The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
War gaming the vulnerable, including those with mental ill health who don’t fit shitty Sunak’s Singaporean dystopia.
As per. And as usual it will take years to undo the damage caused by their rhetoric.
What a nasty, wicked, horrible, bunch they are. If they lose on July 4th I shall be celebrating in the streets.
Depends on what benefit reforms.
A big problem with underutilisation in the workforce is the rate of withdrawal of benefit as you earn.
I’ve sat across from people who want to work more than 16 hours a week, can do really good work. We *wanted* them to do more.
But if they start doing more than that they lose benefits at a rate that leaves them (effectively) pennies per hour for doing a hard job.
We are paying people not to work. Penalising them if they do more.
A few do work the extra hours, to push through to full employment and better rates of pay. I’m always astonished and kinda humbled by those who do. All that extra work for so little…
They've had 14 years already to do something about these cliff edges. We know they exist all over the place. Look at the Carer's Allowance scandal.
Whatever they're planning to unveil it'll be all about blaming people for being sick and choking off access to funds. All to please - guess who? - grumpy, tight, elderly core voters who think that anybody claiming social security who isn't them is a scrounger and deserves a bloody good hiding
I don't know how much of value the Opposition will end up doing but the one certainty in all this is that the Conservatives are toxic waste. Venal and cruel. The sooner they are gone, and the more of them that are voted out, the better.
The results and tallies so far do seem to confirm the change in the opinion polls over the last six months - Sinn Fein losing their commanding lead and Independents doing very strongly. In my own neck of the cattle pasture, Independents, including the new party for Independents (Independents Ireland) received a combined 45.5% of the first preference vote, and Sinn Fein contrived to come last, behind even the Green party.
It's surprising to see just how far SF have fallen back. This might change as the counts come in but it's not the shoo in for a seat in government they expected.
Does you know when the Euro seats get counted.
I thought many will declare 5-7 pm this evening, with some doing it more Britishly and coming out at 11pm or later ?
The results and tallies so far do seem to confirm the change in the opinion polls over the last six months - Sinn Fein losing their commanding lead and Independents doing very strongly. In my own neck of the cattle pasture, Independents, including the new party for Independents (Independents Ireland) received a combined 45.5% of the first preference vote, and Sinn Fein contrived to come last, behind even the Green party.
It's surprising to see just how far SF have fallen back. This might change as the counts come in but it's not the shoo in for a seat in government they expected.
Does you know when the Euro seats get counted.
I thought many will declare 5-7 pm this evening, with some doing it more Britishly and coming out at 11pm or later ?
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
When Sunak starts attacking people on already very low benefits by European standards, after the enormous and welk-documented rise in hardship since 2013-14, my sympathy for his plight evaporates.
The results and tallies so far do seem to confirm the change in the opinion polls over the last six months - Sinn Fein losing their commanding lead and Independents doing very strongly. In my own neck of the cattle pasture, Independents, including the new party for Independents (Independents Ireland) received a combined 45.5% of the first preference vote, and Sinn Fein contrived to come last, behind even the Green party.
It's surprising to see just how far SF have fallen back. This might change as the counts come in but it's not the shoo in for a seat in government they expected.
Does you know when the Euro seats get counted.
Officially the Euro count can't get started until the voting ends in all EU countries, at 10pm tonight. The count in Ireland is expected to start on Monday morning - presumably they will do their best to wrap up the local election counts today. The tallies have Sinn Fein struggling to get the third MEP they were expecting, so no sign of joy for SF there either.
I don't quite understand how the government's monumental failures to deal with the issue of immigration has led to Sinn Fein's support cratering, instead of the government parties, but certainly all my confident talk of Mary Lou McDonald becoming taoiseach after the next election is looking a bit previous. She seems to be getting a very frosty reception on the doorstep.
SF started shouting at the voters about immigrants. That there was absolutely no problem and all immigrants are wonderful people.
How is it that a Labour leader is giving a Tory prime minister lessons on how to be patriotic? Even now, days after the disaster, I suspect Sunak is probably still bewildered by how a simple diary clash turned into a Gillian Duffy-level event.
I don’t speak as a particular flag-shagger, or Reform-lover, or someone who reflects, sobbingly, on “the realm”. But I do know — to put it in terms that Sunak might understand — if Kirsty Young’s doing the live coverage, you’d better be there, and not leave early to do some poxy, minor interview with ITV, subbing in Lord Cameron. Just what was he thinking? I simply do not understand the mindset of a Tory prime minister — any politician — who looks at a row of D-Day heroes and Joe Biden and doesn’t at least think “photo op”. Is his head full of bricks? The right thing to do now would be to go. Just go, taking the Forsyth gollum with you. Even Liz Truss would be doing better.
I have always said that Cameron was popped into the Lords and into a senior ministerial post for a reason.
I thought maybe it was to replace Sunak at an earlier stage.
Rumours around tonight that Sunak’s about to fall on his sword.
There are no MPs - only Ministers.
If Sunak does resign, any replacement would have to come from within Ministerial ranks…
The appointment made little sense (other than avoiding a wider reshuffle), but the theory also makes no real sense, since how would doing that help Cameron, Sunak, the Tories, or the Country?
Cameron wouldn't carry on, Sunak is out in the scenario, the party is not likely to see a sudden boost in that scenario, and there's no time for it to benefit the country even if it was thought it might theoretically if he had more time.
So, and I hate to say this, I think Nadine may have this one wrong.
As Cameron is not an MP, he could not be PM after the election.
Basically, the story is... What's the word... Ridiculous
Alec Douglas-Home says Hi.
In 1963 ADH was PM whilst being a peer and then after renouncing his peerages neither a member of either House of Parliament, until he won a by-election 20 days later.
Sir Alec could renounce his hereditary peerage thanks to legislation passed for Tony Benn. Cameron, as a life peer, cannot, although he can give up his right to sit in the Lords.
But an additional problem since 1963, when new leaders and Prime Ministers just emerged, is the Conservative Party's own rulebook.
In practice, we have a Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister already, so Cameron is not even next on the list.
I think the only resignation scenario that works in an election is if he quits as leader but not PM. Quitting as PM would drag the monarch into politics and you simply don’t do that.
I could see a situation where Rishi relinquishes the leadership immediately, someone gets nominated as acting leader for the rest of the campaign with an admission the election is over and to try to maximise the size of the parliamentary party in opposition. It’s risky and a very long shot in my view, far more likely that Rishi stays on in both posts but is essentially sidelined in his own campaign.
Post election I think the Tories will need to completely reinvent themselves. There’s been a grassroots movement to elect the Party Chairman which might gain traction, I think there is a decent case for having an official deputy leader as most other parties have, there might be a case for combining the two roles somehow, but it seems strange that the party doesn’t have an official deputy leader.
Rishi is only going to quit during an election campaign if he has some sort of mental health crisis, and simply cannot continue. In that situation Cabinet would recommend a replacement PM to the King. Notwithstanding that there is a Deputy PM, I would expect that replacement PM to be Cameron, on the basis of being most reassuring generally in what would be a moment of crisis for the country. Also, his appointment wouldn't skew the subsequent contest for leadership of the party.
Indeed, it just highlights what a hell of a mess the Tories are in that they are in the midst of an election campaign with a leader who is a disaster and no means of extricating themselves from it. Also IIRC had the FTPA not been repealed the election would have been in May by default, so the net effect of that change was to gain 2 months in office. Was it really worth it?
I think that, if you weren't planning to hold on until the autumn or the winter, then it would have been much better to have the election in May. At the time I'd wondered whether the Lee Anderson defection to Reform had been timed to disrupt calling the election for May.
So I think it's safe to assume that the original plan was to hang on for longer, but something happened which changed the decision. I think that's the main advantage to a PM of repealing the FTPA, that the PM has the flexibility to react to events to pick a date whenever they want.
I imagine there will be competing stories about what happened that led to the election being held on July 4th. The hypothesis that the King may have been given only a limited period left to live, and so they decided the election had to happen earlier, to avoid the death of a Monarch during an election campaign, is superficially appealing, only because I struggle to think of any other rational explanation.
As you’re our man on the ground, so to speak, with good local knowledge is there any reason for the decline in support for Sinn Fein ?
SF’s base is with more working class voters, including many previous non-voters, and they’ve been hit by their open doors attitude to migrants.
How is Starmer approval going up so much yet so many other polls and PB say there is no enthusiasm for him?
Do NOT need to be enthused by Starmer, to be seriously unenthused by Sunak.
But surely that would just see Sunak's ratings drops. SKS's are going up.
My personal view is people aren't enthused by SKS - but they do recognise he'd be a potentially good and competent PM, the more of him they see.
I think they just belive he would be vaguely competent. Nothing more. At this moment vaguely competent looks like a million times better than what we have had for the last 5 years.
Until “vaguely competent” meets “once in a century combination of domestic and international issues” and we wonder why we drove all intelligent and capable people out of politics with our childish obsessions on looks, never having said anything controversial, and “gotcha” moments.
Society gets the Police it deserves and the politicians it deserves.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
Looks like some of Leon’s mates have made it through to be Tory candidates…
The Conservative party has been accused of becoming a home for “cranks” after some of its candidates at the general election were revealed to have shared conspiracy theories on social media.
The posts seen by the Observer include the suggestion that positive tests for Covid-19 were “mass psychosis at work” and that the Black Lives Matter movement might be an attempt to “bring down British society”.
Labour said some of the postings shared by Tory candidates suggested “serious concerns” about the calibre of the party’s would-be MPs. Some candidates have already deleted social media accounts, or removed posts, or locked access to accounts.
One Tory candidate in London is revealed to have referred to the London mayor Sadiq Khan as a “snivelling little drip” who had done more to damage the capital “than the Luftwaffe”. Another wrote in a book in 2005 that “we must teach people to be prejudiced once again”.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
This won't be any sort of considered welfare reform, but essentially more attacks on scroungers and the feckless of the type he made a month or two ago.
If you consider the kind of social fallout of what has already occurred in this area since 2010, I find that to be repulsive at a stage like this. Go now please Rishi, and spare yourself a little of the blame.
Yesterday was another day of very heavy Russian losses in Ukraine (and now presumably, following the change in the rules of what can be used to attack where, within Russia itself); 1,270 caulties, 26 tanks and 60 artillery plus 2 MLRS.
That's nearly 500 artillery pieces lost just in 8 days of June. They will take years to replace. And if they could, the Ukrainians would need days to turn them back to scrap metal.
Your daily illustration of how cheap and cheerful drones are changing warfare. And where fifty thousand FPV drones are being produced/acquired by Ukraine every month.
The polls suggest that this judgment will be punishing for the Conservatives: if anything, Labour’s huge poll lead is widening. A monumental defeat on 4 July is exactly what the Conservatives deserve. They have taken an unenviable set of circumstances – a global financial crisis, a pandemic and increasing levels of conflict and insecurity – and through bad political decisions have further worsened Britain’s prospects. The party’s ideological obsession with Brexit has played a key role in its decline. By holding a referendum to satisfy the demands of the right of his party, David Cameron fed the beast. It was by way of Brexit – first the campaign to leave the EU, then the internal party fight to impose a hard Brexit on the country, then the 2019 election campaign – that the party journeyed away from conservatism towards populism, telling voters that Brexit would solve all of Britain’s long-term structural issues instead of making people poorer. It was via Brexit that the party arrived at Boris Johnson as prime minister, one of the worst leaders the country has ever seen. Brexit consumed the Conservatives, leaving a party that does not know what it stands for and has nothing to offer.
Looks like some of Leon’s mates have made it through to be Tory candidates…
The Conservative party has been accused of becoming a home for “cranks” after some of its candidates at the general election were revealed to have shared conspiracy theories on social media.
