Eclipsing Badenoch. Soon Farage could be the favourite to be the next PM – politicalbetting.com
Eclipsing Badenoch. Soon Farage could be the favourite to be the next PM – politicalbetting.com
It is quite something that a party with a mere five MPs and their leader soon could be favourite to be the next Prime Minister.
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Lay the three of them and you can get pleasantly green on everyone else
My aunt COULD grow a pair of balls and become my uncle.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cv2g2rrjywqt
I think the polling on this is quite interesting, from YouGov:
- From spring 2021 - Conservatives no longer trusted on immigration
- From summer 2022 - crossover, with immigration seen as more bad than good
- July 2024 - significant, positive change in whether people think immigration is being handled well ("badly" has fallen from 86% to 67%)
- Concerns about immigration are lower than they were before Brexit, but now approaching that level
- The rising concerns are about pressure on housing and public services, as well as terrorism. Concerns about crime and wages are much lower.
- Significant majority in favour of current levels of asylum seekers (or think we should welcome even more)
- Even higher support for people coming here to work in the NHS
A lot of this is quite contradictory. People tend to be quite keen about the idea of providing a safe haven and having immigrants look after them in their care homes and hospitals, but nevertheless have concerns about the pressure they put on services. Very difficult to navigate for any political party, particularly when the welfare of pensioners really depends on immigration.If it happens at the next election, it’s either going to be Badenoch or someone currently in the Cabinet, and is almost certainly at least four years away in May 2029. If Starmer holds on it could be nine years away, and who locks up cash for that long?
Farage is aged 60, and leads a party of 5 (FIVE) MPs.
https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/iceland-stone-baked-ham-and-pineapple-pizza-420g/90268.html
But it's probably not. Though I'm intrigued at such a critical system having what appears might be a single point of failure.
3 reasons:
1) she may well not be LOTO by 2029
2) if she survives that long it is quite likely that she won't be in charge of the largest party after the GE.
3) it's increasingly likely that Labour will change PM before the next election.
I think Farage is far too short too.
My Arabic immersion semester at the University of Jeddah was excellent. I was going to go to Cairo University for the foreign semester during my Masters but I think I will come back to the Bride of the Red Sea instead.
I can really see the appeal of just surrendering to the mysticism of the Moyen-Orient and disappearing into it like Burton, Philby Snr, Richard Keys and Andy Grey. If I didn't have commitments, I'd like to have a house in Al Balad and do nothing but read the Glorious Quran all day. After I had claimed hafiz status I would learn Persian and immerse myself in the complete works of Rumi. Finally, on my 60th birthday, like the most noted miniaturists of the Sublime Porte, I would blind myself with long iron needle tipped with a peacock feather as my eyes would no longer be capable of perceiving the world as Allah (Subhanahu wa Ta'ala) made it.
I met a lot of young Saudi undergraduates and noted that the radical pan-Arab socialism of Nasser, Afleq and al-Bitar is now moribund. To the extent that they had an ideology it was varying shades of consumerist nihilism and Salafist fundamentalism. Thank Allah (Subhanahu wa Ta'ala) who made the skies and the earth, they have zero interest in and no small contempt for pluralist liberal democracy.
I did radio interview in MSA on life as a mature foreign student in Jeddah and was sweating like Therese Coffey on a Parkrun but got through it. As a result, I was asked to write a newspaper article on the same theme. Sensing a payday, I penned a few anodyne lines on student life followed by a polemic demanding an immediate and violent end to the State of Israel. This I submitted, with a frankly outrageous invoice that was paid promptly and without quibble. Journalism is fucking bollocks and anyone can do it.
I hope you all lumped on Jorge Martin to win the MotoGP WC at 1.8 when I told you back in June he would win it. I won a substantial four figure sum then the c*nts at .com closed my account.
Can you advise on the practicality of learning to fly a Mil-8 from YouTube videos ?
Regarding the journalism bit, you have, TBF, studied at the feet of a master of the bollocks genre, thank to PB.
The tories would have been better off with Jenners who, while being an amoral psychopath, is a lot better at faking enthusiasm for the sort of empirically incorrect opinions to which Carlsberg swillers hew.
Not much further info, oddly.
And for much the same reason- an expression of hope and support.
