This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Don't cast the one for the ex-wife unless she tells you to because although you probably wouldn't be prosecuted that would be a crime and you just confessed to it on the internet.
Isn't it actually an offence to complete, even if you have a verbal instruction from the person?
Yes. See my and @TheScreamingEagles post. @leon posting on a subject he has no knowledge as usual. I mean on a site full of people who are experts on elections. How many ex Agents are here. Lots I expect.
A question to ask about the above would be about how an ex wife who doesn't care is registered to vote anyway?
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Don't cast the one for the ex-wife unless she tells you to because although you probably wouldn't be prosecuted that would be a crime and you just confessed to it on the internet.
Isn't it actually an offence to complete, even if you have a verbal instruction from the person?
Yes. See my and @TheScreamingEagles post. @leon posting on a subject he has no knowledge as usual. I mean on a site full of people who are experts on elections. How many ex Agents are here. Lots I expect.
ITS. A. JOKE
Omg
I do know that. I know you are just winding us up.
Interested to know if you knew though that you couldn't do it if instructed to do so? Also interested to know if you know it is easy to check if you have done it, although it takes a court order.
So if you did do it and write an article the authorities might consider it worth checking because it was publicised and you wouldn't get away with saying it was a joke when they pull the ballot paper out.
Ok I’ll run with. It was a joke - I wanted to see how many pompous people on PB would lose their humour-free nuts and get riled. Quite a few it seems
However I am now genuinely interested. Her postal vote really is in my flat (I’ve no idea why she still gets it - she registered here for the 2019 GE but she’s not been here since 2020). I wonder how often that happens and how many people post multiple votes?
Because I could easily do it and no one would know. Tho if I was going to do it I would not announce it on a public forum. OBVS
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Completing a postal vote for someone else is a criminal offence.
He knows, he just wants the attention, as always.
And it worked. But also I am probably gonna do this to make the evening more exciting. Will I be arrested?
Almost certainly not, but do you fancy a couple of months in prison.
You’re safe enough, @Leon. There’s no room in prison for you.
Lord Ashcrofts latest (non BPC) poll this week is Lab 40 (-3) Con 19 (+1) Ref 17 (-1) LD 10 (+1) Don't know the rest of the figs, sorry, all, on his Web lordashcroftpolls.com
Chunky drop for Labour there and more stalling for Reform
I am convinced that if Farage hadn’t dropped his Putin-bollock Reform would have overtaken the Tories and destroyed them forever. Now I expect the Tories to edge back to 25ish and reform to fall to 15ish
Still horrific for the Tories but sadly not terminal
When the election was called I was hoping for a small Labour majority but that seems extremely unlikely now. Next best would therefore be a reduction in Tory seats to the point where they migh suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.
That's not looking likely either. Looks like about 100 seats - too small to be a useful Opposition, too big to precipitate a rebirth.
Sigh.
Perhaps much discussion has blinded us. It is quite possible that the generally unthinkable reality of 'Tories 100 seats, Labour well over 400' will come as a giant surprise to the UK as a whole, most of whom spend no time thinking about this and may assume the result will be close to the usual sort of turn taking.
I think Tories getting 100 seats would be epoch making, and give a chance for sanity to return. But 50 would be better.
I think that while the projections have appeared on TV and social media, the reality hasn't entered the Public Consciousness.
This is, in many ways, the lowest key general election campaign I have seen. No one seems to be talking about it, out in The Real. If you prompt people - "Tories will lose. Useless. Labour will put up taxes. Always do. Meh." then on with whatever they were doing.
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Completing a postal vote for someone else is a criminal offence.
He knows, he just wants the attention, as always.
And it worked. But also I am probably gonna do this to make the evening more exciting. Will I be arrested?
Almost certainly not, but do you fancy a couple of months in prison.
If that curtails the daily travel reporting for a couple of months, I'd say go for it Leon!
It’ll give me a couple of months extra to find his ten bags if the Tories wipeout.
Apols for quoting at length, but I think is really good. From a guy called Nick Tyrone who does a weekly email I subscribe to, 'The Week in Brexitland'. He's on twitter as well. Reflects a lot of my thoughts as to how we got here:
The result of the EU referendum has long been misunderstood by both sides of the Remain-Leave debate. It was neither some sort of Russian PSYOP project gone wild, nor a rational choice for a better future made by the British electorate. It was a cry for help, a wilfully destructive act by the section of the British electorate who made the difference. They were handed a brick and told not to, under any circumstances, throw it through the store window - and they went ahead and hurled it through as an act of defiance. “Deal with that mess,” was the collective voice of Brexit. “Now maybe you’ll be forced to fix things.” The chaos that consumed parliament in the years following the vote was not against the “will of the people”, but a furtherance of what they wanted to happen when they voted for Brexit. They wanted to disrupt the “natural order” and make the political classes squirm. The electorate succeeded in this goal.
In a sense, the Tories getting annihilated by the electorate is the 2016 result coming full circle, back to the only place it was ever going to end up - the Conservative civil war that created Brexit eating the mothership. The same impulse that drove people to do something slightly crazy, slightly drastic, stepping into the unknown in 2016 has driven them to do the same again in 2024 in a very different direction. “You think we won’t destroy the Conservative party? Watch us.”
The warnings about “super majorities” sound remarkably like the “Brexit will cost every household £4,000” scare stories from eight years ago. People aren’t listening. They don’t care. They feel angry and betrayed and they finally have a chance to do something about it, namely destroying the governing party in the most brutal fashion imaginable. The electorate are being given numerous ways to do it, as well. If you feel angry from the right, you can vote Reform and destroy the Tories that way; if you want to make sure they get destroyed, you can vote Labour; if you feel angry from a different angle, there’s the Lib Dems to consider. So many ways of destroying the Conservative party out there to choose from this time round.
What is humorous to watch is Conservative politicians, about to have their careers ended in many circumstances, who cannot begin to fathom that the same destructive forces which gave us Brexit in 2016 have now turned around and are set to annihilate them as well. The winds of hell they unleashed have blown back and obliterated the Tories. You could almost feel sorry for them, if you really tried to.
Lord Ashcrofts latest (non BPC) poll this week is Lab 40 (-3) Con 19 (+1) Ref 17 (-1) LD 10 (+1) Don't know the rest of the figs, sorry, all, on his Web lordashcroftpolls.com
Chunky drop for Labour there and more stalling for Reform
I am convinced that if Farage hadn’t dropped his Putin-bollock Reform would have overtaken the Tories and destroyed them forever. Now I expect the Tories to edge back to 25ish and reform to fall to 15ish
Still horrific for the Tories but sadly not terminal
When the election was called I was hoping for a small Labour majority but that seems extremely unlikely now. Next best would therefore be a reduction in Tory seats to the point where they migh suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.
That's not looking likely either. Looks like about 100 seats - too small to be a useful Opposition, too big to precipitate a rebirth.
Sigh.
Perhaps much discussion has blinded us. It is quite possible that the generally unthinkable reality of 'Tories 100 seats, Labour well over 400' will come as a giant surprise to the UK as a whole, most of whom spend no time thinking about this and may assume the result will be close to the usual sort of turn taking.
I think Tories getting 100 seats would be epoch making, and give a chance for sanity to return. But 50 would be better.
It come sback to that two pronged question.
1. Do we want the Tory party to survive at all? 2. If we do want it to survive then is it beter for them to have, for example, 100 seats where most of the MPs are centrists or 50 sets where most of the MPs are authoritarian ERG types?
That was kind of the point of my thread header last week looking at the posisble make up of a Tory party that got 72 seats. What sort of Tory party would that be?
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Completing a postal vote for someone else is a criminal offence.
He knows, he just wants the attention, as always.
And it worked. But also I am probably gonna do this to make the evening more exciting. Will I be arrested?
Almost certainly not, but do you fancy a couple of months in prison.
If that curtails the daily travel reporting for a couple of months, I'd say go for it Leon!
It’ll give me a couple of months extra to find his ten bags if the Tories wipeout.
Clearly the focus will be on Biden. if he is as far gone as the images seem to suggest, he might struggle to hold it together for a full debate.
Yet his opponents accuse him of being drugged up if he does well, so they win either way.
Trump rambles incoherently constantly but unfortunately none of his supporters care, so an unedifying encounter of two very old men past their prime looks likely. Only one cares about democracy though.
'Drugging up' someone with dementia would be highly unlikely to improve their debate performance.
And we know whose White House was an actual pill mill.
The allegation that he was on some kind of amphetamines for the State of the Union looks quite convincing to me - the sudden extraordinary improvement in lucidity and eloquence was striking, as was the massive relapse to his normal senility thereafter
Moreover they will want to avoid any “accidents”. A medically informed (and left wing) friend of mine recently gave me a plausible explanation for Biden’s weird behaviour on the White House lawn the other day. I’ll spare PB the unhappy details and precise medical words my friend used, but it all made sense
Also, how many octogenarians are NOT on multiple drugs? It’s normal. I am sure Trump is as well. He’s definitely been guzzling ozempic you can see it in his face
Amphetamines are not a treatment for dementia. Indeed they are likely to make it worse.
The only strong evidence we have for off label, unethical drug prescriptions in the White House is from the Trump administration. I don't count right wing TwitterX as evidence. Or your friends.
I was using “amphetamines” in the broadly accepted medical sense of “many different kinds of drugs some of them not actually amphetamines”
They could have jacked him up with this
“The following are used to temporarily improve dementia symptoms. Cholinesterase inhibitors. These medicines work by boosting levels of a chemical messenger involved in memory and judgment. They include donepezil (Aricept, Adlarity), rivastigmine (Exelon) and galantamine (Razadyne ER)”
So, you're clueless, and you can use google. Got that.
Is there a total sense of humour failure on PB this morning? Jeeez
Yes - I'm doing (electronic) paperwork this morning. I loathe paperwork.
Lord Ashcrofts latest (non BPC) poll this week is Lab 40 (-3) Con 19 (+1) Ref 17 (-1) LD 10 (+1) Don't know the rest of the figs, sorry, all, on his Web lordashcroftpolls.com
Chunky drop for Labour there and more stalling for Reform
I am convinced that if Farage hadn’t dropped his Putin-bollock Reform would have overtaken the Tories and destroyed them forever. Now I expect the Tories to edge back to 25ish and reform to fall to 15ish
Still horrific for the Tories but sadly not terminal
When the election was called I was hoping for a small Labour majority but that seems extremely unlikely now. Next best would therefore be a reduction in Tory seats to the point where they migh suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.
That's not looking likely either. Looks like about 100 seats - too small to be a useful Opposition, too big to precipitate a rebirth.
Sigh.
Perhaps much discussion has blinded us. It is quite possible that the generally unthinkable reality of 'Tories 100 seats, Labour well over 400' will come as a giant surprise to the UK as a whole, most of whom spend no time thinking about this and may assume the result will be close to the usual sort of turn taking.
I think Tories getting 100 seats would be epoch making, and give a chance for sanity to return. But 50 would be better.
I think that while the projections have appeared on TV and social media, the reality hasn't entered the Public Consciousness.
This is, in many ways, the lowest key general election campaign I have seen. No one seems to be talking about it, out in The Real. If you prompt people - "Tories will lose. Useless. Labour will put up taxes. Always do. Meh." then on with whatever they were doing.
If you think Britain is having a low key election then try France. They vote on Sunday and it could be epochal yet there is ZERO evidence. I’ve maybe seen one tiny electoral poster - one!! And I’ve been travelling here for nearly a week. Also nothing on the front pages of the local papers (which are still quite important in France).
The only evidence I’ve had was a table of boat workers at a bar in Belle Ile who seemed to be having a passionate but awkward debate about whether to vote for Le Pen. I detected that most of the were intending to do this but one guy was berating them - causing the awkwardness. But my frendh is not good (tho it is improving, perforce)
💥 Not one Tory 2019 voter we spoke to is even considering voting Conservative on July 4th
💥 Tories described as "self-centred", "out of touch", "hopeless"
💥 People described the moments they turned away from the Conservatives: partygate, Covid contracts, the economy, and "the absolute disgrace" Liz Truss
💥 Sunak's early D-Day exit was singled out as "one of the biggest mistakes a politician has made": seen as "humiliating", "embarrassing", "disgusting"; one voter said they were "fuming"
💥 Rishi Sunak described as "lost", "out of touch", "false, trying to side with the general public but you just see straight through it", "smug", and a "pathetic toff"
💥 Reform UK attractive to three of our voters. Nigel Farage described as "misunderstood", "strong", "having good ideas", "great in the jungle"
💥 Keir Starmer described as "uninspiring", "rambles", "irritating", "corporate", "change", and "wishy washy". But the person who said wishy washy said that is a strength, as we "don't need a Donald Trump running our country"
💥 Labour was the most popular choice of the vast majority, with almost all planning on voting for them in one week's time
💥 But everyone said it was a vote against the Tories rather than a vote for Labour. In the words of one voter, "they've not won me, the Tories have just lost me". All said they would be open to going back to the Tories in the future, or voting for any party. This period of mass voter volatility is not going anywhere.
Apols for quoting at length, but I think is really good. From a guy called Nick Tyrone who does a weekly email I subscribe to, 'The Week in Brexitland'. He's on twitter as well. Reflects a lot of my thoughts as to how we got here:
The result of the EU referendum has long been misunderstood by both sides of the Remain-Leave debate. It was neither some sort of Russian PSYOP project gone wild, nor a rational choice for a better future made by the British electorate. It was a cry for help, a wilfully destructive act by the section of the British electorate who made the difference. They were handed a brick and told not to, under any circumstances, throw it through the store window - and they went ahead and hurled it through as an act of defiance. “Deal with that mess,” was the collective voice of Brexit. “Now maybe you’ll be forced to fix things.” The chaos that consumed parliament in the years following the vote was not against the “will of the people”, but a furtherance of what they wanted to happen when they voted for Brexit. They wanted to disrupt the “natural order” and make the political classes squirm. The electorate succeeded in this goal.
In a sense, the Tories getting annihilated by the electorate is the 2016 result coming full circle, back to the only place it was ever going to end up - the Conservative civil war that created Brexit eating the mothership. The same impulse that drove people to do something slightly crazy, slightly drastic, stepping into the unknown in 2016 has driven them to do the same again in 2024 in a very different direction. “You think we won’t destroy the Conservative party? Watch us.”
The warnings about “super majorities” sound remarkably like the “Brexit will cost every household £4,000” scare stories from eight years ago. People aren’t listening. They don’t care. They feel angry and betrayed and they finally have a chance to do something about it, namely destroying the governing party in the most brutal fashion imaginable. The electorate are being given numerous ways to do it, as well. If you feel angry from the right, you can vote Reform and destroy the Tories that way; if you want to make sure they get destroyed, you can vote Labour; if you feel angry from a different angle, there’s the Lib Dems to consider. So many ways of destroying the Conservative party out there to choose from this time round.
What is humorous to watch is Conservative politicians, about to have their careers ended in many circumstances, who cannot begin to fathom that the same destructive forces which gave us Brexit in 2016 have now turned around and are set to annihilate them as well. The winds of hell they unleashed have blown back and obliterated the Tories. You could almost feel sorry for them, if you really tried to.
Interesting and a lot of truth in it I think. What he misses is that, for many, the vote was less a cry for help, more an act of desperation. And none of the parties have learnt that. This is not just a problem for the Tories but in the longer term for Labour as well. Business as usual is no longer an option and if they try to make it so they will go the same way as the Tories in 5 or 10 years time.
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Don't cast the one for the ex-wife unless she tells you to because although you probably wouldn't be prosecuted that would be a crime and you just confessed to it on the internet.
Isn't it actually an offence to complete, even if you have a verbal instruction from the person?
Yes. See my and @TheScreamingEagles post. @leon posting on a subject he has no knowledge as usual. I mean on a site full of people who are experts on elections. How many ex Agents are here. Lots I expect.
A question to ask about the above would be about how an ex wife who doesn't care is registered to vote anyway?
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Don't cast the one for the ex-wife unless she tells you to because although you probably wouldn't be prosecuted that would be a crime and you just confessed to it on the internet.
Isn't it actually an offence to complete, even if you have a verbal instruction from the person?
Yes. See my and @TheScreamingEagles post. @leon posting on a subject he has no knowledge as usual. I mean on a site full of people who are experts on elections. How many ex Agents are here. Lots I expect.
ITS. A. JOKE
Omg
I do know that. I know you are just winding us up.
Interested to know if you knew though that you couldn't do it if instructed to do so? Also interested to know if you know it is easy to check if you have done it, although it takes a court order.
So if you did do it and write an article the authorities might consider it worth checking because it was publicised and you wouldn't get away with saying it was a joke when they pull the ballot paper out.
Ok I’ll run with. It was a joke - I wanted to see how many pompous people on PB would lose their humour-free nuts and get riled. Quite a few it seems
However I am now genuinely interested. Her postal vote really is in my flat (I’ve no idea why she still gets it - she registered here for the 2019 GE but she’s not been here since 2020). I wonder how often that happens and how many people post multiple votes?
Because I could easily do it and no one would know. Tho if I was going to do it I would not announce it on a public forum. OBVS
I have the postal vote for my mother, in a care home with dementia, and could probably do the same. Yet I am fairly sure that an LPA doesn’t extend to voting matters.
Most such occurrences probably occur spontaneously on impulse, and people don’t realise that a photo of the original signature is held on record. If you look at the stats for a constituency declaration, there are usually postal votes rejected, often a fair few of them, and my guess is that most of these are from such situations. Quite possibly people think it’s OK, because their partner working away, or whatever, has agreed to it. But the votes are rejected all the same, The extent to which rejected votes are later investigated is up to the ERO, but if it looked really dodgy - for example several rejected with the same handwriting - it certainly should be.
Apols for quoting at length, but I think is really good. From a guy called Nick Tyrone who does a weekly email I subscribe to, 'The Week in Brexitland'. He's on twitter as well. Reflects a lot of my thoughts as to how we got here:
The result of the EU referendum has long been misunderstood by both sides of the Remain-Leave debate. It was neither some sort of Russian PSYOP project gone wild, nor a rational choice for a better future made by the British electorate. It was a cry for help, a wilfully destructive act by the section of the British electorate who made the difference. They were handed a brick and told not to, under any circumstances, throw it through the store window - and they went ahead and hurled it through as an act of defiance. “Deal with that mess,” was the collective voice of Brexit. “Now maybe you’ll be forced to fix things.” The chaos that consumed parliament in the years following the vote was not against the “will of the people”, but a furtherance of what they wanted to happen when they voted for Brexit. They wanted to disrupt the “natural order” and make the political classes squirm. The electorate succeeded in this goal.
In a sense, the Tories getting annihilated by the electorate is the 2016 result coming full circle, back to the only place it was ever going to end up - the Conservative civil war that created Brexit eating the mothership. The same impulse that drove people to do something slightly crazy, slightly drastic, stepping into the unknown in 2016 has driven them to do the same again in 2024 in a very different direction. “You think we won’t destroy the Conservative party? Watch us.”
