Redditch has a 16K tory majority. It's council went Labour massively on Thursday.
Middle England.
It is not even on the target list of seats as far as I can see.
a) Different turnout b) Local elections sometimes have opposite results to general elections.
But Hung Parliament is stretching it, yes.
It’s been a bizarre few days for political ‘analysis’, I have commented on the frankly weird and disturbing incessant ramping of Hall on here masquerading as betting insight. But even that was based on initial rumours that Hall could win. She got utterly hammered. I have been away all weekend. Did we ever ascertain from where the initial notion arose?
Sorry, but weren’t you one of them?
No, I said at one stage that my view had been changed by the posts on here - and also said at the time (in the same post) that I was almost certainly being irrational. I was certainly influenced by it. But then, in the past, PB has been a generally good guide on election night. Not this time!
We (well, I) are good at collating data and drawing conclusions, and in POTUS or UKGE elections where there is a constant stream of counted votes we can discuss well. But in the gap between the end of the election and the vote counts being released we only have gossip and tittle-tattle and we (well, I) go haywire on a GIGO basis.
In the specific case of LONMAYORAL24 the only info we had was the gossip from various sources, a possible postal vote leak, and the turnout data, all of which were surprisingly favorable for Hall. Given that the only data available suggested a Hall win, the only conclusion was a Hall win. When actual count data came in, it became rapidly obvious that she had lost and PB corrected accordingly.
Lessons to be learned are as follows * We (well, I) am not good at interpreting low-quality data and should not predict until actual count data is available * We are used as a source by Twitter, which is then fed back to us, and we have a feedback loop. So we (well, I), were both cause of and sufferer of the problem * During the low-quality data period it is possible to manipulate the media and Twitter to swing the odds dramatically in such a way to accrue profit from artificially-created value bets. This offers an interesting possibility for betting engineering. * Journalists know f*** all. Wait for the count data.
Considering POTUS24 is six months away, these are good lessons to know now, yes?
I don’t believe you can possibly argue that the only data available pointed to a Hall win. All the data pointed to a Khan win, as others including myself maintained throughout. What we had on the third were some snippets of anecdata, that subsequently turned out to be nonsense (as I said at the time, postal votes are verified face down so claims from postal verifications are almost always rubbish), and some turnout data that was hardly dramatic, and probably explained - if explanation is needed - by some normally non-voters getting off their arses in Outer London to vote for Reform.
The mystery is how Anabob as one of the very first people to have predicted a Hall win (based on nothing, as far as I can see), almost as soon as polls closed, can now be asking how this ridiculous notion arose?
Partly it's the difference in brain wiring that correlates a bit with which political instincts. An overfocus on what can go wrong makes socialism attractive, an underfocus does the same for libertarian capitalism. See the way that Blair and Starmer have trod the path to Number Ten- incredibly cautiously. You wouldn't get a Tory doing that; at their best, that optimism one of their attractive features.
One of the lessons of the last week is to ignore what party sources say, especially when it's not obvious what their basis is for saying it. The "turnout is up/down in the right places" stuff was clearly made up, but we all swallowed it a bit.
What is worth looking at is what the parties are doing. In London, Hall's campaign was obviously low-energy compared with Johnson's wins. That ought to have been a clue that she wasn't on track to win. Similarly, Labour's move of activists from Teesside to the West Midlands was a pretty good indication of where the front line of the election was.
Not much sunny optimism on ConHome. https://conservativehome.com/2024/05/05/goodbyeee/ … Half our council seats – and twelve authorities – gone. Third place behind the Liberal Democrats. Eleven mayoral races lost out of twelve. Due to the lethargic way in which the results were counted, the true extent of the pain has almost been dulled. The more one considers it, the more it seems the anti-Sunak lot stood down too early. Weren’t these the results they were hoping for?
Yet the fight seems to have gone out of the rebels. Jenkyns, Simon Clarke, and Suella Braverman – all persistent Sunak critics – have called for mythical “policy changes”, but not demand an immediate resignation. The hope amongst some is that Sunak can own the coming loss, allowing the right to swoop in post-election. The flaw in their logic is that it relies on keeping their seats.
But it’s hard to see what, say, installing Penny Mordaunt as a boat-stopping, strike-breaking, ocean-going vehicle of electoral salvation might achieve. It would rely on HMS Sword-Carrier not only being able to appease both the party’s left and right, but mimic Johnson in 2019, except without Vote Leave, the benefit of the doubt, or the overwhelming need to Get Brexit Done.
There’s nothing to stop the Prime Minister’s critics from buying ad space in the Telegraph to print “WE TOLD YOU SO” in big friendly letters. But one doesn’t sense the appetite for crowing. As with Blackadder accepting his appalling fate, there is a widespread air of resignation. Our survey and suggests the general assumption is that Sunak going would only make things worse. Our time is up.
The big push can only be avoided for so long. In a year, the Prime Minister has brought the party precisely nowhere. Even those once optimistic that he could be Johnson but competent have lost the appetite. Reboots have rung hollow. We are 20 points behind and commanding under a fifth of the vote. Rwanda is a dud, Farage will return, and the voters are miserable. Why cling on?
There will be no cunning plans. Notwithstanding the ability of Tory MPs to shoot themselves in the foot, it seems that Sunak has done terribly enough to have earnt the right to lead us slowly towards the guns later this year at the head of his denuded infantry. Our former Editor once wrote of our party in a Totentanz – a dance of death. This will be a slow, painful, and hopeless march...
This is a lot of words to say that no-one wants the job now as it will be available to all survivors with no blame attached for the 2024 GE in a few months time.
The problem with these elections was that if they did OK Sunak would survive, and if they didn't all the others would wait, so Sunak woudl survive.
The surprise he could pull is just resign now without warning. Unlikely.
Yes, that's the only way he's going - which means he isn't. For quite some time I've been in no doubt Sunak would lead the Cons into the GE and (trumpet blow, smugcity etc) have got myself a high performing long position on that. You can still get about 1.12 and it's not the worst 'lump on' proposition imo even at that.
"There is a howling at the moon element at this. The ULEZ formers want to impose their rights to kill people with toxic air - what about the rights of the people being killed or damaged? The 20 mph formers want to kill more pedestrians - what about the rights of the people who don’t want to be killed?"
By that rationale any train or car should be motionless lest they crush someone's foot.
It's perfectly legitimate to advocate a lower speed limit in the name of safety, and equally valid to comment on the economic/personal cost of slower travel times. One side isn't devilish, and the other is most certainly not holy.
The fuss over 20mph in Wales is just weird though. Large swathes of London have been 20mph for a fair while now. You rapidly get used to it.
You could get used to being whipped through the streets in a gimp mask every morning. That wouldn't make it a good and efficient use of your time. It's particularly ludicrous for someone like you, who's incensed by the efficiency loss of (God forbid) using cash, to tell us all how great it is to fart around at 20mph getting nowhere fast, in a bid to protect the hordes of people who were being mown down by people sticking to the 30 limit in less enlightened times.
I am no longer confident about my July bet, Rishi is going to let this run and run isn't he?
I think we should take Sunak at his word; "The second half of the year", and I do think he has a date already in mind. It wont be July or August and I think he wants to use the conference season, where the Tories go last this year, as the platform to launch his pitch. I therefore think we will see him announce the date on the last day of the Tory Party conference, which is October 2nd. I suspect he wants quite a long campaign ("events, dear boy, events") so I think it is in the range of the three weeks up to and including Thursday December 12th, which is exactly 5 years since Boris´s own triumph, however pyrrhic it has turned out to be.
January screws Christmas and just looks desperate, So end of November/early December for me and if pushed, then December 12th.
Remember, we 'poked' them into this. It isn't Russia's fault; it's ours. The Ukrainians are Nazis and don't exist as a country, and are being led by a dictator.
So say some of the 'appeasers' on here...
No, it’s that Russia used to be The Vanguard Of Socialism. The hard left throughout the West accepted from day one of the USSR its right to rule anything touched by the Russian Empire. See the Polish independence in the 20s. They see everything up to the Baltics as Fake Countries.
Try the anarchists.
Or try the left (or council) communists - e.g. the Communist Workers' International. See Germany, Netherlands, also other countries including Britain, e.g. Sylvia Pankhurst.
(Never mind the Bordigists, except to point out that if you study their take on the Comintern and put it together with how the USSR didn't have a national anthem until 1944 you might learn something.)
Difficult to see how you could call political factions that saw themselves as to the left of Bolshevism, and were viewed by the Bolsheviks themselves as such ("Left-Wing Disorder"), as anything other than "hard left".
Many of them saw the Bolshevik revolution as fundamentally bourgeois. See Anton Pannekoek.
But I'm guessing your definition of the "hard left throughout the West" equals red flag-carrying friends of the Kremlin anyway - Leninists and Stalinists. In which case you would have proved what you assumed.
For the record, the first day of the USSR was 30 December 1922.
Be aware that some of us know something about this subject.
"There is a howling at the moon element at this. The ULEZ formers want to impose their rights to kill people with toxic air - what about the rights of the people being killed or damaged? The 20 mph formers want to kill more pedestrians - what about the rights of the people who don’t want to be killed?"
By that rationale any train or car should be motionless lest they crush someone's foot.
It's perfectly legitimate to advocate a lower speed limit in the name of safety, and equally valid to comment on the economic/personal cost of slower travel times. One side isn't devilish, and the other is most certainly not holy.
The fuss over 20mph in Wales is just weird though. Large swathes of London have been 20mph for a fair while now. You rapidly get used to it.
You could get used to being whipped through the streets in a gimp mask every morning. That wouldn't make it a good and efficient use of your time. It's particularly ludicrous for someone like you, who's incensed by the efficiency loss of (God forbid) using cash, to tell us all how great it is to fart around at 20mph getting nowhere fast, in a bid to protect the hordes of people who were being mown down by people sticking to the 30 limit in less enlightened times.
"Efficiency loss"? Using cash is slower in every single way than Contactless.
"There is a howling at the moon element at this. The ULEZ formers want to impose their rights to kill people with toxic air - what about the rights of the people being killed or damaged? The 20 mph formers want to kill more pedestrians - what about the rights of the people who don’t want to be killed?"
By that rationale any train or car should be motionless lest they crush someone's foot.
It's perfectly legitimate to advocate a lower speed limit in the name of safety, and equally valid to comment on the economic/personal cost of slower travel times. One side isn't devilish, and the other is most certainly not holy.
The fuss over 20mph in Wales is just weird though. Large swathes of London have been 20mph for a fair while now. You rapidly get used to it.
You could get used to being whipped through the streets in a gimp mask every morning. That wouldn't make it a good and efficient use of your time. It's particularly ludicrous for someone like you, who's incensed by the efficiency loss of (God forbid) using cash, to tell us all how great it is to fart around at 20mph getting nowhere fast, in a bid to protect the hordes of people who were being mown down by people sticking to the 30 limit in less enlightened times.
"Efficiency loss"? Using cash is slower in every single way than Contactless.
I agree. But why is Anabozina so annoyed about that, when he's fine being restricted to 20mph for deeply spurious safety reasons?
"There is a howling at the moon element at this. The ULEZ formers want to impose their rights to kill people with toxic air - what about the rights of the people being killed or damaged? The 20 mph formers want to kill more pedestrians - what about the rights of the people who don’t want to be killed?"
By that rationale any train or car should be motionless lest they crush someone's foot.
It's perfectly legitimate to advocate a lower speed limit in the name of safety, and equally valid to comment on the economic/personal cost of slower travel times. One side isn't devilish, and the other is most certainly not holy.
The fuss over 20mph in Wales is just weird though. Large swathes of London have been 20mph for a fair while now. You rapidly get used to it.
London is densely packed and has much public transport. A 20mph limit gets you to where you want to go quickly. Wales is more spread out and much more hilly, and the public transport has deteriorated to the occasional bus and a taxi service that isn't up to South-East-England standards (at least away from the cities). 20mph throughout doesn't work.
"20mph gets you where you want to go quickly" ..... av speed in London is 12mph or less so reducing to 20mph will.make little or no difference
My husband, who has been campaigning for a proper West Coast Cycle Path round here for ages, met the author for the book and is quoted in the Lake District section. Our dog also features!
It is one of those improvements which would make life so much nicer in a number of ways and yet every authority you encounter to try and get something done is in "computer says no" mode. The only one who has helped at all - and has been effective - is the MP for Barrow, Simon Fell, and he is likely to lose his seat.
Yes, and Andy Street was a enthusiastic backer of cycling provision in the West Midlands. £60 million capital investment per year. On that basis, I'm sad to see him go (and possibly your MP too).
I am no longer confident about my July bet, Rishi is going to let this run and run isn't he?
No shit Sherlock.
You want a July election because you want the Tories to lose and Labour in Downing Street.
What possible reason has Rishi got to call an election?
It'll be January 2025.
Nah, he has no incentive to go early, it's true, Bart, but he's not daft enough to have an election campaign running through Christmas and the New Year. His own people would stop that.
It's Oct or Nov, as always seemed likely.
Rishi doesn't seem to enjoy campaigning.
If his choice of election date is being driven purely by his own self-interest, then he might welcome the chance to hide behind the xmas/nye break in an effort to reduce the effective campaign period to only 2-3 weeks.
The party would hate it, but by that stage it would be too late to do anything about it.
(I don't actually think this will happen, not least because the other parties would start campaigning anyway as soon as it became clear what was going on. On the other hand, every other possible date has a host of problems too, so who knows...)
Here we have an Islamophobic Tweet from Lozza with a (large) hint of racism, that is also completely and utterly wrong in nearly all of its claims. Should this be kept up and community noted as it has been (community notes are one of the few things good on Twitter - albeit they were invented by the previous leadership) or removed?
Whoever it was who said "a lie travels halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on" (or whatever it was) was correct, and is even more correct in the age of social media.
