The latest Yougov poll implies a GB swing from Lab to Con of 3.7%. In Scotland, however, the swing is circa 9% - which would mean that the swing in England & Wales is just over 3%. To win Copeland the Tories need a swing of 3.25%!
But England & Wales itself isn't homogenous. In the South ex.London Labour does not have far it can fall and indeed polling implies it is near enough static.
The details of Yougov polling imply a Lab-Con swing of about 5-6% in the North, though it should be cautioned part of this swing is a move of a couple of percent Labour-Don't Know. Those Don't Knows may still turn out for Labour when push comes to shove.
Labour, with the Unions behind them are so strong. Even under Corbyn they will remain the 2nd party and will bounce back under a new leader. Don't forget that Corbyn is no worse off than Tories were versus Blair. We were told then that Tories were finished. You can't knock off the big 2. Unions and the Rich will see to that. Labour needs to lose Wales to Plaid or the Midlands cities to Tories to really go into decline. That needs a party to fill the gap. Not happening. UKIP are shot. Libs are too small country wide. Plaid are amateurs, as are Greens.
Labour and the Tories have enormous structural advantages. All the same, displacement from the top two can take place. You're right that at the moment there is no existential crisis for Labour but their situation is graver than that of the Tories was under Hague and IDS all the same.
The Tories were always going to come back at some point despite the 1993-2003 electoral failure for the simple reason that no other party at the time was capable to talking to the right-of-centre. That's not the case for Labour now: there are several parties who could peel chunks of Labour's vote. Only UKIP and the Lib Dems operate on a scale that could enable them to replace Labour and your analysis is right as to why they won't for the time being. Even so, the risk is there and if Labour continues to look irrelevant and if one of the other parties can get their act together, the opportunity is there.
I wonder what the turnout will be in Copeland. I will be very surprised if it approaches the 82% seen at the Darlington by election in March 1983! That proved to be higher than at the 1979 and 1983 General Elections in the same seat.
I think it'll be closer to 29%...
In a marginal seat it should approach 60% given the high profile campaign.
Turnout at the GE was 63.8%.
Realistically it isn't going to get near that.
Well - at Darlington in March 1983 the turnout exceeded that at the preceding General Election!
The Heads of States photo in Malta today shows just how the EU is a 'boys club' - Just three female Heads of States - Theresa May, Angela Merkel, and Beata Szydio of Poland.
Angela Merkel looked very down and worried.
We get bonus points for having a female Head of State and a female Head of Government.
Our HoS is German so the bonus points go to them unfortunately.
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I wonder what the turnout will be in Copeland. I will be very surprised if it approaches the 82% seen at the Darlington by election in March 1983! That proved to be higher than at the 1979 and 1983 General Elections in the same seat.
I spoke to one of the players involved earlier this week and for once the media reports are fairly accurate. The one big problem the bot has is that it takes minutes to makes decisions on especially the turn (and by minutes I mean minutes) even in some fairly "standard" spots.
Geert is going to win, in that the PVV will top the polls in the Netherlands.
But the reason they top the polls is because its an insanely fragmented political landscape in the Netherlands. There are two parties (the CDA and the VVD) that occupy the space taken by Cameron's Conservatives. There are two parties - in parliament - that occupy the space that is taken by the Green Party (the Ecology Party and the The Party of the Animals).
The PVV will get approximately 30 seats at the General Election, which is c. 20% of the vote. But who will they ally with?
Well, quite.
FPTP - set up the coalitions before the election, so that voters have a real choice.
They get to choose a set of policies that won't be implemented, because events will intervene.
The Tories ran on Cameron as PM, staying in the Single Market, eliminating the deficit. We're less than 2 years into the parliament, and it's all gone.
This isn't particularly atypical, either. Major decisions are hardly ever known before the election. Another was the Iraq war.
The closest we've had in recent memory to voters getting the advertised program was 2010 to 2015, and that was a coalition. This probably isn't a coincidence in that to have a coalition you have to have a coalition agreement, and you make that agreement a week after you were advertising your manifesto. Rewriting that agreement is a little bit cumbersome, so a coalition ties the government more closely to its constituent parties' manifestos than a majority government, which will wait a year or so and start quietly throwing things out.
The latest Yougov poll implies a GB swing from Lab to Con of 3.7%. In Scotland, however, the swing is circa 9% - which would mean that the swing in England & Wales is just over 3%. To win Copeland the Tories need a swing of 3.25%!
But England & Wales itself isn't homogenous. In the South ex.London Labour does not have far it can fall and indeed polling implies it is near enough static.
The details of Yougov polling imply a Lab-Con swing of about 5-6% in the North, though it should be cautioned part of this swing is a move of a couple of percent Labour-Don't Know. Those Don't Knows may still turn out for Labour when push comes to shove.
Labour, with the Unions behind them are so strong. Even under Corbyn they will remain the 2nd party and will bounce back under a new leader. Don't forget that Corbyn is no worse off than Tories were versus Blair. We were told then that Tories were finished. You can't knock off the big 2. Unions and the Rich will see to that. Labour needs to lose Wales to Plaid or the Midlands cities to Tories to really go into decline. That needs a party to fill the gap. Not happening. UKIP are shot. Libs are too small country wide. Plaid are amateurs, as are Greens.
Labour and the Tories have enormous structural advantages. All the same, displacement from the top two can take place. You're right that at the moment there is no existential crisis for Labour but their situation is graver than that of the Tories was under Hague and IDS all the same.
The Tories were always going to come back at some point despite the 1993-2003 electoral failure for the simple reason that no other party at the time was capable to talking to the right-of-centre. That's not the case for Labour now: there are several parties who could peel chunks of Labour's vote. Only UKIP and the Lib Dems operate on a scale that could enable them to replace Labour and your analysis is right as to why they won't for the time being. Even so, the risk is there and if Labour continues to look irrelevant and if one of the other parties can get their act together, the opportunity is there.
