Categories
Fifty years ago today – politicalbetting.com
Fifty years ago today – politicalbetting.com
Had Rishi Sunak waited for a November election then PB and the media would have been focussing on the fact that it would have been fifty years since a Labour leader other than Tony Blair won an election.
0
Comments
My detailed memories of the events have unfortunately though been overwritten by recent important information such as which parking app I need to use for which carpark. 100 billion neurons only goes so far.
Harold Wilson's last hurrah.
Which was quite remarkable for him. And in turn emphasised the nature of the event.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/24644065.uk-tory-contest-will-condemn-scottish-party-third-place-holyrood/
My memories are mostly of the first one, and the speculation that the Liberals under Thorpe would support Heath continuing.
Of the second one, I remember the SNP doing well, and in conjunction with the boom in North Sea Oil demands for independence. I think this was the beginning of it becoming a serious proposition.
Then I moved to America so can remember the 1976 US election.
#New General Election poll - Swing State's
Arizona - 🔴 Trump +3
Georgia - 🔴 Trump +5
Michigan - 🔴 Trump +1
Nevada - 🔴 Trump +3
N. Carolina - 🔴 Trump +1
Pennsylvania - 🔴 Trump +1
Wisconsin - 🔴 Trump +1
McLaughlin (🔴) #F - LV - 10/9
FT breaking news
Austin Uni has 23 staff.
@AccountableGOP
“My father-in-law lives just outside of Asheville, NC…And he has refused all FEMA help because he's a hardcore Trumper. He literally believes that if he accepts anything from FEMA they're going to take his house.”
Trump's lies about hurricane relief have real consequences.
https://x.com/AccountableGOP/status/1844417616116318420
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
I would recommend a large bucket of salt when considering the above polling....
The way time flies we will soon know just what the US has voted for [ and the members of the conservative party]
I got the impression that general elections must be held every few months as that's what I had witnessed.
No, because voting has already started in a large number of states.
In fact, I think only Alabama doesn't have some form of early voting (and if that goes blue then it really will be a shellacking that Landon would blink at for Trump).
*Pedant hat OFF*
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
FWIW, McClaughlin published one of the worst polls of 2022, forecasting an incredibly tight Senate race is Connecticut, with the Republican just 3 points behind.
In the end, the Dems won by... 15 points.
It was during then when I realised how unfair the voting system was. Perhaps it was my naievity of age. It was after then that my affinity to the liberals started.
https://news.sky.com/story/britains-demography-is-in-the-process-of-dramatic-change-and-whats-causing-it-is-intriguing-13230442
The Tories are going to change their party rules to make it harder for MPs to trigger a no confidence vote in the leader.
Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick are the only two candidates left in the current leadership contest and the winner should benefit from the change, which will affect the number of MPs needed to demand a vote of confidence in the leader.
Under the current system, a vote takes place if 15% of Tory MPs submit a letter to the chair of the 1922 Committee demanding one. MPs are allowed to do this anonymously.
When the Tories were in government, that meant around 50 MPs or more had to want a vote for one to happen. But now there are only 121 Conservative MPs meaning that, without a rule change, just 19 MPs would be enough to trigger a contest.
In an interview with GB News, Bob Blackman, the chair of the 1922 Committee said the threshold for a no confidence vote would be lifted, probably to 30% or more. He said:
"Now we will amend those rules to increase the threshold. I am not going to say what it is going to be but I suspect it will be at least to 30%, to enable a position where there will have to be a very strong opinion of the parliamentary party."
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/oct/10/labour-workers-bill-jobs-keir-starmer-tory-party-leadership-jenrick-badenoch-uk-politics-live
(Yes, I know Trafalgar is guesswork rather than polling, before @rcs1000 picks me up on it)
https://datacommons.org/tools/timeline#&place=country/GBR&statsVar=Amount_EconomicActivity_GrossDomesticProduction_Nominal_PerCapita
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Must have been enough to turn a whole cohort of 9 year olds into life-long Tories.
LOL.
(They were something a bit good back in the day)
Starmer personality wise is similar to Heath
🔵 Harris 51% (+2)
🔴 Trump 49%
YouGov #B - 1000 RV - 10/2
https://x.com/PpollingNumbers/status/1844223199690801448
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
Sadly, there it falls down.
Long may that day be postponed.
