Can anybody help me out with 2 bets I made? I'm struggling to find the official turn out and vote share for the cons or at least what skybet use to settle bets. I had cons on 24-25.99 and turnout 60-62.49 but skybet have settled them as losers. Plus if they have erred what is the best way to challenge them?
Edit seems that the places I've seen have rounded up the con share still can't find an official turn out figure though, my googling isn't up to snuff today it seems.
Labour makes it clear we need a ceasefire and a Palestinian state. Good soundings from SKS.
One would assume that the new Attorney General (who, I think, is the only change made to ministers in or attending cabinet, save that forced by the Green victory in Bristol,) is already hard at work on the Gaza problem. An embargo on arms exports to Israel would not be a complete surprise, and could be implemented without causing much harm to industry as they are negligible AIUI.
@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.
Excellent stuff. The key is that transfer of cost from fixed to marginal.
Solution 1: Car clubs. Most cars spend 95% of their time parked up on the street, taking up valuable space in towns and cities, depreciating value. Car clubs solve that problem as well as the fixed/marginal inbalance. .
Aren't you going to hit the issue we hit with renewables? It's alright to say that 95% of the time the car is parked on the street, but that 5% of time is when almost everyone needs to use it.
@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.
Excellent stuff. The key is that transfer of cost from fixed to marginal.
Solution 1: Car clubs. Most cars spend 95% of their time parked up on the street, taking up valuable space in towns and cities, depreciating value. Car clubs solve that problem as well as the fixed/marginal inbalance. .
Aren't you going to hit the issue we hit with renewables? It's alright to say that 95% of the time the car is parked on the street, but that 5% of time is when almost everyone needs to use it.
Yes, that still remains an issue with car clubs. Weekend use tends to be higher than during the week, so if there is a good forecast it's very difficult to get one. But for commuters in cities where this is good public transport and active options, car use tends to be very low on weekdays.
The main people they benefit are people who wouldn't be able to afford a car in the first place. The other element is vans - cars come in very useful for when you are moving flat or taking stuff to the tip. A van hired for two hours is even better.
Can anybody help me out with 2 bets I made? I'm struggling to find the official turn out and vote share for the cons or at least what skybet use to settle bets. I had cons on 24-25.99 and turnout 60-62.49 but skybet have settled them as losers. Plus if they have erred what is the best way to challenge them?
Edit seems that the places I've seen have rounded up the con share still can't find an official turn out figure though, my googling isn't up to snuff today it seems.
Con share is 23.7, turnout 59.9% so afraid you hit the crossbar with both.
In an unprecedented development, the UK Government has managed a full 24 hours without a single one making a racist comment, caught openly lying, being busted for a sexual offence or a financial fraud, or channeling cash to their family.
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.
There's a certain cadre of Conservatives who are only "Conservative" by virtue of their class and schooling, and have no real intention of doing anything right-wing and, indeed, are ashamed of it - they secretly despise the members because they're not.
They are just there because they want to be in office with their own kind.
It's a problem that goes back decades.
And had been slowly fading away until Cameron won the leadership when he put it into reverse.
@TSE Sir! sir! He said something bad about Mr Cameron Sir! Is he getting detention?
Labour makes it clear we need a ceasefire and a Palestinian state. Good soundings from SKS.
What anyone in this country thinks won't make the slightest difference to the situation, regrettably.
But voters, especially rather a lot of Muslim voters who are or were friendly to Labour, care about this very much. Labour lost three or four MPs to Gaza eruptions IIRC, and the Health Secretary also narrowly avoided the chop. Dealing with this situation has to be a political as well as a moral priority for the Government.
Even journalists standing in Downing St wondering what might be announced is refreshing. Usually, by now, the Telegraph would have 70% of the full text, the Mail would be telling us all what to think about it, and the Sun would have anonymous senior sources complaining about it.
Can anybody help me out with 2 bets I made? I'm struggling to find the official turn out and vote share for the cons or at least what skybet use to settle bets. I had cons on 24-25.99 and turnout 60-62.49 but skybet have settled them as losers. Plus if they have erred what is the best way to challenge them?
Edit seems that the places I've seen have rounded up the con share still can't find an official turn out figure though, my googling isn't up to snuff today it seems.
Con share is 23.7, turnout 59.9% so afraid you hit the crossbar with both.
Cheers Pulpstar, don't know why I was failing so badly in getting accurate figures. Oh well, I was relying on those for my profit since the others had all failed to come off. Breaking even overall so can't complain too much since I only dabble with low stakes.
