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Why Labour’s large leads could be a chimera – politicalbetting.com
Why Labour’s large leads could be a chimera – politicalbetting.com
Can the Tories win back waverers?New exclusive polling by Sky News and @YouGov gives a hint that a crucial group of voters may still be up for grabs.@SamCoatesSky has more on the data ?#PoliticsHub https://t.co/GlTNastFii? Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/RWlM3iLJGV
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Isn't this exactly what people were saying before 1997?
South Africa breaking the habit of a lifetime and not choking is the only way India don't win the world cup.
In 1997 Blair still led with this type of demographic IIRC.
Sometimes it's hard to separate the goats from the lions and the snakes.
May I suggest:
South Africa breaking the habit of a lifetime and not choking is the only way India don't win the world cup.
That it's all just a little bit of history repeating
That isn’t just a “meh, he’s ok”. That’s a full scale dislike. If that in any way holds then the Tory challenge is to try and weaponise that and get those people out to vote.
That’s not Sunak (who is OK, but not inspiring) neither is it any of the leading candidates to replace him
The Tories need to go into opposition and find a hidden Blair or Thatcher
(Although, perhaps even scarier if I couldn't remember it at all...)
Polls aren’t static and this could change.
No wonder he's been taken off.
I am not saying that the Tories will win the next election but it is possible that Labour fail to win a majority because of this key demographic
As Corbyn was so unpopular it is likely there were a considerable Labourish voters who decided to stay at home in 2019.
If the Scottish figures are anything like the polls yesterday, the bar for Labour is so much lower than previously imagined.
34 for the Tories is unlikely to force a Hung Parliament with Labour ahead in Scotland.
I may be accused of wishful thinking but, no, my wishful thinking would be for them not to hang on any longer - go to the country now Sunak, while you have slim chance of avoiding a Tory meltdown.
Who does that leave? I would respectfully suggest a front-bench dominated by women of whom the Tories have quite a few options: Mordaunt, Badenoch, Donelan, Keegan to name but four. (Maybe not Braverman). With one of them leader, and the others in leading positions, post 2024 politics could become quite interesting.
But I can just about see a hung parliament - potentially.
I find the next GE really tough to call. One day I’m thinking we could be looking at a landslide to rival 97, the next an underwhelming Labour largest party. There appears to be a lot of conflicting data and smoke signals.
What I really don’t see is the Tories clinging on.
Yes that one was odd. People did take against her for some reason. I do think people had a bit of a titter about her claiming she was going to be the PM, but beyond that there wasn’t really a lot to actively dislike about her, even if you disagreed with her Brexit stance.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/world/middleeast/west-bank-palestinians-israel-settlers.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
I don’t see this getting anywhere but much worse. And the chances of a wider war expand daily
And yes, I fear you are right on the second point too. I am not sure if she can win an election, but she can certainly be an effective demagogue. I didn’t think she could be, but listen to her recent speeches - she’s improved markedly, and she comes across well.
Over all, I think the Tory realistic hope is probably a Blair 05 win for Starmer, but on the new boundaries. You get some flavour of Labour led Gvt but it’s weak and the Tories can hope to bounce back if they recover quickly and sober up.
Both the major parties *could* have undergone the kind of epochal event that turned the old Liberals into a minor party.
She was trying to grasp that moment.
Having said that, not long ago I expected a poll with a 10 point Labour lead by Christmas, and that is looking unlikely.
Of betting and political interest equally is the great range of possibilities in the middle - the big area of trench warfare where the Tories lose more than about 45/50 seats (losing control) but Labour fail to gain about 115-120 seats (failing to gain control).
Numbers are imprecise because of SF, and the unpredictability of perfidious DUP.
So long as we don't get a 1992 repeat. Imagine, five more years of this lot.
However, tbf, Braverman, though I'm not keen, is far more persuasive that Truss and almost certainly possesses a political antennae which La Truss manifestly didn't. I think she could, as you say, confound the commentariat with her direct no-nonsense approach.
OTOH I wonder if she will be able to hold the party together. May be seen as the "final straw" by the moderate end of the parliamentary party.
Brexit - the harder the better.
Liz Truss for leader.
Backing Kwasi on the abolition of the 45% tax rate
Her decisions have cost the average voter quite a lot of money, not a great start to making her 'much more popular'.
And Starmer will look like he is not up to the top job.
An election tends to concentrate minds all round.
Not a bad effort.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/02/haley-desantis-2024-00124962
...“Are you wearing higher heels than Ron DeSantis next week at the debate so you can look taller than him on the stage?” Charlamagne Tha God, who is guest hosting “The Daily Show,” asked Haley Wednesday night.
“I don’t know. We’ll have to figure that out. I can tell you I’ve always talked about my high heels. I’ve never hid that from anybody,” Haley responded. “I’ve always said, don’t wear them if you can’t run in them. So we’ll see if he can run in them.”
DeSantis’ campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but has vehemently denied the heel accusations in the past. In a POLITICO article this week about the matter, a DeSantis campaign spokesperson called it a “hit piece” and said the presidential candidate doesn’t pad his boots...
She is going for the “I will say what others won’t,” strategy. Essentially, the Trump playbook. And unfortunately there has for many years been an undercurrent in this country of exasperation with how politics works, how politicians behave, how they don’t, allegedly, focus on the priorities of the man on the street.
This sort of attitude led to Brexit. I’d like to think we’ve learned our lesson on that front, but I’m not convinced. Braverman is going to make a pitch for that, and it’s going to be messy. Think culture war turned up to max, the immigration hot potato becoming even hotter, and a lot of outrageous stuff being said.
