'Robert Jenrick has promised to tear up the Climate Change Act if he becomes Tory leader and eventually prime minister.
He has said he will scrap major pieces of Blair and Brown era legislation including the Climate Change Act, Equality Act and Human Rights Act under a “Great Reform Act” if he makes it to No 10.
His plans include scrapping carbon budgets and unburdening businesses of equality laws which have been criticised for driving positive discrimination and political correctness in the workplace.
He described carbon budgets as “Soviet-style five-year plans” and claimed they impede the building of critical national infrastructure projects.
You know if he does become leader he'll drop all this immediately, right? He wants your support for pole climbing. If you had the misfortune of bumping in to him at an event he'd be looking over your shoulder for someone richer or more powerful.
"DWP to take money directly from bank accounts in benefit fraud crackdown DWP will reform ‘absurd outdated’ measures to prevent fraud which cost taxpayers a record £7.3bn last year"
There appears to be a disconnect between the polls and the betting. Recent polls have Trump narrowing the gap such that the race is now a coin toss. However Harris is still marginally ahead in the key swing states.
But the betting now has Trump as clear favourite to win. Is this smart money or a consequence of market manipulation by Trump backers?
The extra complication here is that it's led by Polymarket which will skew not only because somebody is dumping money on Trump and there's not enough non-manipulative money to correct, but also because somebody knows somebody is going to spend some money breaking the settlement mechanism (Uma).
'Robert Jenrick has promised to tear up the Climate Change Act if he becomes Tory leader and eventually prime minister.
He has said he will scrap major pieces of Blair and Brown era legislation including the Climate Change Act, Equality Act and Human Rights Act under a “Great Reform Act” if he makes it to No 10.
His plans include scrapping carbon budgets and unburdening businesses of equality laws which have been criticised for driving positive discrimination and political correctness in the workplace.
He described carbon budgets as “Soviet-style five-year plans” and claimed they impede the building of critical national infrastructure projects.
Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump · 5h 🚨Trump's former Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, suspects Putin is blackmailing Trump.
How and with what? Why is it necessary for these people to construct such implausible conspiracy theories rather than accepting that Trump is who he is, for better or worse?
That's normalcy bias. The idea that Trump is actually being actively blackmailed is bonkers, but this isn't some lefty on twitter. It's Dan Coats.
But the sad fact is that even if Trump is being blackmailed by Putin, it would only make a marginal impact on his support. Trump is a religion now.
Whether or not Trump is being blackmailed is almost irrelevant at this point, Trump clearly acts like an agent of Russia whether he is one or not. It could be videotape from a KGB monitored hotel, it could be money, it could be mere flattery, and it might simply be because Trump is a gigantic arsehole who aspires to rule like Putin. Whatever the reason is we know he acts like an agent of the Russian government.
"DWP to take money directly from bank accounts in benefit fraud crackdown DWP will reform ‘absurd outdated’ measures to prevent fraud which cost taxpayers a record £7.3bn last year"
HMRC have been sending me a demand for £30k for over a decade now for a nonsense reason. I've got bored of contacting them about it. Nothing happens. We really don't need this sort of slippery slope being allowed and at least I could wear it, those on benefits are the most vulnerable.
Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump · 5h 🚨Trump's former Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, suspects Putin is blackmailing Trump.
How and with what? Why is it necessary for these people to construct such implausible conspiracy theories rather than accepting that Trump is who he is, for better or worse?
That's normalcy bias. The idea that Trump is actually being actively blackmailed is bonkers, but this isn't some lefty on twitter. It's Dan Coats.
But the sad fact is that even if Trump is being blackmailed by Putin, it would only make a marginal impact on his support. Trump is a religion now.
At the moment everyone is being blackmailed by Putin.
'Robert Jenrick has promised to tear up the Climate Change Act if he becomes Tory leader and eventually prime minister.
He has said he will scrap major pieces of Blair and Brown era legislation including the Climate Change Act, Equality Act and Human Rights Act under a “Great Reform Act” if he makes it to No 10.
His plans include scrapping carbon budgets and unburdening businesses of equality laws which have been criticised for driving positive discrimination and political correctness in the workplace.
He described carbon budgets as “Soviet-style five-year plans” and claimed they impede the building of critical national infrastructure projects.
Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump · 5h 🚨Trump's former Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, suspects Putin is blackmailing Trump.
How and with what? Why is it necessary for these people to construct such implausible conspiracy theories rather than accepting that Trump is who he is, for better or worse?
That's normalcy bias. The idea that Trump is actually being actively blackmailed is bonkers, but this isn't some lefty on twitter. It's Dan Coats.
But the sad fact is that even if Trump is being blackmailed by Putin, it would only make a marginal impact on his support. Trump is a religion now.
If this theory were true, wouldn't Putin be angered by Trump's erratic campaign strategy?
"I told you to win the Presidency or else! Why are you talking about eating dogs and cats?!"
Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump · 5h 🚨Trump's former Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, suspects Putin is blackmailing Trump.
How and with what? Why is it necessary for these people to construct such implausible conspiracy theories rather than accepting that Trump is who he is, for better or worse?
That's normalcy bias. The idea that Trump is actually being actively blackmailed is bonkers, but this isn't some lefty on twitter. It's Dan Coats.
But the sad fact is that even if Trump is being blackmailed by Putin, it would only make a marginal impact on his support. Trump is a religion now.
At the moment everyone is being blackmailed by Putin.
Quite, and the most prominent person who has given in to it is Joe Biden.
There appears to be a disconnect between the polls and the betting. Recent polls have Trump narrowing the gap such that the race is now a coin toss. However Harris is still marginally ahead in the key swing states.
But the betting now has Trump as clear favourite to win. Is this smart money or a consequence of market manipulation by Trump backers?
The extra complication here is that it's led by Polymarket which will skew not only because somebody is dumping money on Trump and there's not enough non-manipulative money to correct, but also because somebody knows somebody is going to spend some money breaking the settlement mechanism (Uma).
Yup. This is the thing that would make an interesting article, actually.
And it isn't the first time that the settlement mechanism on Polymarket would be broken either. See our previous convo about Venezuela for example, which happily I never did anything on otherwise I'd have lost my 3XL shirt.
(Still there have been fun dislocations between more conventional US prediction markets and Betfair before. 2012 for example. That was free money for anyone who could place trades in both places).
'Robert Jenrick has promised to tear up the Climate Change Act if he becomes Tory leader and eventually prime minister.
He has said he will scrap major pieces of Blair and Brown era legislation including the Climate Change Act, Equality Act and Human Rights Act under a “Great Reform Act” if he makes it to No 10.
His plans include scrapping carbon budgets and unburdening businesses of equality laws which have been criticised for driving positive discrimination and political correctness in the workplace.
He described carbon budgets as “Soviet-style five-year plans” and claimed they impede the building of critical national infrastructure projects.
Nope. My mum has voted Kemi, so Jenrick will be back to obscurity after his 15 minutes of fame.
Jenrick is sounding a bit desperate now.
Yougov had it Badenoch 52% Jenrick 48% at the start of October, so if he can win over a few more members wanting a firm shift to the right he could do it. Badenoch would have beaten Tugendhat by a comfortable 58% to 42% Yougov found and Cleverly also clearly 54% to 46% as the clearly more rightwing candidate in a membership wanting a shift away from Sunak and Hunt centrism but Jenrick could beat her from the right whereas they couldn't https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/50624-conservative-members-and-the-2024-leadership-contest
Yes, but you are neglecting the obvious fact that my mother is always right.
And uncommonly attractive
She is 87 and happily married, but yes it's where I get my own good looks.
A legitimate efficient-markets explanation for the polling / polymarket skew would be that somebody knows how to interpret early voting data. This is a really hard thing to do without a lot of local knowledge but there's now enough money in these markets that it could be worth someone's while to do the analysis properly, and maybe also commission some private polling to help out.
'Robert Jenrick has promised to tear up the Climate Change Act if he becomes Tory leader and eventually prime minister.
He has said he will scrap major pieces of Blair and Brown era legislation including the Climate Change Act, Equality Act and Human Rights Act under a “Great Reform Act” if he makes it to No 10.
His plans include scrapping carbon budgets and unburdening businesses of equality laws which have been criticised for driving positive discrimination and political correctness in the workplace.
He described carbon budgets as “Soviet-style five-year plans” and claimed they impede the building of critical national infrastructure projects.
Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump · 5h 🚨Trump's former Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, suspects Putin is blackmailing Trump.
How and with what? Why is it necessary for these people to construct such implausible conspiracy theories rather than accepting that Trump is who he is, for better or worse?
That's normalcy bias. The idea that Trump is actually being actively blackmailed is bonkers, but this isn't some lefty on twitter. It's Dan Coats.
But the sad fact is that even if Trump is being blackmailed by Putin, it would only make a marginal impact on his support. Trump is a religion now.
If this theory were true, wouldn't Putin be angered by Trump's erratic campaign strategy?
"I told you to win the Presidency or else! Why are you talking about eating dogs and cats?!"
Not at all. Chaos is what Putin is after, and some race riots would be very welcome from his perspective.
Exclusive: Trump ground game in key states flagged as potentially fake Data suggests canvassers linked to Elon Musk’s America Pac falsely claimed to have visited homes of potential voters
Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump · 5h 🚨Trump's former Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, suspects Putin is blackmailing Trump.
How and with what? Why is it necessary for these people to construct such implausible conspiracy theories rather than accepting that Trump is who he is, for better or worse?
That's normalcy bias. The idea that Trump is actually being actively blackmailed is bonkers, but this isn't some lefty on twitter. It's Dan Coats.
But the sad fact is that even if Trump is being blackmailed by Putin, it would only make a marginal impact on his support. Trump is a religion now.
If this theory were true, wouldn't Putin be angered by Trump's erratic campaign strategy?
"I told you to win the Presidency or else! Why are you talking about eating dogs and cats?!"