The warnings about “super majorities” sound remarkably like the “Brexit will cost every household £4,000” scare stories from eight years ago. People aren’t listening. They don’t care. They feel angry and betrayed and they finally have a chance to do something about it, namely destroying the governing party in the most brutal fashion imaginable. The electorate are being given numerous ways to do it, as well. If you feel angry from the right, you can vote Reform and destroy the Tories that way; if you want to make sure they get destroyed, you can vote Labour; if you feel angry from a different angle, there’s the Lib Dems to consider. So many ways of destroying the Conservative party out there to choose from this time round.
What is humorous to watch is Conservative politicians, about to have their careers ended in many circumstances, who cannot begin to fathom that the same destructive forces which gave us Brexit in 2016 have now turned around and are set to annihilate them as well. The winds of hell they unleashed have blown back and obliterated the Tories. You could almost feel sorry for them, if you really tried to.
Chris Grey's Brexit and Beyond blog is excellent too. His latest post is on the "anti-politics" of right wing populism
Clearly the focus will be on Biden. if he is as far gone as the images seem to suggest, he might struggle to hold it together for a full debate.
Yet his opponents accuse him of being drugged up if he does well, so they win either way.
Trump rambles incoherently constantly but unfortunately none of his supporters care, so an unedifying encounter of two very old men past their prime looks likely. Only one cares about democracy though.
'Drugging up' someone with dementia would be highly unlikely to improve their debate performance.
And we know whose White House was an actual pill mill.
The allegation that he was on some kind of amphetamines for the State of the Union looks quite convincing to me - the sudden extraordinary improvement in lucidity and eloquence was striking, as was the massive relapse to his normal senility thereafter
Moreover they will want to avoid any “accidents”. A medically informed (and left wing) friend of mine recently gave me a plausible explanation for Biden’s weird behaviour on the White House lawn the other day. I’ll spare PB the unhappy details and precise medical words my friend used, but it all made sense
Also, how many octogenarians are NOT on multiple drugs? It’s normal. I am sure Trump is as well. He’s definitely been guzzling ozempic you can see it in his face
Amphetamines are not a treatment for dementia. Indeed they are likely to make it worse.
The only strong evidence we have for off label, unethical drug prescriptions in the White House is from the Trump administration. I don't count right wing TwitterX as evidence. Or your friends.
I was using “amphetamines” in the broadly accepted medical sense of “many different kinds of drugs some of them not actually amphetamines”
They could have jacked him up with this
“The following are used to temporarily improve dementia symptoms. Cholinesterase inhibitors. These medicines work by boosting levels of a chemical messenger involved in memory and judgment. They include donepezil (Aricept, Adlarity), rivastigmine (Exelon) and galantamine (Razadyne ER)”
So, you're clueless, and you can use google. Got that.
Is there a total sense of humour failure on PB this morning? Jeeez
Yes - I'm doing (electronic) paperwork this morning. I loathe paperwork.
Me too. Tidying the office after several projects. Partly to get things together for the tax returns. Which I also loathe.
Leon will be confessing to picking out and eating the whitish stuff between his 3rd and 4th toes next, to epater les PBourgeois.
Sinn Fein are 8/15 with the bookies here . Normally this seat is won in the most marginal way as the unionists only fielded one serious candidate last time to not split the vote . This time it looks like both unionist parties contesting ? Maybe reading this wrong but seems like a Sinn Fein cert (much more so than 8/15) if so
What's your source for indicating two major unionist parties are running ?
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Don't cast the one for the ex-wife unless she tells you to because although you probably wouldn't be prosecuted that would be a crime and you just confessed to it on the internet.
Isn't it actually an offence to complete, even if you have a verbal instruction from the person?
Yes. See my and @TheScreamingEagles post. @leon posting on a subject he has no knowledge as usual. I mean on a site full of people who are experts on elections. How many ex Agents are here. Lots I expect.
A question to ask about the above would be about how an ex wife who doesn't care is registered to vote anyway?
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Don't cast the one for the ex-wife unless she tells you to because although you probably wouldn't be prosecuted that would be a crime and you just confessed to it on the internet.
Isn't it actually an offence to complete, even if you have a verbal instruction from the person?
Yes. See my and @TheScreamingEagles post. @leon posting on a subject he has no knowledge as usual. I mean on a site full of people who are experts on elections. How many ex Agents are here. Lots I expect.
ITS. A. JOKE
Omg
I do know that. I know you are just winding us up.
Interested to know if you knew though that you couldn't do it if instructed to do so? Also interested to know if you know it is easy to check if you have done it, although it takes a court order.
So if you did do it and write an article the authorities might consider it worth checking because it was publicised and you wouldn't get away with saying it was a joke when they pull the ballot paper out.
Ok I’ll run with. It was a joke - I wanted to see how many pompous people on PB would lose their humour-free nuts and get riled. Quite a few it seems
However I am now genuinely interested. Her postal vote really is in my flat (I’ve no idea why she still gets it - she registered here for the 2019 GE but she’s not been here since 2020). I wonder how often that happens and how many people post multiple votes?
Because I could easily do it and no one would know. Tho if I was going to do it I would not announce it on a public forum. OBVS
I have the postal vote for my mother, in a care home with dementia, and could probably do the same. Yet I am fairly sure that an LPA doesn’t extend to voting matters.
Most such occurrences probably occur spontaneously on impulse, and people don’t realise that a photo of the original signature is held on record. If you look at the stats for a constituency declaration, there are usually postal votes rejected, often a fair few of them, and my guess is that most of these are from such situations. Quite possibly people think it’s OK, because their partner working away, or whatever, has agreed to it. But the votes are rejected all the same, The extent to which rejected votes are later investigated is up to the ERO, but if it looked really dodgy - for example several rejected with the same handwriting - it certainly should be.
Interesting. So they literally check every postal vote? That must really slow up the count on the night as they have to check every postal vote that is put in the ballot box on the day?
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Don't cast the one for the ex-wife unless she tells you to because although you probably wouldn't be prosecuted that would be a crime and you just confessed to it on the internet.
Isn't it actually an offence to complete, even if you have a verbal instruction from the person?
There’s a distinction between a postal vote and a proxy vote.
That I know. A proxy vote is specifically for a certain purpose.
I seem to recall that a postal vote can't be filled in by anyone else, even if the person whose vote it is, is directly instructing you. Is that right?
My proxy poll card arrived this morning, so next Thursday will bring the added frisson of (legally) casting two votes at the polling station.
Lord Ashcrofts latest (non BPC) poll this week is Lab 40 (-3) Con 19 (+1) Ref 17 (-1) LD 10 (+1) Don't know the rest of the figs, sorry, all, on his Web lordashcroftpolls.com
Chunky drop for Labour there and more stalling for Reform
I am convinced that if Farage hadn’t dropped his Putin-bollock Reform would have overtaken the Tories and destroyed them forever. Now I expect the Tories to edge back to 25ish and reform to fall to 15ish
Still horrific for the Tories but sadly not terminal
When the election was called I was hoping for a small Labour majority but that seems extremely unlikely now. Next best would therefore be a reduction in Tory seats to the point where they migh suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.
That's not looking likely either. Looks like about 100 seats - too small to be a useful Opposition, too big to precipitate a rebirth.
Sigh.
Perhaps much discussion has blinded us. It is quite possible that the generally unthinkable reality of 'Tories 100 seats, Labour well over 400' will come as a giant surprise to the UK as a whole, most of whom spend no time thinking about this and may assume the result will be close to the usual sort of turn taking.
I think Tories getting 100 seats would be epoch making, and give a chance for sanity to return. But 50 would be better.
I think that while the projections have appeared on TV and social media, the reality hasn't entered the Public Consciousness.
This is, in many ways, the lowest key general election campaign I have seen. No one seems to be talking about it, out in The Real. If you prompt people - "Tories will lose. Useless. Labour will put up taxes. Always do. Meh." then on with whatever they were doing.
The missing ingredient, usually present in elections however tawdry and selfish but sometimes better than that, is hope. If the next government can't work on that issue they will soon be in trouble. This can be done by the magic of converting 'half empty' to 'half full'. No-one in politics has tried it since the early period of Boris's doomed premiership.
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Completing a postal vote for someone else is a criminal offence.
He knows, he just wants the attention, as always.
And it worked. But also I am probably gonna do this to make the evening more exciting. Will I be arrested?
Almost certainly not, but do you fancy a couple of months in prison.
If that curtails the daily travel reporting for a couple of months, I'd say go for it Leon!
It’ll give me a couple of months extra to find his ten bags if the Tories wipeout.
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Completing a postal vote for someone else is a criminal offence.
He knows, he just wants the attention, as always.
And it worked. But also I am probably gonna do this to make the evening more exciting. Will I be arrested?
Almost certainly not, but do you fancy a couple of months in prison.
If that curtails the daily travel reporting for a couple of months, I'd say go for it Leon!
It’ll give me a couple of months extra to find his ten bags if the Tories wipeout.
They won’t be completely wiped out…l
And Leicester will never win the Premier League…
Again, you mean? On the gambling issue, the late Clement Freud used to claim that his judicious betting on his election results in his constituency paid, or went substantially towards paying for, his constituency office expenses.
On the betting scandal, I suspect we'll end up with a political ban on politicians betting on politics. From what I have read there are an awful lot of cheeky punts placed by politicians, so if this goes all puritanical then it could be all kinds of fun.
There's a world of difference between betting on yourself, your party, your candidates elsewhere to win, and betting on yourself to lose. Or betting unsing insider knowledge on when the election will be. Especially if your job is to get your party ready for that election and you don't bother.
The challenge is that less betting means less odds. And they are a useful tool for gauging how elections are progressing. The Press and Journal this morning in a piece about Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey notes that Ross was 1% - 100/1 - to retain his seat in 2019 and do so. Useful data surely!
Someone was asking earlier - I do not hold any bets on anyone.
Apols for quoting at length, but I think is really good. From a guy called Nick Tyrone who does a weekly email I subscribe to, 'The Week in Brexitland'. He's on twitter as well. Reflects a lot of my thoughts as to how we got here:
The result of the EU referendum has long been misunderstood by both sides of the Remain-Leave debate. It was neither some sort of Russian PSYOP project gone wild, nor a rational choice for a better future made by the British electorate. It was a cry for help, a wilfully destructive act by the section of the British electorate who made the difference. They were handed a brick and told not to, under any circumstances, throw it through the store window - and they went ahead and hurled it through as an act of defiance. “Deal with that mess,” was the collective voice of Brexit. “Now maybe you’ll be forced to fix things.” The chaos that consumed parliament in the years following the vote was not against the “will of the people”, but a furtherance of what they wanted to happen when they voted for Brexit. They wanted to disrupt the “natural order” and make the political classes squirm. The electorate succeeded in this goal.
In a sense, the Tories getting annihilated by the electorate is the 2016 result coming full circle, back to the only place it was ever going to end up - the Conservative civil war that created Brexit eating the mothership. The same impulse that drove people to do something slightly crazy, slightly drastic, stepping into the unknown in 2016 has driven them to do the same again in 2024 in a very different direction. “You think we won’t destroy the Conservative party? Watch us.”
The warnings about “super majorities” sound remarkably like the “Brexit will cost every household £4,000” scare stories from eight years ago. People aren’t listening. They don’t care. They feel angry and betrayed and they finally have a chance to do something about it, namely destroying the governing party in the most brutal fashion imaginable. The electorate are being given numerous ways to do it, as well. If you feel angry from the right, you can vote Reform and destroy the Tories that way; if you want to make sure they get destroyed, you can vote Labour; if you feel angry from a different angle, there’s the Lib Dems to consider. So many ways of destroying the Conservative party out there to choose from this time round.
What is humorous to watch is Conservative politicians, about to have their careers ended in many circumstances, who cannot begin to fathom that the same destructive forces which gave us Brexit in 2016 have now turned around and are set to annihilate them as well. The winds of hell they unleashed have blown back and obliterated the Tories. You could almost feel sorry for them, if you really tried to.
Interesting and a lot of truth in it I think. What he misses is that, for many, the vote was less a cry for help, more an act of desperation. And none of the parties have learnt that. This is not just a problem for the Tories but in the longer term for Labour as well. Business as usual is no longer an option and if they try to make it so they will go the same way as the Tories in 5 or 10 years time.
Exactly right. Brexit was also a scream of anger about immigration. We all know that - I voted Leave for sovereignty and democracy reasons like you - but I wholly accept that many of my fellow Britons were demanding: LOWER IMMIGRATION
And what did the Tories do once they “got Brexit done”? They raised inmigration to the highest levels in our history. 2.4 millions in 3 years. Utterly insane and criminally irresponsible and for this and mainly this they deserve to die. You cannot betray voters like this, you absolutely cannot
So for the three most recent polls there is quite a lot of consistency. Herding in the final week?
Lab 39,40, 42 so let’s call it LAB 40% Con 20,20, 23 so let’s call it CON 22% to be generous RFM 14, 15, 16 so RFM 15% LibDem 11,12,12 so let’s call it LibDem 12% GRN 5,6,6 so let’s call it GREEN 6%
Fed into EC without tactical that would yield a Lab majority of c. 230 with the tories and LibDems vying for second place on around 70.
I still think the Conservative vote share will rise a little and that Labour and Reform may slip a little further but I accept that time is limited.
Yes tonight's debate one of the few events in the US presidential election campaign left that might shift the polls. Much earlier than usual as Trump and Biden rejected the networks usual autumn debate proposals, in fact only one other debate is scheduled in September between the two candidates.
Other than that, apart from the poll bounces each party gets after their conventions it is hard to see much else moving the dial. Though in the unlikely event Trump is jailed next month after his conviction in New York over the Stormy Daniels hush money that would certainly make things interesting
Lord Ashcrofts latest (non BPC) poll this week is Lab 40 (-3) Con 19 (+1) Ref 17 (-1) LD 10 (+1) Don't know the rest of the figs, sorry, all, on his Web lordashcroftpolls.com
Chunky drop for Labour there and more stalling for Reform
I am convinced that if Farage hadn’t dropped his Putin-bollock Reform would have overtaken the Tories and destroyed them forever. Now I expect the Tories to edge back to 25ish and reform to fall to 15ish
Still horrific for the Tories but sadly not terminal
When the election was called I was hoping for a small Labour majority but that seems extremely unlikely now. Next best would therefore be a reduction in Tory seats to the point where they migh suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.
That's not looking likely either. Looks like about 100 seats - too small to be a useful Opposition, too big to precipitate a rebirth.
Sigh.
Perhaps much discussion has blinded us. It is quite possible that the generally unthinkable reality of 'Tories 100 seats, Labour well over 400' will come as a giant surprise to the UK as a whole, most of whom spend no time thinking about this and may assume the result will be close to the usual sort of turn taking.
I think Tories getting 100 seats would be epoch making, and give a chance for sanity to return. But 50 would be better.
I think that while the projections have appeared on TV and social media, the reality hasn't entered the Public Consciousness.
This is, in many ways, the lowest key general election campaign I have seen. No one seems to be talking about it, out in The Real. If you prompt people - "Tories will lose. Useless. Labour will put up taxes. Always do. Meh." then on with whatever they were doing.
If you think Britain is having a low key election then try France. They vote on Sunday and it could be epochal yet there is ZERO evidence. I’ve maybe seen one tiny electoral poster - one!! And I’ve been travelling here for nearly a week. Also nothing on the front pages of the local papers (which are still quite important in France).
The only evidence I’ve had was a table of boat workers at a bar in Belle Ile who seemed to be having a passionate but awkward debate about whether to vote for Le Pen. I detected that most of the were intending to do this but one guy was berating them - causing the awkwardness. But my frendh is not good (tho it is improving, perforce)
If you hear a group of french ouvriers make frequent use of the word etranger you may confidently assume they're earnestly discussing Albert Camus' existential classic.
I have the postal vote for my mother, in a care home with dementia, and could probably do the same. Yet I am fairly sure that an LPA doesn’t extend to voting matters.
Most such occurrences probably occur spontaneously on impulse, and people don’t realise that a photo of the original signature is held on record. If you look at the stats for a constituency declaration, there are usually postal votes rejected, often a fair few of them, and my guess is that most of these are from such situations. Quite possibly people think it’s OK, because their partner working away, or whatever, has agreed to it. But the votes are rejected all the same, The extent to which rejected votes are later investigated is up to the ERO, but if it looked really dodgy - for example several rejected with the same handwriting - it certainly should be.
Had a look at the LPA stuff. It certainly givs you some rights with regard to registering to vote but not sure how far it goes with the actual vote itself
All the fretting about close run elections and polling surprises is coming from non-Tories (including me) who have been burned too many times by the inevitable British truism that the Tories always somehow pull it out of the bag.
All the guff about supermajorities and Labour commencing a thousand year Reich comes from the Tories.
Labour seems to have regained some lost ground in the past few days with vote share in most polls above forty and comfortably ahead of Con and Reform put together. Con are just ahead of Reform in the high teens.
This suggests a Con seat total below 100.
This is partly an artefact of the polls that have published recently. We're due a YouGov today, and People Polling - two of the firms that put Labour below 40%, but which haven't published recently.
In other polls More in Common put Labour up one, out of the 30s, and Norstat down one, below 40, so it's a bit of a wash.
I'd say that Labour's share has stabilised, and not continued the downward movement it had previously.
Lord Ashcrofts latest (non BPC) poll this week is Lab 40 (-3) Con 19 (+1) Ref 17 (-1) LD 10 (+1) Don't know the rest of the figs, sorry, all, on his Web lordashcroftpolls.com
Chunky drop for Labour there and more stalling for Reform
I am convinced that if Farage hadn’t dropped his Putin-bollock Reform would have overtaken the Tories and destroyed them forever. Now I expect the Tories to edge back to 25ish and reform to fall to 15ish
Still horrific for the Tories but sadly not terminal
When the election was called I was hoping for a small Labour majority but that seems extremely unlikely now. Next best would therefore be a reduction in Tory seats to the point where they migh suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.
That's not looking likely either. Looks like about 100 seats - too small to be a useful Opposition, too big to precipitate a rebirth.
Sigh.
Perhaps much discussion has blinded us. It is quite possible that the generally unthinkable reality of 'Tories 100 seats, Labour well over 400' will come as a giant surprise to the UK as a whole, most of whom spend no time thinking about this and may assume the result will be close to the usual sort of turn taking.
I think Tories getting 100 seats would be epoch making, and give a chance for sanity to return. But 50 would be better.
I think that while the projections have appeared on TV and social media, the reality hasn't entered the Public Consciousness.
This is, in many ways, the lowest key general election campaign I have seen. No one seems to be talking about it, out in The Real. If you prompt people - "Tories will lose. Useless. Labour will put up taxes. Always do. Meh." then on with whatever they were doing.
If you think Britain is having a low key election then try France. They vote on Sunday and it could be epochal yet there is ZERO evidence. I’ve maybe seen one tiny electoral poster - one!! And I’ve been travelling here for nearly a week. Also nothing on the front pages of the local papers (which are still quite important in France).
