For me the hurricane that has eventually hit the SNP is exactly the same as the one that has hit the Tories.
Payback for incompetence, perceived corruption, obsession with issues that have little agency in everyday lives and most of all the internal contradiction of trying to be too many things to too many different socio-economic, demographic and geographic groups. The fault lines emerge and then at election they fracture.
Scotland needs a better choice of independence leaning parties. Scottish Labour in particular needs a more nuanced position, or else it will be cannibalised again in another 8-10 years time. The SNP could re-build under Forbes as the Tartan Tories of memory.
The volatility of Scottish politics is absurd but results from both the SNP and Labour having very evenly spread support right across the central belt. It seems the something like 30 seats swing together which, out of 57, is ridiculous.
As for other independence supporting parties, the best result for Alba was 1.5% of the vote. Even their sitting MPs got less than that. Many Alba supporters (see Wings, esp BTL) think that the destruction of the SNP is a necessary step for something better to come along. But I don't think it will be Alba.
Alba is in a fix. It gets attention it wouldn't otherwise receive because it's led by Alex Salmond for whom it works as a platform. But he's electorally toxic. And leftie indy supporters have the Greens as an alternative anyway. Alba is really just a cul de sac.
As I understand it: Alba have captured the true believers who think the SNP have sold out. But for most voters its the Alex Salmond show and they got bored of that a decade ago. The SNP now face financial oblivion - the loss of short money and the tithe from MPs will seriously bring into question their solvency The Greens are the driver of all the policies that have brought the SNP most into disrepute
I think there is a real opportunity here to create a 4th and possibly 5th faction as the SNP tears itself apart as to what went wrong and how they fix it.
Indeed, it might. But Iran is only a limited democracy: candidates have to be vetted by a religious council before they can stand. I am therefore slightly suspicious that he might just have been put in there to look good to the outside world, whilst not really changing anything.
Then there's the issue (as noted below) that he has relatively limited power compared to the Supreme Dickhead Leader.
But if he does constrain the morality police (I know a funny story about their predecessors...), and especially if he halts Iran's help to Russia, then it'd be great.
The latter's an interesting one. It could be a rather large 'gift' in negotiations to renew the nuclear deal and ease sanctions.
The Iranian voters may pick the least extreme option they can, which is good, but their impact on the system itself is indirect by how that influences the cadre of nutty old religious pervs who run that system.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
The RedWall is now the BlueWall, albeit with two shades of blue. To win these people over you pander to populism and "othering" although Farage is better at that than your Party are. Besides that doesn't return the Lib Dem BlueWall seats to you. I wonder in the same way once safe Labour seats are lost forever whether that might also be true of the LibDem gains in the Home Counties. Johnson's loutish behaviour didn't go well in genteel Buckinghamshire.
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Someone pointed out that Oxfordshire now has no Tory MP for the first time in two centuries. The political map has shifted a bit.
Yep. Like I say in my longer post above, the LibDems do have a shot at becoming the party of the Home Counties.
The Tories have been so for generations - but it only looks that way because of our voting system. Typically, across the south away from the cities, half the voters are Tory and the other half split between Liberal and Labour. Thus FPTP gives the Tories almost everything. All it ever took to defeat the Tories in a good year is for the non-Conservative half of the electorate to combine behind one party or the other.
Which is what just happened, seat by seat, helped along by the Tories' alientating a good slice of their better educated working age support.
For me the hurricane that has eventually hit the SNP is exactly the same as the one that has hit the Tories.
Payback for incompetence, perceived corruption, obsession with issues that have little agency in everyday lives and most of all the internal contradiction of trying to be too many things to too many different socio-economic, demographic and geographic groups. The fault lines emerge and then at election they fracture.
Scotland needs a better choice of independence leaning parties. Scottish Labour in particular needs a more nuanced position, or else it will be cannibalised again in another 8-10 years time. The SNP could re-build under Forbes as the Tartan Tories of memory.
What has been interesting is that the abusive cybernats are SNP supporters. The ones who are less aggressive are Alba supporters - the only aggression is when you mistake them for the SNP.
If you think about it, the SNP has to be the broadest of tents when INDEPENDENCE is the only shared currency. Its very clear that the top down centralising socially out there tendencies of the SNP drive a lot of independence supporters absolutely nuts.
What the SNP do now will determine if they are still even relevant by the time we get to 2026. We've just had an election campaign where nobody was listening to anything the party in government were saying. I think a rerun of that in 2026 is easily possible, especially if (when?) the SNP arrogantly assume people will have to back them because otherwise not to back them is to be against Scotland. That schtick didn't stick this time.
Yes or no to Reform winning list seats at 'Rood?
Yes, especially if the Tories decide to choose a new leader who wants to be the Nigel Farage Tribute Band. Why vote for the impersonators when you can vote for the real deal?
For me the hurricane that has eventually hit the SNP is exactly the same as the one that has hit the Tories.
Payback for incompetence, perceived corruption, obsession with issues that have little agency in everyday lives and most of all the internal contradiction of trying to be too many things to too many different socio-economic, demographic and geographic groups. The fault lines emerge and then at election they fracture.
Scotland needs a better choice of independence leaning parties. Scottish Labour in particular needs a more nuanced position, or else it will be cannibalised again in another 8-10 years time. The SNP could re-build under Forbes as the Tartan Tories of memory.
The volatility of Scottish politics is absurd but results from both the SNP and Labour having very evenly spread support right across the central belt. It seems the something like 30 seats swing together which, out of 57, is ridiculous.
As for other independence supporting parties, the best result for Alba was 1.5% of the vote. Even their sitting MPs got less than that. Many Alba supporters (see Wings, esp BTL) think that the destruction of the SNP is a necessary step for something better to come along. But I don't think it will be Alba.
Alba is in a fix. It gets attention it wouldn't otherwise receive because it's led by Alex Salmond for whom it works as a platform. But he's electorally toxic. And leftie indy supporters have the Greens as an alternative anyway. Alba is really just a cul de sac.
As I understand it: Alba have captured the true believers who think the SNP have sold out. But for most voters its the Alex Salmond show and they got bored of that a decade ago. The SNP now face financial oblivion - the loss of short money and the tithe from MPs will seriously bring into question their solvency The Greens are the driver of all the policies that have brought the SNP most into disrepute
I think there is a real opportunity here to create a 4th and possibly 5th faction as the SNP tears itself apart as to what went wrong and how they fix it.
Alex Salmond, the former SNP leader who now leads the pro-independence Alba Party, said: “The slaughter of the SNP is not because of independence. How could it be? The SNP did not even campaign on it. In reality the support for independence is strong. It is the SNP who are weak.”
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
The RedWall is now the BlueWall, albeit with two shades of blue. To win these people over you pander to populism and "othering" although Farage is better at that than your Party are. Besides that doesn't return the Lib Dem BlueWall seats to you. I wonder in the same way once safe Labour seats are lost forever whether that might also be true of the LibDem gains in the Home Counties. Johnson's loutish behaviour didn't go well in genteel Buckinghamshire.
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
It’s more that people in the former RedWall figured out that if you are core vote, religiously, for a party, they ignore you
If you don’t get anything from the current choice, choose someone else.
Politicians are, in aggregate, fairly stupid. But eventually they will work it out.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
One idea would be to give Reform a free run in Sunderland/Durham etc in return for standing down round here and other close seconds.
Non aggression pact a la StarmerDavey
The degree of tactical voting and tacit non aggression between Labour and Lib Dem in this election was really quite marked. So much so that it was not far off an alliance, in the style of the CDU and CSU.
We can almost add the two party votes shares together, such was the concentration of the vote in Lib Dem and non Lib Dem target areas. Take say 3% off the Labour total and 2% off LD and you have a combined party with 42% of the vote.
Unlike the Greens. They are now established as the left wing alternative to Labour. They face a tougher fight trying to become the rural environmentalist alternative to Tories though. 2 successes but the Lib Dems have that market otherwise pretty sewn up.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
The RedWall is now the BlueWall, albeit with two shades of blue. To win these people over you have to pander to populism and "othering", although Farage is better at that than your Party are. Besides that doesn't return the Lib Dem BlueWall seats to you. I wonder in the same way once safe Labour seats are lost forever whether that might also be true of the LibDem gains in the Home Counties. Johnson's loutish behaviour didn't go down well in genteel Buckinghamshire.
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
Hasn’t Steve Baker got well publicised mental health problems that he’s discussed and acknowledged affect him badly. In his Radio 4 interview yesterday morning he was clearly almost in tears and you could hear the mental strain when he said he was “free” having lost his seat. Maybe the “Nurse, Nurse” jibe isn’t the best under the circs.
For me the hurricane that has eventually hit the SNP is exactly the same as the one that has hit the Tories.
Payback for incompetence, perceived corruption, obsession with issues that have little agency in everyday lives and most of all the internal contradiction of trying to be too many things to too many different socio-economic, demographic and geographic groups. The fault lines emerge and then at election they fracture.
Scotland needs a better choice of independence leaning parties. Scottish Labour in particular needs a more nuanced position, or else it will be cannibalised again in another 8-10 years time. The SNP could re-build under Forbes as the Tartan Tories of memory.
The volatility of Scottish politics is absurd but results from both the SNP and Labour having very evenly spread support right across the central belt. It seems the something like 30 seats swing together which, out of 57, is ridiculous.
As for other independence supporting parties, the best result for Alba was 1.5% of the vote. Even their sitting MPs got less than that. Many Alba supporters (see Wings, esp BTL) think that the destruction of the SNP is a necessary step for something better to come along. But I don't think it will be Alba.
Alba is in a fix. It gets attention it wouldn't otherwise receive because it's led by Alex Salmond for whom it works as a platform. But he's electorally toxic. And leftie indy supporters have the Greens as an alternative anyway. Alba is really just a cul de sac.
That implies that there are talented Albanians being held back by Salmond's toxicity, don't see it myself. They didn't save a deposit and their one rep with a minimal amount of stature, MacAskill, received fewer votes than that twat Hanvey.
Their last remaining elected (even if originally for the SNP) member to provide the face of ALBA is Ash Regan which I don't see as a positive for them.
A good night's sleep, hangover all gone. Some random thoughts:
1. I have had several American friends comment on the graceful way in which the Tories accepted the result and moved out of the way without rancour. I was surprised, thinking what else would you expect, until I remembered what they have experienced in the US over recent years. The Tories are not yet captured by the Trumpist world view. That is good for them and good for the country. It is vital this doesn't change.
2. For the first time in a very long time, the British PM has been able to appoint a Cabinet based solely on an assessment of ability, not on having to appease or shut out a certain faction or ideology. Starmer may have got it wrong, we'll find out, but he has not had to make Braverman-like appointments (or Johnson-like ones if we go back to the May government). That is a good thing.
3. Entirely predictably, the left is now howling about the size of Labour's majority and the party's low vote share. What they seem to have forgotten is that the Greens and Independents very directly and very specifically centred their pitch on the inevitability of Labour winning power and how that made a vote for them safe. Owen Jones made this point daily, as did Jeremy Corbyn.
4. As I said yesterday on here, my two betting tips came in - Corbyn to win in Islington North, the LibDems to win in Honiton and Sidmouth. Needless to say, I put money on neither! I also got the vote share difference between Labour and Tory spot on, though I gave both slightly higher shares than they actually got (36% and 26%).
