The new (Spanish, by the way) CEO of the merged BA/Iberia operation has been a manic cost-cutter, hence having to pay for a sandwich and a beer on short-haul flights these days.
Don't be surprised if he doesn't last the week, this looks like a monumental screwup that's going to cost an estimated £200m. Outsourcing most of their IT services might have saved 10% of what they've lost this week, before they start on the immeasurable lost goodwill of tens of thousands of unhappy customers.
Do you have an idea of what happened? The reporting is very vague.
The new (Spanish, by the way) CEO of the merged BA/Iberia operation has been a manic cost-cutter, hence having to pay for a sandwich and a beer on short-haul flights these days.
Don't be surprised if he doesn't last the week, this looks like a monumental screwup that's going to cost an estimated £200m. Outsourcing most of their IT services might have saved 10% of what they've lost this week, before they start on the immeasurable lost goodwill of tens of thousands of unhappy customers.
BA wasn't popular to start with. Certainly business travellers in my firm avoid it. Too many bumped departures.
Any MP showing anti-Corbyn colours or as it could be, anti-PM colour, would be hounded by the new 'Forces of Hell'. As John Cleese nearly said in The Life of Brian, "They'd have to really, really hate Corbyn".
Not in my view.
The early election, and Labour's resurgence means that theey are safe for 5 years, and it means more moderate MPs survive as with only 1 or 2 exceptions all sitting MPs and prior candidates were renominated.
A 100 Corbyn gains to have a majority is near impossible, but a strong showing may well help bury the hatchet in Labour. A radical manifesto will not have been a disaster, and a 2022 majority possible under a leader with less baggage. Corbyn will be too old for the next election and a more unifying leader can takevover with honour satisfied on both sides.
Sounds about right to me, if Labour does get the vote the polls are suggesting. But never underestimate the party's ability to shoot itself in the foot.
I suggest everyone reads Martin Boon's article [ of ICM ]about weightings. His point is basically this:
Most of the time, pollsters get a similar sample. The question is what they do with it.
The samples, for whatever reason, are Labour biased. The different pollsters do different adjustments.
The crucial one is to decide "Likelihood to vote" vs "Previous election vote"
All have made changes in their methodology. Some more than others. In Martin Boon's own words that is the difference between Yougov's 5% and ICM's 14%
Mind boggles.
Exactly. And none of us really know, for all that we confidently assert one theory or another. Perhaps the punter's best option is to guess at a midway point, between the best and worst of the polls for either side.
To be honest I don't detect a huge wave of enthusiasm for either side. I meet some enthusiasts for Jeremy and some Tories who are not so much enthusiastic as grimly determined, which comes to the same in voting terms. But I also meet quite a lot people with spotty voting records who are not sure they'll bother. The posters here who are flirting with abstention are not that untypical - the view that the choice is unappealling and positively voting for anyone seems a doubtful use of time is not uncommon.
Mr. CD13, you may, depressingly, be right. Throwing endless free stuff at people, where the 'free' part is their own taxes being recycled through the state and massive increased borrowing, appears alarmingly popular.
We don't seem to reward harder, more realistic measures. We say we want to hear the truth, but if the truth is not great we punish those who tell us it.
Mr. CD13, you may, depressingly, be right. Throwing endless free stuff at people, where the 'free' part is their own taxes being recycled through the state and massive increased borrowing, appears alarmingly popular.
Morris 10 years of no real real wage increases must have some effect eventually.British workers face worst decade for pay in 70 years .
It is, of course, worth remembering that this trend is not restricted to the UK. It also occurred in the US, Japan, and most of the Eurozone.
I suggest everyone reads Martin Boon's article [ of ICM ]about weightings. His point is basically this:
Most of the time, pollsters get a similar sample. The question is what they do with it.
The samples, for whatever reason, are Labour biased. The different pollsters do different adjustments.
The crucial one is to decide "Likelihood to vote" vs "Previous election vote"
All have made changes in their methodology. Some more than others. In Martin Boon's own words that is the difference between Yougov's 5% and ICM's 14%
Mind boggles.
Exactly. And none of us really know, for all that we confidently assert one theory or another. Perhaps the punter's best option is to guess at a midway point, between the best and worst of the polls for either side.
To be honest I don't detect a huge wave of enthusiasm for either side. I meet some enthusiasts for Jeremy and some Tories who are not so much enthusiastic as grimly determined, which comes to the same in voting terms. But I also meet quite a lot people with spotty voting records who are not sure they'll bother. The posters here who are flirting with abstention are not that untypical - the view that the choice is unappealling and positively voting for anyone seems a doubtful use of time is not uncommon.
I think that's fair. And would normally point to a low turnout, yet recent turnout speculation on PB (that I have seen) has tended to the higher side?
FWIW I am picking up a few anecdotal LD reports from LD/Tory targets that are a bit more positive. Possibly just campaign fatigue, but possibly a hint that the swing is as much anti-Tory as pro-Corbyn? As I have argued all along, a national VI poll cannot actually tell the difference between a swing from LD to Labour and a swing toward the leading non-Tory in each seat, since there are so many more Labour challengers. People are generally more willing to vote tactically when there isn't positive enthusiasm for any particular campaign.
Good article Don. I'm expecting the BA debacle to wake people up to many further and more serious problems when Brexit gets into full flow.
The obvious unanswered question is if she can't run a half decent election campaign God help us when she starts trying to extricate us from Europe with two morons by her side.
Being in France at the moment it's easy to see how intertwined our countries really are
I wonder too whether the Manchester tragedy pointed up the Tory habit of wasting time and resources for the benefit of party rather than country? First the destructive Referendum now an unnecessary election.
'For the Many Not the Few' isn't a bad slogan. They could have added the strapline
'Not Another One!'
For the many not the few is not a bad slogan, although if May does win a landslide it ends up looking silly, as it would mean the many considered it and said 'nah, I'm going with the few'
Yes, but the rumour doing the rounds is that it is due to a power problem, so it might be nothing to do with outsourcing.
Delta had a fault where because the power system switchgear detected a high voltage it prevented the backup generators coming online in order to save equipment from shorting out. Which is the right thing to do if you really care about that equipment, but the wrong thing to do if the cost of that equipment is much less than the cost of total power failure and you can safely isolate the damaged equipment. It's a bit like letting your building burn down to avoid water damage from sprinklers.
It might be a bit to do with outsourcing, even if simply because there was no longer anyone walking past the equipment every day who might have spotted the warning signs. And you'd like to imagine there'd be redundant feeds, and a remote DR site, so perhaps the knowledge of how to failover was lost during outsourcing.
It might be just my imagination but there seem to have been a few of these outages based on power feeds recently, including one just last week affecting some council services. One hopes it is only coincidence and not hacking of one sort or another.
Caused by moronic executives hiking their bonuses up by cutting back on IT , they do not understand what happens when a system as complex as this gets a hit. Rebuilding the system by people in India who have no clue how it is done after they have skimped on not having expensive separate powers feeds etc etc. The cheapskates are getting what they deserve.