@SuzyJourno · 13h Jim Allister celebrates his North Antrim win over Ian Paisley in style tonight. A piper leads the TUV leader & wife Ruth into the hooley in Ballymena's Tullyglass Hotel. Goujons, cocktail sausages, chips, traybakes & tea provided. And I'm told the orangeade was flowing! #GE24
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.
Truss winning over Sunak was a disaster for the conservative party
Sunak is a decent person and widely complimented on his resignation speech, but poor at politics but then he had idiotic advisors
Had Sunak taken office we would not have had the Truss disaster and the biggest gift to any opposition by any politicians in living memory
Sunak would still have lost because it was a change election but not the wipe out that happened
No. Truss and Sunk making it to the final run off was the disaster. Once there, it was selecting from two poor options. The membership selected a chance of upside against no chance of upside, and they have been utterly vindicated in the event.
Liz Truss was thrown out whereas Rishi Sunak has the largest remaining Tory majority in the country. There are good reasons for this.
The membership chose Truss over Sunak because they're delusional fantasists who thought Truss sounded more like the Sainted Margaret.
Oh do fuck off. Argue black is white if you want but don't bring psephologically-illiterate turds like the above to a political betting forum - try to keep a modicum of self-respect.
Labour should introduce PR by the end of this term.
Why would they do that? The current system works perfectly for them.
Presumably when they reach a point where they're about to lose the election under FPTP but could still govern under PR in a coalition with LDs, Greens.
Which, appealing to Labour self-interest (which is the only way any change is going to happen), my two term approach has a lot going for it.
If during the first term, cross-party agreement is reached (excepting the Tories, probably) and all those parties put the proposals for a fairer voting system into their manifesto, and together they command a large majority of both votes and seats at the election that follows, as is likely, then that dispenses with the need for a referendum. Which is surely what everyone will want?
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.
Truss winning over Sunak was a disaster for the conservative party
Sunak is a decent person and widely complimented on his resignation speech, but poor at politics but then he had idiotic advisors
Had Sunak taken office we would not have had the Truss disaster and the biggest gift to any opposition by any politicians in living memory
Sunak would still have lost because it was a change election but not the wipe out that happened
No. Truss and Sunk making it to the final run off was the disaster. Once there, it was selecting from two poor options. The membership selected a chance of upside against no chance of upside, and they have been utterly vindicated in the event.
Liz Truss was thrown out whereas Rishi Sunak has the largest remaining Tory majority in the country. There are good reasons for this.
The membership chose Truss over Sunak because they're delusional fantasists who thought Truss sounded more like the Sainted Margaret.
Oh do fuck off. Argue black is white if you want but don't bring psephologically-illiterate turds like the above to a political betting forum - try to keep a modicum of self-respect.
Even journalists standing in Downing St wondering what might be announced is refreshing. Usually, by now, the Telegraph would have 70% of the full text, the Mail would be telling us all what to think about it, and the Sun would have anonymous senior sources complaining about it.
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.
Truss winning over Sunak was a disaster for the conservative party
Sunak is a decent person and widely complimented on his resignation speech, but poor at politics but then he had idiotic advisors
Had Sunak taken office we would not have had the Truss disaster and the biggest gift to any opposition by any politicians in living memory
Sunak would still have lost because it was a change election but not the wipe out that happened
No. Truss and Sunk making it to the final run off was the disaster. Once there, it was selecting from two poor options. The membership selected a chance of upside against no chance of upside, and they have been utterly vindicated in the event.
Yes, clearly Truss did so much better than Sunak.
Truss made a poor, rushed attempt, and failed catastrophically. Sunak made no attempt, counselled despair, and brought despair. There's a gulf of difference between those two things. I value one a million times more than the other. And what did his supine posture actually acheive? Did the polls go up? Did the cost of borrowing come down? Did economic growth return?
Labour makes it clear we need a ceasefire and a Palestinian state. Good soundings from SKS.
What anyone in this country thinks won't make the slightest difference to the situation, regrettably.
But voters, especially rather a lot of Muslim voters who are or were friendly to Labour, care about this very much. Labour lost three or four MPs to Gaza eruptions IIRC, and the Health Secretary also narrowly avoided the chop. Dealing with this situation has to be a political as well as a moral priority for the Government.
Polling suggest Labour regained many Jewish votes, back up to 40% for the last election having been down near single figures under Corbyn, but its Muslim support has fallen dramatically.
