Others surging. Plaid Cymru, Yorkshire Party or Hamas?
I think this will be the lowest Con+Lab share in modern history.
Isn’t that a little disengenous? If Labour did poll 40% and the Conservatives polled 20%, it’s not exactly Labour’s fault that the Con+Lab share has slipped …
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
I don’t think the 2019 Tories did believe in levelling up. It was a slogan and nothing more.
Johnson may have been better than Corbyn but ultimately electing him has put the Tories in their current position. They knew he was unfit and chose him anyway, including Rishi Sunak.
Hislop's comment. If you are a usual Tory, and you're voting for Starmer, be in no doubt: you are voting to embrace aspects of socialism:
"This is an important piece of journalism in that it adds to our understanding of the enigma that is Starmer. It affirms that the man has integrity and is prepared to modify his views when confronted by evidence.
If Labour wins, the electorate has to accept that the government will embrace aspects of socialism. The government will not be Tory lite. The Tory Party destroyed its traditional conservative core. The price of this is something more radical. However, something radical is needed. The Tories have wasted 14 years in government. Radical change is never painless, as we discovered under Thatcher.
Let us hope that Starmer has her mettle."
Let's hope so! My fear is Starmer will disappoint through being too timid.
Hislop's comment. If you are a usual Tory, and you're voting for Starmer, be in no doubt: you are voting to embrace aspects of socialism:
"This is an important piece of journalism in that it adds to our understanding of the enigma that is Starmer. It affirms that the man has integrity and is prepared to modify his views when confronted by evidence.
If Labour wins, the electorate has to accept that the government will embrace aspects of socialism. The government will not be Tory lite. The Tory Party destroyed its traditional conservative core. The price of this is something more radical. However, something radical is needed. The Tories have wasted 14 years in government. Radical change is never painless, as we discovered under Thatcher.
Let us hope that Starmer has her mettle."
Does anyone other than BJO think Starmer will be 'Tory lite' ? And he won't be voting for him.
Yes, there are several "one nation" Tories who've convinced themselves of the same.
He'll be 'Tory lite' because he's reoccupied the centre ground. Because he wants to win the election and actually be able to do stuff.
Whereas the so-called 'Conservative' party have lurched rightwards and become unelectable.
Is it the Tories increasing taxes to a higher rate than Gordon Brown you consider lurching rightwards?
Or is it the Tories increasing redistribution (welfare) to a higher rate than Gordon Browm you consider lurching rightwards?
The problem is the Tories have neither lurched rightwards not leftwards, doing either would probably be less bad than what's happened.
They've simply lurched.
They've totally lost control and lurched from one scandal to the next, one event to the next, with no grip, no control and no clear long term economic plan.
Partially that's out of their control to be fair, the events of the last few years have been manic, but still they're tired, lost, dazed and no longer fit for office.
The Tories are entirely incoherent and entirely incompetent. What's more, after 14 years they have next to no discernible achievements to boast of. If they did, they would be boasting of them. That's the basic problem.
Hislop's comment. If you are a usual Tory, and you're voting for Starmer, be in no doubt: you are voting to embrace aspects of socialism:
"This is an important piece of journalism in that it adds to our understanding of the enigma that is Starmer. It affirms that the man has integrity and is prepared to modify his views when confronted by evidence.
If Labour wins, the electorate has to accept that the government will embrace aspects of socialism. The government will not be Tory lite. The Tory Party destroyed its traditional conservative core. The price of this is something more radical. However, something radical is needed. The Tories have wasted 14 years in government. Radical change is never painless, as we discovered under Thatcher.
Let us hope that Starmer has her mettle."
Socialism or incompetence. Pick your poison.
Incompetence please.
Hence you will vote for another five years of current iteration Conservatism.
Meanwhile the situation in Newton Abbot remains confusing, with two tactical voting sites still non-comital about the best way to defeat the incumbent. Not exactly helpful for those of us voting by post!
It’s interesting that Nigel Farage came here. The only one of the main leaders to do so.
I’m expecting a Cons HOLD but a case could be made for any of Con, Lab, LibDem, Reform. The MRPs are all equally confused, slightly favouring a CON hold but also dividing between Labour and LibDem, with Reform a very close 4th. Only 9% separated the 4 parties in the most recent Focaldata MRP.
I voted (Green) in the Newton Abbot constituency in 2015. Unless there has been major demographic change in the area due to overspill from Exeter, I would say that Lib Dem is the very obvious tactical vote. Very, very obvious.
Yeah it’s not obvious now, let alone ‘very very’ hence the confusion amongst tactical voting sites and MRPs. The boundary changes in particular pulled in more of a Labour demographic.
All I would say anecdotally is that the LibDems who were campaigning hard have pulled out resources, whilst Labour who were piling everyone across to Plymouth Moor have been upping their campaigning in Newton Abbot. Meanwhile Nigel Farage held a rally here.
I’m expecting a Con HOLD but it could be close across all of the 4. Certainly anything but obvious.
Hislop's comment. If you are a usual Tory, and you're voting for Starmer, be in no doubt: you are voting to embrace aspects of socialism:
"This is an important piece of journalism in that it adds to our understanding of the enigma that is Starmer. It affirms that the man has integrity and is prepared to modify his views when confronted by evidence.
If Labour wins, the electorate has to accept that the government will embrace aspects of socialism. The government will not be Tory lite. The Tory Party destroyed its traditional conservative core. The price of this is something more radical. However, something radical is needed. The Tories have wasted 14 years in government. Radical change is never painless, as we discovered under Thatcher.
Let us hope that Starmer has her mettle."
All that is true.
The problem is that Starmer is still the least worst option.
Yes he might be to the left of Gordon Brown, but the Tories have so lost their way they are too.
Under Rishi Sunak the Tories have objectively put up taxes and increased redistribution (welfare) to higher rates than under Gordon Brown.
The only difference is that while Labour believe in redistributing from rich to poor, the Tories have been taken over by a cult of redistribution from workers to pensioners.
I don't particularly want higher taxes. But if I'm going to be taxed either way, I'd rather my taxes go to those who need it more, than those who live rent free and asset rich and don't need the extra income.
Plus with Starmer in office it gives the Tories space to figure out why they've lost so badly and how to win back voters in the future.
The discussion is mostly bogus. The cross party agreement over the role of the state is almost entire. Once you have a welfare state, NHS, social care, state run education system for the 93 %, massive interventionist regulation of lives and business, interventionist economics, and so on as the immovable core of the nation, the policy debate is only about the margins. The real debate is about competence, trust and marginal priorities within that narrow window.
A proper old fashioned liberal conservative agenda would be fascinating. No-one significant has provided one recently.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
I don’t think the 2019 Tories did believe in levelling up. It was a slogan and nothing more.
Johnson may have been better than Corbyn but ultimately electing him has put the Tories in their current position. They knew he was unfit and chose him anyway, including Rishi Sunak.
As I’ve said, 2019 should be seen as an outlier.
I don't believe Johnson was better than Corbyn would have been; the choice on offer was poor tbf.
But as you say 2019 was not a typical election and should not be seen as the start point for this election - it was the 'get Brexit done' election, as in 'just stfu about Brexit and start running the country'.
Unfortunately the Tories have proved incapable of running the country.
The Tories are entirely incoherent and entirely incompetent. What's more, after 14 years they have next to no discernible achievements to boast of. If they did, they would be boasting of them. That's the basic problem.
They hitched their wagon to an incoherent and entirely incompetent talisman pushing a populist fantasy
Recovery will only come when they face that reality and repudiate BoZo and all his works
Hislop's comment. If you are a usual Tory, and you're voting for Starmer, be in no doubt: you are voting to embrace aspects of socialism:
"This is an important piece of journalism in that it adds to our understanding of the enigma that is Starmer. It affirms that the man has integrity and is prepared to modify his views when confronted by evidence.
If Labour wins, the electorate has to accept that the government will embrace aspects of socialism. The government will not be Tory lite. The Tory Party destroyed its traditional conservative core. The price of this is something more radical. However, something radical is needed. The Tories have wasted 14 years in government. Radical change is never painless, as we discovered under Thatcher.
Let us hope that Starmer has her mettle."
Does anyone other than BJO think Starmer will be 'Tory lite' ? And he won't be voting for him.
Yes, there are several "one nation" Tories who've convinced themselves of the same.
He'll be 'Tory lite' because he's reoccupied the centre ground. Because he wants to win the election and actually be able to do stuff.
Whereas the so-called 'Conservative' party have lurched rightwards and become unelectable.
Is it the Tories increasing taxes to a higher rate than Gordon Brown you consider lurching rightwards?
Or is it the Tories increasing redistribution (welfare) to a higher rate than Gordon Browm you consider lurching rightwards?
The problem is the Tories have neither lurched rightwards not leftwards, doing either would probably be less bad than what's happened.
They've simply lurched.
They've totally lost control and lurched from one scandal to the next, one event to the next, with no grip, no control and no clear long term economic plan.
Partially that's out of their control to be fair, the events of the last few years have been manic, but still they're tired, lost, dazed and no longer fit for office.
The Tories are entirely incoherent and entirely incompetent. What's more, after 14 years they have next to no discernible achievements to boast of. If they did, they would be boasting of them. That's the basic problem.
They have achievements:
Affluent oldies, full employment and a NHS workforce increased by half a million.
To name but three.
Whether they're aware of these achievements or think they're a good thing I don't know.
Hislop's comment. If you are a usual Tory, and you're voting for Starmer, be in no doubt: you are voting to embrace aspects of socialism:
"This is an important piece of journalism in that it adds to our understanding of the enigma that is Starmer. It affirms that the man has integrity and is prepared to modify his views when confronted by evidence.
If Labour wins, the electorate has to accept that the government will embrace aspects of socialism. The government will not be Tory lite. The Tory Party destroyed its traditional conservative core. The price of this is something more radical. However, something radical is needed. The Tories have wasted 14 years in government. Radical change is never painless, as we discovered under Thatcher.
Let us hope that Starmer has her mettle."
Socialism or incompetence. Pick your poison.
Incompetence please.
Hence you will vote for another five years of current iteration Conservatism.
1 year max. If the Tories get back in there'll be a leadership contest that will decide the prime minister that will take us through the bulk of the remainder of 2025. The Conservatives are now the political equivalent of the "OS update, please restart your phone".
We are making category errors about lurches or otherwise rightwards.
The conservatives on here look at levels of taxation, or welfare spending on pensioners, and see nothing of the sort.
The non-conservatives on here look at social and cultural policies and rhetoric since 2016 - deals with the DUP, rock hard Brexit, Cummings, trans jokes in parliament, Rwanda, attacks on “foreign courts” and “lefty lawyers”, threats to the ECHR, comments about chai latte sipping liberals, and see a lurch to the right.
What we’re actually talking about is a lurch to right wing populist rhetoric.
Hislop's comment. If you are a usual Tory, and you're voting for Starmer, be in no doubt: you are voting to embrace aspects of socialism:
"This is an important piece of journalism in that it adds to our understanding of the enigma that is Starmer. It affirms that the man has integrity and is prepared to modify his views when confronted by evidence.
If Labour wins, the electorate has to accept that the government will embrace aspects of socialism. The government will not be Tory lite. The Tory Party destroyed its traditional conservative core. The price of this is something more radical. However, something radical is needed. The Tories have wasted 14 years in government. Radical change is never painless, as we discovered under Thatcher.
Let us hope that Starmer has her mettle."
Let's hope so! My fear is Starmer will disappoint through being too timid.
My expectation is he will disappoint because neither he, nor anyone else in the upper echelons of government (and here I very much do include the civil service) has any understanding of the enormous problems we face or therefore of how to fix them.
And even if they did, there are so many fronts to attack on there literally isn't time enough or resource enough to deal with them all.
Britain is of course not alone in that, but we suffer structural weaknesses in our economy that make us unusually vulnerable.
Hislop's comment. If you are a usual Tory, and you're voting for Starmer, be in no doubt: you are voting to embrace aspects of socialism:
"This is an important piece of journalism in that it adds to our understanding of the enigma that is Starmer. It affirms that the man has integrity and is prepared to modify his views when confronted by evidence.
If Labour wins, the electorate has to accept that the government will embrace aspects of socialism. The government will not be Tory lite. The Tory Party destroyed its traditional conservative core. The price of this is something more radical. However, something radical is needed. The Tories have wasted 14 years in government. Radical change is never painless, as we discovered under Thatcher.
Let us hope that Starmer has her mettle."
Socialism or incompetence. Pick your poison.
With Labour, we'll have both.
Every Labour Government leaves office with unemployment higher than it inherited.