It might be a bit to do with outsourcing, even if simply because there was no longer anyone walking past the equipment every day who might have spotted the warning signs. And you'd like to imagine there'd be redundant feeds, and a remote DR site, so perhaps the knowledge of how to failover was lost during outsourcing.
It might be just my imagination but there seem to have been a few of these outages based on power feeds recently, including one just last week affecting some council services. One hopes it is only coincidence and not hacking of one sort or another.
I think power systems are becoming the least reliable part of large scale computer services. It's pretty much impossible for thousands of servers to develop a simultaneous fault, storage is highly reliable nowadays, and networking is pretty good too. Power systems though often put all the eggs in one or two baskets, plus a generator. It's a fundamentally difficult problem to solve as there simply aren't many sites where you have a multitude of supply options. So you have to go the other way and geographically disperse the data centres.
It will be interesting to see what has happened to BA, but like the Delta problem it might not be anything obvious, but instead a new failure mode.
Yes, but the rumour doing the rounds is that it is due to a power problem, so it might be nothing to do with outsourcing.
Delta had a fault where because the power system switchgear detected a high voltage it prevented the backup generators coming online in order to save equipment from shorting out. Which is the right thing to do if you really care about that equipment, but the wrong thing to do if the cost of that equipment is much less than the cost of total power failure and you can safely isolate the damaged equipment. It's a bit like letting your building burn down to avoid water damage from sprinklers.
The one think that's absolutely for sure is that this isn't a simple power failure. Data centres (plural, they have several) have at least two independent mains power sources, backed by generators and batteries. The backup or load-balanced data centres should be able to cope if one goes offline completely.
The most likely scenario is as posted by a probable insider on the PPRuNe thread for the incident:
#231 (permalink) DuncanF's AvatarDuncanF , 29th May 2017 06:50 According to someone who knows someone ... this is not a simple power failure. There has been a "failure" of core routers via the power supplies/backup power supplies to these routers. A targeted attack has not been ruled out. In some areas the network has up to six levels of resiliency, and these outer resilient layers have been targeted first.
This has been across multiple data centres, not all in the UK. In fact the primary UK data centre was the last to fall off the network. The underlying applications are mostly available, but inaccessible due to the network being down.
On topic: Labour are doing a surprisingly good job of selling full-on socialism to a significant chunk of the electorate. The promised jam tsunami paid for by someone else is clearly appealing to many. According to the Telegraph the surge is mostly female. Dumb heifers. It's sad to see how little some people seem able to learn from the examples of history. And...that nice Mrs May has made a bit of a clusterfuck of her campaign. She listened to Grimer Wormtongue instead of her colleagues. All the manifesto needed to be was a 'steady as she goes' Brexity affair. Instead she let some know-nothing REMF masturbate all over it. Not clever.
Someone needs to look at this so called poorTory campaign from a LD perspective. If the Tories are truly having a mare, a number of seats should be back in play for the yellows.
Otherwise, I agree. Labour are doing a great job selling economically insane policies. May's doing fantastically badly because of hubris and a mishmash of policies seemingly designed to turn off voters.
Is anyone watching Victoria Derbyshire's election programme. Just comes over as a bun fight and Derbyshire lacks the control. Also obvious momentum members and seems far from balance
On topic: Labour are doing a surprisingly good job of selling full-on socialism to a significant chunk of the electorate. The promised jam tsunami paid for by someone else is clearly appealing to many. According to the Telegraph the surge is mostly female. Dumb heifers. It's sad to see how little some people seem able to learn from the examples of history. And...that nice Mrs May has made a bit of a clusterfuck of her campaign. She listened to Grimer Wormtongue instead of her colleagues. All the manifesto needed to be was a 'steady as she goes' Brexity affair. Instead she let some know-nothing REMF masturbate all over it. Not clever.
Has it occured to you that many of the free sweetie dumb heifers backing Corbyn were doughty members of the patriotic white working class who voted Leave?
What percentage of 18 to 24 yr olds are affected by tuition fees ?
About half of 18 - 20 year olds.
It is also the half that turnout to vote.
If they already turn out to vote, that suggests any further increase will only have a small impact.
Not nessecarily. There is a big swing to Labour in this age range. Corbyn appeals in a way that Milliband did not.
The other reason is that May offers nothing but a future of misery for young people. There is no hope or vision in the Tory manifesto or front bench. Corbynism may be unrealistic and poorly thought through, but has some ambition for a better society.
There is a vision for a better society in the Tory manifesto, you just dont like it and it's not as inspiring as the labour one.
Youth is no excuse to choose an unrealistic, poorly thought out ambition just because it sounds nice. That's saying it's ok to present nothing but sunshine and freebies because people like it. the ld manifesto is a better choice if one doesn't like the Tory one.
Baxterising the "invisible" Survation poll, I get:
Con 345, Lab 225, Lib 3, Green 1, SNP 55, PC 3, NI 18.
I did not tick the Scottish box.
Con maj. = 40.
I didn't see it, but I gather then that nothing is stopping the labour rise. It's incredible. Ed m looks like a chump if Corbyn smashes past his vote share.
"Mr. Blue, I'm having some difficulty believing Labour are on 37%."
No one inspires. Labour have offered some 'comfortable' policies. Roger may be able to advise, but I've noticed many adverts now run the line ..."You deserve it." I assumed that was just for the Snowflake generation but maybe not.
You make an interesting point. This is the age of high self esteem. Or at least that's the ambition 'Because I'm Worth It...' has become one of the most famous slogans of all time
Its the combination of "Because I'm worth it" and "Don't put it off, put it on" which is so dangerous.
It led to "I want, I want, I want" and politicians willing to pander to it.
It's always thought that advertisers merely reflect or articulate the zeitgeist but I would argue they also create it. L'Oreal is interesting but the Dove campaign is even more so. The reason I suspect is that advertising represents the cutting edge of metropolitan society which is traditionally more enlightened. So whereas the Mail or Sun can still laugh about body shape no one is in any doubt that it's primitive.
If Labour are relying on teenagers they are deluded. Time and again I hear that this time they'll vote, they don't and they won't. And if they do there is no reason to suppose they'll vote Labour, their tory voting parents will be every bit as persuasive.
And when were they last offered a £30k incentive to vote ?
That's the type of nonsense that loses Labour elections:
Vote for us and we'll give you £30k
It's a middle-class bung. Notice they are doing it while keeping all the evil Tory benefit cuts.
It's one of those policies that costs very little for a few years, rather like PFI. Currently the govt pays the universities for students on the course, then expects to get the cash back between 5-15 years later. What Labour are proposing is to keep paying out, just not to receive the future payments.
Its rather the reverse of Brown's pension tax grab - that brought in many billions from the start but people didn't suffer the consequences for years.
But the malign effects of BTL and falling home ownership can be traced back to it.
The increase in BTL is driven by interest rates being on the floor, private pensions not providing sufficient retirement income, other investment paying low returns compared to leveraged investment in housing, and as discussed up thread the willingness of government to pay for unemployed and under-employed to live in some of the most expensive housing in the world in London. And planning is now run by the NIMBYS so we're not building any despite massive recent population increases.
