Anyoneknow what the record number of posts in a thread is?
Are we making an attempt on the record?
But the big long threads seem to be working well for discussion though? In relation to days with lots of threads to jump across to, that can be discussion(s) killer, this feels okay?
But editors also need to be mindful lots of lurkers come for the quality and independent thoughts in the headers, i suspect.
A focus on quality not quantity of headers, and longer threads for discussion seems good balance to me.
In fairness to the editors, OGH has stepped down, TSE is off sick and Robert lives in another timezone. It's not surprising if we have to talk amongst ourselves for a little longer than usual.
The depleted editorial team should use OGH's old tricks of starting a thread every time he saw a tweet about a new opinion poll, and when he didn't, regularly starting generic Nighthawks threads. We do not need the editors to spend the whole day crafting thousand-word headers.
WTF kind of excuse is “it was pre-arranged” anyway? Nobody cares if it was pre-arranged, it looks bad because you did it, not because of when it went into your diary.
I cannot believe that Rishi’s comms team like him, or that he is listening to them.
It being pre-arranged if anything makes it worse.
Why would he have pre-arranged to abandon the services half-way through, when he had no other commitments at the time?
Absolutely, and then once you’ve sloped off early arrange a bit of naked politicking whilst the rest of the political class is engaged in saluting the DDay generation. If I were a Tory candidate in a reasonable prospect I’d be apoplectic.
The Sunak-Normandy error is an overdetermined problem. One angle I haven't seen much is that he was born in 1980. Much younger than other PMs. And for his entire adult life Britain's wars have been domestically controversial rather than nationally unifying. But none of these explains why some trusted advisor did not shout stop.
Yep, I think age is certainly a factor, much more so than the ‘migrant’ rubbish. The 3 features in North British news with vox pops last night were D Day, the impending Taylor Swift-gasm and the Scotland football team prep; kids and young people in the latter two, oldies and late middle agers in the former.
No, it’s the “migrant rubbish” as well. If Sunak had British parents and grandparents he would know in his DNA that D Day is big
I bet even Corbyn gets it. For that reason
This is not a criticism of PMs with foreign ancestry nor a reason for them not to hold office. As I’ve said coming from a new place can be a great advantage. A fresh perspective
What it means is you need good advisors. Didn’t Blair have an advisor who would inform him of the concerns of the common people? What tv they watched? Etc? It’s that but for identity
Sunak’s extra problem is that his wealth further alienates him from the average Brit
This seems harsh and somewhat racist, Leon. You are better than that.
My god it isn’t racist. It is a simple fact of migrant life. It would be the same if Sunak was white American or French or Polish
Also - AND I WILL SAY THIS AGAIN - I actively welcome politicians from migrant backgrounds because they often have new ideas, they aren’t crippled by the hang ups and neuroses and hidebound thinking of those who haven’t moved in 30 generations. I actively approve of immigration for this precise reason. This was my hope for Sunak. That he would be this new kind of PM with an innovative perspective. Sadly not
I do not approve of net 2.4m migrants in 3 years
Sunak isn't a migrant, he was born in Southampton.
Calling him a migrant can only be because of his race, not his immigration status.
That is open and shut racism.
Indeed it is. Time to exercise the "I misspoke" retraction defence @Leon.
I thought the low bar set by Brown in 2010 for GE campaign incompetence by a PM would never be surpassed, but Rishi is quite unbelievable in his staggering ineptitude.
I've been broadly sympathetic to his plight and much as it pains me to do so, expecting to put a cross in the blue box despite zero prospect of a Tory hold in my ultra marginal seat even if the polls had been neck and neck.
I'm resigned to Labour, have been for 3 years, and accept one party can't stay in power for more than 14/15 years, I'm fine with Keir as PM, dull as he'll probably be, but I'm utterly depressed at the thought of the Tories being wiped out and Labour having a stupendous majority that will keep them/ the left in power for a generation. And that I'll be totally disenfranchised if my only prospect is to vote for some Faragist rabble.
I'm 47. I could be approaching my 70s before the country swings back to the centre right, if it ever does at all.
I'm so depressed about this, as someone who's taken a close interest in politics for maybe 35 years. Sad.
Tories got a 10 year majority last time, things can turn much quicker than you think.
I admit as someone who thought Johnson had realigned politics for a generation, I was surprised how quickly it all fell apart. So we shouldn't make the same assumption about Starmer going on for ever. Nevertheless the opposite assumption is also a mistake. My impression of Starmer is he is very ambitious for a lengthy period in office and will do his utmost to win the following election.
So Starmer might crash and burn or he might be there for years and years. Not a particularly useful assessment for a site dedicated to political predictions, I accept.
It depends how fundamentally broken you think British politics is.
If Starmer can stabilise the ship, get into a generally broad based recovery, then he will stay in office for a while, and the Tories can go through their usual cats in a sack fun time in the first two terms, and maybe recover for a third term.
If Starmer can not fix things and becomes rapidly unpopular, then the whole system will become unstable. You could then see a real breakdown in politics, with the failures of our Victorian political system leading to crisis and paralysis.
Then Putinists like Farage might well get their Trump moment and the shit really hits the fan.
As of now, it could go either way, but the innate conservatism of the system and the country may yet stabilise things. However the slightest thing, something like an early change of Monarch for example, or some epochal disaster, might also lead to a general questioning of our entire system.
After the abject chaos of the Tory misrule, the country needs to settle down. Certainly Farage is the last thing we need at this point, and with no real party behind him, I really do question if Reform UK Ltd. is anything more than a sophisticated astrotrurf operation.
It's fairly shaky. You have about 30% of the population whose interests are largely ignored and for the moment Farage is their outlet. Previously when Trades Unions meant something they would have had a voice within Labour. Labour has decided instead to chase urban middle class and they have no interest in the chavs and actively disparage them.
Not so. SKS has been chasing the WWC voters who used to be Labour or Stay Home, who voted Leave in 2016 and for Boris/Brexit in 2019. They have been the number one target, not the urban middle class. Rebuilding the Red Wall has been, still is, the core strategy. That gets Labour back in the game and was the essence of the Starmer project. The rest is icing on the cake and was not anticipated.
Which of his policies are targeted at the Red Wall ?
I am parking my tanks on the Tory lawn. The absolute outrage amongst Tory voters and even members continues up here. So if they want a full time MP, a local candidate to stop the SNP, that choice is now me... https://x.com/ianincyaak/status/1799037268507967998
Here in Aberdeenshire... deserves a prize for understatement of the year. Chapeau!
The obvious person to take over would be Cameron but he would have to renounce his peerage by 4PM (would that even be possible?) and then be nominated for the best seat possible. And would he want to lose his peerage when no chance of winning the election.
If not Cameron, then the only practical thing would be for the Cabinet to choose a new leader. I reckon they would choose Mordaunt as the one most likely to win the most Con seats.
Cameron would work and could be PM from the Lords, provided the Tories abandoned the pretence that they are in any way likely to be close to winning the election. You could then have a rejigged campaign to salvage the Tory party’s fortunes to have a higher base to rebuild from.
A pedant writes, Cameron could not be Prime Minister from the Lords because he would need to be leader of his party and the Conservative Party leader has to be an MP.
He wouldn’t need to be leader, Churchill wasn’t initially. Given it would be for 3-4 weeks max it wouldn’t matter.
Permanent very low deposits guaranteed by government has other negatives above the risk of bad loans.
What percentage of council houses sold are still in the hands of owner occupiers, as opposed to private rental companies?
40% of right to buy homes are now rented out privately.
PB likes to ignore the vast shifts in housing tenure in the last 14 years, but ultimately it's the reason why the country has become more unequal and why the number of natural Conservative voters has fallen. There is no evidence that a mass private housebuilding programme would reverse the trend and increase ownership - all the new homes will simply be hoovered up by those who have accumulated large savings.
That shows a gross ignorance of economics and follows your typical lame excuse-making for NIMBYism.
The reason for the vast shifts in housing tenure is the lack of building supply. If supply increases that will be reversed.
And of course in a healthy free housing economy typically 10% of homes are unoccupied [for very good reasons] which means homes in poor condition or are too expensive don't get let out and the owner is left paying their bills/mortgage and taxes without a tenant paying them any rent.
So why would those with savings snap up all homes if supply is increased and they can't let them out? It means price falls and people who want to buy to own have a choice, as well as tenants having a choice, on where to live.
There he blows!
New homes: 2.0 million Increase in households renting: 1.1 million Increase in households owning outright: 0.9 million Decrease in households with a mortgage: -0.4 million
It would have certainly been worse without any new homes. But the idea that an increase in supply is the only intervention required is nonsense - wealth inequality is now far too great in the UK for that to suffice.
That's been caused by the terrible shortage of new homes, meaning prices are far too high. Which is fundamental supply and demand in action.
An increase in supply may not be the only intervention required, I never said it is, but it is absolutely 100% needed and would help to reverse the damage that has been done.
Of course if supply increases and prices fall in real terms, then that would lower that inequality you mentioned too.
The number of new homes has increased faster than the population, by a wide margin. It's actually a glut.
The problem is that there are significant mismatches with where those houses are being built and where there is housing pressure. At risk of pissing off lots of PBers, here is my official assessment of LAs (bespoke assessments can be provided on request):
YIMBY Gold award:
Selby Huntingdonshire Mid Suffolk Telford and Wrekin West Lindsey
NIMBY Black Spot of Barty Doom
Pendle Thurrock Swale Epping Forest Peterborough
Urban Excellence award: Southwark Rural Excellence award: West Devon, Cotswolds, Uttlesford Leon award: Camden, Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea (fewer houses, population falling) Trooper award: Tower Hamlets, Bedford, Tewkesbury (massive effort, but simply can’t keep up) Breeze block award: Barking and Dagenham, Slough, Leicester (massive population growth, no attempt to deal with it) Barty award: Copeland, Richmondshire, Caerphilly, Allerdale (population falling but f*** it more houses anyway)
This glut is all in your head.
The number of new homes has nowhere near kept up with demand.
Again you show a shocking ignorance of the effects of demographics on housing requirements, talking again only of "population". 🤦♂️
8.2% increase in homes 6.1% increase in households 6.3% increase in population
Why are you lying?
