Percentages are not enough: ansolute numbers and thresholds are also necessary
There are about 175K Conservative members. Two thirds of that is around 120K. That's less people than Middlesbrough
Sunak's failure is explaining why Anderson was suspended. It wasn't because he said the 'unsayable' or something 'politically incorrect' it was because he made an inaccurate criticism about a Muslim man which might reasonably be seen as racist.
If Khan was controlled by Islamists he would have promoted BDS, been against same sex marriage etc. One should never forget the disgraceful behaviour of the Met in taking down posters of the Israeli hostages. Khan is certainly culpable for their conduct including with regard to the marches but then so is the government.
If Sadiq Khan wasn't a Muslim it would make absolutely zero difference to how he runs London, because Islam has nothing to do with it.
Replace Muslim for "Jew" and it's quite obvious why what Anderson said was unacceptable. And also with the amount of death threats and abuse Khan already gets, grossly irresponsible. Attack Khan's policies fine.
Regardless he is crap and could not run a bath.
That's fine.
You think Hamza is a w*****, but you think he's a w****** because you consider him incompetent, not because of his creed. That is fine.
30p brought in the dimension of Islam as a justification to criticise Khan's performance, that changes everything. That is unacceptable.
George won the Rochdale by-election fair and square!
There are allegations about block votes in the large number of postals submitted. That’s hardly unique to Rochdale but is dodgy.
Ultimately Galloway won because his vote was motivated and nobody else’s was. He is legally elected, but that doesn’t make it right, in the exact same way that Rochdale electing a Britain First MP wouldn’t have been right.
There is a positive part to Galloways election, in that it has given electoral voice to the strong opinions over Gaza. It is right and proper that these are expressed in democratic ways rather than just on the streets.
Whilst you point is true, it is where and how it has been expressed that I have the problem. Take a community riven with race issues, and insert *that* as the MP with Gaza the issue. It may provide democratic focus to the Gaza protests, but at the cost of taking Rochdale's community cohesion back a few decades.
It's not the Muslim community's fault that so many other British people find the issue too boring to engage with.
With all the conflicts and suffering going on around the world I fail to see why we should prioritise this situation in particular.
It's the only one I know of where a developed country is killing hundreds of people a day and causing a famine, I think that's quite newsworthy.
So exactly the same strategy that the UK employed in world wars.
George won the Rochdale by-election fair and square!
There are allegations about block votes in the large number of postals submitted. That’s hardly unique to Rochdale but is dodgy.
Ultimately Galloway won because his vote was motivated and nobody else’s was. He is legally elected, but that doesn’t make it right, in the exact same way that Rochdale electing a Britain First MP wouldn’t have been right.
There is a positive part to Galloways election, in that it has given electoral voice to the strong opinions over Gaza. It is right and proper that these are expressed in democratic ways rather than just on the streets.
Whilst you point is true, it is where and how it has been expressed that I have the problem. Take a community riven with race issues, and insert *that* as the MP with Gaza the issue. It may provide democratic focus to the Gaza protests, but at the cost of taking Rochdale's community cohesion back a few decades.
It's not the Muslim community's fault that so many other British people find the issue too boring to engage with.
With all the conflicts and suffering going on around the world I fail to see why we should prioritise this situation in particular.
It's the only one I know of where a developed country is killing hundreds of people a day and causing a famine, I think that's quite newsworthy.
Do Russia, China and Azerbaijan not count as developed countries?
Widespread concerns about President Biden’s age pose a deepening threat to his re-election bid, with a majority of voters who supported him in 2020 now saying he is too old to lead the country effectively, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.
The survey pointed to a fundamental shift in how voters who backed Mr. Biden four years ago have come to see him. A striking 61 percent said they thought he was “just too old” to be an effective president.
Although that said, given the truly labyrinthine rules on capital gains tax on property, I'm not sure even if she's broken the letter of the law it would gain much traction. All she will have to do is plead ignorance, which would be the case for most people who are not trained accountants (including not a few solicitors).
If she needed to turn it around, she could start by pointing out our tax system is a shambles and committing Labour to simplifying it.
This is annoying Mr Neidle.
Rayner said in a statement last week: “As with the majority of ordinary people who sell their own homes, I was not liable for capital gains tax because it was my home and the only one I owned.”
But the rules don’t work like that. We are exempt from capital gains tax (CGT) on our main residence, but married couples can only have one main residence between them.
So Rayner’s initial statement, that she wasn’t liable for capital gains tax because Vicarage Road was her home, was wrong. It’s understandable that she didn’t understand the position in 2015; it would have been a good idea to have taken advice, but many people don’t (and Rayner wasn’t an MP at the time). It’s less understandable that she doesn’t appear to have taken advice before putting out her statement nine years later.
After I and others identified the problem, Rayner failed to correct her original statement, and is now saying simply that “no capital gains tax was payable”. How could that be?
Well, I'm not surprised he's Neidled, but the fact is the rules are bad and that's the fundamental problem. Similarly, an issue with buy to let sales is many solicitors appear to be unaware any CGT must be paid within 60 days and is levied at a different rate.
Sorting these issues out would be beneficial, although I won't hold my breath.
The twist today is that there was some council funded work performed at her husband’s home to accommodate specific needs of one of her children
If her main house was Vicarage Road but her child was living elsewhere…
Looks like the traditional Sunday Rawnsley came out early this week, anyhow....
The police chiefs themselves have been strikingly reluctant to endorse Mr Sunak’s contention that Britain is descending into “mob rule”. This sounds like the kind of thing a rent-a-gob reactionary backbencher might spit out in the hope of being quoted by the Daily Mail. You don’t expect to hear that kind of nonsense coming out of the mouth of the prime minister.
There’s a need for a reasoned debate about the conduct and management of demonstrations. But that was not what the Tory leader was seeking to stimulate with those headline-hunting remarks [of last week]. He was conflating democratic protest with “mob rule” in a way that disdained and undermined Britain’s proud traditions of free assembly and free expression. This wild outburst did him no credit.
[This week's] was one of his better crafted speeches, even if the cynic in me wondered whether a deeply unpopular prime minister was trying to gain public favour by presentinging himself as the steady leader of the nation manning the thin line between stability and chaos. There is also a big underlying issue: the jarring discordance between Mr Sunak’s advocations of unity and mutual respect with the conduct of elements of his own party.
The Tory leader...has been flabby about policing extremism within his own ranks and this feebleness is sourced in a fear that they represent constituencies within his party that could make trouble for him. The Tory party’s hard right is the mob he feels most menaced by. He has not repudiated Ms Truss’s love-ins with the Trumpites. He sacked Ms Braverman as home secretary for an incendiary provocation about “hate marches” last November, but she was only in that profile-enhancing post in the first place because Mr Sunak struck a Faustian bargain with her when he thought he needed hard-right support to secure the premiership. He handed a louder mic to Lee Anderson by promoting him to deputy chair of the Tory party, a role he exploited to platform his noxious prejudices, until he quit over Rwanda.
Only extremists will disagree with the prime minister when he says we should not allow them to hijack our politics. More’s the pity that he has too often behaved like a hostage of the hate-mongers within his own party.
Something to remember.
How many MPs have we had since, 1980 say? A few thousand?
We’ve had 5 murders, innumerable assaults and a barrage of vile threats. For example, women MPs get sexual threats on a daily basis.
A number of MPs carry guns to protect themselves against terrorist threats, as assessed as real and probable by the intelligence services.
A larger number wear stab vests when dealing with the public.
Every MP (pretty much) has had occasions when the stalking/threats have risen to the point the police start individually guarding them and their families.
Talk about a minority under siege.
Makes you wonder about the effect on attitude, doesn’t it?
"A number of MPs carry guns to protect themselves against terrorist threats, as assessed as real and probable by the intelligence services"
Are you serious?.
Yes, that’s serious. Especially Jewish MPs.
I'd be surprised. In olden times, Northern Ireland was a more likely reason.
ETA we know some MPs have police protection after death threats, such as Angela Rayner, but I'd be surprised if she is packing heat.
With regards to the election, it'll be 23rd January. The budget has already fizzled - no money to do the things they had already announced, economy in recession and getting worse, services crumbling and no money available.
The idea of a May election called straight after the budget is excitingly remote, when you consider that it absolutely was plan A a few months ago.
Once we go beyond the deadline to go 2nd May its downhill all the way. We can all talk about various options in the autumn, but all of those involve Sunak calling an "early" election where they will get demolished.
The only wildcard left is January. We all know why January is a catastrophically bad idea. But Sunak will be in the position of needing something, *anything* to change the narrative. Plus this way he can be frit and make the decision of indecision - let parliament expire naturally.
My assumption has been that he'll go for an election date of 12th December, five years exactly after the previous election.
However, if I understand correctly, that would require calling the election almost exactly on polling day in the US. Will that really happen?
Similarly, I think the suggestion of a November election, using party conference as a launching-off point, has some merit - not least of avoiding those dates which would involve cancelling party conference. But an election nine days after the US election? It would put the BBC into an awful bind. Think of all those journalists who were looking forward to a chance to interview voters in Atlanta or Arizona, and instead they'd be expected to trudge around Altrincham or Ayrshire.
There's a bizarre confluence of events that will encourage delay, as well as the natural reluctance to invite electoral oblivion.
Why exactly is there so much idea that we won't call something because the US is having an election? Is it because he's scared of Trump?
The British political/media class are obsessed with the US, none more so than Sunak who until recently held a green card. They won't want to be distracted from what they see as the main event by an election in Britain.
Widespread concerns about President Biden’s age pose a deepening threat to his re-election bid, with a majority of voters who supported him in 2020 now saying he is too old to lead the country effectively, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.
The survey pointed to a fundamental shift in how voters who backed Mr. Biden four years ago have come to see him. A striking 61 percent said they thought he was “just too old” to be an effective president.
NY Times
What a disaster looms.
What the USA needs is a temporary military takeover which gets rid of Biden and Trump and imposes a Haley versus Beshear presidential election.
Percentages are not enough: ansolute numbers and thresholds are also necessary
There are about 175K Conservative members. Two thirds of that is around 120K. That's less people than Middlesbrough
Sunak's failure is explaining why Anderson was suspended. It wasn't because he said the 'unsayable' or something 'politically incorrect' it was because he made an inaccurate criticism about a Muslim man which might reasonably be seen as racist.
If Khan was controlled by Islamists he would have promoted BDS, been against same sex marriage etc. One should never forget the disgraceful behaviour of the Met in taking down posters of the Israeli hostages. Khan is certainly culpable for their conduct including with regard to the marches but then so is the government.
If Sadiq Khan wasn't a Muslim it would make absolutely zero difference to how he runs London, because Islam has nothing to do with it.
Replace Muslim for "Jew" and it's quite obvious why what Anderson said was unacceptable. And also with the amount of death threats and abuse Khan already gets, grossly irresponsible. Attack Khan's policies fine.
Regardless he is crap and could not run a bath.
That's fine.
You think Hamza is a w*****, but you think he's a w****** because you consider him incompetent, not because of his creed. That is fine.
30p brought in the dimension of Islam as a justification to criticise Khan's performance, that changes everything. That is unacceptable.
Yes for sure totally agree , he is a nasty piece of work indeed.
George won the Rochdale by-election fair and square!
There are allegations about block votes in the large number of postals submitted. That’s hardly unique to Rochdale but is dodgy.
Ultimately Galloway won because his vote was motivated and nobody else’s was. He is legally elected, but that doesn’t make it right, in the exact same way that Rochdale electing a Britain First MP wouldn’t have been right.
There is a positive part to Galloways election, in that it has given electoral voice to the strong opinions over Gaza. It is right and proper that these are expressed in democratic ways rather than just on the streets.
Whilst you point is true, it is where and how it has been expressed that I have the problem. Take a community riven with race issues, and insert *that* as the MP with Gaza the issue. It may provide democratic focus to the Gaza protests, but at the cost of taking Rochdale's community cohesion back a few decades.
It's not the Muslim community's fault that so many other British people find the issue too boring to engage with.
With all the conflicts and suffering going on around the world I fail to see why we should prioritise this situation in particular.
It's the only one I know of where a developed country is killing hundreds of people a day and causing a famine, I think that's quite newsworthy.
So because it is a developed country that makes it newsworthy? I suppose you could argue that we tend to focus more on the issues of developed countries but does that explain. I agree with Dan Hodges on this one. The biggest issue is the way white middle class people fetishise the Israel/Gaza issue.
Although that said, given the truly labyrinthine rules on capital gains tax on property, I'm not sure even if she's broken the letter of the law it would gain much traction. All she will have to do is plead ignorance, which would be the case for most people who are not trained accountants (including not a few solicitors).
If she needed to turn it around, she could start by pointing out our tax system is a shambles and committing Labour to simplifying it.
This is annoying Mr Neidle.
Rayner said in a statement last week: “As with the majority of ordinary people who sell their own homes, I was not liable for capital gains tax because it was my home and the only one I owned.”
But the rules don’t work like that. We are exempt from capital gains tax (CGT) on our main residence, but married couples can only have one main residence between them.
So Rayner’s initial statement, that she wasn’t liable for capital gains tax because Vicarage Road was her home, was wrong. It’s understandable that she didn’t understand the position in 2015; it would have been a good idea to have taken advice, but many people don’t (and Rayner wasn’t an MP at the time). It’s less understandable that she doesn’t appear to have taken advice before putting out her statement nine years later.
After I and others identified the problem, Rayner failed to correct her original statement, and is now saying simply that “no capital gains tax was payable”. How could that be?
But if you get married, then you've got a period to dispose of one house without incurring CGT because you were living in it. So her statement doesn't sound implausible. (Times piece paywalled, so I have no idea ifd this is disposed of therein.)
Not as long as she took (she sold in 2015) - 5 years after she married.
Properties are usually exempt from CGT for the last 3(?) years.
Increasingly looking like there is something going on here.
I wonder now if it might be May because if they announce tax cuts it gives Labour little time to respond and say if they'd keep them, whereas delaying gives Labour more time to evolve a plan plus time for more things to go wrong. On a practical level if combined with the locals, does anyone remember the snail count of 2015 especially in London and the Mets?. Final result Friday lunchtime.
It's wishful thinking that leads people to think it will be held in May, by those want to be rid of the Tories as soon as possible.
It's also why they try the gentle goading: the argument being that if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense.
“if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense”
Please share with us your thoughts how you came to this conclusion. It might be both the main parties war gaming and modelling of how it plays out, is different to yours?
Labour might like how bad set of locals for Tory’s plays into the election build up. And Labour also like to have a million households switching to higher mortgage deals before voting day, continued lack of growth to knock on the head any “turned a corner” campaign slogan, inflation sweet spot being in spring and predicted to rise again before year end, and an interim report from covid inquiry before the General Election.
Oh, did I forget to mention the big upsurge in boats from July, reversing last years good news on crossings?
Do any PBer’s think this expected upsurge in boat crossings isn’t actually going to happen? Or that the government can prevent it in some way?
You do post some very convincing arguments on this.
How long until we find out if your prediction day is right or wrong?
If we get to 27th March without it being called for May 2nd, then it’s not May 2nd.
But Sunak will call it tomorrow week, 1038 in the morning to be exact.
I actually agree with everyone that 99/100 you more tempted go long, hoping improving economic news gives you swing back. Brown certainly did that, so too with John Major. But in both those two examples is there evidence it actually worked? And in this situation, there isn’t better economic of financial news later in year to bring the voters home, a worsening picture if any movement.
But I don’t think that 99 times out of a 100 thinking applies here in a unique situation. Sunak’s team called it for May 2nd months ago, when the modelling on boat crossings became clearer. Election timing decisions don’t ever have such an Oppenheimer type time bomb ticking away at the heart of them. In terms of the vital Tory party discipline needed all up to an election back end of this year, and the unique threat the Tories are currently getting from Reform on their voters, boats is not just the main but determining reason why they have gone for the May 2nd election.
Looks like the traditional Sunday Rawnsley came out early this week, anyhow....
The police chiefs themselves have been strikingly reluctant to endorse Mr Sunak’s contention that Britain is descending into “mob rule”. This sounds like the kind of thing a rent-a-gob reactionary backbencher might spit out in the hope of being quoted by the Daily Mail. You don’t expect to hear that kind of nonsense coming out of the mouth of the prime minister.
