Centrists here of both Tory and Libdem persuasion are still having more vapours about Farage winning five seats compared with Labours 400 odd I see.
I guess when you have had a monopoly of the right wing in parliament since the 1661 general election, a rival party of the right breaking through the first past the post wall and winning five seats as well as knocking you into third place in a lot of seats you held until this week is going to seem a bit existensial.
They do not like it.
Labour + Green + SDLP + WPB + Plaid + SNP (33.7% + 6.7% + 0.7% + 0.7% + 0.3% + 2.5) = 44.6%
I know the LDs/Alliance really really really want to count all their 12.6% of voters to the Left-wing block, but they're not. If I was being really generous I'd give them 60% of them and 40% to the Right-wing block. That'd still get you to only 51.1% v 44.2%, and that's on a reduced turnout where many Tories stayed at home.
Point is the country is still split into two-voter blocks. And there's not an awful lot between them, save the mathematics of FPTP, which computed into the landslide.
A lot can change quickly.
Reform aren't a right-wing bloc party, sorry. They compete against Tories and promise magic money tree for the NHS.
It's because Casino is thinking of the culture war, not economics (although resists the logic therein of putting the LibDems firmly on the left, because it would upset his sums). Economically, Reform voters and some of the MPs will be firmly left - the irony is that they're led by free-market libertarians like Farage and Tice.
Are Farage and Tice really free-market libertarians? I think I might fit that description but I'm a long way from them.
Reform are Trussites on the economy and Putinists on foreign policy.
@MichaelDnes1 It’s a truth universally acknowledged that road pricing is political suicide.
But what if it wasn’t? And what if I knew people who’d almost proved it?
Come with me, and try to avoid losing a trillion dollars as we go.🧵
Interesting thread. TLDR is - bring in road pricing on vehicles registered from a point in the future onwards and people won't complain. But, now is the time to act. Soon it will be too late not impose road pricing on existing vehicles and that will be unpopular.
I have to say, I'm not sure it would be accepted just like that, but it would certainly have a better chance than getting to 2028 and going "oh, what are we going to do?"
PhD and 3 post-docs and only has 6 papers. No wonder he is unemployed with such poor academic output.
Not unemployed. But in the CS so not an academic any more. No obvious university position, so not easy to be sure one has all the papers - I don't work in a uni and there is no easy way of counting my own output even of peer-reviewed journal papers.
Robert Jenrick is the first leadership contender to break cover. He says the last government “insulted the public” by failing to deal with immigration. He sets out his stall here:
A position somewhat undermined by his having been a minister with responsibility for (checks notes) immigration.
And also another step into irrelevance.
They created a wedge issue - then found themselves on the wrong side of the wedge. It goes back to Cameron and his foolish "under 100,000" pledge - another reaction to Farage like his Brexit referendum. The issue is not "immigration" but "population" - and the houses and services the population needs. Anyone proposing to "cut immigration" should start off by telling us who they are going to stop coming. NHS staff? Students?
We had 67,000 asylum claims last year, so on Cameron's pledge we would have to have very little net migration to stay under 100,000 per year. Almost certainly that would be lower than the numbers we would want merely to staff essential services.
Now unless we want to turn away all refugees through the schemes we have for places like Hong Kong and Ukraine, and all people arriving and making asylum claims with completely legitimate reasons, then we are going to almost certainly have migration north of 100,000 per year indefinitely. Maybe somewhere in the 200,000 - 300,000 region assuming we still want other types of migrants for high-skill jobs, academic studies, etc.
So once we arrive at a necessary and unavoidable level of migration we basically need to ask one question. Where is everyone going to live and how much stuff do we need to build for them? That's the thing that we need to work on to make immigration work. Keep building at a much faster rate and we will at least make immigration sustainable and less of a resource problem.
Something that keeps on getting left out of the immigration debate is that there is no hard wall between economic migration and asylum migration.
Many of the economic migrants I have worked with have backstories that could amount to an asylum claim. My wife might well have been able to make an asylum claim, for example.
It is much easier to get into work via the economic migration route. Asylum claiming is a last resort.
This is true beyond asylum too, and it's one of the reasons policies to reduce immigration haven't really worked for the Tories. There are loads of people who could enter the country legally with family, and everybody currently in the country could leave. Everybody is making at least a partly economic calculation.
If the economy is producing job opportunities and you stop EU people taking them as easily, you get more non-EU people. If you cut back on one class of work visas, the economy will reconfigure itself to use more people on other classes of work visas. If you cut back on all work visas, you get more people who don't need work visas.
The way to reliably stop people coming is to try to make the economy produce fewer jobs, but this has some other downsides.
As to events locally, Sir Stephen Timms was safely returned in East Ham but lost a third of his vote share. There are some obvious parallels with 2005 though this is slightly worse than that for Timms.
Tahir Mirza of the Newham Independents got 18% and came in second (the Respect candidate in 2005 got 21%). The other big winner was the Greens who came third quadrupling their vote share despite doing nothing in the constituency and I'm sure they will be second next time and will be starting to challenge at Council level. The Conservative was fourth with 10% - their worst result since the constituency was re-created in 1997.
Reform, the Liberal Democrats and both Independents all lost their deposits and turnout slumped from 66% to 48%. Having enjoyed majorities of over 30,000, Timms now has less than 13,000 in hand.
A similar result in West Ham & Beckton with James Asser getting home by 9,250 with his vote share falling from 70% to 45%. Sophia Naqvi for the Newham Independents got 20% but I know the Newham Independents put a lot more effort into this seat than East Ham and I think they may just have hit the glass ceiling of pro-Palestine support. The Greens were again third going from 2.5% to 11% and now look the principal opposition to Labour in the future. The Conservative got 10% in fourth but Reform did better polling 8% in fifth - the constituency has a larger WWC element down around Silvertown and the Docks than East Ham.
In Stratford & Bow, the Greens put in the work and finished second as Labour fell from 70% to 44%. The Conservative vote halved and their candidate finished fourth behind the Workers' Party. The Greens went from 4% to 17%.
Looking to the 2026 locals, I suspect the Greens will be targeting Labour votes across the borough - whether the Newham Independents will be as strong a force by then I've no clue. Only Timms got above 50% so it could well be we'll see a midterm collapse in Labour support at Council level from which the Greens look set to be the main beneficiaries.
Thanks. I appreciate the local insight as always.
I was rather disappointed that the boundary changes meant we were moved from East Ham to West Ham, so I couldn’t vote for Timms, whom I like a lot. Having done some due diligence on Asser I voted for him rather than the LDs, and Mrs Nashe also gave him her vote.
@MichaelDnes1 It’s a truth universally acknowledged that road pricing is political suicide.
But what if it wasn’t? And what if I knew people who’d almost proved it?
Come with me, and try to avoid losing a trillion dollars as we go.🧵
Interesting thread. TLDR is - bring in road pricing on vehicles registered from a point in the future onwards and people won't complain. But, now is the time to act. Soon it will be too late not impose road pricing on existing vehicles and that will be unpopular.
I have to say, I'm not sure it would be accepted just like that, but it would certainly have a better chance than getting to 2028 and going "oh, what are we going to do?"
PhD and 3 post-docs and only has 6 papers. No wonder he is unemployed with such poor academic output.
Not unemployed. But in the CS so not an academic any more. No obvious university position, so not easy to be sure one has all the papers - I don't work in a uni and there is no easy way of counting my own output even of peer-reviewed journal papers.
"I am impressed with the emphasis on honesty and integrity, after the Boris era."
Labour will have its scandals. They will be around money.
Remember, Blair was going to be the new broom, "whiter than white". He was extrememly fortunate over Ecclestone. He assumed he was going to have to resign. It was only the media giving him an extended honeymoon that allowed him to survive. Would Starmer get such a honeymoon? I think not. His Government really WILL have to be "whiter than white".
Whilst that is true it doesn't fix the damage to the Tory brand. Osborne was right on election night. Sunak should have loudly and explicitly repudiated both Boris and Truss on his appointment.
In fairness, he did resign as Chancellor when the lying got so egregious and he did argue against Truss's childish solutions during their leadership campaign which he lost but as PM he tried too hard to herd cats and keep his party together rather than making it clear that neither lying nor rank incompetence was acceptable.
It will take more than 1 Parliament to restore a reputation for both integrity and competence. Labour being as bad is not going to be enough.
Starmer knows it was anti-Tory votes that got Labour into power. He made that clear on Friday in his speech outside Number 10 and again yesterday: he specifically addressed non-Labour voters, he said he was non-ideological, said the red rosette had no monopoly on good ideas, emphasised country first and party second, talked about a different kind of government and so on. The proof is in the pudding, of course, but the sheer awfulness of what came before 4th July presents an opportunity to cement the voting alliance formed last Thursday.
@MichaelDnes1 It’s a truth universally acknowledged that road pricing is political suicide.
But what if it wasn’t? And what if I knew people who’d almost proved it?
Come with me, and try to avoid losing a trillion dollars as we go.🧵
Interesting thread. TLDR is - bring in road pricing on vehicles registered from a point in the future onwards and people won't complain. But, now is the time to act. Soon it will be too late not impose road pricing on existing vehicles and that will be unpopular.
I have to say, I'm not sure it would be accepted just like that, but it would certainly have a better chance than getting to 2028 and going "oh, what are we going to do?"
Thinking that road pricing on future vehicles isn’t political suicide is interesting.
That seems to assume that existing car owners can’t conceive of needing a new(er) car sometime in the near future.
If nothing else, it would crash the car market in interesting ways.
No it wouldn't. Road pricing is quite sensible except no-one has a convincing argument on what to do about those drivers who necessarily go longer distances. In principle, this is no different from making them buy more fuel but politically it is harder.
Is there anyone particularly upset by the election? A lot of upsides across the political spectrum: Labour won a landslide Tories still breathing Best LibDem result in a century RefUK on the board Greens won 4 seats SNP routed
Any downsides?
yes, the second of your points...
It would have been joyous to see ELE. But that would almost certainly have elevated Farage and his mob - surely a worse outcome than what we have.
Also, just enough of the nutters survived in the Tory Party to ensure that the crazy circus carries on even longer. We have seen parties suffer a catastrophic drop in support and spend some time rebuilding before being competitive again. That is the Tories most likely scenario. Can't rule out another oscillation in 2029 that sees them sweep back - in today's politics everything is possible.
But the other scenario is to copy the Liberals a century ago. A crushing defeat followed by division, infighting and absolute self-destructive idiocy. Leading to another hammering into an even smaller total in the elections that follow. 121 may prove to be an impossible target in the next election...
If we had had proportional representation then Farage would have got 100 MPs, most of them having no political experience and paper candidates who would have been a disaster and probably imploded the party within 18 months.
FPTP keeps a party out until it reaches a critical mass and has now ensured that Farage only has his most able leiutenants in Parliament, with five years to professionalise the party.
PR enthusiasts should be careful what they wish for.
I support PR for two simple reasons: 1) In a democracy you should get what you vote for. Every vote should count equally. As a matter of principle it is an aberation that Reform won so many votes and so few seats 2) The best way to defeat any extreme is to expose it to scrutiny. Reform won 4.1m votes - 14.3%. If it has won 93 seats instead of 5 it would not have been a force at the next election. So many of those additional MPs would have been catastrophic for Reform. So many crazy people with appalling ideas and disgusting opinions. With them in the Commons we would have examined Faragism, been repelled by it and seen it off. Instead it continues to fester away in society.
The main objections to PR are all variations on the theme of not liking list systems, which is an absolutely fair point except that the obvious PR solution is STV in multi member constituencies, which doesn’t have a list system.
They might as well be list systems. The top candidate from the main two parties is almost guaranteed to win.
Centrists here of both Tory and Libdem persuasion are still having more vapours about Farage winning five seats compared with Labours 400 odd I see.
I guess when you have had a monopoly of the right wing in parliament since the 1661 general election, a rival party of the right breaking through the first past the post wall and winning five seats as well as knocking you into third place in a lot of seats you held until this week is going to seem a bit existensial.
They do not like it.
