Options
Can you handle two massive elections at the same time? – politicalbetting.com
Can you handle two massive elections at the same time? – politicalbetting.com
In today’s Sunday Times Tim Shipman reports that
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Spring or autumn is the choice facing the Tory leader. Anyone who claims to be certain what he will do is either a fool or a fibber, because he doesn’t know himself. Like any politician in his dire circumstances, he’s trying to keep his options open and his opponents guessing.
I forecast an autumn contest for two main reasons. There’s a better chance that the Bank of England will have started to cut interest rates by then. For many voters, reductions in inflation and borrowing costs will make a bigger difference to their quality of life than any tax cuts. My second reason… is the psychology of beleaguered incumbents who fear the verdict of the electorate. Leaders who aren’t confident of winning almost invariably delay the moment of reckoning in the hope that something will turn up to save them.
Meanwhile we can all nibble on a Sunday Hardman:
So even if the tax cuts they’ve been agitating for over the past year do turn up in March, Tory MPs are anxious about the budget kicking things off. “Let’s hope this starting gun doesn’t have duds like the party conference and the king’s speech,” says one junior minister
Sunak’s more recent refrain is “finish the job”: something he said repeatedly in his press conference about the Rwanda policy. Some of his aides think “finish the job” would be better in May when there is still a chance that things could get worse, than in autumn when the job looks so messy that voters might conclude it’s worth abandoning.
Half of the [Tory] party is already thinking about the leadership election after a polling day defeat, and will be campaigning more vigorously for their pitch to take over the party in that “election recovery” period than they will be for their current chief. Many will want to make pronouncements during the campaign so that they can say “I told you so” afterwards. Many of their colleagues will amplify those pronouncements.
Sunak will have to embrace a noisy, ill-disciplined campaign as there is little chance of him getting anything else. He has seen the virtues of this to some extent, concluding after his party held Uxbridge in the autumn that niche campaigns on local issues could allow the Conservatives to stem losses in other areas too. But he will probably get frustrated by the sense that while he is working relentlessly, his party won’t be beavering away in the same way.
On Topic, assuming Levido has read the Evil Overlord Rulebook, all we can conclude is that the election isn't planned to be on November 17. The more interesting question is why he wants to plant that date in the minds of Shipman's readership?
(In passing, "Shipman's readership" is surprisingly satisfying to say. I recommend it.)
I’m sure our @Leon also feels fine, predicting one global catastrophe after another whilst assuming that his bank account and the walls of his Camden Town bedsit will somehow keep him safe.
Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, the US election/civil war, and the fragility of both western democracy and the financial/debt position of western economies and many of their consumers, will make this coming year an exceptionally fragile one.
I expect that global stock markets are going to lead into the coming year with good bull runs. But my advice would be to watch closely and always be thinking about the right time to sell.
I still think it's plausible Clinton would have made a much better president than Obama. Certainly western policy towards Putin's Russia has been utterly incoherent. Neither one thing nor the other.
The other thing here is that by even raising the prospect of it being May, the Tories have now created a bit of a rod for their own backs. If it doesn't happen in May now, there will be accusations of Rishi being frit. It might become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Fulham 2
67 mins
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/football/67256002
Samantha says dealing with several polls at the same time is well within her capacity.
In other political news, she's off to a Welsh Labour event where the senior MP's name is said to be almost impossible to pronounce. She's always found the longest standing Welsh member a bit of a mouthful.
http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/dungeon_a.html
http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/dungeon_b.html
#KnowYourLimits
Edit : @Leon reaction to pre flaked Parmesan being out of stock *forever*, post apocalypse would be a sight to see.
In a thread where I have not commented, where I am not mentioned, you can’t help mentioning me
It’s just fucking…. WEIRD. TBH
https://www.bestforbritain.org/new_mega_poll_december_2023
The poll had 10,000 respondents so fairly large and they have MRP'd some of the questions.
The most amusing one was Thinking about the next General Election, who do you think would make the best Prime Minister of the UK?
In Richmond and Northallerton when analysing the results, ‘Don’t Know’ was voters’ top response with 32%; Keir Starmer came second with 27%; and Sunak third at just 24%.
So even in Sunak's own consistency they would prefer Starmer as PM.
Happy New Year Rishi!
1. There will be an election in November. The Tories and the SNP will lose. Labour will have a modest majority, greatly helped by 20+ seats in Scotland, all taken from the SNP. The loss of seats may well be the end of the road for Yousaf. By the end of the year Rishi will have stood down as an MP and be looking to go back to California.
2. The economy will do better than current forecasts, growing modestly. There will not be a technical recession but we may come close in the first half of the year.
3. By the Summer both Russia and Ukraine will be exhausted and some form of messy compromise satisfying no one will be found.