Not at all. Chaos is what Putin is after, and some race riots would be very welcome from his perspective.
Perhaps Kamala Harris should be under suspicion after her bizarre statements about black men, drugs and crypto.
A legitimate efficient-markets explanation for the polling / polymarket skew would be that somebody knows how to interpret early voting data. This is a really hard thing to do without a lot of local knowledge but there's now enough money in these markets that it could be worth someone's while to do the analysis properly, and maybe also commission some private polling to help out.
You'd expect some variation in the betting though, as the early voting data won't all be universally good news for Trump and won't warrant uniform sums of money at regular intervals, as there is in this case. (This is based on that twitter thread someone posted a few days ago).
It would be a bit odd to have such a sophisticated operation but place such simple bets.
There appears to be a disconnect between the polls and the betting. Recent polls have Trump narrowing the gap such that the race is now a coin toss. However Harris is still marginally ahead in the key swing states.
But the betting now has Trump as clear favourite to win. Is this smart money or a consequence of market manipulation by Trump backers?
The extra complication here is that it's led by Polymarket which will skew not only because somebody is dumping money on Trump and there's not enough non-manipulative money to correct, but also because somebody knows somebody is going to spend some money breaking the settlement mechanism (Uma).
EIT. I get your first point. Can you explain the second point about Uma please. Thanks.
'Robert Jenrick has promised to tear up the Climate Change Act if he becomes Tory leader and eventually prime minister.
He has said he will scrap major pieces of Blair and Brown era legislation including the Climate Change Act, Equality Act and Human Rights Act under a “Great Reform Act” if he makes it to No 10.
His plans include scrapping carbon budgets and unburdening businesses of equality laws which have been criticised for driving positive discrimination and political correctness in the workplace.
He described carbon budgets as “Soviet-style five-year plans” and claimed they impede the building of critical national infrastructure projects.
You know if he does become leader he'll drop all this immediately, right? He wants your support for pole climbing. If you had the misfortune of bumping in to him at an event he'd be looking over your shoulder for someone richer or more powerful.
Ignore his stated viewpoints, they mean nothing.
1. Jenrick couldn't look over my shoulder, I'm 6ft 1.
2. My support means absolutely nothing to him - I am not a party member.
3. Jenrick has committed himself to these policies - that's more than his opponent has done. Of course he could row back on them, but Kemi hasn't even bothered to present anything to row back on.
4. Regardless of what you perceive to be his own lack of sincerity Jenrick is part of a wider parliamentary group who I believe do sincerely wish to implement these policies because they realise (as Jenrick does) that the Blairite legal settlement should have been overturned when Labour left No. 10, as it has been deeply damaging to our country and has effectively neutered our democracy.
'Robert Jenrick has promised to tear up the Climate Change Act if he becomes Tory leader and eventually prime minister.
He has said he will scrap major pieces of Blair and Brown era legislation including the Climate Change Act, Equality Act and Human Rights Act under a “Great Reform Act” if he makes it to No 10.
His plans include scrapping carbon budgets and unburdening businesses of equality laws which have been criticised for driving positive discrimination and political correctness in the workplace.
He described carbon budgets as “Soviet-style five-year plans” and claimed they impede the building of critical national infrastructure projects.
We shouldnt be complacent. This is the blurb from Tommy Robinsons best selling book manifesto.
For decades the political class have openly planned to replace the indigenous people of Europe and in Manifesto we focus on how they are doing this in the UK. To ensure no-one disturbs their plans the elite manufacture a mythical far-right, when in truth it is the elite 1% who run a Fascist system of state-control, censorship and discrimination. Whenever someone has publicly addressed what is going on, the ruling class set about to destroy that person. We show how the elitist 1% have openly manipulated democracy to subjugate the masses, their elitist discussions carried on in plain sight for over a century, while they distract the masses with unimportant nonsense. The 1% knowingly plan to bring about another global conflict and in the aftermath they will end up in control of the world's resources and financial systems: "you will own nothing and you will be happy"
Is UKIP still a thing? I thought it was on a level with the SDP or Socialist Labour.
it still stands candidates post Farage
But how do they do? The Liberal Party stands candidates in various council elections but has about six councillors nationwide.
See my other comment for detail. Zero Local Councillors.
Pre Robinson endorsement, if they put Robinson's photo on all their literature I could certainly see them picking up some local council seats in the likes of Burnley, Stoke, Coventry, Plymouth, Sunderland, Hartlepool, Dagenham etc
That's a provocative thought. You would have to add a couple of places in Amber Valley to that list, like Heanor, Waingroves, Old Denby.
This is the map of BNP members by then constituency in the period 2007-2009, when their database was leaked. It still seems a fairly sound basic analysis for where the far right are focused imo, although certain potential areas are less prominent that may feature, such as the Hi-De-Hi constituencies.
Some swing from Labour to Reform and the Greens since the GE then but Tories and LDs unchanged
That is a terrifying poll for UK Conservatives imo.
Real votes cast in by-elections not so terrifying though.
Are those local votes this autumn convincing you the Tories will return to government within the next fifteen years?
General Elections is leader v leader, chancellor v shadow, manifesto v manifesto, economic policy v economic policy - no local by elections won or lost this month are based on that General Election match up when it comes. And not to ignore the millstone the Conservatives carry into the coming General Elections, how awful they have been in government the last 4 years.
The actual question is, what brings the Lib Dem held seats the Conservatives need to form a government, what brings the voters Conservatives have lost to Reform, but need in order to form a government, back into the fold? Whatever the answer to that question is, I can’t see it, so by all means share the answer. 😕
The LibDems will not hold those 2024 seats in any great numbers. When people get fed up of Labour, they will not say "Oh, let's give the LibDems a go. You never know, they might be better at stopping all the shit we are fed up with Labour about."
Because they have facilitated that shit. The constituencies getting the worst deal in coming years will be those Labour don't need to win. The Tories will at least have their position as Official Opposition to try to shame Labour into reigning back on their worst vindictive efforts.The LibDems will just have to advise their voters to bend down and grasp their ankles.
The only advice the LibDems can offer constituensts is "Lube up..."
It’s encouraging that this is the Tory strategy. Just sit back and let those old seats lost to Lib Dems come home to the natural party of government.
Given the LDs exceeded pretty much all expectations by winning basically every target seat, even if half the seats they took from the Tories were to 'come home' as some Tories expect, they would probably see that as a good result if their voteshare holds up reasonably.
I don't think the Tories will find it easy to win those seats back. They will be straight LD Tory fights with an obvious choice to voters to keep the Tories out.
Liberal values and attitudes are now mainstream in the shires. Even Oakham has a pride parade now.
For now, at the moment the likeliest outcome of the next general election may well be a Labour and LD coalition government.
If so, the Tories can start to portray the LDs as Labour's tax rising little helpers in the home counties
How will they do that? The only govt the Lib Dems have been actually involved in recently is with the Conservatives. Come 2029 they'll be claiming they could have done everything Labour achieves and more but without raising "your" taxes or building in "your" backyard.
We shouldnt be complacent. This is the blurb from Tommy Robinsons best selling book manifesto.
For decades the political class have openly planned to replace the indigenous people of Europe and in Manifesto we focus on how they are doing this in the UK. To ensure no-one disturbs their plans the elite manufacture a mythical far-right, when in truth it is the elite 1% who run a Fascist system of state-control, censorship and discrimination. Whenever someone has publicly addressed what is going on, the ruling class set about to destroy that person. We show how the elitist 1% have openly manipulated democracy to subjugate the masses, their elitist discussions carried on in plain sight for over a century, while they distract the masses with unimportant nonsense. The 1% knowingly plan to bring about another global conflict and in the aftermath they will end up in control of the world's resources and financial systems: "you will own nothing and you will be happy"
Is UKIP still a thing? I thought it was on a level with the SDP or Socialist Labour.
it still stands candidates post Farage
But how do they do? The Liberal Party stands candidates in various council elections but has about six councillors nationwide.
See my other comment for detail. Zero Local Councillors.
Pre Robinson endorsement, if they put Robinson's photo on all their literature I could certainly see them picking up some local council seats in the likes of Burnley, Stoke, Coventry, Plymouth, Sunderland, Hartlepool, Dagenham etc
That's a provocative thought. You would have to add a couple of places in Amber Valley to that list, like Heanor, Waingroves, Old Denby.
This is the map of BNP members by then constituency in the period 2007-2009, when their database was leaked. It still seems a fairly sound basic analysis for where the far right are focused imo, although certain potential areas are less prominent that may feature, such as the Hi-De-Hi constituencies.
Some swing from Labour to Reform and the Greens since the GE then but Tories and LDs unchanged
That is a terrifying poll for UK Conservatives imo.
Real votes cast in by-elections not so terrifying though.
Are those local votes this autumn convincing you the Tories will return to government within the next fifteen years?
General Elections is leader v leader, chancellor v shadow, manifesto v manifesto, economic policy v economic policy - no local by elections won or lost this month are based on that General Election match up when it comes. And not to ignore the millstone the Conservatives carry into the coming General Elections, how awful they have been in government the last 4 years.
The actual question is, what brings the Lib Dem held seats the Conservatives need to form a government, what brings the voters Conservatives have lost to Reform, but need in order to form a government, back into the fold? Whatever the answer to that question is, I can’t see it, so by all means share the answer. 😕
The LibDems will not hold those 2024 seats in any great numbers. When people get fed up of Labour, they will not say "Oh, let's give the LibDems a go. You never know, they might be better at stopping all the shit we are fed up with Labour about."
Because they have facilitated that shit. The constituencies getting the worst deal in coming years will be those Labour don't need to win. The Tories will at least have their position as Official Opposition to try to shame Labour into reigning back on their worst vindictive efforts.The LibDems will just have to advise their voters to bend down and grasp their ankles.
The only advice the LibDems can offer constituensts is "Lube up..."
