The efficiency of the vote under Blair was incredible. Comfortable majorities on 30 odd per cent of the vote. And for the same reasons. You win elections by winning these volatile voters in the marginal seats.
The Labour vote actually went down slightly in a lot of their safest seats in 1997 (in absolute numbers, not share), because turnout fell from 78% to 71% and the drop was bigger in those types of seats.
Yes, its a point that is often overlooked. People focus on the voters Major got out to stop Kinnock in 1992 who didn't vote because they did not find Blair nearly as scary but there were a lot of Labour lefties, @bigjohnowls style, who also had something of an enthusiasm gap.
I remember the Tories being despised in 1997, but I don’t think Major was. Pitied, rather. The attitude to the Tories feels the same today, but Sunak feels less liked than Major.
Maybe he needs a soapbox?
Except Major knew how to use a soapbox. He'd been doing it since the sixties. Sunak wouldn't have a clue.
Bless him, he would go into the bathroom and grab a new unopened bar of Clé de Peau Beauté from his wife’s cupboard and spend a few hours trying to work out how the hell you stand on it yet alone why people would vote for you for trashing a hundred quid bar of soap.
[Apologies for linking the worst designed website in the world that looks like herpes]
Of course the irony that Lord Ashcroft who as a non-dom avoided millions in tax, is not lost on me.
AIUI the question is whether the tax was legally avoided or illegally evaded. If you are claiming the good lord did the latter, then I fear you might be troubling OGH's lawyers.
Lord Ashcroft as far as I can see, took advantage of a legal scheme but the morals of it are grotesque.
[Apologies for linking the worst designed website in the world that looks like herpes]
Of course the irony that Lord Ashcroft who as a non-dom avoided millions in tax, is not lost on me.
Avoided legally though and it didn’t stop labour and people like Rayner going after him for it. Those that live by the sword etc and Rayner really really does not like being subjected to scrutiny. She will get a lot more in office.
I defer to the Dan Neidle thread on twitter on this and this is pretty balanced.
The really key point at the next General Election isn’t Labour at all. They’re doing well enough i.e. 40%+ But that’s not the story which is this: "The size of Labour’s predicted majority is aided by a collapse in Conservative support.”
It’s notbecause of Reform. It’s because they’re shit and a huge majority of people in this country are not only aware of it, they’re exceedingly angry with them.
They are in for a kicking. Sub 30% poll share. And that is what will cook their goose regardless of Reform.
What odds would you offer on the Tories getting less than 30% at the next GE?
I'm not a bookie but I'd reckon it's about 50/50 whether they get below or above 30%.
If both were given as evens and I had a free bet to place, I'd be torn but probably just back under 30% rather than over.
I would probably go the other way but I agree its likely to be close. But @Heathener is so sure it will be under 30 I am sure she can offer something more tempting than evens!
Major got 30.7 percent in 1997. Whilst the consequences of Sunak doing worse than that seem crazy, what is the mechanism by which Rishi does better?
Absolutely none of this is going to stop a comfortable Starmer victory but I would be tempted to have a wee flutter on the 30% mark if @Heathener is so minded and willing to offer better than evens.
Sorry I’m not a bookie. And I did once have a wager on here with someone, won it, and they never paid up.
(No naming and shaming)
I had a wager with someone on here once, they won, but despite multiple offers they never claimed their payment. Since I had laid off their bet at better odds on Betfair as soon as it was made, I would still feel bad about it, had I not made every effort to pay up. But no naming and shaming…the other party had the kudos of being right balanced by less kudos for offering me better odds than Betfair and hence offering me a sure fire net gain…
[Apologies for linking the worst designed website in the world that looks like herpes]
Of course the irony that Lord Ashcroft who as a non-dom avoided millions in tax, is not lost on me.
Avoided legally though and it didn’t stop labour and people like Rayner going after him for it. Those that live by the sword etc and Rayner really really does not like being subjected to scrutiny. She will get a lot more in office.
I defer to the Dan Neidle thread on twitter on this and this is pretty balanced.
[Apologies for linking the worst designed website in the world that looks like herpes]
Of course the irony that Lord Ashcroft who as a non-dom avoided millions in tax, is not lost on me.
AIUI the question is whether the tax was legally avoided or illegally evaded. If you are claiming the good lord did the latter, then I fear you might be troubling OGH's lawyers.
Lord Ashcroft as far as I can see, took advantage of a legal scheme but the morals of it are grotesque.
FYI (also BTW) yours truly just cast my ballot for delegates from my local 36th legislative district, to the WA State 2024 Democratic Party convention. Which in turn will select delegates from our state to the Democratic National Convention.
Voting being done online, and limited to members of our district Democratic organization; I qualify as an elected Democratic precinct committee officer (PCO) from my humble voting precinct.
Number of state convo delegates allocated to each LD is based on number of votes cast for Democratic candidates for President (Joe Biden) and Governor (Jay Inslee) in 2020 general election. With my humble district having the largest LD delegation.
Had total of 25 votes (to distribute among 41 candidates) of which (based on statewide results of last month's WA Democratic Presidential Primary) 21 were for candidates pledged to Joe Biden, and 4 were for Uncommitted candidates.
As per national party rule, votes for each of above sub-groups had to be balanced between men and women.
Not my first such rodeo, but WAS first time voting for party delegates via on-line ballot.
In interests of semi-full disclosure, was an elected delegate myself, back in the far distant past (1992) to our leg district caucus, to congressional district convention AND to state convention. On behalf of . . . wait for it . . . Paul Tsongas.
[Apologies for linking the worst designed website in the world that looks like herpes]
Of course the irony that Lord Ashcroft who as a non-dom avoided millions in tax, is not lost on me.
AIUI the question is whether the tax was legally avoided or illegally evaded. If you are claiming the good lord did the latter, then I fear you might be troubling OGH's lawyers.
Lord Ashcroft as far as I can see, took advantage of a legal scheme but the morals of it are grotesque.
Why?
Because the things that money could have been spent on. Did he need to avoid it?
[Apologies for linking the worst designed website in the world that looks like herpes]
Of course the irony that Lord Ashcroft who as a non-dom avoided millions in tax, is not lost on me.
AIUI the question is whether the tax was legally avoided or illegally evaded. If you are claiming the good lord did the latter, then I fear you might be troubling OGH's lawyers.
Lord Ashcroft as far as I can see, took advantage of a legal scheme but the morals of it are grotesque.
Why?
Because the things that money could have been spent on. Did he need to avoid it?
You can say the same about everyone else who 'avoids' tax; in other words, perhaps nearly everyone who has an accountant.
[Apologies for linking the worst designed website in the world that looks like herpes]
Of course the irony that Lord Ashcroft who as a non-dom avoided millions in tax, is not lost on me.
AIUI the question is whether the tax was legally avoided or illegally evaded. If you are claiming the good lord did the latter, then I fear you might be troubling OGH's lawyers.
Lord Ashcroft as far as I can see, took advantage of a legal scheme but the morals of it are grotesque.
Why?
Because the things that money could have been spent on. Did he need to avoid it?
[Apologies for linking the worst designed website in the world that looks like herpes]
Of course the irony that Lord Ashcroft who as a non-dom avoided millions in tax, is not lost on me.
AIUI the question is whether the tax was legally avoided or illegally evaded. If you are claiming the good lord did the latter, then I fear you might be troubling OGH's lawyers.
Lord Ashcroft as far as I can see, took advantage of a legal scheme but the morals of it are grotesque.
Why?
Because the things that money could have been spent on. Did he need to avoid it?
You can say the same about everyone else who 'avoids' tax; in other words, perhaps nearly everyone who has an accountant.
The problem is our politicians fault for setting a tax system which taxes PAYE at a higher rate than other income.
If anything it should be the other way around, however my preference would be for flat taxes where everyone with the same income pays the same rate of tax no matter how that income was earned.
The really key point at the next General Election isn’t Labour at all. They’re doing well enough i.e. 40%+ But that’s not the story which is this: "The size of Labour’s predicted majority is aided by a collapse in Conservative support.”
It’s notbecause of Reform. It’s because they’re shit and a huge majority of people in this country are not only aware of it, they’re exceedingly angry with them.
They are in for a kicking. Sub 30% poll share. And that is what will cook their goose regardless of Reform.
What odds would you offer on the Tories getting less than 30% at the next GE?
I'm not a bookie but I'd reckon it's about 50/50 whether they get below or above 30%.
If both were given as evens and I had a free bet to place, I'd be torn but probably just back under 30% rather than over.
I would probably go the other way but I agree its likely to be close. But @Heathener is so sure it will be under 30 I am sure she can offer something more tempting than evens!
Major got 30.7 percent in 1997. Whilst the consequences of Sunak doing worse than that seem crazy, what is the mechanism by which Rishi does better?
Absolutely none of this is going to stop a comfortable Starmer victory but I would be tempted to have a wee flutter on the 30% mark if @Heathener is so minded and willing to offer better than evens.
Sorry I’m not a bookie. And I did once have a wager on here with someone, won it, and they never paid up.
(No naming and shaming)
I had a wager with someone on here once, they won, but despite multiple offers they never claimed their payment. Since I had laid off their bet at better odds on Betfair as soon as it was made, I would still feel bad about it, had I not made every effort to pay up. But no naming and shaming…the other party had the kudos of being right balanced by less kudos for offering me better odds than Betfair and hence offering me a sure fire net gain…
I have had a few wagers with people on here. I think I lost every one and paid up. I asked each to post here when the money/whisky arrived in order to establish confidence for other possible punts.