4. Biden will win the US election, more easily than he did in 2020. The Democrats will also gain the House but may struggle in the Senate. Biden will not complete his second term.
5. China will have another difficult year with huge debt overhangs in property undermining the tax base of several provinces finances. Growth will slow even further and Xi will compensate by making more bellicose noises over Taiwan but not act.
So, you all now know where not to put your bets. Good luck all!
this is truly the first year I've been looking forward to since before the pandemic. following the pandemic everything got too much for me and I fell apart mentally in 2022. I've spent this year making changes and putting myself back together again. I'm looking forward to moving on next year. Hopefully I can leave the past alone from here on out.
We've got to have a five week campaign, so even if Rishi hauls everyone back for a dissolution this week, the earliest Thursday is February 8th, I think.
And not even Rishi can be daft enough to run an election campaign over Christmas (can he?), which puts the last sensible date as December 19th.
Given that just before Christmas is what happens if he continues to bottle it, it's more likely than it should be.
I had always assumed that if there was an autumn election, it would take place in October. Likely 17th.
November felt to me to be leaving it too late for a "scheduled" election (not like 2019). Darker nights, miserable weather, harder to persuade campaigners to get out on the trail. The start of the Christmas rush.
BUT,
Three factors why it may be a wildcard:
1) As noted above, the prospect of a few interest rate cuts having had the time to sink in;
2) The possibility of another autumn statement (more giveaways?)
3) The US election gamble. If you see the US dealing with disorder following the vote (and there must be a chance of that, whoever wins), do you try and run the "no time for change of government" strategy? High risk of that not working. But potentially high reward if it does.
I still think it should be May, and it will be dangerous for the Tories to delay it any further than that. But I ccan see the logic in November....
The winner of that contest will be winning a bottle of champagne.
2 - Agreed, although stock markets may not fare so well, looking forward to the next crisis
3 - possibly. Or we’ll be in the same position next New Year.
4 - if he’s up against Trump, for sure.
5 - the fragility of China’s economic situation is often overlooked. Sadly its possible implosion doesn’t bode well for the rest of us.
I may also be getting married next year once a few things have been sorted out.
Personally I’d add substantial LibDem gains, but there you go.
I am joking, it will be a large bottle, metric or imperial depending on the winner's preference.
Worries about Taiwan and also, North and South Korea.
Other than that I expect us to all be here absolutely fine on 1st January 2025.
Maybe it would rob Starmer of a honeymoon if his first few days coincided with a Trump victory, and the fear and chaos that would cause? Or maybe people here would realise how relatively stable and boring our politics is, with two uncharismatic non-entities competing to manage our decline? Certainly it would make sure that the rest of the world doesn't notice what our result is.
Of course the month-on-month rate - annualised - would be current, and thus not backward looking, but it is subject to 'random' fluctuations and therefore misleading, and the annualisation would magnify them. Those random monthly fluctualtions tend to offset each other when summed up over the year. We choose the annual rate because it tells us the trend, albeit belatedly. The lag is about 6 months. Is there no better way to get the CURRENT value of the trend in price increases, i.e. inflation?
Well yes there is. But it has to involve some kind of smoothing of the monthly data. There are several ways to do that - e.g. @Barnesian's favourite exponential smoothing for one. But my current favourite is a bit recherché: "empirical mode decomposition". Anyway here is the trend rate of UK CPI inflation (red) along with the year-on-year data we normally talk about (black). You can see that the trend troughs and peaks precede the usual measure until, strangely, the most recent downturn.
GIVE IT UP, IAN
You've got a very sexy young hound that seems to love you right back. You both enjoy travel and oral sex. Concentrate on this, on the good stuff, let the rest go
A lot of us were scarred by Covid. I only really moved on late last year, the autumn of 2022
Many are still there. The other day, down in Cornwall for Chrimbo, I messaged a very old friend in Padstow that I haven't seen since pre-pandemic, I suggested a drink and a long overdue catch up
He answered "Sure, briliant, I know a good pub, but it will have to be outside, we are still shielding"
WTAFFFF
I did some research and found out this is true. This person has been "shielding" since 2020 and has not stopped. No one has been inside their house. We are on the cusp of 2024. Will it be like this for the rest of his life?
How many others are like that?
