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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Boris slips to third for next leader in latest ConHome surv
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Boris slips to third for next leader in latest ConHome survey
It’s perhaps hard to credit now but only a few weeks ago on the morning of the budget Boris was still strong betting favourite for next CON leader and Osborne could be had for 5/1 or longer.
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Let's all laugh at Boris, and not in the way he wants us to
Although if he did win and then became PM it would be hilarious for another Old Etonian to lead the country, when we are supposed to be rising up against such elites.
FPT:
Cyclefree said:
Really Nick? The Labour Party may be about to elect as leader someone who has chosen to be friends with terrorist organizations with explicitly anit-semitic and genocidal goals and who do not believe in democracy but in the establishment of a theocracy with no room for minorities of any kind.
I would expect Labour to be against fascism, anti-semitism and the use of violence to get your political aims not to call them "friends". That you think this is something of no moment suggests, to be polite, some complacency on your part.
How do you think such links will look when the next Islamist atrocity happens in the UK or to British citizens?
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I'm sometimes maybe too charitable, but the interview that he gave on this point which excited many here was convincing to me - as he said, he talks to anyone, including the expansionist Israeli right, and reserves the right to disagree with them, as he does with Hamas and Hezbollah, but thinks we have to engage with them. I think that's normally correct, in the same way that I supported talking to and ultimately signing an agreement with the IRA, who I've always seen as bonkers - either you engage with persistent enemies or you defeat them.
We might be able to defeat ISIS and they don't seem to have much to talk about, but that's the exception: is it really possible to imagine a Middle East settlement that doesn't involve part of Hamas? And talking to a pro-Palestinian audience it's sensible to be polite about the people you're trying to engage. I've known JC a long time, and his modus operandi is to treat everyone as an interesting friend who needs to be engaged. In the same way, I support talking to BNP supporters, and one of my closest friends has voted for them, though he doesn't now.
I'm citing the interview because people react to it it so differently. Tories posting here think it shows rage and guilt; Labour people who I've talked to think it shows intelligence and courage. And the selection is not, with silly exceptions, being made by Tories, so for PB purposes it's important to recognise what is likely to affect the result.
Perhaps we should ask them to add "None" as a runner?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/2015UKElectionMap.svg/2000px-2015UKElectionMap.svg.png
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/04/labour-yvette-cooper-jeremy-corbyn-alan-johnson?CMP=twt_gu
Javid and Boris look far overrated.
Dr Palmer,
The use of the term 'friends' is excusable by Jezza as long as he calls Kippers, Tories, LDs and Blairites friends too.
Someone on the previous thread mentioned that voters tend to stick to parties they once voted for with a sort of inertia; basically because the other lot still seem worse. I voted Labour throughout the eighties, even when Michael Foot was leading them, because I was never keen on Mrs Thatcher. I began voting LD in the late nineties even though Blair was probably closer to my political preferences. Now as an old git (a few months older than you), I still can't bring myself to contemplate voting Conservative.
But Corbyn? Shudder! He reminds me of my years at University in the late sixties. Ernest sociology lecturers who would accost passing science students in the manner of the "nutter on the bus."
He may be well-meaning if naive but that old aversion therapy still works.
Hmmm... there could be another glaring reason why London voted largely for Labour....
"London bucked the national trend at the general election by voting largely for Labour. It was a curious aberration. This is an entrepreneurial city and a world centre of finance. London mostly escaped the bruising downturn and unemployment. If, as Ed Balls concedes, Ed Miliband ran an anti-business campaign, you would have thought the capital would have punished him.
Furthermore, we have a Tory Mayor who is consistently popular in the polls. Economic growth and cheerfulness, according to conventional poll wisdom, delivers the Tories. Yet London jumped the other way.
As usual, London is simply ahead of the game. The smart thing to say of our Conservative Government is that the lack of opposition is undemocratic. I tried out this line on the Prime Minister recently and he replied that the newspapers were fulfilling the role expertly. But truly, the opposition is multi-faceted. There is a youthful backlash which is the substantial base of Corbynmania. There is also an appetite for bold policies. The contempt for Conservatism is a dislike of complacency. London is a restless, energetic, confident city. "
http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/sarah-sands-london-is-ahead-of-the-national-political-game-10437094.html
Do you think [name] has what it takes to be a good PM?
Boris Johnson - 32%
Theresa May - 28%
Andy Burnham - 27%
George Osborne - 23%
Yvette Cooper - 22%
Jeremy Corbyn - 17%
Liz Kendall - 16%
Michael Gove - 13%
https://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Poll...015-topline.pdf
https://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Poll...ne-part-two.pdf
Off topic and in response to @NickPalmer's characteristically polite reply (and with apologies to others):-
Thank you Nick for your reply.
Three points:-
1. JC has said that he will or would or has talked to the expansionist Israeli right. Except that no-one has found any evidence that he has ever done so or tried to do so or that he has called them "friends". So I am a little sceptical that this is mere politeness on his part. His friends seem to be consistently anti-Western, illiberal, anti-democratic and in a significant number of cases, anti-Semitic. This worries me. It ought to worry any decent Labour person. That it doesn't seem to also worries me.