But given Farage's age- what does Reform's succession plan look like?
Take your pick from:
1. Cyberattack.
2. Messed-up software upgrade.
3. Bug in a system, or an overflow similar to Y2K.
4. Something stupid like a power cut somewhere critical, which no-one realised was critical until it failed.
Given the recent succession of unlikely grifters and buffoons that electorates around the world have chosen to elevate, I wouldn't bet my house against Farage, or on the good sense of the UK electorate.
Though a lay on Betfair exchange might be a decent trading belt.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/v99SkCbcRgY
(hat-tip YouTube's relevance algorithm)
He'll scuttle off to the US by early 2027 for a final pay day. The idea of this Work shy spiv wanting to be PM let alone doing it is risible.
Badenoch has even less of a chance a Party that ditches Leaders like dirty dishwater I doubt she'll see 2026 out if even 2025.
So let's consider Labour
Firstly it's a lot harder for a Labour leader to be ousted. Secondly no one in their right mind would challenge him before the big devolved election cycle in 2026.Thirdly by the Spring of 2027, half way of the 5 year cycle ALL of Labours measures and net migration could well all be travelling in their direction.
Now Starmer, his strength is his management of big jobs, removing the blocks, building more effective processes and improving delivery. He is an Administrator first, politician second.
Give him 30 months and I believe he will have seen off Badenoch and Farage.
The biggest danger I see to Starmer is health. He's in his early 60s. He has lots of miles on his body clock from 4 decades of proper hard graft jobs, the polar opposite of lazy Nigel.
He may decide to move over, but even then when he decides and his successor is primed.
That successor I belive will be Jones, Reynolds or Kyle or if a female leader Phillipson or E Reeves
Thats where my money will go if the market names them
https://x.com/itsolelehmann/status/1864850794866184570
UK government should be all over this, trying to attract these people themselves by fostering a good half-way between European and US culture and regulation. It’s a massive Brexit benefit to be away from whatever the EU are about to do with AI regulation.
Given our history since the war, who the hell in their right mind would trust either political party on immigration? They have both systematically and repeatedly lied to voters, simultaneously treating them as idiots and as potentially dangerous closet Nazis, first ignoring them, then patronisingly downplaying their concerns, then dismissing them, then branding anyone who raised the issue a racist bigot, then, in the last couple of decades pretending they sympathised while letting in staggering numbers.
All the while dumping most immigrants in poor areas where they themselves would never live, displacing the existing working class population without any consultation whatsoever.
All the deceit and patronising hasn't even worked, as voters could see large parts of urban Britain transformed before their eyes.
It's an absolutely disgraceful record, exceeding in deceitfulness any other issue, which is saying quite a lot, and might well have ended a more fragile democracy than ours.
It seems as though the Social Democrats, who topped the poll for the first time since 2009, the Liberal Reform Party and the People’s Party will form a new coalition with 36 seats. The Centre-right Independence Party will be in the rare situation of being out of Government.
A two thirds majority for impeachment looks much more likely now.
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=387859
Ruling People Power Party (PPP) leader Han Dong-hoon stressed Friday the urgent need to swiftly suspend President Yoon Suk Yeol's powers and duties in order to protect Korea and its people, virtually supporting impeachment of the president following Yoon's bungled martial law declaration.
The shift in stance by Han, who initially said until the previous day that his party would make efforts to prevent impeachment, has significantly increased the likelihood of the impeachment motion passing at the National Assembly's plenary session on Saturday...
Illegal boat arrivals.. 15k again more than halved
100 k net a year measurable off the backlog at end of 25.
Achieve those by 2027 and maintain and on immigration Labour are home and hosed
Gregg Wallace has shot his career in both feet. You should support Chiara, the English-accented Italian chef who lived as a child in Marrakesh, Morocco, somewhere near Saudi, at least language-wise, in the finals of Masterchef: the Professionals next week.
ETA Chiara's chocolate, pig's blood and bacon dessert might be problematic for some religions and anyone who can read a menu.
We've got the highest concentration of talent and emerging tech companies on Europe, I think well over 50% share of investment (probably close to 90% over the last 6 months) in Europe for AI/ML over the last year.