It’s encouraging that this is the Tory strategy. Just sit back and let those old seats lost to Lib Dems come home to the natural party of government.
Given the LDs exceeded pretty much all expectations by winning basically every target seat, even if half the seats they took from the Tories were to 'come home' as some Tories expect, they would probably see that as a good result if their voteshare holds up reasonably.
I don't think the Tories will find it easy to win those seats back. They will be straight LD Tory fights with an obvious choice to voters to keep the Tories out.
Liberal values and attitudes are now mainstream in the shires. Even Oakham has a pride parade now.
For now, at the moment the likeliest outcome of the next general election may well be a Labour and LD coalition government.
If so, the Tories can start to portray the LDs as Labour's tax rising little helpers in the home counties
How will they do that? The only govt the Lib Dems have been actually involved in recently is with the Conservatives. Come 2029 they'll be claiming they could have done everything Labour achieves and more but without raising "your" taxes or building in "your" backyard.
If supporting a minority Labour government with confidence and supply after 2029 they can be attacked as tax raising Labour's mini mes
John Gray has one of the best explanations for populism imo.
"What they call populism is the political blowback against the social disruption their policies have produced. They can't understand the connection between what they've done and populism".
They're totally incapable of understanding it because they can't accept there would be any that isn't entirely beneficial.
I should add, that taken to its logical conclusion it means that there's a risk that all the positive gains of liberalism get overturned in the next 30-50 years.
Which means we could go back to societies where sexism, racism and discrimination are normalised again, with limited rights, unless they rein it in and listen to the concerns of the overreach their policies have caused and the blowback.
The alternative - condemning them harder and faster - will only accelerate their eventual demise.
Agree 100%. I'm a liberal but I think hyper-liberalism, as described by John Gray, could bring down liberalism as we've known it.
'Robert Jenrick has promised to tear up the Climate Change Act if he becomes Tory leader and eventually prime minister.
He has said he will scrap major pieces of Blair and Brown era legislation including the Climate Change Act, Equality Act and Human Rights Act under a “Great Reform Act” if he makes it to No 10.
His plans include scrapping carbon budgets and unburdening businesses of equality laws which have been criticised for driving positive discrimination and political correctness in the workplace.
He described carbon budgets as “Soviet-style five-year plans” and claimed they impede the building of critical national infrastructure projects.
Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump · 7h Wow. 12 million Americans have already voted.
I don't see how they can deduce anything from the number of people who've voted early so far.
Well, that tweet itself doesn't actually postulate that many people having voted earlier benefits any particular side (though obviously given the source of the tweet they would hope it does) so possibly it is just, as on its face, an expression of amazement at how many people have voted early. Maybe they have speculated more in further tweets.
Or perhaps that is a lot more than last time at this point, and they are supposing that will mean something in relation to higher turnout this time, which may benefit their side.
Or perhaps there is a historic trend of Dems taking up early voting more than Republicans, or it's seen as a sign of the success of ground game operations to see a lot more early votes and they think the Dems have a stronger ground game, so more early votes is good for them.
Any of these deductions could be wrong, but I can see how they could be made.
We shouldnt be complacent. This is the blurb from Tommy Robinsons best selling book manifesto.
For decades the political class have openly planned to replace the indigenous people of Europe and in Manifesto we focus on how they are doing this in the UK. To ensure no-one disturbs their plans the elite manufacture a mythical far-right, when in truth it is the elite 1% who run a Fascist system of state-control, censorship and discrimination. Whenever someone has publicly addressed what is going on, the ruling class set about to destroy that person. We show how the elitist 1% have openly manipulated democracy to subjugate the masses, their elitist discussions carried on in plain sight for over a century, while they distract the masses with unimportant nonsense. The 1% knowingly plan to bring about another global conflict and in the aftermath they will end up in control of the world's resources and financial systems: "you will own nothing and you will be happy"
Is UKIP still a thing? I thought it was on a level with the SDP or Socialist Labour.
it still stands candidates post Farage
But how do they do? The Liberal Party stands candidates in various council elections but has about six councillors nationwide.
See my other comment for detail. Zero Local Councillors.
Pre Robinson endorsement, if they put Robinson's photo on all their literature I could certainly see them picking up some local council seats in the likes of Burnley, Stoke, Coventry, Plymouth, Sunderland, Hartlepool, Dagenham etc
That's a provocative thought. You would have to add a couple of places in Amber Valley to that list, like Heanor, Waingroves, Old Denby.
This is the map of BNP members by then constituency in the period 2007-2009, when their database was leaked. It still seems a fairly sound basic analysis for where the far right are focused imo, although certain potential areas are less prominent that may feature, such as the Hi-De-Hi constituencies.
Some swing from Labour to Reform and the Greens since the GE then but Tories and LDs unchanged
That is a terrifying poll for UK Conservatives imo.
Real votes cast in by-elections not so terrifying though.
Are those local votes this autumn convincing you the Tories will return to government within the next fifteen years?
General Elections is leader v leader, chancellor v shadow, manifesto v manifesto, economic policy v economic policy - no local by elections won or lost this month are based on that General Election match up when it comes. And not to ignore the millstone the Conservatives carry into the coming General Elections, how awful they have been in government the last 4 years.
The actual question is, what brings the Lib Dem held seats the Conservatives need to form a government, what brings the voters Conservatives have lost to Reform, but need in order to form a government, back into the fold? Whatever the answer to that question is, I can’t see it, so by all means share the answer. 😕
The LibDems will not hold those 2024 seats in any great numbers. When people get fed up of Labour, they will not say "Oh, let's give the LibDems a go. You never know, they might be better at stopping all the shit we are fed up with Labour about."
Because they have facilitated that shit. The constituencies getting the worst deal in coming years will be those Labour don't need to win. The Tories will at least have their position as Official Opposition to try to shame Labour into reigning back on their worst vindictive efforts.The LibDems will just have to advise their voters to bend down and grasp their ankles.
The only advice the LibDems can offer constituensts is "Lube up..."
It’s encouraging that this is the Tory strategy. Just sit back and let those old seats lost to Lib Dems come home to the natural party of government.
Given the LDs exceeded pretty much all expectations by winning basically every target seat, even if half the seats they took from the Tories were to 'come home' as some Tories expect, they would probably see that as a good result if their voteshare holds up reasonably.
I don't think the Tories will find it easy to win those seats back. They will be straight LD Tory fights with an obvious choice to voters to keep the Tories out.
Liberal values and attitudes are now mainstream in the shires. Even Oakham has a pride parade now.
For now, at the moment the likeliest outcome of the next general election may well be a Labour and LD coalition government.
If so, the Tories can start to portray the LDs as Labour's tax rising little helpers in the home counties
How will they do that? The only govt the Lib Dems have been actually involved in recently is with the Conservatives. Come 2029 they'll be claiming they could have done everything Labour achieves and more but without raising "your" taxes or building in "your" backyard.
If supporting a minority Labour government with confidence and supply after 2029 they can be attacked as tax raising Labour's mini mes
A problem for another day, literally. You have to be mindful of the future, sure, but not at the expense of the present, as an admittedly not very wise man once said.
The question with Trump is where is the money coming from? Who is paying the legal bills?
He's selling hundreds of products with his name on them to his supporters, and getting a big slice of the RNC monies, as well as all the other direct donations, and his PACs can pay for his legal bills too.
'Robert Jenrick has promised to tear up the Climate Change Act if he becomes Tory leader and eventually prime minister.
He has said he will scrap major pieces of Blair and Brown era legislation including the Climate Change Act, Equality Act and Human Rights Act under a “Great Reform Act” if he makes it to No 10.
His plans include scrapping carbon budgets and unburdening businesses of equality laws which have been criticised for driving positive discrimination and political correctness in the workplace.
He described carbon budgets as “Soviet-style five-year plans” and claimed they impede the building of critical national infrastructure projects.
'Robert Jenrick has promised to tear up the Climate Change Act if he becomes Tory leader and eventually prime minister.
He has said he will scrap major pieces of Blair and Brown era legislation including the Climate Change Act, Equality Act and Human Rights Act under a “Great Reform Act” if he makes it to No 10.
His plans include scrapping carbon budgets and unburdening businesses of equality laws which have been criticised for driving positive discrimination and political correctness in the workplace.
He described carbon budgets as “Soviet-style five-year plans” and claimed they impede the building of critical national infrastructure projects.
You know if he does become leader he'll drop all this immediately, right? He wants your support for pole climbing. If you had the misfortune of bumping in to him at an event he'd be looking over your shoulder for someone richer or more powerful.
Ignore his stated viewpoints, they mean nothing.
1. Jenrick couldn't look over my shoulder, I'm 6ft 1.
2. My support means absolutely nothing to him - I am not a party member.
3. Jenrick has committed himself to these policies - that's more than his opponent has done. Of course he could row back on them, but Kemi hasn't even bothered to present anything to row back on.
4. Regardless of what you perceive to be his own lack of sincerity Jenrick is part of a wider parliamentary group who I believe do sincerely wish to implement these policies because they realise (as Jenrick does) that the Blairite legal settlement should have been overturned when Labour left No. 10, as it has been deeply damaging to our country and has effectively neutered our democracy.
I don't take an issue with your views on these policies - I'm convincible (although not quite convinced) to be up for leaving all of them, being a classical liberal* - but getting excited about DickfaceMcTwat espousing any of them is silly. The last thing you should want if you want these policies to actually be enacted is him becoming leader of the opposition. He'll either immediately abandon them, or will not be elected because the general public will immediately spot he's a shit, or both.
*The reason I need convincing is that I'm not so sure the juice is worth the squeeze
A legitimate efficient-markets explanation for the polling / polymarket skew would be that somebody knows how to interpret early voting data. This is a really hard thing to do without a lot of local knowledge but there's now enough money in these markets that it could be worth someone's while to do the analysis properly, and maybe also commission some private polling to help out.
