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.
If they win Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire they'll have one in Scotland too - in a single constituency.
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.
He was clearly very upset and he lost his shit. Whether his prediction that Labour will destroy the nation remains to be seen. From my point of view his previous predictions regarding Brexit, to me at least, suggest he is perhaps not the soothsayer you and Mr BEds have taken him for.
I am under no illusion that both the Labour and Conservative campaigns were disingenuous. Either taxes have to be raised or services cut, and Labour have been left holding that particular parcel.
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.
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..
Which was very encouraging. I'm much of the view that, if the yellows can just sink deep roots into enough of their gains and build the kind of incumbency bonuses they used to enjoy pre-2010, they never a bulwark against any attempted comeback from a populist right version of the Tory Party. Basically, so long as a large tract of Southern English seats with more fiscally dry but socially liberal voters (think all those places along the M4 corridor, Surrey, around Cambridge and so on that flash up yellow on the EU referendum map) carry on voting LD because they take a dim view of a Reform-lite approach, the path to a Conservative majority is barred.
Crudely put, the 200 core Labour seats that backed Corbyn in 2019, plus 50-60 entrenched Southern Lib Dems, plus Scotland, plus the South Wales valleys, Plaid and the Greens easily equals a majority that even a very energised hard right version of the Tory Party is unlikely to be able to crack.
In short, the Lib Dems are a very useful insurance policy against further outbreaks of "let's forcibly conscript teenagers and bin the ECHR," elderly golf club bore-friendly, fuckwittery. Their successes should be celebrated accordingly.
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?
Delivery is, as you say, everything. Once the government has delivered all of its campaign policies, what should it do next week?
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.
He was clearly very upset and he lost his shit. Whether his prediction that Labour will destroy the nation remains to be seen. From my point of view his previous predictions regarding Brexit, to me at least, suggest he is perhaps not the soothsayer you and Mr BEds have taken him for.
I am under no illusion that both the Labour and Conservative campaigns were disingenuous. Either taxes have to be raised or services cut, and Labour have been left holding that particular parcel.
Everything else being equal. Yes. How have we reached a situation in which public services have become so unproductive, despite the resources increasing? My local school has about 1,600 pupils, but has 200 full time equivalent members of staff. My local hospital has about a third more staff than it had even fifteen years ago.
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.
The inability to hold the Brexiters to their own suggestions that we'd have "frictionless trade", still be "inside the free trade area", "no new barriers to trade", "keep all the same benefits" etc. after Brexit was a massive fail, if one for which they have now eventually got their just desserts.
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.
I think Farage is going to model his REF 'movement' on Trump/MAGA so the thesis that we are nothing like the US is about to get thoroughly tested.
Can I just say as someone who voted Lib Dem I think First Post The Post is a wonderful system!!!!! They have got their fair share this time.
I heard Farage announcing this morning that he and Reform is launching a major campaign for fairer voting.
Which the LibDems will continue to back - sadly I fear that the ground that voting change would give Reform a hundred MPs is unlikely to prove a winning argument.
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.
You are right on the principle. The people have spoken! They now wish they hadn't.
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.
He was clearly very upset and he lost his shit. Whether his prediction that Labour will destroy the nation remains to be seen. From my point of view his previous predictions regarding Brexit, to me at least, suggest he is perhaps not the soothsayer you and Mr BEds have taken him for.
I am under no illusion that both the Labour and Conservative campaigns were disingenuous. Either taxes have to be raised or services cut, and Labour have been left holding that particular parcel.
Everything else being equal. Yes. How have we reached a situation in which public services have become so unproductive, despite the resources increasing? My local school has about 1,600 pupils, but has 200 full time equivalent members of staff. My local hospital has about a third more staff than it had even fifteen years ago.
Sorry, I'm on a tea break. I'll get back to you later.
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
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.
If they win Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire they'll have one in Scotland too - in a single constituency.
Looking at that map you can travel from Barnstaple to Bicester without leaving Liberal 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
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...
And that has been confirmed by checking notes, I am assured. 😀
However, it is true that I am not a Conservative *now*.
The Party has disappeared over the horizon and I've sadly concluded that the kind of change I want to see is not going to be delivered by that particular coalition for the foreseeable.
Nevertheless, personal history and philosophy means I do want to see a Conservative Party with strong intellectual underpinning, capable management, practical policy, and deep roots in the communities they wish to serve.
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 think that revision will be very rapid, as there are Councils considering selling off the non-statutory crown jewels such as museums and historic properties to meet revenue costs.
I'd expect a temporary something to help plug the gap this year, and a longer term overhaul to do with some combination of a revaluation and making Council Tax less regressive.
An upside afaics is that it may put downward pressure on some property prices. If I have to shell out £500 low end or £5k high end every year, then that should reduce the amount I can afford to pay up front.
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.
If they win Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire they'll have one in Scotland too - in a single constituency.
Looking at that map you can travel from Barnstaple to Bicester without leaving Liberal 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.
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.
The entire ethos of government at that point, derived from War Socialism, was central control.
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.
I think Farage is going to model his REF 'movement' on Trump/MAGA so the thesis that we are nothing like the US is about to get thoroughly tested.