Somewhat higher unemployment would be a good thing. Full employment causes labour shortages in various areas, increasing the demand for immigration, and reducing the need for upskilling of British workers.
Similarly Employers NI as a tax on jobs is a good thing
You have that the wrong way around.
Full employment increases the need to upskill workers and for capital investment in plant to increase output.
Good. We do not need wannabe Quislings in our democracy.
This is where I think Leon notably misreads this country. We are not the same as mainland Europe and don’t necessarily follow ‘behind’ their trends, which is an odd thing to have to remind a so-called brexiteer.
A good case can be made for saying that we had our rightward surge in 2016 and again in 2019, especially since migration was a big factor in those votes on top of EU centralised control.
That we are now almost certainly about to elect a Centre-Left Government may buck the continental trend, or it may show that we are, in fact, 10 years ahead of them.
Either way, and you can ignore the last bit, the main point is that we are not a typical mainland European country. We are an island nation with both an inward and outward facing dynamic.
We don’t generally do extremism. Since 1945, which was exceptional, we have never elected an extreme government of Right or Left. And however much froth and bubble they produce, neither Marxists nor Fascists have succeeded in winning a majority here.
Thankfully. Long may that continue.
I'm sad to see people just buying into the narrative of there being a significant rightward surge in Europe in general. As I attempted to show shortly after the results, there were countervailing currents in Europe. But people focus selectively so they highlighted the countries that fitted the narrative and stayed quiet on the ones that flowed the other direction. And before anyone says, it's not just that some countries get inherently more focus. In the past few years, Sweden had a lot of focus when it was going towards the right. In this election the result was a kind of stasis so oops we don't analyse that result.
People invested in politics get sucked in my these narratives because they want to feel something is happening. It's easier to justify the investment of time and emotion when you can kid yourself that a great historical tide is flowing even if in reality it's just the waves on the shore.
And of course, for some it's wishful thinking. You see it a lot on here. The country's about to take a moderate turn to the left. But where does that leave my "EVERYTHING FLOWING TO THE RIGHT!" story? Oh, easy, this incoming government will fail fast and the people will quickly wake up to our Lord and Saviour, Sir Nigel of Faragistan. And so a future that is so obviously unwritten collapses, in their minds, to a single inevitable conclusion. The obvious wrongness of this sense of inevitability ought to lead us to question every step they've made to get there. Including the recent past. What happened in the European elections is not what these people say happened. The picture is considerably more mixed and nuanced. But one of two blaring cakeholes shout a lie and everyone sort of absorbs it as gospel without checking.
Spot on. The Nordic countries are very different to Germany and the Netherlands. Poland is very different to Slovakia and Hungary. Portugal and Spain are very different to Italy. Greece is different again, having what seems to be a pretty competent, genuinely centre-right, socially liberal, quite popular government currently. France is going through what looks to be quite a unique trauma. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Sinn Fein has lost almost all the support that had previously seen it surge in the polls. And so on.
One thing that may unite much of Europe, though, including the UK is that the far right has pushed the centre right further rightwards on issues like immigration, the environment, the rule of law and so on. The French left is also now heading leftwards. I wonder if other countries will follow.
This perfectly summarises the lunacy and idiocy of our immigration debate. A long and worthy FT article about the necessity for immigration, and how we must therefore have an honest debate about immigration
Fair enough. But at the end it says “comments are not enabled for this article”. So we’re not actually allowed to have an honest debate about immigration; presumably the FT is scared someone - everyone - will say “er we don’t want so much immigration”. Great. Thanks for the honest debate
We are making category errors about lurches or otherwise rightwards.
The conservatives on here look at levels of taxation, or welfare spending on pensioners, and see nothing of the sort.
The non-conservatives on here look at social and cultural policies and rhetoric since 2016 - deals with the DUP, rock hard Brexit, Cummings, trans jokes in parliament, Rwanda, attacks on “foreign courts” and “lefty lawyers”, threats to the ECHR, comments about chai latte sipping liberals, and see a lurch to the right.
What we’re actually talking about is a lurch to right wing populist rhetoric.
The Labour equivalent would be a decade of banging on about ownership of the means of production, the supremacy of the proletariat, death to class traitors and the dangers of false consciousness while slashing taxes on the rich and privatising the NHS.
Hislop's comment. If you are a usual Tory, and you're voting for Starmer, be in no doubt: you are voting to embrace aspects of socialism:
"This is an important piece of journalism in that it adds to our understanding of the enigma that is Starmer. It affirms that the man has integrity and is prepared to modify his views when confronted by evidence.
If Labour wins, the electorate has to accept that the government will embrace aspects of socialism. The government will not be Tory lite. The Tory Party destroyed its traditional conservative core. The price of this is something more radical. However, something radical is needed. The Tories have wasted 14 years in government. Radical change is never painless, as we discovered under Thatcher.
Let us hope that Starmer has her mettle."
No list is provided here of which aspects of socialism not already in place we will be treated to. Without a bit of detail this is just journalism filling space.
We are making category errors about lurches or otherwise rightwards.
The conservatives on here look at levels of taxation, or welfare spending on pensioners, and see nothing of the sort.
The non-conservatives on here look at social and cultural policies and rhetoric since 2016 - deals with the DUP, rock hard Brexit, Cummings, trans jokes in parliament, Rwanda, attacks on “foreign courts” and “lefty lawyers”, threats to the ECHR, comments about chai latte sipping liberals, and see a lurch to the right.
What we’re actually talking about is a lurch to right wing populist rhetoric.
Wow, what a brilliant new insight
We’ve discussed this a milllion times, the government often “talks right” but it always “does left”
We have very high taxes and extremely high immigration, virtually no one has been sent to Rwanda, we’re still in the ECHR. So the Tories displease the left and enrage the right and thus everyone hates them and that’s why they are going to die. Good
Hislop's comment. If you are a usual Tory, and you're voting for Starmer, be in no doubt: you are voting to embrace aspects of socialism:
"This is an important piece of journalism in that it adds to our understanding of the enigma that is Starmer. It affirms that the man has integrity and is prepared to modify his views when confronted by evidence.
If Labour wins, the electorate has to accept that the government will embrace aspects of socialism. The government will not be Tory lite. The Tory Party destroyed its traditional conservative core. The price of this is something more radical. However, something radical is needed. The Tories have wasted 14 years in government. Radical change is never painless, as we discovered under Thatcher.
Let us hope that Starmer has her mettle."
Socialism or incompetence. Pick your poison.
With Labour, we'll have both.
Every Labour Government leaves office with unemployment higher than it inherited.
Somewhat higher unemployment would be a good thing. Full employment causes labour shortages in various areas, increasing the demand for immigration, and reducing the need for upskilling of British workers.
Similarly Employers NI as a tax on jobs is a good thing
Wut?
Aside from the fact that "Full employment" means millions not working for various reasons. And that many who are working are in a benefits trap - limited to 16 hours a week.
Aside from all of that - you are a lefty *wishing* for unemployment?
Hislop's comment. If you are a usual Tory, and you're voting for Starmer, be in no doubt: you are voting to embrace aspects of socialism:
"This is an important piece of journalism in that it adds to our understanding of the enigma that is Starmer. It affirms that the man has integrity and is prepared to modify his views when confronted by evidence.
If Labour wins, the electorate has to accept that the government will embrace aspects of socialism. The government will not be Tory lite. The Tory Party destroyed its traditional conservative core. The price of this is something more radical. However, something radical is needed. The Tories have wasted 14 years in government. Radical change is never painless, as we discovered under Thatcher.
Let us hope that Starmer has her mettle."
Socialism or incompetence. Pick your poison.
With Labour, we'll have both.
Every Labour Government leaves office with unemployment higher than it inherited.
Somewhat higher unemployment would be a good thing. Full employment causes labour shortages in various areas, increasing the demand for immigration, and reducing the need for upskilling of British workers.
Similarly Employers NI as a tax on jobs is a good thing
You have that the wrong way around.
Full employment increases the need to upskill workers and for capital investment in plant to increase output.
@Foxy is probably finding that the juniors at work are getting a bit uppity. Need to be able to threaten them with the scrap heap to keep the peasants in line.
For election night I have been saving some small glass bottles of Coke that seem to have disappeared from the shops. I do not drink, or take small-c coke, even though that might help stay awake. Coverage from Channel 4, probably, as the BBC has become too gimmicky of late, although I suspect I'll end up relying on pb as I watch all my bets go down. The problem is the gaps between the exit poll and the first few results, and later on when declarations come in so fast I can't keep up.
Whatever you do on election night do not drink Red Bull as that counts as an endorsement of Max Verstappen.
It is also, appropriately, quite disgusting.
It needs a double vodka to balance the flavour imo.
They’re really dangerous! The first one just goes straight down, and so you take a second, then before you know it you’ve had eight of them and are totally screwed up for the next 48 hours. Memories of Ibiza 2001
Meanwhile the situation in Newton Abbot remains confusing, with two tactical voting sites still non-comital about the best way to defeat the incumbent. Not exactly helpful for those of us voting by post!
It’s interesting that Nigel Farage came here. The only one of the main leaders to do so.
I’m expecting a Cons HOLD but a case could be made for any of Con, Lab, LibDem, Reform. The MRPs are all equally confused, slightly favouring a CON hold but also dividing between Labour and LibDem, with Reform a very close 4th. Only 9% separated the 4 parties in the most recent Focaldata MRP.
I voted (Green) in the Newton Abbot constituency in 2015. Unless there has been major demographic change in the area due to overspill from Exeter, I would say that Lib Dem is the very obvious tactical vote. Very, very obvious.
Yeah it’s not obvious now, let alone ‘very very’ hence the confusion amongst tactical voting sites and MRPs. The boundary changes in particular pulled in more of a Labour demographic.
All I would say anecdotally is that the LibDems who were campaigning hard have pulled out resources, whilst Labour who were piling everyone across to Plymouth Moor have been upping their campaigning in Newton Abbot. Meanwhile Nigel Farage held a rally here.
I’m expecting a Con HOLD but it could be close across all of the 4. Certainly anything but obvious.
You really do chat some rubbish. The only change compared to the previous boundaries was that the seat lost a small area (I guess a single ward) near Ashburton. No Labour demographic has been pulled into the seat by the boundary changes.
I'm not naturally of a conspiratorial bent, but you almost seem to be deliberately trying to muddy the waters.
Hislop's comment. If you are a usual Tory, and you're voting for Starmer, be in no doubt: you are voting to embrace aspects of socialism:
"This is an important piece of journalism in that it adds to our understanding of the enigma that is Starmer. It affirms that the man has integrity and is prepared to modify his views when confronted by evidence.
If Labour wins, the electorate has to accept that the government will embrace aspects of socialism. The government will not be Tory lite. The Tory Party destroyed its traditional conservative core. The price of this is something more radical. However, something radical is needed. The Tories have wasted 14 years in government. Radical change is never painless, as we discovered under Thatcher.
Let us hope that Starmer has her mettle."
Socialism or incompetence. Pick your poison.
Incompetence please.
Hence you will vote for another five years of current iteration Conservatism.
1 year max. If the Tories get back in there'll be a leadership contest that will decide the prime minister that will take us through the bulk of the remainder of 2025. The Conservatives are now the political equivalent of the "OS update, please restart your phone".
It's a very low probability event, but surely if Sunak somehow pulls an electoral miracle and the Tories aren't out of office in two weeks time that would give him the authority and credibility within the party to stay PM?
The Tories are entirely incoherent and entirely incompetent. What's more, after 14 years they have next to no discernible achievements to boast of. If they did, they would be boasting of them. That's the basic problem.
They hitched their wagon to an incoherent and entirely incompetent talisman pushing a populist fantasy
Recovery will only come when they face that reality and repudiate BoZo and all his works
Yep, it could well be we are seeing the end game that putting Boris Johnson in charge of the Conservative party was always going to deliver.
Hislop's comment. If you are a usual Tory, and you're voting for Starmer, be in no doubt: you are voting to embrace aspects of socialism:
"This is an important piece of journalism in that it adds to our understanding of the enigma that is Starmer. It affirms that the man has integrity and is prepared to modify his views when confronted by evidence.
If Labour wins, the electorate has to accept that the government will embrace aspects of socialism. The government will not be Tory lite. The Tory Party destroyed its traditional conservative core. The price of this is something more radical. However, something radical is needed. The Tories have wasted 14 years in government. Radical change is never painless, as we discovered under Thatcher.
Let us hope that Starmer has her mettle."
Let's hope so! My fear is Starmer will disappoint through being too timid.
