Unless I’m reading the results wrong, LPF were 3m votes behind RN but because of the way that the tactical voting worked came first on seats.
I’m not sure that bodes well. It’s a bullet dodged but the RN scored by far the highest number of votes (over 10% more on my understanding?). That would be a bit like Labour falling short of a majority on Thursday 10 points ahead of the Tories. It’s the electoral system and alliances that have caused the result.
It raises an important point but I think it's democracy working, not the other way round. The left and centre alliances intended to impose a pseudo PR system on top of a two phase FPTP system. It turned out extremely successful.
The important point is RN is extremely transfer unfriendly. Almost everyone will choose anyone other than RN if their preferred candidate is not available. Le Pen has more votes than anyone else but she can't work a coalition. She can only win if she is the biggest party and gets a majority under FPTP.
The message from this election is the two thirds of the French population who don't support Le Pen have given all the other parties a mandate to sort something out between them. Whether they do or not remains to be seen.
In a way, it’s similar to Gerry Adams’ defeat in 1992, on a larger scale. Most of us cheered, but we overlooked that his vote increased.
And SF can't get a majority in NI or the Republic even now.
RN clearly are too toxic to get anywhere near a majority in France or to win the Presidential election without centre right support, at present LR voters clearly still prefer Macron's party in runoffs to RN. LR voters will only hold their nose and vote for RN to keep out Melenchon and the far left
Correct. And LR will vote for any Left Alliance candidate who is not Mélenchon's party.
In effect everyone will vote for anyone who isn't Le Pen unless they were going to vote for Le Pen in the first place.
Neoliberals showing their soft underbelly to the left continued in France - have I died and gone to heaven? First Starmer underperforms, loses seats to Greens and Independents and is unable to "close the door" on the revival of the left under Corbynism, now the Left Alliance beats RN and La Republique. Left wing wins keep coming - next up will be Biden dropping out and a surprise entry from Bernie sweeping up whatever process they put in place... (that last one is a joke; or is it?)
Starmer who won a huge landslide? That Starmer? Looking forward to watching Turkey play Switzerland on wednesday night on that logic.
Starmer won more seats under FPTP - and got fewer votes and a lower vote share than Corbyn in '17 and '19.
Politics isn't like a football game - it should be an expression of the public's desires, not an expression of skills of a team / individual. If you look at the results and the vote distribution you see a clear story - people wanted to kick the Tories out and, in areas where there was no risk of the Tories winning, Labour underperformed. This bodes well for the left.
Delusion. You are interpreting the results that way you want them. An unpopular Tory government, worn out by 14 years of power plus covid, plus Ukraine, was thrown out by the people. Doesn't mean we are heading for a left wing utopia.
I don't think we are heading for a left wing utopia. But Greens now have 40 seats where they came second, and have proven they can win across many different seats - the argument that "a vote for Greens is a wasted vote" can be tackled with "it's only between us and X party here, and we won in Bristol and Suffolk, we can win here too". And again, the failure to beat JC and some of these other independents winning or getting close to winning, show how and where Labour is weak. I'm not denying a Starmer win, nor am I going to deny that the Labour party will now have the ability to do what it wants in terms of policy. But now the argument isn't "let's kick the Tories out" it's "we've done x for you" - and if Labour don't deliver, or could have gone further, there are a good number of MPs in the commons who will point that out.
If we go back to the football analogy, as a Luton Town supporter, I remember way back when a cup match where we played Liverpool. At half time we were 2-0 up, final score was 2-4. But we were happy because we played a cracking game, and showed a premiership team that we could score against them and hold our own (for a while). A decade later we were in the Premi ourselves. That's how it feels now - we accept we didn't win, but considering our position and the things against us - we performed better than expected. And it gives us hope for the future.
I'm quite taken by her term "Grey Belt" for mess ^ scrub in the Green Belt.
Putting housing targets back on local authorities is a good move.
I wonder if she has a "little list" of Rishi's Hail Mary Passes to consider reversing?
It’s the right thing to do, but probably not a popular thing to do.
I think we will learn much about their judgement of how quickly benefit will be seen/felt vs assessment of short term political hit vs assessment of long term political hit.
What I think they would like is a slow-burn stealth money raiser like Gordon Brown's hit on pensions early on which was hardly noticed.
Something that comes across as looking like a minor change, but actually upends decades of orthodoxy to long-term planning, costing the government many billions more as private companies totally abandon an entire sector?
How does one go about requesting to do a thread header? I'd be willing to do a piece explaining why I, someone on the left, was very happy with the election results last week and why I believe it shows Labour's weakness (although John Curtice has made the same argument, so you could just read his piece...)
Going into this election the suggestion was Starmer would have wrapped up the left wing for good and will get on with "sensible, grown up, politics". Well, the left is alive and well - sure, nowhere near power - but not cowed.
Try tagging @TSE . I'd certainly be happy to read it!
Neoliberals showing their soft underbelly to the left continued in France - have I died and gone to heaven? First Starmer underperforms, loses seats to Greens and Independents and is unable to "close the door" on the revival of the left under Corbynism, now the Left Alliance beats RN and La Republique. Left wing wins keep coming - next up will be Biden dropping out and a surprise entry from Bernie sweeping up whatever process they put in place... (that last one is a joke; or is it?)
208 right wing deputies were elected, compared to 194 left wing. It’s not a left wing victory.
I didn't say it was a victory - but it was better than expected and the left will take what we can get. People were getting ready for a RN French parliament; now they aren't.
I'm quite taken by her term "Grey Belt" for mess ^ scrub in the Green Belt.
Putting housing targets back on local authorities is a good move.
I wonder if she has a "little list" of Rishi's Hail Mary Passes to consider reversing?
It’s the right thing to do, but probably not a popular thing to do.
I think we will learn much about their judgement of how quickly benefit will be seen/felt vs assessment of short term political hit vs assessment of long term political hit.
What I think they would like is a slow-burn stealth money raiser like Gordon Brown's hit on pensions early on which was hardly noticed.
Something that comes across as looking like a minor change, but actually upends decades of orthodoxy to long-term planning, costing the government many billions more as private companies totally abandon an entire sector?
Builder shares up OTOH, admittedly some days back.
The number of lawmakers who explicitly said Biden should not be the Democratic nominee was greater than the number who spoke up for him to stay, according to one of the sources.
It does seem like a lot of people want Biden to step down, and it's now a matter of can he be persuaded to do so.
The debate from last week starts to come across as a stitch-up against the President, there’s been such a co-ordinated response to it since before they even left the stage. There’s no way that everyone in his own party thought he was doing just fine until that moment, when it’s been clear for years that he’s been getting noticeably older and slower.
The problem now is how to deal with Kamala Harris, who’s polling is even worse than Biden’s, but she was a diversity hire so can’t be swapped out easily without upsetting people.
Meanwhile, some of us first mentioned Gretchen Whitmer a long time ago
Not a stitch up, a me too, emperor's new clothes kinda moment. Everyone knew, it just became ok to say so (that, and he has deteriorated). My hopes for KH are that she gets a boost from becoming actual vs hypothetical in polling questions, and that Trump can't cope with a young black female opponent. And that she shortens further enabling me to green up.
Unless I’m reading the results wrong, LPF were 3m votes behind RN but because of the way that the tactical voting worked came first on seats.
I’m not sure that bodes well. It’s a bullet dodged but the RN scored by far the highest number of votes (over 10% more on my understanding?). That would be a bit like Labour falling short of a majority on Thursday 10 points ahead of the Tories. It’s the electoral system and alliances that have caused the result.
It raises an important point but I think it's democracy working, not the other way round. The left and centre alliances intended to impose a pseudo PR system on top of a two phase FPTP system. It turned out extremely successful.
The important point is RN is extremely transfer unfriendly. Almost everyone will choose anyone other than RN if their preferred candidate is not available. Le Pen has more votes than anyone else but she can't work a coalition. She can only win if she is the biggest party and gets a majority under FPTP.
The message from this election is the two thirds of the French population who don't support Le Pen have given all the other parties a mandate to sort something out between them. Whether they do or not remains to be seen.
In a way, it’s similar to Gerry Adams’ defeat in 1992, on a larger scale. Most of us cheered, but we overlooked that his vote increased.
The other parties can only agree upon opposing RN, nothing else. And, the Republicans are on the point of disappearing as a force.
The Republicains still got over 50 seats and their centre right voters are now the key swing voters both Macron and RN need in 2027 to win in the runoffs
Except of course that Macron will not be standing in 2027. So who will be the semi-centrist against the extreme right and left? Perhaps the PM of whatever coalition is eventually cobbled together...and who better to lead it than newly elected Deputy, Francois Hollande, who I believe is quite well-known to the current occupant of the Elsyee Palace.
The number of lawmakers who explicitly said Biden should not be the Democratic nominee was greater than the number who spoke up for him to stay, according to one of the sources.
It does seem like a lot of people want Biden to step down, and it's now a matter of can he be persuaded to do so.
The debate from last week starts to come across as a stitch-up against the President, there’s been such a co-ordinated response to it since before they even left the stage. There’s no way that everyone in his own party thought he was doing just fine until that moment, when it’s been clear for years that he’s been getting noticeably older and slower.
The problem now is how to deal with Kamala Harris, who’s polling is even worse than Biden’s, but she was a diversity hire so can’t be swapped out easily without upsetting people.
Meanwhile, some of us first mentioned Gretchen Whitmer a long time ago
Not a stitch up, a me too, emperor's new clothes kinda moment. Everyone knew, it just became ok to say so (that, and he has deteriorated). My hopes for KH are that she gets a boost from becoming actual vs hypothetical in polling questions, and that Trump can't cope with a young black female opponent. And that she shortens further enabling me to green up.
Unless I’m reading the results wrong, LPF were 3m votes behind RN but because of the way that the tactical voting worked came first on seats.
I’m not sure that bodes well. It’s a bullet dodged but the RN scored by far the highest number of votes (over 10% more on my understanding?). That would be a bit like Labour falling short of a majority on Thursday 10 points ahead of the Tories. It’s the electoral system and alliances that have caused the result.
It raises an important point but I think it's democracy working, not the other way round. The left and centre alliances intended to impose a pseudo PR system on top of a two phase FPTP system. It turned out extremely successful.
The important point is RN is extremely transfer unfriendly. Almost everyone will choose anyone other than RN if their preferred candidate is not available. Le Pen has more votes than anyone else but she can't work a coalition. She can only win if she is the biggest party and gets a majority under FPTP.
The message from this election is the two thirds of the French population who don't support Le Pen have given all the other parties a mandate to sort something out between them. Whether they do or not remains to be seen.
In a way, it’s similar to Gerry Adams’ defeat in 1992, on a larger scale. Most of us cheered, but we overlooked that his vote increased.
And SF can't get a majority in NI or the Republic even now.
RN clearly are too toxic to get anywhere near a majority in France or to win the Presidential election without centre right support, at present LR voters clearly still prefer Macron's party in runoffs to RN. LR voters will only hold their nose and vote for RN to keep out Melenchon and the far left
The number of lawmakers who explicitly said Biden should not be the Democratic nominee was greater than the number who spoke up for him to stay, according to one of the sources.
It does seem like a lot of people want Biden to step down, and it's now a matter of can he be persuaded to do so.
The debate from last week starts to come across as a stitch-up against the President, there’s been such a co-ordinated response to it since before they even left the stage. There’s no way that everyone in his own party thought he was doing just fine until that moment, when it’s been clear for years that he’s been getting noticeably older and slower.
The problem now is how to deal with Kamala Harris, who’s polling is even worse than Biden’s, but she was a diversity hire so can’t be swapped out easily without upsetting people.
Meanwhile, some of us first mentioned Gretchen Whitmer a long time ago
Not a stitch up, a me too, emperor's new clothes kinda moment. Everyone knew, it just became ok to say so (that, and he has deteriorated). My hopes for KH are that she gets a boost from becoming actual vs hypothetical in polling questions, and that Trump can't cope with a young black female opponent. And that she shortens further enabling me to green up.
Not necessarily a problem if they just change the presidential candidate and leave Harris in place?
It is given she may well poll worse than Biden. New JL Partners poll has Trump leading Biden by 5% but Trump leading Harris by 11% in the national popular vote.
New Morning Consult polls from swing states have Biden leading Trump by 3% in Wisconsin and by 5% in Michigan.
Trump leads in Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania and NC and Georgia is neck and neck
Unless I’m reading the results wrong, LPF were 3m votes behind RN but because of the way that the tactical voting worked came first on seats.
I’m not sure that bodes well. It’s a bullet dodged but the RN scored by far the highest number of votes (over 10% more on my understanding?). That would be a bit like Labour falling short of a majority on Thursday 10 points ahead of the Tories. It’s the electoral system and alliances that have caused the result.