Your households figure is a lie. You know this, so why repeat it?
People who are compelled to share a home as there's not enough houses are classed as one household. You know that, but you're repeating your lies anyway. 🤦♂️
The idea that t here's been a lesser increase in household demand than population increase, when our demographic changes mean there's even further household pressures, is so obviously false its remarkable your following through on this outright blatant lie.
The number of people per household has fallen, and overcrowding has fallen too.
Edit: sorry, the population per household has risen* This is explained by immigrants being much more efficient users of households than say older people
The number of people per household should have fallen as we have 4 million extra over 50s than we did. Who don't live with children.🤦♂️
Immigration doesn't counter that.
Your own data reveals the chronic housing shortage. Again!
In most LAs, housing pressure is actually falling. It's only in about 100 where you see this acute problem, and they are mostly in our cities.
Don't believe you - please provide evidence because even this week I saw issues in 3 local authorities round here..
Absolutely.
I'd love to know these mythical local authorities without housing shortages.
I provided you with some examples above
I have posted the infographic on this before too, once directly in reply to Bart.
Glad you got there in the end. You have always banged on that we build plenty of homes. You always missed the point that these are not necessarily where they are needed. Glad to see that is rectified.
That has always been the point I wanted to make.
But even then, I suspect more housebuilding in and around London, Edinburgh etc will just serve to keep pushing those economies on, never really solve the housing crisis there. Vicious cycle.
Sure. But what is the point of more housebuilding in areas like South Shields where the population actually contracted in between the censuses.
Because objectively there aren't enough houses, even in South Shields?
What percentage of houses are vacant in South Shields?
If rightmove is correct there are a total of 33 vacants houses to rent - which is way less than 1% - I drive post at least 30 roads that I know have over 100 houses in them when visiting my parents.
WTF kind of excuse is “it was pre-arranged” anyway? Nobody cares if it was pre-arranged, it looks bad because you did it, not because of when it went into your diary.
I cannot believe that Rishi’s comms team like him, or that he is listening to them.
"And this election is about character, who you have in your mind’s eye when you make decisions.
And for me there was only one place I was going to be, which is there to pay my respects to the veterans.
And to say thank you to them on behalf of all of us, including my young children who, as I said to many of the veterans, were pretty carefree yesterday going to school. But that was down to their sacrifice, and the sacrifice particularly of those colleagues of theirs who didn’t make it back.
I made a choice yesterday about what I would do as leader of the Labour party and as a candidate to be prime minister and I knew I should be there. This was not a discussion.
It was my duty to be there, it was my privilege to be there.
Privilege is a word that is probably overused in politics but I felt privileged to be able to be with veterans who had fought on D-day against the odds to liberate Europe and to allow me to grow up in peace and freedom and democracy."
Of course he would say that - but he knows that this is what to say in the situation.
EU elections have started and the first unofficial results are in from t'Netherlands. Wilder's PVV have gained but just failed to take first place, and still in the lead are a Green-Left party. We don't really have the latter in the UK: although the UK Greens are lefty they are not formally lefty, but in Europe it's more formalised and mergered/allianced. I think the term "deep-green/deep-red" is used for them, but happy to be corrected.
Anyoneknow what the record number of posts in a thread is?
Are we making an attempt on the record?
But the big long threads seem to be working well for discussion though? In relation to days with lots of threads to jump across to, that can be discussion(s) killer, this feels okay?
But editors also need to be mindful lots of lurkers come for the quality and independent thoughts in the headers, i suspect.
A focus on quality not quantity of headers, and longer threads for discussion seems good balance to me.
In fairness to the editors, OGH has stepped down, TSE is off sick and Robert lives in another timezone. It's not surprising if we have to talk amongst ourselves for a little longer than usual.
Oh I didn't realize TSE was unwell. Hope not serious and speedy recovery.
The Sunak-Normandy error is an overdetermined problem. One angle I haven't seen much is that he was born in 1980. Much younger than other PMs. And for his entire adult life Britain's wars have been domestically controversial rather than nationally unifying. But none of these explains why some trusted advisor did not shout stop.
Yep, I think age is certainly a factor, much more so than the ‘migrant’ rubbish. The 3 features in North British news with vox pops last night were D Day, the impending Taylor Swift-gasm and the Scotland football team prep; kids and young people in the latter two, oldies and late middle agers in the former.
No, it’s the “migrant rubbish” as well. If Sunak had British parents and grandparents he would know in his DNA that D Day is big
I bet even Corbyn gets it. For that reason
This is not a criticism of PMs with foreign ancestry nor a reason for them not to hold office. As I’ve said coming from a new place can be a great advantage. A fresh perspective
What it means is you need good advisors. Didn’t Blair have an advisor who would inform him of the concerns of the common people? What tv they watched? Etc? It’s that but for identity
Sunak’s extra problem is that his wealth further alienates him from the average Brit
Its nothing to do with his ethnicity, its just that Sunak is shit.
He was born and bred, went to school and work and and completely grew up in this country.
He's just completely out of touch and incompetent. That's personal to him, not his ethnicity.
Exactly. Anyone anywhere, in the world with some kind of knowledge about the second world war knows how important D-Day was. This should be History 101 for any prime minister of the UK.
A land fit for heroes? The word veterans grates a bit too. The spin teams have picked it up from the States. Rishi will be thanking Vietnam vets before the month is out.
The Sunak-Normandy error is an overdetermined problem. One angle I haven't seen much is that he was born in 1980. Much younger than other PMs. And for his entire adult life Britain's wars have been domestically controversial rather than nationally unifying. But none of these explains why some trusted advisor did not shout stop.
Yep, I think age is certainly a factor, much more so than the ‘migrant’ rubbish. The 3 features in North British news with vox pops last night were D Day, the impending Taylor Swift-gasm and the Scotland football team prep; kids and young people in the latter two, oldies and late middle agers in the former.
No, it’s the “migrant rubbish” as well. If Sunak had British parents and grandparents he would know in his DNA that D Day is big
I bet even Corbyn gets it. For that reason
This is not a criticism of PMs with foreign ancestry nor a reason for them not to hold office. As I’ve said coming from a new place can be a great advantage. A fresh perspective
What it means is you need good advisors. Didn’t Blair have an advisor who would inform him of the concerns of the common people? What tv they watched? Etc? It’s that but for identity
Sunak’s extra problem is that his wealth further alienates him from the average Brit
This seems harsh and somewhat racist, Leon. You are better than that.
My god it isn’t racist. It is a simple fact of migrant life. It would be the same if Sunak was white American or French or Polish
Also - AND I WILL SAY THIS AGAIN - I actively welcome politicians from migrant backgrounds because they often have new ideas, they aren’t crippled by the hang ups and neuroses and hidebound thinking of those who haven’t moved in 30 generations. I actively approve of immigration for this precise reason. This was my hope for Sunak. That he would be this new kind of PM with an innovative perspective. Sadly not
I do not approve of net 2.4m migrants in 3 years
Sunak isn't a migrant, he was born in Southampton.
Calling him a migrant can only be because of his race, not his immigration status.
WTF kind of excuse is “it was pre-arranged” anyway? Nobody cares if it was pre-arranged, it looks bad because you did it, not because of when it went into your diary.
I cannot believe that Rishi’s comms team like him, or that he is listening to them.
It being pre-arranged if anything makes it worse.
Why would he have pre-arranged to abandon the services half-way through, when he had no other commitments at the time?
Because he didn't think it was important. It was a chore and Mr Sunak doesn't do the chores. Now bow down before his magnificence and vote him another five years
I am parking my tanks on the Tory lawn. The absolute outrage amongst Tory voters and even members continues up here. So if they want a full time MP, a local candidate to stop the SNP, that choice is now me... https://x.com/ianincyaak/status/1799037268507967998
I'd vote for you - but I'm in Norfolk
I thought the vid was okay. Stronger if you had mentioned getting value for money for the taxes you pay, and that your main focus will be on delivering safer streets and less crime.
The opening of “Hi, I am” felt a bit weak. What are the alternatives? 🤔
You also need to take your voice a bit deeper. And have your notes next to camera (easily done, someone holds it for you there) so you are looking into camera the whole time.
A land fit for heroes? The word veterans grates a bit too. The spin teams have picked it up from the States. Rishi will be thanking Vietnam vets before the month is out.
Yeah I love my 30% or whatever it is off rail fares but I don't love the name "Veterans Railcard" I use to get it.
I thought the low bar set by Brown in 2010 for GE campaign incompetence by a PM would never be surpassed, but Rishi is quite unbelievable in his staggering ineptitude.
I've been broadly sympathetic to his plight and much as it pains me to do so, expecting to put a cross in the blue box despite zero prospect of a Tory hold in my ultra marginal seat even if the polls had been neck and neck.
I'm resigned to Labour, have been for 3 years, and accept one party can't stay in power for more than 14/15 years, I'm fine with Keir as PM, dull as he'll probably be, but I'm utterly depressed at the thought of the Tories being wiped out and Labour having a stupendous majority that will keep them/ the left in power for a generation. And that I'll be totally disenfranchised if my only prospect is to vote for some Faragist rabble.
I'm 47. I could be approaching my 70s before the country swings back to the centre right, if it ever does at all.
I'm so depressed about this, as someone who's taken a close interest in politics for maybe 35 years. Sad.
Tories got a 10 year majority last time, things can turn much quicker than you think.
I admit as someone who thought Johnson had realigned politics for a generation, I was surprised how quickly it all fell apart. So we shouldn't make the same assumption about Starmer going on for ever. Nevertheless the opposite assumption is also a mistake. My impression of Starmer is he is very ambitious for a lengthy period in office and will do his utmost to win the following election.
So Starmer might crash and burn or he might be there for years and years. Not a particularly useful assessment for a site dedicated to political predictions, I accept.
It depends how fundamentally broken you think British politics is.
If Starmer can stabilise the ship, get into a generally broad based recovery, then he will stay in office for a while, and the Tories can go through their usual cats in a sack fun time in the first two terms, and maybe recover for a third term.
