Technically there is no such thing as a Supermajority in the UK.
A landslide I would say is c. 120+ majority. Some would set the bar a bit lower.
I suspect that this Tory / Daily Mail Supermajority message is cutting through and I’m not too unhappy about it. If it helps defeat @Leon ’s warped worldview then it’s a double win as far as I’m concerned.
There seems to be mixed signals. On one hand "its cutting through" - as I have to presume witnessed by this absurd 48 Hours thing. On the other hand the net of seats to LB attack / Tory defend gets stretched further and further.
It won't people an avalanche of people voting Labour. But they're voting against the Tories. Only a few days to find out if there is a late Tory swingback or not. But lets assume there is, and the "please please no" campaign has "worked" and Labour "only" win a 150 majority
Bit abject isn't it for the Tories? "We successfully avoided getting crushed! We only got beat by a massive landslide! WooHoo!!!!"
I would suggest you may be missing the point that many conservatives look on in disgust at Reform and their stated aim to take over the party and are determined to fight for the one nation conservative cause, but also to have at least a viable opposition and yes including an increased lib dem seat count
I have no idea of Fridays seat totals but disenchantment with all governing parties is at an extreme high, not just here but elsewhere and you only need to witness what is happening in France to be concerned if the centre right is marginalised into irrelevance
No I get it - we don't want Farage.
That is a given, the motivation to salvage as many seats as possible. And *that* is my point. The best case scenario - one the party is now spending its remaining cash pleading for - is to only give Labour a landslide.
How the mighty have fallen. It took Labour over a decade to recover from a badly misguided comedy note channeling Reginald Maudling. How long will it take the Tories to recover from "please don't destroy us, isn't a landslide enough for you?"
I kinda understand BigG's position. But a clearer signal to the Tories to return to the centre would be to vote for the centre. That's the Lib Dems, probably.
I want to address this directly
I was going to vote Lib Dem post Sunak's D day error but it was when Farage entered the fray as leader of Reform that we (my wife and I) made the decision it was correct for us to return to the conservatives as it it far more important to us that the conservatives out vote Reform in votes
Whether that happens I do not know but a vote for the Lib Dems here would have been a wasted vote anyway as labour are going to easily regain the seat
You could equally have decided it was important that the Lib Dems beat Reform on votes. Or that Plaid Cymru beat Reform in Wales. But you didn't. Because you're a Tory tribalist. It's not about Reform, it's about finding some reason to justify what you were always going to do anyway.
Basically every single thing you say can be discounted if it can be contradicted with "but you'll vote Tory anyway". Because you will. Your bland handwringing over Tory scandals can be (and in some quarters was) safely disregarded because the conclusion was always going to be same.
Please disregard everything I post and say if you so wish
I will continue to post as honestly as I can as long as I can
Already do, but I hope you don't think that also means I'll stop pointing out hypocrisy
Oh, I guess you won't be voting Starmer then?
Correct, I won't be
And yet you seem so keen for him to be PM. Hypocrite.
Do I? I'm keen for the Conservatives to be out of power, and I'm realistic enough to know that Labour are the only likely winner. If pushed, I would prefer a Lib Dem led government over a Labour one, but a Labour one will do.
Nigel, if you're going to call people hypocrites at least try to get a handle on their actual view instead of just making any old shit up, there's a good lad.
Hypocrite. There you go, and sorry I really couldn't give a flying fuck about your sad "actual view", as it appears that your "actual view" is really pretty unpleasant..
I have voted LD for the last two elections, though I am pleased that I will not be voting alongside a party that has such unpleasant emotionally unintelligent gits amongst it's following such as yourself. There is also the slight problem with the LDs having a fat buffoon as leader; Boris-Johnson-lite.
I'm probably* not voting Lib Dem either. You can have yet another go if you like! Eventually you might have enough of a handle on what's actually going on and then you can find some deep set hypocrisy and wound me, wound me with your formidable wit.
*I might, though. I will decide tomorrow.
What do I need to say to get your vote? Latest campaign push on FB points out that both Tory and SNP are saying the exact same thing about each other - you have to vote for x to stop y. What people are actually saying on the doorstep doesnt concern either of those two.
I’m the only candidate who’s been talking up jobs and the cost of living and the state of the NHS and council services - literally the only things anyone raises in the doors. And that isn’t just my opinion - Ross and Logan both confirmed that’s what they hear as well.
So why are they only talking about each other? People want change - so vote for it. Voting for more cuts and more broken promises and more failure changes nothing
Same thing I've been saying all along: my priority is that the Tories lose. There's absolutely nothing wrong with your policy platform. I voted Lib Dem last time around and I don't think you're worse now than you were then. So it's 100% an available option for me. Policy wise, you're EASILY within my quite flexibile limits. There are five parties: I will NEVER vote for Reform. I will ONLY vote for Conservative if it's them vs Reform because I'd MUCH rather have a Conservative MP than a Reform one. But that's not the situation, so CON are out. I could vote Labour I could vote SNP I could vote Lib Dem
So it's down to three. I've established to my satisfaction that Labour aren't going to win here: their candidate is suspended and I've heard not a peep from them, honestly ever, since I moved here. So they obviously aren't best placed to beat the Tories.
So it's down to two. My working assumption is the SNP are going to finish above Lib Dem. It's been a few days since I've delved into any polling or MRPs on the subject because I'm waiting for tomorrow when I'll have the freshest data as close to the vote as I can get. If I think Lib Dems will run the Tories the closest, I vote Lib Dem. If it's the SNP, I vote SNP. It's that simple.
Incidentally, update on campaigning: I passed the SNP bus driving along an A-road coming out of Peterhead, and I've seen one -- ONE! -- SNP poster in a window. On the same drive I saw that bus I also saw a big SNP banner in a field, just south of Peterhead near the turning for the Bullers. The permanent Alba poster a couple of miles from me remains in its window. It's been there for years and of course they're not even standing here. No other poster activity.
Thanks for the answer. I’m out in Fochabers - they definitely backed Ross last time and he’s been back here knocking as it’s in his comfort zone.
He isn’t getting their vote this time. The anger with the party is as palpable here as I’ve seen it anywhere. But what are the voters saying? They don’t want the SNP either.
I spoke to one guy who postal voted SNP purely because he hates the Tories. But genuinely I’ve had half a dozen other conversations this afternoon with people switching from the Tories to me. My campaign has been mentioned a few times - it’s cutting through.
And on the SNP side? They’re so pissed off with me that they’ve been reduced to begging for Labour votes despite most of their national campaign being an attack on Labour. Too many of their people last time on the doors saying not this time. I’m picking up votes off them - openly and as I’ve heard repeatedly now there’s people who have switched but don’t want to say so as there is this horrible omertà on speaking out against them.
I’m prepared for every possible result on Thursday. I’m not saying I am going to win - but in a change election people will win from worse positions than I started from. So I *could* win. And there’s a vibe going about both locally and in the wider LD campaign. Let’s put it like this. The Tories are telling candidates who are sitting MPs they have lost and to stop. We’re pushing further and further into Tory safe seats…
Don’t get over excited. You’ve fought a spirited campaign, but will be so far away from winning that you need to prepare yourself for the result.
Absolutely. Don’t worry. My feet are on the ground.
After being convinced for ages that the idea of the Tories getting less than 150 seats is insane, I've finally decided to actually put my money where my mouth is and put a tenner on 150-199 (and a couple of quid on 200-249).
I'm on from 100-300.
Watching for something at decent odds that will protect my stakes if they go under 100.
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
Except of course you fall at the first hurdle because Brexit has not failed. We have left the EU and will not be returning.
If you jump off a cliff, you haven’t failed to leave the clifftop, but the results may not be all that you imagined.
Periodic reminder to our Brexiters that the UK customs control is still a huge shite-storm. So yes, it is most certainly incomplete.
In October you'll need a visa to go to the EU (and you can't apply in advance, have to get it at the border). Then there's goods getting checked that go via Ireland next year.
Maybe there will be another fudge, but it's not exactly ideal.
Isn't there the ETIAS visa waiver program, though, which should be apply-in-advance for most British citizens (similar to ESTA for the US)?
Agree about the rest, with added complications in NI that will no doubt stem from the DUP backing away from their support for the Windsor Framework...
Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
I’m a lot younger, slimmer, and sexier than you.
And most letchy old men of your age think I’m dead hot.
How would you know? Do they approach you on the buses and say "I'm a letchy old man who thinks you're dead hot"?
I will also say this for the ferry. The cabins are immensely soothing and rather comfortable. And the gentle rocking of the boat is perfect for inducing a quick or indeed a really really long nap after an insanely exhausting 9 day whizz around the isles of Brittany
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
[Part 1 of 2...] Failed? We Brexited, didn't we? Though arguably failed in that the right - both populist and mercantilist (do I mean that? do you know what I mean? the Singapore-on-Thames lobby) lost control of it, and neither really got to implement their particular vision of Brexit. So perhaps. Was it a project of the right though? Arguably the right lent Brexit most, though not all, of its leadership - but it wasn't really right-leaning voters who delivered it: the correlation between those who voted right previously and those who voted for Brexit was ambiguous, and in terms of geography weak. I'd say it was sui generis. But I can see the point you're making. And did it absorb and stunt populist right energy? Well I'd say it did, initially. Sadly, those of us who wanted Brexit on grounds of either governance (i.e. the democratic argument) or economics (the European-economy-looking-a-bit-parlous-best-disentangle-ourselves argument) were probably not those who swayed the day - what swayed the day was (as always) the emotional side: both the towns like Clacton who felt distinctly left out of the growth brought about by globalism, and, as always, the immigration angle (particularly if you remember the immigration issues mainland Europe was having in 2016). On both of those issues, those who voted Brexit had reason initially to think that their concerns might be being addressed. Boris was elected with an explicit focus on the areas which had not benefited from globalism, and (possibly coincidentally - covid must have been a factor) immigration dropped down the list of concerns. And also, after years of prevarication by parliament, Brexit was pushed through. And with labour shortages, wages began to rise. And the far right began to ebb, and the Tories won Hartlepool in a by-election.
