The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet.
In her acceptance speech, she described the task ahead as “tough”, which is an understatement. The July election was the worst result for the Conservative party, both in terms of vote share and seats won, since 1832. I am not among those who think this means the Tories can never recover. They have been pronounced dead and buried in the past only then to rise from the grave. But they are unlikely to start recovering until – and unless – they have an honest reckoning with themselves about their multiple failings in government.
Surveys suggest that very few voters think the Conservatives lost the election because they were too left wing while the majority of those with an opinion put it down to their incompetence.
One of the biggest challenges for the new leader of the opposition, and especially when the Tory parliamentary presence is so small, will be persuading voters to pay them any heed. The case made for Mrs Badenoch by her promoters is that she is “box office” with a gift for grabbing attention. What she has often failed to grasp is that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of attention. “Still in development” is the assessment of one reasonably sympathetic senior Tory.
Conservatives have displayed next to no interest in atoning for all the things voters came to loathe about them. There has never been a comprehensive repudiation of Boris Johnson for debauching standards in public life. Nor has there been an expression of suitably abject contrition for Liz Truss’s calamitous experiment with the economy. Nor have senior Tories had the humility to acknowledge that they left a super-massive black hole in the Treasury’s books. When you have fouled up as badly and as repeatedly as the Conservatives did in government, the first step to redemption with the electorate is to own your blunders and express regret for them.
Even if voters become persistently discontented with Sir Keir’s government, the Tories are delusional if they imagine that this means the public will simply collapse back into their embrace and tell the Conservatives all is forgiven. Not least because so far the Tories have been almost completely incapable of recognising how much forgiveness they will need before they are taken seriously again. If Kemi Badenoch wants to get a hearing from the British people, she is first going to have to say sorry. And she is going to have to say it a lot.
Even worse for them membership numbers down:
"In 2022, when Liz Truss defeated Rishi Sunak, 141,725 members out of about 172,000 voted. However, by Saturday there were only 131,680 Tory members eligible to vote for the next leader, a drop of 23%."
And as only 95,000 of those voted looks as if actual paying membership will drop further.
Fewer members means less money.
Let's be honest. No realistic prospect of tweaking government policy in a favourable way to the donar means less money.
Highlights how irrelevant mass membership is to party finances as well. 150k members at £40 a time is £6 million, which doesn't go far these days.
The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet.
In her acceptance speech, she described the task ahead as “tough”, which is an understatement. The July election was the worst result for the Conservative party, both in terms of vote share and seats won, since 1832. I am not among those who think this means the Tories can never recover. They have been pronounced dead and buried in the past only then to rise from the grave. But they are unlikely to start recovering until – and unless – they have an honest reckoning with themselves about their multiple failings in government.
Surveys suggest that very few voters think the Conservatives lost the election because they were too left wing while the majority of those with an opinion put it down to their incompetence.
One of the biggest challenges for the new leader of the opposition, and especially when the Tory parliamentary presence is so small, will be persuading voters to pay them any heed. The case made for Mrs Badenoch by her promoters is that she is “box office” with a gift for grabbing attention. What she has often failed to grasp is that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of attention. “Still in development” is the assessment of one reasonably sympathetic senior Tory.
Conservatives have displayed next to no interest in atoning for all the things voters came to loathe about them. There has never been a comprehensive repudiation of Boris Johnson for debauching standards in public life. Nor has there been an expression of suitably abject contrition for Liz Truss’s calamitous experiment with the economy. Nor have senior Tories had the humility to acknowledge that they left a super-massive black hole in the Treasury’s books. When you have fouled up as badly and as repeatedly as the Conservatives did in government, the first step to redemption with the electorate is to own your blunders and express regret for them.
Even if voters become persistently discontented with Sir Keir’s government, the Tories are delusional if they imagine that this means the public will simply collapse back into their embrace and tell the Conservatives all is forgiven. Not least because so far the Tories have been almost completely incapable of recognising how much forgiveness they will need before they are taken seriously again. If Kemi Badenoch wants to get a hearing from the British people, she is first going to have to say sorry. And she is going to have to say it a lot.
I think this is why Badenoch was the better choice. Jenrick was continuity sleaze.
Kemi's victory speech was clear that big mistakes were made by the Tories in office and that they need to have a long hard look at themselves.
Her musings in the past that WFP should be scrapped (which she rowed back on when it became Labour policy) and on Maternity pay being too generous shows a real willingness to make deep cuts to welfare and pensions in order to move to a low tax country.
I wonder if she has the courage to scrap the Triple Lock. She just might.
I think Badenoch should move to the double-lock in the next 12 months (and sweeten the pill by keeping all other pensioner benefits) and couple it with a narrative of a stronger, fairer and wealthier future for the UK - plus attack Labour on tax.
She'll suffer flak - and Labour may pledge to keep it to try and outflank her - but I think the Tories only chance to junk this is in Opposition, it will play well to younger/ middle-aged voter and so that, by the time of the next election, it's no longer a big issue.
Farage will take the oldies and it will be game over for the conservatives.
I don't think so.
It’s clearly a risk to your strategy, the mitigation would be to (somehow) bury Farage before the policy shift.
Actually, thinking this through, it probably is a risk.
One forgets that to any unqualified and universal benefit people end up thinking it's both an entitlement and that there's not enough of it.
So a reaction could be one of anger and desertion.
Maybe it'd be better to pledge ending it at a date in the future?
Personally, I think the Tories have to deal with their right flank somehow early on. Much as successful Labour leaders have had to figure out how to manage the left.
You cannot make important but difficult decisions whilst Farage is on hand to pop up with betrayal and outrage at a moment’s notice.
What is the dividing line with Farage, which keeps the voters with the Tories? And gives Badenoch room for manoeuvre?
Whereas I think the polar opposite.
Corbyn "shoring up Labour's left flank" helped Boris win a massive majority.
Starmer expelling Corbyn and ensuring that Corbyn and his acolytes and the Hamas independents etc were pissing from the outside helped Labour win a landslide majority.
You don't win elections by appealing to the extremists that piss off everyone else.
We’re in agreement, dealing with something is not the same as accommodating something. Ignoring it nd hoping it will go away is not an option.
The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet.
In her acceptance speech, she described the task ahead as “tough”, which is an understatement. The July election was the worst result for the Conservative party, both in terms of vote share and seats won, since 1832. I am not among those who think this means the Tories can never recover. They have been pronounced dead and buried in the past only then to rise from the grave. But they are unlikely to start recovering until – and unless – they have an honest reckoning with themselves about their multiple failings in government.
Surveys suggest that very few voters think the Conservatives lost the election because they were too left wing while the majority of those with an opinion put it down to their incompetence.
One of the biggest challenges for the new leader of the opposition, and especially when the Tory parliamentary presence is so small, will be persuading voters to pay them any heed. The case made for Mrs Badenoch by her promoters is that she is “box office” with a gift for grabbing attention. What she has often failed to grasp is that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of attention. “Still in development” is the assessment of one reasonably sympathetic senior Tory.
Conservatives have displayed next to no interest in atoning for all the things voters came to loathe about them. There has never been a comprehensive repudiation of Boris Johnson for debauching standards in public life. Nor has there been an expression of suitably abject contrition for Liz Truss’s calamitous experiment with the economy. Nor have senior Tories had the humility to acknowledge that they left a super-massive black hole in the Treasury’s books. When you have fouled up as badly and as repeatedly as the Conservatives did in government, the first step to redemption with the electorate is to own your blunders and express regret for them.
Even if voters become persistently discontented with Sir Keir’s government, the Tories are delusional if they imagine that this means the public will simply collapse back into their embrace and tell the Conservatives all is forgiven. Not least because so far the Tories have been almost completely incapable of recognising how much forgiveness they will need before they are taken seriously again. If Kemi Badenoch wants to get a hearing from the British people, she is first going to have to say sorry. And she is going to have to say it a lot.
I think this is why Badenoch was the better choice. Jenrick was continuity sleaze.
Kemi's victory speech was clear that big mistakes were made by the Tories in office and that they need to have a long hard look at themselves.
Her musings in the past that WFP should be scrapped (which she rowed back on when it became Labour policy) and on Maternity pay being too generous shows a real willingness to make deep cuts to welfare and pensions in order to move to a low tax country.
I wonder if she has the courage to scrap the Triple Lock. She just might.
Badenoch’s weakness is that she is very tribal, aggressively so. The most successful politicians have the ability to look over the party horizon and sympathise without and understand voters that make other choices. She shares Corbyns disdain for the opposition. Evangelical self righteousness makes big tent politics far harder.
I think she will rub a lot of people the wrong way, particularly if she goes heavy on the social authoritarianism of the National Conservatives.
I think she is quite socially conservative herself, but the key issue is whether she wants to force that social conservatism on the rest of us, or whether she actually believes in freedom.
That's always the tricky bit for social conservatives. In theory, "I respect your freedom to go full-on Gilead in your personal life" ought to work, but in practice it doesn't. As our friends across the Atlantic are demonstrating.
I always find it interesting how vociferously left-wingers and progressive liberals argue against any pushback to their sociocultural consensus. "Stick to the economics, guys!"
Maybe they doth protest too much...
No, it's just old fashioned Liberalism. It's why I don't vote Labour or Conservative, but was swayed to vote for Cameron in 2010.
Identity politics goes against Liberalism.
That's why I oppose it.
I don't support Identity Politics.
In particular the nasty right wing populism prevalent across the world.
If Trump fails to win Iowa by at least 7%, he's in trouble.
He's in trouble.
Taking the difference from the polling average at face value and projecting nationally - as just a bit of fun - it would imply Harris winning not only all the commonly recognised swing states, but also Florida, Texas, Iowa, Ohio and Alaska!
Given Florida and Texas voted to the left of Iowa last time there are scenarios where Trump narrowly retains Iowa but ships Florida and Texas. On this poll I’d be taking a much closer look at Texas as it is trending Blue over time, and if Harris were to flip it this cycle Trump would have no path to 270.
If Texas flips to Harris then it’s all over for Trump. It’s been trending Dem for seemingly decades now, but never quite gets there.
The ground game Harris has built is like nothing we have ever seen before. This, from Daily Kos, a partisan site, gives some idea of the scale:
"Reuters reported earlier this month that Elon Musk's America PAC, during an internal meeting, said it wouldn't hit its goal of 450,000 door knocks by election day in WI.
At this rate, Harris campaign in PA will hit 450,000 door knocks in 225 minutes, just shy of four hours. https://t.co/upkZzrocN1 pic.twitter.com/imq6ZiAHrj
The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet.
In her acceptance speech, she described the task ahead as “tough”, which is an understatement. The July election was the worst result for the Conservative party, both in terms of vote share and seats won, since 1832. I am not among those who think this means the Tories can never recover. They have been pronounced dead and buried in the past only then to rise from the grave. But they are unlikely to start recovering until – and unless – they have an honest reckoning with themselves about their multiple failings in government.
Surveys suggest that very few voters think the Conservatives lost the election because they were too left wing while the majority of those with an opinion put it down to their incompetence.
One of the biggest challenges for the new leader of the opposition, and especially when the Tory parliamentary presence is so small, will be persuading voters to pay them any heed. The case made for Mrs Badenoch by her promoters is that she is “box office” with a gift for grabbing attention. What she has often failed to grasp is that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of attention. “Still in development” is the assessment of one reasonably sympathetic senior Tory.
Conservatives have displayed next to no interest in atoning for all the things voters came to loathe about them. There has never been a comprehensive repudiation of Boris Johnson for debauching standards in public life. Nor has there been an expression of suitably abject contrition for Liz Truss’s calamitous experiment with the economy. Nor have senior Tories had the humility to acknowledge that they left a super-massive black hole in the Treasury’s books. When you have fouled up as badly and as repeatedly as the Conservatives did in government, the first step to redemption with the electorate is to own your blunders and express regret for them.
Even if voters become persistently discontented with Sir Keir’s government, the Tories are delusional if they imagine that this means the public will simply collapse back into their embrace and tell the Conservatives all is forgiven. Not least because so far the Tories have been almost completely incapable of recognising how much forgiveness they will need before they are taken seriously again. If Kemi Badenoch wants to get a hearing from the British people, she is first going to have to say sorry. And she is going to have to say it a lot.
Even worse for them membership numbers down:
"In 2022, when Liz Truss defeated Rishi Sunak, 141,725 members out of about 172,000 voted. However, by Saturday there were only 131,680 Tory members eligible to vote for the next leader, a drop of 23%."
And as only 95,000 of those voted looks as if actual paying membership will drop further.
Fewer members means less money.
Badenoch urgently needs to work out how to attract some younger members, to replace those taking their membership to the graveyard.
In the long scheme of things people join political parties for particular reasons. No-one has to. Forget the glorious past of Tories as a middle class dating agency. It isn't coming back.
The reasons: support for fundamental principles; and/or access to the power/money/jobs greasy pole at some level, from Great Snoring Parish Council to Prime Minister to business person.
The Tories stood for: competence, moderation, wealth creation, a Burkean view of change, small platoons, sound defence, self reliance, a degree of equality of opportunity, no interest in equality of outcomes.
I can't give an account at this moment of what set of principles anyone would join for. If that is so, then it will be dominated by chancers.
How's that "Starmer is the real one-nation Tory" stuff going for you ?
Good question. However, in my view he was the nearest, not 'the real'. First impressions? Not bad, but awful presentation. Still loads better than the Tories. If there were an election tomorrow I would vote Labour.