There's a lot to sort out there, why anyone thinks that home ownership will increase under the man who thinks private property is theft and we should take the house the council gives us is anyone's guess!
Otherwise, I agree. Labour are doing a great job selling economically insane policies. May's doing fantastically badly because of hubris and a mishmash of policies seemingly designed to turn off voters.
A quick trip to the FOAK tells me you are quite right and I am not. Grima it is.
What remains constant is this country's desire for high tax / spend levels of public services but only ever a low tax / spend willingness to pay for it. That's always 'someone else richer than you's responsibility. If May does get a decent majority (as I'm pretty sure she will, even if not a landslide) maybe now is a good time to start turning around our addiction to welfarism.
What I find depressing and annoying is the apparent lack of vision from so many on the right of politics. We could push for an efficient state, an expansionary trade policy, defence of civil liberties, all the Patrick Party Manifesto stuff. But we get Dave or George of Theresa - who seem too wedded to the state, authority, control. They seem feeble in defending the free market - or actively go against it. Energy caps is just a fucking insane policy from a Tory manifesto. It seems to me they like the business of doing politics rather than seeing politics as a means to an end. That's Blairism at its very worst.
I am looking forward to Meeks thread on why ICM's turnout filter is likely correct. It will help stablise some wobbles I've been having recently.
Apologies in advance if this has already been done to death (I'm only just logging on this morning,) BUT...
"Polls, including YouGov, that show narrower Conservative leads are those that assign probabilities of voting based wholly or primarily on a respondent's self-reported likelihood of casting a ballot, meaning that young people make up a far bigger proportion of the likely vote than they have historically.
"Those showing wider Conservative leads, such as ICM and ComRes, model turnout based on historical figures for demographic groups. This would have improved accuracy in most previous elections, but risks coming unstuck if behaviour changes markedly."
- Matt Singh of Number Cruncher Politics, writing for the Financial Times
So, assuming that there are no further significant changes in the polls between now and the big day, we are back to thinking about the accuracy of weighting:
1. Are the pollsters that show high Labour figures over-counting young and non-voters, who won't bother to turn out on the day - OR are voting patterns going to change and these people are actually going to make the trip to the polling stations? If the latter is the case then we should also see a substantial overall increase in turnout. 2. Are some or all of the pollsters also going under-weight on the Lib Dems and over-weight on Labour, because they've got their adjustments based on the respondents' stated 2015 vote a bit wrong (a theory quite extensively discussed prior to all the brouhaha over the Tory polling wobble?)
This makes a huge difference. If the Conservatives finish only 6% ahead of Labour in terms of vote share then, depending on which model you adopt, they are likely to do only moderately better, or maybe no better at all, than they did last time. A lead of 14% implies a three-figure Conservative majority, and anything from a drubbing to a total rout for Labour (with a seat total below 200 in any event, which would be their worst performance since 1935.)
If you take the attitude that I do, which is that no meaningful proportion of David Cameron's 2015 vote will go to Labour and that May can also count on about half of the Kippers, then a strong Labour performance all comes down to three things:
1. The ability of Labour to hold on to the existing share it won under Miliband, without any meaningful number of those people defecting to the Tories. 2. The ability of Labour to "unite the Left" - squeezing the votes of the Lib Dems and Greens, and winning back some Red Kippers now that their party has lost salience. 3. The ability of Labour to persuade young and non-voters to come out and support Jeremy Corbyn.
Based on evidence and initution, I'm not certain about point 1 but I think there's a reasonable chance (the remaining swing voters who stuck with Labour last time aren't going to be particularly left-wing, but on the other hand they were probably more interested in public services than the economy, otherwise they'd already have deserted); point 2 is looking increasingly like a good bet; which leaves point 3 as the great unknowable. My hunch is that the young and non-voters won't turn out in the numbers that Labour needs (and that those who do are liable to be disproportionately concentrated in urban areas where they will mostly be of no value to Labour.) If I'm right then Labour's vote share may still edge up a little, but they'll be badly beaten. If I'm wrong then things may yet develop not necessarily to Mrs May's advantage.
If Labour are relying on teenagers they are deluded. Time and again I hear that this time they'll vote, they don't and they won't. And if they do there is no reason to suppose they'll vote Labour, their tory voting parents will be every bit as persuasive.
And when were they last offered a £30k incentive to vote ?
That's the type of nonsense that loses Labour elections:
Vote for us and we'll give you £30k
It's a middle-class bung. Notice they are doing it while keeping all the evil Tory benefit cuts.
It's one of those policies that costs very little for a few years, rather like PFI. Currently the govt pays the universities for students on the course, then expects to get the cash back between 5-15 years later. What Labour are proposing is to keep paying out, just not to receive the future payments.
Its rather the reverse of Brown's pension tax grab - that brought in many billions from the start but people didn't suffer the consequences for years.
But the malign effects of BTL and falling home ownership can be traced back to it.
If the government wins, they seriously seriously need to get a hell of alot more houses built and further discourage BTL. I can see why the young are falling for Corbyn's hard left nonsense with either the prospect of massive uni debt (Or yr at a competitive disadvantage). Heck if I was 18 years old I'd probably vote for him myself.
For decades politicians have viewed rising house prices as wealth creation and as an asset for homeowners to borrow and consume against.
I would have hoped they learned their lesson in 2007-9 but Osborne chose to restart the housing bubble.
Mr. CD13, you may, depressingly, be right. Throwing endless free stuff at people, where the 'free' part is their own taxes being recycled through the state and massive increased borrowing, appears alarmingly popular.
Morris 10 years of no real real wage increases must have some effect eventually.British workers face worst decade for pay in 70 years .
It is, of course, worth remembering that this trend is not restricted to the UK. It also occurred in the US, Japan, and most of the Eurozone.
If Labour are relying on teenagers they are deluded. Time and again I hear that this time they'll vote, they don't and they won't. And if they do there is no reason to suppose they'll vote Labour, their tory voting parents will be every bit as persuasive.
And when were they last offered a £30k incentive to vote ?
That's the type of nonsense that loses Labour elections:
Vote for us and we'll give you £30k
It's a middle-class bung. Notice they are doing it while keeping all the evil Tory benefit cuts.
It's one of those policies that costs very little for a few years, rather like PFI. Currently the govt pays the universities for students on the course, then expects to get the cash back between 5-15 years later. What Labour are proposing is to keep paying out, just not to receive the future payments.
Its rather the reverse of Brown's pension tax grab - that brought in many billions from the start but people didn't suffer the consequences for years.
But the malign effects of BTL and falling home ownership can be traced back to it.
If the government wins, they seriously seriously need to get a hell of alot more houses built and further discourage BTL. I can see why the young are falling for Corbyn's hard left nonsense with either the prospect of massive uni debt (Or yr at a competitive disadvantage). Heck if I was 18 years old I'd probably vote for him myself.
For decades politicians have viewed rising house prices as wealth creation and as an asset for homeowners to borrow and consume against.
I would have hoped they learned their lesson in 2007-9 but Osborne chose to restart the housing bubble.
