(23% ) - Oh dear, at this rate we could see a Labour – Lib Dem cross-over before GE2020...
That is what could cause the dam to break. If the Lib Dems look like they seriously have crossed-over with Labour then that could escalate very, very quickly.
Worth noting lds being sub 10 still seems the norm.
This, er, big LibDem recovery is still falling behind the general Tory advance since the General Election. No point in winning in a personal best if your opponent just beat you by setting a new world record. Surprisingly, none of the thread writers seem to get the point.
The polling by Sir Lynton Crosby (pbuh) says otherwise.
And his polling in 2015 was spot on. I just wish I had I bet accordingly.
Or you could have listened to those of us on the ground, posting here. And we are telling you - the LibDems are not getting those seats back without the mother of all fights.
I acknowledge that, but you'll be fighting this time with your two strongest advantages from last time
1) The threat of the SNP being in government with Ed Miliband
2) David Cameron
1) The threat of the SNP being in government with Jeremy Corbyn is effective to the power of Miliband cubed.
2) Theresa May isn't exactly proving to be the handicap you might hope...
A pity I'm busy the rest of the day, I suspect when the tables for this YouGov poll are published they are going to contain some awesome sub-samples.
I was thinking that this morning. How low can SLAB go, for example?
I read on another forum, it's lucky LAB have only one MP to lose in Scotland.
394 councillors though. How many will be left? I thought they might lose 150, mainly to the SNP but some to the Tories. If we get a total meltdown, however, then the SNP will get a majority in many of the central belt Councils. That is an alarming thought.
(23% ) - Oh dear, at this rate we could see a Labour – Lib Dem cross-over before GE2020...
That is what could cause the dam to break. If the Lib Dems look like they seriously have crossed-over with Labour then that could escalate very, very quickly.
Worth noting lds being sub 10 still seems the norm.
This, er, big LibDem recovery is still falling behind the general Tory advance since the General Election. No point in winning in a personal best if your opponent just beat you by setting a new world record. Surprisingly, none of the thread writers seem to get the point.
The polling by Sir Lynton Crosby (pbuh) says otherwise.
And his polling in 2015 was spot on. I just wish I had I bet accordingly.
Or you could have listened to those of us on the ground, posting here. And we are telling you - the LibDems are not getting those seats back without the mother of all fights.
I acknowledge that, but you'll be fighting this time with your two strongest advantages from last time
1) The threat of the SNP being in government with Ed Miliband
2) David Cameron
1) The threat of the SNP being in government with Jeremy Corbyn is effective to the power of Miliband cubed.
2) Theresa May isn't exactly proving to be the handicap you might hope...
In terms of seats, though, and generalising horribly, the point is that Cameron appealed to the middle class and educated folk in shires who would otherwise tend to the LibDems, whereas the combination of Brexit and Mrs May is much more powerful at pulling swing C1/2 voters away from Labour.
(23% ) - Oh dear, at this rate we could see a Labour – Lib Dem cross-over before GE2020...
That is what could cause the dam to break. If the Lib Dems look like they seriously have crossed-over with Labour then that could escalate very, very quickly.
Worth noting lds being sub 10 still seems the norm.
This, er, big LibDem recovery is still falling behind the general Tory advance since the General Election. No point in winning in a personal best if your opponent just beat you by setting a new world record. Surprisingly, none of the thread writers seem to get the point.
The polling by Sir Lynton Crosby (pbuh) says otherwise.
And his polling in 2015 was spot on. I just wish I had I bet accordingly.
Or you could have listened to those of us on the ground, posting here. And we are telling you - the LibDems are not getting those seats back without the mother of all fights.
I acknowledge that, but you'll be fighting this time with your two strongest advantages from last time
1) The threat of the SNP being in government with Ed Miliband
2) David Cameron
1) The threat of the SNP being in government with Jeremy Corbyn is effective to the power of Miliband cubed.
2) Theresa May isn't exactly proving to be the handicap you might hope...
1) At the last GE the polls were something like Con 34. Lab 34, on current trends at the next GE the polls will be Con 48 Lab 19, so a Corbyn/SNP government is most unlikely
2) I trust Sir Lynton's polling, which kinda implies Mrs May might be a bit of a handicap in the SW.
Mr. Eagles, hope you recover from it promptly. You should re-read TA Dodge's biography of Hannibal. It'll distract you from your pestilence and might even allow you to finally grasp the excellence of Hannibal.
(23% ) - Oh dear, at this rate we could see a Labour – Lib Dem cross-over before GE2020...
That is what could cause the dam to break. If the Lib Dems look like they seriously have crossed-over with Labour then that could escalate very, very quickly.
Worth noting lds being sub 10 still seems the norm.
This, er, big LibDem recovery is still falling behind the general Tory advance since the General Election. No point in winning in a personal best if your opponent just beat you by setting a new world record. Surprisingly, none of the thread writers seem to get the point.
The polling by Sir Lynton Crosby (pbuh) says otherwise.
And his polling in 2015 was spot on. I just wish I had I bet accordingly.
Or you could have listened to those of us on the ground, posting here. And we are telling you - the LibDems are not getting those seats back without the mother of all fights.
Thornbury & Yate, Bath, Cheltenham, perhaps St. Ives, or Mid-Dorset, or Yeovil, could be regained. The rest don't seem vulnerable to me.