My expectation is he will disappoint because neither he, nor anyone else in the upper echelons of government (and here I very much do include the civil service) has any understanding of the enormous problems we face or therefore of how to fix them.
And even if they did, there are so many fronts to attack on there literally isn't time enough or resource enough to deal with them all.
Britain is of course not alone in that, but we suffer structural weaknesses in our economy that make us unusually vulnerable.
So, nobody in the upper echelons of government or civil service has any understanding of the enormous problems we face or how to fix them... but you do?
Sorry, I like a lot of your posts but this one doesn't stack up.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
Why do you think northern England needs 'levelling up' to London's levels of unaffordability and inequality ?
What people need are:
Employment Housing
And then opportunities to get better employment and better housing.
What the North now has are the best employment opportunities it has had since Ken Barlow was a lad.
Yet PBers still babble on about some cho-cho that sod all people would ever have used.
Roads are what brings new developments not trains.
Hislop's comment. If you are a usual Tory, and you're voting for Starmer, be in no doubt: you are voting to embrace aspects of socialism:
"This is an important piece of journalism in that it adds to our understanding of the enigma that is Starmer. It affirms that the man has integrity and is prepared to modify his views when confronted by evidence.
If Labour wins, the electorate has to accept that the government will embrace aspects of socialism. The government will not be Tory lite. The Tory Party destroyed its traditional conservative core. The price of this is something more radical. However, something radical is needed. The Tories have wasted 14 years in government. Radical change is never painless, as we discovered under Thatcher.
Let us hope that Starmer has her mettle."
Socialism or incompetence. Pick your poison.
Incompetence please.
Hence you will vote for another five years of current iteration Conservatism.
1 year max. If the Tories get back in there'll be a leadership contest that will decide the prime minister that will take us through the bulk of the remainder of 2025. The Conservatives are now the political equivalent of the "OS update, please restart your phone".
It's a very low probability event, but surely if Sunak somehow pulls an electoral miracle and the Tories aren't out of office in two weeks time that would give him the authority and credibility within the party to stay PM?
I see you haven't yet met the Conservative Party.
You're right, it would shore him up. That's why I said a year. If we were midterm now Sunak would have been ousted. They hate him. The feeling certainly would be that the Tories will have won the election despite, not because of him. Sunak's premiership doesn't survive the next year even if they win.
Record seven out of ten Britons say: 'We don't like the Tories', bombshell new poll says in fresh blow to Rishi Sunak, exclusive @IpsosUK survey for @EveningStandard
found 83% of Britons are dissatisfied with the Government, the worst ever seen this close to an election, and far higher than the 64% for the Callaghan administration in 1979 after the Winter of Discontent.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
Why do you think northern England needs 'levelling up' to London's levels of unaffordability and inequality ?
What people need are:
Employment Housing
And then opportunities to get better employment and better housing.
What the North now has are the best employment opportunities it has had since Ken Barlow was a lad.
Yet PBers still babble on about some cho-cho that sod all people would ever have used.
Roads are what brings new developments not trains.
Road and rail both have their place. Getting tens of thousands of lorries off the M1, M6, A14, A34, and other trunk roads, means faster travel for those in cars as well as reduced spending on road maintenance.
The Conservatives are on a joint record low of just 19 per cent (as in April this year), and down four points from just weeks ago, with Labour on 42 per cent, down one point, but still with a 23-point lead, @IpsosUK for @EveningStandard
We are making category errors about lurches or otherwise rightwards.
The conservatives on here look at levels of taxation, or welfare spending on pensioners, and see nothing of the sort.
The non-conservatives on here look at social and cultural policies and rhetoric since 2016 - deals with the DUP, rock hard Brexit, Cummings, trans jokes in parliament, Rwanda, attacks on “foreign courts” and “lefty lawyers”, threats to the ECHR, comments about chai latte sipping liberals, and see a lurch to the right.
What we’re actually talking about is a lurch to right wing populist rhetoric.
The Labour equivalent would be a decade of banging on about ownership of the means of production, the supremacy of the proletariat, death to class traitors and the dangers of false consciousness while slashing taxes on the rich and privatising the NHS.
Good. We do not need wannabe Quislings in our democracy.
This is where I think Leon notably misreads this country. We are not the same as mainland Europe and don’t necessarily follow ‘behind’ their trends, which is an odd thing to have to remind a so-called brexiteer.
A good case can be made for saying that we had our rightward surge in 2016 and again in 2019, especially since migration was a big factor in those votes on top of EU centralised control.
That we are now almost certainly about to elect a Centre-Left Government may buck the continental trend, or it may show that we are, in fact, 10 years ahead of them.
Either way, and you can ignore the last bit, the main point is that we are not a typical mainland European country. We are an island nation with both an inward and outward facing dynamic.
We don’t generally do extremism. Since 1945, which was exceptional, we have never elected an extreme government of Right or Left. And however much froth and bubble they produce, neither Marxists nor Fascists have succeeded in winning a majority here.
Thankfully. Long may that continue.
I'm sad to see people just buying into the narrative of there being a significant rightward surge in Europe in general. As I attempted to show shortly after the results, there were countervailing currents in Europe. But people focus selectively so they highlighted the countries that fitted the narrative and stayed quiet on the ones that flowed the other direction. And before anyone says, it's not just that some countries get inherently more focus. In the past few years, Sweden had a lot of focus when it was going towards the right. In this election the result was a kind of stasis so oops we don't analyse that result.
People invested in politics get sucked in my these narratives because they want to feel something is happening. It's easier to justify the investment of time and emotion when you can kid yourself that a great historical tide is flowing even if in reality it's just the waves on the shore.
And of course, for some it's wishful thinking. You see it a lot on here. The country's about to take a moderate turn to the left. But where does that leave my "EVERYTHING FLOWING TO THE RIGHT!" story? Oh, easy, this incoming government will fail fast and the people will quickly wake up to our Lord and Saviour, Sir Nigel of Faragistan. And so a future that is so obviously unwritten collapses, in their minds, to a single inevitable conclusion. The obvious wrongness of this sense of inevitability ought to lead us to question every step they've made to get there. Including the recent past. What happened in the European elections is not what these people say happened. The picture is considerably more mixed and nuanced. But one of two blaring cakeholes shout a lie and everyone sort of absorbs it as gospel without checking.
Spot on. The Nordic countries are very different to Germany and the Netherlands. Poland is very different to Slovakia and Hungary. Portugal and Spain are very different to Italy. Greece is different again, having what seems to be a pretty competent, genuinely centre-right, socially liberal, quite popular government currently. France is going through what looks to be quite a unique trauma. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Sinn Fein has lost almost all the support that had previously seen it surge in the polls. And so on.
One thing that may unite much of Europe, though, including the UK is that the far right has pushed the centre right further rightwards on issues like immigration, the environment, the rule of law and so on. The French left is also now heading leftwards. I wonder if other countries will follow.
It’s a bollocks analysis, you should talk to someone who constantly travels - often around Europe - rather than some berk in a bed sit in Aberdeen. But it consoles you to believe this, so you will believe it
Hislop's comment. If you are a usual Tory, and you're voting for Starmer, be in no doubt: you are voting to embrace aspects of socialism:
"This is an important piece of journalism in that it adds to our understanding of the enigma that is Starmer. It affirms that the man has integrity and is prepared to modify his views when confronted by evidence.
If Labour wins, the electorate has to accept that the government will embrace aspects of socialism. The government will not be Tory lite. The Tory Party destroyed its traditional conservative core. The price of this is something more radical. However, something radical is needed. The Tories have wasted 14 years in government. Radical change is never painless, as we discovered under Thatcher.
Let us hope that Starmer has her mettle."
Does anyone other than BJO think Starmer will be 'Tory lite' ? And he won't be voting for him.
Yes, there are several "one nation" Tories who've convinced themselves of the same.
He'll be 'Tory lite' because he's reoccupied the centre ground. Because he wants to win the election and actually be able to do stuff.
Whereas the so-called 'Conservative' party have lurched rightwards and become unelectable.
Is it the Tories increasing taxes to a higher rate than Gordon Brown you consider lurching rightwards?
Or is it the Tories increasing redistribution (welfare) to a higher rate than Gordon Browm you consider lurching rightwards?
The problem is the Tories have neither lurched rightwards not leftwards, doing either would probably be less bad than what's happened.
They've simply lurched.
They've totally lost control and lurched from one scandal to the next, one event to the next, with no grip, no control and no clear long term economic plan.
Partially that's out of their control to be fair, the events of the last few years have been manic, but still they're tired, lost, dazed and no longer fit for office.
The Tories are entirely incoherent and entirely incompetent. What's more, after 14 years they have next to no discernible achievements to boast of. If they did, they would be boasting of them. That's the basic problem.
Imagine if by some quirk of FPTP voting we accidentally wind up with another five years of this bunch. What is there left to trash?
Well they've set out their road map haven't they? The breaching of international law and morality over Rwanda leading to the withdrawal from Churchill's ECHR. Unaffordable tax cuts (at a time when they need by dint of world affairs to uplift their defence spending) which can only be paid for out of massive social, health, police and education budget cuts. Returning higher education to an exclusive percentage of the population and proposing no (in fact scrapping) infrastructure construction. A reduction in social cohesion from othering and culture wars. Further declining trade, particularly manufacturing, with our closest trading partners.
After another 5 years of the post- Johnsonian Conservatives, what can they offer us in 2029? The only things I can think of is strafing the migrant boats plus capital sentencing for nonces and baby murdering nurses, and as we speak the case against one baby murdering nurse seems to be developing more holes in it than we first thought.
More performative cruelty with no tangible benefits.
- The Conservatives are on a joint record low of just 19 per cent (as in April this year), and down four points from just weeks ago, with Labour on 42 per cent, down one point, but still with a 23-point lead. - Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has jumped from nine per cent to 15 per cent, eating into the Tory vote, with the Liberal Democrats up three points to 11, and Greens down two points to seven per cent.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
Why do you think northern England needs 'levelling up' to London's levels of unaffordability and inequality ?
What people need are:
Employment Housing
And then opportunities to get better employment and better housing.
What the North now has are the best employment opportunities it has had since Ken Barlow was a lad.
Yet PBers still babble on about some cho-cho that sod all people would ever have used.
Roads are what brings new developments not trains.
And had HS2 been cancelled to see the money invested in a new motorway, a M6 (2) as you will, then I would totally support that.
But it wasn't.
There are no new roads worth mentioning.
And cancelling long term capital spend, to cover short term operational spend (potholes etc) is not an alternative either.
We need new roads, but those aren't being backed by any party that I see.
Belle Ile is socially fascinating, At 6pm it is full of beautiful young people spilling out from the bars, often French but also other Europeans. At 8pm they all disappear and old people come out to consume Quiberon oysters. Everyone is in bed by onze heures apart from a couple of cocaine addicts
Then at 8.25am, sharp, the streets are full of very rich Parisian men in late middle age all wearing salmon pink shorts, and eating good croissants as they vaguely stare at the Citadelle de Vauban
It’s like they work in shifts. It is fantastically Cartesian and French
We are making category errors about lurches or otherwise rightwards.
The conservatives on here look at levels of taxation, or welfare spending on pensioners, and see nothing of the sort.
The non-conservatives on here look at social and cultural policies and rhetoric since 2016 - deals with the DUP, rock hard Brexit, Cummings, trans jokes in parliament, Rwanda, attacks on “foreign courts” and “lefty lawyers”, threats to the ECHR, comments about chai latte sipping liberals, and see a lurch to the right.
What we’re actually talking about is a lurch to right wing populist rhetoric.
Wow, what a brilliant new insight
We’ve discussed this a milllion times, the government often “talks right” but it always “does left”
We have very high taxes and extremely high immigration, virtually no one has been sent to Rwanda, we’re still in the ECHR. So the Tories displease the left and enrage the right and thus everyone hates them and that’s why they are going to die. Good
To be fair to TimS, his subsequent analogy of what a Labour equivalent would be is both good and I think original.
Good. We do not need wannabe Quislings in our democracy.
This is where I think Leon notably misreads this country. We are not the same as mainland Europe and don’t necessarily follow ‘behind’ their trends, which is an odd thing to have to remind a so-called brexiteer.
A good case can be made for saying that we had our rightward surge in 2016 and again in 2019, especially since migration was a big factor in those votes on top of EU centralised control.
That we are now almost certainly about to elect a Centre-Left Government may buck the continental trend, or it may show that we are, in fact, 10 years ahead of them.
Either way, and you can ignore the last bit, the main point is that we are not a typical mainland European country. We are an island nation with both an inward and outward facing dynamic.