There are a load of bad actors (as well as once reasonably good actors with substance abuse problems) out there who know it and exploit it, and it's very damaging for democracy.
Twitter is owned by a pretty unpleasant man (albeit a clearly talented one) who isn't really interested in the truth and doesn't see the platform's future in being a reasonably well-trusted source of very immediate breaking news and debate, but as being a sort of mesmerising bin fire fueled by outrage and counter-outrage.
Indeed, Musk personally responded to Laurence Fox's tweet with the word "wow" - which is sufficiently ambiguous as to whether it's "wow - that's an eye-opening fact, Laurence" or "wow - your ex-wife was right, you are an arsehole" that he has plausible deniability. But what's very clear he has no interest in putting out the flames, but rather in fanning them. He has essentially dismantled any sense that there are consequences for spreading malicious, hateful lies - I used to report blatantly racist stuff pre-Musk and, whilst it was a bit toothless (account suspended until they take down a by then historic post), now even calls for violence and the most obscene Islamophopic or anti-semitic stuff always just gets a standard "not in breach" message weeks later.
In terms of regulation, with the best will in the world you clearly cannot pre-clear tweets or have armies of people wading through millions of accounts, and people get things wrong or express themselves badly. But the social media companies should be required to have a functioning standards policy with some kind of effort to deal with bots and hostile power operations, and a regime that ultimately takes down accounts (targeting those with high numbers of followers) for repeated offences.
I am no longer confident about my July bet, Rishi is going to let this run and run isn't he?
I think we should take Sunak at his word; "The second half of the year", and I do think he has a date already in mind. It wont be July or August and I think he wants to use the conference season, where the Tories go last this year, as the platform to launch his pitch. I therefore think we will see him announce the date on the last day of the Tory Party conference, which is October 2nd. I suspect he wants quite a long campaign ("events, dear boy, events") so I think it is in the range of the three weeks up to and including Thursday December 12th, which is exactly 5 years since Boris´s own triumph, however pyrrhic it has turned out to be.
January screws Christmas and just looks desperate, So end of November/early December for me and if pushed, then December 12th.
I see two options 1) the polls begin to narrow a bit post Locals/London (for whatever reason - DKs firming up, methodology tinkering on the back of the results, e.g. London and YouGov), he calls it on the back of getting the first plane load (that arent paid volunteers) off to Rwanda for later July, and probably hoping Labour suffer from Bibi flattening Rafah, sick but there we are.
2) your version if not, but I think a short campaign so an early November poll. I don't think he wants a long campaign to allow any good policies Labour finally find (if any) to bed in with voters.
I am no longer confident about my July bet, Rishi is going to let this run and run isn't he?
No shit Sherlock.
You want a July election because you want the Tories to lose and Labour in Downing Street.
What possible reason has Rishi got to call an election?
It'll be January 2025.
Nah, he has no incentive to go early, it's true, Bart, but he's not daft enough to have an election campaign running through Christmas and the New Year. His own people would stop that.
It's Oct or Nov, as always seemed likely.
Rishi doesn't seem to enjoy campaigning.
If his choice of election date is being driven purely by his own self-interest, then he might welcome the chance to hide behind the xmas/nye break in an effort to reduce the effective campaign period to only 2-3 weeks.
The party would hate it, but by that stage it would be too late to do anything about it.
(I don't actually think this will happen, not least because the other parties would start campaigning anyway as soon as it became clear what was going on. On the other hand, every other possible date has a host of problems too, so who knows...)
I do think in years to come him not going as soon as he was elected will come to be seen as one of the biggest political miscalculations of recent times.
Here we have an Islamophobic Tweet from Lozza with a (large) hint of racism, that is also completely and utterly wrong in nearly all of its claims. Should this be kept up and community noted as it has been (community notes are one of the few things good on Twitter - albeit they were invented by the previous leadership) or removed?
Leave it up, with the attached community note, so that everyone can see he’s a racist tw@ who can’t get his facts right, and the 99.99% of us who aren’t racist tw@s know to avoid him.
To censor him only makes a martyr of him, and leads to the inevitable question of who should be the censors of the town square, especially when it comes to people standing for elected office.
Better that he is silent and thought to be an idiot, than opens his mouth and removes all doubt.
What about the amplification of this content and how many people believed it before the note appeared? I.e. those Musk has provided the Tweet to?
I can agree with your point in principle - but this is the kind of language that radicalises people.
If the language is seen to have crossed a line by authorities, then there are sanctions available for that. I agree that this language is potentially dangerous and could lead to problems, especially as it appears to be a pattern of behaviour from this individual - but if it’s to be deleted, that’s something for a court to decide rather than an unaccountable company able to push a particular viewpoint that can unduly influence elections, as we saw with old Twitter. In this case the Community Notes feature is working as intended.
Redditch has a 16K tory majority. It's council went Labour massively on Thursday.
Middle England.
It is not even on the target list of seats as far as I can see.
a) Different turnout b) Local elections sometimes have opposite results to general elections.
But Hung Parliament is stretching it, yes.
It’s been a bizarre few days for political ‘analysis’, I have commented on the frankly weird and disturbing incessant ramping of Hall on here masquerading as betting insight. But even that was based on initial rumours that Hall could win. She got utterly hammered. I have been away all weekend. Did we ever ascertain from where the initial notion arose?
Sorry, but weren’t you one of them?
No, I said at one stage that my view had been changed by the posts on here - and also said at the time (in the same post) that I was almost certainly being irrational. I was certainly influenced by it. But then, in the past, PB has been a generally good guide on election night. Not this time!
We (well, I) are good at collating data and drawing conclusions, and in POTUS or UKGE elections where there is a constant stream of counted votes we can discuss well. But in the gap between the end of the election and the vote counts being released we only have gossip and tittle-tattle and we (well, I) go haywire on a GIGO basis.
In the specific case of LONMAYORAL24 the only info we had was the gossip from various sources, a possible postal vote leak, and the turnout data, all of which were surprisingly favorable for Hall. Given that the only data available suggested a Hall win, the only conclusion was a Hall win. When actual count data came in, it became rapidly obvious that she had lost and PB corrected accordingly.
Lessons to be learned are as follows * We (well, I) am not good at interpreting low-quality data and should not predict until actual count data is available * We are used as a source by Twitter, which is then fed back to us, and we have a feedback loop. So we (well, I), were both cause of and sufferer of the problem * During the low-quality data period it is possible to manipulate the media and Twitter to swing the odds dramatically in such a way to accrue profit from artificially-created value bets. This offers an interesting possibility for betting engineering. * Journalists know f*** all. Wait for the count data.
Considering POTUS24 is six months away, these are good lessons to know now, yes?
I don’t believe you can possibly argue that the only data available pointed to a Hall win. All the data pointed to a Khan win, as others including myself maintained throughout. What we had on the third were some snippets of anecdata, that subsequently turned out to be nonsense (as I said at the time, postal votes are verified face down so claims from postal verifications are almost always rubbish), and some turnout data that was hardly dramatic, and probably explained - if explanation is needed - by some normally non-voters getting off their arses in Outer London to vote for Reform.
Fair point, but I discard the opinion-polls after the voting stops as no longer relevant. And given that "...what we had on the third were some snippets of anecdata...claims from postal verifications...and some turnout data", you can see the problem.
We know all this now because we are wise after event. It's how we cope at the time that's important. I went off the rails in France22 and somebody who I will not name[1] went off the rails in POTUS16 when early Florida results were good for Clinton. It's important to know why so we can avoid it in future.
[1] other than to point out he rhymes with Smobert Rithson. Don't ban me...
I feel like your "discard the opinion polls after voting stops" is where you're going wrong. When you're judging that data that arrives after close of votes and before the result, the opinion polls are part of the data that should inform your prior opinion about the outcome. The more solid that prior is, the harder it should be for the new data to change your mind. If you immediately forget all the pre-vote data you had available to base an opinion on, you treat "very close race and some signs candidate A might be doing better than expected" the same as "one candidate is a heavy favourite and some signs their opponent is doing better than expected" the same way, when for betting purposes the odds that A actually wins should be very different.
Here we have an Islamophobic Tweet from Lozza with a (large) hint of racism, that is also completely and utterly wrong in nearly all of its claims. Should this be kept up and community noted as it has been (community notes are one of the few things good on Twitter - albeit they were invented by the previous leadership) or removed?
Leave it up, with the attached community note, so that everyone can see he’s a racist tw@ who can’t get his facts right, and the 99.99% of us who aren’t racist tw@s know to avoid him.
To censor him only makes a martyr of him, and leads to the inevitable question of who should be the censors of the town square, especially when it comes to people standing for elected office.
Better that he is silent and thought to be an idiot, than opens his mouth and removes all doubt.
What about the amplification of this content and how many people believed it before the note appeared? I.e. those Musk has provided the Tweet to?
I can agree with your point in principle - but this is the kind of language that radicalises people.
If the language is seen to have crossed a line by authorities, then there are sanctions available for that. I agree that this language is potentially dangerous and could lead to problems, especially as it appears to be a pattern of behaviour from this individual - but if it’s to be deleted, that’s something for a court to decide rather than an unaccountable company able to push a particular viewpoint that can unduly influence elections, as we saw with old Twitter. In this case the Community Notes feature is working as intended.
So what about Laurence's account? It's just allowed to stay up until a court says it must be deleted or does it still stay up he's just held accountable? I think I can agree with what you are saying, I think what is troubling is that Elon himself has undermined the community notes feature.
I think the notes should be made far more visible than they are.
Redditch has a 16K tory majority. It's council went Labour massively on Thursday.
Middle England.
It is not even on the target list of seats as far as I can see.
a) Different turnout b) Local elections sometimes have opposite results to general elections.
But Hung Parliament is stretching it, yes.
It’s been a bizarre few days for political ‘analysis’, I have commented on the frankly weird and disturbing incessant ramping of Hall on here masquerading as betting insight. But even that was based on initial rumours that Hall could win. She got utterly hammered. I have been away all weekend. Did we ever ascertain from where the initial notion arose?
Sorry, but weren’t you one of them?
No, I said at one stage that my view had been changed by the posts on here - and also said at the time (in the same post) that I was almost certainly being irrational. I was certainly influenced by it. But then, in the past, PB has been a generally good guide on election night. Not this time!
We (well, I) are good at collating data and drawing conclusions, and in POTUS or UKGE elections where there is a constant stream of counted votes we can discuss well. But in the gap between the end of the election and the vote counts being released we only have gossip and tittle-tattle and we (well, I) go haywire on a GIGO basis.
In the specific case of LONMAYORAL24 the only info we had was the gossip from various sources, a possible postal vote leak, and the turnout data, all of which were surprisingly favorable for Hall. Given that the only data available suggested a Hall win, the only conclusion was a Hall win. When actual count data came in, it became rapidly obvious that she had lost and PB corrected accordingly.
Lessons to be learned are as follows * We (well, I) am not good at interpreting low-quality data and should not predict until actual count data is available * We are used as a source by Twitter, which is then fed back to us, and we have a feedback loop. So we (well, I), were both cause of and sufferer of the problem * During the low-quality data period it is possible to manipulate the media and Twitter to swing the odds dramatically in such a way to accrue profit from artificially-created value bets. This offers an interesting possibility for betting engineering. * Journalists know f*** all. Wait for the count data.
Considering POTUS24 is six months away, these are good lessons to know now, yes?
I don’t believe you can possibly argue that the only data available pointed to a Hall win. All the data pointed to a Khan win, as others including myself maintained throughout. What we had on the third were some snippets of anecdata, that subsequently turned out to be nonsense (as I said at the time, postal votes are verified face down so claims from postal verifications are almost always rubbish), and some turnout data that was hardly dramatic, and probably explained - if explanation is needed - by some normally non-voters getting off their arses in Outer London to vote for Reform.
The mystery is how Anabob as one of the very first people to have predicted a Hall win (based on nothing, as far as I can see), almost as soon as polls closed, can now be asking how this ridiculous notion arose?
Partly it's the difference in brain wiring that correlates a bit with which political instincts. An overfocus on what can go wrong makes socialism attractive, an underfocus does the same for libertarian capitalism. See the way that Blair and Starmer have trod the path to Number Ten- incredibly cautiously. You wouldn't get a Tory doing that; at their best, that optimism one of their attractive features.
One of the lessons of the last week is to ignore what party sources say, especially when it's not obvious what their basis is for saying it. The "turnout is up/down in the right places" stuff was clearly made up, but we all swallowed it a bit.
What is worth looking at is what the parties are doing. In London, Hall's campaign was obviously low-energy compared with Johnson's wins. That ought to have been a clue that she wasn't on track to win. Similarly, Labour's move of activists from Teesside to the West Midlands was a pretty good indication of where the front line of the election was.
Not much sunny optimism on ConHome. https://conservativehome.com/2024/05/05/goodbyeee/ … Half our council seats – and twelve authorities – gone. Third place behind the Liberal Democrats. Eleven mayoral races lost out of twelve. Due to the lethargic way in which the results were counted, the true extent of the pain has almost been dulled. The more one considers it, the more it seems the anti-Sunak lot stood down too early. Weren’t these the results they were hoping for?
Yet the fight seems to have gone out of the rebels. Jenkyns, Simon Clarke, and Suella Braverman – all persistent Sunak critics – have called for mythical “policy changes”, but not demand an immediate resignation. The hope amongst some is that Sunak can own the coming loss, allowing the right to swoop in post-election. The flaw in their logic is that it relies on keeping their seats.
But it’s hard to see what, say, installing Penny Mordaunt as a boat-stopping, strike-breaking, ocean-going vehicle of electoral salvation might achieve. It would rely on HMS Sword-Carrier not only being able to appease both the party’s left and right, but mimic Johnson in 2019, except without Vote Leave, the benefit of the doubt, or the overwhelming need to Get Brexit Done.