Budget? I note the critics on the whole have picked individual holes, (as can I) but can't offer much by way of alternative to tax, borrow and spend.
Chortle.
I suspect deep-down you know you got this badly wrong and it's only pride and cognitive dissonance that's keeping you from admitting it, because you fear humiliation and the "told you sos" more than anything else.
But... let's hope this is seltzer for Democrat queasiness.
I’m resolutely avoiding hope at all costs. I’ve told the family Trump is going to win at a canter and we need to be prepared for the tariff recession.
Lack of hope being a lesson drummed into me from watching Threads on Halloween night.
(Though honestly, and it feels sacrilegious to say this, I found it a bit hammy and overwrought. The whole wind whistling constantly in the post-war period, the grey filter, they were laying it on thick).
The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet.
In her acceptance speech, she described the task ahead as “tough”, which is an understatement. The July election was the worst result for the Conservative party, both in terms of vote share and seats won, since 1832. I am not among those who think this means the Tories can never recover. They have been pronounced dead and buried in the past only then to rise from the grave. But they are unlikely to start recovering until – and unless – they have an honest reckoning with themselves about their multiple failings in government.
Surveys suggest that very few voters think the Conservatives lost the election because they were too left wing while the majority of those with an opinion put it down to their incompetence.
One of the biggest challenges for the new leader of the opposition, and especially when the Tory parliamentary presence is so small, will be persuading voters to pay them any heed. The case made for Mrs Badenoch by her promoters is that she is “box office” with a gift for grabbing attention. What she has often failed to grasp is that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of attention. “Still in development” is the assessment of one reasonably sympathetic senior Tory.
Conservatives have displayed next to no interest in atoning for all the things voters came to loathe about them. There has never been a comprehensive repudiation of Boris Johnson for debauching standards in public life. Nor has there been an expression of suitably abject contrition for Liz Truss’s calamitous experiment with the economy. Nor have senior Tories had the humility to acknowledge that they left a super-massive black hole in the Treasury’s books. When you have fouled up as badly and as repeatedly as the Conservatives did in government, the first step to redemption with the electorate is to own your blunders and express regret for them.
Even if voters become persistently discontented with Sir Keir’s government, the Tories are delusional if they imagine that this means the public will simply collapse back into their embrace and tell the Conservatives all is forgiven. Not least because so far the Tories have been almost completely incapable of recognising how much forgiveness they will need before they are taken seriously again. If Kemi Badenoch wants to get a hearing from the British people, she is first going to have to say sorry. And she is going to have to say it a lot.
I think this is why Badenoch was the better choice. Jenrick was continuity sleaze.
Kemi's victory speech was clear that big mistakes were made by the Tories in office and that they need to have a long hard look at themselves.
Her musings in the past that WFP should be scrapped (which she rowed back on when it became Labour policy) and on Maternity pay being too generous shows a real willingness to make deep cuts to welfare and pensions in order to move to a low tax country.
I wonder if she has the courage to scrap the Triple Lock. She just might.
I think Badenoch should move to the double-lock in the next 12 months (and sweeten the pill by keeping all other pensioner benefits) and couple it with a narrative of a stronger, fairer and wealthier future for the UK - plus attack Labour on tax.
She'll suffer flak - and Labour may pledge to keep it to try and outflank her - but I think the Tories only chance to junk this is in Opposition, it will play well to younger/ middle-aged voter and so that, by the time of the next election, it's no longer a big issue.
Farage will take the oldies and it will be game over for the conservatives.
I don't think so.
It’s clearly a risk to your strategy, the mitigation would be to (somehow) bury Farage before the policy shift.
Actually, thinking this through, it probably is a risk.
One forgets that to any unqualified and universal benefit people end up thinking it's both an entitlement and that there's not enough of it.
So a reaction could be one of anger and desertion.
Maybe it'd be better to pledge ending it at a date in the future?
Personally, I think the Tories have to deal with their right flank somehow early on. Much as successful Labour leaders have had to figure out how to manage the left.
You cannot make important but difficult decisions whilst Farage is on hand to pop up with betrayal and outrage at a moment’s notice.
What is the dividing line with Farage, which keeps the voters with the Tories? And gives Badenoch room for manoeuvre?
I think the Tories can ride two horses at once.
Labour's programme for government offers opportunities for the Tories to reclaim votes from Reform, Labour and the Lib Dems all at the same time because they're pursuing policies at odds with a significant number of floating voters in all those constituencies.
The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet.
In her acceptance speech, she described the task ahead as “tough”, which is an understatement. The July election was the worst result for the Conservative party, both in terms of vote share and seats won, since 1832. I am not among those who think this means the Tories can never recover. They have been pronounced dead and buried in the past only then to rise from the grave. But they are unlikely to start recovering until – and unless – they have an honest reckoning with themselves about their multiple failings in government.
Surveys suggest that very few voters think the Conservatives lost the election because they were too left wing while the majority of those with an opinion put it down to their incompetence.
One of the biggest challenges for the new leader of the opposition, and especially when the Tory parliamentary presence is so small, will be persuading voters to pay them any heed. The case made for Mrs Badenoch by her promoters is that she is “box office” with a gift for grabbing attention. What she has often failed to grasp is that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of attention. “Still in development” is the assessment of one reasonably sympathetic senior Tory.
Conservatives have displayed next to no interest in atoning for all the things voters came to loathe about them. There has never been a comprehensive repudiation of Boris Johnson for debauching standards in public life. Nor has there been an expression of suitably abject contrition for Liz Truss’s calamitous experiment with the economy. Nor have senior Tories had the humility to acknowledge that they left a super-massive black hole in the Treasury’s books. When you have fouled up as badly and as repeatedly as the Conservatives did in government, the first step to redemption with the electorate is to own your blunders and express regret for them.
Even if voters become persistently discontented with Sir Keir’s government, the Tories are delusional if they imagine that this means the public will simply collapse back into their embrace and tell the Conservatives all is forgiven. Not least because so far the Tories have been almost completely incapable of recognising how much forgiveness they will need before they are taken seriously again. If Kemi Badenoch wants to get a hearing from the British people, she is first going to have to say sorry. And she is going to have to say it a lot.
I think this is why Badenoch was the better choice. Jenrick was continuity sleaze.
Kemi's victory speech was clear that big mistakes were made by the Tories in office and that they need to have a long hard look at themselves.
Her musings in the past that WFP should be scrapped (which she rowed back on when it became Labour policy) and on Maternity pay being too generous shows a real willingness to make deep cuts to welfare and pensions in order to move to a low tax country.
I wonder if she has the courage to scrap the Triple Lock. She just might.
I think Badenoch should move to the double-lock in the next 12 months (and sweeten the pill by keeping all other pensioner benefits) and couple it with a narrative of a stronger, fairer and wealthier future for the UK - plus attack Labour on tax.
She'll suffer flak - and Labour may pledge to keep it to try and outflank her - but I think the Tories only chance to junk this is in Opposition, it will play well to younger/ middle-aged voter and so that, by the time of the next election, it's no longer a big issue.
Farage will take the oldies and it will be game over for the conservatives.
I don't think so.
It’s clearly a risk to your strategy, the mitigation would be to (somehow) bury Farage before the policy shift.
Actually, thinking this through, it probably is a risk.
One forgets that to any unqualified and universal benefit people end up thinking it's both an entitlement and that there's not enough of it.
So a reaction could be one of anger and desertion.
Maybe it'd be better to pledge ending it at a date in the future?
Or get demographic data showing your voting coalition has changed a bit first and then move to qualify it.
Tories really are boxed in by the oldies, even now in Opposition. They have to work out how to break the chain.
The death of the Tory party has been predicted many times before and proved false so I doubt it will happen. FPTP does protect large established parties, but if they do fail enough it can also destroy them. It is a cruel system. So although I expect the Tories to recover and be in government again it isn't certain.
One thing that seems to have happened in the South East is the change in activists. Typically the LD had to target ruthlessly whereas the Tories fought on all fronts (I know that is a simplification). For the first time that seems to have reversed completely with lots of LD activists and few Tories.
In the County elections in 2025 I expect the LDs to do well and the Tories badly in the Home Counties. Elsewhere I expect Tories and Reform to do well at the expense of Labour. Will that be good news or bad news for a Tory recovery?
The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet.
In her acceptance speech, she described the task ahead as “tough”, which is an understatement. The July election was the worst result for the Conservative party, both in terms of vote share and seats won, since 1832. I am not among those who think this means the Tories can never recover. They have been pronounced dead and buried in the past only then to rise from the grave. But they are unlikely to start recovering until – and unless – they have an honest reckoning with themselves about their multiple failings in government.
Surveys suggest that very few voters think the Conservatives lost the election because they were too left wing while the majority of those with an opinion put it down to their incompetence.
One of the biggest challenges for the new leader of the opposition, and especially when the Tory parliamentary presence is so small, will be persuading voters to pay them any heed. The case made for Mrs Badenoch by her promoters is that she is “box office” with a gift for grabbing attention. What she has often failed to grasp is that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of attention. “Still in development” is the assessment of one reasonably sympathetic senior Tory.
Conservatives have displayed next to no interest in atoning for all the things voters came to loathe about them. There has never been a comprehensive repudiation of Boris Johnson for debauching standards in public life. Nor has there been an expression of suitably abject contrition for Liz Truss’s calamitous experiment with the economy. Nor have senior Tories had the humility to acknowledge that they left a super-massive black hole in the Treasury’s books. When you have fouled up as badly and as repeatedly as the Conservatives did in government, the first step to redemption with the electorate is to own your blunders and express regret for them.
Even if voters become persistently discontented with Sir Keir’s government, the Tories are delusional if they imagine that this means the public will simply collapse back into their embrace and tell the Conservatives all is forgiven. Not least because so far the Tories have been almost completely incapable of recognising how much forgiveness they will need before they are taken seriously again. If Kemi Badenoch wants to get a hearing from the British people, she is first going to have to say sorry. And she is going to have to say it a lot.
I think this is why Badenoch was the better choice. Jenrick was continuity sleaze.
Kemi's victory speech was clear that big mistakes were made by the Tories in office and that they need to have a long hard look at themselves.
Her musings in the past that WFP should be scrapped (which she rowed back on when it became Labour policy) and on Maternity pay being too generous shows a real willingness to make deep cuts to welfare and pensions in order to move to a low tax country.
I wonder if she has the courage to scrap the Triple Lock. She just might.
Badenoch’s weakness is that she is very tribal, aggressively so. The most successful politicians have the ability to look over the party horizon and sympathise without and understand voters that make other choices. She shares Corbyns disdain for the opposition. Evangelical self righteousness makes big tent politics far harder.
I think she will rub a lot of people the wrong way, particularly if she goes heavy on the social authoritarianism of the National Conservatives.
I think she is quite socially conservative herself, but the key issue is whether she wants to force that social conservatism on the rest of us, or whether she actually believes in freedom.
That's always the tricky bit for social conservatives. In theory, "I respect your freedom to go full-on Gilead in your personal life" ought to work, but in practice it doesn't. As our friends across the Atlantic are demonstrating.
I always find it interesting how vociferously left-wingers and progressive liberals argue against any pushback to their sociocultural consensus. "Stick to the economics, guys!"
Maybe they doth protest too much...
No, it's just old fashioned Liberalism. It's why I don't vote Labour or Conservative, but was swayed to vote for Cameron in 2010.
Identity politics goes against Liberalism.
That's why I oppose it.
I don't support Identity Politics.
In particular the nasty right wing populism prevalent across the world.
Yes, but you do, don't you? Provided it's the right type of identity politics, in which case you argue it isn't really anyway.
CNN apparently have a big interview today on their Inside Politics show .
From someone who rarely gives an interview . Hard to think who it could be , would Kelly finally give an interview ?
Dubya. That would shake things up...
Not sure about that
MAGA despise him. Hard to moderate left generally despise him - Iraq. He has pulled back, a bit, there with the gracious and friendly handover to Obama.
The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet.
In her acceptance speech, she described the task ahead as “tough”, which is an understatement. The July election was the worst result for the Conservative party, both in terms of vote share and seats won, since 1832. I am not among those who think this means the Tories can never recover. They have been pronounced dead and buried in the past only then to rise from the grave. But they are unlikely to start recovering until – and unless – they have an honest reckoning with themselves about their multiple failings in government.
Surveys suggest that very few voters think the Conservatives lost the election because they were too left wing while the majority of those with an opinion put it down to their incompetence.
One of the biggest challenges for the new leader of the opposition, and especially when the Tory parliamentary presence is so small, will be persuading voters to pay them any heed. The case made for Mrs Badenoch by her promoters is that she is “box office” with a gift for grabbing attention. What she has often failed to grasp is that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of attention. “Still in development” is the assessment of one reasonably sympathetic senior Tory.
Conservatives have displayed next to no interest in atoning for all the things voters came to loathe about them. There has never been a comprehensive repudiation of Boris Johnson for debauching standards in public life. Nor has there been an expression of suitably abject contrition for Liz Truss’s calamitous experiment with the economy. Nor have senior Tories had the humility to acknowledge that they left a super-massive black hole in the Treasury’s books. When you have fouled up as badly and as repeatedly as the Conservatives did in government, the first step to redemption with the electorate is to own your blunders and express regret for them.
