Can we believe the MRP polling? Take North Shropshire: More in Common Con 42, Labour 30, Lib Dem 13 Reform 6, Green 10 YouGov: Lib Dem 40, Cons 25, Labour 18, Reform 11, Green 5
Which one is right or are they both up the creek? Same up in Scotland according to MRP SNP will take all the existing Lib Dem seats bar Orkney where they are just 1 point behind! Whereas YouGov has them being held comfortably by the Lib Dems. There are many other similar situations in other forecasts of who is ahead whether it is Labour, Cons Lib Dems
Am I the only one on here that has taken the 8/1 from SkyBet on SKS getting fewer actual votes than the 12.9m in 2017?
Is 8/1 not fantastic value?
No, it could be a good bet if turnout is down..
The last election had 47m registered and a turnout of 67% = c.32m votes. 2017 election had 47m registered and a turnout of 69% = c.33m votes. Corbyn’s 12.9m was 40%
So if we assume 48m registered, but a turnout of say 60% (as in 2001), that’s 28.8m votes in total, so 12.9m votes is just under 45%
At 8/1 that’s actually a pretty good bet. @bigjohnowls
All of this confirms to me that if the Tories had a centrist candidate that people like me could vote for, they'd be walking this.
Whether you are joking or not, the Cons made a decision to pander to the extreme. But it didn't work. It was never going to work. Because they will never be extreme enough to satisfy the extreme and lo, look at Nige returning.
They *should* have given up the absurd "lead by Francois" approach and gone straight back to the "centre". Thing is, with the finances so blown up by Covid and people beaten down by CoL/Ukraine they had precious little wiggle room.
As the next government will find out on July 5th.
I would be up for voting Tory if they offered anything to younger people. They're open to win my vote at the next election should they want to.
Thanks all again for your advice and thoughts yday. Aunt duly reported to insurance company and let them handle it. Didn't report it to plod but will take advice from insurers.
AUNT UPDATE II: I went round to hers to discuss it all last night and there was a knock on the door. I don't want to dox anyone, least of all myself or my aunt, but she lives in what I would say was one of the nicest streets in one of the nicest parts of her constituency. The door-knocker was a fresh-faced Lab canvasser. I recoiled and recovered only to congratulate him on covering the area. I took a leaflet and bade him farewell and good luck. Lab really are going for it.
A gentleman as ever, Topping. Will you be voting Labour this time? How about Auntie?
Every marker is pointing to a 1997 result. I know we don't believe it - well some of us don't - but it's time to consider that it really is going to happen on current trends.
Yep, I think we end up with a 15 point labour win and 1997ish seat totals
A large amount of people on here still think Labour will struggle to hit the 1997 total and I massively encourage them to bet on it at the current great odds.
There’s still a lot that *could* happen but time is running out.
I’m one of them. I just cannot envisage Sir Keir beating Sir Tony’s 1997 total. I could be wrong - it’s been known.
The D-Day commemorations are very moving to watch, especially knowing that this is likely to be the last time veterans of WWII gather for such an event.
All of this confirms to me that if the Tories had a centrist candidate that people like me could vote for, they'd be walking this.
Whether you are joking or not, the Cons made a decision to pander to the extreme. But it didn't work. It was never going to work. Because they will never be extreme enough to satisfy the extreme and lo, look at Nige returning.
They *should* have given up the absurd "lead by Francois" approach and gone straight back to the "centre". Thing is, with the finances so blown up by Covid and people beaten down by CoL/Ukraine they had precious little wiggle room.
As the next government will find out on July 5th.
You've hit the nail on the head. This isn't about nuance.
All of this confirms to me that if the Tories had a centrist candidate that people like me could vote for, they'd be walking this.
Whether you are joking or not, the Cons made a decision to pander to the extreme. But it didn't work. It was never going to work. Because they will never be extreme enough to satisfy the extreme and lo, look at Nige returning.
They *should* have given up the absurd "lead by Francois" approach and gone straight back to the "centre". Thing is, with the finances so blown up by Covid and people beaten down by CoL/Ukraine they had precious little wiggle room.
As the next government will find out on July 5th.
But they're not pandering to the extreme. They're talking right but not actually acting right. Cameron talked centre and acted centre; arguably Cameron talked centre and acted right. And was moderately successful. Talking right and acting right might also be successful, but hasn't really been tried since Thatcher. But talking right and acting left just pisses everyone off.
Once again we have 60% saying they will definitely vote and 19% saying they will probably vote so I'm still thinking of turnout in the low to mid 70s yet there seema a general view on here turnout will be low. 75% wouldn't be too bad in the context of recent GEs.
A quick glance down the data tables (and I'm delighted to see some proper detail on the sampling) and it "smells" reasonable.
Am I the only one on here that has taken the 8/1 from SkyBet on SKS getting fewer actual votes than the 12.9m in 2017?
Is 8/1 not fantastic value?
I agree that you have found a great bet there. Even if we manage to get a higher vote share, a reduction in turnout will make you a winner. Good luck!
Turnout at this election is a tricky question. Low, high or medium? It seems to me there is a strong sense of the importance of the election, but no sense at all of what the ideological fork in the road, if any, would be about. 2017 and 2019 were ideological elections as well as highly special on account of Brexit.
In most seats the hard left have no-one to vote for, unlike 2017 and 2019.
The importance is focussed on the necessity of getting one lot out and having a reset, but there is also a certainty that this will happen.
My guess is turnout lower than 2017 and 2019, but higher than the really boring elections like 2001, 2005.
@hzeffman Breaking: The Conservatives accepted £5 million from the controversial donor Frank Hester's company in January, new Electoral Commission figures show.
It follows £10 million of donations last year
Perhaps, but Labours going to take £2000 from every voter.
Probably more.
Quite possible, given the precedent our current government has just set.
The average household is paying £3,500 more in tax now than in 2019. The biggest tax raising parliament in UK history.
And I don’t blame the Tories for doing this. They probably should have raised more. Our public infrastructure, services and local government are on their knees after years of no investment.
Or were raising record taxes but spending it on the wrong things.
What would CoE Alanbrooke have stopped spending money on?
Woke diversity consultants in the NHS?
I answered this yesterday - some examples
Major cutback on Quangos theres £82billion to go at Restructure the BoE debt No new IT projects for the duration of parliament - they always overrun Reform MoD procurement for more value for money Restore public sector productivity instead of losing 2% a year
The government spends £1200 billion a year. If youre saying you couldnt find efficiencies in that sum then stay away from management.
If you dont actively go looking for savings you wont find them.
And just to finish off some of the savings need to be put back in to spending on issues like infrastructure which longer term create further savings through productivity
Total airy-fairy nonsense. With the exception of 'No new IT projects' those are all on a par with Sunak's 'cracking down on tax avoidance and evasion'. Taking Quangos for example, you need to list all the quangos that are going to be cut, how much each will save, and what, if any, downsides there are.
Sorry just off a conf call.
There are over 750 quangos and yes you have to list the ones you want to ditch. Nobody in government wants to kill them off so they dont look. But lets kick off with OBR, The country functioned without it, it's an Osborne wheeze, it will stop Reeves doing anything and it duplicates other government forecasters. I'd love to tell you how much that saves but it doesnt publish figures.
And as I if you dont start looking it isnt just going to fall in to your lap.
Anyway Im off for liquid lunch in Brum so have a nice morning.
Axe OBR and you risk a Trussian collapse when the markets conclude you are cutting the fire brigade before setting fire to the nation's accounts. Yes, OBR should not have been created: not the first Osborne wheeze to blow up his own party as well as the country.
Nigeria's economy seems to be disintegrating with inflation, a general strike and its monthly minimum wage now not much more than the UK's hourly minimum wage:
I certainly believe a 1997 result is possible. I actually think depending on the next couple of weeks it could get a lot worse than that.
I admit to being someone who thought the Tories would stabilise in the high 20s once the election was called. I was wrong.
The only cheer for the Tories on Ipsos is REFUK at 9%. Some pollsters are really going to be professionally embarrassed with the eventual Reform score unless they start to converge - I wonder which ones?
Not sure what you mean but I hope it is not connected to the widely condemned milk shake attack on Farage
Its a joke. Besides Farage appears to have set up the milkshake "attack" for publicity. And it worked beautifully.
You are a lib dem candidate joking about milkshakes attacks?
"Milkshake attacks". The work of the milkshake Taliban? Take it easy BigG. Think instead about Labour chaos in Wales and how that might play out in the GE and deliver Rishi a hatful of seats, or maybe not.