There’s a need for a reasoned debate about the conduct and management of demonstrations. But that was not what the Tory leader was seeking to stimulate with those headline-hunting remarks [of last week]. He was conflating democratic protest with “mob rule” in a way that disdained and undermined Britain’s proud traditions of free assembly and free expression. This wild outburst did him no credit.
[This week's] was one of his better crafted speeches, even if the cynic in me wondered whether a deeply unpopular prime minister was trying to gain public favour by presentinging himself as the steady leader of the nation manning the thin line between stability and chaos. There is also a big underlying issue: the jarring discordance between Mr Sunak’s advocations of unity and mutual respect with the conduct of elements of his own party.
The Tory leader...has been flabby about policing extremism within his own ranks and this feebleness is sourced in a fear that they represent constituencies within his party that could make trouble for him. The Tory party’s hard right is the mob he feels most menaced by. He has not repudiated Ms Truss’s love-ins with the Trumpites. He sacked Ms Braverman as home secretary for an incendiary provocation about “hate marches” last November, but she was only in that profile-enhancing post in the first place because Mr Sunak struck a Faustian bargain with her when he thought he needed hard-right support to secure the premiership. He handed a louder mic to Lee Anderson by promoting him to deputy chair of the Tory party, a role he exploited to platform his noxious prejudices, until he quit over Rwanda.
Only extremists will disagree with the prime minister when he says we should not allow them to hijack our politics. More’s the pity that he has too often behaved like a hostage of the hate-mongers within his own party.
Something to remember.
How many MPs have we had since, 1980 say? A few thousand?
We’ve had 5 murders, innumerable assaults and a barrage of vile threats. For example, women MPs get sexual threats on a daily basis.
A number of MPs carry guns to protect themselves against terrorist threats, as assessed as real and probable by the intelligence services.
A larger number wear stab vests when dealing with the public.
Every MP (pretty much) has had occasions when the stalking/threats have risen to the point the police start individually guarding them and their families.
Talk about a minority under siege.
Makes you wonder about the effect on attitude, doesn’t it?
"A number of MPs carry guns to protect themselves against terrorist threats, as assessed as real and probable by the intelligence services"
Are you serious?.
Quite serious.
The Home Sec signs an order, and the person is issued with a government owned firearm, and is given training for it.
While the names are confidential, we do know that David Trimble (now Lord Trimble) has such a license. Since he had an ND with his weapon, by his own account.
For extra laughs, some of those are SF MPs. Yes, the legal exemption to ownership and carriage of hand guns is used for them. They complained, a while back that the guns they were given were old and a bit uncool. They wanted new SIGs.
Some of the guns issued used to be Walter PPKs (yes, that gun) in .22lr.
“I would much rather put up with Trump’s behaviour than put up with what we have” - my analysis of why US Republicans are still backing Trump after 8 years on the political scene
"Voters aren't blind to his faults..." - this is EXACTLY how you end up having a dictatorship.
George won the Rochdale by-election fair and square!
There are allegations about block votes in the large number of postals submitted. That’s hardly unique to Rochdale but is dodgy.
Ultimately Galloway won because his vote was motivated and nobody else’s was. He is legally elected, but that doesn’t make it right, in the exact same way that Rochdale electing a Britain First MP wouldn’t have been right.
There is a positive part to Galloways election, in that it has given electoral voice to the strong opinions over Gaza. It is right and proper that these are expressed in democratic ways rather than just on the streets.
Whilst you point is true, it is where and how it has been expressed that I have the problem. Take a community riven with race issues, and insert *that* as the MP with Gaza the issue. It may provide democratic focus to the Gaza protests, but at the cost of taking Rochdale's community cohesion back a few decades.
It's not the Muslim community's fault that so many other British people find the issue too boring to engage with.
With all the conflicts and suffering going on around the world I fail to see why we should prioritise this situation in particular.
It's the only one I know of where a developed country is killing hundreds of people a day and causing a famine, I think that's quite newsworthy.
Do Russia, China and Azerbaijan not count as developed countries?
Also the Russians ar ekilling many in Ukraine and all over Africa, Syria and in their own country, though a stretch to count them as developed other than a couple of cities.
Looks like the traditional Sunday Rawnsley came out early this week, anyhow....
The police chiefs themselves have been strikingly reluctant to endorse Mr Sunak’s contention that Britain is descending into “mob rule”. This sounds like the kind of thing a rent-a-gob reactionary backbencher might spit out in the hope of being quoted by the Daily Mail. You don’t expect to hear that kind of nonsense coming out of the mouth of the prime minister.
There’s a need for a reasoned debate about the conduct and management of demonstrations. But that was not what the Tory leader was seeking to stimulate with those headline-hunting remarks [of last week]. He was conflating democratic protest with “mob rule” in a way that disdained and undermined Britain’s proud traditions of free assembly and free expression. This wild outburst did him no credit.
[This week's] was one of his better crafted speeches, even if the cynic in me wondered whether a deeply unpopular prime minister was trying to gain public favour by presentinging himself as the steady leader of the nation manning the thin line between stability and chaos. There is also a big underlying issue: the jarring discordance between Mr Sunak’s advocations of unity and mutual respect with the conduct of elements of his own party.
The Tory leader...has been flabby about policing extremism within his own ranks and this feebleness is sourced in a fear that they represent constituencies within his party that could make trouble for him. The Tory party’s hard right is the mob he feels most menaced by. He has not repudiated Ms Truss’s love-ins with the Trumpites. He sacked Ms Braverman as home secretary for an incendiary provocation about “hate marches” last November, but she was only in that profile-enhancing post in the first place because Mr Sunak struck a Faustian bargain with her when he thought he needed hard-right support to secure the premiership. He handed a louder mic to Lee Anderson by promoting him to deputy chair of the Tory party, a role he exploited to platform his noxious prejudices, until he quit over Rwanda.
Only extremists will disagree with the prime minister when he says we should not allow them to hijack our politics. More’s the pity that he has too often behaved like a hostage of the hate-mongers within his own party.
Something to remember.
How many MPs have we had since, 1980 say? A few thousand?
We’ve had 5 murders, innumerable assaults and a barrage of vile threats. For example, women MPs get sexual threats on a daily basis.
A number of MPs carry guns to protect themselves against terrorist threats, as assessed as real and probable by the intelligence services.
A larger number wear stab vests when dealing with the public.
Every MP (pretty much) has had occasions when the stalking/threats have risen to the point the police start individually guarding them and their families.
Talk about a minority under siege.
Makes you wonder about the effect on attitude, doesn’t it?
"A number of MPs carry guns to protect themselves against terrorist threats, as assessed as real and probable by the intelligence services"
Are you serious?.
Yes, that’s serious. Especially Jewish MPs.
I'd be surprised. In olden times, Northern Ireland was a more likely reason.
ETA we know some MPs have police protection after death threats, such as Angela Rayner, but I'd be surprised if she is packing heat.
Gerry Fitt certainly had a gun.
And needed to use it:
In 1976, armed with a pistol, he faced down a mob of IRA supporters who had invaded his home in Belfast.
"The thoughts that went through my head at the time, all in the space of a few seconds, were: 'Gerry, this is how you die'; secondly, 'I hope to God you don't get my wife and young daughter'; and thirdly, 'I hope to God I don't have to pull this trigger and kill someone myself.' "
His home was later burned down, and he moved his family to London.
Although that said, given the truly labyrinthine rules on capital gains tax on property, I'm not sure even if she's broken the letter of the law it would gain much traction. All she will have to do is plead ignorance, which would be the case for most people who are not trained accountants (including not a few solicitors).
If she needed to turn it around, she could start by pointing out our tax system is a shambles and committing Labour to simplifying it.
This is annoying Mr Neidle.
Rayner said in a statement last week: “As with the majority of ordinary people who sell their own homes, I was not liable for capital gains tax because it was my home and the only one I owned.”
But the rules don’t work like that. We are exempt from capital gains tax (CGT) on our main residence, but married couples can only have one main residence between them.
So Rayner’s initial statement, that she wasn’t liable for capital gains tax because Vicarage Road was her home, was wrong. It’s understandable that she didn’t understand the position in 2015; it would have been a good idea to have taken advice, but many people don’t (and Rayner wasn’t an MP at the time). It’s less understandable that she doesn’t appear to have taken advice before putting out her statement nine years later.
After I and others identified the problem, Rayner failed to correct her original statement, and is now saying simply that “no capital gains tax was payable”. How could that be?
Well, I'm not surprised he's Neidled, but the fact is the rules are bad and that's the fundamental problem. Similarly, an issue with buy to let sales is many solicitors appear to be unaware any CGT must be paid within 60 days and is levied at a different rate.
Sorting these issues out would be beneficial, although I won't hold my breath.
The twist today is that there was some council funded work performed at her husband’s home to accommodate specific needs of one of her children
If her main house was Vicarage Road but her child was living elsewhere…
If so, then what? Worst case is she makes an apology, blames her advisors and pays back a few hundred quid. A bit like Nadhim Zahawi.
ETA as said earlier, her problem is that Starmer might weaponise it, not that voters will.
Sunak has an easy way of getting rid of Galloway from Parliament if he wants. One call to the king, and we all get to vote on May 2nd.
There won't be an election in May.
It's needed but won't happen. Sunak will leave it as long as possible.
Sunak will not be in post long after May
I agree that there is likely to be a VONC after the May locals, but he will survive. Only Truss wants the poisoned chalice, and even the Tories are not that daft.
The compelling features of a hypothetical Truss challenge is the tory members are addled enough to vote for her again and she's psychotic enough to believe she can win the subsequent GE.
So, odds on?
Where Truss went wrong was not being more like ‘smeared’ Miele.
With regards to the election, it'll be 23rd January. The budget has already fizzled - no money to do the things they had already announced, economy in recession and getting worse, services crumbling and no money available.
The idea of a May election called straight after the budget is excitingly remote, when you consider that it absolutely was plan A a few months ago.
Once we go beyond the deadline to go 2nd May its downhill all the way. We can all talk about various options in the autumn, but all of those involve Sunak calling an "early" election where they will get demolished.
The only wildcard left is January. We all know why January is a catastrophically bad idea. But Sunak will be in the position of needing something, *anything* to change the narrative. Plus this way he can be frit and make the decision of indecision - let parliament expire naturally.
My assumption has been that he'll go for an election date of 12th December, five years exactly after the previous election.
However, if I understand correctly, that would require calling the election almost exactly on polling day in the US. Will that really happen?
Similarly, I think the suggestion of a November election, using party conference as a launching-off point, has some merit - not least of avoiding those dates which would involve cancelling party conference. But an election nine days after the US election? It would put the BBC into an awful bind. Think of all those journalists who were looking forward to a chance to interview voters in Atlanta or Arizona, and instead they'd be expected to trudge around Altrincham or Ayrshire.
There's a bizarre confluence of events that will encourage delay, as well as the natural reluctance to invite electoral oblivion.
Why exactly is there so much idea that we won't call something because the US is having an election? Is it because he's scared of Trump?
I think perhaps the question is like this. Not everyone follows USA politics, but millions of UK voters do. And they all vote. Those who support Trump are going to vote Reform or Tory anyway.
But what of those millions who either fear a Trump win (pre 5 Nov) or or horrified and terrified by the fact (post 5 Nov)? For win he will. How will they vote? IMHO most of those voters will coalesce around wanting the most stable, sensible, boring and principled government available. No-one qualifies for this of course, but Starmer's Labour comes closest and the Trump effect helps Labour, not Tories.
Betting post: If (big if) this is right, Rishi's best plan is to avoid either pre or post 5 November.
This rules out January (can't campaign over Christmas), and December and November, and most of October.
Look carefully at the July and September options but DYOR.
I wonder now if it might be May because if they announce tax cuts it gives Labour little time to respond and say if they'd keep them, whereas delaying gives Labour more time to evolve a plan plus time for more things to go wrong. On a practical level if combined with the locals, does anyone remember the snail count of 2015 especially in London and the Mets?. Final result Friday lunchtime.
It's wishful thinking that leads people to think it will be held in May, by those want to be rid of the Tories as soon as possible.
It's also why they try the gentle goading: the argument being that if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense.
“if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense”
Please share with us your thoughts how you came to this conclusion. It might be both the main parties war gaming and modelling of how it plays out, is different to yours?
Labour might like how bad set of locals for Tory’s plays into the election build up. And Labour also like to have a million households switching to higher mortgage deals before voting day, continued lack of growth to knock on the head any “turned a corner” campaign slogan, inflation sweet spot being in spring and predicted to rise again before year end, and an interim report from covid inquiry before the General Election.
Oh, did I forget to mention the big upsurge in boats from July, reversing last years good news on crossings?
Do any PBer’s think this expected upsurge in boat crossings isn’t actually going to happen? Or that the government can prevent it in some way?
You do post some very convincing arguments on this.
How long until we find out if your prediction day is right or wrong?
If we get to 27th March without it being called for May 2nd, then it’s not May 2nd.
But Sunak will call it tomorrow week, 1038 in the morning to be exact.
I actually agree with everyone that 99/100 you more tempted go long, hoping improving economic news gives you swing back. Brown certainly did that, so too with John Major. But in both those two examples is there evidence it actually worked? And in this situation, there isn’t better economic of financial news later in year to bring the voters home, a worsening picture if any movement.
But I don’t think that 99 times out of a 100 thinking applies here in a unique situation. Sunak’s team called it for May 2nd months ago, when the modelling on boat crossings became clearer. Election timing decisions don’t ever have such an Oppenheimer type time bomb ticking away at the heart of them. In terms of the vital Tory party discipline needed all up to an election back end of this year, and the unique threat the Tories are currently getting from Reform on their voters, boats is not just the main but determining reason way they have gone for the May 2nd election.
I have £5 riding on a May election - Sunak's Friday speech outside No 10 convinces me that it is likely to be May.
Widespread concerns about President Biden’s age pose a deepening threat to his re-election bid, with a majority of voters who supported him in 2020 now saying he is too old to lead the country effectively, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.
The survey pointed to a fundamental shift in how voters who backed Mr. Biden four years ago have come to see him. A striking 61 percent said they thought he was “just too old” to be an effective president.
NY Times
What a disaster looms.
What the USA needs is a temporary military takeover which gets rid of Biden and Trump and imposes a Haley versus Beshear presidential election.
Beshear is an interesting one to watch for 2028. He might also conceivably challenge McConnell or his successor for the Senate in 2026.
It's worth noting that he was behind in polling in last year's gubernatorial election, in a generally Republican state, and still won very comfortably. And while Daniel Cameron clearly isn't stupid, he is also a Trump endorsed candidate who has made some of the same mistakes...
With regards to the election, it'll be 23rd January. The budget has already fizzled - no money to do the things they had already announced, economy in recession and getting worse, services crumbling and no money available.
The idea of a May election called straight after the budget is excitingly remote, when you consider that it absolutely was plan A a few months ago.
Once we go beyond the deadline to go 2nd May its downhill all the way. We can all talk about various options in the autumn, but all of those involve Sunak calling an "early" election where they will get demolished.
The only wildcard left is January. We all know why January is a catastrophically bad idea. But Sunak will be in the position of needing something, *anything* to change the narrative. Plus this way he can be frit and make the decision of indecision - let parliament expire naturally.
My assumption has been that he'll go for an election date of 12th December, five years exactly after the previous election.
However, if I understand correctly, that would require calling the election almost exactly on polling day in the US. Will that really happen?
Similarly, I think the suggestion of a November election, using party conference as a launching-off point, has some merit - not least of avoiding those dates which would involve cancelling party conference. But an election nine days after the US election? It would put the BBC into an awful bind. Think of all those journalists who were looking forward to a chance to interview voters in Atlanta or Arizona, and instead they'd be expected to trudge around Altrincham or Ayrshire.
There's a bizarre confluence of events that will encourage delay, as well as the natural reluctance to invite electoral oblivion.
Why exactly is there so much idea that we won't call something because the US is having an election? Is it because he's scared of Trump?
