Hilarious scenes by Brighton station. A handful of EDL types turned up hoping to cause mayhem, outnumbered by many hundreds of people politely telling them that they're not welcome in the city. They got nowhere near their target, and seem to have gone now. One arrest. Very effective policing.
Perhaps a naive question, but why are so many of the anti-racist protesters wearing face coverings? Hoping for a scuffle, or afraid of tear gas and the like?
Hoping for a scuffle. A fair number will be extremely unpleasant antifa antiSemites, as we have seen earlier
Don't you know that pretty, female, long legged, slim ethnics are fine? Other ethnics are debatable. These are the criteria which drive the economy. Around a select area of London at least.
I gave perplexity.ai a list of my favorite bands and singers and asked them to recommend other bands, singers and soundtracks. It got them bang on. This is scary.
Hilarious scenes by Brighton station. A handful of EDL types turned up hoping to cause mayhem, outnumbered by many hundreds of people politely telling them that they're not welcome in the city. They got nowhere near their target, and seem to have gone now. One arrest. Very effective policing.
Perhaps a naive question, but why are so many of the anti-racist protesters wearing face coverings? Hoping for a scuffle, or afraid of tear gas and the like?
Talking of insurance not doing what it says, the famed YouTube scam exposer Coffeezilla is being sued and because of the size of his channel / topics he covers he took out media liability insurance, except on page 31 of the policy in the small print there is a clause that basically means he isn't covered against much at all. Likely to be on the hook for $100ks in legal fees.
Interestingly, during coverage of this, it was claimed that the massive payout of the voting machine story that Fox News got stung with was actually largely covered by their liability insurance and tax write offs.
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
No it isn't, the LDs have pretty much hit their ceiling in the Home Counties, taking almost all the Remain seats and some of the soft Leave seats there on 4th July. They are unlikely to get many if any more and in any case in some of those LD seats the Tory and Reform vote combined was bigger than the LD vote
The LDs will be building up their support in seats they haven’t yet won, as we speak.
From where? If they couldn't win Tory voters this time they are unlikely to win many more next time and they have already squeezed Labour tactical votes in their target seats as far as they can go
We targeted ruthlessly. For instance Farnham and Bordon was not a top target even though it could have been. Supporters were coming from there to other targets like Guildford. If all goes well for the LDs and we don't need to target Guildford the same way as this time we will all be in Farnham and Bordon and if under the same circumstances as the last election it would fall. We nearly took it without working it. Think what we could do if we really went for it.
That will happen all over the country. I would predict that if the election was run with both the LDs and Tories on the same level of popularity as at the GE, but starting with the current seats we would take another 20 seats. At least 2 more in Surrey for a start.
The combined Tory and Reform vote in Farnham was 47%, the LD vote only 33%
Hilarious scenes by Brighton station. A handful of EDL types turned up hoping to cause mayhem, outnumbered by many hundreds of people politely telling them that they're not welcome in the city. They got nowhere near their target, and seem to have gone now. One arrest. Very effective policing.
Perhaps a naive question, but why are so many of the anti-racist protesters wearing face coverings? Hoping for a scuffle, or afraid of tear gas and the like?
Hoping for a scuffle. A fair number will be extremely unpleasant antifa antiSemites, as we have seen earlier
How many officers are getting overtime for the "expected 100 Fascist coup attempts" tonight?
6000?
The absurd government should just give me £2,000 a minute to make predictions, and I'd still save them millions
Though your predictions of invasions by a) aliens, b) the woke, c) non-pretty ethnics, would probably about make it a net deficit.
I made a pretty bold prediction this morning, standing in the Vueling Q for Heathrow at Orly. I simply extracted the information available, crunched it like GPTeightyfuckingbillion, then extrapolated the outcome, with my insane knowkedge of sociopsychology, and realised: the riots are over. They are done. Doesn't even need rain
Wow. As they say, big if true. But it does appear as though Yevgeny Poddubny, one of the most prominent of Russia’s war propagandists, has been killed in a Ukrainian FPV drone strike. He was present in all of the Kremlin’s wars of the past decade+, including the Donbas in 2014. https://x.com/ChristopherJM/status/1821260779376799758
Hilarious scenes by Brighton station. A handful of EDL types turned up hoping to cause mayhem, outnumbered by many hundreds of people politely telling them that they're not welcome in the city. They got nowhere near their target, and seem to have gone now. One arrest. Very effective policing.
Heard they were confronted by a phalanx of drag queens at Brighton station.
Wouldn't be surprised. I didn't see the drag queens, but I did see an impromptu band playing jolly songs to welcome them.
I've often thought that one of my main criteria for "are you an ok lot?" is "can you muster a decent oompah oompah band". Don't really care what the instruments are.
I should be in charge of the UK Citizenship programme. I really should.
Hilarious scenes by Brighton station. A handful of EDL types turned up hoping to cause mayhem, outnumbered by many hundreds of people politely telling them that they're not welcome in the city. They got nowhere near their target, and seem to have gone now. One arrest. Very effective policing.
Perhaps a naive question, but why are so many of the anti-racist protesters wearing face coverings? Hoping for a scuffle, or afraid of tear gas and the like?
Covid. It’s been rampant this summer.
EDIT: beaten by Northern Al…damn!
Covid is history.
It says something about how weird Brighton is if they're still wearing face coverings due to Covid.
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
No it isn't, the LDs have pretty much hit their ceiling in the Home Counties, taking almost all the Remain seats and some of the soft Leave seats there on 4th July. They are unlikely to get many if any more and in any case in some of those LD seats the Tory and Reform vote combined was bigger than the LD vote
The LDs will be building up their support in seats they haven’t yet won, as we speak.
From where? If they couldn't win Tory voters this time they are unlikely to win many more next time and they have already squeezed Labour tactical votes in their target seats as far as they can go
We targeted ruthlessly. For instance Farnham and Bordon was not a top target even though it could have been. Supporters were coming from there to other targets like Guildford. If all goes well for the LDs and we don't need to target Guildford the same way as this time we will all be in Farnham and Bordon and if under the same circumstances as the last election it would fall. We nearly took it without working it. Think what we could do if we really went for it.
That will happen all over the country. I would predict that if the election was run with both the LDs and Tories on the same level of popularity as at the GE, but starting with the current seats we would take another 20 seats. At least 2 more in Surrey for a start.
The combined Tory and Reform vote in Farnham was 47%, the LD vote only 33%
How many more times
Stop combining the two
Mind you, hopeless comment by me as @HYUFD is incapable of being wrong
You can spot the difference between those who are irrationally concerned about COVID in the outdoors and using a mask for other reasons, the latter are covered head to toe in black, hood up, etc...even when it is middle of summer.
Talking of insurance not doing what it says, the famed YouTube scam exposer Coffeezilla is being sued and because of the size of his channel / topics he covers he took out media liability insurance, except on page 31 of the policy in the small print there is a clause that basically means he isn't covered against much at all. Likely to be on the hook for $100ks in legal fees.
Interestingly, during coverage of this, it was claimed that the massive payout of the voting machine story that Fox News got stung with was actually largely covered by their liability insurance and tax write offs.
Talking of insurance not doing what it says, the famed YouTube scam exposer Coffeezilla is being sued and because of the size of his channel / topics he covers he took out media liability insurance, except on page 31 of the policy in the small print there is a clause that basically means he isn't covered against much at all. Likely to be on the hook for $100ks in legal fees.
Interestingly, during coverage of this, it was claimed that the massive payout of the voting machine story that Fox News got stung with was actually largely covered by their liability insurance and tax write offs.
You can spot the difference between those who are concerned about COVID and using a mask for other reasons, the later are covered head to toe in black, hood up, etc...even when it is middle of summer.
Yes, a surgical mask I'd accept for COVID. Baseball cap with hood up and a mask tells a bit of a different story.
Hilarious scenes by Brighton station. A handful of EDL types turned up hoping to cause mayhem, outnumbered by many hundreds of people politely telling them that they're not welcome in the city. They got nowhere near their target, and seem to have gone now. One arrest. Very effective policing.
Perhaps a naive question, but why are so many of the anti-racist protesters wearing face coverings? Hoping for a scuffle, or afraid of tear gas and the like?
Covid. It’s been rampant this summer.
EDIT: beaten by Northern Al…damn!
Covid is history.
It says something about how weird Brighton is if they're still wearing face coverings due to Covid.
FFS Barty. I’ll admit it wasn’t comedy gold but surely it was obvious Northern Al and I were joking.
Wow. As they say, big if true. But it does appear as though Yevgeny Poddubny, one of the most prominent of Russia’s war propagandists, has been killed in a Ukrainian FPV drone strike. He was present in all of the Kremlin’s wars of the past decade+, including the Donbas in 2014. https://x.com/ChristopherJM/status/1821260779376799758
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
No it isn't, the LDs have pretty much hit their ceiling in the Home Counties, taking almost all the Remain seats and some of the soft Leave seats there on 4th July. They are unlikely to get many if any more and in any case in some of those LD seats the Tory and Reform vote combined was bigger than the LD vote
The LDs will be building up their support in seats they haven’t yet won, as we speak.
From where? If they couldn't win Tory voters this time they are unlikely to win many more next time and they have already squeezed Labour tactical votes in their target seats as far as they can go
We targeted ruthlessly. For instance Farnham and Bordon was not a top target even though it could have been. Supporters were coming from there to other targets like Guildford. If all goes well for the LDs and we don't need to target Guildford the same way as this time we will all be in Farnham and Bordon and if under the same circumstances as the last election it would fall. We nearly took it without working it. Think what we could do if we really went for it.
That will happen all over the country. I would predict that if the election was run with both the LDs and Tories on the same level of popularity as at the GE, but starting with the current seats we would take another 20 seats. At least 2 more in Surrey for a start.
The combined Tory and Reform vote in Farnham was 47%, the LD vote only 33%
You’re going to be adding the Tory and Reform share together until the end of time aren’t you?
Hilarious scenes by Brighton station. A handful of EDL types turned up hoping to cause mayhem, outnumbered by many hundreds of people politely telling them that they're not welcome in the city. They got nowhere near their target, and seem to have gone now. One arrest. Very effective policing.
Perhaps a naive question, but why are so many of the anti-racist protesters wearing face coverings? Hoping for a scuffle, or afraid of tear gas and the like?
Covid. It’s been rampant this summer.
EDIT: beaten by Northern Al…damn!
Covid is history.
It says something about how weird Brighton is if they're still wearing face coverings due to Covid.
FFS Barty. I’ll admit it wasn’t comedy gold but surely it was obvious Northern Al and I were joking.
I have actually seen quite a few people recently back masked up and not in I am here to steal your mobile mode.
Don't you know that pretty, female, long legged, slim ethnics are fine? Other ethnics are debatable. These are the criteria which drive the economy. Around a select area of London at least.
Hilarious scenes by Brighton station. A handful of EDL types turned up hoping to cause mayhem, outnumbered by many hundreds of people politely telling them that they're not welcome in the city. They got nowhere near their target, and seem to have gone now. One arrest. Very effective policing.
Heard they were confronted by a phalanx of drag queens at Brighton station.
Wouldn't be surprised. I didn't see the drag queens, but I did see an impromptu band playing jolly songs to welcome them.
Talking of insurance not doing what it says, the famed YouTube scam exposer Coffeezilla is being sued and because of the size of his channel / topics he covers he took out media liability insurance, except on page 31 of the policy in the small print there is a clause that basically means he isn't covered against much at all. Likely to be on the hook for $100ks in legal fees.
Interestingly, during coverage of this, it was claimed that the massive payout of the voting machine story that Fox News got stung with was actually largely covered by their liability insurance and tax write offs.
I've taken to running insurance policies etc through Anthropic's "Claude" AI model to ask it to spot "gotcha's" etc. Surprisingly good at it.
I am finding Claude much more useful than ChatGPT.
Yeah - the Sonnet 3.5 really is a step up. With all the departures from OpenAI of late we'll see if they can step up if/when they finish training gpt++ or if they're a busted flush.
Hilarious scenes by Brighton station. A handful of EDL types turned up hoping to cause mayhem, outnumbered by many hundreds of people politely telling them that they're not welcome in the city. They got nowhere near their target, and seem to have gone now. One arrest. Very effective policing.
Perhaps a naive question, but why are so many of the anti-racist protesters wearing face coverings? Hoping for a scuffle, or afraid of tear gas and the like?
Covid. It’s been rampant this summer.
EDIT: beaten by Northern Al…damn!
Covid is history.
It says something about how weird Brighton is if they're still wearing face coverings due to Covid.
FFS Barty. I’ll admit it wasn’t comedy gold but surely it was obvious Northern Al and I were joking.
I have actually seen quite a few people recently back masked up and not in I am here to steal your mobile mode.
Hilarious scenes by Brighton station. A handful of EDL types turned up hoping to cause mayhem, outnumbered by many hundreds of people politely telling them that they're not welcome in the city. They got nowhere near their target, and seem to have gone now. One arrest. Very effective policing.