It raises an important point but I think it's democracy working, not the other way round. The left and centre alliances intended to impose a pseudo PR system on top of a two phase FPTP system. It turned out extremely successful.
The important point is RN is extremely transfer unfriendly. Almost everyone will choose anyone other than RN if their preferred candidate is not available. Le Pen has more votes than anyone else but she can't work a coalition. She can only win if she is the biggest party and gets a majority under FPTP.
The message from this election is the two thirds of the French population who don't support Le Pen have given all the other parties a mandate to sort something out between them. Whether they do or not remains to be seen.
In a way, it’s similar to Gerry Adams’ defeat in 1992, on a larger scale. Most of us cheered, but we overlooked that his vote increased.
The other parties can only agree upon opposing RN, nothing else. And, the Republicans are on the point of disappearing as a force.
The Republicains still got over 50 seats and their centre right voters are now the key swing voters both Macron and RN need in 2027 to win in the runoffs
The 17 Ciotti Republicans are now an adjunct to RN. The rest are down to 39 seats. Sort of like the National Liberal/Liberal split.
Unless I’m reading the results wrong, LPF were 3m votes behind RN but because of the way that the tactical voting worked came first on seats.
I’m not sure that bodes well. It’s a bullet dodged but the RN scored by far the highest number of votes (over 10% more on my understanding?). That would be a bit like Labour falling short of a majority on Thursday 10 points ahead of the Tories. It’s the electoral system and alliances that have caused the result.
It raises an important point but I think it's democracy working, not the other way round. The left and centre alliances intended to impose a pseudo PR system on top of a two phase FPTP system. It turned out extremely successful.
The important point is RN is extremely transfer unfriendly. Almost everyone will choose anyone other than RN if their preferred candidate is not available. Le Pen has more votes than anyone else but she can't work a coalition. She can only win if she is the biggest party and gets a majority under FPTP.
The message from this election is the two thirds of the French population who don't support Le Pen have given all the other parties a mandate to sort something out between them. Whether they do or not remains to be seen.
In a way, it’s similar to Gerry Adams’ defeat in 1992, on a larger scale. Most of us cheered, but we overlooked that his vote increased.
The other parties can only agree upon opposing RN, nothing else. And, the Republicans are on the point of disappearing as a force.
The Republicains still got over 50 seats and their centre right voters are now the key swing voters both Macron and RN need in 2027 to win in the runoffs
Except of course that Macron will not be standing in 2027. So who will be the semi-centrist against the extreme right and left? Perhaps the PM of whatever coalition is eventually cobbled together...and who better to lead it than newly elected Deputy, Francois Hollande, who I believe is quite well-known to the current occupant of the Elsyee Palace.
Attal or Philippe most likely ie the outgoing and former PMs for Macron's party.
Hollande is a leftist Socialist LR voters despise and the man who narrowly beat their hero and former leader Sarkozy in 2012 to the Presidency. LR voters might vote for Attal or Phillippe over Le Pen but they would likely mostly vote for Le Pen over Hollande
I'm quite taken by her term "Grey Belt" for mess ^ scrub in the Green Belt.
Putting housing targets back on local authorities is a good move.
I wonder if she has a "little list" of Rishi's Hail Mary Passes to consider reversing?
It’s the right thing to do, but probably not a popular thing to do.
I think we will learn much about their judgement of how quickly benefit will be seen/felt vs assessment of short term political hit vs assessment of long term political hit.
What I think they would like is a slow-burn stealth money raiser like Gordon Brown's hit on pensions early on which was hardly noticed.
Something that comes across as looking like a minor change, but actually upends decades of orthodoxy to long-term planning, costing the government many billions more as private companies totally abandon an entire sector?
Builder shares up OTOH, admittedly some days back.
Of course they are. The builders love any loosening of planning regs as it saves them money. As I have said many times before planning regs are not about stopping building but about making sure it is done in the right way with the right safeguards for the environment etc.
The biggest influence on how many houses we build is the attitiude of he builders themselves. The Telegraph rather amusingly pointed out a few days ago that planning aplications collapsed last year. They blamed planning regs when in fact it was directly due to the plateauing in house price rises which causd the builders to stop building. They don't want house prices to fall. And if they look like doing so then they will simply stop building houses until they start to rise again.
If you want more houses built then they need to be directly financed and built by local councils. Take the profit motive out of housing supply for a while and you will be able to build what we need and where we need.
The number of lawmakers who explicitly said Biden should not be the Democratic nominee was greater than the number who spoke up for him to stay, according to one of the sources.
It does seem like a lot of people want Biden to step down, and it's now a matter of can he be persuaded to do so.
The debate from last week starts to come across as a stitch-up against the President, there’s been such a co-ordinated response to it since before they even left the stage. There’s no way that everyone in his own party thought he was doing just fine until that moment, when it’s been clear for years that he’s been getting noticeably older and slower.
The problem now is how to deal with Kamala Harris, who’s polling is even worse than Biden’s, but she was a diversity hire so can’t be swapped out easily without upsetting people.
Meanwhile, some of us first mentioned Gretchen Whitmer a long time ago
"Diversity hire" - well done for picking up the right wing trope. Harris is a cut above about three quarter of all VP picks. And get about ten time the average criticism.
Unless I’m reading the results wrong, LPF were 3m votes behind RN but because of the way that the tactical voting worked came first on seats.
I’m not sure that bodes well. It’s a bullet dodged but the RN scored by far the highest number of votes (over 10% more on my understanding?). That would be a bit like Labour falling short of a majority on Thursday 10 points ahead of the Tories. It’s the electoral system and alliances that have caused the result.
It raises an important point but I think it's democracy working, not the other way round. The left and centre alliances intended to impose a pseudo PR system on top of a two phase FPTP system. It turned out extremely successful.
The important point is RN is extremely transfer unfriendly. Almost everyone will choose anyone other than RN if their preferred candidate is not available. Le Pen has more votes than anyone else but she can't work a coalition. She can only win if she is the biggest party and gets a majority under FPTP.
The message from this election is the two thirds of the French population who don't support Le Pen have given all the other parties a mandate to sort something out between them. Whether they do or not remains to be seen.
In a way, it’s similar to Gerry Adams’ defeat in 1992, on a larger scale. Most of us cheered, but we overlooked that his vote increased.
The other parties can only agree upon opposing RN, nothing else. And, the Republicans are on the point of disappearing as a force.
The Republicains still got over 50 seats and their centre right voters are now the key swing voters both Macron and RN need in 2027 to win in the runoffs
The 17 Ciotti Republicans are now an adjunct to RN. The rest are down to 39 seats. Sort of like the National Liberal/Liberal split.
I believe the Ciotti Republicains are now included with RN
Unless I’m reading the results wrong, LPF were 3m votes behind RN but because of the way that the tactical voting worked came first on seats.
I’m not sure that bodes well. It’s a bullet dodged but the RN scored by far the highest number of votes (over 10% more on my understanding?). That would be a bit like Labour falling short of a majority on Thursday 10 points ahead of the Tories. It’s the electoral system and alliances that have caused the result.
It raises an important point but I think it's democracy working, not the other way round. The left and centre alliances intended to impose a pseudo PR system on top of a two phase FPTP system. It turned out extremely successful.
The important point is RN is extremely transfer unfriendly. Almost everyone will choose anyone other than RN if their preferred candidate is not available. Le Pen has more votes than anyone else but she can't work a coalition. She can only win if she is the biggest party and gets a majority under FPTP.
The message from this election is the two thirds of the French population who don't support Le Pen have given all the other parties a mandate to sort something out between them. Whether they do or not remains to be seen.
In a way, it’s similar to Gerry Adams’ defeat in 1992, on a larger scale. Most of us cheered, but we overlooked that his vote increased.
And SF can't get a majority in NI or the Republic even now.
RN clearly are too toxic to get anywhere near a majority in France or to win the Presidential election without centre right support, at present LR voters clearly still prefer Macron's party in runoffs to RN. LR voters will only hold their nose and vote for RN to keep out Melenchon and the far left
Unless I’m reading the results wrong, LPF were 3m votes behind RN but because of the way that the tactical voting worked came first on seats.
I’m not sure that bodes well. It’s a bullet dodged but the RN scored by far the highest number of votes (over 10% more on my understanding?). That would be a bit like Labour falling short of a majority on Thursday 10 points ahead of the Tories. It’s the electoral system and alliances that have caused the result.
It raises an important point but I think it's democracy working, not the other way round. The left and centre alliances intended to impose a pseudo PR system on top of a two phase FPTP system. It turned out extremely successful.
The important point is RN is extremely transfer unfriendly. Almost everyone will choose anyone other than RN if their preferred candidate is not available. Le Pen has more votes than anyone else but she can't work a coalition. She can only win if she is the biggest party and gets a majority under FPTP.
The message from this election is the two thirds of the French population who don't support Le Pen have given all the other parties a mandate to sort something out between them. Whether they do or not remains to be seen.
In a way, it’s similar to Gerry Adams’ defeat in 1992, on a larger scale. Most of us cheered, but we overlooked that his vote increased.
And SF can't get a majority in NI or the Republic even now.
RN clearly are too toxic to get anywhere near a majority in France or to win the Presidential election without centre right support, at present LR voters clearly still prefer Macron's party in runoffs to RN. LR voters will only hold their nose and vote for RN to keep out Melenchon and the far left
Correct. And LR will vote for any Left Alliance candidate who is not Mélenchon's party.
In effect everyone will vote for anyone who isn't Le Pen unless they were going to vote for Le Pen in the first place.
Not sure about that, most LR would not vote for Socialists over RN
How does one go about requesting to do a thread header? I'd be willing to do a piece explaining why I, someone on the left, was very happy with the election results last week and why I believe it shows Labour's weakness (although John Curtice has made the same argument, so you could just read his piece...)
Going into this election the suggestion was Starmer would have wrapped up the left wing for good and will get on with "sensible, grown up, politics". Well, the left is alive and well - sure, nowhere near power - but not cowed.
I'm quite taken by her term "Grey Belt" for mess ^ scrub in the Green Belt.
Putting housing targets back on local authorities is a good move.
I wonder if she has a "little list" of Rishi's Hail Mary Passes to consider reversing?
It’s the right thing to do, but probably not a popular thing to do.
I think we will learn much about their judgement of how quickly benefit will be seen/felt vs assessment of short term political hit vs assessment of long term political hit.
What I think they would like is a slow-burn stealth money raiser like Gordon Brown's hit on pensions early on which was hardly noticed.
Something that comes across as looking like a minor change, but actually upends decades of orthodoxy to long-term planning, costing the government many billions more as private companies totally abandon an entire sector?
Builder shares up OTOH, admittedly some days back.
Of course they are. The builders love any loosening of planning regs as it saves them money. As I have said many times before planning regs are not about stopping building but about making sure it is done in the right way with the right safeguards for the environment etc.
The biggest influence on how many houses we build is the attitiude of he builders themselves. The Telegraph rather amusingly pointed out a few days ago that planning aplications collapsed last year. They blamed planning regs when in fact it was directly due to the plateauing in house price rises which causd the builders to stop building. They don't want house prices to fall. And if they look like doing so then they will simply stop building houses until they start to rise again.
If you want more houses built then they need to be directly financed and built by local councils. Take the profit motive out of housing supply for a while and you will be able to build what we need and where we need.
Let's see what Labour do. Today's announcement is purely about ministerial policy - which can be changed pretty well immediately without legislation. And in its own terms, it seems to me (FWIW) to be a step in the right direction.
I'm quite taken by her term "Grey Belt" for mess ^ scrub in the Green Belt.
Putting housing targets back on local authorities is a good move.
I wonder if she has a "little list" of Rishi's Hail Mary Passes to consider reversing?
It’s the right thing to do, but probably not a popular thing to do.
I think we will learn much about their judgement of how quickly benefit will be seen/felt vs assessment of short term political hit vs assessment of long term political hit.
What I think they would like is a slow-burn stealth money raiser like Gordon Brown's hit on pensions early on which was hardly noticed.
Something that comes across as looking like a minor change, but actually upends decades of orthodoxy to long-term planning, costing the government many billions more as private companies totally abandon an entire sector?
That may be the political reality of it.
Take an example. Council Tax, aside from being regressive, has been in drift from reality for 30+ years.
A rapid sorting out - removing the taper favouring more expensive properties, and a revaluation to deal with unequal house price rises on a local, regional and national level, could be done in 12 months.
But that will have a major impact on some, albeit generally the more wealthy, and those who have been benefiting for 30 years from below-appropriate Council Tax.
On the other side is the argument "but it's a charge for services".
So how to play that one? Councils need greater budgets *now*, but have been so starved that they do not have the capacity to manage the spend effectively - so capacity needs to be built too.
