The green shoots of recovery for Kemi? – politicalbetting.com
The green shoots of recovery for Kemi? – politicalbetting.com
?The latest Opinium @ObserverUK polling ? Early signs of a Kemi boost? Badenoch’s net approval rating rises by 8 points in a week after #cpc25.Her score of net -14 is the highest she’s had at any point in 2025. pic.twitter.com/1001IDMIgU
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https://conservativehome.com/2025/10/12/our-survey-badenoch-secures-her-position-as-leader-with-her-renewal-speech-but-will-it-add-up-to-revival-for-the-party/
An idea: the Big Picture. Tories say "our national debt is grotesque. It's built over decades, including under our watch. A system which we now need to change. So we're going to make significant cuts"
A starter for 10. Our road network is shagged, the bits we do cost £stupid. Why don't the Tories propose private toll motorways? Easy planning clearance for companies who want to build tolled bypasses of the worst bits. We get new stuff without paying for it, it's pay and play for users.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/12/france-crisis-political-faith-belief-democratic-world-vanishing?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Reform’s deputy leader in Cornwall leaves the party.
First step on the path towards phasing out VED and replacing with road pricing, as the rise of EVs and commensurate loss of fuel duty requires.
Yesterday you were talking about cross party consensus on things that need to be done but you know full well that consensus would only be ok if it’s an area one approves of.
The same fate has already befallen Germany’s CDU but at least they are the primary anti-AfD party, not a hanger on.
Interestingly the Mayor of London has shown that with a bit of confidence you can push through major projects in the face of opposition with long term positive results. We all know about ULEZ (see last week’s good news on NO2 readings in London), but who outside the capital has even heard about the tolling of the Blackwall and Silvertown crossings?
The GLA has managed to get the Silvertown tunnel built and turned it and the previously free Blackwall into toll tunnels. You’d think the outcry would be deafening. But aside from a few half hearted local campaigns it’s been met with a shrug. And the promised traffic gridlock on both sides of the river has failed to materialise.
If a Party is at least a decade from Government (and longer if they jump on board the Reform band wagon) they don't really need balanced policy, dreamcasting will do.
I'm pretty convinced this is true about the Edinburgh bypass. It's a really handy way to get from the east of the city to the business parks in the west - much better than the two buses/trams alternative because the marginal cost of driving is so low. But it also means that the freight trying to move from the NE of England in towards Glasgow/the Highlands gets caught up in commuter traffic.
The issue in May is how the Conservatives do against Reform. If there is some evidence that Reform is stalling against the Tories but making headway still against Labour, the Conservative Party should give her another year.
I think we need the vision thing back in our politics. I personally don't think a load of toll motorways is the way forward, but I can at least accept that the status quo doesn't work and toll routes are universal in countries like France.
The Tories need to stop fiddling around the edges and tell us what conservatism actually looks like. Thatcher wanted a home owning share holding privatising business-led enterprise economy. And built policies to deliver that.
"Lets abolish stamp duty to make owning a home even harder" is a daft policy in isolation. But without the vision thing to put it into the context of all the other policies it is pointless edge fiddling.
Plus we have a sensational ability to let a small number of protesters derail things that would benefit millions, Hence the A303 still won’t be dialled at Stonehenge.
The "M7 Fastlink" scheme long cancelled. Company builds a motorway from the M74 at Abington, crossing the M8 to the M9 at Grangemouth. Charges a toll, but it opens up traffic flow through the central belt, unjamming parts of Glasgow and Edinburgh commuter networks.
Personally I'd build it in the public sector - my proposal is a StateCo road construction business. But the Tories like private so have a consortium do it for profit. Whatever. At least we would build *something*. As opposed to nothing as we always seem to do.
The only upside is that our local elections are in 2027 by which time it should be obvious that Reforms local authority management isn't exactly improving things elsewhere,
Why Royal Mail could axe stamps and addresses on letters
Handwritten envelopes may become a thing of the past as the new boss moves to modernise the business
In a world of supercomputers, artificial intelligence and social media, writing a postal address feels something of an anachronism.
Martin Seidenberg says that technology is evolving and that could revolutionise the sending of letters and parcels. Customers are already able to buy postage online, but in future customers may be able to input a recipient’s address and then an alpha-numeric code could be spat out that can be popped on any given letter or parcel.
Will you need to write the address as well? “For now, yes,” responds the boss of Royal Mail’s parent company. He clams up when asked for further details, but it’s too late. Seidenberg has given the game away with the “for now” — but then this is all very early stage thinking.
https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/companies/article/royal-mail-stamps-addresses-letters-ts7vrhtf2
Scotland and Wales have elections too but while Reform will do well in Wales they are unlikely to do as well in Scotland
In Germany CDU leader Metz is now Chancellor yes so a somewhat different scenario to the Tories
Way too much of our infrastructure is overseas owned, and it's a part of what's effed our balance of payments.
But before any of that, planning reform, so that it doesn't cost £stupid.
Like every other bit of infrastructure we now build.
Tories have talked up Badenoch's speech. I am not sure it was as ground breaking as you all believe it was. I doubt it gains the traction you expect.
Although in her defence Jenrick's Andy Burnham tribute act was at least temporarily put back in its box.
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Occasionally we have gone via Edinburgh and the M90 but the first route is our preferred choice
The lack of dualling the A9 to Inverness is disgraceful and it remains one of the most dangerous roads in UK
Spurious logic at best.
Worth remembering you can still get a starter property in parts of London for under £300k which is the threshold for the levying of stamp duty on purchases for first time buyers. For example, there are one bedroom flats in East Ham and Beckton available for £200-£250k (10 years ago, they were barely £100k which tells you a lot).
