Biden and Sunak were both praised by big-stateish economists and academics for giant magic money tree (MMT) stimulus. Now that it has turned out inflation wasn't abolished, both men appear to be paying the price.
https://x.com/jacksurfleet/status/1801016771316506934?s=19 Labour need to be careful this doesn't come out of the launch. 'Austerity plus' would crater their vote. I'm sure they know that but it's a dangerous narrative if it catches
But if that’s representative, then it’s all Sunak needs….
He only needs to lose a debate by a 2-1 margin?
He only needs to get a decent chunk of 36% of voters to think he’s worth their vote….
The rest don’t matter to him.
His only strategy now is to eat into Reform and hope Labour dips a bit more.
Eh? Just because 64% said Starmer won doesn’t mean 64% will vote for him!
Was there a "they're both c**ts" option?
Prize for the most moronic post of the last two days. You must have misplaced the link to Guido's
It is just moronic bilge, daily, from Owls these days. Adds no value, and is mostly just offensive and nasty.
Chill. Come election Greens could end up with no seats, and squeezed down tactically to 3% or less. Calculators give them 2 seats based on polls giving them 6-8%. They won’t get 6-8%. Their Brighton seat likely gone in red wave, they can’t fumble Bristols opportunity or it’s wipe out disaster night.
BJO knows this. If BJO gets up your nose, just ask him for his Green election % and number of seats. 😈
I’m a Green and am deeply pessimistic - I think 0 seats is the most likely outcome, despite potentially a higher overall absolute vote count and share.
It is a long game though, and if it teaches the party that chasing the Momentum vote is not the road to power then that’s a significant silver lining, and we can return to the long-game route of doing well in local politics. Hard yards, for sure, but that’s the real road.
I'm genuinely surprised that the Greens aren't making more of an effort in Oxford East. They have a strong local councillor base and there's a big chunk of the constituency that's demographically very green. They're not going to win it within 10 years, probably longer, but they should be chasing a good second this time. Instead they're pretty much invisible.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
It is but it misses the point. Every statistic, everyone on the waiting list, has friends and family who know that Aunt Freda can't get an appointment and Uncle Joe's been on the waiting list for two years next October. Politicians and media pundits might rely on official statistics to tell them what is happening but voters get to live the life.
But if that’s representative, then it’s all Sunak needs….
He only needs to lose a debate by a 2-1 margin?
He only needs to get a decent chunk of 36% of voters to think he’s worth their vote….
The rest don’t matter to him.
His only strategy now is to eat into Reform and hope Labour dips a bit more.
Eh? Just because 64% said Starmer won doesn’t mean 64% will vote for him!
Was there a "they're both c**ts" option?
Prize for the most moronic post of the last two days. You must have misplaced the link to Guido's
It is just moronic bilge, daily, from Owls these days. Adds no value, and is mostly just offensive and nasty.
Chill. Come election Greens could end up with no seats, and squeezed down tactically to 3% or less. Calculators give them 2 seats based on polls giving them 6-8%. They won’t get 6-8%. Their Brighton seat likely gone in red wave, they can’t fumble Bristols opportunity or it’s wipe out disaster night.
BJO knows this. If BJO gets up your nose, just ask him for his Green election % and number of seats. 😈
That is a MASSIVE drop in Labour VI. I said a couple of days ago they will be nervous at the slide and was decried on here, they will be more than nervous now
No. They won’t. I decried you then and I decry you now. This is a PP reversion to the mean from the stupid LAB VI they had before.
Of course, dear. You’re not nervous at all
What kind of numbers do you think Labour could drift out too, and (presumably) the Tories gain, to bring the majority into question?
I'm sure if we Baxter them it will still bring a sizeable Labour majority
I honestly have no idea, does anyone? Reform could continue their rise - or fall back. Labour could continue to slide, or surge again
it’s a long campaign and neither of the big parties has much enthusiasm behind them, but the Tories are viscerally hated and Labour are merely tolerated as an alternative - for now
If I was in the Lib Dems I would be shouting loudly about Single Market membership immediately to peel off Labour Remainers, and then also a promise of referendum on Rejoin in a few years. That would be cat in the pigeons territory and could upend everything
I’ve no idea why they aren’t slotting this open goal
I will shit my boxers with pleasure if Labour slip into the 30s on the night.
Probably the one pleasure I will get. It will set off all sorts of internal recriminations and legitimacy questions, which will dog SKS for his whole time in office.
This is disingenuous, as well as untrue.
One of the reasons Labour are, or may, poll sub 40 (I think it will be 37-39.5%) is because there’s a much more savvy anti-tory vote now. I’m a case in point but just one of millions. I want to vote Labour, naturally, but I’m voting LibDem to unseat the tory MP.
So make up whatever discourse you want on the night if that makes you happy but it won’t be objective truth.
37% would be a pretty underwhelming 4 point increase on the last election.
Blair won a 62 seat majority on 35.2% in 2005.
I don’t think it will unduly concern Labour if they win
If they win a 300 seat majority with 38% it wouldn't be good for democracy.
You haven’t previously opposed FPP as far as I’m aware? Lots of traditional Tories now seem to have found a newborn enthusiasm for PR. Not sure why?
Permanent right wing govt, Cons senior partner in LD/Con/Reform/DUP coalition with a smaller Labour/Green/SNP/PC opposition just as it becomes in most countries with PR.
Morning all. Halfway to polling day and no sign of any sort of Tory recovery. I think they are down to hoping the 'ever blues' hold their nose one more time to save as many as possible. What's the aim, realistically? I guess get within 15 points and hold 150 plus. Labour will be looking at 40% and thinking 'bank!" - any 40 score and they are on easy Street
To be cynical, Labour would be happy with a 1997-style result for two reasons. First, it ensures they will probably have at least 10 years in Government given the Conservative propensity to descend into soul-searching irrelevance in opposition and second, IF the Conservatives are still the second largest party in terms of seats in the Commons, the duopoly will be preserved and the attack lines for Labour become much easier.
Were Davey and the LDs to be the opposition, however, it would be tougher for Starmer and Labour as they wouldn't be able to point across the floor to the Commons and blame the "party opposite" for all the travails and problems, both the genuine inheritance and the consequences of the new Government's incompetence. The attack lines wouldn't be so obvious - yes, the Coalition, but that's ancient history and no one will accept that.
LDs are used to being in opposition and I suspect they would be criticising the new Government more effectively than the Conservatives from the start. Keeping the leader of the Conservative Party opposite would be much easier for Prime Minister Starmer than having to deal with Ed Davey.
Which might explain why and where Labour are focusing resources right now
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
I didn’t realise BJO was a Green. I genuinely thought from his posts that Big John was a Brexit-loving Red Wall Faragist who hated SKS because of his London wokeness.
Funny old world.
He’s not a Green really. His natural mentor is George Galloway. Indeed he was praising him on here quite recently.
Sunak has always felt that the public ceremonial side of his job, and the time consumed by foreign affairs, was a bit of a waste of his time; what he likes doing is numerical analysis and modelling.
Fair enough, but that's deeply politically inept for a Prime Minister - especially in an election campaign.
It’s surprising that Dave let it happen to be honest. He understood the significance of the event, and would have been involved in the planning as FS.
Perhaps they had a massive row about it, guess we’ll have to wait for Sunak’s memoir to find out.
I’d know how to say to my boss “Sorry, but this is going to go on all day, and it’s going to be a bad look to leave early”.
Dave is a big diddy , probably happy that his pudgy red arsehole of a coupon would be in the photos rather than Sunak's.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
It is but it misses the point. Every statistic, everyone on the waiting list, has friends and family who know that Aunt Freda can't get an appointment and Uncle Joe's been on the waiting list for two years next October. Politicians and media pundits might rely on official statistics to tell them what is happening but voters get to live the life.
And Labour is going to fix it by...checks notes...finding some tax avoidance down the back of the sofa. And dentistry too.
Piss off, Labour. The most dishonest aspect of this whole election.