It would be a possible explanation, but given the hilariously bad record of political markets so far there's no particular reason to believe this time it's different. Not sure about everyone else but the reason I trade/bet on them (and other novelty markets) is precisely that the odds are often obviously out of whack. Not going so far as to say that's the case here - they're wrong but they're not "obvious" like so many others are. Meanwhile with very few exceptions (want a crazy punt I've mentioned here before? SLS on Nasdaq) my investments are index funds.
About the only thing worse is pundits... and everything else.
'Robert Jenrick has promised to tear up the Climate Change Act if he becomes Tory leader and eventually prime minister.
He has said he will scrap major pieces of Blair and Brown era legislation including the Climate Change Act, Equality Act and Human Rights Act under a “Great Reform Act” if he makes it to No 10.
His plans include scrapping carbon budgets and unburdening businesses of equality laws which have been criticised for driving positive discrimination and political correctness in the workplace.
He described carbon budgets as “Soviet-style five-year plans” and claimed they impede the building of critical national infrastructure projects.
Nope. My mum has voted Kemi, so Jenrick will be back to obscurity after his 15 minutes of fame.
Jenrick is sounding a bit desperate now.
Is there anything else he can promise we will leave to get more attention?
Leave the Commonwealth?
I mean that's just a load of woke nonsense isn't it these days?
These are not new pledges - they have been part of Jenrick’s campaign from the beginning.
And frankly, anyone not being aware of the issues with these Blairite legacy laws hasn't really been paying attention.
That's the credibility problem for the Conservatives in a nutshell. They had 14 years to repeal those laws, and...
And they didn't. And Jenrick has admitted they should have. He wasn't leader, so I'm struggling to see the issue.
Certainly he has an opportunity to reframe the party direction, any candidate unless they were newly elected in 2024 will have backed or at least not openly opposed some government policy that the public/party now wish to disavow, even if just in the sense of not looking to remove a law that had been in place for quite some time.
That doesn't mean the credibility problem does not exist at all, especially if the person in question held some senior positions and tacitly accepted issue X in order to get ahead. That's part of the price of being a good little soldier, necessary to get ahead to some degree.
But it's not insurmountable, especially as after a big loss a party is expected to make some big changes, which will necessarily involve rejecting or embracing something they previously did not. Indeed, they will be laughed at if they don't seek to change.
So the question is really the basic one of if it is a good idea, and if it is does the public? And so do you either not go there, or seek to change people's minds about it?
'Robert Jenrick has promised to tear up the Climate Change Act if he becomes Tory leader and eventually prime minister.
He has said he will scrap major pieces of Blair and Brown era legislation including the Climate Change Act, Equality Act and Human Rights Act under a “Great Reform Act” if he makes it to No 10.
His plans include scrapping carbon budgets and unburdening businesses of equality laws which have been criticised for driving positive discrimination and political correctness in the workplace.
He described carbon budgets as “Soviet-style five-year plans” and claimed they impede the building of critical national infrastructure projects.
Nope. My mum has voted Kemi, so Jenrick will be back to obscurity after his 15 minutes of fame.
Jenrick is sounding a bit desperate now.
Is there anything else he can promise we will leave to get more attention?
Leave the Commonwealth?
I mean that's just a load of woke nonsense isn't it these days?
These are not new pledges - they have been part of Jenrick’s campaign from the beginning.
And frankly, anyone not being aware of the issues with these Blairite legacy laws hasn't really been paying attention.
That's the credibility problem for the Conservatives in a nutshell. They had 14 years to repeal those laws, and...
And they didn't. And Jenrick has admitted they should have. He wasn't leader, so I'm struggling to see the issue.
He keeps boasting about being a member of all those Conservative governments! People have heard it all before and know that no government is going to repeal all those laws, simply because it would be so much hassle.
Why vote for the Conservatives when you can just vote for the real thing - Reform.
There appears to be a disconnect between the polls and the betting. Recent polls have Trump narrowing the gap such that the race is now a coin toss. However Harris is still marginally ahead in the key swing states.
But the betting now has Trump as clear favourite to win. Is this smart money or a consequence of market manipulation by Trump backers?
The extra complication here is that it's led by Polymarket which will skew not only because somebody is dumping money on Trump and there's not enough non-manipulative money to correct, but also because somebody knows somebody is going to spend some money breaking the settlement mechanism (Uma).
EIT. I get your first point. Can you explain the second point about Uma please. Thanks.
The people behind Polymarket don't settle their own markets. They outsource this to a system called Uma. (In theory the people behind Polymarket can't steal from punters, because the stake is all managed by computer programs called smart contracts.) After the election, Polymarket (or strictly speaking the smart contracts that Polymarket created) will ask Uma who won the election, and use that information to decide which punters get paid.
The way Uma works is that there are a bunch of tokens (you can think of them like shares in a company). If you have a question like "who won the 2024 presidential election", you ask Uma and the Uma tokenholders will vote on what they think happened. (Actually the process is a bit more complicated than this, but the complications probably make it worse.) So if Harris wins but the Uma tokenholders vote that Trump won, the Trump punters will get paid.
If you've got a lot of money, you can either buy Uma tokens or bribe Uma tokenholders to vote that Trump won the election. You may be doing this expecting to make a loss, because you're trying to make people think that Trump won so he can steal the election. Alternatively if you've got a lot of money staked on Trump, you may be able to make a profit. In theory Uma tokenholders are motivated to vote honestly because their tokens will be worth less if their market-settling system settles a market wrongly, but if the amount you stand to win on your bets is high enough compared to the value of the Uma tokens, you may be able to make a profit even if Uma goes to zero as a result. And Uma won't necessarily go to zero even if it missettles, firstly because crypto prices are basically random numbers with minimal connection whether anything works, and secondly because a lot of investors will be Trump fans who think that it settled correctly.
In non-crypto terms, just imagine putting a load of money on Trump on Betfair, and then when Harris wins, you either buy a load of Betfair shares or bribe the Betfair management to say that Trump won and pay the Trump punters instead of the Harris punters. This probably wouldn't work because the courts would have something to say about it, but there are no courts involved here because the Uma tokenholders are anonymous.
There appears to be a disconnect between the polls and the betting. Recent polls have Trump narrowing the gap such that the race is now a coin toss. However Harris is still marginally ahead in the key swing states.
But the betting now has Trump as clear favourite to win. Is this smart money or a consequence of market manipulation by Trump backers?
The extra complication here is that it's led by Polymarket which will skew not only because somebody is dumping money on Trump and there's not enough non-manipulative money to correct, but also because somebody knows somebody is going to spend some money breaking the settlement mechanism (Uma).
EIT. I get your first point. Can you explain the second point about Uma please. Thanks.
The people behind Polymarket don't settle their own markets. They outsource this to a system called Uma. (In theory the people behind Polymarket can't steal from punters, because the stake is all managed by computer programs called smart contracts.) After the election, Polymarket (or strictly speaking the smart contracts that Polymarket created) will ask Uma who won the election, and use that information to decide which punters get paid.
The way Uma works is that there are a bunch of tokens (you can think of them like shares in a company). If you have a question like "who won the 2024 presidential election", you ask Uma and the Uma tokenholders will vote on what they think happened. (Actually the process is a bit more complicated than this, but the complications probably make it worse.) So if Harris wins but the Uma tokenholders vote that Trump won, the Trump punters will get paid.
If you've got a lot of money, you can either buy Uma tokens or bribe Uma tokenholders to vote that Trump won the election. You may be doing this expecting to make a loss, because you're trying to make people think that Trump won so he can steal the election. Alternatively if you've got a lot of money staked on Trump, you may be able to make a profit. In theory Uma tokenholders are motivated to vote honestly because their tokens will be worth less if their market-settling system settles a market wrongly, but if the amount you stand to win on your bets is high enough compared to the value of the Uma tokens, you may be able to make a profit even if Uma goes to zero as a result. And Uma won't necessarily go to zero even if it missettles, firstly because crypto prices are basically random numbers with minimal connection whether anything works, and secondly because a lot of investors will be Trump fans who think that it settled correctly.
In non-crypto terms, just imagine putting a load of money on Trump on Betfair, and then when Harris wins, you either buy a load of Betfair shares or bribe the Betfair management to say that Trump won and pay the Trump punters instead of the Harris punters. This probably wouldn't work because the courts would have something to say about it, but there are no courts involved here because the Uma tokenholders are anonymous.
Then add to that that for many Uma tokenholders it would actually be (in their heads) an ethical obligation for them to take bribes, and I'm not making that up.
There appears to be a disconnect between the polls and the betting. Recent polls have Trump narrowing the gap such that the race is now a coin toss. However Harris is still marginally ahead in the key swing states.
But the betting now has Trump as clear favourite to win. Is this smart money or a consequence of market manipulation by Trump backers?
The extra complication here is that it's led by Polymarket which will skew not only because somebody is dumping money on Trump and there's not enough non-manipulative money to correct, but also because somebody knows somebody is going to spend some money breaking the settlement mechanism (Uma).
EIT. I get your first point. Can you explain the second point about Uma please. Thanks.
The people behind Polymarket don't settle their own markets. They outsource this to a system called Uma. (In theory the people behind Polymarket can't steal from punters, because the stake is all managed by computer programs called smart contracts.) After the election, Polymarket (or strictly speaking the smart contracts that Polymarket created) will ask Uma who won the election, and use that information to decide which punters get paid.
The way Uma works is that there are a bunch of tokens (you can think of them like shares in a company). If you have a question like "who won the 2024 presidential election", you ask Uma and the Uma tokenholders will vote on what they think happened. (Actually the process is a bit more complicated than this, but the complications probably make it worse.) So if Harris wins but the Uma tokenholders vote that Trump won, the Trump punters will get paid.