Labour + Green + SDLP + WPB + Plaid + SNP (33.7% + 6.7% + 0.7% + 0.7% + 0.3% + 2.5) = 44.6%
I know the LDs/Alliance really really really want to count all their 12.6% of voters to the Left-wing block, but they're not. If I was being really generous I'd give them 60% of them and 40% to the Right-wing block. That'd still get you to only 51.1% v 44.2%, and that's on a reduced turnout where many Tories stayed at home.
Point is the country is still split into two-voter blocks. And there's not an awful lot between them, save the mathematics of FPTP, which computed into the landslide.
A lot can change quickly.
Reform aren't a right-wing bloc party, sorry. They compete against Tories and promise magic money tree for the NHS.
In some ways they are the anti-establishment mirror of the SNP.
Both parties argue that their constituents’ needs cannot be met within the current Westminster setup. SNP from the left(ish), Reform from the right.
One says independence is the solution, the other says - what? The Nietschian superman I suppose.
So you can’t group either into blocs with others because they are constitutionally set apart.
Plaid, not so much. More like SDLP, for now.
You can group them in in terms of whom they would support in government. So right now in mid 2024, the LDs would support a Labour-led government but almost certainly not a Conservative one. Reform would probably be the opposite way around. SNP would probably find it slightly tricky to support Labour but would never, ever support the Tories.
Casino is missing the point to a certain extent when he tries to split the Lib Dems down a 60-40 line and use that to keep them out of the left bloc. The Lib Dems would, in a hung parliament, have elevated Starmer with zero hesitation. He's right in that this reality can change but there's no sign of that any time soon.
Except they’ll be opposing them on quite a lot of stuff in this parliament, and they were part of a coalition with the Tories a decade back.
All Casino is effectively saying is that FPTP is the way it should be. That’s a circular argument, not one of principle.
Yes, the LDs coalitioned with the Tories in 2010. It's that experience that means they are fairly unlikely to repeat it any time soon! Of course the LDs will be opposing Labour at some points in this parliament, and if Labour start to do really badly in the eyes of LDs then you WILL see that drift away. Casino is right in implying the mutability of such support. But that future is undecided. Right now, the LD position on Labour v Tory is extremely clear, and will remain so until such a time that Labour or the Tories change. The likelier outcome, in my view, is that the LDs will still be on the Labour side of the fence come the next election.
LibDems won't like the way Labour goes about things, with civil liberties and centralism likely to be the dividing lines (noting that Labour has endorsed decentralisation in opposition, but time will tell), but it's hard to see what Labour might do that the LibDems would absolutely hate, like so much of the old government's policy?
Labour have a bit of an authoritarian streak that will always cause a bit of a bad smell when they're in government. I'm sure the Lib Dems will do us proud as and when that wafts too strongly.
The return to government of Jacqui Smith is a reminder of that 2005-10 Parliament and how the Lib Dems often ended up opposing Labour more effectively than the Conservatives did (for which they were rewarded with 22% of the vote in 2010).
The trick that the Tories need to pull is to be tough on immigration without coming up with batshit schemes (Rwanda), trying to scrap human rights (ie the ECHR) or generally coming across as utter c***s (Braverman, but also Jenrick, Patel etc etc).
Not sure who is able to square the circle.
This is an issue for all parties. It really isn't possible to deal with immigration under current international treaties, and it's effectively impossible to leave them without blowing up a whole load of other agreements.
I don't expect any headway to be made on the issue.
And yet, I think that once one big country proposed altering the treaties, other big countries would readily agree.
Biden back as favourite for the Democrat nomination
Biden 2.42-2.46 Harris 2.74-2.82
:-(
How are they going to explain away the brain doctor constantly visiting the White House?
Or the failed BC interview on Friday?
Asked whether he had played back the debate video tape to review it, he could not remember.
Quizzed on why it all went wrong he started on about being thrown by so many lies from Trump. The interviewer pointed out it went wrong from question 1.
And so on.
Dems from House of Reps are meeting later today iirc.
"I am impressed with the emphasis on honesty and integrity, after the Boris era."
Labour will have its scandals. They will be around money.
Remember, Blair was going to be the new broom, "whiter than white". He was extrememly fortunate over Ecclestone. He assumed he was going to have to resign. It was only the media giving him an extended honeymoon that allowed him to survive. Would Starmer get such a honeymoon? I think not. His Government really WILL have to be "whiter than white".
Whilst that is true it doesn't fix the damage to the Tory brand. Osborne was right on election night. Sunak should have loudly and explicitly repudiated both Boris and Truss on his appointment.
In fairness, he did resign as Chancellor when the lying got so egregious and he did argue against Truss's childish solutions during their leadership campaign which he lost but as PM he tried too hard to herd cats and keep his party together rather than making it clear that neither lying nor rank incompetence was acceptable.
It will take more than 1 Parliament to restore a reputation for both integrity and competence. Labour being as bad is not going to be enough.
The gambling, especially by his PPS, at the last minute was the icing on the cake.
As to events locally, Sir Stephen Timms was safely returned in East Ham but lost a third of his vote share. There are some obvious parallels with 2005 though this is slightly worse than that for Timms.
Tahir Mirza of the Newham Independents got 18% and came in second (the Respect candidate in 2005 got 21%). The other big winner was the Greens who came third quadrupling their vote share despite doing nothing in the constituency and I'm sure they will be second next time and will be starting to challenge at Council level. The Conservative was fourth with 10% - their worst result since the constituency was re-created in 1997.
Reform, the Liberal Democrats and both Independents all lost their deposits and turnout slumped from 66% to 48%. Having enjoyed majorities of over 30,000, Timms now has less than 13,000 in hand.
A similar result in West Ham & Beckton with James Asser getting home by 9,250 with his vote share falling from 70% to 45%. Sophia Naqvi for the Newham Independents got 20% but I know the Newham Independents put a lot more effort into this seat than East Ham and I think they may just have hit the glass ceiling of pro-Palestine support. The Greens were again third going from 2.5% to 11% and now look the principal opposition to Labour in the future. The Conservative got 10% in fourth but Reform did better polling 8% in fifth - the constituency has a larger WWC element down around Silvertown and the Docks than East Ham.
In Stratford & Bow, the Greens put in the work and finished second as Labour fell from 70% to 44%. The Conservative vote halved and their candidate finished fourth behind the Workers' Party. The Greens went from 4% to 17%.
Looking to the 2026 locals, I suspect the Greens will be targeting Labour votes across the borough - whether the Newham Independents will be as strong a force by then I've no clue. Only Timms got above 50% so it could well be we'll see a midterm collapse in Labour support at Council level from which the Greens look set to be the main beneficiaries.
Thanks. I appreciate the local insight as always.
I was rather disappointed that the boundary changes meant we were moved from East Ham to West Ham, so I couldn’t vote for Timms, whom I like a lot. Having done some due diligence on Asser I voted for him rather than the LDs, and Mrs Nashe also gave him her vote.
Thank you for the kind word. Timms has a level of personal vote here and the fact he got above 50% while the other Labour candidates didn't speaks volumes.
I'm sure you are aware there will be a by election in Asser's vacated council seat in Beckton on the 18th - this is going to be tough for Labour under the circumstances and I imagine the Newham Independents will fight it hard.
The Maryland and Forest Gate North by elections last Thursday followed the overall pattern - Labour down 20 on their 2022 numbers, the Greens about the same and the Newham Independent candidates polling 20-25%.
There's also a by election in Little Ilford on the 18th - Tahir Mirza, who stood in East Ham in the GE and was the candidate for the Newham Independents in 2022, is standing again and he has a chance against Labour.
The 2026 locals will be a three way fight between Labour, the Greens and the Newham Independents.
And the Sunday Rawnsley, as this morning's rain tries to clear:
The outcome of this election may have been foretold, but that makes it no less momentous. This is a dazzling achievement by Sir Keir, the more so for being such a vindication of a strategy that very few people outside a tight circle of friends and allies ever completely trusted.
It is true that Sir Keir has had a large number of assists from the Tories, but he wouldn’t have won this scale of majority without the drive to turn his party into an electable alternative to Conservative rule. This makes it a highly personal triumph. This victory magnifies his authority over Labour and the government will not have much to fear from opposition parties anytime soon.
This regime change is being greeted with enthusiasm in Whitehall, not so much for reasons of ideological sympathy, but because it is more professionally satisfying for civil servants to work for a stable government with a sense of direction allied to the power to get stuff done.
The euphoria is tempered by trepidation. Sue Gray, Sir Keir’s chief of staff, has a “shit list” of emergencies that could erupt during the infancy of this government, ranging from universities and more councils going bankrupt to a full-blown crisis in prisons. Government debt relative to output is at its largest in 60 years. Taxes as a proportion of GDP are heading towards the highest level since 1948. At the same time, critical public services are either on their knees or on the floor.
This was a revenge election in which voters expressed visceral loathing for the Tories much more evidently than they did any love for Labour. Sir Keir is at Number 10 on the back of a vote share that fell short of 34%. There’s never been a lower score for a majority-winning party since 1832. So while the victory looks commanding, the mandate feels brittle. Sir Keir sits atop a skyscraper majority, but its foundations are built on clay. The answer to that is not easy, but it is obvious. Sir Keir will have to set about earning this majority by using it to deliver.
He has astonished all those in his own party and beyond it who were once so sceptical that he was the man to take Labour back into power. Now he must confound the many doubters already noisily questioning whether his government will be equal to the towering challenges that have become Labour’s responsibility.
I don't agree that Labour's small vote share tells you anything. The polls gave us the rare luxury of being able to choose between several parties with the knowledge that the result was a forgone conclusion. We could be as idealistic as we liked without fear.I had lunch with some advertising friends on election day and of the five of us two voted Green two Lib Dem and one Labour. Had there been any chance of a Tory victory all would have voted Labour.
Has there been any discussion of how automatic voter registration might affect the next election?
Harriet Harman was being a bit more open on election night about what Labour would do in power, and she was clear that auto-registration was about expanding representation for people not currently on the register.
That seems like a very strong hint that it would be followed by new boundaries.
Tried to delete it, because he might be from Washington.
Chester-le-street actually 😉
Interesting place Chester-le-Street.
International Cricket and very some interesting / innovative community development back in the 1970s / 1980s.
I like cycling round there. Sadly gone backwards since we were lumped in with Durham at a local govt level. The park is nice and Waldridge area and the fells are superb.
I must also apologise to you for the rude comment I made. Especially as you are usually incredibly courteous. I was a little tired and emotional !!
Centrists here of both Tory and Libdem persuasion are still having more vapours about Farage winning five seats compared with Labours 400 odd I see.
I guess when you have had a monopoly of the right wing in parliament since the 1661 general election, a rival party of the right breaking through the first past the post wall and winning five seats as well as knocking you into third place in a lot of seats you held until this week is going to seem a bit existensial.
They do not like it.
Labour + Green + SDLP + WPB + Plaid + SNP (33.7% + 6.7% + 0.7% + 0.7% + 0.3% + 2.5) = 44.6%
I know the LDs/Alliance really really really want to count all their 12.6% of voters to the Left-wing block, but they're not. If I was being really generous I'd give them 60% of them and 40% to the Right-wing block. That'd still get you to only 51.1% v 44.2%, and that's on a reduced turnout where many Tories stayed at home.
Point is the country is still split into two-voter blocks. And there's not an awful lot between them, save the mathematics of FPTP, which computed into the landslide.
A lot can change quickly.
Reform aren't a right-wing bloc party, sorry. They compete against Tories and promise magic money tree for the NHS.
I'm amazed at how often I'm seeing the Con+Reform vote as the same thing. Both left and right are suggesting that Reform saved Labour.
Yet, we already know that most Reform voters wouldn't have voted Tory. Farage admitted he couldn't "deliver" them before the election, and polling for the last two years has consistently showed that most weren't keen on the Tories.
In fact, if this polling from the day after the election is correct, given the extremely efficient Lab/LD/Green tactical voting, then no Reform may have been a bad thing for the Tories.
No Reform probably takes the Tory vote up to 29%, and the Labour vote up to 36%. So, enough to save maybe 20 seats.