There’s nothing to stop the Prime Minister’s critics from buying ad space in the Telegraph to print “WE TOLD YOU SO” in big friendly letters. But one doesn’t sense the appetite for crowing. As with Blackadder accepting his appalling fate, there is a widespread air of resignation. Our survey and suggests the general assumption is that Sunak going would only make things worse. Our time is up.
The big push can only be avoided for so long. In a year, the Prime Minister has brought the party precisely nowhere. Even those once optimistic that he could be Johnson but competent have lost the appetite. Reboots have rung hollow. We are 20 points behind and commanding under a fifth of the vote. Rwanda is a dud, Farage will return, and the voters are miserable. Why cling on?
There will be no cunning plans. Notwithstanding the ability of Tory MPs to shoot themselves in the foot, it seems that Sunak has done terribly enough to have earnt the right to lead us slowly towards the guns later this year at the head of his denuded infantry. Our former Editor once wrote of our party in a Totentanz – a dance of death. This will be a slow, painful, and hopeless march...
That's quite coruscating. AFAICS the comments are full of people explaining why they have walked away.
YouGov should be asked why it was so out - and therefore are its other polls weighing Labour voters too heavily?
They weren't too bad on Labour: 47 in their poll, 44 in the outcome. What they got badly wrong was Hall's share: they said 25, the voters said 33.
Partly, YouGov overestimated Reform; they had Cox on 6, he ended up with 3. (That was personal- Reform got 7 percent on the assembly list.) Hall did an effective Two Horse Race/Stop Khan thing for those who wanted to stop Khan. There just weren't enough of them. And it's hard to see the same working for Starmer.
But also the final YouGov had Count Binface on three percent. Insert wry comment on joke candidates here.
Thanks, Cyclefree, an interesting read as always. It got me thinking about lawyers. Do I expect them to have higher ethical standards than the average person? Part of me does. Like doctors and chartered accountants they're meant to have a loyalty to something higher than their own interests The roll call of heroic lawyers in fiction is long. It's as long as that for doctors and much longer than for chartered accountants. Yet in truth I can't say that the lawyers I've known (numerous) have lived up to this. Perhaps that's because they've been of the corporate 'city' variety rather than anything like Rumpole or Atticus Finch. Lawyers rather like the PO ones in other words. People engaged in a well paid white-collar career rather than a profession.
You don't expect them to be heroes, Kin, but you kind of expect them to obey the law. The PO's lawyers did not.
Let's see if they get the same treatment as me and thee, if we did likewise.
What makes this stand out - from what you might call routine poor or selfish behaviour in the corporate world - is that it involves knowingly ruining the lives of innocent people. These sorts of offences tend to be thought of as inherently less serious than the physical sort and I think that's wrong. They can be just as wicked. Eg you read about people being conned out of all their savings. The victims are left not just broke but broken. Here, we have financial loss plus loss of good name and (for some) jail and loss of freedom. So as white collar crime goes this is right up there. It's violence really and I think that's the best way to think about it. A white collar crime of violence.
1) Trans 2) 20mph 3) Cyclists 4) I think we are due cash about now? 5) Tomorrow - I suggest Imperial measures 6) Then "Disabilities" 7) Small boats 8) AI, the banhammer and a reincarnation 9) Why Ed Davey is entirely responsible for the PO scandal 10) Let's level Gaza 11) Back to Trans?
Redditch has a 16K tory majority. It's council went Labour massively on Thursday.
Middle England.
It is not even on the target list of seats as far as I can see.
a) Different turnout b) Local elections sometimes have opposite results to general elections.
But Hung Parliament is stretching it, yes.
It’s been a bizarre few days for political ‘analysis’, I have commented on the frankly weird and disturbing incessant ramping of Hall on here masquerading as betting insight. But even that was based on initial rumours that Hall could win. She got utterly hammered. I have been away all weekend. Did we ever ascertain from where the initial notion arose?
They just following the GOP play-back, claim victory early and loudly and if the result is close cry foul play.
I am no longer confident about my July bet, Rishi is going to let this run and run isn't he?
I think we should take Sunak at his word; "The second half of the year", and I do think he has a date already in mind. It wont be July or August and I think he wants to use the conference season, where the Tories go last this year, as the platform to launch his pitch. I therefore think we will see him announce the date on the last day of the Tory Party conference, which is October 2nd. I suspect he wants quite a long campaign ("events, dear boy, events") so I think it is in the range of the three weeks up to and including Thursday December 12th, which is exactly 5 years since Boris´s own triumph, however pyrrhic it has turned out to be.
January screws Christmas and just looks desperate, So end of November/early December for me and if pushed, then December 12th.
I see two options 1) the polls begin to narrow a bit post Locals/London (for whatever reason - DKs firming up, methodology tinkering on the back of the results, e.g. London and YouGov), he calls it on the back of getting the first plane load (that arent paid volunteers) off to Rwanda for later July, and probably hoping Labour suffer from Bibi flattening Rafah, sick but there we are.
2) your version if not, but I think a short campaign so an early November poll. I don't think he wants a long campaign to allow any good policies Labour finally find (if any) to bed in with voters.
I was thinking 24 October (last day before the clocks go back) but that would mean calling it before conference recess. Am now shifting my position to November
Thanks, Cyclefree, an interesting read as always. It got me thinking about lawyers. Do I expect them to have higher ethical standards than the average person? Part of me does. Like doctors and chartered accountants they're meant to have a loyalty to something higher than their own interests The roll call of heroic lawyers in fiction is long. It's as long as that for doctors and much longer than for chartered accountants. Yet in truth I can't say that the lawyers I've known (numerous) have lived up to this. Perhaps that's because they've been of the corporate 'city' variety rather than anything like Rumpole or Atticus Finch. Lawyers rather like the PO ones in other words. People engaged in a well paid white-collar career rather than a profession.
You don't expect them to be heroes, Kin, but you kind of expect them to obey the law. The PO's lawyers did not.
Let's see if they get the same treatment as me and thee, if we did likewise.
What makes this stand out - from what you might call routine poor or selfish behaviour in the corporate world - is that it involves knowingly ruining the lives of innocent people. These sorts of offences tend to be thought of as inherently less serious than the physical sort and I think that's wrong. They can be just as wicked. Eg you read about people being conned out of all their savings. The victims are left not just broke but broken. Here, we have financial loss plus loss of good name and (for some) jail and loss of freedom. So as white collar crime goes this is right up there. It's violence really and I think that's the best way to think about it. A white collar crime of violence.
I've mentioned this line from CS Lewis before:
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.
It's so much easier to be cruel to someone when they only exist as a name on a document.
YouGov should be asked why it was so out - and therefore are its other polls weighing Labour voters too heavily?
They weren't too bad on Labour: 47 in their poll, 44 in the outcome. What they got badly wrong was Hall's share: they said 25, the voters said 33.
Partly, YouGov overestimated Reform; they had Cox on 6, he ended up with 3. (That was personal- Reform got 7 percent on the assembly list.) Hall did an effective Two Horse Race/Stop Khan thing for those who wanted to stop Khan. There just weren't enough of them. And it's hard to see the same working for Starmer.
But also the final YouGov had Count Binface on three percent. Insert wry comment on joke candidates here.
The 7.4% was constituency, they got 5.9% in the list YouGov had them on 8 for both in their last poll so a slight overstatement Their Constituency and List Lab/Con scores were 46 21 and 43 21 versus 40 27 and 38 26 results so a big overestimate of Labour and equally big under on Tory
Redditch has a 16K tory majority. It's council went Labour massively on Thursday.
Middle England.
It is not even on the target list of seats as far as I can see.
a) Different turnout b) Local elections sometimes have opposite results to general elections.
But Hung Parliament is stretching it, yes.
It’s been a bizarre few days for political ‘analysis’, I have commented on the frankly weird and disturbing incessant ramping of Hall on here masquerading as betting insight. But even that was based on initial rumours that Hall could win. She got utterly hammered. I have been away all weekend. Did we ever ascertain from where the initial notion arose?
They just following the GOP play-back, claim victory early and loudly and if the result is close cry foul play.
Whilst it's deeply ironic to see Anabobazina posting this as they were one of the people most on the "Hall will win train", they are right.
This site was really very bad and seemed to throw any sense or logic out of the window. The site has been very restrained, professional and objective before, so it was quite odd to see.
Here we have an Islamophobic Tweet from Lozza with a (large) hint of racism, that is also completely and utterly wrong in nearly all of its claims. Should this be kept up and community noted as it has been (community notes are one of the few things good on Twitter - albeit they were invented by the previous leadership) or removed?
Isn't that the post Musky Baby reacted to (and consequently spread it to a much wider audience)?
Yes. I said this is why it is totally unacceptable that Musk is allowed to own Twitter.
And why all Tesla owners are complicit in tolerating such behaviour.
OT Government spokesman on sky just mentioned earmarking asylum seekers for the Rwanda. Unfortunate use of words. My greyhounds have earmarks. Will they be foot shackled at the airport?
OT Government spokesman on sky just mentioned earmarking asylum seekers for the Rwanda. Unfortunate use of words. My greyhounds have earmarks. Will they be foot shackled at the airport?
I don't really see why any earmarking is needed - they are disembarking from boats nearly every day. Far better to send the message of the channel journey being a one way round trip to Rwanda.
Labour's lead over the Tories is down to just 7%, according to an updated National Equivalent Vote estimate.
Sky Elections Analyst Prof Michael Thrasher says Labour's lead needs to be double that to secure a majority. @skynews
The NEV includes votes from Mayoral contests and we know from secondary polling from the likes of YouGov and Savanta some of the Conservative Mayoral candidates, in particular, Houchen, Street and Hall were polling well in front of their parties.
For example, Savanta had Khan ahead by 13 in London but a 25 point Labour lead. I think there are similar numbers for the Tees Valley and West Midlands.
Relying on Mayoral contest numbers to inform the NEV for a Westminster election isn't valid.
Look at the Council results - look at Havant, Runnymede and Cherwell to name but three to see where the actual votes are also headed. Losing nearly 500 seats doesn't suggest a party running close in a hung Parliament - it's close to the 1996 figures and that ended up the following year with 31% for the governing party and a Labour landslide.
You also have in local contests a lot more Independents and Residents running (and with some success). Where will those votes go in a General Election?
No Scottish elections, only the Mayoral election in London and only PCC contests in Wales, Cornwall and a number of other areas - low turnout elections as well.
The NEV has been weaponised by those who want to have a stick with which to beat Starmer and Labour - all I see from last Thursday is Labour heading towards a substantial majority probably a landslide (if we use a 100+ majority as our definition) and the LDs and Greens possibly picking up the odd scrap from the table.
Here we have an Islamophobic Tweet from Lozza with a (large) hint of racism, that is also completely and utterly wrong in nearly all of its claims. Should this be kept up and community noted as it has been (community notes are one of the few things good on Twitter - albeit they were invented by the previous leadership) or removed?
Isn't that the post Musky Baby reacted to (and consequently spread it to a much wider audience)?
Yes. I said this is why it is totally unacceptable that Musk is allowed to own Twitter.
And why all Tesla owners are complicit in tolerating such behaviour.
You were one of the people that was most consequential in getting me out of the Corbyn hole on here, I am not sure I ever told you that.
OT Government spokesman on sky just mentioned earmarking asylum seekers for the Rwanda. Unfortunate use of words. My greyhounds have earmarks. Will they be foot shackled at the airport?
I don't really see why any earmarking is needed - they are disembarking from boats nearly every day. Far better to send the message of the channel journey being a one way round trip to Rwanda.
They need to pick the ones that look villainous and leave out the ones that look sympatico. Crying babies torn from mummy don't do it for the Tory propaganda.
Labour's lead over the Tories is down to just 7%, according to an updated National Equivalent Vote estimate.
Sky Elections Analyst Prof Michael Thrasher says Labour's lead needs to be double that to secure a majority. @skynews
Oh come on . That didn’t include any changes in the vote in Scotland and Wales .
It is also based on UNS. The fact that the Labour vote was hugely more efficient than 2019 is ignored. As is the total implausibility of Independents replicating their LE share in a GE.
OT Government spokesman on sky just mentioned earmarking asylum seekers for the Rwanda. Unfortunate use of words. My greyhounds have earmarks. Will they be foot shackled at the airport?
I don't really see why any earmarking is needed - they are disembarking from boats nearly every day. Far better to send the message of the channel journey being a one way round trip to Rwanda.
Erm... About that...
The one (1) person the government paid to voluntarily go to Rwanda seems to have been lost. This bodes well. (Via LouCalvey).
OT Government spokesman on sky just mentioned earmarking asylum seekers for the Rwanda. Unfortunate use of words. My greyhounds have earmarks. Will they be foot shackled at the airport?
I don't really see why any earmarking is needed - they are disembarking from boats nearly every day. Far better to send the message of the channel journey being a one way round trip to Rwanda.
They need to pick the ones that look villainous and leave out the ones that look sympatico. Crying babies torn from mummy don't do it for the Tory propaganda.
I would like to hope after the tragedy of last week that no parent is so grossly and wickedly irresponsible as to bring a babe in arms on a dangerous and overcrowded dinghy crossing.
OT Government spokesman on sky just mentioned earmarking asylum seekers for the Rwanda. Unfortunate use of words. My greyhounds have earmarks. Will they be foot shackled at the airport?
I don't really see why any earmarking is needed - they are disembarking from boats nearly every day. Far better to send the message of the channel journey being a one way round trip to Rwanda.
Erm... About that...
The one (1) person the government paid to voluntarily go to Rwanda seems to have been lost. This bodes well. (Via LouCalvey).
I am no longer confident about my July bet, Rishi is going to let this run and run isn't he?