I'm pretty relaxed about Mid Dorset.
It is the constituency that I went to school in, where I have my business, and in whic ]h I helped to canvass etc in '05 and '15.
It was clear to me all day in '15 that we were going to win. Incumbent was standing down, people were tooting their horns and giving me the thumbs up whilst in the town.
The main change between '05 and '10 is not political, but demographic. The constituency is both older and richer: thousands of decent executive homes have been built, and I was struck how many of the bungalows and smaller houses were renovated and done up in the intervening 10 years.
Oh, and we have a really pleasant, engaging MP who is really involved in local issues. And a 10k majority + an eminently squeezable 5k UKIP vote from last time.
We are now almost two years into the current 5 year Parliamentary term yet STILL there appears to be no clear indication as to when, if at all, the proposed 600 HoC seat boundaries are to be introduced. Does anyone know what the timetable is for this?
It's difficult and contentious. We all know May doesn't do difficult or contentious never mind both at once.
To be fair - and adding to the conversation downthread, it is a lot more complicated this time - arising from the more inflexible criteria plus the reduction in total MPs. In the old days the criteria were flexible enough that the Commission would first break the country down into "sub-regions" - usually a county, pair of smaller counties, or pair of London Boroughs, and then re-draw the boundaries within these sub-regions. Once the sub-regional boundaries were established, no-one was allowed to contest them and this dramatically simplified the review process and reduced the number of permutations that could sensibly be advanced for any particular area. And because the number of MPs wasn't changing significantly, and population only changes slowly, most reviews were largely tweaks here and there to existing seats.
This time - as discussed below - it's a lot more complex. And the sub-regions are much larger - effectively regions (such as the whole of London, or in practice London North and London South because of the Thames east of Richmond) that hugely increases the number of permutations; because of the straighjacket criteria, making a change in one locality usually knocks on to other seats miles away.
With hindsight I expect even Tories realise the narrower and 'hard" electoral tolerance limits being used in the current review were a mistake.
the whole thing heading to the long grass?
The Commission will deliver, probably early in 2018 rather than the late 2017 that once seemed possible. The question is whether some of the frankly ludicrous seats that are likely to be thrown up generates any sort of outcry (noting of course that usually hardly anyone actually cares) and whether Tory MPs in those localities feel strongly enough not to toe the party line. Currently I think it will probably get through, nevertheless, but it doesn't take many unhappy Tories to sink the ship.
Rochdale - that's very, well, illuminating. However it is no use simply saying you want to win elections. People aren't going to assume you are different to Mrs May because you wear a different colour badge. Not anymore. Obviously you can make Brexit a dividing line but where does that take you? Staying in the EU? My own view is that social democrats need to ditch the Blairite fundamentalists (if any still exist) and focus on policy. Sometime somewhere, someone might pick up on it. I get that the internal party struggle must be damaging to people's energy but if you don't also focus on what is wrong with the Tories (other than Brexit) you'll get nowhere.
The only people suggesting the alternative to Corbyn is "red Tories" are the entryists nutters who despised Labour in government as a betrayal of revolutionary socialism.
I use the label almost as a badge of honour now. I see myself on the left of the party. Didn't like our 2005 manifesto, voted for Ed Milliband. Campaigned and voted for Jeremy Corbyn before realising just how stupid that was. I support most of our policies now and definitely the direction of travel - as do the electorate when those policies are tested without a party label. Its Corbyn and the language of Corbyn that repels them not the policies.
2 examples of this. On education our policy on Grammar Schools hasn't really moved on since 97. Blair knew attacking grammars would be repellent in the shires we went on to win and irrelevant where Grammars had already been abolished. So the campaign was cut class sizes, universally popular, with attacks on Grammar schools once in government. Corbyn instead prints "education not segregation" pamphlets which read like it's 4 bits of text badly pasted together and has us doing Street stalls in places that don't have grammar schools where they go down as well as you'd expect.
Then we have the railways. The absurd position of most British trains run by a foreign government but Labour bang on about renationalisation and war against "the bosses". State ownership clearly works as a next steps commercial vehicle owned by the state. State ownership is wildly popular according to polling. So we need to campaign on a 2020s solution - a StateCom business that not only runs our trains but looks to sell our expertise worldwide as the French Dutch Germans and Italian governments do here. It's state ownership without the baggage of the past and we can prove it works by pointing to the names on our trains and buses now.
Labour - with a sane leader like Starmer - with little change in policy would provide at the very least serious opposition in both day to day and ideas stakes vs the Tories, and with Brexit the great unknown stands a chance of winning in 2020. But we can't have that because of the deluded the naive and the downright stupid people that have swamped the Labour Party and turned it to the Cult of Corbyn.
Mr. Eagles, hope you recover from it promptly. You should re-read TA Dodge's biography of Hannibal. It'll distract you from your pestilence and might even allow you to finally grasp the excellence of Hannibal.
The worst thing was when I wasn't allowed any more diazepam, I was tempted to 'borrow' my father's prescription pad and write out a month's supply for myself.
Then I realised I'd rather be in pain than become a smackhead.
(23% ) - Oh dear, at this rate we could see a Labour – Lib Dem cross-over before GE2020...
That is what could cause the dam to break. If the Lib Dems look like they seriously have crossed-over with Labour then that could escalate very, very quickly.
Worth noting lds being sub 10 still seems the norm.