I've mentioned before that facebook, strangley, are targetting me with ads urging me to vote for a conservative in Beckenham and Penge - one of the minority of UK seats that I have never even visited. It's still doing this - though I'm sure the candidate three weeks ago is male, and now is female. Anyway Tories - you're wasting your money. I can't vote Conservative in Beckenham and Penge even if I wanted to!
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
It is but it misses the point. Every statistic, everyone on the waiting list, has friends and family who know that Aunt Freda can't get an appointment and Uncle Joe's been on the waiting list for two years next October. Politicians and media pundits might rely on official statistics to tell them what is happening but voters get to live the life.
And Labour is going to fix it by...checks notes...finding some tax avoidance down the back of the sofa. And dentistry too.
Piss off, Labour. The most dishonest aspect of this whole election.
The Tories are doing exactly the same with their financial projections, if not worse. Time for the Tories to grow up or stop complaining that the other side do it too.
That is a MASSIVE drop in Labour VI. I said a couple of days ago they will be nervous at the slide and was decried on here, they will be more than nervous now
No. They won’t. I decried you then and I decry you now. This is a PP reversion to the mean from the stupid LAB VI they had before.
Of course, dear. You’re not nervous at all
What kind of numbers do you think Labour could drift out too, and (presumably) the Tories gain, to bring the majority into question?
I'm sure if we Baxter them it will still bring a sizeable Labour majority
I honestly have no idea, does anyone? Reform could continue their rise - or fall back. Labour could continue to slide, or surge again
it’s a long campaign and neither of the big parties has much enthusiasm behind them, but the Tories are viscerally hated and Labour are merely tolerated as an alternative - for now
If I was in the Lib Dems I would be shouting loudly about Single Market membership immediately to peel off Labour Remainers, and then also a promise of referendum on Rejoin in a few years. That would be cat in the pigeons territory and could upend everything
I’ve no idea why they aren’t slotting this open goal
I will shit my boxers with pleasure if Labour slip into the 30s on the night.
Probably the one pleasure I will get. It will set off all sorts of internal recriminations and legitimacy questions, which will dog SKS for his whole time in office.
This is disingenuous, as well as untrue.
One of the reasons Labour are, or may, poll sub 40 (I think it will be 37-39.5%) is because there’s a much more savvy anti-tory vote now. I’m a case in point but just one of millions. I want to vote Labour, naturally, but I’m voting LibDem to unseat the tory MP.
So make up whatever discourse you want on the night if that makes you happy but it won’t be objective truth.
37% would be a pretty underwhelming 4 point increase on the last election.
Blair won a 62 seat majority on 35.2% in 2005.
I don’t think it will unduly concern Labour if they win
If they win a 300 seat majority with 38% it wouldn't be good for democracy.
Neither was an 80 seat majority on 43%. With FPTP, them's the breaks.
Yeah, the alternative is having a minor party with, say, 15% of the vote controlling the legislative agenda of Government and having an unduly loud voice in the country.
I’d rather have a centrist party in charge on 35% of the vote.
It’s the lesser of two evils.
Rubbish, the minor party in a coalition gets some of their policies through, they don't 'control the legislative agenda'. FPTP means a majority of voters are ignored.
I don't do social media (other than here - is this social media?), but my younger family and friends who do tell me that the GE campaign has finally cut through. The topic? Multiple piss-takes of Sunak and his family suffering the deprivation of not being able to afford Sky TV because they were making sacrifices to finance Winchester.
Sunak has always felt that the public ceremonial side of his job, and the time consumed by foreign affairs, was a bit of a waste of his time; what he likes doing is numerical analysis and modelling.
Fair enough, but that's deeply politically inept for a Prime Minister - especially in an election campaign.
It’s surprising that Dave let it happen to be honest. He understood the significance of the event, and would have been involved in the planning as FS.
Perhaps they had a massive row about it, guess we’ll have to wait for Sunak’s memoir to find out.
I’d know how to say to my boss “Sorry, but this is going to go on all day, and it’s going to be a bad look to leave early”.
Dave is a big diddy , probably happy that his pudgy red arsehole of a coupon would be in the photos rather than Sunak's.
It’s 50% frontier gibberish but when you hit home you get genuine lolz Malc.
Another massive British company about to fall into foreign ownership? A french tycoon already has a chunk as do, I think, German state telecoms company.
Royal Mail seems destined to be non-UK within months.
We are out of our minds.
UK assets are being sold to pay for foreign holidays.
That's a process that UK people can reverse if they want to by simply spending less on foreign holidays and buying more UK assets instead.
But if that’s representative, then it’s all Sunak needs….
He only needs to lose a debate by a 2-1 margin?
He only needs to get a decent chunk of 36% of voters to think he’s worth their vote….
The rest don’t matter to him.
His only strategy now is to eat into Reform and hope Labour dips a bit more.
Eh? Just because 64% said Starmer won doesn’t mean 64% will vote for him!
Was there a "they're both c**ts" option?
Prize for the most moronic post of the last two days. You must have misplaced the link to Guido's
It is just moronic bilge, daily, from Owls these days. Adds no value, and is mostly just offensive and nasty.
Chill. Come election Greens could end up with no seats, and squeezed down tactically to 3% or less. Calculators give them 2 seats based on polls giving them 6-8%. They won’t get 6-8%. Their Brighton seat likely gone in red wave, they can’t fumble Bristols opportunity or it’s wipe out disaster night.
BJO knows this. If BJO gets up your nose, just ask him for his Green election % and number of seats. 😈
I’m a Green and am deeply pessimistic - I think 0 seats is the most likely outcome, despite potentially a higher overall absolute vote count and share.
It is a long game though, and if it teaches the party that chasing the Momentum vote is not the road to power then that’s a significant silver lining, and we can return to the long-game route of doing well in local politics. Hard yards, for sure, but that’s the real road.
You may win a seat somewhere in the Suffolk/Norfolk area such as Waveney Valley.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
It is but it misses the point. Every statistic, everyone on the waiting list, has friends and family who know that Aunt Freda can't get an appointment and Uncle Joe's been on the waiting list for two years next October. Politicians and media pundits might rely on official statistics to tell them what is happening but voters get to live the life.
And Labour is going to fix it by...checks notes...finding some tax avoidance down the back of the sofa. And dentistry too.
Piss off, Labour. The most dishonest aspect of this whole election.
It harks back to 1997 and Virginia Bottomley denying ward closures. People can see. Boris understood this. Why do you think he wanted 40 new hospitals?
I've mentioned before that facebook, strangley, are targetting me with ads urging me to vote for a conservative in Beckenham and Penge - one of the minority of UK seats that I have never even visited. It's still doing this - though I'm sure the candidate three weeks ago is male, and now is female. Anyway Tories - you're wasting your money. I can't vote Conservative in Beckenham and Penge even if I wanted to!
Rules on targeting political ads are stricter and thus quite a bit less accurate than normal commercial stuff. This has changed since 2019.
Tbf though I would absolutely not discount incompetence either.
I've mentioned before that facebook, strangley, are targetting me with ads urging me to vote for a conservative in Beckenham and Penge - one of the minority of UK seats that I have never even visited. It's still doing this - though I'm sure the candidate three weeks ago is male, and now is female. Anyway Tories - you're wasting your money. I can't vote Conservative in Beckenham and Penge even if I wanted to!
A genuine ad from the Tories, or some sort of an impersonation scam someone’s running on Facebook?
Morning all. Halfway to polling day and no sign of any sort of Tory recovery. I think they are down to hoping the 'ever blues' hold their nose one more time to save as many as possible. What's the aim, realistically? I guess get within 15 points and hold 150 plus. Labour will be looking at 40% and thinking 'bank!" - any 40 score and they are on easy Street
To be cynical, Labour would be happy with a 1997-style result for two reasons. First, it ensures they will probably have at least 10 years in Government given the Conservative propensity to descend into soul-searching irrelevance in opposition and second, IF the Conservatives are still the second largest party in terms of seats in the Commons, the duopoly will be preserved and the attack lines for Labour become much easier.