I think perhaps the question is like this. Not everyone follows USA politics, but millions of UK voters do. And they all vote. Those who support Trump are going to vote Reform or Tory anyway.
But what of those millions who either fear a Trump win (pre 5 Nov) or or horrified and terrified by the fact (post 5 Nov)? For win he will. How will they vote? IMHO most of those voters will coalesce around wanting the most stable, sensible, boring and principled government available. No-one qualifies for this of course, but Starmer's Labour comes closest and the Trump effect helps Labour, not Tories.
Betting post: If (big if) this is right, Rishi's best plan is to avoid either pre or post 5 November.
This rules out January (can't campaign over Christmas), and December and November, and most of October.
Look carefully at the July and September options but DYOR.
This is my thinking too. There is also the no small matter of Tory candidates being asked if they support Trump during the campaign. Let alone the Party members who pop up in the States shilling for him.
George won the Rochdale by-election fair and square!
There are allegations about block votes in the large number of postals submitted. That’s hardly unique to Rochdale but is dodgy.
Ultimately Galloway won because his vote was motivated and nobody else’s was. He is legally elected, but that doesn’t make it right, in the exact same way that Rochdale electing a Britain First MP wouldn’t have been right.
There is a positive part to Galloways election, in that it has given electoral voice to the strong opinions over Gaza. It is right and proper that these are expressed in democratic ways rather than just on the streets.
Whilst you point is true, it is where and how it has been expressed that I have the problem. Take a community riven with race issues, and insert *that* as the MP with Gaza the issue. It may provide democratic focus to the Gaza protests, but at the cost of taking Rochdale's community cohesion back a few decades.
It's not the Muslim community's fault that so many other British people find the issue too boring to engage with.
With all the conflicts and suffering going on around the world I fail to see why we should prioritise this situation in particular.
It's the only one I know of where a developed country is killing hundreds of people a day and causing a famine, I think that's quite newsworthy.
It’s the Eurovision test, shoot unarmed civilians and blow up thousands of starving kids and you’re not allowed to join in the crap music camp fest.
With regards to the election, it'll be 23rd January. The budget has already fizzled - no money to do the things they had already announced, economy in recession and getting worse, services crumbling and no money available.
The idea of a May election called straight after the budget is excitingly remote, when you consider that it absolutely was plan A a few months ago.
Once we go beyond the deadline to go 2nd May its downhill all the way. We can all talk about various options in the autumn, but all of those involve Sunak calling an "early" election where they will get demolished.
The only wildcard left is January. We all know why January is a catastrophically bad idea. But Sunak will be in the position of needing something, *anything* to change the narrative. Plus this way he can be frit and make the decision of indecision - let parliament expire naturally.
My assumption has been that he'll go for an election date of 12th December, five years exactly after the previous election.
However, if I understand correctly, that would require calling the election almost exactly on polling day in the US. Will that really happen?
Similarly, I think the suggestion of a November election, using party conference as a launching-off point, has some merit - not least of avoiding those dates which would involve cancelling party conference. But an election nine days after the US election? It would put the BBC into an awful bind. Think of all those journalists who were looking forward to a chance to interview voters in Atlanta or Arizona, and instead they'd be expected to trudge around Altrincham or Ayrshire.
There's a bizarre confluence of events that will encourage delay, as well as the natural reluctance to invite electoral oblivion.
With regards to the election, it'll be 23rd January. The budget has already fizzled - no money to do the things they had already announced, economy in recession and getting worse, services crumbling and no money available.
The idea of a May election called straight after the budget is excitingly remote, when you consider that it absolutely was plan A a few months ago.
Once we go beyond the deadline to go 2nd May its downhill all the way. We can all talk about various options in the autumn, but all of those involve Sunak calling an "early" election where they will get demolished.
The only wildcard left is January. We all know why January is a catastrophically bad idea. But Sunak will be in the position of needing something, *anything* to change the narrative. Plus this way he can be frit and make the decision of indecision - let parliament expire naturally.
My assumption has been that he'll go for an election date of 12th December, five years exactly after the previous election.
However, if I understand correctly, that would require calling the election almost exactly on polling day in the US. Will that really happen?
Similarly, I think the suggestion of a November election, using party conference as a launching-off point, has some merit - not least of avoiding those dates which would involve cancelling party conference. But an election nine days after the US election? It would put the BBC into an awful bind. Think of all those journalists who were looking forward to a chance to interview voters in Atlanta or Arizona, and instead they'd be expected to trudge around Altrincham or Ayrshire.
There's a bizarre confluence of events that will encourage delay, as well as the natural reluctance to invite electoral oblivion.
I think October would be best of a bad lot for it but these losers are likely to hang on to the bitter end knowing it will be a train wreck regardless.
With regards to the election, it'll be 23rd January. The budget has already fizzled - no money to do the things they had already announced, economy in recession and getting worse, services crumbling and no money available.
The idea of a May election called straight after the budget is excitingly remote, when you consider that it absolutely was plan A a few months ago.
Once we go beyond the deadline to go 2nd May its downhill all the way. We can all talk about various options in the autumn, but all of those involve Sunak calling an "early" election where they will get demolished.
The only wildcard left is January. We all know why January is a catastrophically bad idea. But Sunak will be in the position of needing something, *anything* to change the narrative. Plus this way he can be frit and make the decision of indecision - let parliament expire naturally.
My assumption has been that he'll go for an election date of 12th December, five years exactly after the previous election.
However, if I understand correctly, that would require calling the election almost exactly on polling day in the US. Will that really happen?
Similarly, I think the suggestion of a November election, using party conference as a launching-off point, has some merit - not least of avoiding those dates which would involve cancelling party conference. But an election nine days after the US election? It would put the BBC into an awful bind. Think of all those journalists who were looking forward to a chance to interview voters in Atlanta or Arizona, and instead they'd be expected to trudge around Altrincham or Ayrshire.
There's a bizarre confluence of events that will encourage delay, as well as the natural reluctance to invite electoral oblivion.
With regards to the election, it'll be 23rd January. The budget has already fizzled - no money to do the things they had already announced, economy in recession and getting worse, services crumbling and no money available.
The idea of a May election called straight after the budget is excitingly remote, when you consider that it absolutely was plan A a few months ago.
Once we go beyond the deadline to go 2nd May its downhill all the way. We can all talk about various options in the autumn, but all of those involve Sunak calling an "early" election where they will get demolished.
The only wildcard left is January. We all know why January is a catastrophically bad idea. But Sunak will be in the position of needing something, *anything* to change the narrative. Plus this way he can be frit and make the decision of indecision - let parliament expire naturally.
My assumption has been that he'll go for an election date of 12th December, five years exactly after the previous election.
However, if I understand correctly, that would require calling the election almost exactly on polling day in the US. Will that really happen?
Similarly, I think the suggestion of a November election, using party conference as a launching-off point, has some merit - not least of avoiding those dates which would involve cancelling party conference. But an election nine days after the US election? It would put the BBC into an awful bind. Think of all those journalists who were looking forward to a chance to interview voters in Atlanta or Arizona, and instead they'd be expected to trudge around Altrincham or Ayrshire.
There's a bizarre confluence of events that will encourage delay, as well as the natural reluctance to invite electoral oblivion.
I think October would be best of a bad lot for it but these losers are likely to hang on to the bitter end knowing it will be a train wreck regardless.
Yes, Malcom, these crooks will remain till the bitter end. I’m going for a Jan 25 GE. Hopefully it will lead to the filthy Tories to a sub 100 seat total. They deserve it. #ToryScum
PS Not saying that the Labour Party and SKS are good. They are shit too! SKS would sell his family to get into power - unprincipled moron!
Personally I don't think Khan is crap, certainly no less crap than Johnson.
Exceedingly low bar you are setting there.
That's a fair enough rebuttal.
I don't understand the absolute loathing Khan gets, for me he is totally "meh". I'll happily vote for him again only to stop the Tories.
Khan is the blandest of assemble-yourself-kit-politicians.
In a movie involving London, he would be perfect in the role of the Mayor, who gets one speaking line. Listed 126th on the cast list.
I agree, which is why I find it odd that people have enough energy to hate him. Same with Keir Starmer.
Heck, I don't hate Rishi Sunak! I think he's a crap leader and a crap politician but he's so boring and useless I can't get annoyed enough with him personally.
Sunak has an easy way of getting rid of Galloway from Parliament if he wants. One call to the king, and we all get to vote on May 2nd.
There won't be an election in May.
It's needed but won't happen. Sunak will leave it as long as possible.
Sunak will not be in post long after May
I agree that there is likely to be a VONC after the May locals, but he will survive. Only Truss wants the poisoned chalice, and even the Tories are not that daft.
The compelling features of a hypothetical Truss challenge is the tory members are addled enough to vote for her again and she's psychotic enough to believe she can win the subsequent GE.
So, odds on?
Where Truss went wrong was not being more like ‘smeared’ Miele.
Truss operated in a "vacuum ".
Thank you and goodnight!
I could die son with shame at misspelling Milei.
You teed it up and I smashed it straight and true down the fairway towards the pin!
I wonder now if it might be May because if they announce tax cuts it gives Labour little time to respond and say if they'd keep them, whereas delaying gives Labour more time to evolve a plan plus time for more things to go wrong. On a practical level if combined with the locals, does anyone remember the snail count of 2015 especially in London and the Mets?. Final result Friday lunchtime.
It's wishful thinking that leads people to think it will be held in May, by those want to be rid of the Tories as soon as possible.
It's also why they try the gentle goading: the argument being that if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense.
“if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense”
Please share with us your thoughts how you came to this conclusion. It might be both the main parties war gaming and modelling of how it plays out, is different to yours?
Labour might like how bad set of locals for Tory’s plays into the election build up. And Labour also like to have a million households switching to higher mortgage deals before voting day, continued lack of growth to knock on the head any “turned a corner” campaign slogan, inflation sweet spot being in spring and predicted to rise again before year end, and an interim report from covid inquiry before the General Election.
Oh, did I forget to mention the big upsurge in boats from July, reversing last years good news on crossings?
Do any PBer’s think this expected upsurge in boat crossings isn’t actually going to happen? Or that the government can prevent it in some way?
You do post some very convincing arguments on this.
How long until we find out if your prediction day is right or wrong?
If we get to 27th March without it being called for May 2nd, then it’s not May 2nd.
But Sunak will call it tomorrow week, 1038 in the morning to be exact.
I actually agree with everyone that 99/100 you more tempted go long, hoping improving economic news gives you swing back. Brown certainly did that, so too with John Major. But in both those two examples is there evidence it actually worked? And in this situation, there isn’t better economic of financial news later in year to bring the voters home, a worsening picture if any movement.
But I don’t think that 99 times out of a 100 thinking applies here in a unique situation. Sunak’s team called it for May 2nd months ago, when the modelling on boat crossings became clearer. Election timing decisions don’t ever have such an Oppenheimer type time bomb ticking away at the heart of them. In terms of the vital Tory party discipline needed all up to an election back end of this year, and the unique threat the Tories are currently getting from Reform on their voters, boats is not just the main but determining reason why they have gone for the May 2nd election.
Widespread concerns about President Biden’s age pose a deepening threat to his re-election bid, with a majority of voters who supported him in 2020 now saying he is too old to lead the country effectively, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.
The survey pointed to a fundamental shift in how voters who backed Mr. Biden four years ago have come to see him. A striking 61 percent said they thought he was “just too old” to be an effective president.
NY Times
What a disaster looms.
What the USA needs is a temporary military takeover which gets rid of Biden and Trump and imposes a Haley versus Beshear presidential election.
The media keep banging on about Biden's age but it's not what's driving his polling problem. If it was then younger alternatives would poll better, or at least wouldn't make Trump poll better in the head-to-heads which they do.
I wonder now if it might be May because if they announce tax cuts it gives Labour little time to respond and say if they'd keep them, whereas delaying gives Labour more time to evolve a plan plus time for more things to go wrong. On a practical level if combined with the locals, does anyone remember the snail count of 2015 especially in London and the Mets?. Final result Friday lunchtime.
It's wishful thinking that leads people to think it will be held in May, by those want to be rid of the Tories as soon as possible.
It's also why they try the gentle goading: the argument being that if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense.
“if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense”
Please share with us your thoughts how you came to this conclusion. It might be both the main parties war gaming and modelling of how it plays out, is different to yours?
Labour might like how bad set of locals for Tory’s plays into the election build up. And Labour also like to have a million households switching to higher mortgage deals before voting day, continued lack of growth to knock on the head any “turned a corner” campaign slogan, inflation sweet spot being in spring and predicted to rise again before year end, and an interim report from covid inquiry before the General Election.
Oh, did I forget to mention the big upsurge in boats from July, reversing last years good news on crossings?
Do any PBer’s think this expected upsurge in boat crossings isn’t actually going to happen? Or that the government can prevent it in some way?
You do post some very convincing arguments on this.
How long until we find out if your prediction day is right or wrong?
If we get to 27th March without it being called for May 2nd, then it’s not May 2nd.
But Sunak will call it tomorrow week, 1038 in the morning to be exact.
I actually agree with everyone that 99/100 you more tempted go long, hoping improving economic news gives you swing back. Brown certainly did that, so too with John Major. But in both those two examples is there evidence it actually worked? And in this situation, there isn’t better economic of financial news later in year to bring the voters home, a worsening picture if any movement.
But I don’t think that 99 times out of a 100 thinking applies here in a unique situation. Sunak’s team called it for May 2nd months ago, when the modelling on boat crossings became clearer. Election timing decisions don’t ever have such an Oppenheimer type time bomb ticking away at the heart of them. In terms of the vital Tory party discipline needed all up to an election back end of this year, and the unique threat the Tories are currently getting from Reform on their voters, boats is not just the main but determining reason why they have gone for the May 2nd election.
I don't think it would be announced on the 11th that would be an election campaign of almost 2 months which would be painful all round.
but the 18th makes sense as that gives an extra week to get whatever bills are going through Parliament through Parliament and if there are tax cuts in the budget for the election that gives them time to get them through..
Labour appeared to have reached the electoral stage of countering their tediously centrist, wouldn't-say-boo-to-a-goose vibe by doing edgy photo shoots.
Labour appeared to have reached the electoral stage of countering their tediously centrist, wouldn't-say-boo-to-a-goose vibe by doing edgy photo shoots.
Labour appeared to have reached the electoral stage of countering their tediously centrist, wouldn't-say-boo-to-a-goose vibe by doing edgy photo shoots.
I see we've given up posting polls and now we're just attacking how SKS looks. Okay.
You want Polls?
I prefer actual elections here is the last one and looking ahead to 5 more
Labour vote share in Rochdale.
49.4% - Tony Blair 1997 49.2% - Tony Blair 2001 40.0% - Tony Blair 2005 36.4% - Gordon Brown 2010 46.1% - Ed Miliband 2015 58.0% - Jeremy Corbyn 2017 51.6% - Jeremy Corbyn 2019 7.7% - Keir Starmer 2024
Widespread concerns about President Biden’s age pose a deepening threat to his re-election bid, with a majority of voters who supported him in 2020 now saying he is too old to lead the country effectively, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.
The survey pointed to a fundamental shift in how voters who backed Mr. Biden four years ago have come to see him. A striking 61 percent said they thought he was “just too old” to be an effective president.
NY Times
What a disaster looms.
What the USA needs is a temporary military takeover which gets rid of Biden and Trump and imposes a Haley versus Beshear presidential election.
The media keep banging on about Biden's age but it's not what's driving his polling problem. If it was then younger alternatives would poll better, or at least wouldn't make Trump poll better in the head-to-heads which they do.
Biden's problem is this:
Biden is the equivalent of an old piece of tech with maintenance problems.
People are happy to use it as its always been there and fear replacing it might be difficult or just different.
A few weeks after they do replace it they wonder why they didn't do so years before.
I see we've given up posting polls and now we're just attacking how SKS looks. Okay.
You want Polls?
I prefer actual elections here is the last one and looking ahead to 5 more
Labour vote share in Rochdale.