We don’t generally do extremism. Since 1945, which was exceptional, we have never elected an extreme government of Right or Left. And however much froth and bubble they produce, neither Marxists nor Fascists have succeeded in winning a majority here.
Thankfully. Long may that continue.
I'm sad to see people just buying into the narrative of there being a significant rightward surge in Europe in general. As I attempted to show shortly after the results, there were countervailing currents in Europe. But people focus selectively so they highlighted the countries that fitted the narrative and stayed quiet on the ones that flowed the other direction. And before anyone says, it's not just that some countries get inherently more focus. In the past few years, Sweden had a lot of focus when it was going towards the right. In this election the result was a kind of stasis so oops we don't analyse that result.
People invested in politics get sucked in my these narratives because they want to feel something is happening. It's easier to justify the investment of time and emotion when you can kid yourself that a great historical tide is flowing even if in reality it's just the waves on the shore.
And of course, for some it's wishful thinking. You see it a lot on here. The country's about to take a moderate turn to the left. But where does that leave my "EVERYTHING FLOWING TO THE RIGHT!" story? Oh, easy, this incoming government will fail fast and the people will quickly wake up to our Lord and Saviour, Sir Nigel of Faragistan. And so a future that is so obviously unwritten collapses, in their minds, to a single inevitable conclusion. The obvious wrongness of this sense of inevitability ought to lead us to question every step they've made to get there. Including the recent past. What happened in the European elections is not what these people say happened. The picture is considerably more mixed and nuanced. But one of two blaring cakeholes shout a lie and everyone sort of absorbs it as gospel without checking.
Spot on. The Nordic countries are very different to Germany and the Netherlands. Poland is very different to Slovakia and Hungary. Portugal and Spain are very different to Italy. Greece is different again, having what seems to be a pretty competent, genuinely centre-right, socially liberal, quite popular government currently. France is going through what looks to be quite a unique trauma. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Sinn Fein has lost almost all the support that had previously seen it surge in the polls. And so on.
One thing that may unite much of Europe, though, including the UK is that the far right has pushed the centre right further rightwards on issues like immigration, the environment, the rule of law and so on. The French left is also now heading leftwards. I wonder if other countries will follow.
It’s a bollocks analysis, you should talk to someone who constantly travels - often around Europe - rather than some berk in a bed sit in Aberdeen. But it consoles you to believe this, so you will believe it
I work across Europe, rather than just travelling in it. I am in Spain, Italy and Germany on a regular basis. My last meeting with the European Commission was last week. I'm off to Luxembourg in a couple of weeks. I suspect my Spanish is a lot better than yours. But you may console yourself otherwise.
Record seven out of ten Britons say: 'We don't like the Tories', bombshell new poll says in fresh blow to Rishi Sunak, exclusive @IpsosUK survey for @EveningStandard
found 83% of Britons are dissatisfied with the Government, the worst ever seen this close to an election, and far higher than the 64% for the Callaghan administration in 1979 after the Winter of Discontent.
I think the Russian comments have damaged Farage slightly, but it's a case of "Not you" (Public to Farage) "FUCK OFF DEFINITELY NOT YOU LOT" as they look back to the Tories. Probably just slightly increased the stay at home party. I mean the Conservatives seem to be getting flack for Alistair Jack's bets placed likely without any insider info whatsoever. As with the football (Or rugby with the scrum) when it's going wrong you can't catch a break even if you're doing nothing wrong.
We are making category errors about lurches or otherwise rightwards.
The conservatives on here look at levels of taxation, or welfare spending on pensioners, and see nothing of the sort.
The non-conservatives on here look at social and cultural policies and rhetoric since 2016 - deals with the DUP, rock hard Brexit, Cummings, trans jokes in parliament, Rwanda, attacks on “foreign courts” and “lefty lawyers”, threats to the ECHR, comments about chai latte sipping liberals, and see a lurch to the right.
What we’re actually talking about is a lurch to right wing populist rhetoric.
Wow, what a brilliant new insight
We’ve discussed this a milllion times, the government often “talks right” but it always “does left”
We have very high taxes and extremely high immigration, virtually no one has been sent to Rwanda, we’re still in the ECHR. So the Tories displease the left and enrage the right and thus everyone hates them and that’s why they are going to die. Good
To be fair to TimS, his subsequent analogy of what a Labour equivalent would be is both good and I think original.
Yes, he should have gone straight for that, which is actually insightful and even slightly witty
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
Why do you think northern England needs 'levelling up' to London's levels of unaffordability and inequality ?
What people need are:
Employment Housing
And then opportunities to get better employment and better housing.
What the North now has are the best employment opportunities it has had since Ken Barlow was a lad.
Yet PBers still babble on about some cho-cho that sod all people would ever have used.
Roads are what brings new developments not trains.
I don't think that last line is true.
But the point about HS2 for Manchester is not primarily that it would have offered someone in suburban south Manchester or semi-suburban Cheshire the opportunity to get to London slightly more quickly, it's that by taking fast trains out of Piccadilly and off the WCML it would have allowed far more suburban and freight services and allowed Manchester the sort of frequency and reliability on its suburban network that London has.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
Good. We do not need wannabe Quislings in our democracy.
This is where I think Leon notably misreads this country. We are not the same as mainland Europe and don’t necessarily follow ‘behind’ their trends, which is an odd thing to have to remind a so-called brexiteer.
A good case can be made for saying that we had our rightward surge in 2016 and again in 2019, especially since migration was a big factor in those votes on top of EU centralised control.
That we are now almost certainly about to elect a Centre-Left Government may buck the continental trend, or it may show that we are, in fact, 10 years ahead of them.
Either way, and you can ignore the last bit, the main point is that we are not a typical mainland European country. We are an island nation with both an inward and outward facing dynamic.
We don’t generally do extremism. Since 1945, which was exceptional, we have never elected an extreme government of Right or Left. And however much froth and bubble they produce, neither Marxists nor Fascists have succeeded in winning a majority here.
Thankfully. Long may that continue.
I'm sad to see people just buying into the narrative of there being a significant rightward surge in Europe in general. As I attempted to show shortly after the results, there were countervailing currents in Europe. But people focus selectively so they highlighted the countries that fitted the narrative and stayed quiet on the ones that flowed the other direction. And before anyone says, it's not just that some countries get inherently more focus. In the past few years, Sweden had a lot of focus when it was going towards the right. In this election the result was a kind of stasis so oops we don't analyse that result.
People invested in politics get sucked in my these narratives because they want to feel something is happening. It's easier to justify the investment of time and emotion when you can kid yourself that a great historical tide is flowing even if in reality it's just the waves on the shore.
And of course, for some it's wishful thinking. You see it a lot on here. The country's about to take a moderate turn to the left. But where does that leave my "EVERYTHING FLOWING TO THE RIGHT!" story? Oh, easy, this incoming government will fail fast and the people will quickly wake up to our Lord and Saviour, Sir Nigel of Faragistan. And so a future that is so obviously unwritten collapses, in their minds, to a single inevitable conclusion. The obvious wrongness of this sense of inevitability ought to lead us to question every step they've made to get there. Including the recent past. What happened in the European elections is not what these people say happened. The picture is considerably more mixed and nuanced. But one of two blaring cakeholes shout a lie and everyone sort of absorbs it as gospel without checking.
Spot on. The Nordic countries are very different to Germany and the Netherlands. Poland is very different to Slovakia and Hungary. Portugal and Spain are very different to Italy. Greece is different again, having what seems to be a pretty competent, genuinely centre-right, socially liberal, quite popular government currently. France is going through what looks to be quite a unique trauma. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Sinn Fein has lost almost all the support that had previously seen it surge in the polls. And so on.
One thing that may unite much of Europe, though, including the UK is that the far right has pushed the centre right further rightwards on issues like immigration, the environment, the rule of law and so on. The French left is also now heading leftwards. I wonder if other countries will follow.
It’s a bollocks analysis, you should talk to someone who constantly travels - often around Europe - rather than some berk in a bed sit in Aberdeen. But it consoles you to believe this, so you will believe it
I work across Europe, rather than just travelling in it. I am in Spain, Italy and Germany on a regular basis. My last meeting with the European Commission was last week. I'm off to Luxembourg in a couple of weeks. I suspect my Spanish is a lot better than yours. But you may console yourself otherwise.
How can we believe you when you don't constantly post pictures of your far-flung breakfasts?
Good. We do not need wannabe Quislings in our democracy.
This is where I think Leon notably misreads this country. We are not the same as mainland Europe and don’t necessarily follow ‘behind’ their trends, which is an odd thing to have to remind a so-called brexiteer.
A good case can be made for saying that we had our rightward surge in 2016 and again in 2019, especially since migration was a big factor in those votes on top of EU centralised control.
That we are now almost certainly about to elect a Centre-Left Government may buck the continental trend, or it may show that we are, in fact, 10 years ahead of them.
Either way, and you can ignore the last bit, the main point is that we are not a typical mainland European country. We are an island nation with both an inward and outward facing dynamic.
We don’t generally do extremism. Since 1945, which was exceptional, we have never elected an extreme government of Right or Left. And however much froth and bubble they produce, neither Marxists nor Fascists have succeeded in winning a majority here.
Thankfully. Long may that continue.
I'm sad to see people just buying into the narrative of there being a significant rightward surge in Europe in general. As I attempted to show shortly after the results, there were countervailing currents in Europe. But people focus selectively so they highlighted the countries that fitted the narrative and stayed quiet on the ones that flowed the other direction. And before anyone says, it's not just that some countries get inherently more focus. In the past few years, Sweden had a lot of focus when it was going towards the right. In this election the result was a kind of stasis so oops we don't analyse that result.
People invested in politics get sucked in my these narratives because they want to feel something is happening. It's easier to justify the investment of time and emotion when you can kid yourself that a great historical tide is flowing even if in reality it's just the waves on the shore.
And of course, for some it's wishful thinking. You see it a lot on here. The country's about to take a moderate turn to the left. But where does that leave my "EVERYTHING FLOWING TO THE RIGHT!" story? Oh, easy, this incoming government will fail fast and the people will quickly wake up to our Lord and Saviour, Sir Nigel of Faragistan. And so a future that is so obviously unwritten collapses, in their minds, to a single inevitable conclusion. The obvious wrongness of this sense of inevitability ought to lead us to question every step they've made to get there. Including the recent past. What happened in the European elections is not what these people say happened. The picture is considerably more mixed and nuanced. But one of two blaring cakeholes shout a lie and everyone sort of absorbs it as gospel without checking.
Spot on. The Nordic countries are very different to Germany and the Netherlands. Poland is very different to Slovakia and Hungary. Portugal and Spain are very different to Italy. Greece is different again, having what seems to be a pretty competent, genuinely centre-right, socially liberal, quite popular government currently. France is going through what looks to be quite a unique trauma. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Sinn Fein has lost almost all the support that had previously seen it surge in the polls. And so on.
One thing that may unite much of Europe, though, including the UK is that the far right has pushed the centre right further rightwards on issues like immigration, the environment, the rule of law and so on. The French left is also now heading leftwards. I wonder if other countries will follow.
It’s a bollocks analysis, you should talk to someone who constantly travels - often around Europe - rather than some berk in a bed sit in Aberdeen. But it consoles you to believe this, so you will believe it
Do you think your 'here today, gone tomorrow' trips around Europe's tourist attractions give you an in depth understanding ?
Its possible to drive around a district by one route and think it highly affluent and to do it a different way and think it highly deprived.
Now extend that to a whole region, a whole country, a whole continent.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
One of the positive things to come out of the pandemic, should have been a sense of urgency from the wider Civil Service. Instead, they still seem wedded to the old approach of consultation, planning, and form-filling make-work that takes up many thousands of full-time jobs but totally kills productivity.
There needs to be a post-war JFDI attitude back among both the politicians and the CS.
Good. We do not need wannabe Quislings in our democracy.
This is where I think Leon notably misreads this country. We are not the same as mainland Europe and don’t necessarily follow ‘behind’ their trends, which is an odd thing to have to remind a so-called brexiteer.
A good case can be made for saying that we had our rightward surge in 2016 and again in 2019, especially since migration was a big factor in those votes on top of EU centralised control.
That we are now almost certainly about to elect a Centre-Left Government may buck the continental trend, or it may show that we are, in fact, 10 years ahead of them.
Either way, and you can ignore the last bit, the main point is that we are not a typical mainland European country. We are an island nation with both an inward and outward facing dynamic.
We don’t generally do extremism. Since 1945, which was exceptional, we have never elected an extreme government of Right or Left. And however much froth and bubble they produce, neither Marxists nor Fascists have succeeded in winning a majority here.
Thankfully. Long may that continue.