Even if voters become persistently discontented with Sir Keir’s government, the Tories are delusional if they imagine that this means the public will simply collapse back into their embrace and tell the Conservatives all is forgiven. Not least because so far the Tories have been almost completely incapable of recognising how much forgiveness they will need before they are taken seriously again. If Kemi Badenoch wants to get a hearing from the British people, she is first going to have to say sorry. And she is going to have to say it a lot.
Even worse for them membership numbers down:
"In 2022, when Liz Truss defeated Rishi Sunak, 141,725 members out of about 172,000 voted. However, by Saturday there were only 131,680 Tory members eligible to vote for the next leader, a drop of 23%."
And as only 95,000 of those voted looks as if actual paying membership will drop further.
Fewer members means less money.
In terms of income, membership numbers are the least of their worries really. Mrs Miggins' three quid a month isn't what keeps the party going, and a 23% drop over the Truss/Sunak period isn't desperately surprising (it's actually rather less than I'd have thought).
I'd also expect Badenoch to be okay on the membership side. The leadership election was, in the end, authentically nuts vs inauthentically nuts, and authentically nuts is better for membership if not wider electability. And Labour are probably helping out in terms of rallying the Tory base.
Utterly OT but every time I read 'Gilead' I think of 'Gil-Galad'.
The high king of the Noldor would make a better leader than either presidential candidate, but I'm not sure he'd approve the term limits.
Gilead isn’t off-topic. The GOP / evangelical “Christian” project to subjugate women mirrors chunks of what the fictional Gilead was in the early stages.
I said Harris would win and it won’t be close. Hello Selzer poll backing up all of the other data points that Harris has so many voters not only in the bag but motivated and angry. Trump voters? The vote dress up like they’ve been shot or are on the Derelicte fashion shoot for Trump. The millions he needs to win who didn’t vote for him last time? They’re *actually* going to vote are they?
The bigger the Harris win the more entertaining the response from Musk et al. We know the game plan - tell everyone that everyone is voting Trump, that every poll shows he is winning, rig the news so all you hear is He is good and she is shit. So that unless Trump wins the protests will be visceral and directable into the violence that would be needed.
But if it’s a landslide? Where the people who quietly delivered it out themselves quickly and tell men why they voted so hard? What does the idiot savant Musk do then? And what do the GOP cultists do when their Golem has been taken down and the whole world is laughing at his impotent whining - and yours?
The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet.
In her acceptance speech, she described the task ahead as “tough”, which is an understatement. The July election was the worst result for the Conservative party, both in terms of vote share and seats won, since 1832. I am not among those who think this means the Tories can never recover. They have been pronounced dead and buried in the past only then to rise from the grave. But they are unlikely to start recovering until – and unless – they have an honest reckoning with themselves about their multiple failings in government.
Surveys suggest that very few voters think the Conservatives lost the election because they were too left wing while the majority of those with an opinion put it down to their incompetence.
One of the biggest challenges for the new leader of the opposition, and especially when the Tory parliamentary presence is so small, will be persuading voters to pay them any heed. The case made for Mrs Badenoch by her promoters is that she is “box office” with a gift for grabbing attention. What she has often failed to grasp is that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of attention. “Still in development” is the assessment of one reasonably sympathetic senior Tory.
Conservatives have displayed next to no interest in atoning for all the things voters came to loathe about them. There has never been a comprehensive repudiation of Boris Johnson for debauching standards in public life. Nor has there been an expression of suitably abject contrition for Liz Truss’s calamitous experiment with the economy. Nor have senior Tories had the humility to acknowledge that they left a super-massive black hole in the Treasury’s books. When you have fouled up as badly and as repeatedly as the Conservatives did in government, the first step to redemption with the electorate is to own your blunders and express regret for them.
Even if voters become persistently discontented with Sir Keir’s government, the Tories are delusional if they imagine that this means the public will simply collapse back into their embrace and tell the Conservatives all is forgiven. Not least because so far the Tories have been almost completely incapable of recognising how much forgiveness they will need before they are taken seriously again. If Kemi Badenoch wants to get a hearing from the British people, she is first going to have to say sorry. And she is going to have to say it a lot.
I think this is why Badenoch was the better choice. Jenrick was continuity sleaze.
Kemi's victory speech was clear that big mistakes were made by the Tories in office and that they need to have a long hard look at themselves.
Her musings in the past that WFP should be scrapped (which she rowed back on when it became Labour policy) and on Maternity pay being too generous shows a real willingness to make deep cuts to welfare and pensions in order to move to a low tax country.
I wonder if she has the courage to scrap the Triple Lock. She just might.
Badenoch’s weakness is that she is very tribal, aggressively so. The most successful politicians have the ability to look over the party horizon and sympathise without and understand voters that make other choices. She shares Corbyns disdain for the opposition. Evangelical self righteousness makes big tent politics far harder.
I think she will rub a lot of people the wrong way, particularly if she goes heavy on the social authoritarianism of the National Conservatives.
I think she is quite socially conservative herself, but the key issue is whether she wants to force that social conservatism on the rest of us, or whether she actually believes in freedom.
That's always the tricky bit for social conservatives. In theory, "I respect your freedom to go full-on Gilead in your personal life" ought to work, but in practice it doesn't. As our friends across the Atlantic are demonstrating.
I always find it interesting how vociferously left-wingers and progressive liberals argue against any pushback to their sociocultural consensus. "Stick to the economics, guys!"
Maybe they doth protest too much...
No, it's just old fashioned Liberalism. It's why I don't vote Labour or Conservative, but was swayed to vote for Cameron in 2010.
Identity politics goes against Liberalism.
That's why I oppose it.
I don't support Identity Politics.
In particular the nasty right wing populism prevalent across the world.
Yes, but you do, don't you? Provided it's the right type of identity politics, in which case you argue it isn't really anyway.
I think we have different understandings of what "Identity Politics" means.
What bits of "Identity Politics" do you have in mind that I support?
For balance, there was an Emerson College poll in July that put Trump ahead in Virginia, which I think is a broadly equivalent state in terms of is political trajectory that has moved in the other direction over a similar timescale. With enough polls a number of outliers are inevitable.
One interesting thing about this poll is that the previous one showed Trump winning, so it shows a recent move in favour of Harris. Even if other polls are systematically out, there's a better chance of them picking up a change - but they haven't. So this also suggests that this movement is random statistical noise.
All those caveats aside, I'm guessing it should be obvious pretty early, with the results from FL, GA and NC, whether Harris is on course for a landslide.
The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet.
In her acceptance speech, she described the task ahead as “tough”, which is an understatement. The July election was the worst result for the Conservative party, both in terms of vote share and seats won, since 1832. I am not among those who think this means the Tories can never recover. They have been pronounced dead and buried in the past only then to rise from the grave. But they are unlikely to start recovering until – and unless – they have an honest reckoning with themselves about their multiple failings in government.
Surveys suggest that very few voters think the Conservatives lost the election because they were too left wing while the majority of those with an opinion put it down to their incompetence.
One of the biggest challenges for the new leader of the opposition, and especially when the Tory parliamentary presence is so small, will be persuading voters to pay them any heed. The case made for Mrs Badenoch by her promoters is that she is “box office” with a gift for grabbing attention. What she has often failed to grasp is that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of attention. “Still in development” is the assessment of one reasonably sympathetic senior Tory.
Conservatives have displayed next to no interest in atoning for all the things voters came to loathe about them. There has never been a comprehensive repudiation of Boris Johnson for debauching standards in public life. Nor has there been an expression of suitably abject contrition for Liz Truss’s calamitous experiment with the economy. Nor have senior Tories had the humility to acknowledge that they left a super-massive black hole in the Treasury’s books. When you have fouled up as badly and as repeatedly as the Conservatives did in government, the first step to redemption with the electorate is to own your blunders and express regret for them.
Even if voters become persistently discontented with Sir Keir’s government, the Tories are delusional if they imagine that this means the public will simply collapse back into their embrace and tell the Conservatives all is forgiven. Not least because so far the Tories have been almost completely incapable of recognising how much forgiveness they will need before they are taken seriously again. If Kemi Badenoch wants to get a hearing from the British people, she is first going to have to say sorry. And she is going to have to say it a lot.
Even worse for them membership numbers down:
"In 2022, when Liz Truss defeated Rishi Sunak, 141,725 members out of about 172,000 voted. However, by Saturday there were only 131,680 Tory members eligible to vote for the next leader, a drop of 23%."
And as only 95,000 of those voted looks as if actual paying membership will drop further.
Fewer members means less money.
In terms of income, membership numbers are the least of their worries really. Mrs Miggins' three quid a month isn't what keeps the party going, and a 23% drop over the Truss/Sunak period isn't desperately surprising (it's actually rather less than I'd have thought).
I'd also expect Badenoch to be okay on the membership side. The leadership election was, in the end, authentically nuts vs inauthentically nuts, and authentically nuts is better for membership if not wider electability. And Labour are probably helping out in terms of rallying the Tory base.
Frank Hester's £15m subs alone bring Conservative Party membership fee paid equivalence up a few notches.
I genuinely think she is inspiring in a way we have not seen for a very long time. Possibly Bill Clinton first time around or first term Reagan with his shining city on a hill. People have so underestimated her.
There seems to be a fair amount of revisionism over the budget. The reverse of the norm. The hysteria passed from the right wing press infected the BBC and other news stations but as reality dawned and actual numbers started being looked at the picture has changed.
Maybe the Telegraph might now take a break and start functioning as a NEWSpaper again.
I notice another poll with Labour 7% ahead.
Disastrous start for Badenoch. She's already blown Sunak's golden legacy.
The changeover to fibre broadband, in the U.K. , in particular, has led to a lot of people dropping the landline phone. More money for something they don’t use.
If Trump fails to win Iowa by at least 7%, he's in trouble.
He's in trouble.
Taking the difference from the polling average at face value and projecting nationally - as just a bit of fun - it would imply Harris winning not only all the commonly recognised swing states, but also Florida, Texas, Iowa, Ohio and Alaska!
Given Florida and Texas voted to the left of Iowa last time there are scenarios where Trump narrowly retains Iowa but ships Florida and Texas. On this poll I’d be taking a much closer look at Texas as it is trending Blue over time, and if Harris were to flip it this cycle Trump would have no path to 270.
If Texas flips to Harris then it’s all over for Trump. It’s been trending Dem for seemingly decades now, but never quite gets there.
Would be bad news too for Ted. Oh well, never mind.
The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet.
In her acceptance speech, she described the task ahead as “tough”, which is an understatement. The July election was the worst result for the Conservative party, both in terms of vote share and seats won, since 1832. I am not among those who think this means the Tories can never recover. They have been pronounced dead and buried in the past only then to rise from the grave. But they are unlikely to start recovering until – and unless – they have an honest reckoning with themselves about their multiple failings in government.
Surveys suggest that very few voters think the Conservatives lost the election because they were too left wing while the majority of those with an opinion put it down to their incompetence.
One of the biggest challenges for the new leader of the opposition, and especially when the Tory parliamentary presence is so small, will be persuading voters to pay them any heed. The case made for Mrs Badenoch by her promoters is that she is “box office” with a gift for grabbing attention. What she has often failed to grasp is that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of attention. “Still in development” is the assessment of one reasonably sympathetic senior Tory.
Conservatives have displayed next to no interest in atoning for all the things voters came to loathe about them. There has never been a comprehensive repudiation of Boris Johnson for debauching standards in public life. Nor has there been an expression of suitably abject contrition for Liz Truss’s calamitous experiment with the economy. Nor have senior Tories had the humility to acknowledge that they left a super-massive black hole in the Treasury’s books. When you have fouled up as badly and as repeatedly as the Conservatives did in government, the first step to redemption with the electorate is to own your blunders and express regret for them.
Even if voters become persistently discontented with Sir Keir’s government, the Tories are delusional if they imagine that this means the public will simply collapse back into their embrace and tell the Conservatives all is forgiven. Not least because so far the Tories have been almost completely incapable of recognising how much forgiveness they will need before they are taken seriously again. If Kemi Badenoch wants to get a hearing from the British people, she is first going to have to say sorry. And she is going to have to say it a lot.
Even worse for them membership numbers down:
"In 2022, when Liz Truss defeated Rishi Sunak, 141,725 members out of about 172,000 voted. However, by Saturday there were only 131,680 Tory members eligible to vote for the next leader, a drop of 23%."
And as only 95,000 of those voted looks as if actual paying membership will drop further.
Fewer members means less money.
In terms of income, membership numbers are the least of their worries really. Mrs Miggins' three quid a month isn't what keeps the party going, and a 23% drop over the Truss/Sunak period isn't desperately surprising (it's actually rather less than I'd have thought).
I'd also expect Badenoch to be okay on the membership side. The leadership election was, in the end, authentically nuts vs inauthentically nuts, and authentically nuts is better for membership if not wider electability. And Labour are probably helping out in terms of rallying the Tory base.
I think that the benefit of a broad membership is not particularly to do with subscriptions. It's about presence on the ground during campaigns, albeit only a minority of members do this.
The other benefit is "sense checking" the ideas from thinktanks populated by teenage scribblers funded by big donors. Without a broad membership parties are inclined to disappear up their own fundaments.
The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet.
In her acceptance speech, she described the task ahead as “tough”, which is an understatement. The July election was the worst result for the Conservative party, both in terms of vote share and seats won, since 1832. I am not among those who think this means the Tories can never recover. They have been pronounced dead and buried in the past only then to rise from the grave. But they are unlikely to start recovering until – and unless – they have an honest reckoning with themselves about their multiple failings in government.