The only evidence I’ve had was a table of boat workers at a bar in Belle Ile who seemed to be having a passionate but awkward debate about whether to vote for Le Pen. I detected that most of the were intending to do this but one guy was berating them - causing the awkwardness. But my frendh is not good (tho it is improving, perforce)
It must be a trial for someone who has a) convinced himself that there’s some mass foment in the western world and b) getting paid to write about it.
Oh and a tip, if you’re going to write about French politics or indeed anywhere with a degree of aptitude do at least speak the local language.
Lord Ashcrofts latest (non BPC) poll this week is Lab 40 (-3) Con 19 (+1) Ref 17 (-1) LD 10 (+1) Don't know the rest of the figs, sorry, all, on his Web lordashcroftpolls.com
Chunky drop for Labour there and more stalling for Reform
I am convinced that if Farage hadn’t dropped his Putin-bollock Reform would have overtaken the Tories and destroyed them forever. Now I expect the Tories to edge back to 25ish and reform to fall to 15ish
Still horrific for the Tories but sadly not terminal
When the election was called I was hoping for a small Labour majority but that seems extremely unlikely now. Next best would therefore be a reduction in Tory seats to the point where they migh suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.
That's not looking likely either. Looks like about 100 seats - too small to be a useful Opposition, too big to precipitate a rebirth.
Sigh.
Perhaps much discussion has blinded us. It is quite possible that the generally unthinkable reality of 'Tories 100 seats, Labour well over 400' will come as a giant surprise to the UK as a whole, most of whom spend no time thinking about this and may assume the result will be close to the usual sort of turn taking.
I think Tories getting 100 seats would be epoch making, and give a chance for sanity to return. But 50 would be better.
After last night's debate showed Sunak thought the winner by almost 90% of 2019 Tories I think the Tories will narrow the gap and end up nearer 200 seats than 100, let alone 50.
Only 50 would need Reform to have overtaken the Tories in most polls to be realistic which they haven't
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
You don't have 2 votes. You have 1. It is a crime to use your ex wife's vote. Not likely to get caught, but you have admitted it here and voter fraud is usually harshly punished.
How do you sign the cover document? My postal vote was refused In May because my signature didn’t match that originally submitted.
My wife is disturbingly good at forging signatures and other handwriting, a skill developed over years of signing her school homework book in the name of her mother at her mother's direction.
Not that I don't trust her or anything, but I did complete my postal vote while she was still in bed, just to remove any temptation.
Yes tonight's debate one of the few events in the US presidential election campaign left that might shift the polls. Much earlier than usual as Trump and Biden rejected the networks usual autumn debate proposals, in fact only one other debate is scheduled in September between the two candidates.
Other than that, apart from the poll bounces each party gets after their conventions it is hard to see much else moving the dial. Though in the unlikely event Trump is jailed next month after his conviction in New York over the Stormy Daniels hush money that would certainly make things interesting
I'm going to tape it and watch 1st thing tomorrow. It could tell us nothing, it could tell us everything. Will be fascinating to see what happens!
All the fretting about close run elections and polling surprises is coming from non-Tories (including me) who have been burned too many times by the inevitable British truism that the Tories always somehow pull it out of the bag.
All the guff about supermajorities and Labour commencing a thousand year Reich comes from the Tories.
Seems a large number of seats for Reform. Can it be so?
It's total nonsense.
Electoral Calculus does have a habit of pumping out projections that simply don't pass the smell test. I was starting to think they'd improved at the beginning of this campaign, but we're back to the implausible ones.
If I'd coded a program with that sort of output, I would be putting in log statements all over the place to try and work out why it was coming up with something so obviously wrong. Reform are not winning North Cotswolds and the LibDems are not winning Cambridge.
I'm wondering if the underlying algorithms and program have been over-tweaked.
Con -24 on the 2019 notional result for 352 Labour -13 on the 2019 notional result for 184 LD +36 on the 2019 notional result for 44 Greens +1 on the 2019 notional result for 2 SNP -1 on the 2019 notional result for 47
This was with putting in the exact figures for both GB and using the Scottish option to ensure the exact figures for Scotland were put in as well.
Apols for quoting at length, but I think is really good. From a guy called Nick Tyrone who does a weekly email I subscribe to, 'The Week in Brexitland'. He's on twitter as well. Reflects a lot of my thoughts as to how we got here:
The result of the EU referendum has long been misunderstood by both sides of the Remain-Leave debate. It was neither some sort of Russian PSYOP project gone wild, nor a rational choice for a better future made by the British electorate. It was a cry for help, a wilfully destructive act by the section of the British electorate who made the difference. They were handed a brick and told not to, under any circumstances, throw it through the store window - and they went ahead and hurled it through as an act of defiance. “Deal with that mess,” was the collective voice of Brexit. “Now maybe you’ll be forced to fix things.” The chaos that consumed parliament in the years following the vote was not against the “will of the people”, but a furtherance of what they wanted to happen when they voted for Brexit. They wanted to disrupt the “natural order” and make the political classes squirm. The electorate succeeded in this goal.
In a sense, the Tories getting annihilated by the electorate is the 2016 result coming full circle, back to the only place it was ever going to end up - the Conservative civil war that created Brexit eating the mothership. The same impulse that drove people to do something slightly crazy, slightly drastic, stepping into the unknown in 2016 has driven them to do the same again in 2024 in a very different direction. “You think we won’t destroy the Conservative party? Watch us.”
The warnings about “super majorities” sound remarkably like the “Brexit will cost every household £4,000” scare stories from eight years ago. People aren’t listening. They don’t care. They feel angry and betrayed and they finally have a chance to do something about it, namely destroying the governing party in the most brutal fashion imaginable. The electorate are being given numerous ways to do it, as well. If you feel angry from the right, you can vote Reform and destroy the Tories that way; if you want to make sure they get destroyed, you can vote Labour; if you feel angry from a different angle, there’s the Lib Dems to consider. So many ways of destroying the Conservative party out there to choose from this time round.
What is humorous to watch is Conservative politicians, about to have their careers ended in many circumstances, who cannot begin to fathom that the same destructive forces which gave us Brexit in 2016 have now turned around and are set to annihilate them as well. The winds of hell they unleashed have blown back and obliterated the Tories. You could almost feel sorry for them, if you really tried to.
Yes. Pretty much agree. Very good. However, there is no clue as to the meaning of 'fixing things'. Without context it's of more interest to psychanalysis than to politics.
Brexit really centred around 2 things - FOM and its consequences, but secondly the much harder thing of having got to a place WRT the EU where it needed fixing (eg FOM) but there was not the power to do so, nor had the public been asked if it wanted to get to where we were. And we saw other EU countries holding referenda while we didn't.
At that point there seriously wasn't a whole hearted majority for either staying or leaving. There still isn't. Until this massive failure of UK statecraft is resolved it will carry on. It may destroy the Tories this time; there is no party immune from these consequences. Labour could find this out quite soon. And then what?
Labour seems to have regained some lost ground in the past few days with vote share in most polls above forty and comfortably ahead of Con and Reform put together. Con are just ahead of Reform in the high teens.
This suggests a Con seat total below 100.
This is partly an artefact of the polls that have published recently. We're due a YouGov today, and People Polling - two of the firms that put Labour below 40%, but which haven't published recently.
In other polls More in Common put Labour up one, out of the 30s, and Norstat down one, below 40, so it's a bit of a wash.
I'd say that Labour's share has stabilised, and not continued the downward movement it had previously.
I expect both main parties to creep up over the next week, and for Ref and Green to creep down. And Lib Dem stay similar.
Apols for quoting at length, but I think is really good. From a guy called Nick Tyrone who does a weekly email I subscribe to, 'The Week in Brexitland'. He's on twitter as well. Reflects a lot of my thoughts as to how we got here:
The result of the EU referendum has long been misunderstood by both sides of the Remain-Leave debate. It was neither some sort of Russian PSYOP project gone wild, nor a rational choice for a better future made by the British electorate. It was a cry for help, a wilfully destructive act by the section of the British electorate who made the difference. They were handed a brick and told not to, under any circumstances, throw it through the store window - and they went ahead and hurled it through as an act of defiance. “Deal with that mess,” was the collective voice of Brexit. “Now maybe you’ll be forced to fix things.” The chaos that consumed parliament in the years following the vote was not against the “will of the people”, but a furtherance of what they wanted to happen when they voted for Brexit. They wanted to disrupt the “natural order” and make the political classes squirm. The electorate succeeded in this goal.
In a sense, the Tories getting annihilated by the electorate is the 2016 result coming full circle, back to the only place it was ever going to end up - the Conservative civil war that created Brexit eating the mothership. The same impulse that drove people to do something slightly crazy, slightly drastic, stepping into the unknown in 2016 has driven them to do the same again in 2024 in a very different direction. “You think we won’t destroy the Conservative party? Watch us.”
The warnings about “super majorities” sound remarkably like the “Brexit will cost every household £4,000” scare stories from eight years ago. People aren’t listening. They don’t care. They feel angry and betrayed and they finally have a chance to do something about it, namely destroying the governing party in the most brutal fashion imaginable. The electorate are being given numerous ways to do it, as well. If you feel angry from the right, you can vote Reform and destroy the Tories that way; if you want to make sure they get destroyed, you can vote Labour; if you feel angry from a different angle, there’s the Lib Dems to consider. So many ways of destroying the Conservative party out there to choose from this time round.
What is humorous to watch is Conservative politicians, about to have their careers ended in many circumstances, who cannot begin to fathom that the same destructive forces which gave us Brexit in 2016 have now turned around and are set to annihilate them as well. The winds of hell they unleashed have blown back and obliterated the Tories. You could almost feel sorry for them, if you really tried to.
As someone whose Leaviness has hardened distinctly over the last 8 years, I'm surprised to find myself in total agreement with that. People didn't vote to Leave over abstract issues of sovereignty - they voted to Leave because outside the cities the internationalist order wasn't working for them. What they have ended up with is the more of the same, only more so. I don't really know what the Conservative Party believes in, and I suspect nor do they - but in the absence of any sort of philosophical framework we default to that of the state, which is still very much of the centrist/globalist stripe.
There was a moment back in 2020 when the sorts of wages which had been kept low for the last 30 years by globalism - truck drivers being the prime example - started rising steeply when it looked to me like the sort of Brexit that places like Boston voted for might actually be happening. Then government panicked and imported a whole load more medium- and low-paid workers and wage rises among the Brexit-voting classes stalled.
It really is still very much about immigration. I recall a @Cyclefree piece from about 6 years ago which characterised most recent elections, along with the Brexit referendum, as being about immigration: a conversation between voters and government in which voters said "really, we do want less immigration" and government ignored them. This election looks like being no different.
Lord Ashcrofts latest (non BPC) poll this week is Lab 40 (-3) Con 19 (+1) Ref 17 (-1) LD 10 (+1) Don't know the rest of the figs, sorry, all, on his Web lordashcroftpolls.com
Chunky drop for Labour there and more stalling for Reform
I am convinced that if Farage hadn’t dropped his Putin-bollock Reform would have overtaken the Tories and destroyed them forever. Now I expect the Tories to edge back to 25ish and reform to fall to 15ish
Still horrific for the Tories but sadly not terminal
When the election was called I was hoping for a small Labour majority but that seems extremely unlikely now. Next best would therefore be a reduction in Tory seats to the point where they migh suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.
That's not looking likely either. Looks like about 100 seats - too small to be a useful Opposition, too big to precipitate a rebirth.
Sigh.
Perhaps much discussion has blinded us. It is quite possible that the generally unthinkable reality of 'Tories 100 seats, Labour well over 400' will come as a giant surprise to the UK as a whole, most of whom spend no time thinking about this and may assume the result will be close to the usual sort of turn taking.
I think Tories getting 100 seats would be epoch making, and give a chance for sanity to return. But 50 would be better.
After last night's debate showed Sunak thought the winner by almost 90% of 2019 Tories I think the Tories will narrow the gap and end up nearer 200 seats than 100, let alone 50.
Only 50 would need Reform to have overtaken the Tories in most polls to be realistic which they haven't
Well bet on it then . Fill your boots. 7-1 on conservatives 150 to 200 seats.
Lord Ashcrofts latest (non BPC) poll this week is Lab 40 (-3) Con 19 (+1) Ref 17 (-1) LD 10 (+1) Don't know the rest of the figs, sorry, all, on his Web lordashcroftpolls.com
Chunky drop for Labour there and more stalling for Reform
I am convinced that if Farage hadn’t dropped his Putin-bollock Reform would have overtaken the Tories and destroyed them forever. Now I expect the Tories to edge back to 25ish and reform to fall to 15ish
Still horrific for the Tories but sadly not terminal
When the election was called I was hoping for a small Labour majority but that seems extremely unlikely now. Next best would therefore be a reduction in Tory seats to the point where they migh suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.
That's not looking likely either. Looks like about 100 seats - too small to be a useful Opposition, too big to precipitate a rebirth.
Sigh.
Perhaps much discussion has blinded us. It is quite possible that the generally unthinkable reality of 'Tories 100 seats, Labour well over 400' will come as a giant surprise to the UK as a whole, most of whom spend no time thinking about this and may assume the result will be close to the usual sort of turn taking.
I think Tories getting 100 seats would be epoch making, and give a chance for sanity to return. But 50 would be better.
After last night's debate showed Sunak thought the winner by almost 90% of 2019 Tories I think the Tories will narrow the gap and end up nearer 200 seats than 100, let alone 50.
Only 50 would need Reform to have overtaken the Tories in most polls to be realistic which they haven't
Comment on the TV earlier today; one side last night talked about “ruling”, the other about “serving”. I’d certainly rather have a government which regarded itself as being elected to serve, as opposed to one elected to rule!
Lord Ashcrofts latest (non BPC) poll this week is Lab 40 (-3) Con 19 (+1) Ref 17 (-1) LD 10 (+1) Don't know the rest of the figs, sorry, all, on his Web lordashcroftpolls.com
Chunky drop for Labour there and more stalling for Reform
I am convinced that if Farage hadn’t dropped his Putin-bollock Reform would have overtaken the Tories and destroyed them forever. Now I expect the Tories to edge back to 25ish and reform to fall to 15ish
Still horrific for the Tories but sadly not terminal
When the election was called I was hoping for a small Labour majority but that seems extremely unlikely now. Next best would therefore be a reduction in Tory seats to the point where they migh suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.
That's not looking likely either. Looks like about 100 seats - too small to be a useful Opposition, too big to precipitate a rebirth.
Sigh.
Perhaps much discussion has blinded us. It is quite possible that the generally unthinkable reality of 'Tories 100 seats, Labour well over 400' will come as a giant surprise to the UK as a whole, most of whom spend no time thinking about this and may assume the result will be close to the usual sort of turn taking.
I think Tories getting 100 seats would be epoch making, and give a chance for sanity to return. But 50 would be better.
I think that while the projections have appeared on TV and social media, the reality hasn't entered the Public Consciousness.
This is, in many ways, the lowest key general election campaign I have seen. No one seems to be talking about it, out in The Real. If you prompt people - "Tories will lose. Useless. Labour will put up taxes. Always do. Meh." then on with whatever they were doing.
The missing ingredient, usually present in elections however tawdry and selfish but sometimes better than that, is hope. If the next government can't work on that issue they will soon be in trouble. This can be done by the magic of converting 'half empty' to 'half full'. No-one in politics has tried it since the early period of Boris's doomed premiership.
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Yes. You know that crime you just admitted to? Go away, have a think, then come back here and say "I've thought about it and I won't cast my ex-wife's postal vote because that's bad"
Apols for quoting at length, but I think is really good. From a guy called Nick Tyrone who does a weekly email I subscribe to, 'The Week in Brexitland'. He's on twitter as well. Reflects a lot of my thoughts as to how we got here:
The result of the EU referendum has long been misunderstood by both sides of the Remain-Leave debate. It was neither some sort of Russian PSYOP project gone wild, nor a rational choice for a better future made by the British electorate. It was a cry for help, a wilfully destructive act by the section of the British electorate who made the difference. They were handed a brick and told not to, under any circumstances, throw it through the store window - and they went ahead and hurled it through as an act of defiance. “Deal with that mess,” was the collective voice of Brexit. “Now maybe you’ll be forced to fix things.” The chaos that consumed parliament in the years following the vote was not against the “will of the people”, but a furtherance of what they wanted to happen when they voted for Brexit. They wanted to disrupt the “natural order” and make the political classes squirm. The electorate succeeded in this goal.
In a sense, the Tories getting annihilated by the electorate is the 2016 result coming full circle, back to the only place it was ever going to end up - the Conservative civil war that created Brexit eating the mothership. The same impulse that drove people to do something slightly crazy, slightly drastic, stepping into the unknown in 2016 has driven them to do the same again in 2024 in a very different direction. “You think we won’t destroy the Conservative party? Watch us.”
The warnings about “super majorities” sound remarkably like the “Brexit will cost every household £4,000” scare stories from eight years ago. People aren’t listening. They don’t care. They feel angry and betrayed and they finally have a chance to do something about it, namely destroying the governing party in the most brutal fashion imaginable. The electorate are being given numerous ways to do it, as well. If you feel angry from the right, you can vote Reform and destroy the Tories that way; if you want to make sure they get destroyed, you can vote Labour; if you feel angry from a different angle, there’s the Lib Dems to consider. So many ways of destroying the Conservative party out there to choose from this time round.
What is humorous to watch is Conservative politicians, about to have their careers ended in many circumstances, who cannot begin to fathom that the same destructive forces which gave us Brexit in 2016 have now turned around and are set to annihilate them as well. The winds of hell they unleashed have blown back and obliterated the Tories. You could almost feel sorry for them, if you really tried to.
Interesting and a lot of truth in it I think. What he misses is that, for many, the vote was less a cry for help, more an act of desperation. And none of the parties have learnt that. This is not just a problem for the Tories but in the longer term for Labour as well. Business as usual is no longer an option and if they try to make it so they will go the same way as the Tories in 5 or 10 years time.
Exactly right. Brexit was also a scream of anger about immigration. We all know that - I voted Leave for sovereignty and democracy reasons like you - but I wholly accept that many of my fellow Britons were demanding: LOWER IMMIGRATION
And what did the Tories do once they “got Brexit done”? They raised inmigration to the highest levels in our history. 2.4 millions in 3 years. Utterly insane and criminally irresponsible and for this and mainly this they deserve to die. You cannot betray voters like this, you absolutely cannot
Immigration was obviously a factor, but I think it was more general than that. If we imagine a present where there had been zero net migration since Britain left the EU, I don't think the mood in the country would be particularly different. A little less pressure on housing, more of a recruitment crisis in the NHS, overall you'd still have a great frustration with the status quo.