After years of losing, I have to say it feels good to be on the other side. We're at the stage where things feel possible and change can happen. Undoubtedly it will all get very difficult and very unpleasant very quickly, so I am going to enjoy this bit. I like the team Starmer is putting together. I thought the speech he made outside Downing Street yesterday was pitch perfect.
Delivery is everything, of course. The other side of a low vote share being precarious is that there are a lot of new votes to fight for next time around. If Labour makes a decent fist of the next few years - a big if, I know - then that could well happen. If you can't be optimistic at the outset, when can you be?
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
One idea would be to give Reform a free run in Sunderland/Durham etc in return for standing down round here and other close seconds.
The Tories need to fight Reform tooth and nail, pointing out the vacuity of their policies and weakness of their leaders. If they cede them any ground, they are consigning themselves to the bin.
They also need to work incredibly hard in the constituencies in which reform have MPs - pointing out how little they do for them, picking up such casework-type slack as they have access to, championing local issues. Knocking out the leadership at the next election will finish Reform off for this cycle.
More well meaning advice to viciously attack other right wingers and become more centrist from *checks notes* non conservatives.
Sir Keir Starmer will hold his first press conference as Prime Minister later today. As reported by the BBC, Sir Keir will take questions from the nation’s media on his first full day in Downing Street. It comes as part of an attempt to signify a change of style and place an emphasis on accountability in the first part of his tenure.
It will be interesting if he sticks with this. Several PMs started with this and slowly became not a thing. I think it is good that a PM does these, as long as we don't get the twatish media asking totally twatish questions all the time.
Johnson spent £millions on that new media suite that only got used once, which will now be handy
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
The RedWall is now the BlueWall, albeit with two shades of blue. To win these people over you pander to populism and "othering" although Farage is better at that than your Party are. Besides that doesn't return the Lib Dem BlueWall seats to you. I wonder in the same way once safe Labour seats are lost forever whether that might also be true of the LibDem gains in the Home Counties. Johnson's loutish behaviour didn't go well in genteel Buckinghamshire.
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
It’s more that people in the former RedWall figured out that if you are core vote, religiously, for a party, they ignore you
If you don’t get anything from the current choice, choose someone else.
Politicians are, in aggregate, fairly stupid. But eventually they will work it out.
I don't believe that at all. Lie to them that it is foreigners and European institutions that are responsible for their hard lives and they are hooked.
Safest conservatives seats in the country by majority %
Richmond and Northallerton CON 25.11% Harrow East CON 24.45%
Well R&N will be looking for a new candidate.
A nice prize for someone.
I predict a LD win in a by election. A second attempt after the screw up of the SDP/Liberal fall out over the last by election here.
From 4th and 9%?
They have won seats in situations not massively off that, but I'd call it a tall order.
Against an incumbent Tory government perhaps but not with the Tories starting on 45% and the opposition to what will eventually become an unpopular government (by, say, September lol)
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
The RedWall is now the BlueWall, albeit with two shades of blue. To win these people over you have to pander to populism and "othering", although Farage is better at that than your Party are. Besides that doesn't return the Lib Dem BlueWall seats to you. I wonder in the same way once safe Labour seats are lost forever whether that might also be true of the LibDem gains in the Home Counties. Johnson's loutish behaviour didn't go down well in genteel Buckinghamshire.
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
That wasn't a meltdown and he was entirely correct. As he said Reeves is going to have to administer far fiercer Austerity than Osborne did but with a set of MPs who have told everyone that Osbornes so-called austerity** was unneccesary.
**it wasnt austerity - public spending continued to grow above inflation, just more slowly.
I've just been to my local town to watch the competitors for this year's long-distance triathlon come out of the water.
Although due to the rain there was little difference between being in the water and out of it. They've got a 180km bike ride to do, followed by a marathon run, and heavy rain is forecast for most of the day. Ouch.
For me the hurricane that has eventually hit the SNP is exactly the same as the one that has hit the Tories.
Payback for incompetence, perceived corruption, obsession with issues that have little agency in everyday lives and most of all the internal contradiction of trying to be too many things to too many different socio-economic, demographic and geographic groups. The fault lines emerge and then at election they fracture.
Scotland needs a better choice of independence leaning parties. Scottish Labour in particular needs a more nuanced position, or else it will be cannibalised again in another 8-10 years time. The SNP could re-build under Forbes as the Tartan Tories of memory.
The volatility of Scottish politics is absurd but results from both the SNP and Labour having very evenly spread support right across the central belt. It seems the something like 30 seats swing together which, out of 57, is ridiculous.
As for other independence supporting parties, the best result for Alba was 1.5% of the vote. Even their sitting MPs got less than that. Many Alba supporters (see Wings, esp BTL) think that the destruction of the SNP is a necessary step for something better to come along. But I don't think it will be Alba.
Alba is in a fix. It gets attention it wouldn't otherwise receive because it's led by Alex Salmond for whom it works as a platform. But he's electorally toxic. And leftie indy supporters have the Greens as an alternative anyway. Alba is really just a cul de sac.
That implies that there are talented Albanians being held back by Salmond's toxicity, don't see it myself. They didn't save a deposit and their one rep with a minimal amount of stature, MacAskill, received fewer votes than that twat Hanvey.
Their last remaining elected member to provide the face of ALBA is Ash Regan which I don't see as a positive for them.
Yes, they did so poorly I have to assume the SNP are not in danger of being replaced as the primary indy vehicle even if the result being worse than even most worst case scenarios requires some deep thinking to resolve.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
The RedWall is now the BlueWall, albeit with two shades of blue. To win these people over you have to pander to populism and "othering", although Farage is better at that than your Party are. Besides that doesn't return the Lib Dem BlueWall seats to you. I wonder in the same way once safe Labour seats are lost forever whether that might also be true of the LibDem gains in the Home Counties. Johnson's loutish behaviour didn't go down well in genteel Buckinghamshire.
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
It wasn't a meltdown, it was a perfectly controlled and highly effective skewering which left Balls squirming and Osborne hiding behind his inscrutability act. This is mere tribalism: this man is on the other side, therefore he must smell of poo.
For me the hurricane that has eventually hit the SNP is exactly the same as the one that has hit the Tories.
Payback for incompetence, perceived corruption, obsession with issues that have little agency in everyday lives and most of all the internal contradiction of trying to be too many things to too many different socio-economic, demographic and geographic groups. The fault lines emerge and then at election they fracture.
Scotland needs a better choice of independence leaning parties. Scottish Labour in particular needs a more nuanced position, or else it will be cannibalised again in another 8-10 years time. The SNP could re-build under Forbes as the Tartan Tories of memory.
The volatility of Scottish politics is absurd but results from both the SNP and Labour having very evenly spread support right across the central belt. It seems the something like 30 seats swing together which, out of 57, is ridiculous.
As for other independence supporting parties, the best result for Alba was 1.5% of the vote. Even their sitting MPs got less than that. Many Alba supporters (see Wings, esp BTL) think that the destruction of the SNP is a necessary step for something better to come along. But I don't think it will be Alba.
Alba is in a fix. It gets attention it wouldn't otherwise receive because it's led by Alex Salmond for whom it works as a platform. But he's electorally toxic. And leftie indy supporters have the Greens as an alternative anyway. Alba is really just a cul de sac.
As I understand it: Alba have captured the true believers who think the SNP have sold out. But for most voters its the Alex Salmond show and they got bored of that a decade ago. The SNP now face financial oblivion - the loss of short money and the tithe from MPs will seriously bring into question their solvency The Greens are the driver of all the policies that have brought the SNP most into disrepute
I think there is a real opportunity here to create a 4th and possibly 5th faction as the SNP tears itself apart as to what went wrong and how they fix it.
Alex Salmond, the former SNP leader who now leads the pro-independence Alba Party, said: “The slaughter of the SNP is not because of independence. How could it be? The SNP did not even campaign on it. In reality the support for independence is strong. It is the SNP who are weak.”
Utterly delusional. Using the GE as a proxy for a second referendum was the central plank of the SNP campaign. It's just that it went down like a cup of cold sick.
How much of this is to do with voters prioritising other issues, and how much is to do with the deficiencies of the SNP itself (in terms of policy, record in Government, numerous gaffes and scandals, and its evident failure in the eyes of pro-secession voters to achieve any movement in that direction,) I'll leave those with a more informed opinion to speculate upon.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
One idea would be to give Reform a free run in Sunderland/Durham etc in return for standing down round here and other close seconds.
Stitch ups rarely end well pulpy. There’s a reason Reform and the Tories are separate parties.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
The RedWall is now the BlueWall, albeit with two shades of blue. To win these people over you have to pander to populism and "othering", although Farage is better at that than your Party are. Besides that doesn't return the Lib Dem BlueWall seats to you. I wonder in the same way once safe Labour seats are lost forever whether that might also be true of the LibDem gains in the Home Counties. Johnson's loutish behaviour didn't go down well in genteel Buckinghamshire.
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
It wasn't a meltdown, it was a perfectly controlled and highly effective skewering which left Balls squirming and Osborne hiding behind his inscrutability act. This is mere tribalism: this man is on the other side, therefore he must smell of poo.
I thought that as well. The problem for Baker is he just looked like a sore loser because of the context, but it was hard to disagree with some of what he was saying.
Thank you RP, not just for the header but for your narrative throughout the campaign.
Same again for the next Holyrood elections? You could get yourself a list seat.
The campaign always had an eye on building momentum towards 2026 and I have been ramping that. I'm now actively trying to lead the NE candidates group so that we have a post-election wash-up and strategy session. I'm also getting tweets liked by ACH.
As I said, the campaign for Holyrood has already started. Now that I have seen off DRoss I quite fancy going after Salmond in Banffshire and Buchan Coast. Would also want to be as high as possible on the list. We think 1 or maybe 2 seats are winnable on that.
The Cornish blues need to be working Truro, Cambourne, South East and St Austell hard, those 4 seats should be very easily winnable next time, the LD gains I think will stick (as can be seen by the much more convincing majorities). Its not that long since Mebyon Kernow knocked labour into 6th in Cornwall in an election
For me the hurricane that has eventually hit the SNP is exactly the same as the one that has hit the Tories.
Payback for incompetence, perceived corruption, obsession with issues that have little agency in everyday lives and most of all the internal contradiction of trying to be too many things to too many different socio-economic, demographic and geographic groups. The fault lines emerge and then at election they fracture.
Scotland needs a better choice of independence leaning parties. Scottish Labour in particular needs a more nuanced position, or else it will be cannibalised again in another 8-10 years time. The SNP could re-build under Forbes as the Tartan Tories of memory.
The volatility of Scottish politics is absurd but results from both the SNP and Labour having very evenly spread support right across the central belt. It seems the something like 30 seats swing together which, out of 57, is ridiculous.
As for other independence supporting parties, the best result for Alba was 1.5% of the vote. Even their sitting MPs got less than that. Many Alba supporters (see Wings, esp BTL) think that the destruction of the SNP is a necessary step for something better to come along. But I don't think it will be Alba.
Alba is in a fix. It gets attention it wouldn't otherwise receive because it's led by Alex Salmond for whom it works as a platform. But he's electorally toxic. And leftie indy supporters have the Greens as an alternative anyway. Alba is really just a cul de sac.