In the future however, such voters will be motivated more to kick the government than to kick the Tories. If Reform survives, it could hurt Labour in seats where it came second, by picking up Conservatives voting tactically, and swing voters unhappy with Labour.
I don’t quite know how to make this point, but it’s a serious one. Liz Truss generally comes across to me as a bit childish, lacking the kind of seriousness or gravitas you would normally expect. It seems to be a disease that has infected some on the right. They seem to want to shock and provoke rather than effect change. It’s a subtle thing, but they’re a long way from the kind of intellectual heft that sat behind the Thatcherite revolution.
Spot on.
Look at Liz Truss's PMQs performances, and look at Sunak's. And tell me who comes across as childish, wanting to provoke, and lacking the seriousness you'd expect.
Liz Truss.
You're just saying that as you're one of those lefty Tory haters who keep piling on poor Liz for no or partisan reasons.
Wait...
That's how @Luckyguy1983 will see it, despite me being on the Right of the party.
Can't compute that actually she was shit and a complete disaster for the brand.
You can go small state over time, but you can't be a fucking psycho about it.
You're reading the posts I write as you want to read them, not as they are actually written. I have freely admitted that the Truss era was a disaster, how could I not? I have not said that her task was impossible (as she claims), I have said that with more political skill she could have managed it. Even the Queen (God bless her - exceptionally wise even at her moment of passing) advised Truss to pace herself. I also recognise that her era wrecked what was left of the Tories reputation on the economy.
Unlike the rest of PB however, I also recognise and respect the good. And I think the brand damage, which I freely acknowledge, has been worsened considerably by Conservatives willingly buying into, and even accentuating, false and economically illiterate narratives about Truss's responsibility for everything that went wrong. It's not easy to explain LDIs, or bond market instability, or cliff edges, but Tories shouldn't have been the ones heaping it all on Truss, which as far as I can see was done purely to make Sunak look good.
PB Tories - does Atkins have a cat's chance at the leadership or is she running to get a big job in Shadow Cabinet?
Is Victoria Atkins even standing? Apart from a nod-and-wink denial, she's not said much.
Rentoul seems to think she is.
Victoria Atkins is 25/1 in the betting, though shorter in places. I'd prefer to wait and see the runners and riders before getting involved, or even to get some idea of the race distance.
SNP fury mounts with leadership over election rout as infighting mounts - Alex Neil blames Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney and Humza Yousaf - Sturgeon blames Swinney's campaign - Joanna Cherry blames Sturgeon & Ian Blackford - Blackford says Cherry 'bitter'
No Ian Blackford I’m not bitter at all. For me this is something of a liberation. Although I feel awful for my staff. It’s time the truth of the last decade was told & I mean the full truth including your leadership failings & appalling behaviour towards me.
@MichaelDnes1 It’s a truth universally acknowledged that road pricing is political suicide.
But what if it wasn’t? And what if I knew people who’d almost proved it?
Come with me, and try to avoid losing a trillion dollars as we go.🧵
Interesting thread. TLDR is - bring in road pricing on vehicles registered from a point in the future onwards and people won't complain. But, now is the time to act. Soon it will be too late not impose road pricing on existing vehicles and that will be unpopular.
I have to say, I'm not sure it would be accepted just like that, but it would certainly have a better chance than getting to 2028 and going "oh, what are we going to do?"
PhD and 3 post-docs and only has 6 papers. No wonder he is unemployed with such poor academic output.
Not unemployed. But in the CS so not an academic any more. No obvious university position, so not easy to be sure one has all the papers - I don't work in a uni and there is no easy way of counting my own output even of peer-reviewed journal papers.
Ah thanks. But irrespective of that it was interesting to see who the chap is and where he is working, so no harm done, quite the reverse. Obvs not a generalist.
Fascinating to see such a high turnout in France. Usually that would signal a successful mobilisation of the anti-Le Pen voters. Probably it still does
But there was a very big turnout last Sunday and Le Pen came first
🤷🏼♂️
I will be in France by 4pm and ready to test the mood
Is there anyone particularly upset by the election? A lot of upsides across the political spectrum: Labour won a landslide Tories still breathing Best LibDem result in a century RefUK on the board Greens won 4 seats SNP routed
Any downsides?
yes, the second of your points...
It would have been joyous to see ELE. But that would almost certainly have elevated Farage and his mob - surely a worse outcome than what we have.
Also, just enough of the nutters survived in the Tory Party to ensure that the crazy circus carries on even longer. We have seen parties suffer a catastrophic drop in support and spend some time rebuilding before being competitive again. That is the Tories most likely scenario. Can't rule out another oscillation in 2029 that sees them sweep back - in today's politics everything is possible.
But the other scenario is to copy the Liberals a century ago. A crushing defeat followed by division, infighting and absolute self-destructive idiocy. Leading to another hammering into an even smaller total in the elections that follow. 121 may prove to be an impossible target in the next election...
If we had had proportional representation then Farage would have got 100 MPs, most of them having no political experience and paper candidates who would have been a disaster and probably imploded the party within 18 months.
FPTP keeps a party out until it reaches a critical mass and has now ensured that Farage only has his most able leiutenants in Parliament, with five years to professionalise the party.
PR enthusiasts should be careful what they wish for.
I support PR for two simple reasons: 1) In a democracy you should get what you vote for. Every vote should count equally. As a matter of principle it is an aberation that Reform won so many votes and so few seats 2) The best way to defeat any extreme is to expose it to scrutiny. Reform won 4.1m votes - 14.3%. If it has won 93 seats instead of 5 it would not have been a force at the next election. So many of those additional MPs would have been catastrophic for Reform. So many crazy people with appalling ideas and disgusting opinions. With them in the Commons we would have examined Faragism, been repelled by it and seen it off. Instead it continues to fester away in society.
The main objections to PR are all variations on the theme of not liking list systems, which is an absolutely fair point except that the obvious PR solution is STV in multi member constituencies, which doesn’t have a list system.
They might as well be list systems. The top candidate from the main two parties is almost guaranteed to win.
Actually no, if one candidate is unlikeable the voters have the chance to vote for another from the same party. So if you’re for example a right winger in a constituency faced with 3 Tory candidates one of which is a hang ‘em and flog’em and the others Tory wets, you can put your cross in the right wing Tory box.
It is a very good way of ensuring MPs don’t go awol or misbehave.
Starmer knows it was anti-Tory votes that got Labour into power. He made that clear on Friday in his speech outside Number 10 and again yesterday: he specifically addressed non-Labour voters, he said he was non-ideological, said the red rosette had no monopoly on good ideas, emphasised country first and party second, talked about a different kind of government and so on. The proof is in the pudding, of course, but the sheer awfulness of what came before 4th July presents an opportunity to cement the voting alliance formed last Thursday.
Indeed - which was the Blair/Ashdown playbook. Blair carried through on his promise of PR and was thwarted by the unions and his colleagues. It was only under Kennedy and with Iraq that the parties moved apart, once Blair had caught the hubris virus.
There's the potential for the same this time, especially if Starmer proves to be rather more willing to realign with the EU that it appeared during the campaign.
And the Sunday Rawnsley, as this morning's rain tries to clear:
The outcome of this election may have been foretold, but that makes it no less momentous. This is a dazzling achievement by Sir Keir, the more so for being such a vindication of a strategy that very few people outside a tight circle of friends and allies ever completely trusted.
It is true that Sir Keir has had a large number of assists from the Tories, but he wouldn’t have won this scale of majority without the drive to turn his party into an electable alternative to Conservative rule. This makes it a highly personal triumph. This victory magnifies his authority over Labour and the government will not have much to fear from opposition parties anytime soon.
This regime change is being greeted with enthusiasm in Whitehall, not so much for reasons of ideological sympathy, but because it is more professionally satisfying for civil servants to work for a stable government with a sense of direction allied to the power to get stuff done.
The euphoria is tempered by trepidation. Sue Gray, Sir Keir’s chief of staff, has a “shit list” of emergencies that could erupt during the infancy of this government, ranging from universities and more councils going bankrupt to a full-blown crisis in prisons. Government debt relative to output is at its largest in 60 years. Taxes as a proportion of GDP are heading towards the highest level since 1948. At the same time, critical public services are either on their knees or on the floor.
This was a revenge election in which voters expressed visceral loathing for the Tories much more evidently than they did any love for Labour. Sir Keir is at Number 10 on the back of a vote share that fell short of 34%. There’s never been a lower score for a majority-winning party since 1832. So while the victory looks commanding, the mandate feels brittle. Sir Keir sits atop a skyscraper majority, but its foundations are built on clay. The answer to that is not easy, but it is obvious. Sir Keir will have to set about earning this majority by using it to deliver.
He has astonished all those in his own party and beyond it who were once so sceptical that he was the man to take Labour back into power. Now he must confound the many doubters already noisily questioning whether his government will be equal to the towering challenges that have become Labour’s responsibility.
I don't agree that Labour's small vote share tells you anything. The polls gave us the rare luxury of being able to choose between several parties with the knowledge that the result was a forgone conclusion. We could be as idealistic as we liked without fear.I had lunch with some advertising friends on election day and of the five of us two voted Green two Lib Dem and one Labour. Had there been any chance of a Tory victory all would have voted Labour.
Did you notice a disshevelled paperback writer and his long-suffering agent at the next table?
As to events locally, Sir Stephen Timms was safely returned in East Ham but lost a third of his vote share. There are some obvious parallels with 2005 though this is slightly worse than that for Timms.
Tahir Mirza of the Newham Independents got 18% and came in second (the Respect candidate in 2005 got 21%). The other big winner was the Greens who came third quadrupling their vote share despite doing nothing in the constituency and I'm sure they will be second next time and will be starting to challenge at Council level. The Conservative was fourth with 10% - their worst result since the constituency was re-created in 1997.
Reform, the Liberal Democrats and both Independents all lost their deposits and turnout slumped from 66% to 48%. Having enjoyed majorities of over 30,000, Timms now has less than 13,000 in hand.
A similar result in West Ham & Beckton with James Asser getting home by 9,250 with his vote share falling from 70% to 45%. Sophia Naqvi for the Newham Independents got 20% but I know the Newham Independents put a lot more effort into this seat than East Ham and I think they may just have hit the glass ceiling of pro-Palestine support. The Greens were again third going from 2.5% to 11% and now look the principal opposition to Labour in the future. The Conservative got 10% in fourth but Reform did better polling 8% in fifth - the constituency has a larger WWC element down around Silvertown and the Docks than East Ham.
In Stratford & Bow, the Greens put in the work and finished second as Labour fell from 70% to 44%. The Conservative vote halved and their candidate finished fourth behind the Workers' Party. The Greens went from 4% to 17%.
Looking to the 2026 locals, I suspect the Greens will be targeting Labour votes across the borough - whether the Newham Independents will be as strong a force by then I've no clue. Only Timms got above 50% so it could well be we'll see a midterm collapse in Labour support at Council level from which the Greens look set to be the main beneficiaries.
Thanks. I appreciate the local insight as always.
I was rather disappointed that the boundary changes meant we were moved from East Ham to West Ham, so I couldn’t vote for Timms, whom I like a lot. Having done some due diligence on Asser I voted for him rather than the LDs, and Mrs Nashe also gave him her vote.
Thank you for the kind word. Timms has a level of personal vote here and the fact he got above 50% while the other Labour candidates didn't speaks volumes.
I'm sure you are aware there will be a by election in Asser's vacated council seat in Beckton on the 18th - this is going to be tough for Labour under the circumstances and I imagine the Newham Independents will fight it hard.
The Maryland and Forest Gate North by elections last Thursday followed the overall pattern - Labour down 20 on their 2022 numbers, the Greens about the same and the Newham Independent candidates polling 20-25%.
There's also a by election in Little Ilford on the 18th - Tahir Mirza, who stood in East Ham in the GE and was the candidate for the Newham Independents in 2022, is standing again and he has a chance against Labour.
The 2026 locals will be a three way fight between Labour, the Greens and the Newham Independents.
