Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election. Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252. The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.
All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.
Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.
Ask Marcus Fysh.
A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".
Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.
On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".
He’s a right wing nutter. I’m glad he doesn’t agree with the composition of the Conservative Party
Room in the 'broad church' for everyone except those with right wing views eh? Surprise surprise. Like 'party loyalty', a concept that only applies one way.
I didn’t say that.
It was Fysh who was trying to define what the Conservative Party should be
Before the election, CCHQ tried to parachute a candidate into a seat who couldn't accept because they were already on the Lib Dem's candidates list. That's an extreme example of a selection process that stuff safe seats with ideological opponents to conservatism. It demonstrates a very profound issue that goes to the heart of the party's disunity and ineffectiveness in Government. The Tory Party used to be a lot more democratic, with local associations selecting MPs, a democratic right that they gave up in return for a say in the leadership, which CCHQ is also trying to take off them.
There does need to be a broad church, but everyone in that church should be motivated imho by a basic belief in the values of conservatism, however mild that form of conservatism might be. How else can they represent the interests of conservative voters?
The problem is that there *is* overlap between some of the parties in the centre, and you want that to be a hard-and-fast boundary. But without going to the NF or BNP, there is no boundary on the right. You want to truncate the broad church in the centre, but let any nutcase in on the far right.
But IMV the key word for Conservatives is the small-c word 'conservative'. Not no change, but careful and well-planned change, cautiously made. Progress by evolution rather than revolution.
The Conservative Party have forgotten that over the last decade.
But that notion is one of parties occupying a silly sort of space on left/right spectrum. A band that contracts, expands, and is pushed up and down like a pipe cleaner with the vagaries of politics.
What I'm arguing for is belief in a set of values and principles by which all political actions are measured. Is a law adding to the powers of the state against individual? Is a law or treaty in the national interest or against it? Is a law adding unduly to the tax burden? Will a law fundamentally undermine the security of the nation or its ability to defend itself? Is a law in the interests of families? Is a political action conducive to a strong, cohesive society? Is a law conducive to parliamentary sovereignty?
It isn't really about right and left, though those terms can be useful shorthand. A lot of the PCP, through design by CCHQ for reasons which I can't discern, doesn't pay more than lip service to those values, and sometimes not even that.
The issue is that the way those topics viewed can very much be in the eyes of he beholder, e.g. what is the national interest, especially if you take short- and long-term into account? They can also be contradictory. Is a slightly increased tax burden justified if that tax money is spent in the national interest? This treaty may slightly reduce national sovereignty, but also be in the national interest.
I think they're less ambiguous than you indicate. But they do come in and out of fashion.
There are fashionable weasel words that would justify the closing of Britain's virgin steel making capacity, dealing a knockout blow to our ability to manufacture armaments without importing the steel, based on amorphous envisaged future benefits of 'setting a good example' on CO2 emissions, but no true adherent to Tory principles could ever support such a scheme. Another Tory principle is that families and individuals spend their money better than the state. If adherence to these principles was widespread within the PCP, neither the party nor the country would be in the mess they are in.
I think Thatcher would have been thoroughly on board with reducing CO2 emissions. I think she was the first major world leader to take it seriously, along with CFCs and acid rain.
Her own words:
"For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world's systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.
Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some [end p4] to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century. This was brought home to me at the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver last year when the President of the Maldive Islands reminded us that the highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above sea level. The population is 177,000. It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s—though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain!
The second matter under discussion is the discovery by the British Antarctic Survey of a large hole in the ozone layer which protects life from ultra-violet radiation. We don't know the full implications of the ozone hole nor how it may interact with the greenhouse effect. Nevertheless it was common sense to support a worldwide agreement in Montreal last year to halve world consumption of chlorofluorocarbons by the end of the century. As the sole measure to limit ozone depletion, this may be insufficient but it is a start in reducing the pace of change while we continue the detailed study of the problem on which our (the British) Stratospheric Ozone Review Group is about to report.
The third matter is acid deposition which has affected soils, lakes and trees downwind from industrial centres. Extensive action is being taken to cut down emission of sulphur and nitrogen oxides from power stations at great but necessary expense."
According to you, Thatcher would not be a Conservative...
Yes, she was bright - and understood the science.
Oh, that we had politicians of her calibre again today.
The good news about that is that the second and third issues - Ozone Layer depletion and acid rain deposition - have basically now been solved, which is good news.
On topic, I think we should give a big shout to Baxter's Electoral Calculus seat calculator.
As far as I can tell it handled this weird election really well. Plug in the actual election vote shares and you get: C126, L412, LD67, Ref 8, Green 3, SNP 11, PC 3. That is startlingly close.
The challenge as ever is knowing what the vote shares are going to be.
Looks like the increased turnout is increased for BOTH sides en France
It’s obvious where this leads. A chaotic anti RN coalition for 3 years which endlessly bickers and does nothing and then Le Pen comes in and says: make me le President. End the chaos. And they do?
That's what I think too. All the benefits with none of the actual hassle of Governing. It's what everyone wants.
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election. Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252. The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.
All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.
Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.
Ask Marcus Fysh.
A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".
Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.
On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".
He’s a right wing nutter. I’m glad he doesn’t agree with the composition of the Conservative Party
Room in the 'broad church' for everyone except those with right wing views eh? Surprise surprise. Like 'party loyalty', a concept that only applies one way.
I didn’t say that.
It was Fysh who was trying to define what the Conservative Party should be
Before the election, CCHQ tried to parachute a candidate into a seat who couldn't accept because they were already on the Lib Dem's candidates list. That's an extreme example of a selection process that stuff safe seats with ideological opponents to conservatism. It demonstrates a very profound issue that goes to the heart of the party's disunity and ineffectiveness in Government. The Tory Party used to be a lot more democratic, with local associations selecting MPs, a democratic right that they gave up in return for a say in the leadership, which CCHQ is also trying to take off them.
There does need to be a broad church, but everyone in that church should be motivated imho by a basic belief in the values of conservatism, however mild that form of conservatism might be. How else can they represent the interests of conservative voters?
The problem is that there *is* overlap between some of the parties in the centre, and you want that to be a hard-and-fast boundary. But without going to the NF or BNP, there is no boundary on the right. You want to truncate the broad church in the centre, but let any nutcase in on the far right.
But IMV the key word for Conservatives is the small-c word 'conservative'. Not no change, but careful and well-planned change, cautiously made. Progress by evolution rather than revolution.
The Conservative Party have forgotten that over the last decade.
But that notion is one of parties occupying a silly sort of space on left/right spectrum. A band that contracts, expands, and is pushed up and down like a pipe cleaner with the vagaries of politics.
What I'm arguing for is belief in a set of values and principles by which all political actions are measured. Is a law adding to the powers of the state against individual? Is a law or treaty in the national interest or against it? Is a law adding unduly to the tax burden? Will a law fundamentally undermine the security of the nation or its ability to defend itself? Is a law in the interests of families? Is a political action conducive to a strong, cohesive society? Is a law conducive to parliamentary sovereignty?
It isn't really about right and left, though those terms can be useful shorthand. A lot of the PCP, through design by CCHQ for reasons which I can't discern, doesn't pay more than lip service to those values, and sometimes not even that.
The issue is that the way those topics viewed can very much be in the eyes of he beholder, e.g. what is the national interest, especially if you take short- and long-term into account? They can also be contradictory. Is a slightly increased tax burden justified if that tax money is spent in the national interest? This treaty may slightly reduce national sovereignty, but also be in the national interest.
I think they're less ambiguous than you indicate. But they do come in and out of fashion.
There are fashionable weasel words that would justify the closing of Britain's virgin steel making capacity, dealing a knockout blow to our ability to manufacture armaments without importing the steel, based on amorphous envisaged future benefits of 'setting a good example' on CO2 emissions, but no true adherent to Tory principles could ever support such a scheme. Another Tory principle is that families and individuals spend their money better than the state. If adherence to these principles was widespread within the PCP, neither the party nor the country would be in the mess they are in.
I think Thatcher would have been thoroughly on board with reducing CO2 emissions. I think she was the first major world leader to take it seriously, along with CFCs and acid rain.
Her own words:
"For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world's systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.
Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some [end p4] to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century. This was brought home to me at the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver last year when the President of the Maldive Islands reminded us that the highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above sea level. The population is 177,000. It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s—though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain!
The second matter under discussion is the discovery by the British Antarctic Survey of a large hole in the ozone layer which protects life from ultra-violet radiation. We don't know the full implications of the ozone hole nor how it may interact with the greenhouse effect. Nevertheless it was common sense to support a worldwide agreement in Montreal last year to halve world consumption of chlorofluorocarbons by the end of the century. As the sole measure to limit ozone depletion, this may be insufficient but it is a start in reducing the pace of change while we continue the detailed study of the problem on which our (the British) Stratospheric Ozone Review Group is about to report.
The third matter is acid deposition which has affected soils, lakes and trees downwind from industrial centres. Extensive action is being taken to cut down emission of sulphur and nitrogen oxides from power stations at great but necessary expense."
According to you, Thatcher would not be a Conservative...
What a flimsy straw man. Thatcher was rightly extremely concerned about the evidence of global warming, but it is leaping a vast logical chasm to suggest that she would therefore have consented to give up virgin steel-making capacity in Britain, especially given the fact that it has not reduced the quantity of blast furnaces in the world - huge extra capacity has simply been built in India, where environmental standards are lower, so net CO2 may well go up. So the move surrenders a key component of national security, for zero environmental gain.
Do I take it from your attempt to co-opt a dead Margaret Thatcher into agreeing with the closure of Britain's last blast furnace, and therefore our ability to sustain independent armaments production during a war scenario, that you are in favour of this move?
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election. Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252. The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.
All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.
Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.
Ask Marcus Fysh.
A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".
Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.
On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".
He’s a right wing nutter. I’m glad he doesn’t agree with the composition of the Conservative Party
Room in the 'broad church' for everyone except those with right wing views eh? Surprise surprise. Like 'party loyalty', a concept that only applies one way.
I didn’t say that.
It was Fysh who was trying to define what the Conservative Party should be
Before the election, CCHQ tried to parachute a candidate into a seat who couldn't accept because they were already on the Lib Dem's candidates list. That's an extreme example of a selection process that stuff safe seats with ideological opponents to conservatism. It demonstrates a very profound issue that goes to the heart of the party's disunity and ineffectiveness in Government. The Tory Party used to be a lot more democratic, with local associations selecting MPs, a democratic right that they gave up in return for a say in the leadership, which CCHQ is also trying to take off them.
There does need to be a broad church, but everyone in that church should be motivated imho by a basic belief in the values of conservatism, however mild that form of conservatism might be. How else can they represent the interests of conservative voters?
The problem is that there *is* overlap between some of the parties in the centre, and you want that to be a hard-and-fast boundary. But without going to the NF or BNP, there is no boundary on the right. You want to truncate the broad church in the centre, but let any nutcase in on the far right.
But IMV the key word for Conservatives is the small-c word 'conservative'. Not no change, but careful and well-planned change, cautiously made. Progress by evolution rather than revolution.
The Conservative Party have forgotten that over the last decade.
But that notion is one of parties occupying a silly sort of space on left/right spectrum. A band that contracts, expands, and is pushed up and down like a pipe cleaner with the vagaries of politics.
What I'm arguing for is belief in a set of values and principles by which all political actions are measured. Is a law adding to the powers of the state against individual? Is a law or treaty in the national interest or against it? Is a law adding unduly to the tax burden? Will a law fundamentally undermine the security of the nation or its ability to defend itself? Is a law in the interests of families? Is a political action conducive to a strong, cohesive society? Is a law conducive to parliamentary sovereignty?
It isn't really about right and left, though those terms can be useful shorthand. A lot of the PCP, through design by CCHQ for reasons which I can't discern, doesn't pay more than lip service to those values, and sometimes not even that.
The issue is that the way those topics viewed can very much be in the eyes of he beholder, e.g. what is the national interest, especially if you take short- and long-term into account? They can also be contradictory. Is a slightly increased tax burden justified if that tax money is spent in the national interest? This treaty may slightly reduce national sovereignty, but also be in the national interest.
I think they're less ambiguous than you indicate. But they do come in and out of fashion.
There are fashionable weasel words that would justify the closing of Britain's virgin steel making capacity, dealing a knockout blow to our ability to manufacture armaments without importing the steel, based on amorphous envisaged future benefits of 'setting a good example' on CO2 emissions, but no true adherent to Tory principles could ever support such a scheme. Another Tory principle is that families and individuals spend their money better than the state. If adherence to these principles was widespread within the PCP, neither the party nor the country would be in the mess they are in.
I think Thatcher would have been thoroughly on board with reducing CO2 emissions. I think she was the first major world leader to take it seriously, along with CFCs and acid rain.
Her own words:
"For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world's systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.
Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some [end p4] to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century. This was brought home to me at the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver last year when the President of the Maldive Islands reminded us that the highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above sea level. The population is 177,000. It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s—though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain!
The second matter under discussion is the discovery by the British Antarctic Survey of a large hole in the ozone layer which protects life from ultra-violet radiation. We don't know the full implications of the ozone hole nor how it may interact with the greenhouse effect. Nevertheless it was common sense to support a worldwide agreement in Montreal last year to halve world consumption of chlorofluorocarbons by the end of the century. As the sole measure to limit ozone depletion, this may be insufficient but it is a start in reducing the pace of change while we continue the detailed study of the problem on which our (the British) Stratospheric Ozone Review Group is about to report.
The third matter is acid deposition which has affected soils, lakes and trees downwind from industrial centres. Extensive action is being taken to cut down emission of sulphur and nitrogen oxides from power stations at great but necessary expense."
According to you, Thatcher would not be a Conservative...
She would have been on board for funding research to develop commercially viable renewables solutions in the long term which people would freeely choose in a free market and a large nuclear programme to get us through the next fifty years if it was.