The posts seen by the Observer include the suggestion that positive tests for Covid-19 were “mass psychosis at work” and that the Black Lives Matter movement might be an attempt to “bring down British society”.
Labour said some of the postings shared by Tory candidates suggested “serious concerns” about the calibre of the party’s would-be MPs. Some candidates have already deleted social media accounts, or removed posts, or locked access to accounts.
One Tory candidate in London is revealed to have referred to the London mayor Sadiq Khan as a “snivelling little drip” who had done more to damage the capital “than the Luftwaffe”. Another wrote in a book in 2005 that “we must teach people to be prejudiced once again”.
Magafication. We have to keep everything crossed that the ceiling of support for these nutcases is lower here than it is in the States, where half the population appears to be stark staring bonkers - because there's every chance these kinds of nutters are going to end up in possession of whatever is left of the Right after this election.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
The results and tallies so far do seem to confirm the change in the opinion polls over the last six months - Sinn Fein losing their commanding lead and Independents doing very strongly. In my own neck of the cattle pasture, Independents, including the new party for Independents (Independents Ireland) received a combined 45.5% of the first preference vote, and Sinn Fein contrived to come last, behind even the Green party.
It's surprising to see just how far SF have fallen back. This might change as the counts come in but it's not the shoo in for a seat in government they expected.
Does you know when the Euro seats get counted.
Officially the Euro count can't get started until the voting ends in all EU countries, at 10pm tonight. The count in Ireland is expected to start on Monday morning - presumably they will do their best to wrap up the local election counts today. The tallies have Sinn Fein struggling to get the third MEP they were expecting, so no sign of joy for SF there either.
I don't quite understand how the government's monumental failures to deal with the issue of immigration has led to Sinn Fein's support cratering, instead of the government parties, but certainly all my confident talk of Mary Lou McDonald becoming taoiseach after the next election is looking a bit previous. She seems to be getting a very frosty reception on the doorstep.
Voting in Italy finishes at 11pm local time, so 10 pm here. There will be a batch of results coming out then, but the ‘predicted results’ from some countries earlier in the evening should be pretty accurate.
There are lots of local elections taking place across Europe, as well. In one Italian town I was in recently, a party called the ‘Sindicate of Black’ had put forward a slate to control the municipal council, which sounded very sinister. But turns out that the guy leading it has the surname Nero.
The results and tallies so far do seem to confirm the change in the opinion polls over the last six months - Sinn Fein losing their commanding lead and Independents doing very strongly. In my own neck of the cattle pasture, Independents, including the new party for Independents (Independents Ireland) received a combined 45.5% of the first preference vote, and Sinn Fein contrived to come last, behind even the Green party.
It's surprising to see just how far SF have fallen back. This might change as the counts come in but it's not the shoo in for a seat in government they expected.
Does you know when the Euro seats get counted.
Officially the Euro count can't get started until the voting ends in all EU countries, at 10pm tonight. The count in Ireland is expected to start on Monday morning - presumably they will do their best to wrap up the local election counts today. The tallies have Sinn Fein struggling to get the third MEP they were expecting, so no sign of joy for SF there either.
I don't quite understand how the government's monumental failures to deal with the issue of immigration has led to Sinn Fein's support cratering, instead of the government parties, but certainly all my confident talk of Mary Lou McDonald becoming taoiseach after the next election is looking a bit previous. She seems to be getting a very frosty reception on the doorstep.
If that trend sticks then it will be interesting to see if FF\FG coalition continues. I suspect not as both will have a big enough core vote to form a government. SF might be seen as a coalition partner by FF.
Well, one of the observations being made at the counts was the increase in transfers between FF and FG candidates, so as far as the voters are concerned, the two parties are moving towards merger. Assuming that the parties themselves would be horrified by that idea, then they would both be looking for a way out of continuing the coalition.
As the number of Independent TDs increases it becomes harder to put together a coalition, and FF-SF is about the only alternative to the status quo that looks possible. This is one reason why some of the Independents often club together into pseudo-parties or at least loose alliances, as it gives them a better chance of selling their votes in coalition negotiations.
The one caveat that I would add is that SF did really badly in the 2019 local elections, but then had a bit of a surge for the 2020 elections, and would have had more TDs if they'd stood more candidates. They may again get voters to turn to them during a general election campaign.
Based on the downloadable csv file from your link, RefUK is boycotting Sheffield. No Reform candidate is listed in:-
1 Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney 2 Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven 3 Bristol East 4 Cambridge 5 Cheltenham 6 Chorley 7 Doncaster North 8 Earley and Woodley 9 East Grinstead and Uckfield 10 Epping Forest 11 Hexham 12 Leeds South 13 Maidenhead 14 Mid Dorset and North Poole 15 Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland 16 Oxford East 17 Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough 18 Sheffield Central 19 Sheffield Hallam 20 Sheffield Heeley 21 Sheffield South East 22 West Dorset
1 Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney 2 Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven 3 Bristol East 4 Cambridge 5 Cheltenham 6 Chorley 7 Doncaster North 8 Earley and Woodley 9 East Grinstead and Uckfield 10 Epping Forest 11 Hexham 12 Leeds South 13 Maidenhead 14 Mid Dorset and North Poole 15 Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland 16 Oxford East 17 Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough 18 Sheffield Central 19 Sheffield Hallam 20 Sheffield Heeley 21 Sheffield South East 22 Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge 23 West Dorset
RefUK and the TUV are standing agreed joint candidates in most NI seats. They wanted to bade them as TUV/Reform UK, but couldn’t get the paperwork for that agreed in time.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
War gaming the vulnerable, including those with mental ill health who don’t fit shitty Sunak’s Singaporean dystopia.
As per. And as usual it will take years to undo the damage caused by their rhetoric.
What a nasty, wicked, horrible, bunch they are. If they lose on July 4th I shall be celebrating in the streets.
The proposals that they put out a few months ago are essentially to get unqualified people to replace GPs and make assessments likely based on targets so those already suffering especially with mental health problems are thrown under a bus.
It’s yet more othering and throwing red meat to the baying angry mob .
It got slightly lost in the overhyped D-Day stuff, but Sunak got heckled by an unemployed GP in Wiltshire on Friday. He laughed at her.
So we have a government that has simultaneously created a problem with access to GP appointments and also created GP unemployment. It really is quite mind-boggling incompetent management of the NHS. It wouldn't cost a penny to end the restriction on spending this staff budget on GPs.
How is it that a Labour leader is giving a Tory prime minister lessons on how to be patriotic? Even now, days after the disaster, I suspect Sunak is probably still bewildered by how a simple diary clash turned into a Gillian Duffy-level event.
I don’t speak as a particular flag-shagger, or Reform-lover, or someone who reflects, sobbingly, on “the realm”. But I do know — to put it in terms that Sunak might understand — if Kirsty Young’s doing the live coverage, you’d better be there, and not leave early to do some poxy, minor interview with ITV, subbing in Lord Cameron. Just what was he thinking? I simply do not understand the mindset of a Tory prime minister — any politician — who looks at a row of D-Day heroes and Joe Biden and doesn’t at least think “photo op”. Is his head full of bricks? The right thing to do now would be to go. Just go, taking the Forsyth gollum with you. Even Liz Truss would be doing better.
When does this interview come out, then? When it does, it'll bring the D-Day fiasco back into focus, as everyone sees exactly what Sunak chose to instead.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
Those appointments aren’t coming out of the tax avoidance cash machine . I’m sure however that it will do some heavy lifting in other areas.
I have always said that Cameron was popped into the Lords and into a senior ministerial post for a reason.
I thought maybe it was to replace Sunak at an earlier stage.
Rumours around tonight that Sunak’s about to fall on his sword.
There are no MPs - only Ministers.
If Sunak does resign, any replacement would have to come from within Ministerial ranks…
The appointment made little sense (other than avoiding a wider reshuffle), but the theory also makes no real sense, since how would doing that help Cameron, Sunak, the Tories, or the Country?
Cameron wouldn't carry on, Sunak is out in the scenario, the party is not likely to see a sudden boost in that scenario, and there's no time for it to benefit the country even if it was thought it might theoretically if he had more time.
So, and I hate to say this, I think Nadine may have this one wrong.
As Cameron is not an MP, he could not be PM after the election.
Basically, the story is... What's the word... Ridiculous
Alec Douglas-Home says Hi.
In 1963 ADH was PM whilst being a peer and then after renouncing his peerages neither a member of either House of Parliament, until he won a by-election 20 days later.
Sir Alec could renounce his hereditary peerage thanks to legislation passed for Tony Benn. Cameron, as a life peer, cannot, although he can give up his right to sit in the Lords.
But an additional problem since 1963, when new leaders and Prime Ministers just emerged, is the Conservative Party's own rulebook.
In practice, we have a Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister already, so Cameron is not even next on the list.
I think the only resignation scenario that works in an election is if he quits as leader but not PM. Quitting as PM would drag the monarch into politics and you simply don’t do that.
I could see a situation where Rishi relinquishes the leadership immediately, someone gets nominated as acting leader for the rest of the campaign with an admission the election is over and to try to maximise the size of the parliamentary party in opposition. It’s risky and a very long shot in my view, far more likely that Rishi stays on in both posts but is essentially sidelined in his own campaign.
Post election I think the Tories will need to completely reinvent themselves. There’s been a grassroots movement to elect the Party Chairman which might gain traction, I think there is a decent case for having an official deputy leader as most other parties have, there might be a case for combining the two roles somehow, but it seems strange that the party doesn’t have an official deputy leader.
Rishi is only going to quit during an election campaign if he has some sort of mental health crisis, and simply cannot continue. In that situation Cabinet would recommend a replacement PM to the King. Notwithstanding that there is a Deputy PM, I would expect that replacement PM to be Cameron, on the basis of being most reassuring generally in what would be a moment of crisis for the country. Also, his appointment wouldn't skew the subsequent contest for leadership of the party.
Indeed, it just highlights what a hell of a mess the Tories are in that they are in the midst of an election campaign with a leader who is a disaster and no means of extricating themselves from it. Also IIRC had the FTPA not been repealed the election would have been in May by default, so the net effect of that change was to gain 2 months in office. Was it really worth it?
I think that, if you weren't planning to hold on until the autumn or the winter, then it would have been much better to have the election in May. At the time I'd wondered whether the Lee Anderson defection to Reform had been timed to disrupt calling the election for May.
So I think it's safe to assume that the original plan was to hang on for longer, but something happened which changed the decision. I think that's the main advantage to a PM of repealing the FTPA, that the PM has the flexibility to react to events to pick a date whenever they want.
I imagine there will be competing stories about what happened that led to the election being held on July 4th. The hypothesis that the King may have been given only a limited period left to live, and so they decided the election had to happen earlier, to avoid the death of a Monarch during an election campaign, is superficially appealing, only because I struggle to think of any other rational explanation.
As you’re our man on the ground, so to speak, with good local knowledge is there any reason for the decline in support for Sinn Fein ?
It's the immigration issue that's completely upended things.
People are seeing their children emigrate because they can't afford housing, and yet the population of the country continues to increase. The government is going to desperate lengths to house asylum seekers (and still failing), and people don't see the same urgency going towards housing their children. You have protests across the country at any site that is suspected of being chosen to house asylum seekers, and people don't see Sinn Fein as speaking up for and articulating their anger on this issue.
I think it's very sad to see people blame asylum seekers for problems that have been created by government incompetence and failure, but the far-right are winning the political argument on this at the moment.
At the moment I'm thinking the result could be something like this: Lab 40%, Con 25%, Ref 15%, LD 12%, Grn 4%. Not yet convinced of the crossover scenario.
Clive Bull on LBC just now discussing a poll which says 30% of 18 to 24s aren't even registered to vote.
I think that's the sort of statistic which points to Labour not getting much more than 40% on the day.