Largest UK public sector trial of four-day week sees huge benefits, research finds Exclusive: South Cambridgeshire experiment led to fewer refuse collectors quitting and faster planning decisions https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jul/08/largest-uk-public-sector-trial-four-day-week-sees-huge-benefits-research-finds- ...South Cambridgeshire district council’s controversial experiment with a shorter working week resulted in improvements in performance in 11 out of 24 areas, little or no change in 11 areas and worsening of performance in two areas, according to analysis of productivity before and during the 15-month trial by academics at the universities of Cambridge and Salford.
The trial by the Liberal Democrat-controlled authority drew a furious reaction from the Conservative government, with a minister telling the borough leader, Bridget Smith, to “end your experiment immediately”, complaining that it would not give value for money for local taxpayers...
Clearly not a policy that will work everywhere, but well worth further investigation.
Apparently under the Starmer regime Parrs Wood High in South Manchester has supplanted Eton as the most likely alma mater for cabinet ministers.
Also we have an Ed Sec who actually received free school meals for what I assume is the first time ever.
I doubt that one - they go back to 1906, and we have had many ministers who came from poverty.
In 1906 the British parliament passed the permissive Education (Provision of Meals) Act allowing Local Education Authorities (LEAs) to provide free meals to elementary schoolchildren, funded out of the local rates. Rate-payer funded feeding programmes enabled under-nourished schoolchildren to benefit from the nation’s compulsory elementary education. 358,306 elementary schoolchildren were provided with free meals in 1912/13, about 7% of the elementary school population aged 3-11.
The 1944 Education Act required all LEAs to provide a midday meal and set nutritional guidelines to follow. Efforts to provide all meals free of charge to the recipient proved too costly and in 1949 the Labour government allowed LEAs to charge 6d. per meal while still providing some meals free to disadvantaged schoolchildren. Throughout the fifties and sixties approximately 50% of schoolchildren, both elementary and secondary, were taking nutritionally-designed midday meals with 5 - 10% getting them free. https://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/the-provision-of-school-meals-since-1906-progress-or-a-recipe-for-disaster
I'm quite taken by her term "Grey Belt" for mess ^ scrub in the Green Belt.
Putting housing targets back on local authorities is a good move.
I wonder if she has a "little list" of Rishi's Hail Mary Passes to consider reversing?
It’s the right thing to do, but probably not a popular thing to do.
I think we will learn much about their judgement of how quickly benefit will be seen/felt vs assessment of short term political hit vs assessment of long term political hit.
What I think they would like is a slow-burn stealth money raiser like Gordon Brown's hit on pensions early on which was hardly noticed.
Something that comes across as looking like a minor change, but actually upends decades of orthodoxy to long-term planning, costing the government many billions more as private companies totally abandon an entire sector?
Builder shares up OTOH, admittedly some days back.
Of course they are. The builders love any loosening of planning regs as it saves them money. As I have said many times before planning regs are not about stopping building but about making sure it is done in the right way with the right safeguards for the environment etc.
The biggest influence on how many houses we build is the attitiude of he builders themselves. The Telegraph rather amusingly pointed out a few days ago that planning aplications collapsed last year. They blamed planning regs when in fact it was directly due to the plateauing in house price rises which causd the builders to stop building. They don't want house prices to fall. And if they look like doing so then they will simply stop building houses until they start to rise again.
If you want more houses built then they need to be directly financed and built by local councils. Take the profit motive out of housing supply for a while and you will be able to build what we need and where we need.
Housing associations and pension funds (Blackrock) are also available - but yep if you want houses built it needs to be profitable to build them
I'm quite taken by her term "Grey Belt" for mess ^ scrub in the Green Belt.
Putting housing targets back on local authorities is a good move.
I wonder if she has a "little list" of Rishi's Hail Mary Passes to consider reversing?
It’s the right thing to do, but probably not a popular thing to do.
I think we will learn much about their judgement of how quickly benefit will be seen/felt vs assessment of short term political hit vs assessment of long term political hit.
What I think they would like is a slow-burn stealth money raiser like Gordon Brown's hit on pensions early on which was hardly noticed.
Something that comes across as looking like a minor change, but actually upends decades of orthodoxy to long-term planning, costing the government many billions more as private companies totally abandon an entire sector?
Builder shares up OTOH, admittedly some days back.
Of course they are. The builders love any loosening of planning regs as it saves them money. As I have said many times before planning regs are not about stopping building but about making sure it is done in the right way with the right safeguards for the environment etc.
The biggest influence on how many houses we build is the attitiude of he builders themselves. The Telegraph rather amusingly pointed out a few days ago that planning aplications collapsed last year. They blamed planning regs when in fact it was directly due to the plateauing in house price rises which causd the builders to stop building. They don't want house prices to fall. And if they look like doing so then they will simply stop building houses until they start to rise again.
If you want more houses built then they need to be directly financed and built by local councils. Take the profit motive out of housing supply for a while and you will be able to build what we need and where we need.
Let's see what Labour do. Today's announcement is purely about ministerial policy - which can be changed pretty well immediately without legislation. And in its own terms, it seems to me (FWIW) to be a step in the right direction.
On the Planning Announcement, exactly the same is needing on Building Control - who are responsible for built quality / inspection. If developers are just allowed to builder below-standard buildings more quickly, that is exactly what some will do.
Unless I’m reading the results wrong, LPF were 3m votes behind RN but because of the way that the tactical voting worked came first on seats.
I’m not sure that bodes well. It’s a bullet dodged but the RN scored by far the highest number of votes (over 10% more on my understanding?). That would be a bit like Labour falling short of a majority on Thursday 10 points ahead of the Tories. It’s the electoral system and alliances that have caused the result.
It raises an important point but I think it's democracy working, not the other way round. The left and centre alliances intended to impose a pseudo PR system on top of a two phase FPTP system. It turned out extremely successful.
The important point is RN is extremely transfer unfriendly. Almost everyone will choose anyone other than RN if their preferred candidate is not available. Le Pen has more votes than anyone else but she can't work a coalition. She can only win if she is the biggest party and gets a majority under FPTP.
The message from this election is the two thirds of the French population who don't support Le Pen have given all the other parties a mandate to sort something out between them. Whether they do or not remains to be seen.
In a way, it’s similar to Gerry Adams’ defeat in 1992, on a larger scale. Most of us cheered, but we overlooked that his vote increased.
And SF can't get a majority in NI or the Republic even now.
RN clearly are too toxic to get anywhere near a majority in France or to win the Presidential election without centre right support, at present LR voters clearly still prefer Macron's party in runoffs to RN. LR voters will only hold their nose and vote for RN to keep out Melenchon and the far left
Correct. And LR will vote for any Left Alliance candidate who is not Mélenchon's party.
In effect everyone will vote for anyone who isn't Le Pen unless they were going to vote for Le Pen in the first place.
Not sure about that, most LR would not vote for Socialists over RN
I thought they just did. Isn't that the point? The deal was done between LR and the NPF to withdraw third places so that the electorate would have a clear choice between RN and the alternative (LR or NPF). The result was a lot more NPF and LR seats and a lot fewer RN seats. LR voters voted for the socialists to keep out the Right.
Unless I’m reading the results wrong, LPF were 3m votes behind RN but because of the way that the tactical voting worked came first on seats.
I’m not sure that bodes well. It’s a bullet dodged but the RN scored by far the highest number of votes (over 10% more on my understanding?). That would be a bit like Labour falling short of a majority on Thursday 10 points ahead of the Tories. It’s the electoral system and alliances that have caused the result.
It raises an important point but I think it's democracy working, not the other way round. The left and centre alliances intended to impose a pseudo PR system on top of a two phase FPTP system. It turned out extremely successful.
The important point is RN is extremely transfer unfriendly. Almost everyone will choose anyone other than RN if their preferred candidate is not available. Le Pen has more votes than anyone else but she can't work a coalition. She can only win if she is the biggest party and gets a majority under FPTP.
The message from this election is the two thirds of the French population who don't support Le Pen have given all the other parties a mandate to sort something out between them. Whether they do or not remains to be seen.
In a way, it’s similar to Gerry Adams’ defeat in 1992, on a larger scale. Most of us cheered, but we overlooked that his vote increased.
And SF can't get a majority in NI or the Republic even now.
RN clearly are too toxic to get anywhere near a majority in France or to win the Presidential election without centre right support, at present LR voters clearly still prefer Macron's party in runoffs to RN. LR voters will only hold their nose and vote for RN to keep out Melenchon and the far left
Correct. And LR will vote for any Left Alliance candidate who is not Mélenchon's party.
In effect everyone will vote for anyone who isn't Le Pen unless they were going to vote for Le Pen in the first place.
Not sure about that, most LR would not vote for Socialists over RN
I thought tey just did. Isn't that the point? The deal was done between LR and the NPF to withdraw third places so that the electorate would have a clear choice between RN and the alternative (LR or NPF). The result was a lot more NPF and LR seats and a lot fewer RN seats. LR voters voted for the socialists to keep out the Right.
They didn't, there was no left majority and RN and LR combined won more seats than Melenchon and the Socialists did.
Unless I’m reading the results wrong, LPF were 3m votes behind RN but because of the way that the tactical voting worked came first on seats.
I’m not sure that bodes well. It’s a bullet dodged but the RN scored by far the highest number of votes (over 10% more on my understanding?). That would be a bit like Labour falling short of a majority on Thursday 10 points ahead of the Tories. It’s the electoral system and alliances that have caused the result.
It raises an important point but I think it's democracy working, not the other way round. The left and centre alliances intended to impose a pseudo PR system on top of a two phase FPTP system. It turned out extremely successful.
The important point is RN is extremely transfer unfriendly. Almost everyone will choose anyone other than RN if their preferred candidate is not available. Le Pen has more votes than anyone else but she can't work a coalition. She can only win if she is the biggest party and gets a majority under FPTP.
The message from this election is the two thirds of the French population who don't support Le Pen have given all the other parties a mandate to sort something out between them. Whether they do or not remains to be seen.
In a way, it’s similar to Gerry Adams’ defeat in 1992, on a larger scale. Most of us cheered, but we overlooked that his vote increased.
And SF can't get a majority in NI or the Republic even now.
RN clearly are too toxic to get anywhere near a majority in France or to win the Presidential election without centre right support, at present LR voters clearly still prefer Macron's party in runoffs to RN. LR voters will only hold their nose and vote for RN to keep out Melenchon and the far left
Correct. And LR will vote for any Left Alliance candidate who is not Mélenchon's party.
In effect everyone will vote for anyone who isn't Le Pen unless they were going to vote for Le Pen in the first place.
Not sure about that, most LR would not vote for Socialists over RN
You're right! LR voters went 29% Left Alliance except Mélenchon; 34% RN. Everyone else goes non-RN
Nobody questioned David Cameron's mandate in 2015.
People only dislike Labour because of how intelligently they used the voting system to their advantage.
If you hate this, back PR as I do.
I want to be clear - saying that it was a better election than expected / not as good a night for Labour as expected is not me arguing that Labour is illegitimate / don't have a mandate. I just think that mandate is a mile long and an inch deep. People voted the Tories out and saw a Labour government as the only viable method of producing that, so Starmer's Labour will now govern. I don't think he will be popular in his governing and I think there will be further opportunities for the left to show their strength.
The number of lawmakers who explicitly said Biden should not be the Democratic nominee was greater than the number who spoke up for him to stay, according to one of the sources.
It does seem like a lot of people want Biden to step down, and it's now a matter of can he be persuaded to do so.
The debate from last week starts to come across as a stitch-up against the President, there’s been such a co-ordinated response to it since before they even left the stage. There’s no way that everyone in his own party thought he was doing just fine until that moment, when it’s been clear for years that he’s been getting noticeably older and slower.
The problem now is how to deal with Kamala Harris, who’s polling is even worse than Biden’s, but she was a diversity hire so can’t be swapped out easily without upsetting people.
Meanwhile, some of us first mentioned Gretchen Whitmer a long time ago
This is the issue, dump Biden for sure. But replace him with Harris? Fuck that, Trump will walk it in November against her. What they need is a southern Democrat governor or senator who's not too liberal, not gay and not old.
But really good news about this is that I will have even more opportunities to do PB threads on AV/electoral reform over the next few years.
Turning from what Labour won't do (PR) to what will happen, it is clear from all this that in England and Scotland tactical voting is the new fashion, even while the number of of parties nationally relevant has increased recently from 3 to 5. It can work for or against any party; but the obvious national gainer is the LDs. Also, the LDs will have noticed that their tactical advantage in a tactical vote world is in alliance with Labour, with whom they don't compete directly, and not the Tories, with whom they do.
In Scotland it's going to be unionists v SNP.