If you've got a lot of money, you can either buy Uma tokens or bribe Uma tokenholders to vote that Trump won the election. You may be doing this expecting to make a loss, because you're trying to make people think that Trump won so he can steal the election. Alternatively if you've got a lot of money staked on Trump, you may be able to make a profit. In theory Uma tokenholders are motivated to vote honestly because their tokens will be worth less if their market-settling system settles a market wrongly, but if the amount you stand to win on your bets is high enough compared to the value of the Uma tokens, you may be able to make a profit even if Uma goes to zero as a result. And Uma won't necessarily go to zero even if it missettles, firstly because crypto prices are basically random numbers with minimal connection whether anything works, and secondly because a lot of investors will be Trump fans who think that it settled correctly.
In non-crypto terms, just imagine putting a load of money on Trump on Betfair, and then when Harris wins, you either buy a load of Betfair shares or bribe the Betfair management to say that Trump won and pay the Trump punters instead of the Harris punters. This probably wouldn't work because the courts would have something to say about it, but there are no courts involved here because the Uma tokenholders are anonymous.
Then add to that that for many Uma tokenholders it would actually be an ethical obligation for them to take bribes, and I'm not making that up.
Sounds like they should be serving on the US Supreme Court in that case.
There appears to be a disconnect between the polls and the betting. Recent polls have Trump narrowing the gap such that the race is now a coin toss. However Harris is still marginally ahead in the key swing states.
But the betting now has Trump as clear favourite to win. Is this smart money or a consequence of market manipulation by Trump backers?
The extra complication here is that it's led by Polymarket which will skew not only because somebody is dumping money on Trump and there's not enough non-manipulative money to correct, but also because somebody knows somebody is going to spend some money breaking the settlement mechanism (Uma).
EIT. I get your first point. Can you explain the second point about Uma please. Thanks.
The people behind Polymarket don't settle their own markets. They outsource this to a system called Uma. (In theory the people behind Polymarket can't steal from punters, because the stake is all managed by computer programs called smart contracts.) After the election, Polymarket (or strictly speaking the smart contracts that Polymarket created) will ask Uma who won the election, and use that information to decide which punters get paid.
The way Uma works is that there are a bunch of tokens (you can think of them like shares in a company). If you have a question like "who won the 2024 presidential election", you ask Uma and the Uma tokenholders will vote on what they think happened. (Actually the process is a bit more complicated than this, but the complications probably make it worse.) So if Harris wins but the Uma tokenholders vote that Trump won, the Trump punters will get paid.
If you've got a lot of money, you can either buy Uma tokens or bribe Uma tokenholders to vote that Trump won the election. You may be doing this expecting to make a loss, because you're trying to make people think that Trump won so he can steal the election. Alternatively if you've got a lot of money staked on Trump, you may be able to make a profit. In theory Uma tokenholders are motivated to vote honestly because their tokens will be worth less if their market-settling system settles a market wrongly, but if the amount you stand to win on your bets is high enough compared to the value of the Uma tokens, you may be able to make a profit even if Uma goes to zero as a result. And Uma won't necessarily go to zero even if it missettles, firstly because crypto prices are basically random numbers with minimal connection whether anything works, and secondly because a lot of investors will be Trump fans who think that it settled correctly.
In non-crypto terms, just imagine putting a load of money on Trump on Betfair, and then when Harris wins, you either buy a load of Betfair shares or bribe the Betfair management to say that Trump won and pay the Trump punters instead of the Harris punters. This probably wouldn't work because the courts would have something to say about it, but there are no courts involved here because the Uma tokenholders are anonymous.
Very interesting, thanks. Another example of how money begets money by skewing the system.
There appears to be a disconnect between the polls and the betting. Recent polls have Trump narrowing the gap such that the race is now a coin toss. However Harris is still marginally ahead in the key swing states.
But the betting now has Trump as clear favourite to win. Is this smart money or a consequence of market manipulation by Trump backers?
The extra complication here is that it's led by Polymarket which will skew not only because somebody is dumping money on Trump and there's not enough non-manipulative money to correct, but also because somebody knows somebody is going to spend some money breaking the settlement mechanism (Uma).
EIT. I get your first point. Can you explain the second point about Uma please. Thanks.
The people behind Polymarket don't settle their own markets. They outsource this to a system called Uma. (In theory the people behind Polymarket can't steal from punters, because the stake is all managed by computer programs called smart contracts.) After the election, Polymarket (or strictly speaking the smart contracts that Polymarket created) will ask Uma who won the election, and use that information to decide which punters get paid.
The way Uma works is that there are a bunch of tokens (you can think of them like shares in a company). If you have a question like "who won the 2024 presidential election", you ask Uma and the Uma tokenholders will vote on what they think happened. (Actually the process is a bit more complicated than this, but the complications probably make it worse.) So if Harris wins but the Uma tokenholders vote that Trump won, the Trump punters will get paid.
If you've got a lot of money, you can either buy Uma tokens or bribe Uma tokenholders to vote that Trump won the election. You may be doing this expecting to make a loss, because you're trying to make people think that Trump won so he can steal the election. Alternatively if you've got a lot of money staked on Trump, you may be able to make a profit. In theory Uma tokenholders are motivated to vote honestly because their tokens will be worth less if their market-settling system settles a market wrongly, but if the amount you stand to win on your bets is high enough compared to the value of the Uma tokens, you may be able to make a profit even if Uma goes to zero as a result. And Uma won't necessarily go to zero even if it missettles, firstly because crypto prices are basically random numbers with minimal connection whether anything works, and secondly because a lot of investors will be Trump fans who think that it settled correctly.
In non-crypto terms, just imagine putting a load of money on Trump on Betfair, and then when Harris wins, you either buy a load of Betfair shares or bribe the Betfair management to say that Trump won and pay the Trump punters instead of the Harris punters. This probably wouldn't work because the courts would have something to say about it, but there are no courts involved here because the Uma tokenholders are anonymous.
Good grief! Many thanks for the response. I will read it a few times and hopefully get a feel for the situation.
Exclusive: Trump ground game in key states flagged as potentially fake Data suggests canvassers linked to Elon Musk’s America Pac falsely claimed to have visited homes of potential voters
There appears to be a disconnect between the polls and the betting. Recent polls have Trump narrowing the gap such that the race is now a coin toss. However Harris is still marginally ahead in the key swing states.
But the betting now has Trump as clear favourite to win. Is this smart money or a consequence of market manipulation by Trump backers?
The extra complication here is that it's led by Polymarket which will skew not only because somebody is dumping money on Trump and there's not enough non-manipulative money to correct, but also because somebody knows somebody is going to spend some money breaking the settlement mechanism (Uma).
EIT. I get your first point. Can you explain the second point about Uma please. Thanks.
The people behind Polymarket don't settle their own markets. They outsource this to a system called Uma. (In theory the people behind Polymarket can't steal from punters, because the stake is all managed by computer programs called smart contracts.) After the election, Polymarket (or strictly speaking the smart contracts that Polymarket created) will ask Uma who won the election, and use that information to decide which punters get paid.
The way Uma works is that there are a bunch of tokens (you can think of them like shares in a company). If you have a question like "who won the 2024 presidential election", you ask Uma and the Uma tokenholders will vote on what they think happened. (Actually the process is a bit more complicated than this, but the complications probably make it worse.) So if Harris wins but the Uma tokenholders vote that Trump won, the Trump punters will get paid.
If you've got a lot of money, you can either buy Uma tokens or bribe Uma tokenholders to vote that Trump won the election. You may be doing this expecting to make a loss, because you're trying to make people think that Trump won so he can steal the election. Alternatively if you've got a lot of money staked on Trump, you may be able to make a profit. In theory Uma tokenholders are motivated to vote honestly because their tokens will be worth less if their market-settling system settles a market wrongly, but if the amount you stand to win on your bets is high enough compared to the value of the Uma tokens, you may be able to make a profit even if Uma goes to zero as a result. And Uma won't necessarily go to zero even if it missettles, firstly because crypto prices are basically random numbers with minimal connection whether anything works, and secondly because a lot of investors will be Trump fans who think that it settled correctly.
In non-crypto terms, just imagine putting a load of money on Trump on Betfair, and then when Harris wins, you either buy a load of Betfair shares or bribe the Betfair management to say that Trump won and pay the Trump punters instead of the Harris punters. This probably wouldn't work because the courts would have something to say about it, but there are no courts involved here because the Uma tokenholders are anonymous.
Good grief! Many thanks for the response. I will read it a few times and hopefully get a feel for the situation.
Trump seems to be spending tonight's rally focused on Arnold Palmer's penis.
Truly we are at the end of times my friends.
I was trying to think of a pithy response but...I just can't.
How in the name of the wee man have we got here?
Partly because the main media wont take him on frankly. His campaign manager said before the rally that we would be seeing the "closing arguments" being unveiled for the final two weeks. So Trump spends 10 mins talking about a golfer and his equipment. This should be front page news. The guy is fucking deranged.
We shouldnt be complacent. This is the blurb from Tommy Robinsons best selling book manifesto.
For decades the political class have openly planned to replace the indigenous people of Europe and in Manifesto we focus on how they are doing this in the UK. To ensure no-one disturbs their plans the elite manufacture a mythical far-right, when in truth it is the elite 1% who run a Fascist system of state-control, censorship and discrimination. Whenever someone has publicly addressed what is going on, the ruling class set about to destroy that person. We show how the elitist 1% have openly manipulated democracy to subjugate the masses, their elitist discussions carried on in plain sight for over a century, while they distract the masses with unimportant nonsense. The 1% knowingly plan to bring about another global conflict and in the aftermath they will end up in control of the world's resources and financial systems: "you will own nothing and you will be happy"
Is UKIP still a thing? I thought it was on a level with the SDP or Socialist Labour.
it still stands candidates post Farage
But how do they do? The Liberal Party stands candidates in various council elections but has about six councillors nationwide.
See my other comment for detail. Zero Local Councillors.