I agree. Letting it down gently will be the problem (although this is already underway in London). Another reason why a period of inflation, accompanied by stagnant house prices, will be so attractive to our politicians.
Mr. CD13, you may, depressingly, be right. Throwing endless free stuff at people, where the 'free' part is their own taxes being recycled through the state and massive increased borrowing, appears alarmingly popular.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Give the man a fishing rod, and he will say "Oi, where's my free fish?"
I thought it was "Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he will spend all day sitting on a boat drinking beer with his mates"
By the way, I am today slow cooking a lamb tagine. Lamb shanks in apricots, tomatoes, assorted veg and spices, served with couscous. It already smells divine. Waiting til noon is going to be very hard.
I am looking forward to Meeks thread on why ICM's turnout filter is likely correct. It will help stablise some wobbles I've been having recently.
Apologies in advance if this has already been done to death (I'm only just logging on this morning,) BUT...
"Polls, including YouGov, that show narrower Conservative leads are those that assign probabilities of voting based wholly or primarily on a respondent's self-reported likelihood of casting a ballot, meaning that young people make up a far bigger proportion of the likely vote than they have historically.
"Those showing wider Conservative leads, such as ICM and ComRes, model turnout based on historical figures for demographic groups. This would have improved accuracy in most previous elections, but risks coming unstuck if behaviour changes markedly."
- Matt Singh of Number Cruncher Politics, writing for the Financial Times
So, assuming that there are no further significant changes in the polls between now and the big day, we are back to thinking about the accuracy of weighting:
1. Are the pollsters that show high Labour figures over-counting young and non-voters, who won't bother to turn out on the day - OR are voting patterns going to change and these people are actually going to make the trip to the polling stations? If the latter is the case then we should also see a substantial overall increase in turnout. 2. Are some or all of the pollsters also going under-weight on the Lib Dems and over-weight on Labour, because they've got their adjustments based on the respondents' stated 2015 vote a bit wrong (a theory quite extensively discussed prior to all the brouhaha over the Tory polling wobble?)
This makes a huge difference. If the Conservatives finish only 6% ahead of Labour in terms of vote share then, depending on which model you adopt, they are likely to do only moderately better, or maybe no better at all, than they did last time. A lead of 14% implies a three-figure Conservative majority, and anything from a drubbing to a total rout for Labour (with a seat total below 200 in any event, which would be their worst performance since 1935.)
Everything that is supposed to lead to a return of 'normality' for the Tory lead never seems to happen. It's time to face facts - labour have recovered their lost support, people like their message and aren't offput by Corbyn, so the Tory majority so t be massive. But unless the young actually show up, it will still be 50-70.
It'll be funny to see the shares stay about where they are over the next few days despite Tories feeling better when the Ira video went viral and Abbott messed up again.surely this will hurt labour? On present form, people Have made up their minds, they want to limit the Tory majority as much as they can.
Someone needs to look at this so called poorTory campaign from a LD perspective. If the Tories are truly having a mare, a number of seats should be back in play for the yellows.
A good way of normalising for a Corbyn effect.
Except the Tories are not down a huge amount, they're still mid 40s.
Bath might end up bucking the trend for the Lib Dems in the southwest. Almost uniquely there are more Greens and Labour to squeeze, and not too many kippers. I'd guess the demographics are a tad younger, its also alot more remain than most of the SW. Having said that the young voters might just come out and tick the Labour box not realising "Corbyn" has no chance there !
Most of the SW will look even safer for the Tories after the election though.
If you take the attitude that I do, which is that no meaningful proportion of David Cameron's 2015 vote will go to Labour and that May can also count on about half of the Kippers, then a strong Labour performance all comes down to three things:
1. The ability of Labour to hold on to the existing share it won under Miliband, without any meaningful number of those people defecting to the Tories. 2. The ability of Labour to "unite the Left" - squeezing the votes of the Lib Dems and Greens, and winning back some Red Kippers now that their party has lost salience. 3. The ability of Labour to persuade young and non-voters to come out and support Jeremy Corbyn.
Based on evidence and initution, I'm not certain about point 1 but I think there's a reasonable chance (the remaining swing voters who stuck with Labour last time aren't going to be particularly left-wing, but on the other hand they were probably more interested in public services than the economy, otherwise they'd already have deserted); point 2 is looking increasingly like a good bet; which leaves point 3 as the great unknowable. My hunch is that the young and non-voters won't turn out in the numbers that Labour needs (and that those who do are liable to be disproportionately concentrated in urban areas where they will mostly be of no value to Labour.) If I'm right then Labour's vote share may still edge up a little, but they'll be badly beaten. If I'm wrong then things may yet develop not necessarily to Mrs May's advantage.
Someone needs to look at this so called poorTory campaign from a LD perspective. If the Tories are truly having a mare, a number of seats should be back in play for the yellows.
A good way of normalising for a Corbyn effect.
Except the Tories are not down a huge amount, they're still mid 40s.
Well quite. Begs the question is the campaign actually rubbish after all.
I am looking forward to Meeks thread on why ICM's turnout filter is likely correct. It will help stablise some wobbles I've been having recently.
Apologies in advance if this has already been done to death (I'm only just logging on this morning,) BUT...
"Polls, including YouGov, that show narrower Conservative leads are those that assign probabilities of voting based wholly or primarily on a respondent's self-reported likelihood of casting a ballot, meaning that young people make up a far bigger proportion of the likely vote than they have historically.
"Those showing wider Conservative leads, such as ICM and ComRes, model turnout based on historical figures for demographic groups. This would have improved accuracy in most previous elections, but risks coming unstuck if behaviour changes markedly."
- Matt Singh of Number Cruncher Politics, writing for the Financial Times
So, assuming that there are no further significant changes in the polls between now and the big day, we are back to thinking about the accuracy of weighting:
1. Are the pollsters that show high Labour figures over-counting young and non-voters, who won't bother to turn out on the day - OR are voting patterns going to change and these people are actually going to make the trip to the polling stations? If the latter is the case then we should also see a substantial overall increase in turnout. 2. Are some or all of the pollsters also going under-weight on the Lib Dems and over-weight on Labour, because they've got their adjustments based on the respondents' stated 2015 vote a bit wrong (a theory quite extensively discussed prior to all the brouhaha over the Tory polling wobble?)
This makes a huge difference. If the Conservatives finish only 6% ahead of Labour in terms of vote share then, depending on which model you adopt, they are likely to do only moderately better, or maybe no better at all, than they did last time. A lead of 14% implies a three-figure Conservative majority, and anything from a drubbing to a total rout for Labour (with a seat total below 200 in any event, which would be their worst performance since 1935.)
(TBC)
What a time for voting behaviour to change, if that has happened. Corbyn doesn't deserve to be the beneficiary of that behaviour, but that's life.
Time to pile in on a corbynite successor to him, as he's safe as houses if voting behaviour is going to be different this time.
Someone needs to look at this so called poorTory campaign from a LD perspective. If the Tories are truly having a mare, a number of seats should be back in play for the yellows.
A good way of normalising for a Corbyn effect.