The polling numbers take account of turnout. The voting demographics have turned against Labour - that's why the crossover age is over 60.
If (and it's a big if) "youth" turnout is a bit higher than usual, they are even more screwed than shown in the polls.
Fox jr2 and his girlfriend won't be voting as they are in Australia and won't be back. Its too late to fix a proxy vote. His is a safe Labour seat in the East End so probably won't matter much. I am sure he's not the only student who disappeared immediately after exams finished.
They can apply for a proxy vote online up to 26 June.
The polls suggest that this judgment will be punishing for the Conservatives: if anything, Labour’s huge poll lead is widening. A monumental defeat on 4 July is exactly what the Conservatives deserve. They have taken an unenviable set of circumstances – a global financial crisis, a pandemic and increasing levels of conflict and insecurity – and through bad political decisions have further worsened Britain’s prospects. The party’s ideological obsession with Brexit has played a key role in its decline. By holding a referendum to satisfy the demands of the right of his party, David Cameron fed the beast. It was by way of Brexit – first the campaign to leave the EU, then the internal party fight to impose a hard Brexit on the country, then the 2019 election campaign – that the party journeyed away from conservatism towards populism, telling voters that Brexit would solve all of Britain’s long-term structural issues instead of making people poorer. It was via Brexit that the party arrived at Boris Johnson as prime minister, one of the worst leaders the country has ever seen. Brexit consumed the Conservatives, leaving a party that does not know what it stands for and has nothing to offer.
The results and tallies so far do seem to confirm the change in the opinion polls over the last six months - Sinn Fein losing their commanding lead and Independents doing very strongly. In my own neck of the cattle pasture, Independents, including the new party for Independents (Independents Ireland) received a combined 45.5% of the first preference vote, and Sinn Fein contrived to come last, behind even the Green party.
It's surprising to see just how far SF have fallen back. This might change as the counts come in but it's not the shoo in for a seat in government they expected.
Does you know when the Euro seats get counted.
I thought many will declare 5-7 pm this evening, with some doing it more Britishly and coming out at 11pm or later ?
RTE have said this today, so I was a bit wrong in what I said earlier:
"Counting in the European elections will begin this morning, and the results of the first tally will not be declared until after 10pm due to ongoing voting in other EU member states."
At the moment I'm thinking the result could be something like this: Lab 40%, Con 25%, Ref 15%, LD 12%, Grn 4%. Not yet convinced of the crossover scenario.
Discounting the LDs as being seen by most of the country as centrist, that essentially means the country is still in two-camps.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
Those appointments aren’t coming out of the tax avoidance cash machine . I’m sure however that it will do some heavy lifting in other areas.
The core Labour fib is that things will get better later in the Parliament when, somehow, their good administration of the country generates an enormous boost to economic growth that's entirely independent of higher public spending.
We all know that the country is in a bad way and that this is fantasist bollocks. The best we can therefore hope for us that they leave enough sources of taxation that they've promised not to freeze that can be plundered, once the inevitable post election "there is no money left" moment occurs.
There is no way out of this that doesn't involve either a very punishing round of austerity or a major raid on wealth.
Were it not for Reform his lead over the Conservatives would now be in single digits.
Reform are also taking votes from Labour . It might be that Labour end up polling sub 40 . As long as Tory to Reform voters don’t go back then they’ll still get a good majority .
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
Those appointments aren’t coming out of the tax avoidance cash machine . I’m sure however that it will do some heavy lifting in other areas.
You think "ending non-dom status" is not part of the tax avoidance regime? And you think it is going to be tax positive? Really? You aren't normlly that naive.
The first obvious sign we have a Labour government will be the flight of capital out of the UK. No doubt lefties will cheer on the departure.
Until they don't have the money to fund hospital beds.
At the moment I'm thinking the result could be something like this: Lab 40%, Con 25%, Ref 15%, LD 12%, Grn 4%. Not yet convinced of the crossover scenario.
Clive Bull on LBC just now discussing a poll which says 30% of 18 to 24s aren't even registered to vote.
I think that's the sort of statistic which points to Labour not getting much more than 40% on the day.
The polling numbers take account of turnout. The voting demographics have turned against Labour - that's why the crossover age is over 60.
If (and it's a big if) "youth" turnout is a bit higher than usual, they are even more screwed than shown in the polls.
Fox jr2 and his girlfriend won't be voting as they are in Australia and won't be back. Its too late to fix a proxy vote. His is a safe Labour seat in the East End so probably won't matter much. I am sure he's not the only student who disappeared immediately after exams finished.
They can apply for a proxy vote online up to 26 June.
They need someone in the constituency to perform the proxy vote - that may be difficult
The polls suggest that this judgment will be punishing for the Conservatives: if anything, Labour’s huge poll lead is widening. A monumental defeat on 4 July is exactly what the Conservatives deserve. They have taken an unenviable set of circumstances – a global financial crisis, a pandemic and increasing levels of conflict and insecurity – and through bad political decisions have further worsened Britain’s prospects. The party’s ideological obsession with Brexit has played a key role in its decline. By holding a referendum to satisfy the demands of the right of his party, David Cameron fed the beast. It was by way of Brexit – first the campaign to leave the EU, then the internal party fight to impose a hard Brexit on the country, then the 2019 election campaign – that the party journeyed away from conservatism towards populism, telling voters that Brexit would solve all of Britain’s long-term structural issues instead of making people poorer. It was via Brexit that the party arrived at Boris Johnson as prime minister, one of the worst leaders the country has ever seen. Brexit consumed the Conservatives, leaving a party that does not know what it stands for and has nothing to offer.
How is it that a Labour leader is giving a Tory prime minister lessons on how to be patriotic? Even now, days after the disaster, I suspect Sunak is probably still bewildered by how a simple diary clash turned into a Gillian Duffy-level event.
I don’t speak as a particular flag-shagger, or Reform-lover, or someone who reflects, sobbingly, on “the realm”. But I do know — to put it in terms that Sunak might understand — if Kirsty Young’s doing the live coverage, you’d better be there, and not leave early to do some poxy, minor interview with ITV, subbing in Lord Cameron. Just what was he thinking? I simply do not understand the mindset of a Tory prime minister — any politician — who looks at a row of D-Day heroes and Joe Biden and doesn’t at least think “photo op”. Is his head full of bricks? The right thing to do now would be to go. Just go, taking the Forsyth gollum with you. Even Liz Truss would be doing better.
When does this interview come out, then? When it does, it'll bring the D-Day fiasco back into focus, as everyone sees exactly what Sunak chose to instead.
Perhaps Sunak is sitting in his bunker hoping that when the ITV interview is finally broadcast, it will be the turning point and he will be vindicated.
He cut and run 4-5 months before he needed to do so, and is getting massacred anyway. He thought he'd shoot Reform's fox but he's actually shot his own.
He makes Chris Robshaw look like a good decision-maker.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
What's the good of that, when Farage can turn round and say they have been in government for 14 years, and there are still convicted shoplifters walking around with two hands?
At the moment I'm thinking the result could be something like this: Lab 40%, Con 25%, Ref 15%, LD 12%, Grn 4%. Not yet convinced of the crossover scenario.
Clive Bull on LBC just now discussing a poll which says 30% of 18 to 24s aren't even registered to vote.
I think that's the sort of statistic which points to Labour not getting much more than 40% on the day.
The polling numbers take account of turnout. The voting demographics have turned against Labour - that's why the crossover age is over 60.
If (and it's a big if) "youth" turnout is a bit higher than usual, they are even more screwed than shown in the polls.
Fox jr2 and his girlfriend won't be voting as they are in Australia and won't be back. Its too late to fix a proxy vote. His is a safe Labour seat in the East End so probably won't matter much. I am sure he's not the only student who disappeared immediately after exams finished.
They can apply for a proxy vote online up to 26 June.
They need someone in the constituency to perform the proxy vote - that may be difficult
The proxy doesn’t have to be registered in the constituency, but, yes, they need to be there to do the actual voting.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
Those appointments aren’t coming out of the tax avoidance cash machine . I’m sure however that it will do some heavy lifting in other areas.
You think "ending non-dom status" is not part of the tax avoidance regime? And you think it is going to be tax positive? Really? You aren't normlly that naive.
The first obvious sign we have a Labour government will be the flight of capital out of the UK. No doubt lefties will cheer on the departure.
Until they don't have the money to fund hospital beds.
I’m dubious of these tax avoidance savings but all parties think about is getting elected so as long as they can look like they’ve got somewhere to get the money from pre-election they’ll worry about the reality after 4th July . As for flight of capital I don’t see it .
Rishi Sunak combines supreme bad judgement, with sublime incompetence to lead. The greatest political idiot of our - or perhaps any other - day.
He is an effective administrator and, to his credit, did manage to negotiate some deals, including a revised one with Macron and the Windsor Framework.
But, he's a behind the scenes analyst and has no appetite to lead from the front, which is part of the job.
When he does he demonstrates he has even worse political antennae than Theresa May.
Were it not for Reform his lead over the Conservatives would now be in single digits.
Reform are also taking votes from Labour . It might be that Labour end up polling sub 40 . As long as Tory to Reform voters don’t go back then they’ll still get a good majority .
Besides, if there were no Reform and no Farage is a counterfactual that's hard to assess. There might just be another hard right party. Perhaps a lot of those thinking about Reform would find Labour preferable (e.g. because NHS) to the Tories. A chunk of plague on both your houses voters could go to the Lib Dems, like happened in ye olden days. We don't know.
The polls suggest that this judgment will be punishing for the Conservatives: if anything, Labour’s huge poll lead is widening. A monumental defeat on 4 July is exactly what the Conservatives deserve. They have taken an unenviable set of circumstances – a global financial crisis, a pandemic and increasing levels of conflict and insecurity – and through bad political decisions have further worsened Britain’s prospects. The party’s ideological obsession with Brexit has played a key role in its decline. By holding a referendum to satisfy the demands of the right of his party, David Cameron fed the beast. It was by way of Brexit – first the campaign to leave the EU, then the internal party fight to impose a hard Brexit on the country, then the 2019 election campaign – that the party journeyed away from conservatism towards populism, telling voters that Brexit would solve all of Britain’s long-term structural issues instead of making people poorer. It was via Brexit that the party arrived at Boris Johnson as prime minister, one of the worst leaders the country has ever seen. Brexit consumed the Conservatives, leaving a party that does not know what it stands for and has nothing to offer.
I have always said that Cameron was popped into the Lords and into a senior ministerial post for a reason.
I thought maybe it was to replace Sunak at an earlier stage.
Rumours around tonight that Sunak’s about to fall on his sword.
There are no MPs - only Ministers.
If Sunak does resign, any replacement would have to come from within Ministerial ranks…
The appointment made little sense (other than avoiding a wider reshuffle), but the theory also makes no real sense, since how would doing that help Cameron, Sunak, the Tories, or the Country?
Cameron wouldn't carry on, Sunak is out in the scenario, the party is not likely to see a sudden boost in that scenario, and there's no time for it to benefit the country even if it was thought it might theoretically if he had more time.
So, and I hate to say this, I think Nadine may have this one wrong.
As Cameron is not an MP, he could not be PM after the election.
Basically, the story is... What's the word... Ridiculous
Alec Douglas-Home says Hi.
In 1963 ADH was PM whilst being a peer and then after renouncing his peerages neither a member of either House of Parliament, until he won a by-election 20 days later.
Sir Alec could renounce his hereditary peerage thanks to legislation passed for Tony Benn. Cameron, as a life peer, cannot, although he can give up his right to sit in the Lords.
But an additional problem since 1963, when new leaders and Prime Ministers just emerged, is the Conservative Party's own rulebook.
In practice, we have a Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister already, so Cameron is not even next on the list.