Having an election battle between two opposition parties over so much territory, which will be entirely irrelevant to who actually wins it, will be a new feature for the next election.
Nobody questioned David Cameron's mandate in 2015.
People only dislike Labour because of how intelligently they used the voting system to their advantage.
If you hate this, back PR as I do.
To be fair, it was Nigel Farage who used the voting system to Labour's advantage.
No, it is quite clear that Labour anticipated what would happen, as shown by the swings they obtained in the seats they needed to win - they targeted very effectively. Along with tactical voting for the Lib Dems.
Nobody questioned David Cameron's mandate in 2015.
People only dislike Labour because of how intelligently they used the voting system to their advantage.
If you hate this, back PR as I do.
I don't think Labour used the voting system to their advantage - they made a pitch to the electorate who responded as they did. The outcome looks like some master plan, that's an illusion.
Its totally right to say that many previous majority governments have not had a majority of votes. In this case there are several skews that look very unfair. Labour's vote does not warrant such a huge majority. Reform getting more votes but vastly fewer seats than the Lib Dems etc. But complaining NOW because its worked against your party (be you Tory, Reform, Green' etc smacks of being a poor loser. Labour and Tories have had majorities in the past and could have changed the system. They didn't because it normally works for them.
The number of lawmakers who explicitly said Biden should not be the Democratic nominee was greater than the number who spoke up for him to stay, according to one of the sources.
It does seem like a lot of people want Biden to step down, and it's now a matter of can he be persuaded to do so.
The debate from last week starts to come across as a stitch-up against the President, there’s been such a co-ordinated response to it since before they even left the stage. There’s no way that everyone in his own party thought he was doing just fine until that moment, when it’s been clear for years that he’s been getting noticeably older and slower.
The problem now is how to deal with Kamala Harris, who’s polling is even worse than Biden’s, but she was a diversity hire so can’t be swapped out easily without upsetting people.
Meanwhile, some of us first mentioned Gretchen Whitmer a long time ago
This is the issue, dump Biden for sure. But replace him with Harris? Fuck that, Trump will walk it in November against her. What they need is a southern Democrat governor or senator who's not too liberal, not gay and not old.
Why do conservatives think they have a special insight into who the Democrats should pick if Biden drops out ?
The number of lawmakers who explicitly said Biden should not be the Democratic nominee was greater than the number who spoke up for him to stay, according to one of the sources.
It does seem like a lot of people want Biden to step down, and it's now a matter of can he be persuaded to do so.
The debate from last week starts to come across as a stitch-up against the President, there’s been such a co-ordinated response to it since before they even left the stage. There’s no way that everyone in his own party thought he was doing just fine until that moment, when it’s been clear for years that he’s been getting noticeably older and slower.
The problem now is how to deal with Kamala Harris, who’s polling is even worse than Biden’s, but she was a diversity hire so can’t be swapped out easily without upsetting people.
Meanwhile, some of us first mentioned Gretchen Whitmer a long time ago
Not a stitch up, a me too, emperor's new clothes kinda moment. Everyone knew, it just became ok to say so (that, and he has deteriorated). My hopes for KH are that she gets a boost from becoming actual vs hypothetical in polling questions, and that Trump can't cope with a young black female opponent. And that she shortens further enabling me to green up.
Good. All the alleged procedural hurdles are just delaying tactics. Presumably if Biden dropped down dead they wouldn't be saying Tough, we are going to have to run with his corpse. Withdraw him on medical grounds and do it asap.
Nobody questioned David Cameron's mandate in 2015.
People only dislike Labour because of how intelligently they used the voting system to their advantage.
If you hate this, back PR as I do.
I don't think Labour used the voting system to their advantage - they made a pitch to the electorate who responded as they did. The outcome looks like some master plan, that's an illusion.
Its totally right to say that many previous majority governments have not had a majority of votes. In this case there are several skews that look very unfair. Labour's vote does not warrant such a huge majority. Reform getting more votes but vastly fewer seats than the Lib Dems etc. But complaining NOW because its worked against your party (be you Tory, Reform, Green' etc smacks of being a poor loser. Labour and Tories have had majorities in the past and could have changed the system. They didn't because it normally works for them.
Morgan McSweeney assembled the most efficient Labour vote possibly in history, this is not disputed.
Reform certainly made it easier - but compared to 2019 Labour has completely changed where the votes are.
Unless I’m reading the results wrong, LPF were 3m votes behind RN but because of the way that the tactical voting worked came first on seats.
I’m not sure that bodes well. It’s a bullet dodged but the RN scored by far the highest number of votes (over 10% more on my understanding?). That would be a bit like Labour falling short of a majority on Thursday 10 points ahead of the Tories. It’s the electoral system and alliances that have caused the result.
It raises an important point but I think it's democracy working, not the other way round. The left and centre alliances intended to impose a pseudo PR system on top of a two phase FPTP system. It turned out extremely successful.
The important point is RN is extremely transfer unfriendly. Almost everyone will choose anyone other than RN if their preferred candidate is not available. Le Pen has more votes than anyone else but she can't work a coalition. She can only win if she is the biggest party and gets a majority under FPTP.
The message from this election is the two thirds of the French population who don't support Le Pen have given all the other parties a mandate to sort something out between them. Whether they do or not remains to be seen.
In a way, it’s similar to Gerry Adams’ defeat in 1992, on a larger scale. Most of us cheered, but we overlooked that his vote increased.
And SF can't get a majority in NI or the Republic even now.
RN clearly are too toxic to get anywhere near a majority in France or to win the Presidential election without centre right support, at present LR voters clearly still prefer Macron's party in runoffs to RN. LR voters will only hold their nose and vote for RN to keep out Melenchon and the far left
The Good Friday Agreement states that consent for a united Ireland must be “freely and concurrently given” in both the North and the South of the island of Ireland. This is widely interpreted to mean that future border polls must be held in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland at the same time.
[...]
As part of the Good Friday Agreement, an explicit provision for holding a Northern Ireland border poll was made in UK law. The Northern Ireland Act 1998 states that “if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland”, the Secretary of State shall make an Order in Council enabling a border poll.
I have to imagine that the above is true - it appears likely to me that a majority of those voting (NI and ROI) will want reunification. Do we have enough time to make Star Trek lore correct?
Nobody questioned David Cameron's mandate in 2015.
People only dislike Labour because of how intelligently they used the voting system to their advantage.
If you hate this, back PR as I do.
Dave got 11.3m votes and 37% share winning a majority of 10.
No one is questioning the Labour mandate, just recognising that it's much weaker than the HoC would have everyone believe. 34% vote share, under 10m votes and very low turnout is a weak mandate and once the Labour honeymoon is over we'll see voters fracture even further because not enough people voted for this outcome.
I would absolutely advocate changing the voting system to PR right away but I am consistent unlike the Tories.
As for the analysis that Labour didn't win the election, the Tories lost it, I assume the Tories would like to re-assess their 2010 result when they insisted Brown had lost and they had won.
Apparently under the Starmer regime Parrs Wood High in South Manchester has supplanted Eton as the most likely alma mater for cabinet ministers.
Also we have an Ed Sec who actually received free school meals for what I assume is the first time ever.
I doubt that one - they go back to 1906, and we have had many ministers who came from poverty.
In 1906 the British parliament passed the permissive Education (Provision of Meals) Act allowing Local Education Authorities (LEAs) to provide free meals to elementary schoolchildren, funded out of the local rates. Rate-payer funded feeding programmes enabled under-nourished schoolchildren to benefit from the nation’s compulsory elementary education. 358,306 elementary schoolchildren were provided with free meals in 1912/13, about 7% of the elementary school population aged 3-11.
The 1944 Education Act required all LEAs to provide a midday meal and set nutritional guidelines to follow. Efforts to provide all meals free of charge to the recipient proved too costly and in 1949 the Labour government allowed LEAs to charge 6d. per meal while still providing some meals free to disadvantaged schoolchildren. Throughout the fifties and sixties approximately 50% of schoolchildren, both elementary and secondary, were taking nutritionally-designed midday meals with 5 - 10% getting them free. https://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/the-provision-of-school-meals-since-1906-progress-or-a-recipe-for-disaster
There must be plenty of ministers in Attlee’s and Wilson’s governments who had free school meals as children.
Nobody questioned David Cameron's mandate in 2015.
People only dislike Labour because of how intelligently they used the voting system to their advantage.
If you hate this, back PR as I do.
Dave got 11.3m votes and 37% share winning a majority of 10.
No one is questioning the Labour mandate, just recognising that it's much weaker than the HoC would have everyone believe. 34% vote share, under 10m votes and very low turnout is a weak mandate and once the Labour honeymoon is over we'll see voters fracture even further because not enough people voted for this outcome.
You assume it will fracture - but my view is that the expectations are so low that anything SKS does will be seen as positive.
There's a view starting to emerge that Labour will come unstuck quickly and that because SKS is apparently so unpopular the Tories will just nip back into government soon. I think this extremely unlikely based on what SKS has actually done up to now.
The Tories need to do more than just wait for Labour to cock it up.
In the system we have, seats is what matters. SKS won the second largest Labour majority in history, that's the reality.
The number of lawmakers who explicitly said Biden should not be the Democratic nominee was greater than the number who spoke up for him to stay, according to one of the sources.
It does seem like a lot of people want Biden to step down, and it's now a matter of can he be persuaded to do so.
The debate from last week starts to come across as a stitch-up against the President, there’s been such a co-ordinated response to it since before they even left the stage. There’s no way that everyone in his own party thought he was doing just fine until that moment, when it’s been clear for years that he’s been getting noticeably older and slower.
The problem now is how to deal with Kamala Harris, who’s polling is even worse than Biden’s, but she was a diversity hire so can’t be swapped out easily without upsetting people.
Meanwhile, some of us first mentioned Gretchen Whitmer a long time ago
This is the issue, dump Biden for sure. But replace him with Harris? Fuck that, Trump will walk it in November against her. What they need is a southern Democrat governor or senator who's not too liberal, not gay and not old.
Why do conservatives think they have a special insight into who the Democrats should pick if Biden drops out ?
He's just saying what some of the polls show. Obviously the polling would likely change IF Harris became the candidate, but it certainly doesn't suggest that she is a likely winner.
This is why Biden deciding to run has made a real mess of things. If he had said I'm just going to have one term then Harris could have been properly tested.
On a similar vote to UK representation vs vote share. Seeing the headlines from the French GE, you could be fooled into not realising the NF got 37% of the vote in the second round. It was only due to the French system and the stitch up amongst the other parties to game the system, that means they end up in 3rd place in seats.
I'm quite taken by her term "Grey Belt" for mess ^ scrub in the Green Belt.
Putting housing targets back on local authorities is a good move.
I wonder if she has a "little list" of Rishi's Hail Mary Passes to consider reversing?
It’s the right thing to do, but probably not a popular thing to do.
I think we will learn much about their judgement of how quickly benefit will be seen/felt vs assessment of short term political hit vs assessment of long term political hit.
What I think they would like is a slow-burn stealth money raiser like Gordon Brown's hit on pensions early on which was hardly noticed.
Something that comes across as looking like a minor change, but actually upends decades of orthodoxy to long-term planning, costing the government many billions more as private companies totally abandon an entire sector?
Builder shares up OTOH, admittedly some days back.
Of course they are. The builders love any loosening of planning regs as it saves them money. As I have said many times before planning regs are not about stopping building but about making sure it is done in the right way with the right safeguards for the environment etc.
The biggest influence on how many houses we build is the attitiude of he builders themselves. The Telegraph rather amusingly pointed out a few days ago that planning aplications collapsed last year. They blamed planning regs when in fact it was directly due to the plateauing in house price rises which causd the builders to stop building. They don't want house prices to fall. And if they look like doing so then they will simply stop building houses until they start to rise again.
If you want more houses built then they need to be directly financed and built by local councils. Take the profit motive out of housing supply for a while and you will be able to build what we need and where we need.
Housing associations and pension funds (Blackrock) are also available - but yep if you want houses built it needs to be profitable to build them
If you concentrate building to fewer and fewer giant companies, then the market becomes more monopolistic.
When TV prices fell for decades, why did Samsung not go on a sellers strike to support prices?
The number of lawmakers who explicitly said Biden should not be the Democratic nominee was greater than the number who spoke up for him to stay, according to one of the sources.
It does seem like a lot of people want Biden to step down, and it's now a matter of can he be persuaded to do so.
The debate from last week starts to come across as a stitch-up against the President, there’s been such a co-ordinated response to it since before they even left the stage. There’s no way that everyone in his own party thought he was doing just fine until that moment, when it’s been clear for years that he’s been getting noticeably older and slower.