If Starmer can not fix things and becomes rapidly unpopular, then the whole system will become unstable. You could then see a real breakdown in politics, with the failures of our Victorian political system leading to crisis and paralysis.
Then Putinists like Farage might well get their Trump moment and the shit really hits the fan.
As of now, it could go either way, but the innate conservatism of the system and the country may yet stabilise things. However the slightest thing, something like an early change of Monarch for example, or some epochal disaster, might also lead to a general questioning of our entire system.
After the abject chaos of the Tory misrule, the country needs to settle down. Certainly Farage is the last thing we need at this point, and with no real party behind him, I really do question if Reform UK Ltd. is anything more than a sophisticated astrotrurf operation.
It's fairly shaky. You have about 30% of the population whose interests are largely ignored and for the moment Farage is their outlet. Previously when Trades Unions meant something they would have had a voice within Labour. Labour has decided instead to chase urban middle class and they have no interest in the chavs and actively disparage them.
Not so. SKS has been chasing the WWC voters who used to be Labour or Stay Home, who voted Leave in 2016 and for Boris/Brexit in 2019. They have been the number one target, not the urban middle class. Rebuilding the Red Wall has been, still is, the core strategy. That gets Labour back in the game and was the essence of the Starmer project. The rest is icing on the cake and was not anticipated.
Which of his policies are targeted at the Red Wall ?
Next he’s going to sell off the NHS to Rothschild & Co then he’s going to set a cat shelter on fire live on TV.
Hope you're on the mend TSE!
Should be discharged this afternoon then weeks/months of recovery before I can resume a normal life.
Yuk. Not fun. I’m impressed at your sangfroid in not moaning about it more
It makes you appreciate other things in life.
I have a brilliant bosses/team who have made it clear that I am not to work until they see a letter from a doctor confirming I am ready for work.
As tragedies goes being off work (and getting paid for it) during a major football tournament and T20 World Cup is brutal but I will endure.
In some ways the timing is perfect given the GE timetable.
Feel guilty about stress I’ve put my family through though.
Yes. Nothing like a bit of perspective
Last night Odessa came under quite serious bombardment (as late night PBers know - I saw and heard it from my balcony). Now the sun is out and everyone is sitting around outside my hotel in this charming little pavilion of cafes drinking excellent macchiatos. Could be Verona or Vienna. Except all the men have military haircuts
The Odessans are teaching me perspective. They really are. Life goes on
WTF kind of excuse is “it was pre-arranged” anyway? Nobody cares if it was pre-arranged, it looks bad because you did it, not because of when it went into your diary.
I cannot believe that Rishi’s comms team like him, or that he is listening to them.
It being pre-arranged if anything makes it worse.
Why would he have pre-arranged to abandon the services half-way through, when he had no other commitments at the time?
Because he didn't think it was important. It was a chore and Mr Sunak doesn't do the chores. Now bow down before his magnificence and vote him another five years
Anyoneknow what the record number of posts in a thread is?
Are we making an attempt on the record?
But the big long threads seem to be working well for discussion though? In relation to days with lots of threads to jump across to, that can be discussion(s) killer, this feels okay?
But editors also need to be mindful lots of lurkers come for the quality and independent thoughts in the headers, i suspect.
A focus on quality not quantity of headers, and longer threads for discussion seems good balance to me.
In fairness to the editors, OGH has stepped down, TSE is off sick and Robert lives in another timezone. It's not surprising if we have to talk amongst ourselves for a little longer than usual.
It wasn't a criticism, just a query.
I've often thought there should be occasional 'talk-amongst-yourselves' threads, which Nighthawks was,in effect.
We're helped at the moment by a lot happening, so long threads are just fine. As it happens, I'm personally keen to get back to some discussion of the PO scandal. This week's interrogation of Alice Perkins was riveting and revealing. I've been in touch with Ms Cyclefree about it and was kind of hoping she would drop in, but as usual she has plenty on her plate, and in any case, the Site is rightly preoccupied with election matters.
Focus Group of One Alert. I've been waiting in all day for my new garage door openers to be delivered. They just arrived and after the van driver said Ingerland had "no fucking chance" in the Euros his parting quip was that "Richy" Sunak was a wanker. He actually pronounced it /ˈrɪʧi/ which would have gratified Scott_XP and further enraged Casino. Were such a thing possible.
James O'Malley @Psythor · 2h The thing I don’t get about Rishi skipping D-Day is that it was basically his last chance to be a big, important international statesman at a major international event like that. Wouldn’t you want to do that, knowing you’ll never have another chance?
There's also the G7 next week where the topic of conversation may well be where did you get to last week...
"And this election is about character, who you have in your mind’s eye when you make decisions.
And for me there was only one place I was going to be, which is there to pay my respects to the veterans.
And to say thank you to them on behalf of all of us, including my young children who, as I said to many of the veterans, were pretty carefree yesterday going to school. But that was down to their sacrifice, and the sacrifice particularly of those colleagues of theirs who didn’t make it back.
I made a choice yesterday about what I would do as leader of the Labour party and as a candidate to be prime minister and I knew I should be there. This was not a discussion.
It was my duty to be there, it was my privilege to be there.
Privilege is a word that is probably overused in politics but I felt privileged to be able to be with veterans who had fought on D-day against the odds to liberate Europe and to allow me to grow up in peace and freedom and democracy."
Of course he would say that - but he knows that this is what to say in the situation.
Ah yes the veterans.. yet he's quite happy to let Northern Ireland veterans in their 70s and 80s be pursued through the courts while PIRA vets walk free.
Btw, for what it's worth I've backed Labour in Sunak's constituency at 4.5 and Con 150-199 at 6.5 (both Ladbrokes). Otherwise, my only GE bet is an old one for Labour to win a majority. Feeling quietly confident that'll come in.
I hope we don't see a "Labour landslide is down to Rishi Sunak dissing our WW2 heritage" sentiment taking root.
Agree, but I hope we don't get a sentiment that the Labour landslide was down to any one factor. There are hundreds, and every Tory-Lab switch, or Tory-other switch, or Tory-DNV switch will have been driven by different reasons - cost of living or partygate or immigration or Pinchergate or the post office or the cancellation of HS2 or Truss's appointment or Truss's removal or the height of Sunak's trousers or... There's very rarely a single reason.
For me, Truss is when this election became unwinnable for the Cons. But at that point there remained a wide spread of realistic possible outcomes. Now it would appear it's a Blair type landslide for SKS or a win so big as to need a new word. As you say, there's no single reason for something like this. There's loads of reasons.
I think this is up there with the Bigoted Woman in terms of GE clusterf**ks. And at least with Mrs Duffy, Brown could be partially forgiven for thinking he wasn’t being recorded….
For Sunak / Tories, its even worse given that so far the campaign has been big on do your national service.
This is so much worse
Attack line for the next 24 hours - "Sunak wants young people to do twelve months of National Service? He can't even do twelve hours!"
The Labour 'war room' must be great at the moment. I bet they have to pinch themselves every couple of hours to make sure they are not actually dreaming.
I thought the low bar set by Brown in 2010 for GE campaign incompetence by a PM would never be surpassed, but Rishi is quite unbelievable in his staggering ineptitude.
I've been broadly sympathetic to his plight and much as it pains me to do so, expecting to put a cross in the blue box despite zero prospect of a Tory hold in my ultra marginal seat even if the polls had been neck and neck.
I'm resigned to Labour, have been for 3 years, and accept one party can't stay in power for more than 14/15 years, I'm fine with Keir as PM, dull as he'll probably be, but I'm utterly depressed at the thought of the Tories being wiped out and Labour having a stupendous majority that will keep them/ the left in power for a generation. And that I'll be totally disenfranchised if my only prospect is to vote for some Faragist rabble.
I'm 47. I could be approaching my 70s before the country swings back to the centre right, if it ever does at all.
I'm so depressed about this, as someone who's taken a close interest in politics for maybe 35 years. Sad.
Tories got a 10 year majority last time, things can turn much quicker than you think.
I admit as someone who thought Johnson had realigned politics for a generation, I was surprised how quickly it all fell apart. So we shouldn't make the same assumption about Starmer going on for ever. Nevertheless the opposite assumption is also a mistake. My impression of Starmer is he is very ambitious for a lengthy period in office and will do his utmost to win the following election.
So Starmer might crash and burn or he might be there for years and years. Not a particularly useful assessment for a site dedicated to political predictions, I accept.
It depends how fundamentally broken you think British politics is.
If Starmer can stabilise the ship, get into a generally broad based recovery, then he will stay in office for a while, and the Tories can go through their usual cats in a sack fun time in the first two terms, and maybe recover for a third term.
If Starmer can not fix things and becomes rapidly unpopular, then the whole system will become unstable. You could then see a real breakdown in politics, with the failures of our Victorian political system leading to crisis and paralysis.
Then Putinists like Farage might well get their Trump moment and the shit really hits the fan.
As of now, it could go either way, but the innate conservatism of the system and the country may yet stabilise things. However the slightest thing, something like an early change of Monarch for example, or some epochal disaster, might also lead to a general questioning of our entire system.
After the abject chaos of the Tory misrule, the country needs to settle down. Certainly Farage is the last thing we need at this point, and with no real party behind him, I really do question if Reform UK Ltd. is anything more than a sophisticated astrotrurf operation.
It is a bit unfortunate that Farage needs to come back in to politics but it is because liberal elites (including the conservative party) have failed to absorb the lessons of Brexit.
What, that it's a failure, and trying to placate the reactionary right only makes things worse? Those lessons?
The thing that I would observe is that popular revolts against mass immigration, particularly illegal immigration, are bringing the 'populist right' to power across Europe, and probably also back to power in the US. It seems obvious to me that it is the wrong response to describe those revolting as 'fascists' etc, try and get them cancelled, outlaw them by laws about hate speech, etc. This kind of suppression of pretty mainsteam views outside the 'liberal elite' isn't going to work. Maybe just let people speak and let them participate in the discourse, which is what Farage does by representing them.
Is it really them that Farage is representing, or the billionaire climate sceptics who are funding Reform Ltd?