I'm sad to see people just buying into the narrative of there being a significant rightward surge in Europe in general. As I attempted to show shortly after the results, there were countervailing currents in Europe. But people focus selectively so they highlighted the countries that fitted the narrative and stayed quiet on the ones that flowed the other direction. And before anyone says, it's not just that some countries get inherently more focus. In the past few years, Sweden had a lot of focus when it was going towards the right. In this election the result was a kind of stasis so oops we don't analyse that result.
People invested in politics get sucked in my these narratives because they want to feel something is happening. It's easier to justify the investment of time and emotion when you can kid yourself that a great historical tide is flowing even if in reality it's just the waves on the shore.
And of course, for some it's wishful thinking. You see it a lot on here. The country's about to take a moderate turn to the left. But where does that leave my "EVERYTHING FLOWING TO THE RIGHT!" story? Oh, easy, this incoming government will fail fast and the people will quickly wake up to our Lord and Saviour, Sir Nigel of Faragistan. And so a future that is so obviously unwritten collapses, in their minds, to a single inevitable conclusion. The obvious wrongness of this sense of inevitability ought to lead us to question every step they've made to get there. Including the recent past. What happened in the European elections is not what these people say happened. The picture is considerably more mixed and nuanced. But one of two blaring cakeholes shout a lie and everyone sort of absorbs it as gospel without checking.
Spot on. The Nordic countries are very different to Germany and the Netherlands. Poland is very different to Slovakia and Hungary. Portugal and Spain are very different to Italy. Greece is different again, having what seems to be a pretty competent, genuinely centre-right, socially liberal, quite popular government currently. France is going through what looks to be quite a unique trauma. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Sinn Fein has lost almost all the support that had previously seen it surge in the polls. And so on.
One thing that may unite much of Europe, though, including the UK is that the far right has pushed the centre right further rightwards on issues like immigration, the environment, the rule of law and so on. The French left is also now heading leftwards. I wonder if other countries will follow.
It’s a bollocks analysis, you should talk to someone who constantly travels - often around Europe - rather than some berk in a bed sit in Aberdeen. But it consoles you to believe this, so you will believe it
I work across Europe, rather than just travelling in it. I am in Spain, Italy and Germany on a regular basis. My last meeting with the European Commission was last week. I'm off to Luxembourg in a couple of weeks. I suspect my Spanish is a lot better than yours. But you may console yourself otherwise.
I was being sarcastic/sardonic. I am well aware that you are quite well travelled with strong Spanish links, indeed didn’t you live in Catalunya for a few years?
I always read your thoughts on Spanish politics, you know your cebollas
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
Hislop's comment. If you are a usual Tory, and you're voting for Starmer, be in no doubt: you are voting to embrace aspects of socialism:
"This is an important piece of journalism in that it adds to our understanding of the enigma that is Starmer. It affirms that the man has integrity and is prepared to modify his views when confronted by evidence.
If Labour wins, the electorate has to accept that the government will embrace aspects of socialism. The government will not be Tory lite. The Tory Party destroyed its traditional conservative core. The price of this is something more radical. However, something radical is needed. The Tories have wasted 14 years in government. Radical change is never painless, as we discovered under Thatcher.
Let us hope that Starmer has her mettle."
All that is true.
The problem is that Starmer is still the least worst option.
Yes he might be to the left of Gordon Brown, but the Tories have so lost their way they are too.
Under Rishi Sunak the Tories have objectively put up taxes and increased redistribution (welfare) to higher rates than under Gordon Brown.
The only difference is that while Labour believe in redistributing from rich to poor, the Tories have been taken over by a cult of redistribution from workers to pensioners.
I don't particularly want higher taxes. But if I'm going to be taxed either way, I'd rather my taxes go to those who need it more, than those who live rent free and asset rich and don't need the extra income.
Plus with Starmer in office it gives the Tories space to figure out why they've lost so badly and how to win back voters in the future.
Redistribution from workers to pensioners? Really?
Hislop's comment. If you are a usual Tory, and you're voting for Starmer, be in no doubt: you are voting to embrace aspects of socialism:
"This is an important piece of journalism in that it adds to our understanding of the enigma that is Starmer. It affirms that the man has integrity and is prepared to modify his views when confronted by evidence.
If Labour wins, the electorate has to accept that the government will embrace aspects of socialism. The government will not be Tory lite. The Tory Party destroyed its traditional conservative core. The price of this is something more radical. However, something radical is needed. The Tories have wasted 14 years in government. Radical change is never painless, as we discovered under Thatcher.
Let us hope that Starmer has her mettle."
All that is true.
The problem is that Starmer is still the least worst option.
Yes he might be to the left of Gordon Brown, but the Tories have so lost their way they are too.
Under Rishi Sunak the Tories have objectively put up taxes and increased redistribution (welfare) to higher rates than under Gordon Brown.
The only difference is that while Labour believe in redistributing from rich to poor, the Tories have been taken over by a cult of redistribution from workers to pensioners.
I don't particularly want higher taxes. But if I'm going to be taxed either way, I'd rather my taxes go to those who need it more, than those who live rent free and asset rich and don't need the extra income.
Plus with Starmer in office it gives the Tories space to figure out why they've lost so badly and how to win back voters in the future.
Redistribution from workers to pensioners? Really?
Hislop's comment. If you are a usual Tory, and you're voting for Starmer, be in no doubt: you are voting to embrace aspects of socialism:
"This is an important piece of journalism in that it adds to our understanding of the enigma that is Starmer. It affirms that the man has integrity and is prepared to modify his views when confronted by evidence.
If Labour wins, the electorate has to accept that the government will embrace aspects of socialism. The government will not be Tory lite. The Tory Party destroyed its traditional conservative core. The price of this is something more radical. However, something radical is needed. The Tories have wasted 14 years in government. Radical change is never painless, as we discovered under Thatcher.
Let us hope that Starmer has her mettle."
All that is true.
The problem is that Starmer is still the least worst option.
Yes he might be to the left of Gordon Brown, but the Tories have so lost their way they are too.
Under Rishi Sunak the Tories have objectively put up taxes and increased redistribution (welfare) to higher rates than under Gordon Brown.
The only difference is that while Labour believe in redistributing from rich to poor, the Tories have been taken over by a cult of redistribution from workers to pensioners.
I don't particularly want higher taxes. But if I'm going to be taxed either way, I'd rather my taxes go to those who need it more, than those who live rent free and asset rich and don't need the extra income.
Plus with Starmer in office it gives the Tories space to figure out why they've lost so badly and how to win back voters in the future.
Redistribution from workers to pensioners? Really?
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Of the pollsters most recent non MRP polls, 9 now have Tories under 20 and 9 on 20 or above with only More in Common and JLPartners on 25 above the 22% level. Utterly catastrophic poll figures for Tories
Good. We do not need wannabe Quislings in our democracy.
This is where I think Leon notably misreads this country. We are not the same as mainland Europe and don’t necessarily follow ‘behind’ their trends, which is an odd thing to have to remind a so-called brexiteer.
A good case can be made for saying that we had our rightward surge in 2016 and again in 2019, especially since migration was a big factor in those votes on top of EU centralised control.
That we are now almost certainly about to elect a Centre-Left Government may buck the continental trend, or it may show that we are, in fact, 10 years ahead of them.
Either way, and you can ignore the last bit, the main point is that we are not a typical mainland European country. We are an island nation with both an inward and outward facing dynamic.
We don’t generally do extremism. Since 1945, which was exceptional, we have never elected an extreme government of Right or Left. And however much froth and bubble they produce, neither Marxists nor Fascists have succeeded in winning a majority here.
Thankfully. Long may that continue.
I'm sad to see people just buying into the narrative of there being a significant rightward surge in Europe in general. As I attempted to show shortly after the results, there were countervailing currents in Europe. But people focus selectively so they highlighted the countries that fitted the narrative and stayed quiet on the ones that flowed the other direction. And before anyone says, it's not just that some countries get inherently more focus. In the past few years, Sweden had a lot of focus when it was going towards the right. In this election the result was a kind of stasis so oops we don't analyse that result.
People invested in politics get sucked in my these narratives because they want to feel something is happening. It's easier to justify the investment of time and emotion when you can kid yourself that a great historical tide is flowing even if in reality it's just the waves on the shore.
And of course, for some it's wishful thinking. You see it a lot on here. The country's about to take a moderate turn to the left. But where does that leave my "EVERYTHING FLOWING TO THE RIGHT!" story? Oh, easy, this incoming government will fail fast and the people will quickly wake up to our Lord and Saviour, Sir Nigel of Faragistan. And so a future that is so obviously unwritten collapses, in their minds, to a single inevitable conclusion. The obvious wrongness of this sense of inevitability ought to lead us to question every step they've made to get there. Including the recent past. What happened in the European elections is not what these people say happened. The picture is considerably more mixed and nuanced. But one of two blaring cakeholes shout a lie and everyone sort of absorbs it as gospel without checking.
Spot on. The Nordic countries are very different to Germany and the Netherlands. Poland is very different to Slovakia and Hungary. Portugal and Spain are very different to Italy. Greece is different again, having what seems to be a pretty competent, genuinely centre-right, socially liberal, quite popular government currently. France is going through what looks to be quite a unique trauma. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Sinn Fein has lost almost all the support that had previously seen it surge in the polls. And so on.
One thing that may unite much of Europe, though, including the UK is that the far right has pushed the centre right further rightwards on issues like immigration, the environment, the rule of law and so on. The French left is also now heading leftwards. I wonder if other countries will follow.
It’s a bollocks analysis, you should talk to someone who constantly travels - often around Europe - rather than some berk in a bed sit in Aberdeen. But it consoles you to believe this, so you will believe it
Do you think your 'here today, gone tomorrow' trips around Europe's tourist attractions give you an in depth understanding ?
Its possible to drive around a district by one route and think it highly affluent and to do it a different way and think it highly deprived.
Now extend that to a whole region, a whole country, a whole continent.
I’ve now travelled so much around the world I’ve gained an insight into travelling itself. It really does broaden the mind, but not in ways most people understand, because they don’t travel
As for my “trips around Europe’s tourist attractions” it’s maybe skipped your attention that I just spent a week in Moldova, literally the least touristy country in Europe (as in: fewest tourists) and that was followed by two days in Transnistria (zero tourists) and two weeks in war torn Ukraine (war tourists and dead tourists)
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
I turns out they both follow him, as do all of their friends. Which I found initially horrifying but they were quick to reassure me. Amongst their friends, he's seen as ridiculous. A bit of a fool. They agree that he has a face a bit like Mr Bean!
His popularity amonst this demographic has been driven, at least in part, by his use of Cameo where you can pay celebrities to record you video clips. He's shameless, willing to play the clown, to pull silly faces and say stupid things. It's very popular. And doesn't translate into respect.
We are making category errors about lurches or otherwise rightwards.
The conservatives on here look at levels of taxation, or welfare spending on pensioners, and see nothing of the sort.
The non-conservatives on here look at social and cultural policies and rhetoric since 2016 - deals with the DUP, rock hard Brexit, Cummings, trans jokes in parliament, Rwanda, attacks on “foreign courts” and “lefty lawyers”, threats to the ECHR, comments about chai latte sipping liberals, and see a lurch to the right.
What we’re actually talking about is a lurch to right wing populist rhetoric.
The Labour equivalent would be a decade of banging on about ownership of the means of production, the supremacy of the proletariat, death to class traitors and the dangers of false consciousness while slashing taxes on the rich and privatising the NHS.
That is an absolutely fantastic analogy.
Couldn't agree more.
Yes, and it would have resulted in exactly the same thing - anyone right of Tony Blair would have retreated in wary terror of what Labour might do; anyone left of Gordon Brown would have either stopped bothering with them in exasperation or would be flirting with some dodgy far-left outfit. There would have been precious few Labour voters left.
I've made the point in the past that the Cons are talking right but acting left and therefore alienating everyone - but I think this analogy adds significantly to our understanding of the situation.
I think TimS deserves a little fanfare for this. *Tootle*
I expect to see this analogy trotted out by some broadsheet columnist within about three days.
This perfectly summarises the lunacy and idiocy of our immigration debate. A long and worthy FT article about the necessity for immigration, and how we must therefore have an honest debate about immigration
Fair enough. But at the end it says “comments are not enabled for this article”. So we’re not actually allowed to have an honest debate about immigration; presumably the FT is scared someone - everyone - will say “er we don’t want so much immigration”. Great. Thanks for the honest debate
- The Conservatives are on a joint record low of just 19 per cent (as in April this year), and down four points from just weeks ago, with Labour on 42 per cent, down one point, but still with a 23-point lead. - Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has jumped from nine per cent to 15 per cent, eating into the Tory vote, with the Liberal Democrats up three points to 11, and Greens down two points to seven per cent.