Perhaps a naive question, but why are so many of the anti-racist protesters wearing face coverings? Hoping for a scuffle, or afraid of tear gas and the like?
Covid. It’s been rampant this summer.
EDIT: beaten by Northern Al…damn!
Covid is history.
It says something about how weird Brighton is if they're still wearing face coverings due to Covid.
FFS Barty. I’ll admit it wasn’t comedy gold but surely it was obvious Northern Al and I were joking.
Since COVID I've been pretty sensitive about people with colds/consumption/pertussis spluttering about without a mask on.
I dislike them almost as much as I do SUV drivers.
Jenrick turned up for a very quickly arranged Chinese dinner last night. Fluent presentation but the usual hard-right shtick to entice the membership. Hey that worked so well in 1997-2005. I berated him for his open support for Trump (well, what a surprise) to which he replied that the GOP is our "sister party".
No chance of his getting my vote but I fear he'll win. What then after almost 50 years party membership?
Next week it's drinkkies with Mel.
So not only does he support Trump, but he does so for a facile reason. If he is the best the Conservatives can come up with they really might be toast.
More to the point, when you go through the CVs of the new Lib Dem MPs, Lots of ex military, lots of really impressive academic, business, community and local credentials... these are the kinds of MPs who could easily have been conservative. Then you think well, it the Tories go down the Reform/Populist rabbit hole there is an actual conservative party to vote for- moderate decent, pragmatic, hard working, reasonable and sensible. Everything that the Tories used to claim to be.
At this point the Lib Dems only need to take 26 MPs in order to push the Tories into third place or 29 if you took the Tories and Reform together, and yes I know this is a mildly specious argument but under FPTP but there are 72 Lib Dem MPs and only 5 RefUK. However, Truss and now Jenrick saying they support Trump is absolutely lethal, totally lines them up with Farage in the Petin camp and could actually trigger a hard core of the Tories to defect since they completely loathe both Trump and Farage. Local Tories often get on well with local Lib Dems, and we could certainly see emergence of the Lib Dems as the centre right party that many Tories say they are or want to be (but are actually not and definitely would not be as allies of Trump).
Most LDs neither want nor would accept being a centre right party, the social democratic wing of the party would defect en masse to Labour if it tried as effectively happened in 2015 when Clegg's centre right LDs in Cameron's coalition govt got just 8% of the vote
It really takes a special kind of person to lecture someone who has been a member of the Liberals and Liberal Democrats for over 45 years, and who has been pretty active over much of that time, as a candidate, both Parliamentary and local, as an organiser and as a very regular conference attender about what the membership of the party is and what it is not.
I know my party and you, sir, do not.
You don't, you only know the Liberal wing of your party not the Social Democratic wing clearly.
If Orange Book Liberalism was so popular it would not have got just 8% of the vote in 2015 would it? The only examples of Liberal parties being the main centre right party in western nations are in Australia (where they have effectively always held that position in coalition with the conservative Nationals), Japan, where the LDP has been dominant for decades and arguably the Netherlands which is a much more socially liberal nation by culture than the UK is.
If the LDs became a centre right party the social democrats who are heirs of those like Jenkins and Williams and Owen who defected from Labour in the 1980s ie those who make up the Democrats part of the LDs would defect en masse back to Labour which under Starmer would be closer to the old SDP than a centre right Orange Book Liberal party would be
Much as I like you @hyufd, you really aren't right on this one and @Cicero is. We do know our party and you don't. There is no conflict within the LDs between Liberals and Social Democrats. Much of the time even we don't know which colleagues are which. I remember having this discussion at a LD party after the election where we were comparing opinions. I couldn't have told you before those discussions if other members were from one wing or the other, because we just don't have those wings even though some of us are clearly liberals and some of us are clearly social democrats.
Looking at the 2015 election result is daft. We didn't lose because we were Liberals and not Social Democrats. Nobody believes that. We lost because of the coalition and things like Tuition fees. If you asked any voters they couldn't have told you whether we were mainly Liberals or Social Democrats in 2015 and they couldn't now. Only anoraks like us know there is a difference.
And see my other post re being able to win more seats. Here is a bit of info for you. In Guildford in the build up to the election we knocked on 31,000 doors and sent out regular leaflets. During the election we knocked on 32,000 doors. That is nearly everyone twice. 13 leaflets or letters went out and several hundred posterboards went up during the election, although many of those letters were targeted so not to everyone.
There are plenty of Tory seats we could have done that in but didn't have the resources to do so. So we targeted ruthlessly. There are now the next batch of seats to go for and resources we can move from the last lot of targets we have won,
Now that may not happen. The Tories may recover and we may be defending ruthlessly and targeting nowhere. But if it stays the same we will be have many more Tory seats next time as well as some labour ones to go for.
History is on my side. For example, in 1945 the Liberals got just 9% on a centrist or even centre right liberal platform and the Liberals never got over 10% of the vote until Grimond got 11% in 1964, before falling back to 8.5% in 1966. In Feb 1974 Thorpe's Liberals did admittedly peak at 19% (though that was partly a result of his being more charismatic than Heath and Wilson) before falling to 13% under Steel in 1979 after Thorpe's scandals emerged.
Only the social democrat wing of the Labour Party leaving to form the SDP under Roy Jenkins and then forming the Alliance with the Liberals at the 1983 general election got the combined Liberals and SDP over 20% on a centre left platform to 25% and then 22% under Owen in 1987.
The merged parties which formed the LDs then never ceased to get under 15% of the voted from 1992 to 2010, peaking at 22% in 2005 under Charles Kennedy on an even left of Blair's Labour platform never mind just left of the Tories and 23% in 2010 when Clegg pledged to scrap tuition fees before moving right and backing increasing them in government as you say.
After going into coalition with the Tories in 2010 however the LDs collapsed to just 8% in 2015 and although they have got back over 10% since by appealing to hardline Remainers who opposed Brexit they have still not got over 15% again.
If the LDs became a centre right party they would also lose most of the Labour tactical votes that helped win them southern seats from the Tories last month and also have no chance in Labour seats Kennedy won in 2005
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
No it isn't, the LDs have pretty much hit their ceiling in the Home Counties, taking almost all the Remain seats and some of the soft Leave seats there on 4th July. They are unlikely to get many if any more and in any case in some of those LD seats the Tory and Reform vote combined was bigger than the LD vote
The LDs will be building up their support in seats they haven’t yet won, as we speak.
From where? If they couldn't win Tory voters this time they are unlikely to win many more next time and they have already squeezed Labour tactical votes in their target seats as far as they can go
We targeted ruthlessly. For instance Farnham and Bordon was not a top target even though it could have been. Supporters were coming from there to other targets like Guildford. If all goes well for the LDs and we don't need to target Guildford the same way as this time we will all be in Farnham and Bordon and if under the same circumstances as the last election it would fall. We nearly took it without working it. Think what we could do if we really went for it.
That will happen all over the country. I would predict that if the election was run with both the LDs and Tories on the same level of popularity as at the GE, but starting with the current seats we would take another 20 seats. At least 2 more in Surrey for a start.
The combined Tory and Reform vote in Farnham was 47%, the LD vote only 33%
Oh for goodness sake not this nonsense again. And combining the LD vote with the Green and Lab vote was even more (53%) so we won it then even if every Reform vote goes conservative. There you go, it's our seat then.
But we all know that is nonsense, but by your logic we win it. We just trundle in and squeeze that vote which we didn't have the resources to do this time. You seem to be arguing I'm right with that logic.
Hilarious scenes by Brighton station. A handful of EDL types turned up hoping to cause mayhem, outnumbered by many hundreds of people politely telling them that they're not welcome in the city. They got nowhere near their target, and seem to have gone now. One arrest. Very effective policing.
Perhaps a naive question, but why are so many of the anti-racist protesters wearing face coverings? Hoping for a scuffle, or afraid of tear gas and the like?
Covid. It’s been rampant this summer.
EDIT: beaten by Northern Al…damn!
Covid is history.
It says something about how weird Brighton is if they're still wearing face coverings due to Covid.
Covid is history, but the fear lives on. Apparently the latest scare is that H5N1 is already spreading widely between humans, as indicated by tests of wastewater, but this isn't being picked up because there's no testing of anyone who doesn't work directly with birds.
And somehow it still has a 60% fatality rate, despite there not being a trail of dead bodies as a result of this transmission.
Hilarious scenes by Brighton station. A handful of EDL types turned up hoping to cause mayhem, outnumbered by many hundreds of people politely telling them that they're not welcome in the city. They got nowhere near their target, and seem to have gone now. One arrest. Very effective policing.
Perhaps a naive question, but why are so many of the anti-racist protesters wearing face coverings? Hoping for a scuffle, or afraid of tear gas and the like?
Hoping for a scuffle. A fair number will be extremely unpleasant antifa antiSemites, as we have seen earlier
Yawn.
You think these people don't exixt? And you think they aren't attracted to "anti-racism" protests where there might be violence?
You can spot the difference between those who are irrationally concerned about COVID in the outdoors and using a mask for other reasons, the latter are covered head to toe in black, hood up, etc...even when it is middle of summer.
You can spot the difference between those who are irrationally concerned about COVID in the outdoors and using a mask for other reasons, the latter are covered head to toe in black, hood up, etc...even when it is middle of summer.
Right-wing mob bad, left-wing mob good.
On the whole, yes? There are tens of thousands of woke leftists out tonight and they aren't burning stuff down. In percentage terms, clear winners.
Jenrick turned up for a very quickly arranged Chinese dinner last night. Fluent presentation but the usual hard-right shtick to entice the membership. Hey that worked so well in 1997-2005. I berated him for his open support for Trump (well, what a surprise) to which he replied that the GOP is our "sister party".
No chance of his getting my vote but I fear he'll win. What then after almost 50 years party membership?
Next week it's drinkkies with Mel.
So not only does he support Trump, but he does so for a facile reason. If he is the best the Conservatives can come up with they really might be toast.
More to the point, when you go through the CVs of the new Lib Dem MPs, Lots of ex military, lots of really impressive academic, business, community and local credentials... these are the kinds of MPs who could easily have been conservative. Then you think well, it the Tories go down the Reform/Populist rabbit hole there is an actual conservative party to vote for- moderate decent, pragmatic, hard working, reasonable and sensible. Everything that the Tories used to claim to be.
At this point the Lib Dems only need to take 26 MPs in order to push the Tories into third place or 29 if you took the Tories and Reform together, and yes I know this is a mildly specious argument but under FPTP but there are 72 Lib Dem MPs and only 5 RefUK. However, Truss and now Jenrick saying they support Trump is absolutely lethal, totally lines them up with Farage in the Petin camp and could actually trigger a hard core of the Tories to defect since they completely loathe both Trump and Farage. Local Tories often get on well with local Lib Dems, and we could certainly see emergence of the Lib Dems as the centre right party that many Tories say they are or want to be (but are actually not and definitely would not be as allies of Trump).
Most LDs neither want nor would accept being a centre right party, the social democratic wing of the party would defect en masse to Labour if it tried as effectively happened in 2015 when Clegg's centre right LDs in Cameron's coalition govt got just 8% of the vote
It really takes a special kind of person to lecture someone who has been a member of the Liberals and Liberal Democrats for over 45 years, and who has been pretty active over much of that time, as a candidate, both Parliamentary and local, as an organiser and as a very regular conference attender about what the membership of the party is and what it is not.
I know my party and you, sir, do not.
You don't, you only know the Liberal wing of your party not the Social Democratic wing clearly.
If Orange Book Liberalism was so popular it would not have got just 8% of the vote in 2015 would it? The only examples of Liberal parties being the main centre right party in western nations are in Australia (where they have effectively always held that position in coalition with the conservative Nationals), Japan, where the LDP has been dominant for decades and arguably the Netherlands which is a much more socially liberal nation by culture than the UK is.
If the LDs became a centre right party the social democrats who are heirs of those like Jenkins and Williams and Owen who defected from Labour in the 1980s ie those who make up the Democrats part of the LDs would defect en masse back to Labour which under Starmer would be closer to the old SDP than a centre right Orange Book Liberal party would be
Much as I like you @hyufd, you really aren't right on this one and @Cicero is. We do know our party and you don't. There is no conflict within the LDs between Liberals and Social Democrats. Much of the time even we don't know which colleagues are which. I remember having this discussion at a LD party after the election where we were comparing opinions. I couldn't have told you before those discussions if other members were from one wing or the other, because we just don't have those wings even though some of us are clearly liberals and some of us are clearly social democrats.
Looking at the 2015 election result is daft. We didn't lose because we were Liberals and not Social Democrats. Nobody believes that. We lost because of the coalition and things like Tuition fees. If you asked any voters they couldn't have told you whether we were mainly Liberals or Social Democrats in 2015 and they couldn't now. Only anoraks like us know there is a difference.
And see my other post re being able to win more seats. Here is a bit of info for you. In Guildford in the build up to the election we knocked on 31,000 doors and sent out regular leaflets. During the election we knocked on 32,000 doors. That is nearly everyone twice. 13 leaflets or letters went out and several hundred posterboards went up during the election, although many of those letters were targeted so not to everyone.
