The current President, who won an election to get there is unelectable? It's an interesting take.
Different now to then. Take Jeremy Corbyn, for example. He was electable in 2017 (although not elected) but was unelectable in 2019, i.e. could not win since viewed by a critical mass of the public as unfit for the office he was putting himself forward for. Same with Trump in 2020. This will become obvious on Wednesday 4th November.
If he does lose, it will be 'interesting' to see how he behaves. Are there any precedents; losing a big court case, for example?
History proves your last few words to be inaccurate!
Ah yes, but I mean now. Or rather on 3rd Nov 2020. It's 'open eyes and reclaim sanity and moral compass' time and I predict - I superforecast if you will - that the number of Americans doing this come polling day will be sufficient to not only defeat Trump but do so quite comfortably.
The current President, who won an election to get there is unelectable? It's an interesting take.
Different now to then. Take Jeremy Corbyn, for example. He was electable in 2017 (although not elected) but was unelectable in 2019, i.e. could not win since viewed by a critical mass of the public as unfit for the office he was putting himself forward for. Same with Trump in 2020. This will become obvious on Wednesday 4th November.
The last few days has seen HMG reject the EU moves to put a strangle hold on the UK and the launch of the new points based system
These events seem to have really upset some remainers who have become more hysterical in their comments and just do not accept the UK is following a course to an Independent Nation welcoming peoples from across the world who have the skills to see the Country succeed.
Alll along all they hope for is failure and damage so that we may in some way want to go back into the EU, but that is not going to happen in my lifetime
He has a very thoughtful and informed podcast; Reasons to be Cheerful. With a chap called Geoff Lloyd.
I agree, he's one of those politicians who seems to have learned lessons from doing poorly at a big job and may well be better second time around. Hague was the same, a strong cabinet minister after an iffy LoTO.
Both took the job too early and tried/were persuaded to be someone they were not. They both looked faintly ridiculous doing so and both looked much more convincing after giving up the leadership and feeling free to be themselves.
Hague was never in a position to beat Blair in 2001 (no one was), but Miliband, had he kicked out some of his advisors/speech writers and/or had the balls not to care what people thought of him... Who knows? And what a different place we might be in now if he'd won! For better or worse, depending on your point of view, but we might have been arguing about quite different things for the past three and a half years!
If that strong Warren debate performance brings her into contention in Nevada then it's been almost the goldilocks scenario for a contested convention. Lots of candidates able to claim momentum or successes so far.
538 now have 'no majority' as the most likely outcome (40%), albeit with the caveat that in most no majority scenarios Sanders will be close enough as makes no difference.
Bloomberg would be wise to avoid any future debates and focus on his endless ad campaigns instead. If you are going to buy the presidency you should really commit to it fully. The poor performance in the debates has changed the narrative around him overnight. He would fare much better in the general against trump than he will trying to debate Sanders and Warren etc in the primary.
Hes about the only one I could see potentially beating Trump in the general. Doesn't need to debate Trump either if he can just buy billions of ads against him. The ads were working for Bloomberg so far.
At this point with the US economy doing OK there will be no appetite for a radical solution like Bernie or Warren.
Modest growth and even that only bought with fiscal and monetary recklessness bordering on the lunatic. The US economy might look OK superficially but it's screwed. It's like a gravely ill patient who still goes to the hairdressers and the tanning salon, hoping to fool loved ones for that little bit longer.
Bloomberg would be wise to avoid any future debates and focus on his endless ad campaigns instead. If you are going to buy the presidency you should really commit to it fully. The poor performance in the debates has changed the narrative around him overnight. He would fare much better in the general against trump than he will trying to debate Sanders and Warren etc in the primary.
Hes about the only one I could see potentially beating Trump in the general. Doesn't need to debate Trump either if he can just buy billions of ads against him. The ads were working for Bloomberg so far.
At this point with the US economy doing OK there will be no appetite for a radical solution like Bernie or Warren.