[Apologies for linking the worst designed website in the world that looks like herpes]
Of course the irony that Lord Ashcroft who as a non-dom avoided millions in tax, is not lost on me.
AIUI the question is whether the tax was legally avoided or illegally evaded. If you are claiming the good lord did the latter, then I fear you might be troubling OGH's lawyers.
Lord Ashcroft as far as I can see, took advantage of a legal scheme but the morals of it are grotesque.
He legally minimised his tax liabilities. what’s ‘grotesque’ about that ? I don’t blame him. I anyone who uses an ISA or pays into a pension or,has a workplace benefit via salary sacrifice is avoiding tax.
The problem is they need to be OTR 50% cheaper to eliminate petrol.
I bought my new car, brand new from a showroom, for £13k OTR. Petrol self charging hybrid, I'm getting close to 60 mpg from it so it's not costing much to run either.
I would be delighted to see EVs that cheap, but w aren't there yet.
We are very early in the ZEV story. By comparison the ICE technology space has been heavily mined out for lower cost and higher efficiency.
So we can expect ZEV costs to continue to fall. The ultimate floor to their price will be somewhere below ICE - mechanically simpler. It’s pretty much all battery costs at the moment that makes the price.
One reason that higher priced EVs have been pushed is that is where the profit is, per unit of battery capacity. Using the same batteries to make small cars or large lorries would mean less profit.
Indeed I agree that long term I am pretty certain that ICE is future history already.
But we aren't there yet cost-wise and people who want to act like we are aren't in touch with the real world. We will be, but we aren't there yet.
We need to reach a state whereby inflation-adjusted a new EV is available from about £12-13k OTR, like new ICE vehicles are.
We'll get there, but it'll take some time.
Future planning by ensuring eg new builds have off road parking wherever possible so can charge at home rather than at a station is a good idea.
It also requires the manufacturers to stop being precious and build some vast battery factories.
Saying “It’s not fair I have to invest and why can’t I just buy Chinese batteries?” is a 0/10 answer.
The problem is they need to be OTR 50% cheaper to eliminate petrol.
I bought my new car, brand new from a showroom, for £13k OTR. Petrol self charging hybrid, I'm getting close to 60 mpg from it so it's not costing much to run either.
I would be delighted to see EVs that cheap, but w aren't there yet.
We are very early in the ZEV story. By comparison the ICE technology space has been heavily mined out for lower cost and higher efficiency.
So we can expect ZEV costs to continue to fall. The ultimate floor to their price will be somewhere below ICE - mechanically simpler. It’s pretty much all battery costs at the moment that makes the price.
One reason that higher priced EVs have been pushed is that is where the profit is, per unit of battery capacity. Using the same batteries to make small cars or large lorries would mean less profit.
Indeed I agree that long term I am pretty certain that ICE is future history already.
But we aren't there yet cost-wise and people who want to act like we are aren't in touch with the real world. We will be, but we aren't there yet.
We need to reach a state whereby inflation-adjusted a new EV is available from about £12-13k OTR, like new ICE vehicles are.
We'll get there, but it'll take some time.
Future planning by ensuring eg new builds have off road parking wherever possible so can charge at home rather than at a station is a good idea.
It also requires the manufacturers to stop being precious and build some vast battery factories.
Saying “It’s not fair I have to invest and why can’t I just buy Chinese batteries?” is a 0/10 answer.
Or Chinese manufacturing knowhow.
CATL in talks with Tesla, global automakers for US licensing, WSJ reports https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/catl-talks-with-tesla-global-automakers-us-licensing-wsj-reports-2024-03-25/ … The Chinese company's existing partnership with Ford Motor (F.N) will be the model for similar cooperation with other U.S. carmakers, the report added. Ford said in November it would scale back the investment for its Michigan battery plant to produce low-cost lithium-iron batteries based on technology licensed by CATL following pushback from U.S. lawmakers. The WSJ report on CATL comes amid a global slowdown in EV demand and as U.S. lawmakers tighten their grip over the battery industry to prevent China-produced minerals or Chinese battery companies from winning electric vehicle tax credits...
The efficiency of the vote under Blair was incredible. Comfortable majorities on 30 odd per cent of the vote. And for the same reasons. You win elections by winning these volatile voters in the marginal seats.
The Labour vote actually went down slightly in a lot of their safest seats in 1997 (in absolute numbers, not share), because turnout fell from 78% to 71% and the drop was bigger in those types of seats.
Yes, its a point that is often overlooked. People focus on the voters Major got out to stop Kinnock in 1992 who didn't vote because they did not find Blair nearly as scary but there were a lot of Labour lefties, @bigjohnowls style, who also had something of an enthusiasm gap.
I remember the Tories being despised in 1997, but I don’t think Major was. Pitied, rather. The attitude to the Tories feels the same today, but Sunak feels less liked than Major.
Maybe he needs a soapbox?
Except Major knew how to use a soapbox. He'd been doing it since the sixties. Sunak wouldn't have a clue.
Bless him, he would go into the bathroom and grab a new unopened bar of Clé de Peau Beauté from his wife’s cupboard and spend a few hours trying to work out how the hell you stand on it yet alone why people would vote for you for trashing a hundred quid bar of soap.
He could use a champagne crate instead.
Doiesn't drink. Would have to be a carton of Coca-Cola, which doesn't resist rain.
[Apologies for linking the worst designed website in the world that looks like herpes]
Of course the irony that Lord Ashcroft who as a non-dom avoided millions in tax, is not lost on me.
AIUI the question is whether the tax was legally avoided or illegally evaded. If you are claiming the good lord did the latter, then I fear you might be troubling OGH's lawyers.
Lord Ashcroft as far as I can see, took advantage of a legal scheme but the morals of it are grotesque.
Why?
Because the things that money could have been spent on. Did he need to avoid it?
You can say the same about everyone else who 'avoids' tax; in other words, perhaps nearly everyone who has an accountant.
Including people,who’ve worked through PSC’s and Brollies.
Do they have a Labour plant in CCHQ now? This is just sad.
Perhaps there's something so bad ahead that they want minimal representation in Parliament - 'we weren't there guv!'
I think what's happening is that the talented have given up and are working elsewhere, or at least planning to do so. The rump of the party contains some pretty useless people.
A painter, of Moroccan extraction, is telling me that he doesn’t want to do a job because it means going into the ULEZ zone.
Should I tell him that
1) He is a Gammon Fascist 2) That he doesn’t exist 3) Both
?
Why not just pay his ULEZ charge for the period? It's only £12 a day isn't it? and a fairly negligible part of the cost of having painting done.
I offered that - he’s thinking about it.
It sounds like he's after a cash deal if he doesn't want to leave a digital footprint.
More that he shy of anything that sounds complex to him. Scared of a fine as well, probably.
Think of all the people on PB who won’t google for say “GDP U.K. since 1900”, while sitting at a computer. Educated people.
Something that seems hard for the university educated to understand - for many people, their world runs on rails. New things are difficult, complex, risky.
Think of the dislocation that COVID caused across the Western world - millions of people in low paid, dead end jobs were forced to change. And found that things like Amazon delivery van driving paid better. Now they are in a new rut, and won’t move back….
The problem is they need to be OTR 50% cheaper to eliminate petrol.
I bought my new car, brand new from a showroom, for £13k OTR. Petrol self charging hybrid, I'm getting close to 60 mpg from it so it's not costing much to run either.
I would be delighted to see EVs that cheap, but w aren't there yet.
It's not just the cheapness of the silly hulks, it's charging infrastructure. There isn't any. And to move away from petrol and diesel cars we need up to 661,000 charging points. At present I think there are 41,000. And that's without even thinking about the grid upgrades needed to support this charging.
It's a complete farce - a fantasy religion that political 'moderates' are balls deep in whilst those on the political margins are left to point out the emperor's lack of clothes.
If we need to get to Net Zero, we need a different way to get to it than electrifying personal automation and greening energy production, because together they spell utter disaster for the UK, with coal-guzzling India and China laughing at us.
Electrification is unstoppable, we're approaching the rapid change part of the 'S' curve. But we're not there yet, the MG4 looks interesting, the new Renault 5 too, but I'm holding off probably for another year.
It looks like you have a few of you 'facts' wrong - so no change there.
The average daily car mileage is tiny. Which is why 80 - 90% of charging is likely to be low powered domestic chargers. Though that would mean a lot of roadside infrastructure.
The efficiency of the vote under Blair was incredible. Comfortable majorities on 30 odd per cent of the vote. And for the same reasons. You win elections by winning these volatile voters in the marginal seats.
And on the whole you win those votes from the centre, because voters who will vote over time for both Tory and Labour are centrists, rather than 'Never kissed a Tory' or 'Labour are all communists' types.
Under Starmer Labour have made a start on shifting from being a party whose voters are separate interest groups (BAME, payroll vote, ultra urban, public sector, unions) to more like the spread of voters the Tories had before they went populist.
I think from 2015 onwards, both Labour and the Tories, in different ways, switched from the traditional, low risk, proven electoral strategy of trying to sell yourself to the centre - even when being more radical in practice. To a high risk, high reward one of trying to activate the perennially disillusioned either among non-voters or traditionally on the other side.
The reward is that if you are successful you get your fabled 'realignment', win a big majority, leave your opponents electorally adrift by winning in places you shouldn't and have a mandate for big changes.
The problems being, it relies on you not losing your centre flank and becoming disillusioned but even more dangerous, given are often effectively distributed, and the disillusioned buying what you're selling. Get those wrong and you end up losing both and imploding or coming close to it.