James O'Malley @Psythor · 2h The thing I don’t get about Rishi skipping D-Day is that it was basically his last chance to be a big, important international statesman at a major international event like that. Wouldn’t you want to do that, knowing you’ll never have another chance?
There's also the G7 next week where the topic of conversation may well be where did you get to last week...
He’s already checked out, IMHO.
There is a train of thinking that he might’ve called the GE in July because he actually couldn’t bear hanging around until November. We will likely get the full story in time, but I actually wonder if he knew the game was up weeks ago and now he’s just going through the motions.
I thought the low bar set by Brown in 2010 for GE campaign incompetence by a PM would never be surpassed, but Rishi is quite unbelievable in his staggering ineptitude.
I've been broadly sympathetic to his plight and much as it pains me to do so, expecting to put a cross in the blue box despite zero prospect of a Tory hold in my ultra marginal seat even if the polls had been neck and neck.
I'm resigned to Labour, have been for 3 years, and accept one party can't stay in power for more than 14/15 years, I'm fine with Keir as PM, dull as he'll probably be, but I'm utterly depressed at the thought of the Tories being wiped out and Labour having a stupendous majority that will keep them/ the left in power for a generation. And that I'll be totally disenfranchised if my only prospect is to vote for some Faragist rabble.
I'm 47. I could be approaching my 70s before the country swings back to the centre right, if it ever does at all.
I'm so depressed about this, as someone who's taken a close interest in politics for maybe 35 years. Sad.
Tories got a 10 year majority last time, things can turn much quicker than you think.
I admit as someone who thought Johnson had realigned politics for a generation, I was surprised how quickly it all fell apart. So we shouldn't make the same assumption about Starmer going on for ever. Nevertheless the opposite assumption is also a mistake. My impression of Starmer is he is very ambitious for a lengthy period in office and will do his utmost to win the following election.
So Starmer might crash and burn or he might be there for years and years. Not a particularly useful assessment for a site dedicated to political predictions, I accept.
It depends how fundamentally broken you think British politics is.
If Starmer can stabilise the ship, get into a generally broad based recovery, then he will stay in office for a while, and the Tories can go through their usual cats in a sack fun time in the first two terms, and maybe recover for a third term.
If Starmer can not fix things and becomes rapidly unpopular, then the whole system will become unstable. You could then see a real breakdown in politics, with the failures of our Victorian political system leading to crisis and paralysis.
Then Putinists like Farage might well get their Trump moment and the shit really hits the fan.
As of now, it could go either way, but the innate conservatism of the system and the country may yet stabilise things. However the slightest thing, something like an early change of Monarch for example, or some epochal disaster, might also lead to a general questioning of our entire system.
After the abject chaos of the Tory misrule, the country needs to settle down. Certainly Farage is the last thing we need at this point, and with no real party behind him, I really do question if Reform UK Ltd. is anything more than a sophisticated astrotrurf operation.
It is a bit unfortunate that Farage needs to come back in to politics but it is because liberal elites (including the conservative party) have failed to absorb the lessons of Brexit.
What, that it's a failure, and trying to placate the reactionary right only makes things worse? Those lessons?
The thing that I would observe is that popular revolts against mass immigration, particularly illegal immigration, are bringing the 'populist right' to power across Europe, and probably also back to power in the US. It seems obvious to me that it is the wrong response to describe those revolting as 'fascists' etc, try and get them cancelled, outlaw them by laws about hate speech, etc. This kind of suppression of pretty mainsteam views outside the 'liberal elite' isn't going to work. Maybe just let people speak and let them participate in the discourse, which is what Farage does by representing them.
Is it really them that Farage is representing, or the billionaire climate sceptics who are funding Reform Ltd?
WTF kind of excuse is “it was pre-arranged” anyway? Nobody cares if it was pre-arranged, it looks bad because you did it, not because of when it went into your diary.
I cannot believe that Rishi’s comms team like him, or that he is listening to them.
It being pre-arranged if anything makes it worse.
Why would he have pre-arranged to abandon the services half-way through, when he had no other commitments at the time?
You can't even pull the "My kids we sick" routine.
When they were planning this. Did absolutely nobody in his team say, Rishi, mate, you need to stay for the whole day, its the right thing to do, besides think of all the good PR you will get from photos of glad handing world leaders and veterans.
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Anyoneknow what the record number of posts in a thread is?
Are we making an attempt on the record?
But the big long threads seem to be working well for discussion though? In relation to days with lots of threads to jump across to, that can be discussion(s) killer, this feels okay?
But editors also need to be mindful lots of lurkers come for the quality and independent thoughts in the headers, i suspect.
A focus on quality not quantity of headers, and longer threads for discussion seems good balance to me.
In fairness to the editors, OGH has stepped down, TSE is off sick and Robert lives in another timezone. It's not surprising if we have to talk amongst ourselves for a little longer than usual.
The depleted editorial team should use OGH's old tricks of starting a thread every time he saw a tweet about a new opinion poll, and when he didn't, regularly starting generic Nighthawks threads. We do not need the editors to spend the whole day crafting thousand-word headers.
I wasn’t offering criticism cookie, but when situations like you describe happen, sometimes it reveals different ways of operating can be good too?
Theres numerous elements to the site. As a live news blog, learn things here first. A lot of lurkers come for the unique and interesting headers, many of which come from PBers and gives headers that unique range of different independent voices, and then there is the discussion element, which is very liberal minded and light touch in how its moderated. A unique blend of things.
I think this is up there with the Bigoted Woman in terms of GE clusterf**ks. And at least with Mrs Duffy, Brown could be partially forgiven for thinking he wasn’t being recorded….
And she was bigoted. Which many people seem to forget. "Where are they all flocking from?"
The actual quote was something like “all these Eastern Europeans; where are they flocking from?”, so her answer was there all along.
Is this bloke on PB and if not why not. Has he been to South Greenford.
I hope he has more success booking sleepers than me. I have been trying to book the Nightjet from Paris to Vienna in September but the tickets are not yet listed beyond 10 August. No indication of when booking for September will open up
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I am parking my tanks on the Tory lawn. The absolute outrage amongst Tory voters and even members continues up here. So if they want a full time MP, a local candidate to stop the SNP, that choice is now me... https://x.com/ianincyaak/status/1799037268507967998
James O'Malley @Psythor · 2h The thing I don’t get about Rishi skipping D-Day is that it was basically his last chance to be a big, important international statesman at a major international event like that. Wouldn’t you want to do that, knowing you’ll never have another chance?
There's also the G7 next week where the topic of conversation may well be where did you get to last week...
He’s already checked out, IMHO.
There is a train of thinking that he might’ve called the GE in July because he actually couldn’t bear hanging around until November. We will likely get the full story in time, but I actually wonder if he knew the game was up weeks ago and now he’s just going through the motions.
That doesn't chime with his 'up for it' debate performance though.
"And this election is about character, who you have in your mind’s eye when you make decisions.
And for me there was only one place I was going to be, which is there to pay my respects to the veterans.
And to say thank you to them on behalf of all of us, including my young children who, as I said to many of the veterans, were pretty carefree yesterday going to school. But that was down to their sacrifice, and the sacrifice particularly of those colleagues of theirs who didn’t make it back.
I made a choice yesterday about what I would do as leader of the Labour party and as a candidate to be prime minister and I knew I should be there. This was not a discussion.
It was my duty to be there, it was my privilege to be there.
Privilege is a word that is probably overused in politics but I felt privileged to be able to be with veterans who had fought on D-day against the odds to liberate Europe and to allow me to grow up in peace and freedom and democracy."
Of course he would say that - but he knows that this is what to say in the situation.
Ah yes the veterans.. yet he's quite happy to let Northern Ireland veterans in their 70s and 80s be pursued through the courts while PIRA vets walk free.
Funny old world.
I’m sure there are Tory researchers scanning the internet for prospective Labour ministers’ comments on the armed forces in the past right now. Won’t be surprised if there is the odd statement that doesn’t fit the respect for our servicemen stance.
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(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 12m Rishi Sunak says the issue shouldn’t be politicised and we should focus on the veterans. There was supposed to be a campaign pause for D-Day. He broke it, left the veterans, and came home for a political interview.
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This feels like a more important news story today than precisely when Sunak departed Northern France. Or am I the only person on PB who uses public services?
The Tories are somewhere in the 20s, or just below, in the opinion polls. The very hardened core vote. Most of the people who would change their vote due to a public services crisis have done so long ago.
If you are interested in how the election campaign might develop from here, then it kinda makes sense to think more about an issue that might compel some of the hard core Tory vote to switch.
We're looking here at factors that will make the difference between 400 and 500 Labour seats, not between a hung Parliament and a Labour majority.
WTF kind of excuse is “it was pre-arranged” anyway? Nobody cares if it was pre-arranged, it looks bad because you did it, not because of when it went into your diary.
I cannot believe that Rishi’s comms team like him, or that he is listening to them.
"It was pre-arranged to feck off early"
Whoever didn't block D-Day from his diary is not fit for purpose.
That he didn't spot it himself - ditto.
If we had gone from Boris to Penny Mordaunt, the Conservative Party - and the country - would have been in a better place. No way Penny would have shown such a lack of political acumen.
There are a bunch of MPs who voted for Truss who will have a long, long time to reflect on their stupidity. With that on their CV, hard to see how those ex-MPs who voted for her get another job any time soon.
I feel sorry for a core of Tory MPs who have been bloody good constituency MPs, but who have been undermined in getting re-elected by too many of their colleagues, from the top down.
Now we have Starmer drifting in to Downing Street, effectively unopposed. Which wouldn't be quite so bad if hadn't shown himself to be so utterly useless in that first debte. A lifelong barrister who can't make the case for voting for him? He could be on Trump's team of lawyers, being that bad.
I hope we don't see a "Labour landslide is down to Rishi Sunak dissing our WW2 heritage" sentiment taking root.
Agree, but I hope we don't get a sentiment that the Labour landslide was down to any one factor. There are hundreds, and every Tory-Lab switch, or Tory-other switch, or Tory-DNV switch will have been driven by different reasons - cost of living or partygate or immigration or Pinchergate or the post office or the cancellation of HS2 or Truss's appointment or Truss's removal or the height of Sunak's trousers or... There's very rarely a single reason.