Apols for quoting at length, but I think is really good. From a guy called Nick Tyrone who does a weekly email I subscribe to, 'The Week in Brexitland'. He's on twitter as well. Reflects a lot of my thoughts as to how we got here:
The result of the EU referendum has long been misunderstood by both sides of the Remain-Leave debate. It was neither some sort of Russian PSYOP project gone wild, nor a rational choice for a better future made by the British electorate. It was a cry for help, a wilfully destructive act by the section of the British electorate who made the difference. They were handed a brick and told not to, under any circumstances, throw it through the store window - and they went ahead and hurled it through as an act of defiance. “Deal with that mess,” was the collective voice of Brexit. “Now maybe you’ll be forced to fix things.” The chaos that consumed parliament in the years following the vote was not against the “will of the people”, but a furtherance of what they wanted to happen when they voted for Brexit. They wanted to disrupt the “natural order” and make the political classes squirm. The electorate succeeded in this goal.
In a sense, the Tories getting annihilated by the electorate is the 2016 result coming full circle, back to the only place it was ever going to end up - the Conservative civil war that created Brexit eating the mothership. The same impulse that drove people to do something slightly crazy, slightly drastic, stepping into the unknown in 2016 has driven them to do the same again in 2024 in a very different direction. “You think we won’t destroy the Conservative party? Watch us.”
The warnings about “super majorities” sound remarkably like the “Brexit will cost every household £4,000” scare stories from eight years ago. People aren’t listening. They don’t care. They feel angry and betrayed and they finally have a chance to do something about it, namely destroying the governing party in the most brutal fashion imaginable. The electorate are being given numerous ways to do it, as well. If you feel angry from the right, you can vote Reform and destroy the Tories that way; if you want to make sure they get destroyed, you can vote Labour; if you feel angry from a different angle, there’s the Lib Dems to consider. So many ways of destroying the Conservative party out there to choose from this time round.
What is humorous to watch is Conservative politicians, about to have their careers ended in many circumstances, who cannot begin to fathom that the same destructive forces which gave us Brexit in 2016 have now turned around and are set to annihilate them as well. The winds of hell they unleashed have blown back and obliterated the Tories. You could almost feel sorry for them, if you really tried to.
Interesting and a lot of truth in it I think. What he misses is that, for many, the vote was less a cry for help, more an act of desperation. And none of the parties have learnt that. This is not just a problem for the Tories but in the longer term for Labour as well. Business as usual is no longer an option and if they try to make it so they will go the same way as the Tories in 5 or 10 years time.
Exactly right. Brexit was also a scream of anger about immigration. We all know that - I voted Leave for sovereignty and democracy reasons like you - but I wholly accept that many of my fellow Britons were demanding: LOWER IMMIGRATION
And what did the Tories do once they “got Brexit done”? They raised inmigration to the highest levels in our history. 2.4 millions in 3 years. Utterly insane and criminally irresponsible and for this and mainly this they deserve to die. You cannot betray voters like this, you absolutely cannot
The stupidity of brexit vote was huge numbers thought it would stop immigration from asia and africa.
Lord Ashcrofts latest (non BPC) poll this week is Lab 40 (-3) Con 19 (+1) Ref 17 (-1) LD 10 (+1) Don't know the rest of the figs, sorry, all, on his Web lordashcroftpolls.com
Chunky drop for Labour there and more stalling for Reform
I am convinced that if Farage hadn’t dropped his Putin-bollock Reform would have overtaken the Tories and destroyed them forever. Now I expect the Tories to edge back to 25ish and reform to fall to 15ish
Still horrific for the Tories but sadly not terminal
When the election was called I was hoping for a small Labour majority but that seems extremely unlikely now. Next best would therefore be a reduction in Tory seats to the point where they migh suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.
That's not looking likely either. Looks like about 100 seats - too small to be a useful Opposition, too big to precipitate a rebirth.
Sigh.
Perhaps much discussion has blinded us. It is quite possible that the generally unthinkable reality of 'Tories 100 seats, Labour well over 400' will come as a giant surprise to the UK as a whole, most of whom spend no time thinking about this and may assume the result will be close to the usual sort of turn taking.
I think Tories getting 100 seats would be epoch making, and give a chance for sanity to return. But 50 would be better.
I think that while the projections have appeared on TV and social media, the reality hasn't entered the Public Consciousness.
This is, in many ways, the lowest key general election campaign I have seen. No one seems to be talking about it, out in The Real. If you prompt people - "Tories will lose. Useless. Labour will put up taxes. Always do. Meh." then on with whatever they were doing.
The missing ingredient, usually present in elections however tawdry and selfish but sometimes better than that, is hope. If the next government can't work on that issue they will soon be in trouble. This can be done by the magic of converting 'half empty' to 'half full'. No-one in politics has tried it since the early period of Boris's doomed premiership.
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Don't cast the one for the ex-wife unless she tells you to because although you probably wouldn't be prosecuted that would be a crime and you just confessed to it on the internet.
Isn't it actually an offence to complete, even if you have a verbal instruction from the person?
Yes. See my and @TheScreamingEagles post. @leon posting on a subject he has no knowledge as usual. I mean on a site full of people who are experts on elections. How many ex Agents are here. Lots I expect.
A question to ask about the above would be about how an ex wife who doesn't care is registered to vote anyway?
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Don't cast the one for the ex-wife unless she tells you to because although you probably wouldn't be prosecuted that would be a crime and you just confessed to it on the internet.
Isn't it actually an offence to complete, even if you have a verbal instruction from the person?
Yes. See my and @TheScreamingEagles post. @leon posting on a subject he has no knowledge as usual. I mean on a site full of people who are experts on elections. How many ex Agents are here. Lots I expect.
ITS. A. JOKE
Omg
I do know that. I know you are just winding us up.
Interested to know if you knew though that you couldn't do it if instructed to do so? Also interested to know if you know it is easy to check if you have done it, although it takes a court order.
So if you did do it and write an article the authorities might consider it worth checking because it was publicised and you wouldn't get away with saying it was a joke when they pull the ballot paper out.
Ok I’ll run with. It was a joke - I wanted to see how many pompous people on PB would lose their humour-free nuts and get riled. Quite a few it seems
However I am now genuinely interested. Her postal vote really is in my flat (I’ve no idea why she still gets it - she registered here for the 2019 GE but she’s not been here since 2020). I wonder how often that happens and how many people post multiple votes?
Because I could easily do it and no one would know. Tho if I was going to do it I would not announce it on a public forum. OBVS
I have the postal vote for my mother, in a care home with dementia, and could probably do the same. Yet I am fairly sure that an LPA doesn’t extend to voting matters.
Most such occurrences probably occur spontaneously on impulse, and people don’t realise that a photo of the original signature is held on record. If you look at the stats for a constituency declaration, there are usually postal votes rejected, often a fair few of them, and my guess is that most of these are from such situations. Quite possibly people think it’s OK, because their partner working away, or whatever, has agreed to it. But the votes are rejected all the same, The extent to which rejected votes are later investigated is up to the ERO, but if it looked really dodgy - for example several rejected with the same handwriting - it certainly should be.
Interesting. So they literally check every postal vote? That must really slow up the count on the night as they have to check every postal vote that is put in the ballot box on the day?
All postal votes received before polling day are verified at separate verification counts, held in the runup to polling day. Those received at the last minute are verified at the first stage of the election night count.
The parties are entitled to send observers to the PV verification counts, just as they are to the main count, and if the observers are there, it’s even more likely that the checking will be thorough and anything that looks suspect will be set aside. Because the voter’s identity details are visible, every ERO will know to keep the actual ballot paper face down throughout this process.
Parties often don’t bother to observe the verification count, because it’s mostly a waste of time - even if you make a difference by challenging something the counting agent hasn’t spotted or was going to let through, you have no way of knowing whether a challenge helps or hinders your candidate.
But it’s a handy job to send someone who, for various possible reasons, you don’t want to trust knocking on doors, when you’ve run out of things to deliver, because it seems more important than it is, and people are usually keen to go, at least for the first time. If they are very lucky they just might see the X on a few ballots as they are pulled out of envelopes, if the voter has foolishly folded them with the voting side facing outwards, and by the time they get back to HQ they will be pressed for any info - because it’s the only actually data on completed ballots on offer at the time. So the one or two votes the hapless helper has actually seen will have turned into “I saw a few votes”, through the natural tendency to exaggerate and desire to appear important (I am sure you can understand), and by the time the story has been passed around, and reached the media if it’s a key election or by-election, Chinese whispers will have turned it into “party Z is ahead on the postal votes” and occasionally we see such nonsense posted here by people who don’t understand how these things go.
So, yes, they’re checked individually and usually thoroughly. Such that any count result that doesn’t reject some of its postal votes should be regarded with some suspicion.
Good morning everyone, and thank-you for the header.
An interesting piece on a high price medicine, namely Hemgenix, a gene-therapy treatment that costs $3.5m per use in the USA, and replaces clotting factor injections cost between £150,000 and £200,000 per patient per year for life.
NHS use has commenced and is being monitored, and no one will give out any information about how much European authorities are paying, but there seem to be incentive arrangements and performance based payments. 250 patients from 2000 with haemophilia B will be treated in (I assume, given devolution) England. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4nnn51rdrzo
On the betting scandal, I suspect we'll end up with a political ban on politicians betting on politics. From what I have read there are an awful lot of cheeky punts placed by politicians, so if this goes all puritanical then it could be all kinds of fun.
There's a world of difference between betting on yourself, your party, your candidates elsewhere to win, and betting on yourself to lose. Or betting unsing insider knowledge on when the election will be. Especially if your job is to get your party ready for that election and you don't bother.
The challenge is that less betting means less odds. And they are a useful tool for gauging how elections are progressing. The Press and Journal this morning in a piece about Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey notes that Ross was 1% - 100/1 - to retain his seat in 2019 and do so. Useful data surely!
Someone was asking earlier - I do not hold any bets on anyone.
I suspect early in the next Parliament, the Speaker will be the spoilsport that bans it. Anybody found breaching it will be bringing the House into disrepute - and face some serious sanctions.
Lord Ashcrofts latest (non BPC) poll this week is Lab 40 (-3) Con 19 (+1) Ref 17 (-1) LD 10 (+1) Don't know the rest of the figs, sorry, all, on his Web lordashcroftpolls.com
Chunky drop for Labour there and more stalling for Reform
I am convinced that if Farage hadn’t dropped his Putin-bollock Reform would have overtaken the Tories and destroyed them forever. Now I expect the Tories to edge back to 25ish and reform to fall to 15ish
Still horrific for the Tories but sadly not terminal
When the election was called I was hoping for a small Labour majority but that seems extremely unlikely now. Next best would therefore be a reduction in Tory seats to the point where they migh suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.
That's not looking likely either. Looks like about 100 seats - too small to be a useful Opposition, too big to precipitate a rebirth.
Sigh.
Perhaps much discussion has blinded us. It is quite possible that the generally unthinkable reality of 'Tories 100 seats, Labour well over 400' will come as a giant surprise to the UK as a whole, most of whom spend no time thinking about this and may assume the result will be close to the usual sort of turn taking.
I think Tories getting 100 seats would be epoch making, and give a chance for sanity to return. But 50 would be better.
I'm sticking to my weeks-old prediction of 100 Tory seats +/- 100.
Lord Ashcrofts latest (non BPC) poll this week is Lab 40 (-3) Con 19 (+1) Ref 17 (-1) LD 10 (+1) Don't know the rest of the figs, sorry, all, on his Web lordashcroftpolls.com
Chunky drop for Labour there and more stalling for Reform
I am convinced that if Farage hadn’t dropped his Putin-bollock Reform would have overtaken the Tories and destroyed them forever. Now I expect the Tories to edge back to 25ish and reform to fall to 15ish
Still horrific for the Tories but sadly not terminal
When the election was called I was hoping for a small Labour majority but that seems extremely unlikely now. Next best would therefore be a reduction in Tory seats to the point where they migh suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.
That's not looking likely either. Looks like about 100 seats - too small to be a useful Opposition, too big to precipitate a rebirth.
Sigh.
Perhaps much discussion has blinded us. It is quite possible that the generally unthinkable reality of 'Tories 100 seats, Labour well over 400' will come as a giant surprise to the UK as a whole, most of whom spend no time thinking about this and may assume the result will be close to the usual sort of turn taking.
I think Tories getting 100 seats would be epoch making, and give a chance for sanity to return. But 50 would be better.
I think that while the projections have appeared on TV and social media, the reality hasn't entered the Public Consciousness.
This is, in many ways, the lowest key general election campaign I have seen. No one seems to be talking about it, out in The Real. If you prompt people - "Tories will lose. Useless. Labour will put up taxes. Always do. Meh." then on with whatever they were doing.
If you think Britain is having a low key election then try France. They vote on Sunday and it could be epochal yet there is ZERO evidence. I’ve maybe seen one tiny electoral poster - one!! And I’ve been travelling here for nearly a week. Also nothing on the front pages of the local papers (which are still quite important in France).
The only evidence I’ve had was a table of boat workers at a bar in Belle Ile who seemed to be having a passionate but awkward debate about whether to vote for Le Pen. I detected that most of the were intending to do this but one guy was berating them - causing the awkwardness. But my frendh is not good (tho it is improving, perforce)
If you hear a group of french ouvriers make frequent use of the word etranger you may confidently assume they're earnestly discussing Albert Camus' existential classic.
Or they work on the assembly line for the Lepage 344mm Crème Brûlée gun.
One shot turns an entire battalion of Russian troops into Left Bank Existentialists. One minute they a slaughtering and pillaging, next they are wearing black turtle necks, drinking expresso and arguing that reality doesn't exist.
Apols for quoting at length, but I think is really good. From a guy called Nick Tyrone who does a weekly email I subscribe to, 'The Week in Brexitland'. He's on twitter as well. Reflects a lot of my thoughts as to how we got here:
The result of the EU referendum has long been misunderstood by both sides of the Remain-Leave debate. It was neither some sort of Russian PSYOP project gone wild, nor a rational choice for a better future made by the British electorate. It was a cry for help, a wilfully destructive act by the section of the British electorate who made the difference. They were handed a brick and told not to, under any circumstances, throw it through the store window - and they went ahead and hurled it through as an act of defiance. “Deal with that mess,” was the collective voice of Brexit. “Now maybe you’ll be forced to fix things.” The chaos that consumed parliament in the years following the vote was not against the “will of the people”, but a furtherance of what they wanted to happen when they voted for Brexit. They wanted to disrupt the “natural order” and make the political classes squirm. The electorate succeeded in this goal.
In a sense, the Tories getting annihilated by the electorate is the 2016 result coming full circle, back to the only place it was ever going to end up - the Conservative civil war that created Brexit eating the mothership. The same impulse that drove people to do something slightly crazy, slightly drastic, stepping into the unknown in 2016 has driven them to do the same again in 2024 in a very different direction. “You think we won’t destroy the Conservative party? Watch us.”
The warnings about “super majorities” sound remarkably like the “Brexit will cost every household £4,000” scare stories from eight years ago. People aren’t listening. They don’t care. They feel angry and betrayed and they finally have a chance to do something about it, namely destroying the governing party in the most brutal fashion imaginable. The electorate are being given numerous ways to do it, as well. If you feel angry from the right, you can vote Reform and destroy the Tories that way; if you want to make sure they get destroyed, you can vote Labour; if you feel angry from a different angle, there’s the Lib Dems to consider. So many ways of destroying the Conservative party out there to choose from this time round.
What is humorous to watch is Conservative politicians, about to have their careers ended in many circumstances, who cannot begin to fathom that the same destructive forces which gave us Brexit in 2016 have now turned around and are set to annihilate them as well. The winds of hell they unleashed have blown back and obliterated the Tories. You could almost feel sorry for them, if you really tried to.
Interesting and a lot of truth in it I think. What he misses is that, for many, the vote was less a cry for help, more an act of desperation. And none of the parties have learnt that. This is not just a problem for the Tories but in the longer term for Labour as well. Business as usual is no longer an option and if they try to make it so they will go the same way as the Tories in 5 or 10 years time.
Exactly right. Brexit was also a scream of anger about immigration. We all know that - I voted Leave for sovereignty and democracy reasons like you - but I wholly accept that many of my fellow Britons were demanding: LOWER IMMIGRATION
And what did the Tories do once they “got Brexit done”? They raised inmigration to the highest levels in our history. 2.4 millions in 3 years. Utterly insane and criminally irresponsible and for this and mainly this they deserve to die. You cannot betray voters like this, you absolutely cannot
Immigration was obviously a factor, but I think it was more general than that. If we imagine a present where there had been zero net migration since Britain left the EU, I don't think the mood in the country would be particularly different. A little less pressure on housing, more of a recruitment crisis in the NHS, overall you'd still have a great frustration with the status quo.
But we also interpret a 52:48 result as if it reflect a completely opposite mood in the country to a 48:52 result the other way.
It was close and revealed a divided country. Brexit managed to put together a coalition of political brickthrowers, people concerned about immigration, sovereignty voters and Singapore-on-Thames Thatcherites to get over the 50% line. Without any of those groups it would probably have fallen short. I think immigration was probably the biggest driver, along with brick throwing.
Lord Ashcrofts latest (non BPC) poll this week is Lab 40 (-3) Con 19 (+1) Ref 17 (-1) LD 10 (+1) Don't know the rest of the figs, sorry, all, on his Web lordashcroftpolls.com
Chunky drop for Labour there and more stalling for Reform
I am convinced that if Farage hadn’t dropped his Putin-bollock Reform would have overtaken the Tories and destroyed them forever. Now I expect the Tories to edge back to 25ish and reform to fall to 15ish
Still horrific for the Tories but sadly not terminal
When the election was called I was hoping for a small Labour majority but that seems extremely unlikely now. Next best would therefore be a reduction in Tory seats to the point where they migh suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.
That's not looking likely either. Looks like about 100 seats - too small to be a useful Opposition, too big to precipitate a rebirth.
Sigh.
Perhaps much discussion has blinded us. It is quite possible that the generally unthinkable reality of 'Tories 100 seats, Labour well over 400' will come as a giant surprise to the UK as a whole, most of whom spend no time thinking about this and may assume the result will be close to the usual sort of turn taking.
I think Tories getting 100 seats would be epoch making, and give a chance for sanity to return. But 50 would be better.
I think that while the projections have appeared on TV and social media, the reality hasn't entered the Public Consciousness.
This is, in many ways, the lowest key general election campaign I have seen. No one seems to be talking about it, out in The Real. If you prompt people - "Tories will lose. Useless. Labour will put up taxes. Always do. Meh." then on with whatever they were doing.
It hasnt. I stress to my dad the conservatives could go less than 100 seats but it hasnt filtered through to him though he thinks the tories will lose.The exit poll could be a giant shock to the nation.
All the fretting about close run elections and polling surprises is coming from non-Tories (including me) who have been burned too many times by the inevitable British truism that the Tories always somehow pull it out of the bag.
All the guff about supermajorities and Labour commencing a thousand year Reich comes from the Tories.
Labour seems to have regained some lost ground in the past few days with vote share in most polls above forty and comfortably ahead of Con and Reform put together. Con are just ahead of Reform in the high teens.