It's one of the reasons the EU keeps trying to force the UK into their idiotic AI regulations. The previous government had the wherewithal to reject it, I'm worried that Labour will trade it away for something trivial like fishing.
It they did, it may well be the end of their party as it would be hard to differentiate themselves as minority coalition (or confidence and supply) partners.
There is a 0% chance of the Lib Dems or Labour giving confidence to a Reform government, so it would be a big call for the Conservatives in thay eventuality.
On the header, I think they are all too short - though perhaps trading value in Streeting and Rayner. I think Hybrid Air vehicles on the previous thread may be a better investment.
Are there any potential alternatives to Rayner from the 'working class' (?) side of the party. I cannot find a better word.
Conspiracy theories about voter fraud suggested as one reason behind martial law decision
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=387854
Cholsey (South Oxfordshire) Council By-Election Result:
🔶 LDM: 62.2% (+16.1)
🌳 CON: 23.7% (+0.9)
🔴 SDP: 7.6% (+2.3)
🌹 LAB: 4.7% (New)
🙋 IND: 1.8% (New)
No IND (-25.7) as previous.
https://x.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1864824896640922004
(But if the problem is that railing against globetrotting elites is the challenge, it's not obvious that Kemi B is the solution.)
Sunak, for all his other faults, could see this very clearly, and the worry is that the new government doesn’t.
If the vagaries of FPTP awarded Reform a lot more seats than the Tory rump, it's quite possible that the right of the party just decide to join them.
Unpalatable, probably - but the chance of future preferment would surely be preferable to extinction, for the average Tory pol ?
The water companies get a lot of (justifiable) bad press about sewage releases, often done at times of heavy rain. But the scale of the problem they have to tackle is quite amazing.
In late November, London suffered 24 hours of heavy rain. Fortunately, the new Tideway tunnel, though incomplete, has started operation. In those 24 hours, it intercepted 850,000 tonnes of rain/sewage.
850,000 tonnes.
And even then, it was only half full.
That figure is mind-bogglingly massive.
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/850000t-of-sewage-captured-by-thames-tideway-network-during-24-hour-storm-event-04-12-2024/
Others really are so stupendously rich it makes no sense they would scam people, yet they still do it. Baffling.
It would be a classic if it's 4.
We used to have low-rise, wooden framed offices outside Cambridge that were built up on Madingley Hill - one of the laughably-low "high points" in the area. Two of us were working a weekend to get something done before an event, and, of course, there was a massive power-cut that hit the whole of West Cambridge and the villages, including our office.
After a couple of hours, an electricity company van pulled up outside and the chaps got out. Turned out they were scanning the landscape with binoculars to see if they could see where the lines came down.
They did this for an hour or so, sending people out if they spotted anything suspicious looking. But nope, there was nothing.
Then one looked up at the electricity pole next to our building. It had one of those big distributor junction box things at the top of it, relaying power to the little complex of buildings we were in.
It also had a massive, very dead, slightly toasted crow jammed in it.
Turns out that was the cause of the outage.
She has the political wiles that Starmer has not, managing the transition from Corbynism to Starmerism. She has the advantage of being Deputy Leader over other contenders.
She is an increasingly confident performer at the despatch box. She has the wit and also the left wing passion that Starmer lacks. She isn't afraid of speaking out against the Wokefinder generals.
Labour can win the next election from the left but not from the dour austerity of Starmer/Reeves.
The real question is that without Google's money / compute, DeepMind probably would have never have been able to scale. If it had been a US company it probably would e.g. Anthropic. I have heard several UK tech entrepreneurs saying you just can't get the VC money in the UK to scale fast and vast, everybody is very risk averse. And there is also a problem with mentality of the best and the brightest wanting to take risks themselves and set up a DeepMind.
Its come back to a wider problem in the UK, not enough medium sized companies and ones that don't just sell out ASAP. The yanks are much more willing to go big or go home.
Stats for Lefties
@LeftieStats
·
43m
#GE2029 projection in West Midlands (region):
CON 23 seats (+8)
REF 19 seats (+19)
LAB 9 seats (-29)
LD 1 seat (-)
GRN 1 seat (-
https://www.politico.com/elon-musk-trump-donations-super-pac
Elon Musk was the sole funder of a super PAC formed in the final weeks of the election that spent millions on ads claiming Donald Trump’s position on abortion was aligned with that of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The $20.5 million that Musk put into that group, RBG PAC, accounted for just a small fraction of his total political spending this year, which included $238 million to a super PAC he started and millions more to other GOP groups...