Dont believe me? See her speech in Washington and her conference speech. She is gearing up for this.
However I did lapse for about two days into a fit of insane deluded optimism about Truss. It was a stern lesson to myself in the follies of Hopecasting. I so WANTED to believe the Tories had found a sharp, smart, charismatic, Leaver leader, able to sort out the mess of Boris and Co, that I convinced myself, for about 48 hours, that Truss was it
Not my best moment
Braverman feels different. Sane, grounded, intelligent. She has firm right wing views that make her anathema to many, but she doesn't strike me as mad and she has a lot of self belief - and quite an impressive backstory, educationally. She really isn't dim - an accusation hurled at her, absurdly
Who knows. Badenoch comes over as a touch lightweight. Mordaunt is odd, telegenic but odd. And also lightweight
Those seem to be the main three contenders, ATM, it would be marv if someone new and dazzling emerged..
Only about 10% of 1992 Tories switched to Labour in 1997 and look how that worked out.
The Labour vote increased by 2m from 1992-7, some of which was LD tactical voting (the LD vote actually fell over the two elections, despite the LDs more than doubling their number of MPs).
By contrast, the Tory vote fell by fully 5m. Many 1992 Tories simply sat out the Blair landslide, content to watch it happen.
Given that Corbyn's gone, Brexit's done, Starmer's inoffensive and the Tories' rating is not so much down the toilet as through the sewage works and out into the river, it's easy to see why many 2019 Tories - and especially their first-time voters and those voting tactically to keep Labour out - could well simply abstain. I'd predict that many of that 23% DK will end up as DNV (and remember that for those who do return to the Tory fold, there are balancing 2019 Labour voters who are currently DK / LD / Grn who are, IMO, at least as likely to return, though not all will there either).
In other words, the dynamic that worked so strongly to Labour's favour is highly likely to repeat itself, albeit at lower levels of enthusiasm on both sides - as if we jump straight from 1992 to 2001.
I wasn’t very worried by Corbyn, because I thought he was suffering, and suffered in the past, a lot of unfair and inaccurate criticism from the Conservative press.
I’m not at all sure I trust Starmer; as a politician he’s seriously short of experience, as shown by his shilly-shallying approach to Europe and the Middle East.
However I could be prepared to vote Labour if their candidate had a sliver of a chance against Madam Patel!
I did that with Covid, Lab Leak, Ukraine, AI, and others (in my extremely humble opinion)
I'm hardly alone in fearing a wider war springing from this dreadful Gaza conflict
They can be deeply unpleasant. Filled with a poper Messianic zeal, replete with religious self belief, suffused with their own racial supremacy - actual proper cold-eyed Nazis - the mirror image of the Islamists
It s a toxic mix in a volatile place. Like using a naked flame to illuminate a room full of gunpowder
The Arab world doesn’t want another standup war with Israel. Aside from the nuclear thing, the history is not good. Most of their leaders are “Presidents For Life”. Loosing a war is quite possibly fatal.
And they have the recent evidence that a lot of their Russian toys are not exactly winners.
Israel could strike Iran, I suppose, but to what end?
However, as recounted by LA Times:
"Ronald Reagan always denied he hued his hair. But author Kitty Kelley scooped the world and revealed in her unauthorized biography about Nancy Reagan more than 10 years ago that the president’s gray roots were dyed regularly--in secret, of course, and by Nancy’s hairdresser, Julius--since 1968. When Reagan’s head was shaved for surgery after he left the White House, his hair grew back gray. Still, his handlers denied that he had previously colored it."
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-may-24-lv-dye24-story.html
Israelites = Oceania, Canaanites = East Asia
And where have we heard that before...
Then you have a wider war? Who knows how it unfurls from there
I don't think this is probable, but it is certainly very possible, and the possibiity grows as the nightmare in Gaza continues (ditto the West Bank)
NYT ($) - The Shearing of Sam Bankman-Fried
The disgraced crypto king, on trial for financial fraud, takes the stand. But his hair tells its own story.
Imagine if Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the crypto trading firm FTX and defendant in one of the largest financial fraud trials in history, was actually named Samson, rather than Samuel. Like the biblical character, Mr. Bankman-Fried’s symbolic shearing for his courtroom appearance may become a fabled reflection of promise brought low in the tales to come of our digital age.
As Mr. Bankman-Fried took the stand on Friday in federal court in Manhattan to begin testifying in his own defense — to explain his actions as having been made in good faith, even if they had bad results — it was hard not to think that his newly cropped do, created by a fellow jail inmate, according to a person familiar with the situation, and paired with a subdued gray suit, white shirt and purple tie, wasn’t just a dress code choice, but a metaphor. An apologia writ in hair about what happens when a muscular intellect is married to frail corporate governance. . . .
. . . from the beginning it was by Mr. Bankman-Fried’s hair that so many knew him. The wild halo of dark curls that looked as if it had never met a brush and, according to Michael Lewis in “Going Infinite,” his new book about Mr. Bankman-Fried and FTX, resembled “the hairdo of a lunatic.” The hair that suggested Einstein, electric sockets and some sort of giant brain underneath. . . .
But now the hair is no more. . .
Without the hair, in his playing-by-the-rules get-up, Mr. Bankman-Fried seems kind of … average. This guy — a criminal mastermind? Look at him! He looks like the nerd next door. He clearly did not intend to defraud his investors. He is trying hard to obey the rules. He’s going to, in the words of the George Thorogood song, “get a haircut and get a real job.” . . .
And, of course, polls can change. In both directions.