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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Today we should have been getting the new Prime Minister
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Today we should have been getting the new Prime Minister
The picture above sums up the last few months in British politics, the reaction live on television of Sam Coates, Deputy Political Editor of The Times, to Boris Johnson withdrawing from the Tory leadership race.
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On the subject of leadership elections, I see last night's Corbyn/Smith rantathon went well...!
Which will come first - Brexit or TSE's AV thread?
My money would go on Brexit, but I may well be in the old folks home by the time that settlement comes around.
Won't somebody pleeease think of the children?
Proud doesn't even start to describe how I feel right now. Bloody thrilled!
Richard from York - "Why I smothered my orphaned nephews with love and nothing else" - we have lie detector and DNA tests.
Theresa May's majority in Parliament is no bigger than David Cameron's.
100 majority.
Con gain Bootle?
I doubt that. The opposition parties would continue to claim "no mandate" because that's what opposition parties always do in this situation.
You have no mandate!
Tory cuts/Labour waste!
Judge led inquiry!
And I suspect she'll have very little time for middle-class whinging about grammar schools.
Nevertheless many people seem to have a real problem with academic selection by merit, as opposed to that on sport or music or art, so I expect a rather rough ride.
I stand to be corrected, but I also do not see the Prime Minister calling an early election, by way of a plebiscite on the outcome of the EU negotiations. She has already seen what a vote on Europe did to her predecessor.
At this stage, I see no particular reason to doubt that Mrs May can be taken at her word, and there will be no General Election until the scheduled date in 2020. Her majority, although slender, is not under immediate threat (and the Tories can always appeal to the DUP for help in an emergency.) It'll give Labour years longer in which to bury itself, with a Corbyn leadership victory and a devastating rout in next Spring's Scottish local elections likely to be merely the most imminent of its manifold problems. If she goes to the country early then she will look insincere and opportunistic, and thus ruin her reputation with the electorate as a calm and serious politician who does not play games. Waiting the full-term will allow boundary reform to be implemented, which in crude terms means that the Tories will enter the next election with a notional majority of around fifty seats, rather than a dozen, and force an epic bloodletting over selection upon the Labour Party.
Moreover, barring economic catastrophe, it is hard to see how the Conservatives can possibly lose the next election. Notwithstanding the gains both from more moderate voters deserting Labour, and from the return of traditional Tory support from Ukip, where else apart from the Tories are all the people who voted for Cameron last year meant to go? The Lib Dems have been floating between about 7% and 10% for the whole of the last six years, and show no signs of recovery. Ukip is having its own identity crisis, has always demonstrated a low ceiling of support in general elections, and is likely to end up focusing most of its effort on capturing more white, lower income voters from Labour. Labour has lost all interest in electability and only appeals to what's left of its core vote.
The Conservatives secured 37% of the vote last year, and their voter distribution was highly efficient. It was enough to win, and the same performance with the reformed boundaries in 2020 would be enough to win again, this time with a comfortable majority. The reality is that they are likely to reach 40% at least, and achieve a landslide. Theresa May's position is secure, and there is no particular reason to suppose that this will change if she avoids making obvious mistakes. An early election would, therefore, be unnecessary and arguably counterproductive.
That is of course why Conservatives adore them.
It would be a very 'brave' Conservative MP who opposed them, 'So you're against aspiration then? etc. etc"
We must find a way of testing and giving fairer access, yes, and the 11+ isn't the right way, in my view, but there's nothing wrong with the principle of academic selection. Indeed, I'd argue it's critical to our future. Many other countries do it and are baffled at our squeamishness.
I'll ignore the jibes at the Conservatives.
Trouble is that Christian based faith schools are popular, and one can't discriminate.
http://tinyurl.com/juc76t4
Grammar schools are part of a wider policy driving improvement and aspiration in the education sector.
That is of course why non-Conservatives dislike them.
If she really wanted to do something about social mobility she should allow only schools with a greater than average number on free meals to apply to be Grammar schools.
Allowing 100% selection on religious grounds is a step in the wrong direction for social inclusion.