I think the only resignation scenario that works in an election is if he quits as leader but not PM. Quitting as PM would drag the monarch into politics and you simply don’t do that.
I could see a situation where Rishi relinquishes the leadership immediately, someone gets nominated as acting leader for the rest of the campaign with an admission the election is over and to try to maximise the size of the parliamentary party in opposition. It’s risky and a very long shot in my view, far more likely that Rishi stays on in both posts but is essentially sidelined in his own campaign.
Post election I think the Tories will need to completely reinvent themselves. There’s been a grassroots movement to elect the Party Chairman which might gain traction, I think there is a decent case for having an official deputy leader as most other parties have, there might be a case for combining the two roles somehow, but it seems strange that the party doesn’t have an official deputy leader.
It is possible that the Conservative Party could have rolled the ground for a Vote Blair, Get Brown type election but there is no obvious successor to Rishi Sunak.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
We'll all find out about the shit sandwich that's in store at their first Budget later this year. People won't enjoy it.
Clearly, no-one wants to hear about that this side of the GE - because every time it's raised we just hear but.. THE TORRIIIIEESSS!!!! - so they will get what they vote for good and hard.
I have always said that Cameron was popped into the Lords and into a senior ministerial post for a reason.
I thought maybe it was to replace Sunak at an earlier stage.
Rumours around tonight that Sunak’s about to fall on his sword.
There are no MPs - only Ministers.
If Sunak does resign, any replacement would have to come from within Ministerial ranks…
The appointment made little sense (other than avoiding a wider reshuffle), but the theory also makes no real sense, since how would doing that help Cameron, Sunak, the Tories, or the Country?
Cameron wouldn't carry on, Sunak is out in the scenario, the party is not likely to see a sudden boost in that scenario, and there's no time for it to benefit the country even if it was thought it might theoretically if he had more time.
So, and I hate to say this, I think Nadine may have this one wrong.
As Cameron is not an MP, he could not be PM after the election.
Basically, the story is... What's the word... Ridiculous
Alec Douglas-Home says Hi.
In 1963 ADH was PM whilst being a peer and then after renouncing his peerages neither a member of either House of Parliament, until he won a by-election 20 days later.
Sir Alec could renounce his hereditary peerage thanks to legislation passed for Tony Benn. Cameron, as a life peer, cannot, although he can give up his right to sit in the Lords.
But an additional problem since 1963, when new leaders and Prime Ministers just emerged, is the Conservative Party's own rulebook.
In practice, we have a Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister already, so Cameron is not even next on the list.
I think the only resignation scenario that works in an election is if he quits as leader but not PM. Quitting as PM would drag the monarch into politics and you simply don’t do that.
I could see a situation where Rishi relinquishes the leadership immediately, someone gets nominated as acting leader for the rest of the campaign with an admission the election is over and to try to maximise the size of the parliamentary party in opposition. It’s risky and a very long shot in my view, far more likely that Rishi stays on in both posts but is essentially sidelined in his own campaign.
Post election I think the Tories will need to completely reinvent themselves. There’s been a grassroots movement to elect the Party Chairman which might gain traction, I think there is a decent case for having an official deputy leader as most other parties have, there might be a case for combining the two roles somehow, but it seems strange that the party doesn’t have an official deputy leader.
Rishi is only going to quit during an election campaign if he has some sort of mental health crisis, and simply cannot continue. In that situation Cabinet would recommend a replacement PM to the King. Notwithstanding that there is a Deputy PM, I would expect that replacement PM to be Cameron, on the basis of being most reassuring generally in what would be a moment of crisis for the country. Also, his appointment wouldn't skew the subsequent contest for leadership of the party.
Indeed, it just highlights what a hell of a mess the Tories are in that they are in the midst of an election campaign with a leader who is a disaster and no means of extricating themselves from it. Also IIRC had the FTPA not been repealed the election would have been in May by default, so the net effect of that change was to gain 2 months in office. Was it really worth it?
I think that, if you weren't planning to hold on until the autumn or the winter, then it would have been much better to have the election in May. At the time I'd wondered whether the Lee Anderson defection to Reform had been timed to disrupt calling the election for May.
So I think it's safe to assume that the original plan was to hang on for longer, but something happened which changed the decision. I think that's the main advantage to a PM of repealing the FTPA, that the PM has the flexibility to react to events to pick a date whenever they want.
I imagine there will be competing stories about what happened that led to the election being held on July 4th. The hypothesis that the King may have been given only a limited period left to live, and so they decided the election had to happen earlier, to avoid the death of a Monarch during an election campaign, is superficially appealing, only because I struggle to think of any other rational explanation.
Even that unlikely explanation is unconvincing because a suspension of campaigning owing to the death of the monarch would probably, to be cynical, have helped the Conservative Party. Even if we accept the premise, the response is irrational.
Morning all. I do think the "will Sunak resign mid-campaign" story is one of those crazy narratives that grabs hold each election, where coming up to election day itself, just looks silly.
I think the core dynamics of the election result were set first after party gate and then after Truss' tike in office. Sunak has under performed and the lack of a discernible strategy is bemusing, but I don't think the campaign so far has changed an outcome likely baked in during Aurumn 2022. At most, and as pointed out in a previous thread, the D-Day debacle has likely slowed or stopped some swingback.
At the moment I think the result will end up being at one transformational (Labour very big win) and familiar (Tories clear second in seats/votes). I'd guess a 40/27 split with Reform at 10% max. if I had to call it now.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
We'll all find out about the shit sandwich that's in store at their first Budget later this year. People won't enjoy it.
Clearly, no-one wants to hear about that this side of the GE - because every time it's raised we just hear but.. THE TORRIIIIEESSS!!!! - so they will get what they vote for good and hard.
Again, the alternative to tax rises is spending cuts. There are no easy and comfortable choices. If the country were that well off, Sunak would be coasting to victory.
It is not just our GE that is happening but also EU elections today
It does seem the EU are looking at an increase in the right and disruptive voices, some on a par with Farage
We do have quite a number of contributors to our forum who are wholly in thrall with the EU who do not seem to like to talk about what may be about to happen and with Orban heading the EU for the next 6 months
I would be interested to hear how they see the future in a much changing EU
With the U.K. moving left we can provide some much needed counter balance…oh, wait, we can’t. Because we have no way of influencing the EU. For a reason we are not allowed to mention.
And you can take phrases like “wholly in thrall”to the EU and stick them where the sun don’t shine. That and others like the perennial favourite “vassal state” just demonstrate the failure of the right to imagine any form of political, social, or sexual relationship beyond dom/sub.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
We'll all find out about the shit sandwich that's in store at their first Budget later this year. People won't enjoy it.
Clearly, no-one wants to hear about that this side of the GE - because every time it's raised we just hear but.. THE TORRIIIIEESSS!!!! - so they will get what they vote for good and hard.
I’m not under any illusions about the state of the UKs finances . How exactly will voting Tory help. They’ve already dished out NI cuts which the country couldn’t afford and could have gone to public services .
I have always said that Cameron was popped into the Lords and into a senior ministerial post for a reason.
I thought maybe it was to replace Sunak at an earlier stage.
Rumours around tonight that Sunak’s about to fall on his sword.
There are no MPs - only Ministers.
If Sunak does resign, any replacement would have to come from within Ministerial ranks…
The appointment made little sense (other than avoiding a wider reshuffle), but the theory also makes no real sense, since how would doing that help Cameron, Sunak, the Tories, or the Country?
Cameron wouldn't carry on, Sunak is out in the scenario, the party is not likely to see a sudden boost in that scenario, and there's no time for it to benefit the country even if it was thought it might theoretically if he had more time.
So, and I hate to say this, I think Nadine may have this one wrong.
As Cameron is not an MP, he could not be PM after the election.
Basically, the story is... What's the word... Ridiculous
Alec Douglas-Home says Hi.
In 1963 ADH was PM whilst being a peer and then after renouncing his peerages neither a member of either House of Parliament, until he won a by-election 20 days later.
Sir Alec could renounce his hereditary peerage thanks to legislation passed for Tony Benn. Cameron, as a life peer, cannot, although he can give up his right to sit in the Lords.
But an additional problem since 1963, when new leaders and Prime Ministers just emerged, is the Conservative Party's own rulebook.
In practice, we have a Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister already, so Cameron is not even next on the list.
I think the only resignation scenario that works in an election is if he quits as leader but not PM. Quitting as PM would drag the monarch into politics and you simply don’t do that.
I could see a situation where Rishi relinquishes the leadership immediately, someone gets nominated as acting leader for the rest of the campaign with an admission the election is over and to try to maximise the size of the parliamentary party in opposition. It’s risky and a very long shot in my view, far more likely that Rishi stays on in both posts but is essentially sidelined in his own campaign.
Post election I think the Tories will need to completely reinvent themselves. There’s been a grassroots movement to elect the Party Chairman which might gain traction, I think there is a decent case for having an official deputy leader as most other parties have, there might be a case for combining the two roles somehow, but it seems strange that the party doesn’t have an official deputy leader.
Rishi is only going to quit during an election campaign if he has some sort of mental health crisis, and simply cannot continue. In that situation Cabinet would recommend a replacement PM to the King. Notwithstanding that there is a Deputy PM, I would expect that replacement PM to be Cameron, on the basis of being most reassuring generally in what would be a moment of crisis for the country. Also, his appointment wouldn't skew the subsequent contest for leadership of the party.
Indeed, it just highlights what a hell of a mess the Tories are in that they are in the midst of an election campaign with a leader who is a disaster and no means of extricating themselves from it. Also IIRC had the FTPA not been repealed the election would have been in May by default, so the net effect of that change was to gain 2 months in office. Was it really worth it?
I think that, if you weren't planning to hold on until the autumn or the winter, then it would have been much better to have the election in May. At the time I'd wondered whether the Lee Anderson defection to Reform had been timed to disrupt calling the election for May.
So I think it's safe to assume that the original plan was to hang on for longer, but something happened which changed the decision. I think that's the main advantage to a PM of repealing the FTPA, that the PM has the flexibility to react to events to pick a date whenever they want.
I imagine there will be competing stories about what happened that led to the election being held on July 4th. The hypothesis that the King may have been given only a limited period left to live, and so they decided the election had to happen earlier, to avoid the death of a Monarch during an election campaign, is superficially appealing, only because I struggle to think of any other rational explanation.
As you’re our man on the ground, so to speak, with good local knowledge is there any reason for the decline in support for Sinn Fein ?
It's the immigration issue that's completely upended things.
People are seeing their children emigrate because they can't afford housing, and yet the population of the country continues to increase. The government is going to desperate lengths to house asylum seekers (and still failing), and people don't see the same urgency going towards housing their children. You have protests across the country at any site that is suspected of being chosen to house asylum seekers, and people don't see Sinn Fein as speaking up for and articulating their anger on this issue.
I think it's very sad to see people blame asylum seekers for problems that have been created by government incompetence and failure, but the far-right are winning the political argument on this at the moment.
Yup. It’s pretty simple. If the population is increasing at 0.5% a year or whatever, you either increase infrastructure, services and housing at 0.5%+ per year. Or shit happens.
The problem comes with the many who believe that “We can’t and must not do anything”. This is spread across the left and right.
When I lived in Wiltshire, the local LibDems and Greens were *proud* of stopping jobs being created.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
We'll all find out about the shit sandwich that's in store at their first Budget later this year. People won't enjoy it.
Clearly, no-one wants to hear about that this side of the GE - because every time it's raised we just hear but.. THE TORRIIIIEESSS!!!! - so they will get what they vote for good and hard.
I’m not under any illusions about the state of the UKs finances . How exactly will voting Tory help. They’ve already dished out NI cuts which the country couldn’t afford and could have gone to public services .
If Labour want to reverse that and fund public services instead, then let's have that debate.