As I understand it: Alba have captured the true believers who think the SNP have sold out. But for most voters its the Alex Salmond show and they got bored of that a decade ago. The SNP now face financial oblivion - the loss of short money and the tithe from MPs will seriously bring into question their solvency The Greens are the driver of all the policies that have brought the SNP most into disrepute
I think there is a real opportunity here to create a 4th and possibly 5th faction as the SNP tears itself apart as to what went wrong and how they fix it.
Alex Salmond, the former SNP leader who now leads the pro-independence Alba Party, said: “The slaughter of the SNP is not because of independence. How could it be? The SNP did not even campaign on it. In reality the support for independence is strong. It is the SNP who are weak.”
Utterly delusional. Using the GE as a proxy for a second referendum was the central plank of the SNP campaign. It's just that it went down like a cup of cold sick.
How much of this is to do with voters prioritising other issues, and how much is to do with the deficiencies of the SNP itself (in terms of policy, record in Government, numerous gaffes and scandals, and its evident failure in the eyes of pro-secession voters to achieve any movement in that direction,) I'll leave those with a more informed opinion to speculate upon.
Unrealistically restrictive on all the uninformed opinionaters and speculators.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
One idea would be to give Reform a free run in Sunderland/Durham etc in return for standing down round here and other close seconds.
Non aggression pact a la StarmerDavey
The degree of tactical voting and tacit non aggression between Labour and Lib Dem in this election was really quite marked. So much so that it was not far off an alliance, in the style of the CDU and CSU.
We can almost add the two party votes shares together, such was the concentration of the vote in Lib Dem and non Lib Dem target areas. Take say 3% off the Labour total and 2% off LD and you have a combined party with 42% of the vote.
Unlike the Greens. They are now established as the left wing alternative to Labour. They face a tougher fight trying to become the rural environmentalist alternative to Tories though. 2 successes but the Lib Dems have that market otherwise pretty sewn up.
Anti renewable energy rural environmentalists. No wind power here, more gas fired plants please but somewhere else.
Good morning everyone. Although it certainly isn’t, weather-wise! Congratulations on your piece, Mr RP, and thanks for the updates right through the campaign. I’ve a family member who ,is, or more probably, since he’s my age, was a LibDem activist in NE Scotland, and I’m waiting to hear what he has to report. I note that Farage has realised that our electoral system works against smaller parties; I don’t like the man, and I certainly don’t like his opposition to the EU, but one has to admit that when he gets his teeth into an issue he certainly gives it a good go, and often gets the result he wants. So just maybe……..
A good night's sleep, hangover all gone. Some random thoughts:
1. I have had several American friends comment on the graceful way in which the Tories accepted the result and moved out of the way without rancour. I was surprised, thinking what else would you expect, until I remembered what they have experienced in the US over recent years. The Tories are not yet captured by the Trumpist world view. That is good for them and good for the country. It is vital this doesn't change. [snip!]
I honestly feel that if a party was making Trumpist overtones like that or behaved like that, then the sheer pig-headed, obstinate nature of your average Brit demanding fair play would come to the fore. A lot of the American problem seems to be driven by the evangelicals treating Trump like a prophet sent by god.
There are also the more racist elements backing him as whites become a minority in the US.
The differences between the UK and the USA are wider than they have been in a long time, possibly wider than ever and it seems we have less and less in common with them as time goes on.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
He would have walked it. This is the absurdity of what the Tories did to themselves.
Even more absurdly the SNP then decided that they would walk it, and got increasingly upset that their own support was fading.
They won the seat, but with less votes and a lower percentage than last time…
Excellent effort and really respect your standing but dear god what has happened to you.
"Less votes"
Forget your mum and dad, politics really does f*ck you up.
Yes, less votes. You can take th' lad out of Lancashire but you can't take Lancashire out of th' lad.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
The RedWall is now the BlueWall, albeit with two shades of blue. To win these people over you have to pander to populism and "othering", although Farage is better at that than your Party are. Besides that doesn't return the Lib Dem BlueWall seats to you. I wonder in the same way once safe Labour seats are lost forever whether that might also be true of the LibDem gains in the Home Counties. Johnson's loutish behaviour didn't go down well in genteel Buckinghamshire.
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
Never mind Red wall or Blue wall, someone appears to have constructed an Orange wall across the south on Thursday night. You can travel from Eastbourne to Barnstaple without leaving LD territory.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
The RedWall is now the BlueWall, albeit with two shades of blue. To win these people over you have to pander to populism and "othering", although Farage is better at that than your Party are. Besides that doesn't return the Lib Dem BlueWall seats to you. I wonder in the same way once safe Labour seats are lost forever whether that might also be true of the LibDem gains in the Home Counties. Johnson's loutish behaviour didn't go down well in genteel Buckinghamshire.
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
That wasn't a meltdown and he was entirely correct. As he said Reeves is going to have to administer far fiercer Austerity than Osborne did but with a set of MPs who have told everyone that Osbornes so-called austerity** was unneccesary.
**it wasnt austerity - public spending continued to grow above inflation, just more slowly.
If Labour tries to implement real terms spending cuts them they'll be gone next time around. Substantial tax rises are nailed on. Certainly if we don't have a substantial revision of council tax to alleviate the pressure on local authorities, especially with respect to raising the cap on annual rate hikes, I'll be astonished.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
One idea would be to give Reform a free run in Sunderland/Durham etc in return for standing down round here and other close seconds.
The Tories need to fight Reform tooth and nail, pointing out the vacuity of their policies and weakness of their leaders. If they cede them any ground, they are consigning themselves to the bin.
They also need to work incredibly hard in the constituencies in which reform have MPs - pointing out how little they do for them, picking up such casework-type slack as they have access to, championing local issues. Knocking out the leadership at the next election will finish Reform off for this cycle.
More well meaning advice to viciously attack other right wingers and become more centrist from *checks notes* non conservatives.
Fair point perhaps, though Reform attacked the Conservatives just as much as anyone else so that was right on right. I think the Tories will try to heal on the right before going for the centre, but it's not a one way street where the Tories cannot also go after Reform, who openly sought to replace them. They are the Tory enemy too, just of a different kind and requiring different strategies.
I think there's a misconception in politicians that they cannot appeal in different directions. Yes you can risk looking schizophrenic, but no one is ideologically consistent 100% of the time, it is possible to not repel centrists whilst still keeping on board people on your left or right.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
The RedWall is now the BlueWall, albeit with two shades of blue. To win these people over you have to pander to populism and "othering", although Farage is better at that than your Party are. Besides that doesn't return the Lib Dem BlueWall seats to you. I wonder in the same way once safe Labour seats are lost forever whether that might also be true of the LibDem gains in the Home Counties. Johnson's loutish behaviour didn't go down well in genteel Buckinghamshire.
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
Never mind Red wall or Blue wall, someone appears to have constructed an Orange wall across the south on Thursday night. You can travel from Eastbourne to Barnstaple without leaving LD territory.
You are correct Rochdale, it is only when one experiences what it is like to be a candidate and fight a General Election campaign, one can appreciate what the "permanent professionals" are subjected to. I have no doubt you will stand again and maybe get elected on the list in 2026. For the first time in my life, since my first vote in 1979, I voted for another party at a General Election. I gave my support to my distant cousin Jamie Stone and voted LibDem even though I fundamentally oppose many of your party policies, especially on Europe.
I am glad I will no longer feel obliged to defend the Rwanda scheme and as a Cameroon "one nation" Tory, hope our new leader will not be of the Braverman ilk. If it is, I may just end up voting LibDem once more unless the Scottish party finally does what many of us have been calling for it to do for years, become the Scottish CSU to the English CDU.
In the 1980s I poured scorn on the then SDP-Liberal plan for a Federal UK system but as I have got older, especially after some 25 years of devolution, I increasingly believe it is the model the UK should adopt. Almost everything should be devolved with only key ministries like Defence and Foreign Affairs run from Westminster. A House of Commons with around 150 members, an elected House of Lords of a similar size and 4 sensibly sized parliaments in Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London would be my preferred option, all using some form of PR so that we banish politics at the extreme from getting near power in these islands of ours (excluding of course what the Irish Republic does and the separate administrations in the Channel Islands and Isle of Man).
I think there is a case for replacing most counties/unitaries with new bodies, large enough for them to deal with health, education and be self funding for it through levying their own taxes.
Leaving central government to govern not be running corporations providing health and the like.
Prior to 1945 some counties like London County Council had a functioning NHS equivalent and provided utilities such as power, gas and water very efficiently. Others had little or none of it.
Attlee made a fundamental mistake in nationalising instead of forcibly merging local authorities into large enough units to take tbis on viably and then taking over the private companies providing some such services and handing over their assets to said local authorities.
Not the Euroregions. They are mostly too big. But create the Metropolitan Counties like Greater Manchester and for rural counties amalgamation of them in to a viable size that retains viable local identity e.g. merge Derbys, Leices and Notts and merge the three ridings into a County of Yorkshire.
A good night's sleep, hangover all gone. Some random thoughts:
1. I have had several American friends comment on the graceful way in which the Tories accepted the result and moved out of the way without rancour. I was surprised, thinking what else would you expect, until I remembered what they have experienced in the US over recent years. The Tories are not yet captured by the Trumpist world view. That is good for them and good for the country. It is vital this doesn't change.
2. For the first time in a very long time, the British PM has been able to appoint a Cabinet based solely on an assessment of ability, not on having to appease or shut out a certain faction or ideology. Starmer may have got it wrong, we'll find out, but he has not had to make Braverman-like appointments (or Johnson-like ones if we go back to the May government). That is a good thing.
3. Entirely predictably, the left is now howling about the size of Labour's majority and the party's low vote share. What they seem to have forgotten is that the Greens and Independents very directly and very specifically centred their pitch on the inevitability of Labour winning power and how that made a vote for them safe. Owen Jones made this point daily, as did Jeremy Corbyn.
4. As I said yesterday on here, my two betting tips came in - Corbyn to win in Islington North, the LibDems to win in Honiton and Sidmouth. Needless to say, I put money on neither! I also got the vote share difference between Labour and Tory spot on, though I gave both slightly higher shares than they actually got (36% and 26%).
After years of losing, I have to say it feels good to be on the other side. We're at the stage where things feel possible and change can happen. Undoubtedly it will all get very difficult and very unpleasant very quickly, so I am going to enjoy this bit. I like the team Starmer is putting together. I thought the speech he made outside Downing Street yesterday was pitch perfect.
Delivery is everything, of course. The other side of a low vote share being precarious is that there are a lot of new votes to fight for next time around. If Labour makes a decent fist of the next few years - a big if, I know - then that could well happen. If you can't be optimistic at the outset, when can you be?
There was no graceful attempt to accept the result of Brexit. It tore parliament apart as people tried to invalidate and undo the result.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
One idea would be to give Reform a free run in Sunderland/Durham etc in return for standing down round here and other close seconds.
Stitch ups rarely end well pulpy. There’s a reason Reform and the Tories are separate parties.
Just as why Labour and LD are separate, when people propose more formal cooperation.
Many party people seem to struggle to believe opponents are indeed opponents if they are of similar broad wings. A left wing opponent might require a different tactic than a right wing one, but it'd be foolish to treat them like a misguided ally when they are just as committed to defeating you. Farage for instance hasn't been a Tory for decades, he's not their pal if only they could be nice to him.