This, er, big LibDem recovery is still falling behind the general Tory advance since the General Election. No point in winning in a personal best if your opponent just beat you by setting a new world record. Surprisingly, none of the thread writers seem to get the point.
The polling by Sir Lynton Crosby (pbuh) says otherwise.
And his polling in 2015 was spot on. I just wish I had I bet accordingly.
Or you could have listened to those of us on the ground, posting here. And we are telling you - the LibDems are not getting those seats back without the mother of all fights.
I acknowledge that, but you'll be fighting this time with your two strongest advantages from last time
1) The threat of the SNP being in government with Ed Miliband
2) David Cameron
1) The threat of the SNP being in government with Jeremy Corbyn is effective to the power of Miliband cubed.
2) Theresa May isn't exactly proving to be the handicap you might hope...
1) At the last GE the polls were something like Con 34. Lab 34, on current trends at the next GE the polls will be Con 48 Lab 19, so a Corbyn/SNP government is most unlikely
2) I trust Sir Lynton's polling, which kinda implies Mrs May might be a bit of a handicap in the SW.
It would be interesting to know if Cameron would currently be doing better in the South West May's poll ratings are higher nationally are they not? And you continue to ignore the biggest 'strength' for the Tories in the South West. The Lib Dem performance in government.
(23% ) - Oh dear, at this rate we could see a Labour – Lib Dem cross-over before GE2020...
That is what could cause the dam to break. If the Lib Dems look like they seriously have crossed-over with Labour then that could escalate very, very quickly.
Worth noting lds being sub 10 still seems the norm.
This, er, big LibDem recovery is still falling behind the general Tory advance since the General Election. No point in winning in a personal best if your opponent just beat you by setting a new world record. Surprisingly, none of the thread writers seem to get the point.
The polling by Sir Lynton Crosby (pbuh) says otherwise.
And his polling in 2015 was spot on. I just wish I had I bet accordingly.
Or you could have listened to those of us on the ground, posting here. And we are telling you - the LibDems are not getting those seats back without the mother of all fights.
I acknowledge that, but you'll be fighting this time with your two strongest advantages from last time
1) The threat of the SNP being in government with Ed Miliband
2) David Cameron
1) The threat of the SNP being in government with Jeremy Corbyn is effective to the power of Miliband cubed.
2) Theresa May isn't exactly proving to be the handicap you might hope...
1) At the last GE the polls were something like Con 34. Lab 34, on current trends at the next GE the polls will be Con 48 Lab 19, so a Corbyn/SNP government is most unlikely
2) I trust Sir Lynton's polling, which kinda implies Mrs May might be a bit of a handicap in the SW.
It would be interesting to know if Cameron would currently be doing better in the South West May's poll ratings are higher nationally are they not? And you continue to ignore the biggest 'strength' for the Tories in the South West. The Lib Dem performance in government.
I did hear Sir Lynton polled back in February 2016 and the Tories were on course to hold their gains bar one or two.
Weirdly a result on that youguv poll could lead to somethng very in parliament to '97 in terms of numbers. But the Tories swapped with Labour and the SNP the Lib Dems.
(23% ) - Oh dear, at this rate we could see a Labour – Lib Dem cross-over before GE2020...
That is what could cause the dam to break. If the Lib Dems look like they seriously have crossed-over with Labour then that could escalate very, very quickly.
Worth noting lds being sub 10 still seems the norm.
This, er, big LibDem recovery is still falling behind the general Tory advance since the General Election. No point in winning in a personal best if your opponent just beat you by setting a new world record. Surprisingly, none of the thread writers seem to get the point.
The polling by Sir Lynton Crosby (pbuh) says otherwise.
And his polling in 2015 was spot on. I just wish I had I bet accordingly.
Or you could have listened to those of us on the ground, posting here. And we are telling you - the LibDems are not getting those seats back without the mother of all fights.
Thornbury & Yate, Bath, Cheltenham, perhaps St. Ives, or Mid-Dorset, or Yeovil, could be regained. The rest don't seem vulnerable to me.
I'm pretty relaxed about Mid Dorset.
It is the constituency that I went to school in, where I have my business, and in whic ]h I helped to canvass etc in '05 and '15.
It was clear to me all day in '15 that we were going to win. Incumbent was standing down, people were tooting their horns and giving me the thumbs up whilst in the town.
The main change between '05 and '10 is not political, but demographic. The constituency is both older and richer: thousands of decent executive homes have been built, and I was struck how many of the bungalows and smaller houses were renovated and done up in the intervening 10 years.
Oh, and we have a really pleasant, engaging MP who is really involved in local issues. And a 10k majority + an eminently squeezable 5k UKIP vote from last time.
My guess is that most of the UKIP vote came from the LibDems, counter-intuitive as that may seem.
Mid-Dorset has always been a long shot for the LibDems; even in the good years Annette only just scraped in, by the narrowest of margins, as I recall. Your main worry is that the Brexit plus Mili-lite offering from May isn't really pitching at areas like yours.
About a week ago, somebody, I think it may have been Mark Senior, tabulated and posted the total number of councillors standing for each party in England and Wales. did anybody do the same for Scotland?