49.4% - Tony Blair 1997 49.2% - Tony Blair 2001 40.0% - Tony Blair 2005 36.4% - Gordon Brown 2010 46.1% - Ed Miliband 2015 58.0% - Jeremy Corbyn 2017 51.6% - Jeremy Corbyn 2019 7.7% - Keir Starmer 2024
Widespread concerns about President Biden’s age pose a deepening threat to his re-election bid, with a majority of voters who supported him in 2020 now saying he is too old to lead the country effectively, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.
The survey pointed to a fundamental shift in how voters who backed Mr. Biden four years ago have come to see him. A striking 61 percent said they thought he was “just too old” to be an effective president.
NY Times
What a disaster looms.
What the USA needs is a temporary military takeover which gets rid of Biden and Trump and imposes a Haley versus Beshear presidential election.
The media keep banging on about Biden's age but it's not what's driving his polling problem. If it was then younger alternatives would poll better, or at least wouldn't make Trump poll better in the head-to-heads which they do.
Biden's problem is this:
Biden is the equivalent of an old piece of tech with maintenance problems.
People are happy to use it as its always been there and fear replacing it might be difficult or just different.
A few weeks after they do replace it they wonder why they didn't do so years before.
They're not happy to use it, they're saying want to vote for the other guy. What they don't want to do is vote for a different Democrat.
Sunak has an easy way of getting rid of Galloway from Parliament if he wants. One call to the king, and we all get to vote on May 2nd.
There won't be an election in May.
It's needed but won't happen. Sunak will leave it as long as possible.
Sunak will not be in post long after May
I agree that there is likely to be a VONC after the May locals, but he will survive. Only Truss wants the poisoned chalice, and even the Tories are not that daft.
The compelling features of a hypothetical Truss challenge is the tory members are addled enough to vote for her again and she's psychotic enough to believe she can win the subsequent GE.
So, odds on?
Where Truss went wrong was not being more like ‘smeared’ Miele.
Labour appeared to have reached the electoral stage of countering their tediously centrist, wouldn't-say-boo-to-a-goose vibe by doing edgy photo shoots.
Nothing will top Caroline Flint.
Surely the last word on pictures of MPs is this
Still amongst the weirdest thing I've ever seen. What was she thinking?
I wonder now if it might be May because if they announce tax cuts it gives Labour little time to respond and say if they'd keep them, whereas delaying gives Labour more time to evolve a plan plus time for more things to go wrong. On a practical level if combined with the locals, does anyone remember the snail count of 2015 especially in London and the Mets?. Final result Friday lunchtime.
It's wishful thinking that leads people to think it will be held in May, by those want to be rid of the Tories as soon as possible.
It's also why they try the gentle goading: the argument being that if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense.
“if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense”
Please share with us your thoughts how you came to this conclusion. It might be both the main parties war gaming and modelling of how it plays out, is different to yours?
Labour might like how bad set of locals for Tory’s plays into the election build up. And Labour also like to have a million households switching to higher mortgage deals before voting day, continued lack of growth to knock on the head any “turned a corner” campaign slogan, inflation sweet spot being in spring and predicted to rise again before year end, and an interim report from covid inquiry before the General Election.
Oh, did I forget to mention the big upsurge in boats from July, reversing last years good news on crossings?
Do any PBer’s think this expected upsurge in boat crossings isn’t actually going to happen? Or that the government can prevent it in some way?
You do post some very convincing arguments on this.
How long until we find out if your prediction day is right or wrong?
If we get to 27th March without it being called for May 2nd, then it’s not May 2nd.
But Sunak will call it tomorrow week, 1038 in the morning to be exact.
I actually agree with everyone that 99/100 you more tempted go long, hoping improving economic news gives you swing back. Brown certainly did that, so too with John Major. But in both those two examples is there evidence it actually worked? And in this situation, there isn’t better economic of financial news later in year to bring the voters home, a worsening picture if any movement.
But I don’t think that 99 times out of a 100 thinking applies here in a unique situation. Sunak’s team called it for May 2nd months ago, when the modelling on boat crossings became clearer. Election timing decisions don’t ever have such an Oppenheimer type time bomb ticking away at the heart of them. In terms of the vital Tory party discipline needed all up to an election back end of this year, and the unique threat the Tories are currently getting from Reform on their voters, boats is not just the main but determining reason why they have gone for the May 2nd election.
I'm sure Sunak would like to go in May. But the counterargument is that the polls are so bad that it would be suicidal.
Take the most favourable polls, don't have any tactical rewind, add a bit more RefUK squeeze, you still get the Conservatives losing half their MPs;
Holding on probably will make things worse. Boats not stopped, more people moving to increased mortgage rates, more Conservative voters going to the that higher place where they don't even get postal votes.
But climbing out of the trenches to face the Starmerite machine guns when it isn't necessary yet? That's brave, and I'm not sure Rishi is that sort of brave.
I wonder now if it might be May because if they announce tax cuts it gives Labour little time to respond and say if they'd keep them, whereas delaying gives Labour more time to evolve a plan plus time for more things to go wrong. On a practical level if combined with the locals, does anyone remember the snail count of 2015 especially in London and the Mets?. Final result Friday lunchtime.
It's wishful thinking that leads people to think it will be held in May, by those want to be rid of the Tories as soon as possible.
It's also why they try the gentle goading: the argument being that if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense.
“if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense”
Please share with us your thoughts how you came to this conclusion. It might be both the main parties war gaming and modelling of how it plays out, is different to yours?
Labour might like how bad set of locals for Tory’s plays into the election build up. And Labour also like to have a million households switching to higher mortgage deals before voting day, continued lack of growth to knock on the head any “turned a corner” campaign slogan, inflation sweet spot being in spring and predicted to rise again before year end, and an interim report from covid inquiry before the General Election.
Oh, did I forget to mention the big upsurge in boats from July, reversing last years good news on crossings?
Do any PBer’s think this expected upsurge in boat crossings isn’t actually going to happen? Or that the government can prevent it in some way?
You do post some very convincing arguments on this.
How long until we find out if your prediction day is right or wrong?
If we get to 27th March without it being called for May 2nd, then it’s not May 2nd.
But Sunak will call it tomorrow week, 1038 in the morning to be exact.
I actually agree with everyone that 99/100 you more tempted go long, hoping improving economic news gives you swing back. Brown certainly did that, so too with John Major. But in both those two examples is there evidence it actually worked? And in this situation, there isn’t better economic of financial news later in year to bring the voters home, a worsening picture if any movement.
But I don’t think that 99 times out of a 100 thinking applies here in a unique situation. Sunak’s team called it for May 2nd months ago, when the modelling on boat crossings became clearer. Election timing decisions don’t ever have such an Oppenheimer type time bomb ticking away at the heart of them. In terms of the vital Tory party discipline needed all up to an election back end of this year, and the unique threat the Tories are currently getting from Reform on their voters, boats is not just the main but determining reason why they have gone for the May 2nd election.
I'm sure Sunak would like to go in May. But the counterargument is that the polls are so bad that it would be suicidal.
Take the most favourable polls, don't have any tactical rewind, add a bit more RefUK squeeze, you still get the Conservatives losing half their MPs;
Holding on probably will make things worse. Boats not stopped, more people moving to increased mortgage rates, more Conservative voters going to the that higher place where they don't even get postal votes.
But climbing out of the trenches to face the Starmerite machine guns when it isn't necessary yet? That's brave, and I'm not sure Rishi is that sort of brave.
And that's the issue - do you commit electoral suicide by going now or do you wait and die a natural death - although a natural death is likely to result in even fewer seats being retained..
Labour appeared to have reached the electoral stage of countering their tediously centrist, wouldn't-say-boo-to-a-goose vibe by doing edgy photo shoots.
Nothing will top Caroline Flint.
Surely the last word on pictures of MPs is this
Still amongst the weirdest thing I've ever seen. What was she thinking?
They are cringeworthy photos. However, it is really the photographer to blame. As far as Truss is concerned, she was just getting dolled up and doing a fashion shoot. Obviously Maggie would never pose like that but nobody would ever have had the balls to ask her too.
In triple-lock sort of news, the Swiss have voted heavily (59%) for a trade union-backed proposal to increase the national pension by 8.5% from 2026. Opponents criticised it as a help-the-old-bash-the-young proposal (it's likely to be financed by a VAT increase), but the majority reflects the view that pensioners deserve a break in view of the rising cost of living.
Galloway does get his highest approval rating from Labour voters though. So while I would not expect him to make a big impact his party could make an impact in Labour seats with big Muslim populations like Rochdale
Galloway does get his highest approval rating from Labour voters though. So while I would not expect him to make a big impact his party could make an impact in Labour seats with big Muslim populations like Rochdale
it makes Corbyn's bid for re-election more interesting, perhaps an effect on London mayoralty vote as well
With regards to the election, it'll be 23rd January. The budget has already fizzled - no money to do the things they had already announced, economy in recession and getting worse, services crumbling and no money available.
The idea of a May election called straight after the budget is excitingly remote, when you consider that it absolutely was plan A a few months ago.
Once we go beyond the deadline to go 2nd May its downhill all the way. We can all talk about various options in the autumn, but all of those involve Sunak calling an "early" election where they will get demolished.
The only wildcard left is January. We all know why January is a catastrophically bad idea. But Sunak will be in the position of needing something, *anything* to change the narrative. Plus this way he can be frit and make the decision of indecision - let parliament expire naturally.
My assumption has been that he'll go for an election date of 12th December, five years exactly after the previous election.
However, if I understand correctly, that would require calling the election almost exactly on polling day in the US. Will that really happen?
Similarly, I think the suggestion of a November election, using party conference as a launching-off point, has some merit - not least of avoiding those dates which would involve cancelling party conference. But an election nine days after the US election? It would put the BBC into an awful bind. Think of all those journalists who were looking forward to a chance to interview voters in Atlanta or Arizona, and instead they'd be expected to trudge around Altrincham or Ayrshire.
There's a bizarre confluence of events that will encourage delay, as well as the natural reluctance to invite electoral oblivion.
Why exactly is there so much idea that we won't call something because the US is having an election? Is it because he's scared of Trump?
I think perhaps the question is like this. Not everyone follows USA politics, but millions of UK voters do. And they all vote. Those who support Trump are going to vote Reform or Tory anyway.
But what of those millions who either fear a Trump win (pre 5 Nov) or or horrified and terrified by the fact (post 5 Nov)? For win he will. How will they vote? IMHO most of those voters will coalesce around wanting the most stable, sensible, boring and principled government available. No-one qualifies for this of course, but Starmer's Labour comes closest and the Trump effect helps Labour, not Tories.
Betting post: If (big if) this is right, Rishi's best plan is to avoid either pre or post 5 November.
This rules out January (can't campaign over Christmas), and December and November, and most of October.
Look carefully at the July and September options but DYOR.
I doubt the US election makes the slightest difference, some on the left aren't keen on Biden anymore than Starmer over Gaza most swing voters who dislike Trump are already voting Labour or LD and the few in the UK who love Trump back and will vote for Reform on the whole.
By November of course if Trump is convicted in one of his criminal cases he could be in jail in which case it will be a totally different ball game
Just got to Pets at Home in Altrincham to find it doesn't open at 11. God, apparently, has changed his views to fit those of 21st century sensibilities but is still very firm on the hours during which one can buy cat litter on a Sunday. *insert rant about living in a theocracy*
This morning, I brought in my Pets at Home home delivery. It’s free over a certain order amount. Came the day after I ordered. The trick is not to pay for guaranteed next day delivery, because it always seems to come next day anyway!
Widespread concerns about President Biden’s age pose a deepening threat to his re-election bid, with a majority of voters who supported him in 2020 now saying he is too old to lead the country effectively, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.
The survey pointed to a fundamental shift in how voters who backed Mr. Biden four years ago have come to see him. A striking 61 percent said they thought he was “just too old” to be an effective president.
NY Times
What a disaster looms.
What the USA needs is a temporary military takeover which gets rid of Biden and Trump and imposes a Haley versus Beshear presidential election.
The media keep banging on about Biden's age but it's not what's driving his polling problem. If it was then younger alternatives would poll better, or at least wouldn't make Trump poll better in the head-to-heads which they do.
Biden's problem is this:
Biden is the equivalent of an old piece of tech with maintenance problems.
People are happy to use it as its always been there and fear replacing it might be difficult or just different.
A few weeks after they do replace it they wonder why they didn't do so years before.
Whereas replacing Biden with Trump would be like replacing it with a second hand model that happened to be cheap and available but was got rid of because it was rubbish and never worked.
And then a few weeks later shorts out and burns the house down.
In terms of getting elected from outside the main parties the leftist Putin stooge does much better than his right-wing equivalent.
Rochdale has every democratic right to elect George Galloway. He is the democratically elected MP for Rochdale. It does not do for his opponents to claim that his election was undemocratic or mob-rule. If you deny people their right to elect scoundrels then they will express their evident discontent in ways other than the ballot box. Then things really could get nasty.
Sure. As I wrote, you get what you vote for. There is an argument that Galloway won't be the worst MP we have had in the Commons during this session - there seems to be a major problem with scumbags getting elected and then doing various outrageous and very wrong things.
Galloway won't steal. Won't be inappropriate with staffers. Won't disappear for months because of an allegation we're not allowed to talk about. He will be endlessly speaking in the Commons and in the media. Great for Rochdale you would think.
No. He represents one part of the town. One community. One mindset. Regardless of party we have to at least maintain the pretence that MPs represent everyone. Will deal with any issue raised by a constituent. Imagine one of Rochdale's Jewish residents raising anti-semitism fears with Galloway. He won't be campaigning to bring maternity services back to Rochdale, he'll be campaigning to bring them to Rafah.
Galloway’s history suggests that your assurance that he “won't steal. Won't be inappropriate with staffers” can’t be entirely guaranteed. He’s been accused of misusing charity funds and he lost a lawsuit brought by his former assistant.
With regards to the election, it'll be 23rd January. The budget has already fizzled - no money to do the things they had already announced, economy in recession and getting worse, services crumbling and no money available.
The idea of a May election called straight after the budget is excitingly remote, when you consider that it absolutely was plan A a few months ago.
Once we go beyond the deadline to go 2nd May its downhill all the way. We can all talk about various options in the autumn, but all of those involve Sunak calling an "early" election where they will get demolished.
The only wildcard left is January. We all know why January is a catastrophically bad idea. But Sunak will be in the position of needing something, *anything* to change the narrative. Plus this way he can be frit and make the decision of indecision - let parliament expire naturally.
My assumption has been that he'll go for an election date of 12th December, five years exactly after the previous election.
However, if I understand correctly, that would require calling the election almost exactly on polling day in the US. Will that really happen?
Similarly, I think the suggestion of a November election, using party conference as a launching-off point, has some merit - not least of avoiding those dates which would involve cancelling party conference. But an election nine days after the US election? It would put the BBC into an awful bind. Think of all those journalists who were looking forward to a chance to interview voters in Atlanta or Arizona, and instead they'd be expected to trudge around Altrincham or Ayrshire.
There's a bizarre confluence of events that will encourage delay, as well as the natural reluctance to invite electoral oblivion.
Why exactly is there so much idea that we won't call something because the US is having an election? Is it because he's scared of Trump?
It has been reported that the civil service have strenuously warned Sunak that holding an election in early November would be a Bad Thing. Stability of the west, that kind of thing.
Although that said, given the truly labyrinthine rules on capital gains tax on property, I'm not sure even if she's broken the letter of the law it would gain much traction. All she will have to do is plead ignorance, which would be the case for most people who are not trained accountants (including not a few solicitors).
If she needed to turn it around, she could start by pointing out our tax system is a shambles and committing Labour to simplifying it.
This is annoying Mr Neidle.
Rayner said in a statement last week: “As with the majority of ordinary people who sell their own homes, I was not liable for capital gains tax because it was my home and the only one I owned.”
But the rules don’t work like that. We are exempt from capital gains tax (CGT) on our main residence, but married couples can only have one main residence between them.
So Rayner’s initial statement, that she wasn’t liable for capital gains tax because Vicarage Road was her home, was wrong. It’s understandable that she didn’t understand the position in 2015; it would have been a good idea to have taken advice, but many people don’t (and Rayner wasn’t an MP at the time). It’s less understandable that she doesn’t appear to have taken advice before putting out her statement nine years later.
After I and others identified the problem, Rayner failed to correct her original statement, and is now saying simply that “no capital gains tax was payable”. How could that be?