Surveys suggest that very few voters think the Conservatives lost the election because they were too left wing while the majority of those with an opinion put it down to their incompetence.
One of the biggest challenges for the new leader of the opposition, and especially when the Tory parliamentary presence is so small, will be persuading voters to pay them any heed. The case made for Mrs Badenoch by her promoters is that she is “box office” with a gift for grabbing attention. What she has often failed to grasp is that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of attention. “Still in development” is the assessment of one reasonably sympathetic senior Tory.
Conservatives have displayed next to no interest in atoning for all the things voters came to loathe about them. There has never been a comprehensive repudiation of Boris Johnson for debauching standards in public life. Nor has there been an expression of suitably abject contrition for Liz Truss’s calamitous experiment with the economy. Nor have senior Tories had the humility to acknowledge that they left a super-massive black hole in the Treasury’s books. When you have fouled up as badly and as repeatedly as the Conservatives did in government, the first step to redemption with the electorate is to own your blunders and express regret for them.
Even if voters become persistently discontented with Sir Keir’s government, the Tories are delusional if they imagine that this means the public will simply collapse back into their embrace and tell the Conservatives all is forgiven. Not least because so far the Tories have been almost completely incapable of recognising how much forgiveness they will need before they are taken seriously again. If Kemi Badenoch wants to get a hearing from the British people, she is first going to have to say sorry. And she is going to have to say it a lot.
Even worse for them membership numbers down:
"In 2022, when Liz Truss defeated Rishi Sunak, 141,725 members out of about 172,000 voted. However, by Saturday there were only 131,680 Tory members eligible to vote for the next leader, a drop of 23%."
And as only 95,000 of those voted looks as if actual paying membership will drop further.
Fewer members means less money.
Let's be honest. No realistic prospect of tweaking government policy in a favourable way to the donar means less money.
Highlights how irrelevant mass membership is to party finances as well. 150k members at £40 a time is £6 million, which doesn't go far these days.
Another consequence of their heavy defeat at the 2024 GE is the relatively low amount of short money the Tories will receive. In respect of their seats and votes they will receive £4.2m per year (there's extra for travel and for the leader of the opposition's office).
By comparison, Corbyn's 2019 GE defeat still saw Labour receive £6.8m pa.
Peanut was an internet-famous pet squirrel who was taken away and destroyed by public health officials in New York, after complains from neighbours.
Which tends towards a theme in American politics.
A combination of over regulation in certain areas (combined with mad free for all in others), overzealous enforcement. And these-admitted truth that the enforcement is heavily political.
It has happened a few times, over the years, for example, that a “voice in the crowd” type has asked a question to a powerful politician. That embarrassed. Within days, said individual gets an IRS audit - and every other applicable agency takes an interest in his affairs.
The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet.
In her acceptance speech, she described the task ahead as “tough”, which is an understatement. The July election was the worst result for the Conservative party, both in terms of vote share and seats won, since 1832. I am not among those who think this means the Tories can never recover. They have been pronounced dead and buried in the past only then to rise from the grave. But they are unlikely to start recovering until – and unless – they have an honest reckoning with themselves about their multiple failings in government.
Surveys suggest that very few voters think the Conservatives lost the election because they were too left wing while the majority of those with an opinion put it down to their incompetence.
One of the biggest challenges for the new leader of the opposition, and especially when the Tory parliamentary presence is so small, will be persuading voters to pay them any heed. The case made for Mrs Badenoch by her promoters is that she is “box office” with a gift for grabbing attention. What she has often failed to grasp is that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of attention. “Still in development” is the assessment of one reasonably sympathetic senior Tory.
Conservatives have displayed next to no interest in atoning for all the things voters came to loathe about them. There has never been a comprehensive repudiation of Boris Johnson for debauching standards in public life. Nor has there been an expression of suitably abject contrition for Liz Truss’s calamitous experiment with the economy. Nor have senior Tories had the humility to acknowledge that they left a super-massive black hole in the Treasury’s books. When you have fouled up as badly and as repeatedly as the Conservatives did in government, the first step to redemption with the electorate is to own your blunders and express regret for them.
Even if voters become persistently discontented with Sir Keir’s government, the Tories are delusional if they imagine that this means the public will simply collapse back into their embrace and tell the Conservatives all is forgiven. Not least because so far the Tories have been almost completely incapable of recognising how much forgiveness they will need before they are taken seriously again. If Kemi Badenoch wants to get a hearing from the British people, she is first going to have to say sorry. And she is going to have to say it a lot.
I think this is why Badenoch was the better choice. Jenrick was continuity sleaze.
Kemi's victory speech was clear that big mistakes were made by the Tories in office and that they need to have a long hard look at themselves.
Her musings in the past that WFP should be scrapped (which she rowed back on when it became Labour policy) and on Maternity pay being too generous shows a real willingness to make deep cuts to welfare and pensions in order to move to a low tax country.
I wonder if she has the courage to scrap the Triple Lock. She just might.
Badenoch’s weakness is that she is very tribal, aggressively so. The most successful politicians have the ability to look over the party horizon and sympathise without and understand voters that make other choices. She shares Corbyns disdain for the opposition. Evangelical self righteousness makes big tent politics far harder.
Male pollster: Tie game, we've adjusted for Trump Male pollster: Tie game, we've adjusted for Trump Male pollster: Tie game, we've adjusted for Trump Male pollster: Tie game, we've adjusted for Trump Ann Selzer: Have you boys heard of Dobbs?
People want to know how Iowa could swing towards Harris, when the state has been solidly red for so long and let me tell you, as someone who lives here & writes about this state. It’s the abortion ban. Women are furious.
It's not just those particular women. Maternity services clinics have been closing, to the extent that some women are giving birth out of state. And fairly or not (there are other funding issues beyond the resulting difficulties for practitioner insurance), Dobbs is getting blamed.
The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet.
In her acceptance speech, she described the task ahead as “tough”, which is an understatement. The July election was the worst result for the Conservative party, both in terms of vote share and seats won, since 1832. I am not among those who think this means the Tories can never recover. They have been pronounced dead and buried in the past only then to rise from the grave. But they are unlikely to start recovering until – and unless – they have an honest reckoning with themselves about their multiple failings in government.
Surveys suggest that very few voters think the Conservatives lost the election because they were too left wing while the majority of those with an opinion put it down to their incompetence.
One of the biggest challenges for the new leader of the opposition, and especially when the Tory parliamentary presence is so small, will be persuading voters to pay them any heed. The case made for Mrs Badenoch by her promoters is that she is “box office” with a gift for grabbing attention. What she has often failed to grasp is that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of attention. “Still in development” is the assessment of one reasonably sympathetic senior Tory.
Conservatives have displayed next to no interest in atoning for all the things voters came to loathe about them. There has never been a comprehensive repudiation of Boris Johnson for debauching standards in public life. Nor has there been an expression of suitably abject contrition for Liz Truss’s calamitous experiment with the economy. Nor have senior Tories had the humility to acknowledge that they left a super-massive black hole in the Treasury’s books. When you have fouled up as badly and as repeatedly as the Conservatives did in government, the first step to redemption with the electorate is to own your blunders and express regret for them.
Even if voters become persistently discontented with Sir Keir’s government, the Tories are delusional if they imagine that this means the public will simply collapse back into their embrace and tell the Conservatives all is forgiven. Not least because so far the Tories have been almost completely incapable of recognising how much forgiveness they will need before they are taken seriously again. If Kemi Badenoch wants to get a hearing from the British people, she is first going to have to say sorry. And she is going to have to say it a lot.
I think this is why Badenoch was the better choice. Jenrick was continuity sleaze.
Kemi's victory speech was clear that big mistakes were made by the Tories in office and that they need to have a long hard look at themselves.
Her musings in the past that WFP should be scrapped (which she rowed back on when it became Labour policy) and on Maternity pay being too generous shows a real willingness to make deep cuts to welfare and pensions in order to move to a low tax country.
I wonder if she has the courage to scrap the Triple Lock. She just might.
I think Badenoch should move to the double-lock in the next 12 months (and sweeten the pill by keeping all other pensioner benefits) and couple it with a narrative of a stronger, fairer and wealthier future for the UK - plus attack Labour on tax.
She'll suffer flak - and Labour may pledge to keep it to try and outflank her - but I think the Tories only chance to junk this is in Opposition, it will play well to younger/ middle-aged voter and so that, by the time of the next election, it's no longer a big issue.
Farage will take the oldies and it will be game over for the conservatives.
I tend to agree.
Much less controversial and a similar outcome to reduce NI relative to income tax. Give generous pensions but get tax back on it.
Male pollster: Tie game, we've adjusted for Trump Male pollster: Tie game, we've adjusted for Trump Male pollster: Tie game, we've adjusted for Trump Male pollster: Tie game, we've adjusted for Trump Ann Selzer: Have you boys heard of Dobbs?
People want to know how Iowa could swing towards Harris, when the state has been solidly red for so long and let me tell you, as someone who lives here & writes about this state. It’s the abortion ban. Women are furious.
It's not just those particular women. Maternity services clinics have been closing, to the extent that some women are giving birth out of state. And fairly or not (there are other funding issues beyond the resulting difficulties for practitioner insurance), Dobbs is getting blamed.
I think that is something people forget Iowa may be tending Harris for reasons unique to Iowa and the other propositions on this years ballot.
So it's perfectly possible that Selzer is right here but the story isn't reflected in other states without similar propositions.
For reference Ohio has one proposition to create an independent board to decide electoral districts - that will also get the Democrat voters out but won't change a solid Trump victory there.
The bigger the Harris win the more entertaining the response from Musk et al. We know the game plan - tell everyone that everyone is voting Trump, that every poll shows he is winning, rig the news so all you hear is He is good and she is shit. So that unless Trump wins the protests will be visceral and directable into the violence that would be needed.
But if it’s a landslide? Where the people who quietly delivered it out themselves quickly and tell men why they voted so hard? What does the idiot savant Musk do then? And what do the GOP cultists do when their Golem has been taken down and the whole world is laughing at his impotent whining - and yours?
What happens to Musk is interesting.
He has tied himself so firmly to Trump's, err, let's say, 'mast', that if the ship goes down what does he do?
If Twix is a $44B machine for electing Trump, and it doesn't work?
If the 'smartest' tech bro on the planet backed the wrong horse?
There seems to be a fair amount of revisionism over the budget. The reverse of the norm. The hysteria passed from the right wing press infected the BBC and other news stations but as reality dawned and actual numbers started being looked at the picture has changed.
Maybe the Telegraph might now take a break and start functioning as a NEWSpaper again.
I notice another poll with Labour 7% ahead.
Disastrous start for Badenoch. She's already blown Sunak's golden legacy.
Not as disastrous as for Reeves. The TELEGRAPH has an interesting story about Reeves.
Male pollster: Tie game, we've adjusted for Trump Male pollster: Tie game, we've adjusted for Trump Male pollster: Tie game, we've adjusted for Trump Male pollster: Tie game, we've adjusted for Trump Ann Selzer: Have you boys heard of Dobbs?
People want to know how Iowa could swing towards Harris, when the state has been solidly red for so long and let me tell you, as someone who lives here & writes about this state. It’s the abortion ban. Women are furious.
It's not just those particular women. Maternity services clinics have been closing, to the extent that some women are giving birth out of state. And fairly or not (there are other funding issues beyond the resulting difficulties for practitioner insurance), Dobbs is getting blamed.
There have been a number of determined attempts to attack abortion rights in other states. From the anti-abortion states. This has riled people up, to the point that anti-abortion activists have urged toning down of such behaviour - they are worried about the effect this has on public opinion.
The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet.
In her acceptance speech, she described the task ahead as “tough”, which is an understatement. The July election was the worst result for the Conservative party, both in terms of vote share and seats won, since 1832. I am not among those who think this means the Tories can never recover. They have been pronounced dead and buried in the past only then to rise from the grave. But they are unlikely to start recovering until – and unless – they have an honest reckoning with themselves about their multiple failings in government.
Surveys suggest that very few voters think the Conservatives lost the election because they were too left wing while the majority of those with an opinion put it down to their incompetence.
One of the biggest challenges for the new leader of the opposition, and especially when the Tory parliamentary presence is so small, will be persuading voters to pay them any heed. The case made for Mrs Badenoch by her promoters is that she is “box office” with a gift for grabbing attention. What she has often failed to grasp is that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of attention. “Still in development” is the assessment of one reasonably sympathetic senior Tory.
Conservatives have displayed next to no interest in atoning for all the things voters came to loathe about them. There has never been a comprehensive repudiation of Boris Johnson for debauching standards in public life. Nor has there been an expression of suitably abject contrition for Liz Truss’s calamitous experiment with the economy. Nor have senior Tories had the humility to acknowledge that they left a super-massive black hole in the Treasury’s books. When you have fouled up as badly and as repeatedly as the Conservatives did in government, the first step to redemption with the electorate is to own your blunders and express regret for them.
Even if voters become persistently discontented with Sir Keir’s government, the Tories are delusional if they imagine that this means the public will simply collapse back into their embrace and tell the Conservatives all is forgiven. Not least because so far the Tories have been almost completely incapable of recognising how much forgiveness they will need before they are taken seriously again. If Kemi Badenoch wants to get a hearing from the British people, she is first going to have to say sorry. And she is going to have to say it a lot.
I think this is why Badenoch was the better choice. Jenrick was continuity sleaze.