Of course, the biggest downside of not taking the seat for RP is missing out on weekly trips to/from London on the Sleeper.
Just think of all that 73 and 92 mileage that would have been available.
There must be a lot of new MPs who were not really expecting to win, now thinking of how much their lives are about to change. Plus the impact on their families.
Then there are the losers thinking "What do I do now?"
I was warned against candidateitis - getting swept along thinking "I could win this". Well I *could* have won it had enough people voted for me. Was very unlikely and I was always clear about that. But did I not say that in a change election you get some mad results? We got some truly off the scale results...
I travel a lot for work. I go through spells of being away every week. Being away in Westminster or Edinburgh wouldn't be that different from normal.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
One idea would be to give Reform a free run in Sunderland/Durham etc in return for standing down round here and other close seconds.
The Tories need to fight Reform tooth and nail, pointing out the vacuity of their policies and weakness of their leaders. If they cede them any ground, they are consigning themselves to the bin.
They also need to work incredibly hard in the constituencies in which reform have MPs - pointing out how little they do for them, picking up such casework-type slack as they have access to, championing local issues. Knocking out the leadership at the next election will finish Reform off for this cycle.
More well meaning advice to viciously attack other right wingers and become more centrist from *checks notes* non conservatives.
You're wise only to take advice from conservative political strategists, as they clearly have it all nailed.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
One idea would be to give Reform a free run in Sunderland/Durham etc in return for standing down round here and other close seconds.
The Tories need to fight Reform tooth and nail, pointing out the vacuity of their policies and weakness of their leaders. If they cede them any ground, they are consigning themselves to the bin.
They also need to work incredibly hard in the constituencies in which reform have MPs - pointing out how little they do for them, picking up such casework-type slack as they have access to, championing local issues. Knocking out the leadership at the next election will finish Reform off for this cycle.
More well meaning advice to viciously attack other right wingers and become more centrist from *checks notes* non conservatives.
More 'well-meaning' advice from a poster who is, if not a Russian troll, a useful idiot.
If you want to win elections, you need to win many people over. even under FPTP. I know that's not the Russian way, but it's the way it works over here. And that means you do not just appeal to 'Conservatives' (note the capital-C), but the wider electorate. You know, the people who are non-Conservatives.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
The RedWall is now the BlueWall, albeit with two shades of blue. To win these people over you have to pander to populism and "othering", although Farage is better at that than your Party are. Besides that doesn't return the Lib Dem BlueWall seats to you. I wonder in the same way once safe Labour seats are lost forever whether that might also be true of the LibDem gains in the Home Counties. Johnson's loutish behaviour didn't go down well in genteel Buckinghamshire.
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
Never mind Red wall or Blue wall, someone appears to have constructed an Orange wall across the south on Thursday night. You can travel from Eastbourne to Barnstaple without leaving LD territory.
A good night's sleep, hangover all gone. Some random thoughts:
1. I have had several American friends comment on the graceful way in which the Tories accepted the result and moved out of the way without rancour. I was surprised, thinking what else would you expect, until I remembered what they have experienced in the US over recent years. The Tories are not yet captured by the Trumpist world view. That is good for them and good for the country. It is vital this doesn't change.
2. For the first time in a very long time, the British PM has been able to appoint a Cabinet based solely on an assessment of ability, not on having to appease or shut out a certain faction or ideology. Starmer may have got it wrong, we'll find out, but he has not had to make Braverman-like appointments (or Johnson-like ones if we go back to the May government). That is a good thing.
3. Entirely predictably, the left is now howling about the size of Labour's majority and the party's low vote share. What they seem to have forgotten is that the Greens and Independents very directly and very specifically centred their pitch on the inevitability of Labour winning power and how that made a vote for them safe. Owen Jones made this point daily, as did Jeremy Corbyn.
4. As I said yesterday on here, my two betting tips came in - Corbyn to win in Islington North, the LibDems to win in Honiton and Sidmouth. Needless to say, I put money on neither! I also got the vote share difference between Labour and Tory spot on, though I gave both slightly higher shares than they actually got (36% and 26%).
After years of losing, I have to say it feels good to be on the other side. We're at the stage where things feel possible and change can happen. Undoubtedly it will all get very difficult and very unpleasant very quickly, so I am going to enjoy this bit. I like the team Starmer is putting together. I thought the speech he made outside Downing Street yesterday was pitch perfect.
Delivery is everything, of course. The other side of a low vote share being precarious is that there are a lot of new votes to fight for next time around. If Labour makes a decent fist of the next few years - a big if, I know - then that could well happen. If you can't be optimistic at the outset, when can you be?
There was no graceful attempt to accept the result of Brexit. It tore parliament apart as people tried to invalidate and undo the result.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
The RedWall is now the BlueWall, albeit with two shades of blue. To win these people over you have to pander to populism and "othering", although Farage is better at that than your Party are. Besides that doesn't return the Lib Dem BlueWall seats to you. I wonder in the same way once safe Labour seats are lost forever whether that might also be true of the LibDem gains in the Home Counties. Johnson's loutish behaviour didn't go down well in genteel Buckinghamshire.
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
Never mind Red wall or Blue wall, someone appears to have constructed an Orange wall across the south on Thursday night. You can travel from Eastbourne to Barnstaple without leaving LD territory.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
The RedWall is now the BlueWall, albeit with two shades of blue. To win these people over you have to pander to populism and "othering", although Farage is better at that than your Party are. Besides that doesn't return the Lib Dem BlueWall seats to you. I wonder in the same way once safe Labour seats are lost forever whether that might also be true of the LibDem gains in the Home Counties. Johnson's loutish behaviour didn't go down well in genteel Buckinghamshire.
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
Never mind Red wall or Blue wall, someone appears to have constructed an Orange wall across the south on Thursday night. You can travel from Eastbourne to Barnstaple without leaving LD territory.
Longest Tory walk seems to be straight line - Stranraer to East Coast or circuitous from just outside Great Yarmouth cross Norfolk through NE Cambs and around the South and west of the Peterborough/Corby etc red blobs back round to Leicester and up through Lincolnshire to the Humber
A good night's sleep, hangover all gone. Some random thoughts:
1. I have had several American friends comment on the graceful way in which the Tories accepted the result and moved out of the way without rancour. I was surprised, thinking what else would you expect, until I remembered what they have experienced in the US over recent years. The Tories are not yet captured by the Trumpist world view. That is good for them and good for the country. It is vital this doesn't change. [snip!]
I honestly feel that if a party was making Trumpist overtones like that or behaved like that, then the sheer pig-headed, obstinate nature of your average Brit demanding fair play would come to the fore. A lot of the American problem seems to be driven by the evangelicals treating Trump like a prophet sent by god.
There are also the more racist elements backing him as whites become a minority in the US.
The differences between the UK and the USA are wider than they have been in a long time, possibly wider than ever and it seems we have less and less in common with them as time goes on.
I totally agree. But there seems to be a part of the right in the UK - Reform and the sections of the Conservative party wanting to merge with Reform - that tend to look across the Atlantic and to like what they see.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
The RedWall is now the BlueWall, albeit with two shades of blue. To win these people over you have to pander to populism and "othering", although Farage is better at that than your Party are. Besides that doesn't return the Lib Dem BlueWall seats to you. I wonder in the same way once safe Labour seats are lost forever whether that might also be true of the LibDem gains in the Home Counties. Johnson's loutish behaviour didn't go down well in genteel Buckinghamshire.
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
Never mind Red wall or Blue wall, someone appears to have constructed an Orange wall across the south on Thursday night. You can travel from Eastbourne to Barnstaple without leaving LD territory.
I prefer to call it the Golden Arch.
Surely the Gateway to the West, like the Usonians have in St Louis.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
The RedWall is now the BlueWall, albeit with two shades of blue. To win these people over you have to pander to populism and "othering", although Farage is better at that than your Party are. Besides that doesn't return the Lib Dem BlueWall seats to you. I wonder in the same way once safe Labour seats are lost forever whether that might also be true of the LibDem gains in the Home Counties. Johnson's loutish behaviour didn't go down well in genteel Buckinghamshire.
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
Never mind Red wall or Blue wall, someone appears to have constructed an Orange wall across the south on Thursday night. You can travel from Eastbourne to Barnstaple without leaving LD territory.
But not by car unless you have a 4WD and are willing to use a few bridleways, as I set out at length yesterday. You also need red hot navigation along some B roads in Berkshire and the Cotswolds.
A good night's sleep, hangover all gone. Some random thoughts:
1. I have had several American friends comment on the graceful way in which the Tories accepted the result and moved out of the way without rancour. I was surprised, thinking what else would you expect, until I remembered what they have experienced in the US over recent years. The Tories are not yet captured by the Trumpist world view. That is good for them and good for the country. It is vital this doesn't change.
2. For the first time in a very long time, the British PM has been able to appoint a Cabinet based solely on an assessment of ability, not on having to appease or shut out a certain faction or ideology. Starmer may have got it wrong, we'll find out, but he has not had to make Braverman-like appointments (or Johnson-like ones if we go back to the May government). That is a good thing.
3. Entirely predictably, the left is now howling about the size of Labour's majority and the party's low vote share. What they seem to have forgotten is that the Greens and Independents very directly and very specifically centred their pitch on the inevitability of Labour winning power and how that made a vote for them safe. Owen Jones made this point daily, as did Jeremy Corbyn.
4. As I said yesterday on here, my two betting tips came in - Corbyn to win in Islington North, the LibDems to win in Honiton and Sidmouth. Needless to say, I put money on neither! I also got the vote share difference between Labour and Tory spot on, though I gave both slightly higher shares than they actually got (36% and 26%).
After years of losing, I have to say it feels good to be on the other side. We're at the stage where things feel possible and change can happen. Undoubtedly it will all get very difficult and very unpleasant very quickly, so I am going to enjoy this bit. I like the team Starmer is putting together. I thought the speech he made outside Downing Street yesterday was pitch perfect.
Delivery is everything, of course. The other side of a low vote share being precarious is that there are a lot of new votes to fight for next time around. If Labour makes a decent fist of the next few years - a big if, I know - then that could well happen. If you can't be optimistic at the outset, when can you be?
There was no graceful attempt to accept the result of Brexit. It tore parliament apart as people tried to invalidate and undo the result.
But the attempts to reverse it was done entirely with the parliamentary system. There were no baying mobs running amok through the HoC.
It illustrates the total difference between the US and the UK
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
When the Lib Dems got their spectacular by-election wins in North Shropshire, Chesham and Amersham, Honiton and Tiverton, Somerton and Frome the conventional wisdom was that they would all lose at the next GE but all 4 by-election victors were returned on Thursday..
A good night's sleep, hangover all gone. Some random thoughts:
1. I have had several American friends comment on the graceful way in which the Tories accepted the result and moved out of the way without rancour. I was surprised, thinking what else would you expect, until I remembered what they have experienced in the US over recent years. The Tories are not yet captured by the Trumpist world view. That is good for them and good for the country. It is vital this doesn't change.
2. For the first time in a very long time, the British PM has been able to appoint a Cabinet based solely on an assessment of ability, not on having to appease or shut out a certain faction or ideology. Starmer may have got it wrong, we'll find out, but he has not had to make Braverman-like appointments (or Johnson-like ones if we go back to the May government). That is a good thing.