Not subsidising low energy dense Beta renewables solutions and doubling the cost of electricity in the process, driving industry to places like China where the biggest coal fired power generation project in world history continues and coercing people to buy inferior and expensive immature technology electric vehicles with huge subsidies and banning internal combustion engines.
I'd strongly argue that her work on CFCs and the Montreal agreement shows that your view is wrong. AIUI the replacement chemicals were not, and are not, as good (which is why some Chinese companies started using them again a few years ago, noted by an increase in ozone depletion).
Also see the Dash for Gas, which she set in motion for her successors.
The dash for gas was about destroying the NUM and trade union movement as a mob directing threat to democracy along with much else she did.
In the process it closed down indigenous coal mines for being "loss making" and put us in hoc to gas imports from Vladimir and sundry Sheiks as we discovered a couple of years back.
Things can be done for multiple reasons. The Dash for Gas was seen as being revenge to the miners back then; it's clear it was also far more forward-looking than that, as her own little-acknowledged words at the time (or just before) showed.
I look forward to Labour reopening all the coal mines and coal-fired power stations. Oh hang on, it's now the hard right that seems to want that...
As a lifelong Liberal and Liberal Democrat supporter and one time Party member, it's incredible to think we now have 72 MPs. I remember the thrill of 46 MPs in 1997 and thinking of that as a breakthrough but to imagine after the dark days of 2015, we now have 2 LD MPs for every 3 Conservatives - almost unbelievable.
I've often said on here the party I joined and worked for died in the fires of the coalition but, phoenix-like, that party has risen from the ashes of 2015 and has targeted ruthlessly to achieve such a result. Ed Davey is a product of ALDC and the campaigning techniques of that organisation (as was Farron) and it's perhaps no surprise the party has gone back to the future. Yes, a lot of it was the classic "high tide floating all boats" but that doesn't mean each and every gain wasn't the result of hard work.
I strongly suspect there is a significant correlation between local Government success, especially from 2022 onwards, and victory last Thursday and it's to other areas of local strength which were outside the scope of targeting this time the party needs to look for further progress. 2025 has to be about gains at County level and using those to develop organisation in new areas.
Given how some Conservatives enjoyed dancing on the LD graves in 2015, you'll forgive a wry smile as I look at the Conservatives "assessing their losses". The humiliation of 2015 has been avenged. Such is politics, a rough trade as someone once said.
But 71 Lib Dem seats in 2024 matter a lot less than a dozen did in 2015, because Labour's majority is so huge and they will obviously be mostly gone when the public want Labour out, whenever that is. Most of the public would be hard pressed to name a single LibDem policy I think. That's the way with protest votes, whether they are Reform, LibDem or Monster Raving Loony.
LibDems do a great job as "not the Tories!" Can they do the same as "not bloody Labour!"? Jury is very much out on that one.
I don't think they can.
Reform on the other hand could eviscerate Labour but would that benefit the Conservatives? Probably not by much.
The interesting thing about the new political reality is we now potentially have 2 parties on the left (Lab/LD) and 2 parties on the right (REF/CON). With the Greens in the mix here and there too.
What that does mean is that you could start seeing much more electoral geography coming into play.
A good chunk of seats are straight Lab/Con battles, but then you have Lab/Ref and LD/Con contests too.
I do not think it is inconceivable that by the time the next GE rolls around people will be voting essentially for one of two broad electoral coalitions, depending on where they live. By elections throughout the parliament will also demonstrate this (because split votes will equal a loss of the seat).
And this eventually is liable to make a coalition government next time more likely, and possibly electoral reform.
Looks like the increased turnout is increased for BOTH sides en France
It’s obvious where this leads. A chaotic anti RN coalition for 3 years which endlessly bickers and does nothing and then Le Pen comes in and says: make me le President. End the chaos. And they do?
Has she transed? Or would it be Mme La Présidente?
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
Looks like the increased turnout is increased for BOTH sides en France
It’s obvious where this leads. A chaotic anti RN coalition for 3 years which endlessly bickers and does nothing and then Le Pen comes in and says: make me le President. End the chaos. And they do?
One of the theories about the calling of an early election was the far right would get in, make a hash of things, and that would blunt their future chances. Not sure I buy that, but if they are the most popular party but locked out of governing, that presumably enables them to keep pushing that they have solutions the others are failing at - it's taken them this far, from under 10 seats to possibly over 200 in 7 years.
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election. Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252. The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.
All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.
Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.
Ask Marcus Fysh.
A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".
Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.
On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".
He’s a right wing nutter. I’m glad he doesn’t agree with the composition of the Conservative Party
Room in the 'broad church' for everyone except those with right wing views eh? Surprise surprise. Like 'party loyalty', a concept that only applies one way.
I didn’t say that.
It was Fysh who was trying to define what the Conservative Party should be
Before the election, CCHQ tried to parachute a candidate into a seat who couldn't accept because they were already on the Lib Dem's candidates list. That's an extreme example of a selection process that stuff safe seats with ideological opponents to conservatism. It demonstrates a very profound issue that goes to the heart of the party's disunity and ineffectiveness in Government. The Tory Party used to be a lot more democratic, with local associations selecting MPs, a democratic right that they gave up in return for a say in the leadership, which CCHQ is also trying to take off them.
There does need to be a broad church, but everyone in that church should be motivated imho by a basic belief in the values of conservatism, however mild that form of conservatism might be. How else can they represent the interests of conservative voters?
The problem is that there *is* overlap between some of the parties in the centre, and you want that to be a hard-and-fast boundary. But without going to the NF or BNP, there is no boundary on the right. You want to truncate the broad church in the centre, but let any nutcase in on the far right.
But IMV the key word for Conservatives is the small-c word 'conservative'. Not no change, but careful and well-planned change, cautiously made. Progress by evolution rather than revolution.
The Conservative Party have forgotten that over the last decade.
But that notion is one of parties occupying a silly sort of space on left/right spectrum. A band that contracts, expands, and is pushed up and down like a pipe cleaner with the vagaries of politics.
What I'm arguing for is belief in a set of values and principles by which all political actions are measured. Is a law adding to the powers of the state against individual? Is a law or treaty in the national interest or against it? Is a law adding unduly to the tax burden? Will a law fundamentally undermine the security of the nation or its ability to defend itself? Is a law in the interests of families? Is a political action conducive to a strong, cohesive society? Is a law conducive to parliamentary sovereignty?
It isn't really about right and left, though those terms can be useful shorthand. A lot of the PCP, through design by CCHQ for reasons which I can't discern, doesn't pay more than lip service to those values, and sometimes not even that.
The issue is that the way those topics viewed can very much be in the eyes of he beholder, e.g. what is the national interest, especially if you take short- and long-term into account? They can also be contradictory. Is a slightly increased tax burden justified if that tax money is spent in the national interest? This treaty may slightly reduce national sovereignty, but also be in the national interest.
I think they're less ambiguous than you indicate. But they do come in and out of fashion.
There are fashionable weasel words that would justify the closing of Britain's virgin steel making capacity, dealing a knockout blow to our ability to manufacture armaments without importing the steel, based on amorphous envisaged future benefits of 'setting a good example' on CO2 emissions, but no true adherent to Tory principles could ever support such a scheme. Another Tory principle is that families and individuals spend their money better than the state. If adherence to these principles was widespread within the PCP, neither the party nor the country would be in the mess they are in.
I think Thatcher would have been thoroughly on board with reducing CO2 emissions. I think she was the first major world leader to take it seriously, along with CFCs and acid rain.
Her own words:
"For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world's systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.
Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some [end p4] to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century. This was brought home to me at the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver last year when the President of the Maldive Islands reminded us that the highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above sea level. The population is 177,000. It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s—though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain!
The second matter under discussion is the discovery by the British Antarctic Survey of a large hole in the ozone layer which protects life from ultra-violet radiation. We don't know the full implications of the ozone hole nor how it may interact with the greenhouse effect. Nevertheless it was common sense to support a worldwide agreement in Montreal last year to halve world consumption of chlorofluorocarbons by the end of the century. As the sole measure to limit ozone depletion, this may be insufficient but it is a start in reducing the pace of change while we continue the detailed study of the problem on which our (the British) Stratospheric Ozone Review Group is about to report.
The third matter is acid deposition which has affected soils, lakes and trees downwind from industrial centres. Extensive action is being taken to cut down emission of sulphur and nitrogen oxides from power stations at great but necessary expense."
According to you, Thatcher would not be a Conservative...
What a flimsy straw man. Thatcher was rightly extremely concerned about the evidence of global warming, but it is leaping a vast logical chasm to suggest that she would therefore have consented to give up virgin steel-making capacity in Britain, especially given the fact that it has not reduced the quantity of blast furnaces in the world - huge extra capacity has simply been built in India, where environmental standards are lower, so net CO2 may well go up. So the move surrenders a key component of national security, for zero environmental gain.
Do I take it from your attempt to co-opt a dead Margaret Thatcher into agreeing with the closure of Britain's last blast furnace, and therefore our ability to sustain independent armaments production during a war scenario, that you are in favour of this move?
Her actions on CFCs show that she might well have taken some very hard decisions on such matters. I don't think the steelworkers saw her as a friend, do you?
I'm unsure why you're so obsessed with steelmaking in Britain. What 'alternate' websites have informed you about it? The same ones that made you shill for Putin over MH17?
On topic, I think we should give a big shout to Baxter's Electoral Calculus seat calculator.
As far as I can tell it handled this weird election really well. Plug in the actual election vote shares and you get: C126, L412, LD67, Ref 8, Green 3, SNP 11, PC 3. That is startlingly close.
The challenge as ever is knowing what the vote shares are going to be.
Yet Baxter is UNS with added twiddles.
We await analysis as to what extent Thursdays swing was uniform, or proportional.
Looks like the increased turnout is increased for BOTH sides en France
It’s obvious where this leads. A chaotic anti RN coalition for 3 years which endlessly bickers and does nothing and then Le Pen comes in and says: make me le President. End the chaos. And they do?
One of the theories about the calling of an early election was the far right would get in, make a hash of things, and that would blunt their future chances. Not sure I buy that, but if they are the most popular party but locked out of governing, that presumably enables them to keep pushing that they have solutions the others are failing at - it's taken them this far, from under 10 seats to possibly over 200 in 7 years.
Looks like the increased turnout is increased for BOTH sides en France
It’s obvious where this leads. A chaotic anti RN coalition for 3 years which endlessly bickers and does nothing and then Le Pen comes in and says: make me le President. End the chaos. And they do?
One of the theories about the calling of an early election was the far right would get in, make a hash of things, and that would blunt their future chances. Not sure I buy that, but if they are the most popular party but locked out of governing, that presumably enables them to keep pushing that they have solutions the others are failing at - it's taken them this far, from under 10 seats to possibly over 200 in 7 years.
Yes I actually think the worst outcome is RN largest party but no majority. Because it gives them a card to play at the Presidential election.
As a lifelong Liberal and Liberal Democrat supporter and one time Party member, it's incredible to think we now have 72 MPs. I remember the thrill of 46 MPs in 1997 and thinking of that as a breakthrough but to imagine after the dark days of 2015, we now have 2 LD MPs for every 3 Conservatives - almost unbelievable.
I've often said on here the party I joined and worked for died in the fires of the coalition but, phoenix-like, that party has risen from the ashes of 2015 and has targeted ruthlessly to achieve such a result. Ed Davey is a product of ALDC and the campaigning techniques of that organisation (as was Farron) and it's perhaps no surprise the party has gone back to the future. Yes, a lot of it was the classic "high tide floating all boats" but that doesn't mean each and every gain wasn't the result of hard work.
I strongly suspect there is a significant correlation between local Government success, especially from 2022 onwards, and victory last Thursday and it's to other areas of local strength which were outside the scope of targeting this time the party needs to look for further progress. 2025 has to be about gains at County level and using those to develop organisation in new areas.
Given how some Conservatives enjoyed dancing on the LD graves in 2015, you'll forgive a wry smile as I look at the Conservatives "assessing their losses". The humiliation of 2015 has been avenged. Such is politics, a rough trade as someone once said.
The thing that I note is that the LDs went up to 57 then 62 at the next 2 elections after 1997.
Davey's job is to be the experienced leader (only LD with Ministerial experience), making sure that his MPs spend sufficient effort both digging themselves in, and making some impact in Parliament. But he will be using some of his LD Lords in interesting ways.
Yes it's a huge majority, but that also means that the little attention the Opposition around policy / politics get will be more focused on LDs because the Tories will be doing some version of naval gazing.
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
How many of us need to look at a map to find Stirling? Just me then.
Much of England
Well yes, but that's nothing against Scotland. I suspect the same proportion of England would be equally useless in placing Worcester or Ripon or Lincoln.
As a lifelong Liberal and Liberal Democrat supporter and one time Party member, it's incredible to think we now have 72 MPs. I remember the thrill of 46 MPs in 1997 and thinking of that as a breakthrough but to imagine after the dark days of 2015, we now have 2 LD MPs for every 3 Conservatives - almost unbelievable.
I've often said on here the party I joined and worked for died in the fires of the coalition but, phoenix-like, that party has risen from the ashes of 2015 and has targeted ruthlessly to achieve such a result. Ed Davey is a product of ALDC and the campaigning techniques of that organisation (as was Farron) and it's perhaps no surprise the party has gone back to the future. Yes, a lot of it was the classic "high tide floating all boats" but that doesn't mean each and every gain wasn't the result of hard work.
I strongly suspect there is a significant correlation between local Government success, especially from 2022 onwards, and victory last Thursday and it's to other areas of local strength which were outside the scope of targeting this time the party needs to look for further progress. 2025 has to be about gains at County level and using those to develop organisation in new areas.