Rochdale - that's very, well, illuminating. However it is no use simply saying you want to win elections. People aren't going to assume you are different to Mrs May because you wear a different colour badge. Not anymore. Obviously you can make Brexit a dividing line but where does that take you? Staying in the EU? My own view is that social democrats need to ditch the Blairite fundamentalists (if any still exist) and focus on policy. Sometime somewhere, someone might pick up on it. I get that the internal party struggle must be damaging to people's energy but if you don't also focus on what is wrong with the Tories (other than Brexit) you'll get nowhere.
The only people suggesting the alternative to Corbyn is "red Tories" are the entryists nutters who despised Labour in government as a betrayal of revolutionary socialism.
I use the label almost as a badge of honour now. I see myself on the left of the party. Didn't like our 2005 manifesto, voted for Ed Milliband. Campaigned and voted for Jeremy Corbyn before realising just how stupid that was. I support most of our policies now and definitely the direction of travel - as do the electorate when those policies are tested without a party label. Its Corbyn and the language of Corbyn that repels them not the policies.
2 snip
Labour - with a sane leader like Starmer - with little change in policy would provide at the very least serious opposition in both day to day and ideas stakes vs the Tories, and with Brexit the great unknown stands a chance of winning in 2020. But we can't have that because of the deluded the naive and the downright stupid people that have swamped the Labour Party and turned it to the Cult of Corbyn.
Indeed. It is very bleak for the party. However, I am a little suspicious about the polling showing the latest labour policies are very popular. They are seen in isolation (e.g. is it a good idea to feed every kid for free at school?). In the actual GE they will be bundled up and be attacked as 'look at these endless spending commitments from Labour'.
So, an individual proposal might be liked, but if it all adds up to the mood music being we are going to tax you massively, then the Tories win.
Mind you, as you say, nothing Labour says is of the slightest relevance while Corbyn and clowns are running the party.
(23% ) - Oh dear, at this rate we could see a Labour – Lib Dem cross-over before GE2020...
That is what could cause the dam to break. If the Lib Dems look like they seriously have crossed-over with Labour then that could escalate very, very quickly.
Worth noting lds being sub 10 still seems the norm.
This, er, big LibDem recovery is still falling behind the general Tory advance since the General Election. No point in winning in a personal best if your opponent just beat you by setting a new world record. Surprisingly, none of the thread writers seem to get the point.
The polling by Sir Lynton Crosby (pbuh) says otherwise.
And his polling in 2015 was spot on. I just wish I had I bet accordingly.
Or you could have listened to those of us on the ground, posting here. And we are telling you - the LibDems are not getting those seats back without the mother of all fights.
I acknowledge that, but you'll be fighting this time with your two strongest advantages from last time
1) The threat of the SNP being in government with Ed Miliband
2) David Cameron
1) The threat of the SNP being in government with Jeremy Corbyn is effective to the power of Miliband cubed.
2) Theresa May isn't exactly proving to be the handicap you might hope...
1) At the last GE the polls were something like Con 34. Lab 34, on current trends at the next GE the polls will be Con 48 Lab 19, so a Corbyn/SNP government is most unlikely
2) I trust Sir Lynton's polling, which kinda implies Mrs May might be a bit of a handicap in the SW.
It would be interesting to know if Cameron would currently be doing better in the South West May's poll ratings are higher nationally are they not? And you continue to ignore the biggest 'strength' for the Tories in the South West. The Lib Dem performance in government.
I did hear Sir Lynton polled back in February 2016 and the Tories were on course to hold their gains bar one or two.
It's quite noticeable how well the Tories have done now Osborne has quit front line politics
JEREMY Corbyn has reported an MP for harassment who questioned Labour’s woeful media performance.
The Labour leader’s office reported Neil Coyle to the party’s Chief Whip for disciplinary action after he sent Mr Corbyn a formal email questioning his leadership.
(23% ) - Oh dear, at this rate we could see a Labour – Lib Dem cross-over before GE2020...
That is what could cause the dam to break. If the Lib Dems look like they seriously have crossed-over with Labour then that could escalate very, very quickly.
Worth noting lds being sub 10 still seems the norm.
This, er, big LibDem recovery is still falling behind the general Tory advance since the General Election. No point in winning in a personal best if your opponent just beat you by setting a new world record. Surprisingly, none of the thread writers seem to get the point.
The polling by Sir Lynton Crosby (pbuh) says otherwise.
And his polling in 2015 was spot on. I just wish I had I bet accordingly.
Or you could have listened to those of us on the ground, posting here. And we are telling you - the LibDems are not getting those seats back without the mother of all fights.
Thornbury & Yate, Bath, Cheltenham, perhaps St. Ives, or Mid-Dorset, or Yeovil, could be regained. The rest don't seem vulnerable to me.
I'm pretty relaxed about Mid Dorset.
It is the constituency that I went to school in, where I have my business, and in whic ]h I helped to canvass etc in '05 and '15.
It was clear to me all day in '15 that we were going to win. Incumbent was standing down, people were tooting their horns and giving me the thumbs up whilst in the town.
The main change between '05 and '10 is not political, but demographic. The constituency is both older and richer: thousands of decent executive homes have been built, and I was struck how many of the bungalows and smaller houses were renovated and done up in the intervening 10 years.
Oh, and we have a really pleasant, engaging MP who is really involved in local issues. And a 10k majority + an eminently squeezable 5k UKIP vote from last time.
My guess is that most of the UKIP vote came from the LibDems, counter-intuitive as that may seem.