Hislop's comment. If you are a usual Tory, and you're voting for Starmer, be in no doubt: you are voting to embrace aspects of socialism:
"This is an important piece of journalism in that it adds to our understanding of the enigma that is Starmer. It affirms that the man has integrity and is prepared to modify his views when confronted by evidence.
If Labour wins, the electorate has to accept that the government will embrace aspects of socialism. The government will not be Tory lite. The Tory Party destroyed its traditional conservative core. The price of this is something more radical. However, something radical is needed. The Tories have wasted 14 years in government. Radical change is never painless, as we discovered under Thatcher.
Let us hope that Starmer has her mettle."
Does anyone other than BJO think Starmer will be 'Tory lite' ? And he won't be voting for him.
Yes, there are several "one nation" Tories who've convinced themselves of the same.
He'll be 'Tory lite' because he's reoccupied the centre ground. Because he wants to win the election and actually be able to do stuff.
Whereas the so-called 'Conservative' party have lurched rightwards and become unelectable.
Is it the Tories increasing taxes to a higher rate than Gordon Brown you consider lurching rightwards?
Or is it the Tories increasing redistribution (welfare) to a higher rate than Gordon Browm you consider lurching rightwards?
The problem is the Tories have neither lurched rightwards not leftwards, doing either would probably be less bad than what's happened.
They've simply lurched.
They've totally lost control and lurched from one scandal to the next, one event to the next, with no grip, no control and no clear long term economic plan.
Partially that's out of their control to be fair, the events of the last few years have been manic, but still they're tired, lost, dazed and no longer fit for office.
Even the Prime Minister's reaction to wagergate is reminiscent of Boris, sending minister after minister, day after day, into television and radio studios to defend his decision not to suspend the candidates, only to pull the rug from under them with Rishi's inevitable volte face.
Unless it turns out that Farage bet on Putin winning the Russian elections and used the proceeds to fund the reform election campaign, I don't think we will hear much more about Putingate.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
On the contrary. Elecvtdrification was enormously important in increasing speed *and* capacity. And surely your demand for a new motorway from X to Y is basically the existing A class road upgraded.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
Why do you think northern England needs 'levelling up' to London's levels of unaffordability and inequality ?
What people need are:
Employment Housing
And then opportunities to get better employment and better housing.
What the North now has are the best employment opportunities it has had since Ken Barlow was a lad.
Yet PBers still babble on about some cho-cho that sod all people would ever have used.
Roads are what brings new developments not trains.
I don't think that last line is true.
But the point about HS2 for Manchester is not primarily that it would have offered someone in suburban south Manchester or semi-suburban Cheshire the opportunity to get to London slightly more quickly, it's that by taking fast trains out of Piccadilly and off the WCML it would have allowed far more suburban and freight services and allowed Manchester the sort of frequency and reliability on its suburban network that London has.
Every new road I've seen built soon has some combination of new housing, industrial estates, business parks and leisure facilities built alongside it.
As to HS2 I said on this site over a decade ago it would never reach beyond Birmingham.
Its achieved its purposes of helping London and enriching lawyers and consultants.
Unless it turns out that Farage bet on Putin winning the Russian elections and used the proceeds to fund the reform election campaign, I don't think we will hear much more about Putingate.
I would like to have a link to where I can bet on the Russian election.
It will run, because every party outside Reform agrees on it. So everyone will use it as jab. That's how politics rolls.
Not because there's limited scope for swingback (though this suggests that's the case) but because those 54% considering LLG switches are surely thinking tactically. Greens thinking of holding their noses to vote Labour, Lab and Lib thinking about which party to vote for in Newton Abbot (hint: it's the Lib Dems).
But there is still no swell of enthusiasm for Sir Keir, with 33 per cent satisfied with him as Labour leader, up two points, and 52 per cent dissatisfied, no change. So if he wins, it would mean he would go into Downing Street with a lower rating as Opposition Leader than Mr Cameron, Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
"..., or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament."
I'd like to see a recent example of a bypass that's gone from conception to open in five years.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
On the contrary. Elecvtdrification was enormously important in increasing speed *and* capacity. And surely your demand for a new motorway from X to Y is basically the existing road upgraded.
No, not existing roads, new roads.
New routes that don't exist yet. That's the point.
Increasing capacity helps at peak times where capacity is at its limit, but creating a new route helps at all times.
Not saying we shouldn't go for things like electrification, but creating new routes is where the real value lies. Enabling connections that don't yet exist.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
"..., or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament."
I'd like to see a recent example of a bypass that's gone from conception to open in five years.
So would I, that's the problem.
It could be done within a Parliament, but they won't invest in it currently.
But there is still no swell of enthusiasm for Sir Keir, with 33 per cent satisfied with him as Labour leader, up two points, and 52 per cent dissatisfied, no change. So if he wins, it would mean he would go into Downing Street with a lower rating as Opposition Leader than Mr Cameron, Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher.
Ipsos.
I'm not sure that is bad for him. Low expectations should help rather than hinder.
We are making category errors about lurches or otherwise rightwards.
The conservatives on here look at levels of taxation, or welfare spending on pensioners, and see nothing of the sort.
The non-conservatives on here look at social and cultural policies and rhetoric since 2016 - deals with the DUP, rock hard Brexit, Cummings, trans jokes in parliament, Rwanda, attacks on “foreign courts” and “lefty lawyers”, threats to the ECHR, comments about chai latte sipping liberals, and see a lurch to the right.
What we’re actually talking about is a lurch to right wing populist rhetoric.
The Labour equivalent would be a decade of banging on about ownership of the means of production, the supremacy of the proletariat, death to class traitors and the dangers of false consciousness while slashing taxes on the rich and privatising the NHS.
That is an absolutely fantastic analogy.
Couldn't agree more.
Yes, and it would have resulted in exactly the same thing - anyone right of Tony Blair would have retreated in wary terror of what Labour might do; anyone left of Gordon Brown would have either stopped bothering with them in exasperation or would be flirting with some dodgy far-left outfit. There would have been precious few Labour voters left.
I've made the point in the past that the Cons are talking right but acting left and therefore alienating everyone - but I think this analogy adds significantly to our understanding of the situation.
I think TimS deserves a little fanfare for this. *Tootle*
I expect to see this analogy trotted out by some broadsheet columnist within about three days.
Let’s hope that dreadful rag the Spectator doesn’t steal it. They are incorrigible larcenists. They just ran this article about walking in Puglia which I am pretty sure is a direct steal from PBers’ very own travel anecdotes
Good. We do not need wannabe Quislings in our democracy.
This is where I think Leon notably misreads this country. We are not the same as mainland Europe and don’t necessarily follow ‘behind’ their trends, which is an odd thing to have to remind a so-called brexiteer.
A good case can be made for saying that we had our rightward surge in 2016 and again in 2019, especially since migration was a big factor in those votes on top of EU centralised control.
That we are now almost certainly about to elect a Centre-Left Government may buck the continental trend, or it may show that we are, in fact, 10 years ahead of them.
Either way, and you can ignore the last bit, the main point is that we are not a typical mainland European country. We are an island nation with both an inward and outward facing dynamic.
We don’t generally do extremism. Since 1945, which was exceptional, we have never elected an extreme government of Right or Left. And however much froth and bubble they produce, neither Marxists nor Fascists have succeeded in winning a majority here.
Thankfully. Long may that continue.
I'm sad to see people just buying into the narrative of there being a significant rightward surge in Europe in general. As I attempted to show shortly after the results, there were countervailing currents in Europe. But people focus selectively so they highlighted the countries that fitted the narrative and stayed quiet on the ones that flowed the other direction. And before anyone says, it's not just that some countries get inherently more focus. In the past few years, Sweden had a lot of focus when it was going towards the right. In this election the result was a kind of stasis so oops we don't analyse that result.
People invested in politics get sucked in my these narratives because they want to feel something is happening. It's easier to justify the investment of time and emotion when you can kid yourself that a great historical tide is flowing even if in reality it's just the waves on the shore.
And of course, for some it's wishful thinking. You see it a lot on here. The country's about to take a moderate turn to the left. But where does that leave my "EVERYTHING FLOWING TO THE RIGHT!" story? Oh, easy, this incoming government will fail fast and the people will quickly wake up to our Lord and Saviour, Sir Nigel of Faragistan. And so a future that is so obviously unwritten collapses, in their minds, to a single inevitable conclusion. The obvious wrongness of this sense of inevitability ought to lead us to question every step they've made to get there. Including the recent past. What happened in the European elections is not what these people say happened. The picture is considerably more mixed and nuanced. But one of two blaring cakeholes shout a lie and everyone sort of absorbs it as gospel without checking.
Spot on. The Nordic countries are very different to Germany and the Netherlands. Poland is very different to Slovakia and Hungary. Portugal and Spain are very different to Italy. Greece is different again, having what seems to be a pretty competent, genuinely centre-right, socially liberal, quite popular government currently. France is going through what looks to be quite a unique trauma. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Sinn Fein has lost almost all the support that had previously seen it surge in the polls. And so on.
One thing that may unite much of Europe, though, including the UK is that the far right has pushed the centre right further rightwards on issues like immigration, the environment, the rule of law and so on. The French left is also now heading leftwards. I wonder if other countries will follow.
It’s a bollocks analysis, you should talk to someone who constantly travels - often around Europe - rather than some berk in a bed sit in Aberdeen. But it consoles you to believe this, so you will believe it
Do you think your 'here today, gone tomorrow' trips around Europe's tourist attractions give you an in depth understanding ?
Its possible to drive around a district by one route and think it highly affluent and to do it a different way and think it highly deprived.
Now extend that to a whole region, a whole country, a whole continent.
I’ve now travelled so much around the world I’ve gained an insight into travelling itself. It really does broaden the mind, but not in ways most people understand, because they don’t travel
As for my “trips around Europe’s tourist attractions” it’s maybe skipped your attention that I just spent a week in Moldova, literally the least touristy country in Europe (as in: fewest tourists) and that was followed by two days in Transnistria (zero tourists) and two weeks in war torn Ukraine (war tourists and dead tourists)
But you were still a tourist.
A different thing to living or doing business in that country.
Of the pollsters most recent non MRP polls, 9 now have Tories under 20 and 9 on 20 or above with only More in Common and JLPartners on 25 above the 22% level. Utterly catastrophic poll figures for Tories
Like Opinium and YouGov, JLP and MiC both project final tallies based on reassigning DKs and their interpretations of past voter behaviour. Before they apply these assumptions, their numbers are pretty similar to the other pollsters.
Good. We do not need wannabe Quislings in our democracy.
This is where I think Leon notably misreads this country. We are not the same as mainland Europe and don’t necessarily follow ‘behind’ their trends, which is an odd thing to have to remind a so-called brexiteer.
A good case can be made for saying that we had our rightward surge in 2016 and again in 2019, especially since migration was a big factor in those votes on top of EU centralised control.
That we are now almost certainly about to elect a Centre-Left Government may buck the continental trend, or it may show that we are, in fact, 10 years ahead of them.
Either way, and you can ignore the last bit, the main point is that we are not a typical mainland European country. We are an island nation with both an inward and outward facing dynamic.
We don’t generally do extremism. Since 1945, which was exceptional, we have never elected an extreme government of Right or Left. And however much froth and bubble they produce, neither Marxists nor Fascists have succeeded in winning a majority here.
Thankfully. Long may that continue.
I'm sad to see people just buying into the narrative of there being a significant rightward surge in Europe in general. As I attempted to show shortly after the results, there were countervailing currents in Europe. But people focus selectively so they highlighted the countries that fitted the narrative and stayed quiet on the ones that flowed the other direction. And before anyone says, it's not just that some countries get inherently more focus. In the past few years, Sweden had a lot of focus when it was going towards the right. In this election the result was a kind of stasis so oops we don't analyse that result.
People invested in politics get sucked in my these narratives because they want to feel something is happening. It's easier to justify the investment of time and emotion when you can kid yourself that a great historical tide is flowing even if in reality it's just the waves on the shore.
And of course, for some it's wishful thinking. You see it a lot on here. The country's about to take a moderate turn to the left. But where does that leave my "EVERYTHING FLOWING TO THE RIGHT!" story? Oh, easy, this incoming government will fail fast and the people will quickly wake up to our Lord and Saviour, Sir Nigel of Faragistan. And so a future that is so obviously unwritten collapses, in their minds, to a single inevitable conclusion. The obvious wrongness of this sense of inevitability ought to lead us to question every step they've made to get there. Including the recent past. What happened in the European elections is not what these people say happened. The picture is considerably more mixed and nuanced. But one of two blaring cakeholes shout a lie and everyone sort of absorbs it as gospel without checking.