But if you get married, then you've got a period to dispose of one house without incurring CGT because you were living in it. So her statement doesn't sound implausible. (Times piece paywalled, so I have no idea ifd this is disposed of therein.)
Not as long as she took (she sold in 2015) - 5 years after she married.
Properties are usually exempt from CGT for the last 3(?) years.
Increasingly looking like there is something going on here.
Still implausible. HMRC keep an eye on house sales and would have spotted that potential capital gain (as should the solicitor).
Still too many loose variables.
And as for the child moldifications, may that not mean that the child was in the other house waiting for the alterations to be done?
This is now in the stage of "our first gotcha was crap so we're scrabbling around for anything we can possibly make stick if the reader has no idea what we are talking about".
Possibly the single most stupid policy possible, in response to media headlines.
How many people actually understand non-dom status and how it works in practice, or how it relates to foreign direct investment and the balance of payments?
I doubt it’s abject humiliation but it is worrying to see we now have governance by opposition policy and daily mirror editorial.
Same with the end to so called no fault evictions which is merely the end of a contract and one party not wanting to renew it.
Surely it's time landlords had to take business risk and run the risk of actually losing money and their business going tits up. Profit is the reward for risk.
But that risk should be accepted at the start of the contract, not bounced on them part-way through.
I wonder now if it might be May because if they announce tax cuts it gives Labour little time to respond and say if they'd keep them, whereas delaying gives Labour more time to evolve a plan plus time for more things to go wrong. On a practical level if combined with the locals, does anyone remember the snail count of 2015 especially in London and the Mets?. Final result Friday lunchtime.
It's wishful thinking that leads people to think it will be held in May, by those want to be rid of the Tories as soon as possible.
It's also why they try the gentle goading: the argument being that if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense.
“if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense”
Please share with us your thoughts how you came to this conclusion. It might be both the main parties war gaming and modelling of how it plays out, is different to yours?
Labour might like how bad set of locals for Tory’s plays into the election build up. And Labour also like to have a million households switching to higher mortgage deals before voting day, continued lack of growth to knock on the head any “turned a corner” campaign slogan, inflation sweet spot being in spring and predicted to rise again before year end, and an interim report from covid inquiry before the General Election.
Oh, did I forget to mention the big upsurge in boats from July, reversing last years good news on crossings?
Do any PBer’s think this expected upsurge in boat crossings isn’t actually going to happen? Or that the government can prevent it in some way?
You do post some very convincing arguments on this.
How long until we find out if your prediction day is right or wrong?
If we get to 27th March without it being called for May 2nd, then it’s not May 2nd.
But Sunak will call it tomorrow week, 1038 in the morning to be exact.
I actually agree with everyone that 99/100 you more tempted go long, hoping improving economic news gives you swing back. Brown certainly did that, so too with John Major. But in both those two examples is there evidence it actually worked? And in this situation, there isn’t better economic of financial news later in year to bring the voters home, a worsening picture if any movement.
But I don’t think that 99 times out of a 100 thinking applies here in a unique situation. Sunak’s team called it for May 2nd months ago, when the modelling on boat crossings became clearer. Election timing decisions don’t ever have such an Oppenheimer type time bomb ticking away at the heart of them. In terms of the vital Tory party discipline needed all up to an election back end of this year, and the unique threat the Tories are currently getting from Reform on their voters, boats is not just the main but determining reason why they have gone for the May 2nd election.
I'm sure Sunak would like to go in May. But the counterargument is that the polls are so bad that it would be suicidal.
Take the most favourable polls, don't have any tactical rewind, add a bit more RefUK squeeze, you still get the Conservatives losing half their MPs;
Holding on probably will make things worse. Boats not stopped, more people moving to increased mortgage rates, more Conservative voters going to the that higher place where they don't even get postal votes.
But climbing out of the trenches to face the Starmerite machine guns when it isn't necessary yet? That's brave, and I'm not sure Rishi is that sort of brave.
If Meeks's higher Labour possibility comes true parliament will have to consist of Labour's second XI being the opposition to the first XI, because the other team didn't turn up.
I suspect the Labour party won't find that hard to do.
I wonder now if it might be May because if they announce tax cuts it gives Labour little time to respond and say if they'd keep them, whereas delaying gives Labour more time to evolve a plan plus time for more things to go wrong. On a practical level if combined with the locals, does anyone remember the snail count of 2015 especially in London and the Mets?. Final result Friday lunchtime.
It's wishful thinking that leads people to think it will be held in May, by those want to be rid of the Tories as soon as possible.
It's also why they try the gentle goading: the argument being that if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense.
“if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense”
Please share with us your thoughts how you came to this conclusion. It might be both the main parties war gaming and modelling of how it plays out, is different to yours?
Labour might like how bad set of locals for Tory’s plays into the election build up. And Labour also like to have a million households switching to higher mortgage deals before voting day, continued lack of growth to knock on the head any “turned a corner” campaign slogan, inflation sweet spot being in spring and predicted to rise again before year end, and an interim report from covid inquiry before the General Election.
Oh, did I forget to mention the big upsurge in boats from July, reversing last years good news on crossings?
Do any PBer’s think this expected upsurge in boat crossings isn’t actually going to happen? Or that the government can prevent it in some way?
You do post some very convincing arguments on this.
How long until we find out if your prediction day is right or wrong?
If we get to 27th March without it being called for May 2nd, then it’s not May 2nd.
But Sunak will call it tomorrow week, 1038 in the morning to be exact.
I actually agree with everyone that 99/100 you more tempted go long, hoping improving economic news gives you swing back. Brown certainly did that, so too with John Major. But in both those two examples is there evidence it actually worked? And in this situation, there isn’t better economic of financial news later in year to bring the voters home, a worsening picture if any movement.
But I don’t think that 99 times out of a 100 thinking applies here in a unique situation. Sunak’s team called it for May 2nd months ago, when the modelling on boat crossings became clearer. Election timing decisions don’t ever have such an Oppenheimer type time bomb ticking away at the heart of them. In terms of the vital Tory party discipline needed all up to an election back end of this year, and the unique threat the Tories are currently getting from Reform on their voters, boats is not just the main but determining reason way they have gone for the May 2nd election.
I have £5 riding on a May election - Sunak's Friday speech outside No 10 convinces me that it is likely to be May.
Surely his speech suggests it *won't* be May. He won't have time to manage the horrid extremists if he calls an election early.
Labour appeared to have reached the electoral stage of countering their tediously centrist, wouldn't-say-boo-to-a-goose vibe by doing edgy photo shoots.
Nothing will top Caroline Flint.
Surely the last word on pictures of MPs is this
Still amongst the weirdest thing I've ever seen. What was she thinking?
For a long time I assumed it was just a photoshopped spoof.
In terms of getting elected from outside the main parties the leftist Putin stooge does much better than his right-wing equivalent.
Rochdale has every democratic right to elect George Galloway. He is the democratically elected MP for Rochdale. It does not do for his opponents to claim that his election was undemocratic or mob-rule. If you deny people their right to elect scoundrels then they will express their evident discontent in ways other than the ballot box. Then things really could get nasty.
Who has claimed his election was undemocratic ?
It was a mess, and Galloway is a deeply nasty individual, but he was fairly elected. Just as he'll be fairly ejected , in due course.
I wonder now if it might be May because if they announce tax cuts it gives Labour little time to respond and say if they'd keep them, whereas delaying gives Labour more time to evolve a plan plus time for more things to go wrong. On a practical level if combined with the locals, does anyone remember the snail count of 2015 especially in London and the Mets?. Final result Friday lunchtime.
It's wishful thinking that leads people to think it will be held in May, by those want to be rid of the Tories as soon as possible.
It's also why they try the gentle goading: the argument being that if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense.
“if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense”
Please share with us your thoughts how you came to this conclusion. It might be both the main parties war gaming and modelling of how it plays out, is different to yours?
Labour might like how bad set of locals for Tory’s plays into the election build up. And Labour also like to have a million households switching to higher mortgage deals before voting day, continued lack of growth to knock on the head any “turned a corner” campaign slogan, inflation sweet spot being in spring and predicted to rise again before year end, and an interim report from covid inquiry before the General Election.
Oh, did I forget to mention the big upsurge in boats from July, reversing last years good news on crossings?
Do any PBer’s think this expected upsurge in boat crossings isn’t actually going to happen? Or that the government can prevent it in some way?
You do post some very convincing arguments on this.
How long until we find out if your prediction day is right or wrong?
If we get to 27th March without it being called for May 2nd, then it’s not May 2nd.
But Sunak will call it tomorrow week, 1038 in the morning to be exact.
I actually agree with everyone that 99/100 you more tempted go long, hoping improving economic news gives you swing back. Brown certainly did that, so too with John Major. But in both those two examples is there evidence it actually worked? And in this situation, there isn’t better economic of financial news later in year to bring the voters home, a worsening picture if any movement.
But I don’t think that 99 times out of a 100 thinking applies here in a unique situation. Sunak’s team called it for May 2nd months ago, when the modelling on boat crossings became clearer. Election timing decisions don’t ever have such an Oppenheimer type time bomb ticking away at the heart of them. In terms of the vital Tory party discipline needed all up to an election back end of this year, and the unique threat the Tories are currently getting from Reform on their voters, boats is not just the main but determining reason why they have gone for the May 2nd election.
I'm sure Sunak would like to go in May. But the counterargument is that the polls are so bad that it would be suicidal.
Take the most favourable polls, don't have any tactical rewind, add a bit more RefUK squeeze, you still get the Conservatives losing half their MPs;
Holding on probably will make things worse. Boats not stopped, more people moving to increased mortgage rates, more Conservative voters going to the that higher place where they don't even get postal votes.
But climbing out of the trenches to face the Starmerite machine guns when it isn't necessary yet? That's brave, and I'm not sure Rishi is that sort of brave.
If Meeks's higher Labour possibility comes true parliament will have to consist of Labour's second XI being the opposition to the first XI, because the other team didn't turn up.
I suspect the Labour party won't find that hard to do.
I suspect the Government benches will be rather crowded if the end result is anything like where I expect it to fall...
Possibly the single most stupid policy possible, in response to media headlines.
How many people actually understand non-dom status and how it works in practice, or how it relates to foreign direct investment and the balance of payments?
I doubt it’s abject humiliation but it is worrying to see we now have governance by opposition policy and daily mirror editorial.
Same with the end to so called no fault evictions which is merely the end of a contract and one party not wanting to renew it.
Surely it's time landlords had to take business risk and run the risk of actually losing money and their business going tits up. Profit is the reward for risk.
But that risk should be accepted at the start of the contract, not bounced on them part-way through.
You should allow for changes in the regulatory environment.
I see we've given up posting polls and now we're just attacking how SKS looks. Okay.
You want Polls?
I prefer actual elections here is the last one and looking ahead to 5 more
Labour vote share in Rochdale.
49.4% - Tony Blair 1997 49.2% - Tony Blair 2001 40.0% - Tony Blair 2005 36.4% - Gordon Brown 2010 46.1% - Ed Miliband 2015 58.0% - Jeremy Corbyn 2017 51.6% - Jeremy Corbyn 2019 7.7% - Keir Starmer 2024
I see we've given up posting polls and now we're just attacking how SKS looks. Okay.
You want Polls?
I prefer actual elections here is the last one and looking ahead to 5 more
Labour vote share in Rochdale.
49.4% - Tony Blair 1997 49.2% - Tony Blair 2001 40.0% - Tony Blair 2005 36.4% - Gordon Brown 2010 46.1% - Ed Miliband 2015 58.0% - Jeremy Corbyn 2017 51.6% - Jeremy Corbyn 2019 7.7% - Keir Starmer 2024
Labour appeared to have reached the electoral stage of countering their tediously centrist, wouldn't-say-boo-to-a-goose vibe by doing edgy photo shoots.
Reminds me of Siouxsie & the Banshees ‘Happy House’ video
Although that said, given the truly labyrinthine rules on capital gains tax on property, I'm not sure even if she's broken the letter of the law it would gain much traction. All she will have to do is plead ignorance, which would be the case for most people who are not trained accountants (including not a few solicitors).
If she needed to turn it around, she could start by pointing out our tax system is a shambles and committing Labour to simplifying it.
This is annoying Mr Neidle.
Rayner said in a statement last week: “As with the majority of ordinary people who sell their own homes, I was not liable for capital gains tax because it was my home and the only one I owned.”
But the rules don’t work like that. We are exempt from capital gains tax (CGT) on our main residence, but married couples can only have one main residence between them.
So Rayner’s initial statement, that she wasn’t liable for capital gains tax because Vicarage Road was her home, was wrong. It’s understandable that she didn’t understand the position in 2015; it would have been a good idea to have taken advice, but many people don’t (and Rayner wasn’t an MP at the time). It’s less understandable that she doesn’t appear to have taken advice before putting out her statement nine years later.
After I and others identified the problem, Rayner failed to correct her original statement, and is now saying simply that “no capital gains tax was payable”. How could that be?
But if you get married, then you've got a period to dispose of one house without incurring CGT because you were living in it. So her statement doesn't sound implausible. (Times piece paywalled, so I have no idea ifd this is disposed of therein.)
Not as long as she took (she sold in 2015) - 5 years after she married.
Properties are usually exempt from CGT for the last 3(?) years.
Increasingly looking like there is something going on here.
Still implausible. HMRC keep an eye on house sales and would have spotted that potential capital gain (as should the solicitor).
Still too many loose variables.
And as for the child moldifications, may that not mean that the child was in the other house waiting for the alterations to be done?
This is now in the stage of "our first gotcha was crap so we're scrabbling around for anything we can possibly make stick if the reader has no idea what we are talking about".
HMRC are anything but proactive on tax evasion.
Some years ago, a relative in the building line tried lobbying civil service/politicians to do the following -
1) use the data on people extracting cash on a weekly basis in excess of £10,000. 2) correlates that with planning permission on properties owned. 3) every single time you’d find a builder taking cash in hand, and breaking a whole bunch of other laws, to boot.
He was told that this was impossible. Or wrong. Or would be fattening. Or something.
Today I'm emulating Leon and eating oysters and crab on the beach in the Gulf of Thailand. Didn't quite get what he thought about Phnom Penh but there's some nice craft beer. Siem Reap wasn't quite the backpacker/expat hellhole I expected. The trip on the Burma Railway was fun and I discovered an Aussie shibboleth at Hellfire Pass (although not only did more Poms die on the Death Railway, so did the Dutch, and no-one thinks about the 100,000 Asians). And after a couple of weeks I have learned to cope with the heat. Heathrow on Tuesday is going to be a shock.
For my next SEA trip I may do Nam north to south, by train
Today I'm emulating Leon and eating oysters and crab on the beach in the Gulf of Thailand. Didn't quite get what he thought about Phnom Penh but there's some nice craft beer. Siem Reap wasn't quite the backpacker/expat hellhole I expected. The trip on the Burma Railway was fun and I discovered an Aussie shibboleth at Hellfire Pass (although not only did more Poms die on the Death Railway, so did the Dutch, and no-one thinks about the 100,000 Asians). And after a couple of weeks I have learned to cope with the heat. Heathrow on Tuesday is going to be a shock.
For my next SEA trip I may do Nam north to south, by train
Heathrow is always a shock. On any day. Wherever you have come from.
Although that said, given the truly labyrinthine rules on capital gains tax on property, I'm not sure even if she's broken the letter of the law it would gain much traction. All she will have to do is plead ignorance, which would be the case for most people who are not trained accountants (including not a few solicitors).
If she needed to turn it around, she could start by pointing out our tax system is a shambles and committing Labour to simplifying it.
This is annoying Mr Neidle.
Rayner said in a statement last week: “As with the majority of ordinary people who sell their own homes, I was not liable for capital gains tax because it was my home and the only one I owned.”
But the rules don’t work like that. We are exempt from capital gains tax (CGT) on our main residence, but married couples can only have one main residence between them.
So Rayner’s initial statement, that she wasn’t liable for capital gains tax because Vicarage Road was her home, was wrong. It’s understandable that she didn’t understand the position in 2015; it would have been a good idea to have taken advice, but many people don’t (and Rayner wasn’t an MP at the time). It’s less understandable that she doesn’t appear to have taken advice before putting out her statement nine years later.