... [cont]
[Part 2 of 2]
Three years later and I think it's fair to say that Levelling Up hasn't happened and has been treated with some contempt by Rishi (the north gets HS2 cancelled so that money can be diverted to London potholes and trains in Devon, but we do get chessboards in the park in Hull), immigration has surged, and the globalists are back in charge of the agenda. Yes, SKS is about to get a landslide, but we shouldn't confuse that with enthusiasm for centrism - he will probably achieve a respectable but not spectacular not-quite-40% of the vote. The landslide will be delivered by the collapse in support for the unpopulist Conservatives: even as their respectability softens under the blowtorch of a campaign, Reform will probably still get rather more than 10% of the vote and the assorted populists of the left will garner another 10%. Populism hasn't gone away, and it seems to me that the conditions for it very much haven't gone away either. It doesn't seem unlikely to me that it will grow here as it has on the continent, especially with a centrist government about to take the reins. Obviously there's the possibility that under a new government everything will be run competently and immigration will fall and wages will rise* and left-behind towns will get a long-term plan of investment which will see confidence in them grow. But if it doesn't, my guess is the populist impulse grows - though I am taking no view yet on whether that gets hoovered up by the Conservatives or Reform or someone else.
I think Brexit will help, a bit. We are slightly less remote from our elected representatives than our counterparts in the EU; slightly more able to effectively pull at the levers of power - though that is dulled by FPTP. But I see no reason why the UK should be wholly immune to the trends of the continent.
*I actually think this reasonably likely. I am economically more bullish than most and think Labour will have a bit more room to maneouvre than most think.
A big win will give Labour some time and room to manoeuvre, for sure. We can only hope and pray that they take it.
The Tories’ strategic mistake is not to have understood how much of their home countries support came from people who, by birth or effort, were already ahead in life’s game and just wanted sensible, pragmatic, prudent, non-ideological folk to represent them and essentially leave things as they are, for as long as it took until they could pass their lives’ gains onto their children.
As soon as more and more Tories started frothing about the EU and the BBC and the judges and the ill-defined supposed woke, the Conservatives departed from reality and more and more of the sensible middle class folk of our country began to ask, WTF?
Unfortunately for the Tories - and indeed for all parties - it's very very hard nowadays to build a coalition of voters which adds up to a majority in parliament. There aren't enough old fashioned Buckinghamshire type Tories to win an election without some support from Canvey Island type Tories. And vice versa. And indeed the Labour Party is a similarly unstable coalition between.
Well done on spelling manoeuvre correctly though. Always defeats me, and the spellcheck wants me to spell in the American way so is no help.
After being convinced for ages that the idea of the Tories getting less than 150 seats is insane, I've finally decided to actually put my money where my mouth is and put a tenner on 150-199 (and a couple of quid on 200-249).
I'm on from 100-300.
Watching for something at decent odds that will protect my stakes if they go under 100.
The value bet currently is probably Tories 150+ (140+ with Ladbrokes).
Redfield are teasing with a significant shift in tonight’s MRP. Possibly, it’s puff and they’re pushing a within-MOE for the publicity? Otherwise, a swingback to the Tories is surely the most likely change, compared to a surge for Reform (how and why?) or the LibDems (ditto) or Labour (ditto)?
'The Reform UK chairman has admitted to "mistakes" in the party's selection process after its candidate in Orkney and Shetland suggested Nicola Sturgeon should be shot.
Robert Smith posted numerous insults about prominent women on social media between 2016 and last year, The Times has reported [...]
The Times reported that Mr Smith made several insulting comments about Ms Sturgeon, as well as author and activist JK Rowling and Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank.'
There's quite a lot of it.
The strange one is that he is insulting some people one would expect Reform to be supporting.
I will also say this for the ferry. The cabins are immensely soothing and rather comfortable. And the gentle rocking of the boat is perfect for inducing a quick or indeed a really really long nap after an insanely exhausting 9 day whizz around the isles of Brittany
😴😵
Stay alert; you’re due south of St Catherine’s now, will come into view shortly, on the port side. When my Dura-supplied handheld torpedo hits the Bretagne in a less than a couple of hours’ time, you will need to be quick to the lifeboats.
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
Except of course you fall at the first hurdle because Brexit has not failed. We have left the EU and will not be returning.
For you, perhaps. For people in Clacton and other left behind places I don't think they feel they got what they were promised.
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
Except of course you fall at the first hurdle because Brexit has not failed. We have left the EU and will not be returning.
That people overwhelmingly think Brexit was a mistake shouldn't be a factor in any assessment of its success, in your view?
Has the abolition of the death penalty been a success?
I suppose that is a good question for people like me who oppose the death penalty.
If you applied Brexit arguments to polling like this, you'd have to say that maintaining its abolition is unsustainable.
Not really. I'm conceding your point on the death penalty, not on Brexit, because I'm not sure how to reconcile something I think is a moral wrong with the fact most people want it.
I don't think the abolition of the death penalty is a success by virtue of it happening, any more than I think Brexit is a success by virtue of it happening.
On UNS Sir John Curtice is forecasting a result closer to what Michael Howard got in 2005 for Sunak than what Major got in 1997 and Hague got in 2001. On an MRP forecast though Curtice says the Tory result could be even worse than 1997
'Sir John Curtice projects 370 Labour seats, 191 Tory seats and 34 LD and 34 SNP seats, 2 Plaid, 1 Green and 0 Reform on universal national swing based on analysis of 8 recent polls.
However on an MRP change the results look significantly different, with Curtice saying Labour could then get 447 seats, the Tories 98, the LDs 53, the SNP 21, Reform 8 and the Greens and Plaid 2 each' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cl7y2xj728do
So he doesnt know.
Here's my regular reminder that if one methodology gives one result and another gives another, the truth is not in splitting the difference, the truth is that one of them is wrong. We now have to decide whether polls+UNS is right, or MRP is right.
Both can be wrong.
MRP approaches have not been ground-truthed in an election like this. One (YouGov) did well in 2019, under very different circumstances.
Any MRP is only as good as the demographic (or other) factors which it uses to model constituency outcomes. We genuinely do not yet know whether those factors will correlate to voting behaviour on Thursday.
'The Reform UK chairman has admitted to "mistakes" in the party's selection process after its candidate in Orkney and Shetland suggested Nicola Sturgeon should be shot.
Robert Smith posted numerous insults about prominent women on social media between 2016 and last year, The Times has reported [...]
The Times reported that Mr Smith made several insulting comments about Ms Sturgeon, as well as author and activist JK Rowling and Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank.'
RefUK "selection process" = an embarrassment of wretches.
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
Except of course you fall at the first hurdle because Brexit has not failed. We have left the EU and will not be returning.
If you jump off a cliff, you haven’t failed to leave the clifftop, but the results may not be all that you imagined.
Periodic reminder to our Brexiters that the UK customs control is still a huge shite-storm. So yes, it is most certainly incomplete.
In October you'll need a visa to go to the EU (and you can't apply in advance, have to get it at the border). Then there's goods getting checked that go via Ireland next year.
Maybe there will be another fudge, but it's not exactly ideal.
Isn't there the ETIAS visa waiver program, though, which should be apply-in-advance for most British citizens (similar to ESTA for the US)?
Agree about the rest, with added complications in NI that will no doubt stem from the DUP backing away from their support for the Windsor Framework...
I don't think you'll be able to apply in advance (Edit: Not at first anyway)
"A new EU digital border system that will require fingerprints and facial scans to be taken from British travellers on first use is expected to launch next autumn, according to reports.
The entry/exit system (EES) is earmarked to start on 6 October 2024, according to the i and Times newspapers, citing Getlink, the owner of Eurotunnel. The Guardian has contacted Getlink for comment.
Eurotunnel, which runs a car transport service between Folkestone and Calais, is said to be testing the technology, in which personal data will be collected at borders and entered into an EU-wide database.
Under the EES, passengers would have to agree to fingerprinting and facial image capture the first time they arrived on the continent. After that, the data, including any record of refused entry, should allow quicker processing, according to travel bosses."
Will the Royal Mail foul-up as regards the issuing and processing of returned Postal Votes further depress overall turnout levels? That seems likely, although I haven't seen the precise scale of the poblem having been referred to. What we do know is that approx 20% of the electorate have appled for a postal vote, so possibly BIG numbers are involved and potentially a seat or two. This has led me to have a punt on the 60.00% - 62.49% turnout band where Ladbrokes' 7/2 is currently the best odds available and also on the 62.50% - 64.99% band where those nice folk at the Betfair Exchange go 7/2 (or 3.325/1 net of their 5% comm'n).
After being convinced for ages that the idea of the Tories getting less than 150 seats is insane, I've finally decided to actually put my money where my mouth is and put a tenner on 150-199 (and a couple of quid on 200-249).
I'm on from 100-300.
Watching for something at decent odds that will protect my stakes if they go under 100.
I've been betting on 50-99 from the beginning of March onwards, initially to build a trading position because I was convinced that Sunak would be a disaster in the campaign. But I've held onto most of it, with additional smaller bets leaving me with a marginal loss on 100-149 and marginally green on 150-199.
'The Reform UK chairman has admitted to "mistakes" in the party's selection process after its candidate in Orkney and Shetland suggested Nicola Sturgeon should be shot.
Robert Smith posted numerous insults about prominent women on social media between 2016 and last year, The Times has reported [...]