The polls suggest that this judgment will be punishing for the Conservatives: if anything, Labour’s huge poll lead is widening. A monumental defeat on 4 July is exactly what the Conservatives deserve. They have taken an unenviable set of circumstances – a global financial crisis, a pandemic and increasing levels of conflict and insecurity – and through bad political decisions have further worsened Britain’s prospects. The party’s ideological obsession with Brexit has played a key role in its decline. By holding a referendum to satisfy the demands of the right of his party, David Cameron fed the beast. It was by way of Brexit – first the campaign to leave the EU, then the internal party fight to impose a hard Brexit on the country, then the 2019 election campaign – that the party journeyed away from conservatism towards populism, telling voters that Brexit would solve all of Britain’s long-term structural issues instead of making people poorer. It was via Brexit that the party arrived at Boris Johnson as prime minister, one of the worst leaders the country has ever seen. Brexit consumed the Conservatives, leaving a party that does not know what it stands for and has nothing to offer.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
Those appointments aren’t coming out of the tax avoidance cash machine . I’m sure however that it will do some heavy lifting in other areas.
You think "ending non-dom status" is not part of the tax avoidance regime? And you think it is going to be tax positive? Really? You aren't normlly that naive.
The first obvious sign we have a Labour government will be the flight of capital out of the UK. No doubt lefties will cheer on the departure.
Until they don't have the money to fund hospital beds.
Thing is Mark, I recognise the validity of this view.
But despite years of austerity we don't currently have the money to fund hospital beds.
An alternative view is that a more stable, predictable government will reduce capital flight.
I raised that a few days back when I was being asked where we could cut government spending.
But use of the words "cut" and "spending" in the same sentence sent the PB lefties off on one. Apparently just not possible, and you cant upset the OBR or the BoE or anyone in the Civil Service etc.
But of course at some point the bullet will have to be bitten
Some interesting rumours coming out of Welsh Labour - it sems that more revelations coming out about Gething on Monday...which could prove terminal.
But also a major party split with possible defections to a new party...triggered by UK Labour imposing candidates in Cardiff W and Swansea W
A little pointless after nominations have closed, surely? Better to jump ship to Plaid or the LibDems - I could see Lee Waters as an LD and he seems to be one of the principal Gething-sceptics.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
We'll all find out about the shit sandwich that's in store at their first Budget later this year. People won't enjoy it.
Clearly, no-one wants to hear about that this side of the GE - because every time it's raised we just hear but.. THE TORRIIIIEESSS!!!! - so they will get what they vote for good and hard.
Not quite true. I want to hear it, and plenty of others have raised it on here.
Where i agree is that it is not a proposition the public at large want to hear, which is really problematic for both parties (albeit a problem of their/our own making).
The polls suggest that this judgment will be punishing for the Conservatives: if anything, Labour’s huge poll lead is widening. A monumental defeat on 4 July is exactly what the Conservatives deserve. They have taken an unenviable set of circumstances – a global financial crisis, a pandemic and increasing levels of conflict and insecurity – and through bad political decisions have further worsened Britain’s prospects. The party’s ideological obsession with Brexit has played a key role in its decline. By holding a referendum to satisfy the demands of the right of his party, David Cameron fed the beast. It was by way of Brexit – first the campaign to leave the EU, then the internal party fight to impose a hard Brexit on the country, then the 2019 election campaign – that the party journeyed away from conservatism towards populism, telling voters that Brexit would solve all of Britain’s long-term structural issues instead of making people poorer. It was via Brexit that the party arrived at Boris Johnson as prime minister, one of the worst leaders the country has ever seen. Brexit consumed the Conservatives, leaving a party that does not know what it stands for and has nothing to offer.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
We'll all find out about the shit sandwich that's in store at their first Budget later this year. People won't enjoy it.
Clearly, no-one wants to hear about that this side of the GE - because every time it's raised we just hear but.. THE TORRIIIIEESSS!!!! - so they will get what they vote for good and hard.
I’m not under any illusions about the state of the UKs finances . How exactly will voting Tory help. They’ve already dished out NI cuts which the country couldn’t afford and could have gone to public services .
If Labour want to reverse that and fund public services instead, then let's have that debate.
Let’s start with exactly where the £16bn of announced but not started spending cuts that Hunt “discovered” for the NI tax cuts are coming from.
Once that is revealed I think it would be fair for Labour to be asked for some details but until then both parties are as bad as each other - but being blunt the Tories are worse
Heck the only reason why the election is now is because the OBR made it very clear that there was no spare money for more tax cuts
The polls suggest that this judgment will be punishing for the Conservatives: if anything, Labour’s huge poll lead is widening. A monumental defeat on 4 July is exactly what the Conservatives deserve. They have taken an unenviable set of circumstances – a global financial crisis, a pandemic and increasing levels of conflict and insecurity – and through bad political decisions have further worsened Britain’s prospects. The party’s ideological obsession with Brexit has played a key role in its decline. By holding a referendum to satisfy the demands of the right of his party, David Cameron fed the beast. It was by way of Brexit – first the campaign to leave the EU, then the internal party fight to impose a hard Brexit on the country, then the 2019 election campaign – that the party journeyed away from conservatism towards populism, telling voters that Brexit would solve all of Britain’s long-term structural issues instead of making people poorer. It was via Brexit that the party arrived at Boris Johnson as prime minister, one of the worst leaders the country has ever seen. Brexit consumed the Conservatives, leaving a party that does not know what it stands for and has nothing to offer.
The polls suggest that this judgment will be punishing for the Conservatives: if anything, Labour’s huge poll lead is widening. A monumental defeat on 4 July is exactly what the Conservatives deserve. They have taken an unenviable set of circumstances – a global financial crisis, a pandemic and increasing levels of conflict and insecurity – and through bad political decisions have further worsened Britain’s prospects. The party’s ideological obsession with Brexit has played a key role in its decline. By holding a referendum to satisfy the demands of the right of his party, David Cameron fed the beast. It was by way of Brexit – first the campaign to leave the EU, then the internal party fight to impose a hard Brexit on the country, then the 2019 election campaign – that the party journeyed away from conservatism towards populism, telling voters that Brexit would solve all of Britain’s long-term structural issues instead of making people poorer. It was via Brexit that the party arrived at Boris Johnson as prime minister, one of the worst leaders the country has ever seen. Brexit consumed the Conservatives, leaving a party that does not know what it stands for and has nothing to offer.
There is however an interesting observation about Brexit. A dog that's not barking, if you will. Incumbents normally talk to their record. You might expect a Conservative Party elected on "get Brexit done" to point to Starmer and say, "We delivered Brexit. What has he done for you?”
The polls suggest that this judgment will be punishing for the Conservatives: if anything, Labour’s huge poll lead is widening. A monumental defeat on 4 July is exactly what the Conservatives deserve. They have taken an unenviable set of circumstances – a global financial crisis, a pandemic and increasing levels of conflict and insecurity – and through bad political decisions have further worsened Britain’s prospects. The party’s ideological obsession with Brexit has played a key role in its decline. By holding a referendum to satisfy the demands of the right of his party, David Cameron fed the beast. It was by way of Brexit – first the campaign to leave the EU, then the internal party fight to impose a hard Brexit on the country, then the 2019 election campaign – that the party journeyed away from conservatism towards populism, telling voters that Brexit would solve all of Britain’s long-term structural issues instead of making people poorer. It was via Brexit that the party arrived at Boris Johnson as prime minister, one of the worst leaders the country has ever seen. Brexit consumed the Conservatives, leaving a party that does not know what it stands for and has nothing to offer.
“I am ashamed of the Conservative party,” Page says. “I never voted until the last two local elections and now I am a proud Labour supporter, especially after what Rishi Sunak did at the D-day parade.
“The reason the D-day thing hits so hard is because my son is ex-military,” she adds. “Everything the Conservatives have touched is turning to rubbish.”
Aldershot has always been a Conservative constituency since it was created in 1918 and the seat is being defended by Leo Docherty, who won with a majority of more than 16,000 in 2019.
It’s not a place that would ordinarily catch much attention during a general election, but Labour won a narrow majority on Rushmoor borough council in the May local elections, and polling suggests that, nationally, Labour’s candidate, Alex Baker, is neck and neck. It’s a measure of how seriously Labour HQ is taking the prospects of winning here that Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, paid a visit to the candidate alongside Mary Portas yesterday.
“People are struggling,” Page says. “People are lining up at food banks and I think they deserve better. I’ve looked at Keir Starmer’s policies – he may be a bit wishy-washy but his policies are more about helping working-class people.”
She is also upset at how people with mental health problems are “being stigmatised” by Sunak’s crackdown on what he called Britain’s sick-note culture. “It’s disgusting.”
What I don’t get is how Sunak got this far? How the hell did anyone let him run a bath without the presence of the coastguard? And possibly the fire brigade.
“I am ashamed of the Conservative party,” Page says. “I never voted until the last two local elections and now I am a proud Labour supporter, especially after what Rishi Sunak did at the D-day parade.
“The reason the D-day thing hits so hard is because my son is ex-military,” she adds. “Everything the Conservatives have touched is turning to rubbish.”
Aldershot has always been a Conservative constituency since it was created in 1918 and the seat is being defended by Leo Docherty, who won with a majority of more than 16,000 in 2019.
It’s not a place that would ordinarily catch much attention during a general election, but Labour won a narrow majority on Rushmoor borough council in the May local elections, and polling suggests that, nationally, Labour’s candidate, Alex Baker, is neck and neck. It’s a measure of how seriously Labour HQ is taking the prospects of winning here that Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, paid a visit to the candidate alongside Mary Portas yesterday.
“People are struggling,” Page says. “People are lining up at food banks and I think they deserve better. I’ve looked at Keir Starmer’s policies – he may be a bit wishy-washy but his policies are more about helping working-class people.”
She is also upset at how people with mental health problems are “being stigmatised” by Sunak’s crackdown on what he called Britain’s sick-note culture. “It’s disgusting.”
At the moment I'm thinking the result could be something like this: Lab 40%, Con 25%, Ref 15%, LD 12%, Grn 4%. Not yet convinced of the crossover scenario.
Discounting the LDs as being seen by most of the country as centrist, that essentially means the country is still in two-camps.
I find this fascinating. One of the reasons that the current Tories struggle so much right now is that they see Reform as their own, something to win over and embrace rather than a threat they need to defeat. Reminds me of the Labour / Lib Dem relationship in the run up to 2010.
I raised that a few days back when I was being asked where we could cut government spending.
But use of the words "cut" and "spending" in the same sentence sent the PB lefties off on one. Apparently just not possible, and you cant upset the OBR or the BoE or anyone in the Civil Service etc.
But of course at some point the bullet will have to be bitten
I don't discount it - if it's possible and there are no major downsides, bring it on. Unfortunately the FT article is paywalled and you've not bothered to explain what the change really is, so hardly surprising you've not convinced many.
I have always said that Cameron was popped into the Lords and into a senior ministerial post for a reason.
I thought maybe it was to replace Sunak at an earlier stage.
Rumours around tonight that Sunak’s about to fall on his sword.
There are no MPs - only Ministers.
If Sunak does resign, any replacement would have to come from within Ministerial ranks…
The appointment made little sense (other than avoiding a wider reshuffle), but the theory also makes no real sense, since how would doing that help Cameron, Sunak, the Tories, or the Country?
Cameron wouldn't carry on, Sunak is out in the scenario, the party is not likely to see a sudden boost in that scenario, and there's no time for it to benefit the country even if it was thought it might theoretically if he had more time.
So, and I hate to say this, I think Nadine may have this one wrong.
As Cameron is not an MP, he could not be PM after the election.
Basically, the story is... What's the word... Ridiculous
Alec Douglas-Home says Hi.
In 1963 ADH was PM whilst being a peer and then after renouncing his peerages neither a member of either House of Parliament, until he won a by-election 20 days later.