4 Sinn Fein abstainers
10 DUP & UUP MPs who are solidly in favour of Grammars
Kate Hoey and a few other Labour MPs will I suspect vote in Favour.
As with most issues, her real majority is bigger than Thatchers in 1979
I expect that's exactly what she'll do.
In May 2020.
BREXIT talks aren't going to get serious until the French & German elections are out of the way......so Article 50 mid-to late 2017, deal wrapped up before 2020.....
May 2020 - 'You asked, we delivered' - meanwhile Labour & UKIP have torn themselves apart and Sturgeon has been too busy stoking up grievance and affront to either call a referendum or run her country properly.....
Italy is a big, important country.
Trump campaign is now claiming that they didn't know it would be for Russia Today
October 1st 1938, The Right Hon Member has no Mandate to sign an agreement with The German Chancellor in Munich.
I wasn’t NOT impressed with Owen Smith last night. Nore was my wife. And we’d wanted to be!
Both my parents went to Grammar schools, and both were delighted to see the end of selective education. My dad said his grammar (in a Lancashire mill town) was full of the worst snobs on earth. The middle class of the town controlled it and kept the poor out by the combination of expensive uniform and kit list, and ghastly snobbery to the few working class pupils.
I suspect that not much has changed in the last 65 years.
This just provides a more convenient excuse.
It is the most pro-producer anti-consumer move imaginable.
Oh, and no one seems to have understood the low income quotas.
It's rare I pull out this particular cliche, but hasn't the country got better things to be getting on with?
My parents both came from council estates, through grammar schools into the middle classes. Those same opportunities are much harder to come by these days, although Mr. Gove's work on expanding the Acadamies programme and more rigorous exams have been a step in the right direction.
Why? Because we can afford to.
We could move to a cheaper house elsewhere in the town, outside the catchment area, and then either send our children to a poorer school and supplement heavily for private tuition, or work hard at our careers in the hope we can afford to send them to private school.
If you're poor, these options are not open to you. You are stuck with what's in your neighbourhood and that's it.
If these changes went through, and the school we want turns into a grammar, firstly our kids wouldn't 'automatically' get in, they'd have to pass an exam, and, second, anyone else in the town or surrounding villages who wanted it would also have a chance to get in through the same exam.
I accept there are challenges on the age/type of exam, ensuring poorer pupils aren't disadvantages in it, and what happens to the residual school network but, overall, I'd say that's fairer.
Improving the prospects of the worst off?
I'd say that is pretty worthwhile.
Or should we be diddling around the edges and manage our decline?
As I recall a very high percentage of assisted places at Independent schools went to children of low income professionals, such as children of the clergy.
What happens if after a couple of years the % of intake at a new Grammar drops below the threshold? Does the school cease to be allowed to be selective the following year? Or are some poor, thick kids who didn't pass the 11+ admitted to make up the numbers?
It does strike me as odd that Grammar is the chosen policy for the big first non-Brexit strike.
For a start it's not in Tory manifesto, so they will have a bad old time getting any of this through the Lords. Secondly, Greening has been in post about two months. Has she really prepared a detailed review of current policy and written a green paper? Hmm.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-37275092
Britain Elects @britainelects 9h9 hours ago
Mosborough (Sheffield) result:
LDEM: 45.6% (+31.8)
LAB: 34.1% (-9.2)
UKIP: 12.4% (-9.8)
CON: 6.1% (-7.9)
GRN: 1.8% (-1.3)
Britain Elects @britainelects 9h9 hours ago
Liberal Democrat GAIN Mosborough (Sheffield) from Labour.
Britain Elects @britainelects 8h8 hours ago
Shepway South (Maidstone) result:
UKIP: 45.2% (+1.3)
CON: 22.5% (+0.2)
LAB: 19.2% (-8.3)
IND: 9.2% (+9.2)
LDEM: 3.9% (-2.4)
Britain Elects @britainelects 8h8 hours ago
UKIP HOLD Shepway South (Maidstone).
Incidentaly, as I recall, school transport is only free to the nearest school, not to any school of parental choice. Is this another way for the middle classes to keep out the riff raff?