Sunak: "The choice at the next election is clear – only the Conservatives have a plan" - Telegraph article by the man himself.
The same utterly deluded drivel.
"A plan versus no plan, bold principled action versus U-turns and prevarication, a clear record of delivery..." etc etc.
The Telegraph actually reported the results as 'better than expected.' We'll pass quietly over the thought of what 'worse than' might have looked like and gently point out that the antipathy of the electorate is likely to be rather less towards councils than central government. The punishment the Tories received yesterday is therefore likely to be somewhat lighter than what appears to be coming next.
Electoral Calculus is predicting 85 seats. It could be right.
I've always maintained that the polling will narrow quite a bit once people really focus on the choice being Starmer's Labour or Tories.
But I am seriously beginning to wonder whether this really is one of Callaghan's "Seachange" elections.
Starmer's huge issue is going to be getting the vote out I think. Blair he 'aint. A lot of apathy out there. One of the things that seems to be forgotten about '97 GE was the ground war. The people that Labour and the unions had mobilised to knock on doors and leaflet was astonishing is certainly my memory.
I actually think this might be one of Labour's big advantages. Although people at large are somewhat demotivated, the number and motivation of people who want to see the Tories out vastly outstrips that of the Conservative activists.
When coupled with the huge number of Tory activists who've just been booted out of councils - and chiefly in the areas in which Labour (and the LDs) wish to win - that can't be good for their ground campaign.
Expect Hall fanboys to be moaning online about a fix after Khan walks this.
Online is obviously a big place, but in terms of relevance here I don't recall a single poster being positive about Hall, let alone a fan club. There are plenty who would vote for her because she is a Tory and plenty more who would vote for her as she is not Khan.
In the last few weeks I've canvassed at least 100 people including 20-30 Tories but not one had a positive word for Hall. For example one Tory told me he was going to hold his nose and vote for Hall because he hated Khan - ULEZ etc but I think more to it.
If Susan Hall is close to winning London, CCHQ has serious questions to answer about why it didn’t pick a more dynamic, modern, outward-looking candidate. London is winnable for us.
What if their best chance of winning the election was a rope a dope strategy where they picked a Tory candidate so bad that LibDems and Greens thought they could vote for their own parties and Labour voters thought they could vote for Binface? Next level thinking.
Don't be distracted by the mayorals, which have long been only loosely linked to national polling - see Hartlepool, Doncaster, Livingstone etc. Big figures swing votes. Only in the absence of big figures do voters default to national opinion.
This is key.
The interesting question to me is whether Starmer and Labour realise it?
If a bad result for Khan in London leads to major panic by Starmer and Labour, it could still influence the GE outcome.
This is going to sound weird but I think the election this year will feel more like GE2005 but with GE1997++ voteshares.
Why do I say that?
Because SKS already has a fraying base with Greens and issues with Muslim voters, whilst still cracking all the key marginals, to that extent it reminds me of how Blair did post Iraq-War.
This is a very astute point. The one additional observation I'd make, though, is that by 2005 the Tories had come to terms with what they needed to do to regain power and David Cameron appeared soon afterwards. If the Tories do lose later this year, will they bypass the Hague and IDS stages of recovery and go straight back to the centre-right?
Every sign so far is that they're much more likely to repeat the experience of Labour post-1979 and post-2010, and the Tories post-1997 and play to the base first. In their case, the pressure from Reform will add to the desire for comfort-zone politics. It'll probably take about 3 defeats for them to track back to the centre. But it may not happen at all. They're not guaranteed to survive in their current form.
Something will develop on the centre-right though. It has to. There are too many votes there for the space to be left unoccupied.
Crudely, the crossroads the Conservatives are at has a path labelled Street and a path labelled Badenoch. They don't have to be mutually exclusive, but they probably are in practice.
Personally, I think one of them works electorally and the other one doesn't, though I'm just a random on the internet.
Question is, how much time will the Conservatives waste on the Badenoch path before concluding that it's a dead end? And will someone else have occupied the Street patch by the time that whatever's left of the Conservatives decide they want to explore it?
Don't be distracted by the mayorals, which have long been only loosely linked to national polling - see Hartlepool, Doncaster, Livingstone etc. Big figures swing votes. Only in the absence of big figures do voters default to national opinion.
This is key.
The interesting question to me is whether Starmer and Labour realise it?
If a bad result for Khan in London leads to major panic by Starmer and Labour, it could still influence the GE outcome.
This is going to sound weird but I think the election this year will feel more like GE2005 but with GE1997++ voteshares.
Why do I say that?
Because SKS already has a fraying base with Greens and issues with Muslim voters, whilst still cracking all the key marginals, to that extent it reminds me of how Blair did post Iraq-War.
This is a very astute point. The one additional observation I'd make, though, is that by 2005 the Tories had come to terms with what they needed to do to regain power and David Cameron appeared soon afterwards. If the Tories do lose later this year, will they bypass the Hague and IDS stages of recovery and go straight back to the centre-right?
Every sign so far is that they're much more likely to repeat the experience of Labour post-1979 and post-2010, and the Tories post-1997 and play to the base first. In their case, the pressure from Reform will add to the desire for comfort-zone politics. It'll probably take about 3 defeats for them to track back to the centre. But it may not happen at all. They're not guaranteed to survive in their current form.
Something will develop on the centre-right though. It has to. There are too many votes there for the space to be left unoccupied.
Crudely, the crossroads the Conservatives are at has a path labelled Street and a path labelled Badenoch. They don't have to be mutually exclusive, but they probably are in practice.
Personally, I think one of them works electorally and the other one doesn't, though I'm just a random on the internet.
Question is, how much time will the Conservatives waste on the Badenoch path before concluding that it's a dead end? And will someone else have occupied the Street patch by the time that whatever's left of the Conservatives decide they want to explore it?
Technically, all the paths could be named Street.
We should bring this part of the conversation to a close.
Don't be distracted by the mayorals, which have long been only loosely linked to national polling - see Hartlepool, Doncaster, Livingstone etc. Big figures swing votes. Only in the absence of big figures do voters default to national opinion.
This is key.
The interesting question to me is whether Starmer and Labour realise it?
If a bad result for Khan in London leads to major panic by Starmer and Labour, it could still influence the GE outcome.
This is going to sound weird but I think the election this year will feel more like GE2005 but with GE1997++ voteshares.
Why do I say that?
Because SKS already has a fraying base with Greens and issues with Muslim voters, whilst still cracking all the key marginals, to that extent it reminds me of how Blair did post Iraq-War.
This is a very astute point. The one additional observation I'd make, though, is that by 2005 the Tories had come to terms with what they needed to do to regain power and David Cameron appeared soon afterwards. If the Tories do lose later this year, will they bypass the Hague and IDS stages of recovery and go straight back to the centre-right?
Who knows. But I think the centre-right stuff can easily be misinterpreted as "please, as a left-winger, make this Tory party as tolerable to me as possible, just in case it wins".
What they need to do is repitch their brand across the whole electorate in a way that's distinct, and true to their principles, but relevant for the 2030s and can still command a majority.
So, for example, they might maintain a sceptical position on identity politics, and control of immigration, whilst having a better plan for non-ideological market-based solutions for climate change, strong defence and alliances to manage global geopolitical challenges, investing more in education, jobs, infrastructure and housing, rather than just the elderly.
They will still look to minimise tax - they are still too high on income - but this probably means no longer fetishising certain tax cuts.
"Make this Tory party as tolerable to me as possible, just in case it wins" is a good rule of thumb if you do want to win I would suggest. Being intolerable to most people is a problem for the Conservatives right now.
Though I don't think he will, if Khan loses it will be because he and Labour are perceived as too left wing in outer London, and not left wing enough in inner London
Sunak: "The choice at the next election is clear – only the Conservatives have a plan" - Telegraph article by the man himself.
The same utterly deluded drivel.
"A plan versus no plan, bold principled action versus U-turns and prevarication, a clear record of delivery..." etc etc.
The Telegraph actually reported the results as 'better than expected.' We'll pass quietly over the thought of what 'worse than' might have looked like and gently point out that the antipathy of the electorate is likely to be rather less towards councils than central government. The punishment the Tories received yesterday is therefore likely to be somewhat lighter than what appears to be coming next.
Electoral Calculus is predicting 85 seats. It could be right.
I've always maintained that the polling will narrow quite a bit once people really focus on the choice being Starmer's Labour or Tories.
But I am seriously beginning to wonder whether this really is one of Callaghan's "Seachange" elections.
Starmer's huge issue is going to be getting the vote out I think. Blair he 'aint. A lot of apathy out there. One of the things that seems to be forgotten about '97 GE was the ground war. The people that Labour and the unions had mobilised to knock on doors and leaflet was astonishing is certainly my memory.
It's a different time now with so much targeted social media advertising but in 1997, even in a no-hope seat (we used to get the daily briefing fax about 3:30pm, we were that far down the priority list) it was difficult to find places for people to canvass. It doesn't feel like Starmer's got a ground war anything like that.
Expect Hall fanboys to be moaning online about a fix after Khan walks this.
Online is obviously a big place, but in terms of relevance here I don't recall a single poster being positive about Hall, let alone a fan club. There are plenty who would vote for her because she is a Tory and plenty more who would vote for her as she is not Khan.
In the last few weeks I've canvassed at least 100 people including 20-30 Tories but not one had a positive word for Hall. For example one Tory told me he was going to hold his nose and vote for Hall because he hated Khan - ULEZ etc but I think more to it.
If Susan Hall is close to winning London, CCHQ has serious questions to answer about why it didn’t pick a more dynamic, modern, outward-looking candidate. London is winnable for us.
Originally Daniel Korski seemed to have a good chance of being the Tory candidate before those groping allegations. He did seem a better fit for the city especially as he was on the Remain side.
Sunak: "The choice at the next election is clear – only the Conservatives have a plan" - Telegraph article by the man himself.
The same utterly deluded drivel.
"A plan versus no plan, bold principled action versus U-turns and prevarication, a clear record of delivery..." etc etc.
The Telegraph actually reported the results as 'better than expected.' We'll pass quietly over the thought of what 'worse than' might have looked like and gently point out that the antipathy of the electorate is likely to be rather less towards councils than central government. The punishment the Tories received yesterday is therefore likely to be somewhat lighter than what appears to be coming next.
Electoral Calculus is predicting 85 seats. It could be right.
I've always maintained that the polling will narrow quite a bit once people really focus on the choice being Starmer's Labour or Tories.
But I am seriously beginning to wonder whether this really is one of Callaghan's "Seachange" elections.
Starmer's huge issue is going to be getting the vote out I think. Blair he 'aint. A lot of apathy out there. One of the things that seems to be forgotten about '97 GE was the ground war. The people that Labour and the unions had mobilised to knock on doors and leaflet was astonishing is certainly my memory.
WRT Seachange (subtle Shakespeare reference noted), Yes and No. In 1979 it was reasonably clear that there was a problem with unions, economy, national sluggishness, leftism, corporatism, extremism and so on. The Tory party presented an ideological shift from that to a set of ideas that had some clarity and simplicity, whether right or wrong.
This time, once you drill behind the abstractions, no fundamental alternative is being offered.
Expect Hall fanboys to be moaning online about a fix after Khan walks this.
Online is obviously a big place, but in terms of relevance here I don't recall a single poster being positive about Hall, let alone a fan club. There are plenty who would vote for her because she is a Tory and plenty more who would vote for her as she is not Khan.
In the last few weeks I've canvassed at least 100 people including 20-30 Tories but not one had a positive word for Hall. For example one Tory told me he was going to hold his nose and vote for Hall because he hated Khan - ULEZ etc but I think more to it.
If Susan Hall is close to winning London, CCHQ has serious questions to answer about why it didn’t pick a more dynamic, modern, outward-looking candidate. London is winnable for us.
Originally Daniel Korski seemed to have a good chance of being the Tory candidate before those groping allegations. He did seem a better fit for the city especially as he was on the Remain side.
Was he?
Boris was 'on the Remain side' when he was Mayor of London.
Don't be distracted by the mayorals, which have long been only loosely linked to national polling - see Hartlepool, Doncaster, Livingstone etc. Big figures swing votes. Only in the absence of big figures do voters default to national opinion.
This is key.
The interesting question to me is whether Starmer and Labour realise it?
If a bad result for Khan in London leads to major panic by Starmer and Labour, it could still influence the GE outcome.
This is going to sound weird but I think the election this year will feel more like GE2005 but with GE1997++ voteshares.
Why do I say that?
Because SKS already has a fraying base with Greens and issues with Muslim voters, whilst still cracking all the key marginals, to that extent it reminds me of how Blair did post Iraq-War.
This is a very astute point. The one additional observation I'd make, though, is that by 2005 the Tories had come to terms with what they needed to do to regain power and David Cameron appeared soon afterwards. If the Tories do lose later this year, will they bypass the Hague and IDS stages of recovery and go straight back to the centre-right?
Every sign so far is that they're much more likely to repeat the experience of Labour post-1979 and post-2010, and the Tories post-1997 and play to the base first. In their case, the pressure from Reform will add to the desire for comfort-zone politics. It'll probably take about 3 defeats for them to track back to the centre. But it may not happen at all. They're not guaranteed to survive in their current form.
Something will develop on the centre-right though. It has to. There are too many votes there for the space to be left unoccupied.
Crudely, the crossroads the Conservatives are at has a path labelled Street and a path labelled Badenoch. They don't have to be mutually exclusive, but they probably are in practice.
Personally, I think one of them works electorally and the other one doesn't, though I'm just a random on the internet.
Question is, how much time will the Conservatives waste on the Badenoch path before concluding that it's a dead end? And will someone else have occupied the Street patch by the time that whatever's left of the Conservatives decide they want to explore it?