The problem now is how to deal with Kamala Harris, who’s polling is even worse than Biden’s, but she was a diversity hire so can’t be swapped out easily without upsetting people.
Meanwhile, some of us first mentioned Gretchen Whitmer a long time ago
"Diversity hire" - well done for picking up the right wing trope. Harris is a cut above about three quarter of all VP picks. And get about ten time the average criticism.
The number of lawmakers who explicitly said Biden should not be the Democratic nominee was greater than the number who spoke up for him to stay, according to one of the sources.
It does seem like a lot of people want Biden to step down, and it's now a matter of can he be persuaded to do so.
The debate from last week starts to come across as a stitch-up against the President, there’s been such a co-ordinated response to it since before they even left the stage. There’s no way that everyone in his own party thought he was doing just fine until that moment, when it’s been clear for years that he’s been getting noticeably older and slower.
The problem now is how to deal with Kamala Harris, who’s polling is even worse than Biden’s, but she was a diversity hire so can’t be swapped out easily without upsetting people.
Meanwhile, some of us first mentioned Gretchen Whitmer a long time ago
"Diversity hire" - well done for picking up the right wing trope. Harris is a cut above about three quarter of all VP picks. And get about ten time the average criticism.
Biden was very clear about it back in 2020, that his VP pick was going to be “a woman of color”.
Well she turned out to be rubbish, and now they can’t swap her out without needing to tick all of the same identity boxes to avoid upsetting various groups within the Dem party.
The number of lawmakers who explicitly said Biden should not be the Democratic nominee was greater than the number who spoke up for him to stay, according to one of the sources.
It does seem like a lot of people want Biden to step down, and it's now a matter of can he be persuaded to do so.
The debate from last week starts to come across as a stitch-up against the President, there’s been such a co-ordinated response to it since before they even left the stage. There’s no way that everyone in his own party thought he was doing just fine until that moment, when it’s been clear for years that he’s been getting noticeably older and slower.
The problem now is how to deal with Kamala Harris, who’s polling is even worse than Biden’s, but she was a diversity hire so can’t be swapped out easily without upsetting people.
Meanwhile, some of us first mentioned Gretchen Whitmer a long time ago
This is the issue, dump Biden for sure. But replace him with Harris? Fuck that, Trump will walk it in November against her. What they need is a southern Democrat governor or senator who's not too liberal, not gay and not old.
Why do conservatives think they have a special insight into who the Democrats should pick if Biden drops out ?
Because conservatives who point out that Biden must go for the good of his own party and country and the world because of the overwhelming necessity of defeating trump, get called Trumpian by Democrats, who therefore clearly need some help in the thinking department
On a similar vote to UK representation vs vote share. Seeing the headlines from the French GE, you could be fooled into not realising the NF got 37% of the vote in the second round. It was only due to the French system and the stitch up amongst the other parties to game the system, that means they end up in 3rd place in seats.
France has a huge fascist/far right problem, and a massive amount of far-left nutters too.
On a similar vote to UK representation vs vote share. Seeing the headlines from the French GE, you could be fooled into not realising the NF got 37% of the vote in the second round. It was only due to the French system and the stitch up amongst the other parties to game the system, that means they end up in 3rd place in seats.
France has a huge fascist/far right problem, and a massive amount of far-left nutters too.
The platform the left have "won" on makes Truss and Corbyn magic money tree stuff like small beer.
The number of lawmakers who explicitly said Biden should not be the Democratic nominee was greater than the number who spoke up for him to stay, according to one of the sources.
It does seem like a lot of people want Biden to step down, and it's now a matter of can he be persuaded to do so.
The debate from last week starts to come across as a stitch-up against the President, there’s been such a co-ordinated response to it since before they even left the stage. There’s no way that everyone in his own party thought he was doing just fine until that moment, when it’s been clear for years that he’s been getting noticeably older and slower.
The problem now is how to deal with Kamala Harris, who’s polling is even worse than Biden’s, but she was a diversity hire so can’t be swapped out easily without upsetting people.
Meanwhile, some of us first mentioned Gretchen Whitmer a long time ago
This is the issue, dump Biden for sure. But replace him with Harris? Fuck that, Trump will walk it in November against her. What they need is a southern Democrat governor or senator who's not too liberal, not gay and not old.
Why do conservatives think they have a special insight into who the Democrats should pick if Biden drops out ?
I want the candidate who has the best chance of beating Trump which isn't Harris. It's a white (probably male) Democrat from the south or at a push the rust belt. In the same way the Tories are going to have to find a candidate that can win back their small c conservative heartlands in the south (so not Braverman or any other right wing loon) the Dems need to find someone who can win across the whole country so not some drug decriminalising lefty liberal who drives a solar power car and has had sex change surgery.
Keep Trump out this time and he's done for good. If that means comprising and not having an ultra liberal candidate so be it.
Unless I’m reading the results wrong, LPF were 3m votes behind RN but because of the way that the tactical voting worked came first on seats.
I’m not sure that bodes well. It’s a bullet dodged but the RN scored by far the highest number of votes (over 10% more on my understanding?). That would be a bit like Labour falling short of a majority on Thursday 10 points ahead of the Tories. It’s the electoral system and alliances that have caused the result.
It raises an important point but I think it's democracy working, not the other way round. The left and centre alliances intended to impose a pseudo PR system on top of a two phase FPTP system. It turned out extremely successful.
The important point is RN is extremely transfer unfriendly. Almost everyone will choose anyone other than RN if their preferred candidate is not available. Le Pen has more votes than anyone else but she can't work a coalition. She can only win if she is the biggest party and gets a majority under FPTP.
The message from this election is the two thirds of the French population who don't support Le Pen have given all the other parties a mandate to sort something out between them. Whether they do or not remains to be seen.
In a way, it’s similar to Gerry Adams’ defeat in 1992, on a larger scale. Most of us cheered, but we overlooked that his vote increased.
And SF can't get a majority in NI or the Republic even now.
RN clearly are too toxic to get anywhere near a majority in France or to win the Presidential election without centre right support, at present LR voters clearly still prefer Macron's party in runoffs to RN. LR voters will only hold their nose and vote for RN to keep out Melenchon and the far left
The Good Friday Agreement states that consent for a united Ireland must be “freely and concurrently given” in both the North and the South of the island of Ireland. This is widely interpreted to mean that future border polls must be held in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland at the same time.
[...]
As part of the Good Friday Agreement, an explicit provision for holding a Northern Ireland border poll was made in UK law. The Northern Ireland Act 1998 states that “if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland”, the Secretary of State shall make an Order in Council enabling a border poll.
I have to imagine that the above is true - it appears likely to me that a majority of those voting (NI and ROI) will want reunification. Do we have enough time to make Star Trek lore correct?
Nope
This is because a non-trivial portion of those who vote Nationalist (or even Republican) will vote *against* unification.
This has been a thing in NI politics for a long, long time. Even when SF was the party of the Ballot Box And Armalite - literally in favour of murder to bring about a united Ireland - a chunk of their voters, when polled said no to joining the South.
This is why SF aren’t demanding a border poll 24/7 - just occasionally say the words.
I suppose if you want to go very broadbrush, ignoring several other important but arguably subsidiary narratives, the story of GE24 was the parties who'd enjoyed a long hegemony in England and Scotland respectively getting their arses kicked to kingdom come.
A shame that it seems we will have nothing on 4G/5G and planning changes for that, today.
My photo quota for the day. They need JOINED-UP planning for 5G phone masts, as with so many other things.
This one aka "Middle Finger" was built in the middle of the new strategic Active Travel route at the Pentagon Island, Derby, in 2023. The Active Travel route is one which is part of a £100m * package covering Nottingham and Derby allocated in iirc 2022, over 3-4 years.
* For the record, £100m is a pittance for an area of 750k people for active travel. There is currently £50m being spent on improving a single traffic island on the Nottingham Ring Road, one of many highways projects on that scale locally.
Nobody questioned David Cameron's mandate in 2015.
People only dislike Labour because of how intelligently they used the voting system to their advantage.
If you hate this, back PR as I do.
Dave got 11.3m votes and 37% share winning a majority of 10.
No one is questioning the Labour mandate, just recognising that it's much weaker than the HoC would have everyone believe. 34% vote share, under 10m votes and very low turnout is a weak mandate and once the Labour honeymoon is over we'll see voters fracture even further because not enough people voted for this outcome.
Or, if they're reasonably successful in government, they might see increased support. 34% is a pretty low base to build from, so they can afford (actually they have little alternative other than...) to be bold.
Expectations are pretty low, so it's not completely impossible that they surprise us.
They're certainly not hanging about.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/08/operation-reset-lammys-mission-to-reconnect-gets-off-to-flying-start ..Lammy aimed to come not just with warm words, but with the outline of a plan for an EU-UK security pact. That plan, carefully hatched in opposition, and in some ways reviving ideas that fell by the wayside in the original Brexit negotiations, is more ambitious and wide-ranging than commonly recognised, since security is being defined by the Lammy team in its broadest sense, to cover not just defence, but the web of issues that make up modern-day security, from the climate crisis to energy, pandemics, cyber, investment strategies and critical minerals.
He came away from his conversations with Sikorski and Baerbock feeling that there was an enthusiasm to form a new cooperation agreement, although exactly how formal that agreement, and whether it has legal elements, are for future discussion. With EU states worrying about what the possible US presidency of Donald Trump might mean for the Nato umbrella and US contributions to the defence of Europe, the return of the British, with their defence expertise, could at least offer a form of reassurance...
The number of lawmakers who explicitly said Biden should not be the Democratic nominee was greater than the number who spoke up for him to stay, according to one of the sources.
It does seem like a lot of people want Biden to step down, and it's now a matter of can he be persuaded to do so.
The debate from last week starts to come across as a stitch-up against the President, there’s been such a co-ordinated response to it since before they even left the stage. There’s no way that everyone in his own party thought he was doing just fine until that moment, when it’s been clear for years that he’s been getting noticeably older and slower.
The problem now is how to deal with Kamala Harris, who’s polling is even worse than Biden’s, but she was a diversity hire so can’t be swapped out easily without upsetting people.
Meanwhile, some of us first mentioned Gretchen Whitmer a long time ago
This is the issue, dump Biden for sure. But replace him with Harris? Fuck that, Trump will walk it in November against her. What they need is a southern Democrat governor or senator who's not too liberal, not gay and not old.
Why do conservatives think they have a special insight into who the Democrats should pick if Biden drops out ?
I want the candidate who has the best chance of beating Trump which isn't Harris. It's a white (probably male) Democrat from the south or at a push the rust belt. In the same way the Tories are going to have to find a candidate that can win back their small c conservative heartlands in the south (so not Braverman or any other right wing loon) the Dems need to find someone who can win across the whole country so not some drug decriminalising lefty liberal who drives a solar power car and has had sex change surgery.
Keep Trump out this time and he's done for good. If that means comprising and not having an ultra liberal candidate so be it.
Radacanu continues to be overrated and peaked too soon.
Bit ungenerous. She came out of nowhere to win a Grand Slam then was beset by injuries. This marks her return/rebirth from those injuries so give her time. That said, she was played off the court by Lulu. 93mph forehand winners ffs.
The number of lawmakers who explicitly said Biden should not be the Democratic nominee was greater than the number who spoke up for him to stay, according to one of the sources.
It does seem like a lot of people want Biden to step down, and it's now a matter of can he be persuaded to do so.
The debate from last week starts to come across as a stitch-up against the President, there’s been such a co-ordinated response to it since before they even left the stage. There’s no way that everyone in his own party thought he was doing just fine until that moment, when it’s been clear for years that he’s been getting noticeably older and slower.
The problem now is how to deal with Kamala Harris, who’s polling is even worse than Biden’s, but she was a diversity hire so can’t be swapped out easily without upsetting people.
Meanwhile, some of us first mentioned Gretchen Whitmer a long time ago
"Diversity hire" - well done for picking up the right wing trope. Harris is a cut above about three quarter of all VP picks. And get about ten time the average criticism.
Biden was very clear about it back in 2020, that his VP pick was going to be “a woman of color”.
Well she turned out to be rubbish, and now they can’t swap her out without needing to tick all of the same identity boxes to avoid upsetting various groups within the Dem party.
Biden also said that he was merely "a bridge" to a new generation of leaders.
On a similar vote to UK representation vs vote share. Seeing the headlines from the French GE, you could be fooled into not realising the NF got 37% of the vote in the second round. It was only due to the French system and the stitch up amongst the other parties to game the system, that means they end up in 3rd place in seats.
It's not a stitch up in France. If Le Pen sets herself up in opposition to everyone else, it is not surprising and completely democratic if the two thirds of the French who utterly despise her and her politics also roundly defeat her in an election.