I think we should take Sunak at his word; "The second half of the year", and I do think he has a date already in mind. It wont be July or August and I think he wants to use the conference season, where the Tories go last this year, as the platform to launch his pitch. I therefore think we will see him announce the date on the last day of the Tory Party conference, which is October 2nd. I suspect he wants quite a long campaign ("events, dear boy, events") so I think it is in the range of the three weeks up to and including Thursday December 12th, which is exactly 5 years since Boris´s own triumph, however pyrrhic it has turned out to be.
January screws Christmas and just looks desperate, So end of November/early December for me and if pushed, then December 12th.
Yep. He is bound to use the party conference as an election launchpad and hope that a series of policy announcements provides a bit of momentum. Have thought this for a long time. Can't see any logic in any other dateline.
I am no longer confident about my July bet, Rishi is going to let this run and run isn't he?
No shit Sherlock.
You want a July election because you want the Tories to lose and Labour in Downing Street.
What possible reason has Rishi got to call an election?
It'll be January 2025.
Nah, he has no incentive to go early, it's true, Bart, but he's not daft enough to have an election campaign running through Christmas and the New Year. His own people would stop that.
It's Oct or Nov, as always seemed likely.
I don't totally know how his "own people" would stop him once we get to late 2024. They can't force him to the Palace, and can't replace him at that stage. They might be fuming, but would he care?
You are probably right it is likely to be October/November. But I think there is a reasonable chance (albeit not a likelihood) that he'll push it into January. On the most basic level, the history books would then record Sunak as PM 2022-25. He could also convince himself of a rather dubious electoral rationale over it being better to have a low-key, primarily air-war campaign (with the help of the Tory press).
Looks like Israel is going in to Rafah imminently (leafleting refugees to move out of/avoid parts of the area). That's another several weeks/months of this being the hot button issue.
Looks like Israel is going in to Rafah imminently (leafleting refugees to move out of/avoid parts of the area). That's another several weeks/months of this being the hot button issue.
Netanyahu's Einzatzgruppen appear to be on the march again.
Here we have an Islamophobic Tweet from Lozza with a (large) hint of racism, that is also completely and utterly wrong in nearly all of its claims. Should this be kept up and community noted as it has been (community notes are one of the few things good on Twitter - albeit they were invented by the previous leadership) or removed?
Isn't that the post Musky Baby reacted to (and consequently spread it to a much wider audience)?
Yes. I said this is why it is totally unacceptable that Musk is allowed to own Twitter.
And why all Tesla owners are complicit in tolerating such behaviour.
You were one of the people that was most consequential in getting me out of the Corbyn hole on here, I am not sure I ever told you that.
I'm not sure how I managed to accomplish that, but you are v welcome.
OT Government spokesman on sky just mentioned earmarking asylum seekers for the Rwanda. Unfortunate use of words. My greyhounds have earmarks. Will they be foot shackled at the airport?
I don't really see why any earmarking is needed - they are disembarking from boats nearly every day. Far better to send the message of the channel journey being a one way round trip to Rwanda.
They need to pick the ones that look villainous and leave out the ones that look sympatico. Crying babies torn from mummy don't do it for the Tory propaganda.
Tbf there's a subset for whom that would be deeply satisfying.
Labour's lead over the Tories is down to just 7%, according to an updated National Equivalent Vote estimate.
Sky Elections Analyst Prof Michael Thrasher says Labour's lead needs to be double that to secure a majority. @skynews
The NEV includes votes from Mayoral contests and we know from secondary polling from the likes of YouGov and Savanta some of the Conservative Mayoral candidates, in particular, Houchen, Street and Hall were polling well in front of their parties.
For example, Savanta had Khan ahead by 13 in London but a 25 point Labour lead. I think there are similar numbers for the Tees Valley and West Midlands.
Relying on Mayoral contest numbers to inform the NEV for a Westminster election isn't valid.
Look at the Council results - look at Havant, Runnymede and Cherwell to name but three to see where the actual votes are also headed. Losing nearly 500 seats doesn't suggest a party running close in a hung Parliament - it's close to the 1996 figures and that ended up the following year with 31% for the governing party and a Labour landslide.
You also have in local contests a lot more Independents and Residents running (and with some success). Where will those votes go in a General Election?
No Scottish elections, only the Mayoral election in London and only PCC contests in Wales, Cornwall and a number of other areas - low turnout elections as well.
The NEV has been weaponised by those who want to have a stick with which to beat Starmer and Labour - all I see from last Thursday is Labour heading towards a substantial majority probably a landslide (if we use a 100+ majority as our definition) and the LDs and Greens possibly picking up the odd scrap from the table.
Sky's reporting of the NEV has been deeply irresponsible. It's designed to show the expected results of local elections if they had been held in all areas of the country.
Curtice and the BBC have, to their credit, always been very careful in pointing this out, eg.
Trying to conflate NEV/PNS with a GE prediction is misinformation of the worst sort, and I find it bizarre that Thrasher has put his name to it.
Here we have an Islamophobic Tweet from Lozza with a (large) hint of racism, that is also completely and utterly wrong in nearly all of its claims. Should this be kept up and community noted as it has been (community notes are one of the few things good on Twitter - albeit they were invented by the previous leadership) or removed?
Leave it up, with the attached community note, so that everyone can see he’s a racist tw@ who can’t get his facts right, and the 99.99% of us who aren’t racist tw@s know to avoid him.
To censor him only makes a martyr of him, and leads to the inevitable question of who should be the censors of the town square, especially when it comes to people standing for elected office.
Better that he is silent and thought to be an idiot, than opens his mouth and removes all doubt.
What about the amplification of this content and how many people believed it before the note appeared? I.e. those Musk has provided the Tweet to?
I can agree with your point in principle - but this is the kind of language that radicalises people.
If the language is seen to have crossed a line by authorities, then there are sanctions available for that. I agree that this language is potentially dangerous and could lead to problems, especially as it appears to be a pattern of behaviour from this individual - but if it’s to be deleted, that’s something for a court to decide rather than an unaccountable company able to push a particular viewpoint that can unduly influence elections, as we saw with old Twitter. In this case the Community Notes feature is working as intended.
So what about Laurence's account? It's just allowed to stay up until a court says it must be deleted or does it still stay up he's just held accountable? I think I can agree with what you are saying, I think what is troubling is that Elon himself has undermined the community notes feature.
I think the notes should be made far more visible than they are.
Lawrence’s Twitter account belongs to Lawrence, unless and until either he or Twitter are compelled otherwise by a court order.
Labour's lead over the Tories is down to just 7%, according to an updated National Equivalent Vote estimate.
Sky Elections Analyst Prof Michael Thrasher says Labour's lead needs to be double that to secure a majority. @skynews
The NEV includes votes from Mayoral contests and we know from secondary polling from the likes of YouGov and Savanta some of the Conservative Mayoral candidates, in particular, Houchen, Street and Hall were polling well in front of their parties.
For example, Savanta had Khan ahead by 13 in London but a 25 point Labour lead. I think there are similar numbers for the Tees Valley and West Midlands.
Relying on Mayoral contest numbers to inform the NEV for a Westminster election isn't valid.
Look at the Council results - look at Havant, Runnymede and Cherwell to name but three to see where the actual votes are also headed. Losing nearly 500 seats doesn't suggest a party running close in a hung Parliament - it's close to the 1996 figures and that ended up the following year with 31% for the governing party and a Labour landslide.
You also have in local contests a lot more Independents and Residents running (and with some success). Where will those votes go in a General Election?
No Scottish elections, only the Mayoral election in London and only PCC contests in Wales, Cornwall and a number of other areas - low turnout elections as well.
The NEV has been weaponised by those who want to have a stick with which to beat Starmer and Labour - all I see from last Thursday is Labour heading towards a substantial majority probably a landslide (if we use a 100+ majority as our definition) and the LDs and Greens possibly picking up the odd scrap from the table.
Sky's reporting of the NEV has been deeply irresponsible. It's designed to show the expected results of local elections if they had been held in all areas of the country.
Curtice and the BBC have, to their credit, always been very careful in pointing this out, eg.
Trying to conflate NEV/PNS with a GE prediction is misinformation of the worst sort, and I find it bizarre that Thrasher has put his name to it.
It will just help Labour turnout and sharpen tactical voting.
Here we have an Islamophobic Tweet from Lozza with a (large) hint of racism, that is also completely and utterly wrong in nearly all of its claims. Should this be kept up and community noted as it has been (community notes are one of the few things good on Twitter - albeit they were invented by the previous leadership) or removed?
Isn't that the post Musky Baby reacted to (and consequently spread it to a much wider audience)?
Yes. I said this is why it is totally unacceptable that Musk is allowed to own Twitter.
And why all Tesla owners are complicit in tolerating such behaviour.
You were one of the people that was most consequential in getting me out of the Corbyn hole on here, I am not sure I ever told you that.
I'm not sure how I managed to accomplish that, but you are v welcome.
You once from recollection told he I was being a fucking idiot lol
Here we have an Islamophobic Tweet from Lozza with a (large) hint of racism, that is also completely and utterly wrong in nearly all of its claims. Should this be kept up and community noted as it has been (community notes are one of the few things good on Twitter - albeit they were invented by the previous leadership) or removed?
Leave it up, with the attached community note, so that everyone can see he’s a racist tw@ who can’t get his facts right, and the 99.99% of us who aren’t racist tw@s know to avoid him.
To censor him only makes a martyr of him, and leads to the inevitable question of who should be the censors of the town square, especially when it comes to people standing for elected office.
Better that he is silent and thought to be an idiot, than opens his mouth and removes all doubt.
What about the amplification of this content and how many people believed it before the note appeared? I.e. those Musk has provided the Tweet to?
I can agree with your point in principle - but this is the kind of language that radicalises people.
If the language is seen to have crossed a line by authorities, then there are sanctions available for that. I agree that this language is potentially dangerous and could lead to problems, especially as it appears to be a pattern of behaviour from this individual - but if it’s to be deleted, that’s something for a court to decide rather than an unaccountable company able to push a particular viewpoint that can unduly influence elections, as we saw with old Twitter. In this case the Community Notes feature is working as intended.
So what about Laurence's account? It's just allowed to stay up until a court says it must be deleted or does it still stay up he's just held accountable? I think I can agree with what you are saying, I think what is troubling is that Elon himself has undermined the community notes feature.
I think the notes should be made far more visible than they are.
Lawrence’s Twitter account belongs to Lawrence, unless and until either he or Twitter are compelled otherwise by a court order.
But that is what I am asking you, should a court compel Twitter to remove the account or should it always be available?
OT Government spokesman on sky just mentioned earmarking asylum seekers for the Rwanda. Unfortunate use of words. My greyhounds have earmarks. Will they be foot shackled at the airport?
I don't really see why any earmarking is needed - they are disembarking from boats nearly every day. Far better to send the message of the channel journey being a one way round trip to Rwanda.
Erm... About that...
The one (1) person the government paid to voluntarily go to Rwanda seems to have been lost. This bodes well. (Via LouCalvey).
Rwanda clearly will only keep the refugees for as long as it gets paid. It will push them out the moment it gets its money. They did that for Israel and they will do the same for the United Kingdom.
Labour's lead over the Tories is down to just 7%, according to an updated National Equivalent Vote estimate.
Sky Elections Analyst Prof Michael Thrasher says Labour's lead needs to be double that to secure a majority. @skynews
Oh come on . That didn’t include any changes in the vote in Scotland and Wales .
It also didn't take into account the wards which didn't have all the major parties represented. I think election maps could only find 197 wards.
I was rather reminded of the "just a bit of fun" projections Peter Snow used to do, showing Paddy Ashdown or whoever marching into Number 10 after winning some by-election or other.
Ultimately these local elections, like the last ones, showed people finding the best way to beat the Tories in their tiny corner of the world, and taking it. Will the Lib Dem, Green or Independent votes in individual wards in Labour target seats be repeated on a comparable scale in a General Election? No chance. Similarly with anti-Tory votes in Lib Dem target seats.
I quite like Michael Thrasher, and it isn't totally illegitimate to just take some objectively true raw numbers, unfiltered by what I'd call "common sense" but someone else might call "unverified assumption", and make a "bit of fun" projection. But he does have something of a professional interest in making the election feel less of a foregone conclusion than it is.
Remember, we 'poked' them into this. It isn't Russia's fault; it's ours. The Ukrainians are Nazis and don't exist as a country, and are being led by a dictator.
So say some of the 'appeasers' on here...
No, it’s that Russia used to be The Vanguard Of Socialism. The hard left throughout the West accepted from day one of the USSR its right to rule anything touched by the Russian Empire. See the Polish independence in the 20s. They see everything up to the Baltics as Fake Countries.
Try the anarchists.
Or try the left (or council) communists - e.g. the Communist Workers' International. See Germany, Netherlands, also other countries including Britain, e.g. Sylvia Pankhurst.
(Never mind the Bordigists, except to point out that if you study their take on the Comintern and put it together with how the USSR didn't have a national anthem until 1944 you might learn something.)
Difficult to see how you could call political factions that saw themselves as to the left of Bolshevism, and were viewed by the Bolsheviks themselves as such ("Left-Wing Disorder"), as anything other than "hard left".
Many of them saw the Bolshevik revolution as fundamentally bourgeois. See Anton Pannekoek.
But I'm guessing your definition of the "hard left throughout the West" equals red flag-carrying friends of the Kremlin anyway - Leninists and Stalinists. In which case you would have proved what you assumed.
For the record, the first day of the USSR was 30 December 1922.
Be aware that some of us know something about this subject.
The way that many proclaimed anarchists and Trotskyites accidentally followed the Moscow line wasn’t especially curious.
Especially after funding ended post 89. And lots of “independent left” organisations evaporated.
The imperial nature of the USSR was perfectly evident.
Redditch has a 16K tory majority. It's council went Labour massively on Thursday.
Middle England.
It is not even on the target list of seats as far as I can see.
a) Different turnout b) Local elections sometimes have opposite results to general elections.
But Hung Parliament is stretching it, yes.