Were Davey and the LDs to be the opposition, however, it would be tougher for Starmer and Labour as they wouldn't be able to point across the floor to the Commons and blame the "party opposite" for all the travails and problems, both the genuine inheritance and the consequences of the new Government's incompetence. The attack lines wouldn't be so obvious - yes, the Coalition, but that's ancient history and no one will accept that.
LDs are used to being in opposition and I suspect they would be criticising the new Government more effectively than the Conservatives from the start. Keeping the leader of the Conservative Party opposite would be much easier for Prime Minister Starmer than having to deal with Ed Davey.
Which might explain why and where Labour are focusing resources right now
Where are Labour focussing resources? I've passed through a random selection of seats in London, Essex and Kent and so far have seen no sign of an election anywhere.
I saw a Labour canvasser on the first weekend but since then there has been no sign of anything in Romford, so presumably the initial canvas returns showed that Rosindell is safe. No leaflet from the Tories yet, which is unusual, although I had Rosindell's calling card through the door so they have canvassed my road it seems.
Jeremy Hunt becomes the latest senior Tory to admit the game is up, telling Politico that a vote for Reform will give Labour “an even bigger majority”.
I didn’t realise BJO was a Green. I genuinely thought from his posts that Big John was a Brexit-loving Red Wall Faragist who hated SKS because of his London wokeness.
Funny old world.
Unreconciled Corbynite. Definitely more on the hard left wing of the Greens than the hug-a-husky wing.
The sort of convert a long-term Green like Ghedebrav says he wants to get out of the party. Poor old Corbynites, Labour nor Greens want them. They will be cosying up to Galloway's mob next.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
It is but it misses the point. Every statistic, everyone on the waiting list, has friends and family who know that Aunt Freda can't get an appointment and Uncle Joe's been on the waiting list for two years next October. Politicians and media pundits might rely on official statistics to tell them what is happening but voters get to live the life.
And Labour is going to fix it by...checks notes...finding some tax avoidance down the back of the sofa. And dentistry too.
Piss off, Labour. The most dishonest aspect of this whole election.
Maybe you haven't read the Tory manifesto? I believe it says they will finance tax cuts through a) money raised through clamping down on tax avoidance (£6b was it?), and welfare benefits savings (£12bn?).
https://x.com/jacksurfleet/status/1801016771316506934?s=19 Labour need to be careful this doesn't come out of the launch. 'Austerity plus' would crater their vote. I'm sure they know that but it's a dangerous narrative if it catches
Im not convinced Labour have braced the country for what to expect here. They’re playing a decent electoral game but not a great expectations management game. To their credit most of the parties in 2010 were signalling that some really tough cuts/spending decisions were coming after the GE. I do fear that CHANGE will not look very changey if Reeves is having to take the hatchet to public spending in the Autumn.
More bad news for @rishisunak this morning. New data shows hospital waiting lists in England just rose for the first time in seven months. Not a massive rise (1.4% between Mar and Apr) but nonetheless the biggest increase in more than a year, in a metric he pledged to bring down
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
It is but it misses the point. Every statistic, everyone on the waiting list, has friends and family who know that Aunt Freda can't get an appointment and Uncle Joe's been on the waiting list for two years next October. Politicians and media pundits might rely on official statistics to tell them what is happening but voters get to live the life.
And Labour is going to fix it by...checks notes...finding some tax avoidance down the back of the sofa. And dentistry too.
Piss off, Labour. The most dishonest aspect of this whole election.
They're lying because the electorate doesn't want to hear the truth, and will punish anyone who tells it. It's possible to be deeply unimpressed and frustrated with all the rubbish politicians churn out, and to understand why they do it at the same time.
Labour is using fantasies about rampant economic growth to disguise its true intentions. They're either lying about an end to austerity, lying about freezes to income tax and NI rates, or there are big increases coming in taxes where they've not yet been explicitly ruled out. Look for the holes in the manifesto where Reeves is leaving wriggle room for the latter.
The French election developments as described in the Arnaud Bertrand thread are an interesting mirror of the chaos in the UK around 2018-2019. France is having its bit political shift a few years after the UK, and Germany will be along in due course. But because of their 2 stage voting system - essentially a version of AV - the impact on party politics is much more dynamic.
The split within LR about whether to ally with Le Pen or not directly mirrors Tory splits on what to do about Farage. Le Pen has successfully eaten up most of the right (Zemmour and Marine's nemesis Marion Mareschal both showing they're flashes in the pan), but the old rump centre-right continue on at pitiful vote levels. This could be Reform and the Conservatives in a decade's time.
The snap election has really crystallised French politics at assembly level into 3 blocs now: the centrists under Macron, the (relatively) united left which is equivalent to a sort of union of Corbynites and Labour soft-left, and the populist right under Le Pen. For the presidency it's probably still Macron's successor vs Le Pen.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
What MIGHT happen if the Conservatives end up three weeks and a day from now with just 35 MPs and in third place in the Commons?
Let's assume Rishi Sunak is one of the survivors - presumably, like Major, he will stand outside Downing Street, announce he's going to the King to resign and also announce his resignation as leader of the Conservative Party.
The Party will first need to elect a new Chair and re-constitute the 1922 Committee which is much more important in opposition. The new Chair will have to organise the leadership election.
The weekend newspapers will be digesting what happened and there'll be plenty of "advice" for the survivors in terms of the future relationship with Reform and who they should choose as leader to begin the rebuilding process.
When does the leadership election take place? First question is when will the new Commons go into summer recess? Presumably towards the end of July and when would Parliament reconvene? There's an argument for the leadership election to be conducted after the Party Conference which would in effect be a week long hustings for the candidates to stake their positions so it could be mid to late October before there's a new Conservative leader in place.
I've mentioned before that facebook, strangley, are targetting me with ads urging me to vote for a conservative in Beckenham and Penge - one of the minority of UK seats that I have never even visited. It's still doing this - though I'm sure the candidate three weeks ago is male, and now is female. Anyway Tories - you're wasting your money. I can't vote Conservative in Beckenham and Penge even if I wanted to!
We should pretend we are on telly so have to flash up all the candidates in any named constituency, and their Bet365 prices, so for Beckenham and Penge:-
Edward Apostolides Reform UK 40/1 Liam Conlon Labour Party 1/25 Ruth Fabricant Green Party 125/1 Hannah Gray Conservative and Unionist Party 14/1 Chloe-Jane Ross Liberal Democrats 80/1
Morning all. Halfway to polling day and no sign of any sort of Tory recovery. I think they are down to hoping the 'ever blues' hold their nose one more time to save as many as possible. What's the aim, realistically? I guess get within 15 points and hold 150 plus. Labour will be looking at 40% and thinking 'bank!" - any 40 score and they are on easy Street
To be cynical, Labour would be happy with a 1997-style result for two reasons. First, it ensures they will probably have at least 10 years in Government given the Conservative propensity to descend into soul-searching irrelevance in opposition and second, IF the Conservatives are still the second largest party in terms of seats in the Commons, the duopoly will be preserved and the attack lines for Labour become much easier.
Were Davey and the LDs to be the opposition, however, it would be tougher for Starmer and Labour as they wouldn't be able to point across the floor to the Commons and blame the "party opposite" for all the travails and problems, both the genuine inheritance and the consequences of the new Government's incompetence. The attack lines wouldn't be so obvious - yes, the Coalition, but that's ancient history and no one will accept that.
LDs are used to being in opposition and I suspect they would be criticising the new Government more effectively than the Conservatives from the start. Keeping the leader of the Conservative Party opposite would be much easier for Prime Minister Starmer than having to deal with Ed Davey.
Which might explain why and where Labour are focusing resources right now
Where are Labour focussing resources? I've passed through a random selection of seats in London, Essex and Kent and so far have seen no sign of an election anywhere.
I saw a Labour canvasser on the first weekend but since then there has been no sign of anything in Romford, so presumably the initial canvas returns showed that Rosindell is safe. No leaflet from the Tories yet, which is unusual, although I had Rosindell's calling card through the door so they have canvassed my road it seems.