The Tories appeared to have done that with Johnson and Brexit. But the former relied on lots of moderate Tory or centrist voters thinking Corbyn was a fate worse than that (its own failed high risk/reward strategy), and the latter its new Ukippy or ex-Labour leave voters not feeling they'd been missold to because nothing has changed for the better.
Labour are now fighting on the traditional low risk strategy, meaning they might not maximise gains - which they could do by promising lots of flourishy stuff in all directions - but maximise chances of a handy majority.
While the Tories are stuck having gambled and lost, having effectively written off a load of more liberal working age voters they now need, because the illiberal ones who were supposed to add to or replace them are as disillusioned with them as were all politicians before.
I disagree with that. Cameron in 2015, May in 2017, Johnson in 2019 and Starmer in 2024/25 have all appealed to the centre. Just each persons version of the centre changes over time.
The problem is that some people cloaked themselves in the name "centrist" in 2017-2019 while being nothing of the sort.
The central position of the British electorate is to respect democracy. Having had a majority vote for Brexit in 2016, implementing Brexit went from being an extreme position to the centrist one overnight, which 52% who voted for it and millions more who didn't vote for it but respected democracy anyway could support.
Staying in Europe despite the referendum result was anything but a centrist position.
The uniqueness of the Brexit thing is that leaving the EU has always been a centrist position - it has always been arguable, rational and variously preferred by loads of non extreme people with varying degrees of depth and enthusiasm.
But of course it was not the only centrist position. Being in the EU is and was always also non-extreme and centrist.
The issue split centrist opinion to a unique degree, so much so that many centrists honestly believe the view they don't take to have been extreme. This rendered dialogue difficult.
The calculation is not difficult. When a vote splits 16 million to 17 million (approx) then you can be sure neither view is extreme. There are not enough crazy people to go round.
A painter, of Moroccan extraction, is telling me that he doesn’t want to do a job because it means going into the ULEZ zone.
Should I tell him that
1) He is a Gammon Fascist 2) That he doesn’t exist 3) Both
?
Why not just pay his ULEZ charge for the period? It's only £12 a day isn't it? and a fairly negligible part of the cost of having painting done.
I offered that - he’s thinking about it.
It sounds like he's after a cash deal if he doesn't want to leave a digital footprint.
More that he shy of anything that sounds complex to him. Scared of a fine as well, probably.
Think of all the people on PB who won’t google for say “GDP U.K. since 1900”, while sitting at a computer. Educated people.
Something that seems hard for the university educated to understand - for many people, their world runs on rails. New things are difficult, complex, risky.
Think of the dislocation that COVID caused across the Western world - millions of people in low paid, dead end jobs were forced to change. And found that things like Amazon delivery van driving paid better. Now they are in a new rut, and won’t move back….
"Think of all the people on PB who won’t google for say “GDP U.K. since 1900”, while sitting at a computer. Educated people."
I rarely pre-fact-check my posts. I much prefer having a conversation. And anyway you are a prime source of the sort of interesting facts that may not crop up at first google.
[Apologies for linking the worst designed website in the world that looks like herpes]
Of course the irony that Lord Ashcroft who as a non-dom avoided millions in tax, is not lost on me.
Avoided legally though and it didn’t stop labour and people like Rayner going after him for it. Those that live by the sword etc and Rayner really really does not like being subjected to scrutiny. She will get a lot more in office.
I defer to the Dan Neidle thread on twitter on this and this is pretty balanced.
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
[Apologies for linking the worst designed website in the world that looks like herpes]
Of course the irony that Lord Ashcroft who as a non-dom avoided millions in tax, is not lost on me.
AIUI the question is whether the tax was legally avoided or illegally evaded. If you are claiming the good lord did the latter, then I fear you might be troubling OGH's lawyers.
Lord Ashcroft as far as I can see, took advantage of a legal scheme but the morals of it are grotesque.
He legally minimised his tax liabilities. what’s ‘grotesque’ about that ? I don’t blame him. I anyone who uses an ISA or pays into a pension or,has a workplace benefit via salary sacrifice is avoiding tax.
Most of us didn’t leave the country to so so. Which makes a bit of a difference as a basis from which to pontificate on domestic politics.
[Apologies for linking the worst designed website in the world that looks like herpes]
Of course the irony that Lord Ashcroft who as a non-dom avoided millions in tax, is not lost on me.
Avoided legally though and it didn’t stop labour and people like Rayner going after him for it. Those that live by the sword etc and Rayner really really does not like being subjected to scrutiny. She will get a lot more in office.
I defer to the Dan Neidle thread on twitter on this and this is pretty balanced.
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
The good news Mr Royale, is that if and when that comes, let us hope the Tories have gone back to a sensible centrist position that I can vote for. In that case I will be quite happy to vote Labour out. Votes must be earned.
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
Yes. I am terrified at the prospect of an NHS we can rely on.
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
Andy Street seems an intelligent chap and a nice bloke. So it is BAFFLING to me that he backed Liz Truss, what on Earth was going through his mind?
That she was the better option available.
Which she was.
Sunak was clearly the better option. And he's useless.
Yes, but he's not useless, is he?
He's an effective and competent administrator of government and a entry-level statesman. Sure, I don't agree with all his decisions, such as on HS2, Defence, and venerating tax cuts as a magic solution to economic growth over a mixture of more targeted ones and strategic investment, but he's not useless.
He's politically ineffective, I agree, where he simply doesn't have the instincts or the common touch, but that's not the same thing.
Andy Street seems an intelligent chap and a nice bloke. So it is BAFFLING to me that he backed Liz Truss, what on Earth was going through his mind?
That she was the better option available.
Which she was.
Sunak was clearly the better option. And he's useless.
Yes, but he's not useless, is he?
He's an effective and competent administrator of government and a entry-level statesman. Sure, I don't agree with all his decisions, such as on HS2, Defence, and venerating tax cuts as a magic solution to economic growth over a mixture of more targeted ones and strategic investment, but he's not useless.
He's politically ineffective, I agree, where he simply doesn't have the instincts or the common touch, but that's not the same thing.
He is politically hopeless. Useless was the wrong word, I agree.
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
Yes. I am terrified at the prospect of an NHS we can rely on.
[Apologies for linking the worst designed website in the world that looks like herpes]
Of course the irony that Lord Ashcroft who as a non-dom avoided millions in tax, is not lost on me.
AIUI the question is whether the tax was legally avoided or illegally evaded. If you are claiming the good lord did the latter, then I fear you might be troubling OGH's lawyers.
Lord Ashcroft as far as I can see, took advantage of a legal scheme but the morals of it are grotesque.
He legally minimised his tax liabilities. what’s ‘grotesque’ about that ? I don’t blame him. I anyone who uses an ISA or pays into a pension or,has a workplace benefit via salary sacrifice is avoiding tax.
Most of us didn’t leave the country to so so. Which makes a bit of a difference as a basis from which to pontificate on domestic politics.
In the case of Rayner he has published a book about her and this is doing a great job of getting publicity for it.
He wasn’t pontificating on domestic politics in this case but so what if he chooses to. Plenty of expats and tax exiles do or have done so. No one is compelled to listen to them.
That's very Guardian. No-one normal would complain about having an Aston Martin or the England football team as images of Britain. Or even the F35 that was an anglo-american collaboration and based on technology from the Harrier.
That's very Guardian. No-one normal would complain about having an Aston Martin or the England football team as images of Britain. Or even the F35 that was an anglo-american collaboration and based on technology from the Harrier.
Andy Street seems an intelligent chap and a nice bloke. So it is BAFFLING to me that he backed Liz Truss, what on Earth was going through his mind?
That she was the better option available.
Which she was.
Sunak was clearly the better option. And he's useless.
Yes, but he's not useless, is he?
He's an effective and competent administrator of government and a entry-level statesman. Sure, I don't agree with all his decisions, such as on HS2, Defence, and venerating tax cuts as a magic solution to economic growth over a mixture of more targeted ones and strategic investment, but he's not useless.
He's politically ineffective, I agree, where he simply doesn't have the instincts or the common touch, but that's not the same thing.
The efficiency of the vote under Blair was incredible. Comfortable majorities on 30 odd per cent of the vote. And for the same reasons. You win elections by winning these volatile voters in the marginal seats.
And on the whole you win those votes from the centre, because voters who will vote over time for both Tory and Labour are centrists, rather than 'Never kissed a Tory' or 'Labour are all communists' types.
Under Starmer Labour have made a start on shifting from being a party whose voters are separate interest groups (BAME, payroll vote, ultra urban, public sector, unions) to more like the spread of voters the Tories had before they went populist.
I think from 2015 onwards, both Labour and the Tories, in different ways, switched from the traditional, low risk, proven electoral strategy of trying to sell yourself to the centre - even when being more radical in practice. To a high risk, high reward one of trying to activate the perennially disillusioned either among non-voters or traditionally on the other side.
The reward is that if you are successful you get your fabled 'realignment', win a big majority, leave your opponents electorally adrift by winning in places you shouldn't and have a mandate for big changes.
The problems being, it relies on you not losing your centre flank and becoming disillusioned but even more dangerous, given are often effectively distributed, and the disillusioned buying what you're selling. Get those wrong and you end up losing both and imploding or coming close to it.
The Tories appeared to have done that with Johnson and Brexit. But the former relied on lots of moderate Tory or centrist voters thinking Corbyn was a fate worse than that (its own failed high risk/reward strategy), and the latter its new Ukippy or ex-Labour leave voters not feeling they'd been missold to because nothing has changed for the better.