What was the point of Cameron's save the Party Referendum? The price was Brexit and almost a decade on and the Conservative Party are still in the shadow of the cancer that is Farage. They should have stuck the f***** in the House of Lords years ago.
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.
He was clearly very upset and he lost his shit. Whether his prediction that Labour will destroy the nation remains to be seen. From my point of view his previous predictions regarding Brexit, to me at least, suggest he is perhaps not the soothsayer you and Mr BEds have taken him for.
I am under no illusion that both the Labour and Conservative campaigns were disingenuous. Either taxes have to be raised or services cut, and Labour have been left holding that particular parcel.
Everything else being equal. Yes. How have we reached a situation in which public services have become so unproductive, despite the resources increasing? My local school has about 1,600 pupils, but has 200 full time equivalent members of staff. My local hospital has about a third more staff than it had even fifteen years ago.
In part, because patch and mend is cheap in the short term but expensive in the longer term. Whenever a problem comes up, the temptation is always to shift money from capital investment (pay lots upfront, reap the rewards gradually over a decade or more) to agency staff to get over this month's crisis.
It's been happening for ages, not just post-2019 or even post-2010, but the conseqences have been becoming increasingly hard to ignore.
Good luck dealing with the multiple poonamis, Keir.
Congratulations on your writeup, and your candidacy, @RochdalePioneers ! It can be a bit of a drug, that post-election buzz, so watch out. The first time I stood (2005), I was given a piece of advice by a lifelong Liberal who had preceded me as a candidate: 'Do no more than three: after that, the electorate will remember you as the guy who always loses.' Two to go for you...
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..
Which was very encouraging. I'm much of the view that, if the yellows can just sink deep roots into enough of their gains and build the kind of incumbency bonuses they used to enjoy pre-2010, they never a bulwark against any attempted comeback from a populist right version of the Tory Party. Basically, so long as a large tract of Southern English seats with more fiscally dry but socially liberal voters (think all those places along the M4 corridor, Surrey, around Cambridge and so on that flash up yellow on the EU referendum map) carry on voting LD because they take a dim view of a Reform-lite approach, the path to a Conservative majority is barred.
Crudely put, the 200 core Labour seats that backed Corbyn in 2019, plus 50-60 entrenched Southern Lib Dems, plus Scotland, plus the South Wales valleys, Plaid and the Greens easily equals a majority that even a very energised hard right version of the Tory Party is unlikely to be able to crack.
In short, the Lib Dems are a very useful insurance policy against further outbreaks of "let's forcibly conscript teenagers and bin the ECHR," elderly golf club bore-friendly, fuckwittery. Their successes should be celebrated accordingly.
And Labour now has so many seats to defend, next time Palmer will be sent somewhere more useful! The LibDems should be left alone.
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.
From Faiza Shaheen's point of view, IDS won because Labour's NEC sacked the candidate and imposed their own, who also (or only, if you prefer) took 12k votes.
If the official candidate wearing the party rosette cannot beat their recently sacked and now independent predecessor, as here and in Islington North, the party has got something wrong.
And you know who else beat the official party candidate to become Mayor of London...?
Can I just say as someone who voted Lib Dem I think First Post The Post is a wonderful system!!!!! They have got their fair share this time.
I heard Farage announcing this morning that he and Reform is launching a major campaign for fairer voting.
Which the LibDems will continue to back - sadly I fear that the ground that voting change would give Reform a hundred MPs is unlikely to prove a winning argument.
Any arguments for fairer voting based on current votes is inevitably doomed as the winners won't want it.
Those of us in favour of fairer votes should be arguing for them because they are 1) fair and 2) the current system is not working well. Reform deserve proper representation as do the Greens.
Congratulations on your writeup, and your candidacy, @RochdalePioneers ! It can be a bit of a drug, that post-election buzz, so watch out. The first time I stood (2005), I was given a piece of advice by a lifelong Liberal who had preceded me as a candidate: 'Do no more than three: after that, the electorate will remember you as the guy who always loses.' Two to go for you...
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.
A green/LD electoral pact would probably be worthwhile for both parties though. While they have significant differences, there’s never really enough room in a seat for both parties to do well. With the Greens now second in 40 seats, winning 4, and a clear left wing alternative to Labour, the Lib Dem’s don’t want to be competing with Greens next time in their own target seats/defences
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 think you’ll find that for many people it was not the result that created the opposition but the way it was implemented. There was no attempt to seek out any form of consensus position or have a debate about what form of Brexit was best for the country as a whole.
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?
If you voted for Reform, and perhaps worked for them in some way, can you still drink in a Conservative Club? Asking on principle; didn’t vote Reform and don’t drink in the Con Club.
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.
Works both ways though.
In my new seat (Chester South & Eddisbury) the Lib Dem circulated a huge glossy on the eve of poll claiming that only they could beat the Tory. Labour polled over 16,000 and only lost by 2000. The Lib Dem only got 5000.
It was a new seat and I expect that out in the rural parts of the constituency it confused enough voters to lose the seat for Labour.
I understand that all parties talk up their prospects but that was just a vindictive and outright lie to put out so prominently the day before polling and I say that as someone who is more of anti-Tory Lib Dem than an anti-Tory Labour voter.
On topic - British democracy depends on people to put their heads above the parapet and 'fight the good fight' even if - especially if - they are highly unlikely to win. Well done. Glad the deposit came home - that puts you ahead of most candidates!