One "re-elect Rosie Duffield" sign board on the road by my vineyard today. Nothing at home in Lewisham North, but then it's one of the safest seats in the country.
Another massive British company about to fall into foreign ownership? A french tycoon already has a chunk as do, I think, German state telecoms company.
Royal Mail seems destined to be non-UK within months.
We are out of our minds.
Yet still no-one talks about the balance of payments deficit. Before 1992 this figure was headline news every month.
Overseas students bring in £40bn of foreign money per year. Increasing the numbers was one of this governments success stories, gaining around £10bn a year which reduces our balance of payments a fair bit, and provides a base from which to grow companies and industries from.
Instead of claiming success they have decided to burn it all down.
Morning all. Halfway to polling day and no sign of any sort of Tory recovery. I think they are down to hoping the 'ever blues' hold their nose one more time to save as many as possible. What's the aim, realistically? I guess get within 15 points and hold 150 plus. Labour will be looking at 40% and thinking 'bank!" - any 40 score and they are on easy Street
To be cynical, Labour would be happy with a 1997-style result for two reasons. First, it ensures they will probably have at least 10 years in Government given the Conservative propensity to descend into soul-searching irrelevance in opposition and second, IF the Conservatives are still the second largest party in terms of seats in the Commons, the duopoly will be preserved and the attack lines for Labour become much easier.
Were Davey and the LDs to be the opposition, however, it would be tougher for Starmer and Labour as they wouldn't be able to point across the floor to the Commons and blame the "party opposite" for all the travails and problems, both the genuine inheritance and the consequences of the new Government's incompetence. The attack lines wouldn't be so obvious - yes, the Coalition, but that's ancient history and no one will accept that.
LDs are used to being in opposition and I suspect they would be criticising the new Government more effectively than the Conservatives from the start. Keeping the leader of the Conservative Party opposite would be much easier for Prime Minister Starmer than having to deal with Ed Davey.
Which might explain why and where Labour are focusing resources right now
Where are Labour focussing resources? I've passed through a random selection of seats in London, Essex and Kent and so far have seen no sign of an election anywhere.
I saw a Labour canvasser on the first weekend but since then there has been no sign of anything in Romford, so presumably the initial canvas returns showed that Rosindell is safe. No leaflet from the Tories yet, which is unusual, although I had Rosindell's calling card through the door so they have canvassed my road it seems.
Obvs you have to be careful what you say about Romford’s Con candidate. But will be interesting if the the Red Tsunami scenario happens and he is one of the few left standing, given the last couple of years.
The French election developments as described in the Arnaud Bertrand thread are an interesting mirror of the chaos in the UK around 2018-2019. France is having its bit political shift a few years after the UK, and Germany will be along in due course. But because of their 2 stage voting system - essentially a version of AV - the impact on party politics is much more dynamic.
The split within LR about whether to ally with Le Pen or not directly mirrors Tory splits on what to do about Farage. Le Pen has successfully eaten up most of the right (Zemmour and Marine's nemesis Marion Mareschal both showing they're flashes in the pan), but the old rump centre-right continue on at pitiful vote levels. This could be Reform and the Conservatives in a decade's time.
The snap election has really crystallised French politics at assembly level into 3 blocs now: the centrists under Macron, the (relatively) united left which is equivalent to a sort of union of Corbynites and Labour soft-left, and the populist right under Le Pen. For the presidency it's probably still Macron's successor vs Le Pen.
The centrists are the weakest of the three. They depended upon right wingers switching to them in Round 2 to keep out the Left, and left wingers switching to them to keep out RN. But, now it looks as though they will be squeezed out of most round 2 contests. Les Republicains might favour the centre over RN, but I doubt if they'd favour the Left over them.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
More bad news for @rishisunak this morning. New data shows hospital waiting lists in England just rose for the first time in seven months. Not a massive rise (1.4% between Mar and Apr) but nonetheless the biggest increase in more than a year, in a metric he pledged to bring down
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
It is but it misses the point. Every statistic, everyone on the waiting list, has friends and family who know that Aunt Freda can't get an appointment and Uncle Joe's been on the waiting list for two years next October. Politicians and media pundits might rely on official statistics to tell them what is happening but voters get to live the life.
And Labour is going to fix it by...checks notes...finding some tax avoidance down the back of the sofa. And dentistry too.
Piss off, Labour. The most dishonest aspect of this whole election.
Mr. Sandpit, to be fair to the EU, I think other countries (Turkey, maybe Brazil) have also imposed similar tariffs on Chinese electric cars.
Biden’s looking at it too, it’s a genuine conundrum for Western countries and it will be interesting to see how they all react.
I’d love to hear the party leaders in the UK asked the question, see how they respond.
Starmer has thousands of Unionised supporters in the UK car manufacturing industry, but he’s also a staunch advocate for Net Zero targets. It’s a difficult circle to square.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
Sunak has always felt that the public ceremonial side of his job, and the time consumed by foreign affairs, was a bit of a waste of his time; what he likes doing is numerical analysis and modelling.
Fair enough, but that's deeply politically inept for a Prime Minister - especially in an election campaign.
It’s surprising that Dave let it happen to be honest. He understood the significance of the event, and would have been involved in the planning as FS.
Perhaps they had a massive row about it, guess we’ll have to wait for Sunak’s memoir to find out.
I’d know how to say to my boss “Sorry, but this is going to go on all day, and it’s going to be a bad look to leave early”.
Dave is a big diddy , probably happy that his pudgy red arsehole of a coupon would be in the photos rather than Sunak's.
It’s 50% frontier gibberish but when you hit home you get genuine lolz Malc.
Another massive British company about to fall into foreign ownership? A french tycoon already has a chunk as do, I think, German state telecoms company.
Royal Mail seems destined to be non-UK within months.
We are out of our minds.
Yet still no-one talks about the balance of payments deficit. Before 1992 this figure was headline news every month.
I know. It is staggering.
But one day - maybe under Starmer's watch - it will come back and finally bite us.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
Labour candidates told they are campaigning too much in their own seats
Labour election candidates have been told they are doing too much campaigning in their own safe seats and must spend more time in battleground constituencies...
I look forward to those Budget statements when Rachel Reeves announces how much the economy is growing.
Those of you on here still clinging to some expectation that Labour are going to bomb need to brace yourselves for a loooooong time in the political wilderness.
And the further Right you go, the deeper into the desert you head.
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
It's an interesting issue.
If the Chinese state is subsidising these cars with a view to ruining the EU/US car makers then tariffs make sense - after a period, the Chinese cars will get more expensive anyway as subsidies are dropped and we'll be left even more reliant on China.
If, however, the Chinese companies are just better at making cars, then the tariffs will simply prop up inefficient makers here and in the States who need instead to be forced to compete.
Under the former, tariffs are right and won't really have that much effect on EV adoption long term - indeed, giving EU/US companies the certainty to invest and compete on even terms may be a good thing for longer term EV adoption.
Under the latter, tariffs will tend to reduce incentives for EU/US car makers to get competitive in EVs, as their existing business models are protected and probably a bad thing for longer term EV adoption.
I'm not clear which (or what mix of the two) it is and so I cannot judge an appropriate, if any, tariff level.
What MIGHT happen if the Conservatives end up three weeks and a day from now with just 35 MPs and in third place in the Commons?
Let's assume Rishi Sunak is one of the survivors - presumably, like Major, he will stand outside Downing Street, announce he's going to the King to resign and also announce his resignation as leader of the Conservative Party.
The Party will first need to elect a new Chair and re-constitute the 1922 Committee which is much more important in opposition. The new Chair will have to organise the leadership election.
The weekend newspapers will be digesting what happened and there'll be plenty of "advice" for the survivors in terms of the future relationship with Reform and who they should choose as leader to begin the rebuilding process.
When does the leadership election take place? First question is when will the new Commons go into summer recess? Presumably towards the end of July and when would Parliament reconvene? There's an argument for the leadership election to be conducted after the Party Conference which would in effect be a week long hustings for the candidates to stake their positions so it could be mid to late October before there's a new Conservative leader in place.