2. My concerns do not relate to just one interview but to the range of his associations with Islamists and anti-Semites over a period.
3. How do you think it possible to achieve peace or even dialogue with an organization which has as its explicit goal in its founding charter the slaughter of all Jews? What would the dialogue be about? How many Jews to be killed perhaps?
Peace in relation to Israel/Palestine will only come when the representatives of both sides sit down and talk but those talks will, IMO, only have a fruitful outcome when all the parties involved accept that they have to compromise and cannot have all they want nor can they have the total elimination of the other. Peace talks usually happen - as in Northern Ireland - when the parties realise that the military option will not work. The IRA were in effect defeated and riddled with informers and realised that they would not be able to bomb their way to a united Ireland. So they accepted democracy instead. Hamas and Hezbollah have explicitly rejected democracy and JC - if he were serious - would be telling them in no uncertain terms - that they will get nowhere and should get nowhere - until they do. Instead a democratic politician flirts with people who loathe democracy and want to see it replaced by a theocracy.
I'm sorry to say this, Nick, but this is not showing "intelligence and courage". It is demonstrating moral obtuseness and appeasement. Labour should be better than that. Labour voters - no, all of us - deserve better than that from our official opposition.
Osborne merely preaches to the choir, and quite possibly alienates a few people who voted for that nice family man Cameron this year (and despite the Tories thinking they walk on water, they should probably remember they have little margin for error if theywant to win a majority next time).
His heavy association with London could prove detrimental in that regard (given the North/South divide).
"First came PCS union boss Mark Serwotka. He made for a rather unlikely master of ceremonies, roaming the stage carrying what looked like a laptop bag. In fact, it was the medical bag that keeps the blood pumping round his body whilst he awaits heart surgery. And he used it to deliver one of the best lines of the night.
Referencing Tony Blair’s instruction to people thinking of backing Jeremy Corbyn to “get a [heart] transplant”, he told his audience that he was in fact one of 284 people in the country awaiting a heart transplant. And if he got the opportunity to receive one he’d go to sleep with his old heart hoping for a Jeremy Corbyn victory “and I’ll wake up with my new heart, still hoping Jeremy wins”.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11782467/Jeremy-Corbyn-spoke-to-the-masses-but-I-just-saw-a-false-prophet.html
I was talking about this with a friend recently who is non white and v leftwing. He was asking why there are so few non white people in senior positions in the country. I said why are there so few WWC people in senior positions? The same reason. People whose Grandparents were the working class folk of the 60s and 70s are rarely judges/MPs etc now regardless of their skin colour, and BAME people fall into that category almost by default
Otherwise in our attempt to deal with the harm caused by long dead people to other people 50 or more years ago we will overlook the harm currently being done to youngsters now by people who can be stopped, caught, prosecuted and punished.
Call me an idealist but police investigations should not be done half a century after the events in question.
There are grooming gangs still operating in Rotherham, according to reports. Let's focus on stopping them. And elsewhere.
There may well be plenty of the accomplices and people involved in keeping it secret etc who will be available for time at HMP.
Time all these creeps were outed and the rot at the heart of our power system exposed.
There's a distinction here Ms Free. An investigation into Heath is not the same as an investigation into why police failed to follow up on evidence of his crimes.
"There may well be plenty of the accomplices and people involved in keeping it secret etc who will be available for time at HMP."
Exactly so. I await the results from Rotherham - where the evidence is fresh and the numbers far higher.
It seems to me that we are assuaging our guilt at what we failed to do in the past by having a lot of excitable headlines about what may or may not have happened by people who are past punishment and investigations which seem to amount to little more than collecting accounts from alleged victims as part of some sort of therapy for them almost as a substitute for any effective action against current abusers.
While people focus on Heath and the early 1960s girls and boys now are being raped, their cries for help are being ignored and their abusers are getting away with it.
You have a point, but I fail to see how we can ignore reports that a former prime minister of this country, the most powerful position in the land by a street, was throughout his formidable political career a child abuser.
AmericaThe Tory Party!"I wonder if 3 police forces would be so intent on launching investigations if anyone other than a now dead, Senior Tory was alleged to have been involved.
Funny how they can find the resources to do so, whilst so little seems available to go after today's active deviants and abusers.
Saying that the police failed to follow up evidence of a crime is nonsensical. Until you've done the investigation and a prosecution has happened you cannot say that a crime has occurred. All you have are allegations. An investigation may not have happened because the police took the view that there was no evidence, that the complainant was telling lies, that they did not take such stuff seriously or because they were leant on in some way. Not all of these mean that misbehaviour by the police or people in the establishment happened.
And what we are now getting are people saying now that they were attacked then. Unless they said it then those claims are irrelevant given that Heath cannot now be investigated.
I thought (though I may be wrong) that the Goddard inquiry was meant to look at the conduct of institutions in relation to the past. Given the limited resources the police have I really would much rather they concentrated those resources far more on current child abuse.
But in any case your characterisation "......was throughout his ..... career a child abuser" is precisely the problem. We have allegations only, allegations which cannot be proved. Because the person is dead. So let's prioritise investigating the living. The dead are for historians.