It’s been a bizarre few days for political ‘analysis’, I have commented on the frankly weird and disturbing incessant ramping of Hall on here masquerading as betting insight. But even that was based on initial rumours that Hall could win. She got utterly hammered. I have been away all weekend. Did we ever ascertain from where the initial notion arose?
Sorry, but weren’t you one of them?
No, I said at one stage that my view had been changed by the posts on here - and also said at the time (in the same post) that I was almost certainly being irrational. I was certainly influenced by it. But then, in the past, PB has been a generally good guide on election night. Not this time!
We (well, I) are good at collating data and drawing conclusions, and in POTUS or UKGE elections where there is a constant stream of counted votes we can discuss well. But in the gap between the end of the election and the vote counts being released we only have gossip and tittle-tattle and we (well, I) go haywire on a GIGO basis.
In the specific case of LONMAYORAL24 the only info we had was the gossip from various sources, a possible postal vote leak, and the turnout data, all of which were surprisingly favorable for Hall. Given that the only data available suggested a Hall win, the only conclusion was a Hall win. When actual count data came in, it became rapidly obvious that she had lost and PB corrected accordingly.
Lessons to be learned are as follows * We (well, I) am not good at interpreting low-quality data and should not predict until actual count data is available * We are used as a source by Twitter, which is then fed back to us, and we have a feedback loop. So we (well, I), were both cause of and sufferer of the problem * During the low-quality data period it is possible to manipulate the media and Twitter to swing the odds dramatically in such a way to accrue profit from artificially-created value bets. This offers an interesting possibility for betting engineering. * Journalists know f*** all. Wait for the count data.
Considering POTUS24 is six months away, these are good lessons to know now, yes?
I don’t believe you can possibly argue that the only data available pointed to a Hall win. All the data pointed to a Khan win, as others including myself maintained throughout. What we had on the third were some snippets of anecdata, that subsequently turned out to be nonsense (as I said at the time, postal votes are verified face down so claims from postal verifications are almost always rubbish), and some turnout data that was hardly dramatic, and probably explained - if explanation is needed - by some normally non-voters getting off their arses in Outer London to vote for Reform.
Fair point, but I discard the opinion-polls after the voting stops as no longer relevant. And given that "...what we had on the third were some snippets of anecdata...claims from postal verifications...and some turnout data", you can see the problem.
We know all this now because we are wise after event. It's how we cope at the time that's important. I went off the rails in France22 and somebody who I will not name[1] went off the rails in POTUS16 when early Florida results were good for Clinton. It's important to know why so we can avoid it in future.
[1] other than to point out he rhymes with Smobert Rithson. Don't ban me...
I feel like your "discard the opinion polls after voting stops" is where you're going wrong. When you're judging that data that arrives after close of votes and before the result, the opinion polls are part of the data that should inform your prior opinion about the outcome. The more solid that prior is, the harder it should be for the new data to change your mind. If you immediately forget all the pre-vote data you had available to base an opinion on, you treat "very close race and some signs candidate A might be doing better than expected" the same as "one candidate is a heavy favourite and some signs their opponent is doing better than expected" the same way, when for betting purposes the odds that A actually wins should be very different.
That's fair, @pm215. But to counter-argue for the moment. Let's point out the obvious: opinion polls are not voting data (except for exit polls possibly). If we take opinion polls as priors, we fall vulnerable to polling failures, ignoring real vote data in favour of erroneous opinion polls. So i don't think we should, although as you point out, there are advantages in doing so.
I will solve this problem by not predicting between polls close and count data coming in. You will solve this problem by using opinion polls as priors. And in November we will both see what happens.
Downing Street has shelved plans for a general election this summer, The Telegraph understands, with an autumn vote now widely expected after Tory local election defeats.
Downing Street has shelved plans for a general election this summer, The Telegraph understands, with an autumn vote now widely expected after Tory local election defeats.
It was a single Tweet from a Sun journalist, amplified that said a HALL staffer had claimed it was closer than it actually was.
The Sun's credibility is in the loo as usual but it was Laura K who sent it into orbit. Of course PBers should know better than to trust her as her sources are also terrible.
Redditch has a 16K tory majority. It's council went Labour massively on Thursday.
Middle England.
It is not even on the target list of seats as far as I can see.
a) Different turnout b) Local elections sometimes have opposite results to general elections.
But Hung Parliament is stretching it, yes.
It’s been a bizarre few days for political ‘analysis’, I have commented on the frankly weird and disturbing incessant ramping of Hall on here masquerading as betting insight. But even that was based on initial rumours that Hall could win. She got utterly hammered. I have been away all weekend. Did we ever ascertain from where the initial notion arose?
Sorry, but weren’t you one of them?
No, I said at one stage that my view had been changed by the posts on here - and also said at the time (in the same post) that I was almost certainly being irrational. I was certainly influenced by it. But then, in the past, PB has been a generally good guide on election night. Not this time!
We (well, I) are good at collating data and drawing conclusions, and in POTUS or UKGE elections where there is a constant stream of counted votes we can discuss well. But in the gap between the end of the election and the vote counts being released we only have gossip and tittle-tattle and we (well, I) go haywire on a GIGO basis.
In the specific case of LONMAYORAL24 the only info we had was the gossip from various sources, a possible postal vote leak, and the turnout data, all of which were surprisingly favorable for Hall. Given that the only data available suggested a Hall win, the only conclusion was a Hall win. When actual count data came in, it became rapidly obvious that she had lost and PB corrected accordingly.
Lessons to be learned are as follows * We (well, I) am not good at interpreting low-quality data and should not predict until actual count data is available * We are used as a source by Twitter, which is then fed back to us, and we have a feedback loop. So we (well, I), were both cause of and sufferer of the problem * During the low-quality data period it is possible to manipulate the media and Twitter to swing the odds dramatically in such a way to accrue profit from artificially-created value bets. This offers an interesting possibility for betting engineering. * Journalists know f*** all. Wait for the count data.
Considering POTUS24 is six months away, these are good lessons to know now, yes?
I don’t believe you can possibly argue that the only data available pointed to a Hall win. All the data pointed to a Khan win, as others including myself maintained throughout. What we had on the third were some snippets of anecdata, that subsequently turned out to be nonsense (as I said at the time, postal votes are verified face down so claims from postal verifications are almost always rubbish), and some turnout data that was hardly dramatic, and probably explained - if explanation is needed - by some normally non-voters getting off their arses in Outer London to vote for Reform.
Fair point, but I discard the opinion-polls after the voting stops as no longer relevant. And given that "...what we had on the third were some snippets of anecdata...claims from postal verifications...and some turnout data", you can see the problem.
We know all this now because we are wise after event. It's how we cope at the time that's important. I went off the rails in France22 and somebody who I will not name[1] went off the rails in POTUS16 when early Florida results were good for Clinton. It's important to know why so we can avoid it in future.
[1] other than to point out he rhymes with Smobert Rithson. Don't ban me...
I feel like your "discard the opinion polls after voting stops" is where you're going wrong. When you're judging that data that arrives after close of votes and before the result, the opinion polls are part of the data that should inform your prior opinion about the outcome. The more solid that prior is, the harder it should be for the new data to change your mind. If you immediately forget all the pre-vote data you had available to base an opinion on, you treat "very close race and some signs candidate A might be doing better than expected" the same as "one candidate is a heavy favourite and some signs their opponent is doing better than expected" the same way, when for betting purposes the odds that A actually wins should be very different.
That's fair, @pm215. But to counter-argue for the moment. Let's point out the obvious: opinion polls are not voting data (except for exit polls possibly). If we take opinion polls as priors, we fall vulnerable to polling failures, ignoring real vote data in favour of erroneous opinion polls. So i don't think we should, although as you point out, there are advantages in doing so.
I will solve this problem by not predicting between polls close and count data coming in. You will solve this problem by using opinion polls as priors. And in November we will both see what happens.
Opinion polls are, historically, the best available substitute for voting data.
Count rumoured are always rubbish.
Area turnouts have some minor value - the ones we had showed a differential turnout that suggested it was a bit better for Hall than Khan. Which seemed to be born out by the result - a bit better than the most recent poll, for Hall.
Between the polls closing and the declaration there is a market. Lots of value slopping around, provided you keep a cool head.
Here we have an Islamophobic Tweet from Lozza with a (large) hint of racism, that is also completely and utterly wrong in nearly all of its claims. Should this be kept up and community noted as it has been (community notes are one of the few things good on Twitter - albeit they were invented by the previous leadership) or removed?
Leave it up, with the attached community note, so that everyone can see he’s a racist tw@ who can’t get his facts right, and the 99.99% of us who aren’t racist tw@s know to avoid him.
To censor him only makes a martyr of him, and leads to the inevitable question of who should be the censors of the town square, especially when it comes to people standing for elected office.
Better that he is silent and thought to be an idiot, than opens his mouth and removes all doubt.
What about the amplification of this content and how many people believed it before the note appeared? I.e. those Musk has provided the Tweet to?
I can agree with your point in principle - but this is the kind of language that radicalises people.
If the language is seen to have crossed a line by authorities, then there are sanctions available for that. I agree that this language is potentially dangerous and could lead to problems, especially as it appears to be a pattern of behaviour from this individual - but if it’s to be deleted, that’s something for a court to decide rather than an unaccountable company able to push a particular viewpoint that can unduly influence elections, as we saw with old Twitter. In this case the Community Notes feature is working as intended.
So what about Laurence's account? It's just allowed to stay up until a court says it must be deleted or does it still stay up he's just held accountable? I think I can agree with what you are saying, I think what is troubling is that Elon himself has undermined the community notes feature.
I think the notes should be made far more visible than they are.
Lawrence’s Twitter account belongs to Lawrence, unless and until either he or Twitter are compelled otherwise by a court order.
But that is what I am asking you, should a court compel Twitter to remove the account or should it always be available?
Courts shouldn't get involved in individual accounts - it's an incredibly poor use of court time, it amplifies the accounts, and is grist to the mill to hateful inadequates like Fox.
What is needed is a regulatory regime where large social media platforms are required to have and apply policies, backed up with adequate ttechnology and resources, to protect users from the most serious, malicious or repeated hate speech and misinformation. That would be backed by serious consequences for the platform, including very large fines.
The proof of whether they do is not at the level of whether one user should or should not be banned, but whether as a whole a functioning system is in place. At present, Twitter just does not have a functioning system in place.
Here we have an Islamophobic Tweet from Lozza with a (large) hint of racism, that is also completely and utterly wrong in nearly all of its claims. Should this be kept up and community noted as it has been (community notes are one of the few things good on Twitter - albeit they were invented by the previous leadership) or removed?
Leave it up, with the attached community note, so that everyone can see he’s a racist tw@ who can’t get his facts right, and the 99.99% of us who aren’t racist tw@s know to avoid him.
To censor him only makes a martyr of him, and leads to the inevitable question of who should be the censors of the town square, especially when it comes to people standing for elected office.
Better that he is silent and thought to be an idiot, than opens his mouth and removes all doubt.
What about the amplification of this content and how many people believed it before the note appeared? I.e. those Musk has provided the Tweet to?
I can agree with your point in principle - but this is the kind of language that radicalises people.
If the language is seen to have crossed a line by authorities, then there are sanctions available for that. I agree that this language is potentially dangerous and could lead to problems, especially as it appears to be a pattern of behaviour from this individual - but if it’s to be deleted, that’s something for a court to decide rather than an unaccountable company able to push a particular viewpoint that can unduly influence elections, as we saw with old Twitter. In this case the Community Notes feature is working as intended.
So what about Laurence's account? It's just allowed to stay up until a court says it must be deleted or does it still stay up he's just held accountable? I think I can agree with what you are saying, I think what is troubling is that Elon himself has undermined the community notes feature.
I think the notes should be made far more visible than they are.
Lawrence’s Twitter account belongs to Lawrence, unless and until either he or Twitter are compelled otherwise by a court order.
But that is what I am asking you, should a court compel Twitter to remove the account or should it always be available?
Courts shouldn't get involved in individual accounts - it's an incredibly poor use of court time, it amplifies the accounts, and is grist to the mill to hateful inadequates like Fox.
What is needed is a regulatory regime where large social media platforms are required to have and apply policies, backed up with adequate ttechnology and resources, to protect users from the most serious, malicious or repeated hate speech and misinformation. That would be backed by serious consequences for the platform, including very large fines.
The proof of whether they do is not at the level of whether one user should or should not be banned, but whether as a whole a functioning system is in place. At present, Twitter just does not have a functioning system in place.
OT Government spokesman on sky just mentioned earmarking asylum seekers for the Rwanda. Unfortunate use of words. My greyhounds have earmarks. Will they be foot shackled at the airport?
I don't really see why any earmarking is needed - they are disembarking from boats nearly every day. Far better to send the message of the channel journey being a one way round trip to Rwanda.
Erm... About that...
The one (1) person the government paid to voluntarily go to Rwanda seems to have been lost. This bodes well. (Via LouCalvey).
Rwanda clearly will only keep the refugees for as long as it gets paid. It will push them out the moment it gets its money. They did that for Israel and they will do the same for the United Kingdom.
It has nothing to do with what Rwanda will or won't do. The migrants didn't want to be in Rwanda; they wanted to be in the UK. If the opportunities were in Rwanda, they'd be there already. They will be moved to Rwanda, and abscond extremely fast, freeing up space and going back to their home countries, or trying somewhere else, or, if really determined, the UK again. The system needs to be off the boat, on a flight. Then the boats will stop coming, the gangs will die out, a great evil will have been stopped, and a huge public policy problem will have been solved.
Opinion polls are, historically, the best available substitute for voting data.
Count rumoured are always rubbish.
Area turnouts have some minor value - the ones we had showed a differential turnout that suggested it was a bit better for Hall than Khan. Which seemed to be born out by the result - a bit better than the most recent poll, for Hall.