Except the Tories are not down a huge amount, they're still mid 40s.
yup
though one thing which will help Labour is the narrowing of the polls.
if it's no longer a Tory rout then it's actually worth turning out instead of sitting at home and saying whats the point
The new (Spanish, by the way) CEO of the merged BA/Iberia operation has been a manic cost-cutter, hence having to pay for a sandwich and a beer on short-haul flights these days.
Don't be surprised if he doesn't last the week, this looks like a monumental screwup that's going to cost an estimated £200m. Outsourcing most of their IT services might have saved 10% of what they've lost this week, before they start on the immeasurable lost goodwill of tens of thousands of unhappy customers.
Do you have an idea of what happened? The reporting is very vague.
I posted one suggestion up the thread, but there's little firm information at this stage. Partly because most of their IT is in India and don't know any British journalists, but mostly because they're a heavily regulated industry and the precise nature of the issue is possibly a determinant of the level of compensation and fines resulting from the outage.
Someone needs to look at this so called poorTory campaign from a LD perspective. If the Tories are truly having a mare, a number of seats should be back in play for the yellows.
A good way of normalising for a Corbyn effect.
Except the Tories are not down a huge amount, they're still mid 40s.
Well quite. Begs the question is the campaign actually rubbish after all.
I still say yes, as it has failed to discourage the labour rise, which would be amazing even if it is 4-5 lower on election day.
Good article Don. I'm expecting the BA debacle to wake people up to many further and more serious problems when Brexit gets into full flow.
The obvious unanswered question is if she can't run a half decent election campaign God help us when she starts trying to extricate us from Europe with two morons by her side.
Being in France at the moment it's easy to see how intertwined our countries really are
I wonder too whether the Manchester tragedy pointed up the Tory habit of wasting time and resources for the benefit of party rather than country? First the destructive Referendum now an unnecessary election.
'For the Many Not the Few' isn't a bad slogan. They could have added the strapline
On topic: Labour are doing a surprisingly good job of selling full-on socialism to a significant chunk of the electorate. The promised jam tsunami paid for by someone else is clearly appealing to many. According to the Telegraph the surge is mostly female. Dumb heifers. It's sad to see how little some people seem able to learn from the examples of history. And...that nice Mrs May has made a bit of a clusterfuck of her campaign. She listened to Grimer Wormtongue instead of her colleagues. All the manifesto needed to be was a 'steady as she goes' Brexity affair. Instead she let some know-nothing REMF masturbate all over it. Not clever.
When people think they have nothing to lose they'll look for new options.
And there are fundamental issues that few establishment politicians wish to think about - an unbalanced economy, inter-generational inequality, falling home ownership, stagnating earnings (except for the 1%), the loss of hope for the future.
Someone needs to look at this so called poorTory campaign from a LD perspective. If the Tories are truly having a mare, a number of seats should be back in play for the yellows.
A good way of normalising for a Corbyn effect.
Except the Tories are not down a huge amount, they're still mid 40s.
Well quite. Begs the question is the campaign actually rubbish after all.
If the polls turn out to be correct May will have failed in many of her aims and made the next five years harder than she was expecting. The overwhelming mandate for a free Brexit hand will not have been delivered.
Someone needs to look at this so called poorTory campaign from a LD perspective. If the Tories are truly having a mare, a number of seats should be back in play for the yellows.
A good way of normalising for a Corbyn effect.
Probably explains the few more cheerful reports I am getting from LDs. Their local campaign just needs to be good enough to rebuild the anti-Conservative vote that won them those seats in the first place.
Baxterising the "invisible" Survation poll, I get:
Con 345, Lab 225, Lib 3, Green 1, SNP 55, PC 3, NI 18.
I did not tick the Scottish box.
Con maj. = 40.
I didn't see it, but I gather then that nothing is stopping the labour rise. It's incredible. Ed m looks like a chump if Corbyn smashes past his vote share.
I cannot vouch for the actual numbers for UKIP and LD but I clearly remember the total came to 92% and someone wrote that it means the Greens are zero. Greens were not shown in the numbers.
However, I know from past figures that without the SNP and others come to 93% usually. So I gave Greens 1%. I also remember Con [ NC ], Lab +3. Looking ate the previous Survation,it should give :
C 43, Lab 37, LD 8, UKIP 4, GRN 1. I did not tick the Scotland box. [ As I said I am not sure about the LD / UKIP split ]
Last night a Tory source told the Daily Mail: ‘We fully expect to fall behind Labour in a poll in the coming days. It will happen.’
Impact management. So a 6% lead looks good. If mums are returning to Labour, this could turn the election.
However, the Tories will still win. Under 50 majority is possible.
What a waste of an election where 30-50 is possible. Yes it's better fircmay, but is an increase that small worth losing months of negotiation time and other work, particularly when you're not safe from rebellions with areas like that?
Morning all. Getting non-voters to engage, and to vote Labour, was a theme of the Corbyn leadership campaign in 2015. Helpfully, David Cameron managed to turn a fair few non-voters into voters by calling the Brexit referendum.
However, to narrow the gap further we need to get people to switch from Tory to Labour. So far the polls show little sign of this, but some anecdotes do. I think it would take another big cock-up by May to get any major movement, but maybe the pollsters' methodologies are failing to pick up what is happening already.
On topic: Labour are doing a surprisingly good job of selling full-on socialism to a significant chunk of the electorate. The promised jam tsunami paid for by someone else is clearly appealing to many. According to the Telegraph the surge is mostly female. Dumb heifers. It's sad to see how little some people seem able to learn from the examples of history. And...that nice Mrs May has made a bit of a clusterfuck of her campaign. She listened to Grimer Wormtongue instead of her colleagues. All the manifesto needed to be was a 'steady as she goes' Brexity affair. Instead she let some know-nothing REMF masturbate all over it. Not clever.
When people think they have nothing to lose they'll look for new options.
And there are fundamental issues that few establishment politicians wish to think about - an unbalanced economy, inter-generational inequality, falling home ownership, stagnating earnings (except for the 1%), the loss of hope for the future.
Most of those are listed as issues in the other manifestos, 'establishment' politicians do think about them.
On topic: Labour are doing a surprisingly good job of selling full-on socialism to a significant chunk of the electorate. The promised jam tsunami paid for by someone else is clearly appealing to many. According to the Telegraph the surge is mostly female. Dumb heifers. It's sad to see how little some people seem able to learn from the examples of history. And...that nice Mrs May has made a bit of a clusterfuck of her campaign. She listened to Grimer Wormtongue instead of her colleagues. All the manifesto needed to be was a 'steady as she goes' Brexity affair. Instead she let some know-nothing REMF masturbate all over it. Not clever.
When people think they have nothing to lose they'll look for new options.
And there are fundamental issues that few establishment politicians wish to think about - an unbalanced economy, inter-generational inequality, falling home ownership, stagnating earnings (except for the 1%), the loss of hope for the future.
Spot on. The anti-establishment candidate in this election is Jeremy Corbyn.
The Brexit right establishment is merely discovering it does not fully control the narrative. If we end up with a diamond hard Brexit expect that to come back and bite.