The Times reported that Mr Smith made several insulting comments about Ms Sturgeon, as well as author and activist JK Rowling and Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank.'
RefUK "selection process" = an embarrassment of wretches.
I will also say this for the ferry. The cabins are immensely soothing and rather comfortable. And the gentle rocking of the boat is perfect for inducing a quick or indeed a really really long nap after an insanely exhausting 9 day whizz around the isles of Brittany
😴😵
Stay alert; you’re due south of St Catherine’s now, will come into view shortly, on the port side. When my Dura-supplied handheld torpedo hits the Bretagne in a less than a couple of hours’ time, you will need to be quick to the lifeboats.
After being convinced for ages that the idea of the Tories getting less than 150 seats is insane, I've finally decided to actually put my money where my mouth is and put a tenner on 150-199 (and a couple of quid on 200-249).
I'm on from 100-300.
Watching for something at decent odds that will protect my stakes if they go under 100.
I've been betting on 50-99 from the beginning of March onwards, initially to build a trading position because I was convinced that Sunak would be a disaster in the campaign. But I've held onto most of it, with additional smaller bets leaving me with a marginal loss on 100-149 and marginally green on 150-199.
My big worry is that they end up with under 50...
You can get on that for very good odds now - you maybe still be able to hedge successfully with that too
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
Except of course you fall at the first hurdle because Brexit has not failed. We have left the EU and will not be returning.
That people overwhelmingly think Brexit was a mistake shouldn't be a factor in any assessment of its success, in your view?
75% of people thinking Brexit was a mistake is a longing to travel back in time to sometime before 2016 when covid was still just an epidemiologist's bad dream which the state hadn't blown its life savings and that of its children on closing down the economy for, and Europe wasn't at actual war, and we still had nice cheap gas, and virtual and real life weren't patrolled by the perma-furious.
Though compare 2015 Manchester to 2024 Manchester and its hard to argue we have just laboured are way through almost a decade of permanent disaster. How did we find the time and money to build all of those skyscrapers if that was the case?
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
Except of course you fall at the first hurdle because Brexit has not failed. We have left the EU and will not be returning.
That people overwhelmingly think Brexit was a mistake shouldn't be a factor in any assessment of its success, in your view?
Has the abolition of the death penalty been a success?
It has reduced the rate of judicial murder, so it looks like a success to me.
Will the Royal Mail foul-up as regards the issuing and processing of returned Postal Votes further depress overall turnout levels? That seems likely, although I haven't seen the precise scale of the poblem having been referred to. What we do know is that approx 20% of the electorate have appled for a postal vote, so possibly BIG numbers are involved and potentially a seat or two. This has led me to have a punt on the 60.00% - 62.49% turnout band where Ladbrokes' 7/2 is currently the best odds available and also on the 62.50% - 64.99% band where those nice folk at the Betfair Exchange go 7/2 (or 3.325/1 net of their 5% comm'n).
Every election time, Royal Mail will have a team sorting through the incoming mail and fast-tracking outgoing and returning postal votes, and in delivery offices it will be the same. They may arrive later than intended, but I would be surprised if many arrive too late - no-one at RM wants to put the company at the centre of such a national news story.
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
Except of course you fall at the first hurdle because Brexit has not failed. We have left the EU and will not be returning.
If you jump off a cliff, you haven’t failed to leave the clifftop, but the results may not be all that you imagined.
Periodic reminder to our Brexiters that the UK customs control is still a huge shite-storm. So yes, it is most certainly incomplete.
In October you'll need a visa to go to the EU (and you can't apply in advance, have to get it at the border). Then there's goods getting checked that go via Ireland next year.
Maybe there will be another fudge, but it's not exactly ideal.
Isn't there the ETIAS visa waiver program, though, which should be apply-in-advance for most British citizens (similar to ESTA for the US)?
Agree about the rest, with added complications in NI that will no doubt stem from the DUP backing away from their support for the Windsor Framework...
I don't think you'll be able to apply in advance (Edit: Not at first anyway)
"A new EU digital border system that will require fingerprints and facial scans to be taken from British travellers on first use is expected to launch next autumn, according to reports.
The entry/exit system (EES) is earmarked to start on 6 October 2024, according to the i and Times newspapers, citing Getlink, the owner of Eurotunnel. The Guardian has contacted Getlink for comment.
Eurotunnel, which runs a car transport service between Folkestone and Calais, is said to be testing the technology, in which personal data will be collected at borders and entered into an EU-wide database.
Under the EES, passengers would have to agree to fingerprinting and facial image capture the first time they arrived on the continent. After that, the data, including any record of refused entry, should allow quicker processing, according to travel bosses."
You apply for ETIAS in advance; your biometrics are taken on first entry.
Will be slower at first, especially for cars with mulltiple occupants.
But it means, medium term, the end of passport stamps and much more use of electronic gates for British citizens.
What does MRP stand for? I see it every day, and I've still no idea.
Material Requirement Planning is what I thought it stood for.
MRP=Multilevel Regression and Poststratification
Multilevel Regression. You ask lots of people who they are going to vote for. Because you know their age, sex, location and socioeconomic class you make guesses about how many people of each age, sex, location and class will vote for each party
Poststratification. You know the age/sex/class makeup of each constitiuency, so you plug those numbers in and work out who is going to win each seat
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
Except of course you fall at the first hurdle because Brexit has not failed. We have left the EU and will not be returning.
If you jump off a cliff, you haven’t failed to leave the clifftop, but the results may not be all that you imagined.
Periodic reminder to our Brexiters that the UK customs control is still a huge shite-storm. So yes, it is most certainly incomplete.
In October you'll need a visa to go to the EU (and you can't apply in advance, have to get it at the border). Then there's goods getting checked that go via Ireland next year.
Maybe there will be another fudge, but it's not exactly ideal.
Isn't there the ETIAS visa waiver program, though, which should be apply-in-advance for most British citizens (similar to ESTA for the US)?
Agree about the rest, with added complications in NI that will no doubt stem from the DUP backing away from their support for the Windsor Framework...
I don't think you'll be able to apply in advance (Edit: Not at first anyway)
"A new EU digital border system that will require fingerprints and facial scans to be taken from British travellers on first use is expected to launch next autumn, according to reports.
The entry/exit system (EES) is earmarked to start on 6 October 2024, according to the i and Times newspapers, citing Getlink, the owner of Eurotunnel. The Guardian has contacted Getlink for comment.
Eurotunnel, which runs a car transport service between Folkestone and Calais, is said to be testing the technology, in which personal data will be collected at borders and entered into an EU-wide database.
Under the EES, passengers would have to agree to fingerprinting and facial image capture the first time they arrived on the continent. After that, the data, including any record of refused entry, should allow quicker processing, according to travel bosses."
But this is actually good news for all the remoaners whingeing about passport queues. Once this is done it means no more passport stamps - everything will be logged electronically and you will whizz through frontiers as fast as EU citizens
Which again is what us Leavers predicted. There will be initial pain - we left - but then the glitches will get ironed out. And the irritations will disappear but we will be free
Will the Royal Mail foul-up as regards the issuing and processing of returned Postal Votes further depress overall turnout levels? That seems likely, although I haven't seen the precise scale of the poblem having been referred to. What we do know is that approx 20% of the electorate have appled for a postal vote, so possibly BIG numbers are involved and potentially a seat or two. This has led me to have a punt on the 60.00% - 62.49% turnout band where Ladbrokes' 7/2 is currently the best odds available and also on the 62.50% - 64.99% band where those nice folk at the Betfair Exchange go 7/2 (or 3.325/1 net of their 5% comm'n).
Every election time, Royal Mail will have a team sorting through the incoming mail and fast-tracking outgoing and returning postal votes, and in delivery offices it will be the same. They may arrive later than intended, but I would be surprised if many arrive too late - no-one at RM wants to put the company at the centre of such a national news story.
Especially as they are hoping to persuade the incoming government to let a 500 year old British institution be sold off to foreign buyers.
Technically there is no such thing as a Supermajority in the UK.
A landslide I would say is c. 120+ majority. Some would set the bar a bit lower.
I suspect that this Tory / Daily Mail Supermajority message is cutting through and I’m not too unhappy about it. If it helps defeat @Leon ’s warped worldview then it’s a double win as far as I’m concerned.
There seems to be mixed signals. On one hand "its cutting through" - as I have to presume witnessed by this absurd 48 Hours thing. On the other hand the net of seats to LB attack / Tory defend gets stretched further and further.
It won't people an avalanche of people voting Labour. But they're voting against the Tories. Only a few days to find out if there is a late Tory swingback or not. But lets assume there is, and the "please please no" campaign has "worked" and Labour "only" win a 150 majority
Bit abject isn't it for the Tories? "We successfully avoided getting crushed! We only got beat by a massive landslide! WooHoo!!!!"
I would suggest you may be missing the point that many conservatives look on in disgust at Reform and their stated aim to take over the party and are determined to fight for the one nation conservative cause, but also to have at least a viable opposition and yes including an increased lib dem seat count
I have no idea of Fridays seat totals but disenchantment with all governing parties is at an extreme high, not just here but elsewhere and you only need to witness what is happening in France to be concerned if the centre right is marginalised into irrelevance
No I get it - we don't want Farage.
That is a given, the motivation to salvage as many seats as possible. And *that* is my point. The best case scenario - one the party is now spending its remaining cash pleading for - is to only give Labour a landslide.
How the mighty have fallen. It took Labour over a decade to recover from a badly misguided comedy note channeling Reginald Maudling. How long will it take the Tories to recover from "please don't destroy us, isn't a landslide enough for you?"
I kinda understand BigG's position. But a clearer signal to the Tories to return to the centre would be to vote for the centre. That's the Lib Dems, probably.
