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PB Predictions Competition 2025 – politicalbetting.com
PB Predictions Competition 2025 – politicalbetting.com
It’s time to get your entries in for the 2025 PB Predictions Competition if you haven’t already. All entries must be in by midnight on Friday 31st January!
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He might be public enemy number one and effectively be run out of the country by 2029.
More likely he and his party will just fade away into obscurity...
Most of Trump's actions are either stupid, petty or self-defeating, but there is certainly a lot going on.
In the short term though I expect a sugar rush of economic activity in the USA from all the tax cuts and spending, before the bubble pops.
Perhaps it would have been better for the world if he had just beaten Biden in 2020, and carried on in his "not do a lot" mode of operation?
Hmmm.....
Point taken re hotels, but they also profit from imposing the wider costs of tourism in the economy for the rest of us to pay for.
Of course also the tourist industry sensu lato should perhaps not have shat the bed so conspicuously for years (and I'm not thinking of the Golden Turd) quite apart from the AirBNB problem. Cramming so many tourists into Edinburgh at peak times and overcharging everyone and giving crap service (especailly the restaurants, with their reduced and m uch more expensive menus; Arts Festival incl Fringe which in the view of very many locals is grossly bloated; Xmas/New Year). And so arrogantly (cutting down trees in Princes Street Gardens just to get some more "Christmas bazaar" booths for hot dogs and mulled wine FFS, though walling the Gardens off from Princes St and blocking the view etc. didn't get repeated when they realised the public reaction) The peak costs of crowd control, cxleaning up the litter, policing, etc. need to be covered. It's not accidental that Paul Johnston's detective stories set in a future Edinburgh satirise this.
£2-3 a night woiuld imply £40-£60 per person at 5% so seems commensurate?
PS: central Edinburgh is very discernibly heading this way, so something needs to be done. THere is also an AirBNB control system coming in, so it's not just equating hotels with the rest (or at least it's levelling things somewhat).
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/jan/25/no-neighbours-overtourism-residents-spain-portugal-visitor
On the minus side he'd probably have abandoned Ukraine to Putin, and done plenty of damage elsewhere.
So if we're allowed to have different people winning close elections I'd rather have Clinton beating Trump in 2016. Or Clinton beating Obama in 2008. Or Gore beating Bush in 2000
So can he afford to not defend Trump? Its not like he literally does whatever Trump says, but could he manage a move from mild critique to criticism?
Who are Working Towards The Trump, sure. But are also pursuing their agendas as well.
Trump is happy to enable others in return for support. See the ongoing abortion stuff - he is, as far as anyone can tell, not an abortion ideologue. But by supporting the anti-abortion fundies he has acquired a phalanx of devoted voters - “He delivered us the judges he promised, unlike decades of RINOs”.
Interesting to see a faltering start to Trump’s “mass deportations”. Eighty is a start, his supporters might say and I did idly wonder if the plan would be to cajole other Central American countries other than Guatemala to accept the flights. The “America First” schtick is nothing new but there’s a difference between self interest and isolationism.
Whether it’s an effective method of handling illegal immigration depends on how the new administration chooses to regulate legal migration. The emphasis in the UK remains far too much on “stop the boats” rather than coming up with a coherent and effective policy for legal migration.
There’s probably a policy out there but it will never satisfy those who see all migrants in a particular way and nor will it satisfy those who view the open door as a mechanism for maintaining economic growth via the import of cheap unskilled labour.
As with so much else, it needs to be part of a proactive and planned series of policies. Immigration tends to be reactive and the response to it even more so.
Trump, pace Reagan and Johnson, is all “glad confident morning” and that works superficially. Indeed, those who believe honesty is the best policy have never tried politics. The electorate doesn’t respond well to the truth after a long period of being told everything was fine. Governments of all stripes and none are struggling to get their economies moving and the economic malaise has social and cultural impacts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_colonization_of_North_America
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c36e41dx425o.amp
Nothing indicates that this has changed.