Good morning
The sad part about Gething is yet again another politician, this time a labour First Minister, deciding to ignore a vonc and carry on and at the same time has received the backing of Starmer
It will not change the GE result of a wipe out of conservative mps, but what is depressing is there seems to be no consequences for the lack of integrity amongst our leaders.
I notice Drakeford had a furious row with his colleagues over dropping the change to Welsh children's school holiday times as he arrogantly said it was his legacy, one which he hadn't been put out to public consultation and now the Welsh government has and found it to be unpopular especially with teachers so much so it will not be revisited until after the 2026 Senedd election
On another issue Ed Davey has come out this morning condemning labours vat raid on private schools which the Lib Dems do not support
There was three reasons for Gething's VoNC on the motion.
1) Accepting a donation from a businessman who has been convicted of environmental crimes. 2) Deleting his Covid-era WhatsApp messages 3) Sacking a minister and not disclosing the reason.
My own view is that 1 and 2 are enough to vote no-confidence. 3 is nothing, a political leader should have free rein to select who they want in their cabinet and that goes if you're PM, FM or just a leader of a district council.
Now, Sunak's taken £15m from someone who wants an MP shot (someone's been sent to prison for threatening Caroline Nokes just yesterday). As you're very exercised over a milkshake, you surely are concerned about people who want people shot? Sunak's deleted his Covid-era WhatsApp messages too.
I don't think that it's good for our politics to point to the other side and say that they do it too so I think that Gething should step down because he has lost his moral authority to lead. This could be a turning point in our politics for the better. I hope that you agree with me that Sunak should at least apologise for his misdeeds.
I understand Hester made a full apology for his comments as did Diane Abbott for hers, but yes you are correct nobody should threaten any mp by act or even joke as it plays into the narrative of violence against democracy
It seems Sturgeon, Drakeford and others all deleted their Whats app messages and they are all out of order for doing it
As far as Sunak is concerned he will be an ex PM on the 5th July
I have been trying to book a GP appointment for my son for the last 45 mins. Online system has stopped taking appointments and the phone just keeps on ringing. This is what folks face everyday thanks to the Tories.
The usual right-wing fruit loops on here will continue to pretend there is nothing wrong and still put the x against the Conservatives. I actually pity them as they obviously need some kind of help. At least one of this group, @Leon has called a spade a spade and wants the Tories destroyed. His reasoning is wrong, immigration is not the main issue, it’s the fact that the Tories have completely and utterly Ratnered this country over the last 14 years.
Hopefully they will end up with less 15 seats but my betting position is 100-150 seats.
Streetings plan for the Reform of the NHS has more holes in it than Swiss cheese and involves handing more NHS money to profits of private sector.
Such as his donors.
I look forward to you commenting on the improvements in this area 1 year in.
So what are voters to do in the meantime? Sit on our hands or use the choice we have on July the 4th to make the only change possible?
UK 54.7 Italy 49.0 France 43.4 EuroZone 42.9 Germany 38.5
Growth in the UK construction sector gained momentum during May, with activity and new business increasing at sharper rates than in April. Rising workloads prompted renewed expansions in purchasing activity and employment, while business confidence also strengthened.
Eurozone construction activity remained in a steep slump during May, according to the latest HCOB PMI® survey data, as new orders continued to fall sharply. The downturn led to the quickest drop in construction jobs in four years, while purchases and subcontractor use also decreased markedly.
I note the collective thinking about where extra tax revenue might (needs to?) come from.
As an aside I have recently been upgrading my wardrobe and have been persuaded to raise my game from buying cheap T-shirts from the supermarket or multi-buys from M&S if I'm feeling extravagant.
I find to my astonishment that it is possible to buy a plain T-shirt for £100! Who are these people that do this? I would expect to get 5 or 6 for that amount, minimum. Anyway, those are the people who can afford to find a bit more but how do you identify them?
And I'm sorry in advance to Messrs Hilfiger, Boss et al if your sales slump. Or you could try sensible pricing.
It must be glorious to have the job of trying to create and market new Veblen goods. Can we market a £5 tee shirt at £500; can we market a coffee mug for £400; a beer for £40 a pint. Profit wise it's a perpetual motion machine. Nice work if you can get it.
But personally I find Primark a bit pricey.
Everything's spenny these days. Try going to the theatre and paying retail. Extraordinary. Stick a US mini-series star in there and double it.
Plus there's that fantastic "Luxx" mag from the Times every Saturday or so. Watches at around £30,000 and the rest.
But it's all just relative. What @PJH spends on a t-shirt amounts to what a non-trivial proportion of the planet has to live on in a week. I don't mind if someone spends thirty grand on a watch because it will only be X% of their income.
I think one of the visible ways in which the economy has changed since the Big Banking Bust is that the middle has fallen out of many consumer markets.
The top x% is doing very well, and so there's lots of money for top end luxury consumer goods. Everyone else is skint and having to penny pinch. Lidl and LVMH are both doing well, while M&S struggles.
As only one of the figures with the Hitler moustaches are Jewish I can understand why they didn't see it as anti Semitic. John Cleese used to do Hitler moustache spoofs all the time. Tasteless isn't the same as anti semitic.
Spike Milligan used to do a hilarious Hitler. It was neither tasteless nor anti-semitic.
Nigeria's economy seems to be disintegrating with inflation, a general strike and its monthly minimum wage now not much more than the UK's hourly minimum wage:
Perhaps Nigerian is vastly overpopulated for its economic capacity ?
Explains why every care home now appears to be full of Nigerian careworkers..
A lot of Nigerians in my part of the world as well. Doing jobs that have traditionally been done by sub-continentals - construction, taxi driving, security guards, retail & hospitality etc.
A failed state of c.230m people would be a real problem.
All of this confirms to me that if the Tories had a centrist candidate that people like me could vote for, they'd be walking this.
The Conservatives could have a leader with all the positives and none of the negatives of every prime minister of the last century but they would still have no chance.
Because the damage to their reputation from lockdown parties, Truss cosplaying mythological Thatcher, endless sleaze and whiny self-obsessed self-entitlement is far too great.
They've become a soap opera which has been running for a few series too long and thinks ever more lurid storylines will win back its lost viewers.
D Day memorial incredibly moving as they read the words of veterans who were there and are there today.
I usually avoid WW2 docs and run for the hills from docs with re-enactments but I read a blistering review of BBC’s “D-Day, the unheard tapes” in the Guardian and thought that if they were creaming over it it’s either brilliant or focussed on how the minorities won the beaches.
Anyway, it really was very good. They do this thing where they have contemporary actors dressed in clothes of the post war period lip-synching to recordings of their characters perfectly but the same actors re-enacting actions they discuss. It works brilliantly as we’ve seen all the re-enactments before but they are very much made real by the recordings being lip-synced as it’s not an “old man” or woman but someone much more relatable.
Three episodes very well made.
Very good and of course on an iplayer near you.
On that note, might I remark on how impressive was the Prime Minister this morning: serious but not portentous, he struck precisely the right note. How different Rishi's political legacy might have been if he'd not had the faux Boris act thrust upon him.
Am I the only one on here that has taken the 8/1 from SkyBet on SKS getting fewer actual votes than the 12.9m in 2017?
Is 8/1 not fantastic value?
No, it could be a good bet if turnout is down..
The last election had 47m registered and a turnout of 67% = c.32m votes. 2017 election had 47m registered and a turnout of 69% = c.33m votes. Corbyn’s 12.9m was 40%
So if we assume 48m registered, but a turnout of say 60% (as in 2001), that’s 28.8m votes in total, so 12.9m votes is just under 45%
At 8/1 that’s actually a pretty good bet. @bigjohnowls
Dont forget the extra 2 million expat voters......
If they register. I haven’t.
But yes, if the denominator goes up, then turnout has to be even lower for the bet to come off.
No idea how the polling companies are dealing with this, seems like a reasonably big bit of extra variance given we don't have much idea if it will be extra 200,000 or 1,000,000 voters and they are presumably harder to poll anyway.
"53% say they have definitely decided how to vote. 45% say they may change their mind by polling day. In November 2019 this stood at 40%, before falling to 23% in the days before that General Election. Among those who may change their mind, 11% are considering switching to the Conservatives, 13% Labour and 21% the Lib Dems. 50% say it is very important to them who wins the next General Election. Lower than the 64% who said the same in November 2019, but on a par with the figure in May 2017.”
Not sure what you mean but I hope it is not connected to the widely condemned milk shake attack on Farage
Its a joke. Besides Farage appears to have set up the milkshake "attack" for publicity. And it worked beautifully.
You are a lib dem candidate joking about milkshakes attacks?