That won't matter very much.
I think a longer campaign is probably a good idea regardless of how many seats the Tories retain. The focus will be elsewhere and the Tories can do more rethinking if the leadership debate is extended. The 2005 contest was much better for allowing the membership to see all candidates before the MPs whittled it down. Something similar would be good for the party.
Labour candidates told they are campaigning too much in their own seats
Labour election candidates have been told they are doing too much campaigning in their own safe seats and must spend more time in battleground constituencies...
Guardian blog
How do they know which the battleground constituencies are when the range of seats in play is so vast?
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Yesterday I had to take Junior to the dentists for some urgent work. They did a make-do-and-mend, but the waiting list for the proper work is such that we're seriously considering going private, if we can afford it. First time either myself or Mrs Capitano have ever considered private healthcare.
To come home and see Rishi Sunak babbling about how he loves sugar... that's not a great look. He can do that with impunity because he can afford to go private. Most people can't.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
It is but it misses the point. Every statistic, everyone on the waiting list, has friends and family who know that Aunt Freda can't get an appointment and Uncle Joe's been on the waiting list for two years next October. Politicians and media pundits might rely on official statistics to tell them what is happening but voters get to live the life.
And Labour is going to fix it by...checks notes...finding some tax avoidance down the back of the sofa. And dentistry too.
Piss off, Labour. The most dishonest aspect of this whole election.
Give it a rest.
I normally quite respect MM but ever since the election was announced and he began campaigning for the Conservative Party he has unhinged himself. I hope from July 5th he can rectify this and return to greater objectivity.
Jeremy Hunt becomes the latest senior Tory to admit the game is up, telling Politico that a vote for Reform will give Labour “an even bigger majority”.
Another sign of a stupid campaign masterminded by Australian consultants. It is all about the leader. Rishi is visibly knackered after being rushed to kiss babies from St Ives to Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross while Jeremy Hunt, who is the Chancellor of the sodding Exchequer, is left free to canvass his own seat.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
I didn’t realise BJO was a Green. I genuinely thought from his posts that Big John was a Brexit-loving Red Wall Faragist who hated SKS because of his London wokeness.
Funny old world.
Unreconciled Corbynite. Definitely more on the hard left wing of the Greens than the hug-a-husky wing.
The sort of convert a long-term Green like Ghedebrav says he wants to get out of the party. Poor old Corbynites, Labour nor Greens want them. They will be cosying up to Galloway's mob next.
Tbh I wouldn’t say I want any individual out of the party, but it fair to say that the ‘watermelon’ green is not where I want the general direction of the party to go.
Tbh my personal politics cleave fairly far to the left, but in electoral terms I’m a centrist dad with an emphasis on competence and compassion (two things that that the Tories right now utterly lack). Green issues ought to cut across right and left and I dislike the party being pushed too far to the socialist side.
Labour candidates told they are campaigning too much in their own seats
Labour election candidates have been told they are doing too much campaigning in their own safe seats and must spend more time in battleground constituencies...
Jeremy Hunt becomes the latest senior Tory to admit the game is up, telling Politico that a vote for Reform will give Labour “an even bigger majority”.
Another sign of a stupid campaign masterminded by Australian consultants. It is all about the leader. Rishi is visibly knackered after being rushed to kiss babies from St Ives to Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross while Jeremy Hunt, who is the Chancellor of the sodding Exchequer, is left free to canvass his own seat.
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
It's an interesting issue.
If the Chinese state is subsidising these cars with a view to ruining the EU/US car makers then tariffs make sense - after a period, the Chinese cars will get more expensive anyway as subsidies are dropped and we'll be left even more reliant on China.
If, however, the Chinese companies are just better at making cars, then the tariffs will simply prop up inefficient makers here and in the States who need instead to be forced to compete.
Under the former, tariffs are right and won't really have that much effect on EV adoption long term - indeed, giving EU/US companies the certainty to invest and compete on even terms may be a good thing for longer term EV adoption.
Under the latter, tariffs will tend to reduce incentives for EU/US car makers to get competitive in EVs, as their existing business models are protected and probably a bad thing for longer term EV adoption.
I'm not clear which (or what mix of the two) it is and so I cannot judge an appropriate, if any, tariff level.
Another massive British company about to fall into foreign ownership? A french tycoon already has a chunk as do, I think, German state telecoms company.
Royal Mail seems destined to be non-UK within months.
We are out of our minds.
Yet still no-one talks about the balance of payments deficit. Before 1992 this figure was headline news every month.
I know. It is staggering.
But one day - maybe under Starmer's watch - it will come back and finally bite us.
The country is getting closer to genuinely running out of money and the political class are completely in denial, or don't have the courage to tell the public about it.
Jeremy Hunt becomes the latest senior Tory to admit the game is up, telling Politico that a vote for Reform will give Labour “an even bigger majority”.
Another sign of a stupid campaign masterminded by Australian consultants. It is all about the leader. Rishi is visibly knackered after being rushed to kiss babies from St Ives to Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross while Jeremy Hunt, who is the Chancellor of the sodding Exchequer, is left free to canvass his own seat.
Which he is in danger of losing
These election gurus have come up with a plan where it is a presidential campaign with focus all on Sunak and then produce a manifesto without his photo in it iirc.
Yesterday I had to take Junior to the dentists for some urgent work. They did a make-do-and-mend, but the waiting list for the proper work is such that we're seriously considering going private, if we can afford it. First time either myself or Mrs Capitano have ever considered private healthcare.
To come home and see Rishi Sunak babbling about how he loves sugar... that's not a great look. He can do that with impunity because he can afford to go private. Most people can't.
Yikes. I’m sorry to hear about that
Starmer was good on the dentist point last night, especially when he mentioned his children.
Pace @Big_G_NorthWales I thought Starmer did well. First time I’ve ever watched him for more than about 30 seconds. He waffles but my overriding impression was that he’s going to be a (very) safe pair of hands. Someone in whom I can have trust. And frankly after the chaos that’s a great start.
I also woke up this morning thinking that the person he reminds me of most is John Major. I don’t think this Labour Gov’t, if it happens, is going to be radical. More centrist. I suspect John Major would fit in it very happily.
Labour candidates told they are campaigning too much in their own seats
Labour election candidates have been told they are doing too much campaigning in their own safe seats and must spend more time in battleground constituencies...
Guardian blog
Interesting.
Signs that this is no shoo-in?
Well, it isn't. There's a risk that people think it is all done and dusted and don't bother to actually turn out and vote Labour on the day in three weeks.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
But in the UK, at least, healthcare is seen to be the responsibility of the government, and it is the government that determines how that healthcare is constituted and run, whether in the form of the NHS or some other form of provision. If people are failing to receive adequate healthcare, that is ultimately the fault of the government that has presided over the provision of healthcare.
Another massive British company about to fall into foreign ownership? A french tycoon already has a chunk as do, I think, German state telecoms company.
Royal Mail seems destined to be non-UK within months.
We are out of our minds.
Yet still no-one talks about the balance of payments deficit. Before 1992 this figure was headline news every month.
I know. It is staggering.
But one day - maybe under Starmer's watch - it will come back and finally bite us.
It will have to bite eventually, as so much manufacturing has moved overseas. If you make little and have to import most of what you need, that currency has to come from somewhere.
More bad news for @rishisunak this morning. New data shows hospital waiting lists in England just rose for the first time in seven months. Not a massive rise (1.4% between Mar and Apr) but nonetheless the biggest increase in more than a year, in a metric he pledged to bring down
I look forward to those Budget statements when Rachel Reeves announces how much the economy is growing.
Those of you on here still clinging to some expectation that Labour are going to bomb need to brace yourselves for a loooooong time in the political wilderness.
And the further Right you go, the deeper into the desert you head.
Have a nice day xx
We all look forward to Rachel Reeves announcing the economy is growing because it’s good for the country. If she isn’t doing this in five years we also look forward to you coming on PB and admitting to your hubris and misjudgment so it’s a win-win.