I want to address this directly
I was going to vote Lib Dem post Sunak's D day error but it was when Farage entered the fray as leader of Reform that we (my wife and I) made the decision it was correct for us to return to the conservatives as it it far more important to us that the conservatives out vote Reform in votes
Whether that happens I do not know but a vote for the Lib Dems here would have been a wasted vote anyway as labour are going to easily regain the seat
You could equally have decided it was important that the Lib Dems beat Reform on votes. Or that Plaid Cymru beat Reform in Wales. But you didn't. Because you're a Tory tribalist. It's not about Reform, it's about finding some reason to justify what you were always going to do anyway.
Basically every single thing you say can be discounted if it can be contradicted with "but you'll vote Tory anyway". Because you will. Your bland handwringing over Tory scandals can be (and in some quarters was) safely disregarded because the conclusion was always going to be same.
Please disregard everything I post and say if you so wish
I will continue to post as honestly as I can as long as I can
Already do, but I hope you don't think that also means I'll stop pointing out hypocrisy
Oh, I guess you won't be voting Starmer then?
Correct, I won't be
And yet you seem so keen for him to be PM. Hypocrite.
Do I? I'm keen for the Conservatives to be out of power, and I'm realistic enough to know that Labour are the only likely winner. If pushed, I would prefer a Lib Dem led government over a Labour one, but a Labour one will do.
Nigel, if you're going to call people hypocrites at least try to get a handle on their actual view instead of just making any old shit up, there's a good lad.
Hypocrite. There you go, and sorry I really couldn't give a flying fuck about your sad "actual view", as it appears that your "actual view" is really pretty unpleasant..
I have voted LD for the last two elections, though I am pleased that I will not be voting alongside a party that has such unpleasant emotionally unintelligent gits amongst it's following such as yourself. There is also the slight problem with the LDs having a fat buffoon as leader; Boris-Johnson-lite.
I'm probably* not voting Lib Dem either. You can have yet another go if you like! Eventually you might have enough of a handle on what's actually going on and then you can find some deep set hypocrisy and wound me, wound me with your formidable wit.
*I might, though. I will decide tomorrow.
What do I need to say to get your vote? Latest campaign push on FB points out that both Tory and SNP are saying the exact same thing about each other - you have to vote for x to stop y. What people are actually saying on the doorstep doesnt concern either of those two.
I’m the only candidate who’s been talking up jobs and the cost of living and the state of the NHS and council services - literally the only things anyone raises in the doors. And that isn’t just my opinion - Ross and Logan both confirmed that’s what they hear as well.
So why are they only talking about each other? People want change - so vote for it. Voting for more cuts and more broken promises and more failure changes nothing
Same thing I've been saying all along: my priority is that the Tories lose. There's absolutely nothing wrong with your policy platform. I voted Lib Dem last time around and I don't think you're worse now than you were then. So it's 100% an available option for me. Policy wise, you're EASILY within my quite flexibile limits. There are five parties: I will NEVER vote for Reform. I will ONLY vote for Conservative if it's them vs Reform because I'd MUCH rather have a Conservative MP than a Reform one. But that's not the situation, so CON are out. I could vote Labour I could vote SNP I could vote Lib Dem
So it's down to three. I've established to my satisfaction that Labour aren't going to win here: their candidate is suspended and I've heard not a peep from them, honestly ever, since I moved here. So they obviously aren't best placed to beat the Tories.
So it's down to two. My working assumption is the SNP are going to finish above Lib Dem. It's been a few days since I've delved into any polling or MRPs on the subject because I'm waiting for tomorrow when I'll have the freshest data as close to the vote as I can get. If I think Lib Dems will run the Tories the closest, I vote Lib Dem. If it's the SNP, I vote SNP. It's that simple.
Incidentally, update on campaigning: I passed the SNP bus driving along an A-road coming out of Peterhead, and I've seen one -- ONE! -- SNP poster in a window. On the same drive I saw that bus I also saw a big SNP banner in a field, just south of Peterhead near the turning for the Bullers. The permanent Alba poster a couple of miles from me remains in its window. It's been there for years and of course they're not even standing here. No other poster activity.
Thanks for the answer. I’m out in Fochabers - they definitely backed Ross last time and he’s been back here knocking as it’s in his comfort zone.
He isn’t getting their vote this time. The anger with the party is as palpable here as I’ve seen it anywhere. But what are the voters saying? They don’t want the SNP either.
I spoke to one guy who postal voted SNP purely because he hates the Tories. But genuinely I’ve had half a dozen other conversations this afternoon with people switching from the Tories to me. My campaign has been mentioned a few times - it’s cutting through.
And on the SNP side? They’re so pissed off with me that they’ve been reduced to begging for Labour votes despite most of their national campaign being an attack on Labour. Too many of their people last time on the doors saying not this time. I’m picking up votes off them - openly and as I’ve heard repeatedly now there’s people who have switched but don’t want to say so as there is this horrible omertà on speaking out against them.
I’m prepared for every possible result on Thursday. I’m not saying I am going to win - but in a change election people will win from worse positions than I started from. So I *could* win. And there’s a vibe going about both locally and in the wider LD campaign. Let’s put it like this. The Tories are telling candidates who are sitting MPs they have lost and to stop. We’re pushing further and further into Tory safe seats…
Don’t get over excited. You’ve fought a spirited campaign, but will be so far away from winning that you need to prepare yourself for the result.
Absolutely. Don’t worry. My feet are on the ground.
But I've staked my house on you winning!
(Not really - a person in their 30s with a house? Preposterous)
Technically there is no such thing as a Supermajority in the UK.
A landslide I would say is c. 120+ majority. Some would set the bar a bit lower.
I suspect that this Tory / Daily Mail Supermajority message is cutting through and I’m not too unhappy about it. If it helps defeat @Leon ’s warped worldview then it’s a double win as far as I’m concerned.
There seems to be mixed signals. On one hand "its cutting through" - as I have to presume witnessed by this absurd 48 Hours thing. On the other hand the net of seats to LB attack / Tory defend gets stretched further and further.
It won't people an avalanche of people voting Labour. But they're voting against the Tories. Only a few days to find out if there is a late Tory swingback or not. But lets assume there is, and the "please please no" campaign has "worked" and Labour "only" win a 150 majority
Bit abject isn't it for the Tories? "We successfully avoided getting crushed! We only got beat by a massive landslide! WooHoo!!!!"
I would suggest you may be missing the point that many conservatives look on in disgust at Reform and their stated aim to take over the party and are determined to fight for the one nation conservative cause, but also to have at least a viable opposition and yes including an increased lib dem seat count
I have no idea of Fridays seat totals but disenchantment with all governing parties is at an extreme high, not just here but elsewhere and you only need to witness what is happening in France to be concerned if the centre right is marginalised into irrelevance
No I get it - we don't want Farage.
That is a given, the motivation to salvage as many seats as possible. And *that* is my point. The best case scenario - one the party is now spending its remaining cash pleading for - is to only give Labour a landslide.
How the mighty have fallen. It took Labour over a decade to recover from a badly misguided comedy note channeling Reginald Maudling. How long will it take the Tories to recover from "please don't destroy us, isn't a landslide enough for you?"
I kinda understand BigG's position. But a clearer signal to the Tories to return to the centre would be to vote for the centre. That's the Lib Dems, probably.
I want to address this directly
I was going to vote Lib Dem post Sunak's D day error but it was when Farage entered the fray as leader of Reform that we (my wife and I) made the decision it was correct for us to return to the conservatives as it it far more important to us that the conservatives out vote Reform in votes
Whether that happens I do not know but a vote for the Lib Dems here would have been a wasted vote anyway as labour are going to easily regain the seat
You could equally have decided it was important that the Lib Dems beat Reform on votes. Or that Plaid Cymru beat Reform in Wales. But you didn't. Because you're a Tory tribalist. It's not about Reform, it's about finding some reason to justify what you were always going to do anyway.
Basically every single thing you say can be discounted if it can be contradicted with "but you'll vote Tory anyway". Because you will. Your bland handwringing over Tory scandals can be (and in some quarters was) safely disregarded because the conclusion was always going to be same.
Please disregard everything I post and say if you so wish
I will continue to post as honestly as I can as long as I can
Already do, but I hope you don't think that also means I'll stop pointing out hypocrisy
Oh, I guess you won't be voting Starmer then?
Correct, I won't be
And yet you seem so keen for him to be PM. Hypocrite.
Do I? I'm keen for the Conservatives to be out of power, and I'm realistic enough to know that Labour are the only likely winner. If pushed, I would prefer a Lib Dem led government over a Labour one, but a Labour one will do.
Nigel, if you're going to call people hypocrites at least try to get a handle on their actual view instead of just making any old shit up, there's a good lad.
Hypocrite. There you go, and sorry I really couldn't give a flying fuck about your sad "actual view", as it appears that your "actual view" is really pretty unpleasant..
I have voted LD for the last two elections, though I am pleased that I will not be voting alongside a party that has such unpleasant emotionally unintelligent gits amongst it's following such as yourself. There is also the slight problem with the LDs having a fat buffoon as leader; Boris-Johnson-lite.
I'm probably* not voting Lib Dem either. You can have yet another go if you like! Eventually you might have enough of a handle on what's actually going on and then you can find some deep set hypocrisy and wound me, wound me with your formidable wit.
*I might, though. I will decide tomorrow.
What do I need to say to get your vote? Latest campaign push on FB points out that both Tory and SNP are saying the exact same thing about each other - you have to vote for x to stop y. What people are actually saying on the doorstep doesnt concern either of those two.
I’m the only candidate who’s been talking up jobs and the cost of living and the state of the NHS and council services - literally the only things anyone raises in the doors. And that isn’t just my opinion - Ross and Logan both confirmed that’s what they hear as well.