Even journalists standing in Downing St wondering what might be announced is refreshing. Usually, by now, the Telegraph would have 70% of the full text, the Mail would be telling us all what to think about it, and the Sun would have anonymous senior sources complaining about it.
Why are civil servants commenting on politics? Their job is to implement the policy determined by ministers
And they didn't comment on Government policy, they implemented the policy however ludicrous where possible ( i.e. without legal stresses) until the Government fell or a Civil Servant left the employ of the Government.
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.
Truss winning over Sunak was a disaster for the conservative party
Sunak is a decent person and widely complimented on his resignation speech, but poor at politics but then he had idiotic advisors
Had Sunak taken office we would not have had the Truss disaster and the biggest gift to any opposition by any politicians in living memory
Sunak would still have lost because it was a change election but not the wipe out that happened
No. Truss and Sunk making it to the final run off was the disaster. Once there, it was selecting from two poor options. The membership selected a chance of upside against no chance of upside, and they have been utterly vindicated in the event.
Liz Truss was thrown out whereas Rishi Sunak has the largest remaining Tory majority in the country. There are good reasons for this.
The membership chose Truss over Sunak because they're delusional fantasists who thought Truss sounded more like the Sainted Margaret.
Oh do fuck off. Argue black is white if you want but don't bring psephologically-illiterate turds like the above to a political betting forum - try to keep a modicum of self-respect.
Temper temper
An upgrade on your last riposte in both insight and length.
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.
There's a certain cadre of Conservatives who are only "Conservative" by virtue of their class and schooling, and have no real intention of doing anything right-wing and, indeed, are ashamed of it - they secretly despise the members because they're not.
They are just there because they want to be in office with their own kind.
It's a problem that goes back decades.
And had been slowly fading away until Cameron won the leadership when he put it into reverse.
@TSE Sir! sir! He said something bad about Mr Cameron Sir! Is he getting detention?
@SuzyJourno · 13h Jim Allister celebrates his North Antrim win over Ian Paisley in style tonight. A piper leads the TUV leader & wife Ruth into the hooley in Ballymena's Tullyglass Hotel. Goujons, cocktail sausages, chips, traybakes & tea provided. And I'm told the orangeade was flowing! #GE24
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.
There's a certain cadre of Conservatives who are only "Conservative" by virtue of their class and schooling, and have no real intention of doing anything right-wing and, indeed, are ashamed of it - they secretly despise the members because they're not.
They are just there because they want to be in office with their own kind.
It's a problem that goes back decades.
And had been slowly fading away until Cameron won the leadership when he put it into reverse.
@TSE Sir! sir! He said something bad about Mr Cameron Sir! Is he getting detention?
His name is going on my list.
I shall soon deploy that Farage photo again.
Everyone please be careful - the Farage doomsday clock is at 1 minute to midnight.
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
And what was Brexit but a fantasy project?
EU membership was 'a project'. A sovereign Britain is the status quo ante.
A sovereign Britain in the sense we have it now is a relatively untried phenomenon. Prior to joining the EC we had a short post-colonial window. Before that it was an imperial Britain. Sovereign, yes, but fundamentally different in constitution and economy than now. Prior Imperial Britain, there wasn't a Britain politically at all.
We have entered waters that are not quite uncharted in our history, but poorly visited. We've have ~30 years worth of experience.
In theory, we continued to run monetary policy for the benefit of the Sterling area rather than ourselves until June 1972, so technically there was a gap of only six months between imperial Britain and European Britain.
You can possibly make the case for the 1967 devaluation demonstrating that the reality was somewhat different, but the degree of agonising over it (and the money poured into attempting to avoid it!) means that it's probably better to see it as an exception that proves the rule.
And we were certainly banging on the EEC's door at that point anyway, so it's reasonable to say that the result of Brexit leaves us in an entirely unprecedented situation.
Labour makes it clear we need a ceasefire and a Palestinian state. Good soundings from SKS.
What anyone in this country thinks won't make the slightest difference to the situation, regrettably.
But voters, especially rather a lot of Muslim voters who are or were friendly to Labour, care about this very much. Labour lost three or four MPs to Gaza eruptions IIRC, and the Health Secretary also narrowly avoided the chop. Dealing with this situation has to be a political as well as a moral priority for the Government.
Polling suggest Labour regained many Jewish votes, back up to 40% for the last election having been down near single figures under Corbyn, but its Muslim support has fallen dramatically.
There was also talk about the fall amongst Muslim voters due to the 2 child benefit cap, as they were more likely to be affected.