3. Entirely predictably, the left is now howling about the size of Labour's majority and the party's low vote share. What they seem to have forgotten is that the Greens and Independents very directly and very specifically centred their pitch on the inevitability of Labour winning power and how that made a vote for them safe. Owen Jones made this point daily, as did Jeremy Corbyn.
4. As I said yesterday on here, my two betting tips came in - Corbyn to win in Islington North, the LibDems to win in Honiton and Sidmouth. Needless to say, I put money on neither! I also got the vote share difference between Labour and Tory spot on, though I gave both slightly higher shares than they actually got (36% and 26%).
After years of losing, I have to say it feels good to be on the other side. We're at the stage where things feel possible and change can happen. Undoubtedly it will all get very difficult and very unpleasant very quickly, so I am going to enjoy this bit. I like the team Starmer is putting together. I thought the speech he made outside Downing Street yesterday was pitch perfect.
Delivery is everything, of course. The other side of a low vote share being precarious is that there are a lot of new votes to fight for next time around. If Labour makes a decent fist of the next few years - a big if, I know - then that could well happen. If you can't be optimistic at the outset, when can you be?
There was no graceful attempt to accept the result of Brexit. It tore parliament apart as people tried to invalidate and undo the result.
That was then, you won, move on.
No. I cannot move on from something I never thought I would see. An attempt by an awful lot of people who refused to accept a result and where willing to use any and all methods (short of violence) to invalidate it. Absolutely shocking. It should never be forgiven. Those who participated should never be allowed to hold high office again. However, the electorate do seem to have forgiven. PS. I didnt win, the electorate won. It was their vote and their choice.
For me the hurricane that has eventually hit the SNP is exactly the same as the one that has hit the Tories.
Payback for incompetence, perceived corruption, obsession with issues that have little agency in everyday lives and most of all the internal contradiction of trying to be too many things to too many different socio-economic, demographic and geographic groups. The fault lines emerge and then at election they fracture.
Scotland needs a better choice of independence leaning parties. Scottish Labour in particular needs a more nuanced position, or else it will be cannibalised again in another 8-10 years time. The SNP could re-build under Forbes as the Tartan Tories of memory.
The volatility of Scottish politics is absurd but results from both the SNP and Labour having very evenly spread support right across the central belt. It seems the something like 30 seats swing together which, out of 57, is ridiculous.
As for other independence supporting parties, the best result for Alba was 1.5% of the vote. Even their sitting MPs got less than that. Many Alba supporters (see Wings, esp BTL) think that the destruction of the SNP is a necessary step for something better to come along. But I don't think it will be Alba.
Alba is in a fix. It gets attention it wouldn't otherwise receive because it's led by Alex Salmond for whom it works as a platform. But he's electorally toxic. And leftie indy supporters have the Greens as an alternative anyway. Alba is really just a cul de sac.
As I understand it: Alba have captured the true believers who think the SNP have sold out. But for most voters its the Alex Salmond show and they got bored of that a decade ago. The SNP now face financial oblivion - the loss of short money and the tithe from MPs will seriously bring into question their solvency The Greens are the driver of all the policies that have brought the SNP most into disrepute
I think there is a real opportunity here to create a 4th and possibly 5th faction as the SNP tears itself apart as to what went wrong and how they fix it.
Alex Salmond, the former SNP leader who now leads the pro-independence Alba Party, said: “The slaughter of the SNP is not because of independence. How could it be? The SNP did not even campaign on it. In reality the support for independence is strong. It is the SNP who are weak.”
He is right and he is wrong. Swinney put Independence as page 1 line 1 of the manifesto. He went further - a majority of elected MPs would be a mandate for independence.
This was the catastrophic mistake in an election where hubris and internal battles meant that he had to do that. They collapsed to a camper van of seats. On their own terms of their own manifesto that means Scotland has comprehensively *rejected* independence.
Swinney now claims that the rejection is in fact irrelevant as the mandate was at the 2021 election. Erm no, you set the terms for a new mandate and got routed.
You are correct Rochdale, it is only when one experiences what it is like to be a candidate and fight a General Election campaign, one can appreciate what the "permanent professionals" are subjected to. I have no doubt you will stand again and maybe get elected on the list in 2026. For the first time in my life, since my first vote in 1979, I voted for another party at a General Election. I gave my support to my distant cousin Jamie Stone and voted LibDem even though I fundamentally oppose many of your party policies, especially on Europe.
I am glad I will no longer feel obliged to defend the Rwanda scheme and as a Cameroon "one nation" Tory, hope our new leader will not be of the Braverman ilk. If it is, I may just end up voting LibDem once more unless the Scottish party finally does what many of us have been calling for it to do for years, become the Scottish CSU to the English CDU.
In the 1980s I poured scorn on the then SDP-Liberal plan for a Federal UK system but as I have got older, especially after some 25 years of devolution, I increasingly believe it is the model the UK should adopt. Almost everything should be devolved with only key ministries like Defence and Foreign Affairs run from Westminster. A House of Commons with around 150 members, an elected House of Lords of a similar size and 4 sensibly sized parliaments in Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London would be my preferred option, all using some form of PR so that we banish politics at the extreme from getting near power in these islands of ours (excluding of course what the Irish Republic does and the separate administrations in the Channel Islands and Isle of Man).
I think there is a case for replacing most counties/unitaries with new bodies, large enough for them to deal with health, education and be self funding for it through levying their own taxes.
Leaving central government to govern not be running corporations providing health and the like.
Prior to 1945 some counties like London County Council had a functioning NHS equivalent and provided utilities such as power, gas and water very efficiently. Others had little or none of it.
Attlee made a fundamental mistake in nationalising instead of forcibly merging local authorities into large enough units to take tbis on viably and then taking over the private companies providing some such services and handing over their assets to said local authorities.
Not the Euroregions. They are mostly too big. But create the Metropolitan Counties like Greater Manchester and for rural counties amalgamation of them in to a viable size that retains viable local identity e.g. merge Derbys, Leices and Notts and merge the three ridings into a County of Yorkshire.
I think a plan for provincial government was actively considered after the War, but evidently it was dropped (whether this was considered too big an upheaval, or an affront to tradition and to vested interests, I don't know.)
One thing we know Starmer has expressed an interest in is local devolution, so it'll be interesting to see how he approaches this. But one thing I'm virtually certain of is that it won't involve federalism and an English Parliament, for several reasons which I shan't bore on about here.
When are the slackers in Inverness, Skye & West Ross gonna give us a result?
Just think of it as a preview of what it will be like if we adopt STV.
"Elected on the 14th count" and all that nonsense.
Think of it as like a Test match while the current British count is like a one-dayer played overnight. Five days of counting with humane breaks for sleep and meals. Very civilised. I think the British would take to it very naturally.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
The RedWall is now the BlueWall, albeit with two shades of blue. To win these people over you have to pander to populism and "othering", although Farage is better at that than your Party are. Besides that doesn't return the Lib Dem BlueWall seats to you. I wonder in the same way once safe Labour seats are lost forever whether that might also be true of the LibDem gains in the Home Counties. Johnson's loutish behaviour didn't go down well in genteel Buckinghamshire.
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
Never mind Red wall or Blue wall, someone appears to have constructed an Orange wall across the south on Thursday night. You can travel from Eastbourne to Barnstaple without leaving LD territory.
I prefer to call it the Golden Arch.
As long as it doesnt become an Oaten like Brown Table.
The Cornish blues need to be working Truro, Cambourne, South East and St Austell hard, those 4 seats should be very easily winnable next time, the LD gains I think will stick (as can be seen by the much more convincing majorities). Its not that long since Mebyon Kernow knocked labour into 6th in Cornwall in an election
There’s a reason those constituencies have changed. The boomer retirees are gradually dying out. The new retirees are blowouts from London and the SE, Generation Xers with a different world view.
My Mum was moved from Truro into Camborne by the boundary changes. I teased her that by my reckoning she has a Labour MP for probably the first time since she left home in Newcastle under Lyme at the beginning of the 60s.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
One idea would be to give Reform a free run in Sunderland/Durham etc in return for standing down round here and other close seconds.
The Tories need to fight Reform tooth and nail, pointing out the vacuity of their policies and weakness of their leaders. If they cede them any ground, they are consigning themselves to the bin.
They also need to work incredibly hard in the constituencies in which reform have MPs - pointing out how little they do for them, picking up such casework-type slack as they have access to, championing local issues. Knocking out the leadership at the next election will finish Reform off for this cycle.
More well meaning advice to viciously attack other right wingers and become more centrist from *checks notes* non conservatives.
More 'well-meaning' advice from a poster who is, if not a Russian troll, a useful idiot.
If you want to win elections, you need to win many people over. even under FPTP. I know that's not the Russian way, but it's the way it works over here. And that means you do not just appeal to 'Conservatives' (note the capital-C), but the wider electorate. You know, the people who are non-Conservatives.
How do you do that from a far-right viewpoint?
And for the record (yet again) I was a Tory voter, then Tory member, and even stood for the Council, for *decades*.
A good night's sleep, hangover all gone. Some random thoughts:
1. I have had several American friends comment on the graceful way in which the Tories accepted the result and moved out of the way without rancour. I was surprised, thinking what else would you expect, until I remembered what they have experienced in the US over recent years. The Tories are not yet captured by the Trumpist world view. That is good for them and good for the country. It is vital this doesn't change.
2. For the first time in a very long time, the British PM has been able to appoint a Cabinet based solely on an assessment of ability, not on having to appease or shut out a certain faction or ideology. Starmer may have got it wrong, we'll find out, but he has not had to make Braverman-like appointments (or Johnson-like ones if we go back to the May government). That is a good thing.
3. Entirely predictably, the left is now howling about the size of Labour's majority and the party's low vote share. What they seem to have forgotten is that the Greens and Independents very directly and very specifically centred their pitch on the inevitability of Labour winning power and how that made a vote for them safe. Owen Jones made this point daily, as did Jeremy Corbyn.
4. As I said yesterday on here, my two betting tips came in - Corbyn to win in Islington North, the LibDems to win in Honiton and Sidmouth. Needless to say, I put money on neither! I also got the vote share difference between Labour and Tory spot on, though I gave both slightly higher shares than they actually got (36% and 26%).
After years of losing, I have to say it feels good to be on the other side. We're at the stage where things feel possible and change can happen. Undoubtedly it will all get very difficult and very unpleasant very quickly, so I am going to enjoy this bit. I like the team Starmer is putting together. I thought the speech he made outside Downing Street yesterday was pitch perfect.
Delivery is everything, of course. The other side of a low vote share being precarious is that there are a lot of new votes to fight for next time around. If Labour makes a decent fist of the next few years - a big if, I know - then that could well happen. If you can't be optimistic at the outset, when can you be?
There was no graceful attempt to accept the result of Brexit. It tore parliament apart as people tried to invalidate and undo the result.
Had the Tories found the leader and capital to start with 'Norway for now', history would be different.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
The RedWall is now the BlueWall, albeit with two shades of blue. To win these people over you have to pander to populism and "othering", although Farage is better at that than your Party are. Besides that doesn't return the Lib Dem BlueWall seats to you. I wonder in the same way once safe Labour seats are lost forever whether that might also be true of the LibDem gains in the Home Counties. Johnson's loutish behaviour didn't go down well in genteel Buckinghamshire.