There are plenty of Tory seats we could have done that in but didn't have the resources to do so. So we targeted ruthlessly. There are now the next batch of seats to go for and resources we can move from the last lot of targets we have won,
Now that may not happen. The Tories may recover and we may be defending ruthlessly and targeting nowhere. But if it stays the same we will be have many more Tory seats next time as well as some labour ones to go for.
History is on my side. For example, in 1945 the Liberals got just 9% on a centrist or even centre right liberal platform and the Liberals never got over 10% of the vote until Grimond got 11% in 1964, before falling back to 8.5% in 1966. In Feb 1974 Thorpe's Liberals did admittedly peak at 19% (though that was partly a result of his being more charismatic than Heath and Wilson) before falling to 13% under Steel in 1979 after Thorpe's scandals emerged.
Only the social democrat wing of the Labour Party leaving to form the SDP under Roy Jenkins and then forming the Alliance with the Liberals at the 1983 general election got the combined Liberals and SDP over 20% on a centre left platform to 25% and then 22% under Owen in 1987.
The merged parties which formed the LDs then never ceased to get under 15% of the voted from 1992 to 2010, peaking at 22% in 2005 under Charles Kennedy on an even left of Blair's Labour platform never mind just left of the Tories and 23% in 2010 when Clegg pledged to scrap tuition fees before moving right and backing increasing them in government as you say.
After going into coalition with the Tories in 2010 however the LDs collapsed to just 8% in 2015 and although they have got back over 10% since by appealing to hardline Remainers who opposed Brexit they have still not got over 15% again.
If the LDs became a centre right party they would also lose most of the Labour tactical votes that helped win them southern seats from the Tories last month and also have no chance in Labour seats Kennedy won in 2005
There won't be a Tory party, and politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Plenty of ex Tories will never vote for Farage.
You can spot the difference between those who are irrationally concerned about COVID in the outdoors and using a mask for other reasons, the latter are covered head to toe in black, hood up, etc...even when it is middle of summer.
Right-wing mob bad, left-wing mob good.
I don’t see much violence from any “mobs” tonight. Maybe I’m just a dreamer…
You can spot the difference between those who are irrationally concerned about COVID in the outdoors and using a mask for other reasons, the latter are covered head to toe in black, hood up, etc...even when it is middle of summer.
Right-wing mob bad, left-wing mob good.
I don’t see much violence from any “mobs” tonight. Maybe I’m just a dreamer…
But @FF43 just told us a masked mob of Nazis was "attacking" a church in Liverpool!
Hilarious scenes by Brighton station. A handful of EDL types turned up hoping to cause mayhem, outnumbered by many hundreds of people politely telling them that they're not welcome in the city. They got nowhere near their target, and seem to have gone now. One arrest. Very effective policing.
Perhaps a naive question, but why are so many of the anti-racist protesters wearing face coverings? Hoping for a scuffle, or afraid of tear gas and the like?
Covid. It’s been rampant this summer.
EDIT: beaten by Northern Al…damn!
Covid is history.
It says something about how weird Brighton is if they're still wearing face coverings due to Covid.
COVID-19 deaths in the UK in the week up to 19 July (most recent data) was 211, up 6.6%. Numbers have been rising since May, associated with the FLiRT variants, descended from Omicron.
Hilarious scenes by Brighton station. A handful of EDL types turned up hoping to cause mayhem, outnumbered by many hundreds of people politely telling them that they're not welcome in the city. They got nowhere near their target, and seem to have gone now. One arrest. Very effective policing.
Perhaps a naive question, but why are so many of the anti-racist protesters wearing face coverings? Hoping for a scuffle, or afraid of tear gas and the like?
Covid. It’s been rampant this summer.
EDIT: beaten by Northern Al…damn!
Covid is history.
It says something about how weird Brighton is if they're still wearing face coverings due to Covid.
FFS Barty. I’ll admit it wasn’t comedy gold but surely it was obvious Northern Al and I were joking.
I have actually seen quite a few people recently back masked up and not in I am here to steal your mobile mode.
Yeah, we have had a lot of staff off with it the last few weeks, and it hit the Olympics too.
It's not as nasty as it was, partly through mutation, partly through previous infection and partly vaccination.
Still a miserable thing to catch, and the vascular damage not trivial. It's really a respiratory spread vascular disease now.
Hilarious scenes by Brighton station. A handful of EDL types turned up hoping to cause mayhem, outnumbered by many hundreds of people politely telling them that they're not welcome in the city. They got nowhere near their target, and seem to have gone now. One arrest. Very effective policing.
Perhaps a naive question, but why are so many of the anti-racist protesters wearing face coverings? Hoping for a scuffle, or afraid of tear gas and the like?
Hoping for a scuffle. A fair number will be extremely unpleasant antifa antiSemites, as we have seen earlier
Yawn.
You think these people don't exixt? And you think they aren't attracted to "anti-racism" protests where there might be violence?
Fool
Not sure about "a fair number" but they do exist. There's hard left who want a ruck as much as hard right. In the former case it feeds their fantasy that the proletarian revolution is finally upon us.
Jenrick turned up for a very quickly arranged Chinese dinner last night. Fluent presentation but the usual hard-right shtick to entice the membership. Hey that worked so well in 1997-2005. I berated him for his open support for Trump (well, what a surprise) to which he replied that the GOP is our "sister party".
No chance of his getting my vote but I fear he'll win. What then after almost 50 years party membership?
Next week it's drinkkies with Mel.
So not only does he support Trump, but he does so for a facile reason. If he is the best the Conservatives can come up with they really might be toast.
More to the point, when you go through the CVs of the new Lib Dem MPs, Lots of ex military, lots of really impressive academic, business, community and local credentials... these are the kinds of MPs who could easily have been conservative. Then you think well, it the Tories go down the Reform/Populist rabbit hole there is an actual conservative party to vote for- moderate decent, pragmatic, hard working, reasonable and sensible. Everything that the Tories used to claim to be.
At this point the Lib Dems only need to take 26 MPs in order to push the Tories into third place or 29 if you took the Tories and Reform together, and yes I know this is a mildly specious argument but under FPTP but there are 72 Lib Dem MPs and only 5 RefUK. However, Truss and now Jenrick saying they support Trump is absolutely lethal, totally lines them up with Farage in the Petin camp and could actually trigger a hard core of the Tories to defect since they completely loathe both Trump and Farage. Local Tories often get on well with local Lib Dems, and we could certainly see emergence of the Lib Dems as the centre right party that many Tories say they are or want to be (but are actually not and definitely would not be as allies of Trump).
Most LDs neither want nor would accept being a centre right party, the social democratic wing of the party would defect en masse to Labour if it tried as effectively happened in 2015 when Clegg's centre right LDs in Cameron's coalition govt got just 8% of the vote
It really takes a special kind of person to lecture someone who has been a member of the Liberals and Liberal Democrats for over 45 years, and who has been pretty active over much of that time, as a candidate, both Parliamentary and local, as an organiser and as a very regular conference attender about what the membership of the party is and what it is not.
I know my party and you, sir, do not.
You don't, you only know the Liberal wing of your party not the Social Democratic wing clearly.
If Orange Book Liberalism was so popular it would not have got just 8% of the vote in 2015 would it? The only examples of Liberal parties being the main centre right party in western nations are in Australia (where they have effectively always held that position in coalition with the conservative Nationals), Japan, where the LDP has been dominant for decades and arguably the Netherlands which is a much more socially liberal nation by culture than the UK is.
If the LDs became a centre right party the social democrats who are heirs of those like Jenkins and Williams and Owen who defected from Labour in the 1980s ie those who make up the Democrats part of the LDs would defect en masse back to Labour which under Starmer would be closer to the old SDP than a centre right Orange Book Liberal party would be
Much as I like you @hyufd, you really aren't right on this one and @Cicero is. We do know our party and you don't. There is no conflict within the LDs between Liberals and Social Democrats. Much of the time even we don't know which colleagues are which. I remember having this discussion at a LD party after the election where we were comparing opinions. I couldn't have told you before those discussions if other members were from one wing or the other, because we just don't have those wings even though some of us are clearly liberals and some of us are clearly social democrats.
Looking at the 2015 election result is daft. We didn't lose because we were Liberals and not Social Democrats. Nobody believes that. We lost because of the coalition and things like Tuition fees. If you asked any voters they couldn't have told you whether we were mainly Liberals or Social Democrats in 2015 and they couldn't now. Only anoraks like us know there is a difference.
And see my other post re being able to win more seats. Here is a bit of info for you. In Guildford in the build up to the election we knocked on 31,000 doors and sent out regular leaflets. During the election we knocked on 32,000 doors. That is nearly everyone twice. 13 leaflets or letters went out and several hundred posterboards went up during the election, although many of those letters were targeted so not to everyone.
There are plenty of Tory seats we could have done that in but didn't have the resources to do so. So we targeted ruthlessly. There are now the next batch of seats to go for and resources we can move from the last lot of targets we have won,
Now that may not happen. The Tories may recover and we may be defending ruthlessly and targeting nowhere. But if it stays the same we will be have many more Tory seats next time as well as some labour ones to go for.
History is on my side. For example, in 1945 the Liberals got just 9% on a centrist or even centre right liberal platform and the Liberals never got over 10% of the vote until Grimond got 11% in 1964, before falling back to 8.5% in 1966. In Feb 1974 Thorpe's Liberals did admittedly peak at 19% (though that was partly a result of his being more charismatic than Heath and Wilson) before falling to 13% under Steel in 1979 after Thorpe's scandals emerged.
Only the social democrat wing of the Labour Party leaving to form the SDP under Roy Jenkins and then forming the Alliance with the Liberals at the 1983 general election got the combined Liberals and SDP over 20% on a centre left platform to 25% and then 22% under Owen in 1987.
The merged parties which formed the LDs then never ceased to get under 15% of the voted from 1992 to 2010, peaking at 22% in 2005 under Charles Kennedy on an even left of Blair's Labour platform never mind just left of the Tories and 23% in 2010 when Clegg pledged to scrap tuition fees before moving right and backing increasing them in government as you say.
After going into coalition with the Tories in 2010 however the LDs collapsed to just 8% in 2015 and although they have got back over 10% since by appealing to hardline Remainers who opposed Brexit they have still not got over 15% again.
If the LDs became a centre right party they would also lose most of the Labour tactical votes that helped win them southern seats from the Tories last month and also have no chance in Labour seats Kennedy won in 2005
When you go out canvassing @HYUFD and you come across LD voters try asking them if they are social democrats or liberals and see how many blank faces you get. Now try the same thing with Labour or Conservative voters are you will get a clear view of where they stand.
You can spot the difference between those who are irrationally concerned about COVID in the outdoors and using a mask for other reasons, the latter are covered head to toe in black, hood up, etc...even when it is middle of summer.
Right-wing mob bad, left-wing mob good.
On the whole, yes? There are tens of thousands of woke leftists out tonight and they aren't burning stuff down. In percentage terms, clear winners.
Pfft bollocks I was in london a few years back where a left wing mob complained the day after the election that the conservative government just elected were legitimate I think 2010, there were missiles flying at the police
Jenrick turned up for a very quickly arranged Chinese dinner last night. Fluent presentation but the usual hard-right shtick to entice the membership. Hey that worked so well in 1997-2005. I berated him for his open support for Trump (well, what a surprise) to which he replied that the GOP is our "sister party".
No chance of his getting my vote but I fear he'll win. What then after almost 50 years party membership?
Next week it's drinkkies with Mel.
So not only does he support Trump, but he does so for a facile reason. If he is the best the Conservatives can come up with they really might be toast.
More to the point, when you go through the CVs of the new Lib Dem MPs, Lots of ex military, lots of really impressive academic, business, community and local credentials... these are the kinds of MPs who could easily have been conservative. Then you think well, it the Tories go down the Reform/Populist rabbit hole there is an actual conservative party to vote for- moderate decent, pragmatic, hard working, reasonable and sensible. Everything that the Tories used to claim to be.
At this point the Lib Dems only need to take 26 MPs in order to push the Tories into third place or 29 if you took the Tories and Reform together, and yes I know this is a mildly specious argument but under FPTP but there are 72 Lib Dem MPs and only 5 RefUK. However, Truss and now Jenrick saying they support Trump is absolutely lethal, totally lines them up with Farage in the Petin camp and could actually trigger a hard core of the Tories to defect since they completely loathe both Trump and Farage. Local Tories often get on well with local Lib Dems, and we could certainly see emergence of the Lib Dems as the centre right party that many Tories say they are or want to be (but are actually not and definitely would not be as allies of Trump).
Most LDs neither want nor would accept being a centre right party, the social democratic wing of the party would defect en masse to Labour if it tried as effectively happened in 2015 when Clegg's centre right LDs in Cameron's coalition govt got just 8% of the vote
It really takes a special kind of person to lecture someone who has been a member of the Liberals and Liberal Democrats for over 45 years, and who has been pretty active over much of that time, as a candidate, both Parliamentary and local, as an organiser and as a very regular conference attender about what the membership of the party is and what it is not.