I'd also add a lot of first time buyers in London are looking for rental property and anecdotally I think we are seeing some demographic and ethnic changes in my part of the world as a result of the new developments of leasehold flats going up in Barking and Ilford.
Just a question about the Badenoch proposal - is it only on the purchase of primary residences? I assume so but of course that won't stop those wishing to accumulate property buying them in the name of relatives etc.
* Not just PB Tories.
up taxes further in their Budget this autumn not cutting them.
East Ham and Barking never elect Tory councillors anyway, it is voters in areas like Westminster, Wandsworth, Barnet, Richmond upon Thames Kemi will have targeted with her Stamp Duty cut and yes it is focused on primary residences
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_United_Kingdom_local_elections
In London, I expect that the Conservatives will regain Westminster, and Barnet, and maybe Wandsworth, while losing Bexley and Bromley. Basically, a wash. I think Reform will gain Bexley and Havering.
Outside London, I expect that Reform will take Barnsley, South Tyneside, Wakefield, Sunderland, and Sandwell off Labour, and Walsall off the Conservatives.
I expect they will win the new unitary authorities of Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk, and the mayoralties. I think they will win I o W, and Southend from NOC, and Thurrock from Labour.
As I said in a previous, credit where it's due and it does seem there are genuine signs of progress in Gaza. The long suffering of the people there will be ameliorated by the end of violence and the arrival of relief supplies but it's going to be a very long road back rebuilding and reconstructing the place which resembles, to my eyes, the shattered German cities entered by the allied armies in 1945.
The reconstruction process in the west of Germany was multi-layered - economic, political and social. It will need to be the same in Gaza with the radicals expunged from influence and new "moderate" leadership coming to power aided as much a spossible by an international community who can see it's in everyone's best interests to tone down the rhetoric and dial up the relief.
It's also clear however much Trump will try to take personal credit for what has happened there have been a lot of players involved in all this and we may never find out who said what to who and when to get us to this point which is fine.
The problem is the Middle East has been the graveyard of good intentions from Camp David through Oslo to here. Resolving the underlying causes of these conflicts is far harder than achieving temporary truces or ceasefires.
Whether this will mark the end of the salience of the issue in British domestic politics remains to be seen.
Jim McMahon has been replaced by Alison McGovern as the Minister responsible for local Government. Where she is on Local Government Reorganisation I don't know but my information is any decision is now not expected until mid November and I understand a number of councils are very concerned about the tight timescale for organising and running these elections.
https://bsky.app/profile/youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com/post/3m2ydsiiw4s2r
Those countries have mostly lost interest in needling Israel. Money trumps geopolitics for them. It’s only the countries that haven’t taken the full fat capitalist pill - notably the Shias of Iran, Yemen and Lebanon - that still seem to want to have beef.
As a model perhaps that works for Gaza. Let the Qataris invest their petrodollars and the Turks do their industrialisation, and we could end up with a thoroughly undemocratic but largely non-violent and capitalistic regime there on the model of the GCC states.
On a related subject just reading about Time Share fraud. It relates to a particular group of companies that made promises, kept millions without supplying promises. They then reappeared as a Claims company offering to sue (for a fee) the group that defrauded them. Struck me that people who continue to believe in outlandish promises will get shafted a number of times.
https://www.ukpol.co.uk/kemi-badenoch-2025-speech-to-conservative-party-conference/
There's no evidence of any Reform Party locally, so I've no idea what they think about it.
The current system is unreformable.
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/reform-council-tax-hikes-lower-tax-farage-5HjdFDg_2/
A useful political slogan:
REFORM WILL PUT UP YOUR COUNCIL TAX
You also only suggested it as you want Nimby voters still voting Tory to go to your Nimby LDs instead
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/oct/12/chatgpt-ed-into-bed-chatfishing-on-dating-apps?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
It does seem that Chatfishers flop fairly quickly once they meet their target in person. I can see too why some people prefer AI dates to real ones, particularly narcissists.
The old Conservative core, people doing well but tolerating just enough social reform as was needed to stave off revolution, weren't particularly keen on Brexit.
The new Conservative core, greedy old people, were far keener on it, because they saw it as another money flow that should be diverted to them.
The Conservatives aren't the only ones with that confusion. Labour's actual core is early middle-aged graduates working in services or the public sector professions. But the party are still haunted by horny-handed sons of toil. They are way less numerous than they were, and the horny-handed retirees of toil have been lost to Farage.
(Reform also have a confusion between stout yeomen in the red wall and a slightly different subset of pensioners to the Conservatives, but somehow they square that circle. For now, anyway.)
The reason is because by and large the Nimbys are correct. New developments bring traffic congestion, overcrowded schools, overcrowded GPs, loss of green spaces to walk or play and often environmental degradation such as flooding.
The way to build more housing is to recognise the validity of these grievances. The infrastructure needs to be built first, and that requires more than the self interest of the big builders.
"Pensioners who want to downsize but can’t afford the thousands of pounds they have to pay in tax."
Build the layout of a suburb. Trains, gas, water, roads, even pubs built. Then sell plots, half a road at a time, to *different* developers.
As I said it was targeted at first time and second time buyers in London and the South
But spending money upfront? Anathema.
Brexit, not just over 67 and a
white working class 45 year old living in Stoke ie the type of voter Boris won was more likely to have voted Leave than an upper middle class 85 year old living in Surrey
That didn't end well either.
You and Nadine share a devotion to a leader who self destructed
Very convenient.
First time buyers are exempt upto £300,000
This is a policy that eases mobility in the markets and is widely supported by think tanks
You need to understand the policy will be welcomed by all buyers, other than those in Scotland and Wales which presently will retain it, and not just London and the south