No, it makes sense: the LDs lost the "none of the above" vote when they became "the above".
The biggest question is if they can get it back or, when push come to shove at the next GE, will they still be seen as "the above".
F1: fortnight to go so I'll contemplate it some longer, but I'm wondering about Verstappen each way for the Russian win at 26.
Red Bull Constructors' bet looking a little less likely now. Not impossible, but difficult.
For Russia, it's hard to pass, Verstappen's looked clearly the faster of the Red Bull drivers and safety car appearances could shuffle the order. It's a shame the Dutchman had a brake failure in Bahrain. He claims he could've got second. Would've been interesting to find out.
Think a safety car highly probable, due to the nature of the circuit as well as the unusually high attrition rates we're seeing this season.
Bahrain helped firm up my view on how the cars are. Renault can qualify, but not race. Force India are fast. Stroll is unlucky (may mean there will be undeservedly good odds on him getting points).
Incidentally, anyone betting on points for McLaren should consider that they went through 3 MGU-H units at Bahrain. You get 4 for a whole season. Any more, you get penalties. Also, Alonso's engine appears to have been written off. But apart from an 80%+ failure rate, being down 120bhp and causing vibrations so severe other parts of the car get damaged, it's a great engine.
This, er, big LibDem recovery is still falling behind the general Tory advance since the General Election. No point in winning in a personal best if your opponent just beat you by setting a new world record. Surprisingly, none of the thread writers seem to get the point.
The polling by Sir Lynton Crosby (pbuh) says otherwise.
.
Or you could have listened to those of us on the ground, posting here. And we are telling you - the LibDems are not getting those seats back without the mother of all fights.
Thornbury & Yate, Bath, Cheltenham, perhaps St. Ives, or Mid-Dorset, or Yeovil, could be regained. The rest don't seem vulnerable to me.
I'm pretty relaxed about Mid Dorset.
It is the constituency that I went to school in, where I have my business, and in whic ]h I helped to canvass etc in '05 and '15.
It was clear to me all day in '15 that we were going to win. Incumbent was standing down, people were tooting their horns and giving me the thumbs up whilst in the town.
The main change between '05 and '10 is not political, but demographic. The constituency is both older and richer: thousands of decent executive homes have been built, and I was struck how many of the bungalows and smaller houses were renovated and done up in the intervening 10 years.
Oh, and we have a really pleasant, engaging MP who is really involved in local issues. And a 10k majority + an eminently squeezable 5k UKIP vote from last time.
My guess is that most of the UKIP vote came from the LibDems, counter-intuitive as that may seem.
No, it makes sense: the LDs lost the "none of the above" vote when they became "the above".
The biggest question is if they can get it back or, when push come to shove at the next GE, will they still be seen as "the above".
In an area like mid Dorset and Poole, for most people voting Labour is simply out of the question. Therefore for the chunk of the population that won't vote Tory, the LibDems have always offered the only alternative. In 2015 there was a credible-ish UKIP alternative and the LibDems were in coalition with the Tories. So no surprise a chunk of voters switched to UKIP, like you say. Next time they'll switch back. If the Tories in the South West really do think the UKIP vote down there is 'theirs' for the taking, as Mortimer's post suggests, they are making a big mistake.
JEREMY Corbyn has reported an MP for harassment who questioned Labour’s woeful media performance.
The Labour leader’s office reported Neil Coyle to the party’s Chief Whip for disciplinary action after he sent Mr Corbyn a formal email questioning his leadership.
(23% ) - Oh dear, at this rate we could see a Labour – Lib Dem cross-over before GE2020...
That is what could cause the dam to break. If the Lib Dems look like they seriously have crossed-over with Labour then that could escalate very, very quickly.
Worth noting lds being sub 10 still seems the norm.
This, er, big LibDem recovery is still falling behind the general Tory advance since the General Election. No point in winning in a personal best if your opponent just beat you by setting a new world record. Surprisingly, none of the thread writers seem to get the point.
The polling by Sir Lynton Crosby (pbuh) says otherwise.
And his polling in 2015 was spot on. I just wish I had I bet accordingly.
Or you could have listened to those of us on the ground, posting here. And we are telling you - the LibDems are not getting those seats back without the mother of all fights.
I acknowledge that, but you'll be fighting this time with your two strongest advantages from last time
1) The threat of the SNP being in government with Ed Miliband
2) David Cameron
1) The threat of the SNP being in government with Jeremy Corbyn is effective to the power of Miliband cubed.
2) Theresa May isn't exactly proving to be the handicap you might hope...
1) At the last GE the polls were something like Con 34. Lab 34, on current trends at the next GE the polls will be Con 48 Lab 19, so a Corbyn/SNP government is most unlikely
2) I trust Sir Lynton's polling, which kinda implies Mrs May might be a bit of a handicap in the SW.
It would be interesting to know if Cameron would currently be doing better in the South West May's poll ratings are higher nationally are they not? And you continue to ignore the biggest 'strength' for the Tories in the South West. The Lib Dem performance in government.
I did hear Sir Lynton polled back in February 2016 and the Tories were on course to hold their gains bar one or two.
It's quite noticeable how well the Tories have done now Osborne has quit front line politics
it's only now we see how much he held back Dave
If Conservative support has gone from 38% to 44%, those extra votes have to show up somewhere.