Between the polls closing and the declaration there is a market. Lots of value slopping around, provided you keep a cool head.
What I have learned is to trust the polls (i.e. they all said Khan would win) and then look for value when the markets a wobble.
There will be value betting on a Labour win when the markets inevitably have a wobble between now and the election.
If - as reported - Prof Thrasher believes Labour cannot win a majority with a lead below 14%, say 44 L - 31 C he has been kidnapped and replaced by someone more foolish.
Redditch has a 16K tory majority. It's council went Labour massively on Thursday.
Middle England.
It is not even on the target list of seats as far as I can see.
a) Different turnout b) Local elections sometimes have opposite results to general elections.
But Hung Parliament is stretching it, yes.
It’s been a bizarre few days for political ‘analysis’, I have commented on the frankly weird and disturbing incessant ramping of Hall on here masquerading as betting insight. But even that was based on initial rumours that Hall could win. She got utterly hammered. I have been away all weekend. Did we ever ascertain from where the initial notion arose?
Sorry, but weren’t you one of them?
No, I said at one stage that my view had been changed by the posts on here - and also said at the time (in the same post) that I was almost certainly being irrational. I was certainly influenced by it. But then, in the past, PB has been a generally good guide on election night. Not this time!
We (well, I) are good at collating data and drawing conclusions, and in POTUS or UKGE elections where there is a constant stream of counted votes we can discuss well. But in the gap between the end of the election and the vote counts being released we only have gossip and tittle-tattle and we (well, I) go haywire on a GIGO basis.
In the specific case of LONMAYORAL24 the only info we had was the gossip from various sources, a possible postal vote leak, and the turnout data, all of which were surprisingly favorable for Hall. Given that the only data available suggested a Hall win, the only conclusion was a Hall win. When actual count data came in, it became rapidly obvious that she had lost and PB corrected accordingly.
Lessons to be learned are as follows * We (well, I) am not good at interpreting low-quality data and should not predict until actual count data is available * We are used as a source by Twitter, which is then fed back to us, and we have a feedback loop. So we (well, I), were both cause of and sufferer of the problem * During the low-quality data period it is possible to manipulate the media and Twitter to swing the odds dramatically in such a way to accrue profit from artificially-created value bets. This offers an interesting possibility for betting engineering. * Journalists know f*** all. Wait for the count data.
Considering POTUS24 is six months away, these are good lessons to know now, yes?
I don’t believe you can possibly argue that the only data available pointed to a Hall win. All the data pointed to a Khan win, as others including myself maintained throughout. What we had on the third were some snippets of anecdata, that subsequently turned out to be nonsense (as I said at the time, postal votes are verified face down so claims from postal verifications are almost always rubbish), and some turnout data that was hardly dramatic, and probably explained - if explanation is needed - by some normally non-voters getting off their arses in Outer London to vote for Reform.
The mystery is how Anabob as one of the very first people to have predicted a Hall win (based on nothing, as far as I can see), almost as soon as polls closed, can now be asking how this ridiculous notion arose?
Partly it's the difference in brain wiring that correlates a bit with which political instincts. An overfocus on what can go wrong makes socialism attractive, an underfocus does the same for libertarian capitalism. See the way that Blair and Starmer have trod the path to Number Ten- incredibly cautiously. You wouldn't get a Tory doing that; at their best, that optimism one of their attractive features.
One of the lessons of the last week is to ignore what party sources say, especially when it's not obvious what their basis is for saying it. The "turnout is up/down in the right places" stuff was clearly made up, but we all swallowed it a bit.
What is worth looking at is what the parties are doing. In London, Hall's campaign was obviously low-energy compared with Johnson's wins. That ought to have been a clue that she wasn't on track to win. Similarly, Labour's move of activists from Teesside to the West Midlands was a pretty good indication of where the front line of the election was.
Not much sunny optimism on ConHome. https://conservativehome.com/2024/05/05/goodbyeee/ … Half our council seats – and twelve authorities – gone. Third place behind the Liberal Democrats. Eleven mayoral races lost out of twelve. Due to the lethargic way in which the results were counted, the true extent of the pain has almost been dulled. The more one considers it, the more it seems the anti-Sunak lot stood down too early. Weren’t these the results they were hoping for?
Yet the fight seems to have gone out of the rebels. Jenkyns, Simon Clarke, and Suella Braverman – all persistent Sunak critics – have called for mythical “policy changes”, but not demand an immediate resignation. The hope amongst some is that Sunak can own the coming loss, allowing the right to swoop in post-election. The flaw in their logic is that it relies on keeping their seats.
But it’s hard to see what, say, installing Penny Mordaunt as a boat-stopping, strike-breaking, ocean-going vehicle of electoral salvation might achieve. It would rely on HMS Sword-Carrier not only being able to appease both the party’s left and right, but mimic Johnson in 2019, except without Vote Leave, the benefit of the doubt, or the overwhelming need to Get Brexit Done.
There’s nothing to stop the Prime Minister’s critics from buying ad space in the Telegraph to print “WE TOLD YOU SO” in big friendly letters. But one doesn’t sense the appetite for crowing. As with Blackadder accepting his appalling fate, there is a widespread air of resignation. Our survey and suggests the general assumption is that Sunak going would only make things worse. Our time is up.
The big push can only be avoided for so long. In a year, the Prime Minister has brought the party precisely nowhere. Even those once optimistic that he could be Johnson but competent have lost the appetite. Reboots have rung hollow. We are 20 points behind and commanding under a fifth of the vote. Rwanda is a dud, Farage will return, and the voters are miserable. Why cling on?
There will be no cunning plans. Notwithstanding the ability of Tory MPs to shoot themselves in the foot, it seems that Sunak has done terribly enough to have earnt the right to lead us slowly towards the guns later this year at the head of his denuded infantry. Our former Editor once wrote of our party in a Totentanz – a dance of death. This will be a slow, painful, and hopeless march...
Yet despite all that the Sunak Tory voteshare of 25% was still higher than the 23% Brown Labour got in the 2009 local elections. The last locals before a general election saw a change of government.
The Tories also lost under 500 seats whereas in 1996, the last locals elections before the 1997 Labour landslide, the Major led Tories lost over 600 seats
Redditch has a 16K tory majority. It's council went Labour massively on Thursday.
Middle England.
It is not even on the target list of seats as far as I can see.
a) Different turnout b) Local elections sometimes have opposite results to general elections.
But Hung Parliament is stretching it, yes.
It’s been a bizarre few days for political ‘analysis’, I have commented on the frankly weird and disturbing incessant ramping of Hall on here masquerading as betting insight. But even that was based on initial rumours that Hall could win. She got utterly hammered. I have been away all weekend. Did we ever ascertain from where the initial notion arose?
Sorry, but weren’t you one of them?
No, I said at one stage that my view had been changed by the posts on here - and also said at the time (in the same post) that I was almost certainly being irrational. I was certainly influenced by it. But then, in the past, PB has been a generally good guide on election night. Not this time!
We (well, I) are good at collating data and drawing conclusions, and in POTUS or UKGE elections where there is a constant stream of counted votes we can discuss well. But in the gap between the end of the election and the vote counts being released we only have gossip and tittle-tattle and we (well, I) go haywire on a GIGO basis.
In the specific case of LONMAYORAL24 the only info we had was the gossip from various sources, a possible postal vote leak, and the turnout data, all of which were surprisingly favorable for Hall. Given that the only data available suggested a Hall win, the only conclusion was a Hall win. When actual count data came in, it became rapidly obvious that she had lost and PB corrected accordingly.
Lessons to be learned are as follows * We (well, I) am not good at interpreting low-quality data and should not predict until actual count data is available * We are used as a source by Twitter, which is then fed back to us, and we have a feedback loop. So we (well, I), were both cause of and sufferer of the problem * During the low-quality data period it is possible to manipulate the media and Twitter to swing the odds dramatically in such a way to accrue profit from artificially-created value bets. This offers an interesting possibility for betting engineering. * Journalists know f*** all. Wait for the count data.
Considering POTUS24 is six months away, these are good lessons to know now, yes?
I don’t believe you can possibly argue that the only data available pointed to a Hall win. All the data pointed to a Khan win, as others including myself maintained throughout. What we had on the third were some snippets of anecdata, that subsequently turned out to be nonsense (as I said at the time, postal votes are verified face down so claims from postal verifications are almost always rubbish), and some turnout data that was hardly dramatic, and probably explained - if explanation is needed - by some normally non-voters getting off their arses in Outer London to vote for Reform.
The mystery is how Anabob as one of the very first people to have predicted a Hall win (based on nothing, as far as I can see), almost as soon as polls closed, can now be asking how this ridiculous notion arose?
Partly it's the difference in brain wiring that correlates a bit with which political instincts. An overfocus on what can go wrong makes socialism attractive, an underfocus does the same for libertarian capitalism. See the way that Blair and Starmer have trod the path to Number Ten- incredibly cautiously. You wouldn't get a Tory doing that; at their best, that optimism one of their attractive features.
One of the lessons of the last week is to ignore what party sources say, especially when it's not obvious what their basis is for saying it. The "turnout is up/down in the right places" stuff was clearly made up, but we all swallowed it a bit.
What is worth looking at is what the parties are doing. In London, Hall's campaign was obviously low-energy compared with Johnson's wins. That ought to have been a clue that she wasn't on track to win. Similarly, Labour's move of activists from Teesside to the West Midlands was a pretty good indication of where the front line of the election was.
Not much sunny optimism on ConHome. https://conservativehome.com/2024/05/05/goodbyeee/ … Half our council seats – and twelve authorities – gone. Third place behind the Liberal Democrats. Eleven mayoral races lost out of twelve. Due to the lethargic way in which the results were counted, the true extent of the pain has almost been dulled. The more one considers it, the more it seems the anti-Sunak lot stood down too early. Weren’t these the results they were hoping for?
Yet the fight seems to have gone out of the rebels. Jenkyns, Simon Clarke, and Suella Braverman – all persistent Sunak critics – have called for mythical “policy changes”, but not demand an immediate resignation. The hope amongst some is that Sunak can own the coming loss, allowing the right to swoop in post-election. The flaw in their logic is that it relies on keeping their seats.
But it’s hard to see what, say, installing Penny Mordaunt as a boat-stopping, strike-breaking, ocean-going vehicle of electoral salvation might achieve. It would rely on HMS Sword-Carrier not only being able to appease both the party’s left and right, but mimic Johnson in 2019, except without Vote Leave, the benefit of the doubt, or the overwhelming need to Get Brexit Done.
There’s nothing to stop the Prime Minister’s critics from buying ad space in the Telegraph to print “WE TOLD YOU SO” in big friendly letters. But one doesn’t sense the appetite for crowing. As with Blackadder accepting his appalling fate, there is a widespread air of resignation. Our survey and suggests the general assumption is that Sunak going would only make things worse. Our time is up.
The big push can only be avoided for so long. In a year, the Prime Minister has brought the party precisely nowhere. Even those once optimistic that he could be Johnson but competent have lost the appetite. Reboots have rung hollow. We are 20 points behind and commanding under a fifth of the vote. Rwanda is a dud, Farage will return, and the voters are miserable. Why cling on?
There will be no cunning plans. Notwithstanding the ability of Tory MPs to shoot themselves in the foot, it seems that Sunak has done terribly enough to have earnt the right to lead us slowly towards the guns later this year at the head of his denuded infantry. Our former Editor once wrote of our party in a Totentanz – a dance of death. This will be a slow, painful, and hopeless march...
Yet despite all that the Sunak Tory voteshare of 25% was still higher than the 23% Brown Labour got in the 2009 local elections. The last locals before a general election saw a change of government.
The Tories also lost under 500 seats whereas in 1996, the last locals elections before the 1997 Labour landslide, the Major led Tories lost over 600 seats
The seats up for election in 1996 had last been fought in May 1992 - a month after the Tory success at the GE. As a result , the Tories did exceptionally well at the 1992 local elections due to the post GE honeymoon boost and,therefore, had much further to fall in 1996.
Here we have an Islamophobic Tweet from Lozza with a (large) hint of racism, that is also completely and utterly wrong in nearly all of its claims. Should this be kept up and community noted as it has been (community notes are one of the few things good on Twitter - albeit they were invented by the previous leadership) or removed?
Leave it up, with the attached community note, so that everyone can see he’s a racist tw@ who can’t get his facts right, and the 99.99% of us who aren’t racist tw@s know to avoid him.
To censor him only makes a martyr of him, and leads to the inevitable question of who should be the censors of the town square, especially when it comes to people standing for elected office.
Better that he is silent and thought to be an idiot, than opens his mouth and removes all doubt.
What about the amplification of this content and how many people believed it before the note appeared? I.e. those Musk has provided the Tweet to?
I can agree with your point in principle - but this is the kind of language that radicalises people.
If the language is seen to have crossed a line by authorities, then there are sanctions available for that. I agree that this language is potentially dangerous and could lead to problems, especially as it appears to be a pattern of behaviour from this individual - but if it’s to be deleted, that’s something for a court to decide rather than an unaccountable company able to push a particular viewpoint that can unduly influence elections, as we saw with old Twitter. In this case the Community Notes feature is working as intended.
So what about Laurence's account? It's just allowed to stay up until a court says it must be deleted or does it still stay up he's just held accountable? I think I can agree with what you are saying, I think what is troubling is that Elon himself has undermined the community notes feature.
I think the notes should be made far more visible than they are.
Lawrence’s Twitter account belongs to Lawrence, unless and until either he or Twitter are compelled otherwise by a court order.
But that is what I am asking you, should a court compel Twitter to remove the account or should it always be available?
They could, but they’d probably be better off ordering Fox to remove the offensive content, and holding him in contempt of court if he fails to do so.
Redditch has a 16K tory majority. It's council went Labour massively on Thursday.
Middle England.