For me, Truss is when this election became unwinnable for the Cons. But at that point there remained a wide spread of realistic possible outcomes. Now it would appear it's a Blair type landslide for SKS or a win so big as to need a new word. As you say, there's no single reason for something like this. There's loads of reasons.
In November 2021 Paterson left the Commons after Boris had tried to protect him from wrongdoing. In that month the polls turned red. They have never recovered. That event began the sense that this was one rule for them and another for us. Partygate enforced the idea soon afterwards. Sunak was in a senior position at those times, and was far too late resigning - July 2022. Truss made sure that the disaster was about political acumen as well as ethical character. It will take a Robert Peel to put it right.
It’s high time PB woke gestapo tried to get me banned again. It’s been at least three days
Nah, just accept you erred (we all do) and move on.
No. Come get me
No, you're not worth it.
I'm not surprised at your racism, its not the first and won't be your last.
I see your point but you’re a stupid fat dickless loser in a Barratt home new build in Warrington. So we also have to take that into consideration, surely, as it means you are SO low in the pecking order of life you are desperate for the tiniest scintilla of perceived superiority, moral or intellectual, even when it is clearly bogus, as here
WTF kind of excuse is “it was pre-arranged” anyway? Nobody cares if it was pre-arranged, it looks bad because you did it, not because of when it went into your diary.
I cannot believe that Rishi’s comms team like him, or that he is listening to them.
"It was pre-arranged to feck off early"
Whoever didn't block D-Day from his diary is not fit for purpose.
That he didn't spot it himself - ditto.
If we had gone from Boris to Penny Mordaunt, the Conservative Party - and the country - would have been in a better place. No way Penny would have shown such a lack of political acumen.
There are a bunch of MPs who voted for Truss who will have a long, long time to reflect on their stupidity. With that on their CV, hard to see how those ex-MPs who voted for her get another job any time soon.
I feel sorry for a core of Tory MPs who have been bloody good constituency MPs, but who have been undermined in getting re-elected by too many of their colleagues, from the top down.
Now we have Starmer drifting in to Downing Street, effectively unopposed. Which wouldn't be quite so bad if hadn't shown himself to be so utterly useless in that first debte. A lifelong barrister who can't make the case for voting for him? He could be on Trump's team of lawyers, being that bad.
Penny would have emerged from the waves in a WWII era dive suit holding a trident.
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Sunak in the pool interview keeps saying "I returned home before the International Leader Event"...
The obvious thing anybody with half a brain would say is, but aren't you an international leader (for the moment). Again PR team, they are useless, you are just reinforcing that you didn't just skip some irrelevant bit at the end, you skipped the International Leaders Event.
All HYFUD spinning about well it wasn't really an international leader event, it was for head of state etc, Sunak just reinforced in the interview to the public who don't follow the minute details that he skipped an event for international leaders.
It’s high time PB woke gestapo tried to get me banned again. It’s been at least three days
Nah, just accept you erred (we all do) and move on.
No. Come get me
No, you're not worth it.
I'm not surprised at your racism, its not the first and won't be your last.
I see your point but you’re a stupid fat dickless loser in a Barratt home new build in Warrington. So we also have to take that into consideration, surely, as it means you are SO low in the pecking order of life you are desperate for the tiniest scintilla of perceived superiority, moral or intellectual, even when it is clearly bogus, as here
YOU’LL FIND ME AT THE MOZART CAFE
Don't take on Trump for the most toddler like boomer, you will only lose.
If the Tory press gives this Sunak story the coverage they would give it if a Labour PM had done the same, I reckon we're looking at a total Tory meltdown in the polls. But it is a big if.
Calm down.
I love D-Day and Operation Overlord and even I didn't give a fuck about the 80th anniversary today.
I feel sorry for a core of Tory MPs who have been bloody good constituency MPs, but who have been undermined in getting re-elected by too many of their colleagues, from the top down.
Shame you didn't feel the same for the many even better MPs who were booted by your boy, BoZo.
It’s high time PB woke gestapo tried to get me banned again. It’s been at least three days
Nah, just accept you erred (we all do) and move on.
No. Come get me
No, you're not worth it.
I'm not surprised at your racism, its not the first and won't be your last.
I see your point but you’re a stupid fat dickless loser in a Barratt home new build in Warrington. So we also have to take that into consideration, surely, as it means you are SO low in the pecking order of life you are desperate for the tiniest scintilla of perceived superiority, moral or intellectual, even when it is clearly bogus, as here
Focus Group of One Alert. I've been waiting in all day for my new garage door openers to be delivered. They just arrived and after the van driver said Ingerland had "no fucking chance" in the Euros his parting quip was that "Richy" Sunak was a wanker. He actually pronounced it /ˈrɪʧi/ which would have gratified Scott_XP and further enraged Casino. Were such a thing possible.
D-Daygate cut through = 3 feet high and rising.
I was expecting you to consider the reaction here and elsewhere to Sunak leaving early to be a little Gammony.
One odd thing about my voting experience this morning. After all the controversy over voter ID in Britain, abs with the much-discussed knowledge that it was normal for voter ID to be retired on other European countries, I was very prepared to provide ID when I voted in the Irish local elections this morning.
James O'Malley @Psythor · 2h The thing I don’t get about Rishi skipping D-Day is that it was basically his last chance to be a big, important international statesman at a major international event like that. Wouldn’t you want to do that, knowing you’ll never have another chance?
There's also the G7 next week where the topic of conversation may well be where did you get to last week...
He’s already checked out, IMHO.
There is a train of thinking that he might’ve called the GE in July because he actually couldn’t bear hanging around until November. We will likely get the full story in time, but I actually wonder if he knew the game was up weeks ago and now he’s just going through the motions.
TLDL; Sunak has wanted an early election since the start of the year, which backs up your theory.
And the lack of umbrella was because he didn't think he could hold one himself for that long, and having an aide hold one would look too entitled.
What i don't understand is why he didn't make use of one of these (full disclosure, I've dreamed of owning one since I discovered geekery age 4 1/3): https://amzn.eu/d/c5vYSkX
If the Tory press gives this Sunak story the coverage they would give it if a Labour PM had done the same, I reckon we're looking at a total Tory meltdown in the polls. But it is a big if.
Calm down.
I love D-Day and Operation Overlord and even I didn't give a fuck about the 80th anniversary today.
I feel sorry for a core of Tory MPs who have been bloody good constituency MPs, but who have been undermined in getting re-elected by too many of their colleagues, from the top down.
Shame you didn't feel the same for the many even better MPs who were booted by your boy, BoZo.
WTF kind of excuse is “it was pre-arranged” anyway? Nobody cares if it was pre-arranged, it looks bad because you did it, not because of when it went into your diary.
I cannot believe that Rishi’s comms team like him, or that he is listening to them.
"It was pre-arranged to feck off early"
Whoever didn't block D-Day from his diary is not fit for purpose.
That he didn't spot it himself - ditto.
If we had gone from Boris to Penny Mordaunt, the Conservative Party - and the country - would have been in a better place. No way Penny would have shown such a lack of political acumen.
There are a bunch of MPs who voted for Truss who will have a long, long time to reflect on their stupidity. With that on their CV, hard to see how those ex-MPs who voted for her get another job any time soon.
I feel sorry for a core of Tory MPs who have been bloody good constituency MPs, but who have been undermined in getting re-elected by too many of their colleagues, from the top down.
Now we have Starmer drifting in to Downing Street, effectively unopposed. Which wouldn't be quite so bad if hadn't shown himself to be so utterly useless in that first debte. A lifelong barrister who can't make the case for voting for him? He could be on Trump's team of lawyers, being that bad.
Penny would have emerged from the waves in a WWII era dive suit holding a trident.
I feel sorry for a core of Tory MPs who have been bloody good constituency MPs, but who have been undermined in getting re-elected by too many of their colleagues, from the top down.
Shame you didn't feel the same for the many even better MPs who were booted by your boy, BoZo.
Except they weren't.
And this, in a single phrase, is why the party you still claim to support is so fucked.
It’s high time PB woke gestapo tried to get me banned again. It’s been at least three days
Nah, just accept you erred (we all do) and move on.
No. Come get me
No, you're not worth it.
I'm not surprised at your racism, its not the first and won't be your last.
I see your point but you’re a stupid fat dickless loser in a Barratt home new build in Warrington. So we also have to take that into consideration, surely, as it means you are SO low in the pecking order of life you are desperate for the tiniest scintilla of perceived superiority, moral or intellectual, even when it is clearly bogus, as here
YOU’LL FIND ME AT THE MOZART CAFE
Don't take on Trump for the most toddler like boomer, you will only lose.
I thought the low bar set by Brown in 2010 for GE campaign incompetence by a PM would never be surpassed, but Rishi is quite unbelievable in his staggering ineptitude.
I've been broadly sympathetic to his plight and much as it pains me to do so, expecting to put a cross in the blue box despite zero prospect of a Tory hold in my ultra marginal seat even if the polls had been neck and neck.
I'm resigned to Labour, have been for 3 years, and accept one party can't stay in power for more than 14/15 years, I'm fine with Keir as PM, dull as he'll probably be, but I'm utterly depressed at the thought of the Tories being wiped out and Labour having a stupendous majority that will keep them/ the left in power for a generation. And that I'll be totally disenfranchised if my only prospect is to vote for some Faragist rabble.
I'm 47. I could be approaching my 70s before the country swings back to the centre right, if it ever does at all.
I'm so depressed about this, as someone who's taken a close interest in politics for maybe 35 years. Sad.
Tories got a 10 year majority last time, things can turn much quicker than you think.
I admit as someone who thought Johnson had realigned politics for a generation, I was surprised how quickly it all fell apart. So we shouldn't make the same assumption about Starmer going on for ever. Nevertheless the opposite assumption is also a mistake. My impression of Starmer is he is very ambitious for a lengthy period in office and will do his utmost to win the following election.
So Starmer might crash and burn or he might be there for years and years. Not a particularly useful assessment for a site dedicated to political predictions, I accept.
It depends how fundamentally broken you think British politics is.