By the way, I am today slow cooking a lamb tagine. Lamb shanks in apricots, tomatoes, assorted veg and spices, served with couscous. It already smells divine. Waiting til noon is going to be very hard.
No, I suspect it’s that they aren’t used to being team players. Corbyn himself, after all, has made a career of standing on his principles, whether everyone, or indeed anyone, else agrees with him or not.
And I wonder how many ex-kippers will actually vote. After all, they didn’t before!
Morning all. Getting non-voters to engage, and to vote Labour, was a theme of the Corbyn leadership campaign in 2015. Helpfully, David Cameron managed to turn a fair few non-voters into voters by calling the Brexit referendum.
However, to narrow the gap further we need to get people to switch from Tory to Labour. So far the polls show little sign of this, but some anecdotes do. I think it would take another big cock-up by May to get any major movement, but maybe the pollsters' methodologies are failing to pick up what is happening already.
Anecdotes not really picking it up either, So many anecdotes of it happening the other way. The only nonvoter I know who is now planning to vote is doing it to vote against Corbyn for instance.
Either all that talk of labour abstained or switchers was bollocks, or it was incredibly soft and has hurtled en masses back to labour after all. Or the polls are wrong. It's frustrating not having a way to know - so many reasons it could go bad for labour, the locals were bad, they lost Copeland, but push come to shove did people decide they were ok after all just because theyvpronise free tuition fees and the Tories ran a poor campaign?
"Mr. Blue, I'm having some difficulty believing Labour are on 37%."
No one inspires. Labour have offered some 'comfortable' policies. Roger may be able to advise, but I've noticed many adverts now run the line ..."You deserve it." I assumed that was just for the Snowflake generation but maybe not.
You make an interesting point. This is the age of high self esteem. Or at least that's the ambition 'Because I'm Worth It...' has become one of the most famous slogans of all time
Its the combination of "Because I'm worth it" and "Don't put it off, put it on" which is so dangerous.
It led to "I want, I want, I want" and politicians willing to pander to it.
It's always thought that advertisers merely reflect or articulate the zeitgeist but I would argue they also create it. L'Oreal is interesting but the Dove campaign is even more so. The reason I suspect is that advertising represents the cutting edge of metropolitan society which is traditionally more enlightened. So whereas the Mail or Sun can still laugh about body shape no one is in any doubt that it's primitive.
Ha, so says the advertising guy!
Did you have a good day out in Monaco over the weekend?
Good article Don. I'm expecting the BA debacle to wake people up to many further and more serious problems when Brexit gets into full flow.
The obvious unanswered question is if she can't run a half decent election campaign God help us when she starts trying to extricate us from Europe with two morons by her side.
Being in France at the moment it's easy to see how intertwined our countries really are
I wonder too whether the Manchester tragedy pointed up the Tory habit of wasting time and resources for the benefit of party rather than country? First the destructive Referendum now an unnecessary election.
'For the Many Not the Few' isn't a bad slogan. They could have added the strapline
'Not Another One!'
May has more than two morons at her side!
The Daily Mail is advising its readers to make us of EU law to ensure they get compensation from BA.
That would be extraordinary if it wasn't the Mail. What's known as chutzpah! On a more parochial level yesterday I bought some sunglasses from a shop which seemed very cheap by French standards so I asked the shopkeeper if they were OK. He said 'of course. It's got the EU stamp on it!'
LOL, but presumably the UK would have introduced parallel legislation on airfares if the EU hadn't.
I am looking forward to mobile calls costing no more than in the UK when I head off for the Pyrenees next week. Not confident that will survive brexit.
If you're a prolific user of the internet and don't have wifi the £2 a day for as many texts phone calls and internet is worth getting. Though calls and texts are UK prices the internet isn't. Have a great trip!
Is anyone watching Victoria Derbyshire's election programme. Just comes over as a bun fight and Derbyshire lacks the control. Also obvious momentum members and seems far from balance
Is anyone watching Victoria Derbyshire's election programme. Just comes over as a bun fight and Derbyshire lacks the control. Also obvious momentum members and seems far from balance
Yes it does seem Labour supporting audience.
Have switched it off - no balance and full on labour
So, other than this enbargoed poll, any more incoming? Tories need things to at at least stop getting worse. Some polls have been ok, but they really need so e the ones that have shown labour within 5-6 to return to around 10 . Otherwise it's still a question of which methodology is right, not an indication the rot has been stopped,
The Cake and Eat It party won the EU referendum. Why wouldn't it do well in the general election?
The Italian saying is more colourful if less politically correct: they say "you can't have a drunk wife and a full bottle" (or "wanting to have a drunk wife and a full bottle").
If Corbyn wins, I do wonder whether the other countries in the Five Eyes arrangement - and particularly the Americans - would continue to be so willing to share intelligence with us in future.
On the other hand, if Cameron and Osborne hadn't been so terrible in the referendum campaign they would've won it and both would still be in their government jobs.
Mr. CD13, you may, depressingly, be right. Throwing endless free stuff at people, where the 'free' part is their own taxes being recycled through the state and massive increased borrowing, appears alarmingly popular.
Morris 10 years of no real real wage increases must have some effect eventually.British workers face worst decade for pay in 70 years .
It is, of course, worth remembering that this trend is not restricted to the UK. It also occurred in the US, Japan, and most of the Eurozone.
Did it happen to executive earnings ?
It's a good question. And although it's counter-intuitive, I wouldn't be surprised if executive pay was down on the level of a decade ago. It's just that absorbing a 10% decline in real earnings is a easier when you're on £1m/year, rather than £16,000.
There can be no reason to leak that other than he believes the Tories won't do as well as thought. Otherwise he'd say nothing, they get a huge win, and he says how they always knew it would be so and they didn't panic.
Everything that is supposed to lead to a return of 'normality' for the Tory lead never seems to happen. It's time to face facts - labour have recovered their lost support, people like their message and aren't offput by Corbyn, so the Tory majority so t be massive. But unless the young actually show up, it will still be 50-70.
It'll be funny to see the shares stay about where they are over the next few days despite Tories feeling better when the Ira video went viral and Abbott messed up again.surely this will hurt labour? On present form, people Have made up their minds, they want to limit the Tory majority as much as they can.
I'm not at all sure that much of this is to do with something so sophisticated as voters trying to deny the Tories a big majority. If you have a return to two-party politics, which is effectively the situation in the vast bulk of England and Wales (Scotland and Northern Ireland being, of course, almost on different planets politically,) then why bother to vote for anyone else? First the traditional third party collapsed in the last election, and then the alternative third party - which was arguably a single personality, single issue outfit - lost both the personality and the issue after the EU referendum. So, the right-leaning vote has coalesced around May, and the left-leaning vote has coalesced around Corbyn as the only possible answer to May.