Labour are now fighting on the traditional low risk strategy, meaning they might not maximise gains - which they could do by promising lots of flourishy stuff in all directions - but maximise chances of a handy majority.
While the Tories are stuck having gambled and lost, having effectively written off a load of more liberal working age voters they now need, because the illiberal ones who were supposed to add to or replace them are as disillusioned with them as were all politicians before.
I disagree with that. Cameron in 2015, May in 2017, Johnson in 2019 and Starmer in 2024/25 have all appealed to the centre. Just each persons version of the centre changes over time.
The problem is that some people cloaked themselves in the name "centrist" in 2017-2019 while being nothing of the sort.
The central position of the British electorate is to respect democracy. Having had a majority vote for Brexit in 2016, implementing Brexit went from being an extreme position to the centrist one overnight, which 52% who voted for it and millions more who didn't vote for it but respected democracy anyway could support.
Staying in Europe despite the referendum result was anything but a centrist position.
The uniqueness of the Brexit thing is that leaving the EU has always been a centrist position - it has always been arguable, rational and variously preferred by loads of non extreme people with varying degrees of depth and enthusiasm.
But of course it was not the only centrist position. Being in the EU is and was always also non-extreme and centrist.
The issue split centrist opinion to a unique degree, so much so that many centrists honestly believe the view they don't take to have been extreme. This rendered dialogue difficult.
The calculation is not difficult. When a vote splits 16 million to 17 million (approx) then you can be sure neither view is extreme. There are not enough crazy people to go round.
I agree with that, though I'd say the proportion who felt that we should stay in the EU despite the referendum result after the vote was considerably lower than 16 million.
Most Britons respect democracy. The moment the referendum happened, respecting its result was the centrist position and anyone who opposed that under the label of "centrist" was misnamed.
The efficiency of the vote under Blair was incredible. Comfortable majorities on 30 odd per cent of the vote. And for the same reasons. You win elections by winning these volatile voters in the marginal seats.
And on the whole you win those votes from the centre, because voters who will vote over time for both Tory and Labour are centrists, rather than 'Never kissed a Tory' or 'Labour are all communists' types.
Under Starmer Labour have made a start on shifting from being a party whose voters are separate interest groups (BAME, payroll vote, ultra urban, public sector, unions) to more like the spread of voters the Tories had before they went populist.
I think from 2015 onwards, both Labour and the Tories, in different ways, switched from the traditional, low risk, proven electoral strategy of trying to sell yourself to the centre - even when being more radical in practice. To a high risk, high reward one of trying to activate the perennially disillusioned either among non-voters or traditionally on the other side.
The reward is that if you are successful you get your fabled 'realignment', win a big majority, leave your opponents electorally adrift by winning in places you shouldn't and have a mandate for big changes.
The problems being, it relies on you not losing your centre flank and becoming disillusioned but even more dangerous, given are often effectively distributed, and the disillusioned buying what you're selling. Get those wrong and you end up losing both and imploding or coming close to it.
The Tories appeared to have done that with Johnson and Brexit. But the former relied on lots of moderate Tory or centrist voters thinking Corbyn was a fate worse than that (its own failed high risk/reward strategy), and the latter its new Ukippy or ex-Labour leave voters not feeling they'd been missold to because nothing has changed for the better.
Labour are now fighting on the traditional low risk strategy, meaning they might not maximise gains - which they could do by promising lots of flourishy stuff in all directions - but maximise chances of a handy majority.
While the Tories are stuck having gambled and lost, having effectively written off a load of more liberal working age voters they now need, because the illiberal ones who were supposed to add to or replace them are as disillusioned with them as were all politicians before.
I disagree with that. Cameron in 2015, May in 2017, Johnson in 2019 and Starmer in 2024/25 have all appealed to the centre. Just each persons version of the centre changes over time.
The problem is that some people cloaked themselves in the name "centrist" in 2017-2019 while being nothing of the sort.
The central position of the British electorate is to respect democracy. Having had a majority vote for Brexit in 2016, implementing Brexit went from being an extreme position to the centrist one overnight, which 52% who voted for it and millions more who didn't vote for it but respected democracy anyway could support.
Staying in Europe despite the referendum result was anything but a centrist position.
The uniqueness of the Brexit thing is that leaving the EU has always been a centrist position - it has always been arguable, rational and variously preferred by loads of non extreme people with varying degrees of depth and enthusiasm.
But of course it was not the only centrist position. Being in the EU is and was always also non-extreme and centrist.
The issue split centrist opinion to a unique degree, so much so that many centrists honestly believe the view they don't take to have been extreme. This rendered dialogue difficult.
The calculation is not difficult. When a vote splits 16 million to 17 million (approx) then you can be sure neither view is extreme. There are not enough crazy people to go round.
I agree with that, though I'd say the proportion who felt that we should stay in the EU despite the referendum result after the vote was considerably lower than 16 million.
Most Britons respect democracy. The moment the referendum happened, respecting its result was the centrist position and anyone who opposed that under the label of "centrist" was misnamed.
There was more to it. What would’ve been centrist was a soft Brexit, but a wing of the Conservative Party dragged us into a hard Brexit, then choosing a candidate who lied about it to get through a general election campaign.
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
I expect so. But it doesn't mean they want a return to the current omnishambles.
The efficiency of the vote under Blair was incredible. Comfortable majorities on 30 odd per cent of the vote. And for the same reasons. You win elections by winning these volatile voters in the marginal seats.
And on the whole you win those votes from the centre, because voters who will vote over time for both Tory and Labour are centrists, rather than 'Never kissed a Tory' or 'Labour are all communists' types.
Under Starmer Labour have made a start on shifting from being a party whose voters are separate interest groups (BAME, payroll vote, ultra urban, public sector, unions) to more like the spread of voters the Tories had before they went populist.
I think from 2015 onwards, both Labour and the Tories, in different ways, switched from the traditional, low risk, proven electoral strategy of trying to sell yourself to the centre - even when being more radical in practice. To a high risk, high reward one of trying to activate the perennially disillusioned either among non-voters or traditionally on the other side.
The reward is that if you are successful you get your fabled 'realignment', win a big majority, leave your opponents electorally adrift by winning in places you shouldn't and have a mandate for big changes.
The problems being, it relies on you not losing your centre flank and becoming disillusioned but even more dangerous, given are often effectively distributed, and the disillusioned buying what you're selling. Get those wrong and you end up losing both and imploding or coming close to it.
The Tories appeared to have done that with Johnson and Brexit. But the former relied on lots of moderate Tory or centrist voters thinking Corbyn was a fate worse than that (its own failed high risk/reward strategy), and the latter its new Ukippy or ex-Labour leave voters not feeling they'd been missold to because nothing has changed for the better.
Labour are now fighting on the traditional low risk strategy, meaning they might not maximise gains - which they could do by promising lots of flourishy stuff in all directions - but maximise chances of a handy majority.
While the Tories are stuck having gambled and lost, having effectively written off a load of more liberal working age voters they now need, because the illiberal ones who were supposed to add to or replace them are as disillusioned with them as were all politicians before.
I disagree with that. Cameron in 2015, May in 2017, Johnson in 2019 and Starmer in 2024/25 have all appealed to the centre. Just each persons version of the centre changes over time.
The problem is that some people cloaked themselves in the name "centrist" in 2017-2019 while being nothing of the sort.
The central position of the British electorate is to respect democracy. Having had a majority vote for Brexit in 2016, implementing Brexit went from being an extreme position to the centrist one overnight, which 52% who voted for it and millions more who didn't vote for it but respected democracy anyway could support.
Staying in Europe despite the referendum result was anything but a centrist position.
The uniqueness of the Brexit thing is that leaving the EU has always been a centrist position - it has always been arguable, rational and variously preferred by loads of non extreme people with varying degrees of depth and enthusiasm.
But of course it was not the only centrist position. Being in the EU is and was always also non-extreme and centrist.
The issue split centrist opinion to a unique degree, so much so that many centrists honestly believe the view they don't take to have been extreme. This rendered dialogue difficult.
The calculation is not difficult. When a vote splits 16 million to 17 million (approx) then you can be sure neither view is extreme. There are not enough crazy people to go round.
I agree with that, though I'd say the proportion who felt that we should stay in the EU despite the referendum result after the vote was considerably lower than 16 million.
Most Britons respect democracy. The moment the referendum happened, respecting its result was the centrist position and anyone who opposed that under the label of "centrist" was misnamed.
There was more to it. What would’ve been centrist was a soft Brexit, but a wing of the Conservative Party dragged us into a hard Brexit, then choosing a candidate who lied about it to get through a general election campaign.
The 'soft Brexit' being touted was closer to Remain than to Leave.
Do they have a Labour plant in CCHQ now? This is just sad.
Perhaps there's something so bad ahead that they want minimal representation in Parliament - 'we weren't there guv!'
I think what's happening is that the talented have given up and are working elsewhere, or at least planning to do so. The rump of the party contains some pretty useless people.
Tbf the part that wasn't the rump also contained some pretty useless people.
Andy Street seems an intelligent chap and a nice bloke. So it is BAFFLING to me that he backed Liz Truss, what on Earth was going through his mind?
That she was the better option available.
Which she was.
Sunak was clearly the better option. And he's useless.
Yes, but he's not useless, is he?