Pre Robinson endorsement, if they put Robinson's photo on all their literature I could certainly see them picking up some local council seats in the likes of Burnley, Stoke, Coventry, Plymouth, Sunderland, Hartlepool, Dagenham etc
That's a provocative thought. You would have to add a couple of places in Amber Valley to that list, like Heanor, Waingroves, Old Denby.
This is the map of BNP members by then constituency in the period 2007-2009, when their database was leaked. It still seems a fairly sound basic analysis for where the far right are focused imo, although certain potential areas are less prominent that may feature, such as the Hi-De-Hi constituencies.
Some swing from Labour to Reform and the Greens since the GE then but Tories and LDs unchanged
That is a terrifying poll for UK Conservatives imo.
Real votes cast in by-elections not so terrifying though.
Are those local votes this autumn convincing you the Tories will return to government within the next fifteen years?
General Elections is leader v leader, chancellor v shadow, manifesto v manifesto, economic policy v economic policy - no local by elections won or lost this month are based on that General Election match up when it comes. And not to ignore the millstone the Conservatives carry into the coming General Elections, how awful they have been in government the last 4 years.
The actual question is, what brings the Lib Dem held seats the Conservatives need to form a government, what brings the voters Conservatives have lost to Reform, but need in order to form a government, back into the fold? Whatever the answer to that question is, I can’t see it, so by all means share the answer. 😕
The LibDems will not hold those 2024 seats in any great numbers. When people get fed up of Labour, they will not say "Oh, let's give the LibDems a go. You never know, they might be better at stopping all the shit we are fed up with Labour about."
Because they have facilitated that shit. The constituencies getting the worst deal in coming years will be those Labour don't need to win. The Tories will at least have their position as Official Opposition to try to shame Labour into reigning back on their worst vindictive efforts.The LibDems will just have to advise their voters to bend down and grasp their ankles.
The only advice the LibDems can offer constituensts is "Lube up..."
It’s encouraging that this is the Tory strategy. Just sit back and let those old seats lost to Lib Dems come home to the natural party of government.
Given the LDs exceeded pretty much all expectations by winning basically every target seat, even if half the seats they took from the Tories were to 'come home' as some Tories expect, they would probably see that as a good result if their voteshare holds up reasonably.
I don't think the Tories will find it easy to win those seats back. They will be straight LD Tory fights with an obvious choice to voters to keep the Tories out.
Liberal values and attitudes are now mainstream in the shires. Even Oakham has a pride parade now.
For now, at the moment the likeliest outcome of the next general election may well be a Labour and LD coalition government.
If so, the Tories can start to portray the LDs as Labour's tax rising little helpers in the home counties
How will they do that? The only govt the Lib Dems have been actually involved in recently is with the Conservatives. Come 2029 they'll be claiming they could have done everything Labour achieves and more but without raising "your" taxes or building in "your" backyard.
If supporting a minority Labour government with confidence and supply after 2029 they can be attacked as tax raising Labour's mini mes
The issue - of course - is the fact that a lot of the cause of discontent comes from globalisation. And when I say globalisation, I mean the fact that people in other countries around the world can now do what was once the preserve of the West.
It used to be that we swapped expensive manufactured products (that only we knew how to make) for cheap commodities. And we were rich, and they were poor.
But now the rest of the world has learned how to make manufactured product. And we still need commodities. And people in other countries are prepared to work harder for less money than us.
The only way around this is a combination of upskilling and automation - but even where that happens, it means the destruction of skilled working class jobs. The people looking after those Kuka robots in Tesla factories (what few of them there are) aren't High School graduates.
The world is changing, and railing against that change and trying to use legislation to make coal cost competitive with natural gas and solar, will only make things worse. Because in trying to save one industry, you make others even less cost competitive.
Some countries - like Switzerland, Singapore or Norway - have navigated this better. And what they all have in common is that they are relatively open economies with absolutely top notch education systems. We - and the US - should learn from them.
Switzerland and Singapore are relatively small financial services dominated tax havens effectively and Norway has masses of oil for its small size, they are unique circumstances
Manufacturing output per person:
Singapore - $53,548 Switzerland - $18,081 UK - $4,075
So... ummm... about those countries being dominated by financial services? Would you like to reconsider?
There appears to be a disconnect between the polls and the betting. Recent polls have Trump narrowing the gap such that the race is now a coin toss. However Harris is still marginally ahead in the key swing states.
But the betting now has Trump as clear favourite to win. Is this smart money or a consequence of market manipulation by Trump backers?
It's a consequence of market manipulation...ish. Democracy is one man one vote, but bets scale to wealth, not headcount. So in cases where the wealthy have a different voting pattern to the poor, the bets may get skewed. This certainly happened in 2016 with the EU referendum, and it's believed to be the case in the 2019? Conservative Leader vote when Andrea Leadsome was much higher than her polling would justify, and the 2021 London Mayoral with Brian Rose.
With regards to 2024, it has been suggested that a small group of whales (large gamblers) are skewing Polymarket. Here is the person suggesting it
Hmmm... that makes me reconsider my views. Previously, I had Trump as slight favorite. But if Luntz thinks that Trump is leading that does make me pause and wonder if I might be wrong.
"DWP to take money directly from bank accounts in benefit fraud crackdown DWP will reform ‘absurd outdated’ measures to prevent fraud which cost taxpayers a record £7.3bn last year"
I suspect we'll soon get to the point where it's prudent and sensible to keep 90% of your money in a box under the bed, with just enough in the bank to pay bills, because the Government has access to all your accounts, sees every transaction, and can drain your balance at will.
The state has been frog-boiling on this for a while, steadily eating away at financial privacy and safeguards.
That's a fascinating set of numbers, because it has Harris doing better in the sunbelt than the rustbelt. And demographically that's what you'd expect: younger voters and educated voters are increasingly Democrat, and those are exactly the kind of voters leaving Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and heading the Carolinas, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.
As has been clear for pretty much all of the last month, it's all coming down to polling error. The smallest polling error has been about 2% in the six cycles. If it's in Trump's direction, he's won easily. If it's in Harris's, then she has.
Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump · 5h 🚨Trump's former Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, suspects Putin is blackmailing Trump.
How and with what? Why is it necessary for these people to construct such implausible conspiracy theories rather than accepting that Trump is who he is, for better or worse?
That's normalcy bias. The idea that Trump is actually being actively blackmailed is bonkers, but this isn't some lefty on twitter. It's Dan Coats.
But the sad fact is that even if Trump is being blackmailed by Putin, it would only make a marginal impact on his support. Trump is a religion now.
It's unlikely, but it's not bonkers.
It's perfectly possible he was financially compromised in some way by the Russians is return for something. It's nut as though there isn't a long history of their doing exactly that kind if thing with people who do business over there.
Trump seems to be spending tonight's rally focused on Arnold Palmer's penis.
Truly we are at the end of times my friends.
I was trying to think of a pithy response but...I just can't.
How in the name of the wee man have we got here?
Partly because the main media wont take him on frankly. His campaign manager said before the rally that we would be seeing the "closing arguments" being unveiled for the final two weeks. So Trump spends 10 mins talking about a golfer and his equipment. This should be front page news. The guy is fucking deranged.
That's a fascinating set of numbers, because it has Harris doing better in the sunbelt than the rustbelt. And demographically that's what you'd expect: younger voters and educated voters are increasingly Democrat, and those are exactly the kind of voters leaving Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and heading the Carolinas, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.
As has been clear for pretty much all of the last month, it's all coming down to polling error. The smallest polling error has been about 2% in the six cycles. If it's in Trump's direction, he's won easily. If it's in Harris's, then she has.
Harris spent most of the last week in the rust belt states. So her polling is presumably telling a similar story.
If Trump wins, it doesn't matter at all whether or not it's legal.
Elon Musk’s Fake Sites and Fake Texts Impersonating the Harris Campaign
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/elon-musks-fake-sites-and-texts-impersonating-the-harris-campaign There’s deeply cynical and then there’s things which might be illegal. In the first category we have an Elon Musk-funded PAC microtargeting Jewish and Arab communities with diametrically opposed ads about Kamala Harris’s support for Israel or Palestine. Amazingly cynical. But then you have what I’m going to describe next which comes from another Musk-funded dark money operation. They have set up fake sites impersonating the Harris campaign using fake policy positions and then sending out text messages also impersonating the campaign which aim to drive voters to the fake site. (A lot of potential legal and regulatory questions turns on word like “fake” and “impersonating”, which we’ll return to in a moment.)
I found out about this from this article by Anna Massoglia at OpenSecrets. As far as I can tell she’s the first to report it. The project is the work of Building America’s Future PAC, which seems to be largely and perhaps now entirely funded by Elon Musk. ..
'Robert Jenrick has promised to tear up the Climate Change Act if he becomes Tory leader and eventually prime minister.
He has said he will scrap major pieces of Blair and Brown era legislation including the Climate Change Act, Equality Act and Human Rights Act under a “Great Reform Act” if he makes it to No 10.
His plans include scrapping carbon budgets and unburdening businesses of equality laws which have been criticised for driving positive discrimination and political correctness in the workplace.
He described carbon budgets as “Soviet-style five-year plans” and claimed they impede the building of critical national infrastructure projects.
Nope. My mum has voted Kemi, so Jenrick will be back to obscurity after his 15 minutes of fame.
Jenrick is sounding a bit desperate now.
Is there anything else he can promise we will leave to get more attention?
Leave the Commonwealth?
I mean that's just a load of woke nonsense isn't it these days?
These are not new pledges - they have been part of Jenrick’s campaign from the beginning.
And frankly, anyone not being aware of the issues with these Blairite legacy laws hasn't really been paying attention.
That's the credibility problem for the Conservatives in a nutshell. They had 14 years to repeal those laws, and...
And they didn't. And Jenrick has admitted they should have. He wasn't leader, so I'm struggling to see the issue.