I look forward to those Budget statements when Rachel Reeves announces how much the economy is growing.
Those of you on here still clinging to some expectation that Labour are going to bomb need to brace yourselves for a loooooong time in the political wilderness.
And the further Right you go, the deeper into the desert you head.
Have a nice day xx
Speaking as a leftie, you don't seem to realise that the economic fundamentals for Britain are a lot weaker today than twenty years ago.
Hopefully the Tories will suffer an even greater defeat than 1997, but Reeves faces a much more difficult job than Brown did. I don't think she's going to be as popular in the Labour grassroots as Brown was.
Yesterday I had to take Junior to the dentists for some urgent work. They did a make-do-and-mend, but the waiting list for the proper work is such that we're seriously considering going private, if we can afford it. First time either myself or Mrs Capitano have ever considered private healthcare.
To come home and see Rishi Sunak babbling about how he loves sugar... that's not a great look. He can do that with impunity because he can afford to go private. Most people can't.
I think we all know by now that NHS dentistry is, to borrow from Wes Streeting, a poor service for poor people. The mission is to stop the entire health service from going the same way, but whether or not this can be achieved has to be in doubt. For my part I've become increasingly reliant on private healthcare over the last couple of years, and have a close relative who recently spent a small fortune on important surgery for which they would have been made to wait for years on the NHS.
If this goes on for long enough, the middle classes will begin to resent being made to pay twice for healthcare - once through tax for a useless system, a second time privately for one that works - and support for the NHS will start to fall away.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Jeremy Hunt becomes the latest senior Tory to admit the game is up, telling Politico that a vote for Reform will give Labour “an even bigger majority”.
Another sign of a stupid campaign masterminded by Australian consultants. It is all about the leader. Rishi is visibly knackered after being rushed to kiss babies from St Ives to Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross while Jeremy Hunt, who is the Chancellor of the sodding Exchequer, is left free to canvass his own seat.
For @Leon re AI: I asked Copilot (MS AI/ChatGPT) in which constituency was Land's End. It replied Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber. When asked to specify, it clarified that Land’s End is a geographical feature located at the southwestern tip of the Kintyre Peninsula in Argyll and Bute, Scotland. It’s known for its rugged coastline, dramatic cliffs, and stunning views of the Atlantic Ocean. If you ever get a chance to visit, I recommend taking in the breathtaking scenery!
It reminds me of an early geography lesson. For homework, we had to give the coordinates of various towns. I noticed they were actually printed in the back of the atlas. The teacher exclaimed, Trust you to find Leeds in Kent, a tiny village with a castle, two betting shops and half a pub.
The geography teaching at my school was shockingly bad. So poor was our navigation that every week we'd set off for double maths and find ourselves playing snooker in the local golf club's bar.
Seriously, visiting this memorial was one of the most moving eperiences I've ever had. The main gallery has plaques recording of all the deaths, arranged alphabetically instead of rank, and occasionaly two are bracketed together with a note "These were brothers"
Except for one pair - "These were father and son". That broke me up completely.
Morning all. Halfway to polling day and no sign of any sort of Tory recovery. I think they are down to hoping the 'ever blues' hold their nose one more time to save as many as possible. What's the aim, realistically? I guess get within 15 points and hold 150 plus. Labour will be looking at 40% and thinking 'bank!" - any 40 score and they are on easy Street
To be cynical, Labour would be happy with a 1997-style result for two reasons. First, it ensures they will probably have at least 10 years in Government given the Conservative propensity to descend into soul-searching irrelevance in opposition and second, IF the Conservatives are still the second largest party in terms of seats in the Commons, the duopoly will be preserved and the attack lines for Labour become much easier.
Were Davey and the LDs to be the opposition, however, it would be tougher for Starmer and Labour as they wouldn't be able to point across the floor to the Commons and blame the "party opposite" for all the travails and problems, both the genuine inheritance and the consequences of the new Government's incompetence. The attack lines wouldn't be so obvious - yes, the Coalition, but that's ancient history and no one will accept that.
LDs are used to being in opposition and I suspect they would be criticising the new Government more effectively than the Conservatives from the start. Keeping the leader of the Conservative Party opposite would be much easier for Prime Minister Starmer than having to deal with Ed Davey.
Which might explain why and where Labour are focusing resources right now
Where are Labour focussing resources? I've passed through a random selection of seats in London, Essex and Kent and so far have seen no sign of an election anywhere.
I saw a Labour canvasser on the first weekend but since then there has been no sign of anything in Romford, so presumably the initial canvas returns showed that Rosindell is safe. No leaflet from the Tories yet, which is unusual, although I had Rosindell's calling card through the door so they have canvassed my road it seems.
Obvs you have to be careful what you say about Romford’s Con candidate. But will be interesting if the the Red Tsunami scenario happens and he is one of the few left standing, given the last couple of years.
I was wondering if there might be a quiet backlash given his recent troubles, but he's quite marmite and the sense I get is the people who love him consider the matter closed, so the swing here will be no different to similar seats.
I look forward to those Budget statements when Rachel Reeves announces how much the economy is growing.
Those of you on here still clinging to some expectation that Labour are going to bomb need to brace yourselves for a loooooong time in the political wilderness.
And the further Right you go, the deeper into the desert you head.
Have a nice day xx
Speaking as a leftie, you don't seem to realise that the economic fundamentals for Britain are a lot weaker today than twenty years ago.
Hopefully the Tories will suffer an even greater defeat than 1997, but Reeves faces a much more difficult job than Brown did. I don't think she's going to be as popular in the Labour grassroots as Brown was.
I agree with every word of this.
I think she’ll be good and I’ve a lot of time for her. Tough gig though and I suspect you’re absolutely right about popularity within Labour. I guess that’s one thing: Blair was greeted with suspicion by the grassroots but had Brown, who was thoroughly Labour, as his foil.
Another massive British company about to fall into foreign ownership? A french tycoon already has a chunk as do, I think, German state telecoms company.
Royal Mail seems destined to be non-UK within months.
We are out of our minds.
Yet still no-one talks about the balance of payments deficit. Before 1992 this figure was headline news every month.
Overseas students bring in £40bn of foreign money per year. Increasing the numbers was one of this governments success stories, gaining around £10bn a year which reduces our balance of payments a fair bit, and provides a base from which to grow companies and industries from.
Instead of claiming success they have decided to burn it all down.
The problems with overseas students are mostly related to not having enough housing for them all, especially if they bring dependents.
So many problems in the UK stem from a shortage of housing, and can only be fixed with millions of new dwellings. The politicans, especially MPs talk about building, but in practice they’re all more than happy for local NIMBY councillors to take the flak.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
Another massive British company about to fall into foreign ownership? A french tycoon already has a chunk as do, I think, German state telecoms company.
Royal Mail seems destined to be non-UK within months.
We are out of our minds.
Yet still no-one talks about the balance of payments deficit. Before 1992 this figure was headline news every month.
Overseas students bring in £40bn of foreign money per year. Increasing the numbers was one of this governments success stories, gaining around £10bn a year which reduces our balance of payments a fair bit, and provides a base from which to grow companies and industries from.
Instead of claiming success they have decided to burn it all down.
The problems with overseas students are mostly related to not having enough housing for them all, especially if they bring dependents.
So many problems in the UK stem from a shortage of housing, and can only be fixed with millions of new dwellings. The politicans, especially MPs talk about building, but in practice they’re all more than happy for local NIMBY councillors to take the flak.
Sure housing is the biggest issue for the country and both parties have failed on it. It will be interesting to see what Labour do this time, I guess it will be filed under too much like hard work for a distant payoff, but you never know.
Yesterday I had to take Junior to the dentists for some urgent work. They did a make-do-and-mend, but the waiting list for the proper work is such that we're seriously considering going private, if we can afford it. First time either myself or Mrs Capitano have ever considered private healthcare.
To come home and see Rishi Sunak babbling about how he loves sugar... that's not a great look. He can do that with impunity because he can afford to go private. Most people can't.
