This would not be the result of a general election winning Leader of the Opposition-politicalbetting
This would not be the result of a general election winning Leader of the Opposition – politicalbetting.com
You know you're in big trouble when your projected losses in local elections look more like a historical date.(figs: @stevefisher.bsky.social via @stephenkb.bsky.social)
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You have all these talking heads appearing on screens pontificating about issues over which they have no control (defence, immigration, economics etc) though they claim to have. Meanwhile locally everyone gets the hump over potholes and bins and dog shit.
For Labour exactly how bad matters a lot - both for Starmer personally and whether they lose dominance of the left bloc to the Greens.
The Tories will, if anything, do worse. But weirdly they don't seem to care much anymore.
https://bsky.app/profile/samfr.bsky.social/post/3mixz5dv7jx2o
Incidentally, am I missing something? According to the Wikipedia page, Labour are defending 2196 seats, and the Conservatives 1134. Both parties are doing badly, but surely not that badly. Surely?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_United_Kingdom_local_elections
Don’t win according to the rules so they just announce that they won anyway
These days the general fashion to dislike all politicians seems to trump everything. My anti-immigrant but 'definitely not racist' sister-in-law was explaining on the phone to Mrs P last night that the best approach is to spoil you ballot paper because 'that really makes a difference'.
Unfortunately, Jenrick has now defected to Reform.
I am using it fine on MacOS and Safari
I suspect also that there will be a lot of Reform and Green councillors who get elected unexpectedly and don’t realise how much work being a councillor is. Look out for a slew of by-elections later in the year.
Local elections typically have a low turnout, so local campaigns to get your supporters to the polling stations can matter more than in a general election. Will that save some Lab or Con seats?
When no party is particularly loved, that’s also when independents and other local groups do well. Your Party isn’t standing, but YP activists have organised locally in many places.
I see Scotland's Reform leader was down on the Wight too for Easter. A man of the people, perhaps observing ferries from his yacht.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/malcolm-offord-missed-election-campaigning-36982889
A reminder - other, completely uninvolved countries that aren’t in the news are getting a bat to the side of the head.
In many poorer countries, economy is heavily reliant on oil. When prices go up, the poorest don’t eat.
The self-censoring nature of many of the most important facts about Trump's presidencies is a load-bearing necessity for his career. The median voter cannot and will not believe that he is as bad as he actually is. They invent a less bad version of him that they can then be persuaded to support.
@chathamharrison.bsky.social
The sad thing is "the Trump Administration is trying to coerce the Catholic Church to support it by threatening military action against the Pope" is a thing you could never get John Q. Public to wrap his brain around. Ridiculous. "If this was true I'd have heard about it," they say, hearing about it
Thursday, 9 April: Last date for delivery of nomination papers (4pm)
Friday, 10 April: Statement of Persons Nominated is published (the list of candidates standing in the election)
My papers went in on Tuesday.
The last one I spoke to (actually, while leafleting) was going to vote Conservative on the basis that he liked that chap Andy (Street, it turned out after a little prompting) and didn't understand why he'd gone. But after basically nodding and agreeing with him, he said he'd give the Lib Dems a go this time because I seemed a pleasant bloke. I'm not sure he understood the difference between local and mayoral elections.
Anyway, any thoughts I had of interesting political discussions on the doorstep have largely been dispelled; my main strategy now is to make sure they know who the Lib Dem candidate is, and to simply be friendly in the hope that they vote on the basis of that nice Lib Dem chap they chatted with!
Connectedly McReform are warning of stranger danger, these strangers presumably being of the dusky hued variety rather than rosy cheeked English pensioners retiring to a more benevolent environment in Scotland.
He'll prioritise strangers - Reform will prioritise you 🏴
Both Votes ➡️ Reform
https://x.com/cllrtkerr/status/2041586697796764151?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Well, an improvement on his usual bullshit.
I am confident Kemi will not face a vonc post May not least because she polls better than the brand and to turn that around needs stability and policies, especially for younger voters and on defence
I think labour are facing their own crisis as Polanski and the Greens hijack labour's left and Muslim vote
Kemi is not popular with some who want the conservatives to move more to the centre but that is not her path to winning votes
If the conservatives are foolish enough to think a new leader will change their fortunes, when the spotlight is going to fall on Starmer and labour as they have a terrible night in May, then they deserve to fail
"Reform in Scotland don't have a grasp of Scotland or the union. Their Scottish manifesto for the Holyrood election lambasts the SNP Government for "welcoming uncontrolled immigration from the rest of the UK". Which is what being in the UK entails for Scotland! https://www.reformparty.uk/view-pdf/scotland-manifesto"
https://bsky.app/profile/gerryhassan.bsky.social/post/3mizdxcln422l
The students, who are all studying weekend courses, received letters from the Student Loans Company (SLC) or their university saying their courses had never been eligible for maintenance loans or childcare grants.
One letter, from the SLC and seen by the BBC, says the student's university provided incorrect information and "unfortunately, they didn't tell us you only attended on the weekend".
It states that any "over-payment" will have to be repaid.
The BBC understands courses at 15 universities and colleges including London Met, Bath Spa, Leeds Trinity, Southampton Solent and Oxford Brookes are affected."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq593g970z7o
What business is it of the NATO secretary general (who is not a US citizen) to support Trump's threats against Iran ?
The large majority of NATO members oppose Trump's war.
Absolutely bizarre.
TAPPER: When Trump threatened to kill the entire Iranian civilization, did that bother you as a diplomat?
MARK RUTTE: I'm not commenting. What I want you to know is I support the president
https://x.com/atrupar/status/2042013117413044462
Nitrogenous fertiliser made from natural gas is essential too, as subsistence farmers can be very dependent on depleted soils.