He's an effective and competent administrator of government and a entry-level statesman. Sure, I don't agree with all his decisions, such as on HS2, Defence, and venerating tax cuts as a magic solution to economic growth over a mixture of more targeted ones and strategic investment, but he's not useless.
He's politically ineffective, I agree, where he simply doesn't have the instincts or the common touch, but that's not the same thing.
IMV. he's been a terrible PM in the situation he's found himself coming into power: following a PM who resigned in shame, and another who had resigned for being instantly hopeless; and over ten years into a party's time in power.
If he had taken over a party with a 70-80 majority a couple of years into a fresh government and with few significant issues (Ukraine, Covid, etc), he would probably have been 'okay'. But we need better than 'okay'.
Like Major, he's not a *bad* person, or even incompetent. He's just facing an impossible situation, and playing the hand badly. But I think history will view Major better.
The efficiency of the vote under Blair was incredible. Comfortable majorities on 30 odd per cent of the vote. And for the same reasons. You win elections by winning these volatile voters in the marginal seats.
And on the whole you win those votes from the centre, because voters who will vote over time for both Tory and Labour are centrists, rather than 'Never kissed a Tory' or 'Labour are all communists' types.
Under Starmer Labour have made a start on shifting from being a party whose voters are separate interest groups (BAME, payroll vote, ultra urban, public sector, unions) to more like the spread of voters the Tories had before they went populist.
I think from 2015 onwards, both Labour and the Tories, in different ways, switched from the traditional, low risk, proven electoral strategy of trying to sell yourself to the centre - even when being more radical in practice. To a high risk, high reward one of trying to activate the perennially disillusioned either among non-voters or traditionally on the other side.
The reward is that if you are successful you get your fabled 'realignment', win a big majority, leave your opponents electorally adrift by winning in places you shouldn't and have a mandate for big changes.
The problems being, it relies on you not losing your centre flank and becoming disillusioned but even more dangerous, given are often effectively distributed, and the disillusioned buying what you're selling. Get those wrong and you end up losing both and imploding or coming close to it.
The Tories appeared to have done that with Johnson and Brexit. But the former relied on lots of moderate Tory or centrist voters thinking Corbyn was a fate worse than that (its own failed high risk/reward strategy), and the latter its new Ukippy or ex-Labour leave voters not feeling they'd been missold to because nothing has changed for the better.
Labour are now fighting on the traditional low risk strategy, meaning they might not maximise gains - which they could do by promising lots of flourishy stuff in all directions - but maximise chances of a handy majority.
While the Tories are stuck having gambled and lost, having effectively written off a load of more liberal working age voters they now need, because the illiberal ones who were supposed to add to or replace them are as disillusioned with them as were all politicians before.
I disagree with that. Cameron in 2015, May in 2017, Johnson in 2019 and Starmer in 2024/25 have all appealed to the centre. Just each persons version of the centre changes over time.
The problem is that some people cloaked themselves in the name "centrist" in 2017-2019 while being nothing of the sort.
The central position of the British electorate is to respect democracy. Having had a majority vote for Brexit in 2016, implementing Brexit went from being an extreme position to the centrist one overnight, which 52% who voted for it and millions more who didn't vote for it but respected democracy anyway could support.
Staying in Europe despite the referendum result was anything but a centrist position.
The uniqueness of the Brexit thing is that leaving the EU has always been a centrist position - it has always been arguable, rational and variously preferred by loads of non extreme people with varying degrees of depth and enthusiasm.
But of course it was not the only centrist position. Being in the EU is and was always also non-extreme and centrist.
The issue split centrist opinion to a unique degree, so much so that many centrists honestly believe the view they don't take to have been extreme. This rendered dialogue difficult.
The calculation is not difficult. When a vote splits 16 million to 17 million (approx) then you can be sure neither view is extreme. There are not enough crazy people to go round.
I agree with that, though I'd say the proportion who felt that we should stay in the EU despite the referendum result after the vote was considerably lower than 16 million.
Most Britons respect democracy. The moment the referendum happened, respecting its result was the centrist position and anyone who opposed that under the label of "centrist" was misnamed.
There was more to it. What would’ve been centrist was a soft Brexit, but a wing of the Conservative Party dragged us into a hard Brexit, then choosing a candidate who lied about it to get through a general election campaign.
The 'soft Brexit' being touted was closer to Remain than to Leave.
The soft Brexit involved leaving the EU. It was Leave. It was also close to Remain, but when you’ve got the populace evenly split, a centrist position is going to look like that.
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
That's very Guardian. No-one normal would complain about having an Aston Martin or the England football team as images of Britain. Or even the F35 that was an anglo-american collaboration and based on technology from the Harrier.
Clickbait for their readers.
So why did the Tories delete it?
Using the King for political purposes.
Rats in a sack surfacing for the third time before drowning.
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
A painter, of Moroccan extraction, is telling me that he doesn’t want to do a job because it means going into the ULEZ zone.
Should I tell him that
1) He is a Gammon Fascist 2) That he doesn’t exist 3) Both
?
Why not just pay his ULEZ charge for the period? It's only £12 a day isn't it? and a fairly negligible part of the cost of having painting done.
I offered that - he’s thinking about it.
It sounds like he's after a cash deal if he doesn't want to leave a digital footprint.
More that he shy of anything that sounds complex to him. Scared of a fine as well, probably.
Think of all the people on PB who won’t google for say “GDP U.K. since 1900”, while sitting at a computer. Educated people.
Something that seems hard for the university educated to understand - for many people, their world runs on rails. New things are difficult, complex, risky.
Think of the dislocation that COVID caused across the Western world - millions of people in low paid, dead end jobs were forced to change. And found that things like Amazon delivery van driving paid better. Now they are in a new rut, and won’t move back….
Something which is a pain in the arse, however minor, is as much of a barrier as a cost. People will spend far more on petrol driving somewhere with free parking than they would paying for the parking they are avoiding.
I was reflecting recently that I have work colleagues who are either too young to remember the 1997 election or, in some cases, weren't even born.
This year's GE has the potential to be 1997 for the next generation.
There will be voters this time who weren't born the last time Labour won an election.
Bloody hell. I hadn't even thought of that!
Two in my family who will almost certainly both be voting Labour. And they replace 2 LD voters and a Con voter in 1997 who are no longer around. Demographics!
The efficiency of the vote under Blair was incredible. Comfortable majorities on 30 odd per cent of the vote. And for the same reasons. You win elections by winning these volatile voters in the marginal seats.
And on the whole you win those votes from the centre, because voters who will vote over time for both Tory and Labour are centrists, rather than 'Never kissed a Tory' or 'Labour are all communists' types.
Under Starmer Labour have made a start on shifting from being a party whose voters are separate interest groups (BAME, payroll vote, ultra urban, public sector, unions) to more like the spread of voters the Tories had before they went populist.
I think from 2015 onwards, both Labour and the Tories, in different ways, switched from the traditional, low risk, proven electoral strategy of trying to sell yourself to the centre - even when being more radical in practice. To a high risk, high reward one of trying to activate the perennially disillusioned either among non-voters or traditionally on the other side.
The reward is that if you are successful you get your fabled 'realignment', win a big majority, leave your opponents electorally adrift by winning in places you shouldn't and have a mandate for big changes.
The problems being, it relies on you not losing your centre flank and becoming disillusioned but even more dangerous, given are often effectively distributed, and the disillusioned buying what you're selling. Get those wrong and you end up losing both and imploding or coming close to it.
The Tories appeared to have done that with Johnson and Brexit. But the former relied on lots of moderate Tory or centrist voters thinking Corbyn was a fate worse than that (its own failed high risk/reward strategy), and the latter its new Ukippy or ex-Labour leave voters not feeling they'd been missold to because nothing has changed for the better.
Labour are now fighting on the traditional low risk strategy, meaning they might not maximise gains - which they could do by promising lots of flourishy stuff in all directions - but maximise chances of a handy majority.
While the Tories are stuck having gambled and lost, having effectively written off a load of more liberal working age voters they now need, because the illiberal ones who were supposed to add to or replace them are as disillusioned with them as were all politicians before.
I disagree with that. Cameron in 2015, May in 2017, Johnson in 2019 and Starmer in 2024/25 have all appealed to the centre. Just each persons version of the centre changes over time.
The problem is that some people cloaked themselves in the name "centrist" in 2017-2019 while being nothing of the sort.
The central position of the British electorate is to respect democracy. Having had a majority vote for Brexit in 2016, implementing Brexit went from being an extreme position to the centrist one overnight, which 52% who voted for it and millions more who didn't vote for it but respected democracy anyway could support.
Staying in Europe despite the referendum result was anything but a centrist position.
The uniqueness of the Brexit thing is that leaving the EU has always been a centrist position - it has always been arguable, rational and variously preferred by loads of non extreme people with varying degrees of depth and enthusiasm.
But of course it was not the only centrist position. Being in the EU is and was always also non-extreme and centrist.
The issue split centrist opinion to a unique degree, so much so that many centrists honestly believe the view they don't take to have been extreme. This rendered dialogue difficult.
The calculation is not difficult. When a vote splits 16 million to 17 million (approx) then you can be sure neither view is extreme. There are not enough crazy people to go round.
I agree with that, though I'd say the proportion who felt that we should stay in the EU despite the referendum result after the vote was considerably lower than 16 million.
Most Britons respect democracy. The moment the referendum happened, respecting its result was the centrist position and anyone who opposed that under the label of "centrist" was misnamed.