Save in a handful of specific and isolated cases - e.g. Remainian SW London and the Welsh language heartland - the Parliamentary battle is almost entirely between those two power blocs, and we are therefore back to the situation where Con+Lab (again, in England and Wales, not the country as a whole) could make 85% again, and within that bulk of the population most will naturally gravitate towards one party or the other. At this point, it is worth noting that, in the period from 1945-1970 when the Con/Lab duopoly was at its height, the biggest winning margin in any General Election - that of Labour over the Conservatives and their allies in 1945 - was less than 10% in terms of share of the popular vote.
Given the historical precedents, if the Conservatives end up polling around 45% at the end of all off this, then perhaps we ought not to view a Labour share of 35% (or even a little better) as especially surprising, even given the weaknesses and divisive nature of the Labour leadership?
The Cake and Eat It party won the EU referendum. Why wouldn't it do well in the general election?
It won in 2015 as well.
It shouldn't be forgotten how much Cameron and Osborne promised:
Triple Lock Pensions Help to subsidise house prices No increase in income tax, NI or VAT but increases in the IHT and personal allowances Guaranteed spending increases for W, X, Y and Z Vanity projects A, B and C to be funded Doubling free childcare Caping rail fare increases
I think ICM are basically right on the turnout of previous non-voters. When I get time I'll write a thread header on this.
The interesting question is how they don't seem to have this problem in France? Or the US where, as Silver recently highlighted, their polling accuracy is significantly better than ours?
It may be as simple as most Brits don't like to talk about politics.
Driving around my consituency yesterday (Warwick and Leamington) the only posters in windows and on. boards you could see were Labour ones. But the Tories are going to increase their majority here by many thousands.
In my area York Central there are many posters for Labour but only in small letters.The name of the sitting Labour MP Rachel Maskell is everywhere.Where I live York Outer safe conservative seen nothing.
Around Leics posters are sparse. Quite a lot of LD ones in Oadby and Hinckley (Harborough and Bosworth constituencies), a few Jon Ashworth and one Green in Lei South University areas, a couple for the Theresa May party in fields near Kibworth (Harborough again).
There were nearly none for either side in the referendum though, it does not mean much.
I was in Richmond Park on Saturday. Lots of LD and Con posters. While the LD ones didn't name their candidate, I was surprised to see that the Tory ones all read 'Vote Zac Goldsmith, Conservative', accompanied by his picture. I'd have thought they would have wanted to downplay the candidate this time round.
I agree. I think it is an error. Zac is very well liked by Tory councillors and those running his campaign. Not so much by the average Tory voter. "I'm not voting for Goldsmith. I'm voting for the Conservative Party" said one Tory voter to me.
I'm picking up vague signs of voter fatigue. GE 2015, Euref 2016, By election Dec 2016 and now this. I think it is affecting the Tory vote more than the LibDems who are up for it so I think there may be a differential turnout again - which the LibDems need.
Sarah Olney doing well with young mums on education. She's LibDem Shadow on Education and has been very active in that area. In the past Zac has done well with young mums (he hangs around school gates chatting them up) but he's out of favour with many of them now.
Hard to call. I feel the same way as I did at this stage in the by election. Goldsmith probably edges it based on the demographics but he is facing headwinds.
Comments
If so it would seem an odd time for it to be released.
To be honest I don't detect a huge wave of enthusiasm for either side. I meet some enthusiasts for Jeremy and some Tories who are not so much enthusiastic as grimly determined, which comes to the same in voting terms. But I also meet quite a lot people with spotty voting records who are not sure they'll bother. The posters here who are flirting with abstention are not that untypical - the view that the choice is unappealling and positively voting for anyone seems a doubtful use of time is not uncommon.
FWIW I am picking up a few anecdotal LD reports from LD/Tory targets that are a bit more positive. Possibly just campaign fatigue, but possibly a hint that the swing is as much anti-Tory as pro-Corbyn? As I have argued all along, a national VI poll cannot actually tell the difference between a swing from LD to Labour and a swing toward the leading non-Tory in each seat, since there are so many more Labour challengers. People are generally more willing to vote tactically when there isn't positive enthusiasm for any particular campaign.
The cheapskates are getting what they deserve.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4551424/Longer-jail-terms-people-attack-children.html
Well, maybe.
It will be interesting to see what has happened to BA, but like the Delta problem it might not be anything obvious, but instead a new failure mode.
Con 345, Lab 225, Lib 3, Green 1, SNP 55, PC 3, NI 18.
I did not tick the Scottish box.
Con maj. = 40.
The most likely scenario is as posted by a probable insider on the PPRuNe thread for the incident:
#231 (permalink)
DuncanF's AvatarDuncanF , 29th May 2017 06:50
According to someone who knows someone ... this is not a simple power failure. There has been a "failure" of core routers via the power supplies/backup power supplies to these routers. A targeted attack has not been ruled out. In some areas the network has up to six levels of resiliency, and these outer resilient layers have been targeted first.
This has been across multiple data centres, not all in the UK. In fact the primary UK data centre was the last to fall off the network. The underlying applications are mostly available, but inaccessible due to the network being down.
Labour are doing a surprisingly good job of selling full-on socialism to a significant chunk of the electorate. The promised jam tsunami paid for by someone else is clearly appealing to many. According to the Telegraph the surge is mostly female. Dumb heifers. It's sad to see how little some people seem able to learn from the examples of history.
And...that nice Mrs May has made a bit of a clusterfuck of her campaign. She listened to Grimer Wormtongue instead of her colleagues. All the manifesto needed to be was a 'steady as she goes' Brexity affair. Instead she let some know-nothing REMF masturbate all over it. Not clever.
A good way of normalising for a Corbyn effect.
Otherwise, I agree. Labour are doing a great job selling economically insane policies. May's doing fantastically badly because of hubris and a mishmash of policies seemingly designed to turn off voters.
Youth is no excuse to choose an unrealistic, poorly thought out ambition just because it sounds nice. That's saying it's ok to present nothing but sunshine and freebies because people like it. the ld manifesto is a better choice if one doesn't like the Tory one.
A long time ago I remember canvassing a voter who had managed to register his cat. Thankfully it stayed at home on polling day,
However, the Tories will still win. Under 50 majority is possible.
There's a lot to sort out there, why anyone thinks that home ownership will increase under the man who thinks private property is theft and we should take the house the council gives us is anyone's guess!
What remains constant is this country's desire for high tax / spend levels of public services but only ever a low tax / spend willingness to pay for it. That's always 'someone else richer than you's responsibility. If May does get a decent majority (as I'm pretty sure she will, even if not a landslide) maybe now is a good time to start turning around our addiction to welfarism.
What I find depressing and annoying is the apparent lack of vision from so many on the right of politics. We could push for an efficient state, an expansionary trade policy, defence of civil liberties, all the Patrick Party Manifesto stuff. But we get Dave or George of Theresa - who seem too wedded to the state, authority, control. They seem feeble in defending the free market - or actively go against it. Energy caps is just a fucking insane policy from a Tory manifesto. It seems to me they like the business of doing politics rather than seeing politics as a means to an end. That's Blairism at its very worst.
"Polls, including YouGov, that show narrower Conservative leads are those that assign probabilities of voting based wholly or primarily on a respondent's self-reported likelihood of casting a ballot, meaning that young people make up a far bigger proportion of the likely vote than they have historically.