They are assuming that the consequences will just be higher oil and gas prices.
That will happen. But the secondary consequences are something else.
And is won’t just be higher prices. To sustain usage (even with a cut) some countries and industries will go without.
Oil & LNG usage in the short term is generally not optional.
I don't think it works. Partly because lots of us do want to move around (it's usually 'Everyone else should just stay where they were born') and partly because mobility feeds into the prosperity that we've all come to expect. But there is a human longing for a stable community that's just there, without us putting much effort in. That persists, even if you remove race and religion.
Since the Student Loan Company literally can't read or complete simple paperwork, and are known as the Stupid Loan Company while their long-serving head of repayments was so inept he was known as Kevin O'Cockup by his own staff...
So Hegseth's your man.
I'm not inside Trump's circle and this is not financial advice!
Sec Gens are appointed by consensus (effectively unanimous) and have four year terms.
There's no real mechanism - other than consensus again - for removal. Or wait a couple if years for the end of his term.
I guess public censure might be worth a try.
And actively supporting one member state against the wishes of the others directly contradicts the terms of his brief.
Now, I understand that the motoring/pensioner segment of the population is by far the most important electorally, but there is a real sense that the other parties simply do not care about you unless you’re over 60 and live in suburbia. This is particularly the case with the Scottish Lib Dems, I’m afraid. Reform actually directly attacked my age group.
There’s a reason the SNP have a 20 point lead. A very large proportion of the Scottish population live in dense urban areas and none of the UK parties are fighting in that space.
But, as I'm sure most of us recognise... Labour are in government, and it's not going well. It doesn't matter how much that is bad luck and how much is bad judgement, they get the blame. Their unpopularity is kind of understandable.
The Conservatives are in opposition, with a billion free hits at the government. They are doing worse in the polls than in the rout of 2024, and Kemi's positives are within MoE of Useless Old Starmer's. Fewer negatives, but she hasn't done anything so she can't annoy people.
Doing as badly as the Worst Government Ever®, and nobody seems that bothered.
Nobody is really aiming at people that actually work between the ages of 25 and 40. I thought Reform might actually do it but they’ve gone for the triple lock.
If Labour somehow cut my taxes by 2029 (they won’t but just pretend) they’ll have done one more thing than anyone has done for us since 2010.
It’s honestly a joke how the people actually doing the work in this country get completely ignored in basically every debate.
Government approves UK's largest solar farm
Presumably Reform would tear this down?
..
1) it's not pure lithium so unlikely
2) it's a 4000 acre site, they aren't placing the batteries 20 feet from your home..
Acting AG Todd Blanche: "I love working for President Trump. It's the greatest honor of a lifetime. And if President Trump chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I'll say, 'Thank you very much, I love you, sir.'"
https://x.com/atrupar/status/2041583708927340801
But by 2029, a lot of this infrastructure will be in the ground doing its stuff.
The problem for the Conservatives isn't the problem Labour has. The latter are in Government, many people think they are doing a bad job at that and will kick them accordingly. Others are simply disappointed and will stay at home.
In "the old days", if you didn't like the Government, you usually had three options - one, stay at home, two, vote Liberal (Democrat) or Independent if there was one in your area or three, vote Conservative who were everywhere and whether they could win or not, you could give the Government a kicking.
Now, the supermarket selection is transformed - instead of just refried beans or half baked beans, you have green beans, old fashioned beans and white Christian beans if you so want. The choice of protest has never been greater.
Whisper it quietly and they'd like you to forget it but the Conservatives once governed this country and indeed did so for a long period or several - unfortunately some people don't forget and that doesn't help the Conservatives.
It seems to be the age of insurgency - not the nice mild-mannered insurgency of times past but radical new old insurgency taking us forward to a romantic idealised past (apparently) or an equally romanticised future where people can smoke with impunity and no one has the wobbles.
By today's standards, I'm a mild mannered insurgent - I wouldn't be so rude as to break wind anywhere inside the palaces of the mighty (Mother Stodge taught me better than that). Change isn't just about the short-term gratification of tearing down what is but it's the hard graft of working out what will be. That's where all the populists are weak - defining the short term is easy, conceiving of the long term is usually beyond most of them.
You have to project strength and make your argument and not fawn over Trump and call him Daddy
Rutte needs replacing and quickly
I thought the market would crash today after Israel's wrecking ball so I sold across the board at just after 8am. Markets now just slightly down, but Trump isn't up yet.
Gianpiero Lambiase to join McLaren from 2028.
I'm standing in a 3 member ward, so we put in 3 candidates. Shortly after the paperwork had gone in, we received the very sad news that one of the candidates had had a heart attack and died. Obviously, this was tragic at a personal level. He was in his early 70s, but the death was unexpected.
However, it also created a problem for the election. The Electoral Commission website says, "If the RO is notified of a candidate’s death during the election campaign or even on polling day itself (but before the declaration of the result), the poll will be cancelled." The election then has to be re-held, an expense for the Borough. However, our Borough's lawyer went back to the legislation, argued with the Electoral Commission and won. The Borough concluded that a candidate dying before the close of nominations does not invalidate the election. We are sticking with the normal timetable. We've been able to find a new, third candidate and have submitted the paperwork.
Quite the surprise. Verstappen rumours of leaving F1 will only increase.
But a shiny sixpence says that, in the dismal event of a Reform government, they won't tear all this stuff down.
This is hilarious.
The Green Party’s ‘reparations officers’ is descended from a slave trader and CRITICISED the UK abolishing slavery in Nigeria because it was her family that lost out.