I know my party and you, sir, do not.
You don't, you only know the Liberal wing of your party not the Social Democratic wing clearly.
If Orange Book Liberalism was so popular it would not have got just 8% of the vote in 2015 would it? The only examples of Liberal parties being the main centre right party in western nations are in Australia (where they have effectively always held that position in coalition with the conservative Nationals), Japan, where the LDP has been dominant for decades and arguably the Netherlands which is a much more socially liberal nation by culture than the UK is.
If the LDs became a centre right party the social democrats who are heirs of those like Jenkins and Williams and Owen who defected from Labour in the 1980s ie those who make up the Democrats part of the LDs would defect en masse back to Labour which under Starmer would be closer to the old SDP than a centre right Orange Book Liberal party would be
Much as I like you @hyufd, you really aren't right on this one and @Cicero is. We do know our party and you don't. There is no conflict within the LDs between Liberals and Social Democrats. Much of the time even we don't know which colleagues are which. I remember having this discussion at a LD party after the election where we were comparing opinions. I couldn't have told you before those discussions if other members were from one wing or the other, because we just don't have those wings even though some of us are clearly liberals and some of us are clearly social democrats.
Looking at the 2015 election result is daft. We didn't lose because we were Liberals and not Social Democrats. Nobody believes that. We lost because of the coalition and things like Tuition fees. If you asked any voters they couldn't have told you whether we were mainly Liberals or Social Democrats in 2015 and they couldn't now. Only anoraks like us know there is a difference.
And see my other post re being able to win more seats. Here is a bit of info for you. In Guildford in the build up to the election we knocked on 31,000 doors and sent out regular leaflets. During the election we knocked on 32,000 doors. That is nearly everyone twice. 13 leaflets or letters went out and several hundred posterboards went up during the election, although many of those letters were targeted so not to everyone.
There are plenty of Tory seats we could have done that in but didn't have the resources to do so. So we targeted ruthlessly. There are now the next batch of seats to go for and resources we can move from the last lot of targets we have won,
Now that may not happen. The Tories may recover and we may be defending ruthlessly and targeting nowhere. But if it stays the same we will be have many more Tory seats next time as well as some labour ones to go for.
History is on my side. For example, in 1945 the Liberals got just 9% on a centrist or even centre right liberal platform and the Liberals never got over 10% of the vote until Grimond got 11% in 1964, before falling back to 8.5% in 1966. In Feb 1974 Thorpe's Liberals did admittedly peak at 19% (though that was partly a result of his being more charismatic than Heath and Wilson) before falling to 13% under Steel in 1979 after Thorpe's scandals emerged.
Only the social democrat wing of the Labour Party leaving to form the SDP under Roy Jenkins and then forming the Alliance with the Liberals at the 1983 general election got the combined Liberals and SDP over 20% on a centre left platform to 25% and then 22% under Owen in 1987.
The merged parties which formed the LDs then never ceased to get under 15% of the voted from 1992 to 2010, peaking at 22% in 2005 under Charles Kennedy on an even left of Blair's Labour platform never mind just left of the Tories and 23% in 2010 when Clegg pledged to scrap tuition fees before moving right and backing increasing them in government as you say.
After going into coalition with the Tories in 2010 however the LDs collapsed to just 8% in 2015 and although they have got back over 10% since by appealing to hardline Remainers who opposed Brexit they have still not got over 15% again.
If the LDs became a centre right party they would also lose most of the Labour tactical votes that helped win them southern seats from the Tories last month and also have no chance in Labour seats Kennedy won in 2005
The Conservatives however have never polled lower than 30% in a General Election (we know they have in local elections and European parliamentary elections) until July 4th when they polled 24% and won 121 seats, their worst performance since the Reform Act of 1832 so applying historical parallels when we are in uncharted territory seems a little like hopecasting. The last time they polled anywhere near this (1997, 30.7% and 165 seats) they were out of Government for 13 years.
One thing the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk does is make a mockery of Western fears of Russian responses to escalation. Ukraine is occupying sovereign Russian territory, within the internationally-recognised borders, and Russia is dropping glide bombs on its own retreating soldiers.
I wonder, now there's a chance of Harris/Walz winning over Trump/Vance, whether they might provide more robust support to Ukraine than Biden has?
Hilarious scenes by Brighton station. A handful of EDL types turned up hoping to cause mayhem, outnumbered by many hundreds of people politely telling them that they're not welcome in the city. They got nowhere near their target, and seem to have gone now. One arrest. Very effective policing.
Perhaps a naive question, but why are so many of the anti-racist protesters wearing face coverings? Hoping for a scuffle, or afraid of tear gas and the like?
Hoping for a scuffle. A fair number will be extremely unpleasant antifa antiSemites, as we have seen earlier
Yawn.
You think these people don't exixt? And you think they aren't attracted to "anti-racism" protests where there might be violence?
Fool
Not sure about "a fair number" but they do exist. There's hard left who want a ruck as much as hard right. In the former case it feeds their fantasy that the proletarian revolution is finally upon us.
There are people on left and right who are continually disappointed that the UK is not collapsing into a revolutionary/dystopian hellscape. Their desire for it to be true is palpable in their tedious screeches and justifications.
Doesn't mean there are always equal numbers on each of those sides of course.
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
No it isn't, the LDs have pretty much hit their ceiling in the Home Counties, taking almost all the Remain seats and some of the soft Leave seats there on 4th July. They are unlikely to get many if any more and in any case in some of those LD seats the Tory and Reform vote combined was bigger than the LD vote
The LDs will be building up their support in seats they haven’t yet won, as we speak.
From where? If they couldn't win Tory voters this time they are unlikely to win many more next time and they have already squeezed Labour tactical votes in their target seats as far as they can go
We targeted ruthlessly. For instance Farnham and Bordon was not a top target even though it could have been. Supporters were coming from there to other targets like Guildford. If all goes well for the LDs and we don't need to target Guildford the same way as this time we will all be in Farnham and Bordon and if under the same circumstances as the last election it would fall. We nearly took it without working it. Think what we could do if we really went for it.
That will happen all over the country. I would predict that if the election was run with both the LDs and Tories on the same level of popularity as at the GE, but starting with the current seats we would take another 20 seats. At least 2 more in Surrey for a start.
The combined Tory and Reform vote in Farnham was 47%, the LD vote only 33%
Oh for goodness sake not this nonsense again. And combining the LD vote with the Green and Lab vote was even more (53%) so we won it then even if every Reform vote goes conservative. There you go, it's our seat then.
But we all know that is nonsense, but by your logic we win it. We just trundle in and squeeze that vote which we didn't have the resources to do this time. You seem to be arguing I'm right with that logic.
I have already chastised @HYUFD for his monotonous repetition of his nonsense re Tory and Reform vote but he simply will not be told, but as I said earlier he is never wrong in his eyes whilst the rest of us know he is
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
No it isn't, the LDs have pretty much hit their ceiling in the Home Counties, taking almost all the Remain seats and some of the soft Leave seats there on 4th July. They are unlikely to get many if any more and in any case in some of those LD seats the Tory and Reform vote combined was bigger than the LD vote
The LDs will be building up their support in seats they haven’t yet won, as we speak.
From where? If they couldn't win Tory voters this time they are unlikely to win many more next time and they have already squeezed Labour tactical votes in their target seats as far as they can go
We targeted ruthlessly. For instance Farnham and Bordon was not a top target even though it could have been. Supporters were coming from there to other targets like Guildford. If all goes well for the LDs and we don't need to target Guildford the same way as this time we will all be in Farnham and Bordon and if under the same circumstances as the last election it would fall. We nearly took it without working it. Think what we could do if we really went for it.
That will happen all over the country. I would predict that if the election was run with both the LDs and Tories on the same level of popularity as at the GE, but starting with the current seats we would take another 20 seats. At least 2 more in Surrey for a start.
The combined Tory and Reform vote in Farnham was 47%, the LD vote only 33%
How many more times
Stop combining the two
Mind you, hopeless comment by me as @HYUFD is incapable of being wrong
"Let me put it this way, Mr. Big_G. The HYUFD series is the most reliable computer ever made. No HYUFD computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error."
You can spot the difference between those who are irrationally concerned about COVID in the outdoors and using a mask for other reasons, the latter are covered head to toe in black, hood up, etc...even when it is middle of summer.
Right-wing mob bad, left-wing mob good.
On the whole, yes? There are tens of thousands of woke leftists out tonight and they aren't burning stuff down. In percentage terms, clear winners.
Pfft bollocks I was in london a few years back where a left wing mob complained the day after the election that the conservative government just elected were legitimate I think 2010, there were missiles flying at the police
2010? Come on, that's a bit desperate.
That the folk dancing through Walthamstow aren't getting tazed, hunted down by German Shepherds and bonked on the head is yet another example of "two-tier policing". /s
Hilarious scenes by Brighton station. A handful of EDL types turned up hoping to cause mayhem, outnumbered by many hundreds of people politely telling them that they're not welcome in the city. They got nowhere near their target, and seem to have gone now. One arrest. Very effective policing.
Perhaps a naive question, but why are so many of the anti-racist protesters wearing face coverings? Hoping for a scuffle, or afraid of tear gas and the like?
Hoping for a scuffle. A fair number will be extremely unpleasant antifa antiSemites, as we have seen earlier
Yawn.
You think these people don't exixt? And you think they aren't attracted to "anti-racism" protests where there might be violence?
Fool
Not sure about "a fair number" but they do exist. There's hard left who want a ruck as much as hard right. In the former case it feeds their fantasy that the proletarian revolution is finally upon us.
It is, sadly but definitely, a fair number. I saw them on the pro-Palestine marches. Deeply sinister, and many of them veterans of BLM etc (where I also saw them)
A lot of them simply live off the adrenaline. They like a fight, They are football hooligans with a fake political varnish. They can justify their hooliganism with "fight the fash" and "bash the Zios". Some are more sophisticated, but still ultimately driven by the prospect of violence. And there is a larger fringe of simpatico types that will join in if the crowd mood is sufficient and they've had a line or a drink
You can spot the difference between those who are concerned about COVID and using a mask for other reasons, the later are covered head to toe in black, hood up, etc...even when it is middle of summer.
Yes, a surgical mask I'd accept for COVID. Baseball cap with hood up and a mask tells a bit of a different story.
Public Order Act 1936:
An Act to prohibit the wearing of uniforms in connection with political objects...
Sunder Katwala @sundersays · 11m It was an audacious "no no go areas for the far right" idea to have a Brighton protest tonight: these four protestors took part
Favourite Mail comment so far: I find these massively supported counter marches a bit provocative. People have a right to protest without the intimidation of these counter marches. Just leave the police to keep the police.
You can spot the difference between those who are irrationally concerned about COVID in the outdoors and using a mask for other reasons, the latter are covered head to toe in black, hood up, etc...even when it is middle of summer.
Right-wing mob bad, left-wing mob good.
On the whole, yes? There are tens of thousands of woke leftists out tonight and they aren't burning stuff down. In percentage terms, clear winners.
Pfft bollocks I was in london a few years back where a left wing mob complained the day after the election that the conservative government just elected were legitimate I think 2010, there were missiles flying at the police
I worked in Westminster and saw no such violence in 2010, 2015, 2017 or 2019 - but the main reason I know you’re talking bollocks is that the day after the 2010 election there was no Conservative Government appointed to protest. It took, from memory, about a week for the negotiations to form the coalition to conclude, and notoriously Brown clung on like a limpet in the hope that he could do a deal with the Lib Dems.
If you want to criticise left wing protests try the anti-globalisation protests or the tuition fee riots. Yes, they happen, but not tonight.
If you’re going to spout bullshit at least make it a bit believable.
Hilarious scenes by Brighton station. A handful of EDL types turned up hoping to cause mayhem, outnumbered by many hundreds of people politely telling them that they're not welcome in the city. They got nowhere near their target, and seem to have gone now. One arrest. Very effective policing.
Perhaps a naive question, but why are so many of the anti-racist protesters wearing face coverings? Hoping for a scuffle, or afraid of tear gas and the like?
Hoping for a scuffle. A fair number will be extremely unpleasant antifa antiSemites, as we have seen earlier
Yawn.
You think these people don't exixt? And you think they aren't attracted to "anti-racism" protests where there might be violence?
Fool
Not sure about "a fair number" but they do exist. There's hard left who want a ruck as much as hard right. In the former case it feeds their fantasy that the proletarian revolution is finally upon us.
Yeah, one of our nurses (now in her Sixties) was in a Trotskyite faction back in the day. It was great fun it seems, down the pub every weekend, a ruck with the NF and a knocking shop.
Talking politics with her is quite entertaining, she has no delusions about the revolution happening, but she does like to bait a few of my Tory colleagues.
Favourite Mail comment so far: I find these massively supported counter marches a bit provocative. People have a right to protest without the intimidation of these counter marches. Just leave the police to keep the police.