After I and others identified the problem, Rayner failed to correct her original statement, and is now saying simply that “no capital gains tax was payable”. How could that be?
But if you get married, then you've got a period to dispose of one house without incurring CGT because you were living in it. So her statement doesn't sound implausible. (Times piece paywalled, so I have no idea ifd this is disposed of therein.)
Not as long as she took (she sold in 2015) - 5 years after she married.
Properties are usually exempt from CGT for the last 3(?) years.
Increasingly looking like there is something going on here.
Still implausible. HMRC keep an eye on house sales and would have spotted that potential capital gain (as should the solicitor).
Still too many loose variables.
And as for the child moldifications, may that not mean that the child was in the other house waiting for the alterations to be done?
This is now in the stage of "our first gotcha was crap so we're scrabbling around for anything we can possibly make stick if the reader has no idea what we are talking about".
HMRC are anything but proactive on tax evasion.
Some years ago, a relative in the building line tried lobbying civil service/politicians to do the following -
1) use the data on people extracting cash on a weekly basis in excess of £10,000. 2) correlates that with planning permission on properties owned. 3) every single time you’d find a builder taking cash in hand, and breaking a whole bunch of other laws, to boot.
He was told that this was impossible. Or wrong. Or would be fattening. Or something.
They should appoint a personal tax inspector to anyone who earns more than x% and pays less than y% in tax.
I think a good taxation policy would be to take an average earner/taxpayer and ensure than no-one pays less than their marginal rate.
And if they do, and the tax breaks are perfectly legal, change the law.
Today I'm emulating Leon and eating oysters and crab on the beach in the Gulf of Thailand. Didn't quite get what he thought about Phnom Penh but there's some nice craft beer. Siem Reap wasn't quite the backpacker/expat hellhole I expected. The trip on the Burma Railway was fun and I discovered an Aussie shibboleth at Hellfire Pass (although not only did more Poms die on the Death Railway, so did the Dutch, and no-one thinks about the 100,000 Asians). And after a couple of weeks I have learned to cope with the heat. Heathrow on Tuesday is going to be a shock.
For my next SEA trip I may do Nam north to south, by train
Heathrow is always a shock. On any day. Wherever you have come from.
Yeah, I'm much more used to the smaller airports. It surprised me how long it took to get from the T5 bus stop to T2
I wonder now if it might be May because if they announce tax cuts it gives Labour little time to respond and say if they'd keep them, whereas delaying gives Labour more time to evolve a plan plus time for more things to go wrong. On a practical level if combined with the locals, does anyone remember the snail count of 2015 especially in London and the Mets?. Final result Friday lunchtime.
It's wishful thinking that leads people to think it will be held in May, by those want to be rid of the Tories as soon as possible.
It's also why they try the gentle goading: the argument being that if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense.
“if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense”
Please share with us your thoughts how you came to this conclusion. It might be both the main parties war gaming and modelling of how it plays out, is different to yours?
Labour might like how bad set of locals for Tory’s plays into the election build up. And Labour also like to have a million households switching to higher mortgage deals before voting day, continued lack of growth to knock on the head any “turned a corner” campaign slogan, inflation sweet spot being in spring and predicted to rise again before year end, and an interim report from covid inquiry before the General Election.
Oh, did I forget to mention the big upsurge in boats from July, reversing last years good news on crossings?
Do any PBer’s think this expected upsurge in boat crossings isn’t actually going to happen? Or that the government can prevent it in some way?
You do post some very convincing arguments on this.
How long until we find out if your prediction day is right or wrong?
If we get to 27th March without it being called for May 2nd, then it’s not May 2nd.
But Sunak will call it tomorrow week, 1038 in the morning to be exact.
I actually agree with everyone that 99/100 you more tempted go long, hoping improving economic news gives you swing back. Brown certainly did that, so too with John Major. But in both those two examples is there evidence it actually worked? And in this situation, there isn’t better economic of financial news later in year to bring the voters home, a worsening picture if any movement.
But I don’t think that 99 times out of a 100 thinking applies here in a unique situation. Sunak’s team called it for May 2nd months ago, when the modelling on boat crossings became clearer. Election timing decisions don’t ever have such an Oppenheimer type time bomb ticking away at the heart of them. In terms of the vital Tory party discipline needed all up to an election back end of this year, and the unique threat the Tories are currently getting from Reform on their voters, boats is not just the main but determining reason why they have gone for the May 2nd election.
I'm sure Sunak would like to go in May. But the counterargument is that the polls are so bad that it would be suicidal.
Take the most favourable polls, don't have any tactical rewind, add a bit more RefUK squeeze, you still get the Conservatives losing half their MPs;
Holding on probably will make things worse. Boats not stopped, more people moving to increased mortgage rates, more Conservative voters going to the that higher place where they don't even get postal votes.
But climbing out of the trenches to face the Starmerite machine guns when it isn't necessary yet? That's brave, and I'm not sure Rishi is that sort of brave.
If Meeks's higher Labour possibility comes true parliament will have to consist of Labour's second XI being the opposition to the first XI, because the other team didn't turn up.
I suspect the Labour party won't find that hard to do.
Actually the other team would be the Lib Dems in that case. Not that it would make much difference. We would effectively have a one party state.
I wonder now if it might be May because if they announce tax cuts it gives Labour little time to respond and say if they'd keep them, whereas delaying gives Labour more time to evolve a plan plus time for more things to go wrong. On a practical level if combined with the locals, does anyone remember the snail count of 2015 especially in London and the Mets?. Final result Friday lunchtime.
It's wishful thinking that leads people to think it will be held in May, by those want to be rid of the Tories as soon as possible.
It's also why they try the gentle goading: the argument being that if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense.
“if you go sooner you might lose fewer seats, which I think is essentially nonsense”
Please share with us your thoughts how you came to this conclusion. It might be both the main parties war gaming and modelling of how it plays out, is different to yours?
Labour might like how bad set of locals for Tory’s plays into the election build up. And Labour also like to have a million households switching to higher mortgage deals before voting day, continued lack of growth to knock on the head any “turned a corner” campaign slogan, inflation sweet spot being in spring and predicted to rise again before year end, and an interim report from covid inquiry before the General Election.
Oh, did I forget to mention the big upsurge in boats from July, reversing last years good news on crossings?
Do any PBer’s think this expected upsurge in boat crossings isn’t actually going to happen? Or that the government can prevent it in some way?
You do post some very convincing arguments on this.
How long until we find out if your prediction day is right or wrong?
If we get to 27th March without it being called for May 2nd, then it’s not May 2nd.
But Sunak will call it tomorrow week, 1038 in the morning to be exact.
I actually agree with everyone that 99/100 you more tempted go long, hoping improving economic news gives you swing back. Brown certainly did that, so too with John Major. But in both those two examples is there evidence it actually worked? And in this situation, there isn’t better economic of financial news later in year to bring the voters home, a worsening picture if any movement.
But I don’t think that 99 times out of a 100 thinking applies here in a unique situation. Sunak’s team called it for May 2nd months ago, when the modelling on boat crossings became clearer. Election timing decisions don’t ever have such an Oppenheimer type time bomb ticking away at the heart of them. In terms of the vital Tory party discipline needed all up to an election back end of this year, and the unique threat the Tories are currently getting from Reform on their voters, boats is not just the main but determining reason why they have gone for the May 2nd election.
I'm sure Sunak would like to go in May. But the counterargument is that the polls are so bad that it would be suicidal.
Take the most favourable polls, don't have any tactical rewind, add a bit more RefUK squeeze, you still get the Conservatives losing half their MPs;
Holding on probably will make things worse. Boats not stopped, more people moving to increased mortgage rates, more Conservative voters going to the that higher place where they don't even get postal votes.
But climbing out of the trenches to face the Starmerite machine guns when it isn't necessary yet? That's brave, and I'm not sure Rishi is that sort of brave.
If Meeks's higher Labour possibility comes true parliament will have to consist of Labour's second XI being the opposition to the first XI, because the other team didn't turn up.
I suspect the Labour party won't find that hard to do.
Actually the other team would be the Lib Dems in that case. Not that it would make much difference. We would effectively have a one party state.
Although that said, given the truly labyrinthine rules on capital gains tax on property, I'm not sure even if she's broken the letter of the law it would gain much traction. All she will have to do is plead ignorance, which would be the case for most people who are not trained accountants (including not a few solicitors).
If she needed to turn it around, she could start by pointing out our tax system is a shambles and committing Labour to simplifying it.
This is annoying Mr Neidle.
Rayner said in a statement last week: “As with the majority of ordinary people who sell their own homes, I was not liable for capital gains tax because it was my home and the only one I owned.”
But the rules don’t work like that. We are exempt from capital gains tax (CGT) on our main residence, but married couples can only have one main residence between them.
So Rayner’s initial statement, that she wasn’t liable for capital gains tax because Vicarage Road was her home, was wrong. It’s understandable that she didn’t understand the position in 2015; it would have been a good idea to have taken advice, but many people don’t (and Rayner wasn’t an MP at the time). It’s less understandable that she doesn’t appear to have taken advice before putting out her statement nine years later.
After I and others identified the problem, Rayner failed to correct her original statement, and is now saying simply that “no capital gains tax was payable”. How could that be?
But if you get married, then you've got a period to dispose of one house without incurring CGT because you were living in it. So her statement doesn't sound implausible. (Times piece paywalled, so I have no idea ifd this is disposed of therein.)
Not as long as she took (she sold in 2015) - 5 years after she married.
Properties are usually exempt from CGT for the last 3(?) years.
Increasingly looking like there is something going on here.
Still implausible. HMRC keep an eye on house sales and would have spotted that potential capital gain (as should the solicitor).
Still too many loose variables.
And as for the child moldifications, may that not mean that the child was in the other house waiting for the alterations to be done?
This is now in the stage of "our first gotcha was crap so we're scrabbling around for anything we can possibly make stick if the reader has no idea what we are talking about".
HMRC are anything but proactive on tax evasion.
Some years ago, a relative in the building line tried lobbying civil service/politicians to do the following -
1) use the data on people extracting cash on a weekly basis in excess of £10,000. 2) correlates that with planning permission on properties owned. 3) every single time you’d find a builder taking cash in hand, and breaking a whole bunch of other laws, to boot.
He was told that this was impossible. Or wrong. Or would be fattening. Or something.
HMRC are overworked - literally the only thing they care about is getting letters out before the 12 month / 4/6 year deadline is hit at which point it's moved from queue 1 to queue 2 and everything kicks off again...
I have £5 riding on a May election - Sunak's Friday speech outside No 10 convinces me that it is likely to be May.
Surely his speech suggests it *won't* be May. He won't have time to manage the horrid extremists if he calls an election early.
Eliminating extremists is not actually possible, so it's (cynically) better to have an election promising to do it rather than a period where it doesn't happen. Cf. Heath and "Who governs Britain?" - to which the answer was "Not you, seemingly".
Although that said, given the truly labyrinthine rules on capital gains tax on property, I'm not sure even if she's broken the letter of the law it would gain much traction. All she will have to do is plead ignorance, which would be the case for most people who are not trained accountants (including not a few solicitors).
If she needed to turn it around, she could start by pointing out our tax system is a shambles and committing Labour to simplifying it.
This is annoying Mr Neidle.
Rayner said in a statement last week: “As with the majority of ordinary people who sell their own homes, I was not liable for capital gains tax because it was my home and the only one I owned.”
But the rules don’t work like that. We are exempt from capital gains tax (CGT) on our main residence, but married couples can only have one main residence between them.
So Rayner’s initial statement, that she wasn’t liable for capital gains tax because Vicarage Road was her home, was wrong. It’s understandable that she didn’t understand the position in 2015; it would have been a good idea to have taken advice, but many people don’t (and Rayner wasn’t an MP at the time). It’s less understandable that she doesn’t appear to have taken advice before putting out her statement nine years later.
After I and others identified the problem, Rayner failed to correct her original statement, and is now saying simply that “no capital gains tax was payable”. How could that be?
But if you get married, then you've got a period to dispose of one house without incurring CGT because you were living in it. So her statement doesn't sound implausible. (Times piece paywalled, so I have no idea ifd this is disposed of therein.)
Not as long as she took (she sold in 2015) - 5 years after she married.
Properties are usually exempt from CGT for the last 3(?) years.
Increasingly looking like there is something going on here.
Still implausible. HMRC keep an eye on house sales and would have spotted that potential capital gain (as should the solicitor).
Still too many loose variables.
And as for the child moldifications, may that not mean that the child was in the other house waiting for the alterations to be done?
This is now in the stage of "our first gotcha was crap so we're scrabbling around for anything we can possibly make stick if the reader has no idea what we are talking about".
HMRC are anything but proactive on tax evasion.
Some years ago, a relative in the building line tried lobbying civil service/politicians to do the following -
1) use the data on people extracting cash on a weekly basis in excess of £10,000. 2) correlates that with planning permission on properties owned. 3) every single time you’d find a builder taking cash in hand, and breaking a whole bunch of other laws, to boot.
He was told that this was impossible. Or wrong. Or would be fattening. Or something.
HMRC are overworked - literally the only thing they care about is getting letters out before the 12 month / 4/6 year deadline is hit at which point it's moved from queue 1 to queue 2 and everything kicks off again...
Merging the Inland Revenue and HM Customs was Gordon Brown’s worst mistake.
I see we've given up posting polls and now we're just attacking how SKS looks. Okay.
You want Polls?
I prefer actual elections here is the last one and looking ahead to 5 more
Labour vote share in Rochdale.
49.4% - Tony Blair 1997 49.2% - Tony Blair 2001 40.0% - Tony Blair 2005 36.4% - Gordon Brown 2010 46.1% - Ed Miliband 2015 58.0% - Jeremy Corbyn 2017 51.6% - Jeremy Corbyn 2019 7.7% - Keir Starmer 2024
Jeremy Corbyn lost two elections in a row. Are you saying you want him back and so by extension, you want another Tory Government?
I know you would like to forget the time when you supported Boris Johnson. But I don't.
I never voted for him or the Tories and although he is to the left of SKS never will..
You might be happy to vote red Tory but i will never vote for the principles free SKS party
The sad thing is, to beat a Tory party that has shown itself time and again to be utterly ruthless when it comes to winning, prepared quite shamelessly to offer everything to everyone without batting an eyelid, then perhaps to beat them you need someone who’s a bit of a bastard and prepared to fight dirty and break the odd promise here and there themselves.
And that’s not Magic Grandpa. He might have piled the votes up on places where they made no difference, but he lost two Generals. In theory I agreed with a lot of what he said, but Christ he was a terrible leader and the party under him was woeful and amateurish.
You might be happy to languish in ideological purity and Green Party irrelevance, but someone needs to get rid of these bastards and to try and repair some of the damage the fucking nutters have done since 2010.
How disciplined do we think the Tories will be during the election campaign? Likewise Labour?
What chance that either party has to disown a candidate during the campaign, as Labour had to disown Ali in Rochdale, and as Sunak has disowned Lee Anderson?
Could we end up with a few seats like Rochdale, where one or the other of the parties regard their officially nominated candidates as persona non grata?
My feeling is that Labour will be very disciplined, to an incredibly frustrating and quite boring degree.
I can see the Tories either doing the same or just going completely mad. I am starting to think the latter is the more likely.
The Tories will go mad, no doubt about that whatsoever. Liz Truss, for example, we never be off our screens, heaping embarrassments upon Rishi at every opportunity.
With regards to the election, it'll be 23rd January. The budget has already fizzled - no money to do the things they had already announced, economy in recession and getting worse, services crumbling and no money available.
The idea of a May election called straight after the budget is excitingly remote, when you consider that it absolutely was plan A a few months ago.
Once we go beyond the deadline to go 2nd May its downhill all the way. We can all talk about various options in the autumn, but all of those involve Sunak calling an "early" election where they will get demolished.
The only wildcard left is January. We all know why January is a catastrophically bad idea. But Sunak will be in the position of needing something, *anything* to change the narrative. Plus this way he can be frit and make the decision of indecision - let parliament expire naturally.