If Starmer can stabilise the ship, get into a generally broad based recovery, then he will stay in office for a while, and the Tories can go through their usual cats in a sack fun time in the first two terms, and maybe recover for a third term.
If Starmer can not fix things and becomes rapidly unpopular, then the whole system will become unstable. You could then see a real breakdown in politics, with the failures of our Victorian political system leading to crisis and paralysis.
Then Putinists like Farage might well get their Trump moment and the shit really hits the fan.
As of now, it could go either way, but the innate conservatism of the system and the country may yet stabilise things. However the slightest thing, something like an early change of Monarch for example, or some epochal disaster, might also lead to a general questioning of our entire system.
After the abject chaos of the Tory misrule, the country needs to settle down. Certainly Farage is the last thing we need at this point, and with no real party behind him, I really do question if Reform UK Ltd. is anything more than a sophisticated astrotrurf operation.
It is a bit unfortunate that Farage needs to come back in to politics but it is because liberal elites (including the conservative party) have failed to absorb the lessons of Brexit.
The lessons of Brexit presumably being never do anything so stupid again? There's a reason why no-one is talking about Brexit success in this election campaign
If the Tory press gives this Sunak story the coverage they would give it if a Labour PM had done the same, I reckon we're looking at a total Tory meltdown in the polls. But it is a big if.
Calm down.
I love D-Day and Operation Overlord and even I didn't give a fuck about the 80th anniversary today.
We haven't heard from Casino on this yet. Perhaps he is still in a darkened room with a damp towel over his head.
Not a problem, he assured us in his usual pompous manner that it would have "zero cut through"
TBF, the BBC did its absolute best to ignore the story for as long as they could.
They really didn't. All the MSM except the Mirror waited until the day ended to start to cover it*, because I presume they didn't want to be seen as throwing a political hit on D-Day, its looks at Sunak level to do that. Then at about 1am, the paper websites start to run it, even the Telegraph. Then the BBC editors get in early doors and take their cue from this.
WTF kind of excuse is “it was pre-arranged” anyway? Nobody cares if it was pre-arranged, it looks bad because you did it, not because of when it went into your diary.
I cannot believe that Rishi’s comms team like him, or that he is listening to them.
"It was pre-arranged to feck off early"
Whoever didn't block D-Day from his diary is not fit for purpose.
That he didn't spot it himself - ditto.
If we had gone from Boris to Penny Mordaunt, the Conservative Party - and the country - would have been in a better place. No way Penny would have shown such a lack of political acumen.
There are a bunch of MPs who voted for Truss who will have a long, long time to reflect on their stupidity. With that on their CV, hard to see how those ex-MPs who voted for her get another job any time soon.
I feel sorry for a core of Tory MPs who have been bloody good constituency MPs, but who have been undermined in getting re-elected by too many of their colleagues, from the top down.
Now we have Starmer drifting in to Downing Street, effectively unopposed. Which wouldn't be quite so bad if hadn't shown himself to be so utterly useless in that first debte. A lifelong barrister who can't make the case for voting for him? He could be on Trump's team of lawyers, being that bad.
Backbenchers get to choose the two best people to be leader. They are accountable as a body if they don't choose two outstanding candidates.
Backbenchers in a majority governing party are in fact the supreme authority in this country. They have chosen to let their leaders get on with disaster after disaster, political and ethical. They decided to be vote fodder instead of Burkean representatives. Tough.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 12m Rishi Sunak says the issue shouldn’t be politicised and we should focus on the veterans. There was supposed to be a campaign pause for D-Day. He broke it, left the veterans, and came home for a political interview.
Um, he filmed an interview that wasn’t to be aired during D-day events and so clearly didn’t do any campaigning so didn’t “break” any pause.
The only reason people are aware he did an interview for the campaign is because of people wetting their pants about him missing part of the D-day commemorations. So he respected the campaigning pause - it was others who turned it into part of the campaign.
Permanent very low deposits guaranteed by government has other negatives above the risk of bad loans.
What percentage of council houses sold are still in the hands of owner occupiers, as opposed to private rental companies?
40% of right to buy homes are now rented out privately.
PB likes to ignore the vast shifts in housing tenure in the last 14 years, but ultimately it's the reason why the country has become more unequal and why the number of natural Conservative voters has fallen. There is no evidence that a mass private housebuilding programme would reverse the trend and increase ownership - all the new homes will simply be hoovered up by those who have accumulated large savings.
That shows a gross ignorance of economics and follows your typical lame excuse-making for NIMBYism.
The reason for the vast shifts in housing tenure is the lack of building supply. If supply increases that will be reversed.
And of course in a healthy free housing economy typically 10% of homes are unoccupied [for very good reasons] which means homes in poor condition or are too expensive don't get let out and the owner is left paying their bills/mortgage and taxes without a tenant paying them any rent.
So why would those with savings snap up all homes if supply is increased and they can't let them out? It means price falls and people who want to buy to own have a choice, as well as tenants having a choice, on where to live.
There he blows!
New homes: 2.0 million Increase in households renting: 1.1 million Increase in households owning outright: 0.9 million Decrease in households with a mortgage: -0.4 million
It would have certainly been worse without any new homes. But the idea that an increase in supply is the only intervention required is nonsense - wealth inequality is now far too great in the UK for that to suffice.
That's been caused by the terrible shortage of new homes, meaning prices are far too high. Which is fundamental supply and demand in action.
An increase in supply may not be the only intervention required, I never said it is, but it is absolutely 100% needed and would help to reverse the damage that has been done.
Of course if supply increases and prices fall in real terms, then that would lower that inequality you mentioned too.
The number of new homes has increased faster than the population, by a wide margin. It's actually a glut.
The problem is that there are significant mismatches with where those houses are being built and where there is housing pressure. At risk of pissing off lots of PBers, here is my official assessment of LAs (bespoke assessments can be provided on request):
YIMBY Gold award:
Selby Huntingdonshire Mid Suffolk Telford and Wrekin West Lindsey
NIMBY Black Spot of Barty Doom
Pendle Thurrock Swale Epping Forest Peterborough
Urban Excellence award: Southwark Rural Excellence award: West Devon, Cotswolds, Uttlesford Leon award: Camden, Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea (fewer houses, population falling) Trooper award: Tower Hamlets, Bedford, Tewkesbury (massive effort, but simply can’t keep up) Breeze block award: Barking and Dagenham, Slough, Leicester (massive population growth, no attempt to deal with it) Barty award: Copeland, Richmondshire, Caerphilly, Allerdale (population falling but f*** it more houses anyway)
This glut is all in your head.
The number of new homes has nowhere near kept up with demand.
Again you show a shocking ignorance of the effects of demographics on housing requirements, talking again only of "population". 🤦♂️
8.2% increase in homes 6.1% increase in households 6.3% increase in population
Why are you lying?
Your households figure is a lie. You know this, so why repeat it?
People who are compelled to share a home as there's not enough houses are classed as one household. You know that, but you're repeating your lies anyway. 🤦♂️
The idea that t here's been a lesser increase in household demand than population increase, when our demographic changes mean there's even further household pressures, is so obviously false its remarkable your following through on this outright blatant lie.
The number of people per household has fallen, and overcrowding has fallen too.
Edit: sorry, the population per household has risen* This is explained by immigrants being much more efficient users of households than say older people
The number of people per household should have fallen as we have 4 million extra over 50s than we did. Who don't live with children.🤦♂️
Immigration doesn't counter that.
Your own data reveals the chronic housing shortage. Again!
In most LAs, housing pressure is actually falling. It's only in about 100 where you see this acute problem, and they are mostly in our cities.
Don't believe you - please provide evidence because even this week I saw issues in 3 local authorities round here..
Absolutely.
I'd love to know these mythical local authorities without housing shortages.
I provided you with some examples above
I have posted the infographic on this before too, once directly in reply to Bart.
Glad you got there in the end. You have always banged on that we build plenty of homes. You always missed the point that these are not necessarily where they are needed. Glad to see that is rectified.
That has always been the point I wanted to make.
But even then, I suspect more housebuilding in and around London, Edinburgh etc will just serve to keep pushing those economies on, never really solve the housing crisis there. Vicious cycle.
Sure. But what is the point of more housebuilding in areas like South Shields where the population actually contracted in between the censuses.
In South Tyneside, the population fell while the number of households increased very slightly.
This is where the analysis is tricky - under Bart's thinking, that means there was some housing pressure, which has some merit.
However, I suggest that the inverse is happening - there is so little pressure on housing in S.Tyneside people can afford to live alone. I think Barty includes this effect in his definition of "pressure", which I think is a little misleading. Indeed, comparing that kind of "pressure" to that experienced by people in London is just plain wrong.
Under his definition, housing pressure is effectively inescapable. We'd all love to live alone in a 10 bed mansion.
I feel sorry for a core of Tory MPs who have been bloody good constituency MPs, but who have been undermined in getting re-elected by too many of their colleagues, from the top down.
Shame you didn't feel the same for the many even better MPs who were booted by your boy, BoZo.
Except they weren't.
And this, in a single phrase, is why the party you still claim to support is so fucked.
It’s high time PB woke gestapo tried to get me banned again. It’s been at least three days
Nah, just accept you erred (we all do) and move on.
No. Come get me
No, you're not worth it.
I'm not surprised at your racism, its not the first and won't be your last.
I see your point but you’re a stupid fat dickless loser in a Barratt home new build in Warrington. So we also have to take that into consideration, surely, as it means you are SO low in the pecking order of life you are desperate for the tiniest scintilla of perceived superiority, moral or intellectual, even when it is clearly bogus, as here
James O'Malley @Psythor · 2h The thing I don’t get about Rishi skipping D-Day is that it was basically his last chance to be a big, important international statesman at a major international event like that. Wouldn’t you want to do that, knowing you’ll never have another chance?
There's also the G7 next week where the topic of conversation may well be where did you get to last week...
He’s already checked out, IMHO.
There is a train of thinking that he might’ve called the GE in July because he actually couldn’t bear hanging around until November. We will likely get the full story in time, but I actually wonder if he knew the game was up weeks ago and now he’s just going through the motions.