I think I agree with Casino that a winning pitch from the Tories is to move on from the arguments that currently split the party, and move onto thinking about answers for the the new problems. It's not 2007 and inheritance tax is not an important issue. Move on.
But. In terms of positioning I think there's an extent to which a party does have to secure its base before it can march back towards the centre. The one example of a major British party being supplanted that we have involved that party being outflanked to the extreme. The Tories might have to see off the challenge from Farage before they can think of talking to centrist voters again.
Don't be distracted by the mayorals, which have long been only loosely linked to national polling - see Hartlepool, Doncaster, Livingstone etc. Big figures swing votes. Only in the absence of big figures do voters default to national opinion.
This is key.
The interesting question to me is whether Starmer and Labour realise it?
If a bad result for Khan in London leads to major panic by Starmer and Labour, it could still influence the GE outcome.
This is going to sound weird but I think the election this year will feel more like GE2005 but with GE1997++ voteshares.
Why do I say that?
Because SKS already has a fraying base with Greens and issues with Muslim voters, whilst still cracking all the key marginals, to that extent it reminds me of how Blair did post Iraq-War.
This is a very astute point. The one additional observation I'd make, though, is that by 2005 the Tories had come to terms with what they needed to do to regain power and David Cameron appeared soon afterwards. If the Tories do lose later this year, will they bypass the Hague and IDS stages of recovery and go straight back to the centre-right?
Every sign so far is that they're much more likely to repeat the experience of Labour post-1979 and post-2010, and the Tories post-1997 and play to the base first. In their case, the pressure from Reform will add to the desire for comfort-zone politics. It'll probably take about 3 defeats for them to track back to the centre. But it may not happen at all. They're not guaranteed to survive in their current form.
Something will develop on the centre-right though. It has to. There are too many votes there for the space to be left unoccupied.
Crudely, the crossroads the Conservatives are at has a path labelled Street and a path labelled Badenoch. They don't have to be mutually exclusive, but they probably are in practice.
Personally, I think one of them works electorally and the other one doesn't, though I'm just a random on the internet.
Question is, how much time will the Conservatives waste on the Badenoch path before concluding that it's a dead end? And will someone else have occupied the Street patch by the time that whatever's left of the Conservatives decide they want to explore it?
Technically, all the paths could be named Street.
We should bring this part of the conversation to a close.
Actualley, avenue noticed there are many paths available to us? We're not on track to run out of road for a while yet.
Expect Hall fanboys to be moaning online about a fix after Khan walks this.
Online is obviously a big place, but in terms of relevance here I don't recall a single poster being positive about Hall, let alone a fan club. There are plenty who would vote for her because she is a Tory and plenty more who would vote for her as she is not Khan.
In the last few weeks I've canvassed at least 100 people including 20-30 Tories but not one had a positive word for Hall. For example one Tory told me he was going to hold his nose and vote for Hall because he hated Khan - ULEZ etc but I think more to it.
If Susan Hall is close to winning London, CCHQ has serious questions to answer about why it didn’t pick a more dynamic, modern, outward-looking candidate. London is winnable for us.
Originally Daniel Korski seemed to have a good chance of being the Tory candidate before those groping allegations. He did seem a better fit for the city especially as he was on the Remain side.
Was he?
Boris was 'on the Remain side' when he was Mayor of London.
I get your point ! But overall Skorski seemed like he would have been a better candidate .
Don't be distracted by the mayorals, which have long been only loosely linked to national polling - see Hartlepool, Doncaster, Livingstone etc. Big figures swing votes. Only in the absence of big figures do voters default to national opinion.
This is key.
The interesting question to me is whether Starmer and Labour realise it?
If a bad result for Khan in London leads to major panic by Starmer and Labour, it could still influence the GE outcome.
This is going to sound weird but I think the election this year will feel more like GE2005 but with GE1997++ voteshares.
Why do I say that?
Because SKS already has a fraying base with Greens and issues with Muslim voters, whilst still cracking all the key marginals, to that extent it reminds me of how Blair did post Iraq-War.
This is a very astute point. The one additional observation I'd make, though, is that by 2005 the Tories had come to terms with what they needed to do to regain power and David Cameron appeared soon afterwards. If the Tories do lose later this year, will they bypass the Hague and IDS stages of recovery and go straight back to the centre-right?
Who knows. But I think the centre-right stuff can easily be misinterpreted as "please, as a left-winger, make this Tory party as tolerable to me as possible, just in case it wins".
What they need to do is repitch their brand across the whole electorate in a way that's distinct, and true to their principles, but relevant for the 2030s and can still command a majority.
So, for example, they might maintain a sceptical position on identity politics, and control of immigration, whilst having a better plan for non-ideological market-based solutions for climate change, strong defence and alliances to manage global geopolitical challenges, investing more in education, jobs, infrastructure and housing, rather than just the elderly.
They will still look to minimise tax - they are still too high on income - but this probably means no longer fetishising certain tax cuts.
"Make this Tory party as tolerable to me as possible, just in case it wins" is a good rule of thumb if you do want to win I would suggest. Being intolerable to most people is a problem for the Conservatives right now.
The Tory problem is not intolerability per se, it is rotten incompetence mixed with craven greed
eg Stopping the boats would be rather popular with at least half the electorate (and the opposition has no alternative plan). Trouble is they keep saying they will do it, then they don't. Incompetence
Sunak: "The choice at the next election is clear – only the Conservatives have a plan" - Telegraph article by the man himself.
The same utterly deluded drivel.
"A plan versus no plan, bold principled action versus U-turns and prevarication, a clear record of delivery..." etc etc.
The Telegraph actually reported the results as 'better than expected.' We'll pass quietly over the thought of what 'worse than' might have looked like and gently point out that the antipathy of the electorate is likely to be rather less towards councils than central government. The punishment the Tories received yesterday is therefore likely to be somewhat lighter than what appears to be coming next.
Electoral Calculus is predicting 85 seats. It could be right.
I've always maintained that the polling will narrow quite a bit once people really focus on the choice being Starmer's Labour or Tories.
But I am seriously beginning to wonder whether this really is one of Callaghan's "Seachange" elections.
Starmer's huge issue is going to be getting the vote out I think. Blair he 'aint. A lot of apathy out there. One of the things that seems to be forgotten about '97 GE was the ground war. The people that Labour and the unions had mobilised to knock on doors and leaflet was astonishing is certainly my memory.
WRT Seachange (subtle Shakespeare reference noted), Yes and No. In 1979 it was reasonably clear that there was a problem with unions, economy, national sluggishness, leftism, corporatism, extremism and so on. The Tory party presented an ideological shift from that to a set of ideas that had some clarity and simplicity, whether right or wrong.
This time, once you drill behind the abstractions, no fundamental alternative is being offered.
It may be something rich and strange, but I suspect we'll get the usual comedy of errors.
Don't be distracted by the mayorals, which have long been only loosely linked to national polling - see Hartlepool, Doncaster, Livingstone etc. Big figures swing votes. Only in the absence of big figures do voters default to national opinion.
This is key.
The interesting question to me is whether Starmer and Labour realise it?
If a bad result for Khan in London leads to major panic by Starmer and Labour, it could still influence the GE outcome.
This is going to sound weird but I think the election this year will feel more like GE2005 but with GE1997++ voteshares.
Why do I say that?
Because SKS already has a fraying base with Greens and issues with Muslim voters, whilst still cracking all the key marginals, to that extent it reminds me of how Blair did post Iraq-War.
This is a very astute point. The one additional observation I'd make, though, is that by 2005 the Tories had come to terms with what they needed to do to regain power and David Cameron appeared soon afterwards. If the Tories do lose later this year, will they bypass the Hague and IDS stages of recovery and go straight back to the centre-right?
Who knows. But I think the centre-right stuff can easily be misinterpreted as "please, as a left-winger, make this Tory party as tolerable to me as possible, just in case it wins".
What they need to do is repitch their brand across the whole electorate in a way that's distinct, and true to their principles, but relevant for the 2030s and can still command a majority.
So, for example, they might maintain a sceptical position on identity politics, and control of immigration, whilst having a better plan for non-ideological market-based solutions for climate change, strong defence and alliances to manage global geopolitical challenges, investing more in education, jobs, infrastructure and housing, rather than just the elderly.
They will still look to minimise tax - they are still too high on income - but this probably means no longer fetishising certain tax cuts.
"Make this Tory party as tolerable to me as possible, just in case it wins" is a good rule of thumb if you do want to win I would suggest. Being intolerable to most people is a problem for the Conservatives right now.
Starmer’s strategy since the last election has been precisely “make this Labour Party as tolerable to me as possible, in case it wins”. And it seems to be working.
Don't be distracted by the mayorals, which have long been only loosely linked to national polling - see Hartlepool, Doncaster, Livingstone etc. Big figures swing votes. Only in the absence of big figures do voters default to national opinion.
This is key.
The interesting question to me is whether Starmer and Labour realise it?
If a bad result for Khan in London leads to major panic by Starmer and Labour, it could still influence the GE outcome.
This is going to sound weird but I think the election this year will feel more like GE2005 but with GE1997++ voteshares.
Why do I say that?
Because SKS already has a fraying base with Greens and issues with Muslim voters, whilst still cracking all the key marginals, to that extent it reminds me of how Blair did post Iraq-War.
This is a very astute point. The one additional observation I'd make, though, is that by 2005 the Tories had come to terms with what they needed to do to regain power and David Cameron appeared soon afterwards. If the Tories do lose later this year, will they bypass the Hague and IDS stages of recovery and go straight back to the centre-right?
Who knows. But I think the centre-right stuff can easily be misinterpreted as "please, as a left-winger, make this Tory party as tolerable to me as possible, just in case it wins".
What they need to do is repitch their brand across the whole electorate in a way that's distinct, and true to their principles, but relevant for the 2030s and can still command a majority.
So, for example, they might maintain a sceptical position on identity politics, and control of immigration, whilst having a better plan for non-ideological market-based solutions for climate change, strong defence and alliances to manage global geopolitical challenges, investing more in education, jobs, infrastructure and housing, rather than just the elderly.
They will still look to minimise tax - they are still too high on income - but this probably means no longer fetishising certain tax cuts.
"Make this Tory party as tolerable to me as possible, just in case it wins" is a good rule of thumb if you do want to win I would suggest. Being intolerable to most people is a problem for the Conservatives right now.
Here's an interesting poll on how different people think Conservative and Labour policies are (Feb 24), which shows that on almost every issue Labour voters are more likely than Conservative voters to see Labour's policies as different:
'Almost half of Britons (47%) consider the two parties to be different, including 18% who describe them as “very” different. By contrast, 40% consider them similar (with 11% seeing them as very much so).
When it comes to policy areas, despite Labour’s promise to follow Tory fiscal rules, it is the rival parties’ approach to managing the economy that proves to be the biggest point of difference in the eyes of the public.
Most Britons (54%) believe the parties’ economic outlook is different, including 22% who say it is “very different”. By contrast, 28% see the two parties as similar on the topic...
On the key topics of the NHS (49%) and the cost of living (48%) the public likewise tend to see the parties as taking differing approaches – 31% and 33% respectively believe them to be similar on these issues.
The policy area on which Britons are least likely to say the Conservatives and Labour differ is the Israel-Gaza conflict, with just 25% saying so. Four in ten (41%) consider the parties’ approaches to the war to be similar...
One stark finding from the survey is that 2019 Labour voters are substantially more likely than their Conservative-voting counterparts to see differences between the two parties and their policy stances.
At an overall level, 61% of 2019 Labour voters believe that the party is different to the Conservatives. By contrast, only 47% of 2019 Conservatives say the same – with an almost identical 46% considering the two main parties to be similar.
When it comes to specific policies, Labour are most likely to think the two parties are different on the cost of living (66%), the NHS (65%) and welfare benefits (65%). Conservative voters would tend to agree the parties differ on benefits (52%), although less so on the NHS (40%) and cost of living (43%)."
Is the PB herd wheeling around and preparing to stampede in a different direction?
I think Khan will win in London. But London is being bigged up across the country in a ramp-up of Islamophobia, xenophobia, and racism. Many who live in London are unaware of what London connotes for many people who don't. This is practically an open goal for the rightwing.
Sunak: "The choice at the next election is clear – only the Conservatives have a plan" - Telegraph article by the man himself.
The same utterly deluded drivel.
"A plan versus no plan, bold principled action versus U-turns and prevarication, a clear record of delivery..." etc etc.
The Telegraph actually reported the results as 'better than expected.' We'll pass quietly over the thought of what 'worse than' might have looked like and gently point out that the antipathy of the electorate is likely to be rather less towards councils than central government. The punishment the Tories received yesterday is therefore likely to be somewhat lighter than what appears to be coming next.
Electoral Calculus is predicting 85 seats. It could be right.
I've always maintained that the polling will narrow quite a bit once people really focus on the choice being Starmer's Labour or Tories.
But I am seriously beginning to wonder whether this really is one of Callaghan's "Seachange" elections.
Starmer's huge issue is going to be getting the vote out I think. Blair he 'aint. A lot of apathy out there. One of the things that seems to be forgotten about '97 GE was the ground war. The people that Labour and the unions had mobilised to knock on doors and leaflet was astonishing is certainly my memory.
WRT Seachange (subtle Shakespeare reference noted), Yes and No. In 1979 it was reasonably clear that there was a problem with unions, economy, national sluggishness, leftism, corporatism, extremism and so on. The Tory party presented an ideological shift from that to a set of ideas that had some clarity and simplicity, whether right or wrong.
This time, once you drill behind the abstractions, no fundamental alternative is being offered.
It may be something rich and strange, but I suspect we'll get the usual comedy of errors.
It's ok, I don't need a coat.
Rich and strange seems a pretty good summation of Sunak so we really need to move away from that.
Don't be distracted by the mayorals, which have long been only loosely linked to national polling - see Hartlepool, Doncaster, Livingstone etc. Big figures swing votes. Only in the absence of big figures do voters default to national opinion.