This suggests a Con seat total below 100.
This is partly an artefact of the polls that have published recently. We're due a YouGov today, and People Polling - two of the firms that put Labour below 40%, but which haven't published recently.
In other polls More in Common put Labour up one, out of the 30s, and Norstat down one, below 40, so it's a bit of a wash.
I'd say that Labour's share has stabilised, and not continued the downward movement it had previously.
I expect both main parties to creep up over the next week, and for Ref and Green to creep down. And Lib Dem stay similar.
You (along with many others) have been arguing for a couple of weeks now that the Tory vote was going to creep up at the last minute - indeed, I seem to recall that you thought they would end up around 30%. There's a general consensus that, in the privacy of the polling booth, many Tories will put a reluctant cross in the Tory box.
But surely by now there would be some sign of this in the opinion polls? As far as I can see there isn't a sniff of it - the fluctuations that there are seem pretty random and, overall, the Tory vote is static or even down a bit. I know there's a week to go, but at what stage will people accept that it's too late? Probably 10pm July 5th. Swingback: the dog that didn't bark because Sunak put it down.
Lord Ashcrofts latest (non BPC) poll this week is Lab 40 (-3) Con 19 (+1) Ref 17 (-1) LD 10 (+1) Don't know the rest of the figs, sorry, all, on his Web lordashcroftpolls.com
Chunky drop for Labour there and more stalling for Reform
I am convinced that if Farage hadn’t dropped his Putin-bollock Reform would have overtaken the Tories and destroyed them forever. Now I expect the Tories to edge back to 25ish and reform to fall to 15ish
Still horrific for the Tories but sadly not terminal
When the election was called I was hoping for a small Labour majority but that seems extremely unlikely now. Next best would therefore be a reduction in Tory seats to the point where they migh suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.
That's not looking likely either. Looks like about 100 seats - too small to be a useful Opposition, too big to precipitate a rebirth.
Sigh.
Perhaps much discussion has blinded us. It is quite possible that the generally unthinkable reality of 'Tories 100 seats, Labour well over 400' will come as a giant surprise to the UK as a whole, most of whom spend no time thinking about this and may assume the result will be close to the usual sort of turn taking.
I think Tories getting 100 seats would be epoch making, and give a chance for sanity to return. But 50 would be better.
After last night's debate showed Sunak thought the winner by almost 90% of 2019 Tories I think the Tories will narrow the gap and end up nearer 200 seats than 100, let alone 50.
Only 50 would need Reform to have overtaken the Tories in most polls to be realistic which they haven't
Comment on the TV earlier today; one side last night talked about “ruling”, the other about “serving”. I’d certainly rather have a government which regarded itself as being elected to serve, as opposed to one elected to rule!
Apols for quoting at length, but I think is really good. From a guy called Nick Tyrone who does a weekly email I subscribe to, 'The Week in Brexitland'. He's on twitter as well. Reflects a lot of my thoughts as to how we got here:
The result of the EU referendum has long been misunderstood by both sides of the Remain-Leave debate. It was neither some sort of Russian PSYOP project gone wild, nor a rational choice for a better future made by the British electorate. It was a cry for help, a wilfully destructive act by the section of the British electorate who made the difference. They were handed a brick and told not to, under any circumstances, throw it through the store window - and they went ahead and hurled it through as an act of defiance. “Deal with that mess,” was the collective voice of Brexit. “Now maybe you’ll be forced to fix things.” The chaos that consumed parliament in the years following the vote was not against the “will of the people”, but a furtherance of what they wanted to happen when they voted for Brexit. They wanted to disrupt the “natural order” and make the political classes squirm. The electorate succeeded in this goal.
In a sense, the Tories getting annihilated by the electorate is the 2016 result coming full circle, back to the only place it was ever going to end up - the Conservative civil war that created Brexit eating the mothership. The same impulse that drove people to do something slightly crazy, slightly drastic, stepping into the unknown in 2016 has driven them to do the same again in 2024 in a very different direction. “You think we won’t destroy the Conservative party? Watch us.”
The warnings about “super majorities” sound remarkably like the “Brexit will cost every household £4,000” scare stories from eight years ago. People aren’t listening. They don’t care. They feel angry and betrayed and they finally have a chance to do something about it, namely destroying the governing party in the most brutal fashion imaginable. The electorate are being given numerous ways to do it, as well. If you feel angry from the right, you can vote Reform and destroy the Tories that way; if you want to make sure they get destroyed, you can vote Labour; if you feel angry from a different angle, there’s the Lib Dems to consider. So many ways of destroying the Conservative party out there to choose from this time round.
What is humorous to watch is Conservative politicians, about to have their careers ended in many circumstances, who cannot begin to fathom that the same destructive forces which gave us Brexit in 2016 have now turned around and are set to annihilate them as well. The winds of hell they unleashed have blown back and obliterated the Tories. You could almost feel sorry for them, if you really tried to.
Interesting and a lot of truth in it I think. What he misses is that, for many, the vote was less a cry for help, more an act of desperation. And none of the parties have learnt that. This is not just a problem for the Tories but in the longer term for Labour as well. Business as usual is no longer an option and if they try to make it so they will go the same way as the Tories in 5 or 10 years time.
Exactly right. Brexit was also a scream of anger about immigration. We all know that - I voted Leave for sovereignty and democracy reasons like you - but I wholly accept that many of my fellow Britons were demanding: LOWER IMMIGRATION
And what did the Tories do once they “got Brexit done”? They raised inmigration to the highest levels in our history. 2.4 millions in 3 years. Utterly insane and criminally irresponsible and for this and mainly this they deserve to die. You cannot betray voters like this, you absolutely cannot
The stupidity of brexit vote was huge numbers thought it would stop immigration from asia and africa.
Well, not exactly stupid, if you remember the surges of immigration from the Middle East arriving in mainland Europe in the first half of 2016. Not unreasonable of voters to look warily at what was happening in Germany, with Angela Merkel promising on behalf of Europe to take as many immigrants as would come, and wonder how they could actually stop it while inside the EU. Not really stupid at all.
Campaign update from Norwich South. Green and Labour Garden placards now springing up but at levels below Locals, mostly recycled LE ones (vote Norwich Labour etc), surprised not more Green but I guess they are focusing on Waveney in the area. They'd be well placed to challenge here in 2029 though and for the city council next time. 3 on my road, 2 Green and a 'reelect Clive Lewis' window A4 2 doors up, id have had him pegged as a Green any day! One Reform placard standing against the red and green tide. Have now received freeposts from LDs and The Party of Women plus Labour earlier. No Green, Reform or Conservative.
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Don't cast the one for the ex-wife unless she tells you to because although you probably wouldn't be prosecuted that would be a crime and you just confessed to it on the internet.
Isn't it actually an offence to complete, even if you have a verbal instruction from the person?
Yes. See my and @TheScreamingEagles post. @leon posting on a subject he has no knowledge as usual. I mean on a site full of people who are experts on elections. How many ex Agents are here. Lots I expect.
A question to ask about the above would be about how an ex wife who doesn't care is registered to vote anyway?
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Don't cast the one for the ex-wife unless she tells you to because although you probably wouldn't be prosecuted that would be a crime and you just confessed to it on the internet.
Isn't it actually an offence to complete, even if you have a verbal instruction from the person?
Yes. See my and @TheScreamingEagles post. @leon posting on a subject he has no knowledge as usual. I mean on a site full of people who are experts on elections. How many ex Agents are here. Lots I expect.
ITS. A. JOKE
Omg
I do know that. I know you are just winding us up.
Interested to know if you knew though that you couldn't do it if instructed to do so? Also interested to know if you know it is easy to check if you have done it, although it takes a court order.
So if you did do it and write an article the authorities might consider it worth checking because it was publicised and you wouldn't get away with saying it was a joke when they pull the ballot paper out.
Ok I’ll run with. It was a joke - I wanted to see how many pompous people on PB would lose their humour-free nuts and get riled. Quite a few it seems
However I am now genuinely interested. Her postal vote really is in my flat (I’ve no idea why she still gets it - she registered here for the 2019 GE but she’s not been here since 2020). I wonder how often that happens and how many people post multiple votes?
Because I could easily do it and no one would know. Tho if I was going to do it I would not announce it on a public forum. OBVS
I have the postal vote for my mother, in a care home with dementia, and could probably do the same. Yet I am fairly sure that an LPA doesn’t extend to voting matters.
Most such occurrences probably occur spontaneously on impulse, and people don’t realise that a photo of the original signature is held on record. If you look at the stats for a constituency declaration, there are usually postal votes rejected, often a fair few of them, and my guess is that most of these are from such situations. Quite possibly people think it’s OK, because their partner working away, or whatever, has agreed to it. But the votes are rejected all the same, The extent to which rejected votes are later investigated is up to the ERO, but if it looked really dodgy - for example several rejected with the same handwriting - it certainly should be.
Interesting. So they literally check every postal vote? That must really slow up the count on the night as they have to check every postal vote that is put in the ballot box on the day?
All postal votes received before polling day are verified at separate verification counts, held in the runup to polling day. Those received at the last minute are verified at the first stage of the election night count.
The parties are entitled to send observers to the PV verification counts, just as they are to the main count, and if the observers are there, it’s even more likely that the checking will be thorough and anything that looks suspect will be set aside. Because the voter’s identity details are visible, every ERO will know to keep the actual ballot paper face down throughout this process.
Parties often don’t bother to observe the verification count, because it’s mostly a waste of time - even if you make a difference by challenging something the counting agent hasn’t spotted or was going to let through, you have no way of knowing whether a challenge helps or hinders your candidate.
But it’s a handy job to send someone who, for various possible reasons, you don’t want to trust knocking on doors, when you’ve run out of things to deliver, because it seems more important than it is, and people are usually keen to go, at least for the first time. If they are very lucky they just might see the X on a few ballots as they are pulled out of envelopes, if the voter has foolishly folded them with the voting side facing outwards, and by the time they get back to HQ they will be pressed for any info - because it’s the only actually data on completed ballots on offer at the time. So the one or two votes the hapless helper has actually seen will have turned into “I saw a few votes”, through the natural tendency to exaggerate and desire to appear important (I am sure you can understand), and by the time the story has been passed around, and reached the media if it’s a key election or by-election, Chinese whispers will have turned it into “party Z is ahead on the postal votes” and occasionally we see such nonsense posted here by people who don’t understand how these things go.
So, yes, they’re checked individually and usually thoroughly. Such that any count result that doesn’t reject some of its postal votes should be regarded with some suspicion.
I am now educated. And somewhat reassured that we are so rigorous. Merci
Lord Ashcrofts latest (non BPC) poll this week is Lab 40 (-3) Con 19 (+1) Ref 17 (-1) LD 10 (+1) Don't know the rest of the figs, sorry, all, on his Web lordashcroftpolls.com
Chunky drop for Labour there and more stalling for Reform
I am convinced that if Farage hadn’t dropped his Putin-bollock Reform would have overtaken the Tories and destroyed them forever. Now I expect the Tories to edge back to 25ish and reform to fall to 15ish
Still horrific for the Tories but sadly not terminal
When the election was called I was hoping for a small Labour majority but that seems extremely unlikely now. Next best would therefore be a reduction in Tory seats to the point where they migh suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.
That's not looking likely either. Looks like about 100 seats - too small to be a useful Opposition, too big to precipitate a rebirth.
Sigh.
Perhaps much discussion has blinded us. It is quite possible that the generally unthinkable reality of 'Tories 100 seats, Labour well over 400' will come as a giant surprise to the UK as a whole, most of whom spend no time thinking about this and may assume the result will be close to the usual sort of turn taking.
I think Tories getting 100 seats would be epoch making, and give a chance for sanity to return. But 50 would be better.
After last night's debate showed Sunak thought the winner by almost 90% of 2019 Tories I think the Tories will narrow the gap and end up nearer 200 seats than 100, let alone 50.
Only 50 would need Reform to have overtaken the Tories in most polls to be realistic which they haven't
Comment on the TV earlier today; one side last night talked about “ruling”, the other about “serving”. I’d certainly rather have a government which regarded itself as being elected to serve, as opposed to one elected to rule!
My brother watched it and said the same thing. It wasn’t what Sunak said either so much as the way he constantly interrupted Starmer that really put him off. He thought he came over as rude and entitled.
Apols for quoting at length, but I think is really good. From a guy called Nick Tyrone who does a weekly email I subscribe to, 'The Week in Brexitland'. He's on twitter as well. Reflects a lot of my thoughts as to how we got here:
The result of the EU referendum has long been misunderstood by both sides of the Remain-Leave debate. It was neither some sort of Russian PSYOP project gone wild, nor a rational choice for a better future made by the British electorate. It was a cry for help, a wilfully destructive act by the section of the British electorate who made the difference. They were handed a brick and told not to, under any circumstances, throw it through the store window - and they went ahead and hurled it through as an act of defiance. “Deal with that mess,” was the collective voice of Brexit. “Now maybe you’ll be forced to fix things.” The chaos that consumed parliament in the years following the vote was not against the “will of the people”, but a furtherance of what they wanted to happen when they voted for Brexit. They wanted to disrupt the “natural order” and make the political classes squirm. The electorate succeeded in this goal.
In a sense, the Tories getting annihilated by the electorate is the 2016 result coming full circle, back to the only place it was ever going to end up - the Conservative civil war that created Brexit eating the mothership. The same impulse that drove people to do something slightly crazy, slightly drastic, stepping into the unknown in 2016 has driven them to do the same again in 2024 in a very different direction. “You think we won’t destroy the Conservative party? Watch us.”
The warnings about “super majorities” sound remarkably like the “Brexit will cost every household £4,000” scare stories from eight years ago. People aren’t listening. They don’t care. They feel angry and betrayed and they finally have a chance to do something about it, namely destroying the governing party in the most brutal fashion imaginable. The electorate are being given numerous ways to do it, as well. If you feel angry from the right, you can vote Reform and destroy the Tories that way; if you want to make sure they get destroyed, you can vote Labour; if you feel angry from a different angle, there’s the Lib Dems to consider. So many ways of destroying the Conservative party out there to choose from this time round.
What is humorous to watch is Conservative politicians, about to have their careers ended in many circumstances, who cannot begin to fathom that the same destructive forces which gave us Brexit in 2016 have now turned around and are set to annihilate them as well. The winds of hell they unleashed have blown back and obliterated the Tories. You could almost feel sorry for them, if you really tried to.
As someone whose Leaviness has hardened distinctly over the last 8 years, I'm surprised to find myself in total agreement with that. People didn't vote to Leave over abstract issues of sovereignty - they voted to Leave because outside the cities the internationalist order wasn't working for them. What they have ended up with is the more of the same, only more so. I don't really know what the Conservative Party believes in, and I suspect nor do they - but in the absence of any sort of philosophical framework we default to that of the state, which is still very much of the centrist/globalist stripe.
There was a moment back in 2020 when the sorts of wages which had been kept low for the last 30 years by globalism - truck drivers being the prime example - started rising steeply when it looked to me like the sort of Brexit that places like Boston voted for might actually be happening. Then government panicked and imported a whole load more medium- and low-paid workers and wage rises among the Brexit-voting classes stalled.
It really is still very much about immigration. I recall a @Cyclefree piece from about 6 years ago which characterised most recent elections, along with the Brexit referendum, as being about immigration: a conversation between voters and government in which voters said "really, we do want less immigration" and government ignored them. This election looks like being no different.
Wages for skilled working class jobs are rising significantly IMO.
This is predominantly a supply/demand situation caused by decades of insufficient training of new workers.
And why I keep saying that the opportunities for northern, male, working class have never been better than they are now.
Those working class who don't have and will not require the in demand skillset will continue to feature among those 'left behind'.
Likely joined by increasing numbers of indebted middle class types who find their skillsets are no longer needed because of the implementation of AI and further globalisation.
So for the three most recent polls there is quite a lot of consistency. Herding in the final week?
Lab 39,40, 42 so let’s call it LAB 40% Con 20,20, 23 so let’s call it CON 22% to be generous RFM 14, 15, 16 so RFM 15% LibDem 11,12,12 so let’s call it LibDem 12% GRN 5,6,6 so let’s call it GREEN 6%
Fed into EC without tactical that would yield a Lab majority of c. 230 with the tories and LibDems vying for second place on around 70.
I still think the Conservative vote share will rise a little and that Labour and Reform may slip a little further but I accept that time is limited.
I think Farage has Ratnered the Reform brand with his position snugly in Putin's small intestine on Ukraine. There will be a close correlation between those who are proud of the UK's assistance to Ukraine and those who might have considered voting Reform. I genuinely can't see Reform coming close to the Conservative vote.
Perhaps my only bright spot of this whole election would be Farage losing in Clacton.
All the fretting about close run elections and polling surprises is coming from non-Tories (including me) who have been burned too many times by the inevitable British truism that the Tories always somehow pull it out of the bag.
All the guff about supermajorities and Labour commencing a thousand year Reich comes from the Tories.
10000 years.
So you think that Starmer will merge with some sand trout and become
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Don't cast the one for the ex-wife unless she tells you to because although you probably wouldn't be prosecuted that would be a crime and you just confessed to it on the internet.
Isn't it actually an offence to complete, even if you have a verbal instruction from the person?
Yes. See my and @TheScreamingEagles post. @leon posting on a subject he has no knowledge as usual. I mean on a site full of people who are experts on elections. How many ex Agents are here. Lots I expect.
A question to ask about the above would be about how an ex wife who doesn't care is registered to vote anyway?
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Don't cast the one for the ex-wife unless she tells you to because although you probably wouldn't be prosecuted that would be a crime and you just confessed to it on the internet.
Isn't it actually an offence to complete, even if you have a verbal instruction from the person?
Yes. See my and @TheScreamingEagles post. @leon posting on a subject he has no knowledge as usual. I mean on a site full of people who are experts on elections. How many ex Agents are here. Lots I expect.
ITS. A. JOKE
Omg
I do know that. I know you are just winding us up.
Interested to know if you knew though that you couldn't do it if instructed to do so? Also interested to know if you know it is easy to check if you have done it, although it takes a court order.
So if you did do it and write an article the authorities might consider it worth checking because it was publicised and you wouldn't get away with saying it was a joke when they pull the ballot paper out.
Ok I’ll run with. It was a joke - I wanted to see how many pompous people on PB would lose their humour-free nuts and get riled. Quite a few it seems
However I am now genuinely interested. Her postal vote really is in my flat (I’ve no idea why she still gets it - she registered here for the 2019 GE but she’s not been here since 2020). I wonder how often that happens and how many people post multiple votes?
Because I could easily do it and no one would know. Tho if I was going to do it I would not announce it on a public forum. OBVS
I have the postal vote for my mother, in a care home with dementia, and could probably do the same. Yet I am fairly sure that an LPA doesn’t extend to voting matters.