TLDL; Sunak has wanted an early election since the start of the year, which backs up your theory.
And the lack of umbrella was because he didn't think he could hold one himself for that long, and having an aide hold one would look too entitled.
What i don't understand is why he didn't make use of one of these (full disclosure, I've dreamed of owning one since I discovered geekery age 4 1/3): https://amzn.eu/d/c5vYSkX
Originally on Sky they said they were told they would be going inside to do it.
WTF kind of excuse is “it was pre-arranged” anyway? Nobody cares if it was pre-arranged, it looks bad because you did it, not because of when it went into your diary.
I cannot believe that Rishi’s comms team like him, or that he is listening to them.
"It was pre-arranged to feck off early"
Whoever didn't block D-Day from his diary is not fit for purpose.
That he didn't spot it himself - ditto.
If we had gone from Boris to Penny Mordaunt, the Conservative Party - and the country - would have been in a better place. No way Penny would have shown such a lack of political acumen.
There are a bunch of MPs who voted for Truss who will have a long, long time to reflect on their stupidity. With that on their CV, hard to see how those ex-MPs who voted for her get another job any time soon.
I feel sorry for a core of Tory MPs who have been bloody good constituency MPs, but who have been undermined in getting re-elected by too many of their colleagues, from the top down.
Now we have Starmer drifting in to Downing Street, effectively unopposed. Which wouldn't be quite so bad if hadn't shown himself to be so utterly useless in that first debte. A lifelong barrister who can't make the case for voting for him? He could be on Trump's team of lawyers, being that bad.
Penny would have emerged from the waves in a WWII era dive suit holding a trident.
Anyone who could wear a Clammy Death suit and walk in it deserves deep respect.
Source - have worn a modern dry suit and talked to those who used derivatives of the Sladen.
Permanent very low deposits guaranteed by government has other negatives above the risk of bad loans.
What percentage of council houses sold are still in the hands of owner occupiers, as opposed to private rental companies?
40% of right to buy homes are now rented out privately.
PB likes to ignore the vast shifts in housing tenure in the last 14 years, but ultimately it's the reason why the country has become more unequal and why the number of natural Conservative voters has fallen. There is no evidence that a mass private housebuilding programme would reverse the trend and increase ownership - all the new homes will simply be hoovered up by those who have accumulated large savings.
That shows a gross ignorance of economics and follows your typical lame excuse-making for NIMBYism.
The reason for the vast shifts in housing tenure is the lack of building supply. If supply increases that will be reversed.
And of course in a healthy free housing economy typically 10% of homes are unoccupied [for very good reasons] which means homes in poor condition or are too expensive don't get let out and the owner is left paying their bills/mortgage and taxes without a tenant paying them any rent.
So why would those with savings snap up all homes if supply is increased and they can't let them out? It means price falls and people who want to buy to own have a choice, as well as tenants having a choice, on where to live.
There he blows!
New homes: 2.0 million Increase in households renting: 1.1 million Increase in households owning outright: 0.9 million Decrease in households with a mortgage: -0.4 million
It would have certainly been worse without any new homes. But the idea that an increase in supply is the only intervention required is nonsense - wealth inequality is now far too great in the UK for that to suffice.
That's been caused by the terrible shortage of new homes, meaning prices are far too high. Which is fundamental supply and demand in action.
An increase in supply may not be the only intervention required, I never said it is, but it is absolutely 100% needed and would help to reverse the damage that has been done.
Of course if supply increases and prices fall in real terms, then that would lower that inequality you mentioned too.
The number of new homes has increased faster than the population, by a wide margin. It's actually a glut.
The problem is that there are significant mismatches with where those houses are being built and where there is housing pressure. At risk of pissing off lots of PBers, here is my official assessment of LAs (bespoke assessments can be provided on request):
YIMBY Gold award:
Selby Huntingdonshire Mid Suffolk Telford and Wrekin West Lindsey
NIMBY Black Spot of Barty Doom
Pendle Thurrock Swale Epping Forest Peterborough
Urban Excellence award: Southwark Rural Excellence award: West Devon, Cotswolds, Uttlesford Leon award: Camden, Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea (fewer houses, population falling) Trooper award: Tower Hamlets, Bedford, Tewkesbury (massive effort, but simply can’t keep up) Breeze block award: Barking and Dagenham, Slough, Leicester (massive population growth, no attempt to deal with it) Barty award: Copeland, Richmondshire, Caerphilly, Allerdale (population falling but f*** it more houses anyway)
This glut is all in your head.
The number of new homes has nowhere near kept up with demand.
Again you show a shocking ignorance of the effects of demographics on housing requirements, talking again only of "population". 🤦♂️
8.2% increase in homes 6.1% increase in households 6.3% increase in population
Why are you lying?
Your households figure is a lie. You know this, so why repeat it?
People who are compelled to share a home as there's not enough houses are classed as one household. You know that, but you're repeating your lies anyway. 🤦♂️
The idea that t here's been a lesser increase in household demand than population increase, when our demographic changes mean there's even further household pressures, is so obviously false its remarkable your following through on this outright blatant lie.
The number of people per household has fallen, and overcrowding has fallen too.
Edit: sorry, the population per household has risen* This is explained by immigrants being much more efficient users of households than say older people
The number of people per household should have fallen as we have 4 million extra over 50s than we did. Who don't live with children.🤦♂️
Immigration doesn't counter that.
Your own data reveals the chronic housing shortage. Again!
In most LAs, housing pressure is actually falling. It's only in about 100 where you see this acute problem, and they are mostly in our cities.
Don't believe you - please provide evidence because even this week I saw issues in 3 local authorities round here..
Absolutely.
I'd love to know these mythical local authorities without housing shortages.
I provided you with some examples above
I have posted the infographic on this before too, once directly in reply to Bart.
Glad you got there in the end. You have always banged on that we build plenty of homes. You always missed the point that these are not necessarily where they are needed. Glad to see that is rectified.
That has always been the point I wanted to make.
But even then, I suspect more housebuilding in and around London, Edinburgh etc will just serve to keep pushing those economies on, never really solve the housing crisis there. Vicious cycle.
Sure. But what is the point of more housebuilding in areas like South Shields where the population actually contracted in between the censuses.
In South Tyneside, the population fell while the number of households increased very slightly.
This is where the analysis is tricky - under Bart's thinking, that means there was some housing pressure, which has some merit.
However, I suggest that the inverse is happening - there is so little pressure on housing in S.Tyneside people can afford to live alone. I think Barty includes this effect in his definition of "pressure", which I think is a little misleading.
Under his definition, housing pressure is effectively inescapable. We'd all love to live alone in a 10 bed mansion.
No, housing pressure is escapable by having sufficient vacant buildings because you have built enough.
In S. Tyneside that is not the case.
There is no LA in England I know of where that's the case.
WTF kind of excuse is “it was pre-arranged” anyway? Nobody cares if it was pre-arranged, it looks bad because you did it, not because of when it went into your diary.
I cannot believe that Rishi’s comms team like him, or that he is listening to them.
"It was pre-arranged to feck off early"
Whoever didn't block D-Day from his diary is not fit for purpose.
That he didn't spot it himself - ditto.
If we had gone from Boris to Penny Mordaunt, the Conservative Party - and the country - would have been in a better place. No way Penny would have shown such a lack of political acumen.
There are a bunch of MPs who voted for Truss who will have a long, long time to reflect on their stupidity. With that on their CV, hard to see how those ex-MPs who voted for her get another job any time soon.
I feel sorry for a core of Tory MPs who have been bloody good constituency MPs, but who have been undermined in getting re-elected by too many of their colleagues, from the top down.
Now we have Starmer drifting in to Downing Street, effectively unopposed. Which wouldn't be quite so bad if hadn't shown himself to be so utterly useless in that first debte. A lifelong barrister who can't make the case for voting for him? He could be on Trump's team of lawyers, being that bad.
The first debate has descended into "was the Prime Minister really bullshitting the voter? Ooh I don't like that".
Starmer may have been wooden in the debate, but it has caused him less trouble than Rishi telling porkies. Personally I have no problem with Rishi bunking off from France early, but the people who were planning to vote for him rather than for a self-declared national hero and faux patriot friend of Trump and Putin, might not be so receptive.
It’s high time PB woke gestapo tried to get me banned again. It’s been at least three days
Nah, just accept you erred (we all do) and move on.
No. Come get me
No, you're not worth it.
I'm not surprised at your racism, its not the first and won't be your last.
I see your point but you’re a stupid fat dickless loser in a Barratt home new build in Warrington. So we also have to take that into consideration, surely, as it means you are SO low in the pecking order of life you are desperate for the tiniest scintilla of perceived superiority, moral or intellectual, even when it is clearly bogus, as here
YOU’LL FIND ME AT THE MOZART CAFE
At 10 o'clock?
It’s 3pm in Odessa darling. EVERYONE goes to “the Mozart” at 3
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 12m Rishi Sunak says the issue shouldn’t be politicised and we should focus on the veterans. There was supposed to be a campaign pause for D-Day. He broke it, left the veterans, and came home for a political interview.
Um, he filmed an interview that wasn’t to be aired during D-day events and so clearly didn’t do any campaigning.
The only reason people are aware he did an interview for the campaign is because of people wetting their pants about him missing part of the D-day commemorations. So he respected the campaigning pause - it was others who turned it into part of the campaign.
That’s not how people will see it. He didn’t have time in his diary for veterans of D Day but could find the time to do a campaign interview. And his excuse that he did the British events but not the non-British one is just staggering. The liberation of Nazi occupied Europe was a joint endeavour, the commemoration of it should be too. Any PM who doesn’t get that instinctively deserves everything he gets.
Focus Group of One Alert. I've been waiting in all day for my new garage door openers to be delivered. They just arrived and after the van driver said Ingerland had "no fucking chance" in the Euros his parting quip was that "Richy" Sunak was a wanker. He actually pronounced it /ˈrɪʧi/ which would have gratified Scott_XP and further enraged Casino. Were such a thing possible.
D-Daygate cut through = 3 feet high and rising.
I was expecting you to consider the reaction here and elsewhere to Sunak leaving early to be a little Gammony.