The situation with NHS dentists is absurd. My missus when to her dentist for a check-up yesterday, almost an hour's drive away. My dentist, on the other hand, is just a five minute walk away. Why doesn't she switch, you ask? Because the waiting list for NHS patients is years long. People who are registered as NHS patients dare not risk losing their registration, even if they have to drive miles for an appointment.
But if that’s representative, then it’s all Sunak needs….
He only needs to lose a debate by a 2-1 margin?
He only needs to get a decent chunk of 36% of voters to think he’s worth their vote….
The rest don’t matter to him.
His only strategy now is to eat into Reform and hope Labour dips a bit more.
Eh? Just because 64% said Starmer won doesn’t mean 64% will vote for him!
Was there a "they're both c**ts" option?
Prize for the most moronic post of the last two days. You must have misplaced the link to Guido's
It is just moronic bilge, daily, from Owls these days. Adds no value, and is mostly just offensive and nasty.
Chill. Come election Greens could end up with no seats, and squeezed down tactically to 3% or less. Calculators give them 2 seats based on polls giving them 6-8%. They won’t get 6-8%. Their Brighton seat likely gone in red wave, they can’t fumble Bristols opportunity or it’s wipe out disaster night.
BJO knows this. If BJO gets up your nose, just ask him for his Green election % and number of seats. 😈
I’m a Green and am deeply pessimistic - I think 0 seats is the most likely outcome, despite potentially a higher overall absolute vote count and share.
It is a long game though, and if it teaches the party that chasing the Momentum vote is not the road to power then that’s a significant silver lining, and we can return to the long-game route of doing well in local politics. Hard yards, for sure, but that’s the real road.
Like Scottish Independence, It probably needs a sustained mass movement over years and years - or a revolution!
Which part of Statutory Instrument did they not understand? Keir Starmer's pension as Director of Public Prosecutions hardly falls into the category of private pension.
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
Depends on the desired service level. Something broadly equivalent to (e.g.) Germany: approximately Germany levels of funding. Unless we do (or are doing) something very silly with the organisation of it (e.g. US style).
Labour candidates told they are campaigning too much in their own seats
Labour election candidates have been told they are doing too much campaigning in their own safe seats and must spend more time in battleground constituencies...
Guardian blog
Interesting.
Signs that this is no shoo-in?
Not in the slightest, no point running up the score in a seat you got 70% of the vote in last time and missing a marginal by a dozen votes.
I've mentioned before that facebook, strangley, are targetting me with ads urging me to vote for a conservative in Beckenham and Penge - one of the minority of UK seats that I have never even visited. It's still doing this - though I'm sure the candidate three weeks ago is male, and now is female. Anyway Tories - you're wasting your money. I can't vote Conservative in Beckenham and Penge even if I wanted to!
A genuine ad from the Tories, or some sort of an impersonation scam someone’s running on Facebook?
A genuine ad. To be honest, thanks to @DecrepiterJohnL for flashing up the list of candidates - the Labour candidate's name looks familiar: perhaps actually facebook is just targeting me with all the ads for Beckenham and Penge.
Where, as I say, I've never been, and know no-one who lives there.
Which set me off down the path of which constituencies have I been to? As in, actually got out the car, spent some time in, got a brief feel of the place, talked to people? I reckon I've been everywhere in the East Midlands, across the NW I've been everywhere except Liverpool West Derby; across the NE everywhere except Houghton and Sunderland South; across Y&H everywhere except Hull East (I think? it looks like the Old Town is in west), Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes and Bradford South. It tails off significantly south of that though...
Labour candidates told they are campaigning too much in their own seats
Labour election candidates have been told they are doing too much campaigning in their own safe seats and must spend more time in battleground constituencies...
Guardian blog
Interesting.
Signs that this is no shoo-in?
Not in the slightest, no point running up the score in a seat you got 70% of the vote in last time and missing a marginal by a dozen votes.
I've mentioned before that facebook, strangley, are targetting me with ads urging me to vote for a conservative in Beckenham and Penge - one of the minority of UK seats that I have never even visited. It's still doing this - though I'm sure the candidate three weeks ago is male, and now is female. Anyway Tories - you're wasting your money. I can't vote Conservative in Beckenham and Penge even if I wanted to!
The Labour candidate in Beckenham and Penge is Sue Gray's son.
Which part of Statutory Instrument did they not understand? Keir Starmer's pension as Director of Public Prosecutions hardly falls into the category of private pension.
The reasoning seems to be: "Starmer has some money, ergo, as a leftie, he is a hypocrite. Lol."
It's an offensive attack in the sense that it assumes the electorate has such a low level of intelligence that they would be outwitted by an amoeba.
I've mentioned before that facebook, strangley, are targetting me with ads urging me to vote for a conservative in Beckenham and Penge - one of the minority of UK seats that I have never even visited. It's still doing this - though I'm sure the candidate three weeks ago is male, and now is female. Anyway Tories - you're wasting your money. I can't vote Conservative in Beckenham and Penge even if I wanted to!
The Labour candidate in Beckenham and Penge is Sue Gray's son.
Nepo-candidacy can be a bad thing just ask the electors of Dover.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
I would fix it as a percentage of GDP, like defence. 15%? It's 11% at the moment in the UK, 12% in France, 13% in Germany, 17% in the US.
That would focus minds on what to do with fixed resources, and divert more health funding to interventions that boost the economy. Much more spending on public health, for example.
My view though is that as countries become richer, a larger proportion of GDP inevitably gets spent of healthcare. And I don't think that is a bad thing - my end-AI-stage for the UK is a 1 day week, lots of culture and sport and a large chunk of the workforce providing sports injury and old age care.
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
Even if you don't agree with their methods, there's nothing particularly fundamentalist about JSO's demands. There is general scientific agreement that we need to rapidly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and ceasing to issue new licences for oil exploration and production is broadly compatible with that aim. Amelioration to cope with the damage already in the pipeline is of course also required, but that's in addition to, not instead of, a sharp reduction in oil consumption.
I've mentioned before that facebook, strangley, are targetting me with ads urging me to vote for a conservative in Beckenham and Penge - one of the minority of UK seats that I have never even visited. It's still doing this - though I'm sure the candidate three weeks ago is male, and now is female. Anyway Tories - you're wasting your money. I can't vote Conservative in Beckenham and Penge even if I wanted to!
The Labour candidate in Beckenham and Penge is Sue Gray's son.
Nepo-candidacy can be a bad thing just ask the electors of Dover.
Remember it's only nepotism if... no, I've got nothing. Confusingly, Liam Conlon is Sue Gray's son but one of his rival candidates has Sue Gray's name: the Conservative, Hannah Gray.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
It's like asking how fast to run on a treadmill to move forward.
It doesn't matter how much you spend it will never be enough.
Spend more, people stay alive longer, get more chronic illnesses, require more expenditure as a result. It's a never ending circle until people do die.
Comments
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/coAnaLQtNh0
Labour need to be careful this doesn't come out of the launch. 'Austerity plus' would crater their vote.
I'm sure they know that but it's a dangerous narrative if it catches
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Piss off, Labour. The most dishonest aspect of this whole election.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjkwA_FJMYw
Anyway Tories - you're wasting your money. I can't vote Conservative in Beckenham and Penge even if I wanted to!
FPTP means a majority of voters are ignored.
That's a process that UK people can reverse if they want to by simply spending less on foreign holidays and buying more UK assets instead.
But they don't want to.
Tbf though I would absolutely not discount incompetence either.
I saw a Labour canvasser on the first weekend but since then there has been no sign of anything in Romford, so presumably the initial canvas returns showed that Rosindell is safe. No leaflet from the Tories yet, which is unusual, although I had Rosindell's calling card through the door so they have canvassed my road it seems.
Jeremy Hunt becomes the latest senior Tory to admit the game is up, telling Politico that a vote for Reform will give Labour “an even bigger majority”.
More bad news for @rishisunak this morning.
New data shows hospital waiting lists in England just rose for the first time in seven months.