So why are they only talking about each other? People want change - so vote for it. Voting for more cuts and more broken promises and more failure changes nothing
Same thing I've been saying all along: my priority is that the Tories lose. There's absolutely nothing wrong with your policy platform. I voted Lib Dem last time around and I don't think you're worse now than you were then. So it's 100% an available option for me. Policy wise, you're EASILY within my quite flexibile limits. There are five parties: I will NEVER vote for Reform. I will ONLY vote for Conservative if it's them vs Reform because I'd MUCH rather have a Conservative MP than a Reform one. But that's not the situation, so CON are out. I could vote Labour I could vote SNP I could vote Lib Dem
So it's down to three. I've established to my satisfaction that Labour aren't going to win here: their candidate is suspended and I've heard not a peep from them, honestly ever, since I moved here. So they obviously aren't best placed to beat the Tories.
So it's down to two. My working assumption is the SNP are going to finish above Lib Dem. It's been a few days since I've delved into any polling or MRPs on the subject because I'm waiting for tomorrow when I'll have the freshest data as close to the vote as I can get. If I think Lib Dems will run the Tories the closest, I vote Lib Dem. If it's the SNP, I vote SNP. It's that simple.
Incidentally, update on campaigning: I passed the SNP bus driving along an A-road coming out of Peterhead, and I've seen one -- ONE! -- SNP poster in a window. On the same drive I saw that bus I also saw a big SNP banner in a field, just south of Peterhead near the turning for the Bullers. The permanent Alba poster a couple of miles from me remains in its window. It's been there for years and of course they're not even standing here. No other poster activity.
Thanks for the answer. I’m out in Fochabers - they definitely backed Ross last time and he’s been back here knocking as it’s in his comfort zone.
He isn’t getting their vote this time. The anger with the party is as palpable here as I’ve seen it anywhere. But what are the voters saying? They don’t want the SNP either.
I spoke to one guy who postal voted SNP purely because he hates the Tories. But genuinely I’ve had half a dozen other conversations this afternoon with people switching from the Tories to me. My campaign has been mentioned a few times - it’s cutting through.
And on the SNP side? They’re so pissed off with me that they’ve been reduced to begging for Labour votes despite most of their national campaign being an attack on Labour. Too many of their people last time on the doors saying not this time. I’m picking up votes off them - openly and as I’ve heard repeatedly now there’s people who have switched but don’t want to say so as there is this horrible omertà on speaking out against them.
I’m prepared for every possible result on Thursday. I’m not saying I am going to win - but in a change election people will win from worse positions than I started from. So I *could* win. And there’s a vibe going about both locally and in the wider LD campaign. Let’s put it like this. The Tories are telling candidates who are sitting MPs they have lost and to stop. We’re pushing further and further into Tory safe seats…
Let's see. One of the things I will analyse tomorrow is just how far off the national trends ANME would need to be to tip things your way. We know overall that CON and SNP will be down. LD looks static-ish in overall vote share. That looks like a fascinating calculation and I've been a bit put off thinking about how the hell it all falls out in the seat like ours. The two big parties in 2019 are both stumbling badly. The one also-ran is static but has an active campaign. The other also-ran is surging in the polls but has no campaign and their candidate is suspended. The newbie party are also surging in the polls but the campaign is nearly non-existent here and the candidate is also in trouble after some anti-monarchy posts.
I honestly can't think of a weirder seat though perhaps someone else can point to one even more dramatic. It's going to be a headache churning the numbers.
Reform candidate there also anti-King, like the one in O&S? Well, well. I thought they all stood at attention whenver America (My Country 'Tis of Thee) were played on the telly.
On UNS Sir John Curtice is forecasting a result closer to what Michael Howard got in 2005 for Sunak than what Major got in 1997 and Hague got in 2001. On an MRP forecast though Curtice says the Tory result could be even worse than 1997
'Sir John Curtice projects 370 Labour seats, 191 Tory seats and 34 LD and 34 SNP seats, 2 Plaid, 1 Green and 0 Reform on universal national swing based on analysis of 8 recent polls.
However on an MRP change the results look significantly different, with Curtice saying Labour could then get 447 seats, the Tories 98, the LDs 53, the SNP 21, Reform 8 and the Greens and Plaid 2 each' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cl7y2xj728do
So he doesnt know.
Here's my regular reminder that if one methodology gives one result and another gives another, the truth is not in splitting the difference, the truth is that one of them is wrong. We now have to decide whether polls+UNS is right, or MRP is right.
I'm lost over tory messaging. Not a surprise I suppose in this campaign.
We are being told to stop a supermajority and now, at same time, that a hung parliament is within reach.
It's classic attempts at damage limitation undercut by admitting defeat being even more damaging. So they look confused or dishonest.
Some minor parties suffer as they put policies in a theoretical government or more realistically things they will 'push' for. Most avoided it this time.
Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
I’m a lot younger, slimmer, and sexier than you.
And most letchy old men of your age think I’m dead hot.
How would you know? Do they approach you on the buses and say "I'm a letchy old man who thinks you're dead hot"?
Seems a reasonable guess. Letchy old men tend to think anyone female is dead hot. Part of the job description.
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
Except of course you fall at the first hurdle because Brexit has not failed. We have left the EU and will not be returning.
Yes it happened alright. If we just consider it as an event rather than a change then it can neither succeed nor fail. There's something in that but it's not how it was pitched or is usually discussed.
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
Except of course you fall at the first hurdle because Brexit has not failed. We have left the EU and will not be returning.
If you jump off a cliff, you haven’t failed to leave the clifftop, but the results may not be all that you imagined.
When everyone told you it was a cliff and it turned out to be nothing more than a small step a lot of people would have the good grace to feel rather foolish.
That’s rather glib when Brexit has sent many small UK exporters to the wall.
UK Exports to the EU rose from £300 billion in 2019 to £357 billion in 2023.
What does MRP stand for? I see it every day, and I've still no idea.
Material Requirement Planning is what I thought it stood for.
MRP=Multilevel Regression and Poststratification
Multilevel Regression. You ask lots of people who they are going to vote for. Because you know their age, sex, location and socioeconomic class you make guesses about how many people of each age, sex, location and class will vote for each party
Poststratification. You know the age/sex/class makeup of each constitiuency, so you plug those numbers in and work out who is going to win each seat
Except, examine the small print, and you will see that they all have a further stage, using some mix of local sample and previous election results to avoid being totally embarrassed by the failure of the demographic modelling to predict actual voter behaviour on the ground.
I will also say this for the ferry. The cabins are immensely soothing and rather comfortable. And the gentle rocking of the boat is perfect for inducing a quick or indeed a really really long nap after an insanely exhausting 9 day whizz around the isles of Brittany
😴😵
Stay alert; you’re due south of St Catherine’s now, will come into view shortly, on the port side. When my Dura-supplied handheld torpedo hits the Bretagne in a less than a couple of hours’ time, you will need to be quick to the lifeboats.
I first came across this (or the rusting remains of its launch ramp, more accurately) on a visit to Fort Victoria in West Wight. The age of this steampunk guided weapon system is exactly what you'd guess from the name of the coastal defence fortification.
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
Except of course you fall at the first hurdle because Brexit has not failed. We have left the EU and will not be returning.
Yes it happened alright. If we just consider it as an event rather than a change then it can neither succeed nor fail. There's something in that but it's not how it was pitched or is usually discussed.
It was usually discussed as an existential catastrophe and an ELE for the British economy. If that's what you were expecting I suppose you could say that it's failed to live up to its billing.
YouGov confirm their final MRP is tomorrow at 5 Edit - Opinium also have final poll tomorrow, Ipsos Thursday AM in the Standard traditionally final poll of campaign
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
Except of course you fall at the first hurdle because Brexit has not failed. We have left the EU and will not be returning.
If you jump off a cliff, you haven’t failed to leave the clifftop, but the results may not be all that you imagined.
When everyone told you it was a cliff and it turned out to be nothing more than a small step a lot of people would have the good grace to feel rather foolish.
That’s rather glib when Brexit has sent many small UK exporters to the wall.
UK Exports to the EU rose from £300 billion in 2019 to £357 billion in 2023.
In other words, rather less than inflation. And the small exporters are small but vital for the future.
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
Except of course you fall at the first hurdle because Brexit has not failed. We have left the EU and will not be returning.
If you jump off a cliff, you haven’t failed to leave the clifftop, but the results may not be all that you imagined.
When everyone told you it was a cliff and it turned out to be nothing more than a small step a lot of people would have the good grace to feel rather foolish.
That’s rather glib when Brexit has sent many small UK exporters to the wall.
UK Exports to the EU rose from £300 billion in 2019 to £357 billion in 2023.
That’s because you’re cleverly including inter-bank gold transfers in your figures.
My guess is most Reform voters are very keen on a change of government. They might not like Labour, but they definitely don't want another 5 years of this Conservative government. So it's a waste of time. You may as well say if Con + Reform is greater than Lab then all the Conservative voters should vote Reform.
'The Reform UK chairman has admitted to "mistakes" in the party's selection process after its candidate in Orkney and Shetland suggested Nicola Sturgeon should be shot.
Robert Smith posted numerous insults about prominent women on social media between 2016 and last year, The Times has reported [...]
The Times reported that Mr Smith made several insulting comments about Ms Sturgeon, as well as author and activist JK Rowling and Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank.'
RefUK "selection process" = an embarrassment of wretches.
I said this back at the beginning of the campaign. The 'process' consists of someone saying 'I want to be a Reform candidate' and if that constituency doesn't yet have a candidate then you are it. From what I can see tere was absolutely no vetting at all.
My guess is most Reform voters are very keen on a change of government. They might not like Labour, but they definitely don't want another 5 years of this Conservative government. So it's a waste of time. You may as well say if Con + Reform is greater than Lab then all the Conservative voters should vote Reform.