He keeps boasting about being a member of all those Conservative governments! People have heard it all before and know that no government is going to repeal all those laws, simply because it would be so much hassle.
Why vote for the Conservatives when you can just vote for the real thing - Reform.
Does he boast about it? I haven't heard him do so, and I've been paying closer attention than most.
I think you slightly mistake my meaning, understandably to be fair. I didn't actually mean 'anyone' in the country not understanding the problem with the Evironment Act etc. hasn't been paying attention - I meant anyone who's a politics nerd on PB and doesn’t understand it hasn't been paying attention.
This story could be seen (and I suppose has been by the posters above) as Jenrick trying to find the juiciest possible red meat and chucking it to the members, but actually this has been his programme from day 1 of his campaign, with good reason.
Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump · 7h Wow. 12 million Americans have already voted.
I don't see how they can deduce anything from the number of people who've voted early so far.
Well, that tweet itself doesn't actually postulate that many people having voted earlier benefits any particular side (though obviously given the source of the tweet they would hope it does) so possibly it is just, as on its face, an expression of amazement at how many people have voted early. Maybe they have speculated more in further tweets.
Or perhaps that is a lot more than last time at this point, and they are supposing that will mean something in relation to higher turnout this time, which may benefit their side.
Or perhaps there is a historic trend of Dems taking up early voting more than Republicans, or it's seen as a sign of the success of ground game operations to see a lot more early votes and they think the Dems have a stronger ground game, so more early votes is good for them.
Any of these deductions could be wrong, but I can see how they could be made.
A few things to remember:
1) Early voters tend to be focussed in Democratic target groups. If they are voting in large numbers, that's a definite positive for Harris. This election will likely be decided by turnout especially in swing states.
2) Once a vote has been cast, the rest of the campaign becomes irrelevant to it. Therefore if Harris' supporters have voted it won't matter if she or Walz makes a gaffe. Meanwhile, Trump's increasingly strange behaviour may still be relevant.
3) As against that, Trump and his puppet master Musk will undoubtedly try to claim the amount of early voting was a clear sign of fraud and use it to contest the election results if they lose.
We shouldnt be complacent. This is the blurb from Tommy Robinsons best selling book manifesto.
For decades the political class have openly planned to replace the indigenous people of Europe and in Manifesto we focus on how they are doing this in the UK. To ensure no-one disturbs their plans the elite manufacture a mythical far-right, when in truth it is the elite 1% who run a Fascist system of state-control, censorship and discrimination. Whenever someone has publicly addressed what is going on, the ruling class set about to destroy that person. We show how the elitist 1% have openly manipulated democracy to subjugate the masses, their elitist discussions carried on in plain sight for over a century, while they distract the masses with unimportant nonsense. The 1% knowingly plan to bring about another global conflict and in the aftermath they will end up in control of the world's resources and financial systems: "you will own nothing and you will be happy"
Is UKIP still a thing? I thought it was on a level with the SDP or Socialist Labour.
it still stands candidates post Farage
But how do they do? The Liberal Party stands candidates in various council elections but has about six councillors nationwide.
See my other comment for detail. Zero Local Councillors.
Pre Robinson endorsement, if they put Robinson's photo on all their literature I could certainly see them picking up some local council seats in the likes of Burnley, Stoke, Coventry, Plymouth, Sunderland, Hartlepool, Dagenham etc
That's a provocative thought. You would have to add a couple of places in Amber Valley to that list, like Heanor, Waingroves, Old Denby.
This is the map of BNP members by then constituency in the period 2007-2009, when their database was leaked. It still seems a fairly sound basic analysis for where the far right are focused imo, although certain potential areas are less prominent that may feature, such as the Hi-De-Hi constituencies.
Some swing from Labour to Reform and the Greens since the GE then but Tories and LDs unchanged
That is a terrifying poll for UK Conservatives imo.
Real votes cast in by-elections not so terrifying though.
Are those local votes this autumn convincing you the Tories will return to government within the next fifteen years?
General Elections is leader v leader, chancellor v shadow, manifesto v manifesto, economic policy v economic policy - no local by elections won or lost this month are based on that General Election match up when it comes. And not to ignore the millstone the Conservatives carry into the coming General Elections, how awful they have been in government the last 4 years.
The actual question is, what brings the Lib Dem held seats the Conservatives need to form a government, what brings the voters Conservatives have lost to Reform, but need in order to form a government, back into the fold? Whatever the answer to that question is, I can’t see it, so by all means share the answer. 😕
The LibDems will not hold those 2024 seats in any great numbers. When people get fed up of Labour, they will not say "Oh, let's give the LibDems a go. You never know, they might be better at stopping all the shit we are fed up with Labour about."
Because they have facilitated that shit. The constituencies getting the worst deal in coming years will be those Labour don't need to win. The Tories will at least have their position as Official Opposition to try to shame Labour into reigning back on their worst vindictive efforts.The LibDems will just have to advise their voters to bend down and grasp their ankles.
The only advice the LibDems can offer constituensts is "Lube up..."
It’s encouraging that this is the Tory strategy. Just sit back and let those old seats lost to Lib Dems come home to the natural party of government.
Given the LDs exceeded pretty much all expectations by winning basically every target seat, even if half the seats they took from the Tories were to 'come home' as some Tories expect, they would probably see that as a good result if their voteshare holds up reasonably.
I don't think the Tories will find it easy to win those seats back. They will be straight LD Tory fights with an obvious choice to voters to keep the Tories out.
Liberal values and attitudes are now mainstream in the shires. Even Oakham has a pride parade now.
For now, at the moment the likeliest outcome of the next general election may well be a Labour and LD coalition government.
If so, the Tories can start to portray the LDs as Labour's tax rising little helpers in the home counties
🤷♀️
Does it need to be stressed again today, once you shred reputations for economic competence and governmental competence, what a long road back it is from there. That credibly ain’t miraculously coming back, just because Starmer got freebie concert tickets, and Reeves does a couple of early Parliament tax taking, War Chest budgets. Labour need to badly handle the economy, be a big sleazy mess at running the country, and even then it’s going to take a lot of hard, talented work to convince the voters to forget and forgive us so quickly.
One thing different than UK political history to guide us - how many voters permanently lost to Lib Dem’s, Labour and Reform on the General Election cycle, thanks to the Pandoras Box of Brexit being opened? Another thing different than UK political history to guide us, and much much worse than merely being the enablers and designers of Brexit - UK Conservatism being re defined in front of our eyes. Does using the Ron DeSantis and NeoCon playbooks, rather than the Lady Thatcher playbook, make UK Conservatives more, or less successful on the UK General Election cycle?
As I carefully explained, cosplaying Lady Thatcher, expressing love for Thatcherism means diddly squat if Conservatives don’t put up income taxes when needed, and slap Windfall Taxes on the Banks and Oil Companies, in order to give working households help in credit crunch - which is exactly what Lady Thatcher done to build her election wins and Legendary status on.
This ain’t no moment to reach for polling comforts, or complacency - this is a very perilous moment in terms of long term General Election success.
What would a Trump presidency mean? F*ck knows. But we should be taking his statements seriously. He's likely to abandon Ukraine and cosy up to Putin. This could destroy Nato and put us at odds with a US government in a way we haven't been for over 100 years. We're facing a major threat from the Axis of autocrats led by China and it's not clear the US President would be on our side.
Trump 2.0 means the end of the world order as it has been since the 40s. NATO cannot survive if its biggest member effectively switches sides. Any nation with even the most flimsy territorial claim and sufficient military capability will know they will get away with using force.
And, yes, almost nobody in power is taking this seriously enough.
We are not prepared for a world where the US is an enemy. Where Ukraine falls and multiple EU members know they are next in line for Putin's meatgrinder. Where China makes a grab for Taiwan and causes a global economic meltdown.
This isn't even accounting for the not insignificant chance the US itself begins to come apart. If you are the US military command do you obey Trump's orders to abandon Ukraine and begin aiding Russia, or do you consider the unthinkable? Does the Governor of a liberal state acquiesce as Vance & co implement Project 2025, or does succession suddenly become the lest terrible course?
Lots of people are closing their eyes and hoping this doesn't happen. I hope they're not in for an unpleasant shock.
Even if Trump does win it will likely be with a small mandate and doesn't mean the US will suddenly become an enemy and pro Russia and China.
Trump is proposing massive tariffs on Chinese imports as well as EU imports for one and he did back Brexit unlike the Democrats.
Most likely he would try and force a deal between Putin and Zelensky in Ukraine but otherwise remain neutral
If Trump wins, and I think …..hope …… that’s by no means certain…… he’ll regard that as a mandate for whatever he wants to do.
A (more) worrying thing is that his cognitive decline is such that he doesn't do what he wants to do; but he does whatever the last person who whispers in his ear wants him to do.
That is more or less what happened last time (and even with previous GOP presidents). It was not Trump himself who felt particularly strongly about stacking the courts or tax cuts for billionaires or where to put the embassy in Israel. The problem was not cognitive decline so much as Trump had never given much thought to most political issues. Trump's own decades-long concerns were China and isolationism (anti-globalisation if you prefer) which at least meant no new wars.
"Every day, from now through Nov 5, @America PAC will be giving away $1M to someone in swing states who signed our petition to support free speech & the right to bear arms!
We want to make sure that everyone in swing states hears about this and I suspect this will ensure they do."
"Every day, from now through Nov 5, @America PAC will be giving away $1M to someone in swing states who signed our petition to support free speech & the right to bear arms!
We want to make sure that everyone in swing states hears about this and I suspect this will ensure they do."
Comments
Ignore his stated viewpoints, they mean nothing.
DWP will reform ‘absurd outdated’ measures to prevent fraud which cost taxpayers a record £7.3bn last year"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/10/19/state-powers-benefit-fraud-crackdown/
If they are stupid enough to elect him in November then he 'aint going anywhere until he is dead. No way will he or his MAGA cult accept term limits.
I mean that's just a load of woke nonsense isn't it these days?