It's the complete opposite of the Starmer FPTP issue. Le Pen would get nowhere under PR because she has no attraction outside her admittedly large core vote
Radacanu continues to be overrated and peaked too soon.
Bit ungenerous. She came out of nowhere to win a Grand Slam then was beset by injuries. This marks her return/rebirth from those injuries so give her time. That said, she was played off the court by Lulu. 93mph forehand winners ffs.
Not really ungenerous, what I am saying is true. She's a good player but she's been over-hyped and allowed to be put up too high to only fall down.
She'd have been much better off not being hyped up so early. Only disappointment will follow.
The Republicans could have had say DeSantis, who putting aside his woke bashing, runs Florida pretty well and isn't a total nut nut or a criminal like Trump, so I imagine would easily beat Biden.
The Democrats have a number of options if they could put aside the obsession with having to triangulate everything through identity politics of requiring the colour / gendered / sexual orientation on the ticket. Just pick a non-senile middled aged person, who sounds credible and doesn't have loads of baggage, and you beat Trump.
For the sake of the US, both parties, should have picked anybody but the two they picked.
The number of lawmakers who explicitly said Biden should not be the Democratic nominee was greater than the number who spoke up for him to stay, according to one of the sources.
It does seem like a lot of people want Biden to step down, and it's now a matter of can he be persuaded to do so.
The debate from last week starts to come across as a stitch-up against the President, there’s been such a co-ordinated response to it since before they even left the stage. There’s no way that everyone in his own party thought he was doing just fine until that moment, when it’s been clear for years that he’s been getting noticeably older and slower.
The problem now is how to deal with Kamala Harris, who’s polling is even worse than Biden’s, but she was a diversity hire so can’t be swapped out easily without upsetting people.
Meanwhile, some of us first mentioned Gretchen Whitmer a long time ago
"Diversity hire" - well done for picking up the right wing trope. Harris is a cut above about three quarter of all VP picks. And get about ten time the average criticism.
I'd say Palin, Ferraro, Eagleton / Shriver, Agnew and Miller.
Its generally a list of solid politicians used to balance the ticket on geographical and experience lines.
VPs exist to balance out the weaknesses of the top of the ticket. Harris does that as well as anyone else here - Biden was old and had senatorial and foreign affair experience as a long time member of the senate and as VP himself. Harris has experience as a prosecutor and state senator, but also her lived experience - being from a younger generation and being a woman of colour in the US. You can say that she had less political experience than most above (even on that score she still beats Pence, imho, who started his career as a conservative radio host in the vein of Rush Limbaugh).
On a similar vote to UK representation vs vote share. Seeing the headlines from the French GE, you could be fooled into not realising the NF got 37% of the vote in the second round. It was only due to the French system and the stitch up amongst the other parties to game the system, that means they end up in 3rd place in seats.
It's not a stitch up in France. If Le Pen sets herself up in opposition to everyone else, it is not surprising and completely democratic if the two thirds of the French who utterly despise her and her politics also roundly defeat her in an election.
It's the complete opposite of the Starmer FPTP issue. Le Pen would get nowhere under PR because she has no attraction outside her admittedly large core vote
PR didn't keep Geert Wilders out of power in the Netherlands.
On a similar vote to UK representation vs vote share. Seeing the headlines from the French GE, you could be fooled into not realising the NF got 37% of the vote in the second round. It was only due to the French system and the stitch up amongst the other parties to game the system, that means they end up in 3rd place in seats.
A shame that it seems we will have nothing on 4G/5G and planning changes for that, today.
My photo quota for the day. They need JOINED-UP planning for 5G phone masts, as with so many other things.
This one aka "Middle Finger" was built in the middle of the new strategic Active Travel route at the Pentagon Island, Derby, in 2023. The Active Travel route is one which is part of a £100m * package covering Nottingham and Derby allocated in iirc 2022, over 3-4 years.
* For the record, £100m is a pittance for an area of 750k people for active travel. There is currently £50m being spent on improving a single traffic island on the Nottingham Ring Road, one of many highways projects on that scale locally.
Where would you like this mast to be placed? Perhaps onto the grass next to it? But the MNO will have concluded it must be there for coverage reasons.
I would certainly advocate shared, much taller sites and with no planning required in urban areas.
I would absolutely advocate changing the voting system to PR right away but I am consistent unlike the Tories.
As for the analysis that Labour didn't win the election, the Tories lost it, I assume the Tories would like to re-assess their 2010 result when they insisted Brown had lost and they had won.
I mean as a non-Tory I would agree with the idea that Brown lost the election and the Tories didn't win it - especially considering in that election they failed to get an overall majority...
A shame that it seems we will have nothing on 4G/5G and planning changes for that, today.
My photo quota for the day. They need JOINED-UP planning for 5G phone masts, as with so many other things.
This one aka "Middle Finger" was built in the middle of the new strategic Active Travel route at the Pentagon Island, Derby, in 2023. The Active Travel route is one which is part of a £100m * package covering Nottingham and Derby allocated in iirc 2022, over 3-4 years.
* For the record, £100m is a pittance for an area of 750k people for active travel. There is currently £50m being spent on improving a single traffic island on the Nottingham Ring Road, one of many highways projects on that scale locally.
Is that malicious compliance with some stupid rules by a stupid person being stupid? Stupidly?
On the mildly hilarious "We hate FPTP now Labour has wrongly won instead of us". Are the Tories proposing a rerun of the AV referendum, but this time we will say Yes ?
On a similar vote to UK representation vs vote share. Seeing the headlines from the French GE, you could be fooled into not realising the NF got 37% of the vote in the second round. It was only due to the French system and the stitch up amongst the other parties to game the system, that means they end up in 3rd place in seats.
Le Pen v Melenchon will be fun in 2027.
Nah, Melenchon won't make it through. It will be Le Pen vs An Other and the other person will (probably) win though I think it will be closer than people expect. Though if the hard leftists in government don't fix the border control/immigration issues then I think Le Pen could squeeze a 50.1% victory.
On the mildly hilarious "We hate FPTP now Labour has wrongly won instead of us". Are the Tories proposing a rerun of the AV referendum, but this time we will say Yes ?
Not a Tory, but I actually think FPTP did the job that the British public wanted. The pubic wanted the Tories to be removed from government and that was the outcome. Its ruthlessly effective at getting a decisive result, 2010 being an outlier.
A shame that it seems we will have nothing on 4G/5G and planning changes for that, today.
My photo quota for the day. They need JOINED-UP planning for 5G phone masts, as with so many other things.
This one aka "Middle Finger" was built in the middle of the new strategic Active Travel route at the Pentagon Island, Derby, in 2023. The Active Travel route is one which is part of a £100m * package covering Nottingham and Derby allocated in iirc 2022, over 3-4 years.
* For the record, £100m is a pittance for an area of 750k people for active travel. There is currently £50m being spent on improving a single traffic island on the Nottingham Ring Road, one of many highways projects on that scale locally.
Where would you like this mast to be placed? Perhaps onto the grass next to it? But the MNO will have concluded it must be there for coverage reasons.
I would certainly advocate shared, much taller sites and with no planning required in urban areas.
1) moving it a meter or two onto the grass wouldn’t effect coverage that much? 2) what about a combined phone mast/light standard for the road?
Nobody questioned David Cameron's mandate in 2015.
People only dislike Labour because of how intelligently they used the voting system to their advantage.
If you hate this, back PR as I do.
Dave got 11.3m votes and 37% share winning a majority of 10.
No one is questioning the Labour mandate, just recognising that it's much weaker than the HoC would have everyone believe. 34% vote share, under 10m votes and very low turnout is a weak mandate and once the Labour honeymoon is over we'll see voters fracture even further because not enough people voted for this outcome.
You assume it will fracture - but my view is that the expectations are so low that anything SKS does will be seen as positive.
There's a view starting to emerge that Labour will come unstuck quickly and that because SKS is apparently so unpopular the Tories will just nip back into government soon. I think this extremely unlikely based on what SKS has actually done up to now.
The Tories need to do more than just wait for Labour to cock it up.
In the system we have, seats is what matters. SKS won the second largest Labour majority in history, that's the reality.
What the Tories should be doing is backing PR.
It's obviously true that Labour won a large majority on an exceptionally small share of the vote
But I don't think it follows from that that the Labour majority will be particularly precarious at the next election, because it was largely the result of Labour/Lib Dem/Green supporters' willingness to vote tactically against the Tories. Unless that can be reversed, it's misleading to judge by Labour's 34% alone. The size of the majority (and Lib Dem strength in the Commons) represents something closer to the combined L/LD/G vote of 52%.
Even if the Tories could magically appropriate the whole of the Reform vote, it would take them only to 36%. But it's clear that Reform drew from Labour as well as from the Tories, so that's over-optimistic for them.
The Republicans could have had say DeSantis, who putting aside his woke bashing, runs Florida pretty well and isn't a total nut nut or a criminal like Trump, so I imagine would easily beat Biden.
The Democrats have a number of options if they could put aside the obsession with having to triangulate everything through identity politics of requiring the colour / gendered / sexual orientation on the ticket. Just pick a non-senile middled aged person, who sounds credible and doesn't have loads of baggage, and you beat Trump.
For the sake of the US, both parties, should have picked anybody but the two they picked.
Judging from the outside I've always thought that the primaries, caucuses, and conventions appear to be designed to elminate the best candidates.
Nobody questioned David Cameron's mandate in 2015.
People only dislike Labour because of how intelligently they used the voting system to their advantage.
If you hate this, back PR as I do.
I don't think Labour used the voting system to their advantage - they made a pitch to the electorate who responded as they did. The outcome looks like some master plan, that's an illusion.
Its totally right to say that many previous majority governments have not had a majority of votes. In this case there are several skews that look very unfair. Labour's vote does not warrant such a huge majority. Reform getting more votes but vastly fewer seats than the Lib Dems etc. But complaining NOW because its worked against your party (be you Tory, Reform, Green' etc smacks of being a poor loser. Labour and Tories have had majorities in the past and could have changed the system. They didn't because it normally works for them.
Whether or not it was a plan or not - it seems like the electorate at least acted in a way that made sense within the system we have if the desire was to kick out Tories:
The efficiency of the combined LD/LAB vote shares is a real sight to behold. The Lib Dem share in seats Labour won seems to have rarely surpassed 10%, then as soon as the Labour share drops below ~30% the LD share explodes.
There is a very pretty visual with that tweet as well.
A shame that it seems we will have nothing on 4G/5G and planning changes for that, today.
My photo quota for the day. They need JOINED-UP planning for 5G phone masts, as with so many other things.
This one aka "Middle Finger" was built in the middle of the new strategic Active Travel route at the Pentagon Island, Derby, in 2023. The Active Travel route is one which is part of a £100m * package covering Nottingham and Derby allocated in iirc 2022, over 3-4 years.
* For the record, £100m is a pittance for an area of 750k people for active travel. There is currently £50m being spent on improving a single traffic island on the Nottingham Ring Road, one of many highways projects on that scale locally.
Is that malicious compliance with some stupid rules by a stupid person being stupid? Stupidly?
Surely, a stupid malevolent person would have positioned it horizontally?
A shame that it seems we will have nothing on 4G/5G and planning changes for that, today.
My photo quota for the day. They need JOINED-UP planning for 5G phone masts, as with so many other things.
This one aka "Middle Finger" was built in the middle of the new strategic Active Travel route at the Pentagon Island, Derby, in 2023. The Active Travel route is one which is part of a £100m * package covering Nottingham and Derby allocated in iirc 2022, over 3-4 years.
* For the record, £100m is a pittance for an area of 750k people for active travel. There is currently £50m being spent on improving a single traffic island on the Nottingham Ring Road, one of many highways projects on that scale locally.
Where would you like this mast to be placed? Perhaps onto the grass next to it? But the MNO will have concluded it must be there for coverage reasons.
I would certainly advocate shared, much taller sites and with no planning required in urban areas.
It needs to be somewhere where it does not undermine Council policy, and does not block the public highway.
From my point of view, putting it 1m out in the carriageway is exactly the same issue. But they wouldn't do that - which is one basic problem with the way Local Highways Authorities are set up. This was done because it was an easy solution to the person sitting at the bottom of the "phone mast" silo.
It wasn't there for coverage reasons, as explained in the tweet linked.
Solution - for example they could have put a Compulsory Purchase Order on a small section of the car park for the factory to the right.
The number of lawmakers who explicitly said Biden should not be the Democratic nominee was greater than the number who spoke up for him to stay, according to one of the sources.
It does seem like a lot of people want Biden to step down, and it's now a matter of can he be persuaded to do so.
The debate from last week starts to come across as a stitch-up against the President, there’s been such a co-ordinated response to it since before they even left the stage. There’s no way that everyone in his own party thought he was doing just fine until that moment, when it’s been clear for years that he’s been getting noticeably older and slower.