Indeed that's exactly what Farage would argue. They maybe dropped a bit, but he can point to polls where they are ahead.
Will the Royal Mail foul-up as regards the issuing and processing of returned Postal Votes further depress overall turnout levels? That seems likely, although I haven't seen the precise scale of the poblem having been referred to. What we do know is that approx 20% of the electorate have appled for a postal vote, so possibly BIG numbers are involved and potentially a seat or two. This has led me to have a punt on the 60.00% - 62.49% turnout band where Ladbrokes' 7/2 is currently the best odds available and also on the 62.50% - 64.99% band where those nice folk at the Betfair Exchange go 7/2 (or 3.325/1 net of their 5% comm'n).
Every election time, Royal Mail will have a team sorting through the incoming mail and fast-tracking outgoing and returning postal votes, and in delivery offices it will be the same. They may arrive later than intended, but I would be surprised if many arrive too late - no-one at RM wants to put the company at the centre of such a national news story.
Whilst I agree with your final sentiment, this has never previously been a big story, at least not so far as I am aware. Obviously there will always have been a tiny margin of error in the issuing and processing of returned postal votes, but this time it appears oto be on an entirely different scale of magnitude ... if not, then why all the fuss?
"...Like a dog lying in a corner They will bite you and never warn you Look out, they'll tear your insides out 'Cause everybody hates a tourist Especially one who, who thinks it's all such a laugh Yeah, and the chip stains and grease will come out in the bath..."
Well done on spelling manoeuvre correctly though. Always defeats me, and the spellcheck wants me to spell in the American way so is no help.
There's a Terry Pratchett joke that says the problem with the word "accommodation" is not how to spell it, but how to stop spelling it
"diarrhoea", "independent" and "commitment" always get me.
My maximum in life which has served me well is
‘Never trust anyone who spells gonorrhoea correctly on the first attempt.’
Unless, or because, they were classically educated and knew their Attic spelling?
I blame autocorrect.
Maxim, not maximum.
If it's any consequence, that was what I assumed. I've taken autocorrect off. I get lots of 'tge' rather than 'the' but this is less jarring than a word which is absolutely not what I meant.
On UNS Sir John Curtice is forecasting a result closer to what Michael Howard got in 2005 for Sunak than what Major got in 1997 and Hague got in 2001. On an MRP forecast though Curtice says the Tory result could be even worse than 1997
'Sir John Curtice projects 370 Labour seats, 191 Tory seats and 34 LD and 34 SNP seats, 2 Plaid, 1 Green and 0 Reform on universal national swing based on analysis of 8 recent polls.
However on an MRP change the results look significantly different, with Curtice saying Labour could then get 447 seats, the Tories 98, the LDs 53, the SNP 21, Reform 8 and the Greens and Plaid 2 each' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cl7y2xj728do
So he doesnt know.
Here's my regular reminder that if one methodology gives one result and another gives another, the truth is not in splitting the difference, the truth is that one of them is wrong. We now have to decide whether polls+UNS is right, or MRP is right.
Or neither, because something non-uniform is happening, but not based on the assumptions in the MRP model.
I will also say this for the ferry. The cabins are immensely soothing and rather comfortable. And the gentle rocking of the boat is perfect for inducing a quick or indeed a really really long nap after an insanely exhausting 9 day whizz around the isles of Brittany
😴😵
Stay alert; you’re due south of St Catherine’s now, will come into view shortly, on the port side. When my Dura-supplied handheld torpedo hits the Bretagne in a less than a couple of hours’ time, you will need to be quick to the lifeboats.
What the fuck are you on about now?
As Bretagne often does on the way back, the ship has veered a little to port to cut the corner at Dunnose Head, which should give me a better shot.
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
Except of course you fall at the first hurdle because Brexit has not failed. We have left the EU and will not be returning.
If you jump off a cliff, you haven’t failed to leave the clifftop, but the results may not be all that you imagined.
When everyone told you it was a cliff and it turned out to be nothing more than a small step a lot of people would have the good grace to feel rather foolish.
That’s rather glib when Brexit has sent many small UK exporters to the wall.
UK Exports to the EU rose from £300 billion in 2019 to £357 billion in 2023.
In other words, rather less than inflation. And the small exporters are small but vital for the future.
A quick google and a bit of excel shows that £300 in 2019, inflated to 2023 by UK inflation figures which average 4.6%pa gets us to ... £359. So less than inflation, but I think 'rather' is doing a lot of work there.
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
Except of course you fall at the first hurdle because Brexit has not failed. We have left the EU and will not be returning.
Yes it has been a huge success. Finally - finally - we can vote to leave the EU which previously, under the yoke of the beastly europeans, we were not able to do.
On UNS Sir John Curtice is forecasting a result closer to what Michael Howard got in 2005 for Sunak than what Major got in 1997 and Hague got in 2001. On an MRP forecast though Curtice says the Tory result could be even worse than 1997
'Sir John Curtice projects 370 Labour seats, 191 Tory seats and 34 LD and 34 SNP seats, 2 Plaid, 1 Green and 0 Reform on universal national swing based on analysis of 8 recent polls.
However on an MRP change the results look significantly different, with Curtice saying Labour could then get 447 seats, the Tories 98, the LDs 53, the SNP 21, Reform 8 and the Greens and Plaid 2 each' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cl7y2xj728do
So he doesnt know.
Here's my regular reminder that if one methodology gives one result and another gives another, the truth is not in splitting the difference, the truth is that one of them is wrong. We now have to decide whether polls+UNS is right, or MRP is right.
Or neither, because something non-uniform is happening, but not based on the assumptions in the MRP model.
Will the Royal Mail foul-up as regards the issuing and processing of returned Postal Votes further depress overall turnout levels? That seems likely, although I haven't seen the precise scale of the poblem having been referred to. What we do know is that approx 20% of the electorate have appled for a postal vote, so possibly BIG numbers are involved and potentially a seat or two. This has led me to have a punt on the 60.00% - 62.49% turnout band where Ladbrokes' 7/2 is currently the best odds available and also on the 62.50% - 64.99% band where those nice folk at the Betfair Exchange go 7/2 (or 3.325/1 net of their 5% comm'n).
Every election time, Royal Mail will have a team sorting through the incoming mail and fast-tracking outgoing and returning postal votes, and in delivery offices it will be the same. They may arrive later than intended, but I would be surprised if many arrive too late - no-one at RM wants to put the company at the centre of such a national news story.
Whilst I agree with your final sentiment, this has never previously been a big story, at least not so far as I am aware. Obviously there will always have been a tiny margin of error in the issuing and processing of returned postal votes, but this time it appears oto be on an entirely different scale of magnitude ... if not, then why all the fuss?
Don't I remember Royal Mail messing up the Christmas post recently? I certainly have the impression that the "last day for posting" has got nearer and nearer to December 1st for the past few years.
My guess is most Reform voters are very keen on a change of government. They might not like Labour, but they definitely don't want another 5 years of this Conservative government. So it's a waste of time. You may as well say if Con + Reform is greater than Lab then all the Conservative voters should vote Reform.
100% agree. Arbitrarily lumping one party's voters in with another is a fool's errand. See also the Green/Lib Dem/PC pact at the last election which was excellent news for the Tories in Wales at least.
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
Except of course you fall at the first hurdle because Brexit has not failed. We have left the EU and will not be returning.
If you jump off a cliff, you haven’t failed to leave the clifftop, but the results may not be all that you imagined.
When everyone told you it was a cliff and it turned out to be nothing more than a small step a lot of people would have the good grace to feel rather foolish.
That’s rather glib when Brexit has sent many small UK exporters to the wall.
UK Exports to the EU rose from £300 billion in 2019 to £357 billion in 2023.
That’s because you’re cleverly including inter-bank gold transfers in your figures.
Nope. I am just using the ONS numbers. If you don't like it then argue with them. And as Sky pointed out the other day, even excluding the gold transfer numbers we have still moved from being the 7th to the 5th largest economy in the world ahead of France and just behind Japan. If you include them we are ahead of Japan as well.
Since full Brexit in 2020 we have leapfrogged both Italy and France in GDP terms (excluding gold transfers) and are expected to pass Japan as well in the next couple of years. This idea of Brexit failure is just wishful thinking by those who always opposed it.
On UNS Sir John Curtice is forecasting a result closer to what Michael Howard got in 2005 for Sunak than what Major got in 1997 and Hague got in 2001. On an MRP forecast though Curtice says the Tory result could be even worse than 1997
'Sir John Curtice projects 370 Labour seats, 191 Tory seats and 34 LD and 34 SNP seats, 2 Plaid, 1 Green and 0 Reform on universal national swing based on analysis of 8 recent polls.
However on an MRP change the results look significantly different, with Curtice saying Labour could then get 447 seats, the Tories 98, the LDs 53, the SNP 21, Reform 8 and the Greens and Plaid 2 each' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cl7y2xj728do
So he doesnt know.
Here's my regular reminder that if one methodology gives one result and another gives another, the truth is not in splitting the difference, the truth is that one of them is wrong. We now have to decide whether polls+UNS is right, or MRP is right.
Or neither, because something non-uniform is happening, but not based on the assumptions in the MRP model.
I'm feeling quite happy with my bets on Con 100-149 and 150-199. Although when I placed them, it was on the basis that the odds looked long (3.something and 8.something) and that if they got <100 seats I'd be laughing so much I wouldn't care about the loss
If the Cons somehow clear 200 and I lose that way then I'll just have to drown my sorrows! And go flying pig spotting outside...
On UNS Sir John Curtice is forecasting a result closer to what Michael Howard got in 2005 for Sunak than what Major got in 1997 and Hague got in 2001. On an MRP forecast though Curtice says the Tory result could be even worse than 1997
'Sir John Curtice projects 370 Labour seats, 191 Tory seats and 34 LD and 34 SNP seats, 2 Plaid, 1 Green and 0 Reform on universal national swing based on analysis of 8 recent polls.