Closer to home, we have to defeat our right wing populists. Badenoch telling Truss to shut up was a good thing.
Politicians and business leaders might need to roll back position because of the change but media and regular people dont. So long as they are not in denial about why a majority of americans did pick Trump, or just wallow in performative hatred.
Some of the mewling we are seeing in the UK at the moment is because we have gone from a government which was biased towards politics to one with a bias towards government. Not all of it, but some of it. So being told the unpleasant reality (that taxes need to go up, not down) is heard as talking the economy down.
(Note that isn't Starmer's only weakness. But some of the anger is because he isn't pretending that the government finances are tickety-boo.)
https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/druck-von-donald-trump-eu-general-schlaegt-stationierung-von-eu-soldaten-in-groenland-vor-a-d39fd4d1-e59c-4e12-9635-f6ad3690f060
Prompts the question "how many divisions does the EU have?"
(none, yet...)
Either outcome will utterly screw the already-very-unhealthy Russian economy.
But whilst there's some Trump support in this country her enthusiasm level is a bit beyond most Tories.
There's not going to be an EU army, but a semi-permanent European "coalition of the willing" to back up European interests when the US isn't willing to seems needed now.
I think the same was true of some of the early attempts at colonisation by English settlers in North America too, hence the failure at Roanoke and near failure at Jamestown.
Talking the economy down is talking the economy down.
The government would have been less unpopular if they had, say, merged Income Tax and NI, simplified the rates, and put up the combined tax a bit.
Between pulling people into NI and higher rates, this would have raised a fair bit.
This would have caused a tidal wave of returns from the alt-left parties - Starmer being Proper Labour.
The markets would have taken this as a sign of *funded* increased expenditure. Government borrowing costs would have fallen.
Sold as “Needed to save public services, expand defence spending, tough times etc” - it could have been sold as a positive message of taking tough decisions to deliver results.
Similarly, WFA could have been dealt with as part of a wholesale rebuild of pensioner benefits - “We need to concentrate on the poorest”
Interesting to see a faltering start to Trump’s “mass deportations”. Eighty is a start, his supporters might say and I did idly wonder if the plan would be to cajole other Central American countries other than Guatemala to accept the flights. The You’re not wrong, my friend.
The “party” ended on July 5th though most of us knew the bill was on the table and we needed to pay up and leave. The Governments who were at the fag end of the party were broken politically and economically and their successors have come in and having told everyone the truth are also suffering.
Only those who claim they can either keep the party going or re-start it are being heard but as is always the case many refuse to listen to things they don’t want to hear whether it’s the economy, the environment or whatever or rail against it.
Labour has a big majority - it can and could ride out unpopularity in the short term but the 104 Labour MPs whose seats are vulnerable on a 5% swing or less will begin to worry in a couple of years if there is no improvement.
Italy, Spain and Greece - all about 180 ships each.
France lots of submarines, and Germany, but obviously theirs not Nuclear. The Swedes and Finns seem to have quite decent-sized Navies, as well.
Ho-hum.
Are the current population similarly vulnerable now?
No incoming Chancellor should tie their hands like that. It leaves them with no room for financial manoeuvre. Dumb of Starmer/Reeves, particularly so for the whole term. Promising it for the first year or two like Blair did would have been better.
(1) Nationalist populism + the USA version of the state being on the side of ordinary people + bigging itself up around the world and generally showing that it is a big cheese.
(2) A plutocratic gangster oligarchy.
The first, as amended for UK, is very popular with a large proportion of the UK population.
We are not yet ready for the second. Not even most Reform voters.
How Reform get on will have some relation to how it is seen to be attached to Trumpism in its two forms. It could gain, it could lose. It will have to steer carefully.
But MPs are not known to be blasé about that.
In theory the last day for a GE was 28/1/25 so we could still have a Tory government if they had wanted to go as long as they could, but having salted the earth and a giveaway budget they knew that it would be better to skip town than face reality.