Spot on. The Nordic countries are very different to Germany and the Netherlands. Poland is very different to Slovakia and Hungary. Portugal and Spain are very different to Italy. Greece is different again, having what seems to be a pretty competent, genuinely centre-right, socially liberal, quite popular government currently. France is going through what looks to be quite a unique trauma. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Sinn Fein has lost almost all the support that had previously seen it surge in the polls. And so on.
One thing that may unite much of Europe, though, including the UK is that the far right has pushed the centre right further rightwards on issues like immigration, the environment, the rule of law and so on. The French left is also now heading leftwards. I wonder if other countries will follow.
It’s a bollocks analysis, you should talk to someone who constantly travels - often around Europe - rather than some berk in a bed sit in Aberdeen. But it consoles you to believe this, so you will believe it
I work across Europe, rather than just travelling in it. I am in Spain, Italy and Germany on a regular basis. My last meeting with the European Commission was last week. I'm off to Luxembourg in a couple of weeks. I suspect my Spanish is a lot better than yours. But you may console yourself otherwise.
I was being sarcastic/sardonic. I am well aware that you are quite well travelled with strong Spanish links, indeed didn’t you live in Catalunya for a few years?
I always read your thoughts on Spanish politics, you know your cebollas
Good. We do not need wannabe Quislings in our democracy.
This is where I think Leon notably misreads this country. We are not the same as mainland Europe and don’t necessarily follow ‘behind’ their trends, which is an odd thing to have to remind a so-called brexiteer.
A good case can be made for saying that we had our rightward surge in 2016 and again in 2019, especially since migration was a big factor in those votes on top of EU centralised control.
That we are now almost certainly about to elect a Centre-Left Government may buck the continental trend, or it may show that we are, in fact, 10 years ahead of them.
Either way, and you can ignore the last bit, the main point is that we are not a typical mainland European country. We are an island nation with both an inward and outward facing dynamic.
We don’t generally do extremism. Since 1945, which was exceptional, we have never elected an extreme government of Right or Left. And however much froth and bubble they produce, neither Marxists nor Fascists have succeeded in winning a majority here.
Thankfully. Long may that continue.
I'm sad to see people just buying into the narrative of there being a significant rightward surge in Europe in general. As I attempted to show shortly after the results, there were countervailing currents in Europe. But people focus selectively so they highlighted the countries that fitted the narrative and stayed quiet on the ones that flowed the other direction. And before anyone says, it's not just that some countries get inherently more focus. In the past few years, Sweden had a lot of focus when it was going towards the right. In this election the result was a kind of stasis so oops we don't analyse that result.
People invested in politics get sucked in my these narratives because they want to feel something is happening. It's easier to justify the investment of time and emotion when you can kid yourself that a great historical tide is flowing even if in reality it's just the waves on the shore.
And of course, for some it's wishful thinking. You see it a lot on here. The country's about to take a moderate turn to the left. But where does that leave my "EVERYTHING FLOWING TO THE RIGHT!" story? Oh, easy, this incoming government will fail fast and the people will quickly wake up to our Lord and Saviour, Sir Nigel of Faragistan. And so a future that is so obviously unwritten collapses, in their minds, to a single inevitable conclusion. The obvious wrongness of this sense of inevitability ought to lead us to question every step they've made to get there. Including the recent past. What happened in the European elections is not what these people say happened. The picture is considerably more mixed and nuanced. But one of two blaring cakeholes shout a lie and everyone sort of absorbs it as gospel without checking.
One thing that may unite much of Europe, though, including the UK is that the far right has pushed the centre right further rightwards on issues like immigration, the environment, the rule of law and so on. The French left is also now heading leftwards. I wonder if other countries will follow.
So the 'centre' is holding in Europe because the mainstream right increasing looks like the far right?
The key economic number is that the UK, alone of the G7 states, has a lower household income than before the pandemic. Employment levels are strong, productivity rather ho-hum, but set to improve, but real incomes have stagnated. Meanwhile the substantial real cuts across the public sector, especially in the NHS and local government, has left even middle income earners facing substantially increased real costs. The resulting squeeze has fallen disproportionately on middle and lower income earners, with the public sector pensions bill at £2,3 trillion now being larger than the total UK economy.
The Tory pensions bribe has sold the future for their own electoral advantage and left the UK living way beyond its means. The Tory version of austerity was burn everything except pensions. That cannot continue.
The country needs tro invest in infrastructure and substantially boost overall productivity, while reducing the national pensions burden. Its tricky political balance, and the clown car politics of the past 9 years have been little short of catastrophic. The Tories absolutely deserve the kicking they are going to get.
Labour will see some positive news, given inflation is stabilising and productivity can really only improve. However, restructuring UK public finances is a mammoth task, even to get to stability, let alone growth, Rachel Reeves has no magic wand, and it will be a tightrope walk to maintain growth while improving the long term productive capacity of the economy versus competition such as the US, or Germany, let alone China and India.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
On the contrary. Elecvtdrification was enormously important in increasing speed *and* capacity. And surely your demand for a new motorway from X to Y is basically the existing road upgraded.
No, not existing roads, new roads.
New routes that don't exist yet. That's the point.
Increasing capacity helps at peak times where capacity is at its limit, but creating a new route helps at all times.
Not saying we shouldn't go for things like electrification, but creating new routes is where the real value lies. Enabling connections that don't yet exist.
No, it just wastes a lot of money and leaves you where you were before after a few years.
Eg M25 is now permanently congested and so are the "old roads" because when it opened people started doing things like commuting from Maidstone to Staines and clogged it up with new journeys.
Not saying that things like the Stonehenge Bypass shouldn't be built but motoring costs need to be front loaded onto the journey not mostly indirect, so if you want to commute from maidstone to staines in rush hour round the M25, you pay a hefty premium.
Yes I am advocating replacement of VED and Petrol Duty with variable per mile tolling through similar to those used by insurance companies.
Journeys of less than a mile ending at schools at going in/chucking out times could then attract an eyewatering toll.
Unless it turns out that Farage bet on Putin winning the Russian elections and used the proceeds to fund the reform election campaign, I don't think we will hear much more about Putingate.
Well he'd have had to have bet millions to get enough winnings to fund a campaign.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
"..., or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament."
I'd like to see a recent example of a bypass that's gone from conception to open in five years.
So would I, that's the problem.
It could be done within a Parliament, but they won't invest in it currently.
So which part of the process would you drop?
A new £1 billion road - Black Cat to Caxton - is being built about a mile away from where I sit. Proper work started late last year (after a six month delay due to green loons), and it is due to open in Spring 2027. That's three or four years of work. From what I recall, the final route was chosen in 2019, and there was a few years of route options, discussions and preliminary work before that.
It'll probably be over ten years from being seriously considered to opening.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
On the contrary. Elecvtdrification was enormously important in increasing speed *and* capacity. And surely your demand for a new motorway from X to Y is basically the existing A class road upgraded.
I am fairly convinced that electrification - in the sense of overhead lines - will not advance much more.
While battery powered trains are less efficient (carrying the weight of the batteries), the vastly lower capital costs and the maintenance issues will mean that for routes of increasing length, the batteries will win.
But there is still no swell of enthusiasm for Sir Keir, with 33 per cent satisfied with him as Labour leader, up two points, and 52 per cent dissatisfied, no change. So if he wins, it would mean he would go into Downing Street with a lower rating as Opposition Leader than Mr Cameron, Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher.
Ipsos.
Thats why, unless he does well (with an inbox that resembles a hospital pass), he will be in the same boat as the Tories come 2029, with Liblabcon struggling to get 50% of the votes between them.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
On the contrary. Elecvtdrification was enormously important in increasing speed *and* capacity. And surely your demand for a new motorway from X to Y is basically the existing A class road upgraded.
I am fairly convinced that electrification - in the sense of overhead lines - will not advance much more.
While battery powered trains are less efficient (carrying the weight of the batteries), the vastly lower capital costs and the maintenance issues will mean that for routes of increasing length, the batteries will win.
I can well believe that for the branch lines and the rural lines.
But there is still no swell of enthusiasm for Sir Keir, with 33 per cent satisfied with him as Labour leader, up two points, and 52 per cent dissatisfied, no change. So if he wins, it would mean he would go into Downing Street with a lower rating as Opposition Leader than Mr Cameron, Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher.
Ipsos.
I'm not sure that is bad for him. Low expectations should help rather than hinder.
Sadly I disagree. People are generally cynical, have little patience, and don't like Starmer enough to give him the benefit of the doubt for the many years it would take to turn things around even in the most optimistic of scenarios.
What we don't yet know is how Starmer will react to criticism and unpopularity when in office. Sunak panicked and flailed around from one thing to another ineffectually. We must hope that Starmer is made of sterner stuff.
But there is still no swell of enthusiasm for Sir Keir, with 33 per cent satisfied with him as Labour leader, up two points, and 52 per cent dissatisfied, no change. So if he wins, it would mean he would go into Downing Street with a lower rating as Opposition Leader than Mr Cameron, Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher.
Ipsos.
I'm not sure that is bad for him. Low expectations should help rather than hinder.
Sadly I disagree. People are generally cynical, have little patience, and don't like Starmer enough to give him the benefit of the doubt for the many years it would take to turn things around even in the most optimistic of scenarios.
What we don't yet know is how Starmer will react to criticism and unpopularity when in office. Sunak panicked and flailed around from one thing to another ineffectually. We must hope that Starmer is made of sterner stuff.
Starmer is an eminent lawyer, they are made of stern stuff.
Meanwhile the situation in Newton Abbot remains confusing, with two tactical voting sites still non-comital about the best way to defeat the incumbent. Not exactly helpful for those of us voting by post!
It’s interesting that Nigel Farage came here. The only one of the main leaders to do so.
I’m expecting a Cons HOLD but a case could be made for any of Con, Lab, LibDem, Reform. The MRPs are all equally confused, slightly favouring a CON hold but also dividing between Labour and LibDem, with Reform a very close 4th. Only 9% separated the 4 parties in the most recent Focaldata MRP.
I voted (Green) in the Newton Abbot constituency in 2015. Unless there has been major demographic change in the area due to overspill from Exeter, I would say that Lib Dem is the very obvious tactical vote. Very, very obvious.
Yeah it’s not obvious now, let alone ‘very very’ hence the confusion amongst tactical voting sites and MRPs. The boundary changes in particular pulled in more of a Labour demographic.
All I would say anecdotally is that the LibDems who were campaigning hard have pulled out resources, whilst Labour who were piling everyone across to Plymouth Moor have been upping their campaigning in Newton Abbot. Meanwhile Nigel Farage held a rally here.
I’m expecting a Con HOLD but it could be close across all of the 4. Certainly anything but obvious.
You really do chat some rubbish. The only change compared to the previous boundaries was that the seat lost a small area (I guess a single ward) near Ashburton. No Labour demographic has been pulled into the seat by the boundary changes.
I'm not naturally of a conspiratorial bent, but you almost seem to be deliberately trying to muddy the waters.
A single ward, Mr Password? Not as much as that! It was just 140 people, in a tidying up exercise by the Boundary Commission.
The key economic number is that the UK, alone of the G7 states, has a lower household income than before the pandemic. Employment levels are strong, productivity rather ho-hum, but set to improve, but real incomes have stagnated. Meanwhile the substantial real cuts across the public sector, especially in the NHS and local government, has left even middle income earners facing substantially increased real costs. The resulting squeeze has fallen disproportionately on middle and lower income earners, with the public sector pensions bill at £2,3 trillion now being larger than the total UK economy.
The Tory pensions bribe has sold the future for their own electoral advantage and left the UK living way beyond its means. The Tory version of austerity was burn everything except pensions. That cannot continue.
The country needs tro invest in infrastructure and substantially boost overall productivity, while reducing the national pensions burden. Its tricky political balance, and the clown car politics of the past 9 years have been little short of catastrophic. The Tories absolutely deserve the kicking they are going to get.
Labour will see some positive news, given inflation is stabilising and productivity can really only improve. However, restructuring UK public finances is a mammoth task, even to get to stability, let alone growth, Rachel Reeves has no magic wand, and it will be a tightrope walk to maintain growth while improving the long term productive capacity of the economy versus competition such as the US, or Germany, let alone China and India.
How is productivity set to improve - this country has just done it's usual approach of throwing more (cheap) labour at a problem...