Given how some Conservatives enjoyed dancing on the LD graves in 2015, you'll forgive a wry smile as I look at the Conservatives "assessing their losses". The humiliation of 2015 has been avenged. Such is politics, a rough trade as someone once said.
But 71 Lib Dem seats in 2024 matter a lot less than a dozen did in 2015, because Labour's majority is so huge and they will obviously be mostly gone when the public want Labour out, whenever that is. Most of the public would be hard pressed to name a single LibDem policy I think. That's the way with protest votes, whether they are Reform, LibDem or Monster Raving Loony.
72. It's 72.
73 teamed up with the APNI
The Lib Dems should appoint Sorcha Eastwood as their Northern Ireland spokesperson. It would help the inclusion of Northern Ireland politics into wider British politics. It would also show NI voters the advantages of voting for a non sectarian party.
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election. Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252. The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.
All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.
Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.
Ask Marcus Fysh.
A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".
Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.
On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".
He’s a right wing nutter. I’m glad he doesn’t agree with the composition of the Conservative Party
Room in the 'broad church' for everyone except those with right wing views eh? Surprise surprise. Like 'party loyalty', a concept that only applies one way.
I didn’t say that.
It was Fysh who was trying to define what the Conservative Party should be
Before the election, CCHQ tried to parachute a candidate into a seat who couldn't accept because they were already on the Lib Dem's candidates list. That's an extreme example of a selection process that stuff safe seats with ideological opponents to conservatism. It demonstrates a very profound issue that goes to the heart of the party's disunity and ineffectiveness in Government. The Tory Party used to be a lot more democratic, with local associations selecting MPs, a democratic right that they gave up in return for a say in the leadership, which CCHQ is also trying to take off them.
There does need to be a broad church, but everyone in that church should be motivated imho by a basic belief in the values of conservatism, however mild that form of conservatism might be. How else can they represent the interests of conservative voters?
The problem is that there *is* overlap between some of the parties in the centre, and you want that to be a hard-and-fast boundary. But without going to the NF or BNP, there is no boundary on the right. You want to truncate the broad church in the centre, but let any nutcase in on the far right.
But IMV the key word for Conservatives is the small-c word 'conservative'. Not no change, but careful and well-planned change, cautiously made. Progress by evolution rather than revolution.
The Conservative Party have forgotten that over the last decade.
But that notion is one of parties occupying a silly sort of space on left/right spectrum. A band that contracts, expands, and is pushed up and down like a pipe cleaner with the vagaries of politics.
What I'm arguing for is belief in a set of values and principles by which all political actions are measured. Is a law adding to the powers of the state against individual? Is a law or treaty in the national interest or against it? Is a law adding unduly to the tax burden? Will a law fundamentally undermine the security of the nation or its ability to defend itself? Is a law in the interests of families? Is a political action conducive to a strong, cohesive society? Is a law conducive to parliamentary sovereignty?
It isn't really about right and left, though those terms can be useful shorthand. A lot of the PCP, through design by CCHQ for reasons which I can't discern, doesn't pay more than lip service to those values, and sometimes not even that.
The issue is that the way those topics viewed can very much be in the eyes of he beholder, e.g. what is the national interest, especially if you take short- and long-term into account? They can also be contradictory. Is a slightly increased tax burden justified if that tax money is spent in the national interest? This treaty may slightly reduce national sovereignty, but also be in the national interest.
I think they're less ambiguous than you indicate. But they do come in and out of fashion.
There are fashionable weasel words that would justify the closing of Britain's virgin steel making capacity, dealing a knockout blow to our ability to manufacture armaments without importing the steel, based on amorphous envisaged future benefits of 'setting a good example' on CO2 emissions, but no true adherent to Tory principles could ever support such a scheme. Another Tory principle is that families and individuals spend their money better than the state. If adherence to these principles was widespread within the PCP, neither the party nor the country would be in the mess they are in.
I think Thatcher would have been thoroughly on board with reducing CO2 emissions. I think she was the first major world leader to take it seriously, along with CFCs and acid rain.
Her own words:
"For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world's systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.
Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some [end p4] to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century. This was brought home to me at the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver last year when the President of the Maldive Islands reminded us that the highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above sea level. The population is 177,000. It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s—though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain!
The second matter under discussion is the discovery by the British Antarctic Survey of a large hole in the ozone layer which protects life from ultra-violet radiation. We don't know the full implications of the ozone hole nor how it may interact with the greenhouse effect. Nevertheless it was common sense to support a worldwide agreement in Montreal last year to halve world consumption of chlorofluorocarbons by the end of the century. As the sole measure to limit ozone depletion, this may be insufficient but it is a start in reducing the pace of change while we continue the detailed study of the problem on which our (the British) Stratospheric Ozone Review Group is about to report.
The third matter is acid deposition which has affected soils, lakes and trees downwind from industrial centres. Extensive action is being taken to cut down emission of sulphur and nitrogen oxides from power stations at great but necessary expense."
According to you, Thatcher would not be a Conservative...
What a flimsy straw man. Thatcher was rightly extremely concerned about the evidence of global warming, but it is leaping a vast logical chasm to suggest that she would therefore have consented to give up virgin steel-making capacity in Britain, especially given the fact that it has not reduced the quantity of blast furnaces in the world - huge extra capacity has simply been built in India, where environmental standards are lower, so net CO2 may well go up. So the move surrenders a key component of national security, for zero environmental gain.
Do I take it from your attempt to co-opt a dead Margaret Thatcher into agreeing with the closure of Britain's last blast furnace, and therefore our ability to sustain independent armaments production during a war scenario, that you are in favour of this move?
Quite what your war scenario is that has you so outraged on behalf of Mrs T's ghost, I'm not clear.
Join the club - I'm not at all clear on the point you're making. We know that the British steel industry has been on its knees for ages and this is just the coup de grace. During peacetime, of course we can import whatever steel we want from India or China - during wartime, it would be a great deal harder, especially if we're at war with a military alliance of our previous suppliers. I'm loving your insouciance about the prospect of war by the way - it makes a change from your stark warnings that Putin might march across Europe and pop over the channel at any moment.
As a lifelong Liberal and Liberal Democrat supporter and one time Party member, it's incredible to think we now have 72 MPs. I remember the thrill of 46 MPs in 1997 and thinking of that as a breakthrough but to imagine after the dark days of 2015, we now have 2 LD MPs for every 3 Conservatives - almost unbelievable.
I've often said on here the party I joined and worked for died in the fires of the coalition but, phoenix-like, that party has risen from the ashes of 2015 and has targeted ruthlessly to achieve such a result. Ed Davey is a product of ALDC and the campaigning techniques of that organisation (as was Farron) and it's perhaps no surprise the party has gone back to the future. Yes, a lot of it was the classic "high tide floating all boats" but that doesn't mean each and every gain wasn't the result of hard work.
I strongly suspect there is a significant correlation between local Government success, especially from 2022 onwards, and victory last Thursday and it's to other areas of local strength which were outside the scope of targeting this time the party needs to look for further progress. 2025 has to be about gains at County level and using those to develop organisation in new areas.
Given how some Conservatives enjoyed dancing on the LD graves in 2015, you'll forgive a wry smile as I look at the Conservatives "assessing their losses". The humiliation of 2015 has been avenged. Such is politics, a rough trade as someone once said.
But 71 Lib Dem seats in 2024 matter a lot less than a dozen did in 2015, because Labour's majority is so huge and they will obviously be mostly gone when the public want Labour out, whenever that is. Most of the public would be hard pressed to name a single LibDem policy I think. That's the way with protest votes, whether they are Reform, LibDem or Monster Raving Loony.
72. It's 72.
73 teamed up with the APNI
The Lib Dems should appoint Sorcha Eastwood as their Northern Ireland spokesperson. It would help the inclusion of Northern Ireland politics into wider British politics. It would also show NI voters the advantages of voting for a non sectarian party.
I think that's a great idea, and being non-sectarian that might be easier to swallow than alliances between any of the other parties and GB equivalents.
Looks like the increased turnout is increased for BOTH sides en France
It’s obvious where this leads. A chaotic anti RN coalition for 3 years which endlessly bickers and does nothing and then Le Pen comes in and says: make me le President. End the chaos. And they do?
One of the theories about the calling of an early election was the far right would get in, make a hash of things, and that would blunt their future chances. Not sure I buy that, but if they are the most popular party but locked out of governing, that presumably enables them to keep pushing that they have solutions the others are failing at - it's taken them this far, from under 10 seats to possibly over 200 in 7 years.
Gotta say it does look quite fash-adjacent. This place could - understandably - vote Nazi in despair any moment
This trying to empathise with the French business will do you no good you know!
(Is there an any way similar website to PB in France? A mere echo though it must be of course.)
I’m in Menerbes. One of the plus nice villages de France. It is absurdly beaut
No riots….. YET
I studied and lived on the Cote D'Azur for three months. Filthy little dogs shitting everywhere. Watch where you're puting your Gucci loafers.
I’ve no intention of going to the coast. It’s vulgar and full of gangsters. And I might meet @Roger
You should. It's at it's sparkling best and full of people you'll recognise. Two exhibitions you might like. Bettina Rheims in Nice and Pasolini in Monaco. Bettina Rheims shows that Me2 doesn't apply to women and Pasolini......is just Pasolini. Then if you can wait the Tour de France ends in Nice on the 17th and the Olympic torch is wending its way from VF to Paris as I type....
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
How many of us need to look at a map to find Stirling? Just me then.
Much of England
Well yes, but that's nothing against Scotland. I suspect the same proportion of England would be equally useless in placing Worcester or Ripon or Lincoln.
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
How many of us need to look at a map to find Stirling? Just me then.
Much of England
Can you find Hemel Hempstead?
Can anyone? It is more elusive than Milton Keynes.
To previous poster , Given I have lived in Little Gaddesden and Hemel Hempstead itself , I would say an emphatic YES. Some of us are educated and have travelled.
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
How many of us need to look at a map to find Stirling? Just me then.
Much of England
Can you find Hemel Hempstead?
Can anyone? It is more elusive than Milton Keynes.
To previous poster , Given I have lived in Little Gaddesden and Hemel Hempstead itself , I would say an emphatic YES. Some of us are educated and have travelled.
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
How many of us need to look at a map to find Stirling? Just me then.
Much of England
Well yes, but that's nothing against Scotland. I suspect the same proportion of England would be equally useless in placing Worcester or Ripon or Lincoln.
Cookie , not if educated surely, small obscure / country places perhaps.
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
How many of us need to look at a map to find Stirling? Just me then.
Much of England
Can you find Hemel Hempstead?
Can anyone? It is more elusive than Milton Keynes.
To previous poster , Given I have lived in Little Gaddesden and Hemel Hempstead itself , I would say an emphatic YES. Some of us are educated and have travelled.
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
How many of us need to look at a map to find Stirling? Just me then.
Much of England
Well yes, but that's nothing against Scotland. I suspect the same proportion of England would be equally useless in placing Worcester or Ripon or Lincoln.
As a lifelong Liberal and Liberal Democrat supporter and one time Party member, it's incredible to think we now have 72 MPs. I remember the thrill of 46 MPs in 1997 and thinking of that as a breakthrough but to imagine after the dark days of 2015, we now have 2 LD MPs for every 3 Conservatives - almost unbelievable.
I've often said on here the party I joined and worked for died in the fires of the coalition but, phoenix-like, that party has risen from the ashes of 2015 and has targeted ruthlessly to achieve such a result. Ed Davey is a product of ALDC and the campaigning techniques of that organisation (as was Farron) and it's perhaps no surprise the party has gone back to the future. Yes, a lot of it was the classic "high tide floating all boats" but that doesn't mean each and every gain wasn't the result of hard work.
I strongly suspect there is a significant correlation between local Government success, especially from 2022 onwards, and victory last Thursday and it's to other areas of local strength which were outside the scope of targeting this time the party needs to look for further progress. 2025 has to be about gains at County level and using those to develop organisation in new areas.
Given how some Conservatives enjoyed dancing on the LD graves in 2015, you'll forgive a wry smile as I look at the Conservatives "assessing their losses". The humiliation of 2015 has been avenged. Such is politics, a rough trade as someone once said.
But 71 Lib Dem seats in 2024 matter a lot less than a dozen did in 2015, because Labour's majority is so huge and they will obviously be mostly gone when the public want Labour out, whenever that is. Most of the public would be hard pressed to name a single LibDem policy I think. That's the way with protest votes, whether they are Reform, LibDem or Monster Raving Loony.
72. It's 72.
73 teamed up with the APNI
The Lib Dems should appoint Sorcha Eastwood as their Northern Ireland spokesperson. It would help the inclusion of Northern Ireland politics into wider British politics. It would also show NI voters the advantages of voting for a non sectarian party.
I think that's a great idea, and being non-sectarian that might be easier to swallow than alliances between any of the other parties and GB equivalents.
"The Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI), also known simply as Alliance, is a liberal and centrist political party in Northern Ireland. It was founded in 1970 with the aim of breaking the sectarian mold of politics by pursuing moderate policies. Initially representing moderate and non-sectarian unionism, the party evolved over time to embrace wider liberal and non-sectarian concerns. It supports the Good Friday Agreement and advocates for a non-sectarian future. The APNI holds seventeen seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly and is affiliated with the Liberal Democrats in Great Britain"
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
⚫️ #RN: circa 200 seggi 🔴 #NFP: circa 170 🟡 #ENS: circa 140 🔵 #LR: circa 60
That would be toward the upper end of expectations the BBC was showing previously based on polling - lower than initial estimates before all the withdrawals, but high.
RTBF has RN on 210-228, at the top end of expectations.
They aren't exit polls, they're partial vote counts.
It's as though rural seats stopped voting at 8pm on Thursday, urban seats at 10pm, and the "exit poll" takes into account votes already counted, if the UK counted votes at polling stations instead of counting centres.