Kemi's victory speech was clear that big mistakes were made by the Tories in office and that they need to have a long hard look at themselves.
Her musings in the past that WFP should be scrapped (which she rowed back on when it became Labour policy) and on Maternity pay being too generous shows a real willingness to make deep cuts to welfare and pensions in order to move to a low tax country.
I wonder if she has the courage to scrap the Triple Lock. She just might.
Badenoch’s weakness is that she is very tribal, aggressively so. The most successful politicians have the ability to look over the party horizon and sympathise without and understand voters that make other choices. She shares Corbyns disdain for the opposition. Evangelical self righteousness makes big tent politics far harder.
I think she will rub a lot of people the wrong way, particularly if she goes heavy on the social authoritarianism of the National Conservatives.
I think she is quite socially conservative herself, but the key issue is whether she wants to force that social conservatism on the rest of us, or whether she actually believes in freedom.
That's always the tricky bit for social conservatives. In theory, "I respect your freedom to go full-on Gilead in your personal life" ought to work, but in practice it doesn't. As our friends across the Atlantic are demonstrating.
I always find it interesting how vociferously left-wingers and progressive liberals argue against any pushback to their sociocultural consensus. "Stick to the economics, guys!"
Maybe they doth protest too much...
No, it's just old fashioned Liberalism. It's why I don't vote Labour or Conservative, but was swayed to vote for Cameron in 2010.
Identity politics goes against Liberalism.
That's why I oppose it.
I don't support Identity Politics.
In particular the nasty right wing populism prevalent across the world.
Yes, but you do, don't you? Provided it's the right type of identity politics, in which case you argue it isn't really anyway.
I think you may have got some of us non-right wingers wrong. Most of us couldn't really care less about taking the knee at Wembley, although we are offended by riots incited by senior politicians quoting Andrew Tate. And I couldn't really demonstrate an interest in LGBT rights.
I do have diametrically opposed opinions to yourself on certain issues but my view (probably like yours) is borne out of practicality. Take the VAT on schools issue that you keep flagging me for. Your view is you should be entitled to educate your children to the standards you desire. I agree you should, but for the privilege you should pay VAT on that lifestyle choice. I would prefer all children to have the same opportunities awarded to your children at their private school, but in a top quality state school. If the UK state sector were properly funded and as such results based on the merit of the student rather than because of their parents income the UK would ( in my view) be a richer nation.
I went to a great comprehensive school which was promoted through the will of then Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher, it was full of students whose parents could have afforded Solihull or Bromsgrove Schools but they chose not to because they didn't need to.
In order to pay for such a service a higher taxation burden is required. One question begs another and so on. But fundamentally do we want the top 7% to flourish and everyone else to flounder? I don't believe identity politics plays any part in that central theme. We would all be treated equally.
I see Reeves has been all over the news studios this morning spouting more lies to justify her idiotic budget. It will be fun watching her crash and burn - although less fun as she takes the economy with her.
There’s very few pollsters I sit up and listen to in US politics. But Selzer is one of them. And even if she’s out by a little bit, this is still insanely bad for Trump.
The one hopeful possibility is that the pollster-shy voters turn out to be the female family members of the vocal male Trump voters, who go to the polls and quietly vote for Harris…
That's the one that caused Jesse to lose his shit.
..if I found out my wife secretly voted for Harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day" https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet.
In her acceptance speech, she described the task ahead as “tough”, which is an understatement. The July election was the worst result for the Conservative party, both in terms of vote share and seats won, since 1832. I am not among those who think this means the Tories can never recover. They have been pronounced dead and buried in the past only then to rise from the grave. But they are unlikely to start recovering until – and unless – they have an honest reckoning with themselves about their multiple failings in government.
Surveys suggest that very few voters think the Conservatives lost the election because they were too left wing while the majority of those with an opinion put it down to their incompetence.
One of the biggest challenges for the new leader of the opposition, and especially when the Tory parliamentary presence is so small, will be persuading voters to pay them any heed. The case made for Mrs Badenoch by her promoters is that she is “box office” with a gift for grabbing attention. What she has often failed to grasp is that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of attention. “Still in development” is the assessment of one reasonably sympathetic senior Tory.
Conservatives have displayed next to no interest in atoning for all the things voters came to loathe about them. There has never been a comprehensive repudiation of Boris Johnson for debauching standards in public life. Nor has there been an expression of suitably abject contrition for Liz Truss’s calamitous experiment with the economy. Nor have senior Tories had the humility to acknowledge that they left a super-massive black hole in the Treasury’s books. When you have fouled up as badly and as repeatedly as the Conservatives did in government, the first step to redemption with the electorate is to own your blunders and express regret for them.
Even if voters become persistently discontented with Sir Keir’s government, the Tories are delusional if they imagine that this means the public will simply collapse back into their embrace and tell the Conservatives all is forgiven. Not least because so far the Tories have been almost completely incapable of recognising how much forgiveness they will need before they are taken seriously again. If Kemi Badenoch wants to get a hearing from the British people, she is first going to have to say sorry. And she is going to have to say it a lot.
I think this is why Badenoch was the better choice. Jenrick was continuity sleaze.
Kemi's victory speech was clear that big mistakes were made by the Tories in office and that they need to have a long hard look at themselves.
Her musings in the past that WFP should be scrapped (which she rowed back on when it became Labour policy) and on Maternity pay being too generous shows a real willingness to make deep cuts to welfare and pensions in order to move to a low tax country.
I wonder if she has the courage to scrap the Triple Lock. She just might.
I think Badenoch should move to the double-lock in the next 12 months (and sweeten the pill by keeping all other pensioner benefits) and couple it with a narrative of a stronger, fairer and wealthier future for the UK - plus attack Labour on tax.
She'll suffer flak - and Labour may pledge to keep it to try and outflank her - but I think the Tories only chance to junk this is in Opposition, it will play well to younger/ middle-aged voter and so that, by the time of the next election, it's no longer a big issue.
Farage will take the oldies and it will be game over for the conservatives.
I tend to agree.
Much less controversial and a similar outcome to reduce NI relative to income tax. Give generous pensions but get tax back on it.
Some policies
1) merge employee NI into Income tax. Take the opportunity to reband, removing various anomolies 2) quadruple lock. The pension is locked to the tax free allowance. The tax free allowance is permanently removed from all withdrawal etc. Foundations of a UBI 3) crackdown on illegal employment - large fines shared with employees who report. See previous posts. 4) merge vocational training into university degrees. Degrees for all! Use this to leverage cross skilling 5) productivity units inside all government departments. Think internalised consultancies. Make it the place for high pay and promotion, based on long term results. 6) non winner picking technology investment. Pay on results. See x per unit of storage in cars delivered. 7) company tax system revised to make financialisation expensive and investment in productivity cheap. Etc
The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet.
In her acceptance speech, she described the task ahead as “tough”, which is an understatement. The July election was the worst result for the Conservative party, both in terms of vote share and seats won, since 1832. I am not among those who think this means the Tories can never recover. They have been pronounced dead and buried in the past only then to rise from the grave. But they are unlikely to start recovering until – and unless – they have an honest reckoning with themselves about their multiple failings in government.
Surveys suggest that very few voters think the Conservatives lost the election because they were too left wing while the majority of those with an opinion put it down to their incompetence.
One of the biggest challenges for the new leader of the opposition, and especially when the Tory parliamentary presence is so small, will be persuading voters to pay them any heed. The case made for Mrs Badenoch by her promoters is that she is “box office” with a gift for grabbing attention. What she has often failed to grasp is that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of attention. “Still in development” is the assessment of one reasonably sympathetic senior Tory.
Conservatives have displayed next to no interest in atoning for all the things voters came to loathe about them. There has never been a comprehensive repudiation of Boris Johnson for debauching standards in public life. Nor has there been an expression of suitably abject contrition for Liz Truss’s calamitous experiment with the economy. Nor have senior Tories had the humility to acknowledge that they left a super-massive black hole in the Treasury’s books. When you have fouled up as badly and as repeatedly as the Conservatives did in government, the first step to redemption with the electorate is to own your blunders and express regret for them.
Even if voters become persistently discontented with Sir Keir’s government, the Tories are delusional if they imagine that this means the public will simply collapse back into their embrace and tell the Conservatives all is forgiven. Not least because so far the Tories have been almost completely incapable of recognising how much forgiveness they will need before they are taken seriously again. If Kemi Badenoch wants to get a hearing from the British people, she is first going to have to say sorry. And she is going to have to say it a lot.
Even worse for them membership numbers down:
"In 2022, when Liz Truss defeated Rishi Sunak, 141,725 members out of about 172,000 voted. However, by Saturday there were only 131,680 Tory members eligible to vote for the next leader, a drop of 23%."
And as only 95,000 of those voted looks as if actual paying membership will drop further.
Fewer members means less money.
Badenoch urgently needs to work out how to attract some younger members, to replace those taking their membership to the graveyard.
In the long scheme of things people join political parties for particular reasons. No-one has to. Forget the glorious past of Tories as a middle class dating agency. It isn't coming back.
The reasons: support for fundamental principles; and/or access to the power/money/jobs greasy pole at some level, from Great Snoring Parish Council to Prime Minister to business person.
The Tories stood for: competence, moderation, wealth creation, a Burkean view of change, small platoons, sound defence, self reliance, a degree of equality of opportunity, no interest in equality of outcomes.
I can't give an account at this moment of what set of principles anyone would join for. If that is so, then it will be dominated by chancers.
How's that "Starmer is the real one-nation Tory" stuff going for you ?
Good question. However, in my view he was the nearest, not 'the real'. First impressions? Not bad, but awful presentation. Still loads better than the Tories. If there were an election tomorrow I would vote Labour.
Budget? I note the critics on the whole have picked individual holes, (as can I) but can't offer much by way of alternative to tax, borrow and spend.
I have had a bit of an argument in another place of social media about what I perceive as Labour's irresponsibility in borrowing more, particularly to borrow more to spend more in current spending.
I was challenged to close the deficit and I think it's possible over a few years with a mixture of lower increases in current spending, higher taxes, and still be able to increase investment spending. That's the mix I would have gone for: less current spending, more investment spending, higher tax, lower borrowing.
Politically such a mix would be difficult, which is why I argued for so long that Starmer had to make the case for difficult choices when in opposition. But it would set Britain up for a much stronger 2030s.
The bigger the Harris win the more entertaining the response from Musk et al. We know the game plan - tell everyone that everyone is voting Trump, that every poll shows he is winning, rig the news so all you hear is He is good and she is shit. So that unless Trump wins the protests will be visceral and directable into the violence that would be needed.
But if it’s a landslide? Where the people who quietly delivered it out themselves quickly and tell men why they voted so hard? What does the idiot savant Musk do then? And what do the GOP cultists do when their Golem has been taken down and the whole world is laughing at his impotent whining - and yours?
What happens to Musk is interesting.
He has tied himself so firmly to Trump's, err, let's say, 'mast', that if the ship goes down what does he do?
If Twix is a $44B machine for electing Trump, and it doesn't work?
If the 'smartest' tech bro on the planet backed the wrong horse?
It could be epic. Or a giant nothing burger
His million dollar bribe is likely illegal - but that won’t have that big an impact on him. He has trashed Twitter- have no idea where he now goes with it as so many of us have discarded it as anything serious or have stopped using it at all.
His other business interests? Can’t see what would change. Tesla continues to bet the farm on automation and has a profitable car manufacturing business the likes of VW would die for. SpaceX is the only game in town for the US space program. Not bothered about BrainChipLink or the boring Boring company.
Big business entrepreneurs bet big and sometimes lose. If he is smart he will say “ah well” and move on. But I think he is in the middle of a neurodivergent obsession phase. Dropping those part way through is practically impossible. So he is pretty likely to attach himself to the TRUMP WOZ ROBBED train and thus remove his future from SpaceX and Tesla as he ends up another discredited fool sued to death because of the ludicrous claims he is likely to make over the next few months
I see Reeves has been all over the news studios this morning spouting more lies to justify her idiotic budget. It will be fun watching her crash and burn - although less fun as she takes the economy with her.
At least we’re now going to have the benefit of a functioning opposition, whatever one’s views of Badenoch.
A perceptive comment on the Seltzer poll. If it’s not an outlier and Iowa really is in play for the Presidential race, how come neither candidate has committed resources there during the campaign?
I see Reeves has been all over the news studios this morning spouting more lies to justify her idiotic budget. It will be fun watching her crash and burn - although less fun as she takes the economy with her.
At least we’re now going to have the benefit of a functioning opposition, whatever one’s views of Badenoch.
That Selzer poll for the Des Moines Register is genuinely jaw dropping stuff. Wow.
I'm too pessimistic to believe it, but at least one org isn't herding!
If it is correct - and that's a massive 'if,' but let's consider this - you wonder if there might be a major surprise in Missouri.
That's one I'd thought of as a possible target early on - Obama nearly took it in 2008 - but assumed from the belief the race was very close would be out of reach for Harris.
It's also got an abortion ballot...and the Republican Senate candidate has been leading the drive to enforce Dobbs v Jackson.
FWIW the CEO of one of the biggest employers in MO is very very close to Mike Pence
A perceptive comment on the Seltzer poll. If it’s not an outlier and Iowa really is in play for the Presidential race, how come neither candidate has committed resources there during the campaign?
Sometimes there are just results that no-one sees coming. It’s true in Westminster elections too, where you just get a random constituency flip that no-one was paying any attention to. That said, I very much doubt Harris will win Iowa.