"Milkshake attacks". The work of the milkshake Taliban? Take it easy BigG. Think instead about Labour chaos in Wales and how that might play out in the GE and deliver Rishi a hatful of seats, or maybe not.
Good morning
The sad part about Gething is yet again another politician, this time a labour First Minister, deciding to ignore a vonc and carry on and at the same time has received the backing of Starmer
It will not change the GE result of a wipe out of conservative mps, but what is depressing is there seems to be no consequences for the lack of integrity amongst our leaders.
I notice Drakeford had a furious row with his colleagues over dropping the change to Welsh children's school holiday times as he arrogantly said it was his legacy, one which he hadn't been put out to public consultation and now the Welsh government has and found it to be unpopular especially with teachers so much so it will not be revisited until after the 2026 Senedd election
On another issue Ed Davey has come out this morning condemning labours vat raid on private schools which the Lib Dems do not support
There was three reasons for Gething's VoNC on the motion.
1) Accepting a donation from a businessman who has been convicted of environmental crimes. 2) Deleting his Covid-era WhatsApp messages 3) Sacking a minister and not disclosing the reason.
My own view is that 1 and 2 are enough to vote no-confidence. 3 is nothing, a political leader should have free rein to select who they want in their cabinet and that goes if you're PM, FM or just a leader of a district council.
Now, Sunak's taken £15m from someone who wants an MP shot (someone's been sent to prison for threatening Caroline Nokes just yesterday). As you're very exercised over a milkshake, you surely are concerned about people who want people shot? Sunak's deleted his Covid-era WhatsApp messages too.
I don't think that it's good for our politics to point to the other side and say that they do it too so I think that Gething should step down because he has lost his moral authority to lead. This could be a turning point in our politics for the better. I hope that you agree with me that Sunak should at least apologise for his misdeeds.
A rather odd thing about Welsh politics is that outside Wales no-one pays it any attention at all. Just complete zero, totally ignored. NI, RoI, Scotland, all get attention, especially Scotland even though its population is about the same as Yorkshire. Not Wales.
Nigeria's economy seems to be disintegrating with inflation, a general strike and its monthly minimum wage now not much more than the UK's hourly minimum wage:
Perhaps Nigerian is vastly overpopulated for its economic capacity ?
Explains why every care home now appears to be full of Nigerian careworkers..
A lot of Nigerians in my part of the world as well. Doing jobs that have traditionally been done by sub-continentals - construction, taxi driving, security guards, retail & hospitality etc.
A failed state of c.230m people would be a real problem.
A failed state of c.230m is going to be a real problem....
All of this confirms to me that if the Tories had a centrist candidate that people like me could vote for, they'd be walking this.
Whether you are joking or not, the Cons made a decision to pander to the extreme. But it didn't work. It was never going to work. Because they will never be extreme enough to satisfy the extreme and lo, look at Nige returning.
They *should* have given up the absurd "lead by Francois" approach and gone straight back to the "centre". Thing is, with the finances so blown up by Covid and people beaten down by CoL/Ukraine they had precious little wiggle room.
As the next government will find out on July 5th.
But they're not pandering to the extreme. They're talking right but not actually acting right. Cameron talked centre and acted centre; arguably Cameron talked centre and acted right. And was moderately successful. Talking right and acting right might also be successful, but hasn't really been tried since Thatcher. But talking right and acting left just pisses everyone off.
Good point. They have ensured they get the worst of all worlds. I think people (us, the politicians) have been living in la-la land about the fiscal position. No one wants to acknowledge it but it is the elephant in the room is our net debt to GDP of 100% +/-.
Almost anything else we could have done during Covid appears to have been better than what we have ended up with. Without going all Barty on the situation we simply took the cap off the QALY calcs.
And do you know what? @contrarian said almost dollar for dollar this is what would happen. And here we are.
Once again we have 60% saying they will definitely vote and 19% saying they will probably vote so I'm still thinking of turnout in the low to mid 70s yet there seema a general view on here turnout will be low. 75% wouldn't be too bad in the context of recent GEs.
A quick glance down the data tables (and I'm delighted to see some proper detail on the sampling) and it "smells" reasonable.
I note the collective thinking about where extra tax revenue might (needs to?) come from.
As an aside I have recently been upgrading my wardrobe and have been persuaded to raise my game from buying cheap T-shirts from the supermarket or multi-buys from M&S if I'm feeling extravagant.
I find to my astonishment that it is possible to buy a plain T-shirt for £100! Who are these people that do this? I would expect to get 5 or 6 for that amount, minimum. Anyway, those are the people who can afford to find a bit more but how do you identify them?
And I'm sorry in advance to Messrs Hilfiger, Boss et al if your sales slump. Or you could try sensible pricing.
It must be glorious to have the job of trying to create and market new Veblen goods. Can we market a £5 tee shirt at £500; can we market a coffee mug for £400; a beer for £40 a pint. Profit wise it's a perpetual motion machine. Nice work if you can get it.
But personally I find Primark a bit pricey.
Everything's spenny these days. Try going to the theatre and paying retail. Extraordinary. Stick a US mini-series star in there and double it.
Plus there's that fantastic "Luxx" mag from the Times every Saturday or so. Watches at around £30,000 and the rest.
But it's all just relative. What @PJH spends on a t-shirt amounts to what a non-trivial proportion of the planet has to live on in a week. I don't mind if someone spends thirty grand on a watch because it will only be X% of their income.
I think one of the visible ways in which the economy has changed since the Big Banking Bust is that the middle has fallen out of many consumer markets.
The top x% is doing very well, and so there's lots of money for top end luxury consumer goods. Everyone else is skint and having to penny pinch. Lidl and LVMH are both doing well, while M&S struggles.
M&S is no longer struggling - because that sector of the market is literally just M&S / Next (everyone else has been cleared out) with John Lewis struggling in the sector slightly above them...
Nigeria's economy seems to be disintegrating with inflation, a general strike and its monthly minimum wage now not much more than the UK's hourly minimum wage:
Perhaps Nigerian is vastly overpopulated for its economic capacity ?
My understanding - from a Nigerian who has recently gone back to visit Nigeria for a few weeks - is that the country has abolished cash. But does not have the infrastructure for most transactions to be done electronically. So there is now a black market in cash, which is expensive to obtain. That's obviously not the whole problem, but it's an example of the sort of decision making which has led them to where they are.
The D-Day commemorations are very moving to watch, especially knowing that this is likely to be the last time veterans of WWII gather for such an event.
Mantra of the day (one which I have applied to my old dad in the past) is ‘he never talked about it’. The BBC et al are certainly making up for that.
Good to see so many of the (very) old soldiers are of a pacifist outlook.
[…] The only cheer for the Tories on Ipsos is REFUK at 9%. Some pollsters are really going to be professionally embarrassed with the eventual Reform score unless they start to converge - I wonder which ones?
They shouldn’t cheer yet. 80% of the data was collected pre-Farage.
Did Rishi take into account the D-Day commemorations (where he's able to show a statesman presence) and all the sporting events coming up when he went for this date, hoping not so much focus on his Government?
I note the collective thinking about where extra tax revenue might (needs to?) come from.
As an aside I have recently been upgrading my wardrobe and have been persuaded to raise my game from buying cheap T-shirts from the supermarket or multi-buys from M&S if I'm feeling extravagant.
I find to my astonishment that it is possible to buy a plain T-shirt for £100! Who are these people that do this? I would expect to get 5 or 6 for that amount, minimum. Anyway, those are the people who can afford to find a bit more but how do you identify them?
And I'm sorry in advance to Messrs Hilfiger, Boss et al if your sales slump. Or you could try sensible pricing.
It must be glorious to have the job of trying to create and market new Veblen goods. Can we market a £5 tee shirt at £500; can we market a coffee mug for £400; a beer for £40 a pint. Profit wise it's a perpetual motion machine. Nice work if you can get it.
But personally I find Primark a bit pricey.
Everything's spenny these days. Try going to the theatre and paying retail. Extraordinary. Stick a US mini-series star in there and double it.
Plus there's that fantastic "Luxx" mag from the Times every Saturday or so. Watches at around £30,000 and the rest.
But it's all just relative. What @PJH spends on a t-shirt amounts to what a non-trivial proportion of the planet has to live on in a week. I don't mind if someone spends thirty grand on a watch because it will only be X% of their income.
I think one of the visible ways in which the economy has changed since the Big Banking Bust is that the middle has fallen out of many consumer markets.
The top x% is doing very well, and so there's lots of money for top end luxury consumer goods. Everyone else is skint and having to penny pinch. Lidl and LVMH are both doing well, while M&S struggles.
M&S is no longer struggling - because that sector of the market is literally just M&S / Next (everyone else has been cleared out) with John Lewis struggling in the sector slightly above them...