This is key.
The interesting question to me is whether Starmer and Labour realise it?
If a bad result for Khan in London leads to major panic by Starmer and Labour, it could still influence the GE outcome.
This is going to sound weird but I think the election this year will feel more like GE2005 but with GE1997++ voteshares.
Why do I say that?
Because SKS already has a fraying base with Greens and issues with Muslim voters, whilst still cracking all the key marginals, to that extent it reminds me of how Blair did post Iraq-War.
This is a very astute point. The one additional observation I'd make, though, is that by 2005 the Tories had come to terms with what they needed to do to regain power and David Cameron appeared soon afterwards. If the Tories do lose later this year, will they bypass the Hague and IDS stages of recovery and go straight back to the centre-right?
Who knows. But I think the centre-right stuff can easily be misinterpreted as "please, as a left-winger, make this Tory party as tolerable to me as possible, just in case it wins".
What they need to do is repitch their brand across the whole electorate in a way that's distinct, and true to their principles, but relevant for the 2030s and can still command a majority.
So, for example, they might maintain a sceptical position on identity politics, and control of immigration, whilst having a better plan for non-ideological market-based solutions for climate change, strong defence and alliances to manage global geopolitical challenges, investing more in education, jobs, infrastructure and housing, rather than just the elderly.
They will still look to minimise tax - they are still too high on income - but this probably means no longer fetishising certain tax cuts.
"Make this Tory party as tolerable to me as possible, just in case it wins" is a good rule of thumb if you do want to win I would suggest. Being intolerable to most people is a problem for the Conservatives right now.
The Tory problem is not intolerability per se, it is rotten incompetence mixed with craven greed
eg Stopping the boats would be rather popular with at least half the electorate (and the opposition has no alternative plan). Trouble is they keep saying they will do it, then they don't. Incompetence
Yes. But incompetence and intolerability aren't independent of one another.
The intolerability of the Rwanda plan (amongst those for whom it is intolerable) is made worse because of the incompetence with which it is implemented.
An effective Tory party would be more intolerable to some, but much less intolerable for their target market.
I've written intolerable far too often in this post. Off to enjoy the sunshine.
I have no idea what will happen this afternoon but looking back at the last 24 hours commentary I can't help but feel this is rather like the narrative built up in those pseudo-archaeology ancient aliens books where a single shakey foundation is used to justify a whole raft of fairly wild theories.
Expect Hall fanboys to be moaning online about a fix after Khan walks this.
Online is obviously a big place, but in terms of relevance here I don't recall a single poster being positive about Hall, let alone a fan club. There are plenty who would vote for her because she is a Tory and plenty more who would vote for her as she is not Khan.
In the last few weeks I've canvassed at least 100 people including 20-30 Tories but not one had a positive word for Hall. For example one Tory told me he was going to hold his nose and vote for Hall because he hated Khan - ULEZ etc but I think more to it.
If Susan Hall is close to winning London, CCHQ has serious questions to answer about why it didn’t pick a more dynamic, modern, outward-looking candidate. London is winnable for us.
Originally Daniel Korski seemed to have a good chance of being the Tory candidate before those groping allegations. He did seem a better fit for the city especially as he was on the Remain side.
Yes I had an early bet on him at 15/1 before he withdrew.
According to all the commentary on R4 this morning, the pressure is off Sunak as results (thus far) are much better than feared and, crucially, they won the Tees Valley mayoralty and will probably hang on to the West Midlands mayoralty. All in all, not a bad day for the Tories, they seem to be saying. (Blackpool South has been cancelled.)
I'd love to see what a bad set of results for the Tories would look like.
I have no idea what will happen this afternoon but looking back at the last 24 hours commentary I can't help but feel this is rather like the narrative built up in those pseudo-archaeology ancient aliens books where a single shakey foundation is used to justify a whole raft of fairly wild theories.
I expect Khan to win but the margin to be even closer than it was on first preferences last time.
He will be hit by leakage to the Greens in London, where a higher percentage of the population are Corbynite and ideologically leftwing than the UK average. Hall however has squeezed Reform to almost nothing running a populist right and anti ULEZ campaign
Though I don't think he will, if Khan loses it will be because he and Labour are perceived as too left wing in outer London, and not left wing enough in inner London
Is the PB herd wheeling around and preparing to stampede in a different direction?
I think Khan will win in London. But London is being bigged up across the country in a ramp-up of Islamophobia, xenophobia, and racism. Many who live in London are unaware of what London connotes for many people who don't. This is practically an open goal for the rightwing.
As someone who lives in London, the issue isn't all perception. Crime is just ridiculous there days - in the past 16 months the church by my corner shop had a drive by shooting, I then moved and have been mugged, missed an acid attack by 5 minutes, been broken into, and my housemate had a death threat/hate crime attack against him. My experience isn't massively unrepresentative (bar the drive by shooting). Most people don't report a lot of minor crimes (bike theft/phone snatching) etc anymore. Outside of that homophobia is clearly increasing as an issue due to high rates of immigration from backwards places leading to semi-regular attacks on LGBTQ venues, and every Saturday blatant anti-semitism shuts down central London. Bar that London is great.
Don't be distracted by the mayorals, which have long been only loosely linked to national polling - see Hartlepool, Doncaster, Livingstone etc. Big figures swing votes. Only in the absence of big figures do voters default to national opinion.
This is key.
The interesting question to me is whether Starmer and Labour realise it?
If a bad result for Khan in London leads to major panic by Starmer and Labour, it could still influence the GE outcome.
This is going to sound weird but I think the election this year will feel more like GE2005 but with GE1997++ voteshares.
Why do I say that?
Because SKS already has a fraying base with Greens and issues with Muslim voters, whilst still cracking all the key marginals, to that extent it reminds me of how Blair did post Iraq-War.
This is a very astute point. The one additional observation I'd make, though, is that by 2005 the Tories had come to terms with what they needed to do to regain power and David Cameron appeared soon afterwards. If the Tories do lose later this year, will they bypass the Hague and IDS stages of recovery and go straight back to the centre-right?
Every sign so far is that they're much more likely to repeat the experience of Labour post-1979 and post-2010, and the Tories post-1997 and play to the base first. In their case, the pressure from Reform will add to the desire for comfort-zone politics. It'll probably take about 3 defeats for them to track back to the centre. But it may not happen at all. They're not guaranteed to survive in their current form.
Something will develop on the centre-right though. It has to. There are too many votes there for the space to be left unoccupied.
Crudely, the crossroads the Conservatives are at has a path labelled Street and a path labelled Badenoch. They don't have to be mutually exclusive, but they probably are in practice.
Personally, I think one of them works electorally and the other one doesn't, though I'm just a random on the internet.
Question is, how much time will the Conservatives waste on the Badenoch path before concluding that it's a dead end? And will someone else have occupied the Street patch by the time that whatever's left of the Conservatives decide they want to explore it?
Technically, all the paths could be named Street.
We should bring this part of the conversation to a close.
Agreed. But is there not someone already occupying the Street patch i.e. Starmer?
Yes and no. Ultimately, they're both pragmatists, which has been unusual in recent years. But left pragmatism and right pragmatism. It's the difference between cutting public spending (which Reeves will have to do) but only as much as necessary, and cutting public spending because it's the right thing to do. Or, conversely raising taxes but only as much as is necessary versus doing it as a virtue.
Historically, Butler and Gaitskell were portmanteaued because they often arrived at similar answers. But not always, and by different thought processes.
Of course, as a Centrist Dad, I would say that, wouldn't I?
According to all the commentary on R4 this morning, the pressure is off Sunak as results (thus far) are much better than feared and, crucially, they won the Tees Valley mayoralty and will probably hang on to the West Midlands mayoralty. All in all, not a bad day for the Tories, they seem to be saying. (Blackpool South has been cancelled.)
I'd love to see what a bad set of results for the Tories would look like.
In one sense I think they may have a point. As predicted on here, Reform was the dog that didn’t bark. That must come as a big relief. They are a make believe party.
Yes they did relatively well in Blackpool South but they’re not going to be the force that costs the Tories the election.
I have no idea what will happen this afternoon but looking back at the last 24 hours commentary I can't help but feel this is rather like the narrative built up in those pseudo-archaeology ancient aliens books where a single shakey foundation is used to justify a whole raft of fairly wild theories.
Bit harsh on atheists, there
Of course it applies far more readily to the theists, although I wasn't actually referencing religion at all.
If Le Pen wins in France in 2027, then suddenly Badenoch will look positively Cameroon (and centrist)
The Tories need to go for a populist right wing stance, on cultural issues, but centre-right on economics
DO WE NOT HAVE RUMOURS ABOUT THE MAYORALTY
Le Pen is statist and protectionist on economics but rightwing on social issues and immigration. In some respects the heir to a distinctively French nationalism trying to adopt some of the legacy of De Gaulle.
Meloni in Italy however has won already with a platform that is both rightwing on economics and conservative on social issues. If Tories like Badenoch, Braverman, Rees Mogg etc want a model it would probably be Meloni (who is already probably Rishi's closest ally in the G7 now)
Poor Sadiq gets blamed for Israelis killing Palestinians and Palestinians killing Israelis, not getting the Met under control and not giving the Met free rein to get the criminals off our street. Not to mention TFL going nearly bankrupt during a pandemic when people were told to stay at home and also for increasing charges for road users to help restore TFL finances.
Its a tough gig this one.
On the Met, the Mayor has practical (is not entirely official) hire and fire.
The problem is that the police will regard serious reform as “Going To War With The Police” - see Plebgate for where that ends.
I expect Khan to win but the margin to be even closer than it was on first preferences last time.
He will be hit by leakage to the Greens in London, where a higher percentage of the population are Corbynite and ideologically leftwing than the UK average. Hall however has squeezed Reform to almost nothing running a populist right and anti ULEZ campaign
Squeezing Reform by running to the right sounds plausible but does politics work like that? It is where a number of next leader candidates want to take the Conservative Party but there might be a risk of driving voters to the real deal. I'm not sure.
What an awesome pun, puns like this is why I visit PB.
Love the AV chat in the thread header too, oh and the subtle Star Trek reference too.
I know you're being gently ironical at your own expense, and we all appreciate how you've stepped in after Mike had to call it a day. But I do find the constant flow of puns and Shakespeare increasingly off-putting, to the point of visiting the site less. I feel like a killjoy but... might you dial it down a bit?
Leave TSE alone. He’s done brilliantly since he’s taken over. Journalistically the headers are punchy, easy to read and fun.
How do you fancy Thangham’s Bristol Central chances now, Nick?
According to all the commentary on R4 this morning, the pressure is off Sunak as results (thus far) are much better than feared and, crucially, they won the Tees Valley mayoralty and will probably hang on to the West Midlands mayoralty. All in all, not a bad day for the Tories, they seem to be saying. (Blackpool South has been cancelled.)
I'd love to see what a bad set of results for the Tories would look like.
Give it six to eight months, and I suspect you will.
Margaret Thatcher was, and maybe remains, intolerable to a very large chunk of the country. Possibly near or over 50% at one point. But that doesn't matter, if you have the profound loyalty of another large minority, who will stick with you: she did. Now she is acclaimed as one of our greatest prime ministers ever, even by the people that cannot tolerate her
You must have a coherent plan, and stick with it, and you need that praetorian guard of willing followers who will fend off the attacks. See the plan through. Mend the country
Both Mao and Mussolini made the same point. You can transform a nation if you have just a few thousand willing to die for the case, against the complacent masses. That's true of revolutions, but in democratic politics you need a few MILLION voters, who fiercely believe in you
Thatcher did it by 1. winning in the Falklands, 2, selling council houses (creating those loyal voters who loved her), 3. producing obvious economic growth, faster than our competitors
There is no point in trying to reproduce 1. But 2 is achievable, and hopefully it will lead to 3. So the new Tories need an iconic transformative policy aimed at the ordinary working family, NOT fecking pensioners. Then they will win again, and maybe do better
According to all the commentary on R4 this morning, the pressure is off Sunak as results (thus far) are much better than feared and, crucially, they won the Tees Valley mayoralty and will probably hang on to the West Midlands mayoralty. All in all, not a bad day for the Tories, they seem to be saying. (Blackpool South has been cancelled.)
I'd love to see what a bad set of results for the Tories would look like.
That's amazing. There are only a handful of councils left to declare and the Tories are currently the third party in terms of number of councillors elected, having lost 44% of their sitting councillors. They started this round of local elections with very slightly more councillors than Labour, and now have less than half as many. They've been routed.
Don't be distracted by the mayorals, which have long been only loosely linked to national polling - see Hartlepool, Doncaster, Livingstone etc. Big figures swing votes. Only in the absence of big figures do voters default to national opinion.
This is key.
The interesting question to me is whether Starmer and Labour realise it?
If a bad result for Khan in London leads to major panic by Starmer and Labour, it could still influence the GE outcome.
This is going to sound weird but I think the election this year will feel more like GE2005 but with GE1997++ voteshares.
Why do I say that?
Because SKS already has a fraying base with Greens and issues with Muslim voters, whilst still cracking all the key marginals, to that extent it reminds me of how Blair did post Iraq-War.
This is a very astute point. The one additional observation I'd make, though, is that by 2005 the Tories had come to terms with what they needed to do to regain power and David Cameron appeared soon afterwards. If the Tories do lose later this year, will they bypass the Hague and IDS stages of recovery and go straight back to the centre-right?
Who knows. But I think the centre-right stuff can easily be misinterpreted as "please, as a left-winger, make this Tory party as tolerable to me as possible, just in case it wins".
What they need to do is repitch their brand across the whole electorate in a way that's distinct, and true to their principles, but relevant for the 2030s and can still command a majority.