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
"..., or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament."
I'd like to see a recent example of a bypass that's gone from conception to open in five years.
So would I, that's the problem.
It could be done within a Parliament, but they won't invest in it currently.
So which part of the process would you drop?
A new £1 billion road - Black Cat to Caxton - is being built about a mile away from where I sit. Proper work started late last year (after a six month delay due to green loons), and it is due to open in Spring 2027. That's three or four years of work. From what I recall, the final route was chosen in 2019, and there was a few years of route options, discussions and preliminary work before that.
It'll probably be over ten years from being seriously considered to opening.
But how would you speed it up?
3-4 years of work is entirely doable within 1 Parliament.
I would seriously curtail the planning process, the ability of people to object etc - entirely consistent with my overall views on "planning" and NIMBYism.
Plus I would seek to have a rolling programme of continuous investment, so while any work on current projects is being done then the planning stages of the next work can be underway, continuously rotating, with many small connections being made (potentially then joined up into larger ones over time) rather than individual white elephants that take decades.
Comments
Johnson may have been better than Corbyn but ultimately electing him has put the Tories in their current position. They knew he was unfit and chose him anyway, including Rishi Sunak.
As I’ve said, 2019 should be seen as an outlier.
A proper old fashioned liberal conservative agenda would be fascinating. No-one significant has provided one recently.
But as you say 2019 was not a typical election and should not be seen as the start point for this election - it was the 'get Brexit done' election, as in 'just stfu about Brexit and start running the country'.
Unfortunately the Tories have proved incapable of running the country.
Recovery will only come when they face that reality and repudiate BoZo and all his works
Affluent oldies, full employment and a NHS workforce increased by half a million.
To name but three.
Whether they're aware of these achievements or think they're a good thing I don't know.
Corbyn would have been disastrous, but not definitely worse than BoZo
PhDs await...
The conservatives on here look at levels of taxation, or welfare spending on pensioners, and see nothing of the sort.
The non-conservatives on here look at social and cultural policies and rhetoric since 2016 - deals with the DUP, rock hard Brexit, Cummings, trans jokes in parliament, Rwanda, attacks on “foreign courts” and “lefty lawyers”, threats to the ECHR, comments about chai latte sipping liberals, and see a lurch to the right.
What we’re actually talking about is a lurch to right wing populist rhetoric.
And even if they did, there are so many fronts to attack on there literally isn't time enough or resource enough to deal with them all.
Britain is of course not alone in that, but we suffer structural weaknesses in our economy that make us unusually vulnerable.
Full employment increases the need to upskill workers and for capital investment in plant to increase output.
One thing that may unite much of Europe, though, including the UK is that the far right has pushed the centre right further rightwards on issues like immigration, the environment, the rule of law and so on. The French left is also now heading leftwards. I wonder if other countries will follow.
We’ve discussed this a milllion times, the government often “talks right” but it always “does left”
We have very high taxes and extremely high immigration, virtually no one has been sent to Rwanda, we’re still in the ECHR. So the Tories displease the left and enrage the right and thus everyone hates them and that’s why they are going to die. Good
Aside from the fact that "Full employment" means millions not working for various reasons. And that many who are working are in a benefits trap - limited to 16 hours a week.
Aside from all of that - you are a lefty *wishing* for unemployment?
https://x.com/_Mark_Walsh_/status/1805664422368886885
I'm not naturally of a conspiratorial bent, but you almost seem to be deliberately trying to muddy the waters.
Sorry, I like a lot of your posts but this one doesn't stack up.
What people need are:
Employment
Housing
And then opportunities to get better employment and better housing.
What the North now has are the best employment opportunities it has had since Ken Barlow was a lad.
Yet PBers still babble on about some cho-cho that sod all people would ever have used.
Roads are what brings new developments not trains.
You're right, it would shore him up. That's why I said a year. If we were midterm now Sunak would have been ousted. They hate him. The feeling certainly would be that the Tories will have won the election despite, not because of him. Sunak's premiership doesn't survive the next year even if they win.
Record seven out of ten Britons say: 'We don't like the Tories', bombshell new poll says in fresh blow to Rishi Sunak, exclusive @IpsosUK survey for @EveningStandard
found 83% of Britons are dissatisfied with the Government, the worst ever seen this close to an election, and far higher than the 64% for the Callaghan administration in 1979 after the Winter of Discontent.
https://x.com/nicholascecil/status/1805873621610475813
The Conservatives are on a joint record low of just 19 per cent (as in April this year), and down four points from just weeks ago, with Labour on 42 per cent, down one point, but still with a 23-point lead, @IpsosUK for @EveningStandard
Couldn't agree more.
Well they've set out their road map haven't they? The breaching of international law and morality over Rwanda leading to the withdrawal from Churchill's ECHR. Unaffordable tax cuts (at a time when they need by dint of world affairs to uplift their defence spending) which can only be paid for out of massive social, health, police and education budget cuts. Returning higher education to an exclusive percentage of the population and proposing no (in fact scrapping) infrastructure construction. A reduction in social cohesion from othering and culture wars. Further declining trade, particularly manufacturing, with our closest trading partners.
After another 5 years of the post- Johnsonian Conservatives, what can they offer us in 2029? The only things I can think of is strafing the migrant boats plus capital sentencing for nonces and baby murdering nurses, and as we speak the case against one baby murdering nurse seems to be developing more holes in it than we first thought.
More performative cruelty with no tangible benefits.
- The Conservatives are on a joint record low of just 19 per cent (as in April this year), and down four points from just weeks ago, with Labour on 42 per cent, down one point, but still with a 23-point lead.
- Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has jumped from nine per cent to 15 per cent, eating into the Tory vote, with the Liberal Democrats up three points to 11, and Greens down two points to seven per cent.
But it wasn't.
There are no new roads worth mentioning.
And cancelling long term capital spend, to cover short term operational spend (potholes etc) is not an alternative either.
We need new roads, but those aren't being backed by any party that I see.
Con 41
Lab 495
LD 63
Ref 3
Green 2
SNP 21
PC 4
Other 3
NI 18
Then at 8.25am, sharp, the streets are full of very rich Parisian men in late middle age all wearing salmon pink shorts, and eating good croissants as they vaguely stare at the Citadelle de Vauban
It’s like they work in shifts. It is fantastically Cartesian and French
I mean the Conservatives seem to be getting flack for Alistair Jack's bets placed likely without any insider info whatsoever. As with the football (Or rugby with the scrum) when it's going wrong you can't catch a break even if you're doing nothing wrong.
But the point about HS2 for Manchester is not primarily that it would have offered someone in suburban south Manchester or semi-suburban Cheshire the opportunity to get to London slightly more quickly, it's that by taking fast trains out of Piccadilly and off the WCML it would have allowed far more suburban and freight services and allowed Manchester the sort of frequency and reliability on its suburban network that London has.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
Link to data tables at the bottom of this page: https://www.survation.com/mrp-update-first-mrp-since-farages-return/
Its possible to drive around a district by one route and think it highly affluent and to do it a different way and think it highly deprived.
Now extend that to a whole region, a whole country, a whole continent.
There needs to be a post-war JFDI attitude back among both the politicians and the CS.
I always read your thoughts on Spanish politics, you know your cebollas
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
You question that?
The facts and figures speak for themselves.
A man has been arrested in connection with the Westminster ‘honeytrap’ scandal
Police this morning arrested a man in Islington on suspicion of offences under the Online Safety Act, and harassment
https://x.com/hzeffman/status/1805875618350850382?s=61&t=c6bcp0cjChLfQN5Tc8A_6g
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Utterly catastrophic poll figures for Tories
As for my “trips around Europe’s tourist attractions” it’s maybe skipped your attention that I just spent a week in Moldova, literally the least touristy country in Europe (as in: fewest tourists) and that was followed by two days in Transnistria (zero tourists) and two weeks in war torn Ukraine (war tourists and dead tourists)
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
I turns out they both follow him, as do all of their friends. Which I found initially horrifying but they were quick to reassure me. Amongst their friends, he's seen as ridiculous. A bit of a fool. They agree that he has a face a bit like Mr Bean!
His popularity amonst this demographic has been driven, at least in part, by his use of Cameo where you can pay celebrities to record you video clips. He's shameless, willing to play the clown, to pull silly faces and say stupid things. It's very popular. And doesn't translate into respect.
There would have been precious few Labour voters left.
I've made the point in the past that the Cons are talking right but acting left and therefore alienating everyone - but I think this analogy adds significantly to our understanding of the situation.
I think TimS deserves a little fanfare for this. *Tootle*
I expect to see this analogy trotted out by some broadsheet columnist within about three days.
Signs meant to deter voters end up encouraging support of Keir Starmer
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/06/26/green-party-anti-labour-placards-brighton-bristol-graffiti/
As to HS2 I said on this site over a decade ago it would never reach beyond Birmingham.
Its achieved its purposes of helping London and enriching lawyers and consultants.
It will run, because every party outside Reform agrees on it. So everyone will use it as jab. That's how politics rolls.
"Remarkably, despite the very low Conservative vote share in Ipsos's poll, it doesn't look like they have much room to grow.
Among the 36% of voters who may change their mind, 54% are considering LD/Lab/Green, and just 7% are considering the Conservatives."
https://x.com/Beyond_Topline/status/1805879943127093425
Not because there's limited scope for swingback (though this suggests that's the case) but because those 54% considering LLG switches are surely thinking tactically. Greens thinking of holding their noses to vote Labour, Lab and Lib thinking about which party to vote for in Newton Abbot (hint: it's the Lib Dems).
But there is still no swell of enthusiasm for Sir Keir, with 33 per cent satisfied with him as Labour leader, up two points, and 52 per cent dissatisfied, no change.
So if he wins, it would mean he would go into Downing Street with a lower rating as Opposition Leader than Mr Cameron, Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher.
Ipsos.
I'd like to see a recent example of a bypass that's gone from conception to open in five years.
New routes that don't exist yet. That's the point.
Increasing capacity helps at peak times where capacity is at its limit, but creating a new route helps at all times.
Not saying we shouldn't go for things like electrification, but creating new routes is where the real value lies. Enabling connections that don't yet exist.
It could be done within a Parliament, but they won't invest in it currently.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-forgotten-forest-of-italy/
A different thing to living or doing business in that country.
There's an awful lot of clutching at straws here.
The Tory pensions bribe has sold the future for their own electoral advantage and left the UK living way beyond its means. The Tory version of austerity was burn everything except pensions. That cannot continue.
The country needs tro invest in infrastructure and substantially boost overall productivity, while reducing the national pensions burden. Its tricky political balance, and the clown car politics of the past 9 years have been little short of catastrophic. The Tories absolutely deserve the kicking they are going to get.
Labour will see some positive news, given inflation is stabilising and productivity can really only improve. However, restructuring UK public finances is a mammoth task, even to get to stability, let alone growth, Rachel Reeves has no magic wand, and it will be a tightrope walk to maintain growth while improving the long term productive capacity of the economy versus competition such as the US, or Germany, let alone China and India.
Eg M25 is now permanently congested and so are the "old roads" because when it opened people started doing things like commuting from Maidstone to Staines and clogged it up with new journeys.
Not saying that things like the Stonehenge Bypass shouldn't be built but motoring costs need to be front loaded onto the journey not mostly indirect, so if you want to commute from maidstone to staines in rush hour round the M25, you pay a hefty premium.
Yes I am advocating replacement of VED and Petrol Duty with variable per mile tolling through similar to those used by insurance companies.
Journeys of less than a mile ending at schools at going in/chucking out times could then attract an eyewatering toll.
A new £1 billion road - Black Cat to Caxton - is being built about a mile away from where I sit. Proper work started late last year (after a six month delay due to green loons), and it is due to open in Spring 2027. That's three or four years of work. From what I recall, the final route was chosen in 2019, and there was a few years of route options, discussions and preliminary work before that.
It'll probably be over ten years from being seriously considered to opening.
But how would you speed it up?
While battery powered trains are less efficient (carrying the weight of the batteries), the vastly lower capital costs and the maintenance issues will mean that for routes of increasing length, the batteries will win.
What we don't yet know is how Starmer will react to criticism and unpopularity when in office. Sunak panicked and flailed around from one thing to another ineffectually. We must hope that Starmer is made of sterner stuff.
I would seriously curtail the planning process, the ability of people to object etc - entirely consistent with my overall views on "planning" and NIMBYism.
Plus I would seek to have a rolling programme of continuous investment, so while any work on current projects is being done then the planning stages of the next work can be underway, continuously rotating, with many small connections being made (potentially then joined up into larger ones over time) rather than individual white elephants that take decades.