Did Rishi take into account the D-Day commemorations (where he's able to show a statesman presence) and all the sporting events coming up when he went for this date, hoping not so much focus on his Government?
Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to believe he and his advisers were that smart.
Diane Abbott was causing Labour bad news so the Tories have stepped in to get the public back on her (and Labour's) side.
There must be a mole in CCHQ, there is simply no other explanation.
No, the donation was in January, it had already happened when the row exploded, the figures have just come out as they always would today.
The Tories must have known it would resurface in the campaign. There is a Labour mole, I am sure of it.
I'm not sure where you get the mole from? The figures were due out today, what's a Labour mole got to do with it? They didn't return the 10 million so why would they worry about the 5 million? They clearly don't give a toss how it looks.
The fact they took it at all baffles me. And then they didn't give it back!
That's where the mole comes in, somebody is advising them against all common sense.
They took it before the story happened. They can't afford to give it back. And Welsh Labour have just yesterday shown us dodgy donations have no consequences, they even supercede VONCs. The whole system is rotten.
Welsh Labour is a joke.
Sadly it is not a joke to those of us living in Wales and apparently he has received Starmer's full backing
It just plays into the public's disdain of politicians and politics
Fortunately for Labour in Wales the Conservatives led by the hopeless Andrew RT Davies are head and shoulders worse.
I note the collective thinking about where extra tax revenue might (needs to?) come from.
As an aside I have recently been upgrading my wardrobe and have been persuaded to raise my game from buying cheap T-shirts from the supermarket or multi-buys from M&S if I'm feeling extravagant.
I find to my astonishment that it is possible to buy a plain T-shirt for £100! Who are these people that do this? I would expect to get 5 or 6 for that amount, minimum. Anyway, those are the people who can afford to find a bit more but how do you identify them?
And I'm sorry in advance to Messrs Hilfiger, Boss et al if your sales slump. Or you could try sensible pricing.
It must be glorious to have the job of trying to create and market new Veblen goods. Can we market a £5 tee shirt at £500; can we market a coffee mug for £400; a beer for £40 a pint. Profit wise it's a perpetual motion machine. Nice work if you can get it.
But personally I find Primark a bit pricey.
Everything's spenny these days. Try going to the theatre and paying retail. Extraordinary. Stick a US mini-series star in there and double it.
Plus there's that fantastic "Luxx" mag from the Times every Saturday or so. Watches at around £30,000 and the rest.
But it's all just relative. What @PJH spends on a t-shirt amounts to what a non-trivial proportion of the planet has to live on in a week. I don't mind if someone spends thirty grand on a watch because it will only be X% of their income.
I think one of the visible ways in which the economy has changed since the Big Banking Bust is that the middle has fallen out of many consumer markets.
The top x% is doing very well, and so there's lots of money for top end luxury consumer goods. Everyone else is skint and having to penny pinch. Lidl and LVMH are both doing well, while M&S struggles.
M&S is no longer struggling - because that sector of the market is literally just M&S / Next (everyone else has been cleared out) with John Lewis struggling in the sector slightly above them...
M&S is closing a lot of its larger stores.
I wouldn't saying closing stores in poor locations is a sign of them struggling, more a sign of careful management...
All of this confirms to me that if the Tories had a centrist candidate that people like me could vote for, they'd be walking this.
The Conservatives could have a leader with all the positives and none of the negatives of every prime minister of the last century but they would still have no chance.
Because the damage to their reputation from lockdown parties, Truss cosplaying mythological Thatcher, endless sleaze and whiny self-obsessed self-entitlement is far too great.
They've become a soap opera which has been running for a few series too long and thinks ever more lurid storylines will win back its lost viewers.
You’re right on every count and we could add a heap more too.
But the thing I’m hearing a lot right now is about mortgages.
I mentioned yesterday the three most influential politicians of the last 50 years in this country and, in my opinion, the only three (Thatcher, Blair, and Johnson). I obviously disliked Thatcher’s politics but my god she got it absolutely right when she enabled people to buy their own homes.
You touch a British person’s home and you’re toast.
I note the collective thinking about where extra tax revenue might (needs to?) come from.
As an aside I have recently been upgrading my wardrobe and have been persuaded to raise my game from buying cheap T-shirts from the supermarket or multi-buys from M&S if I'm feeling extravagant.
I find to my astonishment that it is possible to buy a plain T-shirt for £100! Who are these people that do this? I would expect to get 5 or 6 for that amount, minimum. Anyway, those are the people who can afford to find a bit more but how do you identify them?
And I'm sorry in advance to Messrs Hilfiger, Boss et al if your sales slump. Or you could try sensible pricing.
It must be glorious to have the job of trying to create and market new Veblen goods. Can we market a £5 tee shirt at £500; can we market a coffee mug for £400; a beer for £40 a pint. Profit wise it's a perpetual motion machine. Nice work if you can get it.
But personally I find Primark a bit pricey.
Everything's spenny these days. Try going to the theatre and paying retail. Extraordinary. Stick a US mini-series star in there and double it.
Plus there's that fantastic "Luxx" mag from the Times every Saturday or so. Watches at around £30,000 and the rest.
But it's all just relative. What @PJH spends on a t-shirt amounts to what a non-trivial proportion of the planet has to live on in a week. I don't mind if someone spends thirty grand on a watch because it will only be X% of their income.
I think one of the visible ways in which the economy has changed since the Big Banking Bust is that the middle has fallen out of many consumer markets.
The top x% is doing very well, and so there's lots of money for top end luxury consumer goods. Everyone else is skint and having to penny pinch. Lidl and LVMH are both doing well, while M&S struggles.
M&S is no longer struggling - because that sector of the market is literally just M&S / Next (everyone else has been cleared out) with John Lewis struggling in the sector slightly above them...
M&S is closing a lot of its larger stores.
I wouldn't saying closing stores in poor locations is a sign of them struggling, more a sign of careful management...
We popped into the one in Sunderland when we went up to see Springsteen recently for a couple of sandwiches. Think it was the last day it was open .
Am I the only one on here that has taken the 8/1 from SkyBet on SKS getting fewer actual votes than the 12.9m in 2017?
Is 8/1 not fantastic value?
No, it could be a good bet if turnout is down..
The last election had 47m registered and a turnout of 67% = c.32m votes. 2017 election had 47m registered and a turnout of 69% = c.33m votes. Corbyn’s 12.9m was 40%
So if we assume 48m registered, but a turnout of say 60% (as in 2001), that’s 28.8m votes in total, so 12.9m votes is just under 45%
At 8/1 that’s actually a pretty good bet. @bigjohnowls
Dont forget the extra 2 million expat voters......
If they register. I haven’t.
But yes, if the denominator goes up, then turnout has to be even lower for the bet to come off.
No idea how the polling companies are dealing with this, seems like a reasonably big bit of extra variance given we don't have much idea if it will be extra 200,000 or 1,000,000 voters and they are presumably harder to poll anyway.
As a UK overseas voter I suspect that this group is a lot more "sticky" than in general. First you have to jump through a few hoops to get registered as an overseas voter, and then return a letter each year to confirm your overseas address. If you move the letter gets sent to your old address so you need to actively change your address (in my constituency at least this is still all done by snail mail). Secondly the day to day politics are more at arms length and so a bigger change in the UK situation is needed to make a chang in the vote.
So I think that overseas registered voters are much more likely to vote (as they have an interest in registering). And that they are much less likely to change their vote from last time.
@hzeffman Breaking: The Conservatives accepted £5 million from the controversial donor Frank Hester's company in January, new Electoral Commission figures show.
It follows £10 million of donations last year
Perhaps, but Labours going to take £2000 from every voter.
Probably more.
Quite possible, given the precedent our current government has just set.
The average household is paying £3,500 more in tax now than in 2019. The biggest tax raising parliament in UK history.
And I don’t blame the Tories for doing this. They probably should have raised more. Our public infrastructure, services and local government are on their knees after years of no investment.
Or were raising record taxes but spending it on the wrong things.
What would CoE Alanbrooke have stopped spending money on?
Woke diversity consultants in the NHS?
I answered this yesterday - some examples
Major cutback on Quangos theres £82billion to go at Restructure the BoE debt No new IT projects for the duration of parliament - they always overrun Reform MoD procurement for more value for money Restore public sector productivity instead of losing 2% a year
The government spends £1200 billion a year. If youre saying you couldnt find efficiencies in that sum then stay away from management.
If you dont actively go looking for savings you wont find them.