Sir Alec could renounce his hereditary peerage thanks to legislation passed for Tony Benn. Cameron, as a life peer, cannot, although he can give up his right to sit in the Lords.
But an additional problem since 1963, when new leaders and Prime Ministers just emerged, is the Conservative Party's own rulebook.
In practice, we have a Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister already, so Cameron is not even next on the list.
I think the only resignation scenario that works in an election is if he quits as leader but not PM. Quitting as PM would drag the monarch into politics and you simply don’t do that.
I could see a situation where Rishi relinquishes the leadership immediately, someone gets nominated as acting leader for the rest of the campaign with an admission the election is over and to try to maximise the size of the parliamentary party in opposition. It’s risky and a very long shot in my view, far more likely that Rishi stays on in both posts but is essentially sidelined in his own campaign.
Post election I think the Tories will need to completely reinvent themselves. There’s been a grassroots movement to elect the Party Chairman which might gain traction, I think there is a decent case for having an official deputy leader as most other parties have, there might be a case for combining the two roles somehow, but it seems strange that the party doesn’t have an official deputy leader.
Rishi is only going to quit during an election campaign if he has some sort of mental health crisis, and simply cannot continue. In that situation Cabinet would recommend a replacement PM to the King. Notwithstanding that there is a Deputy PM, I would expect that replacement PM to be Cameron, on the basis of being most reassuring generally in what would be a moment of crisis for the country. Also, his appointment wouldn't skew the subsequent contest for leadership of the party.
Indeed, it just highlights what a hell of a mess the Tories are in that they are in the midst of an election campaign with a leader who is a disaster and no means of extricating themselves from it. Also IIRC had the FTPA not been repealed the election would have been in May by default, so the net effect of that change was to gain 2 months in office. Was it really worth it?
I think that, if you weren't planning to hold on until the autumn or the winter, then it would have been much better to have the election in May. At the time I'd wondered whether the Lee Anderson defection to Reform had been timed to disrupt calling the election for May.
So I think it's safe to assume that the original plan was to hang on for longer, but something happened which changed the decision. I think that's the main advantage to a PM of repealing the FTPA, that the PM has the flexibility to react to events to pick a date whenever they want.
I imagine there will be competing stories about what happened that led to the election being held on July 4th. The hypothesis that the King may have been given only a limited period left to live, and so they decided the election had to happen earlier, to avoid the death of a Monarch during an election campaign, is superficially appealing, only because I struggle to think of any other rational explanation.
As you’re our man on the ground, so to speak, with good local knowledge is there any reason for the decline in support for Sinn Fein ?
It's the immigration issue that's completely upended things.
People are seeing their children emigrate because they can't afford housing, and yet the population of the country continues to increase. The government is going to desperate lengths to house asylum seekers (and still failing), and people don't see the same urgency going towards housing their children. You have protests across the country at any site that is suspected of being chosen to house asylum seekers, and people don't see Sinn Fein as speaking up for and articulating their anger on this issue.
I think it's very sad to see people blame asylum seekers for problems that have been created by government incompetence and failure, but the far-right are winning the political argument on this at the moment.
Thanks, that’s interesting. So housing again seems to be a problem.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
We'll all find out about the shit sandwich that's in store at their first Budget later this year. People won't enjoy it.
Clearly, no-one wants to hear about that this side of the GE - because every time it's raised we just hear but.. THE TORRIIIIEESSS!!!! - so they will get what they vote for good and hard.
I’m not under any illusions about the state of the UKs finances . How exactly will voting Tory help. They’ve already dished out NI cuts which the country couldn’t afford and could have gone to public services .
As the Spectator pointed out (not exactly a Labour paper) the current Tory tax plans are for each taxpayer to pay an additional £3018 in tax.
Meanwhile we run a deficit of £120 billion per year and have real terms cuts in budgets for government services planned for the next few years.
But neither Labour nor Tories are willing to talk about the fact that the national finances are in such a mess. Its the elephant in the room for both parties.
If Sunak has one skill it is spreadsheet analysis, so he probably knows this better than anyone. I think that is the reason for the July election. He knows that there is no scope for autumn giveaways or tax cuts, and on current budgets more public service cuts are imminent.
I am sure that the shine will fall off Starmerism quickly, but why would those voters go back to the party that created the mess in the first place? An ELE for the Tories is on its way and richly deserved. A Tory party unwilling to be realistic about public finances has no reason to exist.
At the moment I'm thinking the result could be something like this: Lab 40%, Con 25%, Ref 15%, LD 12%, Grn 4%. Not yet convinced of the crossover scenario.
Discounting the LDs as being seen by most of the country as centrist, that essentially means the country is still in two-camps.
I find this fascinating. One of the reasons that the current Tories struggle so much right now is that they see Reform as their own, something to win over and embrace rather than a threat they need to defeat.
Based on the downloadable csv file from your link, RefUK is boycotting Sheffield. No Reform candidate is listed in:-
1 Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney 2 Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven 3 Bristol East 4 Cambridge 5 Cheltenham 6 Chorley 7 Doncaster North 8 Earley and Woodley 9 East Grinstead and Uckfield 10 Epping Forest 11 Hexham 12 Leeds South 13 Maidenhead 14 Mid Dorset and North Poole 15 Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland 16 Oxford East 17 Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough 18 Sheffield Central 19 Sheffield Hallam 20 Sheffield Heeley 21 Sheffield South East 22 West Dorset
1 Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney 2 Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven 3 Bristol East 4 Cambridge 5 Cheltenham 6 Chorley 7 Doncaster North 8 Earley and Woodley 9 East Grinstead and Uckfield 10 Epping Forest 11 Hexham 12 Leeds South 13 Maidenhead 14 Mid Dorset and North Poole 15 Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland 16 Oxford East 17 Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough 18 Sheffield Central 19 Sheffield Hallam 20 Sheffield Heeley 21 Sheffield South East 22 Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge 23 West Dorset
RefUK and the TUV are standing agreed joint candidates in most NI seats. They wanted to bade them as TUV/Reform UK, but couldn’t get the paperwork for that agreed in time.
Thanks. For the record then, the TUV are standing in 14 of Northern Ireland's 18 constituencies, and not these four:-
1 Fermanagh and South Tyrone 2 Foyle 3 North Down 4 Upper Bann
I have always said that Cameron was popped into the Lords and into a senior ministerial post for a reason.
I thought maybe it was to replace Sunak at an earlier stage.
Rumours around tonight that Sunak’s about to fall on his sword.
There are no MPs - only Ministers.
If Sunak does resign, any replacement would have to come from within Ministerial ranks…
The appointment made little sense (other than avoiding a wider reshuffle), but the theory also makes no real sense, since how would doing that help Cameron, Sunak, the Tories, or the Country?
Cameron wouldn't carry on, Sunak is out in the scenario, the party is not likely to see a sudden boost in that scenario, and there's no time for it to benefit the country even if it was thought it might theoretically if he had more time.
So, and I hate to say this, I think Nadine may have this one wrong.
As Cameron is not an MP, he could not be PM after the election.
Basically, the story is... What's the word... Ridiculous
Alec Douglas-Home says Hi.
In 1963 ADH was PM whilst being a peer and then after renouncing his peerages neither a member of either House of Parliament, until he won a by-election 20 days later.
Sir Alec could renounce his hereditary peerage thanks to legislation passed for Tony Benn. Cameron, as a life peer, cannot, although he can give up his right to sit in the Lords.
But an additional problem since 1963, when new leaders and Prime Ministers just emerged, is the Conservative Party's own rulebook.
In practice, we have a Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister already, so Cameron is not even next on the list.
I think the only resignation scenario that works in an election is if he quits as leader but not PM. Quitting as PM would drag the monarch into politics and you simply don’t do that.
I could see a situation where Rishi relinquishes the leadership immediately, someone gets nominated as acting leader for the rest of the campaign with an admission the election is over and to try to maximise the size of the parliamentary party in opposition. It’s risky and a very long shot in my view, far more likely that Rishi stays on in both posts but is essentially sidelined in his own campaign.
Post election I think the Tories will need to completely reinvent themselves. There’s been a grassroots movement to elect the Party Chairman which might gain traction, I think there is a decent case for having an official deputy leader as most other parties have, there might be a case for combining the two roles somehow, but it seems strange that the party doesn’t have an official deputy leader.
Rishi is only going to quit during an election campaign if he has some sort of mental health crisis, and simply cannot continue. In that situation Cabinet would recommend a replacement PM to the King. Notwithstanding that there is a Deputy PM, I would expect that replacement PM to be Cameron, on the basis of being most reassuring generally in what would be a moment of crisis for the country. Also, his appointment wouldn't skew the subsequent contest for leadership of the party.
Indeed, it just highlights what a hell of a mess the Tories are in that they are in the midst of an election campaign with a leader who is a disaster and no means of extricating themselves from it. Also IIRC had the FTPA not been repealed the election would have been in May by default, so the net effect of that change was to gain 2 months in office. Was it really worth it?
I think that, if you weren't planning to hold on until the autumn or the winter, then it would have been much better to have the election in May. At the time I'd wondered whether the Lee Anderson defection to Reform had been timed to disrupt calling the election for May.
So I think it's safe to assume that the original plan was to hang on for longer, but something happened which changed the decision. I think that's the main advantage to a PM of repealing the FTPA, that the PM has the flexibility to react to events to pick a date whenever they want.
I imagine there will be competing stories about what happened that led to the election being held on July 4th. The hypothesis that the King may have been given only a limited period left to live, and so they decided the election had to happen earlier, to avoid the death of a Monarch during an election campaign, is superficially appealing, only because I struggle to think of any other rational explanation.
As you’re our man on the ground, so to speak, with good local knowledge is there any reason for the decline in support for Sinn Fein ?
It's the immigration issue that's completely upended things.
People are seeing their children emigrate because they can't afford housing, and yet the population of the country continues to increase. The government is going to desperate lengths to house asylum seekers (and still failing), and people don't see the same urgency going towards housing their children. You have protests across the country at any site that is suspected of being chosen to house asylum seekers, and people don't see Sinn Fein as speaking up for and articulating their anger on this issue.
I think it's very sad to see people blame asylum seekers for problems that have been created by government incompetence and failure, but the far-right are winning the political argument on this at the moment.
Yup. It’s pretty simple. If the population is increasing at 0.5% a year or whatever, you either increase infrastructure, services and housing at 0.5%+ per year. Or shit happens.
The problem comes with the many who believe that “We can’t and must not do anything”. This is spread across the left and right.
When I lived in Wiltshire, the local LibDems and Greens were *proud* of stopping jobs being created.
RTE have this filler programme called "Reeling in the Years". They pick a year, say 2001, and then they put together 25 minutes of archive footage from the year - twin towers, some sport, release of the iPod, something happening in Northern Ireland, foot and mouth disease, etc.
Anyway, they had a new batch of years recently, and they had one from the late 2000s, maybe 2006, when the INMO had just started counting the number of patients admitted to hospital without a hospital bed - major crisis, indignity of patients being kept on a trolley in a corridor, politicians earnestly promising that the issue would be fixed. And here we are in 2024, the trolley count figures reach new record highs, the politicians mouth the same formula of words, often the same politicians, bearing in mind the last three politicians to be taoiseach have all been previous ministers for health.
There is this pattern, much more in Ireland than in Britain, of emergency measures being introduced to deal with a crisis, and then becoming normalised, with the underlying problem left unaddressed. My wife thinks this is, in part, due to the culture of emigration. A lot of the people not happy with the status quo, and who might have the wherewithal to do something about it, end up putting their energy into leaving the country, instead of fixing it. And so the country is disproportionately inhabited by people who simply put up with things. (Not sure what that says about us, having moved here.)