There was more to it. What would’ve been centrist was a soft Brexit, but a wing of the Conservative Party dragged us into a hard Brexit, then choosing a candidate who lied about it to get through a general election campaign.
The 'soft Brexit' being touted was closer to Remain than to Leave.
The soft Brexit involved leaving the EU. It was Leave. It was also close to Remain, but when you’ve got the populace evenly split, a centrist position is going to look like that.
Oh please. If a million votes had gone the other way, would that have been interpreted as a vote for in the EU but to never have any integration again so as to keep Leave voters on board? Of course not, it would have been full speed ahead.
And your interpretation of "as long as it is *technically* Brexit, the actual substance doesn't matter" is the pure duplicitousness of EU types. It is exactly what happened to the Irish over the EU constitution. That sort of insidiousness is why more people voted Leave.
Good job too, given we have economically outgrown the EU since we left EU structures.
The efficiency of the vote under Blair was incredible. Comfortable majorities on 30 odd per cent of the vote. And for the same reasons. You win elections by winning these volatile voters in the marginal seats.
And on the whole you win those votes from the centre, because voters who will vote over time for both Tory and Labour are centrists, rather than 'Never kissed a Tory' or 'Labour are all communists' types.
Under Starmer Labour have made a start on shifting from being a party whose voters are separate interest groups (BAME, payroll vote, ultra urban, public sector, unions) to more like the spread of voters the Tories had before they went populist.
I think from 2015 onwards, both Labour and the Tories, in different ways, switched from the traditional, low risk, proven electoral strategy of trying to sell yourself to the centre - even when being more radical in practice. To a high risk, high reward one of trying to activate the perennially disillusioned either among non-voters or traditionally on the other side.
The reward is that if you are successful you get your fabled 'realignment', win a big majority, leave your opponents electorally adrift by winning in places you shouldn't and have a mandate for big changes.
The problems being, it relies on you not losing your centre flank and becoming disillusioned but even more dangerous, given are often effectively distributed, and the disillusioned buying what you're selling. Get those wrong and you end up losing both and imploding or coming close to it.
The Tories appeared to have done that with Johnson and Brexit. But the former relied on lots of moderate Tory or centrist voters thinking Corbyn was a fate worse than that (its own failed high risk/reward strategy), and the latter its new Ukippy or ex-Labour leave voters not feeling they'd been missold to because nothing has changed for the better.
Labour are now fighting on the traditional low risk strategy, meaning they might not maximise gains - which they could do by promising lots of flourishy stuff in all directions - but maximise chances of a handy majority.
While the Tories are stuck having gambled and lost, having effectively written off a load of more liberal working age voters they now need, because the illiberal ones who were supposed to add to or replace them are as disillusioned with them as were all politicians before.
I disagree with that. Cameron in 2015, May in 2017, Johnson in 2019 and Starmer in 2024/25 have all appealed to the centre. Just each persons version of the centre changes over time.
The problem is that some people cloaked themselves in the name "centrist" in 2017-2019 while being nothing of the sort.
The central position of the British electorate is to respect democracy. Having had a majority vote for Brexit in 2016, implementing Brexit went from being an extreme position to the centrist one overnight, which 52% who voted for it and millions more who didn't vote for it but respected democracy anyway could support.
Staying in Europe despite the referendum result was anything but a centrist position.
The uniqueness of the Brexit thing is that leaving the EU has always been a centrist position - it has always been arguable, rational and variously preferred by loads of non extreme people with varying degrees of depth and enthusiasm.
But of course it was not the only centrist position. Being in the EU is and was always also non-extreme and centrist.
The issue split centrist opinion to a unique degree, so much so that many centrists honestly believe the view they don't take to have been extreme. This rendered dialogue difficult.
The calculation is not difficult. When a vote splits 16 million to 17 million (approx) then you can be sure neither view is extreme. There are not enough crazy people to go round.
I agree with that, though I'd say the proportion who felt that we should stay in the EU despite the referendum result after the vote was considerably lower than 16 million.
Most Britons respect democracy. The moment the referendum happened, respecting its result was the centrist position and anyone who opposed that under the label of "centrist" was misnamed.
There was more to it. What would’ve been centrist was a soft Brexit, but a wing of the Conservative Party dragged us into a hard Brexit, then choosing a candidate who lied about it to get through a general election campaign.
It's not a spectrum; the cliff-edge of EEA (SM/FoM) is so large that its essentially either-or and everything else is a second-order concern.
And, as remainers never cease to remind us, it was all about immigration - so FoM had to go. And all else follows.
Edit: the idea there was an easily navigable, smooth, contiguous spectrum is akin to the cakeism leavers were accused of.
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
Labour could be utterly useless and still be better than the current lot.
Do they have a Labour plant in CCHQ now? This is just sad.
Perhaps there's something so bad ahead that they want minimal representation in Parliament - 'we weren't there guv!'
I think what's happening is that the talented have given up and are working elsewhere, or at least planning to do so. The rump of the party contains some pretty useless people.
Tbf the part that wasn't the rump also contained some pretty useless people.
A good point. well made. However people like Sunak aren't really useless, in fact they're rather talented. The Tory party has a double whammy going on where somehow their structure is screwing them up too. (Cf the 80s when the behind-the-scenes wisdom made everyone look good)
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
Labour could be utterly useless and still be better than the current lot.
They could be just as bad, much more easily than you think.
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
I don't know how old you are (I think you may be younger than me) but I am in my mid-50s and all the Conservative governments in my adult lifetime have been an unmitigated disaster. The coalition was good on the whole, Blair's first term likewise if a bit timid until he went mad over Iraq, but even Brown was OK compared to all Conservative administrations except late Major but by then they had run out of steam and were fatally damaged by the mess they made earlier.
It perplexes me where the fear of Labour comes from.
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
Labour could be utterly useless and still be better than the current lot.
There's always room to get *much* worse; look at (say) Russia politically, Venezuela politically and fiscally, or South Africa for everything. It's feasible that we'll look back at Sunak's government with a certain fondness.
But the scenarios where a Starmer government is worse are few and far between. I fear the biggest issue will be a stonkingly large majority, which might cause him to be over-enthusiastic. Over-enthusiasm should be avoided in all governments...
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
I don't know how old you are (I think you may be younger than me) but I am in my mid-50s and all the Conservative governments in my adult lifetime have been an unmitigated disaster. The coalition was good on the whole, Blair's first term likewise if a bit timid until he went mad over Iraq, but even Brown was OK compared to all Conservative administrations except late Major but by then they had run out of steam and were fatally damaged by the mess they made earlier.
It perplexes me where the fear of Labour comes from.
The main thing that people have forgotten is just how populist New Labour were. They were forever chasing tabloid headlines.
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
Labour could be utterly useless and still be better than the current lot.
There's always room to get *much* worse; look at (say) Russia politically, Venezuela politically and fiscally, or South Africa for everything. It's feasible that we'll look back at Sunak's government with a certain fondness.
But the scenarios where a Starmer government is worse are few and far between. I fear the biggest issue will be a stonkingly large majority, which might cause him to be over-enthusiastic. Over-enthusiasm should be avoided in all governments...
We all thought nothing could be worse than Gordon Brown.
Now we look back on even him with a certain nostalgia.
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
Labour could be utterly useless and still be better than the current lot.
There's always room to get *much* worse; look at (say) Russia politically, Venezuela politically and fiscally, or South Africa for everything. It's feasible that we'll look back at Sunak's government with a certain fondness.
This is a Government that has created a 2-3 year gap in train orders resulting in the Derby (and probably the Newton Aycliffe) manufacturers running out of work. It's then trying to pretend that the 20,000+ jobs that will be lost has nothing to do with them....
I doubt anyone clueful will look back at this Government other than the worst Government of their lifetime...
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
Labour could be utterly useless and still be better than the current lot.
Not just better. If the predicted landslide happens the current lot become just as irrelevant as the Lib Dems. I don't think that fact has really sunk in
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
I don't know how old you are (I think you may be younger than me) but I am in my mid-50s and all the Conservative governments in my adult lifetime have been an unmitigated disaster. The coalition was good on the whole, Blair's first term likewise if a bit timid until he went mad over Iraq, but even Brown was OK compared to all Conservative administrations except late Major but by then they had run out of steam and were fatally damaged by the mess they made earlier.
It perplexes me where the fear of Labour comes from.
The disasters of many of the nationalisations, for one thing. The Transport Act 1947 did not just nationalise railways, but all long-distance road haulage (forming British Road Services). Even for the few years it remained nationalised, it was an unmitigated disaster.
But as ever, any government that puts ideology over common sense should be avoided.
[Apologies for linking the worst designed website in the world that looks like herpes]
Of course the irony that Lord Ashcroft who as a non-dom avoided millions in tax, is not lost on me.
The point being, that rightly or wrongly, we expect Labour not to do this kind of thing. Being dodgy with finances is traditionally more a Tory thing. The old Labour moral high ground argument.
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
Labour could be utterly useless and still be better than the current lot.
Not just better. If the predicted landslide happens the current lot become just as irrelevant as the Lib Dems. I don't think that fact has really sunk in
I'm quite fearful as to quite what a fragmentation of the right might bring, and I'm pretty sure that if the Tories get to LD territory they will fragment.
Oddly the fear is much around there being no alternative middle ground precisely because the LDs are so useless.
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
Labour could be utterly useless and still be better than the current lot.
There's always room to get *much* worse; look at (say) Russia politically, Venezuela politically and fiscally, or South Africa for everything. It's feasible that we'll look back at Sunak's government with a certain fondness.