It would be funny if Trump stormed Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and even Pennsylvania, but suffered a shock defeat, due to unexpected losses in Iowa and Missouri.
Emerson has a good, not outstanding reputation. It got Iowa wrong when Selzer got it right, last time. And it uses the same sort of sample screening everyone else does, which more vulnerable to missing big shifts in voting patterns (because last time's pattern is baked into the screen), as opposed to any overall move in the party vote.
A perceptive comment on the Seltzer poll. If it’s not an outlier and Iowa really is in play for the Presidential race, how come neither candidate has committed resources there during the campaign?
1: The swing may not have been detected by either campaign prior to the poll, so they didn't know it was really in play and now its too late to do much about it. 2: It may not matter - if Harris wins Iowa she's probably won enough elsewhere anyway too. 3: Its only 6 electoral votes, fewer than all other of the typically regarded 2024 purple states except for Nevada (also 6).
PA and NC are more important, even if Iowa is in play.
If Trump fails to win Iowa by at least 7%, he's in trouble.
He's in trouble.
Taking the difference from the polling average at face value and projecting nationally - as just a bit of fun - it would imply Harris winning not only all the commonly recognised swing states, but also Florida, Texas, Iowa, Ohio and Alaska!
Given Florida and Texas voted to the left of Iowa last time there are scenarios where Trump narrowly retains Iowa but ships Florida and Texas. On this poll I’d be taking a much closer look at Texas as it is trending Blue over time, and if Harris were to flip it this cycle Trump would have no path to 270.
If Texas flips to Harris then it’s all over for Trump. It’s been trending Dem for seemingly decades now, but never quite gets there.
Would be bad news too for Ted. Oh well, never mind.
Ted Cruz getting beaten will prove a huge boost for the American drinks industry...
As antidote to the header the only actual voting data AFAIK shows a slight advantage to Trump. Nevada is a battleground state won by Biden last time where almost all the votes are submitted and counted early. It looks very close at the moment but GOP marginally ahead.
The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet.
In her acceptance speech, she described the task ahead as “tough”, which is an understatement. The July election was the worst result for the Conservative party, both in terms of vote share and seats won, since 1832. I am not among those who think this means the Tories can never recover. They have been pronounced dead and buried in the past only then to rise from the grave. But they are unlikely to start recovering until – and unless – they have an honest reckoning with themselves about their multiple failings in government.
Surveys suggest that very few voters think the Conservatives lost the election because they were too left wing while the majority of those with an opinion put it down to their incompetence.
One of the biggest challenges for the new leader of the opposition, and especially when the Tory parliamentary presence is so small, will be persuading voters to pay them any heed. The case made for Mrs Badenoch by her promoters is that she is “box office” with a gift for grabbing attention. What she has often failed to grasp is that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of attention. “Still in development” is the assessment of one reasonably sympathetic senior Tory.
Conservatives have displayed next to no interest in atoning for all the things voters came to loathe about them. There has never been a comprehensive repudiation of Boris Johnson for debauching standards in public life. Nor has there been an expression of suitably abject contrition for Liz Truss’s calamitous experiment with the economy. Nor have senior Tories had the humility to acknowledge that they left a super-massive black hole in the Treasury’s books. When you have fouled up as badly and as repeatedly as the Conservatives did in government, the first step to redemption with the electorate is to own your blunders and express regret for them.
Even if voters become persistently discontented with Sir Keir’s government, the Tories are delusional if they imagine that this means the public will simply collapse back into their embrace and tell the Conservatives all is forgiven. Not least because so far the Tories have been almost completely incapable of recognising how much forgiveness they will need before they are taken seriously again. If Kemi Badenoch wants to get a hearing from the British people, she is first going to have to say sorry. And she is going to have to say it a lot.
I think this is why Badenoch was the better choice. Jenrick was continuity sleaze.
Kemi's victory speech was clear that big mistakes were made by the Tories in office and that they need to have a long hard look at themselves.
Her musings in the past that WFP should be scrapped (which she rowed back on when it became Labour policy) and on Maternity pay being too generous shows a real willingness to make deep cuts to welfare and pensions in order to move to a low tax country.
I wonder if she has the courage to scrap the Triple Lock. She just might.
Badenoch’s weakness is that she is very tribal, aggressively so. The most successful politicians have the ability to look over the party horizon and sympathise without and understand voters that make other choices. She shares Corbyns disdain for the opposition. Evangelical self righteousness makes big tent politics far harder.
I think she will rub a lot of people the wrong way, particularly if she goes heavy on the social authoritarianism of the National Conservatives.
I think she is quite socially conservative herself, but the key issue is whether she wants to force that social conservatism on the rest of us, or whether she actually believes in freedom.
That's always the tricky bit for social conservatives. In theory, "I respect your freedom to go full-on Gilead in your personal life" ought to work, but in practice it doesn't. As our friends across the Atlantic are demonstrating.
I always find it interesting how vociferously left-wingers and progressive liberals argue against any pushback to their sociocultural consensus. "Stick to the economics, guys!"
Maybe they doth protest too much...
No, it's just old fashioned Liberalism. It's why I don't vote Labour or Conservative, but was swayed to vote for Cameron in 2010.
Identity politics goes against Liberalism.
That's why I oppose it.
I don't support Identity Politics.
In particular the nasty right wing populism prevalent across the world.
Yes, but you do, don't you? Provided it's the right type of identity politics, in which case you argue it isn't really anyway.
I have always assessed this to be a Harris victory simply because she wins women by a significantly larger margin than Trump wins men. It's as basic as that.
Even if they were about level, there's 3%-4% more women voting than men in recent previous elections. That could easily be 4-5% this time. Maybe even 6%. Enough to win the EC on its own.
But there are other factors in play. Shy Republicans not telling anyone how they will vote - just because. Trump supporters are not folk you want to admit your vote to. Just nod and "uh-huh" as they spout off. Then go vote for Harris. They won't all be Haley voters, but enough to make a difference.
That’s pretty much how I’ve seen it, but with an additional dollop of a motivated youth vote.
The pollsters are modelling a Trumpy electorate. But that may not be the electorate that votes. And dig down and there’s lots of underlying data that supports that.
The one hopeful possibility is that the pollster-shy voters turn out to be the female family members of the vocal male Trump voters, who go to the polls and quietly vote for Harris…
That's the one that caused Jesse to lose his shit.
..if I found out my wife secretly voted for Harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day" https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
That’s sad. It’s quite astonishing just how polarised the US has has become politically, with so many supporters of both candidates thinking the election result is existential for the country, to the point that it is costing friendships and relationships.
It really won’t be the end of the world if the other guy wins, and it’s a secret ballot so you don’t have to tell anyone for whom you voted.
Kemi Badenoch says she would reverse the introduction of VAT on private school fees.
Labour popping champagne corks.
Superb news, and quite right too.
Education is a public good, which benefits us all. Small independent schools aren't businesses making returns for shareholders but charities helping to educate our children.
A perceptive comment on the Seltzer poll. If it’s not an outlier and Iowa really is in play for the Presidential race, how come neither candidate has committed resources there during the campaign?
The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet.
In her acceptance speech, she described the task ahead as “tough”, which is an understatement. The July election was the worst result for the Conservative party, both in terms of vote share and seats won, since 1832. I am not among those who think this means the Tories can never recover. They have been pronounced dead and buried in the past only then to rise from the grave. But they are unlikely to start recovering until – and unless – they have an honest reckoning with themselves about their multiple failings in government.
Surveys suggest that very few voters think the Conservatives lost the election because they were too left wing while the majority of those with an opinion put it down to their incompetence.
One of the biggest challenges for the new leader of the opposition, and especially when the Tory parliamentary presence is so small, will be persuading voters to pay them any heed. The case made for Mrs Badenoch by her promoters is that she is “box office” with a gift for grabbing attention. What she has often failed to grasp is that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of attention. “Still in development” is the assessment of one reasonably sympathetic senior Tory.
Conservatives have displayed next to no interest in atoning for all the things voters came to loathe about them. There has never been a comprehensive repudiation of Boris Johnson for debauching standards in public life. Nor has there been an expression of suitably abject contrition for Liz Truss’s calamitous experiment with the economy. Nor have senior Tories had the humility to acknowledge that they left a super-massive black hole in the Treasury’s books. When you have fouled up as badly and as repeatedly as the Conservatives did in government, the first step to redemption with the electorate is to own your blunders and express regret for them.
Even if voters become persistently discontented with Sir Keir’s government, the Tories are delusional if they imagine that this means the public will simply collapse back into their embrace and tell the Conservatives all is forgiven. Not least because so far the Tories have been almost completely incapable of recognising how much forgiveness they will need before they are taken seriously again. If Kemi Badenoch wants to get a hearing from the British people, she is first going to have to say sorry. And she is going to have to say it a lot.
I think this is why Badenoch was the better choice. Jenrick was continuity sleaze.
Kemi's victory speech was clear that big mistakes were made by the Tories in office and that they need to have a long hard look at themselves.
Her musings in the past that WFP should be scrapped (which she rowed back on when it became Labour policy) and on Maternity pay being too generous shows a real willingness to make deep cuts to welfare and pensions in order to move to a low tax country.
I wonder if she has the courage to scrap the Triple Lock. She just might.
Badenoch’s weakness is that she is very tribal, aggressively so. The most successful politicians have the ability to look over the party horizon and sympathise without and understand voters that make other choices. She shares Corbyns disdain for the opposition. Evangelical self righteousness makes big tent politics far harder.
I think she will rub a lot of people the wrong way, particularly if she goes heavy on the social authoritarianism of the National Conservatives.
I think she is quite socially conservative herself, but the key issue is whether she wants to force that social conservatism on the rest of us, or whether she actually believes in freedom.
That's always the tricky bit for social conservatives. In theory, "I respect your freedom to go full-on Gilead in your personal life" ought to work, but in practice it doesn't. As our friends across the Atlantic are demonstrating.
I always find it interesting how vociferously left-wingers and progressive liberals argue against any pushback to their sociocultural consensus. "Stick to the economics, guys!"
Maybe they doth protest too much...
No, it's just old fashioned Liberalism. It's why I don't vote Labour or Conservative, but was swayed to vote for Cameron in 2010.
Identity politics goes against Liberalism.
That's why I oppose it.
I don't support Identity Politics.
In particular the nasty right wing populism prevalent across the world.
Yes, but you do, don't you? Provided it's the right type of identity politics, in which case you argue it isn't really anyway.
I think you may have got some of us non-right wingers wrong. Most of us couldn't really care less about taking the knee at Wembley, although we are offended by riots incited by senior politicians quoting Andrew Tate. And I couldn't really demonstrate an interest in LGBT rights.
I do have diametrically opposed opinions to yourself on certain issues but my view (probably like yours) is borne out of practicality. Take the VAT on schools issue that you keep flagging me for. Your view is you should be entitled to educate your children to the standards you desire. I agree you should, but for the privilege you should pay VAT on that lifestyle choice. I would prefer all children to have the same opportunities awarded to your children at their private school, but in a top quality state school. If the UK state sector were properly funded and as such results based on the merit of the student rather than because of their parents income the UK would ( in my view) be a richer nation.
I went to a great comprehensive school which was promoted through the will of then Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher, it was full of students whose parents could have afforded Solihull or Bromsgrove Schools but they chose not to because they didn't need to.
In order to pay for such a service a higher taxation burden is required. One question begs another and so on. But fundamentally do we want the top 7% to flourish and everyone else to flounder? I don't believe identity politics plays any part in that central theme. We would all be treated equally.
I am beginning to think that the Tory party will recover faster than most of us thought possible, The wipe out of so many Tory MPs is in some ways a benefit to Kemi. The Tories can restart with a fresh team untainted by the past issues. Jenerick's focus on Reform was a big mistake. Many of Reform's voters will never vote Tory. Remember it was the Tory party that put Tommy in jail in the first place.
Kemi needs to focus on the traditional groups of Tory voters the farmers, the small business owners and the striving middle class who want to send their kids to private schools. This along with the senior citizens can give them a base of 30-35% of the voters. The first big challenge is Scotland in May next year. I expect the Tories if Kemi delivers will do Ok and may take a couple of rural seats off the SNP.
The one hopeful possibility is that the pollster-shy voters turn out to be the female family members of the vocal male Trump voters, who go to the polls and quietly vote for Harris…
That's the one that caused Jesse to lose his shit.
..if I found out my wife secretly voted for Harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day" https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
That’s sad. It’s quite astonishing just how polarised the US has has become politically, with so many supporters of both candidates thinking the election result is existential for the country, to the point that it is costing friendships and relationships.
It really won’t be the end of the world if the other guy wins, and it’s a secret ballot so you don’t have to tell anyone for whom you voted.
To be pedantic, it was Jesse shagging a producer rather than politics that cost him his ‘sanctified’ marriage.
Kemi Badenoch tells @bbclaurak that Boris Johnson was a "great" prime minister and partygate was "overblown".
Badenoch's interview on Kuenssberg was very interesting and she is quite impressive
I think she may well surprise her opponents, even confound them
I would suggest it would be foolhardy to underestimate her
Good to see you on board. I think she is in principle okay, but Cleverly would have moved the dial very much more in your favour.
It is the first time I have heard her interviewed, and she was confident and very much pro business and anti big government which is a breath of fresh air from some previous conservatives
A perceptive comment on the Seltzer poll. If it’s not an outlier and Iowa really is in play for the Presidential race, how come neither candidate has committed resources there during the campaign?