I never saw my friend. It rained like fuck and I am not gonna stand outside a pub in the rain talking to someone in a frigging mask
Happy New Year to all on PB 👍🍺
Dominic C is very smart and good at elex but Merlin the Magician in a tag team with Einstein and GPT43 could not win this election for the Tories
2) Agree
3) Sadly the war will continue through 2024
4) Trump wins in November, after which the crystal ball clouds over, but we get closer to the early 1930s
5) Agree
1. Election in May. Labour win a decent majority but not quite the landslide the polls imply
2. Agreed. No recession, but we will come dangerously close. Growth will remain "subdued"
3. The Ukraine war will grind to a halt in late spring as both sides realise they have run out men, energy and ideas and no summer offensive is gonna work. There may not even be a formal armistice. Just a kind of sad, frigid truce
4. Trump will win a very close election but will not be the dictator feared by some. He will exult in his victory like the braggart he is, but much else will continue. He won't withdraw from NATO, he WILL bully NATO countries into spending more on defence (and fair enough)
5. China will begin a chokehold on Taiwan, subtle at first: aiming for takeover by 2027
OK now for the blacker swans:
6. A form of LLM will be released (perhaps from an unexpected source) and for many it will cross the line and be true AI; relatedly we will see the first major swathe of jobs falling to AI
7. Migration will become an overwhelming issue in Europe, and more countries will fall to far/hard right governments: the EU elections will show this
8. England will win the euros mainly thanks to Jude Bellingham
The election is in May.
Labour wins the election. I will not predict the means in which they do so but I would not be surprised to see SKS getting a larger majority than Blair. The Tories do very badly, Sunak immediately resigns.
Braverman takes over the Tory Party. They poll less than 20% for much of the year.
Labour records a 30 point lead at some point in the year.
Labour passes planning reform.
Lots of phone masts are built.
CorrectHorseBattery is re-admitted to PB.
My husband Doug will issue a statement tomorrow morning at 9am to set the record straight.
https://twitter.com/MichelleMone/status/1741454220274946371
But my point is, this person has been shielding perpetually since lockdown 1. Never stopped
What kind of life is that?
For him, this would include blocks on Ukraine being a member of the EU & NATO.
I think even the most “pragmatic” will balk at blocking, permanently, EU membership
I last did a dry month in November, and for the first time I hated it. As an agnostic, I take it to be my form of wearing a hair shirt...
"An Joint-Statement is reportedly expected to be made in the coming hours by the United States, Britain, and an Unknown European Country, announcing that they are in Final Preparations for a Large-Scale Military Operation against the Houthi Terrorist Group in Yemen which will include the launch of Hundreds of Missiles and Airstrikes against Pre-Planned Targets in Western Yemen and the Red Sea."
https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1741490989313704183?s=20
* net disposable income
* the difference between wage inflation and price inflation (which is similar to the above but ignores interest rate effects on housing costs)
* whether voters look at prices in supermarkets etc and think "blimey, I remember when it used to be under a quid for that"
For all of those, inflation-right-now is an input but only one input. For the third item, inflation over 12 or 24 months might actually be a better guide to voter sentiment.
2. inflation continues to fall and moderate but sluggish growth
3. War continues through the year
4. Biden is forced to pull out due to ill health and his replacement loses to Trump
5. China's economy begins to tank
6. England fail to get out of the group stages at the euros
England will arguably have the best team in the world, with the best player in the world, when these euros come around. If we cannot win it now, we never will
BRACE
This TwiX account is known for hyperbole and melodrama, and you know how allergic I am to such things
Mind you, the Houthis should be taken out. They threaten a global recession. Zap them
Secondly, Trump is so unpopular in the UK that you can expect Labour to highlight the pro-Trumpers in the most crackers parts of the Tory party, and it's a lot easier for Labour to distance itself from Trump's wilder statements if asked to comment, for both diplomatic and party management reasons.
1) A THING WILL HAPPEN
- A thing will happen
- PBers will post twitter links to it
- PBers will post twitter links to other people's tweets about it
- PBers will post links to powerpoints, pdfs or word documents
- Nobody will bother to check whether the words or the numbers are true
2) SOMEBODY WILL SAY SOMETHING- Somebody will say something
- PBers will post twitter links to it
- It will be hotly debated
- PB will conclude that it is good and free speech is cited
- The something will be praised and the somebody will keep their job
- Nobody will bother to check whether the words or the numbers are true
3) SOMEBODY ELSE WILL SAY SOMETHING ELSE- Somebody else will say something else
- PBers will post twitter links to it
- It will be hotly debated
- PB will conclude that it is bad and "it must be offensive/wrong" or similar will be cited
- The something else will be derided and the somebody else will lose their job
- Nobody will bother to check whether the words or the numbers are true
4) A RUMOUR WILL BE RUMOURED- A rumour will be rumoured
- PBers will post twitter links to it
- It will be hotly debated
- PB will conclude that it is true or false on absolutely no evidence
- PB will say sagely "in my judgement..." despite no evidence other than the rumour
- Nobody will bother to check whether the words or the numbers are true
5) SOMEBODY WILL POST A PICTURE OF A LITTLE DOGhttps://x.com/neilgibbons/status/1741490798753906826?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
My nickname at university was Finbarr after Finbarr Saunders.
Whoever is running her PR is really shit.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/michelle-mone-covid-ppe-scandal-escobar-b2469292.html
Go for it, Rishi.