And just to finish off some of the savings need to be put back in to spending on issues like infrastructure which longer term create further savings through productivity
Total airy-fairy nonsense. With the exception of 'No new IT projects' those are all on a par with Sunak's 'cracking down on tax avoidance and evasion'. Taking Quangos for example, you need to list all the quangos that are going to be cut, how much each will save, and what, if any, downsides there are.
Sorry just off a conf call.
There are over 750 quangos and yes you have to list the ones you want to ditch. Nobody in government wants to kill them off so they dont look. But lets kick off with OBR, The country functioned without it, it's an Osborne wheeze, it will stop Reeves doing anything and it duplicates other government forecasters. I'd love to tell you how much that saves but it doesnt publish figures.
And as I if you dont start looking it isnt just going to fall in to your lap.
Anyway Im off for liquid lunch in Brum so have a nice morning.
Axe OBR and you risk a Trussian collapse when the markets conclude you are cutting the fire brigade before setting fire to the nation's accounts. Yes, OBR should not have been created: not the first Osborne wheeze to blow up his own party as well as the country.
OBR is not an especially stupid idea. Consider that we have people with no knowledge of economics or history making economic decisions. Or attempting to.
I note the collective thinking about where extra tax revenue might (needs to?) come from.
As an aside I have recently been upgrading my wardrobe and have been persuaded to raise my game from buying cheap T-shirts from the supermarket or multi-buys from M&S if I'm feeling extravagant.
I find to my astonishment that it is possible to buy a plain T-shirt for £100! Who are these people that do this? I would expect to get 5 or 6 for that amount, minimum. Anyway, those are the people who can afford to find a bit more but how do you identify them?
And I'm sorry in advance to Messrs Hilfiger, Boss et al if your sales slump. Or you could try sensible pricing.
It must be glorious to have the job of trying to create and market new Veblen goods. Can we market a £5 tee shirt at £500; can we market a coffee mug for £400; a beer for £40 a pint. Profit wise it's a perpetual motion machine. Nice work if you can get it.
But personally I find Primark a bit pricey.
Everything's spenny these days. Try going to the theatre and paying retail. Extraordinary. Stick a US mini-series star in there and double it.
Plus there's that fantastic "Luxx" mag from the Times every Saturday or so. Watches at around £30,000 and the rest.
But it's all just relative. What @PJH spends on a t-shirt amounts to what a non-trivial proportion of the planet has to live on in a week. I don't mind if someone spends thirty grand on a watch because it will only be X% of their income.
I think one of the visible ways in which the economy has changed since the Big Banking Bust is that the middle has fallen out of many consumer markets.
The top x% is doing very well, and so there's lots of money for top end luxury consumer goods. Everyone else is skint and having to penny pinch. Lidl and LVMH are both doing well, while M&S struggles.
M&S is no longer struggling - because that sector of the market is literally just M&S / Next (everyone else has been cleared out) with John Lewis struggling in the sector slightly above them...
M&S is closing a lot of its larger stores.
I wouldn't saying closing stores in poor locations is a sign of them struggling, more a sign of careful management...
Closing stores in any locations is not a sign of prosperity. Poor stores today were prospering yesterday (or yesteryear) otherwise they'd already have been closed.
Politically there are other implications, as one of the causes of the Red Wall flipping is thought to be the psychological impact of destination shops closing.
p.s. a person’s home is the real point of aspiration that matters in this country, not whether or not they can afford to send their child to a private school.
CR goes on and on endlessly about VAT on schools as something which will affect the election but it’s straining and gnats and swallowing camels.
The tories stuffed up people’s mortgages with that ill-conceived moment of madness under Liz Truss. Everyone except the extremely wealthy are now petrified that they a) will not be able to afford their repayments and b) will be repaying it into retirement.
Looking at Reform and Cons polling within 2% of each other (17% and 19% respectively) - what would be a point where between the two of them the showing is relatively good, but both of them collapse in terms of seat numbers due to FPTP? I assume if they both polled equal at ~17% that could potentially stop either party getting any / a significant number of seats. Whilst I am not looking forward to this Labour super majority government, I do feel that the extinction of the Conservative party is a long time coming.
Something like a 3:2 ratio between Refuk and Con vote share would probably be the pessimal point in terms of their combined seat total.
So, 21% Refuk, 14% Con might get them just 9 or 10 seats apiece.
That assumes that voting patterns stay the same otherwise, and that would be far from certain in the face of such a big upheaval in public opinion. If Refuk were able to find a couple of dozen "big beasts", they might be able to start concentrating their vote share in target seats, making them more likely to win.
Deadline for nominations is 4pm tomorrow, though - so they've almost certainly left it too late to pick up on any surge this time round.
Meanwhile, back at Horizon Inquiry, Mrs Jack Straw continues to give spellbinding evidence.
Nick Wallis provides a regular email commentary for subscribers. It is excellent, but for once I disagree with his assessment of a witness. He portray Perkins as an incompetent, bewildered Chair - 'Perkins in Wonderland'. My own view is that she and the Board were the source of much of the mischief the PO caused. In my experience, when a fish stinks, it does so from the head, and her evidence seemed to confirm this is what happened here.
We need Ms Cyclefree on this one. I think she'd agree with me, but will be happy to be corrected if our leading expert on the scandal thinks otherwise.
All of this confirms to me that if the Tories had a centrist candidate that people like me could vote for, they'd be walking this.
Eh? Sunak is the centrist Tory candidate, centrist Hunt is chancellor, centrist Cameron Foreign Secretary they are leaking to Reform for not being rightwing enough if anything.
All of this confirms to me that if the Tories had a centrist candidate that people like me could vote for, they'd be walking this.
Eh? Sunak is the centrist Tory candidate, centrist Hunt is chancellor, centrist Cameron Foreign Secretary they are leaking to Reform for not being rightwing enough if anything.
I would keep Cammo as Forsec, under Labour. He has been excellent – and is well suited to the role.
Tim Montgomerie hypothesises that the election was called to enforce certain Rishi favoured candidates in seats the Tories think they will hold.
He is right, the snap election has meant CCHQ could impose shortlists of 3 Sunak loyalists whereas if the election was in the autumn local associations could still have picked their own candidates from the approved list and had a local in the final round
Although a lot of everyone might think Tuesdays debate is behind us, I actually now suspect it shapes what we can guess is in front of us.
Sunak couldn’t get through the debate without bare faced lies to EVERY question he faced. Waiting lists down (the audience gasped and laughed) boat crossings down (try saying that with Farage on the stage) Rwanda is a deterrent, Pensioners have never paid tax on pensions (he did say that, the very man who invented a pension tax and has been taxing pensions). The 2K Lie wasn’t made up by SPADs in an echo chamber, the treasury really did do it.
It’s just sinking in with me now how bad Sunak’s performance was in that debate, because as the leader, he has set a clear lead what the answers are. Everyone one else in his party, in debates, interviews, panels, QT in front of audiences, all must repeat Sunak’s lies now.
Starting with Mordaunt on Friday, no matter how batshit she thinks these answers are, she must say boat crossing are down, waiting lists are down, pensioners have never paid tax, the 2K Lie wasn’t made up by SPADs in an echo chamber the treasury really did do it. Etc etc.
All of this confirms to me that if the Tories had a centrist candidate that people like me could vote for, they'd be walking this.
Eh? Sunak is the centrist Tory candidate, centrist Hunt is chancellor, centrist Cameron Foreign Secretary they are leaking to Reform for not being rightwing enough if anything.
I would keep Cammo as Forsec, under Labour. He has been excellent – and is well suited to the role.
I’ve heard he may be US Ambassador.
It’s all a very cute idea and Starmer might go for it but I suspect a lot of Labour MPs would be very peed off if, having worked so hard for their Party’s win, Etonian Cameron gets the nod.
It’s time for a new broom. Bye bye Dave. And with it all your tawdry Greenshill shadiness.
Although a lot of everyone might think Tuesdays debate is behind us, I actually now suspect it shapes what we can guess is in front of us.
Sunak couldn’t get through the debate without bare faced lies to EVERY question he faced. Waiting lists down (the audience gasped and laughed) boat crossings down (try saying that with Farage on the stage) Rwanda is a deterrent, Pensioners have never paid tax on pensions (he did say that, the very man who invented a pension tax and has been taxing pensions). The 2K Lie wasn’t made up by SPADs in an echo chamber, the treasury really did do it.
It’s just sinking in with me now how bad Sunak’s performance was in that debate, because as the leader, he has set a clear lead what the answers are. Everyone one else in his party, in debates, interviews, panels, QT in front of audiences, all must repeat Sunak’s lies now.