My assumption has been that he'll go for an election date of 12th December, five years exactly after the previous election.
However, if I understand correctly, that would require calling the election almost exactly on polling day in the US. Will that really happen?
Similarly, I think the suggestion of a November election, using party conference as a launching-off point, has some merit - not least of avoiding those dates which would involve cancelling party conference. But an election nine days after the US election? It would put the BBC into an awful bind. Think of all those journalists who were looking forward to a chance to interview voters in Atlanta or Arizona, and instead they'd be expected to trudge around Altrincham or Ayrshire.
There's a bizarre confluence of events that will encourage delay, as well as the natural reluctance to invite electoral oblivion.
Why exactly is there so much idea that we won't call something because the US is having an election? Is it because he's scared of Trump?
It has been reported that the civil service have strenuously warned Sunak that holding an election in early November would be a Bad Thing. Stability of the west, that kind of thing.
That’s the first vaguely plausible argument I’ve heard that November might be a better date than May.
How disciplined do we think the Tories will be during the election campaign? Likewise Labour?
What chance that either party has to disown a candidate during the campaign, as Labour had to disown Ali in Rochdale, and as Sunak has disowned Lee Anderson?
Could we end up with a few seats like Rochdale, where one or the other of the parties regard their officially nominated candidates as persona non grata?
My feeling is that Labour will be very disciplined, to an incredibly frustrating and quite boring degree.
I can see the Tories either doing the same or just going completely mad. I am starting to think the latter is the more likely.
The Tories will go mad, no doubt about that whatsoever. Liz Truss, for example, we never be off our screens, heaping embarrassments upon Rishi at every opportunity.
Although that said, given the truly labyrinthine rules on capital gains tax on property, I'm not sure even if she's broken the letter of the law it would gain much traction. All she will have to do is plead ignorance, which would be the case for most people who are not trained accountants (including not a few solicitors).
If she needed to turn it around, she could start by pointing out our tax system is a shambles and committing Labour to simplifying it.
This is annoying Mr Neidle.
Rayner said in a statement last week: “As with the majority of ordinary people who sell their own homes, I was not liable for capital gains tax because it was my home and the only one I owned.”
But the rules don’t work like that. We are exempt from capital gains tax (CGT) on our main residence, but married couples can only have one main residence between them.
So Rayner’s initial statement, that she wasn’t liable for capital gains tax because Vicarage Road was her home, was wrong. It’s understandable that she didn’t understand the position in 2015; it would have been a good idea to have taken advice, but many people don’t (and Rayner wasn’t an MP at the time). It’s less understandable that she doesn’t appear to have taken advice before putting out her statement nine years later.
After I and others identified the problem, Rayner failed to correct her original statement, and is now saying simply that “no capital gains tax was payable”. How could that be?
But if you get married, then you've got a period to dispose of one house without incurring CGT because you were living in it. So her statement doesn't sound implausible. (Times piece paywalled, so I have no idea ifd this is disposed of therein.)
Not as long as she took (she sold in 2015) - 5 years after she married.
Properties are usually exempt from CGT for the last 3(?) years.
Increasingly looking like there is something going on here.
Still implausible. HMRC keep an eye on house sales and would have spotted that potential capital gain (as should the solicitor).
Still too many loose variables.
And as for the child moldifications, may that not mean that the child was in the other house waiting for the alterations to be done?
This is now in the stage of "our first gotcha was crap so we're scrabbling around for anything we can possibly make stick if the reader has no idea what we are talking about".
HMRC are anything but proactive on tax evasion.
Some years ago, a relative in the building line tried lobbying civil service/politicians to do the following -
1) use the data on people extracting cash on a weekly basis in excess of £10,000. 2) correlates that with planning permission on properties owned. 3) every single time you’d find a builder taking cash in hand, and breaking a whole bunch of other laws, to boot.
He was told that this was impossible. Or wrong. Or would be fattening. Or something.
But wasn't one of us moaning that HMRC were hassling him for tax after the sale of a house because they thought he owed them for a capital gain over the probate valuation? Strictly speaking, that was, I think, IHT but they were obviousluy keeping an eye on house sales and prices, which are a matter of public record.
Although that said, given the truly labyrinthine rules on capital gains tax on property, I'm not sure even if she's broken the letter of the law it would gain much traction. All she will have to do is plead ignorance, which would be the case for most people who are not trained accountants (including not a few solicitors).
If she needed to turn it around, she could start by pointing out our tax system is a shambles and committing Labour to simplifying it.
This is annoying Mr Neidle.
Rayner said in a statement last week: “As with the majority of ordinary people who sell their own homes, I was not liable for capital gains tax because it was my home and the only one I owned.”
But the rules don’t work like that. We are exempt from capital gains tax (CGT) on our main residence, but married couples can only have one main residence between them.
So Rayner’s initial statement, that she wasn’t liable for capital gains tax because Vicarage Road was her home, was wrong. It’s understandable that she didn’t understand the position in 2015; it would have been a good idea to have taken advice, but many people don’t (and Rayner wasn’t an MP at the time). It’s less understandable that she doesn’t appear to have taken advice before putting out her statement nine years later.
After I and others identified the problem, Rayner failed to correct her original statement, and is now saying simply that “no capital gains tax was payable”. How could that be?
But if you get married, then you've got a period to dispose of one house without incurring CGT because you were living in it. So her statement doesn't sound implausible. (Times piece paywalled, so I have no idea ifd this is disposed of therein.)
Not as long as she took (she sold in 2015) - 5 years after she married.
Properties are usually exempt from CGT for the last 3(?) years.
Increasingly looking like there is something going on here.
Still implausible. HMRC keep an eye on house sales and would have spotted that potential capital gain (as should the solicitor).
Still too many loose variables.
And as for the child moldifications, may that not mean that the child was in the other house waiting for the alterations to be done?
This is now in the stage of "our first gotcha was crap so we're scrabbling around for anything we can possibly make stick if the reader has no idea what we are talking about".
HMRC are anything but proactive on tax evasion.
Some years ago, a relative in the building line tried lobbying civil service/politicians to do the following -
1) use the data on people extracting cash on a weekly basis in excess of £10,000. 2) correlates that with planning permission on properties owned. 3) every single time you’d find a builder taking cash in hand, and breaking a whole bunch of other laws, to boot.
He was told that this was impossible. Or wrong. Or would be fattening. Or something.
HMRC are overworked - literally the only thing they care about is getting letters out before the 12 month / 4/6 year deadline is hit at which point it's moved from queue 1 to queue 2 and everything kicks off again...
Merging the Inland Revenue and HM Customs was Gordon Brown’s worst mistake.
Discuss.
What is there to discuss - it's a hard agree.
Although actually the question is really what was worse merging Inland Revenue and HM Customs or giving the Bank of England independence. I still think the merge was the worse decision...
A pleasant day here in London Town (or my part of it anyway).
On topic, George Galloway has form in my part of London having won Bethnal Green & Bow for Respect back in 2005 defeating sitting MP Oona King in a contest dominated by the Iraq War,
I'd argue Iraq had a wider but shallower impact than Gaza is having now - Respect got 20% in East Ham in 2005 coming a clear second and about the same in West Ham. We've seen big by-election wins for the Newham Independents in Plaistow North and Boleyn (the latter before the Gaza conflict began) but whether that will translate into a meaningful anti-Labour vote among the Muslim community (35%) in the Borough and across the constituencies remains to be seen.
You could argue if the level of vote collapse seen in Plaistow North were replicated, Lyn Brown could be in trouble in West Ham & Beckton but we've yet to see Gaza have any salience in non-Muslim majority areas so it may well be even if the Newham Independents camapign hard the sheer weight of Labour dominance will leave them a distant second at best.
As to the longer term effects, looking at the 2026 local elections in Newham, I can envisage the Independents winning more seats on the Council if Gaza is still an active issue and especially against the backdrop of a Labour Government post honeymoon period. In 2006, Respect won 23% of the vote across the Borough but that got them just 3 seats.
Widespread concerns about President Biden’s age pose a deepening threat to his re-election bid, with a majority of voters who supported him in 2020 now saying he is too old to lead the country effectively, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.
The survey pointed to a fundamental shift in how voters who backed Mr. Biden four years ago have come to see him. A striking 61 percent said they thought he was “just too old” to be an effective president.
NY Times
What a disaster looms.
Yeah, this guy is MUCH better...
@Acyn Wow the crowd goes silent as a confused Trump says: And Putin has so little respect for Obama that he's starting to throw around the nuclear word
With regards to the election, it'll be 23rd January. The budget has already fizzled - no money to do the things they had already announced, economy in recession and getting worse, services crumbling and no money available.
The idea of a May election called straight after the budget is excitingly remote, when you consider that it absolutely was plan A a few months ago.
Once we go beyond the deadline to go 2nd May its downhill all the way. We can all talk about various options in the autumn, but all of those involve Sunak calling an "early" election where they will get demolished.
The only wildcard left is January. We all know why January is a catastrophically bad idea. But Sunak will be in the position of needing something, *anything* to change the narrative. Plus this way he can be frit and make the decision of indecision - let parliament expire naturally.
My assumption has been that he'll go for an election date of 12th December, five years exactly after the previous election.
However, if I understand correctly, that would require calling the election almost exactly on polling day in the US. Will that really happen?
Similarly, I think the suggestion of a November election, using party conference as a launching-off point, has some merit - not least of avoiding those dates which would involve cancelling party conference. But an election nine days after the US election? It would put the BBC into an awful bind. Think of all those journalists who were looking forward to a chance to interview voters in Atlanta or Arizona, and instead they'd be expected to trudge around Altrincham or Ayrshire.
There's a bizarre confluence of events that will encourage delay, as well as the natural reluctance to invite electoral oblivion.
Why exactly is there so much idea that we won't call something because the US is having an election? Is it because he's scared of Trump?
It has been reported that the civil service have strenuously warned Sunak that holding an election in early November would be a Bad Thing. Stability of the west, that kind of thing.
That’s the first vaguely plausible argument I’ve heard that November might be a better date than May.
Didn't we cover that back in January where you quickly watch all the Autumn dates fall apart due to prior engagements elsewhere - beyond the US election (which is only a problem because of Trump) the Commonwealth summit screwed up a whole set of possible dates...
Although that said, given the truly labyrinthine rules on capital gains tax on property, I'm not sure even if she's broken the letter of the law it would gain much traction. All she will have to do is plead ignorance, which would be the case for most people who are not trained accountants (including not a few solicitors).
If she needed to turn it around, she could start by pointing out our tax system is a shambles and committing Labour to simplifying it.
This is annoying Mr Neidle.
Rayner said in a statement last week: “As with the majority of ordinary people who sell their own homes, I was not liable for capital gains tax because it was my home and the only one I owned.”
But the rules don’t work like that. We are exempt from capital gains tax (CGT) on our main residence, but married couples can only have one main residence between them.
So Rayner’s initial statement, that she wasn’t liable for capital gains tax because Vicarage Road was her home, was wrong. It’s understandable that she didn’t understand the position in 2015; it would have been a good idea to have taken advice, but many people don’t (and Rayner wasn’t an MP at the time). It’s less understandable that she doesn’t appear to have taken advice before putting out her statement nine years later.
After I and others identified the problem, Rayner failed to correct her original statement, and is now saying simply that “no capital gains tax was payable”. How could that be?
Well, I'm not surprised he's Neidled, but the fact is the rules are bad and that's the fundamental problem. Similarly, an issue with buy to let sales is many solicitors appear to be unaware any CGT must be paid within 60 days and is levied at a different rate.
Sorting these issues out would be beneficial, although I won't hold my breath.
The twist today is that there was some council funded work performed at her husband’s home to accommodate specific needs of one of her children
If her main house was Vicarage Road but her child was living elsewhere…
If so, then what? Worst case is she makes an apology, blames her advisors and pays back a few hundred quid. A bit like Nadhim Zahawi.
ETA as said earlier, her problem is that Starmer might weaponise it, not that voters will.
AIUI, Zahawi undertook very aggressive tax planning. Certainly poor judgement but not necessarily illegal if there was the possibility that what he did was legal.
It’s possible - and of course what you and I read in the press may not be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth - that Rayner may simply have evaded taxes
With regards to the election, it'll be 23rd January. The budget has already fizzled - no money to do the things they had already announced, economy in recession and getting worse, services crumbling and no money available.
The idea of a May election called straight after the budget is excitingly remote, when you consider that it absolutely was plan A a few months ago.
Once we go beyond the deadline to go 2nd May its downhill all the way. We can all talk about various options in the autumn, but all of those involve Sunak calling an "early" election where they will get demolished.
The only wildcard left is January. We all know why January is a catastrophically bad idea. But Sunak will be in the position of needing something, *anything* to change the narrative. Plus this way he can be frit and make the decision of indecision - let parliament expire naturally.
My assumption has been that he'll go for an election date of 12th December, five years exactly after the previous election.
However, if I understand correctly, that would require calling the election almost exactly on polling day in the US. Will that really happen?
Similarly, I think the suggestion of a November election, using party conference as a launching-off point, has some merit - not least of avoiding those dates which would involve cancelling party conference. But an election nine days after the US election? It would put the BBC into an awful bind. Think of all those journalists who were looking forward to a chance to interview voters in Atlanta or Arizona, and instead they'd be expected to trudge around Altrincham or Ayrshire.
There's a bizarre confluence of events that will encourage delay, as well as the natural reluctance to invite electoral oblivion.
Why exactly is there so much idea that we won't call something because the US is having an election? Is it because he's scared of Trump?
It has been reported that the civil service have strenuously warned Sunak that holding an election in early November would be a Bad Thing. Stability of the west, that kind of thing.
That’s the first vaguely plausible argument I’ve heard that November might be a better date than May.
Didn't we cover that back in January where you quickly watch all the Autumn dates fall apart due to prior engagements elsewhere - beyond the US election (which is only a problem because of Trump) the Commonwealth summit screwed up a whole set of possible dates...
Yes.
But if the Civil Service is against November then given their atrocious track record I’m starting to think it might be a decent option.
I didn't think there was much in the Angela Rayner story but now I do.
The Angela Rayner council house case, explained by a tax expert Hmmmm Ignorance about tax is not new, but contradictions in the deputy Labour leader’s accounts are concerning, says Dan Neidle
Although that said, given the truly labyrinthine rules on capital gains tax on property, I'm not sure even if she's broken the letter of the law it would gain much traction. All she will have to do is plead ignorance, which would be the case for most people who are not trained accountants (including not a few solicitors).
If she needed to turn it around, she could start by pointing out our tax system is a shambles and committing Labour to simplifying it.
This is annoying Mr Neidle.
Rayner said in a statement last week: “As with the majority of ordinary people who sell their own homes, I was not liable for capital gains tax because it was my home and the only one I owned.”
But the rules don’t work like that. We are exempt from capital gains tax (CGT) on our main residence, but married couples can only have one main residence between them.
So Rayner’s initial statement, that she wasn’t liable for capital gains tax because Vicarage Road was her home, was wrong. It’s understandable that she didn’t understand the position in 2015; it would have been a good idea to have taken advice, but many people don’t (and Rayner wasn’t an MP at the time). It’s less understandable that she doesn’t appear to have taken advice before putting out her statement nine years later.
After I and others identified the problem, Rayner failed to correct her original statement, and is now saying simply that “no capital gains tax was payable”. How could that be?
But if you get married, then you've got a period to dispose of one house without incurring CGT because you were living in it. So her statement doesn't sound implausible. (Times piece paywalled, so I have no idea ifd this is disposed of therein.)
Not as long as she took (she sold in 2015) - 5 years after she married.
Properties are usually exempt from CGT for the last 3(?) years.
Increasingly looking like there is something going on here.
In the past, it has been noted its the first untruth that leads to .......
Although that said, given the truly labyrinthine rules on capital gains tax on property, I'm not sure even if she's broken the letter of the law it would gain much traction. All she will have to do is plead ignorance, which would be the case for most people who are not trained accountants (including not a few solicitors).
If she needed to turn it around, she could start by pointing out our tax system is a shambles and committing Labour to simplifying it.
This is annoying Mr Neidle.