UKIP don't appear to have a long term future post brexit which, by definition, was their raison d'etre, unless they can somehow reinvent themselves. As ever, the LibDems are the party with genuine mid-long term potential to recover to the 20%+ level of support and might just do so earlier than people realise should the Tories fail with their Brexit negotiations, which is quite possible, likely even and Labour foolishly decide to persevere with Corbyn, which is quite possible, likely even. The Greens have effectively thrown away any chance of becoming a major party by foolishly sticking to a largely communist-style agenda.
You could be right there, but when I read something like this I really do start to wonder where power really lies in the US and whether we overstate just what the President is and isn't capable of doing.
The Heads of States photo in Malta today shows just how the EU is a 'boys club' - Just three female Heads of States - Theresa May, Angela Merkel, and Beata Szydio of Poland.
Angela Merkel looked very down and worried.
We get bonus points for having a female Head of State and a female Head of Government.
Our HoS is German so the bonus points go to them unfortunately.
How does the great great grand daughter of a German Prince and English queen, become 'German'? The last German born monarch was George II, his son, George III was born in England & spoke English as his first language - excellent BBC documentary on him the other night, btw.
You could be right there, but when I read something like this I really do start to wonder where power really lies in the US and whether we overstate just what the President is and isn't capable of doing.
If Trump simply wanted an effective ban pause on people entering the US they could have simply rehashed Obama's ban pause, whereby they just slowed visa applications down to a snails pace.
Instead they went for the nuclear option. Now some think it is because Trump is an idiot, but I doubt all the people behind drafting this didn't know there would be loads of legal challenges. Thus, I think it is fairly certain he wanted a big bust up on this.
You could be right there, but when I read something like this I really do start to wonder where power really lies in the US and whether we overstate just what the President is and isn't capable of doing.
If Trump simply wanted an effective ban pause on people entering the US they could have simply rehashed Obama's ban pause, whereby they just slowed visa applications down to a snails pace.
Instead they went for the nuclear option. Now some think it is because Trump is an idiot, but I doubt all the people behind drafting this didn't know there would be loads of legal challenges. Thus, I think it is fairly certain he wanted a big bust up on this.
You could be right there, but when I read something like this I really do start to wonder where power really lies in the US and whether we overstate just what the President is and isn't capable of doing.
If Trump simply wanted an effective ban pause on people entering the US they could have simply rehashed Obama's ban pause, whereby they just slowed visa applications down to a snails pace.
Instead they went for the nuclear option. Now some think it is because Trump is an idiot, but I doubt all the people behind drafting this didn't know there would be loads of legal challenges. Thus, I think it is fairly certain he wanted a big bust up on this.
You could be right there, but when I read something like this I really do start to wonder where power really lies in the US and whether we overstate just what the President is and isn't capable of doing.
If Trump simply wanted an effective ban pause on people entering the US they could have simply rehashed Obama's ban pause, whereby they just slowed visa applications down to a snails pace.
Instead they went for the nuclear option. Now some think it is because Trump is an idiot, but I doubt all the people behind drafting this didn't know there would be loads of legal challenges. Thus, I think it is fairly certain he wanted a big bust up on this.
You could be right there, but when I read something like this I really do start to wonder where power really lies in the US and whether we overstate just what the President is and isn't capable of doing.
If Trump simply wanted an effective ban pause on people entering the US they could have simply rehashed Obama's ban pause, whereby they just slowed visa applications down to a snails pace.
Instead they went for the nuclear option. Now some think it is because Trump is an idiot, but I doubt all the people behind drafting this didn't know there would be loads of legal challenges. Thus, I think it is fairly certain he wanted a big bust up on this.
Comments
The Tories were always going to come back at some point despite the 1993-2003 electoral failure for the simple reason that no other party at the time was capable to talking to the right-of-centre. That's not the case for Labour now: there are several parties who could peel chunks of Labour's vote. Only UKIP and the Lib Dems operate on a scale that could enable them to replace Labour and your analysis is right as to why they won't for the time being. Even so, the risk is there and if Labour continues to look irrelevant and if one of the other parties can get their act together, the opportunity is there.
Well, that's what I'm hoping.
Copeland 39%
Stoke Central 33%
The Tories ran on Cameron as PM, staying in the Single Market, eliminating the deficit. We're less than 2 years into the parliament, and it's all gone.
This isn't particularly atypical, either. Major decisions are hardly ever known before the election. Another was the Iraq war.
The closest we've had in recent memory to voters getting the advertised program was 2010 to 2015, and that was a coalition. This probably isn't a coincidence in that to have a coalition you have to have a coalition agreement, and you make that agreement a week after you were advertising your manifesto. Rewriting that agreement is a little bit cumbersome, so a coalition ties the government more closely to its constituent parties' manifestos than a majority government, which will wait a year or so and start quietly throwing things out.
As ever, the LibDems are the party with genuine mid-long term potential to recover to the 20%+ level of support and might just do so earlier than people realise should the Tories fail with their Brexit negotiations, which is quite possible, likely even and Labour foolishly decide to persevere with Corbyn, which is quite possible, likely even.
The Greens have effectively thrown away any chance of becoming a major party by foolishly sticking to a largely communist-style agenda.
*innocent face*
banpause on people entering the US they could have simply rehashed Obama'sbanpause, whereby they just slowed visa applications down to a snails pace.Instead they went for the nuclear option. Now some think it is because Trump is an idiot, but I doubt all the people behind drafting this didn't know there would be loads of legal challenges. Thus, I think it is fairly certain he wanted a big bust up on this.