Most such occurrences probably occur spontaneously on impulse, and people don’t realise that a photo of the original signature is held on record. If you look at the stats for a constituency declaration, there are usually postal votes rejected, often a fair few of them, and my guess is that most of these are from such situations. Quite possibly people think it’s OK, because their partner working away, or whatever, has agreed to it. But the votes are rejected all the same, The extent to which rejected votes are later investigated is up to the ERO, but if it looked really dodgy - for example several rejected with the same handwriting - it certainly should be.
Interesting. So they literally check every postal vote? That must really slow up the count on the night as they have to check every postal vote that is put in the ballot box on the day?
Nope they are checked in batches as they arrive and parties are allowed to send representatives to scrutinise each day of a check. The actual vote is not exposed. On the day of the count, after the the verification process is done on the votes from the individual boxes on the day (a process that allows us to judge how the parties have done in each ward) the votes are all mixed up, including the postal votes and counted to get the winner.
The votes are then put back into the boxes and sealed. If after that there is suspicion of fraud then with a court order they can be opened. It is possible to identify a particular ballot by its number so you can pick out specific votes. Because this is possible at a count you must not take pictures or note down specific ballot paper information, because it is possible to identify a voter.
PS Just noted your specific point (sorry). I think if you vote on the day it is just like any other vote.
No what anyone with any brains or who knew a single shred about betting would take. The Tories are 230 - two hundred and thirty - on Betfair Exchange. You are either a mug punter or a garden-variety trollcaster.
A question. Will Labour do better than they did in May's local election. Let's try not to give the local elections are different to general ones plus a far higher percentage of people vote in general ones. The Tory gambling scandal. Farage etc. Forget all that. I cannot see Labour getting more than a 5% upswing compared to the local elections. I really cannot.
Labour seems to have regained some lost ground in the past few days with vote share in most polls above forty and comfortably ahead of Con and Reform put together. Con are just ahead of Reform in the high teens.
This suggests a Con seat total below 100.
This is partly an artefact of the polls that have published recently. We're due a YouGov today, and People Polling - two of the firms that put Labour below 40%, but which haven't published recently.
In other polls More in Common put Labour up one, out of the 30s, and Norstat down one, below 40, so it's a bit of a wash.
I'd say that Labour's share has stabilised, and not continued the downward movement it had previously.
I expect both main parties to creep up over the next week, and for Ref and Green to creep down. And Lib Dem stay similar.
You (along with many others) have been arguing for a couple of weeks now that the Tory vote was going to creep up at the last minute - indeed, I seem to recall that you thought they would end up around 30%. There's a general consensus that, in the privacy of the polling booth, many Tories will put a reluctant cross in the Tory box.
But surely by now there would be some sign of this in the opinion polls? As far as I can see there isn't a sniff of it - the fluctuations that there are seem pretty random and, overall, the Tory vote is static or even down a bit. I know there's a week to go, but at what stage will people accept that it's too late? Probably 10pm July 5th. Swingback: the dog that didn't bark because Sunak put it down.
I don't think it will show in the polls at all. But casting the actual vote is very different to giving a response to a pollster. There will be many people who are angry and swear that they're going to make a protest with their vote, even believing it themselves, but who will revert to form when it comes to the crunch. I expect the Conservative rout to be much milder than the polls suggest.
Apols for quoting at length, but I think is really good. From a guy called Nick Tyrone who does a weekly email I subscribe to, 'The Week in Brexitland'. He's on twitter as well. Reflects a lot of my thoughts as to how we got here:
The result of the EU referendum has long been misunderstood by both sides of the Remain-Leave debate. It was neither some sort of Russian PSYOP project gone wild, nor a rational choice for a better future made by the British electorate. It was a cry for help, a wilfully destructive act by the section of the British electorate who made the difference. They were handed a brick and told not to, under any circumstances, throw it through the store window - and they went ahead and hurled it through as an act of defiance. “Deal with that mess,” was the collective voice of Brexit. “Now maybe you’ll be forced to fix things.” The chaos that consumed parliament in the years following the vote was not against the “will of the people”, but a furtherance of what they wanted to happen when they voted for Brexit. They wanted to disrupt the “natural order” and make the political classes squirm. The electorate succeeded in this goal.
In a sense, the Tories getting annihilated by the electorate is the 2016 result coming full circle, back to the only place it was ever going to end up - the Conservative civil war that created Brexit eating the mothership. The same impulse that drove people to do something slightly crazy, slightly drastic, stepping into the unknown in 2016 has driven them to do the same again in 2024 in a very different direction. “You think we won’t destroy the Conservative party? Watch us.”
The warnings about “super majorities” sound remarkably like the “Brexit will cost every household £4,000” scare stories from eight years ago. People aren’t listening. They don’t care. They feel angry and betrayed and they finally have a chance to do something about it, namely destroying the governing party in the most brutal fashion imaginable. The electorate are being given numerous ways to do it, as well. If you feel angry from the right, you can vote Reform and destroy the Tories that way; if you want to make sure they get destroyed, you can vote Labour; if you feel angry from a different angle, there’s the Lib Dems to consider. So many ways of destroying the Conservative party out there to choose from this time round.
What is humorous to watch is Conservative politicians, about to have their careers ended in many circumstances, who cannot begin to fathom that the same destructive forces which gave us Brexit in 2016 have now turned around and are set to annihilate them as well. The winds of hell they unleashed have blown back and obliterated the Tories. You could almost feel sorry for them, if you really tried to.
Interesting and a lot of truth in it I think. What he misses is that, for many, the vote was less a cry for help, more an act of desperation. And none of the parties have learnt that. This is not just a problem for the Tories but in the longer term for Labour as well. Business as usual is no longer an option and if they try to make it so they will go the same way as the Tories in 5 or 10 years time.
Exactly right. Brexit was also a scream of anger about immigration. We all know that - I voted Leave for sovereignty and democracy reasons like you - but I wholly accept that many of my fellow Britons were demanding: LOWER IMMIGRATION
And what did the Tories do once they “got Brexit done”? They raised inmigration to the highest levels in our history. 2.4 millions in 3 years. Utterly insane and criminally irresponsible and for this and mainly this they deserve to die. You cannot betray voters like this, you absolutely cannot
Immigration was obviously a factor, but I think it was more general than that. If we imagine a present where there had been zero net migration since Britain left the EU, I don't think the mood in the country would be particularly different. A little less pressure on housing, more of a recruitment crisis in the NHS, overall you'd still have a great frustration with the status quo.
But we also interpret a 52:48 result as if it reflect a completely opposite mood in the country to a 48:52 result the other way.
It was close and revealed a divided country. Brexit managed to put together a coalition of political brickthrowers, people concerned about immigration, sovereignty voters and Singapore-on-Thames Thatcherites to get over the 50% line. Without any of those groups it would probably have fallen short. I think immigration was probably the biggest driver, along with brick throwing.
The thing about the interpretation of the Brexit vote as a vote if frustration and desperation, is that many of those who voted Remain were also frustrated, but had sufficient attachment to the EU, or were sufficiently scared by the campaign, that they voted Remain.
It's precisely because the vote for Brexit wasn't mainly about Brexit, that we can generalise the main motive force behind it to a substantial majority across the country.
So for the three most recent polls there is quite a lot of consistency. Herding in the final week?
Lab 39,40, 42 so let’s call it LAB 40% Con 20,20, 23 so let’s call it CON 22% to be generous RFM 14, 15, 16 so RFM 15% LibDem 11,12,12 so let’s call it LibDem 12% GRN 5,6,6 so let’s call it GREEN 6%
Fed into EC without tactical that would yield a Lab majority of c. 230 with the tories and LibDems vying for second place on around 70.
I still think the Conservative vote share will rise a little and that Labour and Reform may slip a little further but I accept that time is limited.
I think Farage has Ratnered the Reform brand with his position snugly in Putin's small intestine on Ukraine. There will be a close correlation between those who are proud of the UK's assistance to Ukraine and those who might have considered voting Reform. I genuinely can't see Reform coming close to the Conservative vote.
Perhaps my only bright spot of this whole election would be Farage losing in Clacton.
It should be Watling who beats him if so as Labour appear to have given up and sent the candidate to campaign elsewhere
Apols for quoting at length, but I think is really good. From a guy called Nick Tyrone who does a weekly email I subscribe to, 'The Week in Brexitland'. He's on twitter as well. Reflects a lot of my thoughts as to how we got here:
The result of the EU referendum has long been misunderstood by both sides of the Remain-Leave debate. It was neither some sort of Russian PSYOP project gone wild, nor a rational choice for a better future made by the British electorate. It was a cry for help, a wilfully destructive act by the section of the British electorate who made the difference. They were handed a brick and told not to, under any circumstances, throw it through the store window - and they went ahead and hurled it through as an act of defiance. “Deal with that mess,” was the collective voice of Brexit. “Now maybe you’ll be forced to fix things.” The chaos that consumed parliament in the years following the vote was not against the “will of the people”, but a furtherance of what they wanted to happen when they voted for Brexit. They wanted to disrupt the “natural order” and make the political classes squirm. The electorate succeeded in this goal.
In a sense, the Tories getting annihilated by the electorate is the 2016 result coming full circle, back to the only place it was ever going to end up - the Conservative civil war that created Brexit eating the mothership. The same impulse that drove people to do something slightly crazy, slightly drastic, stepping into the unknown in 2016 has driven them to do the same again in 2024 in a very different direction. “You think we won’t destroy the Conservative party? Watch us.”
The warnings about “super majorities” sound remarkably like the “Brexit will cost every household £4,000” scare stories from eight years ago. People aren’t listening. They don’t care. They feel angry and betrayed and they finally have a chance to do something about it, namely destroying the governing party in the most brutal fashion imaginable. The electorate are being given numerous ways to do it, as well. If you feel angry from the right, you can vote Reform and destroy the Tories that way; if you want to make sure they get destroyed, you can vote Labour; if you feel angry from a different angle, there’s the Lib Dems to consider. So many ways of destroying the Conservative party out there to choose from this time round.
What is humorous to watch is Conservative politicians, about to have their careers ended in many circumstances, who cannot begin to fathom that the same destructive forces which gave us Brexit in 2016 have now turned around and are set to annihilate them as well. The winds of hell they unleashed have blown back and obliterated the Tories. You could almost feel sorry for them, if you really tried to.
As someone whose Leaviness has hardened distinctly over the last 8 years, I'm surprised to find myself in total agreement with that. People didn't vote to Leave over abstract issues of sovereignty - they voted to Leave because outside the cities the internationalist order wasn't working for them. What they have ended up with is the more of the same, only more so. I don't really know what the Conservative Party believes in, and I suspect nor do they - but in the absence of any sort of philosophical framework we default to that of the state, which is still very much of the centrist/globalist stripe.
There was a moment back in 2020 when the sorts of wages which had been kept low for the last 30 years by globalism - truck drivers being the prime example - started rising steeply when it looked to me like the sort of Brexit that places like Boston voted for might actually be happening. Then government panicked and imported a whole load more medium- and low-paid workers and wage rises among the Brexit-voting classes stalled.
It really is still very much about immigration. I recall a @Cyclefree piece from about 6 years ago which characterised most recent elections, along with the Brexit referendum, as being about immigration: a conversation between voters and government in which voters said "really, we do want less immigration" and government ignored them. This election looks like being no different.
Bang on the money. And unless Labour do something about this (spoiler: they almost certainly won’t) then they will get the same treatment in 5 years time
Clearly the focus will be on Biden. if he is as far gone as the images seem to suggest, he might struggle to hold it together for a full debate.
Yet his opponents accuse him of being drugged up if he does well, so they win either way.
Trump rambles incoherently constantly but unfortunately none of his supporters care, so an unedifying encounter of two very old men past their prime looks likely. Only one cares about democracy though.
'Drugging up' someone with dementia would be highly unlikely to improve their debate performance.
And we know whose White House was an actual pill mill.
The allegation that he was on some kind of amphetamines for the State of the Union looks quite convincing to me - the sudden extraordinary improvement in lucidity and eloquence was striking, as was the massive relapse to his normal senility thereafter
Moreover they will want to avoid any “accidents”. A medically informed (and left wing) friend of mine recently gave me a plausible explanation for Biden’s weird behaviour on the White House lawn the other day. I’ll spare PB the unhappy details and precise medical words my friend used, but it all made sense
Also, how many octogenarians are NOT on multiple drugs? It’s normal. I am sure Trump is as well. He’s definitely been guzzling ozempic you can see it in his face
Amphetamines are not a treatment for dementia. Indeed they are likely to make it worse.
The only strong evidence we have for off label, unethical drug prescriptions in the White House is from the Trump administration. I don't count right wing TwitterX as evidence. Or your friends.
I was using “amphetamines” in the broadly accepted medical sense of “many different kinds of drugs some of them not actually amphetamines”
They could have jacked him up with this
“The following are used to temporarily improve dementia symptoms. Cholinesterase inhibitors. These medicines work by boosting levels of a chemical messenger involved in memory and judgment. They include donepezil (Aricept, Adlarity), rivastigmine (Exelon) and galantamine (Razadyne ER)”
So, you're clueless, and you can use google. Got that.
Is there a total sense of humour failure on PB this morning? Jeeez
Cheer up. I’m on a boat going to a mystical island. This is the final ultimate incredible life-changing culmination of a long-held dream that I’ve nurtured for literally days, ever since I first beheld the Ile De Sein from the sun-burnt rocks of Pointe de Rez well over a fortnight ago
Finally, I’m here. After all that yearning. Minute after minute of staring at atlases, tracing the outline of this fabled island then getting bored and doing something else. Entire moments of thinking about it vaguely then thinking about the next place I can have oysters
At last. The time has come and the dreams that I never really had are fulfilled
I'm presuming, given its location, it was an important Nazi base to monitor the Atlantic? Lots of concrete bunkers still like the Channel Isles?
On the betting scandal, I suspect we'll end up with a political ban on politicians betting on politics. From what I have read there are an awful lot of cheeky punts placed by politicians, so if this goes all puritanical then it could be all kinds of fun.
There's a world of difference between betting on yourself, your party, your candidates elsewhere to win, and betting on yourself to lose. Or betting unsing insider knowledge on when the election will be. Especially if your job is to get your party ready for that election and you don't bother.
The challenge is that less betting means less odds. And they are a useful tool for gauging how elections are progressing. The Press and Journal this morning in a piece about Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey notes that Ross was 1% - 100/1 - to retain his seat in 2019 and do so. Useful data surely!
Someone was asking earlier - I do not hold any bets on anyone.
I suspect early in the next Parliament, the Speaker will be the spoilsport that bans it. Anybody found breaching it will be bringing the House into disrepute - and face some serious sanctions.
This may be an unpopular view on here but I’ve a feeling that MPs will have to be banned from placing political bets.
However, and it’s a big however, how wide do you cast the net? MPs wives and husbands? SPADs and other workers? Journalists? The cleaner who comes into the minister’s office?
It’s going to be near-impossible to monitor let alone ‘police’.
And arguably a massive waste of everyone’s time and energy.
So for the three most recent polls there is quite a lot of consistency. Herding in the final week?
Lab 39,40, 42 so let’s call it LAB 40% Con 20,20, 23 so let’s call it CON 22% to be generous RFM 14, 15, 16 so RFM 15% LibDem 11,12,12 so let’s call it LibDem 12% GRN 5,6,6 so let’s call it GREEN 6%
Fed into EC without tactical that would yield a Lab majority of c. 230 with the tories and LibDems vying for second place on around 70.
I still think the Conservative vote share will rise a little and that Labour and Reform may slip a little further but I accept that time is limited.
I think Farage has Ratnered the Reform brand with his position snugly in Putin's small intestine on Ukraine. There will be a close correlation between those who are proud of the UK's assistance to Ukraine and those who might have considered voting Reform. I genuinely can't see Reform coming close to the Conservative vote.
Perhaps my only bright spot of this whole election would be Farage losing in Clacton.
Rare agreement by me with a Tory. Farage losing would be magnificent, and I would get even more joy from that than from my eager desire for JRM to be decapitated.
Er excuse me. But you seem to have suddenly changed your methedology. Only a couple of days ago you were arguing that it was only 8 days to go because you don't count the day that has already started nor the actual day of the vote.
So now you are claiming it is 1 week to go when by your own methedology it should only be 6 days.
I don't mind which way you count it but if you are going to criticise others and make snide remarks at least be consistent in your own methedology.
I posted at 7am exactly. At that stage it was precisely one week!
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Don't cast the one for the ex-wife unless she tells you to because although you probably wouldn't be prosecuted that would be a crime and you just confessed to it on the internet.
Isn't it actually an offence to complete, even if you have a verbal instruction from the person?
Yes. See my and @TheScreamingEagles post. @leon posting on a subject he has no knowledge as usual. I mean on a site full of people who are experts on elections. How many ex Agents are here. Lots I expect.
A question to ask about the above would be about how an ex wife who doesn't care is registered to vote anyway?
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Don't cast the one for the ex-wife unless she tells you to because although you probably wouldn't be prosecuted that would be a crime and you just confessed to it on the internet.
Isn't it actually an offence to complete, even if you have a verbal instruction from the person?
Yes. See my and @TheScreamingEagles post. @leon posting on a subject he has no knowledge as usual. I mean on a site full of people who are experts on elections. How many ex Agents are here. Lots I expect.
ITS. A. JOKE
Omg
I do know that. I know you are just winding us up.
Interested to know if you knew though that you couldn't do it if instructed to do so? Also interested to know if you know it is easy to check if you have done it, although it takes a court order.
So if you did do it and write an article the authorities might consider it worth checking because it was publicised and you wouldn't get away with saying it was a joke when they pull the ballot paper out.
Ok I’ll run with. It was a joke - I wanted to see how many pompous people on PB would lose their humour-free nuts and get riled. Quite a few it seems
However I am now genuinely interested. Her postal vote really is in my flat (I’ve no idea why she still gets it - she registered here for the 2019 GE but she’s not been here since 2020). I wonder how often that happens and how many people post multiple votes?
Because I could easily do it and no one would know. Tho if I was going to do it I would not announce it on a public forum. OBVS
I have the postal vote for my mother, in a care home with dementia, and could probably do the same. Yet I am fairly sure that an LPA doesn’t extend to voting matters.
Most such occurrences probably occur spontaneously on impulse, and people don’t realise that a photo of the original signature is held on record. If you look at the stats for a constituency declaration, there are usually postal votes rejected, often a fair few of them, and my guess is that most of these are from such situations. Quite possibly people think it’s OK, because their partner working away, or whatever, has agreed to it. But the votes are rejected all the same, The extent to which rejected votes are later investigated is up to the ERO, but if it looked really dodgy - for example several rejected with the same handwriting - it certainly should be.
Interesting. So they literally check every postal vote? That must really slow up the count on the night as they have to check every postal vote that is put in the ballot box on the day?
All postal votes received before polling day are verified at separate verification counts, held in the runup to polling day. Those received at the last minute are verified at the first stage of the election night count.
The parties are entitled to send observers to the PV verification counts, just as they are to the main count, and if the observers are there, it’s even more likely that the checking will be thorough and anything that looks suspect will be set aside. Because the voter’s identity details are visible, every ERO will know to keep the actual ballot paper face down throughout this process.