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
Never mind Red wall or Blue wall, someone appears to have constructed an Orange wall across the south on Thursday night. You can travel from Eastbourne to Barnstaple without leaving LD territory.
I prefer to call it the Golden Arch.
The geographical pattern is really interesting and highly persistent. As I’ve commented before, it largely follows the map of places that were never in the open field system and never faced enclosure. Ie places where Britain’s incipient class system got less of a foothold.
I’ve not done the count yet but I’d like to work out the share of vineyard acreage under Lib Dem, Tory, Labour and Green. The Tories dominated the wine lands in the past but that’s no longer the case. Huge areas now under LD control. Mine has been under Rosie Duffield Labour since planting - she now boasts Simpson’s, Evremond (Taittinger), Heppington, Chartham, Gorsley, vast unmarked vineyards and several other new plantings.
A good night's sleep, hangover all gone. Some random thoughts:
1. I have had several American friends comment on the graceful way in which the Tories accepted the result and moved out of the way without rancour. I was surprised, thinking what else would you expect, until I remembered what they have experienced in the US over recent years. The Tories are not yet captured by the Trumpist world view. That is good for them and good for the country. It is vital this doesn't change. [snip!]
I honestly feel that if a party was making Trumpist overtones like that or behaved like that, then the sheer pig-headed, obstinate nature of your average Brit demanding fair play would come to the fore. A lot of the American problem seems to be driven by the evangelicals treating Trump like a prophet sent by god.
There are also the more racist elements backing him as whites become a minority in the US.
The differences between the UK and the USA are wider than they have been in a long time, possibly wider than ever and it seems we have less and less in common with them as time goes on.
I totally agree. But there seems to be a part of the right in the UK - Reform and the sections of the Conservative party wanting to merge with Reform - that tend to look across the Atlantic and to like what they see.
They may be less keen in 6 months if the Orange Jesus becomes Kind Donald I
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
The RedWall is now the BlueWall, albeit with two shades of blue. To win these people over you have to pander to populism and "othering", although Farage is better at that than your Party are. Besides that doesn't return the Lib Dem BlueWall seats to you. I wonder in the same way once safe Labour seats are lost forever whether that might also be true of the LibDem gains in the Home Counties. Johnson's loutish behaviour didn't go down well in genteel Buckinghamshire.
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
Never mind Red wall or Blue wall, someone appears to have constructed an Orange wall across the south on Thursday night. You can travel from Eastbourne to Barnstaple without leaving LD territory.
The orange areas around Bristol, Cambridge, Oxford, St Albans and south-west of London will be the main battlegrounds in the development/nimby wars to come.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
The RedWall is now the BlueWall, albeit with two shades of blue. To win these people over you have to pander to populism and "othering", although Farage is better at that than your Party are. Besides that doesn't return the Lib Dem BlueWall seats to you. I wonder in the same way once safe Labour seats are lost forever whether that might also be true of the LibDem gains in the Home Counties. Johnson's loutish behaviour didn't go down well in genteel Buckinghamshire.
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
That wasn't a meltdown and he was entirely correct. As he said Reeves is going to have to administer far fiercer Austerity than Osborne did but with a set of MPs who have told everyone that Osbornes so-called austerity** was unneccesary.
**it wasnt austerity - public spending continued to grow above inflation, just more slowly.
If Labour tries to implement real terms spending cuts them they'll be gone next time around. Substantial tax rises are nailed on. Certainly if we don't have a substantial revision of council tax to alleviate the pressure on local authorities, especially with respect to raising the cap on annual rate hikes, I'll be astonished.
I’ll take the revision of council tax as long as it is accompanied by revalorisation. Our house is Band D. A 2/3 bed 19th C cottage with good sized rooms. Our neighbour is very similar, having extended a smaller cottage, but his is still Band B. That makes no sense.
A good night's sleep, hangover all gone. Some random thoughts:
1. I have had several American friends comment on the graceful way in which the Tories accepted the result and moved out of the way without rancour. I was surprised, thinking what else would you expect, until I remembered what they have experienced in the US over recent years. The Tories are not yet captured by the Trumpist world view. That is good for them and good for the country. It is vital this doesn't change.
2. For the first time in a very long time, the British PM has been able to appoint a Cabinet based solely on an assessment of ability, not on having to appease or shut out a certain faction or ideology. Starmer may have got it wrong, we'll find out, but he has not had to make Braverman-like appointments (or Johnson-like ones if we go back to the May government). That is a good thing.
3. Entirely predictably, the left is now howling about the size of Labour's majority and the party's low vote share. What they seem to have forgotten is that the Greens and Independents very directly and very specifically centred their pitch on the inevitability of Labour winning power and how that made a vote for them safe. Owen Jones made this point daily, as did Jeremy Corbyn.
4. As I said yesterday on here, my two betting tips came in - Corbyn to win in Islington North, the LibDems to win in Honiton and Sidmouth. Needless to say, I put money on neither! I also got the vote share difference between Labour and Tory spot on, though I gave both slightly higher shares than they actually got (36% and 26%).
After years of losing, I have to say it feels good to be on the other side. We're at the stage where things feel possible and change can happen. Undoubtedly it will all get very difficult and very unpleasant very quickly, so I am going to enjoy this bit. I like the team Starmer is putting together. I thought the speech he made outside Downing Street yesterday was pitch perfect.
Delivery is everything, of course. The other side of a low vote share being precarious is that there are a lot of new votes to fight for next time around. If Labour makes a decent fist of the next few years - a big if, I know - then that could well happen. If you can't be optimistic at the outset, when can you be?
There was no graceful attempt to accept the result of Brexit. It tore parliament apart as people tried to invalidate and undo the result.
But the attempts to reverse it was done entirely with the parliamentary system. There were no baying mobs running amok through the HoC.
It illustrates the total difference between the US and the UK
I find it hard to imagine that we'll have a referendum on anything else any time soon.
(So even less chance of anything happening wrt PR)
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
One idea would be to give Reform a free run in Sunderland/Durham etc in return for standing down round here and other close seconds.
Stitch ups rarely end well pulpy. There’s a reason Reform and the Tories are separate parties.
Just as why Labour and LD are separate, when people propose more formal cooperation.
Many party people seem to struggle to believe opponents are indeed opponents if they are of similar broad wings. A left wing opponent might require a different tactic than a right wing one, but it'd be foolish to treat them like a misguided ally when they are just as committed to defeating you. Farage for instance hasn't been a Tory for decades, he's not their pal if only they could be nice to him.
That was my first thought to Pulpy's suggestion.
But of course both Labour and Liberals have deep roots, long histories, and their own culture and traditions to defend, embedded with local memberships and councillors and assets and experience.
Reform doesn't have any of this, and might well collapse or disappear if Farage decides to retire.
Whether Reform now takes root as a national political party or movement, or simply remains a handful of troublemaking MPs without really having a party at all, is one of the key questions for the next few years. Farage doesn't to me seem to have the right mentality or skills for achieving the former?
A good night's sleep, hangover all gone. Some random thoughts:
1. I have had several American friends comment on the graceful way in which the Tories accepted the result and moved out of the way without rancour. I was surprised, thinking what else would you expect, until I remembered what they have experienced in the US over recent years. The Tories are not yet captured by the Trumpist world view. That is good for them and good for the country. It is vital this doesn't change.
2. For the first time in a very long time, the British PM has been able to appoint a Cabinet based solely on an assessment of ability, not on having to appease or shut out a certain faction or ideology. Starmer may have got it wrong, we'll find out, but he has not had to make Braverman-like appointments (or Johnson-like ones if we go back to the May government). That is a good thing.
3. Entirely predictably, the left is now howling about the size of Labour's majority and the party's low vote share. What they seem to have forgotten is that the Greens and Independents very directly and very specifically centred their pitch on the inevitability of Labour winning power and how that made a vote for them safe. Owen Jones made this point daily, as did Jeremy Corbyn.
4. As I said yesterday on here, my two betting tips came in - Corbyn to win in Islington North, the LibDems to win in Honiton and Sidmouth. Needless to say, I put money on neither! I also got the vote share difference between Labour and Tory spot on, though I gave both slightly higher shares than they actually got (36% and 26%).
After years of losing, I have to say it feels good to be on the other side. We're at the stage where things feel possible and change can happen. Undoubtedly it will all get very difficult and very unpleasant very quickly, so I am going to enjoy this bit. I like the team Starmer is putting together. I thought the speech he made outside Downing Street yesterday was pitch perfect.
Delivery is everything, of course. The other side of a low vote share being precarious is that there are a lot of new votes to fight for next time around. If Labour makes a decent fist of the next few years - a big if, I know - then that could well happen. If you can't be optimistic at the outset, when can you be?
There was no graceful attempt to accept the result of Brexit. It tore parliament apart as people tried to invalidate and undo the result.
Can I remind you the Referendum was advisory, nonetheless it has now been accepted despite Brexit being hugely unpopular.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
The RedWall is now the BlueWall, albeit with two shades of blue. To win these people over you have to pander to populism and "othering", although Farage is better at that than your Party are. Besides that doesn't return the Lib Dem BlueWall seats to you. I wonder in the same way once safe Labour seats are lost forever whether that might also be true of the LibDem gains in the Home Counties. Johnson's loutish behaviour didn't go down well in genteel Buckinghamshire.
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
That wasn't a meltdown and he was entirely correct. As he said Reeves is going to have to administer far fiercer Austerity than Osborne did but with a set of MPs who have told everyone that Osbornes so-called austerity** was unneccesary.
**it wasnt austerity - public spending continued to grow above inflation, just more slowly.
If Labour tries to implement real terms spending cuts them they'll be gone next time around. Substantial tax rises are nailed on. Certainly if we don't have a substantial revision of council tax to alleviate the pressure on local authorities, especially with respect to raising the cap on annual rate hikes, I'll be astonished.
There does seem to be some real structural budget pressure built in which doesnt give Labour much room to wriggle with. Theyve massively boxed themselves in with tax rise pledges.
Council tax revaluations in which almost everyone pays more (which is what you are suggesting, no?), as well as removing the limit which is currently 5% (for social care precepting authorities) again is going to go down really hard.
Quality candidates next time for the Cons are clearly important; but what about quality members in the short term? Can someone who knows how local associations work tell me whether there will be a purge of Reform activists who have quietly kept up their Con membership?
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
One idea would be to give Reform a free run in Sunderland/Durham etc in return for standing down round here and other close seconds.
Stitch ups rarely end well pulpy. There’s a reason Reform and the Tories are separate parties.
Just as why Labour and LD are separate, when people propose more formal cooperation.
Many party people seem to struggle to believe opponents are indeed opponents if they are of similar broad wings. A left wing opponent might require a different tactic than a right wing one, but it'd be foolish to treat them like a misguided ally when they are just as committed to defeating you. Farage for instance hasn't been a Tory for decades, he's not their pal if only they could be nice to him.
That was my first thought to Pulpy's suggestion.
But of course both Labour and Liberals have deep roots, long histories, and their own culture and traditions to defend, embedded with local memberships and councillors and assets and experience.
Reform doesn't have any of this, and might well collapse or disappear if Farage decides to retire.