So, for example, they might maintain a sceptical position on identity politics, and control of immigration, whilst having a better plan for non-ideological market-based solutions for climate change, strong defence and alliances to manage global geopolitical challenges, investing more in education, jobs, infrastructure and housing, rather than just the elderly.
They will still look to minimise tax - they are still too high on income - but this probably means no longer fetishising certain tax cuts.
"Make this Tory party as tolerable to me as possible, just in case it wins" is a good rule of thumb if you do want to win I would suggest. Being intolerable to most people is a problem for the Conservatives right now.
The Tory problem is not intolerability per se, it is rotten incompetence mixed with craven greed
eg Stopping the boats would be rather popular with at least half the electorate (and the opposition has no alternative plan). Trouble is they keep saying they will do it, then they don't. Incompetence
I would like the boats stopped, but by a civilised and humane asylum system, including the opportunity to apply outside the country, and by a Europe-wide crackdown on the smugglers. Same applies to the Mediterranean and the Aegean crossings. Decent, respectable and responsible governments in much of the Middle East and North East Africa would help too.
But then I’ve always hoped the moon on a stick! Don’t, for one moment, expect to see much, if any, of it happening in whatever’s left of my lifetime!
Margaret Thatcher was, and maybe remains, intolerable to a very large chunk of the country. Possibly near or over 50% at one point. But that doesn't matter, if you have the profound loyalty of another large minority, who will stick with you: she did. Now she is acclaimed as one of our greatest prime ministers ever, even by the people that cannot tolerate her
You must have a coherent plan, and stick with it, and you need that praetorian guard of willing followers who will fend off the attacks. See the plan through. Mend the country
Both Mao and Mussolini made the same point. You can transform a nation if you have just a few thousand willing to die for the case, against the complacent masses. That's true of revolutions, but in democratic politics you need a few MILLION voters, who fiercely believe in you
Thatcher did it by 1. winning in the Falklands, 2, selling council houses (creating those loyal voters who loved her), 3. producing obvious economic growth, faster than our competitors
There is no point in trying to reproduce 1. But 2 is achievable, and hopefully it will lead to 3. So the new Tories need an iconic transformative policy aimed at the ordinary working family, NOT fecking pensioners. Then they will win again, and maybe do better
Housing would be a good area to focus on
I think you are spot on here. The problem for the Tories is that for this to work you also need to start from a position of no baggage. I don't think that the course you suggest is possible from where the Tories are now in public perception. It will take at least one term or more in opposition and a new top team to allow them to start the process.
I expect Khan to win but the margin to be even closer than it was on first preferences last time.
He will be hit by leakage to the Greens in London, where a higher percentage of the population are Corbynite and ideologically leftwing than the UK average. Hall however has squeezed Reform to almost nothing running a populist right and anti ULEZ campaign
Squeezing Reform by running to the right sounds plausible but does politics work like that? It is where a number of next leader candidates want to take the Conservative Party but there might be a risk of driving voters to the real deal. I'm not sure.
It works in a mayoral election where there is a motivated minority within a much wider low-knowledge electorate. Most Londoners know nothing about Susan Hall because she has not appeared on their TV screens or in the newspapers they read that much. The same does not happen at the national level.
I have no idea what will happen this afternoon but looking back at the last 24 hours commentary I can't help but feel this is rather like the narrative built up in those pseudo-archaeology ancient aliens books where a single shakey foundation is used to justify a whole raft of fairly wild theories.
I may have egg on my face later (and wouldn't be unusual) but the Hall/Khan speculation seems like nothing more than ramping/expectations management.
Great to extract trading value from bets, but any of you left with money on Hall when the music stops are fools, in my view.
And, if she does win, posts like this will in turn look foolish.
We need to get beyond calling people genuines if they happen to get it right and idiots it they get it wrong. It doesn't help frank dialogue on here that we all depend on.
Any good punter will have lots of losses in their portfolio, including some bad ones, but will also be consistently be making a fairly good profit overall.
Don't be distracted by the mayorals, which have long been only loosely linked to national polling - see Hartlepool, Doncaster, Livingstone etc. Big figures swing votes. Only in the absence of big figures do voters default to national opinion.
This is key.
The interesting question to me is whether Starmer and Labour realise it?
If a bad result for Khan in London leads to major panic by Starmer and Labour, it could still influence the GE outcome.
This is going to sound weird but I think the election this year will feel more like GE2005 but with GE1997++ voteshares.
Why do I say that?
Because SKS already has a fraying base with Greens and issues with Muslim voters, whilst still cracking all the key marginals, to that extent it reminds me of how Blair did post Iraq-War.
This is a very astute point. The one additional observation I'd make, though, is that by 2005 the Tories had come to terms with what they needed to do to regain power and David Cameron appeared soon afterwards. If the Tories do lose later this year, will they bypass the Hague and IDS stages of recovery and go straight back to the centre-right?
Who knows. But I think the centre-right stuff can easily be misinterpreted as "please, as a left-winger, make this Tory party as tolerable to me as possible, just in case it wins".
What they need to do is repitch their brand across the whole electorate in a way that's distinct, and true to their principles, but relevant for the 2030s and can still command a majority.
So, for example, they might maintain a sceptical position on identity politics, and control of immigration, whilst having a better plan for non-ideological market-based solutions for climate change, strong defence and alliances to manage global geopolitical challenges, investing more in education, jobs, infrastructure and housing, rather than just the elderly.
They will still look to minimise tax - they are still too high on income - but this probably means no longer fetishising certain tax cuts.
"Make this Tory party as tolerable to me as possible, just in case it wins" is a good rule of thumb if you do want to win I would suggest. Being intolerable to most people is a problem for the Conservatives right now.
The Tory problem is not intolerability per se, it is rotten incompetence mixed with craven greed
eg Stopping the boats would be rather popular with at least half the electorate (and the opposition has no alternative plan). Trouble is they keep saying they will do it, then they don't. Incompetence
Yes. But incompetence and intolerability aren't independent of one another.
The intolerability of the Rwanda plan (amongst those for whom it is intolerable) is made worse because of the incompetence with which it is implemented.
An effective Tory party would be more intolerable to some, but much less intolerable for their target market.
I've written intolerable far too often in this post. Off to enjoy the sunshine.
If Rwanda was effective you'd still hate it and the Tories but they'd also be polling much better.
Don't be distracted by the mayorals, which have long been only loosely linked to national polling - see Hartlepool, Doncaster, Livingstone etc. Big figures swing votes. Only in the absence of big figures do voters default to national opinion.
This is key.
The interesting question to me is whether Starmer and Labour realise it?
If a bad result for Khan in London leads to major panic by Starmer and Labour, it could still influence the GE outcome.
This is going to sound weird but I think the election this year will feel more like GE2005 but with GE1997++ voteshares.
Why do I say that?
Because SKS already has a fraying base with Greens and issues with Muslim voters, whilst still cracking all the key marginals, to that extent it reminds me of how Blair did post Iraq-War.
This is a very astute point. The one additional observation I'd make, though, is that by 2005 the Tories had come to terms with what they needed to do to regain power and David Cameron appeared soon afterwards. If the Tories do lose later this year, will they bypass the Hague and IDS stages of recovery and go straight back to the centre-right?
You say that but had Ken Clarke beaten Hague for the Conservative leadership in 1997 would he have beaten Blair in 2001? Probably not. Had Portillo beaten IDS for the leadership in 2001 would he have beaten Blair in 2005? Again, probably not although it might have been close to a hung parliament.
Had Healey beaten Foot for the Labour leadership in 1980 would he have beaten Thatcher in 1983? Again almost certainly not. Had David Miliband beaten Ed Miliband for the Labour leadership in 2010 would he have beaten Cameron in 2015? Probably not though he may have got a hung parliament. So even had the centrist candidate beaten the more ideological candidate in Opposition for both Labour and the Conservatives they still likely would have lost, albeit Portillo in 2005 and David Miliband in 2015 might have got a hung parliament.
Indeed of elections opposition parties have lost in recent decades only 2017 might have seen a different result with a different leader. Andy Burnham might have beaten Theresa May narrowly while Corbyn fell just short
Margaret Thatcher was, and maybe remains, intolerable to a very large chunk of the country. Possibly near or over 50% at one point. But that doesn't matter, if you have the profound loyalty of another large minority, who will stick with you: she did. Now she is acclaimed as one of our greatest prime ministers ever, even by the people that cannot tolerate her
You must have a coherent plan, and stick with it, and you need that praetorian guard of willing followers who will fend off the attacks. See the plan through. Mend the country
Both Mao and Mussolini made the same point. You can transform a nation if you have just a few thousand willing to die for the case, against the complacent masses. That's true of revolutions, but in democratic politics you need a few MILLION voters, who fiercely believe in you
Thatcher did it by 1. winning in the Falklands, 2, selling council houses (creating those loyal voters who loved her), 3. producing obvious economic growth, faster than our competitors
There is no point in trying to reproduce 1. But 2 is achievable, and hopefully it will lead to 3. So the new Tories need an iconic transformative policy aimed at the ordinary working family, NOT fecking pensioners. Then they will win again, and maybe do better
Housing would be a good area to focus on
Trouble is, what's left to give away?
The right to buy discounts made sense socially- the large estates of social housing were a mistake. But they were also (as the Bird and Fortune sketch put it about tax cuts) "a shameless bribe... but a bloody good one."
Don't be distracted by the mayorals, which have long been only loosely linked to national polling - see Hartlepool, Doncaster, Livingstone etc. Big figures swing votes. Only in the absence of big figures do voters default to national opinion.
This is key.
The interesting question to me is whether Starmer and Labour realise it?
If a bad result for Khan in London leads to major panic by Starmer and Labour, it could still influence the GE outcome.
This is going to sound weird but I think the election this year will feel more like GE2005 but with GE1997++ voteshares.
Why do I say that?
Because SKS already has a fraying base with Greens and issues with Muslim voters, whilst still cracking all the key marginals, to that extent it reminds me of how Blair did post Iraq-War.
This is a very astute point. The one additional observation I'd make, though, is that by 2005 the Tories had come to terms with what they needed to do to regain power and David Cameron appeared soon afterwards. If the Tories do lose later this year, will they bypass the Hague and IDS stages of recovery and go straight back to the centre-right?
Every sign so far is that they're much more likely to repeat the experience of Labour post-1979 and post-2010, and the Tories post-1997 and play to the base first. In their case, the pressure from Reform will add to the desire for comfort-zone politics. It'll probably take about 3 defeats for them to track back to the centre. But it may not happen at all. They're not guaranteed to survive in their current form.
Something will develop on the centre-right though. It has to. There are too many votes there for the space to be left unoccupied.
Crudely, the crossroads the Conservatives are at has a path labelled Street and a path labelled Badenoch. They don't have to be mutually exclusive, but they probably are in practice.
Personally, I think one of them works electorally and the other one doesn't, though I'm just a random on the internet.
Question is, how much time will the Conservatives waste on the Badenoch path before concluding that it's a dead end? And will someone else have occupied the Street patch by the time that whatever's left of the Conservatives decide they want to explore it?
Technically, all the paths could be named Street.
We should bring this part of the conversation to a close.
Agreed. But is there not someone already occupying the Street patch i.e. Starmer?
Yes and no. Ultimately, they're both pragmatists, which has been unusual in recent years. But left pragmatism and right pragmatism. It's the difference between cutting public spending (which Reeves will have to do) but only as much as necessary, and cutting public spending because it's the right thing to do. Or, conversely raising taxes but only as much as is necessary versus doing it as a virtue.
Historically, Butler and Gaitskell were portmanteaued because they often arrived at similar answers. But not always, and by different thought processes.
Of course, as a Centrist Dad, I would say that, wouldn't I?
Pragmatism would be fine, if they were also competent administrators. The current Tories very clearly aren't; whether Labour will prove significantly better in that respect isn't at all clear.
I have no idea what will happen this afternoon but looking back at the last 24 hours commentary I can't help but feel this is rather like the narrative built up in those pseudo-archaeology ancient aliens books where a single shakey foundation is used to justify a whole raft of fairly wild theories.
Not really. There's plausible data for all it.
There is a single piece of data (turnout) which no one really knows how to interpret. It is a great basis for rumour but nothing more.
Margaret Thatcher was, and maybe remains, intolerable to a very large chunk of the country. Possibly near or over 50% at one point. But that doesn't matter, if you have the profound loyalty of another large minority, who will stick with you: she did. Now she is acclaimed as one of our greatest prime ministers ever, even by the people that cannot tolerate her
You must have a coherent plan, and stick with it, and you need that praetorian guard of willing followers who will fend off the attacks. See the plan through. Mend the country
Both Mao and Mussolini made the same point. You can transform a nation if you have just a few thousand willing to die for the case, against the complacent masses. That's true of revolutions, but in democratic politics you need a few MILLION voters, who fiercely believe in you
Thatcher did it by 1. winning in the Falklands, 2, selling council houses (creating those loyal voters who loved her), 3. producing obvious economic growth, faster than our competitors
There is no point in trying to reproduce 1. But 2 is achievable, and hopefully it will lead to 3. So the new Tories need an iconic transformative policy aimed at the ordinary working family, NOT fecking pensioners. Then they will win again, and maybe do better
Housing would be a good area to focus on
Council house building.
A way to drive down housing costs, and thereby free up money in the economy for other things, is for the state to engage as a major housebuilder who will carry on building houses even when house prices fall - something the private housebuilders have little incentive to do.