Parties often don’t bother to observe the verification count, because it’s mostly a waste of time - even if you make a difference by challenging something the counting agent hasn’t spotted or was going to let through, you have no way of knowing whether a challenge helps or hinders your candidate.
But it’s a handy job to send someone who, for various possible reasons, you don’t want to trust knocking on doors, when you’ve run out of things to deliver, because it seems more important than it is, and people are usually keen to go, at least for the first time. If they are very lucky they just might see the X on a few ballots as they are pulled out of envelopes, if the voter has foolishly folded them with the voting side facing outwards, and by the time they get back to HQ they will be pressed for any info - because it’s the only actually data on completed ballots on offer at the time. So the one or two votes the hapless helper has actually seen will have turned into “I saw a few votes”, through the natural tendency to exaggerate and desire to appear important (I am sure you can understand), and by the time the story has been passed around, and reached the media if it’s a key election or by-election, Chinese whispers will have turned it into “party Z is ahead on the postal votes” and occasionally we see such nonsense posted here by people who don’t understand how these things go.
So, yes, they’re checked individually and usually thoroughly. Such that any count result that doesn’t reject some of its postal votes should be regarded with some suspicion.
Hang on, aren't the ballot papers put into a second envelope which is only opened on the night? So checking the signature shouldn't reveal the vote anyway?
Going through the Electoral Calculus MRP there are surely some mistakes, Lib Debs 20% in front at Bermondsey for example. I reckon to have found half a dozen others showing Lib Dems in unusual winning positions, take them away and they fall to 64/65 seats. However there are 16 others when other pollsters and MRPS have them leading whereas Electoral Calculus has them behind, Devon South for example. what 64 plus 16 = 80, this sort of figure seems so far fetched, the highest number of Liberal seats since what 1923, to be seriously questioned. Still what if it is right?.
Apols for quoting at length, but I think is really good. From a guy called Nick Tyrone who does a weekly email I subscribe to, 'The Week in Brexitland'. He's on twitter as well. Reflects a lot of my thoughts as to how we got here:
The result of the EU referendum has long been misunderstood by both sides of the Remain-Leave debate. It was neither some sort of Russian PSYOP project gone wild, nor a rational choice for a better future made by the British electorate. It was a cry for help, a wilfully destructive act by the section of the British electorate who made the difference. They were handed a brick and told not to, under any circumstances, throw it through the store window - and they went ahead and hurled it through as an act of defiance. “Deal with that mess,” was the collective voice of Brexit. “Now maybe you’ll be forced to fix things.” The chaos that consumed parliament in the years following the vote was not against the “will of the people”, but a furtherance of what they wanted to happen when they voted for Brexit. They wanted to disrupt the “natural order” and make the political classes squirm. The electorate succeeded in this goal.
In a sense, the Tories getting annihilated by the electorate is the 2016 result coming full circle, back to the only place it was ever going to end up - the Conservative civil war that created Brexit eating the mothership. The same impulse that drove people to do something slightly crazy, slightly drastic, stepping into the unknown in 2016 has driven them to do the same again in 2024 in a very different direction. “You think we won’t destroy the Conservative party? Watch us.”
The warnings about “super majorities” sound remarkably like the “Brexit will cost every household £4,000” scare stories from eight years ago. People aren’t listening. They don’t care. They feel angry and betrayed and they finally have a chance to do something about it, namely destroying the governing party in the most brutal fashion imaginable. The electorate are being given numerous ways to do it, as well. If you feel angry from the right, you can vote Reform and destroy the Tories that way; if you want to make sure they get destroyed, you can vote Labour; if you feel angry from a different angle, there’s the Lib Dems to consider. So many ways of destroying the Conservative party out there to choose from this time round.
What is humorous to watch is Conservative politicians, about to have their careers ended in many circumstances, who cannot begin to fathom that the same destructive forces which gave us Brexit in 2016 have now turned around and are set to annihilate them as well. The winds of hell they unleashed have blown back and obliterated the Tories. You could almost feel sorry for them, if you really tried to.
Interestingly if you watch the vox pop from Fareham which I've just posted it's saying the same thing
Clearly the focus will be on Biden. if he is as far gone as the images seem to suggest, he might struggle to hold it together for a full debate.
Yet his opponents accuse him of being drugged up if he does well, so they win either way.
Trump rambles incoherently constantly but unfortunately none of his supporters care, so an unedifying encounter of two very old men past their prime looks likely. Only one cares about democracy though.
'Drugging up' someone with dementia would be highly unlikely to improve their debate performance.
And we know whose White House was an actual pill mill.
The allegation that he was on some kind of amphetamines for the State of the Union looks quite convincing to me - the sudden extraordinary improvement in lucidity and eloquence was striking, as was the massive relapse to his normal senility thereafter
Moreover they will want to avoid any “accidents”. A medically informed (and left wing) friend of mine recently gave me a plausible explanation for Biden’s weird behaviour on the White House lawn the other day. I’ll spare PB the unhappy details and precise medical words my friend used, but it all made sense
Also, how many octogenarians are NOT on multiple drugs? It’s normal. I am sure Trump is as well. He’s definitely been guzzling ozempic you can see it in his face
Amphetamines are not a treatment for dementia. Indeed they are likely to make it worse.
The only strong evidence we have for off label, unethical drug prescriptions in the White House is from the Trump administration. I don't count right wing TwitterX as evidence. Or your friends.
I was using “amphetamines” in the broadly accepted medical sense of “many different kinds of drugs some of them not actually amphetamines”
They could have jacked him up with this
“The following are used to temporarily improve dementia symptoms. Cholinesterase inhibitors. These medicines work by boosting levels of a chemical messenger involved in memory and judgment. They include donepezil (Aricept, Adlarity), rivastigmine (Exelon) and galantamine (Razadyne ER)”
So, you're clueless, and you can use google. Got that.
Is there a total sense of humour failure on PB this morning? Jeeez
Cheer up. I’m on a boat going to a mystical island. This is the final ultimate incredible life-changing culmination of a long-held dream that I’ve nurtured for literally days, ever since I first beheld the Ile De Sein from the sun-burnt rocks of Pointe de Rez well over a fortnight ago
Finally, I’m here. After all that yearning. Minute after minute of staring at atlases, tracing the outline of this fabled island then getting bored and doing something else. Entire moments of thinking about it vaguely then thinking about the next place I can have oysters
At last. The time has come and the dreams that I never really had are fulfilled
I'm presuming, given its location, it was an important Nazi base to monitor the Atlantic? Lots of concrete bunkers still like the Channel Isles?
There were Nazis here but that didn’t stop the entire male population buggering off in their fishing smacks in 1940 to form the free French navy
It’s an incroyable place. Like a mix of the saddest Welsh mining village but set in the Hebrides with some beautiful French houses in the middle of a warm still grey Arctic lake
Apols for quoting at length, but I think is really good. From a guy called Nick Tyrone who does a weekly email I subscribe to, 'The Week in Brexitland'. He's on twitter as well. Reflects a lot of my thoughts as to how we got here:
The result of the EU referendum has long been misunderstood by both sides of the Remain-Leave debate. It was neither some sort of Russian PSYOP project gone wild, nor a rational choice for a better future made by the British electorate. It was a cry for help, a wilfully destructive act by the section of the British electorate who made the difference. They were handed a brick and told not to, under any circumstances, throw it through the store window - and they went ahead and hurled it through as an act of defiance. “Deal with that mess,” was the collective voice of Brexit. “Now maybe you’ll be forced to fix things.” The chaos that consumed parliament in the years following the vote was not against the “will of the people”, but a furtherance of what they wanted to happen when they voted for Brexit. They wanted to disrupt the “natural order” and make the political classes squirm. The electorate succeeded in this goal.
In a sense, the Tories getting annihilated by the electorate is the 2016 result coming full circle, back to the only place it was ever going to end up - the Conservative civil war that created Brexit eating the mothership. The same impulse that drove people to do something slightly crazy, slightly drastic, stepping into the unknown in 2016 has driven them to do the same again in 2024 in a very different direction. “You think we won’t destroy the Conservative party? Watch us.”
The warnings about “super majorities” sound remarkably like the “Brexit will cost every household £4,000” scare stories from eight years ago. People aren’t listening. They don’t care. They feel angry and betrayed and they finally have a chance to do something about it, namely destroying the governing party in the most brutal fashion imaginable. The electorate are being given numerous ways to do it, as well. If you feel angry from the right, you can vote Reform and destroy the Tories that way; if you want to make sure they get destroyed, you can vote Labour; if you feel angry from a different angle, there’s the Lib Dems to consider. So many ways of destroying the Conservative party out there to choose from this time round.
What is humorous to watch is Conservative politicians, about to have their careers ended in many circumstances, who cannot begin to fathom that the same destructive forces which gave us Brexit in 2016 have now turned around and are set to annihilate them as well. The winds of hell they unleashed have blown back and obliterated the Tories. You could almost feel sorry for them, if you really tried to.
As someone whose Leaviness has hardened distinctly over the last 8 years, I'm surprised to find myself in total agreement with that. People didn't vote to Leave over abstract issues of sovereignty - they voted to Leave because outside the cities the internationalist order wasn't working for them. What they have ended up with is the more of the same, only more so. I don't really know what the Conservative Party believes in, and I suspect nor do they - but in the absence of any sort of philosophical framework we default to that of the state, which is still very much of the centrist/globalist stripe.
There was a moment back in 2020 when the sorts of wages which had been kept low for the last 30 years by globalism - truck drivers being the prime example - started rising steeply when it looked to me like the sort of Brexit that places like Boston voted for might actually be happening. Then government panicked and imported a whole load more medium- and low-paid workers and wage rises among the Brexit-voting classes stalled.
It really is still very much about immigration. I recall a @Cyclefree piece from about 6 years ago which characterised most recent elections, along with the Brexit referendum, as being about immigration: a conversation between voters and government in which voters said "really, we do want less immigration" and government ignored them. This election looks like being no different.
Bang on the money. And unless Labour do something about this (spoiler: they almost certainly won’t) then they will get the same treatment in 5 years time
In all my time on pb you have never, in my honest opinion, been bang on the money about anything. From your luv-in with Liz Truss to your recent Faragasm telling us he was going to revolutionise this entire election.
So, again with respect and not ad hominem, I will entirely ignore your predictions. They are wildly inaccurate time after time after time after ...
Er excuse me. But you seem to have suddenly changed your methedology. Only a couple of days ago you were arguing that it was only 8 days to go because you don't count the day that has already started nor the actual day of the vote.
So now you are claiming it is 1 week to go when by your own methedology it should only be 6 days.
I don't mind which way you count it but if you are going to criticise others and make snide remarks at least be consistent in your own methedology.
I posted at 7am exactly. At that stage it was precisely one week!
That must be wrong. We all know a week is 7 days. 7 am Thursday to 7 am Thursday covers 8 days, so it can't be 1 week.
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Don't cast the one for the ex-wife unless she tells you to because although you probably wouldn't be prosecuted that would be a crime and you just confessed to it on the internet.
Isn't it actually an offence to complete, even if you have a verbal instruction from the person?
Yes. See my and @TheScreamingEagles post. @leon posting on a subject he has no knowledge as usual. I mean on a site full of people who are experts on elections. How many ex Agents are here. Lots I expect.
A question to ask about the above would be about how an ex wife who doesn't care is registered to vote anyway?
This dosent feel like 1997. It feels like Majors exhausted and despised party of 1997 up against Kinnocks disliked Labour of 1992 and the SDP of 1983 performing Reforms disruptor role.
Feel is important in an election. In 1997 it was obvious Labour were whupping the Tories. You could taste it. In 2010? The Tories would have won that had we not had the Cleggasm. In the 2015 Stockton South campaign the wheel had fallen off the Labour bus weeks before polling day with fractious infighting within the camp. And with door after door saying they liked our candidate but feared Alex Salmond, we knew in our guts it wasn't going well. 2017? I co-authored and strategised Dr Paul Williams winning campaign. No infighting as we simply shut the party out, and won.
This time? I'm telling you, there is something in the air which the pollsters aren't picking up at least here in the true North East. That isn't me confidently saying we will win. But we're in the battle and getting heard and picking up support.
We know how the Tories feel. They feel that they are heading for the cliffs. Sunak out campaigning in seats they hold by 25k, kids with crayons running the social media campaign, and coming out swinging in the debates hoping desperately to land a punch on Penfold...
It feels the same here in Dorset but... the 'reluctantly going to vote Tory' voices on here make me think it will end up disappointingly much closer than the polls suggest.
just observer bias imho- On a site like this you get lots of "tories" - by definition they are politicly engaged (why would they be on the site if not) and therefore will at some point be angry with whats happened either by the government or by the campaign - Of this mass a lot will then not vote tory again but probably then dont feel the need to admit who they are going to vote for instead but some out of the mass will state they are "reluctantly " going to vote tory. Nothing that contradicts the polls ,indeed supports them , otherwise the tories would be on zero percent .
I for instance have voted tory at all general elections but will this time vote Reform .
I have a moral dilemma here. I have two votes. Two postal votes. One for me and one for my ex wife (who is now in distant parts and doesn’t care)
How shall I cast them? I am torn between starmer (to give him a chance and annoy @kinabalu) and Reform (I want the Tories destroyed and every vote for Reform adds to that)
However my two vote sitch seems to solve the dilemma. I shall personally vote for Starmer but my ex wife will vote Reform. Sorted
Don't cast the one for the ex-wife unless she tells you to because although you probably wouldn't be prosecuted that would be a crime and you just confessed to it on the internet.
Isn't it actually an offence to complete, even if you have a verbal instruction from the person?
Yes. See my and @TheScreamingEagles post. @leon posting on a subject he has no knowledge as usual. I mean on a site full of people who are experts on elections. How many ex Agents are here. Lots I expect.
ITS. A. JOKE
Omg
I do know that. I know you are just winding us up.
Interested to know if you knew though that you couldn't do it if instructed to do so? Also interested to know if you know it is easy to check if you have done it, although it takes a court order.
So if you did do it and write an article the authorities might consider it worth checking because it was publicised and you wouldn't get away with saying it was a joke when they pull the ballot paper out.
Ok I’ll run with. It was a joke - I wanted to see how many pompous people on PB would lose their humour-free nuts and get riled. Quite a few it seems
However I am now genuinely interested. Her postal vote really is in my flat (I’ve no idea why she still gets it - she registered here for the 2019 GE but she’s not been here since 2020). I wonder how often that happens and how many people post multiple votes?
Because I could easily do it and no one would know. Tho if I was going to do it I would not announce it on a public forum. OBVS
You should have returned an update for the register every year. It is a legal requirement, although I'm sure many forget. I don't know what they do if you forget. It seems like they pretend you have. Or you may have ticked the box that says nothing has changed when it has.
I'm sure some people do vote twice. The obvious ones are people who can vote in two places eg students. I think the numbers are trivial though.
And of course postal votes give the opportunity for a person who has died in the year to vote if you are good enough to forge the signature. Not worth the risk.
Labour seems to have regained some lost ground in the past few days with vote share in most polls above forty and comfortably ahead of Con and Reform put together. Con are just ahead of Reform in the high teens.
This suggests a Con seat total below 100.
This is partly an artefact of the polls that have published recently. We're due a YouGov today, and People Polling - two of the firms that put Labour below 40%, but which haven't published recently.
In other polls More in Common put Labour up one, out of the 30s, and Norstat down one, below 40, so it's a bit of a wash.
I'd say that Labour's share has stabilised, and not continued the downward movement it had previously.
I expect both main parties to creep up over the next week, and for Ref and Green to creep down. And Lib Dem stay similar.
You (along with many others) have been arguing for a couple of weeks now that the Tory vote was going to creep up at the last minute - indeed, I seem to recall that you thought they would end up around 30%. There's a general consensus that, in the privacy of the polling booth, many Tories will put a reluctant cross in the Tory box.
But surely by now there would be some sign of this in the opinion polls? As far as I can see there isn't a sniff of it - the fluctuations that there are seem pretty random and, overall, the Tory vote is static or even down a bit. I know there's a week to go, but at what stage will people accept that it's too late? Probably 10pm July 5th. Swingback: the dog that didn't bark because Sunak put it down.
I mainly think the Tories will reach my prediction of 29% due to a combination of polling error (RFM online bubble), and the Big_G effect, of lifelong Tory voters not being able to break the habit, despite them insisting they would do so.
I wouldn't expect the first to show up in opinion polls as a tightening as we approach polling day, for obvious reasons. You might expect a modest improvement in the Tory polling score due to the second effect, if people who voted by post were then honest about a last-minute change of heart. But this effect would be small, because most people still vote in person.
So, not having the polls tighten doesn't necessarily mean that my prediction is wrong, but the Tory poll position has deteriorated since I made it.
So for the three most recent polls there is quite a lot of consistency. Herding in the final week?
Lab 39,40, 42 so let’s call it LAB 40% Con 20,20, 23 so let’s call it CON 22% to be generous RFM 14, 15, 16 so RFM 15% LibDem 11,12,12 so let’s call it LibDem 12% GRN 5,6,6 so let’s call it GREEN 6%
Fed into EC without tactical that would yield a Lab majority of c. 230 with the tories and LibDems vying for second place on around 70.
I still think the Conservative vote share will rise a little and that Labour and Reform may slip a little further but I accept that time is limited.
I think Farage has Ratnered the Reform brand with his position snugly in Putin's small intestine on Ukraine. There will be a close correlation between those who are proud of the UK's assistance to Ukraine and those who might have considered voting Reform. I genuinely can't see Reform coming close to the Conservative vote.
Perhaps my only bright spot of this whole election would be Farage losing in Clacton.
Going through the Electoral Calculus MRP there are surely some mistakes, Lib Debs 20% in front at Bermondsey for example. I reckon to have found half a dozen others showing Lib Dems in unusual winning positions, take them away and they fall to 64/65 seats. However there are 16 others when other pollsters and MRPS have them leading whereas Electoral Calculus has them behind, Devon South for example. what 64 plus 16 = 80, this sort of figure seems so far fetched, the highest number of Liberal seats since what 1923, to be seriously questioned. Still what if it is right?.
You've posted some outlandish suggestions about Lib Dem outperformance in the past that haven't materialised, but this time round I believe you have cause to be optimistic
Going through the Electoral Calculus MRP there are surely some mistakes, Lib Debs 20% in front at Bermondsey for example. I reckon to have found half a dozen others showing Lib Dems in unusual winning positions, take them away and they fall to 64/65 seats. However there are 16 others when other pollsters and MRPS have them leading whereas Electoral Calculus has them behind, Devon South for example. what 64 plus 16 = 80, this sort of figure seems so far fetched, the highest number of Liberal seats since what 1923, to be seriously questioned. Still what if it is right?.
Then Rochdale Pioneers will be the Shadow Business Secretary in a couple of weeks.....