Not a massive rise (1.4% between Mar and Apr) but nonetheless the biggest increase in more than a year, in a metric he pledged to bring down
https://x.com/EdConwaySky/status/1801179760535486863
Labour is using fantasies about rampant economic growth to disguise its true intentions. They're either lying about an end to austerity, lying about freezes to income tax and NI rates, or there are big increases coming in taxes where they've not yet been explicitly ruled out. Look for the holes in the manifesto where Reeves is leaving wriggle room for the latter.
The split within LR about whether to ally with Le Pen or not directly mirrors Tory splits on what to do about Farage. Le Pen has successfully eaten up most of the right (Zemmour and Marine's nemesis Marion Mareschal both showing they're flashes in the pan), but the old rump centre-right continue on at pitiful vote levels. This could be Reform and the Conservatives in a decade's time.
The snap election has really crystallised French politics at assembly level into 3 blocs now: the centrists under Macron, the (relatively) united left which is equivalent to a sort of union of Corbynites and Labour soft-left, and the populist right under Le Pen. For the presidency it's probably still Macron's successor vs Le Pen.
Let's assume Rishi Sunak is one of the survivors - presumably, like Major, he will stand outside Downing Street, announce he's going to the King to resign and also announce his resignation as leader of the Conservative Party.
The Party will first need to elect a new Chair and re-constitute the 1922 Committee which is much more important in opposition. The new Chair will have to organise the leadership election.
The weekend newspapers will be digesting what happened and there'll be plenty of "advice" for the survivors in terms of the future relationship with Reform and who they should choose as leader to begin the rebuilding process.
When does the leadership election take place? First question is when will the new Commons go into summer recess? Presumably towards the end of July and when would Parliament reconvene? There's an argument for the leadership election to be conducted after the Party Conference which would in effect be a week long hustings for the candidates to stake their positions so it could be mid to late October before there's a new Conservative leader in place.
That won't matter very much.
Edward Apostolides Reform UK 40/1
Liam Conlon Labour Party 1/25
Ruth Fabricant Green Party 125/1
Hannah Gray Conservative and Unionist Party 14/1
Chloe-Jane Ross Liberal Democrats 80/1
Instead of claiming success they have decided to burn it all down.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45814459
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/publicsectorpersonnel/timeseries/c9lg/pse
I’d love to hear the party leaders in the UK asked the question, see how they respond.
Starmer has thousands of Unionised supporters in the UK car manufacturing industry, but he’s also a staunch advocate for Net Zero targets. It’s a difficult circle to square.
But one day - maybe under Starmer's watch - it will come back and finally bite us.
"Average day-to-day health spending in the UK between 2010 and 2019 was £3,005 per person – 18% below the EU14 average of £3,655."
Labour election candidates have been told they are doing too much campaigning in their own safe seats and must spend more time in battleground constituencies...
Guardian blog
Those of you on here still clinging to some expectation that Labour are going to bomb need to brace yourselves for a loooooong time in the political wilderness.
And the further Right you go, the deeper into the desert you head.
Have a nice day
If the Chinese state is subsidising these cars with a view to ruining the EU/US car makers then tariffs make sense - after a period, the Chinese cars will get more expensive anyway as subsidies are dropped and we'll be left even more reliant on China.
If, however, the Chinese companies are just better at making cars, then the tariffs will simply prop up inefficient makers here and in the States who need instead to be forced to compete.
Under the former, tariffs are right and won't really have that much effect on EV adoption long term - indeed, giving EU/US companies the certainty to invest and compete on even terms may be a good thing for longer term EV adoption.
Under the latter, tariffs will tend to reduce incentives for EU/US car makers to get competitive in EVs, as their existing business models are protected and probably a bad thing for longer term EV adoption.
I'm not clear which (or what mix of the two) it is and so I cannot judge an appropriate, if any, tariff level.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
To come home and see Rishi Sunak babbling about how he loves sugar... that's not a great look. He can do that with impunity because he can afford to go private. Most people can't.
Tbh my personal politics cleave fairly far to the left, but in electoral terms I’m a centrist dad with an emphasis on competence and compassion (two things that that the Tories right now utterly lack). Green issues ought to cut across right and left and I dislike the party being pushed too far to the socialist side.
Signs that this is no shoo-in?
Starmer was good on the dentist point last night, especially when he mentioned his children.
Pace @Big_G_NorthWales I thought Starmer did well. First time I’ve ever watched him for more than about 30 seconds. He waffles but my overriding impression was that he’s going to be a (very) safe pair of hands. Someone in whom I can have trust. And frankly after the chaos that’s a great start.
I also woke up this morning thinking that the person he reminds me of most is John Major. I don’t think this Labour Gov’t, if it happens, is going to be radical. More centrist. I suspect John Major would fit in it very happily.
Hopefully the Tories will suffer an even greater defeat than 1997, but Reeves faces a much more difficult job than Brown did. I don't think she's going to be as popular in the Labour grassroots as Brown was.
If this goes on for long enough, the middle classes will begin to resent being made to pay twice for healthcare - once through tax for a useless system, a second time privately for one that works - and support for the NHS will start to fall away.
Ultimately they can only set general strategies and provide funding levels.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
It reminds me of an early geography lesson. For homework, we had to give the coordinates of various towns. I noticed they were actually printed in the back of the atlas. The teacher exclaimed, Trust you to find Leeds in Kent, a tiny village with a castle, two betting shops and half a pub.
The geography teaching at my school was shockingly bad. So poor was our navigation that every week we'd set off for double maths and find ourselves playing snooker in the local golf club's bar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandakan_Death_Marches
Seriously, visiting this memorial was one of the most moving eperiences I've ever had. The main gallery has plaques recording of all the deaths, arranged alphabetically instead of rank, and occasionaly two are bracketed together with a note "These were brothers"
Except for one pair - "These were father and son". That broke me up completely.
I think she’ll be good and I’ve a lot of time for her. Tough gig though and I suspect you’re absolutely right about popularity within Labour. I guess that’s one thing: Blair was greeted with suspicion by the grassroots but had Brown, who was thoroughly Labour, as his foil.
Anyway I’m waffling and you said it better.
x
So many problems in the UK stem from a shortage of housing, and can only be fixed with millions of new dwellings. The politicans, especially MPs talk about building, but in practice they’re all more than happy for local NIMBY councillors to take the flak.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
https://x.com/Conservatives/status/1801142167240425723
Which part of Statutory Instrument did they not understand? Keir Starmer's pension as Director of Public Prosecutions hardly falls into the category of private pension.
To be honest, thanks to @DecrepiterJohnL for flashing up the list of candidates - the Labour candidate's name looks familiar: perhaps actually facebook is just targeting me with all the ads for Beckenham and Penge.
Where, as I say, I've never been, and know no-one who lives there.
Which set me off down the path of which constituencies have I been to? As in, actually got out the car, spent some time in, got a brief feel of the place, talked to people? I reckon I've been everywhere in the East Midlands, across the NW I've been everywhere except Liverpool West Derby; across the NE everywhere except Houghton and Sunderland South; across Y&H everywhere except Hull East (I think? it looks like the Old Town is in west), Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes and Bradford South. It tails off significantly south of that though...
It's an offensive attack in the sense that it assumes the electorate has such a low level of intelligence that they would be outwitted by an amoeba.
Party funds boosted in the days since Nigel Farage’s return as leader"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/06/13/holly-valance-among-reform-donors-fund-boost-farage/
That would focus minds on what to do with fixed resources, and divert more health funding to interventions that boost the economy. Much more spending on public health, for example.
My view though is that as countries become richer, a larger proportion of GDP inevitably gets spent of healthcare. And I don't think that is a bad thing - my end-AI-stage for the UK is a 1 day week, lots of culture and sport and a large chunk of the workforce providing sports injury and old age care.
38.00-39.99% -> 5.7
40.00-41.99% -> 5.9
42.00-43.99% -> 5.8
44.00-45.99% -> 5.8
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.223276482
It doesn't matter how much you spend it will never be enough.
Spend more, people stay alive longer, get more chronic illnesses, require more expenditure as a result. It's a never ending circle until people do die.