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The Swinney slump doesn’t look like stopping – politicalbetting.com
The Swinney slump doesn’t look like stopping – politicalbetting.com
Holyrood Constituency Voting Intention:SNP 33% (-2)LAB 32% (+1)CON 17% (+1)LD 9% (+1)GRN 5% (nc)OTH 3% (-2)F/w 23rd – 27th May 2024. Changes vs. 25th January 2024. pic.twitter.com/cUouTBMAgP
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Scotland is becoming politically rather interesting. Where would the major Labour pickups be? Edinburgh, Glasgow, the southern coal belt, perhaps. Anywhere else?
Starmer, by contrast, seems wary of any hubris and is intent on avoiding giving new hostages to fortune. The only really silly things he's done so far are VAT on private school fees and Diane Abbott's in and out situation.
I suppose north of the border Swinney could turn it round, or at least, with 45% backing Indy has a better chance too, but he's no campaigner and if he urges the SNP will stand up for Scotland better than Labour he immediately faces the question 'how come you haven't then?'
NEW. The Labour Party has EXTENDED its lead over the Conservatives, according to the first exclusive YouGov poll of the campaign for Sky News
The Great Britain poll - conducted on Mon and Tue this week - puts Labour on 47%, the Tories on 20%, Reform on 12%, the LibDems on 9% and Greens on 7%.
https://x.com/antoguerrera/status/1795683085943525716
How many people will actually change their vote based on Diane Abbott being given the whip back and barred from standing at the same time?
Perhaps they should. It raises concerns about Starmer's management skills. Just as Williamson and Zahawi should have been the reddest of red flags about Sunak. But they won't.
Caveat venditor.
The closest thing I can recall is when Red Ken had that mad phase when he couldn’t finish a sentence without “anyway, Hitler…”.
The parcel of rogues is protean and immortal; I’m moderately unionist but I do feel for the Nats who are so grievously let down by their politicians.
Blair managed to keep that going for the best part of a decade.
Oh and when he did that I don't think he quite realised the GDPR/DPA issues it would cause.
LOL.
"According to the Swiss national body, Transmutex’s technology could help reduce the volume of nuclear waste generated by 80 percent and reduce the time it remains radioactive to less than 500 years. More importantly, the technology could also be applied to 99 percent of existing nuclear waste."
https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/nuclear-waste-reduction-tech
“If it can be demonstrated to work, you basically get the best of both worlds,” said Jack Henderson, chair of the nuclear physics group at the UK’s Institute of Physics and a researcher at the University of Surrey. “You are able to reduce the level of radioactivity produced by burning up some of the longer-lived isotopes produced in your reactor — and you get energy out at the same time.”"
https://www.ft.com/content/286490fd-9181-4c94-8444-a5a19621bbe6
She remains the dahl-ing of the party membership.
"BREAKING: Palestine Action cut Leonardo’s Edinburgh factory’s internet cables, disrupting the producers of targeting systems for Israel’s F-35 fighter jets."
https://x.com/Pal_action/status/1795437306893193325
Kier Starmer will never recover from this. Any other leader would be 28% ahead
https://x.com/jaymurphs11/status/1795700651558924312
You couldn't really give her a peerage without it looking grubby in another way.
Yes, they've handled it badly. But let's not pretend this is someone who is entirely blameless getting the boot for factional reasons rather than someone who holds some pretty dismal views that are now, thankfully, not acceptable within Labour. Who Labour were in a quandary about dealing with in the harsh way might otherwise have done because she holds significance for other reasons.
5 weeks left to go for the swingback theory to come true...
What will they throw at the wall next?
2. Dumb MSP doesn't understand how WIFI works. Or what roaming charges are
3. Public contract for cellular WIFI appears not to have a hard stop point on roaming charges. Seriously? Who negotiates these things?
4. MSP runs up £11k bill watching the footy with his kids
5. SNP decides that any public outrage on this incident is a public outrage
6. Replacement replacement SNP Leader and FM forgets he doesn't have a majority and declares that all patriotic Scots will repel the English smear that £11k to watch the fitba isn't a good use of public money
7. Parliament says "naw"
8. Whoops Apocalypse. "Austerity, Brexit and the Cost of Living" says the SNP alternative back-up leader. How does burning £11k of our money work for you mate?
The SNP has moved to shore itself up in NE with oil policy, and will hope that the Tories are unpopular enough that its foray into gender matters won't totally destroy its Tartan Tory appeal in the north. But it isn't where the numbers are.
It seems it's the natural Tories and the extreme-lefties on here who think she's been hard done by. Odd bedfellows.
Diane Abbott received a private letter from the Labour Chief Whip yesterday telling her that she was back in the parliamentary party, as AnushkaAsthana revealed. Abbott believed that would be the precursor to her own announcement that she would be retiring, to be accompanied by a flurry of tributes for her service from Starmer and others. That elegant departure had been under negotiation for weeks I am told - which is why she felt badly let down when the Times was briefed that she had been banned from running in this election. All she wanted, I understand, was the dignity of being able to say she was choosing to stand down. This looks like a mess that could have been avoided.
https://twitter.com/Peston/status/1795717746203771378
"Self-important campaign aide blabbing unhelpfully" is always pretty plausible. Someone might be about to get a very long leaflet round to do.