On the betting scandal, I suspect we'll end up with a political ban on politicians betting on politics. From what I have read there are an awful lot of cheeky punts placed by politicians, so if this goes all puritanical then it could be all kinds of fun.
There's a world of difference between betting on yourself, your party, your candidates elsewhere to win, and betting on yourself to lose. Or betting unsing insider knowledge on when the election will be. Especially if your job is to get your party ready for that election and you don't bother.
The challenge is that less betting means less odds. And they are a useful tool for gauging how elections are progressing. The Press and Journal this morning in a piece about Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey notes that Ross was 1% - 100/1 - to retain his seat in 2019 and do so. Useful data surely!
Someone was asking earlier - I do not hold any bets on anyone.
I suspect early in the next Parliament, the Speaker will be the spoilsport that bans it. Anybody found breaching it will be bringing the House into disrepute - and face some serious sanctions.
A moment’s thought suggests problems with definition. Is Mr RP a politician, because he’s standing for election. Is Mr HYUFD because he’s an active member of a political party? RP hasn’t had a flutter on himself to win; if he had, could it be put in the same category as Dr F’s bet on Leicester to win the League? Once in a great while that came off.
Going through the Electoral Calculus MRP there are surely some mistakes, Lib Debs 20% in front at Bermondsey for example. I reckon to have found half a dozen others showing Lib Dems in unusual winning positions, take them away and they fall to 64/65 seats. However there are 16 others when other pollsters and MRPS have them leading whereas Electoral Calculus has them behind, Devon South for example. what 64 plus 16 = 80, this sort of figure seems so far fetched, the highest number of Liberal seats since what 1923, to be seriously questioned. Still what if it is right?.
Lib Dems winning back Bermondsey and Old Southwark. Now that really would be a shock.
So for the three most recent polls there is quite a lot of consistency. Herding in the final week?
Lab 39,40, 42 so let’s call it LAB 40% Con 20,20, 23 so let’s call it CON 22% to be generous RFM 14, 15, 16 so RFM 15% LibDem 11,12,12 so let’s call it LibDem 12% GRN 5,6,6 so let’s call it GREEN 6%
Fed into EC without tactical that would yield a Lab majority of c. 230 with the tories and LibDems vying for second place on around 70.
I still think the Conservative vote share will rise a little and that Labour and Reform may slip a little further but I accept that time is limited.
I think Farage has Ratnered the Reform brand with his position snugly in Putin's small intestine on Ukraine. There will be a close correlation between those who are proud of the UK's assistance to Ukraine and those who might have considered voting Reform. I genuinely can't see Reform coming close to the Conservative vote.
Perhaps my only bright spot of this whole election would be Farage losing in Clacton.
No chance. Reform 2/11 for Clacton.
Still a chance, but Putinbots dissing the chances of Farage´s opponents is nothing new.
Backing Putin in Ukraine, backing Farage in Clacton. Be careful or others will start to draw the right conclusions.
Comments
However I am now genuinely interested. Her postal vote really is in my flat (I’ve no idea why she still gets it - she registered here for the 2019 GE but she’s not been here since 2020). I wonder how often that happens and how many people post multiple votes?
Because I could easily do it and no one would know. Tho if I was going to do it I would not announce it on a public forum. OBVS
This is, in many ways, the lowest key general election campaign I have seen. No one seems to be talking about it, out in The Real. If you prompt people - "Tories will lose. Useless. Labour will put up taxes. Always do. Meh." then on with whatever they were doing.
The result of the EU referendum has long been misunderstood by both sides of the Remain-Leave debate. It was neither some sort of Russian PSYOP project gone wild, nor a rational choice for a better future made by the British electorate. It was a cry for help, a wilfully destructive act by the section of the British electorate who made the difference. They were handed a brick and told not to, under any circumstances, throw it through the store window - and they went ahead and hurled it through as an act of defiance. “Deal with that mess,” was the collective voice of Brexit. “Now maybe you’ll be forced to fix things.” The chaos that consumed parliament in the years following the vote was not against the “will of the people”, but a furtherance of what they wanted to happen when they voted for Brexit. They wanted to disrupt the “natural order” and make the political classes squirm. The electorate succeeded in this goal.
In a sense, the Tories getting annihilated by the electorate is the 2016 result coming full circle, back to the only place it was ever going to end up - the Conservative civil war that created Brexit eating the mothership. The same impulse that drove people to do something slightly crazy, slightly drastic, stepping into the unknown in 2016 has driven them to do the same again in 2024 in a very different direction. “You think we won’t destroy the Conservative party? Watch us.”
The warnings about “super majorities” sound remarkably like the “Brexit will cost every household £4,000” scare stories from eight years ago. People aren’t listening. They don’t care. They feel angry and betrayed and they finally have a chance to do something about it, namely destroying the governing party in the most brutal fashion imaginable. The electorate are being given numerous ways to do it, as well. If you feel angry from the right, you can vote Reform and destroy the Tories that way; if you want to make sure they get destroyed, you can vote Labour; if you feel angry from a different angle, there’s the Lib Dems to consider. So many ways of destroying the Conservative party out there to choose from this time round.
What is humorous to watch is Conservative politicians, about to have their careers ended in many circumstances, who cannot begin to fathom that the same destructive forces which gave us Brexit in 2016 have now turned around and are set to annihilate them as well. The winds of hell they unleashed have blown back and obliterated the Tories. You could almost feel sorry for them, if you really tried to.
1. Do we want the Tory party to survive at all?
2. If we do want it to survive then is it beter for them to have, for example, 100 seats where most of the MPs are centrists or 50 sets where most of the MPs are authoritarian ERG types?
That was kind of the point of my thread header last week looking at the posisble make up of a Tory party that got 72 seats. What sort of Tory party would that be?
I loathe paperwork.
The only evidence I’ve had was a table of boat workers at a bar in Belle Ile who seemed to be having a passionate but awkward debate about whether to vote for Le Pen. I detected that most of the were intending to do this but one guy was berating them - causing the awkwardness. But my frendh is not good (tho it is improving, perforce)
💥 Not one Tory 2019 voter we spoke to is even considering voting Conservative on July 4th
💥 Tories described as "self-centred", "out of touch", "hopeless"
💥 People described the moments they turned away from the Conservatives: partygate, Covid contracts, the economy, and "the absolute disgrace" Liz Truss
💥 Sunak's early D-Day exit was singled out as "one of the biggest mistakes a politician has made": seen as "humiliating", "embarrassing", "disgusting"; one voter said they were "fuming"
💥 Rishi Sunak described as "lost", "out of touch", "false, trying to side with the general public but you just see straight through it", "smug", and a "pathetic toff"
💥 Reform UK attractive to three of our voters. Nigel Farage described as "misunderstood", "strong", "having good ideas", "great in the jungle"
💥 Keir Starmer described as "uninspiring", "rambles", "irritating", "corporate", "change", and "wishy washy". But the person who said wishy washy said that is a strength, as we "don't need a Donald Trump running our country"
💥 Labour was the most popular choice of the vast majority, with almost all planning on voting for them in one week's time
💥 But everyone said it was a vote against the Tories rather than a vote for Labour. In the words of one voter, "they've not won me, the Tories have just lost me". All said they would be open to going back to the Tories in the future, or voting for any party. This period of mass voter volatility is not going anywhere.
https://x.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1806239023796498488
Video https://t.co/qPsJDbyIqp
Most such occurrences probably occur spontaneously on impulse, and people don’t realise that a photo of the original signature is held on record. If you look at the stats for a constituency declaration, there are usually postal votes rejected, often a fair few of them, and my guess is that most of these are from such situations. Quite possibly people think it’s OK, because their partner working away, or whatever, has agreed to it. But the votes are rejected all the same, The extent to which rejected votes are later investigated is up to the ERO, but if it looked really dodgy - for example several rejected with the same handwriting - it certainly should be.
https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/
Leon will be confessing to picking out and eating the whitish stuff between his 3rd and 4th toes next, to epater les PBourgeois.
BMG Research
@BMGResearch
📊 Latest VI poll for
@theipaper
📊
➡️ Labour leads by 22 points. Reform drops by 3 points. Lib Dem’s up to 12%.
📉 Gap between Labour and Conservatives looks steady with one week to go.
LAB: 42% (=)
CON: 20% (+1)
RFM: 16% (-3)
LDM: 12% (+3)
GRN: 6% (-1)
SNP: 3% (=)
OTH: 2% (+1)
24th-26th June. Changes with 18-19th June.
On the gambling issue, the late Clement Freud used to claim that his judicious betting on his election results in his constituency paid, or went substantially towards paying for, his constituency office expenses.
There's a world of difference between betting on yourself, your party, your candidates elsewhere to win, and betting on yourself to lose. Or betting unsing insider knowledge on when the election will be. Especially if your job is to get your party ready for that election and you don't bother.
The challenge is that less betting means less odds. And they are a useful tool for gauging how elections are progressing. The Press and Journal this morning in a piece about Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey notes that Ross was 1% - 100/1 - to retain his seat in 2019 and do so. Useful data surely!
Someone was asking earlier - I do not hold any bets on anyone.
And what did the Tories do once they “got Brexit done”? They raised inmigration to the highest levels in our history. 2.4 millions in 3 years. Utterly insane and criminally irresponsible and for this and mainly this they deserve to die. You cannot betray voters like this, you absolutely cannot
Lab 39,40, 42 so let’s call it LAB 40%
Con 20,20, 23 so let’s call it CON 22% to be generous
RFM 14, 15, 16 so RFM 15%
LibDem 11,12,12 so let’s call it LibDem 12%
GRN 5,6,6 so let’s call it GREEN 6%
Fed into EC without tactical that would yield a Lab majority of c. 230 with the tories and LibDems vying for second place on around 70.
I still think the Conservative vote share will rise a little and that Labour and Reform may slip a little further but I accept that time is limited.
Other than that, apart from the poll bounces each party gets after their conventions it is hard to see much else moving the dial. Though in the unlikely event Trump is jailed next month after his conviction in New York over the Stormy Daniels hush money that would certainly make things interesting
https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/new-guidance-clarifies-power-attorney-can-be-used-voter-registration
All the fretting about close run elections and polling surprises is coming from non-Tories (including me) who have been burned too many times by the inevitable British truism that the Tories always somehow pull it out of the bag.
All the guff about supermajorities and Labour commencing a thousand year Reich comes from the Tories.
In other polls More in Common put Labour up one, out of the 30s, and Norstat down one, below 40, so it's a bit of a wash.
I'd say that Labour's share has stabilised, and not continued the downward movement it had previously.
Oh and a tip, if you’re going to write about French politics or indeed anywhere with a degree of aptitude do at least speak the local language.
2019 Tories I think the Tories will narrow the gap and end up nearer 200 seats than 100, let alone 50.
Only 50 would need Reform to have overtaken the Tories in most polls to be realistic which they haven't
Not that I don't trust her or anything, but I did complete my postal vote while she was still in bed, just to remove any temptation.
I look forward to you posting the same to Malcolm in particular ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK8BHiWLBV8
Using the fundamental sanity check of putting in the previous election, you get this:
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=Y&scotshow=Y&CON=44.7&LAB=33.0&LIB=11.8&Reform=2.1&Green=2.8&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=25.1&SCOTLAB=18.6&SCOTLIB=9.5&SCOTReform=0.5&SCOTGreen=1.0&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=45.0&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2019nbbase
Con -24 on the 2019 notional result for 352
Labour -13 on the 2019 notional result for 184
LD +36 on the 2019 notional result for 44
Greens +1 on the 2019 notional result for 2
SNP -1 on the 2019 notional result for 47
This was with putting in the exact figures for both GB and using the Scottish option to ensure the exact figures for Scotland were put in as well.
Something's up with it, I feel.
Brexit really centred around 2 things - FOM and its consequences, but secondly the much harder thing of having got to a place WRT the EU where it needed fixing (eg FOM) but there was not the power to do so, nor had the public been asked if it wanted to get to where we were. And we saw other EU countries holding referenda while we didn't.
At that point there seriously wasn't a whole hearted majority for either staying or leaving. There still isn't. Until this massive failure of UK statecraft is resolved it will carry on. It may destroy the Tories this time; there is no party immune from these consequences. Labour could find this out quite soon. And then what?
As someone whose Leaviness has hardened distinctly over the last 8 years, I'm surprised to find myself in total agreement with that.
People didn't vote to Leave over abstract issues of sovereignty - they voted to Leave because outside the cities the internationalist order wasn't working for them. What they have ended up with is the more of the same, only more so. I don't really know what the Conservative Party believes in, and I suspect nor do they - but in the absence of any sort of philosophical framework we default to that of the state, which is still very much of the centrist/globalist stripe.
There was a moment back in 2020 when the sorts of wages which had been kept low for the last 30 years by globalism - truck drivers being the prime example - started rising steeply when it looked to me like the sort of Brexit that places like Boston voted for might actually be happening. Then government panicked and imported a whole load more medium- and low-paid workers and wage rises among the Brexit-voting classes stalled.
It really is still very much about immigration. I recall a @Cyclefree piece from about 6 years ago which characterised most recent elections, along with the Brexit referendum, as being about immigration: a conversation between voters and government in which voters said "really, we do want less immigration" and government ignored them. This election looks like being no different.
I’d certainly rather have a government which regarded itself as being elected to serve, as opposed to one elected to rule!
It's not "half empty". It's not "half full".
It's "Is it my round?"
The parties are entitled to send observers to the PV verification counts, just as they are to the main count, and if the observers are there, it’s even more likely that the checking will be thorough and anything that looks suspect will be set aside. Because the voter’s identity details are visible, every ERO will know to keep the actual ballot paper face down throughout this process.
Parties often don’t bother to observe the verification count, because it’s mostly a waste of time - even if you make a difference by challenging something the counting agent hasn’t spotted or was going to let through, you have no way of knowing whether a challenge helps or hinders your candidate.
But it’s a handy job to send someone who, for various possible reasons, you don’t want to trust knocking on doors, when you’ve run out of things to deliver, because it seems more important than it is, and people are usually keen to go, at least for the first time. If they are very lucky they just might see the X on a few ballots as they are pulled out of envelopes, if the voter has foolishly folded them with the voting side facing outwards, and by the time they get back to HQ they will be pressed for any info - because it’s the only actually data on completed ballots on offer at the time. So the one or two votes the hapless helper has actually seen will have turned into “I saw a few votes”, through the natural tendency to exaggerate and desire to appear important (I am sure you can understand), and by the time the story has been passed around, and reached the media if it’s a key election or by-election, Chinese whispers will have turned it into “party Z is ahead on the postal votes” and occasionally we see such nonsense posted here by people who don’t understand how these things go.
So, yes, they’re checked individually and usually thoroughly. Such that any count result that doesn’t reject some of its postal votes should be regarded with some suspicion.
An interesting piece on a high price medicine, namely Hemgenix, a gene-therapy treatment that costs $3.5m per use in the USA, and replaces clotting factor injections cost between £150,000 and £200,000 per patient per year for life.
NHS use has commenced and is being monitored, and no one will give out any information about how much European authorities are paying, but there seem to be incentive arrangements and performance based payments. 250 patients from 2000 with haemophilia B will be treated in (I assume, given devolution) England.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4nnn51rdrzo
Context:
The product was first developed by the Dutch biotechnology company uniQure. In 2020, CSL Behring paid $450 million to license the therapy. CSL Behring will be marketing the drug.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2022/12/02/despite-eye-popping-35-million-price-tag-for-gene-therapy-hemgenix-budget-impact-for-most-payers-will-be-relatively-small/
It is June (one month)
The election is in July (one month)
1+1=2
Two months to go.
One shot turns an entire battalion of Russian troops into Left Bank Existentialists. One minute they a slaughtering and pillaging, next they are wearing black turtle necks, drinking expresso and arguing that reality doesn't exist.
It was close and revealed a divided country. Brexit managed to put together a coalition of political brickthrowers, people concerned about immigration, sovereignty voters and Singapore-on-Thames Thatcherites to get over the 50% line. Without any of those groups it would probably have fallen short. I think immigration was probably the biggest driver, along with brick throwing.
But surely by now there would be some sign of this in the opinion polls? As far as I can see there isn't a sniff of it - the fluctuations that there are seem pretty random and, overall, the Tory vote is static or even down a bit. I know there's a week to go, but at what stage will people accept that it's too late? Probably 10pm July 5th.
Swingback: the dog that didn't bark because Sunak put it down.
No Overall Majority 33-1
Conservative Majority 230-1
DYOR.
Have now received freeposts from LDs and The Party of Women plus Labour earlier. No Green, Reform or Conservative.
This is predominantly a supply/demand situation caused by decades of insufficient training of new workers.
And why I keep saying that the opportunities for northern, male, working class have never been better than they are now.
Those working class who don't have and will not require the in demand skillset will continue to feature among those 'left behind'.
Likely joined by increasing numbers of indebted middle class types who find their skillsets are no longer needed because of the implementation of AI and further globalisation.
very good!
Perhaps my only bright spot of this whole election would be Farage losing in Clacton.
The votes are then put back into the boxes and sealed. If after that there is suspicion of fraud then with a court order they can be opened. It is possible to identify a particular ballot by its number so you can pick out specific votes. Because this is possible at a count you must not take pictures or note down specific ballot paper information, because it is possible to identify a voter.
PS Just noted your specific point (sorry). I think if you vote on the day it is just like any other vote.
It's precisely because the vote for Brexit wasn't mainly about Brexit, that we can generalise the main motive force behind it to a substantial majority across the country.
However, and it’s a big however, how wide do you cast the net? MPs wives and husbands? SPADs and other workers? Journalists? The cleaner who comes into the minister’s office?
It’s going to be near-impossible to monitor let alone ‘police’.
And arguably a massive waste of everyone’s time and energy.
what 64 plus 16 = 80, this sort of figure seems so far fetched, the highest number of Liberal seats since what 1923, to be seriously questioned. Still what if it is right?.
It’s an incroyable place. Like a mix of the saddest Welsh mining village but set in the Hebrides with some beautiful French houses in the middle of a warm still grey Arctic lake
So, again with respect and not ad hominem, I will entirely ignore your predictions. They are wildly inaccurate time after time after time after ...
I'm sure some people do vote twice. The obvious ones are people who can vote in two places eg students. I think the numbers are trivial though.
And of course postal votes give the opportunity for a person who has died in the year to vote if you are good enough to forge the signature. Not worth the risk.
I wouldn't expect the first to show up in opinion polls as a tightening as we approach polling day, for obvious reasons. You might expect a modest improvement in the Tory polling score due to the second effect, if people who voted by post were then honest about a last-minute change of heart. But this effect would be small, because most people still vote in person.
So, not having the polls tighten doesn't necessarily mean that my prediction is wrong, but the Tory poll position has deteriorated since I made it.
RP hasn’t had a flutter on himself to win; if he had, could it be put in the same category as Dr F’s bet on Leicester to win the League? Once in a great while that came off.
Backing Putin in Ukraine, backing Farage in Clacton. Be careful or others will start to draw the right conclusions.