It is not even on the target list of seats as far as I can see.
a) Different turnout b) Local elections sometimes have opposite results to general elections.
But Hung Parliament is stretching it, yes.
It’s been a bizarre few days for political ‘analysis’, I have commented on the frankly weird and disturbing incessant ramping of Hall on here masquerading as betting insight. But even that was based on initial rumours that Hall could win. She got utterly hammered. I have been away all weekend. Did we ever ascertain from where the initial notion arose?
They just following the GOP play-back, claim victory early and loudly and if the result is close cry foul play.
Well Piers Corbyn is now saying the vote was rigged so theres that.
If - as reported - Prof Thrasher believes Labour cannot win a majority with a lead below 14%, say 44 L - 31 C he has been kidnapped and replaced by someone more foolish.
It is simply misleading as I have stated several times, as it omits upwards of 60 Scottish and Welsh seats for labour
It is surprising and it seems the media are going with it but then our media aren't any better than politicians when spinning stories
As for the ramping of Hall I rejected it from the first rumour as Khan always was going to win London
Redfield and Wilton are polling "in the so-called ‘Blue Wall’ of affluent, southern constituencies where the party has traditionally won, but where its support has been slipping in recent years". These are Remain-orientated constituencies, but with a selection bias towards including ones where the Lib Dems are the main challenger, the threshold for inclusion is either that LDs are within 15,000 votes of the Tories or that Labour is within 10,000 votes of the Tories, so a higher bar for Labour.
The picture from the polling is still one of Labour going forward strongly since 2019 and of the LDs going backwards. The LDs vote share has been below their 2019 vote share in every single one of the R&W polls to date. So while McFadden is of course ramping Labour, I think he is justified in his comments.
Latest R&W Blue Wall polling (28/4/24) with change since GE 2019:
Ironically that could save a few Tory seats in areas like Surrey or Oxfordshire or Chelsea and Fulham where the LDs were second last time if Labour is up at their expense
Redfield and Wilton are polling "in the so-called ‘Blue Wall’ of affluent, southern constituencies where the party has traditionally won, but where its support has been slipping in recent years". These are Remain-orientated constituencies, but with a selection bias towards including ones where the Lib Dems are the main challenger, the threshold for inclusion is either that LDs are within 15,000 votes of the Tories or that Labour is within 10,000 votes of the Tories, so a higher bar for Labour.
The picture from the polling is still one of Labour going forward strongly since 2019 and of the LDs going backwards. The LDs vote share has been below their 2019 vote share in every single one of the R&W polls to date. So while McFadden is of course ramping Labour, I think he is justified in his comments.
Latest R&W Blue Wall polling (28/4/24) with change since GE 2019:
Ironically that could save a few Tory seats in areas like Surrey or Oxfordshire or Chelsea and Fulham where the LDs were second last time if Labour is up at their expense
In quite a few seats Labour is likely to jump from 3rd place to win the seat.
It was a single Tweet from a Sun journalist, amplified that said a HALL staffer had claimed it was closer than it actually was.
The Sun's credibility is in the loo as usual but it was Laura K who sent it into orbit. Of course PBers should know better than to trust her as her sources are also terrible.
Leaving aside that one of our own started predicting it here before even the Sun journalist, the salient point is that it SUITED the Tories to raise the possibility that Hall might pull off a miraculous win by late Saturday afternoon, because they knew that the possibility of such a headline-grabbing victory would make potential rebels think twice about sticking their heads above the parapet on Friday or Saturday, lest Hall’s spectacular win pulls the rug from under them.
It probably also suited a few Tories who had money on Hall to shorten her odds so they could exit their positions at a profit.
If - as reported - Prof Thrasher believes Labour cannot win a majority with a lead below 14%, say 44 L - 31 C he has been kidnapped and replaced by someone more foolish.
Particularly as we remember Cameron fell quite some way short of the lead he "needed" in 2015.
Remember, we 'poked' them into this. It isn't Russia's fault; it's ours. The Ukrainians are Nazis and don't exist as a country, and are being led by a dictator.
So say some of the 'appeasers' on here...
Who on here has said this?
The poked comment, Nick Palmer, a couple of days before Russia's invasion. A staggeringly ill-judged comment, and one that implied Putin's invasion was *our* fault. Ukrainians are Nazi's - implied by various, including Nick and, naturally, our old friend @Dura_Ace. The Ukrainians are being led by a dictator - @Dura_Ace (*) . Ukraine doesn't exist as a country: again, implied by some of those posters.
Good enough, or do you want me to find actual posts?
(*) Unsurprisingly, this is currently a thread in pro-Russian propaganda.
Yes please find the actual posts so we can judge if you are putting words into Nick Palmer's mouth that he didn't actually say.
He did. It was a few days before the invasion, back in February 2022. You can believe me or not: but he said it.
But Google doesn't appear to be behaving wrt searches for some odd reason. Perhaps my Googlefu is broken.
(If you argue the context may matter; fair enough. But I'm LOLing at your insipid defence of him over this.)
Edit: and ISTR that Nick also propagated the "We promised no eastwards NATO expansion" lie.
Redditch has a 16K tory majority. It's council went Labour massively on Thursday.
Middle England.
It is not even on the target list of seats as far as I can see.
a) Different turnout b) Local elections sometimes have opposite results to general elections.
But Hung Parliament is stretching it, yes.
It’s been a bizarre few days for political ‘analysis’, I have commented on the frankly weird and disturbing incessant ramping of Hall on here masquerading as betting insight. But even that was based on initial rumours that Hall could win. She got utterly hammered. I have been away all weekend. Did we ever ascertain from where the initial notion arose?
They just following the GOP play-back, claim victory early and loudly and if the result is close cry foul play.
Well Piers Corbyn is now saying the vote was rigged so theres that.
Hey Olly, your near namesake and guiding light Oli London is a bit of a prude, aint he?
If - as reported - Prof Thrasher believes Labour cannot win a majority with a lead below 14%, say 44 L - 31 C he has been kidnapped and replaced by someone more foolish.
Also, Con 26% = hung parliament is a "surprising" conclusion
Redditch has a 16K tory majority. It's council went Labour massively on Thursday.
Middle England.
It is not even on the target list of seats as far as I can see.
a) Different turnout b) Local elections sometimes have opposite results to general elections.
But Hung Parliament is stretching it, yes.
It’s been a bizarre few days for political ‘analysis’, I have commented on the frankly weird and disturbing incessant ramping of Hall on here masquerading as betting insight. But even that was based on initial rumours that Hall could win. She got utterly hammered. I have been away all weekend. Did we ever ascertain from where the initial notion arose?
They just following the GOP play-back, claim victory early and loudly and if the result is close cry foul play.
Well Piers Corbyn is now saying the vote was rigged so theres that.
Piers Corbyn. The worst Piers. The worst Corbyn.
I don’t think that anyone needs to worry about what sets him off.
In some areas of Britain we are now witnessing the rise of a darker, tribal, more sectarian politics which, ironically, is emerging under the banner of the so-called ‘liberal progressive’ Greens"
I do fervently hope that the Tories and their bought cheerleaders go into election night expecting a hung Parliament on a 14% lead. Will make my joy even more delicious.
I am no longer confident about my July bet, Rishi is going to let this run and run isn't he?
I think we should take Sunak at his word; "The second half of the year", and I do think he has a date already in mind. It wont be July or August and I think he wants to use the conference season, where the Tories go last this year, as the platform to launch his pitch. I therefore think we will see him announce the date on the last day of the Tory Party conference, which is October 2nd. I suspect he wants quite a long campaign ("events, dear boy, events") so I think it is in the range of the three weeks up to and including Thursday December 12th, which is exactly 5 years since Boris´s own triumph, however pyrrhic it has turned out to be.
January screws Christmas and just looks desperate, So end of November/early December for me and if pushed, then December 12th.
I am no longer confident about my July bet, Rishi is going to let this run and run isn't he?
I think we should take Sunak at his word; "The second half of the year", and I do think he has a date already in mind. It wont be July or August and I think he wants to use the conference season, where the Tories go last this year, as the platform to launch his pitch. I therefore think we will see him announce the date on the last day of the Tory Party conference, which is October 2nd. I suspect he wants quite a long campaign ("events, dear boy, events") so I think it is in the range of the three weeks up to and including Thursday December 12th, which is exactly 5 years since Boris´s own triumph, however pyrrhic it has turned out to be.
January screws Christmas and just looks desperate, So end of November/early December for me and if pushed, then December 12th.
December in 2019 was not Johnson's preferred month for a GE . He had made two unsuccessful attempts earlier in the Autumn but been blocked by the FTPA rules.
OT Government spokesman on sky just mentioned earmarking asylum seekers for the Rwanda. Unfortunate use of words. My greyhounds have earmarks. Will they be foot shackled at the airport?
I don't really see why any earmarking is needed - they are disembarking from boats nearly every day. Far better to send the message of the channel journey being a one way round trip to Rwanda.
Erm... About that...
The one (1) person the government paid to voluntarily go to Rwanda seems to have been lost. This bodes well. (Via LouCalvey).
Rwanda clearly will only keep the refugees for as long as it gets paid. It will push them out the moment it gets its money. They did that for Israel and they will do the same for the United Kingdom.
It has nothing to do with what Rwanda will or won't do. The migrants didn't want to be in Rwanda; they wanted to be in the UK. If the opportunities were in Rwanda, they'd be there already. They will be moved to Rwanda, and abscond extremely fast, freeing up space and going back to their home countries, or trying somewhere else, or, if really determined, the UK again. The system needs to be off the boat, on a flight. Then the boats will stop coming, the gangs will die out, a great evil will have been stopped, and a huge public policy problem will have been solved.
Have the Tories considered the fallout, I wonder, if it transpires that someone who was here and who we are paying Rwanda ££££££ to take off our hands, turns up here again?
Redditch has a 16K tory majority. It's council went Labour massively on Thursday.
Middle England.
It is not even on the target list of seats as far as I can see.
a) Different turnout b) Local elections sometimes have opposite results to general elections.
But Hung Parliament is stretching it, yes.
It’s been a bizarre few days for political ‘analysis’, I have commented on the frankly weird and disturbing incessant ramping of Hall on here masquerading as betting insight. But even that was based on initial rumours that Hall could win. She got utterly hammered. I have been away all weekend. Did we ever ascertain from where the initial notion arose?
Sorry, but weren’t you one of them?
No, I said at one stage that my view had been changed by the posts on here - and also said at the time (in the same post) that I was almost certainly being irrational. I was certainly influenced by it. But then, in the past, PB has been a generally good guide on election night. Not this time!
We (well, I) are good at collating data and drawing conclusions, and in POTUS or UKGE elections where there is a constant stream of counted votes we can discuss well. But in the gap between the end of the election and the vote counts being released we only have gossip and tittle-tattle and we (well, I) go haywire on a GIGO basis.
In the specific case of LONMAYORAL24 the only info we had was the gossip from various sources, a possible postal vote leak, and the turnout data, all of which were surprisingly favorable for Hall. Given that the only data available suggested a Hall win, the only conclusion was a Hall win. When actual count data came in, it became rapidly obvious that she had lost and PB corrected accordingly.
Lessons to be learned are as follows * We (well, I) am not good at interpreting low-quality data and should not predict until actual count data is available * We are used as a source by Twitter, which is then fed back to us, and we have a feedback loop. So we (well, I), were both cause of and sufferer of the problem * During the low-quality data period it is possible to manipulate the media and Twitter to swing the odds dramatically in such a way to accrue profit from artificially-created value bets. This offers an interesting possibility for betting engineering. * Journalists know f*** all. Wait for the count data.
Considering POTUS24 is six months away, these are good lessons to know now, yes?
I don’t believe you can possibly argue that the only data available pointed to a Hall win. All the data pointed to a Khan win, as others including myself maintained throughout. What we had on the third were some snippets of anecdata, that subsequently turned out to be nonsense (as I said at the time, postal votes are verified face down so claims from postal verifications are almost always rubbish), and some turnout data that was hardly dramatic, and probably explained - if explanation is needed - by some normally non-voters getting off their arses in Outer London to vote for Reform.
The mystery is how Anabob as one of the very first people to have predicted a Hall win (based on nothing, as far as I can see), almost as soon as polls closed, can now be asking how this ridiculous notion arose?
I said I had a feeling that she would win, yes. I also said that that feeling was irrational. But wasn’t the source of the national rumour! There were a series of rumours coming out, expressed in terms of great confidence. Were they from Hall’s camp? If so she is even dumber that we feared: why ramp up expectations?
Remember, we 'poked' them into this. It isn't Russia's fault; it's ours. The Ukrainians are Nazis and don't exist as a country, and are being led by a dictator.
So say some of the 'appeasers' on here...
Who on here has said this?
The poked comment, Nick Palmer, a couple of days before Russia's invasion. A staggeringly ill-judged comment, and one that implied Putin's invasion was *our* fault. Ukrainians are Nazi's - implied by various, including Nick and, naturally, our old friend @Dura_Ace. The Ukrainians are being led by a dictator - @Dura_Ace (*) . Ukraine doesn't exist as a country: again, implied by some of those posters.
Good enough, or do you want me to find actual posts?
(*) Unsurprisingly, this is currently a thread in pro-Russian propaganda.
Yes please find the actual posts so we can judge if you are putting words into Nick Palmer's mouth that he didn't actually say.
He did. It was a few days before the invasion, back in February 2022. You can believe me or not: but he said it.
But Google doesn't appear to be behaving wrt searches for some odd reason. Perhaps my Googlefu is broken.
(If you argue the context may matter; fair enough. But I'm LOLing at your insipid defence of him over this.)
Edit: and ISTR that Nick also propagated the "We promised no eastwards NATO expansion" lie.
As it happens I remember the exchanges at that time, if not the exact words.
Nick was among those saying that arming Ukraine was provoking Russia. And that Russia didn’t intend to invade.