Looks like the increased turnout is increased for BOTH sides en France
It’s obvious where this leads. A chaotic anti RN coalition for 3 years which endlessly bickers and does nothing and then Le Pen comes in and says: make me le President. End the chaos. And they do?
Has she transed? Or would it be Mme La Présidente?
I think it's a good analysis - pointing out that a move to fringe stunts adjacent to violence is a practice across various campaign groups. It's stuff the likes of the SWP and eg some Islamists and the Far Right have been doing forever, and now it has the added attraction of viewers on social media.
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election. Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252. The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.
All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.
Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.
Ask Marcus Fysh.
A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".
Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.
On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".
He’s a right wing nutter. I’m glad he doesn’t agree with the composition of the Conservative Party
Room in the 'broad church' for everyone except those with right wing views eh? Surprise surprise. Like 'party loyalty', a concept that only applies one way.
I didn’t say that.
It was Fysh who was trying to define what the Conservative Party should be
Before the election, CCHQ tried to parachute a candidate into a seat who couldn't accept because they were already on the Lib Dem's candidates list. That's an extreme example of a selection process that stuff safe seats with ideological opponents to conservatism. It demonstrates a very profound issue that goes to the heart of the party's disunity and ineffectiveness in Government. The Tory Party used to be a lot more democratic, with local associations selecting MPs, a democratic right that they gave up in return for a say in the leadership, which CCHQ is also trying to take off them.
There does need to be a broad church, but everyone in that church should be motivated imho by a basic belief in the values of conservatism, however mild that form of conservatism might be. How else can they represent the interests of conservative voters?
The problem is that there *is* overlap between some of the parties in the centre, and you want that to be a hard-and-fast boundary. But without going to the NF or BNP, there is no boundary on the right. You want to truncate the broad church in the centre, but let any nutcase in on the far right.
But IMV the key word for Conservatives is the small-c word 'conservative'. Not no change, but careful and well-planned change, cautiously made. Progress by evolution rather than revolution.
The Conservative Party have forgotten that over the last decade.
But that notion is one of parties occupying a silly sort of space on left/right spectrum. A band that contracts, expands, and is pushed up and down like a pipe cleaner with the vagaries of politics.
What I'm arguing for is belief in a set of values and principles by which all political actions are measured. Is a law adding to the powers of the state against individual? Is a law or treaty in the national interest or against it? Is a law adding unduly to the tax burden? Will a law fundamentally undermine the security of the nation or its ability to defend itself? Is a law in the interests of families? Is a political action conducive to a strong, cohesive society? Is a law conducive to parliamentary sovereignty?
It isn't really about right and left, though those terms can be useful shorthand. A lot of the PCP, through design by CCHQ for reasons which I can't discern, doesn't pay more than lip service to those values, and sometimes not even that.
The issue is that the way those topics viewed can very much be in the eyes of he beholder, e.g. what is the national interest, especially if you take short- and long-term into account? They can also be contradictory. Is a slightly increased tax burden justified if that tax money is spent in the national interest? This treaty may slightly reduce national sovereignty, but also be in the national interest.
I think they're less ambiguous than you indicate. But they do come in and out of fashion.
There are fashionable weasel words that would justify the closing of Britain's virgin steel making capacity, dealing a knockout blow to our ability to manufacture armaments without importing the steel, based on amorphous envisaged future benefits of 'setting a good example' on CO2 emissions, but no true adherent to Tory principles could ever support such a scheme. Another Tory principle is that families and individuals spend their money better than the state. If adherence to these principles was widespread within the PCP, neither the party nor the country would be in the mess they are in.
I think Thatcher would have been thoroughly on board with reducing CO2 emissions. I think she was the first major world leader to take it seriously, along with CFCs and acid rain.
Her own words:
"For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world's systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.
Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some [end p4] to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century. This was brought home to me at the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver last year when the President of the Maldive Islands reminded us that the highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above sea level. The population is 177,000. It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s—though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain!
The second matter under discussion is the discovery by the British Antarctic Survey of a large hole in the ozone layer which protects life from ultra-violet radiation. We don't know the full implications of the ozone hole nor how it may interact with the greenhouse effect. Nevertheless it was common sense to support a worldwide agreement in Montreal last year to halve world consumption of chlorofluorocarbons by the end of the century. As the sole measure to limit ozone depletion, this may be insufficient but it is a start in reducing the pace of change while we continue the detailed study of the problem on which our (the British) Stratospheric Ozone Review Group is about to report.
The third matter is acid deposition which has affected soils, lakes and trees downwind from industrial centres. Extensive action is being taken to cut down emission of sulphur and nitrogen oxides from power stations at great but necessary expense."
According to you, Thatcher would not be a Conservative...
What a flimsy straw man. Thatcher was rightly extremely concerned about the evidence of global warming, but it is leaping a vast logical chasm to suggest that she would therefore have consented to give up virgin steel-making capacity in Britain, especially given the fact that it has not reduced the quantity of blast furnaces in the world - huge extra capacity has simply been built in India, where environmental standards are lower, so net CO2 may well go up. So the move surrenders a key component of national security, for zero environmental gain.
Do I take it from your attempt to co-opt a dead Margaret Thatcher into agreeing with the closure of Britain's last blast furnace, and therefore our ability to sustain independent armaments production during a war scenario, that you are in favour of this move?
Quite what your war scenario is that has you so outraged on behalf of Mrs T's ghost, I'm not clear.
Join the club - I'm not at all clear on the point you're making. We know that the British steel industry has been on its knees for ages and this is just the coup de grace. During peacetime, of course we can import whatever steel we want from India or China - during wartime, it would be a great deal harder, especially if we're at war with a military alliance of our previous suppliers. I'm loving your insouciance about the prospect of war by the way - it makes a change from your stark warnings that Putin might march across Europe and pop over the channel at any moment.
I suppose there's a modern version of the Falklands/Belgium ammunition supply scenario to consider. But to be honest I think it is all so JIT we'd be having arguments that are essentially 'if you want to get there, I wouldn't start from here."
Gotta say it does look quite fash-adjacent. This place could - understandably - vote Nazi in despair any moment
This trying to empathise with the French business will do you no good you know!
(Is there an any way similar website to PB in France? A mere echo though it must be of course.)
I’m in Menerbes. One of the plus nice villages de France. It is absurdly beaut
No riots….. YET
I studied and lived on the Cote D'Azur for three months. Filthy little dogs shitting everywhere. Watch where you're puting your Gucci loafers.
I’ve no intention of going to the coast. It’s vulgar and full of gangsters. And I might meet @Roger
You should. It's at it's sparkling best and full of people you'll recognise. Two exhibitions you might like. Bettina Rheims in Nice and Pasolini in Monaco. Bettina Rheims shows that Me2 doesn't apply to women and Pasolini......is just Pasolini. Then if you can wait the Tour de France ends in Nice on the 17th and the Olympic torch is wending its way from VF to Paris as I type....
I’ve done the Riviera many times. It’s nice if you like that sort of thing - and sometimes I do
But I’m here to do some actual flint knapping and a friend has kindly loaned me his little house in the lovely Luberon
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
How many of us need to look at a map to find Stirling? Just me then.
Much of England
Well yes, but that's nothing against Scotland. I suspect the same proportion of England would be equally useless in placing Worcester or Ripon or Lincoln.
As a lifelong Liberal and Liberal Democrat supporter and one time Party member, it's incredible to think we now have 72 MPs. I remember the thrill of 46 MPs in 1997 and thinking of that as a breakthrough but to imagine after the dark days of 2015, we now have 2 LD MPs for every 3 Conservatives - almost unbelievable.
I've often said on here the party I joined and worked for died in the fires of the coalition but, phoenix-like, that party has risen from the ashes of 2015 and has targeted ruthlessly to achieve such a result. Ed Davey is a product of ALDC and the campaigning techniques of that organisation (as was Farron) and it's perhaps no surprise the party has gone back to the future. Yes, a lot of it was the classic "high tide floating all boats" but that doesn't mean each and every gain wasn't the result of hard work.
I strongly suspect there is a significant correlation between local Government success, especially from 2022 onwards, and victory last Thursday and it's to other areas of local strength which were outside the scope of targeting this time the party needs to look for further progress. 2025 has to be about gains at County level and using those to develop organisation in new areas.
Given how some Conservatives enjoyed dancing on the LD graves in 2015, you'll forgive a wry smile as I look at the Conservatives "assessing their losses". The humiliation of 2015 has been avenged. Such is politics, a rough trade as someone once said.
But 71 Lib Dem seats in 2024 matter a lot less than a dozen did in 2015, because Labour's majority is so huge and they will obviously be mostly gone when the public want Labour out, whenever that is. Most of the public would be hard pressed to name a single LibDem policy I think. That's the way with protest votes, whether they are Reform, LibDem or Monster Raving Loony.
72. It's 72.
73 teamed up with the APNI
The Lib Dems should appoint Sorcha Eastwood as their Northern Ireland spokesperson. It would help the inclusion of Northern Ireland politics into wider British politics. It would also show NI voters the advantages of voting for a non sectarian party.
I think that's a great idea, and being non-sectarian that might be easier to swallow than alliances between any of the other parties and GB equivalents.
The SDLP, despite being Nationalists, used to take the Labour Whip. Not sure if they still do.
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
How many of us need to look at a map to find Stirling? Just me then.
Much of England
Well yes, but that's nothing against Scotland. I suspect the same proportion of England would be equally useless in placing Worcester or Ripon or Lincoln.
I fucked up Coventry, Nottingham, and Caernarfon (don't ask me how on that last one, total brain fade) The English midlands is all a bit crowded with places, easy to pick the one next door like I did twice.
Gets easier as you go along as options reduce, but I'm fairly pleased at getting 44/70 - a few total guesses (I got most of Ireland right somehow), balanced out by being only just out with a few others.
An interesting question might be which ones were we the most wrong on - I was bad on Nottingham and Coventry too.
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
The impasse in the Democratic party in the US is going to lead to real trouble.
Who knows the right and wrongs of which political system is 'best', but the US seems to have gotten it mostly right. However Biden is challenging one of their weaknesses at the same time that Trumpo is attacking the same fault. A President has to have limited powers and limited freedom.
If I was a US citizen I'd be really quite alarmed that the system that has worked well for a long time is being attacked and undermined by both of the main political strands.
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election. Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252. The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.
All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.
Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.
Ask Marcus Fysh.
A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".
Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.
On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".
He’s a right wing nutter. I’m glad he doesn’t agree with the composition of the Conservative Party
Room in the 'broad church' for everyone except those with right wing views eh? Surprise surprise. Like 'party loyalty', a concept that only applies one way.
I didn’t say that.
It was Fysh who was trying to define what the Conservative Party should be
Before the election, CCHQ tried to parachute a candidate into a seat who couldn't accept because they were already on the Lib Dem's candidates list. That's an extreme example of a selection process that stuff safe seats with ideological opponents to conservatism. It demonstrates a very profound issue that goes to the heart of the party's disunity and ineffectiveness in Government. The Tory Party used to be a lot more democratic, with local associations selecting MPs, a democratic right that they gave up in return for a say in the leadership, which CCHQ is also trying to take off them.
There does need to be a broad church, but everyone in that church should be motivated imho by a basic belief in the values of conservatism, however mild that form of conservatism might be. How else can they represent the interests of conservative voters?
The problem is that there *is* overlap between some of the parties in the centre, and you want that to be a hard-and-fast boundary. But without going to the NF or BNP, there is no boundary on the right. You want to truncate the broad church in the centre, but let any nutcase in on the far right.
But IMV the key word for Conservatives is the small-c word 'conservative'. Not no change, but careful and well-planned change, cautiously made. Progress by evolution rather than revolution.
The Conservative Party have forgotten that over the last decade.
But that notion is one of parties occupying a silly sort of space on left/right spectrum. A band that contracts, expands, and is pushed up and down like a pipe cleaner with the vagaries of politics.
What I'm arguing for is belief in a set of values and principles by which all political actions are measured. Is a law adding to the powers of the state against individual? Is a law or treaty in the national interest or against it? Is a law adding unduly to the tax burden? Will a law fundamentally undermine the security of the nation or its ability to defend itself? Is a law in the interests of families? Is a political action conducive to a strong, cohesive society? Is a law conducive to parliamentary sovereignty?
It isn't really about right and left, though those terms can be useful shorthand. A lot of the PCP, through design by CCHQ for reasons which I can't discern, doesn't pay more than lip service to those values, and sometimes not even that.
The issue is that the way those topics viewed can very much be in the eyes of he beholder, e.g. what is the national interest, especially if you take short- and long-term into account? They can also be contradictory. Is a slightly increased tax burden justified if that tax money is spent in the national interest? This treaty may slightly reduce national sovereignty, but also be in the national interest.
I think they're less ambiguous than you indicate. But they do come in and out of fashion.
There are fashionable weasel words that would justify the closing of Britain's virgin steel making capacity, dealing a knockout blow to our ability to manufacture armaments without importing the steel, based on amorphous envisaged future benefits of 'setting a good example' on CO2 emissions, but no true adherent to Tory principles could ever support such a scheme. Another Tory principle is that families and individuals spend their money better than the state. If adherence to these principles was widespread within the PCP, neither the party nor the country would be in the mess they are in.
I think Thatcher would have been thoroughly on board with reducing CO2 emissions. I think she was the first major world leader to take it seriously, along with CFCs and acid rain.
Her own words:
"For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world's systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.
Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some [end p4] to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century. This was brought home to me at the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver last year when the President of the Maldive Islands reminded us that the highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above sea level. The population is 177,000. It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s—though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain!
The second matter under discussion is the discovery by the British Antarctic Survey of a large hole in the ozone layer which protects life from ultra-violet radiation. We don't know the full implications of the ozone hole nor how it may interact with the greenhouse effect. Nevertheless it was common sense to support a worldwide agreement in Montreal last year to halve world consumption of chlorofluorocarbons by the end of the century. As the sole measure to limit ozone depletion, this may be insufficient but it is a start in reducing the pace of change while we continue the detailed study of the problem on which our (the British) Stratospheric Ozone Review Group is about to report.