Yes, I think the Council needs shaking up, but I have big reservations about both the Independents and Greens. I’d be much happier if the challenge was coming from the LDs.
Is there anyone particularly upset by the election? A lot of upsides across the political spectrum: Labour won a landslide Tories still breathing Best LibDem result in a century RefUK on the board Greens won 4 seats SNP routed
Any downsides?
yes, the second of your points...
It would have been joyous to see ELE. But that would almost certainly have elevated Farage and his mob - surely a worse outcome than what we have.
Also, just enough of the nutters survived in the Tory Party to ensure that the crazy circus carries on even longer. We have seen parties suffer a catastrophic drop in support and spend some time rebuilding before being competitive again. That is the Tories most likely scenario. Can't rule out another oscillation in 2029 that sees them sweep back - in today's politics everything is possible.
But the other scenario is to copy the Liberals a century ago. A crushing defeat followed by division, infighting and absolute self-destructive idiocy. Leading to another hammering into an even smaller total in the elections that follow. 121 may prove to be an impossible target in the next election...
If we had had proportional representation then Farage would have got 100 MPs, most of them having no political experience and paper candidates who would have been a disaster and probably imploded the party within 18 months.
FPTP keeps a party out until it reaches a critical mass and has now ensured that Farage only has his most able leiutenants in Parliament, with five years to professionalise the party.
PR enthusiasts should be careful what they wish for.
I support PR for two simple reasons: 1) In a democracy you should get what you vote for. Every vote should count equally. As a matter of principle it is an aberation that Reform won so many votes and so few seats 2) The best way to defeat any extreme is to expose it to scrutiny. Reform won 4.1m votes - 14.3%. If it has won 93 seats instead of 5 it would not have been a force at the next election. So many of those additional MPs would have been catastrophic for Reform. So many crazy people with appalling ideas and disgusting opinions. With them in the Commons we would have examined Faragism, been repelled by it and seen it off. Instead it continues to fester away in society.
The main objections to PR are all variations on the theme of not liking list systems, which is an absolutely fair point except that the obvious PR solution is STV in multi member constituencies, which doesn’t have a list system.
They might as well be list systems. The top candidate from the main two parties is almost guaranteed to win.
The voters get to choose who that top candidate is, so no.
If you mean potential bias from alphabetical order, there are ways round that.
Fascinating to see such a high turnout in France. Usually that would signal a successful mobilisation of the anti-Le Pen voters. Probably it still does
But there was a very big turnout last Sunday and Le Pen came first
🤷🏼♂️
I will be in France by 4pm and ready to test the mood
On the frontline of the battle when it all kicks off?
Fascinating to see such a high turnout in France. Usually that would signal a successful mobilisation of the anti-Le Pen voters. Probably it still does
But there was a very big turnout last Sunday and Le Pen came first
🤷🏼♂️
I will be in France by 4pm and ready to test the mood
Polling for round 2 suggests that FN beats LFI, but is neck and neck with other left candidates. FN loses narrowly to Macronists.
So, nobody wins, but Macron loses 100 seats, making the Assembly more chaotic.
Has there been any discussion of how automatic voter registration might affect the next election?
Harriet Harman was being a bit more open on election night about what Labour would do in power, and she was clear that auto-registration was about expanding representation for people not currently on the register.
That seems like a very strong hint that it would be followed by new boundaries.
Fascinating to see such a high turnout in France. Usually that would signal a successful mobilisation of the anti-Le Pen voters. Probably it still does
But there was a very big turnout last Sunday and Le Pen came first
🤷🏼♂️
I will be in France by 4pm and ready to test the mood
The striking thing isn't so much who's saying it, but who's publishing it.....
The SNP are a busted flush
"A vote for us is a vote for Indy"
"Fuck off then..."
Where does a party of Indy go when voters don't want what they are selling?
You might have it the wrong way round, and Scots voters (or half of them) still want independence but now also demand an end to corruption and a return to competence.
SNP fury mounts with leadership over election rout as infighting mounts - Alex Neil blames Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney and Humza Yousaf - Sturgeon blames Swinney's campaign - Joanna Cherry blames Sturgeon & Ian Blackford - Blackford says Cherry 'bitter'
No Ian Blackford I’m not bitter at all. For me this is something of a liberation. Although I feel awful for my staff. It’s time the truth of the last decade was told & I mean the full truth including your leadership failings & appalling behaviour towards me.
@MichaelDnes1 It’s a truth universally acknowledged that road pricing is political suicide.
But what if it wasn’t? And what if I knew people who’d almost proved it?
Come with me, and try to avoid losing a trillion dollars as we go.🧵
Interesting thread. TLDR is - bring in road pricing on vehicles registered from a point in the future onwards and people won't complain. But, now is the time to act. Soon it will be too late not impose road pricing on existing vehicles and that will be unpopular.
I have to say, I'm not sure it would be accepted just like that, but it would certainly have a better chance than getting to 2028 and going "oh, what are we going to do?"
Thinking that road pricing on future vehicles isn’t political suicide is interesting.
That seems to assume that existing car owners can’t conceive of needing a new(er) car sometime in the near future.
If nothing else, it would crash the car market in interesting ways.
Road pricing is essential to avoid national bankruptcy with electric vehicles and by combining in car trackers that insurance companies use and ANPR cameras (to fine those who disable it) it is possible to actually do.
Rule 1 has to be to move the costs of motoring from being mostly sunk costs to mostly per mile costs. So petrol duty goes and VED goes. If you are bold MOT fees go and insurance goes (the road toll insures you instead and is factored into it). If you are really bold you move to pay for tbe car by mile through an account like Student loans that is paid for through the road toll.
So it is cheap (upfront) to buy a car, and expensive to use it. Good for selling cars and good for removing congestion.
People like pensioners will end up better off as they are low mileage.
Reps in flashy cars get hammered.
Lorries pay their fair proportion of road infrastructure building and maintenance costs.
Buses become a no brainer for short urban journeys cost wise and train fares become value compared with hammering up then M1.
Plus you can charge more at peak times when roads are congested, charge more for better quality roads and charge penal rates over short distances for rat runs and quarter mile journeys ending at schools during school "rush hour".
A revolution but something Starmer needs to get on with NOW to get it done over the heads of vested interests.
It might even change the balance so much that new or reopened railways /light rail become a commercialy viable proposition, privately funded.
Biden back as favourite for the Democrat nomination
Biden 2.42-2.46 Harris 2.74-2.82
:-(
How are they going to explain away the brain doctor constantly visiting the White House?
Or the failed BC interview on Friday?
Asked whether he had played back the debate video tape to review it, he could not remember.
Quizzed on why it all went wrong he started on about being thrown by so many lies from Trump. The interviewer pointed out it went wrong from question 1.
And so on.
Dems from House of Reps are meeting later today iirc.
@MichaelDnes1 It’s a truth universally acknowledged that road pricing is political suicide.
But what if it wasn’t? And what if I knew people who’d almost proved it?
Come with me, and try to avoid losing a trillion dollars as we go.🧵
Interesting thread. TLDR is - bring in road pricing on vehicles registered from a point in the future onwards and people won't complain. But, now is the time to act. Soon it will be too late not impose road pricing on existing vehicles and that will be unpopular.
I have to say, I'm not sure it would be accepted just like that, but it would certainly have a better chance than getting to 2028 and going "oh, what are we going to do?"
Thinking that road pricing on future vehicles isn’t political suicide is interesting.
That seems to assume that existing car owners can’t conceive of needing a new(er) car sometime in the near future.
If nothing else, it would crash the car market in interesting ways.
Road pricing is essential to avoid national bankruptcy with electric vehicles and by combining in car trackers that insurance companies use and ANPR cameras (to fine those who disable it) it is possible to actually do.
Rule 1 has to be to move the costs of motoring from being mostly sunk costs to mostly per mile costs. So petrol duty goes and VED goes. If you are bold MOT fees go and insurance goes (the road toll insures you instead and is factored into it). If you are really bold you move to pay for tbe car by mile through an account like Student loans that is paid for through the road toll.
So it is cheap (upfront) to buy a car, and expensive to use it. Good for selling cars and good for removing congestion.
People like pensioners will end up better off as they are low mileage.
Reps in flashy cars get hammered.
Lorries pay their fair proportion of road infrastructure building and maintenance costs.
Buses become a no brainer for short urban journeys cost wise and train fares become value compared with hammering up then M1.
Plus you can charge more at peak times when roads are congested, charge more for better quality roads and charge penal rates over short distances for rat runs and quarter mile journeys ending at schools during school "rush hour".
A revolution but something Starmer needs to get on with NOW to get it done over the heads of vested interests.
It might even change the balance so much that new or reopened railways /light rail become a commercialy viable proposition, privately funded.
I don’t quite know how to make this point, but it’s a serious one. Liz Truss generally comes across to me as a bit childish, lacking the kind of seriousness or gravitas you would normally expect. It seems to be a disease that has infected some on the right. They seem to want to shock and provoke rather than effect change. It’s a subtle thing, but they’re a long way from the kind of intellectual heft that sat behind the Thatcherite revolution.
Not just Truss. The British right loved Beano Boris, and grumily tolerated May and Sunak, who at least tried to be responsible national leaders. Or see the Spectator; yes it sells by the truckload but that's in part because it's given up on being a serious journal of right wing thinking and is now almost entirely there to make people think "OMG what are they going to say now?" Which is an excellent sales strategy, but a terrible way to run a country.
Let us hope that Boring Old PM Starmer can Make Britain Boring Again.
May I join in the chorus.
Reform Uk is the Party of childish politics, of wishful thinking. Farage is an essentially unserious politician, in it for the laughs.
True to an extent but Farage did bring Brexit and should not be underestimated
A careful reading of their manifesto shows us that underestimating him his impossible. It was the worst policy platform of any party and would see the economy curl up and die. Surprised fewer people talked about it, but therein lies the truth. Farage is a wrecking ball, not a builder. You vote for him if you prefer a pile of rubble over what we have now.
I have no doubt you are correct, but the rise of Reform and the right in Europe is not something easily dismissed
I have no regrets voting for Labour and think Starmer will do a decent job. I am impressed with the emphasis on honesty and integrity, after the Boris era. But I think the assumption that everything is now 'back to normal' is quite severely mistaken.
I do think that the greatest threat to democracy is not the Reform party but the dismissal and ostracisation of the Reform party. They should be able to represent their voters on things like 'woke' , 'immigration', 'net zero' , 'low traffic zones' without being slandered or defamed because amongst all the misinformation on every point there is something of value which Labour should take in to account. The 'woke' stuff has gone way too far. Illegal immigration is a massive problem and the asylum system is a failure. Net Zero imposes costs on working people which are too casually shrugged off. If the governing party can take this in to account then it defuses the threat from the reform party. If it goes full on culture war against the 'far right' as many of its MP's/members/supporters would like then it just perpetuates the polarisation and appeal of the Reform party.
You can't converse with conspiracy theorists without making yourself look like one too. Perfectly sensible Tories like Mark Harper made that mistake, undermining his own government's policies. It also leads to people like IDS siding with criminals.
Woke has had next to zero impact on most people's lives. Legal immigration is a material issue, not illegal immigration. Net Zero is the only path to growth for the UK, not protecting 20th century technologies and special interests. Cheap, secure British Energy for the British Economy.
If the Tories engage in the kind of paranoid culture battles you suggest, they'll just lose even more votes to Reform (the real deal) or the Lib Dems (the sensible alternative).
Does 'woke' impact peoples lives? Perhaps not a lot so far. But the desecration of our universities will certainly do so in the long term.
Affects my blood pressure having to listen to the tossers.
Woke is responsible for the pressure on the NHS. Millions of Daily Mail readers pushed to the edge of a heart attack by rainbow lanyards and vegan sausage rolls.
I will not mention "venison" as it upsets one of our esteemed posters.
Centrists here of both Tory and Libdem persuasion are still having more vapours about Farage winning five seats compared with Labours 400 odd I see.
I guess when you have had a monopoly of the right wing in parliament since the 1661 general election, a rival party of the right breaking through the first past the post wall and winning five seats as well as knocking you into third place in a lot of seats you held until this week is going to seem a bit existensial.
