With the exception of the period of the UK General Election the biggest political betting markets of the past year have been on Donald Trump. Is he going to survive a full first term? Will he win again in 2020? What will be the year of his actual departure from the White House?
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Nothing much to argue with in the thread comment - the 2018 midterm elections will be decisive. IF the GOP does well and holds both the House and Senate with minimal losses, I suspect the Party will rally behind a Trump second term.
IF the GOP loses the House and comes close to losing the Senate it will be very different and we could see a serious challenge to Trump in the GOP primaries. The problem the GOP has in states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania is while Democrats will vote for another Democrat who isn't Hilary Clinton will Republicans vote for another Republican who isn't Donald Trump (and it doesn't need many not to do so for that state to switch from red to blue) ?
As was discussed on here yesterday, Trump’s work in bringing huge corporate onshoring of profits could lead to huge infrastructure investment in key swing states.
One of the Democrats is going to be huge value, just don’t yet know which one!
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/politics/event/28009878/market?marketId=1.128151441
Or maybe working with Trump ages you ten years, and last year he looked 57....
"Can we have more money for the NHS". "No, sorry". "Can we have more money for our armed forces". "No". "Schools?". "Nope". "Police?". "Nope". "A massive bridge across the English Channel?". "Of course. Great idea". The Tories actually want to lose, don't they.
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/954271477607686146
Currently the Democratic top tier for 2020, Biden, Sanders, Oprah and Warren all lead Trump in the polls but there is a long way to go yet
In the same way that Corbyn weighing votes in Islington and Liverpool doesn’t make him PM, he needs to win in places like Nuneaton for that.
https://twitter.com/DavidHardingAFP/status/953916826160893952
In the absence of an established credible challenger the insurgent came through and won. He was also the only GOP candidate seemingly able to reach beyond the confines of the party base and that, as we know, is how elections are won.
After they’ve fallen out with all their neighbours, work on all the construction projects has ground to a halt for the last six months, they ain’t going to have the stadia nor the hotels and training grounds finished in time.
Sounds all a bit 'Tin Foil Hat', but if this is the case, its a bigger abuse than Watergate, much bigger, because it suggests Federal Agencies involvement is direct, in the act (not just the cover up).
And this was from a man I once saw casually quaff from a tin of cold chicken soup in the ACRB as we battled sea state 8 across the Flemish Cap.
Aus 7.6 to stop us
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/cricket/event/28547422/multi-market?marketIds=1.138937387&marketIds=1.138937389
https://twitter.com/Byline_Media/status/954123499752206336
Clinton was also helped by the fact the main Republican contenders in 1996 were the dull, establishment Dole or the extremist populist Buchanan or Steve Forbes whose main reason for running was his wealth. None of the Democratic top tier for 2020, Biden, Sanders, Oprah and Warren look really threatening if Trump recovers
https://twitter.com/DanVevers/status/953582119418318848
Boris has pulled us out of the EU, wants out of the single market and customs union so we can trade with rest of the world, wants minimal EU migration etc etc.
Yet, he does want a bridge to France so that traffic can flow between the two countries.
Are there actually two Boriss?
Crossrail 2 and sorting out the Transpennine railways would both be a much higher priority. For that matter, improving the Scottish central belt's transport connectivity would also be very worthwhile.
Would, that said, mean a whole lot more furriners able and willing to come here but, as every Leaver stated categorically during the campaign, they are all for immigration.
I think there is an issue with anti-semitism in the Labour party at the moment, far more than with the Tories (t’was not always thus). It is more than just Livingstone. I do not think Corbyn himself is an anti-semite. Nor do I think it is official Labour party policy.
Some of Corbyn’s advisers and associates and too many lower in the ranks, however, have great difficulty understanding the difference between criticism of Israel, sympathy for Palestinians and anti-semitism. There have been far too many examples of repeated behaviour & comments which are utterly vile, offensive & completely contrary to Labour’s professed values.
There is a very real problem - which has nothing to do with pro-Palestinian sympathy - when at last year’s conference one of those attending thought - and said publicly - that the Labour party should debate whether the Holocaust happened. This is the sort of “debate” previously reserved for neo-Nazi groupuscules hiding in dark corners. It ought, in my view, to be a matter of shame to decent people that it is happening in Labour. This kind of stuff ought to be more firmly stamped down on by the leadership. It hasn’t been & that is one reason why it continues to flourish like one of those weeds which keeps popping up all over the garden despite some occasional ineffectual hacking now and again.
Corbyn had a wonderful opportunity in his main speech at last year’s conference to denounce this sort of behaviour very explicitly He chose not to take it. A pity.