The third matter is acid deposition which has affected soils, lakes and trees downwind from industrial centres. Extensive action is being taken to cut down emission of sulphur and nitrogen oxides from power stations at great but necessary expense."
According to you, Thatcher would not be a Conservative...
What a flimsy straw man. Thatcher was rightly extremely concerned about the evidence of global warming, but it is leaping a vast logical chasm to suggest that she would therefore have consented to give up virgin steel-making capacity in Britain, especially given the fact that it has not reduced the quantity of blast furnaces in the world - huge extra capacity has simply been built in India, where environmental standards are lower, so net CO2 may well go up. So the move surrenders a key component of national security, for zero environmental gain.
Do I take it from your attempt to co-opt a dead Margaret Thatcher into agreeing with the closure of Britain's last blast furnace, and therefore our ability to sustain independent armaments production during a war scenario, that you are in favour of this move?
Her actions on CFCs show that she might well have taken some very hard decisions on such matters. I don't think the steelworkers saw her as a friend, do you?
I'm unsure why you're so obsessed with steelmaking in Britain. What 'alternate' websites have informed you about it? The same ones that made you shill for Putin over MH17?
Hahah - brilliant. Not enjoying this discussion very much ducks? Your rather drippy equivocation on a very simple national security concept, preserving a capability that every other Government from Atlee to Cameron to May has preserved, is very telling.
You're psychotically insistent on holding the PB-line against Mad Vlad, and very flamboyantly question where the loyalties of other people lie, but on something which is a real threat to our national security, you really couldn't give a toss.
As a lifelong Liberal and Liberal Democrat supporter and one time Party member, it's incredible to think we now have 72 MPs. I remember the thrill of 46 MPs in 1997 and thinking of that as a breakthrough but to imagine after the dark days of 2015, we now have 2 LD MPs for every 3 Conservatives - almost unbelievable.
I've often said on here the party I joined and worked for died in the fires of the coalition but, phoenix-like, that party has risen from the ashes of 2015 and has targeted ruthlessly to achieve such a result. Ed Davey is a product of ALDC and the campaigning techniques of that organisation (as was Farron) and it's perhaps no surprise the party has gone back to the future. Yes, a lot of it was the classic "high tide floating all boats" but that doesn't mean each and every gain wasn't the result of hard work.
I strongly suspect there is a significant correlation between local Government success, especially from 2022 onwards, and victory last Thursday and it's to other areas of local strength which were outside the scope of targeting this time the party needs to look for further progress. 2025 has to be about gains at County level and using those to develop organisation in new areas.
Given how some Conservatives enjoyed dancing on the LD graves in 2015, you'll forgive a wry smile as I look at the Conservatives "assessing their losses". The humiliation of 2015 has been avenged. Such is politics, a rough trade as someone once said.
But 71 Lib Dem seats in 2024 matter a lot less than a dozen did in 2015, because Labour's majority is so huge and they will obviously be mostly gone when the public want Labour out, whenever that is. Most of the public would be hard pressed to name a single LibDem policy I think. That's the way with protest votes, whether they are Reform, LibDem or Monster Raving Loony.
72. It's 72.
73 teamed up with the APNI
Will the Alliance sit with the LibDems? I seem to remember that during the coalition years they didn't.
Lib Dems always complain when anyone adds their votes to those of Labour - but they seem determined to do exactly the same thing with Alliance.
The reality is that they're sister parties, but they're not in a formal coalition and never have been. They share a similar ethos but many of their policies are different, particularly on constitutional issues.
It's true that John Alderdice sits as Lib Dem in the lords, but that's a personal decision on his part - not a party one.
APNI are busily licking their wounds after a disappointing election (they thought they would win 2 seats, and had high hopes for 3), and I'd be pretty surprised if they decided to take the LD whip - how would it benefit them?
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election. Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252. The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.
All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.
Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.
Ask Marcus Fysh.
A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".
Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.
On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".
He’s a right wing nutter. I’m glad he doesn’t agree with the composition of the Conservative Party
Room in the 'broad church' for everyone except those with right wing views eh? Surprise surprise. Like 'party loyalty', a concept that only applies one way.
I didn’t say that.
It was Fysh who was trying to define what the Conservative Party should be
Before the election, CCHQ tried to parachute a candidate into a seat who couldn't accept because they were already on the Lib Dem's candidates list. That's an extreme example of a selection process that stuff safe seats with ideological opponents to conservatism. It demonstrates a very profound issue that goes to the heart of the party's disunity and ineffectiveness in Government. The Tory Party used to be a lot more democratic, with local associations selecting MPs, a democratic right that they gave up in return for a say in the leadership, which CCHQ is also trying to take off them.
There does need to be a broad church, but everyone in that church should be motivated imho by a basic belief in the values of conservatism, however mild that form of conservatism might be. How else can they represent the interests of conservative voters?
The problem is that there *is* overlap between some of the parties in the centre, and you want that to be a hard-and-fast boundary. But without going to the NF or BNP, there is no boundary on the right. You want to truncate the broad church in the centre, but let any nutcase in on the far right.
But IMV the key word for Conservatives is the small-c word 'conservative'. Not no change, but careful and well-planned change, cautiously made. Progress by evolution rather than revolution.
The Conservative Party have forgotten that over the last decade.
But that notion is one of parties occupying a silly sort of space on left/right spectrum. A band that contracts, expands, and is pushed up and down like a pipe cleaner with the vagaries of politics.
What I'm arguing for is belief in a set of values and principles by which all political actions are measured. Is a law adding to the powers of the state against individual? Is a law or treaty in the national interest or against it? Is a law adding unduly to the tax burden? Will a law fundamentally undermine the security of the nation or its ability to defend itself? Is a law in the interests of families? Is a political action conducive to a strong, cohesive society? Is a law conducive to parliamentary sovereignty?
It isn't really about right and left, though those terms can be useful shorthand. A lot of the PCP, through design by CCHQ for reasons which I can't discern, doesn't pay more than lip service to those values, and sometimes not even that.
The issue is that the way those topics viewed can very much be in the eyes of he beholder, e.g. what is the national interest, especially if you take short- and long-term into account? They can also be contradictory. Is a slightly increased tax burden justified if that tax money is spent in the national interest? This treaty may slightly reduce national sovereignty, but also be in the national interest.
I think they're less ambiguous than you indicate. But they do come in and out of fashion.
There are fashionable weasel words that would justify the closing of Britain's virgin steel making capacity, dealing a knockout blow to our ability to manufacture armaments without importing the steel, based on amorphous envisaged future benefits of 'setting a good example' on CO2 emissions, but no true adherent to Tory principles could ever support such a scheme. Another Tory principle is that families and individuals spend their money better than the state. If adherence to these principles was widespread within the PCP, neither the party nor the country would be in the mess they are in.
I think Thatcher would have been thoroughly on board with reducing CO2 emissions. I think she was the first major world leader to take it seriously, along with CFCs and acid rain.
Her own words:
"For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world's systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.
Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some [end p4] to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century. This was brought home to me at the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver last year when the President of the Maldive Islands reminded us that the highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above sea level. The population is 177,000. It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s—though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain!
The second matter under discussion is the discovery by the British Antarctic Survey of a large hole in the ozone layer which protects life from ultra-violet radiation. We don't know the full implications of the ozone hole nor how it may interact with the greenhouse effect. Nevertheless it was common sense to support a worldwide agreement in Montreal last year to halve world consumption of chlorofluorocarbons by the end of the century. As the sole measure to limit ozone depletion, this may be insufficient but it is a start in reducing the pace of change while we continue the detailed study of the problem on which our (the British) Stratospheric Ozone Review Group is about to report.
The third matter is acid deposition which has affected soils, lakes and trees downwind from industrial centres. Extensive action is being taken to cut down emission of sulphur and nitrogen oxides from power stations at great but necessary expense."
According to you, Thatcher would not be a Conservative...
What a flimsy straw man. Thatcher was rightly extremely concerned about the evidence of global warming, but it is leaping a vast logical chasm to suggest that she would therefore have consented to give up virgin steel-making capacity in Britain, especially given the fact that it has not reduced the quantity of blast furnaces in the world - huge extra capacity has simply been built in India, where environmental standards are lower, so net CO2 may well go up. So the move surrenders a key component of national security, for zero environmental gain.
Do I take it from your attempt to co-opt a dead Margaret Thatcher into agreeing with the closure of Britain's last blast furnace, and therefore our ability to sustain independent armaments production during a war scenario, that you are in favour of this move?
Her actions on CFCs show that she might well have taken some very hard decisions on such matters. I don't think the steelworkers saw her as a friend, do you?
I'm unsure why you're so obsessed with steelmaking in Britain. What 'alternate' websites have informed you about it? The same ones that made you shill for Putin over MH17?
We could do with more MPs with scientific backgrounds. I wonder what scientific knowledge the new lot have got. NB CoPilot can't help me on this.
I think it's a good analysis - pointing out that a move to fringe stunts adjacent to violence is a practice across various campaign groups. It's stuff the likes of the SWP and eg some Islamists and the Far Right have been doing forever, and now it has the added attraction of viewers on social media.
Until you are prepared to call them out, they'll keep on doing it. Simply calling them idiots - something which I doubt she'd call Tommy Robinson et al - isn't enough. I have no sympathy for her.
Looks like we no longer need to be up from Survation who have fallen from most accurate pollster at the last 3 general elections back to middle of the pack. Instead Verian, Norstat and BMG take the crown this time.
Also shocked Matt Goodwin's pollster came last and to top that the result ended up closer to 1997 than Canada 1993 for the Tories and Farage is not LOTO as Mystic Matt had hoped. If Le Pen doesn't win a landslide this evening how will the poor man cope?
Well done Sir John Curtice for another broadly accurate exit poll
A comfortable hold for Neil Hudson in Epping Forest but a huge swing to Reform in Brentwood & Ongar.
In your view, should the Party go for a "quick" leadership election (I don't really see the point) or basically use the Conference as an extended hustings?
I presume the reconstituted 1922 will make the decision - any thoughts on who might replace Sir Graham Brady as Chairman?
And sadly a loss to Labour in Harlow mainly due to votes lost to Reform.
I think use the conference as an extended hustings once all candidates have declared and to allow MPs and members to see their proposals and how they perform. We are in opposition now not government so no need to rush electing a new leader as we are not selecting the PM, Rishi or Dowden can stay caretaker in the meantime.
No idea who might replace Brady as 1922 chair
How much political time is there in the next few months? The King's Speech is on the 17th of this month, there can't be many Commons days after that before the summer holidays. Then back for a couple of weeks in September before the conference season.
On the other hand, the "look at the calendar and decide what makes sense" approach didn't work at all for predicting the General Election date.
That bet on Rishi's exit year being 2025 is certainly worth thinking about, with the consensus moving towards "let's take it slow".
Was available on Betfair at 60-1, now in to 33-1 (albeit with v. small volumes).
2025 is very slow. Even if Rishi can be persuaded to stay on, and they use conference (29/9 to 2/10) to audition the hopefuls, there will still be time to wrap up an election by the end of this year. Otoh I'm not a member so dyor.
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
How many of us need to look at a map to find Stirling? Just me then.
Much of England
Well yes, but that's nothing against Scotland. I suspect the same proportion of England would be equally useless in placing Worcester or Ripon or Lincoln.
I fucked up Coventry, Nottingham, and Caernarfon (don't ask me how on that last one, total brain fade) The English midlands is all a bit crowded with places, easy to pick the one next door like I did twice.
Just two wrong. Portree. Which I thought was in Ireland for some reason. And a fat finger on Reading. Or rather not on Reading.
Looks like we no longer need to be up from Survation who have fallen from most accurate pollster at the last 3 general elections back to middle of the pack. Instead Verian, Norstat and BMG take the crown this time.
Also shocked Matt Goodwin's pollster came last and to top that the result ended up closer to 1997 than Canada 1993 for the Tories and Farage is not LOTO as Mystic Matt had hoped. If Le Pen doesn't win a landslide this evening how will the poor man cope?
Well done Sir John Curtice for another broadly accurate exit poll
A comfortable hold for Neil Hudson in Epping Forest but a huge swing to Reform in Brentwood & Ongar.
In your view, should the Party go for a "quick" leadership election (I don't really see the point) or basically use the Conference as an extended hustings?
I presume the reconstituted 1922 will make the decision - any thoughts on who might replace Sir Graham Brady as Chairman?
And sadly a loss to Labour in Harlow mainly due to votes lost to Reform.
I think use the conference as an extended hustings once all candidates have declared and to allow MPs and members to see their proposals and how they perform. We are in opposition now not government so no need to rush electing a new leader as we are not selecting the PM, Rishi or Dowden can stay caretaker in the meantime.
No idea who might replace Brady as 1922 chair
How much political time is there in the next few months? The King's Speech is on the 17th of this month, there can't be many Commons days after that before the summer holidays. Then back for a couple of weeks in September before the conference season.
On the other hand, the "look at the calendar and decide what makes sense" approach didn't work at all for predicting the General Election date.
That bet on Rishi's exit year being 2025 is certainly worth thinking about, with the consensus moving towards "let's take it slow".
Was available on Betfair at 60-1, now in to 33-1 (albeit with v. small volumes).
2025 is very slow. Even if Rishi can be persuaded to stay on, and they use conference (29/9 to 2/10) to audition the hopefuls, there will still be time to wrap up an election by the end of this year. Otoh I'm not a member so dyor.
I think they just need to get on with it and have a new leader in place by conference, TBH.
If they look rudderless for too long people will start to notice (and Farage will exploit that). Arguably they’re better off just making the choice one way or the other and then moving forwards.