They do not like it.
Labour + Green + SDLP + WPB + Plaid + SNP (33.7% + 6.7% + 0.7% + 0.7% + 0.3% + 2.5) = 44.6%
I know the LDs/Alliance really really really want to count all their 12.6% of voters to the Left-wing block, but they're not. If I was being really generous I'd give them 60% of them and 40% to the Right-wing block. That'd still get you to only 51.1% v 44.2%, and that's on a reduced turnout where many Tories stayed at home.
Point is the country is still split into two-voter blocks. And there's not an awful lot between them, save the mathematics of FPTP, which computed into the landslide.
A lot can change quickly.
The important numbers are 121 and 411. The Conservatives need to get to 300 seats or so to form the next government even if they can get into a coalition with Reform. Meanwhile Labour have an issuance policy of a coalition with the Lib Dems if their seat count is drastically cut.
That conventional thinking is quite wrong, as shown last week. Winning an extra 200 seats is not 200 times as difficult as winning one. We are not liberating Europe from the Nazis one village at a time. Seats are fought in parallel, not in series.
And talk of a Labour LibDem coalition forgets 2010 to 2015. Why should the LibDems want to repeat the circumstances of their demise? Why should Labour be interested in the Tories' little helpers?
On the LibDem side, you'd want to do it because the point of being a political party is to try to make the country better by getting your ideas enacted, not merely to be a protest group. There are certainly tactical lessons to be learnt from 2010-15 about how being a junior coalition partner can be mismanaged and go badly wrong, but it would be strange for an avowedly pro-PR party to refuse to ever enter into a coalition again just because we didn't do as good a job of it as we should have last time we tried.
Biden back as favourite for the Democrat nomination
Biden 2.42-2.46 Harris 2.74-2.82
:-(
How are they going to explain away the brain doctor constantly visiting the White House?
If the neurologist goes in twice a day and gives Biden the all-clear, that is hardly fatal to his chances.
And if you believe that I have a bridge to sell you. He already has a whole medical team in situ, if they keep calling for the specialist brain doctor over the course of the last year, it isn't because he keeps getting the all clear and there is nothing to see....and we see it with our own eyes.
And the Sunday Rawnsley, as this morning's rain tries to clear:
The outcome of this election may have been foretold, but that makes it no less momentous. This is a dazzling achievement by Sir Keir, the more so for being such a vindication of a strategy that very few people outside a tight circle of friends and allies ever completely trusted.
It is true that Sir Keir has had a large number of assists from the Tories, but he wouldn’t have won this scale of majority without the drive to turn his party into an electable alternative to Conservative rule. This makes it a highly personal triumph. This victory magnifies his authority over Labour and the government will not have much to fear from opposition parties anytime soon.
This regime change is being greeted with enthusiasm in Whitehall, not so much for reasons of ideological sympathy, but because it is more professionally satisfying for civil servants to work for a stable government with a sense of direction allied to the power to get stuff done.
The euphoria is tempered by trepidation. Sue Gray, Sir Keir’s chief of staff, has a “shit list” of emergencies that could erupt during the infancy of this government, ranging from universities and more councils going bankrupt to a full-blown crisis in prisons. Government debt relative to output is at its largest in 60 years. Taxes as a proportion of GDP are heading towards the highest level since 1948. At the same time, critical public services are either on their knees or on the floor.
This was a revenge election in which voters expressed visceral loathing for the Tories much more evidently than they did any love for Labour. Sir Keir is at Number 10 on the back of a vote share that fell short of 34%. There’s never been a lower score for a majority-winning party since 1832. So while the victory looks commanding, the mandate feels brittle. Sir Keir sits atop a skyscraper majority, but its foundations are built on clay. The answer to that is not easy, but it is obvious. Sir Keir will have to set about earning this majority by using it to deliver.
He has astonished all those in his own party and beyond it who were once so sceptical that he was the man to take Labour back into power. Now he must confound the many doubters already noisily questioning whether his government will be equal to the towering challenges that have become Labour’s responsibility.
I don't agree that Labour's small vote share tells you anything. The polls gave us the rare luxury of being able to choose between several parties with the knowledge that the result was a forgone conclusion. We could be as idealistic as we liked without fear.I had lunch with some advertising friends on election day and of the five of us two voted Green two Lib Dem and one Labour. Had there been any chance of a Tory victory all would have voted Labour.
Did you notice a disshevelled paperback writer and his long-suffering agent at the next table?
If Roger was on the Groucho table next to me and my flint agent he is
1 strikingly attractive and also a young woman
And
2. Possessed of great tattle if he overheard my agent’s gossip about Starmer
The striking thing isn't so much who's saying it, but who's publishing it.....
The SNP are a busted flush
"A vote for us is a vote for Indy"
"Fuck off then..."
Where does a party of Indy go when voters don't want what they are selling?
You might have it the wrong way round, and Scots voters (or half of them) still want independence but now also demand an end to corruption and a return to competence.
Is there anyone particularly upset by the election? A lot of upsides across the political spectrum: Labour won a landslide Tories still breathing Best LibDem result in a century RefUK on the board Greens won 4 seats SNP routed
Any downsides?
yes, the second of your points...
It would have been joyous to see ELE. But that would almost certainly have elevated Farage and his mob - surely a worse outcome than what we have.
Also, just enough of the nutters survived in the Tory Party to ensure that the crazy circus carries on even longer. We have seen parties suffer a catastrophic drop in support and spend some time rebuilding before being competitive again. That is the Tories most likely scenario. Can't rule out another oscillation in 2029 that sees them sweep back - in today's politics everything is possible.
But the other scenario is to copy the Liberals a century ago. A crushing defeat followed by division, infighting and absolute self-destructive idiocy. Leading to another hammering into an even smaller total in the elections that follow. 121 may prove to be an impossible target in the next election...
If we had had proportional representation then Farage would have got 100 MPs, most of them having no political experience and paper candidates who would have been a disaster and probably imploded the party within 18 months.
FPTP keeps a party out until it reaches a critical mass and has now ensured that Farage only has his most able leiutenants in Parliament, with five years to professionalise the party.
PR enthusiasts should be careful what they wish for.
I support PR for two simple reasons: 1) In a democracy you should get what you vote for. Every vote should count equally. As a matter of principle it is an aberation that Reform won so many votes and so few seats 2) The best way to defeat any extreme is to expose it to scrutiny. Reform won 4.1m votes - 14.3%. If it has won 93 seats instead of 5 it would not have been a force at the next election. So many of those additional MPs would have been catastrophic for Reform. So many crazy people with appalling ideas and disgusting opinions. With them in the Commons we would have examined Faragism, been repelled by it and seen it off. Instead it continues to fester away in society.
The main objections to PR are all variations on the theme of not liking list systems, which is an absolutely fair point except that the obvious PR solution is STV in multi member constituencies, which doesn’t have a list system.
They might as well be list systems. The top candidate from the main two parties is almost guaranteed to win.
The voters get to choose who that top candidate is, so no.
If you mean potential bias from alphabetical order, there are ways round that.
In Taiwan (which doesn't have alphabetical order, but does have stroke number and order, which is basically the same thing), there is a draw, similar to the FA Cup, for a number. It's a big thing live on TV. Everyone wants the 1. 4 is the literal sound of death. It's a number for the candidate, not the Party. So Parties have different numbers, dependant on location.
I don’t quite know how to make this point, but it’s a serious one. Liz Truss generally comes across to me as a bit childish, lacking the kind of seriousness or gravitas you would normally expect. It seems to be a disease that has infected some on the right. They seem to want to shock and provoke rather than effect change. It’s a subtle thing, but they’re a long way from the kind of intellectual heft that sat behind the Thatcherite revolution.
Not just Truss. The British right loved Beano Boris, and grumily tolerated May and Sunak, who at least tried to be responsible national leaders. Or see the Spectator; yes it sells by the truckload but that's in part because it's given up on being a serious journal of right wing thinking and is now almost entirely there to make people think "OMG what are they going to say now?" Which is an excellent sales strategy, but a terrible way to run a country.
Let us hope that Boring Old PM Starmer can Make Britain Boring Again.
May I join in the chorus.
Reform Uk is the Party of childish politics, of wishful thinking. Farage is an essentially unserious politician, in it for the laughs.
True to an extent but Farage did bring Brexit and should not be underestimated
A careful reading of their manifesto shows us that underestimating him his impossible. It was the worst policy platform of any party and would see the economy curl up and die. Surprised fewer people talked about it, but therein lies the truth. Farage is a wrecking ball, not a builder. You vote for him if you prefer a pile of rubble over what we have now.
I have no doubt you are correct, but the rise of Reform and the right in Europe is not something easily dismissed
I have no regrets voting for Labour and think Starmer will do a decent job. I am impressed with the emphasis on honesty and integrity, after the Boris era. But I think the assumption that everything is now 'back to normal' is quite severely mistaken.
I do think that the greatest threat to democracy is not the Reform party but the dismissal and ostracisation of the Reform party. They should be able to represent their voters on things like 'woke' , 'immigration', 'net zero' , 'low traffic zones' without being slandered or defamed because amongst all the misinformation on every point there is something of value which Labour should take in to account. The 'woke' stuff has gone way too far. Illegal immigration is a massive problem and the asylum system is a failure. Net Zero imposes costs on working people which are too casually shrugged off. If the governing party can take this in to account then it defuses the threat from the reform party. If it goes full on culture war against the 'far right' as many of its MP's/members/supporters would like then it just perpetuates the polarisation and appeal of the Reform party.
You can't converse with conspiracy theorists without making yourself look like one too. Perfectly sensible Tories like Mark Harper made that mistake, undermining his own government's policies. It also leads to people like IDS siding with criminals.
Woke has had next to zero impact on most people's lives. Legal immigration is a material issue, not illegal immigration. Net Zero is the only path to growth for the UK, not protecting 20th century technologies and special interests. Cheap, secure British Energy for the British Economy.
If the Tories engage in the kind of paranoid culture battles you suggest, they'll just lose even more votes to Reform (the real deal) or the Lib Dems (the sensible alternative).
Does 'woke' impact peoples lives? Perhaps not a lot so far. But the desecration of our universities will certainly do so in the long term.
Affects my blood pressure having to listen to the tossers.
Woke is responsible for the pressure on the NHS. Millions of Daily Mail readers pushed to the edge of a heart attack by rainbow lanyards and vegan sausage rolls.
I will not mention "venison" as it upsets one of our esteemed posters.
Biden back as favourite for the Democrat nomination
Biden 2.42-2.46 Harris 2.74-2.82
:-(
Biden as favourite supports my mantra that things that ought to matter, often don't. Still, one side or the other will have got the betting value and punters cleverer than me will have an all-green book.
This is the list of the 22 Roman Catholic Cathedrals in England.
Arundel Cathedral - CONSERVATIVE St Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham - LABOUR? Brentwood Cathedral - CONSERVATIVE ? Cathedral of St Michael and St George, Aldershot - LABOUR Clifton Cathedral Lancaster Cathedral - LABOUR Leeds Cathedral - LABOUR Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral - LABOUR Middlesbrough Cathedral - LABOUR St Mary's Cathedral, Newcastle upon Tyne - LABOUR Northampton Cathedral St John the Baptist Cathedral, Norwich - LABOUR Nottingham Cathedral - LABOUR Old Sarum Cathedral Plymouth Cathedral - LABOUR Cathedral of St John the Evangelist, Portsmouth Pro-Cathedral of the Holy Apostles Salford Cathedral - LABOUR Cathedral Church of St Marie, Sheffield - LABOUR Shrewsbury Cathedral - LABOUR St George's Cathedral, Southwark - LABOUR Westminster Cathedral - LABOUR
I'm a bit less reliable on these, as I am not sure exactly where they all are to within a stone's throw.
Old Sarum Cathedral? All thats left is the foundation.
The Bristol (Clifton) pro cathedral is now student housing.
By the way most of the C of E ones are Catholic too (just under temporary occupation).
Good observations - my list is from the Wikipedia summary page.