I'm an investor, albeit on a small scale.
I haven't had this email so far.
Also, there is a big problem with STEM and spin-outs from universities, but that is a whole different conversation.
VW workers are going on strike for 4 hours in 9 factories over the threat of closures.
However if people are not buying their cars then what will they have to build ?
German industrial production unexpectedly fell in October, owing mainly to declines in energy production and in the automotive industry, the federal statistics office said on Friday.
Production was down by 1.0% in October from the previous month, the office said.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/german-industrial-output-unexpectedly-falls-in-october/ar-AA1vnnuq?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=379165fe21944381d3f9eed745c9af24&ei=20
The idea of pigs blood in that pastry as well as the desert. Genius.
Popbitch this week is a Gregg special. The man seems to have no filter and just seems to love talking about his sex life.
The Gateshead flyover into Newcastle I have cycled over many times, the drains have never been cleared. Same on the A167 here. Plenty of drains are just silted up.
I've noticed on our residential estate the council clearing the drains this year.
However too many round here are blocked and no sign of them being cleared.
The water has to go somewhere.
There’s already ICE vehicle rationing going on in the UK, with the manufacturers and dealers refusing to sell cheap ICE cars to avoid potentially massive fines.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/12/04/petrol-car-numbers-uk-to-nearly-halve-in-a-decade/
That has been an accusation for decades, and seems to be an almost unfixable part of our culture.
I suspect however they will reverse it quite quickly and drag the EU along with them.
The lesson from Germany now would seem to be encourge research and long-term investment, but then don't put all your eggs in one or two baskets.
There was an entertaining back-and-forth on this on a BBC news article comments section after the journalist correctly referred to a rook as a crow.
#PBpedantry.
I also think that while Badenoch has an incredible tough job ahead of her as the Leader of the Opposition because of that incredble Labour result at the last GE, it is in some ways what will make her position more safe especially as because she is already turning out to be a far more formidable opponent for Farage and Reform than Starmer and the Labour party right now are and already the local by-elections and polling are reflecting that. Plus, why would the party want to change leader in Opposition if the current polling trends put the Conservatives ahead of Labour and Reform?
Lets see how Farage manages being a constitueny MP and Leader in charge of Reform with five MPs for the next five years, will he like he did with UKIP see a never ending revolving door of key players who joined his party and then left disillusioned with the set up under his leadership?....
Since the 2024 General Election:
LAB: 62 (-24)
CON: 46 (+23)
LDM: 30 (+1)
GRN: 8 (+2)
IND: 6 (-3)
SNP: 5 (-1)
RFM: 5 (+5)
PLC: 2 (=)
LOC: 2 (-2)
163 seats contested since GE 2024
There’s so many unknown single points of failure for any business, even if they have explicitly paid for redundancy. Usually it’s a utility digging up the road that takes out a fibre bundle or power cable.
Should be noted that airships fly at relatively slow speed through air, therefore if they're going against the wind then they'll have to fly far further through air than a plane. That's why they've never been a commercial success, anything other than a tailwind and they're screwed.
Nowadays aren’t we all consumerist nihilists enraged because the credit card is maxed out, and seething with contempt for pluralist liberal democracy? It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
I am interested in Durham to see what happens there.
The coalition has not been brilliant but Labour before was not great either.
I cannot see Labour regaining control, if anything I can see them losing ground. But I can see Reform taking a few seats should they stand.
Starmer is in his 60s and soon will be older than any previous Prime Minister since Jim Callaghan. He is not a natural politician but at heart a lawyer. He has no great project he wants to see enacted. And (shades of Wilson?) he is starting to misspeak. For these reasons, I expect him to retire.
Risk aversion can also be slightly distinct, as Max prefers to highlight the side of, but they are definitely both present and intertwined problems in the U.K.
Auto production is massive for their economy, and they've effectively ceded the future of that to China. Having generously provided them with a good deal of their manufacturing technology.
The other big mistake was banding nuclear power.