However on an MRP change the results look significantly different, with Curtice saying Labour could then get 447 seats, the Tories 98, the LDs 53, the SNP 21, Reform 8 and the Greens and Plaid 2 each' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cl7y2xj728do
So he doesnt know.
Here's my regular reminder that if one methodology gives one result and another gives another, the truth is not in splitting the difference, the truth is that one of them is wrong. We now have to decide whether polls+UNS is right, or MRP is right.
Or neither, because something non-uniform is happening, but not based on the assumptions in the MRP model.
Curtice, good as he is doesn't know, and he thought Labour was going to win in Rochdale ! But at 10 PM he will know.
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
Except of course you fall at the first hurdle because Brexit has not failed. We have left the EU and will not be returning.
Yes it has been a huge success. Finally - finally - we can vote to leave the EU which previously, under the yoke of the beastly europeans, we were not able to do.
Will the Royal Mail foul-up as regards the issuing and processing of returned Postal Votes further depress overall turnout levels? That seems likely, although I haven't seen the precise scale of the poblem having been referred to. What we do know is that approx 20% of the electorate have appled for a postal vote, so possibly BIG numbers are involved and potentially a seat or two. This has led me to have a punt on the 60.00% - 62.49% turnout band where Ladbrokes' 7/2 is currently the best odds available and also on the 62.50% - 64.99% band where those nice folk at the Betfair Exchange go 7/2 (or 3.325/1 net of their 5% comm'n).
Every election time, Royal Mail will have a team sorting through the incoming mail and fast-tracking outgoing and returning postal votes, and in delivery offices it will be the same. They may arrive later than intended, but I would be surprised if many arrive too late - no-one at RM wants to put the company at the centre of such a national news story.
Whilst I agree with your final sentiment, this has never previously been a big story, at least not so far as I am aware. Obviously there will always have been a tiny margin of error in the issuing and processing of returned postal votes, but this time it appears oto be on an entirely different scale of magnitude ... if not, then why all the fuss?
Don't I remember Royal Mail messing up the Christmas post recently? I certainly have the impression that the "last day for posting" has got nearer and nearer to December 1st for the past few years.
They’ll be doing everything they can to get the PVs through the system, as they always do.
Royal Mails problems arise from staffing shortages in some delivery offices - a feature affecting the wider economy. That won’t affect getting the delivery of returning PVs back ti the town hall in time.
YouGov confirm their final MRP is tomorrow at 5 Edit - Opinium also have final poll tomorrow, Ipsos Thursday AM in the Standard traditionally final poll of campaign
It rather looks as if we can expect next to nothing today then, at least from the major pollsters.
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
Except of course you fall at the first hurdle because Brexit has not failed. We have left the EU and will not be returning.
If you jump off a cliff, you haven’t failed to leave the clifftop, but the results may not be all that you imagined.
When everyone told you it was a cliff and it turned out to be nothing more than a small step a lot of people would have the good grace to feel rather foolish.
That’s rather glib when Brexit has sent many small UK exporters to the wall.
UK Exports to the EU rose from £300 billion in 2019 to £357 billion in 2023.
In other words, rather less than inflation. And the small exporters are small but vital for the future.
Nope, pretty much in line with inflation. So where is this terrible collapse that everyone claimed would happen?
My guess is most Reform voters are very keen on a change of government. They might not like Labour, but they definitely don't want another 5 years of this Conservative government. So it's a waste of time. You may as well say if Con + Reform is greater than Lab then all the Conservative voters should vote Reform.
Not so sure. We live in a 2-party FPTP world. I know that no one ever went bust misunderestimating the intelligence of your average Reform voter but they will at some point realise that the only way of not getting a Lab govt is to vote Cons.
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
Except of course you fall at the first hurdle because Brexit has not failed. We have left the EU and will not be returning.
Yes it has been a huge success. Finally - finally - we can vote to leave the EU which previously, under the yoke of the beastly europeans, we were not able to do.
You are dribbling again Topping.
One of us is, Richard. "We will not be returning" is one of the most asinine things I have read on PB.
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
Except of course you fall at the first hurdle because Brexit has not failed. We have left the EU and will not be returning.
If you jump off a cliff, you haven’t failed to leave the clifftop, but the results may not be all that you imagined.
When everyone told you it was a cliff and it turned out to be nothing more than a small step a lot of people would have the good grace to feel rather foolish.
That’s rather glib when Brexit has sent many small UK exporters to the wall.
UK Exports to the EU rose from £300 billion in 2019 to £357 billion in 2023.
In other words, rather less than inflation. And the small exporters are small but vital for the future.
Interesting thread about the claim UK's exports have increased in relative terms since Brexit. They are but it is distorted by gold movements and is only temporary anyway. Once you strip out gold, the UK's trade performance is weakening, especially in goods
My guess is most Reform voters are very keen on a change of government. They might not like Labour, but they definitely don't want another 5 years of this Conservative government. So it's a waste of time. You may as well say if Con + Reform is greater than Lab then all the Conservative voters should vote Reform.
Not so sure. We live in a 2-party FPTP world. I know that no one ever went bust misunderestimating the intelligence of your average Reform voter but they will at some point realise that the only way of not getting a Lab govt is to vote Cons.
But they hate the Conservatives! More than they hate Labour.
What does MRP stand for? I see it every day, and I've still no idea.
Material Requirement Planning is what I thought it stood for.
MRP=Multilevel Regression and Poststratification
Multilevel Regression. You ask lots of people who they are going to vote for. Because you know their age, sex, location and socioeconomic class you make guesses about how many people of each age, sex, location and class will vote for each party
Poststratification. You know the age/sex/class makeup of each constitiuency, so you plug those numbers in and work out who is going to win each seat
I prefer Mostly Relies on Polling
(As with traditional polls, if the sample is wrong then the MRP is screwed too).
The constituency level tweaks are the main secret sauce, other than sampling, that will make or break pollsters' reputations here, I think.
My guess is most Reform voters are very keen on a change of government. They might not like Labour, but they definitely don't want another 5 years of this Conservative government. So it's a waste of time. You may as well say if Con + Reform is greater than Lab then all the Conservative voters should vote Reform.
100% agree. Arbitrarily lumping one party's voters in with another is a fool's errand. See also the Green/Lib Dem/PC pact at the last election which was excellent news for the Tories in Wales at least.
But Rishi is addressing, specifically, Reform voters' concerns ie immigration. Just like Dave did re the EU referendum for UKIP.
It is not a marriage of convenience, a la Green/LibDem/PC but an alignment of policy aims. That's very different.
"...Like a dog lying in a corner They will bite you and never warn you Look out, they'll tear your insides out 'Cause everybody hates a tourist Especially one who, who thinks it's all such a laugh Yeah, and the chip stains and grease will come out in the bath..."
It always pisses me off that they cut these lines when playing the radio version. They absolutely make the song.
I'm not going to bother updating my spreadsheets for the final MRPs etc - it's fragile enough as it is and the broad "shape" of the MRPs shouldn't change at this stage. We'll soon have the results anyway.
What does MRP stand for? I see it every day, and I've still no idea.
Material Requirement Planning is what I thought it stood for.
MRP=Multilevel Regression and Poststratification
Multilevel Regression. You ask lots of people who they are going to vote for. Because you know their age, sex, location and socioeconomic class you make guesses about how many people of each age, sex, location and class will vote for each party
Poststratification. You know the age/sex/class makeup of each constitiuency, so you plug those numbers in and work out who is going to win each seat
What is interesting is that MRP has been the basis for a lot of the Voter ID systems like Mosaic or Voter Vault that have been developed and used in the USA (and modified for use in the UK, mostly by the Tories for the past 5-6 general elections). Using it allows really targeted messaging, especially via social media. However, it has historically been expensive to buy the data, so only the Tories used it in a big way.
To give you a flavour, the data can give relative Labour/Lib Dem/Tory voting probabilities for -say- a young married woman working in the public sector, who reads the Mailonline, and Woman and Home, is a member of Virgin Gyms drives a two door car, and lives in a house in a market town of 80,000. From the various archetypes it can adjust the probabilities to give you likely outcomes based on the relative numbers of these various archetypes in each place.
Now, however, the data available is both much more detailed and much cheaper to acquire, so the Parties, in theory, do not need to canvass so much, but rather deliver specific messages to their pre identified target voters.
The cost reduction in data acquisition has meant that theoretical campaigning advantage the Tories had has now been drastically reduced. Nevertheless the fact is that like with any system, you need to pay attention to the data, and if mis-entered then it is garbage in/garbage out.
I think that this is the first time that pollsters have felt that they had sufficient granularity and confidence in the regression to be able to predict seats in the way they have for this General Election. While UNS is a blunderbuss when it comes to seat predictions, it still remains to be seen if MRP will improve the predictions.
It is the uncertainty that is adding a certain frisson to the prediction game, and why I chose to veer slightly to UNS in my Lib Dem predictions on the recent thread.
She’s gone from the mid teens to the mid 30 percent. In one election. A ginormous leap
Also see this about Bardella, from the same FT article
“Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.”
Women - younger women - are shifting to the RN. Despite the mewlings of geriatric thermos-freak and self declared anarchist @Heathener, sitting under her tartan blankie on the top deck of her hipster revolutionary bus heading into suburban Sidmouth, I am right. The young are moving to the hard right
Yes, the claim that 'we have already done that' with Brexit is nonsense. Brexit was a) driven by the old, b) about one specific issue, and c) arguably didn't really entail any sort of change of view: the British had always been pretty Eurosceptic anyway and while there was probably a majority in support of the EU as it was circa 1987 or 1992 or even 2005, I don't think in retrospect there was ever really support for the EU as it was post Lisbon. It certainly wasn't a rightwards shift, still less one driven by the young.