Remember the “Tonto” row?And UK military transports being diverted around German airspace?
Voti g in Epping Forest, I had 9 votes over three papers. I could only vote labour twice. Not wishing to waste votes I voted green 6 times. What does that sat about Thrashers calculations?
I feel that if Laurence Fox wants to keep his twitter account open in a way to provide regular donations to 'woke' causes than he should be allowed to do so.
Remember, we 'poked' them into this. It isn't Russia's fault; it's ours. The Ukrainians are Nazis and don't exist as a country, and are being led by a dictator.
So say some of the 'appeasers' on here...
Who on here has said this?
The poked comment, Nick Palmer, a couple of days before Russia's invasion. A staggeringly ill-judged comment, and one that implied Putin's invasion was *our* fault. Ukrainians are Nazi's - implied by various, including Nick and, naturally, our old friend @Dura_Ace. The Ukrainians are being led by a dictator - @Dura_Ace (*) . Ukraine doesn't exist as a country: again, implied by some of those posters.
Good enough, or do you want me to find actual posts?
(*) Unsurprisingly, this is currently a thread in pro-Russian propaganda.
I'd rather put an Asian Hornet under my foreskin than indulge in a tedious to and fro about who said what about Ukraine, but if you state that someone has said something it's traditional to back it up with a quote. At least you've slipped in a qualifying 'implied' now.
So... as the search appears to be a little buggered, I guess you want posters to record everything that people write on the site? That's a bit... obsessive?
I am no longer confident about my July bet, Rishi is going to let this run and run isn't he?
I think we should take Sunak at his word; "The second half of the year", and I do think he has a date already in mind. It wont be July or August and I think he wants to use the conference season, where the Tories go last this year, as the platform to launch his pitch. I therefore think we will see him announce the date on the last day of the Tory Party conference, which is October 2nd. I suspect he wants quite a long campaign ("events, dear boy, events") so I think it is in the range of the three weeks up to and including Thursday December 12th, which is exactly 5 years since Boris´s own triumph, however pyrrhic it has turned out to be.
January screws Christmas and just looks desperate, So end of November/early December for me and if pushed, then December 12th.
I am no longer confident about my July bet, Rishi is going to let this run and run isn't he?
I think we should take Sunak at his word; "The second half of the year", and I do think he has a date already in mind. It wont be July or August and I think he wants to use the conference season, where the Tories go last this year, as the platform to launch his pitch. I therefore think we will see him announce the date on the last day of the Tory Party conference, which is October 2nd. I suspect he wants quite a long campaign ("events, dear boy, events") so I think it is in the range of the three weeks up to and including Thursday December 12th, which is exactly 5 years since Boris´s own triumph, however pyrrhic it has turned out to be.
January screws Christmas and just looks desperate, So end of November/early December for me and if pushed, then December 12th.
December in 2019 was not Johnson's preferred month for a GE . He had made two unsuccessful attempts earlier in the Autumn but been blocked by the FTPA rules.
As I recall, it was the SNP’s choice, which first the LibDem and then Labour fell for?
Comments
January screws Christmas and just looks desperate, So end of November/early December for me and if pushed, then December 12th.
Or try the left (or council) communists - e.g. the Communist Workers' International. See Germany, Netherlands, also other countries including Britain, e.g. Sylvia Pankhurst.
(Never mind the Bordigists, except to point out that if you study their take on the Comintern and put it together with how the USSR didn't have a national anthem until 1944 you might learn something.)
Here you go:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_communism
Difficult to see how you could call political factions that saw themselves as to the left of Bolshevism, and were viewed by the Bolsheviks themselves as such ("Left-Wing Disorder"), as anything other than "hard left".
Many of them saw the Bolshevik revolution as fundamentally bourgeois. See Anton Pannekoek.
But I'm guessing your definition of the "hard left throughout the West" equals red flag-carrying friends of the Kremlin anyway - Leninists and Stalinists. In which case you would have proved what you assumed.
For the record, the first day of the USSR was 30 December 1922.
Be aware that some of us know something about this subject.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1786828547581264118
Is Elon okay?
If his choice of election date is being driven purely by his own self-interest, then he might welcome the chance to hide behind the xmas/nye break in an effort to reduce the effective campaign period to only 2-3 weeks.
The party would hate it, but by that stage it would be too late to do anything about it.
(I don't actually think this will happen, not least because the other parties would start campaigning anyway as soon as it became clear what was going on. On the other hand, every other possible date has a host of problems too, so who knows...)
There are a load of bad actors (as well as once reasonably good actors with substance abuse problems) out there who know it and exploit it, and it's very damaging for democracy.
Twitter is owned by a pretty unpleasant man (albeit a clearly talented one) who isn't really interested in the truth and doesn't see the platform's future in being a reasonably well-trusted source of very immediate breaking news and debate, but as being a sort of mesmerising bin fire fueled by outrage and counter-outrage.
Indeed, Musk personally responded to Laurence Fox's tweet with the word "wow" - which is sufficiently ambiguous as to whether it's "wow - that's an eye-opening fact, Laurence" or "wow - your ex-wife was right, you are an arsehole" that he has plausible deniability. But what's very clear he has no interest in putting out the flames, but rather in fanning them. He has essentially dismantled any sense that there are consequences for spreading malicious, hateful lies - I used to report blatantly racist stuff pre-Musk and, whilst it was a bit toothless (account suspended until they take down a by then historic post), now even calls for violence and the most obscene Islamophopic or anti-semitic stuff always just gets a standard "not in breach" message weeks later.
In terms of regulation, with the best will in the world you clearly cannot pre-clear tweets or have armies of people wading through millions of accounts, and people get things wrong or express themselves badly. But the social media companies should be required to have a functioning standards policy with some kind of effort to deal with bots and hostile power operations, and a regime that ultimately takes down accounts (targeting those with high numbers of followers) for repeated offences.
1) the polls begin to narrow a bit post Locals/London (for whatever reason - DKs firming up, methodology tinkering on the back of the results, e.g. London and YouGov), he calls it on the back of getting the first plane load (that arent paid volunteers) off to Rwanda for later July, and probably hoping Labour suffer from Bibi flattening Rafah, sick but there we are.
2) your version if not, but I think a short campaign so an early November poll. I don't think he wants a long campaign to allow any good policies Labour finally find (if any) to bed in with voters.
If this week's poll sees a leap in YouGov Tory VI we know they've probably tinkered
I think the notes should be made far more visible than they are.
Partly, YouGov overestimated Reform; they had Cox on 6, he ended up with 3. (That was personal- Reform got 7 percent on the assembly list.) Hall did an effective Two Horse Race/Stop Khan thing for those who wanted to stop Khan. There just weren't enough of them. And it's hard to see the same working for Starmer.
But also the final YouGov had Count Binface on three percent. Insert wry comment on joke candidates here.
I think it will seriously annoy the public and I’d expect them to get even more hammered at the election if they do that .
2) 20mph
3) Cyclists
4) I think we are due cash about now?
5) Tomorrow - I suggest Imperial measures
6) Then "Disabilities"
7) Small boats
8) AI, the banhammer and a reincarnation
9) Why Ed Davey is entirely responsible for the PO scandal
10) Let's level Gaza
11) Back to Trans?
Until January 2025
Sky Elections Analyst Prof Michael Thrasher says Labour's lead needs to be double that to secure a majority.
@skynews
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.
It's so much easier to be cruel to someone when they only exist as a name on a document.
YouGov had them on 8 for both in their last poll so a slight overstatement
Their Constituency and List Lab/Con scores were 46 21 and 43 21 versus 40 27 and 38 26 results so a big overestimate of Labour and equally big under on Tory
This site was really very bad and seemed to throw any sense or logic out of the window. The site has been very restrained, professional and objective before, so it was quite odd to see.
Government spokesman on sky just mentioned earmarking asylum seekers for the Rwanda. Unfortunate use of words. My greyhounds have earmarks. Will they be foot shackled at the airport?
For example, Savanta had Khan ahead by 13 in London but a 25 point Labour lead. I think there are similar numbers for the Tees Valley and West Midlands.
Relying on Mayoral contest numbers to inform the NEV for a Westminster election isn't valid.
Look at the Council results - look at Havant, Runnymede and Cherwell to name but three to see where the actual votes are also headed. Losing nearly 500 seats doesn't suggest a party running close in a hung Parliament - it's close to the 1996 figures and that ended up the following year with 31% for the governing party and a Labour landslide.
You also have in local contests a lot more Independents and Residents running (and with some success). Where will those votes go in a General Election?
No Scottish elections, only the Mayoral election in London and only PCC contests in Wales, Cornwall and a number of other areas - low turnout elections as well.
The NEV has been weaponised by those who want to have a stick with which to beat Starmer and Labour - all I see from last Thursday is Labour heading towards a substantial majority probably a landslide (if we use a 100+ majority as our definition) and the LDs and Greens possibly picking up the odd scrap from the table.
The fact that the Labour vote was hugely more efficient than 2019 is ignored.
As is the total implausibility of Independents replicating their LE share in a GE.
The one (1) person the government paid to voluntarily go to Rwanda seems to have been lost. This bodes well. (Via LouCalvey).
https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1787427700203716891
Full story in the Express:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1895779/rwanda-migrants-uk-hotel-empty
You are probably right it is likely to be October/November. But I think there is a reasonable chance (albeit not a likelihood) that he'll push it into January. On the most basic level, the history books would then record Sunak as PM 2022-25. He could also convince himself of a rather dubious electoral rationale over it being better to have a low-key, primarily air-war campaign (with the help of the Tory press).
Curtice and the BBC have, to their credit, always been very careful in pointing this out, eg.
Trying to conflate NEV/PNS with a GE prediction is misinformation of the worst sort, and I find it bizarre that Thrasher has put his name to it.
Ultimately these local elections, like the last ones, showed people finding the best way to beat the Tories in their tiny corner of the world, and taking it. Will the Lib Dem, Green or Independent votes in individual wards in Labour target seats be repeated on a comparable scale in a General Election? No chance. Similarly with anti-Tory votes in Lib Dem target seats.
I quite like Michael Thrasher, and it isn't totally illegitimate to just take some objectively true raw numbers, unfiltered by what I'd call "common sense" but someone else might call "unverified assumption", and make a "bit of fun" projection. But he does have something of a professional interest in making the election feel less of a foregone conclusion than it is.
Especially after funding ended post 89. And lots of “independent left” organisations evaporated.
The imperial nature of the USSR was perfectly evident.
I will solve this problem by not predicting between polls close and count data coming in. You will solve this problem by using opinion polls as priors. And in November we will both see what happens.
https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1787219592412037135
It was a single Tweet from a Sun journalist, amplified that said a HALL staffer had claimed it was closer than it actually was.
The Sun's credibility is in the loo as usual but it was Laura K who sent it into orbit. Of course PBers should know better than to trust her as her sources are also terrible.
Count rumoured are always rubbish.
Area turnouts have some minor value - the ones we had showed a differential turnout that suggested it was a bit better for Hall than Khan. Which seemed to be born out by the result - a bit better than the most recent poll, for Hall.
Between the polls closing and the declaration there is a market. Lots of value slopping around, provided you keep a cool head.
What is needed is a regulatory regime where large social media platforms are required to have and apply policies, backed up with adequate ttechnology and resources, to protect users from the most serious, malicious or repeated hate speech and misinformation. That would be backed by serious consequences for the platform, including very large fines.
The proof of whether they do is not at the level of whether one user should or should not be banned, but whether as a whole a functioning system is in place. At present, Twitter just does not have a functioning system in place.
“The war on woke is a joke for most young people.”
Focusing on culture wars is driving young voters away from the Conservative Party, says former private secretary to Margaret Thatcher
@CarolineSlocock
Correct. 100%.
There will be value betting on a Labour win when the markets inevitably have a wobble between now and the election.
🔵 Biden 49% (+4)
🔴 Trump 45%
Ipsos #17 - LV - 4/30
https://twitter.com/PpollingNumbers/status/1787112781096878284
It’s easier to hold a British individual in contempt of a British court, than to try and drag up an executive of an American company which wishes to protect freedom of speech to a very high level. Twitter recently reacted to an Australian court order by barring access to the offensive content only in Australia. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/22/elon-musk-x-twitter-stephen-jones-content-removal-order-sydney-stabbings
It is surprising and it seems the media are going with it but then our media aren't any better than politicians when spinning stories
As for the ramping of Hall I rejected it from the first rumour as Khan always was going to win London
Wiki has it 48-37.
Which is quite a thumping tbh.
Will Sunak be rolling out the red carpet for Xi too?
It probably also suited a few Tories who had money on Hall to shorten her odds so they could exit their positions at a profit.
Those that fell for it were played.
But Google doesn't appear to be behaving wrt searches for some odd reason. Perhaps my Googlefu is broken.
(If you argue the context may matter; fair enough. But I'm LOLing at your insipid defence of him over this.)
Edit: and ISTR that Nick also propagated the "We promised no eastwards NATO expansion" lie.
https://x.com/OliLondonTV/status/1787214865758597196
Lopetegui will be new manager next season.
is a "surprising" conclusion
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/06/gender-specific-toilets-to-be-required-in-non-residential-buildings-in-england
I don’t think that anyone needs to worry about what sets him off.
In some areas of Britain we are now witnessing the rise of a darker, tribal, more sectarian politics which, ironically, is emerging under the banner of the so-called ‘liberal progressive’ Greens"
https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1787422914385428734
Will make my joy even more delicious.
irrational. But wasn’t the source of the
national rumour! There were a series of rumours coming out, expressed in terms of great confidence. Were they from Hall’s camp? If so she is even dumber that we feared: why ramp up expectations?
Nick was among those saying that arming Ukraine was provoking Russia. And that Russia didn’t intend to invade.
Remember the “Tonto” row?And UK military transports being diverted around German airspace?
But if you want to call me a liar, fine.