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.
The garden of England is becoming the vineyard of England.
Well done @RochdalePioneers for standing for parliament. Interesting to hear about the cybernat attacks, I thought the SNP'S hate speech laws prevented this? I believe strongly in free speech but if the abuse came from the SNP (albeit their supporters) who are the same people who are so censorious in government it does feel like something that should be followed 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!
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.
The missing piece of the puzzle is borrowing. The current fiscal rules are excessively tight, particularly the requirement for debt to be falling by year 5.
If Reeves can loosen borrowing without frightening the markets (by doing so to invest in capex) then that headroom, combined with lower interest rates and a tiny bit better growth than expected (and maybe one unheralded tax raid eg on CGT rate) could see the picture look significantly better.
The key then is to invest in productive assets, not just day to day spending.
Makes you wonder why Hunt fought so hard to keep his seat. He is independently wealthy, he doesn't need to be an MP & has been one for a long time now.
Well, if the 2019 result was a clear mandate for no referendum, which is what Scotland got, then the 2024 result must be the opposite. I look forward to Starmer talking to the Scottish government to arrange a date.
If John Swinney has conceded the mandate for indyref 2 has expired, who are we to disagree with him?
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.
I think Farage is going to model his REF 'movement' on Trump/MAGA so the thesis that we are nothing like the US is about to get thoroughly tested.
What is MAGA though? If it is a party led by a messiah figure and whose voters prize one single issue above all else, then parts of this United Kingdom have already experienced this.
Makes you wonder why Hunt fought so hard to keep his seat. He is independently wealthy, he doesn't need to be an MP & has been one for a long time now.
I heard he wanted to be the Willie Whitelaw for the next Tory leader.
He really doesn't want the ERG mob to take over and he can best defeat them from inside Parliament.
I note some attacks on polling - VI or MRP or both. I'll just say that that the polls over-stated both Lab and Reform support (the shy reform voter proved a mirage) while failing to pick up the limited success of the super-majority line in peeling possible Lab voters off to vote LD, Green, PC or Gaza and (to a lesser extent) squeezing Reform to the Cons.
I'd also like to comment on the Norfolk predictions made here. 5 out of 10 wasn't a very good score. Who is this idiot Clutch Brompton?
Jeremy Hunt rules out leadership bid - GB News reports
It is clear to me that it is not his time. I rate Hunt very highly as a public servant but unfortunately he would be seen as a grey centrist and continuity Sunak. For me it is clearly Badenoch who should take on the job as she can encroach in to RefUK territory and expand the conservatives appeal amongst the young, also she is not 'toxic' in the way that Braverman and Patel are.
Looking back at the polling the optimum time for him to have called it (hindsight 20/20) was at conference in 2023 with election around his 1 year anniversary, although of course Oct 7th would have hit mid campaign. Or early Spring 2023 he had a brief period of low teens deficit which might have been bridgeable
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.
He was clearly very upset and he lost his shit. Whether his prediction that Labour will destroy the nation remains to be seen. From my point of view his previous predictions regarding Brexit, to me at least, suggest he is perhaps not the soothsayer you and Mr BEds have taken him for.
I am under no illusion that both the Labour and Conservative campaigns were disingenuous. Either taxes have to be raised or services cut, and Labour have been left holding that particular parcel.
Everything else being equal. Yes. How have we reached a situation in which public services have become so unproductive, despite the resources increasing? My local school has about 1,600 pupils, but has 200 full time equivalent members of staff. My local hospital has about a third more staff than it had even fifteen years ago.
In part, because patch and mend is cheap in the short term but expensive in the longer term. Whenever a problem comes up, the temptation is always to shift money from capital investment (pay lots upfront, reap the rewards gradually over a decade or more) to agency staff to get over this month's crisis.
It's been happening for ages, not just post-2019 or even post-2010, but the conseqences have been becoming increasingly hard to ignore.
Good luck dealing with the multiple poonamis, Keir.
This is spot on. There has also been a focus on input measures (number of doctors etc) rather than outcomes.
Would be interested if, given a free hand, schools and hospitals would have spent more on IT and estates rather than staff (obviously they would have liked to do both).
Gloriously vicious - much of it thoroughly well deserved:
Were you up for John Nicolson? It was 4.23am when the news came in that the grandest of all SNP MPs had lost his seat.
If Scotland had a Portillo moment it was this, not only because Nicolson's pristinely coiffured mane rivals that of the formerly fop-haired Tory grandee but because his notional majority was almost 13,000.
I squinted at the BBC's results table to inspect its outrageous conclusion, but the numbers added up.
Nicolson had been unceremoniously dumped in favour of Labour. Perhaps it's his regal manner but it was almost as if the electors of Alloa and Grangemouth had voted out the Queen Mother.
Well done @RochdalePioneers for standing for parliament. Interesting to hear about the cybernat attacks, I thought the SNP'S hate speech laws prevented this? I believe strongly in free speech but if the abuse came from the SNP (albeit their supporters) who are the same people who are so censorious in government it does feel like something that should be followed up.