Greenland is not for sale (“f*** off Mr T). It’s up to the Greenlanders (“it’s not Denmark being difficult”)
Then work behind the scenes to make sure that the Greenlanders don’t do anything silly
Starmer and Reeves lacked confidence and while failing to rule out income tax and VAT rises would have given the Tories some room for attack and the first debate showed the potential, there was so much else against the Conservatives it wouldn’t have made much difference to the outcome.
I think Reeves could have done as some on here have suggested and while there’d have been plenty of complaints (aren’t there always?) at a fundamental level it would have been accepted as necessary.
Strangely uplifting, though I'm sure it won't last.
Good morning, everyone.
The problem is they're not willing to do that.
It also won't be necessary to increase tax rates if we get decent economic growth which would be easily achievable if we take that handbrake off the economy by implementing credible and serious reforms, which would be unpopular with vested interests.
The problem is they're not willing to do that.
Politically, they were doomed from day one. They were perfectly placed to do government-not-politics and fix some of the politically impossible problems the nation has. Not only did they flunk that, they made things worse with their NI cuts and joke spending plans.
Speculation that Israel's retired Patriot systems are getting acquired by Ukraine.
https://breakingdefense.com/2024/05/israel-retires-patriot-air-defenses-as-native-air-defense-systems-step-up/
They put taxes up not down by freezing the thresholds and raising NI which cushions the impact of the threshold cut on those working for a living, while being a pure tax rise for those not working for their income. Overall, net, it was a tax rise.
Why do you repeat this bollocks about a "tax cut" as salting the earth when income tax was put up (that is the effect of a threshold freeze) by enough to more than counter the NI cut?
As we have ever higher proportions of people getting their income through means that don't require paying NI, but do require paying Income Tax, merging NI and Income Tax together is both good for the Exchequer and the right and fair thing to do - and that small step to doing so was fully funded!
1.Highest share of the vote in 2025 with a BPC registered pollster in a GB wide poll for each of Lab, Con, LD, Reform: LAB – 35%, Con – 30%, LD 15%, Reform 30%
2.Lowest share of the vote in 2025 with a BPC registered pollster in a GB wide poll for each of Lab, Con, LD, Reform: LAB – 22%, Con – 18%, LD 9%, Reform 20%
3.Number of Reform MPs on 31/12/2025: 6
4.Number of Tory MP defectors to Reform in 2025: 0
5.Number of Westminster by-elections held in 2025: 2
6.Number of ministers to leave the Westminster cabinet during 2025: 2
7.Number of seats won by the AfD in the 2025 German Federal Election: 150
8.UK CPI figure for November 2025: 2.8%
9.UK borrowing in the financial year-to-November 2025: £127bn
10. UK GDP growth in the 12 months to October 2025: 1.6%
11.US growth annualised rate in Q3 2025: 2.9%
12.EU growth Q3 2024 to Q3 2025: 1.1%
13.USD/Ruble exchange rate at London FOREX close on 31/12/2025: 125 USD/RUB
14.The result of the 2025-2026 Ashes series: Australia 3-1 England
And nobody has a politically acceptable and realistic way of cutting government spending.
Often undertaking hopeless cases they know they will lose which inevitably causes delays.
If SKS can put a stop to this all well and good.
https://x.com/michaeldnes1/status/1883068824578334821?s=61
Yet you repeat patent bollocks about an "NI cut" while disregarding that it was part of a package that was a net tax rise.
VAT can be argued either way. I suppose there would've been room to create a new rate of VAT applicable to spending on luxury goods, but that wouldn't have raised an enormous amount. Hiking the rate across the board is a sub-optimal measure in the midst of a cost of living crisis. Crossing the Rubicon and applying VAT to all food purchases would raise a lot of money but wreck the finances of households across the bottom half of the income distribution.