If there had been a poll with Tories ahead in Bootle, do you think anybody wouldchange their plans and go visit?
I think under that circumstances Labour would be best off relinquishing the lease on 20 Rushworth Street as they won't need a head office going forward.
Listening to the F1 Gamer YouTube channel. On every five times in the past that qualifying has been delayed to Sunday a German driver has won pole position.
The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet.
In her acceptance speech, she described the task ahead as “tough”, which is an understatement. The July election was the worst result for the Conservative party, both in terms of vote share and seats won, since 1832. I am not among those who think this means the Tories can never recover. They have been pronounced dead and buried in the past only then to rise from the grave. But they are unlikely to start recovering until – and unless – they have an honest reckoning with themselves about their multiple failings in government.
Surveys suggest that very few voters think the Conservatives lost the election because they were too left wing while the majority of those with an opinion put it down to their incompetence.
One of the biggest challenges for the new leader of the opposition, and especially when the Tory parliamentary presence is so small, will be persuading voters to pay them any heed. The case made for Mrs Badenoch by her promoters is that she is “box office” with a gift for grabbing attention. What she has often failed to grasp is that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of attention. “Still in development” is the assessment of one reasonably sympathetic senior Tory.
Conservatives have displayed next to no interest in atoning for all the things voters came to loathe about them. There has never been a comprehensive repudiation of Boris Johnson for debauching standards in public life. Nor has there been an expression of suitably abject contrition for Liz Truss’s calamitous experiment with the economy. Nor have senior Tories had the humility to acknowledge that they left a super-massive black hole in the Treasury’s books. When you have fouled up as badly and as repeatedly as the Conservatives did in government, the first step to redemption with the electorate is to own your blunders and express regret for them.
Even if voters become persistently discontented with Sir Keir’s government, the Tories are delusional if they imagine that this means the public will simply collapse back into their embrace and tell the Conservatives all is forgiven. Not least because so far the Tories have been almost completely incapable of recognising how much forgiveness they will need before they are taken seriously again. If Kemi Badenoch wants to get a hearing from the British people, she is first going to have to say sorry. And she is going to have to say it a lot.
I think this is why Badenoch was the better choice. Jenrick was continuity sleaze.
Kemi's victory speech was clear that big mistakes were made by the Tories in office and that they need to have a long hard look at themselves.
Her musings in the past that WFP should be scrapped (which she rowed back on when it became Labour policy) and on Maternity pay being too generous shows a real willingness to make deep cuts to welfare and pensions in order to move to a low tax country.
I wonder if she has the courage to scrap the Triple Lock. She just might.
I think Badenoch should move to the double-lock in the next 12 months (and sweeten the pill by keeping all other pensioner benefits) and couple it with a narrative of a stronger, fairer and wealthier future for the UK - plus attack Labour on tax.
She'll suffer flak - and Labour may pledge to keep it to try and outflank her - but I think the Tories only chance to junk this is in Opposition, it will play well to younger/ middle-aged voter and so that, by the time of the next election, it's no longer a big issue.
Farage will take the oldies and it will be game over for the conservatives.
I tend to agree.
Much less controversial and a similar outcome to reduce NI relative to income tax. Give generous pensions but get tax back on it.
Some policies
1) merge employee NI into Income tax. Take the opportunity to reband, removing various anomolies 2) quadruple lock. The pension is locked to the tax free allowance. The tax free allowance is permanently removed from all withdrawal etc. Foundations of a UBI 3) crackdown on illegal employment - large fines shared with employees who report. See previous posts. 4) merge vocational training into university degrees. Degrees for all! Use this to leverage cross skilling 5) productivity units inside all government departments. Think internalised consultancies. Make it the place for high pay and promotion, based on long term results. 6) non winner picking technology investment. Pay on results. See x per unit of storage in cars delivered. 7) company tax system revised to make financialisation expensive and investment in productivity cheap. Etc
Some interesting policies, a couple I disagree on.
But there is a more basic truth about policy that Badenoch will need to understand, and that she'll need to be strong enough to act on. Bad policies by their wasteful nature, generate lots of money for someone. So they will always be popular with lobby groups and sectors of big business - who will in turn reward and heap praise on politicians who choose them. Good policies, by their nature, are tight and efficient, with very little money belching out. So there's no big bucks in them, and they will be opposed or ignored.
That's why all our renewables are shit ones, whereas good, dependable ones like tidal are left on the shelf. There's no pot of gold in a good policy.
I think Kemi is extremely savvy, we just have to hope she is willing to take on the vested interests, and bend them to her will, and not just be a creature of them, like every other Government since Maggie T.
Kemi Badenoch says she would reverse the introduction of VAT on private school fees.
Labour popping champagne corks.
The Tories fighting last years battles - by the time the Tories come back into power (even if it's 2028) what's left of the private school sector won't need the change and probably couldn't cope with the extra demand..
A perceptive comment on the Seltzer poll. If it’s not an outlier and Iowa really is in play for the Presidential race, how come neither candidate has committed resources there during the campaign?
1: The swing may not have been detected by either campaign prior to the poll, so they didn't know it was really in play and now its too late to do much about it. 2: It may not matter - if Harris wins Iowa she's probably won enough elsewhere anyway too. 3: Its only 6 electoral votes, fewer than all other of the typically regarded 2024 purple states except for Nevada (also 6).
PA and NC are more important, even if Iowa is in play.
Perhaps too it shows how little the physical locations of the rallies matter?
The big news last week was Trump in New York, but got worldwide coverage.
It's important to keep up the energy of a local campaign, but it's a national audience.
The one hopeful possibility is that the pollster-shy voters turn out to be the female family members of the vocal male Trump voters, who go to the polls and quietly vote for Harris…
That's the one that caused Jesse to lose his shit.
..if I found out my wife secretly voted for Harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day" https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
That’s sad. It’s quite astonishing just how polarised the US has has become politically, with so many supporters of both candidates thinking the election result is existential for the country, to the point that it is costing friendships and relationships.
It really won’t be the end of the world if the other guy wins, and it’s a secret ballot so you don’t have to tell anyone for whom you voted.
To be pedantic, it was Jesse shagging a producer rather than politics that cost him his ‘sanctified’ marriage.
I find it remarkable that any human being would desire to procreate with Watters. Reptiles on the other hand...
The one hopeful possibility is that the pollster-shy voters turn out to be the female family members of the vocal male Trump voters, who go to the polls and quietly vote for Harris…
That's the one that caused Jesse to lose his shit.
..if I found out my wife secretly voted for Harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day" https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
That’s sad. It’s quite astonishing just how polarised the US has has become politically, with so many supporters of both candidates thinking the election result is existential for the country, to the point that it is costing friendships and relationships.
It really won’t be the end of the world if the other guy wins, and it’s a secret ballot so you don’t have to tell anyone for whom you voted.
It *probably* won't be the end of the world if the other guy wins. But the world has enough nuclear weapons to blow ourselves up multiple times over and the fact that this hasn't happened yet comes down to the sense and good judgement of the people in charge of large countries so let's not get complacent.
A perceptive comment on the Seltzer poll. If it’s not an outlier and Iowa really is in play for the Presidential race, how come neither candidate has committed resources there during the campaign?
1. It's probably not in play BUT even if it's close it's bad news for Trump, especially in other midwest states. 2. It's the first Iowa poll with a Harris lead (see 1) 3. If Harris wins Iowa (which has only 6 EC votes), then she has almost certainly already won without Iowa, so it's a waste of resources campaigning there (538 gives Iowa a 0.1% chance of being the tipping point state).
Kemi Badenoch says she would reverse the introduction of VAT on private school fees.
Labour popping champagne corks.
Superb news, and quite right too.
Education is a public good, which benefits us all. Small independent schools aren't businesses making returns for shareholders but charities helping to educate our children.
I have nothing against private schools (went to one myself for the sixth form) but that's a bit rich. I presume by 'our children' you mean the children of the well to do.
Kemi Badenoch says she would reverse the introduction of VAT on private school fees.
Labour popping champagne corks.
The Tories fighting last years battles - by the time the Tories come back into power (even if it's 2028) what's left of the private school sector won't need the change and probably couldn't cope with the extra demand..
You really think anything this Government does is going to last the time it takes to repeal something after their unmourned demise?
The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet.
In her acceptance speech, she described the task ahead as “tough”, which is an understatement. The July election was the worst result for the Conservative party, both in terms of vote share and seats won, since 1832. I am not among those who think this means the Tories can never recover. They have been pronounced dead and buried in the past only then to rise from the grave. But they are unlikely to start recovering until – and unless – they have an honest reckoning with themselves about their multiple failings in government.
Surveys suggest that very few voters think the Conservatives lost the election because they were too left wing while the majority of those with an opinion put it down to their incompetence.
One of the biggest challenges for the new leader of the opposition, and especially when the Tory parliamentary presence is so small, will be persuading voters to pay them any heed. The case made for Mrs Badenoch by her promoters is that she is “box office” with a gift for grabbing attention. What she has often failed to grasp is that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of attention. “Still in development” is the assessment of one reasonably sympathetic senior Tory.
Conservatives have displayed next to no interest in atoning for all the things voters came to loathe about them. There has never been a comprehensive repudiation of Boris Johnson for debauching standards in public life. Nor has there been an expression of suitably abject contrition for Liz Truss’s calamitous experiment with the economy. Nor have senior Tories had the humility to acknowledge that they left a super-massive black hole in the Treasury’s books. When you have fouled up as badly and as repeatedly as the Conservatives did in government, the first step to redemption with the electorate is to own your blunders and express regret for them.
Even if voters become persistently discontented with Sir Keir’s government, the Tories are delusional if they imagine that this means the public will simply collapse back into their embrace and tell the Conservatives all is forgiven. Not least because so far the Tories have been almost completely incapable of recognising how much forgiveness they will need before they are taken seriously again. If Kemi Badenoch wants to get a hearing from the British people, she is first going to have to say sorry. And she is going to have to say it a lot.
I think this is why Badenoch was the better choice. Jenrick was continuity sleaze.
Kemi's victory speech was clear that big mistakes were made by the Tories in office and that they need to have a long hard look at themselves.
Her musings in the past that WFP should be scrapped (which she rowed back on when it became Labour policy) and on Maternity pay being too generous shows a real willingness to make deep cuts to welfare and pensions in order to move to a low tax country.
I wonder if she has the courage to scrap the Triple Lock. She just might.
Badenoch’s weakness is that she is very tribal, aggressively so. The most successful politicians have the ability to look over the party horizon and sympathise without and understand voters that make other choices. She shares Corbyns disdain for the opposition. Evangelical self righteousness makes big tent politics far harder.
I think she will rub a lot of people the wrong way, particularly if she goes heavy on the social authoritarianism of the National Conservatives.
I think she is quite socially conservative herself, but the key issue is whether she wants to force that social conservatism on the rest of us, or whether she actually believes in freedom.
That's always the tricky bit for social conservatives. In theory, "I respect your freedom to go full-on Gilead in your personal life" ought to work, but in practice it doesn't. As our friends across the Atlantic are demonstrating.
I always find it interesting how vociferously left-wingers and progressive liberals argue against any pushback to their sociocultural consensus. "Stick to the economics, guys!"
Maybe they doth protest too much...
No, it's just old fashioned Liberalism. It's why I don't vote Labour or Conservative, but was swayed to vote for Cameron in 2010.
Identity politics goes against Liberalism.
That's why I oppose it.
I don't support Identity Politics.
In particular the nasty right wing populism prevalent across the world.
Yes, but you do, don't you? Provided it's the right type of identity politics, in which case you argue it isn't really anyway.
I think you may have got some of us non-right wingers wrong. Most of us couldn't really care less about taking the knee at Wembley, although we are offended by riots incited by senior politicians quoting Andrew Tate. And I couldn't really demonstrate an interest in LGBT rights.
I do have diametrically opposed opinions to yourself on certain issues but my view (probably like yours) is borne out of practicality. Take the VAT on schools issue that you keep flagging me for. Your view is you should be entitled to educate your children to the standards you desire. I agree you should, but for the privilege you should pay VAT on that lifestyle choice. I would prefer all children to have the same opportunities awarded to your children at their private school, but in a top quality state school. If the UK state sector were properly funded and as such results based on the merit of the student rather than because of their parents income the UK would ( in my view) be a richer nation.
I went to a great comprehensive school which was promoted through the will of then Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher, it was full of students whose parents could have afforded Solihull or Bromsgrove Schools but they chose not to because they didn't need to.
In order to pay for such a service a higher taxation burden is required. One question begs another and so on. But fundamentally do we want the top 7% to flourish and everyone else to flounder? I don't believe identity politics plays any part in that central theme. We would all be treated equally.
I am beginning to think that the Tory party will recover faster than most of us thought possible, The wipe out of so many Tory MPs is in some ways a benefit to Kemi. The Tories can restart with a fresh team untainted by the past issues. Jenerick's focus on Reform was a big mistake. Many of Reform's voters will never vote Tory. Remember it was the Tory party that put Tommy in jail in the first place.
Kemi needs to focus on the traditional groups of Tory voters the farmers, the small business owners and the striving middle class who want to send their kids to private schools. This along with the senior citizens can give them a base of 30-35% of the voters. The first big challenge is Scotland in May next year. I expect the Tories if Kemi delivers will do Ok and may take a couple of rural seats off the SNP.