My experience in Scottish elections is exactly the same. Even if Scottish, the abuse is just as outrageous - Uncle Tom, traitor, colonial slave, hundreds of expletives not deleted, etc. etc. That is why so many are taking great delight in the look on Sturgeon's face.
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.
No, LD edged Labour to be second in 2019 in South Shropshire by a tiny margin having been a bad third in 2017. That was why it was so galling this time that the TV sites and MRP were advising Labour when anyone politically engaged in the seat knew that Matthew Green was best positioned to take it from the Tories, especially as the circumstances were not that dissimilar to when he took it in 2001.
Labour campaigned in Broseley where they have the council seat, there were lots of stakeboards, and that could have made the difference.
Makes you wonder why Hunt fought so hard to keep his seat. He is independently wealthy, he doesn't need to be an MP & has been one for a long time now.
I heard he wanted to be the Willie Whitelaw for the next Tory leader.
He really doesn't want the ERG mob to take over and he can best defeat them from inside Parliament.
As Maggie wrily observed as the first female in the role, every Prime Minister needs a Willie.
Although, in Penny Mordaunt's case, probably a cock.
Bit triumphalist of SLab to organise full marching bands through Glasgow today.
Oh, it's the Boyne Parade (which is beginning to amount to the same thing).
Thats next Friday surely?
There may be diddy ones next Friday but today is the big one in Glasgow. I believe NI is more traditionalist and keeps the 800ft high bonfires and burning in effigy stuff for the actual 12th.
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.
I think Farage is going to model his REF 'movement' on Trump/MAGA so the thesis that we are nothing like the US is about to get thoroughly tested.
Hopefully, despite our structural deference, our tendency to mock those who wish to lead us (and weed out those who can't take it) should stand us in good stead.
Loathe though I am to speak well of JRM, he is someone who *could* take the mocking (c.f. his response to The Beano caricaturing him) and is obviously good with kids. Compare and contrast with NF.
Well, if the 2019 result was a clear mandate for no referendum, which is what Scotland got, then the 2024 result must be the opposite. I look forward to Starmer talking to the Scottish government to arrange a date.
If John Swinney has conceded the mandate for indyref 2 has expired, who are we to disagree with him?
Of course it has. But I'm troubled by the fact that a majority of MPs and a majority of MSPs wasn't enough. What's the peaceful path towards Scottish independence?
I think trying to overturn a referendum result within five years via parliamentary elections when you receive fewer votes than the winning side in the plebiscite can lead to a democratic deficit.
The realpolitik is that for the foreseeable future the only way an indyref is happening is if we have a Lab/SNP coalition at Westminster.
Otherwise we're looking at the mid 2030s before it happens.
Well, if the 2019 result was a clear mandate for no referendum, which is what Scotland got, then the 2024 result must be the opposite. I look forward to Starmer talking to the Scottish government to arrange a date.
If John Swinney has conceded the mandate for indyref 2 has expired, who are we to disagree with him?
Of course it has. But I'm troubled by the fact that a majority of MPs and a majority of MSPs wasn't enough. What's the peaceful path towards Scottish independence?
If as the Yoons state the SNP have 'failed' to get a mandate for indy via this GE, it appears they accept the principle. That's how it works isn't it?
Sky News understands Jeremy Hunt has ruled out running for the leadership.
That's not allowed. I have a couple of quid on him. He needs to be told.
You must have missed the umpteen other times Hunt rule out standing.
He also didn`t go on the tele during the campaign. Thought he must have been fighting hard to keep his seat. Might have made some difference as otherwise it was just Rishi.
Well done @RochdalePioneers for standing for parliament. Interesting to hear about the cybernat attacks, I thought the SNP'S hate speech laws prevented this? I believe strongly in free speech but if the abuse came from the SNP (albeit their supporters) who are the same people who are so censorious in government it does feel like something that should be followed up.
My experience in Scottish elections is exactly the same. Even if Scottish, the abuse is just as outrageous - Uncle Tom, traitor, colonial slave, hundreds of expletives not deleted, etc. etc. That is why so many are taking great delight in the look on Sturgeon's face.
On second thoughts perhaps let them be. Given the amount of problems we are facing we could do without breaking up the UK. These people sound like an asset for the unionist cause.
Makes you wonder why Hunt fought so hard to keep his seat. He is independently wealthy, he doesn't need to be an MP & has been one for a long time now.
I heard he wanted to be the Willie Whitelaw for the next Tory leader.
He really doesn't want the ERG mob to take over and he can best defeat them from inside Parliament.
As Maggie wrily observed as the first female in the role, every Prime Minister needs a Willie.
Although, in Penny Mordaunt's case, probably a cock.
Somebody said something very harsh to me yesterday which I had no response to.
'I am not sure having a leader whose speeches felt like they were written by you would be an election winner.'
Sky News understands Jeremy Hunt has ruled out running for the leadership.
That's not allowed. I have a couple of quid on him. He needs to be told.
You must have missed the umpteen other times Hunt rule out standing.
He also didn`t go on the tele during the campaign. Thought he must have been fighting hard to keep his seat. Might have made some difference as otherwise it was just Rishi.
I believe the pillocks running the Tory campaign decided on a presidential style campaign in which it was all Rishi, because you know he is amaze-balls at campaigning.
Sky News understands Jeremy Hunt has ruled out running for the leadership.