Favourite Mail comment so far: I find these massively supported counter marches a bit provocative. People have a right to protest without the intimidation of these counter marches. Just leave the police to keep the police.
Diddums
Lol, so only fascists have a right to protest? Jog on daily mail commenters.
You can spot the difference between those who are irrationally concerned about COVID in the outdoors and using a mask for other reasons, the latter are covered head to toe in black, hood up, etc...even when it is middle of summer.
Right-wing mob bad, left-wing mob good.
I don’t see much violence from any “mobs” tonight. Maybe I’m just a dreamer…
But @FF43 just told us a masked mob of Nazis was "attacking" a church in Liverpool!
If they decide not to show up that's good obviously. The deterrence has worked, even though it shouldn't be necessary, and so hopefully one of the many horrible events of the past week won't be repeated this time.
Interesting. His obvious course now - as I have been saying for some time - is to go into politics, professionally
Big gamble. The Reform vote (at the moment) is probably 15% max, and winning a seat will be really hard. On the other hand there is a vast empty space which he could occupy. The Reform-minded intellectual who is an eloquent speaker
His life span within ultra-lefty academe was always that of a mayfly
I hate to bring the subject up but could one of our resident AI experts help me out with how to solve a problem. I have a WhatsApp Group where three of us post scored from a popular online word game. I want to work out how many days each person has won but we've been playing over a year and there's lots of chatter in between. Is there an AI product which could extract and count up the scores we have posted? Preferably it could read the WhatsApp thread without me having to copy it out.
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
No it isn't, the LDs have pretty much hit their ceiling in the Home Counties, taking almost all the Remain seats and some of the soft Leave seats there on 4th July. They are unlikely to get many if any more and in any case in some of those LD seats the Tory and Reform vote combined was bigger than the LD vote
The LDs will be building up their support in seats they haven’t yet won, as we speak.
From where? If they couldn't win Tory voters this time they are unlikely to win many more next time and they have already squeezed Labour tactical votes in their target seats as far as they can go
We targeted ruthlessly. For instance Farnham and Bordon was not a top target even though it could have been. Supporters were coming from there to other targets like Guildford. If all goes well for the LDs and we don't need to target Guildford the same way as this time we will all be in Farnham and Bordon and if under the same circumstances as the last election it would fall. We nearly took it without working it. Think what we could do if we really went for it.
That will happen all over the country. I would predict that if the election was run with both the LDs and Tories on the same level of popularity as at the GE, but starting with the current seats we would take another 20 seats. At least 2 more in Surrey for a start.
The combined Tory and Reform vote in Farnham was 47%, the LD vote only 33%
How many more times
Stop combining the two
Mind you, hopeless comment by me as @HYUFD is incapable of being wrong
"Let me put it this way, Mr. Big_G. The HYUFD series is the most reliable computer ever made. No HYUFD computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error."
You may be interested that my wife and I had a wonderful day out yesterday taking the TFW train from Llandudno to Blaenau Ffestiniog , crossing the platform and joining the 'quarryman' steam hauled narrow gauge railway which followed the track slate was taken down to Porthmadog for export worldwide, before returning on the quarryman to Blaenau and TFW to Llandudno
It was a lovely day and showcased the beauty of North Wales while slowly passing through
Favourite Mail comment so far: I find these massively supported counter marches a bit provocative. People have a right to protest without the intimidation of these counter marches. Just leave the police to keep the police.
Diddums
The answer is simple - organise a counter counter-march.
Jenrick turned up for a very quickly arranged Chinese dinner last night. Fluent presentation but the usual hard-right shtick to entice the membership. Hey that worked so well in 1997-2005. I berated him for his open support for Trump (well, what a surprise) to which he replied that the GOP is our "sister party".
No chance of his getting my vote but I fear he'll win. What then after almost 50 years party membership?
Next week it's drinkkies with Mel.
So not only does he support Trump, but he does so for a facile reason. If he is the best the Conservatives can come up with they really might be toast.
More to the point, when you go through the CVs of the new Lib Dem MPs, Lots of ex military, lots of really impressive academic, business, community and local credentials... these are the kinds of MPs who could easily have been conservative. Then you think well, it the Tories go down the Reform/Populist rabbit hole there is an actual conservative party to vote for- moderate decent, pragmatic, hard working, reasonable and sensible. Everything that the Tories used to claim to be.
At this point the Lib Dems only need to take 26 MPs in order to push the Tories into third place or 29 if you took the Tories and Reform together, and yes I know this is a mildly specious argument but under FPTP but there are 72 Lib Dem MPs and only 5 RefUK. However, Truss and now Jenrick saying they support Trump is absolutely lethal, totally lines them up with Farage in the Petin camp and could actually trigger a hard core of the Tories to defect since they completely loathe both Trump and Farage. Local Tories often get on well with local Lib Dems, and we could certainly see emergence of the Lib Dems as the centre right party that many Tories say they are or want to be (but are actually not and definitely would not be as allies of Trump).
Most LDs neither want nor would accept being a centre right party, the social democratic wing of the party would defect en masse to Labour if it tried as effectively happened in 2015 when Clegg's centre right LDs in Cameron's coalition govt got just 8% of the vote
It really takes a special kind of person to lecture someone who has been a member of the Liberals and Liberal Democrats for over 45 years, and who has been pretty active over much of that time, as a candidate, both Parliamentary and local, as an organiser and as a very regular conference attender about what the membership of the party is and what it is not.
I know my party and you, sir, do not.
You don't, you only know the Liberal wing of your party not the Social Democratic wing clearly.
If Orange Book Liberalism was so popular it would not have got just 8% of the vote in 2015 would it? The only examples of Liberal parties being the main centre right party in western nations are in Australia (where they have effectively always held that position in coalition with the conservative Nationals), Japan, where the LDP has been dominant for decades and arguably the Netherlands which is a much more socially liberal nation by culture than the UK is.
If the LDs became a centre right party the social democrats who are heirs of those like Jenkins and Williams and Owen who defected from Labour in the 1980s ie those who make up the Democrats part of the LDs would defect en masse back to Labour which under Starmer would be closer to the old SDP than a centre right Orange Book Liberal party would be
Much as I like you @hyufd, you really aren't right on this one and @Cicero is. We do know our party and you don't. There is no conflict within the LDs between Liberals and Social Democrats. Much of the time even we don't know which colleagues are which. I remember having this discussion at a LD party after the election where we were comparing opinions. I couldn't have told you before those discussions if other members were from one wing or the other, because we just don't have those wings even though some of us are clearly liberals and some of us are clearly social democrats.
Looking at the 2015 election result is daft. We didn't lose because we were Liberals and not Social Democrats. Nobody believes that. We lost because of the coalition and things like Tuition fees. If you asked any voters they couldn't have told you whether we were mainly Liberals or Social Democrats in 2015 and they couldn't now. Only anoraks like us know there is a difference.
And see my other post re being able to win more seats. Here is a bit of info for you. In Guildford in the build up to the election we knocked on 31,000 doors and sent out regular leaflets. During the election we knocked on 32,000 doors. That is nearly everyone twice. 13 leaflets or letters went out and several hundred posterboards went up during the election, although many of those letters were targeted so not to everyone.
There are plenty of Tory seats we could have done that in but didn't have the resources to do so. So we targeted ruthlessly. There are now the next batch of seats to go for and resources we can move from the last lot of targets we have won,
Now that may not happen. The Tories may recover and we may be defending ruthlessly and targeting nowhere. But if it stays the same we will be have many more Tory seats next time as well as some labour ones to go for.
History is on my side. For example, in 1945 the Liberals got just 9% on a centrist or even centre right liberal platform and the Liberals never got over 10% of the vote until Grimond got 11% in 1964, before falling back to 8.5% in 1966. In Feb 1974 Thorpe's Liberals did admittedly peak at 19% (though that was partly a result of his being more charismatic than Heath and Wilson) before falling to 13% under Steel in 1979 after Thorpe's scandals emerged.
Only the social democrat wing of the Labour Party leaving to form the SDP under Roy Jenkins and then forming the Alliance with the Liberals at the 1983 general election got the combined Liberals and SDP over 20% on a centre left platform to 25% and then 22% under Owen in 1987.
The merged parties which formed the LDs then never ceased to get under 15% of the voted from 1992 to 2010, peaking at 22% in 2005 under Charles Kennedy on an even left of Blair's Labour platform never mind just left of the Tories and 23% in 2010 when Clegg pledged to scrap tuition fees before moving right and backing increasing them in government as you say.
After going into coalition with the Tories in 2010 however the LDs collapsed to just 8% in 2015 and although they have got back over 10% since by appealing to hardline Remainers who opposed Brexit they have still not got over 15% again.
If the LDs became a centre right party they would also lose most of the Labour tactical votes that helped win them southern seats from the Tories last month and also have no chance in Labour seats Kennedy won in 2005
There won't be a Tory party, and politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Plenty of ex Tories will never vote for Farage.
Why won't there be a Tory party? Not one leadership contender is suggesting merging with Reform.
However if that did happen Canada style then if the LDs became a centre right One Nation Tory party effectively obviously the social democratic wing of the LDs would in turn move to Labour
Favourite Mail comment so far: I find these massively supported counter marches a bit provocative. People have a right to protest without the intimidation of these counter marches. Just leave the police to keep the police.
Diddums
No, racists should be intimidated.
Being vastly outnumbered can be intimidating, but that's what happens with taking a minority position.
I don't think being a racist is as minority a position as I would like, but it is minority.
This does assume of course that any counter-march remains peaceful itself.
You can spot the difference between those who are irrationally concerned about COVID in the outdoors and using a mask for other reasons, the latter are covered head to toe in black, hood up, etc...even when it is middle of summer.
Right-wing mob bad, left-wing mob good.
I don’t see much violence from any “mobs” tonight. Maybe I’m just a dreamer…
But @FF43 just told us a masked mob of Nazis was "attacking" a church in Liverpool!
If they decide not to show up that's good obviously. The deterrence has worked, even though it shouldn't be necessary, and so hopefully one of the many horrible events of the past week won't be repeated this time.
Interesting. His obvious course now - as I have been saying for some time - is to go into politics, professionally
Big gamble. The Reform vote (at the moment) is probably 15% max, and winning a seat will be really hard. On the other hand there is a vast empty space which he could occupy. The Reform-minded intellectual who is an eloquent speaker
His life span within ultra-lefty academe was always that of a mayfly
The University of Kent is, sadly as it’s a major employer in my home City, in deep financial shit (deeper than most) and that might well have influenced his decision to leave.
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
No it isn't, the LDs have pretty much hit their ceiling in the Home Counties, taking almost all the Remain seats and some of the soft Leave seats there on 4th July. They are unlikely to get many if any more and in any case in some of those LD seats the Tory and Reform vote combined was bigger than the LD vote
The LDs will be building up their support in seats they haven’t yet won, as we speak.
From where? If they couldn't win Tory voters this time they are unlikely to win many more next time and they have already squeezed Labour tactical votes in their target seats as far as they can go
We targeted ruthlessly. For instance Farnham and Bordon was not a top target even though it could have been. Supporters were coming from there to other targets like Guildford. If all goes well for the LDs and we don't need to target Guildford the same way as this time we will all be in Farnham and Bordon and if under the same circumstances as the last election it would fall. We nearly took it without working it. Think what we could do if we really went for it.
That will happen all over the country. I would predict that if the election was run with both the LDs and Tories on the same level of popularity as at the GE, but starting with the current seats we would take another 20 seats. At least 2 more in Surrey for a start.
The combined Tory and Reform vote in Farnham was 47%, the LD vote only 33%
How many more times
Stop combining the two
Mind you, hopeless comment by me as @HYUFD is incapable of being wrong
"Let me put it this way, Mr. Big_G. The HYUFD series is the most reliable computer ever made. No HYUFD computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error."
You may be interested that my wife and I had a wonderful day out yesterday taking the TFW train from Llandudno to Blaenau Ffestiniog , crossing the platform and joining the 'quarryman' steam hauled narrow gauge railway which followed the track slate was taken down to Porthmadog for export worldwide, before returning on the quarryman to Blaenau and TFW to Llandudno
It was a lovely day and showcased the beauty of North Wales while slowly passing through
So good to hear you and your wife are 'out and about' - as I know you had some health issues earlier in the year.
The scenes from Brighton are great. Four fascists surrounded by thousands of people who want to send a message that they aren't wanted there.
As Sunder hints at: what the hell made them think Brighton would be rich pickings for a nazi rally?
And Walthamstow, the list, at least to me, seems like it was put together by someone who doesn't actually know the country very well and just typed "immigration centres UK" into Google and typed it up. Anyone who knows anything about the country wouldn't have put Brighton, anywhere in London, Liverpool or other major cities on the list. I do think it was Russian trolls that started this "day of riot" bullshit on Telegram.
Jenrick turned up for a very quickly arranged Chinese dinner last night. Fluent presentation but the usual hard-right shtick to entice the membership. Hey that worked so well in 1997-2005. I berated him for his open support for Trump (well, what a surprise) to which he replied that the GOP is our "sister party".