We are now almost two years into the current 5 year Parliamentary term yet STILL there appears to be no clear indication as to when, if at all, the proposed 600 HoC seat boundaries are to be introduced. Does anyone know what the timetable is for this?
Vote in Parliament in Autumn 2018 - so new Boundaries will be effective - if approved - from end of next year.
Summary please, for those of who aren’t subscribers.
Google 'London battles to keep hold of two main EU agencies' and you should be able to read the article for free.
Précis - The EU are relocating their medicine and banking bodies from London in light of Brexit, and well David Davis thinks otherwise.
Neither are any big deal.
You're like my boxer shorts, full of bollocks.
could you perhaps be confusing your haemorrhoids with testicles ?
I've got sciatica at the moment, haemorrhoids sounds appealing to be honest.
my wife had that and was in total agony.
I told her that's what wedding preparations are like for blokes
The worst thing about sciatica is that you feel confident it has gone, and then its back.
Is it spinal disc herniation ? A member of my family had really excellent results with the Coflex device. http://www.coflexsolution.com/content/what-coflex (Disclaimer - I am no medic; get proper advice if interested.)
About a week ago, somebody, I think it may have been Mark Senior, tabulated and posted the total number of councillors standing for each party in England and Wales. did anybody do the same for Scotland?
I did that the previous week as nomination in Scotland closed a week earlier , you probably missed it .
F1: fortnight to go so I'll contemplate it some longer, but I'm wondering about Verstappen each way for the Russian win at 26.
Red Bull Constructors' bet looking a little less likely now. Not impossible, but difficult.
For Russia, it's hard to pass, Verstappen's looked clearly the faster of the Red Bull drivers and safety car appearances could shuffle the order. It's a shame the Dutchman had a brake failure in Bahrain. He claims he could've got second. Would've been interesting to find out.
Think a safety car highly probable, due to the nature of the circuit as well as the unusually high attrition rates we're seeing this season.
Bahrain helped firm up my view on how the cars are. Renault can qualify, but not race. Force India are fast. Stroll is unlucky (may mean there will be undeservedly good odds on him getting points).
Incidentally, anyone betting on points for McLaren should consider that they went through 3 MGU-H units at Bahrain. You get 4 for a whole season. Any more, you get penalties. Also, Alonso's engine appears to have been written off. But apart from an 80%+ failure rate, being down 120bhp and causing vibrations so severe other parts of the car get damaged, it's a great engine.
Is anyone quoting odds on McLaren getting a podium by the end of the season ? At the right price, I'd be interested.
Rochdale - that's very, well, illuminating. However it is no use simply saying you want to win elections. People aren't going to assume you are different to Mrs May because you wear a different colour badge. Not anymore. Obviously you can make Brexit a dividing line but where does that take you? Staying in the EU? My own view is that social democrats need to ditch the Blairite fundamentalists (if any still exist) and focus on policy. Sometime somewhere, someone might pick up on it. I get that the internal party struggle must be damaging to people's energy but if you don't also focus on what is wrong with the Tories (other than Brexit) you'll get nowhere.
The only people suggesting the alternative to Corbyn is "red Tories" are the entryists nutters who despised Labour in government as a betrayal of revolutionary socialism.
I use the label almost as a badge of honour now. I see myself on the left of the party. Didn't like our 2005 manifesto, voted for Ed Milliband. Campaigned and voted for Jeremy Corbyn before realising just how stupid that was. I support most of our policies now and definitely the direction of travel - as do the electorate when those policies are tested without a party label. Its Corbyn and the language of Corbyn that repels them not the policies.
2 examples of this. On education our policy on Grammar Schools hasn't really moved on since 97. Blair knew attacking grammars would be repellent in the shires we went on to win and irrelevant where Grammars had already been abolished. So the campaign was cut class sizes, universally popular, with attacks on Grammar schools once in government. Corbyn instead prints "education not segregation" pamphlets which read like it's 4 bits of text badly pasted together and has us doing Street stalls in places that don't have grammar schools where they go down as well as you'd expect.
Then we have the railways. The absurd position of most British trains run by a foreign government but Labour bang on about renationalisation and war against "the bosses". State ownership clearly works as a next steps commercial vehicle owned by the state. State ownership is wildly popular according to polling. So we need to campaign on a 2020s solution - a StateCom business that not only runs our trains but looks to sell our expertise worldwide as the French Dutch Germans and Italian governments do here. It's state ownership without the baggage of the past and we can prove it works by pointing to the names on our trains and buses now.
Snip.
The electorate is not going to swallow unilateral nuclear disarmament. The tabloids will beat Labour to death with it.
TBF he says they don't "have" to. He's absolutely right. They probably will (although I would have thought that the EMA would be negotiable - although it is in demand - provided the UK remains within the common approval process for drugs)
He may be pendantically correct, but we voted out and EU institutions are based within the EU. Expect to lose all EU institutions in the UK
Besides it is only 1,000 jobs and we have millions of jobs with people flocking in from all over the EU to do them.
We will be fine!
And jobs where the big earners pay no income tax to us but presumably use services like the NHS
About a week ago, somebody, I think it may have been Mark Senior, tabulated and posted the total number of councillors standing for each party in England and Wales. did anybody do the same for Scotland?
I did that the previous week as nomination in Scotland closed a week earlier , you probably missed it .
Woops! There's a hole in the floor. It had to happen.