This is a Government that has created a 2-3 year gap in train orders resulting in the Derby (and probably the Newton Aycliffe) manufacturers running out of work. It's then trying to pretend that the 20,000+ jobs that will be lost has nothing to do with them....
I doubt anyone clueful will look back at this Government other than the worst Government of their lifetime...
Hang on - you can easily 'blame' Blair's government for that, and the disastrous decision to award Hitachi a train-building contract in 2009.
I really hope Derby survives. 175 years of history should matter when their rivals are fly-by-nights.
Anyway, I have been out all day and returned to find my local Conservative MP (Andrew Rosindell) has been visiting while I'm out. He left 3 leaflets for the GLA elections and the main one (which is really about him) is quite dispiriting as it is full of rubbish and not a good sign of how the Tories intend to fight the next election.
Anyway - 2 LOL moments in it.
Apparently I have to vote for him or "hand Romford and Britain over to a left-wing, woke-obsessed, re-join EU, socialist party". That sounds good to me. Which party is that then? I thought it was Labour in 2nd place here
And separately he complains about the state of the roads, litter, concrete jungle of high-rise buildings and the decline of the town centre. Vote against the party that has allowed that to happen by being in government for 14 years and controlling the council for 20 years until they were booted out (leaving no money for the new administration to improve anything). Oh.
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
Yes. I am terrified at the prospect of an NHS we can rely on.
Like the Welsh NHS, currently under the hands of Labour?
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
Labour could be utterly useless and still be better than the current lot.
They could be just as bad, much more easily than you think.
I doubt it. The Tories' incompetence is structural, reflecting the fact that their voter base is out of touch with reality. They're like an architect who only builds houses for people who don't believe in gravity.
The efficiency of the vote under Blair was incredible. Comfortable majorities on 30 odd per cent of the vote. And for the same reasons. You win elections by winning these volatile voters in the marginal seats.
And on the whole you win those votes from the centre, because voters who will vote over time for both Tory and Labour are centrists, rather than 'Never kissed a Tory' or 'Labour are all communists' types.
Under Starmer Labour have made a start on shifting from being a party whose voters are separate interest groups (BAME, payroll vote, ultra urban, public sector, unions) to more like the spread of voters the Tories had before they went populist.
I think from 2015 onwards, both Labour and the Tories, in different ways, switched from the traditional, low risk, proven electoral strategy of trying to sell yourself to the centre - even when being more radical in practice. To a high risk, high reward one of trying to activate the perennially disillusioned either among non-voters or traditionally on the other side.
The reward is that if you are successful you get your fabled 'realignment', win a big majority, leave your opponents electorally adrift by winning in places you shouldn't and have a mandate for big changes.
The problems being, it relies on you not losing your centre flank and becoming disillusioned but even more dangerous, given are often effectively distributed, and the disillusioned buying what you're selling. Get those wrong and you end up losing both and imploding or coming close to it.
The Tories appeared to have done that with Johnson and Brexit. But the former relied on lots of moderate Tory or centrist voters thinking Corbyn was a fate worse than that (its own failed high risk/reward strategy), and the latter its new Ukippy or ex-Labour leave voters not feeling they'd been missold to because nothing has changed for the better.
Labour are now fighting on the traditional low risk strategy, meaning they might not maximise gains - which they could do by promising lots of flourishy stuff in all directions - but maximise chances of a handy majority.
While the Tories are stuck having gambled and lost, having effectively written off a load of more liberal working age voters they now need, because the illiberal ones who were supposed to add to or replace them are as disillusioned with them as were all politicians before.
I disagree with that. Cameron in 2015, May in 2017, Johnson in 2019 and Starmer in 2024/25 have all appealed to the centre. Just each persons version of the centre changes over time.
The problem is that some people cloaked themselves in the name "centrist" in 2017-2019 while being nothing of the sort.
The central position of the British electorate is to respect democracy. Having had a majority vote for Brexit in 2016, implementing Brexit went from being an extreme position to the centrist one overnight, which 52% who voted for it and millions more who didn't vote for it but respected democracy anyway could support.
Staying in Europe despite the referendum result was anything but a centrist position.
The uniqueness of the Brexit thing is that leaving the EU has always been a centrist position - it has always been arguable, rational and variously preferred by loads of non extreme people with varying degrees of depth and enthusiasm.
But of course it was not the only centrist position. Being in the EU is and was always also non-extreme and centrist.
The issue split centrist opinion to a unique degree, so much so that many centrists honestly believe the view they don't take to have been extreme. This rendered dialogue difficult.
The calculation is not difficult. When a vote splits 16 million to 17 million (approx) then you can be sure neither view is extreme. There are not enough crazy people to go round.
I agree with that, though I'd say the proportion who felt that we should stay in the EU despite the referendum result after the vote was considerably lower than 16 million.
Most Britons respect democracy. The moment the referendum happened, respecting its result was the centrist position and anyone who opposed that under the label of "centrist" was misnamed.
There was more to it. What would’ve been centrist was a soft Brexit, but a wing of the Conservative Party dragged us into a hard Brexit, then choosing a candidate who lied about it to get through a general election campaign.
Well the Vote Leave campaign promised what you call a hard Brexit, as did the Remain campaign if we left. The campaign was debated on issues such as "taking back control" of our money, laws, trade and borders - a soft Brexit didn't do that, except for maybe the last one which as a non-racist was the one I cared about the least.
Either way though, Theresa May spent years trying to get a flaccidly soft Brexit through that would have all-but kept us in the EU via the backstop, but was blocked at every turn not just by the wing of the Tory party that had campaigned for Brexit originally as they wanted us to actually leave the EU in practice and not just in name, but she was also blocked by the likes of Dominic Grieve, Keir Starmer, Jeremy Corbyn, Jo "next Prime Minister" Swinson and Ian Blackford,
You can thank them as well as the Tories who wanted a hard Brexit for giving the country what the Brexiteer Tories wanted.
Anyway, I have been out all day and returned to find my local Conservative MP (Andrew Rosindell) has been visiting while I'm out. He left 3 leaflets for the GLA elections and the main one (which is really about him) is quite dispiriting as it is full of rubbish and not a good sign of how the Tories intend to fight the next election.
Anyway - 2 LOL moments in it.
Apparently I have to vote for him or "hand Romford and Britain over to a left-wing, woke-obsessed, re-join EU, socialist party". That sounds good to me. Which party is that then? I thought it was Labour in 2nd place here
And separately he complains about the state of the roads, litter, concrete jungle of high-rise buildings and the decline of the town centre. Vote against the party that has allowed that to happen by being in government for 14 years and controlling the council for 20 years until they were booted out (leaving no money for the new administration to improve anything). Oh.
Even by Rozzer's standards, it was rather... shrill, wasn't it?
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
Yes. I am terrified at the prospect of an NHS we can rely on.
Like the Welsh NHS, currently under the hands of Labour?
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
Labour could be utterly useless and still be better than the current lot.
There's always room to get *much* worse; look at (say) Russia politically, Venezuela politically and fiscally, or South Africa for everything. It's feasible that we'll look back at Sunak's government with a certain fondness.
This is a Government that has created a 2-3 year gap in train orders resulting in the Derby (and probably the Newton Aycliffe) manufacturers running out of work. It's then trying to pretend that the 20,000+ jobs that will be lost has nothing to do with them....
I doubt anyone clueful will look back at this Government other than the worst Government of their lifetime...
Hang on - you can easily 'blame' Blair's government for that, and the disastrous decision to award Hitachi a train-building contract in 2009.
I really hope Derby survives. 175 years of history should matter when their rivals are fly-by-nights.
Given that Hitachi was founded in 1910, that's a tiny bit unfair. They built the first Japanese main line electric loco 100 years ago.
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
Labour could be utterly useless and still be better than the current lot.
Not just better. If the predicted landslide happens the current lot become just as irrelevant as the Lib Dems. I don't think that fact has really sunk in
For evidence, see the manoeuvring to be the next leader. As if it matters. The wheel will spin for a bit, but Mr Snuffles is already dead.
Now of course you should never say never. I wonder how many people really thought of Starmer as a PM in waiting in 2020, rather than a caretaker to clear up the mess left by Corbyn and retire after losing with dignity in 2023.
But it's much more likely that the next Conservative PM is someone that almost none of us have heard of, who will win on a platform none of us can currently imagine.
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
Yes. I am terrified at the prospect of an NHS we can rely on.
Like the Welsh NHS, currently under the hands of Labour?
Funded by the Tories in Westminster.
Doesn’t Wales get more money per person that’s England, due to the Barnett formula?
I don’t want to defend the Tory record on the NHS, other than to say that worldwide health systems are struggling after covid, and with ageing populations. But there is a clear example of a Labour run NHS that is not better than the English one (and some Welsh PBers claim it’s worse). Funding isn’t everything - policy and how you spend the money count too.
Anyway, I have been out all day and returned to find my local Conservative MP (Andrew Rosindell) has been visiting while I'm out. He left 3 leaflets for the GLA elections and the main one (which is really about him) is quite dispiriting as it is full of rubbish and not a good sign of how the Tories intend to fight the next election.
Anyway - 2 LOL moments in it.
Apparently I have to vote for him or "hand Romford and Britain over to a left-wing, woke-obsessed, re-join EU, socialist party". That sounds good to me. Which party is that then? I thought it was Labour in 2nd place here
And separately he complains about the state of the roads, litter, concrete jungle of high-rise buildings and the decline of the town centre. Vote against the party that has allowed that to happen by being in government for 14 years and controlling the council for 20 years until they were booted out (leaving no money for the new administration to improve anything). Oh.