But Old Sarum used to have 2 MPs
Clifton I do not know apart from formerly a former vicar of St Mary Redcliffe, and visits to the Bridge when visiting Bristol.
I'll leave your third point an unexplored rabbit hole, except to assert that all of the CofE cathedrals are Catholic, because the CofE is Catholic and Reformed .
I did once have a lovely conversation with a delightfully assertive old lady at St Etheldreda's Church in Ely Place, about why their "Bishops of London" stopped so abruptly hundreds of years ago.
An old priest once talked to an old lady who was remonstrating within about the iniquities of a Catholic Mass being celebrated in a (900 year old) C of E Church (by kind permission of the Vicar) that actually it is a Catholic Church as it has never been deconsecrated and many Catholics are buried in the Church and grounds.
Simildrly, my former local vicar said "It's yours really anyway" on bumping into me visiting it and discovering it is RC.
Fortunately, for financial reasons, they are all nationalised and the states problem!
Church of England churches are not owned by the state and get no financial help from the state.
Clifton Pro Cathedral was abandoned fifty years ago due to structural problems, but Clifton Cathedral is going along just fine.
You might have it the wrong way round, and Scots voters (or half of them) still want independence but now also demand an end to corruption and a return to competence.
Brexit voters wanted the moon on a stick as well
Now look at them
While it may be true that in the abstract when asked by a pollster whether they want Indy, some people said yes, last week in the voting booths when asked to put stubby pencil to paper in favour of it (as expressed by the SNP campaign) they overwhelmingly said "fuck that"
Yes it was the disastrous Truss budget that swung so many mortgage holders towards Labour and helped give Labour a landslide. Without that it may well have been a hung parliament with the LDs holding the balance of power again
@MichaelDnes1 It’s a truth universally acknowledged that road pricing is political suicide.
But what if it wasn’t? And what if I knew people who’d almost proved it?
Come with me, and try to avoid losing a trillion dollars as we go.🧵
Interesting thread. TLDR is - bring in road pricing on vehicles registered from a point in the future onwards and people won't complain. But, now is the time to act. Soon it will be too late not impose road pricing on existing vehicles and that will be unpopular.
I have to say, I'm not sure it would be accepted just like that, but it would certainly have a better chance than getting to 2028 and going "oh, what are we going to do?"
Thinking that road pricing on future vehicles isn’t political suicide is interesting.
That seems to assume that existing car owners can’t conceive of needing a new(er) car sometime in the near future.
If nothing else, it would crash the car market in interesting ways.
No it wouldn't. Road pricing is quite sensible except no-one has a convincing argument on what to do about those drivers who necessarily go longer distances. In principle, this is no different from making them buy more fuel but politically it is harder.
Imposing it on new vehicles only would be stupid.
If nothing else, it would stop the removal of the oldest and most polluting vehicles from the road.
The problem is trust - everyone I speak to is utterly convinced that road pricing will be on top of existing taxes and that the War On Roads will continue. They think they will be paying more for less.
Centrists here of both Tory and Libdem persuasion are still having more vapours about Farage winning five seats compared with Labours 400 odd I see.
I guess when you have had a monopoly of the right wing in parliament since the 1661 general election, a rival party of the right breaking through the first past the post wall and winning five seats as well as knocking you into third place in a lot of seats you held until this week is going to seem a bit existensial.
They do not like it.
Labour + Green + SDLP + WPB + Plaid + SNP (33.7% + 6.7% + 0.7% + 0.7% + 0.3% + 2.5) = 44.6%
I know the LDs/Alliance really really really want to count all their 12.6% of voters to the Left-wing block, but they're not. If I was being really generous I'd give them 60% of them and 40% to the Right-wing block. That'd still get you to only 51.1% v 44.2%, and that's on a reduced turnout where many Tories stayed at home.
Point is the country is still split into two-voter blocks. And there's not an awful lot between them, save the mathematics of FPTP, which computed into the landslide.
A lot can change quickly.
The important numbers are 121 and 411. The Conservatives need to get to 300 seats or so to form the next government even if they can get into a coalition with Reform. Meanwhile Labour have an issuance policy of a coalition with the Lib Dems if their seat count is drastically cut.
That conventional thinking is quite wrong, as shown last week. Winning an extra 200 seats is not 200 times as difficult as winning one. We are not liberating Europe from the Nazis one village at a time. Seats are fought in parallel, not in series.
And talk of a Labour LibDem coalition forgets 2010 to 2015. Why should the LibDems want to repeat the circumstances of their demise? Why should Labour be interested in the Tories' little helpers?
On the LibDem side, you'd want to do it because the point of being a political party is to try to make the country better by getting your ideas enacted, not merely to be a protest group. There are certainly tactical lessons to be learnt from 2010-15 about how being a junior coalition partner can be mismanaged and go badly wrong, but it would be strange for an avowedly pro-PR party to refuse to ever enter into a coalition again just because we didn't do as good a job of it as we should have last time we tried.
The Liberals and LibDems have a long track record of getting their policies enacted; indeed I recall a study of manifestos going back to the 1960s which found that more policies had eventually been implemented from Lib/LibDem manifestos than from Tory or Labour. The downside is that they rarely get the chance to do it themselves.
Biden back as favourite for the Democrat nomination
Biden 2.42-2.46 Harris 2.74-2.82
:-(
How are they going to explain away the brain doctor constantly visiting the White House?
If the neurologist goes in twice a day and gives Biden the all-clear, that is hardly fatal to his chances.
And if you believe that I have a bridge to sell you. He already has a whole medical team in situ, if they keep calling for the specialist brain doctor over the course of the last year, it isn't because he keeps getting the all clear and there is nothing to see....and we see it with our own eyes.
Perhaps they just forgot to cancel Trump’s appointments?
What happened to the stubby pencil on a string? We had brand new (in the morning, at least) ordinary pencils of normal length collected with our ballot papers. Easier for Special Branch to rub out the X's, I suppose.
@MichaelDnes1 It’s a truth universally acknowledged that road pricing is political suicide.
But what if it wasn’t? And what if I knew people who’d almost proved it?
Come with me, and try to avoid losing a trillion dollars as we go.🧵
Interesting thread. TLDR is - bring in road pricing on vehicles registered from a point in the future onwards and people won't complain. But, now is the time to act. Soon it will be too late not impose road pricing on existing vehicles and that will be unpopular.
I have to say, I'm not sure it would be accepted just like that, but it would certainly have a better chance than getting to 2028 and going "oh, what are we going to do?"
Thinking that road pricing on future vehicles isn’t political suicide is interesting.
That seems to assume that existing car owners can’t conceive of needing a new(er) car sometime in the near future.
If nothing else, it would crash the car market in interesting ways.
No it wouldn't. Road pricing is quite sensible except no-one has a convincing argument on what to do about those drivers who necessarily go longer distances. In principle, this is no different from making them buy more fuel but politically it is harder.
Imposing it on new vehicles only would be stupid.
If nothing else, it would stop the removal of the oldest and most polluting vehicles from the road.
The problem is trust - everyone I speak to is utterly convinced that road pricing will be on top of existing taxes and that the War On Roads will continue. They think they will be paying more for less.
Surely the way you’d introduce it on new vehicles is to eliminate VED and make the initial road pricing costs similar for an average vehicle to the VED it replaces.
Then start to ramp it up in a transparently symmetrical relationship with declining fuel duty income as ICE cars are phased out.
Biden back as favourite for the Democrat nomination
Biden 2.42-2.46 Harris 2.74-2.82
:-(
How are they going to explain away the brain doctor constantly visiting the White House?
Or the failed BC interview on Friday?
Asked whether he had played back the debate video tape to review it, he could not remember.
Quizzed on why it all went wrong he started on about being thrown by so many lies from Trump. The interviewer pointed out it went wrong from question 1.
And so on.
Dems from House of Reps are meeting later today iirc.
When is the Dem convention?
August.
iirc it is quite late this year and so there's been issues with the ballot for Ohio.
SNP fury mounts with leadership over election rout as infighting mounts - Alex Neil blames Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney and Humza Yousaf - Sturgeon blames Swinney's campaign - Joanna Cherry blames Sturgeon & Ian Blackford - Blackford says Cherry 'bitter'
No Ian Blackford I’m not bitter at all. For me this is something of a liberation. Although I feel awful for my staff. It’s time the truth of the last decade was told & I mean the full truth including your leadership failings & appalling behaviour towards me.
Is there anyone particularly upset by the election? A lot of upsides across the political spectrum: Labour won a landslide Tories still breathing Best LibDem result in a century RefUK on the board Greens won 4 seats SNP routed
Any downsides?
yes, the second of your points...
It would have been joyous to see ELE. But that would almost certainly have elevated Farage and his mob - surely a worse outcome than what we have.
Also, just enough of the nutters survived in the Tory Party to ensure that the crazy circus carries on even longer. We have seen parties suffer a catastrophic drop in support and spend some time rebuilding before being competitive again. That is the Tories most likely scenario. Can't rule out another oscillation in 2029 that sees them sweep back - in today's politics everything is possible.
But the other scenario is to copy the Liberals a century ago. A crushing defeat followed by division, infighting and absolute self-destructive idiocy. Leading to another hammering into an even smaller total in the elections that follow. 121 may prove to be an impossible target in the next election...
If we had had proportional representation then Farage would have got 100 MPs, most of them having no political experience and paper candidates who would have been a disaster and probably imploded the party within 18 months.
FPTP keeps a party out until it reaches a critical mass and has now ensured that Farage only has his most able leiutenants in Parliament, with five years to professionalise the party.
PR enthusiasts should be careful what they wish for.
I support PR for two simple reasons: 1) In a democracy you should get what you vote for. Every vote should count equally. As a matter of principle it is an aberation that Reform won so many votes and so few seats 2) The best way to defeat any extreme is to expose it to scrutiny. Reform won 4.1m votes - 14.3%. If it has won 93 seats instead of 5 it would not have been a force at the next election. So many of those additional MPs would have been catastrophic for Reform. So many crazy people with appalling ideas and disgusting opinions. With them in the Commons we would have examined Faragism, been repelled by it and seen it off. Instead it continues to fester away in society.
The main objections to PR are all variations on the theme of not liking list systems, which is an absolutely fair point except that the obvious PR solution is STV in multi member constituencies, which doesn’t have a list system.
They might as well be list systems. The top candidate from the main two parties is almost guaranteed to win.
The voters get to choose who that top candidate is, so no.
If you mean potential bias from alphabetical order, there are ways round that.
In Taiwan (which doesn't have alphabetical order, but does have stroke number and order, which is basically the same thing), there is a draw, similar to the FA Cup, for a number. It's a big thing live on TV. Everyone wants the 1. 4 is the literal sound of death. It's a number for the candidate, not the Party. So Parties have different numbers, dependant on location.
@MichaelDnes1 It’s a truth universally acknowledged that road pricing is political suicide.
But what if it wasn’t? And what if I knew people who’d almost proved it?
Come with me, and try to avoid losing a trillion dollars as we go.🧵
Interesting thread. TLDR is - bring in road pricing on vehicles registered from a point in the future onwards and people won't complain. But, now is the time to act. Soon it will be too late not impose road pricing on existing vehicles and that will be unpopular.
I have to say, I'm not sure it would be accepted just like that, but it would certainly have a better chance than getting to 2028 and going "oh, what are we going to do?"
Thinking that road pricing on future vehicles isn’t political suicide is interesting.
That seems to assume that existing car owners can’t conceive of needing a new(er) car sometime in the near future.
If nothing else, it would crash the car market in interesting ways.
No it wouldn't. Road pricing is quite sensible except no-one has a convincing argument on what to do about those drivers who necessarily go longer distances. In principle, this is no different from making them buy more fuel but politically it is harder.
Imposing it on new vehicles only would be stupid.
If nothing else, it would stop the removal of the oldest and most polluting vehicles from the road.
But continuing to drive the oldest and most polluting vehicles on the road until they expire is the greenest thing you can do.