No chance of his getting my vote but I fear he'll win. What then after almost 50 years party membership?
Next week it's drinkkies with Mel.
So not only does he support Trump, but he does so for a facile reason. If he is the best the Conservatives can come up with they really might be toast.
More to the point, when you go through the CVs of the new Lib Dem MPs, Lots of ex military, lots of really impressive academic, business, community and local credentials... these are the kinds of MPs who could easily have been conservative. Then you think well, it the Tories go down the Reform/Populist rabbit hole there is an actual conservative party to vote for- moderate decent, pragmatic, hard working, reasonable and sensible. Everything that the Tories used to claim to be.
At this point the Lib Dems only need to take 26 MPs in order to push the Tories into third place or 29 if you took the Tories and Reform together, and yes I know this is a mildly specious argument but under FPTP but there are 72 Lib Dem MPs and only 5 RefUK. However, Truss and now Jenrick saying they support Trump is absolutely lethal, totally lines them up with Farage in the Petin camp and could actually trigger a hard core of the Tories to defect since they completely loathe both Trump and Farage. Local Tories often get on well with local Lib Dems, and we could certainly see emergence of the Lib Dems as the centre right party that many Tories say they are or want to be (but are actually not and definitely would not be as allies of Trump).
Most LDs neither want nor would accept being a centre right party, the social democratic wing of the party would defect en masse to Labour if it tried as effectively happened in 2015 when Clegg's centre right LDs in Cameron's coalition govt got just 8% of the vote
It really takes a special kind of person to lecture someone who has been a member of the Liberals and Liberal Democrats for over 45 years, and who has been pretty active over much of that time, as a candidate, both Parliamentary and local, as an organiser and as a very regular conference attender about what the membership of the party is and what it is not.
I know my party and you, sir, do not.
You don't, you only know the Liberal wing of your party not the Social Democratic wing clearly.
If Orange Book Liberalism was so popular it would not have got just 8% of the vote in 2015 would it? The only examples of Liberal parties being the main centre right party in western nations are in Australia (where they have effectively always held that position in coalition with the conservative Nationals), Japan, where the LDP has been dominant for decades and arguably the Netherlands which is a much more socially liberal nation by culture than the UK is.
If the LDs became a centre right party the social democrats who are heirs of those like Jenkins and Williams and Owen who defected from Labour in the 1980s ie those who make up the Democrats part of the LDs would defect en masse back to Labour which under Starmer would be closer to the old SDP than a centre right Orange Book Liberal party would be
Much as I like you @hyufd, you really aren't right on this one and @Cicero is. We do know our party and you don't. There is no conflict within the LDs between Liberals and Social Democrats. Much of the time even we don't know which colleagues are which. I remember having this discussion at a LD party after the election where we were comparing opinions. I couldn't have told you before those discussions if other members were from one wing or the other, because we just don't have those wings even though some of us are clearly liberals and some of us are clearly social democrats.
Looking at the 2015 election result is daft. We didn't lose because we were Liberals and not Social Democrats. Nobody believes that. We lost because of the coalition and things like Tuition fees. If you asked any voters they couldn't have told you whether we were mainly Liberals or Social Democrats in 2015 and they couldn't now. Only anoraks like us know there is a difference.
And see my other post re being able to win more seats. Here is a bit of info for you. In Guildford in the build up to the election we knocked on 31,000 doors and sent out regular leaflets. During the election we knocked on 32,000 doors. That is nearly everyone twice. 13 leaflets or letters went out and several hundred posterboards went up during the election, although many of those letters were targeted so not to everyone.
There are plenty of Tory seats we could have done that in but didn't have the resources to do so. So we targeted ruthlessly. There are now the next batch of seats to go for and resources we can move from the last lot of targets we have won,
Now that may not happen. The Tories may recover and we may be defending ruthlessly and targeting nowhere. But if it stays the same we will be have many more Tory seats next time as well as some labour ones to go for.
History is on my side. For example, in 1945 the Liberals got just 9% on a centrist or even centre right liberal platform and the Liberals never got over 10% of the vote until Grimond got 11% in 1964, before falling back to 8.5% in 1966. In Feb 1974 Thorpe's Liberals did admittedly peak at 19% (though that was partly a result of his being more charismatic than Heath and Wilson) before falling to 13% under Steel in 1979 after Thorpe's scandals emerged.
Only the social democrat wing of the Labour Party leaving to form the SDP under Roy Jenkins and then forming the Alliance with the Liberals at the 1983 general election got the combined Liberals and SDP over 20% on a centre left platform to 25% and then 22% under Owen in 1987.
The merged parties which formed the LDs then never ceased to get under 15% of the voted from 1992 to 2010, peaking at 22% in 2005 under Charles Kennedy on an even left of Blair's Labour platform never mind just left of the Tories and 23% in 2010 when Clegg pledged to scrap tuition fees before moving right and backing increasing them in government as you say.
After going into coalition with the Tories in 2010 however the LDs collapsed to just 8% in 2015 and although they have got back over 10% since by appealing to hardline Remainers who opposed Brexit they have still not got over 15% again.
If the LDs became a centre right party they would also lose most of the Labour tactical votes that helped win them southern seats from the Tories last month and also have no chance in Labour seats Kennedy won in 2005
The Conservatives however have never polled lower than 30% in a General Election (we know they have in local elections and European parliamentary elections) until July 4th when they polled 24% and won 121 seats, their worst performance since the Reform Act of 1832 so applying historical parallels when we are in uncharted territory seems a little like hopecasting. The last time they polled anywhere near this (1997, 30.7% and 165 seats) they were out of Government for 13 years.
24% was still double the 12% the LDs got.
In 1997 Labour under Blair got 43%, 10% more than the 33% Labour under Starmer got
Interesting how it's become another "free free palestine" mob judging from that video. Not sure how comfortable I'd feel being visibly Jewish walking past that.
Or even being Jewish and showing up to support my local community and stand against far right nazis, only to find I'd walked into a bunch of "free free Palestine" numpties.
Plenty Jewish people want to free Palestine. And those that don't will be proven to be on the wrong side of history (and are also racist as they see Palestinians as lesser)
Interesting. His obvious course now - as I have been saying for some time - is to go into politics, professionally
Big gamble. The Reform vote (at the moment) is probably 15% max, and winning a seat will be really hard. On the other hand there is a vast empty space which he could occupy. The Reform-minded intellectual who is an eloquent speaker
His life span within ultra-lefty academe was always that of a mayfly
The University of Kent is, sadly as it’s a major employer in my home City, in deep financial shit (deeper than most) and that might well have influenced his decision to leave.
I hope they all close. Sorry, but I do. Modern-day academe has nursed the Woke viper in its bosom, and academe is now beyond saving, even science has been compromised
This pains me. Britain is good at this stuff. But it must be done - and various modern pressures mean it will happen anyway within the next decade, whatever my own beliefs. A few universities will survive as expensive, ultra-posh finishing schools for the elite
Interesting. His obvious course now - as I have been saying for some time - is to go into politics, professionally
Big gamble. The Reform vote (at the moment) is probably 15% max, and winning a seat will be really hard. On the other hand there is a vast empty space which he could occupy. The Reform-minded intellectual who is an eloquent speaker
His life span within ultra-lefty academe was always that of a mayfly
The University of Kent is, sadly as it’s a major employer in my home City, in deep financial shit (deeper than most) and that might well have influenced his decision to leave.
He might find a place at the private university of Buckingham
Trump and the RNC have no field offices. Also a cursory check through social media specifically Facebook the Trump ads are down to a trickle and in many places non-existent. The media should be asking the Trump family what they did with the money. https://x.com/Scaramucci/status/1821266037393813565
The scenes from Brighton are great. Four fascists surrounded by thousands of people who want to send a message that they aren't wanted there.
As Sunder hints at: what the hell made them think Brighton would be rich pickings for a nazi rally?
And Walthamstow, the list, at least to me, seems like it was put together by someone who doesn't actually know the country very well and just typed "immigration centres UK" into Google and typed it up. Anyone who knows anything about the country wouldn't have put Brighton, anywhere in London, Liverpool or other major cities on the list. I do think it was Russian trolls that started this "day of riot" bullshit on Telegram.
Trump and the RNC have no field offices. Also a cursory check through social media specifically Facebook the Trump ads are down to a trickle and in many places non-existent. The media should be asking the Trump family what they did with the money. https://x.com/Scaramucci/status/1821266037393813565
Their constant hawking of tatty merchandise is just so skeevy as well.
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
No it isn't, the LDs have pretty much hit their ceiling in the Home Counties, taking almost all the Remain seats and some of the soft Leave seats there on 4th July. They are unlikely to get many if any more and in any case in some of those LD seats the Tory and Reform vote combined was bigger than the LD vote
The LDs will be building up their support in seats they haven’t yet won, as we speak.
From where? If they couldn't win Tory voters this time they are unlikely to win many more next time and they have already squeezed Labour tactical votes in their target seats as far as they can go
We targeted ruthlessly. For instance Farnham and Bordon was not a top target even though it could have been. Supporters were coming from there to other targets like Guildford. If all goes well for the LDs and we don't need to target Guildford the same way as this time we will all be in Farnham and Bordon and if under the same circumstances as the last election it would fall. We nearly took it without working it. Think what we could do if we really went for it.
That will happen all over the country. I would predict that if the election was run with both the LDs and Tories on the same level of popularity as at the GE, but starting with the current seats we would take another 20 seats. At least 2 more in Surrey for a start.
The combined Tory and Reform vote in Farnham was 47%, the LD vote only 33%
How many more times
Stop combining the two
Mind you, hopeless comment by me as @HYUFD is incapable of being wrong
"Let me put it this way, Mr. Big_G. The HYUFD series is the most reliable computer ever made. No HYUFD computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error."
You may be interested that my wife and I had a wonderful day out yesterday taking the TFW train from Llandudno to Blaenau Ffestiniog , crossing the platform and joining the 'quarryman' steam hauled narrow gauge railway which followed the track slate was taken down to Porthmadog for export worldwide, before returning on the quarryman to Blaenau and TFW to Llandudno
It was a lovely day and showcased the beauty of North Wales while slowly passing through
So good to hear you and your wife are 'out and about' - as I know you had some health issues earlier in the year.
Heartening to hear.
Thank you and you are very kind
My health issues continue and I am having to use a walking stick on occasions but we are so grateful for the medical interventions and continuing care from my consultants
Interesting how it's become another "free free palestine" mob judging from that video. Not sure how comfortable I'd feel being visibly Jewish walking past that.
Or even being Jewish and showing up to support my local community and stand against far right nazis, only to find I'd walked into a bunch of "free free Palestine" numpties.
Plenty Jewish people want to free Palestine. And those that don't will be proven to be on the wrong side of history (and are also racist as they see Palestinians as lesser)
If you say so.
The Walthamstow protest against fascists is probably the nearest one to me (though still a fair distance) and on another day I might have been tempted to show up.
However, if I went there, expecting to protest against anti-muslim thugs, but found that all the people around me were shouting "free free Palestine", I would be deeply uncomfortable, totally unable to join in, and very frightened in case anyone looked at me, noticed I wasn't joining in, and chanted "he's one of them, get 'im." Unlikely of course, but you see my point. Jewish people should feel free to attend - of all things - a demonstration against Nazis - without it becoming an anti-Israel rally.
Hilarious scenes by Brighton station. A handful of EDL types turned up hoping to cause mayhem, outnumbered by many hundreds of people politely telling them that they're not welcome in the city. They got nowhere near their target, and seem to have gone now. One arrest. Very effective policing.
Heard they were confronted by a phalanx of drag queens at Brighton station.
Wouldn't be surprised. I didn't see the drag queens, but I did see an impromptu band playing jolly songs to welcome them.
Jenrick turned up for a very quickly arranged Chinese dinner last night. Fluent presentation but the usual hard-right shtick to entice the membership. Hey that worked so well in 1997-2005. I berated him for his open support for Trump (well, what a surprise) to which he replied that the GOP is our "sister party".
No chance of his getting my vote but I fear he'll win. What then after almost 50 years party membership?
Next week it's drinkkies with Mel.
So not only does he support Trump, but he does so for a facile reason. If he is the best the Conservatives can come up with they really might be toast.
More to the point, when you go through the CVs of the new Lib Dem MPs, Lots of ex military, lots of really impressive academic, business, community and local credentials... these are the kinds of MPs who could easily have been conservative. Then you think well, it the Tories go down the Reform/Populist rabbit hole there is an actual conservative party to vote for- moderate decent, pragmatic, hard working, reasonable and sensible. Everything that the Tories used to claim to be.
At this point the Lib Dems only need to take 26 MPs in order to push the Tories into third place or 29 if you took the Tories and Reform together, and yes I know this is a mildly specious argument but under FPTP but there are 72 Lib Dem MPs and only 5 RefUK. However, Truss and now Jenrick saying they support Trump is absolutely lethal, totally lines them up with Farage in the Petin camp and could actually trigger a hard core of the Tories to defect since they completely loathe both Trump and Farage. Local Tories often get on well with local Lib Dems, and we could certainly see emergence of the Lib Dems as the centre right party that many Tories say they are or want to be (but are actually not and definitely would not be as allies of Trump).