Gotta say it does look quite fash-adjacent. This place could - understandably - vote Nazi in despair any moment
This trying to empathise with the French business will do you no good you know!
(Is there an any way similar website to PB in France? A mere echo though it must be of course.)
I’m in Menerbes. One of the plus nice villages de France. It is absurdly beaut
No riots….. YET
I studied and lived on the Cote D'Azur for three months. Filthy little dogs shitting everywhere. Watch where you're puting your Gucci loafers.
I’ve no intention of going to the coast. It’s vulgar and full of gangsters. And I might meet @Roger
You should. It's at it's sparkling best and full of people you'll recognise. Two exhibitions you might like. Bettina Rheims in Nice and Pasolini in Monaco. Bettina Rheims shows that Me2 doesn't apply to women and Pasolini......is just Pasolini. Then if you can wait the Tour de France ends in Nice on the 17th and the Olympic torch is wending its way from VF to Paris as I type....
I’ve done the Riviera many times. It’s nice if you like that sort of thing - and sometimes I do
But I’m here to do some actual flint knapping and a friend has kindly loaned me his little house in the lovely Luberon
That sounds nice. You can visit the locations of Claude Berri's Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources which must be pretty close. Just replace that thin stemmed wine glass with something a little more macho
Looks like we no longer need to be up from Survation who have fallen from most accurate pollster at the last 3 general elections back to middle of the pack. Instead Verian, Norstat and BMG take the crown this time.
Also shocked Matt Goodwin's pollster came last and to top that the result ended up closer to 1997 than Canada 1993 for the Tories and Farage is not LOTO as Mystic Matt had hoped. If Le Pen doesn't win a landslide this evening how will the poor man cope?
Well done Sir John Curtice for another broadly accurate exit poll
A comfortable hold for Neil Hudson in Epping Forest but a huge swing to Reform in Brentwood & Ongar.
In your view, should the Party go for a "quick" leadership election (I don't really see the point) or basically use the Conference as an extended hustings?
I presume the reconstituted 1922 will make the decision - any thoughts on who might replace Sir Graham Brady as Chairman?
And sadly a loss to Labour in Harlow mainly due to votes lost to Reform.
I think use the conference as an extended hustings once all candidates have declared and to allow MPs and members to see their proposals and how they perform. We are in opposition now not government so no need to rush electing a new leader as we are not selecting the PM, Rishi or Dowden can stay caretaker in the meantime.
No idea who might replace Brady as 1922 chair
How much political time is there in the next few months? The King's Speech is on the 17th of this month, there can't be many Commons days after that before the summer holidays. Then back for a couple of weeks in September before the conference season.
On the other hand, the "look at the calendar and decide what makes sense" approach didn't work at all for predicting the General Election date.
That bet on Rishi's exit year being 2025 is certainly worth thinking about, with the consensus moving towards "let's take it slow".
Was available on Betfair at 60-1, now in to 33-1 (albeit with v. small volumes).
2025 is very slow. Even if Rishi can be persuaded to stay on, and they use conference (29/9 to 2/10) to audition the hopefuls, there will still be time to wrap up an election by the end of this year. Otoh I'm not a member so dyor.
The sensible thing would be to appoint Cameron as temporary leader. Maybe IDS as a deputy for the Commons.
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election. Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252. The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.
All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.
Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.
Ask Marcus Fysh.
A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".
Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.
On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".
He’s a right wing nutter. I’m glad he doesn’t agree with the composition of the Conservative Party
Room in the 'broad church' for everyone except those with right wing views eh? Surprise surprise. Like 'party loyalty', a concept that only applies one way.
I didn’t say that.
It was Fysh who was trying to define what the Conservative Party should be
Before the election, CCHQ tried to parachute a candidate into a seat who couldn't accept because they were already on the Lib Dem's candidates list. That's an extreme example of a selection process that stuff safe seats with ideological opponents to conservatism. It demonstrates a very profound issue that goes to the heart of the party's disunity and ineffectiveness in Government. The Tory Party used to be a lot more democratic, with local associations selecting MPs, a democratic right that they gave up in return for a say in the leadership, which CCHQ is also trying to take off them.
There does need to be a broad church, but everyone in that church should be motivated imho by a basic belief in the values of conservatism, however mild that form of conservatism might be. How else can they represent the interests of conservative voters?
The problem is that there *is* overlap between some of the parties in the centre, and you want that to be a hard-and-fast boundary. But without going to the NF or BNP, there is no boundary on the right. You want to truncate the broad church in the centre, but let any nutcase in on the far right.
But IMV the key word for Conservatives is the small-c word 'conservative'. Not no change, but careful and well-planned change, cautiously made. Progress by evolution rather than revolution.
The Conservative Party have forgotten that over the last decade.
But that notion is one of parties occupying a silly sort of space on left/right spectrum. A band that contracts, expands, and is pushed up and down like a pipe cleaner with the vagaries of politics.
What I'm arguing for is belief in a set of values and principles by which all political actions are measured. Is a law adding to the powers of the state against individual? Is a law or treaty in the national interest or against it? Is a law adding unduly to the tax burden? Will a law fundamentally undermine the security of the nation or its ability to defend itself? Is a law in the interests of families? Is a political action conducive to a strong, cohesive society? Is a law conducive to parliamentary sovereignty?
It isn't really about right and left, though those terms can be useful shorthand. A lot of the PCP, through design by CCHQ for reasons which I can't discern, doesn't pay more than lip service to those values, and sometimes not even that.
The issue is that the way those topics viewed can very much be in the eyes of he beholder, e.g. what is the national interest, especially if you take short- and long-term into account? They can also be contradictory. Is a slightly increased tax burden justified if that tax money is spent in the national interest? This treaty may slightly reduce national sovereignty, but also be in the national interest.
I think they're less ambiguous than you indicate. But they do come in and out of fashion.
There are fashionable weasel words that would justify the closing of Britain's virgin steel making capacity, dealing a knockout blow to our ability to manufacture armaments without importing the steel, based on amorphous envisaged future benefits of 'setting a good example' on CO2 emissions, but no true adherent to Tory principles could ever support such a scheme. Another Tory principle is that families and individuals spend their money better than the state. If adherence to these principles was widespread within the PCP, neither the party nor the country would be in the mess they are in.
I think Thatcher would have been thoroughly on board with reducing CO2 emissions. I think she was the first major world leader to take it seriously, along with CFCs and acid rain.
Her own words:
"For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world's systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.
Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some [end p4] to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century. This was brought home to me at the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver last year when the President of the Maldive Islands reminded us that the highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above sea level. The population is 177,000. It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s—though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain!
The second matter under discussion is the discovery by the British Antarctic Survey of a large hole in the ozone layer which protects life from ultra-violet radiation. We don't know the full implications of the ozone hole nor how it may interact with the greenhouse effect. Nevertheless it was common sense to support a worldwide agreement in Montreal last year to halve world consumption of chlorofluorocarbons by the end of the century. As the sole measure to limit ozone depletion, this may be insufficient but it is a start in reducing the pace of change while we continue the detailed study of the problem on which our (the British) Stratospheric Ozone Review Group is about to report.
The third matter is acid deposition which has affected soils, lakes and trees downwind from industrial centres. Extensive action is being taken to cut down emission of sulphur and nitrogen oxides from power stations at great but necessary expense."
According to you, Thatcher would not be a Conservative...
What a flimsy straw man. Thatcher was rightly extremely concerned about the evidence of global warming, but it is leaping a vast logical chasm to suggest that she would therefore have consented to give up virgin steel-making capacity in Britain, especially given the fact that it has not reduced the quantity of blast furnaces in the world - huge extra capacity has simply been built in India, where environmental standards are lower, so net CO2 may well go up. So the move surrenders a key component of national security, for zero environmental gain.
Do I take it from your attempt to co-opt a dead Margaret Thatcher into agreeing with the closure of Britain's last blast furnace, and therefore our ability to sustain independent armaments production during a war scenario, that you are in favour of this move?
Her actions on CFCs show that she might well have taken some very hard decisions on such matters. I don't think the steelworkers saw her as a friend, do you?
I'm unsure why you're so obsessed with steelmaking in Britain. What 'alternate' websites have informed you about it? The same ones that made you shill for Putin over MH17?
Gotta say it does look quite fash-adjacent. This place could - understandably - vote Nazi in despair any moment
This trying to empathise with the French business will do you no good you know!
(Is there an any way similar website to PB in France? A mere echo though it must be of course.)
I’m in Menerbes. One of the plus nice villages de France. It is absurdly beaut
No riots….. YET
I studied and lived on the Cote D'Azur for three months. Filthy little dogs shitting everywhere. Watch where you're puting your Gucci loafers.
I’ve no intention of going to the coast. It’s vulgar and full of gangsters. And I might meet @Roger
You should. It's at it's sparkling best and full of people you'll recognise. Two exhibitions you might like. Bettina Rheims in Nice and Pasolini in Monaco. Bettina Rheims shows that Me2 doesn't apply to women and Pasolini......is just Pasolini. Then if you can wait the Tour de France ends in Nice on the 17th and the Olympic torch is wending its way from VF to Paris as I type....
I’ve done the Riviera many times. It’s nice if you like that sort of thing - and sometimes I do
But I’m here to do some actual flint knapping and a friend has kindly loaned me his little house in the lovely Luberon
Little known fact that Luberon is where KY Jelly was invented.
Looks like we no longer need to be up from Survation who have fallen from most accurate pollster at the last 3 general elections back to middle of the pack. Instead Verian, Norstat and BMG take the crown this time.
Also shocked Matt Goodwin's pollster came last and to top that the result ended up closer to 1997 than Canada 1993 for the Tories and Farage is not LOTO as Mystic Matt had hoped. If Le Pen doesn't win a landslide this evening how will the poor man cope?
Well done Sir John Curtice for another broadly accurate exit poll
A comfortable hold for Neil Hudson in Epping Forest but a huge swing to Reform in Brentwood & Ongar.
In your view, should the Party go for a "quick" leadership election (I don't really see the point) or basically use the Conference as an extended hustings?
I presume the reconstituted 1922 will make the decision - any thoughts on who might replace Sir Graham Brady as Chairman?
And sadly a loss to Labour in Harlow mainly due to votes lost to Reform.
I think use the conference as an extended hustings once all candidates have declared and to allow MPs and members to see their proposals and how they perform. We are in opposition now not government so no need to rush electing a new leader as we are not selecting the PM, Rishi or Dowden can stay caretaker in the meantime.
No idea who might replace Brady as 1922 chair
How much political time is there in the next few months? The King's Speech is on the 17th of this month, there can't be many Commons days after that before the summer holidays. Then back for a couple of weeks in September before the conference season.
On the other hand, the "look at the calendar and decide what makes sense" approach didn't work at all for predicting the General Election date.
That bet on Rishi's exit year being 2025 is certainly worth thinking about, with the consensus moving towards "let's take it slow".
Was available on Betfair at 60-1, now in to 33-1 (albeit with v. small volumes).
2025 is very slow. Even if Rishi can be persuaded to stay on, and they use conference (29/9 to 2/10) to audition the hopefuls, there will still be time to wrap up an election by the end of this year. Otoh I'm not a member so dyor.
The sensible thing would be to appoint Cameron as temporary leader. Maybe IDS as a deputy for the Commons.
I don't follow how either of those would be the sensible choice to be honest.
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
How many of us need to look at a map to find Stirling? Just me then.
Much of England
Well yes, but that's nothing against Scotland. I suspect the same proportion of England would be equally useless in placing Worcester or Ripon or Lincoln.
I fucked up Coventry, Nottingham, and Caernarfon (don't ask me how on that last one, total brain fade) The English midlands is all a bit crowded with places, easy to pick the one next door like I did twice.
Just two wrong. Portree. Which I thought was in Ireland for some reason. And a fat finger on Reading. Or rather not on Reading.
Mixed up Leicester and Milton Keynes (sorry Foxy) and fat finger pressed Derry instead of Castlebar.
I think it's a good analysis - pointing out that a move to fringe stunts adjacent to violence is a practice across various campaign groups. It's stuff the likes of the SWP and eg some Islamists and the Far Right have been doing forever, and now it has the added attraction of viewers on social media.
Not all muslims are the same. Rowan Williams the late Archbishop of Canterbury and Ian Paisley (senior) were both Christians but almost totally different religions
We are very blessed that many Muslims in this country are Ahmadis who are wholly peaceful and non voilent. Wonderful people but regarded as heritics by militants.
And dare I say it that where there is trouble it is less to do with religion and more to do with a lot of little educated people from certain remote rural areas being brought in by the owners of declining mills, due to manual skills that enabled them to be (very) cheap labour and brought with them many customs that would not have been wholy unfamiliar to Thomas Hardy.
Some did extraordinarily well, but many ended up in virtual ghettoes with little attempt to bring them in to the mainstream and basically abandonment of them when the mills went bust a decade or two later. In such a siutation communities become insular.
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
How many of us need to look at a map to find Stirling? Just me then.
Much of England
Well yes, but that's nothing against Scotland. I suspect the same proportion of England would be equally useless in placing Worcester or Ripon or Lincoln.
I fucked up Coventry, Nottingham, and Caernarfon (don't ask me how on that last one, total brain fade) The English midlands is all a bit crowded with places, easy to pick the one next door like I did twice.
Interesting quiz - much easier with a list of names; tricky if having to remember names especially bearing in mind our habit of making things cities that should be towns and vice-versa.
Looking at East Anglia, and two of Southend, Colchester, Chelmsford, Ipswich being cities it's not quite clear in my head which those should be. That's probably because I don't know them very well enough; I have to rely on Chelmsford having a Cathedral and Cricket, and Colchester being prominently Roman.
Looks like we no longer need to be up from Survation who have fallen from most accurate pollster at the last 3 general elections back to middle of the pack. Instead Verian, Norstat and BMG take the crown this time.