But all you are achieving is formulating policy for a win rather than to address how to make Britain Great again. Is winning in order to hand out PPE contracts to Boris's mates the main reason for the Conservative Party existing these days?
Kemi Badenoch tells @bbclaurak that Boris Johnson was a "great" prime minister and partygate was "overblown".
Badenoch's interview on Kuenssberg was very interesting and she is quite impressive
I think she may well surprise her opponents, even confound them
I would suggest it would be foolhardy to underestimate her
she just announced the Tories will vote AGAINST the Budget’s £22bn for the NHS
I think the word there is "brave"...
Or "sensible", as the NHS gives poor results for the money spent on it and is, even by public sector standards, notoriously wasteful, inefficient and insatiable.
Sort of like the EU really, except maybe not quite as bad.
Kemi Badenoch says she would reverse the introduction of VAT on private school fees.
Labour popping champagne corks.
The Tories fighting last years battles - by the time the Tories come back into power (even if it's 2028) what's left of the private school sector won't need the change and probably couldn't cope with the extra demand..
You really think anything this Government does is going to last the time it takes to repeal something after their unmourned demise?
If the Iowa poll is right it could be an absolute Harris landslide. Trump sub 209 at around 6%. He can even win Florida and that still might come in...
Mr. Stereodog, my parents weren't, and aren't, well-to-do. In addition to reduced fees for bursaries, they could only afford to send me to a private school due to making sacrifices (I went abroad on holiday with them precisely once). The idea The Rich are the only ones who send children to public schools is not accurate.
Comments
In particular the nasty right wing populism prevalent across the world.
I can see the theory (red wall, most senior Conservative actually running stuff), but is that entirely wise?
But... let's hope this is seltzer for Democrat queasiness.
Vote for this woman, America. Please.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6bv6jYEVAs
"Reuters reported earlier this month that Elon Musk's America PAC, during an internal meeting, said it wouldn't hit its goal of 450,000 door knocks by election day in WI.
At this rate, Harris campaign in PA will hit 450,000 door knocks in 225 minutes, just shy of four hours. https://t.co/upkZzrocN1 pic.twitter.com/imq6ZiAHrj
— Matt Ortega (@MattOrtega) November 2, 2024"
That was conducted on behalf of Real Clear Politics ! I’d hope it didn’t effect their poll but RCP is another Trump arse licker.
I suspect deep-down you know you got this badly wrong and it's only pride and cognitive dissonance that's keeping you from admitting it, because you fear humiliation and the "told you sos" more than anything else.
Lack of hope being a lesson drummed into me from watching Threads on Halloween night.
(Though honestly, and it feels sacrilegious to say this, I found it a bit hammy and overwrought. The whole wind whistling constantly in the post-war period, the grey filter, they were laying it on thick).
Come on America, do the right thing. Please.
Labour's programme for government offers opportunities for the Tories to reclaim votes from Reform, Labour and the Lib Dems all at the same time because they're pursuing policies at odds with a significant number of floating voters in all those constituencies.
One thing that seems to have happened in the South East is the change in activists. Typically the LD had to target ruthlessly whereas the Tories fought on all fronts (I know that is a simplification). For the first time that seems to have reversed completely with lots of LD activists and few Tories.
In the County elections in 2025 I expect the LDs to do well and the Tories badly in the Home Counties. Elsewhere I expect Tories and Reform to do well at the expense of Labour. Will that be good news or bad news for a Tory recovery?
MAGA despise him. Hard to moderate left generally despise him - Iraq. He has pulled back, a bit, there with the gracious and friendly handover to Obama.
I'd also expect Badenoch to be okay on the membership side. The leadership election was, in the end, authentically nuts vs inauthentically nuts, and authentically nuts is better for membership if not wider electability. And Labour are probably helping out in terms of rallying the Tory base.
I said Harris would win and it won’t be close. Hello Selzer poll backing up all of the other data points that Harris has so many voters not only in the bag but motivated and angry. Trump voters? The vote dress up like they’ve been shot or are on the Derelicte fashion shoot for Trump. The millions he needs to win who didn’t vote for him last time? They’re *actually* going to vote are they?
The bigger the Harris win the more entertaining the response from Musk et al. We know the game plan - tell everyone that everyone is voting Trump, that every poll shows he is winning, rig the news so all you hear is He is good and she is shit. So that unless Trump wins the protests will be visceral and directable into the violence that would be needed.
But if it’s a landslide? Where the people who quietly delivered it out themselves quickly and tell men why they voted so hard? What does the idiot savant Musk do then? And what do the GOP cultists do when their Golem has been taken down and the whole world is laughing at his impotent whining - and yours?
What bits of "Identity Politics" do you have in mind that I support?
One interesting thing about this poll is that the previous one showed Trump winning, so it shows a recent move in favour of Harris. Even if other polls are systematically out, there's a better chance of them picking up a change - but they haven't. So this also suggests that this movement is random statistical noise.
All those caveats aside, I'm guessing it should be obvious pretty early, with the results from FL, GA and NC, whether Harris is on course for a landslide.
https://apnews.com/article/peanut-pet-squirrel-seized-euthanized-45a4cba19e1c49cb0cd58fef0f140f0d
Peanut was an internet-famous pet squirrel who was taken away and destroyed by public health officials in New York, after complains from neighbours.
And we are seeing a similar thing here.
The changeover to fibre broadband, in the U.K. , in particular, has led to a lot of people dropping the landline phone. More money for something they don’t use.
The other benefit is "sense checking" the ideas from thinktanks populated by teenage scribblers funded by big donors. Without a broad membership parties are inclined to disappear up their own fundaments.
By comparison, Corbyn's 2019 GE defeat still saw Labour receive £6.8m pa.
A combination of over regulation in certain areas (combined with mad free for all in others), overzealous enforcement. And these-admitted truth that the enforcement is heavily political.
It has happened a few times, over the years, for example, that a “voice in the crowd” type has asked a question to a powerful politician. That embarrassed. Within days, said individual gets an IRS audit - and every other applicable agency takes an interest in his affairs.
Maternity services clinics have been closing, to the extent that some women are giving birth out of state. And fairly or not (there are other funding issues beyond the resulting difficulties for practitioner insurance), Dobbs is getting blamed.
Much less controversial and a similar outcome to reduce NI relative to income tax. Give generous pensions but get tax back on it.
So it's perfectly possible that Selzer is right here but the story isn't reflected in other states without similar propositions.
For reference Ohio has one proposition to create an independent board to decide electoral districts - that will also get the Democrat voters out but won't change a solid Trump victory there.
He has tied himself so firmly to Trump's, err, let's say, 'mast', that if the ship goes down what does he do?
If Twix is a $44B machine for electing Trump, and it doesn't work?
If the 'smartest' tech bro on the planet backed the wrong horse?
It could be epic. Or a giant nothing burger
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/devious-rachel-reeves-omitted-public-sector-pensions-debt/
Trump watching the returns on election night.
https://x.com/BillyBaldwin/status/1852845417182241060
https://x.com/PDXEleven/status/1852779613690478970
I do have diametrically opposed opinions to yourself on certain issues but my view (probably like yours) is borne out of practicality. Take the VAT on schools issue that you keep flagging me for. Your view is you should be entitled to educate your children to the standards you desire. I agree you should, but for the privilege you should pay VAT on that lifestyle choice. I would prefer all children to have the same opportunities awarded to your children at their private school, but in a top quality state school. If the UK state sector were properly funded and as such results based on the merit of the student rather than because of their parents income the UK would ( in my view) be a richer nation.
I went to a great comprehensive school which was promoted through the will of then Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher, it was full of students whose parents could have afforded Solihull or Bromsgrove Schools but they chose not to because they didn't need to.
In order to pay for such a service a higher taxation burden is required. One question begs another and so on. But fundamentally do we want the top 7% to flourish and everyone else to flounder? I don't believe identity politics plays any part in that central theme. We would all be treated equally.
Trump: "we always have huge crowds and never any empty seats."
Cameraman: *pans camera*
https://x.com/TheHoustonWade/status/1852935336361676805
I also notice the Trump tagline now is "Trump will fix it"
Sad...
..if I found out my wife secretly voted for Harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day"
https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
1) merge employee NI into Income tax. Take the opportunity to reband, removing various anomolies
2) quadruple lock. The pension is locked to the tax free allowance. The tax free allowance is permanently removed from all withdrawal etc. Foundations of a UBI
3) crackdown on illegal employment - large fines shared with employees who report. See previous posts.
4) merge vocational training into university degrees. Degrees for all! Use this to leverage cross skilling
5) productivity units inside all government departments. Think internalised consultancies. Make it the place for high pay and promotion, based on long term results.
6) non winner picking technology investment. Pay on results. See x per unit of storage in cars delivered.
7) company tax system revised to make financialisation expensive and investment in productivity cheap.
Etc
I was challenged to close the deficit and I think it's possible over a few years with a mixture of lower increases in current spending, higher taxes, and still be able to increase investment spending. That's the mix I would have gone for: less current spending, more investment spending, higher tax, lower borrowing.
Politically such a mix would be difficult, which is why I argued for so long that Starmer had to make the case for difficult choices when in opposition. But it would set Britain up for a much stronger 2030s.
His other business interests? Can’t see what would change. Tesla continues to bet the farm on automation and has a profitable car manufacturing business the likes of VW would die for. SpaceX is the only game in town for the US space program. Not bothered about BrainChipLink or the boring Boring company.
Big business entrepreneurs bet big and sometimes lose. If he is smart he will say “ah well” and move on. But I think he is in the middle of a neurodivergent obsession phase. Dropping those part way through is practically impossible. So he is pretty likely to attach himself to the TRUMP WOZ ROBBED train and thus remove his future from SpaceX and Tesla as he ends up another discredited fool sued to death because of the ludicrous claims he is likely to make over the next few months
@KevinASchofield
Kemi Badenoch tells @bbclaurak that Boris Johnson was a "great" prime minister and partygate was "overblown".
https://x.com/ryangirdusky/status/1852852851384733864
Harris is in PA today, and Trump in NC.
As you were.
(Or, just playing to Laura's sensitivities.)
Kemi Badenoch says she would reverse the introduction of VAT on private school fees.
Labour popping champagne corks.
And it uses the same sort of sample screening everyone else does, which more vulnerable to missing big shifts in voting patterns (because last time's pattern is baked into the screen), as opposed to any overall move in the party vote.
What would Jenrick say on this one? Probably something equally unapologetic, but a little mealier mouthed.
1: The swing may not have been detected by either campaign prior to the poll, so they didn't know it was really in play and now its too late to do much about it.
2: It may not matter - if Harris wins Iowa she's probably won enough elsewhere anyway too.
3: Its only 6 electoral votes, fewer than all other of the typically regarded 2024 purple states except for Nevada (also 6).
PA and NC are more important, even if Iowa is in play.
I think she may well surprise her opponents, even confound them
I would suggest it would be foolhardy to underestimate her
I think the word there is "brave"...
https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/the-early-voting-blog-2024
The pollsters are modelling a Trumpy electorate. But that may not be the electorate that votes. And dig down and there’s lots of underlying data that supports that.
And do you seriously think the conservatives would vote for Reeves budget
It really won’t be the end of the world if the other guy wins, and it’s a secret ballot so you don’t have to tell anyone for whom you voted.
That's hand votes to reform territory.
Education is a public good, which benefits us all. Small independent schools aren't businesses making returns for shareholders but charities helping to educate our children.
I am beginning to think that the Tory party will recover faster than most of us thought possible, The wipe out of so many Tory MPs is in some ways a benefit to Kemi. The Tories can restart with a fresh team untainted by the past issues. Jenerick's focus on Reform was a big mistake. Many of Reform's voters will never vote Tory. Remember it was the Tory party that put Tommy in jail in the first place.
Kemi needs to focus on the traditional groups of Tory voters the farmers, the small business owners and the striving middle class who want to send their kids to private schools. This along with the senior citizens can give them a base of 30-35% of the voters. The first big challenge is Scotland in May next year. I expect the Tories if Kemi delivers will do Ok and may take a couple of rural seats off the SNP.
The Budget is an up and down vote, you don't vote for individual measures like the NHS expenditure separately from the NI tax rises.
The previous TV personality to use that tagline posthumously found to have committed 31 cases of rape amongst other things..
So it seems very appropriate tagline
Ahem.
But there is a more basic truth about policy that Badenoch will need to understand, and that she'll need to be strong enough to act on. Bad policies by their wasteful nature, generate lots of money for someone. So they will always be popular with lobby groups and sectors of big business - who will in turn reward and heap praise on politicians who choose them. Good policies, by their nature, are tight and efficient, with very little money belching out. So there's no big bucks in them, and they will be opposed or ignored.
That's why all our renewables are shit ones, whereas good, dependable ones like tidal are left on the shelf. There's no pot of gold in a good policy.
I think Kemi is extremely savvy, we just have to hope she is willing to take on the vested interests, and bend them to her will, and not just be a creature of them, like every other Government since Maggie T.
The big news last week was Trump in New York, but got worldwide coverage.
It's important to keep up the energy of a local campaign, but it's a national audience.
2. It's the first Iowa poll with a Harris lead (see 1)
3. If Harris wins Iowa (which has only 6 EC votes), then she has almost certainly already won without Iowa, so it's a waste of resources campaigning there (538 gives Iowa a 0.1% chance of being the tipping point state).
Sort of like the EU really, except maybe not quite as bad.
All Governments always do making lasting changes.