It is wrong and dangerous to substitute the rule of law by Twitter outrage and sensationalist headlines. That helps no-one, the victims least of all.
I still think Johnson would be the leading candidate if the party is looking for a fresh start in 2020 though as opposed to continuity Osborne.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_child_abuse_investigation_2008
All these rumours have been around for years. Why didn't they come out when Labour was in power? Silly question!
Odd that Boris’ odds should be falling, now that he is actually an MP and at least within shot of being elected. - Of course things might change, but fear his novelty amongst voters and punters alike would have worn a little thin after another 4-5 years waiting in the wings.
Wasn’t he supposed to be leading his party now, according to some of the more avant-garde claims prior to GE2015?
Poiint 3 is of more general interest. How do peace talks usually happen? I'm not at all convinced that they happen because one side is essentially defeated, and I don't think the IRA was any more defeated at the start of the Major/Blair talks than at other times in recent decades. If one side is really defeated they just fade away, like the Red Brigades and the Ku Klux Klan. What's more common is war-weariness, as expressed by the leader of a Muslim insurgency in the Phillippines - "We're all getting older and want more out of life than just killing each other forever". It's important to recognise when that point is reached - offer to negotiate too soon and it's a sign of weakness, leave it too long and fresh enthusiasts may take over.
To take a less controversial past example - I was one of those who thought that the Mozambique Renamo insurgents were incredibly vile - how could anyone possibly support what they did and said? And yet at a certain point they simply formed a coalition with Frelimo and the war ended. The willingness to accept that a vicious opponent with significant support may need to be accommodated is crucial, and it's often surprising how few absolute conditions they set. It's usually worth a try, since the alternative may be to go on fighting indefinitely. And it's not anti-semitic or pro-terrorist to think so (though people who are just that may pretend to be motivated by the wish for peace).
Does Panorama even exist as a show?
Does she have a block of limestone to carve them on?
No wonder Corbyn's winning. He can speak human.
The underdog in the wider Middle East these days includes Yazidis and Christians and Kurds, all of whom are being horribly persecuted by IS. And yet Leftist sympathy for them seems rather thin on the ground. The Stop the War campaign are, for instance, against doing anything to help them because it would involve supporting any sort of anti-IS bombing by the US and its allies.
Too many Leftists seem more concerned about being on the side of anyone who claims to be anti-Western regardless of how much of a bully/fascist/genocidal maniac they actually are. That is not intelligent. It is morally repulsive.
I do not consider Islamists "friends" and I think there is no point talking to them. There is no common ground. There is nothing to talk about. Their aim is total victory. May I suggest you look at that Dan Cruickshank documentary - which though focused on the cultural war - is very illuminating about their aims. Sometimes when you face evil you have to say what it is and be utterly determined to defeat it. Moral clarity matters more than politeness.
My objection - and I realise we will have to agree to differ here - is that I don't think that JC or those like Galloway and Livingstone and other high-profile supporters with a record of cosying up to Islamists are showing the sort of moral clarity that I expect- and would like to see - in a party which claims to believe in liberal democracy, equality, freedom and progressive values.
Never underestimate the hatred of the left for the English middle class.
On the plus side, twas cheaper to produce than the Ed’Stone, but equally as vapid.
@Plato - snap.
No one - no politician anywhere - has a magic wand. A leader needs to be competent and able to handle the problems as they arise.
On one hand he'd renationalise the railways, so we could all get cheap trips to Hogwarts on the Orient Express, perhaps the onboard food would be a bit cheaper too...
On the other hand he'd deny one's parents the rights to leave their stuff as they see fit.
Probably safist to stick with call me Dave.
Cheers for the warning
Just asking.
But I'd be interested to know if that question has been asked before and what the changes in it are.
https://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/political-monitor-july-2015-topline-part-two.pdf
https://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/political-monitor-july-2015-topline.pdf
The odds for the 4th Test at Trent Bridge are a bit baffling IMO:
England 3.5
Australia 2.16
Draw 3.95
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/cricket/event?id=27458860
As for Javid being overrated as you say in another post, I think you are making a big mistake. We shall see how he performs in a cabinet post, but providing he does not make a pigs ear of it, he should be a short priced runner in the Replacing Cameron Handicap Stakes.
Nauseous, come on Corbyn, for heaven's sake liven it up with your own brand of nonsense, at least you believe what you say.
One of the problems I have with polling like this is that they don't have the changes with respect to time and you have nothing to really compare it with. Plus what's the baseline and what do they do with don't knows.
Of course crimes should be investigated at the time, but if they are not, they must obviously be investigated later - to suggest otherwise is like saying someone shouldn't do an adult education course because they should have learned woodwork at school.
With regard to the other comments here by hard-done-by Conservative party supporters, the story about Heath broke last year, and you can't libel the dead, yet it's taken this IPCC investigation before even a sniff of it has reached the newspapers. I'd hardly call that trial by media, and I find it hardly surprising that now the muzzle has been taken off, they are responding to legitimate public interest in what may turn out to be a seismic political scandal.