That's not allowed. I have a couple of quid on him. He needs to be told.
You must have missed the umpteen other times Hunt rule out standing.
He also didn`t go on the tele during the campaign. Thought he must have been fighting hard to keep his seat. Might have made some difference as otherwise it was just Rishi.
I believe the pillocks running the Tory campaign decided on a presidential style campaign in which it was all Rishi, because you know he is amaze-balls at campaigning.
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.
From Faiza Shaheen's point of view, IDS won because Labour's NEC sacked the candidate and imposed their own, who also (or only, if you prefer) took 12k votes.
If the official candidate wearing the party rosette cannot beat their recently sacked and now independent predecessor, as here and in Islington North, the party has got something wrong.
And you know who else beat the official party candidate to become Mayor of London...?
I agree. I know party discipline is important but the way Shaheen was treated over hitting the like button was counter to natural justice in my view. Having worked that seat for 6 years she had every right to stand, and as a result we are stuck with IDS for another 5 years.
Makes you wonder why Hunt fought so hard to keep his seat. He is independently wealthy, he doesn't need to be an MP & has been one for a long time now.
I heard he wanted to be the Willie Whitelaw for the next Tory leader.
He really doesn't want the ERG mob to take over and he can best defeat them from inside Parliament.
As Maggie wrily observed as the first female in the role, every Prime Minister needs a Willie.
Although, in Penny Mordaunt's case, probably a cock.
Somebody said something very harsh to me yesterday which I had no response to.
'I am not sure having a leader whose speeches felt like they were written by you would be an election winner.'
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.
PB'ers would absolutely love it. The conversations about how the next round of preferences would fall would be magnificent.
STV is a terrible idea.
It'd be like listening to 14 x SKS speeches in a row just to find out his policy on wheelie bins.
They use it for the Northern Irish assembly as well as Locals in Scotland.
And in Scotland the votes are counted by machine. Instead of us party hacks spending hours on our feet marking off "5-bar gates" on our counting sheets, and making sure our votes don't get put in some-one else's pile, we can just sit back with a coffee and put the world to rights.
Well done @RochdalePioneers for standing for parliament. Interesting to hear about the cybernat attacks, I thought the SNP'S hate speech laws prevented this? I believe strongly in free speech but if the abuse came from the SNP (albeit their supporters) who are the same people who are so censorious in government it does feel like something that should be followed up.
My experience in Scottish elections is exactly the same. Even if Scottish, the abuse is just as outrageous - Uncle Tom, traitor, colonial slave, hundreds of expletives not deleted, etc. etc. That is why so many are taking great delight in the look on Sturgeon's face.
Irregular verb time.
I speak robustly You are rude He/She/They have been charged with inciting violence.
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 film critic Mark Kermode lives in Brockenhurst, between Bournemouth and Southampton. There's room for a whimsical comedy in which he has to smuggle a cello packed with Bad Brie past the LibDem guards in the Golden Arch to get to the Cheese Conference in Islington. The title sequence is lifted from Escape From New York. A modern classic.
Well, if the 2019 result was a clear mandate for no referendum, which is what Scotland got, then the 2024 result must be the opposite. I look forward to Starmer talking to the Scottish government to arrange a date.
If John Swinney has conceded the mandate for indyref 2 has expired, who are we to disagree with him?
Of course it has. But I'm troubled by the fact that a majority of MPs and a majority of MSPs wasn't enough. What's the peaceful path towards Scottish independence?
If as the Yoons state the SNP have 'failed' to get a mandate for indy via this GE, it appears they accept the principle. That's how it works isn't it?
I note some attacks on polling - VI or MRP or both. I'll just say that that the polls over-stated both Lab and Reform support (the shy reform voter proved a mirage) while failing to pick up the limited success of the super-majority line in peeling possible Lab voters off to vote LD, Green, PC or Gaza and (to a lesser extent) squeezing Reform to the Cons.
I'd also like to comment on the Norfolk predictions made here. 5 out of 10 wasn't a very good score. Who is this idiot Clutch Brompton?
5 out of 9 1/2 surely!
Not sure how my farming in laws will have felt to wake up to having a Green MP!
Makes you wonder why Hunt fought so hard to keep his seat. He is independently wealthy, he doesn't need to be an MP & has been one for a long time now.
I heard he wanted to be the Willie Whitelaw for the next Tory leader.
He really doesn't want the ERG mob to take over and he can best defeat them from inside Parliament.
As Maggie wrily observed as the first female in the role, every Prime Minister needs a Willie.
Although, in Penny Mordaunt's case, probably a cock.
Somebody said something very harsh to me yesterday which I had no response to.
'I am not sure having a leader whose speeches felt like they were written by you would be an election winner.'
Helen Thompson (Unheard "These Times" podcast) in good form;
“It took, I think, two breaches of trust....
The first was Boris Johnson's personal behaviour. That was the trigger for Rishi Sunak to resign as Chancellor and begin what was effectively a party coup against Johnson. And then the personal trust issue around Liz Trust, because regardless of what actually happened in the moment of the, not those moments, shall we say, of her premiership itself, it began with her saying really that she had not the slightest bit of interest in levelling up, that she wanted to make the party in some sense, thatcherite.
...