What is a bit ironic is that after 2 years of not very much Labour has starting producing some real policy ideas in the last week or so. Not very good policies, in my view, but distinct and according to the polling relatively popular. Certainly more than 23% popular.
Corbyn is now at the stage where every interview is going to be, "yes, but when are you standing down?" The indications are that he will not respond to that well.
Meanwhile, are Opinium re-evaluating their methodology (again)?
My friends at Opinium are quite keen to remind me that they got the London Mayor and EU Referendum spot on.
Opinium are far more reliable than Comres. Whilst Yougov is a very sound pollster , there is a clear 'house' effect apparent in its findings since last September in that it has consistently produced the lowest Labour vote share of all pollsters. Previously that was true of ICM. 23% is a new low from Yougov , but Labour has been in the 24% - 26% range since late November.
William Hill educed LIb Dems price at Gorton to 9-2. That party is claiming to be on 31% with Labour on 51%. Are the figures right, is it bluff. Richmond Park they were pretty accurate. If so 18% others who could be squeezed + do not knows. Is it on for them? Would certainly be sensational if it happened. 31% that is a 26% increase since 2015!!!!. That alone seems astonishing.
TBF he says they don't "have" to. He's absolutely right. They probably will (although I would have thought that the EMA would be negotiable - although it is in demand - provided the UK remains within the common approval process for drugs)
He may be pendantically correct, but we voted out and EU institutions are based within the EU. Expect to lose all EU institutions in the UK
Besides it is only 1,000 jobs and we have millions of jobs with people flocking in from all over the EU to do them.
We will be fine!
And jobs where the big earners pay no income tax to us but presumably use services like the NHS
Apart from A&E big earners avoid the NHS like the plague.
(23% ) - Oh dear, at this rate we could see a Labour – Lib Dem cross-over before GE2020...
That is what could cause the dam to break. If the Lib Dems look like they seriously have crossed-over with Labour then that could escalate very, very quickly.
Worth noting lds being sub 10 still seems the norm.
This, er, big LibDem recovery is still falling behind the general Tory advance since the General Election. No point in winning in a personal best if your opponent just beat you by setting a new world record. Surprisingly, none of the thread writers seem to get the point.
The polling by Sir Lynton Crosby (pbuh) says otherwise.
And his polling in 2015 was spot on. I just wish I had I bet accordingly.
Yes, and if you were running CCHQ strategy, you'd probably be content to accept a few losses in the SW if that's the price of much bigger gains vs Lab. Apart from the obvious top-line advantage, it would make the LDs a much more credible threat to Labour.
That is the last thing they want. Having Labour as the opposition suits them just fine, not least because the large swathes of the country that would never elect a Labour MP are rendered safe for them; jobs for life whether they bother to do the job or not. The last thing they would want is to be up against a rival that could theoretically win almost anywhere.
The Lib Dems couldn't win 'almost anywhere' if they became the main opposition. They'd have a much more clearly defined national position and attitude (i.e. they couldn't rely on tactical Con votes to beat Lab in one area and tactical Lab ones to beat Con in another). If they did push Labour out of its leading position on the left-of-centre, then inevitably, they'd find it far harder to win tactical Con votes - but then, having gathered up so many Labour ones, they wouldn't need to.
Are you still expecting Labour to lose only 50 councillors in England next month ?
No. I'd revise that up to 80-100 now.
i am sticking at least for the moment to my forecast of 90 Labour councillor losses in England
A rare moment of agreement between us re election prospects!
How do you see Scotland and Wales? I wonder if the non-SLab parties have underplayed their hands in their STV nominations and SLab might end up with quite a few more councillors than they'd otherwise have done due to other parties maxing out early?
The question now is when we will see the 1st Poll putting The Libdems ahead of Labour ? Not for another Year at least, imo. Of course that 1st Poll will be an outrider & will be dismissed as a blip.
About a week ago, somebody, I think it may have been Mark Senior, tabulated and posted the total number of councillors standing for each party in England and Wales. did anybody do the same for Scotland?
I did that the previous week as nomination in Scotland closed a week earlier , you probably missed it .
Thanks, can you remember what the numbers where?
SNP 609 Lab 443 Con 369 LDem 241 Green 210 UKIP 43 Ind/Others 588
About a week ago, somebody, I think it may have been Mark Senior, tabulated and posted the total number of councillors standing for each party in England and Wales. did anybody do the same for Scotland?
About a week ago, somebody, I think it may have been Mark Senior, tabulated and posted the total number of councillors standing for each party in England and Wales. did anybody do the same for Scotland?
I did that the previous week as nomination in Scotland closed a week earlier , you probably missed it .
Thanks, can you remember what the numbers where?
SNP 609 Lab 443 Con 369 LDem 241 Green 210 UKIP 43 Ind/Others 588
I think the figures have had some minor updates as I've got 626 SNP and 372 Con
Comments
2) Theresa May isn't exactly proving to be the handicap you might hope...
Numpty.
I told her that's what wedding preparations are like for blokes
2) I trust Sir Lynton's polling, which kinda implies Mrs May might be a bit of a handicap in the SW.
I'm ten days in from recovering from a wedding :-)
Mr. Brooke, sorry to hear about that.
Mr. Eagles, hope you recover from it promptly. You should re-read TA Dodge's biography of Hannibal. It'll distract you from your pestilence and might even allow you to finally grasp the excellence of Hannibal.