"I told you to win the Presidency or else! Why are you talking about eating dogs and cats?!"
And it isn't the first time that the settlement mechanism on Polymarket would be broken either. See our previous convo about Venezuela for example, which happily I never did anything on otherwise I'd have lost my 3XL shirt.
(Still there have been fun dislocations between more conventional US prediction markets and Betfair before. 2012 for example. That was free money for anyone who could place trades in both places).
Though personally I think it is a useful took to reduce Beiing's influence beyond that
Exclusive: Trump ground game in key states flagged as potentially fake
Data suggests canvassers linked to Elon Musk’s America Pac falsely claimed to have visited homes of potential voters
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/19/trump-campaign-leaked-data-voters-elon-musk
It would be a bit odd to have such a sophisticated operation but place such simple bets.
2. My support means absolutely nothing to him - I am not a party member.
3. Jenrick has committed himself to these policies - that's more than his opponent has done. Of course he could row back on them, but Kemi hasn't even bothered to present anything to row back on.
4. Regardless of what you perceive to be his own lack of sincerity Jenrick is part of a wider parliamentary group who I believe do sincerely wish to implement these policies because they realise (as Jenrick does) that the Blairite legal settlement should have been overturned when Labour left No. 10, as it has been deeply damaging to our country and has effectively neutered our democracy.
Republicans against Trump
@RpsAgainstTrump
·
7h
Wow. 12 million Americans have already voted.
And frankly, anyone not being aware of the issues with these Blairite legacy laws hasn't really been paying attention.
Or perhaps that is a lot more than last time at this point, and they are supposing that will mean something in relation to higher turnout this time, which may benefit their side.
Or perhaps there is a historic trend of Dems taking up early voting more than Republicans, or it's seen as a sign of the success of ground game operations to see a lot more early votes and they think the Dems have a stronger ground game, so more early votes is good for them.
Any of these deductions could be wrong, but I can see how they could be made.
*The reason I need convincing is that I'm not so sure the juice is worth the squeeze
About the only thing worse is pundits... and everything else.
That doesn't mean the credibility problem does not exist at all, especially if the person in question held some senior positions and tacitly accepted issue X in order to get ahead. That's part of the price of being a good little soldier, necessary to get ahead to some degree.
But it's not insurmountable, especially as after a big loss a party is expected to make some big changes, which will necessarily involve rejecting or embracing something they previously did not. Indeed, they will be laughed at if they don't seek to change.
So the question is really the basic one of if it is a good idea, and if it is does the public? And so do you either not go there, or seek to change people's minds about it?
Why vote for the Conservatives when you can just vote for the real thing - Reform.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/pennsylvania/
The way Uma works is that there are a bunch of tokens (you can think of them like shares in a company). If you have a question like "who won the 2024 presidential election", you ask Uma and the Uma tokenholders will vote on what they think happened. (Actually the process is a bit more complicated than this, but the complications probably make it worse.) So if Harris wins but the Uma tokenholders vote that Trump won, the Trump punters will get paid.
If you've got a lot of money, you can either buy Uma tokens or bribe Uma tokenholders to vote that Trump won the election. You may be doing this expecting to make a loss, because you're trying to make people think that Trump won so he can steal the election. Alternatively if you've got a lot of money staked on Trump, you may be able to make a profit. In theory Uma tokenholders are motivated to vote honestly because their tokens will be worth less if their market-settling system settles a market wrongly, but if the amount you stand to win on your bets is high enough compared to the value of the Uma tokens, you may be able to make a profit even if Uma goes to zero as a result. And Uma won't necessarily go to zero even if it missettles, firstly because crypto prices are basically random numbers with minimal connection whether anything works, and secondly because a lot of investors will be Trump fans who think that it settled correctly.
In non-crypto terms, just imagine putting a load of money on Trump on Betfair, and then when Harris wins, you either buy a load of Betfair shares or bribe the Betfair management to say that Trump won and pay the Trump punters instead of the Harris punters. This probably wouldn't work because the courts would have something to say about it, but there are no courts involved here because the Uma tokenholders are anonymous.
Truly we are at the end of times my friends.
How in the name of the wee man have we got here?
To quoth Gomer Pyle - Surprise, surprise!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW9v2dmsyYI
With regards to 2024, it has been suggested that a small group of whales (large gamblers) are skewing Polymarket. Here is the person suggesting it
https://nitter.poast.org/Domahhhh
https://www.wsj.com/finance/betting-election-pro-trump-ad74aa71
As for the intelligence services, somebody once said that if you are gay you are told to go on Pride marches to avoid blackmail
I suspect we'll soon get to the point where it's prudent and sensible to keep 90% of your money in a box under the bed, with just enough in the bank to pay bills, because the Government has access to all your accounts, sees every transaction, and can drain your balance at will.
The state has been frog-boiling on this for a while, steadily eating away at financial privacy and safeguards.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-bc-election-ndp-conservatives/
Anyone know when the results start to come through?
Edit: Eric Grenier is doing a live stream in about 100 minutes from now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFtYeH1vUqk
#New General Election poll - Swing States
Arizona - 🟡 Tie
Georgia - 🔴 Trump +2
N. Carolina - 🔵 Harris +2
Nevada - 🟡 Tie
Michigan - 🔴 Trump +3
Pennsylvania - 🔴 Trump +3
Wisconsin - 🔵 Harris +1
Atlas Intel #A - 10/17
As has been clear for pretty much all of the last month, it's all coming down to polling error. The smallest polling error has been about 2% in the six cycles. If it's in Trump's direction, he's won easily. If it's in Harris's, then she has.
It's perfectly possible he was financially compromised in some way by the Russians is return for something.
It's nut as though there isn't a long history of their doing exactly that kind if thing with people who do business over there.
That's just one possibility.
https://x.com/samstein/status/1847813889108410748
The NYT, as usual, sane washed and called it "golfing stories".
"Trump appears energetic in scattered Pennsylvania speech"
The NYT journalist who wrote their story, which completely omitted the incident, claims it was actively censored by the senior editor.
https://x.com/bsdtectr/status/1847816879458414639
But it's a "Liberal Newspaper".
Elon Musk’s Fake Sites and Fake Texts Impersonating the Harris Campaign
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/elon-musks-fake-sites-and-texts-impersonating-the-harris-campaign
There’s deeply cynical and then there’s things which might be illegal. In the first category we have an Elon Musk-funded PAC microtargeting Jewish and Arab communities with diametrically opposed ads about Kamala Harris’s support for Israel or Palestine. Amazingly cynical. But then you have what I’m going to describe next which comes from another Musk-funded dark money operation. They have set up fake sites impersonating the Harris campaign using fake policy positions and then sending out text messages also impersonating the campaign which aim to drive voters to the fake site. (A lot of potential legal and regulatory questions turns on word like “fake” and “impersonating”, which we’ll return to in a moment.)
I found out about this from this article by Anna Massoglia at OpenSecrets. As far as I can tell she’s the first to report it. The project is the work of Building America’s Future PAC, which seems to be largely and perhaps now entirely funded by Elon Musk. ..
I think you slightly mistake my meaning, understandably to be fair. I didn't actually mean 'anyone' in the country not understanding the problem with the Evironment Act etc. hasn't been paying attention - I meant anyone who's a politics nerd on PB and doesn’t understand it hasn't been paying attention.
This story could be seen (and I suppose has been by the posters above) as Jenrick trying to find the juiciest possible red meat and chucking it to the members, but actually this has been his programme from day 1 of his campaign, with good reason.
1) Early voters tend to be focussed in Democratic target groups. If they are voting in large numbers, that's a definite positive for Harris. This election will likely be decided by turnout especially in swing states.
2) Once a vote has been cast, the rest of the campaign becomes irrelevant to it. Therefore if Harris' supporters have voted it won't matter if she or Walz makes a gaffe. Meanwhile, Trump's increasingly strange behaviour may still be relevant.
3) As against that, Trump and his puppet master Musk will undoubtedly try to claim the amount of early voting was a clear sign of fraud and use it to contest the election results if they lose.
https://www.thecricketer.com/Topics/globalgame/tom_harrison_in_line_to_replace_geoff_allardice_as_icc_ceo.html?t=638650001023577747
Tom Harrison for the ICC? I mean, seriously?
He's a stupider version of Donald Trump.
And his track record in English cricket covered all points from the catastrophic to the merely dire.
F1 ramble will be later than usual due to a combination of me being tired and giving the markets more time to wake up too.
Does it need to be stressed again today, once you shred reputations for economic competence and governmental competence, what a long road back it is from there. That credibly ain’t miraculously coming back, just because Starmer got freebie concert tickets, and Reeves does a couple of early Parliament tax taking, War Chest budgets. Labour need to badly handle the economy, be a big sleazy mess at running the country, and even then it’s going to take a lot of hard, talented work to convince the voters to forget and forgive us so quickly.
One thing different than UK political history to guide us - how many voters permanently lost to Lib Dem’s, Labour and Reform on the General Election cycle, thanks to the Pandoras Box of Brexit being opened?
Another thing different than UK political history to guide us, and much much worse than merely being the enablers and designers of Brexit - UK Conservatism being re defined in front of our eyes. Does using the Ron DeSantis and NeoCon playbooks, rather than the Lady Thatcher playbook, make UK Conservatives more, or less successful on the UK General Election cycle?
As I carefully explained, cosplaying Lady Thatcher, expressing love for Thatcherism means diddly squat if Conservatives don’t put up income taxes when needed, and slap Windfall Taxes on the Banks and Oil Companies, in order to give working households help in credit crunch - which is exactly what Lady Thatcher done to build her election wins and Legendary status on.
This ain’t no moment to reach for polling comforts, or complacency - this is a very perilous moment in terms of long term General Election success.
We want to make sure that everyone in swing states hears about this and I suspect this will ensure they do."
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1847856712914555061
NEW THREAD