And now, even those people are running out of patience.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
Those appointments aren’t coming out of the tax avoidance cash machine . I’m sure however that it will do some heavy lifting in other areas.
You think "ending non-dom status" is not part of the tax avoidance regime? And you think it is going to be tax positive? Really? You aren't normlly that naive.
The first obvious sign we have a Labour government will be the flight of capital out of the UK. No doubt lefties will cheer on the departure.
Until they don't have the money to fund hospital beds.
I’m dubious of these tax avoidance savings but all parties think about is getting elected so as long as they can look like they’ve got somewhere to get the money from pre-election they’ll worry about the reality after 4th July . As for flight of capital I don’t see it .
On flight of capital.... If Labour has a big majority, you are going to have a mass of new backbench MPs all looking to get noticed. Some of them might have been councillors, but there will be a cohort who have effectively only known student politics. This "Eat the Rich!" cohort are going to be making noise about how the those with wealth need to pay "their fair share". Which is way more than those who have the wealth will want to pay - they are not going to see eye to eye on what is "fair".
And so within a year - and probably much sooner - there will have been a significant departure for those shores who have a better understanding of what is "fair". That money will not be paying stamp duty on new properties here, will not be paying VAT on their latest Bentley or Ferrari or super yacht.
And there will be a black hole that those muppets who thought they would give Labour a try will end up having to fund.
Dr. Foxy, I agree with a lot of what you wrote regarding the state of finances. But laying it entirely at the feet of the Conservatives is not justified.
Back in the late 1990s, things were very rosy. Labour had a great economic inheritance. The dotcom bubble bursting was not Labour's fault. Running up a deficit in a boom was a choice by Brown, however. The rejigging of financial regulation, also by Brown, acted to make worse the impact of the financial crisis.
Broadly, the Coalition did a good job of handling the effects, though cuts to the legal sector were ill-considered. Then, post-Cameron, the eye was taken off the economy very significantly. The biggest single factor in economic terms was, of course, the pandemic. Any government would, right now, be dealing with economic difficulty. The Conservatives could've handled things better. But even if they'd done so, the costs associated with barely recovering from the worst recession in history and then suffering the first pandemic in a century would pose a huge challenge.
Labour will, very soon, return to power, most likely in a landslide. But unlike 1997 the question will not be "Where shall we spend all this lovely money?" but "How do we handle this economic challenge?"
What I don’t get is how Sunak got this far? How the hell did anyone let him run a bath without the presence of the coastguard? And possibly the fire brigade.
Counting backwards, he got to be PM because Truss and Johnson exploded in office in utterly predictable ways, and none of the alternatives looked better. (Both Mordaunt Badenoch have have moments in the spotlight this week- neither of them were much good.)
He was in pole position because he'd been Chancellor. He got to be Chancellor because he has been willing to throw the Saj under the bus and become Dom's Sub.
He was available to be Chancellor because he had backed both Boris and Brexit before they were cool.
Before that, we're lost in why he was catapulted into a safe seat with no political testing. Because he was wealthy? Because he was Eurosceptic? Because his face fitted?
But like pretty much everyone else associated with the idea of Brexit, he has failed miserably in office. Even Gove is only a partial exception to this. They've all proved to be corrupt or idiotic or both. And whilst an idea isn't responsible for its adherents, that is suggestive.
What I don’t get is how Sunak got this far? How the hell did anyone let him run a bath without the presence of the coastguard? And possibly the fire brigade.
The competition was Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees Mogg.
I think History will possibly be a little kinder to Sunak, than it seems now. The Torys deserve to get routed at the polls, but in my opinion because of the worst two prime ministers in my lifetime, Truss and Johnson. My worry is for the 2029 election, Labour will take the blame for not turning the ship around quick enough, and the alternative will be a far right Tory party under Patel/Farage, and unlike when Labour went far left, and Corbyn rightly so got crucified by the media, the right wing media will say they are the best thing since sliced bread, very worrying, even Tommy two names might join the Tory party
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
Those appointments aren’t coming out of the tax avoidance cash machine . I’m sure however that it will do some heavy lifting in other areas.
You think "ending non-dom status" is not part of the tax avoidance regime? And you think it is going to be tax positive? Really? You aren't normlly that naive.
The first obvious sign we have a Labour government will be the flight of capital out of the UK. No doubt lefties will cheer on the departure.
Until they don't have the money to fund hospital beds.
I’m dubious of these tax avoidance savings but all parties think about is getting elected so as long as they can look like they’ve got somewhere to get the money from pre-election they’ll worry about the reality after 4th July . As for flight of capital I don’t see it .
On flight of capital.... If Labour has a big majority, you are going to have a mass of new backbench MPs all looking to get noticed. Some of them might have been councillors, but there will be a cohort who have effectively only known student politics. This "Eat the Rich!" cohort are going to be making noise about how the those with wealth need to pay "their fair share". Which is way more than those who have the wealth will want to pay - they are not going to see eye to eye on what is "fair".
And so within a year - and probably much sooner - there will have been a significant departure for those shores who have a better understanding of what is "fair". That money will not be paying stamp duty on new properties here, will not be paying VAT on their latest Bentley or Ferrari or super yacht.
And there will be a black hole that those muppets who thought they would give Labour a try will end up having to fund.
I’ll wait and see . But I don’t see why the country should reward the Tories with 5 more years . Can you explain why the Tories should be given that .
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
We'll all find out about the shit sandwich that's in store at their first Budget later this year. People won't enjoy it.
Clearly, no-one wants to hear about that this side of the GE - because every time it's raised we just hear but.. THE TORRIIIIEESSS!!!! - so they will get what they vote for good and hard.
Again, the alternative to tax rises is spending cuts. There are no easy and comfortable choices. If the country were that well off, Sunak would be coasting to victory.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
Those appointments aren’t coming out of the tax avoidance cash machine . I’m sure however that it will do some heavy lifting in other areas.
You think "ending non-dom status" is not part of the tax avoidance regime? And you think it is going to be tax positive? Really? You aren't normlly that naive.
The first obvious sign we have a Labour government will be the flight of capital out of the UK. No doubt lefties will cheer on the departure.
Until they don't have the money to fund hospital beds.
I’m dubious of these tax avoidance savings but all parties think about is getting elected so as long as they can look like they’ve got somewhere to get the money from pre-election they’ll worry about the reality after 4th July . As for flight of capital I don’t see it .
On flight of capital.... If Labour has a big majority, you are going to have a mass of new backbench MPs all looking to get noticed. Some of them might have been councillors, but there will be a cohort who have effectively only known student politics. This "Eat the Rich!" cohort are going to be making noise about how the those with wealth need to pay "their fair share". Which is way more than those who have the wealth will want to pay - they are not going to see eye to eye on what is "fair".
And so within a year - and probably much sooner - there will have been a significant departure for those shores who have a better understanding of what is "fair". That money will not be paying stamp duty on new properties here, will not be paying VAT on their latest Bentley or Ferrari or super yacht.
And there will be a black hole that those muppets who thought they would give Labour a try will end up having to fund.
The Tories have revealed their skill, intelligence and finesse in how they have run this election campaign. It is not unreasonable to assume that behind the scenes they have governed in the same manner. It would explain the dreadful state of the country.
Despite having to deal with this dreadful inheritance, it is possible that any incoming government might surprise on the upside simply by not being utter buffoons.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
Those appointments aren’t coming out of the tax avoidance cash machine . I’m sure however that it will do some heavy lifting in other areas.
You think "ending non-dom status" is not part of the tax avoidance regime? And you think it is going to be tax positive? Really? You aren't normlly that naive.
The first obvious sign we have a Labour government will be the flight of capital out of the UK. No doubt lefties will cheer on the departure.
Until they don't have the money to fund hospital beds.
I’m dubious of these tax avoidance savings but all parties think about is getting elected so as long as they can look like they’ve got somewhere to get the money from pre-election they’ll worry about the reality after 4th July . As for flight of capital I don’t see it .
On flight of capital.... If Labour has a big majority, you are going to have a mass of new backbench MPs all looking to get noticed. Some of them might have been councillors, but there will be a cohort who have effectively only known student politics. This "Eat the Rich!" cohort are going to be making noise about how the those with wealth need to pay "their fair share". Which is way more than those who have the wealth will want to pay - they are not going to see eye to eye on what is "fair".
And so within a year - and probably much sooner - there will have been a significant departure for those shores who have a better understanding of what is "fair". That money will not be paying stamp duty on new properties here, will not be paying VAT on their latest Bentley or Ferrari or super yacht.
And there will be a black hole that those muppets who thought they would give Labour a try will end up having to fund.
The Tories have revealed their skill, intelligence and finesse in how they have run this election campaign. It is not unreasonable to assume that behind the scenes they have governed in the same manner. It would explain the dreadful state of the country.
Despite having to deal with this dreadful inheritance, it is possible that any incoming government might surprise on the upside simply by not being utter buffoons.
That is the only upside I see. A vaguely competent Government may well get the benefit of the doubt for a while longer..
Before that, we're lost in why he was catapulted into a safe seat with no political testing. Because he was wealthy? Because he was Eurosceptic? Because his face fitted?
More baffling is why he wanted to.
Not only is he bad at politics, he doesn't even seem to like it. What was his goal?
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
Those appointments aren’t coming out of the tax avoidance cash machine . I’m sure however that it will do some heavy lifting in other areas.
You think "ending non-dom status" is not part of the tax avoidance regime? And you think it is going to be tax positive? Really? You aren't normlly that naive.
The first obvious sign we have a Labour government will be the flight of capital out of the UK. No doubt lefties will cheer on the departure.
Until they don't have the money to fund hospital beds.
I’m dubious of these tax avoidance savings but all parties think about is getting elected so as long as they can look like they’ve got somewhere to get the money from pre-election they’ll worry about the reality after 4th July . As for flight of capital I don’t see it .
On flight of capital.... If Labour has a big majority, you are going to have a mass of new backbench MPs all looking to get noticed. Some of them might have been councillors, but there will be a cohort who have effectively only known student politics. This "Eat the Rich!" cohort are going to be making noise about how the those with wealth need to pay "their fair share". Which is way more than those who have the wealth will want to pay - they are not going to see eye to eye on what is "fair".
And so within a year - and probably much sooner - there will have been a significant departure for those shores who have a better understanding of what is "fair". That money will not be paying stamp duty on new properties here, will not be paying VAT on their latest Bentley or Ferrari or super yacht.
And there will be a black hole that those muppets who thought they would give Labour a try will end up having to fund.
Considering the near certainty of PM Starmer in a month, capital markets are remarkably unbothered.
They clearly don't consider a Labour government is going to act against their interests.
Comments
Whatever they're planning to unveil it'll be all about blaming people for being sick and choking off access to funds. All to please - guess who? - grumpy, tight, elderly core voters who think that anybody claiming social security who isn't them is a scrounger and deserves a bloody good hiding
I don't know how much of value the Opposition will end up doing but the one certainty in all this is that the Conservatives are toxic waste. Venal and cruel. The sooner they are gone, and the more of them that are voted out, the better.
When Sunak starts attacking people on already very low benefits by European standards, after the enormous and welk-documented rise in hardship since 2013-14, my sympathy for his plight evaporates.
I don’t speak as a particular flag-shagger, or Reform-lover, or someone who reflects, sobbingly, on “the realm”. But I do know — to put it in terms that Sunak might understand — if Kirsty Young’s doing the live coverage, you’d better be there, and not leave early to do some poxy, minor interview with ITV, subbing in Lord Cameron. Just what was he thinking? I simply do not understand the mindset of a Tory prime minister — any politician — who looks at a row of D-Day heroes and Joe Biden and doesn’t at least think “photo op”. Is his head full of bricks? The right thing to do now would be to go. Just go, taking the Forsyth gollum with you. Even Liz Truss would be doing better.