Starting with Mordaunt on Friday, no matter how batshit she thinks these answers are, she must say boat crossing are down, waiting lists are down, pensioners have never paid tax, the 2K Lie wasn’t made up by SPADs in an echo chamber the treasury really did do it. Etc etc.
It’s not going to be easy for them, is it?
Again you make sound points. Do I detect a wobble in your Tory vote? Are you heading back into the warm embrace of Wavey Davey?
All of this confirms to me that if the Tories had a centrist candidate that people like me could vote for, they'd be walking this.
Eh? Sunak is the centrist Tory candidate, centrist Hunt is chancellor, centrist Cameron Foreign Secretary they are leaking to Reform for not being rightwing enough if anything.
I would keep Cammo as Forsec, under Labour. He has been excellent – and is well suited to the role.
Yes, Cammo could serve Starmer or Sunak, both centrist upper middle class Oxford educated liberal meterosexuals like him.
He would draw the line at serving an oik like Farage though
Tim Montgomerie hypothesises that the election was called to enforce certain Rishi favoured candidates in seats the Tories think they will hold.
He is right, the snap election has meant CCHQ could impose shortlists of 3 Sunak loyalists whereas if the election was in the autumn local associations could still have picked their own candidates from the approved list and had a local in the final round
Thanks Hyufd for confirming the view I had formed without the benefit of your experience of the Party. July 4th was a shockingly bad call, and driven by internal politics rather than a desire to minimise election losses.
Tim Montgomerie hypothesises that the election was called to enforce certain Rishi favoured candidates in seats the Tories think they will hold.
He is right, the snap election has meant CCHQ could impose shortlists of 3 Sunak loyalists whereas if the election was in the autumn local associations could still have picked their own candidates from the approved list and had a local in the final round
Surely Sunak isn't planning to try and remain as leader?
Thanks all again for your advice and thoughts yday. Aunt duly reported to insurance company and let them handle it. Didn't report it to plod but will take advice from insurers.
AUNT UPDATE II: I went round to hers to discuss it all last night and there was a knock on the door. I don't want to dox anyone, least of all myself or my aunt, but she lives in what I would say was one of the nicest streets in one of the nicest parts of her constituency. The door-knocker was a fresh-faced Lab canvasser. I recoiled and recovered only to congratulate him on covering the area. I took a leaflet and bade him farewell and good luck. Lab really are going for it.
Tim Montgomerie hypothesises that the election was called to enforce certain Rishi favoured candidates in seats the Tories think they will hold.
He is right, the snap election has meant CCHQ could impose shortlists of 3 Sunak loyalists whereas if the election was in the autumn local associations could still have picked their own candidates from the approved list and had a local in the final round
Thanks Hyufd for confirming the view I had formed without the benefit of your experience of the Party. July 4th was a shockingly bad call, and driven by internal politics rather than a desire to minimise election losses.
Yes it is all about ensuring the next leader of the Tory Party in opposition is Barclay, Tugendhat or Cleverly not Badenoch, Braverman, Patel or Jenrick by filling safe and lean Tory parliamentary seats where the Tory MP is standing down with Sunak loyalists as candidates
The M&S "is struggling" thing on here this morning is fake news. It's had a very good year. It's true it is closing stores in areas where it does;t trade well. But that is not the same thing!
Is it moral to drop Galloway's candidate in favour of Labour's dropped candidate? I'm not sure. None of the parties' leaderships come out well from this candidate selection, deselection and imposition process across the country.
It's not even clear it will produce good government (or good opposition). If all your MPs think the same way, groupthink is bad. If they all come from running think tanks, then they are used to running things and will not want to be backbench cannon fodder, and they are also likely to have fixed ideas about their areas of expertise.
Not sure what you mean but I hope it is not connected to the widely condemned milk shake attack on Farage
Its a joke. Besides Farage appears to have set up the milkshake "attack" for publicity. And it worked beautifully.
You are a lib dem candidate joking about milkshakes attacks?
"Milkshake attacks". The work of the milkshake Taliban? Take it easy BigG. Think instead about Labour chaos in Wales and how that might play out in the GE and deliver Rishi a hatful of seats, or maybe not.
Good morning
The sad part about Gething is yet again another politician, this time a labour First Minister, deciding to ignore a vonc and carry on and at the same time has received the backing of Starmer
It will not change the GE result of a wipe out of conservative mps, but what is depressing is there seems to be no consequences for the lack of integrity amongst our leaders.
I notice Drakeford had a furious row with his colleagues over dropping the change to Welsh children's school holiday times as he arrogantly said it was his legacy, one which he hadn't been put out to public consultation and now the Welsh government has and found it to be unpopular especially with teachers so much so it will not be revisited until after the 2026 Senedd election
On another issue Ed Davey has come out this morning condemning labours vat raid on private schools which the Lib Dems do not support
There was three reasons for Gething's VoNC on the motion.
1) Accepting a donation from a businessman who has been convicted of environmental crimes. 2) Deleting his Covid-era WhatsApp messages 3) Sacking a minister and not disclosing the reason.
My own view is that 1 and 2 are enough to vote no-confidence. 3 is nothing, a political leader should have free rein to select who they want in their cabinet and that goes if you're PM, FM or just a leader of a district council.
Now, Sunak's taken £15m from someone who wants an MP shot (someone's been sent to prison for threatening Caroline Nokes just yesterday). As you're very exercised over a milkshake, you surely are concerned about people who want people shot? Sunak's deleted his Covid-era WhatsApp messages too.
I don't think that it's good for our politics to point to the other side and say that they do it too so I think that Gething should step down because he has lost his moral authority to lead. This could be a turning point in our politics for the better. I hope that you agree with me that Sunak should at least apologise for his misdeeds.
A rather odd thing about Welsh politics is that outside Wales no-one pays it any attention at all. Just complete zero, totally ignored. NI, RoI, Scotland, all get attention, especially Scotland even though its population is about the same as Yorkshire. Not Wales.
That is because Wales has had one party win most of its seats for longer than any other nation in the democratic world.
You could put a hamster up as FM in Wales with a red rosette and it would win
Yeah he’s an appalling right winger. Attacking boat people, the disabled, people with mental ill-health, LGBGT, climate change etc. etc.
His myopic vision, from his billionaire funded chopper, is to drive Britain to an uncaring, ruthless, exploitative, functionalist, factory.
It’s not the way forward for this country, nor the world. It’s absolutely clear to everyone that this dystopia will do nothing to solve the fundamental, systemic, and global problems we face. He is living in a mindset which has literally nothing to offer for solving what really now concerns people.
All of this confirms to me that if the Tories had a centrist candidate that people like me could vote for, they'd be walking this.
Eh? Sunak is the centrist Tory candidate, centrist Hunt is chancellor, centrist Cameron Foreign Secretary they are leaking to Reform for not being rightwing enough if anything.
I would keep Cammo as Forsec, under Labour. He has been excellent – and is well suited to the role.
Yes, Cammo could serve Starmer or Sunak, both centrist upper middle class Oxford educated liberal meterosexuals like him.
He would draw the line at serving an oik like Farage though
Man of the people Farage was a millionaire City trader from a second tier public school, Dulwich College.
Meanwhile, back at Horizon Inquiry, Mrs Jack Straw continues to give spellbinding evidence.
Nick Wallis provides a regular email commentary for subscribers. It is excellent, but for once I disagree with his assessment of a witness. He portray Perkins as an incompetent, bewildered Chair - 'Perkins in Wonderland'. My own view is that she and the Board were the source of much of the mischief the PO caused. In my experience, when a fish stinks, it does so from the head, and her evidence seemed to confirm this is what happened here.
We need Ms Cyclefree on this one. I think she'd agree with me, but will be happy to be corrected if our leading expert on the scandal thinks otherwise.
My reading of it is that the Board (certainly Perkins) were trying to ensure plausible deniability - and that they are trying to throw Vennells and particularly Crichton under the bus by saying 'we weren't told'. My reading is that they (Perkins in particular) will likelyl have had corridor conversations where something will have been mentioned and the response from here will have been 'Ok, well don't bring that up to the board formally until you have something more concrete' or similar - so the push was 'don't tell us unless there is a clear answer'. This seems to be the entire culture of the place - senior people not asking about things that they should have been curious about, and setting a culture to junior people of 'only bring us solutions, not problems'
Although a lot of everyone might think Tuesdays debate is behind us, I actually now suspect it shapes what we can guess is in front of us.
Sunak couldn’t get through the debate without bare faced lies to EVERY question he faced. Waiting lists down (the audience gasped and laughed) boat crossings down (try saying that with Farage on the stage) Rwanda is a deterrent, Pensioners have never paid tax on pensions (he did say that, the very man who invented a pension tax and has been taxing pensions). The 2K Lie wasn’t made up by SPADs in an echo chamber, the treasury really did do it.