Rayner said in a statement last week: “As with the majority of ordinary people who sell their own homes, I was not liable for capital gains tax because it was my home and the only one I owned.”
But the rules don’t work like that. We are exempt from capital gains tax (CGT) on our main residence, but married couples can only have one main residence between them.
So Rayner’s initial statement, that she wasn’t liable for capital gains tax because Vicarage Road was her home, was wrong. It’s understandable that she didn’t understand the position in 2015; it would have been a good idea to have taken advice, but many people don’t (and Rayner wasn’t an MP at the time). It’s less understandable that she doesn’t appear to have taken advice before putting out her statement nine years later.
After I and others identified the problem, Rayner failed to correct her original statement, and is now saying simply that “no capital gains tax was payable”. How could that be?
But if you get married, then you've got a period to dispose of one house without incurring CGT because you were living in it. So her statement doesn't sound implausible. (Times piece paywalled, so I have no idea ifd this is disposed of therein.)
Not as long as she took (she sold in 2015) - 5 years after she married.
Properties are usually exempt from CGT for the last 3(?) years.
Increasingly looking like there is something going on here.
Still implausible. HMRC keep an eye on house sales and would have spotted that potential capital gain (as should the solicitor).
Still too many loose variables.
And as for the child moldifications, may that not mean that the child was in the other house waiting for the alterations to be done?
This is now in the stage of "our first gotcha was crap so we're scrabbling around for anything we can possibly make stick if the reader has no idea what we are talking about".
HMRC are anything but proactive on tax evasion.
Some years ago, a relative in the building line tried lobbying civil service/politicians to do the following -
1) use the data on people extracting cash on a weekly basis in excess of £10,000. 2) correlates that with planning permission on properties owned. 3) every single time you’d find a builder taking cash in hand, and breaking a whole bunch of other laws, to boot.
He was told that this was impossible. Or wrong. Or would be fattening. Or something.
HMRC are overworked - literally the only thing they care about is getting letters out before the 12 month / 4/6 year deadline is hit at which point it's moved from queue 1 to queue 2 and everything kicks off again...
Merging the Inland Revenue and HM Customs was Gordon Brown’s worst mistake.
Discuss.
No, the Bank of England/FSA split was the worst. One knew what the banks were up to, but did not have the power to act. The other had the power but didn't have a scooby what the banks were doing.
Although that said, given the truly labyrinthine rules on capital gains tax on property, I'm not sure even if she's broken the letter of the law it would gain much traction. All she will have to do is plead ignorance, which would be the case for most people who are not trained accountants (including not a few solicitors).
If she needed to turn it around, she could start by pointing out our tax system is a shambles and committing Labour to simplifying it.
This is annoying Mr Neidle.
Rayner said in a statement last week: “As with the majority of ordinary people who sell their own homes, I was not liable for capital gains tax because it was my home and the only one I owned.”
But the rules don’t work like that. We are exempt from capital gains tax (CGT) on our main residence, but married couples can only have one main residence between them.
So Rayner’s initial statement, that she wasn’t liable for capital gains tax because Vicarage Road was her home, was wrong. It’s understandable that she didn’t understand the position in 2015; it would have been a good idea to have taken advice, but many people don’t (and Rayner wasn’t an MP at the time). It’s less understandable that she doesn’t appear to have taken advice before putting out her statement nine years later.
After I and others identified the problem, Rayner failed to correct her original statement, and is now saying simply that “no capital gains tax was payable”. How could that be?
But if you get married, then you've got a period to dispose of one house without incurring CGT because you were living in it. So her statement doesn't sound implausible. (Times piece paywalled, so I have no idea ifd this is disposed of therein.)
Not as long as she took (she sold in 2015) - 5 years after she married.
Properties are usually exempt from CGT for the last 3(?) years.
Increasingly looking like there is something going on here.
Still implausible. HMRC keep an eye on house sales and would have spotted that potential capital gain (as should the solicitor).
Still too many loose variables.
And as for the child moldifications, may that not mean that the child was in the other house waiting for the alterations to be done?
This is now in the stage of "our first gotcha was crap so we're scrabbling around for anything we can possibly make stick if the reader has no idea what we are talking about".
HMRC are anything but proactive on tax evasion.
Some years ago, a relative in the building line tried lobbying civil service/politicians to do the following -
1) use the data on people extracting cash on a weekly basis in excess of £10,000. 2) correlates that with planning permission on properties owned. 3) every single time you’d find a builder taking cash in hand, and breaking a whole bunch of other laws, to boot.
He was told that this was impossible. Or wrong. Or would be fattening. Or something.
They should appoint a personal tax inspector to anyone who earns more than x% and pays less than y% in tax.
I think a good taxation policy would be to take an average earner/taxpayer and ensure than no-one pays less than their marginal rate.
And if they do, and the tax breaks are perfectly legal, change the law.
We could use a prediction market. We can all bet on who's dodging taxes. If we show a high probability, they do an audit. People who are confident they're doing their taxes correctly can bet on themselves, and make a profit off the cynics.
Widespread concerns about President Biden’s age pose a deepening threat to his re-election bid, with a majority of voters who supported him in 2020 now saying he is too old to lead the country effectively, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.
The survey pointed to a fundamental shift in how voters who backed Mr. Biden four years ago have come to see him. A striking 61 percent said they thought he was “just too old” to be an effective president.
NY Times
What a disaster looms.
Yeah, this guy is MUCH better...
@Acyn Wow the crowd goes silent as a confused Trump says: And Putin has so little respect for Obama that he's starting to throw around the nuclear word
That’s the real problem isn’t it? It’s not like Reagan v Mondale (or Dole v Clinton) where if the age of one candidate is an issue, vote for the other choice.
We’ve got a dodderer vs a man who is a dodderer and ALSO a liar, traitor, forger, thief and sexual predator.
That’s not a good choice but nor should it be a difficult one.
The real issue is the current state of the Republican Party who only care about their actively repellent principles and foolishly think Trump shares them instead of grasping he is using them for his own even more repellent and cynical ends.
Widespread concerns about President Biden’s age pose a deepening threat to his re-election bid, with a majority of voters who supported him in 2020 now saying he is too old to lead the country effectively, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.
The survey pointed to a fundamental shift in how voters who backed Mr. Biden four years ago have come to see him. A striking 61 percent said they thought he was “just too old” to be an effective president.
NY Times
What a disaster looms.
Yeah, this guy is MUCH better...
@Acyn Wow the crowd goes silent as a confused Trump says: And Putin has so little respect for Obama that he's starting to throw around the nuclear word
Labour appeared to have reached the electoral stage of countering their tediously centrist, wouldn't-say-boo-to-a-goose vibe by doing edgy photo shoots.
The fact that tweet is entitled "robustly supporting genocide" just shows how deep the rot in the Left goes.
Comments
You think Hamza is a w*****, but you think he's a w****** because you consider him incompetent, not because of his creed. That is fine.
30p brought in the dimension of Islam as a justification to criticise Khan's performance, that changes everything. That is unacceptable.
The survey pointed to a fundamental shift in how voters who backed Mr. Biden four years ago have come to see him. A striking 61 percent said they thought he was “just too old” to be an effective president.
NY Times
What a disaster looms.
If her main house was Vicarage Road but her child was living elsewhere…
ETA we know some MPs have police protection after death threats, such as Angela Rayner, but I'd be surprised if she is packing heat.
Properties are usually exempt from CGT for the last 3(?) years.
Increasingly looking like there is something going on here.
But Sunak will call it tomorrow week, 1038 in the morning to be exact.
I actually agree with everyone that 99/100 you more tempted go long, hoping improving economic news gives you swing back. Brown certainly did that, so too with John Major. But in both those two examples is there evidence it actually worked? And in this situation, there isn’t better economic of financial news later in year to bring the voters home, a worsening picture if any movement.
But I don’t think that 99 times out of a 100 thinking applies here in a unique situation. Sunak’s team called it for May 2nd months ago, when the modelling on boat crossings became clearer. Election timing decisions don’t ever have such an Oppenheimer type time bomb ticking away at the heart of them. In terms of the vital Tory party discipline needed all up to an election back end of this year, and the unique threat the Tories are currently getting from Reform on their voters, boats is not just the main but determining reason why they have gone for the May 2nd election.
The Home Sec signs an order, and the person is issued with a government owned firearm, and is given training for it.
While the names are confidential, we do know that David Trimble (now Lord Trimble) has such a license. Since he had an ND with his weapon, by his own account.
For extra laughs, some of those are SF MPs. Yes, the legal exemption to ownership and carriage of hand guns is used for them. They complained, a while back that the guns they were given were old and a bit uncool. They wanted new SIGs.
Some of the guns issued used to be Walter PPKs (yes, that gun) in .22lr.
“I would much rather put up with Trump’s behaviour than put up with what we have” - my analysis of why US Republicans are still backing Trump after 8 years on the political scene
"Voters aren't blind to his faults..." - this is EXACTLY how you end up having a dictatorship.
And needed to use it:
In 1976, armed with a pistol, he faced down a mob of IRA supporters who had invaded his home in Belfast.
"The thoughts that went through my head at the time, all in the space of a few seconds, were: 'Gerry, this is how you die'; secondly, 'I hope to God you don't get my wife and young daughter'; and thirdly, 'I hope to God I don't have to pull this trigger and kill someone myself.' "
His home was later burned down, and he moved his family to London.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2005/08/29/gerry-fitt-dies/f7142780-74b6-44b7-8c3c-7a25de6d1f6b/
ETA as said earlier, her problem is that Starmer might weaponise it, not that voters will.
But what of those millions who either fear a Trump win (pre 5 Nov) or or horrified and terrified by the fact (post 5 Nov)? For win he will. How will they vote? IMHO most of those voters will coalesce around wanting the most stable, sensible, boring and principled government available. No-one qualifies for this of course, but Starmer's Labour comes closest and the Trump effect helps Labour, not Tories.
Betting post: If (big if) this is right, Rishi's best plan is to avoid either pre or post 5 November.
This rules out January (can't campaign over Christmas), and December and November, and most of October.
Look carefully at the July and September options but DYOR.
In a movie involving London, he would be perfect in the role of the Mayor, who gets one speaking line. Listed 126th on the cast list.
It's worth noting that he was behind in polling in last year's gubernatorial election, in a generally Republican state, and still won very comfortably. And while Daniel Cameron clearly isn't stupid, he is also a Trump endorsed candidate who has made some of the same mistakes...
While pointing at his predecessor...
There is also the no small matter of Tory candidates being asked if they support Trump during the campaign.
Let alone the Party members who pop up in the States shilling for him.
PS Not saying that the Labour Party and SKS are good. They are shit too! SKS would sell his family to get into power - unprincipled moron!
Heck, I don't hate Rishi Sunak! I think he's a crap leader and a crap politician but he's so boring and useless I can't get annoyed enough with him personally.
Biden's problem is this:
but the 18th makes sense as that gives an extra week to get whatever bills are going through Parliament through Parliament and if there are tax cuts in the budget for the election that gives them time to get them through..
https://twitter.com/UrbaneSlave/status/1764244898645975459
The irony of Verstappen senior getting involved in this row is hilarious.
I prefer actual elections here is the last one and looking ahead to 5 more
Labour vote share in Rochdale.
49.4% - Tony Blair 1997
49.2% - Tony Blair 2001
40.0% - Tony Blair 2005
36.4% - Gordon Brown 2010
46.1% - Ed Miliband 2015
58.0% - Jeremy Corbyn 2017
51.6% - Jeremy Corbyn 2019
7.7% - Keir Starmer 2024
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-gaza-galloway-general-election-b2505390.html
People are happy to use it as its always been there and fear replacing it might be difficult or just different.
A few weeks after they do replace it they wonder why they didn't do so years before.
I know you would like to forget the time when you supported Boris Johnson. But I don't.
Take the most favourable polls, don't have any tactical rewind, add a bit more RefUK squeeze, you still get the Conservatives losing half their MPs;
https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-death-clock-71b807a65973
Holding on probably will make things worse. Boats not stopped, more people moving to increased mortgage rates, more Conservative voters going to the that higher place where they don't even get postal votes.
But climbing out of the trenches to face the Starmerite machine guns when it isn't necessary yet? That's brave, and I'm not sure Rishi is that sort of brave.
it makes Corbyn's bid for re-election more interesting, perhaps an effect on London mayoralty vote as well
By November of course if Trump is convicted in one of his criminal cases he could be in jail in which case it will be a totally different ball game
And then a few weeks later shorts out and burns the house down.
Still too many loose variables.
And as for the child moldifications, may that not mean that the child was in the other house waiting for the alterations to be done?
This is now in the stage of "our first gotcha was crap so we're scrabbling around for anything we can possibly make stick if the reader has no idea what we are talking about".
I suspect the Labour party won't find that hard to do.
It was a mess, and Galloway is a deeply nasty individual, but he was fairly elected.
Just as he'll be fairly ejected , in due course.
You might be happy to vote red Tory but i will never vote for the principles free SKS party
https://youtu.be/amR6-neQBPE?si=BpXSUmtJQquDhVKp
Some years ago, a relative in the building line tried lobbying civil service/politicians to do the following -
1) use the data on people extracting cash on a weekly basis in excess of £10,000.
2) correlates that with planning permission on properties owned.
3) every single time you’d find a builder taking cash in hand, and breaking a whole bunch of other laws, to boot.
He was told that this was impossible. Or wrong. Or would be fattening. Or something.
For my next SEA trip I may do Nam north to south, by train
I think a good taxation policy would be to take an average earner/taxpayer and ensure than no-one pays less than their marginal rate.
And if they do, and the tax breaks are perfectly legal, change the law.
Discuss.
https://twitter.com/TheDeadDistrict/status/1764221204943056924
And that’s not Magic Grandpa. He might have piled the votes up on places where they made no difference, but he lost two Generals. In theory I agreed with a lot of what he said, but Christ he was a terrible leader and the party under him was woeful and amateurish.
You might be happy to languish in ideological purity and Green Party irrelevance, but someone needs to get rid of these bastards and to try and repair some of the damage the fucking nutters have done since 2010.
Although actually the question is really what was worse merging Inland Revenue and HM Customs or giving the Bank of England independence. I still think the merge was the worse decision...
A pleasant day here in London Town (or my part of it anyway).
On topic, George Galloway has form in my part of London having won Bethnal Green & Bow for Respect back in 2005 defeating sitting MP Oona King in a contest dominated by the Iraq War,
I'd argue Iraq had a wider but shallower impact than Gaza is having now - Respect got 20% in East Ham in 2005 coming a clear second and about the same in West Ham. We've seen big by-election wins for the Newham Independents in Plaistow North and Boleyn (the latter before the Gaza conflict began) but whether that will translate into a meaningful anti-Labour vote among the Muslim community (35%) in the Borough and across the constituencies remains to be seen.
You could argue if the level of vote collapse seen in Plaistow North were replicated, Lyn Brown could be in trouble in West Ham & Beckton but we've yet to see Gaza have any salience in non-Muslim majority areas so it may well be even if the Newham Independents camapign hard the sheer weight of Labour dominance will leave them a distant second at best.
As to the longer term effects, looking at the 2026 local elections in Newham, I can envisage the Independents winning more seats on the Council if Gaza is still an active issue and especially against the backdrop of a Labour Government post honeymoon period. In 2006, Respect won 23% of the vote across the Borough but that got them just 3 seats.
@Acyn
Wow the crowd goes silent as a confused Trump says: And Putin has so little respect for Obama that he's starting to throw around the nuclear word
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1764089216470839300?s=20
It’s possible - and of course what you and I read in the press may not be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth - that Rayner may simply have evaded taxes
Which is much more serious.
But if the Civil Service is against November then given their atrocious track record I’m starting to think it might be a decent option.
In the past, it has been noted its the first untruth that leads to .......
One knew what the banks were up to, but did not have the power to act.
The other had the power but didn't have a scooby what the banks were doing.
We’ve got a dodderer vs a man who is a dodderer and ALSO a liar, traitor, forger, thief and sexual predator.
That’s not a good choice but nor should it be a difficult one.
The real issue is the current state of the Republican Party who only care about their actively repellent principles and foolishly think Trump shares them instead of grasping he is using them for his own even more repellent and cynical ends.