Whether Reform now takes root as a national political party or movement, or simply remains a handful of troublemaking MPs without really having a party at all, is one of the key questions for the next few years. Farage doesn't to me seem to have the right mentality or skills for achieving the former?
The funny thing is he will now probably get fewer slots on Question Time because the bbc will have to factor him in on balance.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
The RedWall is now the BlueWall, albeit with two shades of blue. To win these people over you have to pander to populism and "othering", although Farage is better at that than your Party are. Besides that doesn't return the Lib Dem BlueWall seats to you. I wonder in the same way once safe Labour seats are lost forever whether that might also be true of the LibDem gains in the Home Counties. Johnson's loutish behaviour didn't go down well in genteel Buckinghamshire.
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
Never mind Red wall or Blue wall, someone appears to have constructed an Orange wall across the south on Thursday night. You can travel from Eastbourne to Barnstaple without leaving LD territory.
Longest Tory walk seems to be straight line - Stranraer to East Coast or circuitous from just outside Great Yarmouth cross Norfolk through NE Cambs and around the South and west of the Peterborough/Corby etc red blobs back round to Leicester and up through Lincolnshire to the Humber
I wonder if anyone would actually do these walks or drives. Pretty niche.
I'm essentially landlocked in rural inland East Hampshire and West Sussex.
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
Your old campaigning ground of Derbyshire NE had an almost identical result in 2024 to that in 2015:
The likely Conservative gains in 2029 are going to include some non-standard places.
I wonder when the Conservatives will realise that and what it will do to their strategy and policy ideas.
Darlington, Redcar, Middlesborough South, the Stocktons need to figure in alongside Bolsover, Rother Valley etc and they need a fairly radical NW strategy
One idea would be to give Reform a free run in Sunderland/Durham etc in return for standing down round here and other close seconds.
The Tories need to fight Reform tooth and nail, pointing out the vacuity of their policies and weakness of their leaders. If they cede them any ground, they are consigning themselves to the bin.
They also need to work incredibly hard in the constituencies in which reform have MPs - pointing out how little they do for them, picking up such casework-type slack as they have access to, championing local issues. Knocking out the leadership at the next election will finish Reform off for this cycle.
More well meaning advice to viciously attack other right wingers and become more centrist from *checks notes* non conservatives.
More 'well-meaning' advice from a poster who is, if not a Russian troll, a useful idiot.
If you want to win elections, you need to win many people over. even under FPTP. I know that's not the Russian way, but it's the way it works over here. And that means you do not just appeal to 'Conservatives' (note the capital-C), but the wider electorate. You know, the people who are non-Conservatives.
How do you do that from a far-right viewpoint?
And for the record (yet again) I was a Tory voter, then Tory member, and even stood for the Council, for *decades*.
Yeah, but you're not a Conservative. Apparently...
You are correct Rochdale, it is only when one experiences what it is like to be a candidate and fight a General Election campaign, one can appreciate what the "permanent professionals" are subjected to. I have no doubt you will stand again and maybe get elected on the list in 2026. For the first time in my life, since my first vote in 1979, I voted for another party at a General Election. I gave my support to my distant cousin Jamie Stone and voted LibDem even though I fundamentally oppose many of your party policies, especially on Europe.
I am glad I will no longer feel obliged to defend the Rwanda scheme and as a Cameroon "one nation" Tory, hope our new leader will not be of the Braverman ilk. If it is, I may just end up voting LibDem once more unless the Scottish party finally does what many of us have been calling for it to do for years, become the Scottish CSU to the English CDU.
In the 1980s I poured scorn on the then SDP-Liberal plan for a Federal UK system but as I have got older, especially after some 25 years of devolution, I increasingly believe it is the model the UK should adopt. Almost everything should be devolved with only key ministries like Defence and Foreign Affairs run from Westminster. A House of Commons with around 150 members, an elected House of Lords of a similar size and 4 sensibly sized parliaments in Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London would be my preferred option, all using some form of PR so that we banish politics at the extreme from getting near power in these islands of ours (excluding of course what the Irish Republic does and the separate administrations in the Channel Islands and Isle of Man).
I think there is a case for replacing most counties/unitaries with new bodies, large enough for them to deal with health, education and be self funding for it through levying their own taxes.
Leaving central government to govern not be running corporations providing health and the like.
Prior to 1945 some counties like London County Council had a functioning NHS equivalent and provided utilities such as power, gas and water very efficiently. Others had little or none of it.
Attlee made a fundamental mistake in nationalising instead of forcibly merging local authorities into large enough units to take tbis on viably and then taking over the private companies providing some such services and handing over their assets to said local authorities.
Not the Euroregions. They are mostly too big. But create the Metropolitan Counties like Greater Manchester and for rural counties amalgamation of them in to a viable size that retains viable local identity e.g. merge Derbys, Leices and Notts and merge the three ridings into a County of Yorkshire.
I have always felt Unitarisation brings the worst of both worlds. District councils were better for local accountability and understanding needs. Regional Government would be better at the strategic stuff.
Instead we get Unitaries that are too big to understand the places they are managing and too small to do strategic decision making.
Just before I forget, most risible comment during the tv election coverage: IDS having been quite obviously saved in Chingford only by Faiza Shaheen standing and taking 12k votes, claiming the reason he held on was he'd been such a terrific local MP working 24/7 for his constituents. Great stuff.
On Galloway and Workers Party, where next? Does it fizzle out or get built into a genuine national left wing/socially conservative party with strong ties to the Muslim community? 210,000 votes across 152 constituencies with 3 second places within 2.5% swing/500 to 1500 votes and a couple further strong third places. If Galloway can be bothered that could be a party attracting 1 million votes and winning a seat or two with a few dozen councillors by 2028/9. If I were him I'd be looking to have serious discussions with the indies (although I suspect Adnan Hussain will tell him to get knotted after the farrago with Craig Murray)
And did anyone see Steve Baker's meltdown on GMB, blaming Ozzie and Balls for his defeat? Nurse, Nurse over here quickly please!
Did JRM have a post-defeat interview or are we awaiting that to be delivered on a scroll by a King's Messenger?
JRM gave several interviews between knowing he had lost and its announcement. He sounded chipper, even cheerful, and unfailingly polite.
Here is JRM's short speech at the count. Yes, it's formulaic but they all are, that is what formulaic means. Liz Truss and a few others might have learnt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAAaL9ouMRE
ANME clearly shows the importance of candidate selection. It was more than anything a vote against Douglas Ross attempting to carpet-bag. Duguid would have won comfortably.
The Conservatives should almost focus on nothing else but high-quality candidate selection.
No way James Arbuthnot would have lost Hampshire North East either.
Can be difficult to get seats back from the Lib Dems once they're in, they (2015 excepted !) normally don't have to deal with the mucky business of government. The seat you really want next time round as a Tory candidate is Truss' old one - that to my mind is the easiest Con Gain of 2029 or whenever right now.
When the Lib Dems got their spectacular by-election wins in North Shropshire, Chesham and Amersham, Honiton and Tiverton, Somerton and Frome the conventional wisdom was that they would all lose at the next GE but all 4 by-election victors were returned on Thursday..
And the LDs almost won South Shropshire as well, one of the more remarkable results as the LDs started in third place behind Labour, their 8,000 votes last time up against the Tory's 37,000.
That the LDs came through so strongly past Labour in Home Counties seats like this re-enforces that, despite the merciless mid-campaign spinning from Palmer in his Didcot bunker, the LibDems really are the better placed to take on the Tories in the south away from the larger towns.
A good night's sleep, hangover all gone. Some random thoughts:
1. I have had several American friends comment on the graceful way in which the Tories accepted the result and moved out of the way without rancour. I was surprised, thinking what else would you expect, until I remembered what they have experienced in the US over recent years. The Tories are not yet captured by the Trumpist world view. That is good for them and good for the country. It is vital this doesn't change.
2. For the first time in a very long time, the British PM has been able to appoint a Cabinet based solely on an assessment of ability, not on having to appease or shut out a certain faction or ideology. Starmer may have got it wrong, we'll find out, but he has not had to make Braverman-like appointments (or Johnson-like ones if we go back to the May government). That is a good thing.
3. Entirely predictably, the left is now howling about the size of Labour's majority and the party's low vote share. What they seem to have forgotten is that the Greens and Independents very directly and very specifically centred their pitch on the inevitability of Labour winning power and how that made a vote for them safe. Owen Jones made this point daily, as did Jeremy Corbyn.
4. As I said yesterday on here, my two betting tips came in - Corbyn to win in Islington North, the LibDems to win in Honiton and Sidmouth. Needless to say, I put money on neither! I also got the vote share difference between Labour and Tory spot on, though I gave both slightly higher shares than they actually got (36% and 26%).
After years of losing, I have to say it feels good to be on the other side. We're at the stage where things feel possible and change can happen. Undoubtedly it will all get very difficult and very unpleasant very quickly, so I am going to enjoy this bit. I like the team Starmer is putting together. I thought the speech he made outside Downing Street yesterday was pitch perfect.
Delivery is everything, of course. The other side of a low vote share being precarious is that there are a lot of new votes to fight for next time around. If Labour makes a decent fist of the next few years - a big if, I know - then that could well happen. If you can't be optimistic at the outset, when can you be?
There was no graceful attempt to accept the result of Brexit. It tore parliament apart as people tried to invalidate and undo the result.
Had the Tories found the leader and capital to start with 'Norway for now', history would be different.
My God, i know. Such an easy solution, and before we got May's Red Lines (which made Norway impossible) people like farage etc were perfectly happy with staying in the Single Market.
A good night's sleep, hangover all gone. Some random thoughts:
1. I have had several American friends comment on the graceful way in which the Tories accepted the result and moved out of the way without rancour. I was surprised, thinking what else would you expect, until I remembered what they have experienced in the US over recent years. The Tories are not yet captured by the Trumpist world view. That is good for them and good for the country. It is vital this doesn't change.
2. For the first time in a very long time, the British PM has been able to appoint a Cabinet based solely on an assessment of ability, not on having to appease or shut out a certain faction or ideology. Starmer may have got it wrong, we'll find out, but he has not had to make Braverman-like appointments (or Johnson-like ones if we go back to the May government). That is a good thing.
3. Entirely predictably, the left is now howling about the size of Labour's majority and the party's low vote share. What they seem to have forgotten is that the Greens and Independents very directly and very specifically centred their pitch on the inevitability of Labour winning power and how that made a vote for them safe. Owen Jones made this point daily, as did Jeremy Corbyn.
4. As I said yesterday on here, my two betting tips came in - Corbyn to win in Islington North, the LibDems to win in Honiton and Sidmouth. Needless to say, I put money on neither! I also got the vote share difference between Labour and Tory spot on, though I gave both slightly higher shares than they actually got (36% and 26%).
After years of losing, I have to say it feels good to be on the other side. We're at the stage where things feel possible and change can happen. Undoubtedly it will all get very difficult and very unpleasant very quickly, so I am going to enjoy this bit. I like the team Starmer is putting together. I thought the speech he made outside Downing Street yesterday was pitch perfect.
Delivery is everything, of course. The other side of a low vote share being precarious is that there are a lot of new votes to fight for next time around. If Labour makes a decent fist of the next few years - a big if, I know - then that could well happen. If you can't be optimistic at the outset, when can you be?
There was no graceful attempt to accept the result of Brexit. It tore parliament apart as people tried to invalidate and undo the result.