Well Brexit was a (failed) project of the populist right (both inside and outside the Tory Party) and to the extent we have a certain amount of 'populist right energy' in the UK it has absorbed and stunted it rather than fed the flames. France is France but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for more of that sort of stuff here. The opposite in fact. Landslide majorities for a politician like Keir Starmer don't happen in countries gagging for a hard right strongman.
Except of course you fall at the first hurdle because Brexit has not failed. We have left the EU and will not be returning.
If you jump off a cliff, you haven’t failed to leave the clifftop, but the results may not be all that you imagined.
When everyone told you it was a cliff and it turned out to be nothing more than a small step a lot of people would have the good grace to feel rather foolish.
That’s rather glib when Brexit has sent many small UK exporters to the wall.
UK Exports to the EU rose from £300 billion in 2019 to £357 billion in 2023.
In other words, rather less than inflation. And the small exporters are small but vital for the future.
Nope, pretty much in line with inflation. So where is this terrible collapse that everyone claimed would happen?
Remain needed May left right and centre on the Leave campaign proclaiming: "Vote Leave. Nothing Will Change!"
YouGov confirm their final MRP is tomorrow at 5 Edit - Opinium also have final poll tomorrow, Ipsos Thursday AM in the Standard traditionally final poll of campaign
It rather looks as if we can expect next to nothing today then, at least from the major pollsters.
We're getting the final R&W poll at 5pm and Survations final MRP should be showing up later, so hang in there. Things are about to liven up!
Survation. @Survation Survation’s final MRP projection will be published on Tuesday, followed by our final call on Wednesday.
"At the time of writing, we have had around 50% of the dispatched postal votes returned. We are concerned by this, as we would have expected a higher response at this stage. Along with a number of other local councils, we have raised this with Royal Mail management locally and nationally as a matter of urgency. Our concerns are being investigated, and I will update you when I have further information."
Could be lost in the post I guess or... could it be that postal voters are sitting this one out?
"At the time of writing, we have had around 50% of the dispatched postal votes returned. We are concerned by this, as we would have expected a higher response at this stage. Along with a number of other local councils, we have raised this with Royal Mail management locally and nationally as a matter of urgency. Our concerns are being investigated, and I will update you when I have further information."
Could be lost in the post I guess or... could it be that postal voters are sitting this one out?
Has a private company ever held so much electoral power? Want to swing a constituency away from the Conservatives? Just reassign a few posties for a month.
Comments
Watching for something at decent odds that will protect my stakes if they go under 100.
Agree about the rest, with added complications in NI that will no doubt stem from the DUP backing away from their support for the Windsor Framework...
😴😵
And indeed the Labour Party is a similarly unstable coalition between.
Well done on spelling manoeuvre correctly though. Always defeats me, and the spellcheck wants me to spell in the American way so is no help.
Redfield are teasing with a significant shift in tonight’s MRP. Possibly, it’s puff and they’re pushing a within-MOE for the publicity? Otherwise, a swingback to the Tories is surely the most likely change, compared to a surge for Reform (how and why?) or the LibDems (ditto) or Labour (ditto)?
The strange one is that he is insulting some people one would expect Reform to be supporting.
https://archive.ph/L9PVX
I don't think the abolition of the death penalty is a success by virtue of it happening, any more than I think Brexit is a success by virtue of it happening.
"diarrhoea", "independent" and "commitment" always get me.
MRP approaches have not been ground-truthed in an election like this. One (YouGov) did well in 2019, under very different circumstances.
Any MRP is only as good as the demographic (or other) factors which it uses to model constituency outcomes. We genuinely do not yet know whether those factors will correlate to voting behaviour on Thursday.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/19/eu-fingerprint-checks-uk-travellers-british-passengers-entry-exit-system-facial-scans
"A new EU digital border system that will require fingerprints and facial scans to be taken from British travellers on first use is expected to launch next autumn, according to reports.
The entry/exit system (EES) is earmarked to start on 6 October 2024, according to the i and Times newspapers, citing Getlink, the owner of Eurotunnel. The Guardian has contacted Getlink for comment.
Eurotunnel, which runs a car transport service between Folkestone and Calais, is said to be testing the technology, in which personal data will be collected at borders and entered into an EU-wide database.
Under the EES, passengers would have to agree to fingerprinting and facial image capture the first time they arrived on the continent. After that, the data, including any record of refused entry, should allow quicker processing, according to travel bosses."
That seems likely, although I haven't seen the precise scale of the poblem having been referred to. What we do know is that approx 20% of the electorate have appled for a postal vote, so possibly BIG numbers are involved and potentially a seat or two.
This has led me to have a punt on the 60.00% - 62.49% turnout band where Ladbrokes' 7/2 is currently the best odds available and also on the 62.50% - 64.99% band where those nice folk at the Betfair Exchange go 7/2 (or 3.325/1 net of their 5% comm'n).
We are being told to stop a supermajority and now, at same time, that a hung parliament is within reach.
Docs are very happy and the Hairy Cell leukemia is now down to less than 1% of bone marrow.
This is very good news, but it means I am now out of excuses for being tired and not doing things requiring energy.
* Looks through window into garden and shudders *
My big worry is that they end up with under 50...
‘Never trust anyone who spells gonorrhoea correctly on the first attempt.’
Though compare 2015 Manchester to 2024 Manchester and its hard to argue we have just laboured are way through almost a decade of permanent disaster. How did we find the time and money to build all of those skyscrapers if that was the case?
Will be slower at first, especially for cars with mulltiple occupants.
But it means, medium term, the end of passport stamps and much more use of electronic gates for British citizens.
Which again is what us Leavers predicted. There will be initial pain - we left - but then the glitches will get ironed out. And the irritations will disappear but we will be free
(Not really - a person in their 30s with a house? Preposterous)
Things can only get better
https://x.com/BurgerKingUK/status/1808095757389439422
If Sunak can pull such awesome vote efficiency then, my god, he deserves to be made PM for life.
"I wonder if the Cons will make a last ditch and extreme appeal to Reform, eyeing the eg JLP poll which had Cons + Ref = greater than Lab."
Some minor parties suffer as they put policies in a theoretical government or more realistically things they will 'push' for. Most avoided it this time.
I first came across this (or the rusting remains of its launch ramp, more accurately) on a visit to Fort Victoria in West Wight. The age of this steampunk guided weapon system is exactly what you'd guess from the name of the coastal defence fortification.
Edit - Opinium also have final poll tomorrow, Ipsos Thursday AM in the Standard traditionally final poll of campaign
Maxim, not maximum.
They will bite you and never warn you
Look out, they'll tear your insides out
'Cause everybody hates a tourist
Especially one who, who thinks it's all such a laugh
Yeah, and the chip stains and grease will come out in the bath..."
This is the worst thing the public has seen from him since the dodgy dossier.
https://x.com/celebswimbledon/status/1808101615062102471?s=61&t=c6bcp0cjChLfQN5Tc8A_6g
I've taken autocorrect off. I get lots of 'tge' rather than 'the' but this is less jarring than a word which is absolutely not what I meant.
Since full Brexit in 2020 we have leapfrogged both Italy and France in GDP terms (excluding gold transfers) and are expected to pass Japan as well in the next couple of years. This idea of Brexit failure is just wishful thinking by those who always opposed it.
If the Cons somehow clear 200 and I lose that way then I'll just have to drown my sorrows! And go flying pig spotting outside...
But at 10 PM he will know.
Royal Mails problems arise from staffing shortages in some delivery offices - a feature affecting the wider economy. That won’t affect getting the delivery of returning PVs back ti the town hall in time.
https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1804840636522053661
Sometimes, anyway.
(As with traditional polls, if the sample is wrong then the MRP is screwed too).
The constituency level tweaks are the main secret sauce, other than sampling, that will make or break pollsters' reputations here, I think.
It is not a marriage of convenience, a la Green/LibDem/PC but an alignment of policy aims. That's very different.
I have a simple question;
Is it existential for your party?
ta.
To give you a flavour, the data can give relative Labour/Lib Dem/Tory voting probabilities for -say- a young married woman working in the public sector, who reads the Mailonline, and Woman and Home, is a member of Virgin Gyms drives a two door car, and lives in a house in a market town of 80,000. From the various archetypes it can adjust the probabilities to give you likely outcomes based on the relative numbers of these various archetypes in each place.
Now, however, the data available is both much more detailed and much cheaper to acquire, so the Parties, in theory, do not need to canvass so much, but rather deliver specific messages to their pre identified target voters.
The cost reduction in data acquisition has meant that theoretical campaigning advantage the Tories had has now been drastically reduced. Nevertheless the fact is that like with any system, you need to pay attention to the data, and if mis-entered then it is garbage in/garbage out.
I think that this is the first time that pollsters have felt that they had sufficient granularity and confidence in the regression to be able to predict seats in the way they have for this General Election. While UNS is a blunderbuss when it comes to seat predictions, it still remains to be seen if MRP will improve the predictions.
It is the uncertainty that is adding a certain frisson to the prediction game, and why I chose to veer slightly to UNS in my Lib Dem predictions on the recent thread.
Survation.
@Survation
Survation’s final MRP projection will be published on Tuesday, followed by our final call on Wednesday.
"At the time of writing, we have had around 50% of the dispatched postal votes returned. We are concerned by this, as we would have expected a higher response at this stage. Along with a number of other local councils, we have raised this with Royal Mail management locally and nationally as a matter of urgency. Our concerns are being investigated, and I will update you when I have further information."
Could be lost in the post I guess or... could it be that postal voters are sitting this one out?
And I thought his first name was Moe.