The huge energy required to build and dispose of cars means that scrapping them early causes far more carbon to be emitted than the marginal amount for extra fuel (compaed with a newer more efficient vehicles over those five years)
If a car lasts twenty years, then two cars need to be built and demolished every forty years.
If a car lasts ten years then four cars need to be built and demolished every forty years.
Paying people to scrap early (scrappage) is about the most environentally unfriendly thing you can do. Its just a subsidy to motor manufacturers at taxpayers expense. Basically legitimised corruption.
Biden back as favourite for the Democrat nomination
Biden 2.42-2.46 Harris 2.74-2.82
:-(
How are they going to explain away the brain doctor constantly visiting the White House?
If the neurologist goes in twice a day and gives Biden the all-clear, that is hardly fatal to his chances.
And if you believe that I have a bridge to sell you. He already has a whole medical team in situ, if they keep calling for the specialist brain doctor over the course of the last year, it isn't because he keeps getting the all clear and there is nothing to see....and we see it with our own eyes.
What's the politics? Trump proxies say the president's off with the fairies but now there is a rebuttal. He's been cleared. No need for anyone to change their vote. Whether Biden actually does have Parkinson's is a secondary consideration.
Biden back as favourite for the Democrat nomination
Biden 2.42-2.46 Harris 2.74-2.82
:-(
How are they going to explain away the brain doctor constantly visiting the White House?
If the neurologist goes in twice a day and gives Biden the all-clear, that is hardly fatal to his chances.
Really? If someone got checked for STDs every 6 hours would you think they were adhering to a vow of chastity?
I was watching Primary Colours earlier and the Bill Clinton character played by Travolta gets his uncle to provide blood for a paternity test and the political advisor points out that even though she doesn’t think the kid is his the fact that he did the blood switch shows he thought it could be.
So as you correctly point out, if someone is having to prove a negative there is a reason why they need to which doesn’t help inspire confidence.
Make polling day a bank holiday. We have public holidays for less. One day every five years to celebrate our democracy is a good and fully justified thing. We shouldn’t take it for granted.
Here at @focaldataHQ we’ve produced a 53,000 person survey weighted to the result on “How Britain Voted” at #GE24...
The Conservatives lost votes to everyone. 25% of the 2019 vote to Reform, 23% to the left. The latter count double. Losing votes to the left ensured election defeat. Bleeding so heavily to reform turned that defeat into a cataclysm.
The striking thing isn't so much who's saying it, but who's publishing it.....
The SNP are a busted flush
"A vote for us is a vote for Indy"
"Fuck off then..."
Where does a party of Indy go when voters don't want what they are selling?
Back to running the devolved Scottish Government competently and for the whole of Scotland, as happened during Alex Salmond’s minority government of 2007 - 2011.
Biden back as favourite for the Democrat nomination
Biden 2.42-2.46 Harris 2.74-2.82
:-(
How are they going to explain away the brain doctor constantly visiting the White House?
If the neurologist goes in twice a day and gives Biden the all-clear, that is hardly fatal to his chances.
And if you believe that I have a bridge to sell you. He already has a whole medical team in situ, if they keep calling for the specialist brain doctor over the course of the last year, it isn't because he keeps getting the all clear and there is nothing to see....and we see it with our own eyes.
What's the politics? Trump proxies say the president's off with the fairies but now there is a rebuttal. He's been cleared. No need for anyone to change their vote. Whether Biden actually does have Parkinson's is a secondary consideration.
No one believes it. At least not anyone neutral. They can keep trying to pretend he is fine but too many people know he isn't and if he is still there in November then it will mean a Trump victory.
Make polling day a bank holiday. We have public holidays for less. One day every five years to celebrate our democracy is a good and fully justified thing. We shouldn’t take it for granted.
Or the day after to encourage the nation to pull an all-nighter...
Make polling day a bank holiday. We have public holidays for less. One day every five years to celebrate our democracy is a good and fully justified thing. We shouldn’t take it for granted.
Too many bank holidays, it’s nuts and damages the economy. We’ve got one next Monday just because the King is visiting. They worked out it costs our gov £700k in terms of what they are paying staff but getting no productivity as well as the extra pay they have to give staff who have to work on the public holiday. If you scale that up to the UK public sector just think how much it costs the country.
Make polling day a bank holiday. We have public holidays for less. One day every five years to celebrate our democracy is a good and fully justified thing. We shouldn’t take it for granted.
Too many bank holidays, it’s nuts and damages the economy. We’ve got one next Monday just because the King is visiting. They worked out it costs our gov £700k in terms of what they are paying staff but getting no productivity as well as the extra pay they have to give staff who have to work on the public holiday. If you scale that up to the UK public sector just think how much it costs the country.
One every five years. I think the economy can bare it.
Biden back as favourite for the Democrat nomination
Biden 2.42-2.46 Harris 2.74-2.82
:-(
How are they going to explain away the brain doctor constantly visiting the White House?
Or the failed BC interview on Friday?
Asked whether he had played back the debate video tape to review it, he could not remember.
Quizzed on why it all went wrong he started on about being thrown by so many lies from Trump. The interviewer pointed out it went wrong from question 1.
And so on.
Dems from House of Reps are meeting later today iirc.
When is the Dem convention?
August.
iirc it is quite late this year and so there's been issues with the ballot for Ohio.
He is deteriorating anyway, and I can't think of anything better designed to accelerate his deterioration than the knowledge that the world is scrutinising him. The paranoiac whom everyone really is out to get sorted of thing.
The propping up puts me in mind of Charlie Kennedy. Presumably the proppers do it because their importance derives 100% from the main man and or because they can't agree about the succession. I can't think of a non contemptible excuse for doing it.
Fascinating to see such a high turnout in France. Usually that would signal a successful mobilisation of the anti-Le Pen voters. Probably it still does
But there was a very big turnout last Sunday and Le Pen came first
🤷🏼♂️
I will be in France by 4pm and ready to test the mood
It looks like Le Pen's party will win most seats but fall short of a majority, there is an outside chance they could have a majority with Les Republicains but even then Les Republicains would probably largely support Macron and his party though again combined they too would lack a majority. The Melenchon leftist block likely second
Make polling day a bank holiday. We have public holidays for less. One day every five years to celebrate our democracy is a good and fully justified thing. We shouldn’t take it for granted.
No. Means a substantial proportion of the population is drunk or off its tits on cheap coke when it votes.
Make polling day a bank holiday. We have public holidays for less. One day every five years to celebrate our democracy is a good and fully justified thing. We shouldn’t take it for granted.
Too many bank holidays, it’s nuts and damages the economy. We’ve got one next Monday just because the King is visiting. They worked out it costs our gov £700k in terms of what they are paying staff but getting no productivity as well as the extra pay they have to give staff who have to work on the public holiday. If you scale that up to the UK public sector just think how much it costs the country.
One every five years. I think the economy can bare it.
Bank holiday on Thursday means you would get loads of people taking the Friday off and going away for a long weekend instead of voting. Just moving polling day to a Sunday would be a better way to make it easier for people to vote.
Centrists here of both Tory and Libdem persuasion are still having more vapours about Farage winning five seats compared with Labours 400 odd I see.
I guess when you have had a monopoly of the right wing in parliament since the 1661 general election, a rival party of the right breaking through the first past the post wall and winning five seats as well as knocking you into third place in a lot of seats you held until this week is going to seem a bit existensial.
They do not like it.
Labour + Green + SDLP + WPB + Plaid + SNP (33.7% + 6.7% + 0.7% + 0.7% + 0.3% + 2.5) = 44.6%
I know the LDs/Alliance really really really want to count all their 12.6% of voters to the Left-wing block, but they're not. If I was being really generous I'd give them 60% of them and 40% to the Right-wing block. That'd still get you to only 51.1% v 44.2%, and that's on a reduced turnout where many Tories stayed at home.
Point is the country is still split into two-voter blocks. And there's not an awful lot between them, save the mathematics of FPTP, which computed into the landslide.
A lot can change quickly.
Reform aren't a right-wing bloc party, sorry. They compete against Tories and promise magic money tree for the NHS.
In some ways they are the anti-establishment mirror of the SNP.
Both parties argue that their constituents’ needs cannot be met within the current Westminster setup. SNP from the left(ish), Reform from the right.
One says independence is the solution, the other says - what? The Nietschian superman I suppose.
So you can’t group either into blocs with others because they are constitutionally set apart.
Plaid, not so much. More like SDLP, for now.
You can group them in in terms of whom they would support in government. So right now in mid 2024, the LDs would support a Labour-led government but almost certainly not a Conservative one. Reform would probably be the opposite way around. SNP would probably find it slightly tricky to support Labour but would never, ever support the Tories.
Casino is missing the point to a certain extent when he tries to split the Lib Dems down a 60-40 line and use that to keep them out of the left bloc. The Lib Dems would, in a hung parliament, have elevated Starmer with zero hesitation. He's right in that this reality can change but there's no sign of that any time soon.
Except they’ll be opposing them on quite a lot of stuff in this parliament, and they were part of a coalition with the Tories a decade back.
All Casino is effectively saying is that FPTP is the way it should be. That’s a circular argument, not one of principle.
Yes, the LDs coalitioned with the Tories in 2010. It's that experience that means they are fairly unlikely to repeat it any time soon! Of course the LDs will be opposing Labour at some points in this parliament, and if Labour start to do really badly in the eyes of LDs then you WILL see that drift away. Casino is right in implying the mutability of such support. But that future is undecided. Right now, the LD position on Labour v Tory is extremely clear, and will remain so until such a time that Labour or the Tories change. The likelier outcome, in my view, is that the LDs will still be on the Labour side of the fence come the next election.
That is risky given over 90% of LD seats now were won from the Tories, if they are sensible they will remain in the middle
Fascinating to see such a high turnout in France. Usually that would signal a successful mobilisation of the anti-Le Pen voters. Probably it still does
But there was a very big turnout last Sunday and Le Pen came first
🤷🏼♂️
I will be in France by 4pm and ready to test the mood
It looks like Le Pen's party will win most seats but fall short of a majority, there is an outside chance they could have a majority with Les Republicains but even then Les Republicains would probably largely support Macron and his party though again combined they too would lack a majority. The Melenchon leftist block likely second
Most seats but not a majority is what Le Pen will want. The last thing she wants to be is Morgan Tsvngarai to Macrons Mugabe. Hobbled by the presindent but shares the blame with the voters for achieving little.
Robert Jenrick is the first leadership contender to break cover. He says the last government “insulted the public” by failing to deal with immigration. He sets out his stall here:
It would have been better for your Party, Carlotta, if the Election had produced a more cleansing result. It would then have had less detritus like Jenrick to clear out before reconstruction begins.
I worry about the members, Peter.
They usually go for the most tub-thumping and dogmatic one. It really doesn't help.
I doubt they've learned many (any) lessons from this defeat.
I think there's an argument that this is the right way to go. They need to rebuild the base first and stop all the members defecting, and lose elections with a purist in charge until they get it out of their system.
One place Labour went wrong was putting a (relative) moderate up first, which pushed everything back by an entire parliament. If they'd picked Corbyn right away they could have got it out of their system in 2015 then got back into office in 2020.
Or, we could get it out of our system now - given we've just massively lost an election, near catastrophically - and go professional straight away.
The Conservatives aren't going to recover unless they can inspire and recruit some young people. Money is also going to be a problem, their costs are based on a pre-2024 Conservative party in government - why would anyone now contribute to the Conservatives? Their councillor numbers are likely to decline further. I cannot see a way back for them - though admit I am not inclined to look very hard for one.
Biden back as favourite for the Democrat nomination
Biden 2.42-2.46 Harris 2.74-2.82
:-(
How are they going to explain away the brain doctor constantly visiting the White House?
If the neurologist goes in twice a day and gives Biden the all-clear, that is hardly fatal to his chances.
And if you believe that I have a bridge to sell you. He already has a whole medical team in situ, if they keep calling for the specialist brain doctor over the course of the last year, it isn't because he keeps getting the all clear and there is nothing to see....and we see it with our own eyes.
What's the politics? Trump proxies say the president's off with the fairies but now there is a rebuttal. He's been cleared. No need for anyone to change their vote. Whether Biden actually does have Parkinson's is a secondary consideration.