That was then, you won, move on.
No. I cannot move on from something I never thought I would see. An attempt by an awful lot of people who refused to accept a result and where willing to use any and all methods (short of violence) to invalidate it. Absolutely shocking. It should never be forgiven. Those who participated should never be allowed to hold high office again. However, the electorate do seem to have forgiven. PS. I didnt win, the electorate won. It was their vote and their choice.
I do wonder for how many decades to come we will hear the winners whine. Leave won the referendum and then it was up to parliament to decide what to do. You can't just "leave" the EU. A whole load of things need to be untangled and disconnected before you could even attempt it, and even at that point you need to understand what you do on a wide range of things *after* you leave.
Which is why parliament was needed. The 2015 parliament was elected on a mandate to hold a referendum. Which it did. It then had a mandate to carry through that referendum. Which it did not do because we then had another election.
Whatever the mandate of the 2015 parliament, that no longer stood in the 2017 parliament. That so many winner whiners refuse at accept that parliamentary sovereignty is absolute is comedic when you remember how many gave "sovereignty" as their stock answer as to why they wanted to leave the EU in the first place.
Ian's first rule of politics - you get what you vote for. And people voted for a parliament which could not agree to any of the methods to leave the EU or what to do next. That was not "invalidating" democracy. That WAS democracy.
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Alba have captured the true believers who think the SNP have sold out. But for most voters its the Alex Salmond show and they got bored of that a decade ago.
The SNP now face financial oblivion - the loss of short money and the tithe from MPs will seriously bring into question their solvency
The Greens are the driver of all the policies that have brought the SNP most into disrepute
I think there is a real opportunity here to create a 4th and possibly 5th faction as the SNP tears itself apart as to what went wrong and how they fix it.
The Tories have been so for generations - but it only looks that way because of our voting system. Typically, across the south away from the cities, half the voters are Tory and the other half split between Liberal and Labour. Thus FPTP gives the Tories almost everything. All it ever took to defeat the Tories in a good year is for the non-Conservative half of the electorate to combine behind one party or the other.
Which is what just happened, seat by seat, helped along by the Tories' alientating a good slice of their better educated working age support.
If you don’t get anything from the current choice, choose someone else.
Politicians are, in aggregate, fairly stupid. But eventually they will work it out.
We can almost add the two party votes shares together, such was the concentration of the vote in Lib Dem and non Lib Dem target areas. Take say 3% off the Labour total and 2% off LD and you have a combined party with 42% of the vote.
Unlike the Greens. They are now established as the left wing alternative to Labour. They face a tougher fight trying to become the rural environmentalist alternative to Tories though. 2 successes but the Lib Dems have that market otherwise pretty sewn up.
Have a good day, everyone.
Their last remaining elected (even if originally for the SNP) member to provide the face of ALBA is Ash Regan which I don't see as a positive for them.
1. I have had several American friends comment on the graceful way in which the Tories accepted the result and moved out of the way without rancour. I was surprised, thinking what else would you expect, until I remembered what they have experienced in the US over recent years. The Tories are not yet captured by the Trumpist world view. That is good for them and good for the country. It is vital this doesn't change.
2. For the first time in a very long time, the British PM has been able to appoint a Cabinet based solely on an assessment of ability, not on having to appease or shut out a certain faction or ideology. Starmer may have got it wrong, we'll find out, but he has not had to make Braverman-like appointments (or Johnson-like ones if we go back to the May government). That is a good thing.
3. Entirely predictably, the left is now howling about the size of Labour's majority and the party's low vote share. What they seem to have forgotten is that the Greens and Independents very directly and very specifically centred their pitch on the inevitability of Labour winning power and how that made a vote for them safe. Owen Jones made this point daily, as did Jeremy Corbyn.
4. As I said yesterday on here, my two betting tips came in - Corbyn to win in Islington North, the LibDems to win in Honiton and Sidmouth. Needless to say, I put money on neither! I also got the vote share difference between Labour and Tory spot on, though I gave both slightly higher shares than they actually got (36% and 26%).
After years of losing, I have to say it feels good to be on the other side. We're at the stage where things feel possible and change can happen. Undoubtedly it will all get very difficult and very unpleasant very quickly, so I am going to enjoy this bit. I like the team Starmer is putting together. I thought the speech he made outside Downing Street yesterday was pitch perfect.
Delivery is everything, of course. The other side of a low vote share being precarious is that there are a lot of new votes to fight for next time around. If Labour makes a decent fist of the next few years - a big if, I know - then that could well happen. If you can't be optimistic at the outset, when can you be?
**it wasnt austerity - public spending continued to grow above inflation, just more slowly.
Although due to the rain there was little difference between being in the water and out of it. They've got a 180km bike ride to do, followed by a marathon run, and heavy rain is forecast for most of the day. Ouch.
How much of this is to do with voters prioritising other issues, and how much is to do with the deficiencies of the SNP itself (in terms of policy, record in Government, numerous gaffes and scandals, and its evident failure in the eyes of pro-secession voters to achieve any movement in that direction,) I'll leave those with a more informed opinion to speculate upon.
"Elected on the 14th count" and all that nonsense.
As I said, the campaign for Holyrood has already started. Now that I have seen off DRoss I quite fancy going after Salmond in Banffshire and Buchan Coast. Would also want to be as high as possible on the list. We think 1 or maybe 2 seats are winnable on that.
Although it certainly isn’t, weather-wise!
Congratulations on your piece, Mr RP, and thanks for the updates right through the campaign. I’ve a family member who ,is, or more probably, since he’s my age, was a LibDem activist in NE Scotland, and I’m waiting to hear what he has to report.
I note that Farage has realised that our electoral system works against smaller parties; I don’t like the man, and I certainly don’t like his opposition to the EU, but one has to admit that when he gets his teeth into an issue he certainly gives it a good go, and often gets the result he wants.
So just maybe……..
There are also the more racist elements backing him as whites become a minority in the US.
The differences between the UK and the USA are wider than they have been in a long time, possibly wider than ever and it seems we have less and less in common with them as time goes on.
I think there's a misconception in politicians that they cannot appeal in different directions. Yes you can risk looking schizophrenic, but no one is ideologically consistent 100% of the time, it is possible to not repel centrists whilst still keeping on board people on your left or right.
Leaving central government to govern not be running corporations providing health and the like.
Prior to 1945 some counties like London County Council had a functioning NHS equivalent and provided utilities such as power, gas and water very efficiently. Others had little or none of it.
Attlee made a fundamental mistake in nationalising instead of forcibly merging local authorities into large enough units to take tbis on viably and then taking over the private companies providing some such services and handing over their assets to said local authorities.
Not the Euroregions. They are mostly too big. But create the Metropolitan Counties like Greater Manchester and for rural counties amalgamation of them in to a viable size that retains viable local identity e.g. merge Derbys, Leices and Notts and merge the three ridings into a County of Yorkshire.
Oh, it's the Boyne Parade (which is beginning to amount to the same thing).
Many party people seem to struggle to believe opponents are indeed opponents if they are of similar broad wings. A left wing opponent might require a different tactic than a right wing one, but it'd be foolish to treat them like a misguided ally when they are just as committed to defeating you. Farage for instance hasn't been a Tory for decades, he's not their pal if only they could be nice to him.
I travel a lot for work. I go through spells of being away every week. Being away in Westminster or Edinburgh wouldn't be that different from normal.
If you want to win elections, you need to win many people over. even under FPTP. I know that's not the Russian way, but it's the way it works over here. And that means you do not just appeal to 'Conservatives' (note the capital-C), but the wider electorate. You know, the people who are non-Conservatives.
How do you do that from a far-right viewpoint?
It illustrates the total difference between the US and the UK
PS. I didnt win, the electorate won. It was their vote and their choice.
This was the catastrophic mistake in an election where hubris and internal battles meant that he had to do that. They collapsed to a camper van of seats. On their own terms of their own manifesto that means Scotland has comprehensively *rejected* independence.
Swinney now claims that the rejection is in fact irrelevant as the mandate was at the 2021 election. Erm no, you set the terms for a new mandate and got routed.
One thing we know Starmer has expressed an interest in is local devolution, so it'll be interesting to see how he approaches this. But one thing I'm virtually certain of is that it won't involve federalism and an English Parliament, for several reasons which I shan't bore on about here.
My Mum was moved from Truro into Camborne by the boundary changes. I teased her that by my reckoning she has a Labour MP for probably the first time since she left home in Newcastle under Lyme at the beginning of the 60s.
I’ve not done the count yet but I’d like to work out the share of vineyard acreage under Lib Dem, Tory, Labour and Green. The Tories dominated the wine lands in the past but that’s no longer the case. Huge areas now under LD control. Mine has been under Rosie Duffield Labour since planting - she now boasts Simpson’s, Evremond (Taittinger), Heppington, Chartham, Gorsley, vast unmarked vineyards and several other
new plantings.
(So even less chance of anything happening wrt PR)
But of course both Labour and Liberals have deep roots, long histories, and their own culture and traditions to defend, embedded with local memberships and councillors and assets and experience.
Reform doesn't have any of this, and might well collapse or disappear if Farage decides to retire.
Whether Reform now takes root as a national political party or movement, or simply remains a handful of troublemaking MPs without really having a party at all, is one of the key questions for the next few years. Farage doesn't to me seem to have the right mentality or skills for achieving the former?
You won, enjoy!
Council tax revaluations in which almost everyone pays more (which is what you are suggesting, no?), as well as removing the limit which is currently 5% (for social care precepting authorities) again is going to go down really hard.
Tories were too far left.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oV7cSRmO8Q
I'm essentially landlocked in rural inland East Hampshire and West Sussex.
Go back to your constituency and prepare ...
It'd be like listening to 14 x SKS speeches in a row just to find out his policy on wheelie bins.
They have got their fair share this time.
Instead we get Unitaries that are too big to understand the places they are managing and too small to do strategic decision making.
210,000 votes across 152 constituencies with 3 second places within 2.5% swing/500 to 1500 votes and a couple further strong third places. If Galloway can be bothered that could be a party attracting 1 million votes and winning a seat or two with a few dozen councillors by 2028/9.
If I were him I'd be looking to have serious discussions with the indies (although I suspect Adnan Hussain will tell him to get knotted after the farrago with Craig Murray)
Here is JRM's short speech at the count. Yes, it's formulaic but they all are, that is what formulaic means. Liz Truss and a few others might have learnt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAAaL9ouMRE
That the LDs came through so strongly past Labour in Home Counties seats like this re-enforces that, despite the merciless mid-campaign spinning from Palmer in his Didcot bunker, the LibDems really are the better placed to take on the Tories in the south away from the larger towns.
Which is why parliament was needed. The 2015 parliament was elected on a mandate to hold a referendum. Which it did. It then had a mandate to carry through that referendum. Which it did not do because we then had another election.
Whatever the mandate of the 2015 parliament, that no longer stood in the 2017 parliament. That so many winner whiners refuse at accept that parliamentary sovereignty is absolute is comedic when you remember how many gave "sovereignty" as their stock answer as to why they wanted to leave the EU in the first place.
Ian's first rule of politics - you get what you vote for. And people voted for a parliament which could not agree to any of the methods to leave the EU or what to do next. That was not "invalidating" democracy. That WAS democracy.