Margaret Thatcher was, and maybe remains, intolerable to a very large chunk of the country. Possibly near or over 50% at one point. But that doesn't matter, if you have the profound loyalty of another large minority, who will stick with you: she did. Now she is acclaimed as one of our greatest prime ministers ever, even by the people that cannot tolerate her
You must have a coherent plan, and stick with it, and you need that praetorian guard of willing followers who will fend off the attacks. See the plan through. Mend the country
Both Mao and Mussolini made the same point. You can transform a nation if you have just a few thousand willing to die for the case, against the complacent masses. That's true of revolutions, but in democratic politics you need a few MILLION voters, who fiercely believe in you
Thatcher did it by 1. winning in the Falklands, 2, selling council houses (creating those loyal voters who loved her), 3. producing obvious economic growth, faster than our competitors
There is no point in trying to reproduce 1. But 2 is achievable, and hopefully it will lead to 3. So the new Tories need an iconic transformative policy aimed at the ordinary working family, NOT fecking pensioners. Then they will win again, and maybe do better
Housing would be a good area to focus on
Trouble is, what's left to give away?
The right to buy discounts made sense socially- the large estates of social housing were a mistake. But they were also (as the Bird and Fortune sketch put it about tax cuts) "a shameless bribe... but a bloody good one."
Focusing on economics and good governance instead of wittering about willies/fannies and boats would be a start.
If the narrative which emerges is that the Tories have done better than expected, Sunak firmly in place and game on for the GE, then the happiest winner from all that is SKS. Boy he's lucky. But his opponents don't half make it easy to be lucky.
Is the PB herd wheeling around and preparing to stampede in a different direction?
I think Khan will win in London. But London is being bigged up across the country in a ramp-up of Islamophobia, xenophobia, and racism. Many who live in London are unaware of what London connotes for many people who don't. This is practically an open goal for the rightwing.
As someone who lives in London, the issue isn't all perception. Crime is just ridiculous there days - in the past 16 months the church by my corner shop had a drive by shooting, I then moved and have been mugged, missed an acid attack by 5 minutes, been broken into, and my housemate had a death threat/hate crime attack against him. My experience isn't massively unrepresentative (bar the drive by shooting). Most people don't report a lot of minor crimes (bike theft/phone snatching) etc anymore. Outside of that homophobia is clearly increasing as an issue due to high rates of immigration from backwards places leading to semi-regular attacks on LGBTQ venues, and every Saturday blatant anti-semitism shuts down central London. Bar that London is great.
Yep. Ditto Paris, except Paris is worse
People outside don't realise what is happening to the great Western cities, but it will spread
The only choice is severe limitation on immigration, and I mean DRACONIAN. It will hurt the economy, but we have let this fester so long that we are faced with stark and distressing alternatives
I've not told this story before because it is so depressing, but here we go. A few months ago I was in Egypt with a bunch of journalists. One was an attractive Asutralian girl, blonde, who mistakenly moved to a predominantly black and Muslim area of London when she first arrived, near Hammersmith. This is not nice to hear, but she said: "every day when I walk down my own high street the black men will sexually harrass me and try and touch me, and the Muslim men will hiss and call me a slut if I wear anything at all sexy or revealing." In the end she stopped using her own high street at any time, and got Ubers from the front door, everywhere, even at noon
Her sister was actually sexually assaulted, badly, in daylight
What have we done?
Go ahead, call me a racist, that was her lived experience, verbatim. Sad
Margaret Thatcher was, and maybe remains, intolerable to a very large chunk of the country. Possibly near or over 50% at one point. But that doesn't matter, if you have the profound loyalty of another large minority, who will stick with you: she did. Now she is acclaimed as one of our greatest prime ministers ever, even by the people that cannot tolerate her
You must have a coherent plan, and stick with it, and you need that praetorian guard of willing followers who will fend off the attacks. See the plan through. Mend the country
Both Mao and Mussolini made the same point. You can transform a nation if you have just a few thousand willing to die for the case, against the complacent masses. That's true of revolutions, but in democratic politics you need a few MILLION voters, who fiercely believe in you
Thatcher did it by 1. winning in the Falklands, 2, selling council houses (creating those loyal voters who loved her), 3. producing obvious economic growth, faster than our competitors
There is no point in trying to reproduce 1. But 2 is achievable, and hopefully it will lead to 3. So the new Tories need an iconic transformative policy aimed at the ordinary working family, NOT fecking pensioners. Then they will win again, and maybe do better
Housing would be a good area to focus on
In the same way that only Labour can really reform the NHS drastically, only the Tories from opposition can pivot away from the pensioner vote to making working families the core target and focus for government policies to get back into power.
If the Tories break that taboo it will work but Labour won’t try as they are too scared as the Tories are re NHS.
Expect Hall fanboys to be moaning online about a fix after Khan walks this.
Oh. Is that why they were briefing that she had won? Voter fraud claims?
Seems pretty clear to me it was, in the case of Labour, shock from on the ground stuff and the differential turnout by area. See tables posted yesterday.
I still don’t think that Hall will win.
But the market managed to relieve some rubes of their cash. Blessed is the Maker, Adam Smith. Blessed is his passage through the world. Blessed is his Hand that smites the unbelievers.
More knowledgeable people, of course, refer to the Tory voting system as the Exhaustive Ballot. Remember, you CANNOT change your vote with AV, like you can between successive rounds of an Exhaustive Ballot.
According to all the commentary on R4 this morning, the pressure is off Sunak as results (thus far) are much better than feared and, crucially, they won the Tees Valley mayoralty and will probably hang on to the West Midlands mayoralty. All in all, not a bad day for the Tories, they seem to be saying. (Blackpool South has been cancelled.)
I'd love to see what a bad set of results for the Tories would look like.
In one sense I think they may have a point. As predicted on here, Reform was the dog that didn’t bark. That must come as a big relief. They are a make believe party.
Yes they did relatively well in Blackpool South but they’re not going to be the force that costs the Tories the election.
A better canine analogy would be "Reform barked but were not let out of the kennel" as they only had 316 candidates.
I expect Khan to win but the margin to be even closer than it was on first preferences last time.
He will be hit by leakage to the Greens in London, where a higher percentage of the population are Corbynite and ideologically leftwing than the UK average. Hall however has squeezed Reform to almost nothing running a populist right and anti ULEZ campaign
Squeezing Reform by running to the right sounds plausible but does politics work like that? It is where a number of next leader candidates want to take the Conservative Party but there might be a risk of driving voters to the real deal. I'm not sure.
If Hall gets closer to Khan by squeezing Reform today than Sunak does to Starmer in the GE with a higher Reform vote, in Opposition the right will make the argument they have to squeeze Reform first
According to all the commentary on R4 this morning, the pressure is off Sunak as results (thus far) are much better than feared and, crucially, they won the Tees Valley mayoralty and will probably hang on to the West Midlands mayoralty. All in all, not a bad day for the Tories, they seem to be saying. (Blackpool South has been cancelled.)
I'd love to see what a bad set of results for the Tories would look like.
The Tories lost over 600 councillors in 1996 at the same stage of the electoral cycle. It looks like they will lose just under 500 so it could have been worse
Expect Hall fanboys to be moaning online about a fix after Khan walks this.
Online is obviously a big place, but in terms of relevance here I don't recall a single poster being positive about Hall, let alone a fan club. There are plenty who would vote for her because she is a Tory and plenty more who would vote for her as she is not Khan.
In the last few weeks I've canvassed at least 100 people including 20-30 Tories but not one had a positive word for Hall. For example one Tory told me he was going to hold his nose and vote for Hall because he hated Khan - ULEZ etc but I think more to it.
If Susan Hall is close to winning London, CCHQ has serious questions to answer about why it didn’t pick a more dynamic, modern, outward-looking candidate. London is winnable for us.
The wet faction really are going with this shite. Desperate. CCHQ got rid of two good candidates and chose a 'dynamic, modern, outward looking candidate' - he was brought down by groping allegations, leaving Hall.
If Susan Hall comes close, she will have done miles better than the Tory polling average - that indicates that Tories in general should be more like Susan Hall, not the other way around.
The nature of Hall's campaign has been a guerilla one of campaigning on the doorsteps and on social media, strongly coming out against ULEZ and hammering Khan on crime. A 'dynamic, modern, outward looking candidate' wouldn't have done any of that, and would have been lucky to poll as well as the Tory average.
According to all the commentary on R4 this morning, the pressure is off Sunak as results (thus far) are much better than feared and, crucially, they won the Tees Valley mayoralty and will probably hang on to the West Midlands mayoralty. All in all, not a bad day for the Tories, they seem to be saying. (Blackpool South has been cancelled.)
I'd love to see what a bad set of results for the Tories would look like.
The Tories lost over 600 councillors in 1996 at the same stage of the electoral cycle. It looks like they will lose just under 500 so it could have been worse
Um... what was that as a percentage of held seats?
Expect Hall fanboys to be moaning online about a fix after Khan walks this.
Online is obviously a big place, but in terms of relevance here I don't recall a single poster being positive about Hall, let alone a fan club. There are plenty who would vote for her because she is a Tory and plenty more who would vote for her as she is not Khan.
In the last few weeks I've canvassed at least 100 people including 20-30 Tories but not one had a positive word for Hall. For example one Tory told me he was going to hold his nose and vote for Hall because he hated Khan - ULEZ etc but I think more to it.
If Susan Hall is close to winning London, CCHQ has serious questions to answer about why it didn’t pick a more dynamic, modern, outward-looking candidate. London is winnable for us.
Is the PB herd wheeling around and preparing to stampede in a different direction?
I think Khan will win in London. But London is being bigged up across the country in a ramp-up of Islamophobia, xenophobia, and racism. Many who live in London are unaware of what London connotes for many people who don't. This is practically an open goal for the rightwing.
As someone who lives in London, the issue isn't all perception. Crime is just ridiculous there days - in the past 16 months the church by my corner shop had a drive by shooting, I then moved and have been mugged, missed an acid attack by 5 minutes, been broken into, and my housemate had a death threat/hate crime attack against him. My experience isn't massively unrepresentative (bar the drive by shooting). Most people don't report a lot of minor crimes (bike theft/phone snatching) etc anymore. Outside of that homophobia is clearly increasing as an issue due to high rates of immigration from backwards places leading to semi-regular attacks on LGBTQ venues, and every Saturday blatant anti-semitism shuts down central London. Bar that London is great.
Something to note - crime is extraordinarily segregated. Criminals will commit crime in one area. The next street gets left alone.
I live in a nice area. We get a number of phone robberies. The nasty stuff, not so much. Friends who live in poorer areas, even half a mile away report a different world.
The you have the crime deserts - areas where not much is reported of the low level street stuff. Interesting, eh?
Don't be distracted by the mayorals, which have long been only loosely linked to national polling - see Hartlepool, Doncaster, Livingstone etc. Big figures swing votes. Only in the absence of big figures do voters default to national opinion.
This is key.
The interesting question to me is whether Starmer and Labour realise it?
If a bad result for Khan in London leads to major panic by Starmer and Labour, it could still influence the GE outcome.
This is going to sound weird but I think the election this year will feel more like GE2005 but with GE1997++ voteshares.
Why do I say that?
Because SKS already has a fraying base with Greens and issues with Muslim voters, whilst still cracking all the key marginals, to that extent it reminds me of how Blair did post Iraq-War.
This is a very astute point. The one additional observation I'd make, though, is that by 2005 the Tories had come to terms with what they needed to do to regain power and David Cameron appeared soon afterwards. If the Tories do lose later this year, will they bypass the Hague and IDS stages of recovery and go straight back to the centre-right?
Who knows. But I think the centre-right stuff can easily be misinterpreted as "please, as a left-winger, make this Tory party as tolerable to me as possible, just in case it wins".
What they need to do is repitch their brand across the whole electorate in a way that's distinct, and true to their principles, but relevant for the 2030s and can still command a majority.
So, for example, they might maintain a sceptical position on identity politics, and control of immigration, whilst having a better plan for non-ideological market-based solutions for climate change, strong defence and alliances to manage global geopolitical challenges, investing more in education, jobs, infrastructure and housing, rather than just the elderly.
They will still look to minimise tax - they are still too high on income - but this probably means no longer fetishising certain tax cuts.
"Make this Tory party as tolerable to me as possible, just in case it wins" is a good rule of thumb if you do want to win I would suggest. Being intolerable to most people is a problem for the Conservatives right now.
The Tory problem is not intolerability per se, it is rotten incompetence mixed with craven greed
eg Stopping the boats would be rather popular with at least half the electorate (and the opposition has no alternative plan). Trouble is they keep saying they will do it, then they don't. Incompetence
"Stopping the boats" is the tory equivalent to "Trump's wall".
I expect Khan to win but the margin to be even closer than it was on first preferences last time.
He will be hit by leakage to the Greens in London, where a higher percentage of the population are Corbynite and ideologically leftwing than the UK average. Hall however has squeezed Reform to almost nothing running a populist right and anti ULEZ campaign
Squeezing Reform by running to the right sounds plausible but does politics work like that? It is where a number of next leader candidates want to take the Conservative Party but there might be a risk of driving voters to the real deal. I'm not sure.
If Hall gets closer to Khan by squeezing Reform today than Sunak does to Starmer in the GE with a higher Reform vote, in Opposition the right will make the argument they have to squeeze Reform first
It's also just what most Tory members want, it means a loss as due solely to poor leadership.
Parties will always go with the easier option first.
Sunak: "The choice at the next election is clear – only the Conservatives have a plan" - Telegraph article by the man himself.
The same utterly deluded drivel.
"A plan versus no plan, bold principled action versus U-turns and prevarication, a clear record of delivery..." etc etc.
The Telegraph actually reported the results as 'better than expected.' We'll pass quietly over the thought of what 'worse than' might have looked like and gently point out that the antipathy of the electorate is likely to be rather less towards councils than central government. The punishment the Tories received yesterday is therefore likely to be somewhat lighter than what appears to be coming next.
Electoral Calculus is predicting 85 seats. It could be right.
I've always maintained that the polling will narrow quite a bit once people really focus on the choice being Starmer's Labour or Tories.
But I am seriously beginning to wonder whether this really is one of Callaghan's "Seachange" elections.