Also shocked Matt Goodwin's pollster came last and to top that the result ended up closer to 1997 than Canada 1993 for the Tories and Farage is not LOTO as Mystic Matt had hoped. If Le Pen doesn't win a landslide this evening how will the poor man cope?
Well done Sir John Curtice for another broadly accurate exit poll
A comfortable hold for Neil Hudson in Epping Forest but a huge swing to Reform in Brentwood & Ongar.
In your view, should the Party go for a "quick" leadership election (I don't really see the point) or basically use the Conference as an extended hustings?
I presume the reconstituted 1922 will make the decision - any thoughts on who might replace Sir Graham Brady as Chairman?
And sadly a loss to Labour in Harlow mainly due to votes lost to Reform.
I think use the conference as an extended hustings once all candidates have declared and to allow MPs and members to see their proposals and how they perform. We are in opposition now not government so no need to rush electing a new leader as we are not selecting the PM, Rishi or Dowden can stay caretaker in the meantime.
No idea who might replace Brady as 1922 chair
How much political time is there in the next few months? The King's Speech is on the 17th of this month, there can't be many Commons days after that before the summer holidays. Then back for a couple of weeks in September before the conference season.
On the other hand, the "look at the calendar and decide what makes sense" approach didn't work at all for predicting the General Election date.
That bet on Rishi's exit year being 2025 is certainly worth thinking about, with the consensus moving towards "let's take it slow".
Was available on Betfair at 60-1, now in to 33-1 (albeit with v. small volumes).
2025 is very slow. Even if Rishi can be persuaded to stay on, and they use conference (29/9 to 2/10) to audition the hopefuls, there will still be time to wrap up an election by the end of this year. Otoh I'm not a member so dyor.
The sensible thing would be to appoint Cameron as temporary leader. Maybe IDS as a deputy for the Commons.
I don't follow how either of those would be the sensible choice to be honest.
Not that I have an alternative suggestion.
You may be right. Toryism isn't what it once was. There're a lot of early morning and unproductive strolls ahead. Metaphorically some of those might be an end, but in sunshine.
Looks like we no longer need to be up from Survation who have fallen from most accurate pollster at the last 3 general elections back to middle of the pack. Instead Verian, Norstat and BMG take the crown this time.
Also shocked Matt Goodwin's pollster came last and to top that the result ended up closer to 1997 than Canada 1993 for the Tories and Farage is not LOTO as Mystic Matt had hoped. If Le Pen doesn't win a landslide this evening how will the poor man cope?
Well done Sir John Curtice for another broadly accurate exit poll
A comfortable hold for Neil Hudson in Epping Forest but a huge swing to Reform in Brentwood & Ongar.
In your view, should the Party go for a "quick" leadership election (I don't really see the point) or basically use the Conference as an extended hustings?
I presume the reconstituted 1922 will make the decision - any thoughts on who might replace Sir Graham Brady as Chairman?
And sadly a loss to Labour in Harlow mainly due to votes lost to Reform.
I think use the conference as an extended hustings once all candidates have declared and to allow MPs and members to see their proposals and how they perform. We are in opposition now not government so no need to rush electing a new leader as we are not selecting the PM, Rishi or Dowden can stay caretaker in the meantime.
No idea who might replace Brady as 1922 chair
How much political time is there in the next few months? The King's Speech is on the 17th of this month, there can't be many Commons days after that before the summer holidays. Then back for a couple of weeks in September before the conference season.
On the other hand, the "look at the calendar and decide what makes sense" approach didn't work at all for predicting the General Election date.
That bet on Rishi's exit year being 2025 is certainly worth thinking about, with the consensus moving towards "let's take it slow".
Was available on Betfair at 60-1, now in to 33-1 (albeit with v. small volumes).
2025 is very slow. Even if Rishi can be persuaded to stay on, and they use conference (29/9 to 2/10) to audition the hopefuls, there will still be time to wrap up an election by the end of this year. Otoh I'm not a member so dyor.
I agree that it's unlikely, and would expect that the conference dates are probably the determining factor - a long contest this time round would probably end up running on very similar dates to those in 2005.
So Sunak would appoint a new Shad Cab prominently featuring the likely contenders, then the conference would be used as a beauty contest. First round of the election would be in the second half October, with subsequent rounds followed by a membership ballot with the winner announced in late November or early December.
But it's worth remembering that in 2005, this meant that Howard remained leader for 7 months after his election defeat - a similar length of time would take us into 2025. Unlikely, but not impossible.
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election. Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252. The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.
All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.
Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.
Ask Marcus Fysh.
A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".
Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.
On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".
He’s a right wing nutter. I’m glad he doesn’t agree with the composition of the Conservative Party
Room in the 'broad church' for everyone except those with right wing views eh? Surprise surprise. Like 'party loyalty', a concept that only applies one way.
I didn’t say that.
It was Fysh who was trying to define what the Conservative Party should be
Before the election, CCHQ tried to parachute a candidate into a seat who couldn't accept because they were already on the Lib Dem's candidates list. That's an extreme example of a selection process that stuff safe seats with ideological opponents to conservatism. It demonstrates a very profound issue that goes to the heart of the party's disunity and ineffectiveness in Government. The Tory Party used to be a lot more democratic, with local associations selecting MPs, a democratic right that they gave up in return for a say in the leadership, which CCHQ is also trying to take off them.
There does need to be a broad church, but everyone in that church should be motivated imho by a basic belief in the values of conservatism, however mild that form of conservatism might be. How else can they represent the interests of conservative voters?
The problem is that there *is* overlap between some of the parties in the centre, and you want that to be a hard-and-fast boundary. But without going to the NF or BNP, there is no boundary on the right. You want to truncate the broad church in the centre, but let any nutcase in on the far right.
But IMV the key word for Conservatives is the small-c word 'conservative'. Not no change, but careful and well-planned change, cautiously made. Progress by evolution rather than revolution.
The Conservative Party have forgotten that over the last decade.
But that notion is one of parties occupying a silly sort of space on left/right spectrum. A band that contracts, expands, and is pushed up and down like a pipe cleaner with the vagaries of politics.
What I'm arguing for is belief in a set of values and principles by which all political actions are measured. Is a law adding to the powers of the state against individual? Is a law or treaty in the national interest or against it? Is a law adding unduly to the tax burden? Will a law fundamentally undermine the security of the nation or its ability to defend itself? Is a law in the interests of families? Is a political action conducive to a strong, cohesive society? Is a law conducive to parliamentary sovereignty?
It isn't really about right and left, though those terms can be useful shorthand. A lot of the PCP, through design by CCHQ for reasons which I can't discern, doesn't pay more than lip service to those values, and sometimes not even that.
The issue is that the way those topics viewed can very much be in the eyes of he beholder, e.g. what is the national interest, especially if you take short- and long-term into account? They can also be contradictory. Is a slightly increased tax burden justified if that tax money is spent in the national interest? This treaty may slightly reduce national sovereignty, but also be in the national interest.
I think they're less ambiguous than you indicate. But they do come in and out of fashion.
There are fashionable weasel words that would justify the closing of Britain's virgin steel making capacity, dealing a knockout blow to our ability to manufacture armaments without importing the steel, based on amorphous envisaged future benefits of 'setting a good example' on CO2 emissions, but no true adherent to Tory principles could ever support such a scheme. Another Tory principle is that families and individuals spend their money better than the state. If adherence to these principles was widespread within the PCP, neither the party nor the country would be in the mess they are in.
I think Thatcher would have been thoroughly on board with reducing CO2 emissions. I think she was the first major world leader to take it seriously, along with CFCs and acid rain.
Her own words:
"For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world's systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.
Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some [end p4] to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century. This was brought home to me at the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver last year when the President of the Maldive Islands reminded us that the highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above sea level. The population is 177,000. It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s—though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain!
The second matter under discussion is the discovery by the British Antarctic Survey of a large hole in the ozone layer which protects life from ultra-violet radiation. We don't know the full implications of the ozone hole nor how it may interact with the greenhouse effect. Nevertheless it was common sense to support a worldwide agreement in Montreal last year to halve world consumption of chlorofluorocarbons by the end of the century. As the sole measure to limit ozone depletion, this may be insufficient but it is a start in reducing the pace of change while we continue the detailed study of the problem on which our (the British) Stratospheric Ozone Review Group is about to report.
The third matter is acid deposition which has affected soils, lakes and trees downwind from industrial centres. Extensive action is being taken to cut down emission of sulphur and nitrogen oxides from power stations at great but necessary expense."
According to you, Thatcher would not be a Conservative...
What a flimsy straw man. Thatcher was rightly extremely concerned about the evidence of global warming, but it is leaping a vast logical chasm to suggest that she would therefore have consented to give up virgin steel-making capacity in Britain, especially given the fact that it has not reduced the quantity of blast furnaces in the world - huge extra capacity has simply been built in India, where environmental standards are lower, so net CO2 may well go up. So the move surrenders a key component of national security, for zero environmental gain.
Do I take it from your attempt to co-opt a dead Margaret Thatcher into agreeing with the closure of Britain's last blast furnace, and therefore our ability to sustain independent armaments production during a war scenario, that you are in favour of this move?
Her actions on CFCs show that she might well have taken some very hard decisions on such matters. I don't think the steelworkers saw her as a friend, do you?
I'm unsure why you're so obsessed with steelmaking in Britain. What 'alternate' websites have informed you about it? The same ones that made you shill for Putin over MH17?
We could do with more MPs with scientific backgrounds. I wonder what scientific knowledge the new lot have got. NB CoPilot can't help me on this.
Give it a few days and you can look them up on Wikipedia.
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
What would be considered a failure? They had hopes of getting a majority after the first round, but would you consider being the largest party and a more than doubling of their seats a failure?
Not being the largest party surely would be a failure after the first predictions.
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election. Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252. The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.
All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.
Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.
Ask Marcus Fysh.
A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".
Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.
On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".
He’s a right wing nutter. I’m glad he doesn’t agree with the composition of the Conservative Party
Room in the 'broad church' for everyone except those with right wing views eh? Surprise surprise. Like 'party loyalty', a concept that only applies one way.
I didn’t say that.
It was Fysh who was trying to define what the Conservative Party should be
Before the election, CCHQ tried to parachute a candidate into a seat who couldn't accept because they were already on the Lib Dem's candidates list. That's an extreme example of a selection process that stuff safe seats with ideological opponents to conservatism. It demonstrates a very profound issue that goes to the heart of the party's disunity and ineffectiveness in Government. The Tory Party used to be a lot more democratic, with local associations selecting MPs, a democratic right that they gave up in return for a say in the leadership, which CCHQ is also trying to take off them.
There does need to be a broad church, but everyone in that church should be motivated imho by a basic belief in the values of conservatism, however mild that form of conservatism might be. How else can they represent the interests of conservative voters?
The problem is that there *is* overlap between some of the parties in the centre, and you want that to be a hard-and-fast boundary. But without going to the NF or BNP, there is no boundary on the right. You want to truncate the broad church in the centre, but let any nutcase in on the far right.
But IMV the key word for Conservatives is the small-c word 'conservative'. Not no change, but careful and well-planned change, cautiously made. Progress by evolution rather than revolution.
The Conservative Party have forgotten that over the last decade.
But that notion is one of parties occupying a silly sort of space on left/right spectrum. A band that contracts, expands, and is pushed up and down like a pipe cleaner with the vagaries of politics.
What I'm arguing for is belief in a set of values and principles by which all political actions are measured. Is a law adding to the powers of the state against individual? Is a law or treaty in the national interest or against it? Is a law adding unduly to the tax burden? Will a law fundamentally undermine the security of the nation or its ability to defend itself? Is a law in the interests of families? Is a political action conducive to a strong, cohesive society? Is a law conducive to parliamentary sovereignty?
It isn't really about right and left, though those terms can be useful shorthand. A lot of the PCP, through design by CCHQ for reasons which I can't discern, doesn't pay more than lip service to those values, and sometimes not even that.
The issue is that the way those topics viewed can very much be in the eyes of he beholder, e.g. what is the national interest, especially if you take short- and long-term into account? They can also be contradictory. Is a slightly increased tax burden justified if that tax money is spent in the national interest? This treaty may slightly reduce national sovereignty, but also be in the national interest.
I think they're less ambiguous than you indicate. But they do come in and out of fashion.
There are fashionable weasel words that would justify the closing of Britain's virgin steel making capacity, dealing a knockout blow to our ability to manufacture armaments without importing the steel, based on amorphous envisaged future benefits of 'setting a good example' on CO2 emissions, but no true adherent to Tory principles could ever support such a scheme. Another Tory principle is that families and individuals spend their money better than the state. If adherence to these principles was widespread within the PCP, neither the party nor the country would be in the mess they are in.
I think Thatcher would have been thoroughly on board with reducing CO2 emissions. I think she was the first major world leader to take it seriously, along with CFCs and acid rain.
Her own words:
"For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world's systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.
Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some [end p4] to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century. This was brought home to me at the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver last year when the President of the Maldive Islands reminded us that the highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above sea level. The population is 177,000. It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s—though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain!
The second matter under discussion is the discovery by the British Antarctic Survey of a large hole in the ozone layer which protects life from ultra-violet radiation. We don't know the full implications of the ozone hole nor how it may interact with the greenhouse effect. Nevertheless it was common sense to support a worldwide agreement in Montreal last year to halve world consumption of chlorofluorocarbons by the end of the century. As the sole measure to limit ozone depletion, this may be insufficient but it is a start in reducing the pace of change while we continue the detailed study of the problem on which our (the British) Stratospheric Ozone Review Group is about to report.
The third matter is acid deposition which has affected soils, lakes and trees downwind from industrial centres. Extensive action is being taken to cut down emission of sulphur and nitrogen oxides from power stations at great but necessary expense."
According to you, Thatcher would not be a Conservative...