Given that they've heavily hinted that the cap will go, I suspect Labour were more worried about gaining votes elsewhere.
Whether being in power, and having more time to show that their stance is a lot more pro-Palestine than it had been portrayed, plus the end of the 2 child cap, will be enough to bring more Muslims back on board, remains to be seen.
Why are civil servants commenting on politics? Their job is to implement the policy determined by ministers
And they didn't comment on Government policy, they implemented the policy however ludicrous where possible ( i.e. without legal stresses) until the Government fell or a Civil Servant left the employ of the Government.
They are commenting on the last government’s policy in very political terms.
And there was lots of leaking from civil servants during the last government as well
Regardless of what you think of this specific policy, governments can’t operate effectively if they can’t freely debate the alternatives without risking civil servants playing politics
These are hard and so my rates will have to increase significantly. But still a much much better bet than Levido and whichever Cummings-look alike cretins have been advising you up till now.
Leadership
1. See the basic principles from my earlier post. People with a loose understanding of integrity should not even be in contention. That rules out Braverman and Jenrick - also on the grounds of competence.
2. Take your time. No-one wants to hear from you right now and they certainly don't want to hear retreads they've just blown a gigantic raspberry at. See also point 1.
3. Your new leader needs to be a new face or, at least, one capable of creating a new face for themselves and the party. Tetchy arrogance is not a good look. So think next generation or the bridge to it. If there is no-one ready yet look for another Michael Howard and accept this will be a long game.
4. Whatever you do stop looking for the next Cameron or Thatcher. You're meant to remember your granny not turn into her.
5. They will need one thing above all: courage. First, courage to speak some truths to the membership. Preserving and building on the best of the past does not mean living in it. If they don't like that message, the party will die. Be blunt and don't pander. Second: they will need the courage to tear up party shibboleths, be ruthless with the drama queens and be largely irrelevant for a while. That lack of attention gives some space to rebuild.
Opposition
This will be hard. You don't set the agenda. You will be blamed for everything. Find an answer to the obvious blame statements. One good one is: You're in power now so expect to be put under scrutiny for what you are doing now. Develop a thick skin.
You do have a lot of experience of government so you should know where the traps are. Plus you have quite a few ex-MPs who can give you useful intelligence. Use them.
Work on the competence and delivery angle: this is where governments come unstuck. So patiently ask questions, get into the detail, know your briefs and keep on asking questions and probing and pointing out errors etc.,. Think Jason Beer KC. Remember it's not whether they're doing things as you would like them to do. It's whether the government achieves what they have promised. That's what you attack and probe and target. That - if you do it well - is what will undermine voters' faith in a government and start the process of them looking at alternatives.
New faces please and ones who communicate as humans.
Ditch the entitlement: no group of voters belong to you, not Reform, not Blue Wall, no-one.
Do not copy the USA.
Remember: you are planning for the 2030's and beyond.
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.
Truss winning over Sunak was a disaster for the conservative party
Sunak is a decent person and widely complimented on his resignation speech, but poor at politics but then he had idiotic advisors
Had Sunak taken office we would not have had the Truss disaster and the biggest gift to any opposition by any politicians in living memory
Sunak would still have lost because it was a change election but not the wipe out that happened
No. Truss and Sunk making it to the final run off was the disaster. Once there, it was selecting from two poor options. The membership selected a chance of upside against no chance of upside, and they have been utterly vindicated in the event.
Liz Truss was thrown out whereas Rishi Sunak has the largest remaining Tory majority in the country. There are good reasons for this.
The membership chose Truss over Sunak because they're delusional fantasists who thought Truss sounded more like the Sainted Margaret.
I think Robert Buckley summarised it well in his speech after losing in Swindon. He mentioned cheap populism and said "Do we value those who work to bring people together and to come into politics to do something rather than be someone? Or do we shrug our shoulders and accept politics as a mere circus?"
Truss was a circus.
To a point, but she didn’t set out to be a circus, like Farage and his ilk. Or Johnson.
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.
Truss winning over Sunak was a disaster for the conservative party
Sunak is a decent person and widely complimented on his resignation speech, but poor at politics but then he had idiotic advisors
Had Sunak taken office we would not have had the Truss disaster and the biggest gift to any opposition by any politicians in living memory
Sunak would still have lost because it was a change election but not the wipe out that happened
No. Truss and Sunk making it to the final run off was the disaster. Once there, it was selecting from two poor options. The membership selected a chance of upside against no chance of upside, and they have been utterly vindicated in the event.