It was really (sticking up) two fingers (to) those voters who voted conservative for the first time in 2019. And I don't think in that respect actually Rishi Sunak was that different.
Because if you look at the leadership contests that they had that summer, it was all about growth. And that isn't to say that growth is a problematic thing. It's simply to say it wasn't like, how do we have levelling up growth?
...
“I think it'd be hard pressed to find a parallel for a party in office engaging in that kind of repudiation of its voters' concerns.”
...
'“the explicit messaging, we are not interested in this part of our electoral coalition that voted for us only three years ago.”
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.
Note that this also applies to Reform. It's nothing to do with Tories/Reformers versus Republicans but about Britain vs America. What you want to avoid is becoming like the US overall.
Local Elections 2025 - Tories defend nearly all the county councils. Last of the Tory bloodbaths?
I was looking at that earlier, too. The last election to those councils was near Boris' peak popularity.
The vaccine bounce locals, although on the night it was 36/29 which isn't unreasonable to aim for as opposition given the shine will probably be starting to wear off in 10 months. Labour's first polling lead in this previous parliament was 9 months in/5 months into SKS era
Bit triumphalist of SLab to organise full marching bands through Glasgow today.
Oh, it's the Boyne Parade (which is beginning to amount to the same thing).
Thats next Friday surely?
There may be diddy ones next Friday but today is the big one in Glasgow. I believe NI is more traditionalist and keeps the 800ft high bonfires and burning in effigy stuff for the actual 12th.
A Nigerian manager in our team at work suggested a team night out next Friday. After we explained to him that a night out in Glasgow on The 12th was maybe not such a good idea, we have made it another night.
Makes you wonder why Hunt fought so hard to keep his seat. He is independently wealthy, he doesn't need to be an MP & has been one for a long time now.
I heard he wanted to be the Willie Whitelaw for the next Tory leader.
He really doesn't want the ERG mob to take over and he can best defeat them from inside Parliament.
As Maggie wrily observed as the first female in the role, every Prime Minister needs a Willie.
Although, in Penny Mordaunt's case, probably a cock.
True enough. In that case, what a shame Steve Baker lost his seat.
Helen Thompson (Unheard "These Times" podcast) in good form;
“It took, I think, two breaches of trust. And that's why I think it goes beyond the have to be against something effectively.
The first was Boris Johnson's personal behaviour. That was the trigger for Rishi Sunak to resign as Chancellor and begin what was effectively a party coup against Johnson. And then the personal trust issue around Liz Trust, because regardless of what actually happened in the moment of the, not those moments, shall we say, of her premiership itself, it began with her saying really that she had not the slightest bit of interest in levelling up, that she wanted to make the party in some sense, thatcherite.
...
It was really stuck in two fingers. I put those voters who voted conservative for the first time in 2019. And I don't think in that respect actually Rishi Sunak was that different.
Because if you look at the leadership contests that they had that summer, it was all about growth. And that isn't to say that growth is a problematic thing. It's simply to say it wasn't like, how do we have levelling up growth?
...
“I think it'd be hard pressed to find a parallel for a party in office engaging in that kind of repudiation of its voters' concerns.”
...
'“the explicit messaging, we are not interested in this part of our electoral coalition that voted for us only three years ago.
I don't think you can find something that's quite like that.”
Jeremy Hunt rules out leadership bid - GB News reports
It is clear to me that it is not his time. I rate Hunt very highly as a public servant but unfortunately he would be seen as a grey centrist and continuity Sunak. For me it is clearly Badenoch who should take on the job as she can encroach in to RefUK territory and expand the conservatives appeal amongst the young, also she is not 'toxic' in the way that Braverman and Patel are.
Badenoch appears to be kind, thoughtful, with very very traditional small conservative values which are still prominent in many immigrant families but have lost favour in the UK. She has a Corbyn like naivety about her though and would need someone who was battle hardened to keep her on track to remind her that culture war stuff is really important to a few, but the big picture stuff like health education and the economy are more important.
Well, if the 2019 result was a clear mandate for no referendum, which is what Scotland got, then the 2024 result must be the opposite. I look forward to Starmer talking to the Scottish government to arrange a date.
If John Swinney has conceded the mandate for indyref 2 has expired, who are we to disagree with him?
Of course it has. But I'm troubled by the fact that a majority of MPs and a majority of MSPs wasn't enough. What's the peaceful path towards Scottish independence?
I think trying to overturn a referendum result within five years via parliamentary elections when you receive fewer votes than the winning side in the plebiscite can lead to a democratic deficit.
The realpolitik is that for the foreseeable future the only way an indyref is happening is if we have a Lab/SNP coalition at Westminster.
Otherwise we're looking at the mid 2030s before it happens/
But wait, which mandates expire and which don't? The 2014 referendum result persists but the 2015 Westminster, 2016 Holyrood, the 2017 Westminster, the 2019 Westminster results have all expired.
What about the 2021 Holyrood result? Has that expired now too?
"Realpolitik" is what happens in the absence of agreed upon rules. Such situations favour certain powerful interests and those are rarely the interests of the public. I find this approach illiberal and problematic.
MY mandate never expires. YOUR mandate was illegitimate from the beginning.
Makes you wonder why Hunt fought so hard to keep his seat. He is independently wealthy, he doesn't need to be an MP & has been one for a long time now.