The problem now is how to deal with Kamala Harris, who’s polling is even worse than Biden’s, but she was a diversity hire so can’t be swapped out easily without upsetting people.
Meanwhile, some of us first mentioned Gretchen Whitmer a long time ago
"Diversity hire" - well done for picking up the right wing trope. Harris is a cut above about three quarter of all VP picks. And get about ten time the average criticism.
Biden was very clear about it back in 2020, that his VP pick was going to be “a woman of color”.
Well she turned out to be rubbish, and now they can’t swap her out without needing to tick all of the same identity boxes to avoid upsetting various groups within the Dem party.
I'm wondering whether the groups that would nominally be upset about this actually exist.
The influential congressman who got Biden to promise to pick a black woman has already suggested a mini-primary. Black Democrats voted for Biden and as well as Kamala's campaign imploding before a vote was cast, the perfectly capable Cory Booker went nowhere too.
I know there are some *Kamala Harris* enthusiasts who are saying this stuff but it's not clear to me that they speak for an interest group, or that they would be mollified by having a different black woman instead.
The number of lawmakers who explicitly said Biden should not be the Democratic nominee was greater than the number who spoke up for him to stay, according to one of the sources.
It does seem like a lot of people want Biden to step down, and it's now a matter of can he be persuaded to do so.
The debate from last week starts to come across as a stitch-up against the President, there’s been such a co-ordinated response to it since before they even left the stage. There’s no way that everyone in his own party thought he was doing just fine until that moment, when it’s been clear for years that he’s been getting noticeably older and slower.
The problem now is how to deal with Kamala Harris, who’s polling is even worse than Biden’s, but she was a diversity hire so can’t be swapped out easily without upsetting people.
Meanwhile, some of us first mentioned Gretchen Whitmer a long time ago
"Diversity hire" - well done for picking up the right wing trope. Harris is a cut above about three quarter of all VP picks. And get about ten time the average criticism.
I'd say Palin, Ferraro, Eagleton / Shriver, Agnew and Miller.
Its generally a list of solid politicians used to balance the ticket on geographical and experience lines.
VPs exist to balance out the weaknesses of the top of the ticket. Harris does that as well as anyone else here - Biden was old and had senatorial and foreign affair experience as a long time member of the senate and as VP himself. Harris has experience as a prosecutor and state senator, but also her lived experience - being from a younger generation and being a woman of colour in the US. You can say that she had less political experience than most above (even on that score she still beats Pence, imho, who started his career as a conservative radio host in the vein of Rush Limbaugh).
Pence was a Governor and former House Rep so had experience in both executive and legislature.
Which together with being an evangelical and from the mid west provided the necessary balance to Trump.
Harris was able to give balance to Biden as you say but she would need someone very different to give balance to her as President. Andy Beshear would tick most boxes in that case.
A shame that it seems we will have nothing on 4G/5G and planning changes for that, today.
My photo quota for the day. They need JOINED-UP planning for 5G phone masts, as with so many other things.
This one aka "Middle Finger" was built in the middle of the new strategic Active Travel route at the Pentagon Island, Derby, in 2023. The Active Travel route is one which is part of a £100m * package covering Nottingham and Derby allocated in iirc 2022, over 3-4 years.
* For the record, £100m is a pittance for an area of 750k people for active travel. There is currently £50m being spent on improving a single traffic island on the Nottingham Ring Road, one of many highways projects on that scale locally.
Is that malicious compliance with some stupid rules by a stupid person being stupid? Stupidly?
Surely, a stupid malevolent person would have positioned it horizontally?
A shame that it seems we will have nothing on 4G/5G and planning changes for that, today.
My photo quota for the day. They need JOINED-UP planning for 5G phone masts, as with so many other things.
This one aka "Middle Finger" was built in the middle of the new strategic Active Travel route at the Pentagon Island, Derby, in 2023. The Active Travel route is one which is part of a £100m * package covering Nottingham and Derby allocated in iirc 2022, over 3-4 years.
* For the record, £100m is a pittance for an area of 750k people for active travel. There is currently £50m being spent on improving a single traffic island on the Nottingham Ring Road, one of many highways projects on that scale locally.
Where would you like this mast to be placed? Perhaps onto the grass next to it? But the MNO will have concluded it must be there for coverage reasons.
I would certainly advocate shared, much taller sites and with no planning required in urban areas.
1) moving it a meter or two onto the grass wouldn’t effect coverage that much? 2) what about a combined phone mast/light standard for the road?
1) You'd be surprised how much a small movement can make - but I would agree with you in principle. This is something that should already be allowed for under planning regs, the MNO should have to justify not putting it on the grass say.
2) They already exist but are limited in the bands and spectrum they can support because the structure is often too small. They hamper upgrades because of needing to work with the council (go figure) and they will not support all MNOs.
The better solution would be a taller lamp-post mast as there but further back and with support for all MNOs on it. That is already possible. If they allowed these up to 50m say they'd need fewer of them.
The number of lawmakers who explicitly said Biden should not be the Democratic nominee was greater than the number who spoke up for him to stay, according to one of the sources.
It does seem like a lot of people want Biden to step down, and it's now a matter of can he be persuaded to do so.
The debate from last week starts to come across as a stitch-up against the President, there’s been such a co-ordinated response to it since before they even left the stage. There’s no way that everyone in his own party thought he was doing just fine until that moment, when it’s been clear for years that he’s been getting noticeably older and slower.
The problem now is how to deal with Kamala Harris, who’s polling is even worse than Biden’s, but she was a diversity hire so can’t be swapped out easily without upsetting people.
Meanwhile, some of us first mentioned Gretchen Whitmer a long time ago
This is the issue, dump Biden for sure. But replace him with Harris? Fuck that, Trump will walk it in November against her. What they need is a southern Democrat governor or senator who's not too liberal, not gay and not old.
Why do conservatives think they have a special insight into who the Democrats should pick if Biden drops out ?
I want the candidate who has the best chance of beating Trump which isn't Harris. It's a white (probably male) Democrat from the south or at a push the rust belt. In the same way the Tories are going to have to find a candidate that can win back their small c conservative heartlands in the south (so not Braverman or any other right wing loon) the Dems need to find someone who can win across the whole country so not some drug decriminalising lefty liberal who drives a solar power car and has had sex change surgery.
Keep Trump out this time and he's done for good. If that means comprising and not having an ultra liberal candidate so be it.
There's no process for getting what you want. You're effectively asking for a messy intra-party fight, a couple of months before the election, with unpredictable but quite likely damaging consequences.
Realistically, the option most likely to win the general election is Harris.
The highlighted bit shows how unserious you are about the process.
A shame that it seems we will have nothing on 4G/5G and planning changes for that, today.
My photo quota for the day. They need JOINED-UP planning for 5G phone masts, as with so many other things.
This one aka "Middle Finger" was built in the middle of the new strategic Active Travel route at the Pentagon Island, Derby, in 2023. The Active Travel route is one which is part of a £100m * package covering Nottingham and Derby allocated in iirc 2022, over 3-4 years.
* For the record, £100m is a pittance for an area of 750k people for active travel. There is currently £50m being spent on improving a single traffic island on the Nottingham Ring Road, one of many highways projects on that scale locally.
Where would you like this mast to be placed? Perhaps onto the grass next to it? But the MNO will have concluded it must be there for coverage reasons.
I would certainly advocate shared, much taller sites and with no planning required in urban areas.
It needs to be somewhere where it does not undermine Council policy, and does not block the public highway.
From my point of view, putting it 1m out in the carriageway is exactly the same issue. But they wouldn't do that - which is one basic problem with the way Local Highways Authorities are set up. This was done because it was an easy solution to the person sitting at the bottom of the "phone mast" silo.
It wasn't there for coverage reasons, as explained in the tweet linked.
Solution - for example they could have put a Compulsory Purchase Order on a small section of the car park for the factory to the right.
A meter to the left of right would have been fine.
Unless I’m reading the results wrong, LPF were 3m votes behind RN but because of the way that the tactical voting worked came first on seats.
I’m not sure that bodes well. It’s a bullet dodged but the RN scored by far the highest number of votes (over 10% more on my understanding?). That would be a bit like Labour falling short of a majority on Thursday 10 points ahead of the Tories. It’s the electoral system and alliances that have caused the result.
It raises an important point but I think it's democracy working, not the other way round. The left and centre alliances intended to impose a pseudo PR system on top of a two phase FPTP system. It turned out extremely successful.
The important point is RN is extremely transfer unfriendly. Almost everyone will choose anyone other than RN if their preferred candidate is not available. Le Pen has more votes than anyone else but she can't work a coalition. She can only win if she is the biggest party and gets a majority under FPTP.
The message from this election is the two thirds of the French population who don't support Le Pen have given all the other parties a mandate to sort something out between them. Whether they do or not remains to be seen.
In a way, it’s similar to Gerry Adams’ defeat in 1992, on a larger scale. Most of us cheered, but we overlooked that his vote increased.
And SF can't get a majority in NI or the Republic even now.
RN clearly are too toxic to get anywhere near a majority in France or to win the Presidential election without centre right support, at present LR voters clearly still prefer Macron's party in runoffs to RN. LR voters will only hold their nose and vote for RN to keep out Melenchon and the far left
Correct. And LR will vote for any Left Alliance candidate who is not Mélenchon's party.
In effect everyone will vote for anyone who isn't Le Pen unless they were going to vote for Le Pen in the first place.
Not sure about that, most LR would not vote for Socialists over RN
You're right! LR voters went 29% Left Alliance except Mélenchon; 34% RN. Everyone else goes non-RN
Radacanu continues to be overrated and peaked too soon.
Bit ungenerous. She came out of nowhere to win a Grand Slam then was beset by injuries. This marks her return/rebirth from those injuries so give her time. That said, she was played off the court by Lulu. 93mph forehand winners ffs.
Not really ungenerous, what I am saying is true. She's a good player but she's been over-hyped and allowed to be put up too high to only fall down.
She'd have been much better off not being hyped up so early. Only disappointment will follow.
She's a seriously talented player, dedicated to the game, working her way towards the top 10 after rather fluking a slam as a teenage qualifier. She might never win Wimbledon, few do, but I give her a decent chance between now and (say) 2030.
"Biden’s condition at the debate, and in some other recent public appearances, would be highly worrying if you encountered it in an aging grandparent. At the very least, you’d encourage them to undergo neurological testing, something Biden — like a lot of stubborn people at his age — has refused to do. It’s time to confront reality: wishing you could have the old Biden back won’t be any more effective than wishing you were 17 years old again."
The number of lawmakers who explicitly said Biden should not be the Democratic nominee was greater than the number who spoke up for him to stay, according to one of the sources.
It does seem like a lot of people want Biden to step down, and it's now a matter of can he be persuaded to do so.
The debate from last week starts to come across as a stitch-up against the President, there’s been such a co-ordinated response to it since before they even left the stage. There’s no way that everyone in his own party thought he was doing just fine until that moment, when it’s been clear for years that he’s been getting noticeably older and slower.
The problem now is how to deal with Kamala Harris, who’s polling is even worse than Biden’s, but she was a diversity hire so can’t be swapped out easily without upsetting people.
Meanwhile, some of us first mentioned Gretchen Whitmer a long time ago
"Diversity hire" - well done for picking up the right wing trope. Harris is a cut above about three quarter of all VP picks. And get about ten time the average criticism.
I'd say Palin, Ferraro, Eagleton / Shriver, Agnew and Miller.
Its generally a list of solid politicians used to balance the ticket on geographical and experience lines.
VPs exist to balance out the weaknesses of the top of the ticket. Harris does that as well as anyone else here - Biden was old and had senatorial and foreign affair experience as a long time member of the senate and as VP himself. Harris has experience as a prosecutor and state senator, but also her lived experience - being from a younger generation and being a woman of colour in the US. You can say that she had less political experience than most above (even on that score she still beats Pence, imho, who started his career as a conservative radio host in the vein of Rush Limbaugh).
Pence was a Governor and former House Rep so had experience in both executive and legislature.
Which together with being an evangelical and from the mid west provided the necessary balance to Trump.
Harris was able to give balance to Biden as you say but she would need someone very different to give balance to her as President. Andy Beshear would tick most boxes in that case.
If she really wanted to piss off the left and hope to try and eat into the GOP vote she should pick Joe Manchin... but I'd rather she didn't
Comments
In effect everyone will vote for anyone who isn't Le Pen unless they were going to vote for Le Pen in the first place.