The polls are wrong.
#fakepolls #fakenews
It is the constituency that I went to school in, where I have my business, and in whic ]h I helped to canvass etc in '05 and '15.
It was clear to me all day in '15 that we were going to win. Incumbent was standing down, people were tooting their horns and giving me the thumbs up whilst in the town.
The main change between '05 and '10 is not political, but demographic. The constituency is both older and richer: thousands of decent executive homes have been built, and I was struck how many of the bungalows and smaller houses were renovated and done up in the intervening 10 years.
Oh, and we have a really pleasant, engaging MP who is really involved in local issues. And a 10k majority + an eminently squeezable 5k UKIP vote from last time.
I use the label almost as a badge of honour now. I see myself on the left of the party. Didn't like our 2005 manifesto, voted for Ed Milliband. Campaigned and voted for Jeremy Corbyn before realising just how stupid that was. I support most of our policies now and definitely the direction of travel - as do the electorate when those policies are tested without a party label. Its Corbyn and the language of Corbyn that repels them not the policies.
2 examples of this. On education our policy on Grammar Schools hasn't really moved on since 97. Blair knew attacking grammars would be repellent in the shires we went on to win and irrelevant where Grammars had already been abolished. So the campaign was cut class sizes, universally popular, with attacks on Grammar schools once in government. Corbyn instead prints "education not segregation" pamphlets which read like it's 4 bits of text badly pasted together and has us doing Street stalls in places that don't have grammar schools where they go down as well as you'd expect.
Then we have the railways. The absurd position of most British trains run by a foreign government but Labour bang on about renationalisation and war against "the bosses". State ownership clearly works as a next steps commercial vehicle owned by the state. State ownership is wildly popular according to polling. So we need to campaign on a 2020s solution - a StateCom business that not only runs our trains but looks to sell our expertise worldwide as the French Dutch Germans and Italian governments do here. It's state ownership without the baggage of the past and we can prove it works by pointing to the names on our trains and buses now.
Labour - with a sane leader like Starmer - with little change in policy would provide at the very least serious opposition in both day to day and ideas stakes vs the Tories, and with Brexit the great unknown stands a chance of winning in 2020. But we can't have that because of the deluded the naive and the downright stupid people that have swamped the Labour Party and turned it to the Cult of Corbyn.
The worst thing was when I wasn't allowed any more diazepam, I was tempted to 'borrow' my father's prescription pad and write out a month's supply for myself.
Then I realised I'd rather be in pain than become a smackhead.
Mid-Dorset has always been a long shot for the LibDems; even in the good years Annette only just scraped in, by the narrowest of margins, as I recall. Your main worry is that the Brexit plus Mili-lite offering from May isn't really pitching at areas like yours.
So, an individual proposal might be liked, but if it all adds up to the mood music being we are going to tax you massively, then the Tories win.
Mind you, as you say, nothing Labour says is of the slightest relevance while Corbyn and clowns are running the party.
it's only now we see how much he held back Dave
Imagine if he ever got his hands on the levers of power
The biggest question is if they can get it back or, when push come to shove at the next GE, will they still be seen as "the above".
Red Bull Constructors' bet looking a little less likely now. Not impossible, but difficult.
For Russia, it's hard to pass, Verstappen's looked clearly the faster of the Red Bull drivers and safety car appearances could shuffle the order. It's a shame the Dutchman had a brake failure in Bahrain. He claims he could've got second. Would've been interesting to find out.
Think a safety car highly probable, due to the nature of the circuit as well as the unusually high attrition rates we're seeing this season.
Bahrain helped firm up my view on how the cars are. Renault can qualify, but not race. Force India are fast. Stroll is unlucky (may mean there will be undeservedly good odds on him getting points).
Incidentally, anyone betting on points for McLaren should consider that they went through 3 MGU-H units at Bahrain. You get 4 for a whole season. Any more, you get penalties. Also, Alonso's engine appears to have been written off. But apart from an 80%+ failure rate, being down 120bhp and causing vibrations so severe other parts of the car get damaged, it's a great engine.
A member of my family had really excellent results with the Coflex device.
http://www.coflexsolution.com/content/what-coflex
(Disclaimer - I am no medic; get proper advice if interested.)
Good morning all.
Labour more and more resemble a real life version of the 'boiled frog' parable.
At the right price, I'd be interested.
Opinium daily rolling poll
Macron 22 (=)
Le Pen 22 (-1)
Fillon 21 (+1)
Melenchon 18 (+1)
https://www.lesechos.fr/elections/presidentielle-2017/0211739192332-sondage-le-suivi-quotidien-de-la-presidentielle-2062937.php
Mr. B, I'd probably want four noughts at the end of such odds.
Any idea of the timetable for getting the first round's results?
If so 18% others who could be squeezed + do not knows. Is it on for them? Would certainly be sensational if it happened. 31% that is a 26% increase since 2015!!!!. That alone seems astonishing.
NEW THREAD
How do you see Scotland and Wales? I wonder if the non-SLab parties have underplayed their hands in their STV nominations and SLab might end up with quite a few more councillors than they'd otherwise have done due to other parties maxing out early?
Of course that 1st Poll will be an outrider & will be dismissed as a blip.
Lab 443
Con 369
LDem 241
Green 210
UKIP 43
Ind/Others 588