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They aren’t all the same – politicalbetting.com
They aren’t all the same – politicalbetting.com
How similar do voters perceive the main parties to be?Most similar according to Labour voters:Conservatives and Reform UK: 65% say they are similarLabour and Lib Dems: 42%Lib Dems and Greens: 40%According to Conservative voters:Lib Dems and Greens: 42%Conservatives and… pic.twitter.com/G7BKr3FjBC
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Vaguely competent is the reason why Labour / Tories look different - sadly I don't expect that difference to last long at which point the "they are all the same" will reappear..
Joy of joys, a new political coalition: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c24p2l11y12o
Why is there a "clear risk", after nearly a year. Either Israel is violating the law in which case fine, or it is not, in which case what's the problem.
To say that there is a "clear risk" suggests that you think they have already done so, in which case line up with South Africa and Ireland and take your case to the ICC.
As I say, weird.
Compare with Labour:Lib Dem and Lib Dem:Labour. In general, their views on the other parties are very similar.
(Also lots of Lib Dems look quite open to voting Green)
I think there is a deep-fuelled cynicism about politics and politicians, fuelled by the Faragista alt-right AND the Corbynista alt-left which is going to be very hard to shift. Harder still the longer that Osbornomics rules the economic roost...
Similar independent groups are not unusual at council level.
WorldsMPs.It is the very specific issue of the spectacular failure of Brexit both in conception and in implementation that defines the Tory brand. "The party that severely damaged the economy and the global standing of the nation in order to address their own internal political disputes".
For that alone Surrey or Oxfordshire is not coming back to the Tories for a very long time, if ever.
Despite William Hague´s bromides in today´s Times, I think that the Tories will struggle to recover at all until they have some much better answers to the Brexit conundrum. Those answers do not include middle aged people in polyester mix suits saying that the solution is even more extreme and unreasonable policies.
Rwanda, like Brexit, was another policy that did not stand up to real world scrutiny. A gimmick more than anything else, yet still the Tories and their little propagandists in the press continue to defend the useless and indefensible.
They do the same with Brexit, though ever less convincingly. Unless you accept that the policy has failed and that these failures must be mitigated, then you are not even in the conversation. The Lib Dems and Labour know that, the Tories still do not. Even a new leader is just a sticking plaster over the Brexit wound for the Tories.
“There are two rather different stories told about British identity. One is a vision of a multicultural society that is welcoming of the cultural diversity that postwar waves of immigration have brought. The other is of a proud country that has withstood all invaders since the Norman conquest, and which enjoys a rich and unique cultural legacy that needs to be cherished and preserved,” it says.
“The decision to leave the European Union seemed to suggest that the latter vision was the more powerful in the popular mind. However, what appears to have happened in practice during the last decade is that British identity has come to be conceived to an even greater extent than before in primarily civic, inclusive terms that potentially leave the door open to newcomers.”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/sep/03/pride-britain-history-falls-sharply-social-attitudes-survey
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/sep/02/voters-beginning-to-think-conservatives-are-weird-research-suggests
I tend to agree that the Tories have utterly trashed their brand with what would once have been the liberal 30% of their support. With Reform now competing for the little Englanders, it’s hard to see how they can win a majority at an election at any time in the forseeable.
Strike prices higher than last time, when nobody bid. £54 per MWh. Is that the right level? Much lower than nuclear (£128 last time I looked), lower than current gas generation costs but higher than historic gas costs. Feels about right to me - on a continued long term trend lower but not as low as the £48 hit just before our recent inflation bout.
The problem being he couldn't find common ground with GPS
Truss's Mini Budget wasn't "governing from the left". Nor was the Rwanda scheme. Nor was cutting taxes when many public services were struggling. If the Conservative Party keeps misleading itself about why it lost, it will spend a long time in opposition
https://x.com/GavinBarwell/status/1830667700399706220
It does show that the "Fun with Flags" tendency is fighting for a diminishing part of the electorate, and ignoring the growing bit.
It's a nuanced response to a long term ally apparently losing sight of its obligations under international law.
If the case has already been taken to the ICC by other countries, for us also to do so would be little more than performative.
That was a consequence of their own batshit obsession with brexit
Governing from the shallow end of the talent pool
The party has no such power to persuade for now, and likely for quite some time.
(I'm assuming you didn't intend to write "to the centre" ?)
The English Greens are a strange beast as they also embrace the more energised National Trust membership concerned about electricity pylons in beauty spots
Given Starmer Labour now oppose rejoining the EU, the Single Market and the Customs Union and back the Windsor Framework Sunak negotiated the Tories and Labour now agree on Brexit anyway. The real Brexit divide is Reform, who want to scrap the Windsor Framework v the LDs, Greens and SNP who want to rejoin the Single Market
Saying there is a clear risk means that Israel has form in this area. And yet the UK government says that it is making no judgement about any violation. That is illogical. A clear risk must only mean that it has happened before and might happen again with UK-supplied weapons. Otherwise it is meaningless.
And that only seems weird, because normality always seems weird after intense abnormality.
https://x.com/zarahsultana/status/1830645870892634332?s=61
Lammy says there is a risk that UK-supplied weapons might be used to commit violations of international law. Which implies that he thinks Israel is violating international law. So take them to the ICC.
Weird.
“Starmer welcomes Siberian kitten to Downing Street”
A Russian agent in no. 10!!!!!
Only Corbyn would have been an MP in that group if Gaza hadn't attacked Israel in Oct last year.
GPs spent most of their time on sickest patients with multiple conditions.
Revealed: Tiny group of patients that takes up a third of GPs’ time
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/03/the-tiny-group-of-patients-that-take-up-a-third-of-gps-time/
My hunch is that is wasn’t because they were not right ring or Brexity enough. Hunt managed to hang on. Perhaps they might ask him.