Liz Truss was thrown out whereas Rishi Sunak has the largest remaining Tory majority in the country. There are good reasons for this.
The membership chose Truss over Sunak because they're delusional fantasists who thought Truss sounded more like the Sainted Margaret.
Oh do fuck off. Argue black is white if you want but don't bring psephologically-illiterate turds like the above to a political betting forum - try to keep a modicum of self-respect.
Temper temper
An upgrade on your last riposte in both insight and length.
The problem was Liz Truss had a proven track record of incompetence which meant she should have been sacked from the cabinet after her disasterous time at Defra, certainly the worst Defra / MAFF secretary since 1979. It is very telling that you can be utterly useless at Defra and no-one who lies in bed while 6.00 am notices !
These are hard and so my rates will have to increase significantly. But still a much much better bet than Levido and whichever Cummings-look alike cretins have been advising you up till now.
Leadership
1. See the basic principles from my earlier post. People with a loose understanding of integrity should not even be in contention. That rules out Braverman and Jenrick - also on the grounds of competence.
2. Take your time. No-one wants to hear from you right now and they certainly don't want to hear retreads they've just blown a gigantic raspberry at. See also point 1.
3. Your new leader needs to be a new face or, at least, one capable of creating a new face for themselves and the party. Tetchy arrogance is not a good look. So think next generation or the bridge to it. If there is no-one ready yet look for another Michael Howard and accept this will be a long game.
4. Whatever you do stop looking for the next Cameron or Thatcher. You're meant to remember your granny not turn into her.
5. They will need one thing above all: courage. First, courage to speak some truths to the membership. Preserving and building on the best of the past does not mean living in it. If they don't like that message, the party will die. Be blunt and don't pander. Second: they will need the courage to tear up party shibboleths, be ruthless with the drama queens and be largely irrelevant for a while. That lack of attention gives some space to rebuild.
Opposition
This will be hard. You don't set the agenda. You will be blamed for everything. Find an answer to the obvious blame statements. One good one is: You're in power now so expect to be put under scrutiny for what you are doing now. Develop a thick skin.
You do have a lot of experience of government so you should know where the traps are. Plus you have quite a few ex-MPs who can give you useful intelligence. Use them.
Work on the competence and delivery angle: this is where governments come unstuck. So patiently ask questions, get into the detail, know your briefs and keep on asking questions and probing and pointing out errors etc.,. Think Jason Beer KC. Remember it's not whether they're doing things as you would like them to do. It's whether the government achieves what they have promised. That's what you attack and probe and target. That - if you do it well - is what will undermine voters' faith in a government and start the process of them looking at alternatives.
New faces please and ones who communicate as humans.
Ditch the entitlement: no group of voters belong to you, not Reform, not Blue Wall, no-one.
Do not copy the USA.
Remember: you are planning for the 2030's and beyond.
Another thing, use people's ignorance of parliamentary process to cause as much damage as you can. Two of the most damaging things about the government came from cheap shots at creating motions that the government forced its majority to vote against because they were impractical and came with extreme costs. One was the sewage into rivers. This country has the cleanest drinking water in the world and rivers and bathing areas the cleanest since we kept records. But voting against a motion to end all overflow releases (combined with a wet couple of years which had more than average) allowed a narrative to be built that we are literally swimming in sh*t. The second one was a similar process for free school meals. Despite the expansion of free school meals over what it used to be, and a series of "one off covid measures" (which ended up becoming permanent) to give funds to families on free school meals during school holidays, they government ended up on the wrong side of an argument and made to look like monsters.
It doesnt matter how big your opposition group is, because the purpose of these things is to goad the government into voting against.
Comments
I'm struggling to find the official turn out and vote share for the cons or at least what skybet use to settle bets.
I had cons on 24-25.99 and turnout 60-62.49 but skybet have settled them as losers.
Plus if they have erred what is the best way to challenge them?
Edit seems that the places I've seen have rounded up the con share still can't find an official turn out figure though, my googling isn't up to snuff today it seems.
Here's a remarkable stat:
There are more people in the Commons who were in Gordon Brown's last cabinet (2010) than were in Boris Johnson's cabinet when he resigned (2022).
Five vs three.
Here's how the civil servants saw it.
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/home-office-fury-rwanda-disaster-wrecked-asylum-3152575
The main people they benefit are people who wouldn't be able to afford a car in the first place. The other element is vans - cars come in very useful for when you are moving flat or taking stuff to the tip. A van hired for two hours is even better.