It’s just sinking in with me now how bad Sunak’s performance was in that debate, because as the leader, he has set a clear lead what the answers are. Everyone one else in his party, in debates, interviews, panels, QT in front of audiences, all must repeat Sunak’s lies now.
Starting with Mordaunt on Friday, no matter how batshit she thinks these answers are, she must say boat crossing are down, waiting lists are down, pensioners have never paid tax, the 2K Lie wasn’t made up by SPADs in an echo chamber the treasury really did do it. Etc etc.
It’s not going to be easy for them, is it?
Again you make sound points. Do I detect a wobble in your Tory vote? Are you heading back into the warm embrace of Wavey Davey?
No. The election being called was a horrible shock. Even though I did predict both the shock announcement and the actual day. I now think he should have waited. Then the polls, and the spread markets, and everyone on PB excited at Conservative wipe out event made me feel sick for a week.
Now I think, at least it draws a line, and Conservatives can go back to being proper Conservatives again. Slowly. So there is no point me posting anything other than the true history of this election, and cut through everybody’s spin.
The Conservative debates and leadership election that come after is the important thing.
I just went for a short walk and a thought occured to me...... Did a young linesman from Morayshire get visited by three witches yesterday? Hail wee Dougie, leader of the Scons Hall wee Dougie MP for Aberdeenshire and Moray East Hail wee Dougie thou shalt be LOTO hereafter......
Does he think given the SNP woes he's gaining seats and can present himself as the face of 'successful Unionism and Conservatism'? Set against carnage in the rest of the UK. Is that what this is all about?
Thanks all again for your advice and thoughts yday. Aunt duly reported to insurance company and let them handle it. Didn't report it to plod but will take advice from insurers.
AUNT UPDATE II: I went round to hers to discuss it all last night and there was a knock on the door. I don't want to dox anyone, least of all myself or my aunt, but she lives in what I would say was one of the nicest streets in one of the nicest parts of her constituency. The door-knocker was a fresh-faced Lab canvasser. I recoiled and recovered only to congratulate him on covering the area. I took a leaflet and bade him farewell and good luck. Lab really are going for it.
Which seat is this?
Although in my seat the canvasser muddles up Rachel Barnes (the candidate) with Rachel Reeves…
Meanwhile, back at Horizon Inquiry, Mrs Jack Straw continues to give spellbinding evidence.
Nick Wallis provides a regular email commentary for subscribers. It is excellent, but for once I disagree with his assessment of a witness. He portray Perkins as an incompetent, bewildered Chair - 'Perkins in Wonderland'. My own view is that she and the Board were the source of much of the mischief the PO caused. In my experience, when a fish stinks, it does so from the head, and her evidence seemed to confirm this is what happened here.
We need Ms Cyclefree on this one. I think she'd agree with me, but will be happy to be corrected if our leading expert on the scandal thinks otherwise.
My reading of it is that the Board (certainly Perkins) were trying to ensure plausible deniability - and that they are trying to throw Vennells and particularly Crichton under the bus by saying 'we weren't told'. My reading is that they (Perkins in particular) will likelyl have had corridor conversations where something will have been mentioned and the response from here will have been 'Ok, well don't bring that up to the board formally until you have something more concrete' or similar - so the push was 'don't tell us unless there is a clear answer'. This seems to be the entire culture of the place - senior people not asking about things that they should have been curious about, and setting a culture to junior people of 'only bring us solutions, not problems'
Thanks, Lennon. Yes, that's about where I am.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the culture was Board-driven.
We may in due course learn the extent to which it was also Civil Service/Government driven, but that part of the story is yet to come.
More shenanigans. Ross announced himself as candidate. But still needs to get formally selected by the association. And from what I can see on Facebook they are NOT happy.
The Electoral Commission has updated its donations database for Q1 2024. Zero reportable donations to the SNP. Just the regular “short money” allocation from the House of Commons, which is very likely to collapse after the general election.
The M&S "is struggling" thing on here this morning is fake news. It's had a very good year. It's true it is closing stores in areas where it does;t trade well. But that is not the same thing!
M&S is very often the absolutely last store to leave a town
Boro is a prime example, it lost Debenhams, then House of Fraser but Marks kept going until the lack of footfall made keeping the store open impossible.
Same is true of Sunderland where they recently closed while moving to Washington..
All of this confirms to me that if the Tories had a centrist candidate that people like me could vote for, they'd be walking this.
Eh? Sunak is the centrist Tory candidate, centrist Hunt is chancellor, centrist Cameron Foreign Secretary they are leaking to Reform for not being rightwing enough if anything.
I would keep Cammo as Forsec, under Labour. He has been excellent – and is well suited to the role.
Yes, Cammo could serve Starmer or Sunak, both centrist upper middle class Oxford educated liberal meterosexuals like him.
He would draw the line at serving an oik like Farage though
Man of the people Farage was a millionaire City trader from a second tier public school, Dulwich College.
Although a lot of everyone might think Tuesdays debate is behind us, I actually now suspect it shapes what we can guess is in front of us.
Sunak couldn’t get through the debate without bare faced lies to EVERY question he faced. Waiting lists down (the audience gasped and laughed) boat crossings down (try saying that with Farage on the stage) Rwanda is a deterrent, Pensioners have never paid tax on pensions (he did say that, the very man who invented a pension tax and has been taxing pensions). The 2K Lie wasn’t made up by SPADs in an echo chamber, the treasury really did do it.
It’s just sinking in with me now how bad Sunak’s performance was in that debate, because as the leader, he has set a clear lead what the answers are. Everyone one else in his party, in debates, interviews, panels, QT in front of audiences, all must repeat Sunak’s lies now.
Starting with Mordaunt on Friday, no matter how batshit she thinks these answers are, she must say boat crossing are down, waiting lists are down, pensioners have never paid tax, the 2K Lie wasn’t made up by SPADs in an echo chamber the treasury really did do it. Etc etc.
It’s not going to be easy for them, is it?
So you have moved on from: "It’s worse than that. The Tory £2,000 Tax Attack is everywhere now, and it’s blown this election wide open. 1992 at all that"
Although a lot of everyone might think Tuesdays debate is behind us, I actually now suspect it shapes what we can guess is in front of us.
Sunak couldn’t get through the debate without bare faced lies to EVERY question he faced. Waiting lists down (the audience gasped and laughed) boat crossings down (try saying that with Farage on the stage) Rwanda is a deterrent, Pensioners have never paid tax on pensions (he did say that, the very man who invented a pension tax and has been taxing pensions). The 2K Lie wasn’t made up by SPADs in an echo chamber, the treasury really did do it.
It’s just sinking in with me now how bad Sunak’s performance was in that debate, because as the leader, he has set a clear lead what the answers are. Everyone one else in his party, in debates, interviews, panels, QT in front of audiences, all must repeat Sunak’s lies now.
Starting with Mordaunt on Friday, no matter how batshit she thinks these answers are, she must say boat crossing are down, waiting lists are down, pensioners have never paid tax, the 2K Lie wasn’t made up by SPADs in an echo chamber the treasury really did do it. Etc etc.
It’s not going to be easy for them, is it?
So you have moved on from: "It’s worse than that. The Tory £2,000 Tax Attack is everywhere now, and it’s blown this election wide open. 1992 at all that"
The Electoral Commission has updated its donations database for Q1 2024. Zero reportable donations to the SNP. Just the regular “short money” allocation from the House of Commons, which is very likely to collapse after the general election.
More shenanigans. Ross announced himself as candidate. But still needs to get formally selected by the association. And from what I can see on Facebook they are NOT happy.
Seems outrageous on David Duguid quite honestly given how the new seat is 75% his old one.
Comments
Take North Shropshire:
More in Common Con 42, Labour 30, Lib Dem 13 Reform 6, Green 10
YouGov: Lib Dem 40, Cons 25, Labour 18, Reform 11, Green 5
Which one is right or are they both up the creek?
Same up in Scotland according to MRP SNP will take all the existing Lib Dem seats bar Orkney where they are just 1 point behind!
Whereas YouGov has them being held comfortably by the Lib Dems.
There are many other similar situations in other forecasts of who is ahead whether it is Labour, Cons Lib Dems
But yes, if the denominator goes up, then turnout has to be even lower for the bet to come off.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/tv/bbc-accused-of-monumental-double-standards-for-not-dropping-racist-cricket-pundit/ar-BB1nHjrf?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=e36013eb41ed424ab536870e78254e37&ei=18
I see Kantar have rebranded as Verian - all very unhelpful. Their poll has an 18-point Labour lead:
https://veriangroup.com/hubfs/Britain-Barometer/Britain-Barometer-2024/5-June-2024-Britain-Barometer.pdf
Once again we have 60% saying they will definitely vote and 19% saying they will probably vote so I'm still thinking of turnout in the low to mid 70s yet there seema a general view on here turnout will be low. 75% wouldn't be too bad in the context of recent GEs.