Most LDs neither want nor would accept being a centre right party, the social democratic wing of the party would defect en masse to Labour if it tried as effectively happened in 2015 when Clegg's centre right LDs in Cameron's coalition govt got just 8% of the vote
It really takes a special kind of person to lecture someone who has been a member of the Liberals and Liberal Democrats for over 45 years, and who has been pretty active over much of that time, as a candidate, both Parliamentary and local, as an organiser and as a very regular conference attender about what the membership of the party is and what it is not.
I know my party and you, sir, do not.
You don't, you only know the Liberal wing of your party not the Social Democratic wing clearly.
If Orange Book Liberalism was so popular it would not have got just 8% of the vote in 2015 would it? The only examples of Liberal parties being the main centre right party in western nations are in Australia (where they have effectively always held that position in coalition with the conservative Nationals), Japan, where the LDP has been dominant for decades and arguably the Netherlands which is a much more socially liberal nation by culture than the UK is.
If the LDs became a centre right party the social democrats who are heirs of those like Jenkins and Williams and Owen who defected from Labour in the 1980s ie those who make up the Democrats part of the LDs would defect en masse back to Labour which under Starmer would be closer to the old SDP than a centre right Orange Book Liberal party would be
Much as I like you @hyufd, you really aren't right on this one and @Cicero is. We do know our party and you don't. There is no conflict within the LDs between Liberals and Social Democrats. Much of the time even we don't know which colleagues are which. I remember having this discussion at a LD party after the election where we were comparing opinions. I couldn't have told you before those discussions if other members were from one wing or the other, because we just don't have those wings even though some of us are clearly liberals and some of us are clearly social democrats.
Looking at the 2015 election result is daft. We didn't lose because we were Liberals and not Social Democrats. Nobody believes that. We lost because of the coalition and things like Tuition fees. If you asked any voters they couldn't have told you whether we were mainly Liberals or Social Democrats in 2015 and they couldn't now. Only anoraks like us know there is a difference.
And see my other post re being able to win more seats. Here is a bit of info for you. In Guildford in the build up to the election we knocked on 31,000 doors and sent out regular leaflets. During the election we knocked on 32,000 doors. That is nearly everyone twice. 13 leaflets or letters went out and several hundred posterboards went up during the election, although many of those letters were targeted so not to everyone.
There are plenty of Tory seats we could have done that in but didn't have the resources to do so. So we targeted ruthlessly. There are now the next batch of seats to go for and resources we can move from the last lot of targets we have won,
Now that may not happen. The Tories may recover and we may be defending ruthlessly and targeting nowhere. But if it stays the same we will be have many more Tory seats next time as well as some labour ones to go for.
History is on my side. For example, in 1945 the Liberals got just 9% on a centrist or even centre right liberal platform and the Liberals never got over 10% of the vote until Grimond got 11% in 1964, before falling back to 8.5% in 1966. In Feb 1974 Thorpe's Liberals did admittedly peak at 19% (though that was partly a result of his being more charismatic than Heath and Wilson) before falling to 13% under Steel in 1979 after Thorpe's scandals emerged.
Only the social democrat wing of the Labour Party leaving to form the SDP under Roy Jenkins and then forming the Alliance with the Liberals at the 1983 general election got the combined Liberals and SDP over 20% on a centre left platform to 25% and then 22% under Owen in 1987.
The merged parties which formed the LDs then never ceased to get under 15% of the voted from 1992 to 2010, peaking at 22% in 2005 under Charles Kennedy on an even left of Blair's Labour platform never mind just left of the Tories and 23% in 2010 when Clegg pledged to scrap tuition fees before moving right and backing increasing them in government as you say.
After going into coalition with the Tories in 2010 however the LDs collapsed to just 8% in 2015 and although they have got back over 10% since by appealing to hardline Remainers who opposed Brexit they have still not got over 15% again.
If the LDs became a centre right party they would also lose most of the Labour tactical votes that helped win them southern seats from the Tories last month and also have no chance in Labour seats Kennedy won in 2005
The Conservatives however have never polled lower than 30% in a General Election (we know they have in local elections and European parliamentary elections) until July 4th when they polled 24% and won 121 seats, their worst performance since the Reform Act of 1832 so applying historical parallels when we are in uncharted territory seems a little like hopecasting. The last time they polled anywhere near this (1997, 30.7% and 165 seats) they were out of Government for 13 years.
24% was still double the 12% the LDs got.
In 1997 Labour under Blair got 43%, 10% more than the 33% Labour under Starmer got
Your problem with that is that it illustrates two things - the potential for Tory revival at the next election, and the potential for oblivion.
Your opponents winning big without actually doing that well comes with a huge, flashing warning sign.
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
No it isn't, the LDs have pretty much hit their ceiling in the Home Counties, taking almost all the Remain seats and some of the soft Leave seats there on 4th July. They are unlikely to get many if any more and in any case in some of those LD seats the Tory and Reform vote combined was bigger than the LD vote
The LDs will be building up their support in seats they haven’t yet won, as we speak.
From where? If they couldn't win Tory voters this time they are unlikely to win many more next time and they have already squeezed Labour tactical votes in their target seats as far as they can go
We targeted ruthlessly. For instance Farnham and Bordon was not a top target even though it could have been. Supporters were coming from there to other targets like Guildford. If all goes well for the LDs and we don't need to target Guildford the same way as this time we will all be in Farnham and Bordon and if under the same circumstances as the last election it would fall. We nearly took it without working it. Think what we could do if we really went for it.
That will happen all over the country. I would predict that if the election was run with both the LDs and Tories on the same level of popularity as at the GE, but starting with the current seats we would take another 20 seats. At least 2 more in Surrey for a start.
The combined Tory and Reform vote in Farnham was 47%, the LD vote only 33%
You’re going to be adding the Tory and Reform share together until the end of time aren’t you?
He'll be adding it to Trumps polling in the rustbelt next.
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
No it isn't, the LDs have pretty much hit their ceiling in the Home Counties, taking almost all the Remain seats and some of the soft Leave seats there on 4th July. They are unlikely to get many if any more and in any case in some of those LD seats the Tory and Reform vote combined was bigger than the LD vote
The LDs will be building up their support in seats they haven’t yet won, as we speak.
From where? If they couldn't win Tory voters this time they are unlikely to win many more next time and they have already squeezed Labour tactical votes in their target seats as far as they can go
We targeted ruthlessly. For instance Farnham and Bordon was not a top target even though it could have been. Supporters were coming from there to other targets like Guildford. If all goes well for the LDs and we don't need to target Guildford the same way as this time we will all be in Farnham and Bordon and if under the same circumstances as the last election it would fall. We nearly took it without working it. Think what we could do if we really went for it.
That will happen all over the country. I would predict that if the election was run with both the LDs and Tories on the same level of popularity as at the GE, but starting with the current seats we would take another 20 seats. At least 2 more in Surrey for a start.
The combined Tory and Reform vote in Farnham was 47%, the LD vote only 33%
How many more times
Stop combining the two
Mind you, hopeless comment by me as @HYUFD is incapable of being wrong
"Let me put it this way, Mr. Big_G. The HYUFD series is the most reliable computer ever made. No HYUFD computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error."
You may be interested that my wife and I had a wonderful day out yesterday taking the TFW train from Llandudno to Blaenau Ffestiniog , crossing the platform and joining the 'quarryman' steam hauled narrow gauge railway which followed the track slate was taken down to Porthmadog for export worldwide, before returning on the quarryman to Blaenau and TFW to Llandudno
It was a lovely day and showcased the beauty of North Wales while slowly passing through
So good to hear you and your wife are 'out and about' - as I know you had some health issues earlier in the year.
Heartening to hear.
Thank you and you are very kind
My health issues continue and I am having to use a walking stick on occasions but we are so grateful for the medical interventions and continuing care from my consultants
Mate, you're doing pretty well at 84 (is that right?) to be using a walking stick only on occasions!
Trump and the RNC have no field offices. Also a cursory check through social media specifically Facebook the Trump ads are down to a trickle and in many places non-existent. The media should be asking the Trump family what they did with the money. https://x.com/Scaramucci/status/1821266037393813565
Despite my instincts, Scaramucci has become a bit of a hero of mine. His The Rest is Politics US podcasts with Katy Kay are brilliant.
He's the kind of Republican the GOP should be rallying behind (they won't of course).
Interesting how it's become another "free free palestine" mob judging from that video. Not sure how comfortable I'd feel being visibly Jewish walking past that.
Or even being Jewish and showing up to support my local community and stand against far right nazis, only to find I'd walked into a bunch of "free free Palestine" numpties.
Plenty Jewish people want to free Palestine. And those that don't will be proven to be on the wrong side of history (and are also racist as they see Palestinians as lesser)
If you say so.
The Walthamstow protest against fascists is probably the nearest one to me (though still a fair distance) and on another day I might have been tempted to show up.
However, if I went there, expecting to protest against anti-muslim thugs, but found that all the people around me were shouting "free free Palestine", I would be deeply uncomfortable, totally unable to join in, and very frightened in case anyone looked at me, noticed I wasn't joining in, and chanted "he's one of them, get 'im." Unlikely of course, but you see my point. Jewish people should feel free to attend - of all things - a demonstration against Nazis - without it becoming an anti-Israel rally.
I posted ealier: one of the antifa organisations rallying people to be "anti-racist" in North London tonight is openly and virulently anti-Semitic. Quite horrible
You can spot the difference between those who are irrationally concerned about COVID in the outdoors and using a mask for other reasons, the latter are covered head to toe in black, hood up, etc...even when it is middle of summer.
Right-wing mob bad, left-wing mob good.
I don’t see much violence from any “mobs” tonight. Maybe I’m just a dreamer…
But @FF43 just told us a masked mob of Nazis was "attacking" a church in Liverpool!
If they decide not to show up that's good obviously. The deterrence has worked, even though it shouldn't be necessary, and so hopefully one of the many horrible events of the past week won't be repeated this time.
Interesting how it's become another "free free palestine" mob judging from that video. Not sure how comfortable I'd feel being visibly Jewish walking past that.
Or even being Jewish and showing up to support my local community and stand against far right nazis, only to find I'd walked into a bunch of "free free Palestine" numpties.
Plenty Jewish people want to free Palestine. And those that don't will be proven to be on the wrong side of history (and are also racist as they see Palestinians as lesser)
This Jewish guy did turn out to protest the Fascists and show solidarity in Finchley. It was a bit uncomfortable at times it seems, but other sections of the crowd supportive.
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
No it isn't, the LDs have pretty much hit their ceiling in the Home Counties, taking almost all the Remain seats and some of the soft Leave seats there on 4th July. They are unlikely to get many if any more and in any case in some of those LD seats the Tory and Reform vote combined was bigger than the LD vote
The LDs will be building up their support in seats they haven’t yet won, as we speak.
From where? If they couldn't win Tory voters this time they are unlikely to win many more next time and they have already squeezed Labour tactical votes in their target seats as far as they can go
We targeted ruthlessly. For instance Farnham and Bordon was not a top target even though it could have been. Supporters were coming from there to other targets like Guildford. If all goes well for the LDs and we don't need to target Guildford the same way as this time we will all be in Farnham and Bordon and if under the same circumstances as the last election it would fall. We nearly took it without working it. Think what we could do if we really went for it.
That will happen all over the country. I would predict that if the election was run with both the LDs and Tories on the same level of popularity as at the GE, but starting with the current seats we would take another 20 seats. At least 2 more in Surrey for a start.
The combined Tory and Reform vote in Farnham was 47%, the LD vote only 33%
How many more times
Stop combining the two
Mind you, hopeless comment by me as @HYUFD is incapable of being wrong
"Let me put it this way, Mr. Big_G. The HYUFD series is the most reliable computer ever made. No HYUFD computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error."
You may be interested that my wife and I had a wonderful day out yesterday taking the TFW train from Llandudno to Blaenau Ffestiniog , crossing the platform and joining the 'quarryman' steam hauled narrow gauge railway which followed the track slate was taken down to Porthmadog for export worldwide, before returning on the quarryman to Blaenau and TFW to Llandudno
It was a lovely day and showcased the beauty of North Wales while slowly passing through
So good to hear you and your wife are 'out and about' - as I know you had some health issues earlier in the year.
Heartening to hear.
Thank you and you are very kind
My health issues continue and I am having to use a walking stick on occasions but we are so grateful for the medical interventions and continuing care from my consultants
Mate, you're doing pretty well at 84 (is that right?) to be using a walking stick only on occasions!
Long may you thrive and your family likewise
80 with my wife at 84 and yes we are very grateful for all our blessings
lee harpin @lmharpin Only the SWP could stage an “anti racism” demo where many Jewish participants, including myself, felt absolutely no sense of solidarity with those organising. Thankfully the far right haven’t showed up.