Make polling day a bank holiday. We have public holidays for less. One day every five years to celebrate our democracy is a good and fully justified thing. We shouldn’t take it for granted.
Too many bank holidays, it’s nuts and damages the economy. We’ve got one next Monday just because the King is visiting. They worked out it costs our gov £700k in terms of what they are paying staff but getting no productivity as well as the extra pay they have to give staff who have to work on the public holiday. If you scale that up to the UK public sector just think how much it costs the country.
One every five years. I think the economy can bare it.
Bank holiday on Thursday means you would get loads of people taking the Friday off and going away for a long weekend instead of voting. Just moving polling day to a Sunday would be a better way to make it easier for people to vote.
If we vote on Sundays, all the church halls we use as polling stations might... Still, more overtime for school caretakers.
Biden back as favourite for the Democrat nomination
Biden 2.42-2.46 Harris 2.74-2.82
:-(
Biden as favourite supports my mantra that things that ought to matter, often don't. Still, one side or the other will have got the betting value and punters cleverer than me will have an all-green book.
Not all green, but as long as it's not Kennedy, Obama, Clinton or Newsom I'm ok.
The striking thing isn't so much who's saying it, but who's publishing it.....
they were all silent whilst sucking at the public teat, all the rats will be coming out of the woodwork now. MSP's will be crapping it that all those deadbeats will be wheedling to get into Holyrood to get back at the trough. Which Holyrood silent deadbeats will be sacrificed for the Westminster mob, they will be like ferrets in a sack shortly.
Comments
https://x.com/drphiliplee1/status/1809537723180486715
And he had at least one substantial book as well.
https://www.traffex.com/people/parkex-speakers/michael-dnes/
If the economy is producing job opportunities and you stop EU people taking them as easily, you get more non-EU people. If you cut back on one class of work visas, the economy will reconfigure itself to use more people on other classes of work visas. If you cut back on all work visas, you get more people who don't need work visas.
The way to reliably stop people coming is to try to make the economy produce fewer jobs, but this has some other downsides.
I was rather disappointed that the boundary changes meant we were moved from East Ham to West Ham, so I couldn’t vote for Timms, whom I like a lot. Having done some due diligence on Asser I voted for him rather than the LDs, and Mrs Nashe also gave him her vote.
https://9gag.com/gag/3911393
"I am impressed with the emphasis on honesty and integrity, after the Boris era."
Labour will have its scandals. They will be around money.
Remember, Blair was going to be the new broom, "whiter than white". He was extrememly fortunate over Ecclestone. He assumed he was going to have to resign. It was only the media giving him an extended honeymoon that allowed him to survive. Would Starmer get such a honeymoon? I think not. His Government really WILL have to be "whiter than white".
Whilst that is true it doesn't fix the damage to the Tory brand. Osborne was right on election night. Sunak should have loudly and explicitly repudiated both Boris and Truss on his appointment.
In fairness, he did resign as Chancellor when the lying got so egregious and he did argue against Truss's childish solutions during their leadership campaign which he lost but as PM he tried too hard to herd cats and keep his party together rather than making it clear that neither lying nor rank incompetence was acceptable.
It will take more than 1 Parliament to restore a reputation for both integrity and competence. Labour being as bad is not going to be enough.
Biden 2.42-2.46
Harris 2.74-2.82
:-(
🗣️ 'People have been too scared to speak out'
Nicola Sturgeon 'personality cult' blamed for SNP defeat as an 'apology' has been demanded
https://x.com/ScotNational/status/1809901926240125038
The striking thing isn't so much who's saying it, but who's publishing it.....
Asked whether he had played back the debate video tape to review it, he could not remember.
Quizzed on why it all went wrong he started on about being thrown by so many lies from Trump. The interviewer pointed out it went wrong from question 1.
And so on.
Dems from House of Reps are meeting later today iirc.
In fairness, he did resign as Chancellor when the lying got so egregious and he did argue against Truss's childish solutions during their leadership campaign which he lost but as PM he tried too hard to herd cats and keep his party together rather than making it clear that neither lying nor rank incompetence was acceptable.
It will take more than 1 Parliament to restore a reputation for both integrity and competence. Labour being as bad is not going to be enough.
The gambling, especially by his PPS, at the last minute was the icing on the cake.
I'm sure you are aware there will be a by election in Asser's vacated council seat in Beckton on the 18th - this is going to be tough for Labour under the circumstances and I imagine the Newham Independents will fight it hard.
The Maryland and Forest Gate North by elections last Thursday followed the overall pattern - Labour down 20 on their 2022 numbers, the Greens about the same and the Newham Independent candidates polling 20-25%.
There's also a by election in Little Ilford on the 18th - Tahir Mirza, who stood in East Ham in the GE and was the candidate for the Newham Independents in 2022, is standing again and he has a chance against Labour.
The 2026 locals will be a three way fight between Labour, the Greens and the Newham Independents.
Harriet Harman was being a bit more open on election night about what Labour would do in power, and she was clear that auto-registration was about expanding representation for people not currently on the register.
That seems like a very strong hint that it would be followed by new boundaries.
I must also apologise to you for the rude comment I made. Especially as you are usually incredibly courteous. I was a little tired and emotional !!
In the future however, such voters will be motivated more to kick the government than to kick the Tories. If Reform survives, it could hurt Labour in seats where it came second, by picking up Conservatives voting tactically, and swing voters unhappy with Labour.
Unlike the rest of PB however, I also recognise and respect the good. And I think the brand damage, which I freely acknowledge, has been worsened considerably by Conservatives willingly buying into, and even accentuating, false and economically illiterate narratives about Truss's responsibility for everything that went wrong. It's not easy to explain LDIs, or bond market instability, or cliff edges, but Tories shouldn't have been the ones heaping it all on Truss, which as far as I can see was done purely to make Sunak look good.
- Alex Neil blames Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney and Humza Yousaf
- Sturgeon blames Swinney's campaign
- Joanna Cherry blames Sturgeon & Ian Blackford
- Blackford says Cherry 'bitter'
https://x.com/kacnutt/status/1809882898905895233
No Ian Blackford I’m not bitter at all. For me this is something of a liberation. Although I feel awful for my staff. It’s time the truth of the last decade was told & I mean the full truth including your leadership failings & appalling behaviour towards me.
https://x.com/joannaccherry/status/1809896007250948253
So, having taken "incompetence" out of the Tory playbook, the SNP have added "internecine warfare"....
But there was a very big turnout last Sunday and Le Pen came first
🤷🏼♂️
I will be in France by 4pm and ready to test the mood
It is a very good way of ensuring MPs don’t go awol or misbehave.
There's the potential for the same this time, especially if Starmer proves to be rather more willing to realign with the EU that it appeared during the campaign.
"A vote for us is a vote for Indy"
"Fuck off then..."
Where does a party of Indy go when voters don't want what they are selling?
If you mean potential bias from alphabetical order, there are ways round that.
So, nobody wins, but Macron loses 100 seats, making the Assembly more chaotic.
They are viciously divided, still under police investigation, and after so many years in power they’re as jaded as they are corrupt
@NiallStanage
·
13h
This is getting almost surreal now.
A senior White House Official, though unnamed, is telling the
@NYTimes Biden should stand aside.
https://x.com/NiallStanage/status/1809705566874247656
I was on a neurological ward in the late 90s and was forever having to tell doctors and nurses about Tony Blair.
Rule 1 has to be to move the costs of motoring from being mostly sunk costs to mostly per mile costs. So petrol duty goes and VED goes. If you are bold MOT fees go and insurance goes (the road toll insures you instead and is factored into it). If you are really bold you move to pay for tbe car by mile through an account like Student loans that is paid for through the road toll.
So it is cheap (upfront) to buy a car, and expensive to use it. Good for selling cars and good for removing congestion.
People like pensioners will end up better off as they are low mileage.
Reps in flashy cars get hammered.
Lorries pay their fair proportion of road infrastructure building and maintenance costs.
Buses become a no brainer for short urban journeys cost wise and train fares become value compared with hammering up then M1.
Plus you can charge more at peak times when roads are congested, charge more for better quality roads and charge penal rates over short distances for rat runs and quarter mile journeys ending at schools during school "rush hour".
A revolution but something Starmer needs to get on with NOW to get it done over the heads of vested interests.
It might even change the balance so much that new or reopened railways /light rail become a commercialy viable proposition, privately funded.
1 strikingly attractive and also a young woman
And
2. Possessed of great tattle if he overheard my agent’s gossip about Starmer
What about jobs? Indy
What about the cost of living? Indy
What about corruption and incompetence? INDY !!!
The Tories should take note as they are probably about to make the same mistake
What about jobs? Immigration
What about the cost of living? Immigration
What about corruption and incompetence? IMMIGRATION !!!
It's a big thing live on TV. Everyone wants the 1.
4 is the literal sound of death.
It's a number for the candidate, not the Party.
So Parties have different numbers, dependant on location.
Clifton Pro Cathedral was abandoned fifty years ago due to structural problems, but Clifton Cathedral is going along just fine.
Now look at them
While it may be true that in the abstract when asked by a pollster whether they want Indy, some people said yes, last week in the voting booths when asked to put stubby pencil to paper in favour of it (as expressed by the SNP campaign) they overwhelmingly said "fuck that"
2014 was the high watermark
If nothing else, it would stop the removal of the oldest and most polluting vehicles from the road.
The problem is trust - everyone I speak to is utterly convinced that road pricing will be on top of existing taxes and that the War On Roads will continue. They think they will be paying more for less.
What happened to the stubby pencil on a string? We had brand new (in the morning, at least) ordinary pencils of normal length collected with our ballot papers. Easier for Special Branch to rub out the X's, I suppose.
Then start to ramp it up in a transparently symmetrical relationship with declining fuel duty income as ICE cars are phased out.
iirc it is quite late this year and so there's been issues with the ballot for Ohio.
Given a choice between Farage and Blackford, give me Farage.
And I despise Farage.
You can also randomise, and do different batches of papers with different orders. Google "Robson Rotation", also from Australia.
The huge energy required to build and dispose of cars means that scrapping them early causes far more carbon to be emitted than the marginal amount for extra fuel (compaed with a newer more efficient vehicles over those five years)
If a car lasts twenty years, then two cars need to be built and demolished every forty years.
If a car lasts ten years then four cars need to be built and demolished every forty years.
Paying people to scrap early (scrappage) is about the most environentally unfriendly thing you can do. Its just a subsidy to motor manufacturers at taxpayers expense. Basically legitimised corruption.
So as you correctly point out, if someone is having to prove a negative there is a reason why they need to which doesn’t help inspire confidence.
Here at @focaldataHQ we’ve produced a 53,000 person survey weighted to the result on “How Britain Voted” at #GE24...
The Conservatives lost votes to everyone. 25% of the 2019 vote to Reform, 23% to the left. The latter count double. Losing votes to the left ensured election defeat. Bleeding so heavily to reform turned that defeat into a cataclysm.
https://x.com/JamesKanag/status/1809906698385002988
Not trying to ape the Greens’ economic policies.
Let's hope too that the planning framework includes provision for 4G/5G connectivity as this is now essential for growth.
The propping up puts me in mind of Charlie Kennedy. Presumably the proppers do it because their importance derives 100% from the main man and or because they can't agree about the succession. I can't think of a non contemptible excuse for doing it.
Expect more running costs, less investment and less trains in the future.
The SNP support Indy. The Greens support Indy. Therefore we are the same...
The Tories hate immigrants. RefUK hate immigrants. Therefore we are the same...
Both of these strategies lead to disaster. The SNP already found out. The Tories are entering the fuck around stage right now
It doesn't look to me like the markets are pricing in an interest rate cut any time soon;
https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=TVC:GB06MY
People who know about these things: Am I looking at the right chart?
Is there a better chart/data out there indicating the market expectations of interest rate cuts by the end of the year?
'cos it looks to me like when Rishi called the election, expectations were no cuts before the end of the year.
The random factor is whether Tice and Farage are really in it for the long haul, or the short grift.