I heard he wanted to be the Willie Whitelaw for the next Tory leader.
He really doesn't want the ERG mob to take over and he can best defeat them from inside Parliament.
As Maggie wrily observed as the first female in the role, every Prime Minister needs a Willie.
Although, in Penny Mordaunt's case, probably a cock.
Somebody said something very harsh to me yesterday which I had no response to.
'I am not sure having a leader whose speeches felt like they were written by you would be an election winner.'
Helen Thompson (Unheard "These Times" podcast) in good form;
“It took, I think, two breaches of trust....
The first was Boris Johnson's personal behaviour. That was the trigger for Rishi Sunak to resign as Chancellor and begin what was effectively a party coup against Johnson. And then the personal trust issue around Liz Trust, because regardless of what actually happened in the moment of the, not those moments, shall we say, of her premiership itself, it began with her saying really that she had not the slightest bit of interest in levelling up, that she wanted to make the party in some sense, thatcherite.
...
It was really (sticking up) two fingers (to) those voters who voted conservative for the first time in 2019. And I don't think in that respect actually Rishi Sunak was that different.
Because if you look at the leadership contests that they had that summer, it was all about growth. And that isn't to say that growth is a problematic thing. It's simply to say it wasn't like, how do we have levelling up growth?
...
“I think it'd be hard pressed to find a parallel for a party in office engaging in that kind of repudiation of its voters' concerns.”
...
'“the explicit messaging, we are not interested in this part of our electoral coalition that voted for us only three years ago.”
Jeremy Hunt rules out leadership bid - GB News reports
It is clear to me that it is not his time. I rate Hunt very highly as a public servant but unfortunately he would be seen as a grey centrist and continuity Sunak. For me it is clearly Badenoch who should take on the job as she can encroach in to RefUK territory and expand the conservatives appeal amongst the young, also she is not 'toxic' in the way that Braverman and Patel are.
Badenoch appears to be kind, thoughtful, with very very traditional small conservative values which are still prominent in many immigrant families but have lost favour in the UK. She has a Corbyn like naivety about her though and would need someone who was battle hardened to keep her on track to remind her that culture war stuff is really important to a few, but the big picture stuff like health education and the economy are more important.
She comes across to me like an evangelical christian preacher who has stumbled into politics.
Well, if the 2019 result was a clear mandate for no referendum, which is what Scotland got, then the 2024 result must be the opposite. I look forward to Starmer talking to the Scottish government to arrange a date.
If John Swinney has conceded the mandate for indyref 2 has expired, who are we to disagree with him?
Of course it has. But I'm troubled by the fact that a majority of MPs and a majority of MSPs wasn't enough. What's the peaceful path towards Scottish independence?
I think trying to overturn a referendum result within five years via parliamentary elections when you receive fewer votes than the winning side in the plebiscite can lead to a democratic deficit.
The realpolitik is that for the foreseeable future the only way an indyref is happening is if we have a Lab/SNP coalition at Westminster.
Otherwise we're looking at the mid 2030s before it happens/
But wait, which mandates expire and which don't? The 2014 referendum result persists but the 2015 Westminster, 2016 Holyrood, the 2017 Westminster, the 2019 Westminster results have all expired.
What about the 2021 Holyrood result? Has that expired now too?
"Realpolitik" is what happens in the absence of agreed upon rules. Such situations favour certain powerful interests and those are rarely the interests of the public. I find this approach illiberal and problematic.
The rules aka the law is that granting an independence referendum is solely down to Westminster not Holyrood, this was known well before the referendum.
Comments
I am under no illusion that both the Labour and Conservative campaigns were disingenuous. Either taxes have to be raised or services cut, and Labour have been left holding that particular parcel.
Crudely put, the 200 core Labour seats that backed Corbyn in 2019, plus 50-60 entrenched Southern Lib Dems, plus Scotland, plus the South Wales valleys, Plaid and the Greens easily equals a majority that even a very energised hard right version of the Tory Party is unlikely to be able to crack.
In short, the Lib Dems are a very useful insurance policy against further outbreaks of "let's forcibly conscript teenagers and bin the ECHR," elderly golf club bore-friendly, fuckwittery. Their successes should be celebrated accordingly.
My local school has about 1,600 pupils, but has 200 full time equivalent members of staff. My local hospital has about a third more staff than it had even fifteen years ago.
Which the LibDems will continue to back - sadly I fear that the ground that voting change would give Reform a hundred MPs is unlikely to prove a winning argument.
However, it is true that I am not a Conservative *now*.
The Party has disappeared over the horizon and I've sadly concluded that the kind of change I want to see is not going to be delivered by that particular coalition for the foreseeable.
Nevertheless, personal history and philosophy means I do want to see a Conservative Party with strong intellectual underpinning, capable management, practical policy, and deep roots in the communities they wish to serve.
I'd expect a temporary something to help plug the gap this year, and a longer term overhaul to do with some combination of a revaluation and making Council Tax less regressive.
An upside afaics is that it may put downward pressure on some property prices. If I have to shell out £500 low end or £5k high end every year, then that should reduce the amount I can afford to pay up front.
It's been happening for ages, not just post-2019 or even post-2010, but the conseqences have been becoming increasingly hard to ignore.