Shame you missed him.
If he is worried about the electorate then realisation of the forthcoming ELE has penetrated even his skull.
Everyone is going to rapidly rediscover everything they've forgotten over the last 14 years about what a Labour government means - and not in a good way.
Labour could be utterly useless and still be better than the current lot.
Not just better. If the predicted landslide happens the current lot become just as irrelevant as the Lib Dems. I don't think that fact has really sunk in
For evidence, see the manoeuvring to be the next leader. As if it matters. The wheel will spin for a bit, but Mr Snuffles is already dead.
Now of course you should never say never. I wonder how many people really thought of Starmer as a PM in waiting in 2020, rather than a caretaker to clear up the mess left by Corbyn and retire after losing with dignity in 2023.
But it's much more likely that the next Conservative PM is someone that almost none of us have heard of, who will win on a platform none of us can currently imagine.
You could have broken the news about Mr Snuffles a little more gently. Geez.
Comments
Trumpski has a slush fund to cover his legal expenses.
I defer to the Dan Neidle thread on twitter on this and this is pretty balanced.
https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2024/02/29/rayner/
Voting being done online, and limited to members of our district Democratic organization; I qualify as an elected Democratic precinct committee officer (PCO) from my humble voting precinct.
Number of state convo delegates allocated to each LD is based on number of votes cast for Democratic candidates for President (Joe Biden) and Governor (Jay Inslee) in 2020 general election. With my humble district having the largest LD delegation.
Had total of 25 votes (to distribute among 41 candidates) of which (based on statewide results of last month's WA Democratic Presidential Primary) 21 were for candidates pledged to Joe Biden, and 4 were for Uncommitted candidates.
As per national party rule, votes for each of above sub-groups had to be balanced between men and women.
Not my first such rodeo, but WAS first time voting for party delegates via on-line ballot.
In interests of semi-full disclosure, was an elected delegate myself, back in the far distant past (1992) to our leg district caucus, to congressional district convention AND to state convention. On behalf of . . . wait for it . . . Paul Tsongas.
If anything it should be the other way around, however my preference would be for flat taxes where everyone with the same income pays the same rate of tax no matter how that income was earned.
Which she was.
The post on X also breached royal protocol on politics by using image of the king
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/06/tories-delete-social-media-post-plugging-britain-with-a-us-jet-a-canadian-car-and-a-defeated-football-team?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
CATL in talks with Tesla, global automakers for US licensing, WSJ reports
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/catl-talks-with-tesla-global-automakers-us-licensing-wsj-reports-2024-03-25/
… The Chinese company's existing partnership with Ford Motor (F.N) will be the model for similar cooperation with other U.S. carmakers, the report added.
Ford said in November it would scale back the investment for its Michigan battery plant to produce low-cost lithium-iron batteries based on technology licensed by CATL following pushback from U.S. lawmakers.
The WSJ report on CATL comes amid a global slowdown in EV demand and as U.S. lawmakers tighten their grip over the battery industry to prevent China-produced minerals or Chinese battery companies from winning electric vehicle tax credits...
I think what's happening is that the talented have given up and are working elsewhere, or at least planning to do so. The rump of the party contains some pretty useless people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRwfZ_gAFjU
Think of all the people on PB who won’t google for say “GDP U.K. since 1900”, while sitting at a computer. Educated people.
Something that seems hard for the university educated to understand - for many people, their world runs on rails. New things are difficult, complex, risky.
Think of the dislocation that COVID caused across the Western world - millions of people in low paid, dead end jobs were forced to change. And found that things like Amazon delivery van driving paid better. Now they are in a new rut, and won’t move back….
That way lies madness and at lease a decade enjoying those Opposition benches at Westminster.
Which is why 80 - 90% of charging is likely to be low powered domestic chargers. Though that would mean a lot of roadside infrastructure.
Still we’ve got a few years to work that out.
But of course it was not the only centrist position. Being in the EU is and was always also non-extreme and centrist.
The issue split centrist opinion to a unique degree, so much so that many centrists honestly believe the view they don't take to have been extreme. This rendered dialogue difficult.
The calculation is not difficult. When a vote splits 16 million to 17 million (approx) then you can be sure neither view is extreme. There are not enough crazy people to go round.
I rarely pre-fact-check my posts. I much prefer having a conversation. And anyway you are a prime source of the sort of interesting facts that may not crop up at first google.
Which makes a bit of a difference as a basis from which to pontificate on domestic politics.
I bet the Tory party are secretly loving this.
What is it about these right wing parties and candidate selection.
https://x.com/stanvowales/status/1776644979168817399?s=61
Under Siege is on Channel 4 tonight at 11.10pm
He's an effective and competent administrator of government and a entry-level statesman. Sure, I don't agree with all his decisions, such as on HS2, Defence, and venerating tax cuts as a magic solution to economic growth over a mixture of more targeted ones and strategic investment, but he's not useless.
He's politically ineffective, I agree, where he simply doesn't have the instincts or the common touch, but that's not the same thing.
This year's GE has the potential to be 1997 for the next generation.
He wasn’t pontificating on domestic politics in this case but so what if he chooses to. Plenty of expats and tax exiles do or have done so. No one is compelled to listen to them.
Clickbait for their readers.
Most Britons respect democracy. The moment the referendum happened, respecting its result was the centrist position and anyone who opposed that under the label of "centrist" was misnamed.
If he had taken over a party with a 70-80 majority a couple of years into a fresh government and with few significant issues (Ukraine, Covid, etc), he would probably have been 'okay'. But we need better than 'okay'.
Like Major, he's not a *bad* person, or even incompetent. He's just facing an impossible situation, and playing the hand badly. But I think history will view Major better.
Captain Mainwearing
Rats in a sack surfacing for the third time before drowning.
🚨 New polling with @ObserverUK
No change as Labour’s lead stays at 16 points
• Labour 41% (n/c)
• Conservatives 25% (n/c)
• Lib Dems 10% (n/c)
• SNP 3% (n/c)
• Greens 8% (n/c)
• Reform 11% (n/c)
https://twitter.com/OpiniumResearch/status/1776686339729080330
People will spend far more on petrol driving somewhere with free parking than they would paying for the parking they are avoiding.
And your interpretation of "as long as it is *technically* Brexit, the actual substance doesn't matter" is the pure duplicitousness of EU types. It is exactly what happened to the Irish over the EU constitution. That sort of insidiousness is why more people voted Leave.
Good job too, given we have economically outgrown the EU since we left EU structures.
And, as remainers never cease to remind us, it was all about immigration - so FoM had to go. And all else follows.
Edit: the idea there was an easily navigable, smooth, contiguous spectrum is akin to the cakeism leavers were accused of.
It perplexes me where the fear of Labour comes from.
But the scenarios where a Starmer government is worse are few and far between. I fear the biggest issue will be a stonkingly large majority, which might cause him to be over-enthusiastic. Over-enthusiasm should be avoided in all governments...
Now we look back on even him with a certain nostalgia.
I doubt anyone clueful will look back at this Government other than the worst Government of their lifetime...
But as ever, any government that puts ideology over common sense should be avoided.
BBC:
The military regime which seized power in Myanmar three years ago has suffered another big defeat, this time on the eastern border with Thailand.
Troops had suffered weeks of attacks by ethnic Karen insurgents, allied with other anti-coup forces.
Hundreds of troops guarding the vital border town of Myawaddy have now agreed to surrender.
Understanding their audience and micro-targetting was an important weapon in 2015.
Oddly the fear is much around there being no alternative middle ground precisely because the LDs are so useless.
I really hope Derby survives. 175 years of history should matter when their rivals are fly-by-nights.
Anyway - 2 LOL moments in it.
Apparently I have to vote for him or "hand Romford and Britain over to a left-wing, woke-obsessed, re-join EU, socialist party". That sounds good to me. Which party is that then? I thought it was Labour in 2nd place here
And separately he complains about the state of the roads, litter, concrete jungle of high-rise buildings and the decline of the town centre. Vote against the party that has allowed that to happen by being in government for 14 years and controlling the council for 20 years until they were booted out (leaving no money for the new administration to improve anything). Oh.
Either way though, Theresa May spent years trying to get a flaccidly soft Brexit through that would have all-but kept us in the EU via the backstop, but was blocked at every turn not just by the wing of the Tory party that had campaigned for Brexit originally as they wanted us to actually leave the EU in practice and not just in name, but she was also blocked by the likes of Dominic Grieve, Keir Starmer, Jeremy Corbyn, Jo "next Prime Minister" Swinson and Ian Blackford,
You can thank them as well as the Tories who wanted a hard Brexit for giving the country what the Brexiteer Tories wanted.
Not sure when the police are due to finish their review . Or will they hold off from going public until after the elections .
Now of course you should never say never. I wonder how many people really thought of Starmer as a PM in waiting in 2020, rather than a caretaker to clear up the mess left by Corbyn and retire after losing with dignity in 2023.
But it's much more likely that the next Conservative PM is someone that almost none of us have heard of, who will win on a platform none of us can currently imagine.
I don’t want to defend the Tory record on the NHS, other than to say that worldwide health systems are struggling after covid, and with ageing populations. But there is a clear example of a Labour run NHS that is not better than the English one (and some Welsh PBers claim it’s worse). Funding isn’t everything - policy and how you spend the money count too.
If he is worried about the electorate then realisation of the forthcoming ELE has penetrated even his skull.