Starmer's huge issue is going to be getting the vote out I think. Blair he 'aint. A lot of apathy out there. One of the things that seems to be forgotten about '97 GE was the ground war. The people that Labour and the unions had mobilised to knock on doors and leaflet was astonishing is certainly my memory.
I think we may get odd variations, depending on past performance. In areas where people are accustomed to voting Labour and have a local authority with the usual mixed record, I doubt if we'll see high Labour turnout (cf. Oxford this week, and maybe London). In areas where a big Tory majority is under threat for the first time, I expect a lot of enthusiasm. So you can get huge swings in Tory seats (cf. Blackpool South) and meh results elsewhere. Which should, in principle, make the vote more efficient.
Another reason why immigration needs, in essence, to end
I found this extraordinarily bleak account on Conservative Home, giving one reason why so many councils are going bust
"The Children’s Social Care system is in many cities and larger towns collapsing, in large part as a disastrous consequence of the broken Immigration system...
"I was recently stunned to the point of initial disbelief during a conversation with a friend during which he mentioned that a child placed in residential care costs the average local council roughly £5,500 per week and rapidly rising. I was equally taken aback when he stated that in large cities, anywhere between 40 per cent and 60 per cent (and rising) of the children being placed in these expensive placements are children whose mothers are immigrants."
"Bradford Council reports that its average current cost per child residential placement, is at the time of writing £6,498 per week, £337,896 per year, which dwarfs the £4,258 per month, £51,100 per year cost of housing adult immigrants in nice hotels etc. The immigrant child in care is costing more than six adult immigrants in a hotel and the public don’t even know about the scale of it.
"Sadly, the number of immigrant children in care is rising at shocking rates in major cities throughout the country. Using Bradford Council as an example again, in the 2017-18 Municipal Year, there were 42 children in external care placements, but this had risen to 214 by the end of 2023 at a combined cost at least £65 million to £75 million over the period.
"With each increase of three children in care placements coming in at a cool £1 million per year, dozens of councils will become effectively bankrupt in a couple of years or so unless there is an urgent, serious intervention."
The Tories thought it was a wizard idea to import 1.4m people in 2 years. Labour thought it would be amusing to "rub the noses of the right in diversity"
What an awesome pun, puns like this is why I visit PB.
Love the AV chat in the thread header too, oh and the subtle Star Trek reference too.
I know you're being gently ironical at your own expense, and we all appreciate how you've stepped in after Mike had to call it a day. But I do find the constant flow of puns and Shakespeare increasingly off-putting, to the point of visiting the site less. I feel like a killjoy but... might you dial it down a bit?
Are you kidding? I think it's improved the site. Tastes vary of course, and this isn't a "umm actually" post, but I genuinely like it.
He should be ok because people are voting for him not voting Tory. He's like Boris in this respect, Pulpstar's dad is. But hopefully only in this respect.
He should be ok because people are voting for him not voting Tory. He's like Boris in this respect, Pulpstar's dad is. But hopefully only in this respect.
Yes he did, it helps he is in the safest Conservative ward in Coventry too mind. I checked back and it was the only ward held in 1995 and 1996.
What an awesome pun, puns like this is why I visit PB.
Love the AV chat in the thread header too, oh and the subtle Star Trek reference too.
I know you're being gently ironical at your own expense, and we all appreciate how you've stepped in after Mike had to call it a day. But I do find the constant flow of puns and Shakespeare increasingly off-putting, to the point of visiting the site less. I feel like a killjoy but... might you dial it down a bit?
Are you kidding? I think it's improved the site. Tastes vary of course, and this isn't a "umm actually" post, but I genuinely like it.
I respect the header writers and their contributions, and get around to reading most headers in general (brevity helps), but the btl comments is why I spend inordinate amounts of time here, and I can't imagine the header style being a huge factor in whether I'd do that or not.
Another reason why immigration needs, in essence, to end
I found this extraordinarily bleak account on Conservative Home, giving one reason why so many councils are going bust
"The Children’s Social Care system is in many cities and larger towns collapsing, in large part as a disastrous consequence of the broken Immigration system...
"I was recently stunned to the point of initial disbelief during a conversation with a friend during which he mentioned that a child placed in residential care costs the average local council roughly £5,500 per week and rapidly rising. I was equally taken aback when he stated that in large cities, anywhere between 40 per cent and 60 per cent (and rising) of the children being placed in these expensive placements are children whose mothers are immigrants."
"Bradford Council reports that its average current cost per child residential placement, is at the time of writing £6,498 per week, £337,896 per year, which dwarfs the £4,258 per month, £51,100 per year cost of housing adult immigrants in nice hotels etc. The immigrant child in care is costing more than six adult immigrants in a hotel and the public don’t even know about the scale of it.
"Sadly, the number of immigrant children in care is rising at shocking rates in major cities throughout the country. Using Bradford Council as an example again, in the 2017-18 Municipal Year, there were 42 children in external care placements, but this had risen to 214 by the end of 2023 at a combined cost at least £65 million to £75 million over the period.
"With each increase of three children in care placements coming in at a cool £1 million per year, dozens of councils will become effectively bankrupt in a couple of years or so unless there is an urgent, serious intervention."
The Tories thought it was a wizard idea to import 1.4m people in 2 years. Labour thought it would be amusing to "rub the noses of the right in diversity"
Expect Hall fanboys to be moaning online about a fix after Khan walks this.
Online is obviously a big place, but in terms of relevance here I don't recall a single poster being positive about Hall, let alone a fan club. There are plenty who would vote for her because she is a Tory and plenty more who would vote for her as she is not Khan.
In the last few weeks I've canvassed at least 100 people including 20-30 Tories but not one had a positive word for Hall. For example one Tory told me he was going to hold his nose and vote for Hall because he hated Khan - ULEZ etc but I think more to it.
If Susan Hall is close to winning London, CCHQ has serious questions to answer about why it didn’t pick a more dynamic, modern, outward-looking candidate. London is winnable for us.
Dynamic, modern, outward looking ... you immediately think Alan Sugar. He must be wondering what he has to do to get the gig. It's like when Brian Clough in his pomp kept being passed over for England manager.
What an awesome pun, puns like this is why I visit PB.
Love the AV chat in the thread header too, oh and the subtle Star Trek reference too.
I know you're being gently ironical at your own expense, and we all appreciate how you've stepped in after Mike had to call it a day. But I do find the constant flow of puns and Shakespeare increasingly off-putting, to the point of visiting the site less. I feel like a killjoy but... might you dial it down a bit?
I'm genuinely confused why Shakespeare references would be 'off-putting'.
Said as someone who has never read Shakespeare since school and never seen one of the plays.
This is a fairly remarkable direct transition from simulation to real world. Robotics is going to advance really quickly.
We trained a robot dog to balance and walk on top of a yoga ball purely in simulation, and then transfer zero-shot to the real world. No fine-tuning. Just works.
I’m excited to announce DrEureka, an LLM agent that writes code to train robot skills in simulation, and writes more code to bridge the difficult simulation-reality gap. It fully automates the pipeline from new skill learning to real-world deployment.
The Yoga ball task is particularly hard because it is not possible to accurately simulate the bouncy ball surface. Yet DrEureka has no trouble searching over a vast space of sim-to-real configurations, and enables the dog to steer the ball on various terrains, even walking sideways!.. https://twitter.com/DrJimFan/status/1786429467537088741
Another reason why immigration needs, in essence, to end
I found this extraordinarily bleak account on Conservative Home, giving one reason why so many councils are going bust
"The Children’s Social Care system is in many cities and larger towns collapsing, in large part as a disastrous consequence of the broken Immigration system...
"I was recently stunned to the point of initial disbelief during a conversation with a friend during which he mentioned that a child placed in residential care costs the average local council roughly £5,500 per week and rapidly rising. I was equally taken aback when he stated that in large cities, anywhere between 40 per cent and 60 per cent (and rising) of the children being placed in these expensive placements are children whose mothers are immigrants."
"Bradford Council reports that its average current cost per child residential placement, is at the time of writing £6,498 per week, £337,896 per year, which dwarfs the £4,258 per month, £51,100 per year cost of housing adult immigrants in nice hotels etc. The immigrant child in care is costing more than six adult immigrants in a hotel and the public don’t even know about the scale of it.
"Sadly, the number of immigrant children in care is rising at shocking rates in major cities throughout the country. Using Bradford Council as an example again, in the 2017-18 Municipal Year, there were 42 children in external care placements, but this had risen to 214 by the end of 2023 at a combined cost at least £65 million to £75 million over the period.
"With each increase of three children in care placements coming in at a cool £1 million per year, dozens of councils will become effectively bankrupt in a couple of years or so unless there is an urgent, serious intervention."
The Tories thought it was a wizard idea to import 1.4m people in 2 years. Labour thought it would be amusing to "rub the noses of the right in diversity"
And here we are
Banning cousin-marriages would be a start.
Health issues caused by 1st cousin offspring are a huge issue for the NHS. Not an issue touched by the Tories but they should do it. Labour would have to oppose the ban. Wedge issue. Not polite, but great policy, and politics.
I am very much in this camp. I have no interest in the Tories doing well, I don't particularly like or dislike Khan, know almost nothing about Hall and of course I don't live in London so have no immediate stake in the game. But I do love to see a good political upset.
Another reason why immigration needs, in essence, to end
I found this extraordinarily bleak account on Conservative Home, giving one reason why so many councils are going bust
"The Children’s Social Care system is in many cities and larger towns collapsing, in large part as a disastrous consequence of the broken Immigration system...
"I was recently stunned to the point of initial disbelief during a conversation with a friend during which he mentioned that a child placed in residential care costs the average local council roughly £5,500 per week and rapidly rising. I was equally taken aback when he stated that in large cities, anywhere between 40 per cent and 60 per cent (and rising) of the children being placed in these expensive placements are children whose mothers are immigrants."
"Bradford Council reports that its average current cost per child residential placement, is at the time of writing £6,498 per week, £337,896 per year, which dwarfs the £4,258 per month, £51,100 per year cost of housing adult immigrants in nice hotels etc. The immigrant child in care is costing more than six adult immigrants in a hotel and the public don’t even know about the scale of it.
"Sadly, the number of immigrant children in care is rising at shocking rates in major cities throughout the country. Using Bradford Council as an example again, in the 2017-18 Municipal Year, there were 42 children in external care placements, but this had risen to 214 by the end of 2023 at a combined cost at least £65 million to £75 million over the period.
"With each increase of three children in care placements coming in at a cool £1 million per year, dozens of councils will become effectively bankrupt in a couple of years or so unless there is an urgent, serious intervention."
The Tories thought it was a wizard idea to import 1.4m people in 2 years. Labour thought it would be amusing to "rub the noses of the right in diversity"
And here we are
Banning cousin-marriages would be a start.
Health issues caused by 1st cousin offspring are a huge issue for the NHS. Not an issue touched by the Tories but they should do it. Labour would have to oppose the ban. Wedge issue. Not polite, but great policy, and politics.
Back in the olden days, even The Guardian would happily discuss the issue:
This is a fairly remarkable direct transition from simulation to real world. Robotics is going to advance really quickly.
We trained a robot dog to balance and walk on top of a yoga ball purely in simulation, and then transfer zero-shot to the real world. No fine-tuning. Just works.
I’m excited to announce DrEureka, an LLM agent that writes code to train robot skills in simulation, and writes more code to bridge the difficult simulation-reality gap. It fully automates the pipeline from new skill learning to real-world deployment.
The Yoga ball task is particularly hard because it is not possible to accurately simulate the bouncy ball surface. Yet DrEureka has no trouble searching over a vast space of sim-to-real configurations, and enables the dog to steer the ball on various terrains, even walking sideways!.. https://twitter.com/DrJimFan/status/1786429467537088741
Another reason why immigration needs, in essence, to end
I found this extraordinarily bleak account on Conservative Home, giving one reason why so many councils are going bust
"The Children’s Social Care system is in many cities and larger towns collapsing, in large part as a disastrous consequence of the broken Immigration system...
"I was recently stunned to the point of initial disbelief during a conversation with a friend during which he mentioned that a child placed in residential care costs the average local council roughly £5,500 per week and rapidly rising. I was equally taken aback when he stated that in large cities, anywhere between 40 per cent and 60 per cent (and rising) of the children being placed in these expensive placements are children whose mothers are immigrants."
"Bradford Council reports that its average current cost per child residential placement, is at the time of writing £6,498 per week, £337,896 per year, which dwarfs the £4,258 per month, £51,100 per year cost of housing adult immigrants in nice hotels etc. The immigrant child in care is costing more than six adult immigrants in a hotel and the public don’t even know about the scale of it.
"Sadly, the number of immigrant children in care is rising at shocking rates in major cities throughout the country. Using Bradford Council as an example again, in the 2017-18 Municipal Year, there were 42 children in external care placements, but this had risen to 214 by the end of 2023 at a combined cost at least £65 million to £75 million over the period.
"With each increase of three children in care placements coming in at a cool £1 million per year, dozens of councils will become effectively bankrupt in a couple of years or so unless there is an urgent, serious intervention."
The Tories thought it was a wizard idea to import 1.4m people in 2 years. Labour thought it would be amusing to "rub the noses of the right in diversity"
Margaret Thatcher was, and maybe remains, intolerable to a very large chunk of the country. Possibly near or over 50% at one point. But that doesn't matter, if you have the profound loyalty of another large minority, who will stick with you: she did. Now she is acclaimed as one of our greatest prime ministers ever, even by the people that cannot tolerate her
You must have a coherent plan, and stick with it, and you need that praetorian guard of willing followers who will fend off the attacks. See the plan through. Mend the country
Both Mao and Mussolini made the same point. You can transform a nation if you have just a few thousand willing to die for the case, against the complacent masses. That's true of revolutions, but in democratic politics you need a few MILLION voters, who fiercely believe in you
Thatcher did it by 1. winning in the Falklands, 2, selling council houses (creating those loyal voters who loved her), 3. producing obvious economic growth, faster than our competitors
There is no point in trying to reproduce 1. But 2 is achievable, and hopefully it will lead to 3. So the new Tories need an iconic transformative policy aimed at the ordinary working family, NOT fecking pensioners. Then they will win again, and maybe do better
Housing would be a good area to focus on
Council house building.