I know we don’t bet on the timings of elections in the current climate.
But I’d say a fiver on there being a by-election in Clacton before 2029 would be fairly safe.
In an unprecedented development, the UK Government has managed a full 24 hours without a single one making a racist comment, caught openly lying, being busted for a sexual offence or a financial fraud, or channeling cash to their family.
https://x.com/jdpoc/status/1809579530958344353
Among Blair's many mistakes was cosying up to Murdoch et al.
If during the first term, cross-party agreement is reached (excepting the Tories, probably) and all those parties put the proposals for a fairer voting system into their manifesto, and together they command a large majority of both votes and seats at the election that follows, as is likely, then that dispenses with the need for a referendum. Which is surely what everyone will want?
ludicrous where possible ( i.e. without legal stresses) until the Government fell or a Civil Servant left the employ of the Government.
I shall soon deploy that Farage photo again.
NEW THREAD
You can possibly make the case for the 1967 devaluation demonstrating that the reality was somewhat different, but the degree of agonising over it (and the money poured into attempting to avoid it!) means that it's probably better to see it as an exception that proves the rule.
And we were certainly banging on the EEC's door at that point anyway, so it's reasonable to say that the result of Brexit leaves us in an entirely unprecedented situation.
Given that they've heavily hinted that the cap will go, I suspect Labour were more worried about gaining votes elsewhere.
Whether being in power, and having more time to show that their stance is a lot more pro-Palestine than it had been portrayed, plus the end of the 2 child cap, will be enough to bring more Muslims back on board, remains to be seen.
And there was lots of leaking from civil servants during the last government as well
Regardless of what you think of this specific policy, governments can’t operate effectively if they can’t freely debate the alternatives without risking civil servants playing politics
Leadership and How To Do Opposition
These are hard and so my rates will have to increase significantly. But still a much much better bet than Levido and whichever Cummings-look alike cretins have been advising you up till now.
Leadership
1. See the basic principles from my earlier post. People with a loose understanding of integrity should not even be in contention. That rules out Braverman and Jenrick - also on the grounds of competence.
2. Take your time. No-one wants to hear from you right now and they certainly don't want to hear retreads they've just blown a gigantic raspberry at. See also point 1.
3. Your new leader needs to be a new face or, at least, one capable of creating a new face for themselves and the party. Tetchy arrogance is not a good look. So think next generation or the bridge to it. If there is no-one ready yet look for another Michael Howard and accept this will be a long game.
4. Whatever you do stop looking for the next Cameron or Thatcher. You're meant to remember your granny not turn into her.
5. They will need one thing above all: courage. First, courage to speak some truths to the membership. Preserving and building on the best of the past does not mean living in it. If they don't like that message, the party will die. Be blunt and don't pander. Second: they will need the courage to tear up party shibboleths, be ruthless with the drama queens and be largely irrelevant for a while. That lack of attention gives some space to rebuild.
Opposition
This will be hard. You don't set the agenda. You will be blamed for everything. Find an answer to the obvious blame statements. One good one is: You're in power now so expect to be put under scrutiny for what you are doing now. Develop a thick skin.
You do have a lot of experience of government so you should know where the traps are. Plus you have quite a few ex-MPs who can give you useful intelligence. Use them.
Work on the competence and delivery angle: this is where governments come unstuck. So patiently ask questions, get into the detail, know your briefs and keep on asking questions and probing and pointing out errors etc.,. Think Jason Beer KC. Remember it's not whether they're doing things as you would like them to do. It's whether the government achieves what they have promised. That's what you attack and probe and target. That - if you do it well - is what will undermine voters' faith in a government and start the process of them looking at alternatives.
New faces please and ones who communicate as humans.
Ditch the entitlement: no group of voters belong to you, not Reform, not Blue Wall, no-one.
Do not copy the USA.
Remember: you are planning for the 2030's and beyond.
Truss just struck me as a naive ideologue.
One was the sewage into rivers. This country has the cleanest drinking water in the world and rivers and bathing areas the cleanest since we kept records. But voting against a motion to end all overflow releases (combined with a wet couple of years which had more than average) allowed a narrative to be built that we are literally swimming in sh*t. The second one was a similar process for free school meals. Despite the expansion of free school meals over what it used to be, and a series of "one off covid measures" (which ended up becoming permanent) to give funds to families on free school meals during school holidays, they government ended up on the wrong side of an argument and made to look like monsters.
It doesnt matter how big your opposition group is, because the purpose of these things is to goad the government into voting against.