There is no other way to make commercial steel without coking coal (a heck of a lot of CO2). Anyone who says otherwise also has a Fusion reactor to sell you.
I'm unsure what point you're trying to make? Few people say we need *no* coal; otherwise heritage railways would be in serious trouble. But getting rid of coal-fired power stations from the 1990s onwards made a massive dent in our carbon emissions.
We are talking about commercial steel and the closing down of a plant that makes virgin steel to replace it with one the recycles scrap steel. The virgin steel market is not decreasing in any way, but it just wont be getting made here.
We also do not mine iron ore any more (there are lots of traces of that industry, only recently gone, in the Northamptonshire area). So that needs importing as well for the true independence you desire. Fortunately we have oodles of limestone.
I'm ambivalent about the steel plant's closure. Ideally we'd keep it, bit I have little idea of the economics of it. If we did, we may be better off nationalising it as a national resource - not that British Steel did a stellar job...
Point of order. We stopped mining iron ore because in a globalised market we could get it cheaper from vast open cast mines in other parts of the word. There are still huge reserves of iron ore just as there are coal. Same goes for copper and tungsten (Devon has the 4th largest tungesten reserves in the world). These are economic and political decisions not resource availability decisions.
Exit polls have just been made available and they all give different numbers - to the point we cannot confidently say which party has come out on top.
France Télévisions gives the National Rally between 120 and 160 seats - if that's correct then this is a surprise defeat for the RN, which would have come third.
Two other polls, including France's biggest private channel TF1 and from RTL/M6 suggest RN has come second. One other projection gives RN the biggest number of seats, but that may be an outlier.
However, what is clear is that France is heading for a hung parliament with no single block controlling a majority. The picture will become clearer in the next few hours as actual results come trickling in - we will bring you those as we get them.
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
From BBC France Télévisions gives the National Rally between 120 and 160 seats - if that's correct then this is a surprise defeat for the RN, which would have come third.
Two other polls, including France's biggest private channel TF1 and from RTL/M6 suggest RN has come second. One other projection gives RN the biggest number of seats, but that may be an outlier.
Looks like the withdrawals and appeals to combine against the far right worked. But governing will not be easier.
What would be considered a failure? They had hopes of getting a majority after the first round, but would you consider being the largest party and a more than doubling of their seats a failure?
Not being the largest party surely would be a failure after the first predictions.
What would be considered a failure? They had hopes of getting a majority after the first round, but would you consider being the largest party and a more than doubling of their seats a failure?
Not being the largest party surely would be a failure after the first predictions.
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election. Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252. The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.
All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.
Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.
Ask Marcus Fysh.
A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".
Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.
On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".
He’s a right wing nutter. I’m glad he doesn’t agree with the composition of the Conservative Party
Room in the 'broad church' for everyone except those with right wing views eh? Surprise surprise. Like 'party loyalty', a concept that only applies one way.
I didn’t say that.
It was Fysh who was trying to define what the Conservative Party should be
Before the election, CCHQ tried to parachute a candidate into a seat who couldn't accept because they were already on the Lib Dem's candidates list. That's an extreme example of a selection process that stuff safe seats with ideological opponents to conservatism. It demonstrates a very profound issue that goes to the heart of the party's disunity and ineffectiveness in Government. The Tory Party used to be a lot more democratic, with local associations selecting MPs, a democratic right that they gave up in return for a say in the leadership, which CCHQ is also trying to take off them.
There does need to be a broad church, but everyone in that church should be motivated imho by a basic belief in the values of conservatism, however mild that form of conservatism might be. How else can they represent the interests of conservative voters?
The problem is that there *is* overlap between some of the parties in the centre, and you want that to be a hard-and-fast boundary. But without going to the NF or BNP, there is no boundary on the right. You want to truncate the broad church in the centre, but let any nutcase in on the far right.
But IMV the key word for Conservatives is the small-c word 'conservative'. Not no change, but careful and well-planned change, cautiously made. Progress by evolution rather than revolution.
The Conservative Party have forgotten that over the last decade.
But that notion is one of parties occupying a silly sort of space on left/right spectrum. A band that contracts, expands, and is pushed up and down like a pipe cleaner with the vagaries of politics.
What I'm arguing for is belief in a set of values and principles by which all political actions are measured. Is a law adding to the powers of the state against individual? Is a law or treaty in the national interest or against it? Is a law adding unduly to the tax burden? Will a law fundamentally undermine the security of the nation or its ability to defend itself? Is a law in the interests of families? Is a political action conducive to a strong, cohesive society? Is a law conducive to parliamentary sovereignty?
It isn't really about right and left, though those terms can be useful shorthand. A lot of the PCP, through design by CCHQ for reasons which I can't discern, doesn't pay more than lip service to those values, and sometimes not even that.
The issue is that the way those topics viewed can very much be in the eyes of he beholder, e.g. what is the national interest, especially if you take short- and long-term into account? They can also be contradictory. Is a slightly increased tax burden justified if that tax money is spent in the national interest? This treaty may slightly reduce national sovereignty, but also be in the national interest.
I think they're less ambiguous than you indicate. But they do come in and out of fashion.
There are fashionable weasel words that would justify the closing of Britain's virgin steel making capacity, dealing a knockout blow to our ability to manufacture armaments without importing the steel, based on amorphous envisaged future benefits of 'setting a good example' on CO2 emissions, but no true adherent to Tory principles could ever support such a scheme. Another Tory principle is that families and individuals spend their money better than the state. If adherence to these principles was widespread within the PCP, neither the party nor the country would be in the mess they are in.
I think Thatcher would have been thoroughly on board with reducing CO2 emissions. I think she was the first major world leader to take it seriously, along with CFCs and acid rain.
Her own words:
"For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world's systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.
Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some [end p4] to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century. This was brought home to me at the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver last year when the President of the Maldive Islands reminded us that the highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above sea level. The population is 177,000. It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s—though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain!
The second matter under discussion is the discovery by the British Antarctic Survey of a large hole in the ozone layer which protects life from ultra-violet radiation. We don't know the full implications of the ozone hole nor how it may interact with the greenhouse effect. Nevertheless it was common sense to support a worldwide agreement in Montreal last year to halve world consumption of chlorofluorocarbons by the end of the century. As the sole measure to limit ozone depletion, this may be insufficient but it is a start in reducing the pace of change while we continue the detailed study of the problem on which our (the British) Stratospheric Ozone Review Group is about to report.
The third matter is acid deposition which has affected soils, lakes and trees downwind from industrial centres. Extensive action is being taken to cut down emission of sulphur and nitrogen oxides from power stations at great but necessary expense."
According to you, Thatcher would not be a Conservative...
There is no other way to make commercial steel without coking coal (a heck of a lot of CO2). Anyone who says otherwise also has a Fusion reactor to sell you.
I'm unsure what point you're trying to make? Few people say we need *no* coal; otherwise heritage railways would be in serious trouble. But getting rid of coal-fired power stations from the 1990s onwards made a massive dent in our carbon emissions.
Key takeaways and apparent concerns that aren't: - It'd probably make us less dependent on imports - You certainly can make the top grades of steel in electric arc furnaces these days and the very best grades of steel made in Britain these days are made in electric arc furnaces rather than blast furnaces
Actual concerns: - It's a very rapid and sudden shift and puts all our eggs into one basket (reversing our previous issue of being almost all-in on blast furnaces) - Power costs here are high - The most exciting new work on decarbonising steel production is occuring in Sweden with hydrogen DRI plants and the US with electrolysis
Comments
The first issue is by far the hardest.
As far as I can tell it handled this weird election really well. Plug in the actual election vote shares and you get: C126, L412, LD67, Ref 8, Green 3, SNP 11, PC 3. That is startlingly close.
The challenge as ever is knowing what the vote shares are going to be.
https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/30/why-vast-projects-like-hs2-uk-steel-industry-procurement-rules-british-producers
Quite what your war scenario is that has you so outraged on behalf of Mrs T's ghost, I'm not clear.
I look forward to Labour reopening all the coal mines and coal-fired power stations. Oh hang on, it's now the hard right that seems to want that...
https://x.com/LBC/status/1809910681983959081
Completely in denial.
What that does mean is that you could start seeing much more electoral geography coming into play.
A good chunk of seats are straight Lab/Con battles, but then you have Lab/Ref and LD/Con contests too.
I do not think it is inconceivable that by the time the next GE rolls around people will be voting essentially for one of two broad electoral coalitions, depending on where they live. By elections throughout the parliament will also demonstrate this (because split votes will equal a loss of the seat).
And this eventually is liable to make a coalition government next time more likely, and possibly electoral reform.
It might be wrong but it looks about right and they’ve been correct before from this source
I'm unsure why you're so obsessed with steelmaking in Britain. What 'alternate' websites have informed you about it? The same ones that made you shill for Putin over MH17?
We await analysis as to what extent Thursdays swing was uniform, or proportional.
Davey's job is to be the experienced leader (only LD with Ministerial experience), making sure that his MPs spend sufficient effort both digging themselves in, and making some impact in Parliament. But he will be using some of his LD Lords in interesting ways.
Yes it's a huge majority, but that also means that the little attention the Opposition around policy / politics get will be more focused on LDs because the Tories will be doing some version of naval gazing.
We will know in 25 minutes
https://www.sporcle.com/games/g/states
It's as though rural seats stopped voting at 8pm on Thursday, urban seats at 10pm, and the "exit poll" takes into account votes already counted, if the UK counted votes at polling stations instead of counting centres.
But I’m here to do some actual flint knapping and a friend has kindly loaned me his little house in the lovely Luberon
BBC commentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSvJ9SN8THE
An interesting question might be which ones were we the most wrong on - I was bad on Nottingham and Coventry too.
Who knows the right and wrongs of which political system is 'best', but the US seems to have gotten it mostly right. However Biden is challenging one of their weaknesses at the same time that Trumpo is attacking the same fault. A President has to have limited powers and limited freedom.
If I was a US citizen I'd be really quite alarmed that the system that has worked well for a long time is being attacked and undermined by both of the main political strands.
You're psychotically insistent on holding the PB-line against Mad Vlad, and very flamboyantly question where the loyalties of other people lie, but on something which is a real threat to our national security, you really couldn't give a toss.
The reality is that they're sister parties, but they're not in a formal coalition and never have been. They share a similar ethos but many of their policies are different, particularly on constitutional issues.
It's true that John Alderdice sits as Lib Dem in the lords, but that's a personal decision on his part - not a party one.
APNI are busily licking their wounds after a disappointing election (they thought they would win 2 seats, and had high hopes for 3), and I'd be pretty surprised if they decided to take the LD whip - how would it benefit them?
I wonder what scientific knowledge the new lot have got.
NB CoPilot can't help me on this.
Portree. Which I thought was in Ireland for some reason. And a fat finger on Reading. Or rather not on Reading.
If they look rudderless for too long people will start to notice (and Farage will exploit that). Arguably they’re better off just making the choice one way or the other and then moving forwards.
Not that I have an alternative suggestion.
We are very blessed that many Muslims in this country are Ahmadis who are wholly peaceful and non voilent. Wonderful people but regarded as heritics by militants.
And dare I say it that where there is trouble it is less to do with religion and more to do with a lot of little educated people from certain remote rural areas being brought in by the owners of declining mills, due to manual skills that enabled them to be (very) cheap labour and brought with them many customs that would not have been wholy unfamiliar to Thomas Hardy.
Some did extraordinarily well, but many ended up in virtual ghettoes with little attempt to bring them in to the mainstream and basically abandonment of them when the mills went bust a decade or two later. In such a siutation communities become insular.
Looking at East Anglia, and two of Southend, Colchester, Chelmsford, Ipswich being cities it's not quite clear in my head which those should be. That's probably because I don't know them very well enough; I have to rely on Chelmsford having a Cathedral and Cricket, and Colchester being prominently Roman.
So Sunak would appoint a new Shad Cab prominently featuring the likely contenders, then the conference would be used as a beauty contest. First round of the election would be in the second half October, with subsequent rounds followed by a membership ballot with the winner announced in late November or early December.
But it's worth remembering that in 2005, this meant that Howard remained leader for 7 months after his election defeat - a similar length of time would take us into 2025. Unlikely, but not impossible.
Have the far right failed as expected?
Not being the largest party surely would be a failure after the first predictions.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/jul/07/french-election-2024-results-latest-france-news-marine-le-pen-national-rally-emmanuel-macron
Exit polls have just been made available and they all give different numbers - to the point we cannot confidently say which party has come out on top.
France Télévisions gives the National Rally between 120 and 160 seats - if that's correct then this is a surprise defeat for the RN, which would have come third.
Two other polls, including France's biggest private channel TF1 and from RTL/M6 suggest RN has come second. One other projection gives RN the biggest number of seats, but that may be an outlier.
However, what is clear is that France is heading for a hung parliament with no single block controlling a majority. The picture will become clearer in the next few hours as actual results come trickling in - we will bring you those as we get them.
France Télévisions gives the National Rally between 120 and 160 seats - if that's correct then this is a surprise defeat for the RN, which would have come third.
Two other polls, including France's biggest private channel TF1 and from RTL/M6 suggest RN has come second. One other projection gives RN the biggest number of seats, but that may be an outlier.
Looks like the withdrawals and appeals to combine against the far right worked. But governing will not be easier.
Very embarrassing for RN though.
Key takeaways and apparent concerns that aren't:
- It'd probably make us less dependent on imports
- You certainly can make the top grades of steel in electric arc furnaces these days and the very best grades of steel made in Britain these days are made in electric arc furnaces rather than blast furnaces
Actual concerns:
- It's a very rapid and sudden shift and puts all our eggs into one basket (reversing our previous issue of being almost all-in on blast furnaces)
- Power costs here are high
- The most exciting new work on decarbonising steel production is occuring in Sweden with hydrogen DRI plants and the US with electrolysis