I'm more concerned at the confused message he's sending, if only because it seems to have pissed off absolutely everyone. If he'd let her quietly rejoin to retire, or expelled her and banned her, then at least one side would have been happy.
Doesn't say much for his judgement.
Edit - although in light of Stuart's post it seems Starmer may have been trying for option A when somebody sabotaged it. So I may be being unfair to him.
Edit: just seen your edit. That's the way it seems to me.
(This was farcical, if nobody has seen it:
https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/pcb-and-shaheen-afridi-hold-crisis-talks-after-statement-furore-1427275 )
YouGov will cheer up the Labour team though, and im sure they wont make the mistake of over interpreting one poll just as they warned last night!
Though being located so close to the Muirhouse/Pilton/Granton stink pit* does not suggest they are that bothered about security.
*I might be moving there shortly
d. At 07:49:40 hr, the aircraft experienced a rapid change in G as recorded vertical acceleration decreased from +ve 1.35G to negative (-ve) 1.5G, within 0.6 sec. This likely resulted in the occupants who were not belted up to become airborne.
e. At 07:49:41 hr, the vertical acceleration changed from -ve 1.5G to +ve 1.5G within 4 sec. This likely resulted in the occupants who were airborne to fall back down.
f. The rapid changes in G over the 4.6 sec duration resulted in an altitude drop of 178 ft, from 37,362 ft to 37,184 ft. This sequence of events likely caused the injuries to the crew and passengers
https://www.mot.gov.sg/news/press-releases/Details/transport-safety-investigation-bureau-preliminary-investigation-findings-of-incident-involving-sq321
https://x.com/skynews/status/1795712956883140690?s=46
I won't give the full details away (pay for quality research / opinions if the person wants to be paid for their opinion) but he repeats that the Labour vote is efficient - the Green / workers party votes are coming from seats where Labour has a big enough majority that the lost votes don't really matter that much.
In the interests of balance, I’m quite in favour of reducing university attendance and increasing apprenticeships, though I would fully expect Rishi to somehow make an absolute bollix of delivering it.
The Corbyn thing, I entirely get. Whether or not Corbyn wins in Islington (and he may well) it's simply helpful to detoxifying Labour that Corbyn has very visibly been cast out of Labour.
But Abbott isn't toxic in that way (and is a bit of an icon for some simply as first black female MP), and this has festered far too long. Similarly, the relationship with Duffield appears dire, and he's done little personally to resolve it.
I suspect he'll get real problems over this sort of thing when, inevitably, he has to disappoint people in reshuffles etc. That's particularly problematic if he wins big - he'll simply be managing a lot more people with fewer opportunities to keep them happy with jobs.
https://www.bombercommandmuseum.ca/bomber-command/gun-turrets/
A valid point, but misses the fact that nowacasters like todays YouGov are telling us how a GE would go if the DKs dont vote. Both methodologues are thus susceptible to inaccuracy
"No, it can't be true. I can't be so massively disconnected from what most people think.
The polls must all be wrong."
London St Pancras to Luton Airport Parkway goes from one gleaming new station to another gleaming new station
And it takes…. 24 minutes
https://x.com/kensayshitler?lang=en-GB
On Mathieson, I'm still a little baffled as to how it blew up like this.
It's a twat wasting lots of money by doing the wrong thing, and then failing to take responsibility for himself.
That's not exactly huge.
I wonder if there will be some sort of Hackney/Islington axis of allotment socialism with Abbot and Corbyn aligning to both stand.
Wouldn’t blame them tbh and while I wouldn’t vote for them I have a lot more good will towards them than I do Galloway. There is a space on the far left for a socially liberal group, even though the tendency there is towards conservative authoritarianism.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/may/29/diane-abbott-banned-standing-labour-election
'Probably' would have been better but neither was necessary in this instance.
or something a bit like it will happen despite the evidence? "It can't be true" (though I don't mind if it is) is running through a multitude of PB minds.
At this point, don’t rule out Sunak slipping on a literal banana skin.
We had some very dodgy interpretations of some polling questions earlier this year too (was it the Telegraph I remember?). At least we haven't had too much of that yet.
1.) It would have been far better if had been allowed to stand down with some dignity given her historic status and some of the appalling abuse she gets. Shame on whoever's briefing screwed that up.
But...
2.) Some of those either expressing or confecting outrage that it hasn't worked out like that seem to be forgetting (deliberately or otherwise) she's got a pretty long and dismal record of crossing or pushing the line on views Labour has been trying to root out as unacceptable since 2020.
So the botching of it is less out of being vindictive to someone blameless - if they were doing that they'd have cast her out yonks ago and taken the local hit - as did with Corbyn and have done with prominent non-MPs. Than failed management of sensitivities around offering someone a dignified exit.
I certainly don't think shunting her to the Lords would be a good look.