My sources: well, Jon Lansmann, Emily Thornberry, well-sourced newspaper reports, the Jewish Labour Movement website and newsletter and a former Labour councillor & twice a Parliamentary candidate, whose name will be well known to you all, were I permitted to reveal it. Luciana Berger and Ruth Smeeth, both MPs, have talked about the abuse they have received, some of it sent by people apparently doing it on behalf of Jeremy. There is plenty of information out there. It is happening far too often and far too regularly to simply be isolated examples.
Banking, for a long time, said that repeated examples of misconduct were simply “bad apples”. It was eventually forced to admit that there was a more deep-seated cultural problem which it needed to address. I think Labour needs to do the same and needs to be more honest about the possible roots of the problem. Its Chakrabarti report was an attempt but was seriously flawed, superficial & has not worked. To my mind, Labour risks looking as if it just wants to give the appearance of doing something rather than actually doing something effective.
I have some ideas as to why that might be. But I think Labour’s conduct in not really getting to grips with this issue dishonours its own principles and the very many decent Labour people who are not like this. A pity. Labour should be better than this.
I can't for the life of me understand why absolutely no one seems to be pushing the idea.
And that's without getting into the political delights of trying to make the British counterweight to London in Scotland, which is subject to its own devolution.
Edited extra bit: sorry, misread it a bit. Used the Greater figure for Manchester but not Leeds. Using that for both, that's about 5 million.
Glasgow is 1.8, Edinburgh 1.3. So the point stands.
Leeds and Manchester are divided by the Pennines, which are culturally higher than the Himalayas.
Father-in-Law's stage three cancer op cancelled for the second time this January due to lack of beds. His family distraught.
Not to mention Leeds is a massive transport hub, perhaps the most significant in the North.
Or much, in fact.Including Foreign Affairs.
If we have money for bridges we have money for this.
I don't think he's running for the Senate just for fun.
They really need to go something about Livingston/Bathgate stretches and its several exit/slip roads, it's a bugger for 6 hours a day.
Should say I have a couple of pounds on Ivanka at 101.
Another great result for the one day side, shame we couldn’t deliver in the much more important Test series though.
The economy doing well didn’t help Hilary much. The weakness in 2012 (albeit on an improving path) didn’t hurt Obama either.
I’d put Trumps chances around 25% myself.
Hope something comes through soon.
"My previous book, "And the Weak Suffer What they Must?: Europe Austerity and the Threat to Global Stability", offered an historical explanation of why Europe is now in the process, decades in the making, of losing its integrity and forfeiting its soul."
Maybe not one for WilliamGlenn but I would recommend to anyone else. What is interesting is that Varoufakis gets on very well with right winger politicians/economists in both the UK and US and agrees with their analysis, particularly about extend and pretend. He has complete contempt for EU bureaucrats, Junker in particular getting rough treatment.
There was a good bit when he states: "George was among the first finance ministers I met after my election. The most startling aspect of that encounter -at least to those in the press who expected a frosty or outright acrimonious meeting- was that we found very little to disagree on. In the first few minutes of our discussion I suggested to him that, " While we may disagree on the merits of austerity, you are not doing much of it, George, are you?" He agreed smilingly...Osborne also seemed appreciative of the help he was getting from the Bank of England, which from the moment the City went through its 2008 convulsion had printed billions to refloat the banks and kept the economy "liquid". "
He is a stylish and thought provoking writer enjoyable for both the left and the right.
If we're considering bridges over the channel, surely a tunnel through the peaks shouldn't be too much to ask for?
I hope that if any politicians or policy makers are tuning in to PB today that they take note that behind every stat, every story and every data point there is a real person. The choices you make, change lives. Politics is not a game.
The captain said they were the worst conditions in his decades-long career. And if anything had gone wrong, we were the only surface vessel in Antarctica. And if you weren't on the bridge at 7.00 am and saw the mountain peaks, then you didn't actually see anything of Antarctica through the blizzards.
But we saw some penguins. Hard-core birding!
https://twitter.com/johnmcternan/status/954305711248494593
https://twitter.com/johnmcternan/status/954311762547019776
But the only way this stops happening is if you have spare capacity in the system, and have politicians that are prepared to take the brickbats when that stands idle a portion of the year. But that is not a debate we have been having.
Serious question, what are the SCons' proposals for education, SNHS, infrastructure, Brexit, long term business & economic strategies etc? Apart from no second referendum and Ruth trumpeting a so far illusory influence on UK government policy, I haven't really seen anything.
Of course that may be down to the notoriously pro SNP Scottish media hiding Ruth's meticulously constructed plan for government under a bushel.