I don't give a fuck whether he went, didn't go, left early or drowned in the Channel. Though the last would have been my preferred outcome. I was just pointing out that lots of people do seem to care. Including the fat oaf in the Sprinter who brought my garage door openers.
WTF kind of excuse is “it was pre-arranged” anyway? Nobody cares if it was pre-arranged, it looks bad because you did it, not because of when it went into your diary.
I cannot believe that Rishi’s comms team like him, or that he is listening to them.
"It was pre-arranged to feck off early"
Whoever didn't block D-Day from his diary is not fit for purpose.
That he didn't spot it himself - ditto.
If we had gone from Boris to Penny Mordaunt, the Conservative Party - and the country - would have been in a better place. No way Penny would have shown such a lack of political acumen.
There are a bunch of MPs who voted for Truss who will have a long, long time to reflect on their stupidity. With that on their CV, hard to see how those ex-MPs who voted for her get another job any time soon.
I feel sorry for a core of Tory MPs who have been bloody good constituency MPs, but who have been undermined in getting re-elected by too many of their colleagues, from the top down.
Now we have Starmer drifting in to Downing Street, effectively unopposed. Which wouldn't be quite so bad if hadn't shown himself to be so utterly useless in that first debte. A lifelong barrister who can't make the case for voting for him? He could be on Trump's team of lawyers, being that bad.
Penny would have emerged from the waves in a WWII era dive suit holding a trident.
COPP style, diving in originally from a canoe paddled by, who? That would have been good.
Edit: And it really would have upset the fashion nazis, already in the stratosphere with Mr Z's semmit and trews.
WTF kind of excuse is “it was pre-arranged” anyway? Nobody cares if it was pre-arranged, it looks bad because you did it, not because of when it went into your diary.
I cannot believe that Rishi’s comms team like him, or that he is listening to them.
"It was pre-arranged to feck off early"
Whoever didn't block D-Day from his diary is not fit for purpose.
That he didn't spot it himself - ditto.
If we had gone from Boris to Penny Mordaunt, the Conservative Party - and the country - would have been in a better place. No way Penny would have shown such a lack of political acumen.
There are a bunch of MPs who voted for Truss who will have a long, long time to reflect on their stupidity. With that on their CV, hard to see how those ex-MPs who voted for her get another job any time soon.
I feel sorry for a core of Tory MPs who have been bloody good constituency MPs, but who have been undermined in getting re-elected by too many of their colleagues, from the top down.
Now we have Starmer drifting in to Downing Street, effectively unopposed. Which wouldn't be quite so bad if hadn't shown himself to be so utterly useless in that first debte. A lifelong barrister who can't make the case for voting for him? He could be on Trump's team of lawyers, being that bad.
Penny would have emerged from the waves in a WWII era dive suit holding a trident.
COPP style, diving in originally from a canoe paddled by, who? That would have been good.
Comments
https://x.com/zero_4/status/1799040330962186503
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION^1228&index=24&propertyTypes=&includeLetAgreed=false&mustHave=&dontShow=&furnishTypes=&keywords=
Now that isn't an answer to how many houses are empty but it's an accurate one for what is available to rent.
"And this election is about character, who you have in your mind’s eye when you make decisions.
And for me there was only one place I was going to be, which is there to pay my respects to the veterans.
And to say thank you to them on behalf of all of us, including my young children who, as I said to many of the veterans, were pretty carefree yesterday going to school. But that was down to their sacrifice, and the sacrifice particularly of those colleagues of theirs who didn’t make it back.
I made a choice yesterday about what I would do as leader of the Labour party and as a candidate to be prime minister and I knew I should be there. This was not a discussion.
It was my duty to be there, it was my privilege to be there.
Privilege is a word that is probably overused in politics but I felt privileged to be able to be with veterans who had fought on D-day against the odds to liberate Europe and to allow me to grow up in peace and freedom and democracy."
Of course he would say that - but he knows that this is what to say in the situation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7HYOWj6Nlg
(narrator: this is why Viewcode was so keen to publish an article on parties. And yes, the youtube uses the political groups to explain them)
The opening of “Hi, I am” felt a bit weak. What are the alternatives? 🤔
You also need to take your voice a bit deeper. And have your notes next to camera (easily done, someone holds it for you there) so you are looking into camera the whole time.
A decent c+ effort.
I've often thought there should be occasional 'talk-amongst-yourselves' threads, which Nighthawks was,in effect.
We're helped at the moment by a lot happening, so long threads are just fine. As it happens, I'm personally keen to get back to some discussion of the PO scandal. This week's interrogation of Alice Perkins was riveting and revealing. I've been in touch with Ms Cyclefree about it and was kind of hoping she would drop in, but as usual she has plenty on her plate, and in any case, the Site is rightly preoccupied with election matters.
So laters, perhaps.
D-Daygate cut through = 3 feet high and rising.
James O'Malley
@Psythor
·
2h
The thing I don’t get about Rishi skipping D-Day is that it was basically his last chance to be a big, important international statesman at a major international event like that. Wouldn’t you want to do that, knowing you’ll never have another chance?
There's also the G7 next week where the topic of conversation may well be where did you get to last week...
Funny old world.
Lol
Is this bloke on PB and if not why not.
Has he been to South Greenford.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/07/who-are-the-wealthy-climate-sceptics-funding-rightwing-uk-politics
There is a train of thinking that he might’ve called the GE in July because he actually couldn’t bear hanging around until November. We will likely get the full story in time, but I actually wonder if he knew the game was up weeks ago and now he’s just going through the motions.
When they were planning this. Did absolutely nobody in his team say, Rishi, mate, you need to stay for the whole day, its the right thing to do, besides think of all the good PR you will get from photos of glad handing world leaders and veterans.
@IsabelOakeshott
·
1m
👀 Introducing my new project! News, intelligence and analysis from the heart of the political Right. Sign up here! http://insidetheright.today
https://x.com/IsabelOakeshott
Theres numerous elements to the site. As a live news blog, learn things here first. A lot of lurkers come for the unique and interesting headers, many of which come from PBers and gives headers that unique range of different independent voices, and then there is the discussion element, which is very liberal minded and light touch in how its moderated. A unique blend of things.
I'm not surprised at your racism, its not the first and won't be your last.
@DPJHodges
·
12m
Rishi Sunak says the issue shouldn’t be politicised and we should focus on the veterans. There was supposed to be a campaign pause for D-Day. He broke it, left the veterans, and came home for a political interview.
https://x.com/DPJHodges?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author
If you are interested in how the election campaign might develop from here, then it kinda makes sense to think more about an issue that might compel some of the hard core Tory vote to switch.
We're looking here at factors that will make the difference between 400 and 500 Labour seats, not between a hung Parliament and a Labour majority.
That he didn't spot it himself - ditto.
If we had gone from Boris to Penny Mordaunt, the Conservative Party - and the country - would have been in a better place. No way Penny would have shown such a lack of political acumen.
There are a bunch of MPs who voted for Truss who will have a long, long time to reflect on their stupidity. With that on their CV, hard to see how those ex-MPs who voted for her get another job any time soon.
I feel sorry for a core of Tory MPs who have been bloody good constituency MPs, but who have been undermined in getting re-elected by too many of their colleagues, from the top down.
Now we have Starmer drifting in to Downing Street, effectively unopposed. Which wouldn't be quite so bad if hadn't shown himself to be so utterly useless in that first debte. A lifelong barrister who can't make the case for voting for him? He could be on Trump's team of lawyers, being that bad.
I see your point but you’re a stupid fat dickless loser in a Barratt home new build in Warrington. So we also have to take that into consideration, surely, as it means you are SO low in the pecking order of life you are desperate for the tiniest scintilla of perceived superiority, moral or intellectual, even when it is clearly bogus, as here
YOU’LL FIND ME AT THE MOZART CAFE
The obvious thing anybody with half a brain would say is, but aren't you an international leader (for the moment). Again PR team, they are useless, you are just reinforcing that you didn't just skip some irrelevant bit at the end, you skipped the International Leaders Event.
All HYFUD spinning about well it wasn't really an international leader event, it was for head of state etc, Sunak just reinforced in the interview to the public who don't follow the minute details that he skipped an event for international leaders.
But then I wasn't asked for my ID at all.
TLDL; Sunak has wanted an early election since the start of the year, which backs up your theory.
And the lack of umbrella was because he didn't think he could hold one himself for that long, and having an aide hold one would look too entitled.
What i don't understand is why he didn't make use of one of these (full disclosure, I've dreamed of owning one since I discovered geekery age 4 1/3): https://amzn.eu/d/c5vYSkX
Awwwww
* twatter doesn't count.
Backbenchers in a majority governing party are in fact the supreme authority in this country. They have chosen to let their leaders get on with disaster after disaster, political and ethical. They decided to be vote fodder instead of Burkean representatives. Tough.
The only reason people are aware he did an interview for the campaign is because of people wetting their pants about him missing part of the D-day commemorations. So he respected the campaigning pause - it was others who turned it into part of the campaign.
This is where the analysis is tricky - under Bart's thinking, that means there was some housing pressure, which has some merit.
However, I suggest that the inverse is happening - there is so little pressure on housing in S.Tyneside people can afford to live alone. I think Barty includes this effect in his definition of "pressure", which I think is a little misleading. Indeed, comparing that kind of "pressure" to that experienced by people in London is just plain wrong.
Under his definition, housing pressure is effectively inescapable. We'd all love to live alone in a 10 bed mansion.
Source - have worn a modern dry suit and talked to those who used derivatives of the Sladen.
In S. Tyneside that is not the case.
There is no LA in England I know of where that's the case.
Starmer may have been wooden in the debate, but it has caused him less trouble than Rishi telling porkies. Personally I have no problem with Rishi bunking off from France early, but the people who were planning to vote for him rather than for a self-declared national hero and faux patriot friend of Trump and Putin, might not be so receptive.
Don’t you know ANYTHING?
*essays disdainful pout*
Turnout a bit down compared to 2019 in many places.
Edit: And it really would have upset the fashion nazis, already in the stratosphere with Mr Z's semmit and trews.