A way to drive down housing costs, and thereby free up money in the economy for other things, is for the state to engage as a major housebuilder who will carry on building houses even when house prices fall - something the private housebuilders have little incentive to do.
The state also has the ability to acquire building land much more cheaply than do commercial house builders. Should it so choose.
(1) SkyBet paid out on Houchen bet at 2/7 (2) Hills bet at 7/4 on Street (now all greened up) (3) Exchange Khan / Hall - profit either way now, but balance on Hall in 3 figures (4) Ladbrokes Khan bet share in 35-40% range - odds on
I stand to make over £400 profit at the moment
Well done; sensible to have laid off on Hall. In the end it wasn’t a value bet, but a trading bet.
Thanks. The two aren't mutually exclusive. A value bet provides opportunities for trading, which is why it's value.
I still await to see with interest how close it is later today.
Well, the object is different, I’d suggest, and they are separate concepts which whilst not mutually exclusive also don’t necessarily overlap.
A value bet is, as you described earlier, one in which even though you lose more often than you win, the odds make it attractive in the long run. The poker analogy being betting a flush draw at low stake, where the payouts when your suit card comes up more than cover the losses when it doesn’t. The trick there is correctly assessing low probability events, and it remains my view that Hall was never a value bet from that perspective.
A trading bet is one that stands to lose, but where you anticipate a narrowing at some point before the result is declared, so you can lay off at a profit. The object is not to be holding the bet at the end, in contrast to the above. Elections with a clear front runner but where there is a delayed count are perhaps ideally suited to such opportunities, given the febrile atmosphere and tendency for thin rumours to gain fast traction, and that may be a learning point from this contest with useful application going forward?
It's a view we all have to come to based on our own research but I think Hall was value when I laid Khan at 1.03 because her chances were always higher than 3%. That was just too low.
But even if her true chances were only, say, 15% then that made her value at that price.
You then have choices to trade or hold.
If the market moved in her direction based on turnout data, leaks and early results then, of course, you could then trade out at a profit.
If it looked like she'd run him even closer then you could hold it and trade out for an even higher price, or, once greened up, let it run all the way if you think there's a chance of a major upset.
Her true chances were always much lower than 15%. I think they were lower than 3%.
Consider: out of all the elections held on Thursday, how many saw the Conservatives *gain* a seat? A tiny handful, less than 1%. And that’s before you even get to the extensive polling in London.
But it’s great that you’ve made money on trading bets.
Yes, but that's nonsense, isn't it?
If she runs the election close that's evidence enough in and of itself, but with anti-ULEZ, anti-Gaza, general anti-Khan malaise and only a 5% margin of victory last time (with a FPTP voting system this time) its absurd to suggest her chances were so low.
What people are telegraphing here is they really don't like her at all, or want her to win, so don't want to give any other narrative other than she's a totally hopeless cause lest it give her some momentum.
We see similar with Trump posts on here and you should absolutely never bet like that.
Why is that nonsense? The overriding factor in this round of elections is the very large, national Con->Lab swing since 2021. You can’t just pretend that hasn’t happened. You then look at what happened in 2021 in a contest. What that means is that we would expect Lab/Con contests won by Labour last time to be won by Labour again and any changes to be Tory seats falling to Labour.
We have more than enough results now to test this hypothesis. We’ve had >2000 results, which the largest chunk being Lab/Con contests. What do we see? Almost every Lab/Con contest won by Labour last time has been held by Labour. There have been at least 2 Con gains, but that’s a tiny proportion. The Conservatives gaining from Labour is clearly very, very, very unlikely.
That’s my baseline. Conservatives won’t win seats from Labour. But, sure, there are other factors to consider.
There’s a change in the voting system. However, no London mayoral election has ever been determined by second preferences. Khan last time, and the time before, won on first preferences and with second preferences. So, that doesn’t suggest FPTP will matter much. Indeed, if anything, I would guess FPTP harms Hall more because of the rise in Reform UK support.
Anti-ULEZ malaise? The test of that is the Uxbridge by-election, which saw a 6.7% swing to Labour. Add a 6.7% swing to Labour on the 2021 result and you get… oh, a large Khan win. And ULEZ has certainly become less of an issue since then.
Gaza? Sure, that could hurt Khan, although it won’t mean votes going to Hall, and Khan being Muslim himself and Hall’s Islamophobia could be factors that reduce any Gaza effect.
And then we have the polling! The polling ranges from a massive Khan victory to a small Khan victory. The polls were off last time, overestimating the Labour vote, but the polls were pretty accurate in prior mayoral contests. Even if you take the 2021 polling error and apply it to the 2024 polls, Khan wins.
So, for Hall to win, you need a greater polling error than ever before, *and* you need the national swing to Labour to go in reverse. Given that, I think your estimate of a 15% chance for Hall to win is ludicrous. Estimating unlikely things gets difficult, so maybe you can make a case that she’s got a 3% chance, but I don’t see it.
Margaret Thatcher was, and maybe remains, intolerable to a very large chunk of the country. Possibly near or over 50% at one point. But that doesn't matter, if you have the profound loyalty of another large minority, who will stick with you: she did. Now she is acclaimed as one of our greatest prime ministers ever, even by the people that cannot tolerate her
You must have a coherent plan, and stick with it, and you need that praetorian guard of willing followers who will fend off the attacks. See the plan through. Mend the country
Both Mao and Mussolini made the same point. You can transform a nation if you have just a few thousand willing to die for the case, against the complacent masses. That's true of revolutions, but in democratic politics you need a few MILLION voters, who fiercely believe in you
Thatcher did it by 1. winning in the Falklands, 2, selling council houses (creating those loyal voters who loved her), 3. producing obvious economic growth, faster than our competitors
There is no point in trying to reproduce 1. But 2 is achievable, and hopefully it will lead to 3. So the new Tories need an iconic transformative policy aimed at the ordinary working family, NOT fecking pensioners. Then they will win again, and maybe do better
Housing would be a good area to focus on
I think your conclusion is probably a start, but I would also say that Margaret Thatcher´s reputation is being generally negatively reappraised. So many long term mistakes; much of the monopoly privatisation, for example, and the general butchery of local government, and most of all the deliberate running down of the industrial base. So looking to the past for a model is unlikely to bring many solutions. I think housing is a key, but at the end of the day if we cannot improve innovation and productivity, then the UK decline will continue. The core problem is that we do not transfer our research powerhouse into economic power and the reasons for that include our system of credit/finance, poor infrastructure, inefficient government systems and many others. This stuff doesn´t respond to a quick fix or sloganized politics, and is not easy to explain to the punters, so even if you have a loyal cadre of helots willing to bend to your iron will, it is pretty unlikely that you will be going in the right direction.
What an awesome pun, puns like this is why I visit PB.
Love the AV chat in the thread header too, oh and the subtle Star Trek reference too.
I know you're being gently ironical at your own expense, and we all appreciate how you've stepped in after Mike had to call it a day. But I do find the constant flow of puns and Shakespeare increasingly off-putting, to the point of visiting the site less. I feel like a killjoy but... might you dial it down a bit?
I'm genuinely confused why Shakespeare references would be 'off-putting'.
Said as someone who has never read Shakespeare since school and never seen one of the plays.
I think it's the punning Nick most objects to ? Weird, I know.. but it does irritate lots of people.
Another reason why immigration needs, in essence, to end
I found this extraordinarily bleak account on Conservative Home, giving one reason why so many councils are going bust
"The Children’s Social Care system is in many cities and larger towns collapsing, in large part as a disastrous consequence of the broken Immigration system...
"I was recently stunned to the point of initial disbelief during a conversation with a friend during which he mentioned that a child placed in residential care costs the average local council roughly £5,500 per week and rapidly rising. I was equally taken aback when he stated that in large cities, anywhere between 40 per cent and 60 per cent (and rising) of the children being placed in these expensive placements are children whose mothers are immigrants."
"Bradford Council reports that its average current cost per child residential placement, is at the time of writing £6,498 per week, £337,896 per year, which dwarfs the £4,258 per month, £51,100 per year cost of housing adult immigrants in nice hotels etc. The immigrant child in care is costing more than six adult immigrants in a hotel and the public don’t even know about the scale of it.
"Sadly, the number of immigrant children in care is rising at shocking rates in major cities throughout the country. Using Bradford Council as an example again, in the 2017-18 Municipal Year, there were 42 children in external care placements, but this had risen to 214 by the end of 2023 at a combined cost at least £65 million to £75 million over the period.
"With each increase of three children in care placements coming in at a cool £1 million per year, dozens of councils will become effectively bankrupt in a couple of years or so unless there is an urgent, serious intervention."
The Tories thought it was a wizard idea to import 1.4m people in 2 years. Labour thought it would be amusing to "rub the noses of the right in diversity"
And here we are
I refer you to my standard rant about how the ruling classes do not know the working classes, do not care about them, and are so focussed on metrics like growth that they ignore the people.
Somebody else pointed out that the process known as "enshittification" is happening to the UK. Having encouraged inward investment to the point of selling off the land to the Qatar is, they now have to extract so much value per year to those foreign investors as to make the country progressively worse.
More knowledgeable people, of course, refer to the Tory voting system as the Exhaustive Ballot. Remember, you CANNOT change your vote with AV, like you can between successive rounds of an Exhaustive Ballot.
According to all the commentary on R4 this morning, the pressure is off Sunak as results (thus far) are much better than feared and, crucially, they won the Tees Valley mayoralty and will probably hang on to the West Midlands mayoralty. All in all, not a bad day for the Tories, they seem to be saying. (Blackpool South has been cancelled.)
I'd love to see what a bad set of results for the Tories would look like.
The Tories lost over 600 councillors in 1996 at the same stage of the electoral cycle. It looks like they will lose just under 500 so it could have been worse
In 1996 most of those seats were previously up for election just one month after John Major won his GE in 1992. The Conservative did very well in that round of elections. It is hardly surprisiong that they fell so hard 4 years later in 1996.
But in 1996 the tories lost only 12% of their seats, so far in 2024 they have lost a staggering 44% of their councillors.
Morning all. Thinking more on results thus far and then dangerously extrapolating them like a fool to a prospective GE I thought I'd look at them slightly differently. Comparing Locals in 95 and 96 to 2023 and 2024, Labour and LDs are doing nowhere near as well in terms of NEV whereas the Tories are doing about the same as 95 and a little worse than 96 (so basement level bad). Where people could be bothered to vote for a copper babysitter its very mixed and not very landslidey. Then I can dangerously extrapolate etc. The lack of enthusiasm for Labour is real The LDs partial recovery but being way short of Kennedy and the Cleggasm is real The Tories being at core is real
It's an unenthusiastic working majority to high double digits majority, with maximum readiness to monster the incoming administration
As Curtice said yesterday re polling when a government or party is in big trouble their support is most likely to say 'Don't Know' Prom rules - Ain't buying no dress till I get a date (July)
Margaret Thatcher was, and maybe remains, intolerable to a very large chunk of the country. Possibly near or over 50% at one point. But that doesn't matter, if you have the profound loyalty of another large minority, who will stick with you: she did. Now she is acclaimed as one of our greatest prime ministers ever, even by the people that cannot tolerate her
You must have a coherent plan, and stick with it, and you need that praetorian guard of willing followers who will fend off the attacks. See the plan through. Mend the country
Both Mao and Mussolini made the same point. You can transform a nation if you have just a few thousand willing to die for the case, against the complacent masses. That's true of revolutions, but in democratic politics you need a few MILLION voters, who fiercely believe in you
Thatcher did it by 1. winning in the Falklands, 2, selling council houses (creating those loyal voters who loved her), 3. producing obvious economic growth, faster than our competitors
There is no point in trying to reproduce 1. But 2 is achievable, and hopefully it will lead to 3. So the new Tories need an iconic transformative policy aimed at the ordinary working family, NOT fecking pensioners. Then they will win again, and maybe do better
Housing would be a good area to focus on
Trouble is, what's left to give away?
The right to buy discounts made sense socially- the large estates of social housing were a mistake. But they were also (as the Bird and Fortune sketch put it about tax cuts) "a shameless bribe... but a bloody good one."
Right To Buy was a colossal giveaway, but not one that can be repeated. Indeed RTB set the seed for the Tories current problems. It gifted housing wealth to people who are now pensioners or BTL landlords or both. Neither want to redistribute wealth to the young, or to gift them housing.
There is a desperate need for cheap, quality housing for young families, particularly near where good jobs are. That requires a mass building programme by the public sector, the direct opposite of RTB.
Comments
When coupled with the huge number of Tory activists who've just been booted out of councils - and chiefly in the areas in which Labour (and the LDs) wish to win - that can't be good for their ground campaign.
The Tories need to go for a populist right wing stance, on cultural issues, but centre-right on economics
DO WE NOT HAVE RUMOURS ABOUT THE MAYORALTY
This time, once you drill behind the abstractions, no fundamental alternative is being offered.
Boris was 'on the Remain side' when he was Mayor of London.
Happy Jedi day; May the Fourth be with you!
But. In terms of positioning I think there's an extent to which a party does have to secure its base before it can march back towards the centre. The one example of a major British party being supplanted that we have involved that party being outflanked to the extreme. The Tories might have to see off the challenge from Farage before they can think of talking to centrist voters again.
eg Stopping the boats would be rather popular with at least half the electorate (and the opposition has no alternative plan). Trouble is they keep saying they will do it, then they don't. Incompetence
It's ok, I don't need a coat.