The triple lock should've been binned. It's a massive and destructive wealth transfer mechanism, the net effect of which will be, over time, to progressively impoverish the young and poor by handing what little they have to the old and rich. Labour committed a fatal error by failing to explain that it was unaffordable and would have to be replaced by something less generous, and now they are stuck with it - something made all the more astonishing by the fact that the elderly are the only age group that still backed the Tories at the GE. Starmer has fucked over his own supporters to pay for Kemi Badenoch's core voters to be insulated from the endless austerity applied to everyone else. Lunacy.
We still get Tories on PB and elsewhere saying the demonstrably obviously laughably incorrect things. Stuff that so obviously isn't true that even they must know they are repeating a lie. Yet repeat it they do. I don't get it. I know it worked for Trump, but that's Murica. As I've said so many times, our voters aren't stupid.
If Labour want to raise taxes then repeating that would be good economics.
Sadly they probably won't just because it was a Tory policy so they'll do the opposite, even though its the right thing to do.
Taxes should be levelled more on that which you wish to discourage. Taxing work-earned income more than unearned incomes means you wish to discourage work and encourage people to find alternative sources of income that doesn't involve being productive. It is an absurd way to run the country!
you haven’t used deepseek r1 yet, you’re missing out. watching the model argue with itself, test ideas, & refine its approach feels eerily close to human cognition. it’s not just producing answers—it’s thinking out loud, & the effect is uncanny.
for the first time, it genuinely feels like we’re sharing the planet with another form of intelligence. seeing its thought process unfold makes you realize how close we are to asi—closer than most people are ready to admit.
i’m excited & genuinely fearful at the same time.
https://x.com/signulll/status/1882786965608894629
Said they focused on data infrastructure and knowledge modeling. Which was a long run win.
Techbros tried to lecture me. Now they're trying to pretend.
https://x.com/pplsartofwar/status/1882533067849707591
for the first time in a while, i’m genuinely afraid the u.s. is losing its dominance—its influence, its capacity to innovate, & its ability to outcompete on a global scale. the core issue isn’t just regulatory capture or bureaucratic inertia. the real problem is also the managerial class: a bloated, risk-averse, overpaid, over glorified layer that’s systematically dismantled the mechanisms that once made the u.s. competitive. meta is a great example of this (look at what happened with llama)—that’s with a founder running it, now imagine google where there is a professional manager running it & 5k vp’s underneath.
meanwhile, china is surging ahead. it’s not just drones or now a world-class ai model; it’s the entire ecosystem. robots are building other robots at scale. their tech is cheap, effective, & ubiquitous. the world’s supply chain—its manufacturing core—is de facto chinese.
china isn’t just catching up; it’s scaling the future. if the west continues down this path—short-term thinking, managerial inefficiency, & a refusal to prioritize strategic innovation—it risks becoming irrelevant in the face of a system designed for precision & long-term dominance. this isn’t just a challenge; it’s an existential threat to western economic & technological leadership.
https://x.com/signulll/status/1882898628525584663
Then there might be a sensible discussion about tax,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/live/c9dpwj4gw9pt
One of the issues with the triple lock is that while there are quite a few pensioners with adequate pensions and realisable assets there are also quite a few (a similar number?) with neither.
Mrs C and I are among the fortunate, but we do know people who are in the other category. Losing the WFP was of little concern to us, but it might have been better to pay it this year and sort out a better scheme..... one which left us out, but allowed for those in difficulties ...... next year. Maybe a 'better' scheme can be devised for this autumn, in which case most, of not all, will be forgotten.
China’s #DeepSeek could represent the biggest threat to US equity markets as the company seems to have built a groundbreaking AI model at an extremely low price and w/o having access to cutting-edge chips, calling into question the utility of the hundreds of billions worth of capex being poured into this industry. https://cnb.cx/3Wtl7he (via
@knowledge_vital
)
https://x.com/Schuldensuehner/status/1882908672952582477