Winds up something chronic that he's labelled as a "Wet" or "Remoaner" or effete Cameroon.
He's an effective Conservative.
He's a male Heidi Allen.
The fact that this is occurring "after nearly a year" is also irrelevant. The previous Government (of fine, upstanding, hardworking, capable individuals feted for their successes on all stages) took one view. A few weeks later, another Government takes another view.
Common ground shifts all the time and its your job to stake it out, shape it, lead it and define it so you can win a majority/strong plurality of voters.
Centre ground is passive and means being mushy, following consensus, or just splitting the difference on policy.
Yes, right there. That's where you went wrong...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg3z2xz1nzo
...Former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt wrote to Mr Case in July saying it was "deeply troubling" that Rachel Reeves’s claims about the public finances appeared to contradict formal government spending estimates published shortly beforehand.
In his response, which has been leaked to the BBC, Mr Case said the mismatch identified by Mr Hunt was a result of the compressed parliamentary timetable between the sudden general election and the summer.
But then he went further, questioning why the government in which Mr Hunt served had not updated different departments’ budgets since 2021.
"I would also note that the sizeable in-year changes to spending plans in recent years have resulted from the lack of a new Spending Review to replan departmental budgets in the face of significant pressures which have materialised since budgets were set in 2021," Mr Case wrote.
"By the time the election was called, we were in the final year of the 2021 Spending Review period. The most effective way to transparently identify, quantify and address those pressures would have been to conduct a prompt Spending Review."
At another point, Mr Case said that "unlike previous years" the current government "has set out to Parliament the pressures that it is having to manage down and the actions it is taking to do so"...
Meanwhile, I’d like to see the Tories taking on reform and defeating them rather than trying to accommodate them. Who is best placed of the current leadership to do that?
Although on second thoughts it may have been a cunning plan that worked perfectly.
Is it just possible?
On economics they taxed more than ever before- whilst cclaimimg to be a low taxed party. The two main reasons why people vote Tory they didn't deliver on.
We frequently discussed how left/right has become less useful as a political metric over the years, not least as it doesn't define where parties stand on issue that actually matter to the country.
Industrial policy is an excellent example. Governments of both right and left have for many decades failed (or avoided even trying) to implement successful industrial policy. While other nations have managed to do so under governments of both right and left.
On of the reasons for the disillusion with political parties is that people like you define politics to entrench their position in the two party hegemony that's governed the country for most of the last century. And in doing so have completely ignored things which might have led to better government.
As between the parties with any prospect of actual power the Overton window, when looked at in the big picture, is as narrow as a Norman lancet window.
They agree on: NATO, nuclear, keeping out of foreign wars, the arms trade, a welfare state, free education to 18, regulated capitalism+ a gigantic state sector, state pensions, NHS free at the point of access, not being in the single market, huge net inward migration (look at deeds not words of course), net zero at some movable date in the future, a never reached future on debt, continued borrowing at £100 bn pa, public service broadcasting and a free press.
They must differ on something but at the moment I can't think of anything. Weapons grade staples and paperclips to Israel perhaps
Tories are closer to them than
the LDs though
They spoke racist and governed incompetent
https://www.samdumitriu.com/p/where-the-wind-blows
...3. Using existing infrastructure better. The advantage of nodal pricing isn’t just that more infrastructure will be built in places where it’s more useful, but the infrastructure itself will be used more efficiently too. Let’s stick with batteries in West Texas. What’s interesting about the Texan market, which by the way leads the US in adding renewables, is that not only are batteries located in response to local prices, but the way they’re used is different too. West Texan batteries make more of their money through trading energy (buying it when it’s cheap and selling it when it’s expensive to smooth out prices), while batteries in South Texas earn their money through grid reliability services (preventing blackouts when demand for power outstrips supply).
It’s not just batteries either. One of the ways that Britain’s grid manages the intermittency of renewables is through interconnectors (big cables connecting Britain’s grid to the grids of Norway, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands). Yet, a single national price for energy does weird things with interconnectors. It can create situations where interconnectors end up making constraints worse forcing us to curtail even more renewable power.
For example, when the link between Scotland and England is over-congested but the national price remains high, it can lead to us importing energy from Norway into Scotland and force us to curtail even more renewable power. Under a locational pricing system, prices close to zero in a constrained Scotland would lead to us exporting power to Norway. The end result being cheaper bills for households across the country...
Labour gives TfL go-ahead to build 350 new homes near Cockfosters tube station
https://www.cityam.com/labour-gives-tfl-go-ahead-to-build-350-new-homes-near-cockfosters-tube-station/
The new Labour government has given Transport for London (TfL) the green light to build hundreds of affordable homes near Cockfosters tube station, overriding a decision from the former Conservative transport secretary Grant Shapps to block the project.
Shapps controversially intervened to stop the proposals in March 2022, using obscure legal powers that require TfL to seek government permission to sell land used for its operational purposes...
..London City Airport was granted permission to significantly expand its capacity in August, following a protracted spat with nearby Newham Council.
Places for London, TfL’s property arm, is currently working towards a target of constructing 20,000 homes, including 50 per cent affordable housing, by 2031.
“This key milestone will be built on in the coming years as developments at Kidbrooke, Wembley Park, Bollo Lane, Barkingside, Southall and Nine Elms complete, providing much needed new housing close to Tube stations,” the Mayor’s office said in a statement.
But the idea that there might be no simple way to deal with an ally which is behaving in a way we disapprove of, and over whom we have quite limited influence, is not a hard one to grasp.
Even you.
Absobloodylutely.
That's why I voted for Boris. Not guilty at all. He was a useless, lazy, solipsistic twat. But still better him than Jezza.