I sometimes get the too/to/two and their/they're/there wrong too - somehow I think of my sentences as to how they sound rather than otherwise. I don't usually get these things wrong, but sometimes.
The problem is that a lot of people who post regularly, so maybe 80% of the comments, regurgitate the dominant narrative about Trump in an antagonistic way, and in doing so are basically repeating propaganda, making the whole discussion pointless.
Which is why any option from a narrow Trump win to a Harris landslide is still possible.
Sounds a bit ghoulish, but do we know how the hurricane will affect Florida from that point of view? How many ballots will have been issued? How many returned? How many kept safely and how many destroyed?
Florida was looking mighty close. It's hard to believe this won't have some impact, especially if it disrupts voting on the day.
This will of course lead The Orange Haired One and Elon PG Musk to claim the Dems arranged the hurricane...
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
It is needed, it is also inevitable. This shit is happening across Europe. Europeans can look at Dubai and Singapore and they can see that a no-fucking-nonsense government which strangles muggers and has a "tough" attitude to all crime especially imported migrant crime looks evermore appealing, and evermore prosperous
It will happen when white women, belatedly, swing Right. When they realise that this no-borders happy clappy multikulti bollocks means cities where they cannot safely walk the streets by day, let alone by night
There's no easy answer, but it would definitely be better if we actually discussed the issue.
Has any hard right government ever been a success?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._Ben_Rees
PA, WI etc is a different matter.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/8/2275616/-Millions-of-Christians-not-planning-to-vote-this-November-could-shape-election-Study
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
But - that's a big 'if.' I distrust all US polling on principle.
Finger in the air says everything is blowing due Harris, but that could change.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/main-spending-cuts-tax-increases-frances-2025-budget-2024-10-10/
SPENDING CUTS
The French government will cut 2,200 jobs. The headcount for teachers, in particular, will drop, along with the expected drop in the number of pupils, government officials said.
France will cut its foreign aid budget by 1.3 billion euros.
Subsidies for apprentices and other jobs will be cut by 2.1 billion euros.
Green subsidies, in particular those for insulation and the purchase of electric cars, will be cut by 1.9 billion euros.
The planned increase of pensions due to inflation on Jan. 1 will be postponed by six months, saving 3.6 billion euros.
TAX HIKES
Big companies
France's largest companies with revenue exceeding 1 billion euros will pay an additional tax on their profits. The tax is expected to raise 8 billion euros and, if approved, would affect 440 companies.
Wealthy individuals
Individuals earning more than 250,000 euros a year will see a temporary increase in income tax, and a minimum tax of 20% will be introduced for those households only, to prevent the use of tax loopholes, raising 2 billion euros per year.
Air transport
France will raise a tax on airplane tickets and private jets.
The amount, currently being discussed with the industry, will be added in an amendment to the budget bill during parliamentary debates.
France currently has a tax of 2.6 euros per flight, lower than in Britain or Germany, government officials said.
It's a strong law-and-order Government - now, that can work in places like Dubai and Singapore but how would that operate in Britain or even London?
How many Police Officers would you need to enforce the kind of strict law and order policies those advocating "hard right" solutions would want - how many judges, how much extra prison capacity, how many extra Police stations? Who pays for all this and from where?
Are we looking at armed Police on every street corner? IF you are stupid or desperate enough to nick a sandwich from Wenzel's (or Popham's in your part of the world presumably), would the staff be able to detain you until the Police arrive? What about fare evasion or mobile phone theft?
Rather like simply wanting more houses built, it's a multi-faceted problem whose solutions would need detailed planning and the electorate would want to know the costs and the limitations on new Police powers - would people be allowed to protest against the new law and order legislation or would they be beaten up or worse if they tried (or dared)?
If I were being more cynical, I'd wonder if ten years of what you might describe as a socialist Government would crash the economy so much as to make the prospect of coming to Britain so utterly unappealing to even the most desperate migrant.
Many many times
But for today: look at the UAE and Singapore. Arguably the most successful nations on the planet, esp given where they came from
Every police officer is also a Judge...
*The football team that plays at the appropriately named Wankdorf Stadium springs to mind.
OK El Salvador
Brutally rightwing government
Now has possibly the lowest murder rate in the Western Hemisphere
https://efe.com/en/other-news/2024-02-03/fear-of-police-replaces-gang-violence-in-el-salvador/
Er, yeah, in a place as fucked as El Salvador (as was) it is GOOD if people are "scared" of the police