Jenrick turned up for a very quickly arranged Chinese dinner last night. Fluent presentation but the usual hard-right shtick to entice the membership. Hey that worked so well in 1997-2005. I berated him for his open support for Trump (well, what a surprise) to which he replied that the GOP is our "sister party".
No chance of his getting my vote but I fear he'll win. What then after almost 50 years party membership?
Next week it's drinkkies with Mel.
So not only does he support Trump, but he does so for a facile reason. If he is the best the Conservatives can come up with they really might be toast.
More to the point, when you go through the CVs of the new Lib Dem MPs, Lots of ex military, lots of really impressive academic, business, community and local credentials... these are the kinds of MPs who could easily have been conservative. Then you think well, it the Tories go down the Reform/Populist rabbit hole there is an actual conservative party to vote for- moderate decent, pragmatic, hard working, reasonable and sensible. Everything that the Tories used to claim to be.
At this point the Lib Dems only need to take 26 MPs in order to push the Tories into third place or 29 if you took the Tories and Reform together, and yes I know this is a mildly specious argument but under FPTP but there are 72 Lib Dem MPs and only 5 RefUK. However, Truss and now Jenrick saying they support Trump is absolutely lethal, totally lines them up with Farage in the Petin camp and could actually trigger a hard core of the Tories to defect since they completely loathe both Trump and Farage. Local Tories often get on well with local Lib Dems, and we could certainly see emergence of the Lib Dems as the centre right party that many Tories say they are or want to be (but are actually not and definitely would not be as allies of Trump).
Most LDs neither want nor would accept being a centre right party, the social democratic wing of the party would defect en masse to Labour if it tried as effectively happened in 2015 when Clegg's centre right LDs in Cameron's coalition govt got just 8% of the vote
It really takes a special kind of person to lecture someone who has been a member of the Liberals and Liberal Democrats for over 45 years, and who has been pretty active over much of that time, as a candidate, both Parliamentary and local, as an organiser and as a very regular conference attender about what the membership of the party is and what it is not.
I know my party and you, sir, do not.
You don't, you only know the Liberal wing of your party not the Social Democratic wing clearly.
If Orange Book Liberalism was so popular it would not have got just 8% of the vote in 2015 would it? The only examples of Liberal parties being the main centre right party in western nations are in Australia (where they have effectively always held that position in coalition with the conservative Nationals), Japan, where the LDP has been dominant for decades and arguably the Netherlands which is a much more socially liberal nation by culture than the UK is.
If the LDs became a centre right party the social democrats who are heirs of those like Jenkins and Williams and Owen who defected from Labour in the 1980s ie those who make up the Democrats part of the LDs would defect en masse back to Labour which under Starmer would be closer to the old SDP than a centre right Orange Book Liberal party would be
Much as I like you @hyufd, you really aren't right on this one and @Cicero is. We do know our party and you don't. There is no conflict within the LDs between Liberals and Social Democrats. Much of the time even we don't know which colleagues are which. I remember having this discussion at a LD party after the election where we were comparing opinions. I couldn't have told you before those discussions if other members were from one wing or the other, because we just don't have those wings even though some of us are clearly liberals and some of us are clearly social democrats.
Looking at the 2015 election result is daft. We didn't lose because we were Liberals and not Social Democrats. Nobody believes that. We lost because of the coalition and things like Tuition fees. If you asked any voters they couldn't have told you whether we were mainly Liberals or Social Democrats in 2015 and they couldn't now. Only anoraks like us know there is a difference.
And see my other post re being able to win more seats. Here is a bit of info for you. In Guildford in the build up to the election we knocked on 31,000 doors and sent out regular leaflets. During the election we knocked on 32,000 doors. That is nearly everyone twice. 13 leaflets or letters went out and several hundred posterboards went up during the election, although many of those letters were targeted so not to everyone.
There are plenty of Tory seats we could have done that in but didn't have the resources to do so. So we targeted ruthlessly. There are now the next batch of seats to go for and resources we can move from the last lot of targets we have won,
Now that may not happen. The Tories may recover and we may be defending ruthlessly and targeting nowhere. But if it stays the same we will be have many more Tory seats next time as well as some labour ones to go for.
History is on my side. For example, in 1945 the Liberals got just 9% on a centrist or even centre right liberal platform and the Liberals never got over 10% of the vote until Grimond got 11% in 1964, before falling back to 8.5% in 1966. In Feb 1974 Thorpe's Liberals did admittedly peak at 19% (though that was partly a result of his being more charismatic than Heath and Wilson) before falling to 13% under Steel in 1979 after Thorpe's scandals emerged.
Only the social democrat wing of the Labour Party leaving to form the SDP under Roy Jenkins and then forming the Alliance with the Liberals at the 1983 general election got the combined Liberals and SDP over 20% on a centre left platform to 25% and then 22% under Owen in 1987.
The merged parties which formed the LDs then never ceased to get under 15% of the voted from 1992 to 2010, peaking at 22% in 2005 under Charles Kennedy on an even left of Blair's Labour platform never mind just left of the Tories and 23% in 2010 when Clegg pledged to scrap tuition fees before moving right and backing increasing them in government as you say.
After going into coalition with the Tories in 2010 however the LDs collapsed to just 8% in 2015 and although they have got back over 10% since by appealing to hardline Remainers who opposed Brexit they have still not got over 15% again.
If the LDs became a centre right party they would also lose most of the Labour tactical votes that helped win them southern seats from the Tories last month and also have no chance in Labour seats Kennedy won in 2005
The Conservatives however have never polled lower than 30% in a General Election (we know they have in local elections and European parliamentary elections) until July 4th when they polled 24% and won 121 seats, their worst performance since the Reform Act of 1832 so applying historical parallels when we are in uncharted territory seems a little like hopecasting. The last time they polled anywhere near this (1997, 30.7% and 165 seats) they were out of Government for 13 years.
24% was still double the 12% the LDs got.
In 1997 Labour under Blair got 43%, 10% more than the 33% Labour under Starmer got
Perhaps of more relevance, the Greens got 0.2% in 1997 - 6.4% now. Referendum got 2.6% in 1997 - Reform 14% now.
Conservative plus Labour 74% in 1997 - 57.4% in 2024.
Comments
Compare with:
2020 22/64
2016 27/67
2012 29/65
2008 19/51
The number of medals will be okay but the gold proportion is well down.
Whether that is luck or something more negative I don't know.
To increase medals then more are needed in swimming - 105 available in the pool of which only five were won.
EDIT: beaten by Northern Al…damn!
Interestingly, during coverage of this, it was claimed that the massive payout of the voting machine story that Fox News got stung with was actually largely covered by their liability insurance and tax write offs.
https://fortune.com/2023/04/24/fox-7875-million-settlement-dominion-voting-systems-insurance-tax-deductions/
Cool.
Slava Ukraini.
I should be in charge of the UK Citizenship programme. I really should.
It says something about how weird Brighton is if they're still wearing face coverings due to Covid.
Stop combining the two
Mind you, hopeless comment by me as @HYUFD is incapable of being wrong
A slightly odd choice for 20 fascists, but good to hear there was a good oompah band to welcome them, at the station.
https://x.com/PhilipProudfoot/status/1821264775403466800?t=AUfUhuhJe9P7k_4npFTKbA&s=19
"Run from the drag queens, we saw you run from the drag queens..."
I dislike them almost as much as I do SUV drivers.
Only the social democrat wing of the Labour Party leaving to form the SDP under Roy Jenkins and then forming the Alliance with the Liberals at the 1983 general election got the combined Liberals and SDP over 20% on a centre left platform to 25% and then 22% under Owen in 1987.
The merged parties which formed the LDs then never ceased to get under 15% of the voted from 1992 to 2010, peaking at 22% in 2005 under Charles Kennedy on an even left of Blair's Labour platform never mind just left of the Tories and 23% in 2010 when Clegg pledged to scrap tuition fees before moving right and backing increasing them in government as you say.
After going into coalition with the Tories in 2010 however the LDs collapsed to just 8% in 2015 and although they have got back over 10% since by appealing to hardline Remainers who opposed Brexit they have still not got over 15% again.
If the LDs became a centre right party they would also lose most of the Labour tactical votes that helped win them southern seats from the Tories last month and also have no chance in Labour seats Kennedy won in 2005
But we all know that is nonsense, but by your logic we win it. We just trundle in and squeeze that vote which we didn't have the resources to do this time. You seem to be arguing I'm right with that logic.
And somehow it still has a 60% fatality rate, despite there not being a trail of dead bodies as a result of this transmission.
Fool
It's basically an impromptu carnival.
It's not as nasty as it was, partly through mutation, partly through previous infection and partly vaccination.
Still a miserable thing to catch, and the vascular damage not trivial. It's really a respiratory spread vascular disease now.
https://www.heart.org/en/news/2024/01/16/how-covid-19-affects-your-heart-brain-and-other-organs
I wonder, now there's a chance of Harris/Walz winning over Trump/Vance, whether they might provide more robust support to Ukraine than Biden has?
Daily Mail website front page this evening.
Doesn't mean there are always equal numbers on each of those sides of course.
That the folk dancing through Walthamstow aren't getting tazed, hunted down by German Shepherds and bonked on the head is yet another example of "two-tier policing". /s
A lot of them simply live off the adrenaline. They like a fight, They are football hooligans with a fake political varnish. They can justify their hooliganism with "fight the fash" and "bash the Zios". Some are more sophisticated, but still ultimately driven by the prospect of violence. And there is a larger fringe of simpatico types that will join in if the crowd mood is sufficient and they've had a line or a drink
An Act to prohibit the wearing of uniforms in connection with political objects...
Sunder Katwala
@sundersays
·
11m
It was an audacious "no no go areas for the far right" idea to have a Brighton protest tonight: these four protestors took part
https://x.com/sundersays/status/1821275051209191883
https://x.com/jamesrbuk/status/1821217140139032602?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Diddums
If you want to criticise left wing protests try the anti-globalisation protests or the tuition fee riots. Yes, they happen, but not tonight.
If you’re going to spout bullshit at least make it a bit believable.
Talking politics with her is quite entertaining, she has no delusions about the revolution happening, but she does like to bait a few of my Tory colleagues.
Big gamble. The Reform vote (at the moment) is probably 15% max, and winning a seat will be really hard. On the other hand there is a vast empty space which he could occupy. The Reform-minded intellectual who is an eloquent speaker
His life span within ultra-lefty academe was always that of a mayfly
It was a lovely day and showcased the beauty of North Wales while slowly passing through
However if that did happen Canada style then if the LDs became a centre right One Nation Tory party effectively obviously the social democratic wing of the LDs would in turn move to Labour
I don't think being a racist is as minority a position as I would like, but it is minority.
This does assume of course that any counter-march remains peaceful itself.
Heartening to hear.
In 1997 Labour under Blair got 43%, 10% more than the 33% Labour under Starmer got
This pains me. Britain is good at this stuff. But it must be done - and various modern pressures mean it will happen anyway within the next decade, whatever my own beliefs. A few universities will survive as expensive, ultra-posh finishing schools for the elite
Trump and the RNC have no field offices. Also a cursory check through social media specifically Facebook the Trump ads are down to a trickle and in many places non-existent. The media should be asking the Trump family what they did with the money.
https://x.com/Scaramucci/status/1821266037393813565
My health issues continue and I am having to use a walking stick on occasions but we are so grateful for the medical interventions and continuing care from my consultants
Kamala HQ
@KamalaHQ
·
1h
Reporter: Why would people in Wisconsin want to have a beer with you?
Vance: Ha ha ha ha. Ahh. Well. I guess, I guess, they’d like, they’d want to have a beer with me because I do like to drink beer
https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1821260444054519986
The Walthamstow protest against fascists is probably the nearest one to me (though still a fair distance) and on another day I might have been tempted to show up.
However, if I went there, expecting to protest against anti-muslim thugs, but found that all the people around me were shouting "free free Palestine", I would be deeply uncomfortable, totally unable to join in, and very frightened in case anyone looked at me, noticed I wasn't joining in, and chanted "he's one of them, get 'im." Unlikely of course, but you see my point. Jewish people should feel free to attend - of all things - a demonstration against Nazis - without it becoming an anti-Israel rally.
Your opponents winning big without actually doing that well comes with a huge, flashing warning sign.
Long may you thrive and your family likewise
He's the kind of Republican the GOP should be rallying behind (they won't of course).
https://x.com/FatSideburns/status/1821268810755948871?t=U1DUg1wHa4Oi3JdiNcDoHg&s=19
And thank you
https://x.com/sundersays/status/1821275660960329996
The Labour government will not enact former prime minister Rishi Sunak’s plan to favour UK nationals when allocating social housing.'
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/labour-scraps-previous-governments-british-workers-social-housing-allocation-plan-87937
lee harpin
@lmharpin
Only the SWP could stage an “anti racism” demo where many Jewish participants, including myself, felt absolutely no sense of solidarity with those organising. Thankfully the far right haven’t showed up.
Conservative plus Labour 74% in 1997 - 57.4% in 2024.