Good luck dealing with the multiple poonamis, Keir.
The first time I stood (2005), I was given a piece of advice by a lifelong Liberal who had preceded me as a candidate: 'Do no more than three: after that, the electorate will remember you as the guy who always loses.' Two to go for you...
If the official candidate wearing the party rosette cannot beat their recently sacked and now independent predecessor, as here and in Islington North, the party has got something wrong.
And you know who else beat the official party candidate to become Mayor of London...?
Those of us in favour of fairer votes should be arguing for them because they are 1) fair and 2) the current system is not working well. Reform deserve proper representation as do the Greens.
Labour, the Lib Dem’s don’t want to be competing with Greens next time in their own target seats/defences
Asking on principle; didn’t vote Reform and don’t drink in the Con Club.
In my new seat (Chester South & Eddisbury) the Lib Dem circulated a huge glossy on the eve of poll claiming that only they could beat the Tory. Labour polled over 16,000 and only lost by 2000. The Lib Dem only got 5000.
It was a new seat and I expect that out in the rural parts of the constituency it confused enough voters to lose the seat for Labour.
I understand that all parties talk up their prospects but that was just a vindictive and outright lie to put out so prominently the day before polling and I say that as someone who is more of anti-Tory Lib Dem than an anti-Tory Labour voter.
If Reeves can loosen borrowing without frightening the markets (by doing so to invest in capex) then that headroom, combined with lower interest rates and a tiny bit better growth than expected (and maybe one unheralded tax raid eg on CGT rate) could see the picture look significantly better.
The key then is to invest in productive assets, not just day to day spending.
Maybe the Liberal Democrats will start supporting FPTP?
He really doesn't want the ERG mob to take over and he can best defeat them from inside Parliament.
It takes guts to stand
I'd also like to comment on the Norfolk predictions made here. 5 out of 10 wasn't a very good score. Who is this idiot Clutch Brompton?
Unfortunately, I was and remain too tired to give it serious thought.
Would be interested if, given a free hand, schools and hospitals would have spent more on IT and estates rather than staff (obviously they would have liked to do both).
Perhaps @Foxy might now?
Were you up for John Nicolson? It was 4.23am when the news came in that the grandest of all SNP MPs had lost his seat.
If Scotland had a Portillo moment it was this, not only because Nicolson's pristinely coiffured mane rivals that of the formerly fop-haired Tory grandee but because his notional majority was almost 13,000.
I squinted at the BBC's results table to inspect its outrageous conclusion, but the numbers added up.
Nicolson had been unceremoniously dumped in favour of Labour. Perhaps it's his regal manner but it was almost as if the electors of Alloa and Grangemouth had voted out the Queen Mother.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13605707/STEPHEN-DAISLEY-Sturgeons-stare-icy-probably-set-global-warming-decade.html
Labour campaigned in Broseley where they have the council seat, there were lots of stakeboards, and that could have made the difference.
Although, in Penny Mordaunt's case, probably a cock.
https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/24430511.ask-orange-order-questions-ahead-big-walk-glasgow/
Loathe though I am to speak well of JRM, he is someone who *could* take the mocking (c.f. his response to The Beano caricaturing him) and is obviously good with kids. Compare and contrast with NF.
The realpolitik is that for the foreseeable future the only way an indyref is happening is if we have a Lab/SNP coalition at Westminster.
Otherwise we're looking at the mid 2030s before it happens.
'I am not sure having a leader whose speeches felt like they were written by you would be an election winner.'
Starmer, Reeves and Rayner?
And there's always "fuck off...."
I speak robustly
You are rude
He/She/They have been charged with inciting violence.
I don't see a Like button on your header, so thank you for a very real and interesting letter.
Not sure how my farming in laws will have felt to wake up to having a Green MP!
“Dear Sir,
Upon consideration of the remarks upon my views, I refer the honourable gentleman to the judgement in Arkell v. Pressdram.
Cordially yours,
Etc
P.S. this letter will be billed to you at £1,675.35 plus VAT”
“It took, I think, two breaches of trust....
The first was Boris Johnson's personal behaviour. That was the trigger for Rishi Sunak to resign as Chancellor and begin what was effectively a party coup against Johnson. And then the personal trust issue around Liz Trust, because regardless of what actually happened in the moment of the, not those moments, shall we say, of her premiership itself, it began with her saying really that she had not the slightest bit of interest in levelling up, that she wanted to make the party in some sense, thatcherite.
...
It was really (sticking up) two fingers (to) those voters who voted conservative for the first time in 2019. And I don't think in that respect actually Rishi Sunak was that different.
Because if you look at the leadership contests that they had that summer, it was all about growth. And that isn't to say that growth is a problematic thing. It's simply to say it wasn't like, how do we have levelling up growth?
...
“I think it'd be hard pressed to find a parallel for a party in office engaging in that kind of repudiation of its voters' concerns.”
...
'“the explicit messaging, we are not interested in this part of our electoral coalition that voted for us only three years ago.”
https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/these-times-5315906/episodes/recent
Labour's first polling lead in this previous parliament was 9 months in/5 months into SKS era
Thank-you for your invoice.
I refer you to the judgement in ....
These characters rarely make good leaders.
#StarmersSummer