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48688-are-the-labour-and-conservative-parties-and-their-policies-similar-or-different
'Almost half of Britons (47%) consider the two parties to be different, including 18% who describe them as “very” different. By contrast, 40% consider them similar (with 11% seeing them as very much so).
When it comes to policy areas, despite Labour’s promise to follow Tory fiscal rules, it is the rival parties’ approach to managing the economy that proves to be the biggest point of difference in the eyes of the public.
Most Britons (54%) believe the parties’ economic outlook is different, including 22% who say it is “very different”. By contrast, 28% see the two parties as similar on the topic...
On the key topics of the NHS (49%) and the cost of living (48%) the public likewise tend to see the parties as taking differing approaches – 31% and 33% respectively believe them to be similar on these issues.
The policy area on which Britons are least likely to say the Conservatives and Labour differ is the Israel-Gaza conflict, with just 25% saying so. Four in ten (41%) consider the parties’ approaches to the war to be similar...
One stark finding from the survey is that 2019 Labour voters are substantially more likely than their Conservative-voting counterparts to see differences between the two parties and their policy stances.
At an overall level, 61% of 2019 Labour voters believe that the party is different to the Conservatives. By contrast, only 47% of 2019 Conservatives say the same – with an almost identical 46% considering the two main parties to be similar.
When it comes to specific policies, Labour are most likely to think the two parties are different on the cost of living (66%), the NHS (65%) and welfare benefits (65%). Conservative voters would tend to agree the parties differ on benefits (52%), although less so on the NHS (40%) and cost of living (43%)."
I think Khan will win in London. But London is being bigged up across the country in a ramp-up of Islamophobia, xenophobia, and racism. Many who live in London are unaware of what London connotes for many people who don't. This is practically an open goal for the rightwing.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/3/whats-next-for-uk-asylum-seekers-facing-deportation-to-rwanda
The intolerability of the Rwanda plan (amongst those for whom it is intolerable) is made worse because of the incompetence with which it is implemented.
An effective Tory party would be more intolerable to some, but much less intolerable for their target market.
I've written intolerable far too often in this post. Off to enjoy the sunshine.
I'd love to see what a bad set of results for the Tories would look like.
He will be hit by leakage to the Greens in London, where a higher percentage of the population are Corbynite and ideologically leftwing than the UK average. Hall however has squeezed Reform to almost nothing running a populist right and anti ULEZ campaign
ETA: Frustrated mews, @maxh beat me to it.
Yes and no. Ultimately, they're both pragmatists, which has been unusual in recent years. But left pragmatism and right pragmatism. It's the difference between cutting public spending (which Reeves will have to do) but only as much as necessary, and cutting public spending because it's the right thing to do. Or, conversely raising taxes but only as much as is necessary versus doing it as a virtue.
Historically, Butler and Gaitskell were portmanteaued because they often arrived at similar answers. But not always, and by different thought processes.
Of course, as a Centrist Dad, I would say that, wouldn't I?
Yes they did relatively well in Blackpool South but they’re not going to be the force that costs the Tories the election.
Meloni in Italy however has won already with a platform that is both rightwing on economics and conservative on social issues. If Tories like Badenoch, Braverman, Rees Mogg etc want a model it would probably be Meloni (who is already probably Rishi's closest ally in the G7 now)
The problem is that the police will regard serious reform as “Going To War With The Police” - see Plebgate for where that ends.
How do you fancy Thangham’s Bristol Central chances now, Nick?
You must have a coherent plan, and stick with it, and you need that praetorian guard of willing followers who will fend off the attacks. See the plan through. Mend the country
Both Mao and Mussolini made the same point. You can transform a nation if you have just a few thousand willing to die for the case, against the complacent masses. That's true of revolutions, but in democratic politics you need a few MILLION voters, who fiercely believe in you
Thatcher did it by 1. winning in the Falklands, 2, selling council houses (creating those loyal voters who loved her), 3. producing obvious economic growth, faster than our competitors
There is no point in trying to reproduce 1. But 2 is achievable, and hopefully it will lead to 3. So the new Tories need an iconic transformative policy aimed at the ordinary working family, NOT fecking pensioners. Then they will win again, and maybe do better
Housing would be a good area to focus on
https://dominiccummings.substack.com/p/dostoyevsky-the-modern-intelligentsia
AI is apparently so groovy now that it barely "hallucinates". Hmm...
"(T)he limiting factor in replacing all this human labour is the world’s friction not scientific progress."
His context is AI and customer services but a broader interpretation is available.
Same applies to the Mediterranean and the Aegean crossings.
Decent, respectable and responsible governments in much of the Middle East and North East Africa would help too.
But then I’ve always hoped the moon on a stick! Don’t, for one moment, expect to see much, if any, of it happening in whatever’s left of my lifetime!
Had Portillo beaten IDS for the leadership in 2001 would he have beaten Blair in 2005? Again, probably not although it might have been close to a hung parliament.
Had Healey beaten Foot for the Labour leadership in 1980 would he have beaten Thatcher in 1983? Again almost certainly not. Had David Miliband beaten Ed Miliband for the Labour leadership in 2010 would he have beaten Cameron in 2015? Probably not though he may have got a hung parliament. So even had the centrist candidate beaten the more ideological candidate in Opposition for both Labour and the Conservatives they still likely would have lost,
albeit Portillo in 2005 and
David Miliband in 2015 might
have got a hung parliament.
Indeed of elections
opposition parties have lost
in recent decades only 2017
might have seen a different
result with a different leader.
Andy Burnham might have
beaten Theresa May narrowly
while Corbyn fell just short
The right to buy discounts made sense socially- the large estates of social housing were a mistake. But they were also (as the Bird and Fortune sketch put it about tax cuts) "a shameless bribe... but a bloody good one."
The current Tories very clearly aren't; whether Labour will prove significantly better in that respect isn't at all clear.
A way to drive down housing costs, and thereby free up money in the economy for other things, is for the state to engage as a major housebuilder who will carry on building houses even when house prices fall - something the private housebuilders have little incentive to do.
School leaders warn of ‘full-blown’ special needs crisis in England
Survey by NAHT union finds funding shortages mean pupils are losing out on vital support
https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/may/04/school-leaders-warn-of-full-blown-special-needs-crisis-in-england
Boy he's lucky. But his opponents don't half make it easy to be lucky.
People outside don't realise what is happening to the great Western cities, but it will spread
The only choice is severe limitation on immigration, and I mean DRACONIAN. It will hurt the economy, but we have let this fester so long that we are faced with stark and distressing alternatives
I've not told this story before because it is so depressing, but here we go. A few months ago I was in Egypt with a bunch of journalists. One was an attractive Asutralian girl, blonde, who mistakenly moved to a predominantly black and Muslim area of London when she first arrived, near Hammersmith. This is not nice to hear, but she said: "every day when I walk down my own high street the black men will sexually harrass me and try and touch me, and the Muslim men will hiss and call me a slut if I wear anything at all sexy or revealing." In the end she stopped using her own high street at any time, and got Ubers from the front door, everywhere, even at noon
Her sister was actually sexually assaulted, badly, in daylight
What have we done?
Go ahead, call me a racist, that was her lived experience, verbatim. Sad
If the Tories break that taboo it will work but Labour won’t try as they are too scared as the Tories are re NHS.
I still don’t think that Hall will win.
But the market managed to relieve some rubes of their cash. Blessed is the Maker, Adam Smith. Blessed is his passage through the world. Blessed is his Hand that smites the unbelievers.
More knowledgeable people, of course, refer to the Tory voting system as the Exhaustive Ballot. Remember, you CANNOT change your vote with AV, like you can between successive rounds of an Exhaustive Ballot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustive_ballot
If Susan Hall comes close, she will have done miles better than the Tory polling average - that indicates that Tories in general should be more like Susan Hall, not the other way around.
The nature of Hall's campaign has been a guerilla one of campaigning on the doorsteps and on social media, strongly coming out against ULEZ and hammering Khan on crime. A 'dynamic, modern, outward looking candidate' wouldn't have done any of that, and would have been lucky to poll as well as the Tory average.
2 Green gains from Lab and one Lab gain from Con so far….
I live in a nice area. We get a number of phone robberies. The nasty stuff, not so much. Friends who live in poorer areas, even half a mile away report a different world.
The you have the crime deserts - areas where not much is reported of the low level street stuff. Interesting, eh?
Parties will always go with the easier option first.
For the lolz.
I found this extraordinarily bleak account on Conservative Home, giving one reason why so many councils are going bust
"The Children’s Social Care system is in many cities and larger towns collapsing, in large part as a disastrous consequence of the broken Immigration system...
"I was recently stunned to the point of initial disbelief during a conversation with a friend during which he mentioned that a child placed in residential care costs the average local council roughly £5,500 per week and rapidly rising. I was equally taken aback when he stated that in large cities, anywhere between 40 per cent and 60 per cent (and rising) of the children being placed in these expensive placements are children whose mothers are immigrants."
"Bradford Council reports that its average current cost per child residential placement, is at the time of writing £6,498 per week, £337,896 per year, which dwarfs the £4,258 per month, £51,100 per year cost of housing adult immigrants in nice hotels etc. The immigrant child in care is costing more than six adult immigrants in a hotel and the public don’t even know about the scale of it.
"Sadly, the number of immigrant children in care is rising at shocking rates in major cities throughout the country. Using Bradford Council as an example again, in the 2017-18 Municipal Year, there were 42 children in external care placements, but this had risen to 214 by the end of 2023 at a combined cost at least £65 million to £75 million over the period.
"With each increase of three children in care placements coming in at a cool £1 million per year, dozens of councils will become effectively bankrupt in a couple of years or so unless there is an urgent, serious intervention."
https://conservativehome.com/2024/05/03/roger-taylor-migration-is-placing-a-huge-cost-on-childrens-social-care-services/
The Tories thought it was a wizard idea to import 1.4m people in 2 years. Labour thought it would be amusing to "rub the noses of the right in diversity"
And here we are
Said as someone who has never read Shakespeare since school and never seen one of the plays.
Robotics is going to advance really quickly.
We trained a robot dog to balance and walk on top of a yoga ball purely in simulation, and then transfer zero-shot to the real world. No fine-tuning. Just works.
I’m excited to announce DrEureka, an LLM agent that writes code to train robot skills in simulation, and writes more code to bridge the difficult simulation-reality gap. It fully automates the pipeline from new skill learning to real-world deployment.
The Yoga ball task is particularly hard because it is not possible to accurately simulate the bouncy ball surface. Yet DrEureka has no trouble searching over a vast space of sim-to-real configurations, and enables the dog to steer the ball on various terrains, even walking sideways!..
https://twitter.com/DrJimFan/status/1786429467537088741
Still don't think it will happen though.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2001/mar/14/guardiansocietysupplement6
"The crazy lady who complained about the press using a bad photo won? Really?"
Should it so choose.
We have more than enough results now to test this hypothesis. We’ve had >2000 results, which the largest chunk being Lab/Con contests. What do we see? Almost every Lab/Con contest won by Labour last time has been held by Labour. There have been at least 2 Con gains, but that’s a tiny proportion. The Conservatives gaining from Labour is clearly very, very, very unlikely.
That’s my baseline. Conservatives won’t win seats from Labour. But, sure, there are other factors to consider.
There’s a change in the voting system. However, no London mayoral election has ever been determined by second preferences. Khan last time, and the time before, won on first preferences and with second preferences. So, that doesn’t suggest FPTP will matter much. Indeed, if anything, I would guess FPTP harms Hall more because of the rise in Reform UK support.
Anti-ULEZ malaise? The test of that is the Uxbridge by-election, which saw a 6.7% swing to Labour. Add a 6.7% swing to Labour on the 2021 result and you get… oh, a large Khan win. And ULEZ has certainly become less of an issue since then.
Gaza? Sure, that could hurt Khan, although it won’t mean votes going to Hall, and Khan being Muslim himself and Hall’s Islamophobia could be factors that reduce any Gaza effect.
And then we have the polling! The polling ranges from a massive Khan victory to a small Khan victory. The polls were off last time, overestimating the Labour vote, but the polls were pretty accurate in prior mayoral contests. Even if you take the 2021 polling error and apply it to the 2024 polls, Khan wins.
So, for Hall to win, you need a greater polling error than ever before, *and* you need the national swing to Labour to go in reverse. Given that, I think your estimate of a 15% chance for Hall to win is ludicrous. Estimating unlikely things gets difficult, so maybe you can make a case that she’s got a 3% chance, but I don’t see it.
Weird, I know.. but it does irritate lots of people.
Somebody else pointed out that the process known as "enshittification" is happening to the UK. Having encouraged inward investment to the point of selling off the land to the Qatar is, they now have to extract so much value per year to those foreign investors as to make the country progressively worse.
Look it up.
But in 1996 the tories lost only 12% of their seats, so far in 2024 they have lost a staggering 44% of their councillors.
Thinking more on results thus far and then dangerously extrapolating them like a fool to a prospective GE I thought I'd look at them slightly differently. Comparing Locals in 95 and 96 to 2023 and 2024, Labour and LDs are doing nowhere near as well in terms of NEV whereas the Tories are doing about the same as 95 and a little worse than 96 (so basement level bad). Where people could be bothered to vote for a copper babysitter its very mixed and not very landslidey. Then I can dangerously extrapolate etc.
The lack of enthusiasm for Labour is real
The LDs partial recovery but being way short of Kennedy and the Cleggasm is real
The Tories being at core is real
It's an unenthusiastic working majority to high double digits majority, with maximum readiness to monster the incoming administration
As Curtice said yesterday re polling when a government or party is in big trouble their support is most likely to say 'Don't Know'
Prom rules - Ain't buying no dress till I get a date (July)
There is a desperate need for cheap, quality housing for young families, particularly near where good jobs are. That requires a mass building programme by the public sector, the direct opposite of RTB.