"Those showing wider Conservative leads, such as ICM and ComRes, model turnout based on historical figures for demographic groups. This would have improved accuracy in most previous elections, but risks coming unstuck if behaviour changes markedly."
- Matt Singh of Number Cruncher Politics, writing for the Financial Times
So, assuming that there are no further significant changes in the polls between now and the big day, we are back to thinking about the accuracy of weighting:
1. Are the pollsters that show high Labour figures over-counting young and non-voters, who won't bother to turn out on the day - OR are voting patterns going to change and these people are actually going to make the trip to the polling stations? If the latter is the case then we should also see a substantial overall increase in turnout.
2. Are some or all of the pollsters also going under-weight on the Lib Dems and over-weight on Labour, because they've got their adjustments based on the respondents' stated 2015 vote a bit wrong (a theory quite extensively discussed prior to all the brouhaha over the Tory polling wobble?)
This makes a huge difference. If the Conservatives finish only 6% ahead of Labour in terms of vote share then, depending on which model you adopt, they are likely to do only moderately better, or maybe no better at all, than they did last time. A lead of 14% implies a three-figure Conservative majority, and anything from a drubbing to a total rout for Labour (with a seat total below 200 in any event, which would be their worst performance since 1935.)
(TBC)
If you take the attitude that I do, which is that no meaningful proportion of David Cameron's 2015 vote will go to Labour and that May can also count on about half of the Kippers, then a strong Labour performance all comes down to three things:
1. The ability of Labour to hold on to the existing share it won under Miliband, without any meaningful number of those people defecting to the Tories.
2. The ability of Labour to "unite the Left" - squeezing the votes of the Lib Dems and Greens, and winning back some Red Kippers now that their party has lost salience.
3. The ability of Labour to persuade young and non-voters to come out and support Jeremy Corbyn.
Based on evidence and initution, I'm not certain about point 1 but I think there's a reasonable chance (the remaining swing voters who stuck with Labour last time aren't going to be particularly left-wing, but on the other hand they were probably more interested in public services than the economy, otherwise they'd already have deserted); point 2 is looking increasingly like a good bet; which leaves point 3 as the great unknowable. My hunch is that the young and non-voters won't turn out in the numbers that Labour needs (and that those who do are liable to be disproportionately concentrated in urban areas where they will mostly be of no value to Labour.) If I'm right then Labour's vote share may still edge up a little, but they'll be badly beaten. If I'm wrong then things may yet develop not necessarily to Mrs May's advantage.
I would have hoped they learned their lesson in 2007-9 but Osborne chose to restart the housing bubble.
Top tip for any leadership candidate, never accept a coronation. It robs you of a rare chance to develop your campaigning skills.
It'll be funny to see the shares stay about where they are over the next few days despite Tories feeling better when the Ira video went viral and Abbott messed up again.surely this will hurt labour? On present form, people Have made up their minds, they want to limit the Tory majority as much as they can.
Having said that the young voters might just come out and tick the Labour box not realising "Corbyn" has no chance there !
Most of the SW will look even safer for the Tories after the election though.
Time to pile in on a corbynite successor to him, as he's safe as houses if voting behaviour is going to be different this time.
though one thing which will help Labour is the narrowing of the polls.
if it's no longer a Tory rout then it's actually worth turning out instead of sitting at home and saying whats the point
And there are fundamental issues that few establishment politicians wish to think about - an unbalanced economy, inter-generational inequality, falling home ownership, stagnating earnings (except for the 1%), the loss of hope for the future.
However, I know from past figures that without the SNP and others come to 93% usually. So I gave Greens 1%. I also remember Con [ NC ], Lab +3. Looking ate the previous Survation,it should give :
C 43, Lab 37, LD 8, UKIP 4, GRN 1. I did not tick the Scotland box. [ As I said I am not sure about the LD / UKIP split ]
However, to narrow the gap further we need to get people to switch from Tory to Labour. So far the polls show little sign of this, but some anecdotes do. I think it would take another big cock-up by May to get any major movement, but maybe the pollsters' methodologies are failing to pick up what is happening already.
The Brexit right establishment is merely discovering it does not fully control the narrative. If we end up with a diamond hard Brexit expect that to come back and bite.
Labour are stupid - this is the man they chose to lead them and you as a party deserve to be smashed for this
https://order-order.com/2017/05/29/corbyn-attended-terror-conference-honouring-munich-killer/
The exit poll reveal will be a dramatic moment. I hope the site's IT can be strong and stable (unlike BA).
And I wonder how many ex-kippers will actually vote. After all, they didn’t before!
Either all that talk of labour abstained or switchers was bollocks, or it was incredibly soft and has hurtled en masses back to labour after all. Or the polls are wrong. It's frustrating not having a way to know - so many reasons it could go bad for labour, the locals were bad, they lost Copeland, but push come to shove did people decide they were ok after all just because theyvpronise free tuition fees and the Tories ran a poor campaign?
Did you have a good day out in Monaco over the weekend?
Green voted down 50%, UKIP vote down 66%.
That, so far, hasn't happened. Some slightly disappointing polls but others point to a large majority.
Although no Tories wanted the polls to narrow, they're not in the danger zone yet.
https://twitter.com/keiranpedley/status/868971016642592770
On the other hand, if Cameron and Osborne hadn't been so terrible in the referendum campaign they would've won it and both would still be in their government jobs.
Tory panic confirmed.
Save in a handful of specific and isolated cases - e.g. Remainian SW London and the Welsh language heartland - the Parliamentary battle is almost entirely between those two power blocs, and we are therefore back to the situation where Con+Lab (again, in England and Wales, not the country as a whole) could make 85% again, and within that bulk of the population most will naturally gravitate towards one party or the other. At this point, it is worth noting that, in the period from 1945-1970 when the Con/Lab duopoly was at its height, the biggest winning margin in any General Election - that of Labour over the Conservatives and their allies in 1945 - was less than 10% in terms of share of the popular vote.
Given the historical precedents, if the Conservatives end up polling around 45% at the end of all off this, then perhaps we ought not to view a Labour share of 35% (or even a little better) as especially surprising, even given the weaknesses and divisive nature of the Labour leadership?
It shouldn't be forgotten how much Cameron and Osborne promised:
Triple Lock Pensions
Help to subsidise house prices
No increase in income tax, NI or VAT but increases in the IHT and personal allowances
Guaranteed spending increases for W, X, Y and Z
Vanity projects A, B and C to be funded
Doubling free childcare
Caping rail fare increases
I'm picking up vague signs of voter fatigue. GE 2015, Euref 2016, By election Dec 2016 and now this. I think it is affecting the Tory vote more than the LibDems who are up for it so I think there may be a differential turnout again - which the LibDems need.
Sarah Olney doing well with young mums on education. She's LibDem Shadow on Education and has been very active in that area. In the past Zac has done well with young mums (he hangs around school gates chatting them up) but he's out of favour with many of them now.
Hard to call. I feel the same way as I did at this stage in the by election. Goldsmith probably edges it based on the demographics but he is facing headwinds.