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/rishi-sunaks-d-day-blunder-made-me-wonder-is-he-even-a-politician-tmzxqcp69
Yours is a most salient point.
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
The Conservative party has been accused of becoming a home for “cranks” after some of its candidates at the general election were revealed to have shared conspiracy theories on social media.
The posts seen by the Observer include the suggestion that positive tests for Covid-19 were “mass psychosis at work” and that the Black Lives Matter movement might be an attempt to “bring down British society”.
Labour said some of the postings shared by Tory candidates suggested “serious concerns” about the calibre of the party’s would-be MPs. Some candidates have already deleted social media accounts, or removed posts, or locked access to accounts.
One Tory candidate in London is revealed to have referred to the London mayor Sadiq Khan as a “snivelling little drip” who had done more to damage the capital “than the Luftwaffe”. Another wrote in a book in 2005 that “we must teach people to be prejudiced once again”.
If you consider the kind of social fallout of what has already occurred in this area since 2010, I find that to be repulsive at a stage like this. Go now please Rishi, and spare yourself a little of the blame.
That's nearly 500 artillery pieces lost just in 8 days of June. They will take years to replace. And if they could, the Ukrainians would need days to turn them back to scrap metal.
Your daily illustration of how cheap and cheerful drones are changing warfare. And where fifty thousand FPV drones are being produced/acquired by Ukraine every month.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/09/the-observer-view-on-d-day-furore-rishi-sunak-is-driving-tories-over-an-electoral-cliff-edge
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
There are lots of local elections taking place across Europe, as well. In one Italian town I was in recently, a party called the ‘Sindicate of Black’ had put forward a slate to control the municipal council, which sounded very sinister. But turns out that the guy leading it has the surname Nero.
As the number of Independent TDs increases it becomes harder to put together a coalition, and FF-SF is about the only alternative to the status quo that looks possible. This is one reason why some of the Independents often club together into pseudo-parties or at least loose alliances, as it gives them a better chance of selling their votes in coalition negotiations.
The one caveat that I would add is that SF did really badly in the 2019 local elections, but then had a bit of a surge for the 2020 elections, and would have had more TDs if they'd stood more candidates. They may again get voters to turn to them during a general election campaign.
https://x.com/SkyNews/status/1799130378923323771?t=dXgo0tC7P6miG18xrZaIcw&s=19
This is the background to what she is on about.
https://x.com/TomStocks1982/status/1799404326667911336?t=XSSWnj3MgAWJyk7jPBRwww&s=19
So we have a government that has simultaneously created a problem with access to GP appointments and also created GP unemployment. It really is quite mind-boggling incompetent management of the NHS. It wouldn't cost a penny to end the restriction on spending this staff budget on GPs.
People are seeing their children emigrate because they can't afford housing, and yet the population of the country continues to increase. The government is going to desperate lengths to house asylum seekers (and still failing), and people don't see the same urgency going towards housing their children. You have protests across the country at any site that is suspected of being chosen to house asylum seekers, and people don't see Sinn Fein as speaking up for and articulating their anger on this issue.
I think it's very sad to see people blame asylum seekers for problems that have been created by government incompetence and failure, but the far-right are winning the political argument on this at the moment.
Were it not for Reform his lead over the Conservatives would now be in single digits.
Obsessed.
"Counting in the European elections will begin this morning, and the results of the first tally will not be declared until after 10pm due to ongoing voting in other EU member states."
We all know that the country is in a bad way and that this is fantasist bollocks. The best we can therefore hope for us that they leave enough sources of taxation that they've promised not to freeze that can be plundered, once the inevitable post election "there is no money left" moment occurs.
There is no way out of this that doesn't involve either a very punishing round of austerity or a major raid on wealth.
The first obvious sign we have a Labour government will be the flight of capital out of the UK. No doubt lefties will cheer on the departure.
Until they don't have the money to fund hospital beds.
Ignoring the problem is why they will die out
But then they say that the rationale behind this is to "tackle the sick note culture".
That's right. Everyone with a mental health problem is a workshy scrounger, swinging the lead.
The nasty party is here to stay and it's turning up the volume.
He makes Chris Robshaw look like a good decision-maker.
But, he's a behind the scenes analyst and has no appetite to lead from the front, which is part of the job.
When he does he demonstrates he has even worse political antennae than Theresa May.
Clearly, no-one wants to hear about that this side of the GE - because every time it's raised we just hear but.. THE TORRIIIIEESSS!!!! - so they will get what they vote for good and hard.
I think the core dynamics of the election result were set first after party gate and then after Truss' tike in office. Sunak has under performed and the lack of a discernible strategy is bemusing, but I don't think the campaign so far has changed an outcome likely baked in during Aurumn 2022. At most, and as pointed out in a previous thread, the D-Day debacle has likely slowed or stopped some swingback.
At the moment I think the result will end up being at one transformational (Labour very big win) and familiar (Tories clear second in seats/votes). I'd guess a 40/27 split with Reform at 10% max. if I had to call it now.
And you can take phrases like “wholly in thrall”to the EU and stick them where the sun don’t shine. That and others like the perennial favourite “vassal state” just demonstrate the failure of the right to imagine any form of political, social, or sexual relationship beyond dom/sub.
But also a major party split with possible defections to a new party...triggered by UK Labour imposing candidates in Cardiff W and Swansea W
The problem comes with the many who believe that “We can’t and must not do anything”. This is spread across the left and right.
When I lived in Wiltshire, the local LibDems and Greens were *proud* of stopping jobs being created.
https://www.ft.com/content/5209be99-3f6b-4ba3-b3f3-49b544f71c28
https://x.com/xtophercook/status/1799548290372903106
That's why you're now so fucked.
But despite years of austerity we don't currently have the money to fund hospital beds.
An alternative view is that a more stable, predictable government will reduce capital flight.
But use of the words "cut" and "spending" in the same sentence sent the PB lefties off on one. Apparently just not possible, and you cant upset the OBR or the BoE or anyone in the Civil Service etc.
But of course at some point the bullet will have to be bitten
Where i agree is that it is not a proposition the public at large want to hear, which is really problematic for both parties (albeit a problem of their/our own making).
Once that is revealed I think it would be fair for Labour to be asked for some details but until then both parties are as bad as each other - but being blunt the Tories are worse
Heck the only reason why the election is now is because the OBR made it very clear that there was no spare money for more tax cuts
But nothing.
“The reason the D-day thing hits so hard is because my son is ex-military,” she adds. “Everything the Conservatives have touched is turning to rubbish.”
Aldershot has always been a Conservative constituency since it was created in 1918 and the seat is being defended by Leo Docherty, who won with a majority of more than 16,000 in 2019.
It’s not a place that would ordinarily catch much attention during a general election, but Labour won a narrow majority on Rushmoor borough council in the May local elections, and polling suggests that, nationally, Labour’s candidate, Alex Baker, is neck and neck. It’s a measure of how seriously Labour HQ is taking the prospects of winning here that Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, paid a visit to the candidate alongside Mary Portas yesterday.
“People are struggling,” Page says. “People are lining up at food banks and I think they deserve better. I’ve looked at Keir Starmer’s policies – he may be a bit wishy-washy but his policies are more about helping working-class people.”
She is also upset at how people with mental health problems are “being stigmatised” by Sunak’s crackdown on what he called Britain’s sick-note culture. “It’s disgusting.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/09/i-think-sunaks-walked-out-of-number-10-tory-garrison-town-reacts-to-d-day-gaffe
All, including everything I've mentioned this morning. In a nutshell.
https://x.com/Sunday_Mail/status/1799553321331523671
Douglas Ross has an expenses scandal
Meanwhile we run a deficit of £120 billion per year and have real terms cuts in budgets for government services planned for the next few years.
But neither Labour nor Tories are willing to talk about the fact that the national finances are in such a mess. Its the elephant in the room for both parties.
If Sunak has one skill it is spreadsheet analysis, so he probably knows this better than anyone. I think that is the reason for the July election. He knows that there is no scope for autumn giveaways or tax cuts, and on current budgets more public service cuts are imminent.
I am sure that the shine will fall off Starmerism quickly, but why would those voters go back to the party that created the mess in the first place? An ELE for the Tories is on its way and richly deserved. A Tory party unwilling to be realistic about public finances has no reason to exist.
The far right are the enemy, not allies.
1 Fermanagh and South Tyrone
2 Foyle
3 North Down
4 Upper Bann
Anyway, they had a new batch of years recently, and they had one from the late 2000s, maybe 2006, when the INMO had just started counting the number of patients admitted to hospital without a hospital bed - major crisis, indignity of patients being kept on a trolley in a corridor, politicians earnestly promising that the issue would be fixed. And here we are in 2024, the trolley count figures reach new record highs, the politicians mouth the same formula of words, often the same politicians, bearing in mind the last three politicians to be taoiseach have all been previous ministers for health.
There is this pattern, much more in Ireland than in Britain, of emergency measures being introduced to deal with a crisis, and then becoming normalised, with the underlying problem left unaddressed. My wife thinks this is, in part, due to the culture of emigration. A lot of the people not happy with the status quo, and who might have the wherewithal to do something about it, end up putting their energy into leaving the country, instead of fixing it. And so the country is disproportionately inhabited by people who simply put up with things. (Not sure what that says about us, having moved here.)
And now, even those people are running out of patience.
And so within a year - and probably much sooner - there will have been a significant departure for those shores who have a better understanding of what is "fair". That money will not be paying stamp duty on new properties here, will not be paying VAT on their latest Bentley or Ferrari or super yacht.
And there will be a black hole that those muppets who thought they would give Labour a try will end up having to fund.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2024_United_Kingdom_general_election#2024
Back in the late 1990s, things were very rosy. Labour had a great economic inheritance. The dotcom bubble bursting was not Labour's fault. Running up a deficit in a boom was a choice by Brown, however. The rejigging of financial regulation, also by Brown, acted to make worse the impact of the financial crisis.
Broadly, the Coalition did a good job of handling the effects, though cuts to the legal sector were ill-considered. Then, post-Cameron, the eye was taken off the economy very significantly. The biggest single factor in economic terms was, of course, the pandemic. Any government would, right now, be dealing with economic difficulty. The Conservatives could've handled things better. But even if they'd done so, the costs associated with barely recovering from the worst recession in history and then suffering the first pandemic in a century would pose a huge challenge.
Labour will, very soon, return to power, most likely in a landslide. But unlike 1997 the question will not be "Where shall we spend all this lovely money?" but "How do we handle this economic challenge?"
(Both Mordaunt Badenoch have have moments in the spotlight this week- neither of them were much good.)
He was in pole position because he'd been Chancellor. He got to be Chancellor because he has been willing to throw the Saj under the bus and become Dom's Sub.
He was available to be Chancellor because he had backed both Boris and Brexit before they were cool.
Before that, we're lost in why he was catapulted into a safe seat with no political testing. Because he was wealthy? Because he was Eurosceptic? Because his face fitted?
But like pretty much everyone else associated with the idea of Brexit, he has failed miserably in office. Even Gove is only a partial exception to this. They've all proved to be corrupt or idiotic or both. And whilst an idea isn't responsible for its adherents, that is suggestive.
It's a technical accounting issue between BoE and the Treasury as fall out from Quantitave Easing.
In effect though it is printing money, so rather counter to the drive to get inflation down.
Despite having to deal with this dreadful inheritance, it is possible that any incoming government might surprise on the upside simply by not being utter buffoons.
Lee Anderson with the pointless overkill
https://x.com/DPJHodges/status/1799705566459171285?t=XjtDpJWtIobIGWgp3K4rfw&s=19
Not only is he bad at politics, he doesn't even seem to like it. What was his goal?
They clearly don't consider a Labour government is going to act against their interests.