A quick glance down the data tables (and I'm delighted to see some proper detail on the sampling) and it "smells" reasonable.
In most seats the hard left have no-one to vote for, unlike 2017 and 2019.
The importance is focussed on the necessity of getting one lot out and having a reset, but there is also a certainty that this will happen.
My guess is turnout lower than 2017 and 2019, but higher than the really boring elections like 2001, 2005.
I admit to being someone who thought the Tories would stabilise in the high 20s once the election was called. I was wrong.
The only cheer for the Tories on Ipsos is REFUK at 9%. Some pollsters are really going to be professionally embarrassed with the eventual Reform score unless they start to converge - I wonder which ones?
It seems Sturgeon, Drakeford and others all deleted their Whats app messages and they are all out of order for doing it
As far as Sunak is concerned he will be an ex PM on the 5th July
The top x% is doing very well, and so there's lots of money for top end luxury consumer goods. Everyone else is skint and having to penny pinch. Lidl and LVMH are both doing well, while M&S struggles.
A failed state of c.230m people would be a real problem.
Because the damage to their reputation from lockdown parties, Truss cosplaying mythological Thatcher, endless sleaze and whiny self-obsessed self-entitlement is far too great.
They've become a soap opera which has been running for a few series too long and thinks ever more lurid storylines will win back its lost viewers.
On that note, might I remark on how impressive was the Prime Minister this morning: serious but not portentous, he struck precisely the right note. How different Rishi's political legacy might have been if he'd not had the faux Boris act thrust upon him.
Among those who may change their mind, 11% are considering switching to the Conservatives, 13% Labour and 21% the Lib Dems.
50% say it is very important to them who wins the next General Election. Lower than the 64% who said the same in November 2019, but on a par with the figure in May 2017.”
@IPSOS
Almost anything else we could have done during Covid appears to have been better than what we have ended up with. Without going all Barty on the situation we simply took the cap off the QALY calcs.
And do you know what? @contrarian said almost dollar for dollar this is what would happen. And here we are.
That's obviously not the whole problem, but it's an example of the sort of decision making which has led them to where they are.
The BBC et al are certainly making up for that.
Good to see so many of the (very) old soldiers are of a pacifist outlook.
Fortunately for Labour in Wales the Conservatives led by the hopeless Andrew RT Davies are head and shoulders worse.
For the record. Gething should resign.
But the thing I’m hearing a lot right now is about mortgages.
I mentioned yesterday the three most influential politicians of the last 50 years in this country and, in my opinion, the only three (Thatcher, Blair, and Johnson). I obviously disliked Thatcher’s politics but my god she got it absolutely right when she enabled people to buy their own homes.
You touch a British person’s home and you’re toast.
First you have to jump through a few hoops to get registered as an overseas voter, and then return a letter each year to confirm your overseas address. If you move the letter gets sent to your old address so you need to actively change your address (in my constituency at least this is still all done by snail mail). Secondly the day to day politics are more at arms length and so a bigger change in the UK situation is needed to make a chang in the vote.
So I think that overseas registered voters are much more likely to vote (as they have an interest in registering). And that they are much less likely to change their vote from last time.
Politically there are other implications, as one of the causes of the Red Wall flipping is thought to be the psychological impact of destination shops closing.
CR goes on and on endlessly about VAT on schools as something which will affect the election but it’s straining and gnats and swallowing camels.
The tories stuffed up people’s mortgages with that ill-conceived moment of madness under Liz Truss. Everyone except the extremely wealthy are now petrified that they a) will not be able to afford their repayments and b) will be repaying it into retirement.
So, 21% Refuk, 14% Con might get them just 9 or 10 seats apiece.
That assumes that voting patterns stay the same otherwise, and that would be far from certain in the face of such a big upheaval in public opinion. If Refuk were able to find a couple of dozen "big beasts", they might be able to start concentrating their vote share in target seats, making them more likely to win.
Deadline for nominations is 4pm tomorrow, though - so they've almost certainly left it too late to pick up on any surge this time round.
Nick Wallis provides a regular email commentary for subscribers. It is excellent, but for once I disagree with his assessment of a witness. He portray Perkins as an incompetent, bewildered Chair - 'Perkins in Wonderland'. My own view is that she and the Board were the source of much of the mischief the PO caused. In my experience, when a fish stinks, it does so from the head, and her evidence seemed to confirm this is what happened here.
We need Ms Cyclefree on this one. I think she'd agree with me, but will be happy to be corrected if our leading expert on the scandal thinks otherwise.
Sunak couldn’t get through the debate without bare faced lies to EVERY question he faced. Waiting lists down (the audience gasped and laughed) boat crossings down (try saying that with Farage on the stage) Rwanda is a deterrent, Pensioners have never paid tax on pensions (he did say that, the very man who invented a pension tax and has been taxing pensions). The 2K Lie wasn’t made up by SPADs in an echo chamber, the treasury really did do it.
It’s just sinking in with me now how bad Sunak’s performance was in that debate, because as the leader, he has set a clear lead what the answers are. Everyone one else in his party, in debates, interviews, panels, QT in front of audiences, all must repeat Sunak’s lies now.
Starting with Mordaunt on Friday, no matter how batshit she thinks these answers are, she must say boat crossing are down, waiting lists are down, pensioners have never paid tax, the 2K Lie wasn’t made up by SPADs in an echo chamber the treasury really did do it. Etc etc.
It’s not going to be easy for them, is it?
I'm still not convinced CON will end up with less than 25%
It could end up 38-28. Still massive for LAB on that. 410-160?
https://x.com/kira_millana/status/1798616964774129867?s=46
It’s all a very cute idea and Starmer might go for it but I suspect a lot of Labour MPs would be very peed off if, having worked so hard for their Party’s win, Etonian Cameron gets the nod.
It’s time for a new broom. Bye bye Dave. And with it all your tawdry Greenshill shadiness.
Taxes on land on the other are eminently possible and quite reasonable for liberal economic reasons.
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=Y&CON=28&LAB=38&LIB=9&Reform=11&Green=5&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=15.3&SCOTLAB=37.1&SCOTLIB=8.3&SCOTReform=2.4&SCOTGreen=2.8&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=31&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2019nbbase
He would draw the line at serving an oik like Farage though
I’m expecting a Starmer bounce from his win in the debates.
https://www.ft.com/content/20185cd5-c1de-46b0-b3dd-ac51260ae38f
A centrist would not have appointed Cruella.
He is the shit Tory candidate...
It's not even clear it will produce good government (or good opposition). If all your MPs think the same way, groupthink is bad. If they all come from running think tanks, then they are used to running things and will not want to be backbench cannon fodder, and they are also likely to have fixed ideas about their areas of expertise.
You could put a hamster up as FM in Wales with a red rosette and it would win
His myopic vision, from his billionaire funded chopper, is to drive Britain to an uncaring, ruthless, exploitative, functionalist, factory.
It’s not the way forward for this country, nor the world. It’s absolutely clear to everyone that this dystopia will do nothing to solve the fundamental, systemic, and global problems we face. He is living in a mindset which has literally nothing to offer for solving what really now concerns people.
Banff and Buchan was SNP in 1997 and Basildon went Labour
Now I think, at least it draws a line, and Conservatives can go back to being proper Conservatives again. Slowly. So there is no point me posting anything other than the true history of this election, and cut through everybody’s spin.
The Conservative debates and leadership election that come after is the important thing.
Did a young linesman from Morayshire get visited by three witches yesterday?
Hail wee Dougie, leader of the Scons
Hall wee Dougie MP for Aberdeenshire and Moray East
Hail wee Dougie thou shalt be LOTO hereafter......
Does he think given the SNP woes he's gaining seats and can present himself as the face of 'successful Unionism and Conservatism'? Set against carnage in the rest of the UK. Is that what this is all about?
I can't even find odds.......
Arise Sir Alec Dougie Ross
It is becoming increasingly clear that the culture was Board-driven.
We may in due course learn the extent to which it was also Civil Service/Government driven, but that part of the story is yet to come.
https://x.com/staylorish/status/1798614146839347245
Boro is a prime example, it lost Debenhams, then House of Fraser but Marks kept going until the lack of footfall made keeping the store open impossible.
Same is true of Sunderland where they recently closed while moving to Washington..