If we go back to the football analogy, as a Luton Town supporter, I remember way back when a cup match where we played Liverpool. At half time we were 2-0 up, final score was 2-4. But we were happy because we played a cracking game, and showed a premiership team that we could score against them and hold our own (for a while). A decade later we were in the Premi ourselves. That's how it feels now - we accept we didn't win, but considering our position and the things against us - we performed better than expected. And it gives us hope for the future.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/labours-landslide-victory-sees-u-k-housebuilder-stocks-surge-a343ef46
https://prospect.org/power/2024-07-02-campaign-finance-laws-harris-big-boost-biden-dropout-scenario/
9 Nationalist MPs
8 Unionists
1 Alliance (non-sectarian)
New Morning Consult polls from swing states have Biden leading Trump by 3% in Wisconsin and by 5% in Michigan.
Trump leads in Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania and NC and Georgia is neck and neck
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/
Also we have an Ed Sec who actually received free school meals for what I assume is the first time ever.
Hollande is a leftist Socialist LR voters despise and the man who narrowly beat their hero and former leader Sarkozy in 2012 to the Presidency. LR voters might vote for Attal or Phillippe over Le Pen but they would likely mostly vote for Le Pen over Hollande
The biggest influence on how many houses we build is the attitiude of he builders themselves. The Telegraph rather amusingly pointed out a few days ago that planning aplications collapsed last year. They blamed planning regs when in fact it was directly due to the plateauing in house price rises which causd the builders to stop building. They don't want house prices to fall. And if they look like doing so then they will simply stop building houses until they start to rise again.
If you want more houses built then they need to be directly financed and built by local councils. Take the profit motive out of housing supply for a while and you will be able to build what we need and where we need.
Harris is a cut above about three quarter of all VP picks. And get about ten time the average criticism.
He's already put out a request:
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4887416#Comment_4887416
Word format preferred for articles.
Today's announcement is purely about ministerial policy - which can be changed pretty well immediately without legislation. And in its own terms, it seems to me (FWIW) to be a step in the right direction.
Take an example. Council Tax, aside from being regressive, has been in drift from reality for 30+ years.
A rapid sorting out - removing the taper favouring more expensive properties, and a revaluation to deal with unequal house price rises on a local, regional and national level, could be done in 12 months.
But that will have a major impact on some, albeit generally the more wealthy, and those who have been benefiting for 30 years from below-appropriate Council Tax.
On the other side is the argument "but it's a charge for services".
So how to play that one? Councils need greater budgets *now*, but have been so starved that they do not have the capacity to manage the spend effectively - so capacity needs to be built too.
How to play it, and over what timespan?
Largest UK public sector trial of four-day week sees huge benefits, research finds
Exclusive: South Cambridgeshire experiment led to fewer refuse collectors quitting and faster planning decisions
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jul/08/largest-uk-public-sector-trial-four-day-week-sees-huge-benefits-research-finds-
...South Cambridgeshire district council’s controversial experiment with a shorter working week resulted in improvements in performance in 11 out of 24 areas, little or no change in 11 areas and worsening of performance in two areas, according to analysis of productivity before and during the 15-month trial by academics at the universities of Cambridge and Salford.
The trial by the Liberal Democrat-controlled authority drew a furious reaction from the Conservative government, with a minister telling the borough leader, Bridget Smith, to “end your experiment immediately”, complaining that it would not give value for money for local taxpayers...
Clearly not a policy that will work everywhere, but well worth further investigation.
In 1906 the British parliament passed the permissive Education (Provision of Meals) Act allowing Local Education Authorities (LEAs) to provide free meals to elementary schoolchildren, funded out of the local rates. Rate-payer funded feeding programmes enabled under-nourished schoolchildren to benefit from the nation’s compulsory elementary education. 358,306 elementary schoolchildren were provided with free meals in 1912/13, about 7% of the elementary school population aged 3-11.
The 1944 Education Act required all LEAs to provide a midday meal and set nutritional guidelines to follow. Efforts to provide all meals free of charge to the recipient proved too costly and in 1949 the Labour government allowed LEAs to charge 6d. per meal while still providing some meals free to disadvantaged schoolchildren. Throughout the fifties and sixties approximately 50% of schoolchildren, both elementary and secondary, were taking nutritionally-designed midday meals with 5 - 10% getting them free.
https://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/the-provision-of-school-meals-since-1906-progress-or-a-recipe-for-disaster
People only dislike Labour because of how intelligently they used the voting system to their advantage.
If you hate this, back PR as I do.
https://x.com/mathieugallard/status/1810010894937575572
Reform just put the icing on the cake.
Its totally right to say that many previous majority governments have not had a majority of votes. In this case there are several skews that look very unfair. Labour's vote does not warrant such a huge majority. Reform getting more votes but vastly fewer seats than the Lib Dems etc. But complaining NOW because its worked against your party (be you Tory, Reform, Green' etc smacks of being a poor loser. Labour and Tories have had majorities in the past and could have changed the system. They didn't because it normally works for them.
Reform certainly made it easier - but compared to 2019 Labour has completely changed where the votes are.
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/irish-reunification
The Good Friday Agreement states that consent for a united Ireland must be “freely and concurrently given” in both the North and the South of the island of Ireland. This is widely interpreted to mean that future border polls must be held in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland at the same time.
[...]
As part of the Good Friday Agreement, an explicit provision for holding a Northern Ireland border poll was made in UK law. The Northern Ireland Act 1998 states that “if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland”, the Secretary of State shall make an Order in Council enabling a border poll.
I have to imagine that the above is true - it appears likely to me that a majority of those voting (NI and ROI) will want reunification. Do we have enough time to make Star Trek lore correct?
No one is questioning the Labour mandate, just recognising that it's much weaker than the HoC would have everyone believe. 34% vote share, under 10m votes and very low turnout is a weak mandate and once the Labour honeymoon is over we'll see voters fracture even further because not enough people voted for this outcome.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqql6gq076no
No - they are commemorating the start of the Senedd. It wasn't 'born', it doesn't have a birthday.
As for the analysis that Labour didn't win the election, the Tories lost it, I assume the Tories would like to re-assess their 2010 result when they insisted Brown had lost and they had won.
There's a view starting to emerge that Labour will come unstuck quickly and that because SKS is apparently so unpopular the Tories will just nip back into government soon. I think this extremely unlikely based on what SKS has actually done up to now.
The Tories need to do more than just wait for Labour to cock it up.
In the system we have, seats is what matters. SKS won the second largest Labour majority in history, that's the reality.
What the Tories should be doing is backing PR.
This is why Biden deciding to run has made a real mess of things. If he had said I'm just going to have one term then Harris could have been properly tested.
When TV prices fell for decades, why did Samsung not go on a sellers strike to support prices?
Pence (R)
Kaine (D)
Ryan (R)
Biden (D)
Palin (R)
Edwards (D)
Cheney (R)
Lieberman (D)
Kemp (R)
Gore (D)
Quayle (R)
Bentsen (D)
Ferraro (D)
Bush (R)
Mondale (D)
Dole (R)
Eagleton / Shriver (D)
Agnew (R)
Muskie (D)
Miller (R)
Humphrey (D)
Lodge (R)
Johnson (D)
Kefauver (D)
Sparkman (D)
Nixon (R)
Warren (R)
Barkley (D)
How many is Harris a cut above ?
I'd say Palin, Ferraro, Eagleton / Shriver, Agnew and Miller.
Its generally a list of solid politicians used to balance the ticket on geographical and experience lines.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/11/women-of-color-representation-government/
Well she turned out to be rubbish, and now they can’t swap her out without needing to tick all of the same identity boxes to avoid upsetting various groups within the Dem party.
Keep Trump out this time and he's done for good. If that means comprising and not having an ultra liberal candidate so be it.
This is because a non-trivial portion of those who vote Nationalist (or even Republican) will vote *against* unification.
This has been a thing in NI politics for a long, long time. Even when SF was the party of the Ballot Box And Armalite - literally in favour of murder to bring about a united Ireland - a chunk of their voters, when polled said no to joining the South.
This is why SF aren’t demanding a border poll 24/7 - just occasionally say the words.
This one aka "Middle Finger" was built in the middle of the new strategic Active Travel route at the Pentagon Island, Derby, in 2023. The Active Travel route is one which is part of a £100m * package covering Nottingham and Derby allocated in iirc 2022, over 3-4 years.
https://x.com/tandemkate/status/1710701505064354227
* For the record, £100m is a pittance for an area of 750k people for active travel. There is currently £50m being spent on improving a single traffic island on the Nottingham Ring Road, one of many highways projects on that scale locally.
Expectations are pretty low, so it's not completely impossible that they surprise us.
They're certainly not hanging about.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/08/operation-reset-lammys-mission-to-reconnect-gets-off-to-flying-start
..Lammy aimed to come not just with warm words, but with the outline of a plan for an EU-UK security pact. That plan, carefully hatched in opposition, and in some ways reviving ideas that fell by the wayside in the original Brexit negotiations, is more ambitious and wide-ranging than commonly recognised, since security is being defined by the Lammy team in its broadest sense, to cover not just defence, but the web of issues that make up modern-day security, from the climate crisis to energy, pandemics, cyber, investment strategies and critical minerals.
He came away from his conversations with Sikorski and Baerbock feeling that there was an enthusiasm to form a new cooperation agreement, although exactly how formal that agreement, and whether it has legal elements, are for future discussion. With EU states worrying about what the possible US presidency of Donald Trump might mean for the Nato umbrella and US contributions to the defence of Europe, the return of the British, with their defence expertise, could at least offer a form of reassurance...
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/09/politics/joe-biden-bridge-new-generation-of-leaders/index.html
It's the complete opposite of the Starmer FPTP issue. Le Pen would get nowhere under PR because she has no attraction outside her admittedly large core vote
She'd have been much better off not being hyped up so early. Only disappointment will follow.
The Republicans could have had say DeSantis, who putting aside his woke bashing, runs Florida pretty well and isn't a total nut nut or a criminal like Trump, so I imagine would easily beat Biden.
The Democrats have a number of options if they could put aside the obsession with having to triangulate everything through identity politics of requiring the colour / gendered / sexual orientation on the ticket. Just pick a non-senile middled aged person, who sounds credible and doesn't have loads of baggage, and you beat Trump.
For the sake of the US, both parties, should have picked anybody but the two they picked.
I would certainly advocate shared, much taller sites and with no planning required in urban areas.
2) what about a combined phone mast/light standard for the road?
But I don't think it follows from that that the Labour majority will be particularly precarious at the next election, because it was largely the result of Labour/Lib Dem/Green supporters' willingness to vote tactically against the Tories. Unless that can be reversed, it's misleading to judge by Labour's 34% alone. The size of the majority (and Lib Dem strength in the Commons) represents something closer to the combined L/LD/G vote of 52%.
Even if the Tories could magically appropriate the whole of the Reform vote, it would take them only to 36%. But it's clear that Reform drew from Labour as well as from the Tories, so that's over-optimistic for them.
https://x.com/birdyword/status/1809937062625464339
The efficiency of the combined LD/LAB vote shares is a real sight to behold. The Lib Dem share in seats Labour won seems to have rarely surpassed 10%, then as soon as the Labour share drops below ~30% the LD share explodes.
There is a very pretty visual with that tweet as well.
https://x.com/ianvisits/status/1810248233605533950
From my point of view, putting it 1m out in the carriageway is exactly the same issue. But they wouldn't do that - which is one basic problem with the way Local Highways Authorities are set up. This was done because it was an easy solution to the person sitting at the bottom of the "phone mast" silo.
It wasn't there for coverage reasons, as explained in the tweet linked.
Solution - for example they could have put a Compulsory Purchase Order on a small section of the car park for the factory to the right.
The influential congressman who got Biden to promise to pick a black woman has already suggested a mini-primary. Black Democrats voted for Biden and as well as Kamala's campaign imploding before a vote was cast, the perfectly capable Cory Booker went nowhere too.
I know there are some *Kamala Harris* enthusiasts who are saying this stuff but it's not clear to me that they speak for an interest group, or that they would be mollified by having a different black woman instead.
Which together with being an evangelical and from the mid west provided the necessary balance to Trump.
Harris was able to give balance to Biden as you say but she would need someone very different to give balance to her as President. Andy Beshear would tick most boxes in that case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hendy,_Baron_Hendy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hendy
2) They already exist but are limited in the bands and spectrum they can support because the structure is often too small. They hamper upgrades because of needing to work with the council (go figure) and they will not support all MNOs.
The better solution would be a taller lamp-post mast as there but further back and with support for all MNOs on it. That is already possible. If they allowed these up to 50m say they'd need fewer of them.
You're effectively asking for a messy intra-party fight, a couple of months before the election, with unpredictable but quite likely damaging consequences.
Realistically, the option most likely to win the general election is Harris.
The highlighted bit shows how unserious you are about the process.
https://x.com/mathieugallard/status/1810010894937575572
Nate Silver