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Why I now think an early election is likely – politicalbetting.com
Why I now think an early election is now likely – politicalbetting.com
Tory campaign manager Isaac Levido to rejoin CCHQ amid speculation of early electionhttps://t.co/1gqmvo688n
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Good job he's not leading this shower then.
Shame about the EU Referendum. Still you can't win 'em all. No harm done!
Bringing forward Budget, usually held in March, would allow time for any tax cuts to improve voters’ finances before they go to polls
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/11/23/snap-election-speculation-treasury-mulls-early-budget/ (£££)
I am appreciative. Whilst it would have been funny to watch Rishi cling on it means we get shut of this shower of shit quicker than we could have hoped. And on a personal level now that I am running it means that I know how long my commitment is - 4 months.
Lab 46
Con 21
I don’t buy this May election talk .
Although chancellor of the exchequer Jeremy Hunt's autumn statement to the House of Commons on Wednesday did not include any references to gambling, the documents published alongside did contain potentially grave news for the [racing] industry.
Under a chapter titled Backing British Business (point 5.86), the document said the government "will consult shortly on proposals to bring remote gambling [meaning gambling offered over the internet, telephone, TV and radio] into a single tax, rather than taxing it through a three-tax structure".
General betting duty and pool betting duty are set at 15 per cent of an operator's profits, but remote gaming duty, levied on games of chance such as online casino, is set at 21 per cent.
https://www.racingpost.com/news/britain/potential-online-gambling-tax-hike-threatens-to-blow-up-funding-of-racing-atPho2H1ZEGy/
To be honest, I didn’t think the discussion had started! Was it on the earlier thread? Anyway, Skelton Lake must be pretty good to be better than Tebay!
I think Sunak will be reluctant to hang on to the bitter end like Brown and Major.
But the problem is that the Government is still massively increasing taxes by fiscal drag.
Giving small tax cuts funded by much bigger tax rises, isn't anything to be proud of.
Still, for the longer term rebalancing of the economy and taxes, I would be OK with another five years of fiscal drag if the next five years saw a further 2% per year cut in National Insurance - though Employers National Insurance needs dealing with too.
I had the steak at Cuts. Superb
https://www.rosewoodhotels.com/en/phnom-penh/dining/cuts
Their problem is that neither option looks great, and they can't know in advance which is better. I'm reminded of Murray Gell-Mann's comments on studying at MIT;
“It occurred to me that I could try MIT, first, and then commit suicide. Whereas I couldn’t do things in reverse order: if I committed suicide, I could not then, afterwards, try MIT.”
If Skelton is M&S, Tebay is the Booths of services...
We have a true believer!
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
There are still far too many people in this country who have yet to work out that the government doesn't have any money of its own. It has our money and it should be a damn sight more careful about how it spends it.
I am just trying to get in the mindset of those who produced projections during Covid @Foxy!
It is clear we are at the beginning of an election campaign.
@EdConwaySky
Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start.
This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this.
Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850.
It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE
it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
a) next week's increase will be 8 percent, then 16...
or
b) we will all be immune to Conservatism by teatime, if not already.
I am making a different point. The scale of migration - legal and illegal - into Europe - is now surging towards crisis levels. And politics is reflecting that (Meloni, Wilders, Eastern Europe)
That may redound to the benefit of Tories if some calamity hits. Who knows. This is all unprecedented
As that chart shows
Spring and early summer is when voters think more about nature and the environment (that’s my rock solid empirically proven statement of fact / groundless supposition that sounds about right). That could help Lib Dems in the raw sewage belt if there’s a spring election.
Sunak will want more time to narrow the gap and even if he doesn't is unlikely to want to cut 6 months from his premiership unnecessarily
I imagine in Britain surge immigration might = surge in abstention, or wasted RefUK votes.
The right always complain about unions and paymasters when Labour are in government. But say nothing about the spivocracy bottom feeders they are beholden to when they are in government.
The biggest driver by far of immigration are foreign students who in aggregate are keeping our Universities and colleges afloat. The government is reluctant to talk about that although it is one of our few successful growth export industries of recent years. The next biggest is family members of those who are already here. Awkward to deny that, creates lots of unsympathetic headlines.
And now we have the skills or labour shortage exemptions which don't say much good about the way our economy has been run in recent decades either. So let's talk about the boats, it was supposed to be easier until the Supreme Court took away the pretence.
The cat is out of the bag, and you can expect the media now to push a May election as the plan. Should Rishi turn frit again and bottle it, you won't get a better result in the autumn, it will be worse.
The lesson from so many past elections is that an early election is almost always better than a late election...
Maybe 8,000 people into a country of 2.5 million? And also it was spread over many years
So, nowhere near 1%
Either i) Our universities are growing and growing and growing and growing with ever more students in each year OR
ii) "Students" are staying forever - so in fact they're not really student immigrants for the stats if they spend 4 years studying and then 40 years working here
Might have been more, if the leader of the opposition had been Hereward the Woke rather than Wake.
The odds tighten.
Quite a lot of these students end up staying here.
The idea then that they somehow shouldn't be counted as some suggest strikes me as absurd
What is interesting - though I have no idea of reasons or implications - is the big drop in the numbers of Britons leaving the UK in the last 20 odd years.
In 2006 207,000 Britons emigrated. In 2022 it was just 92,000. The big drop appears to be following the 2008 GFC and numbers have never recoverd since then.
(PS are you all excited for Cybertruck Day? Only six sleeps to go... 😃 )
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=363857
Their shipbuilding in particular will be highly competitive with other western offerings.
Say 30 years from 1066 to 1096
The UK has just imported 1.3 million people - nearly 2% of the population - in 24 MONTHS
https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/rtwbelgians/belgian-refugees-in-britain-a-short-summary/
Everyone should spend three hours on ConHome for such disrespectful behaviour.
Banning the age discrimination where oldies get things cheaper than younger people is another idea.
I think that’s the biggest anti migrant race riot Europe has seen in many decades. And it was in Ireland, of all places
Also, drinking at home is now a relatively inexpensive thing, especially when compared with either pubs or smoking.
(ONS says 20 king size filter are now £15. Can this be true?)
Israel could have had a hostage deal nearly one month ago, but chose a ground invasion instead. It then rejected the same Qatari-brokered deal last week.
What changed now? According to Amos Harel of Haaretz, the Israeli “security establishment” has developed the “understanding that the outcry of the hostages’ families is arousing broad public support, and that it will be difficult to continue with a ground maneuver in the southern Gaza Strip should public anger over what will be perceived as abandoning women and children increase.”
Call it "National Service" to confuse everyone.