Modest growth and even that only bought with fiscal and monetary recklessness bordering on the lunatic. The US economy might look OK superficially but it's screwed. It's like a gravely ill patient who still goes to the hairdressers and the tanning salon, hoping to fool loved ones for that little bit longer.
Yep, the current US economy is pretty scary, and if Sanders gets in then the house of cards collapses then it will re-toxify the socialist tag in the US for the next few decades.
However the average person doesn't really look into or understand that, all they see and feel is that the economy doing well and paypackets are rising. An incumbent vs someone promising radical change when people are on the whole doing pretty well is not a good matchup for the radical.
He has a very thoughtful and informed podcast; Reasons to be Cheerful. With a chap called Geoff Lloyd.
I agree, he's one of those politicians who seems to have learned lessons from doing poorly at a big job and may well be better second time around. Hague was the same, a strong cabinet minister after an iffy LoTO.
Both took the job too early and tried/were persuaded to be someone they were not. They both looked faintly ridiculous doing so and both looked much more convincing after giving up the leadership and feeling free to be themselves.
Hague was never in a position to beat Blair in 2001 (no one was), but Miliband, had he kicked out some of his advisors/speech writers and/or had the balls not to care what people thought of him... Who knows? And what a different place we might be in now if he'd won! For better or worse, depending on your point of view, but we might have been arguing about quite different things for the past three and a half years!
It's often forgotten that the 2015 election wasn't a conventional Labour vs Tory fight. That ended up more or less even, but the Tories lost more seats to Labour than they won from them. The Tories won their majority by taking seats from their Coalition partners, and Labour lost heavily to the SNP.. It was the collapse of LD's and the rise of the SNP which ushered in the period of disastrous politics which we are now experiencing.
If he does lose, it will be 'interesting' to see how he behaves. Are there any precedents; losing a big court case, for example?
Oh yes, this is a real concern. He will IMO need to forcibly removed from office, either via the courts or a team of army doctors. He will not vacate the premises voluntarily simply due to something trivial such as a crushing electoral defeat.
He has a very thoughtful and informed podcast; Reasons to be Cheerful. With a chap called Geoff Lloyd.
I agree, he's one of those politicians who seems to have learned lessons from doing poorly at a big job and may well be better second time around. Hague was the same, a strong cabinet minister after an iffy LoTO.
Both took the job too early and tried/were persuaded to be someone they were not. They both looked faintly ridiculous doing so and both looked much more convincing after giving up the leadership and feeling free to be themselves.
Hague was never in a position to beat Blair in 2001 (no one was), but Miliband, had he kicked out some of his advisors/speech writers and/or had the balls not to care what people thought of him... Who knows? And what a different place we might be in now if he'd won! For better or worse, depending on your point of view, but we might have been arguing about quite different things for the past three and a half years!
If he’d agreed to a referendum, maybe the Tories wouldn’t have won a majority
Big move by Starmer this morning. Most of the rather modest talent in Labour has sat on the back benches rather than be tainted by the morally repulsive Corbyn but bringing back Ed will almost certainly bring other former ministers and shadow ministers back with him. The RLB wing won't like it much but Labour could look both more united and competent after this.
Big move by Starmer this morning. Most of the rather modest talent in Labour has sat on the back benches rather than be tainted by the morally repulsive Corbyn but bringing back Ed will almost certainly bring other former ministers and shadow ministers back with him. The RLB wing won't like it much but Labour could look both more united and competent after this.
Do the RLB wing dislike Ed? They may have an issue with other former ministers, but I'd always thought they viewed him as lacking the courage of his convictions but a solid lefty who had acted with honour in the main.
He has a very thoughtful and informed podcast; Reasons to be Cheerful. With a chap called Geoff Lloyd.
I agree, he's one of those politicians who seems to have learned lessons from doing poorly at a big job and may well be better second time around. Hague was the same, a strong cabinet minister after an iffy LoTO.
Both took the job too early and tried/were persuaded to be someone they were not. They both looked faintly ridiculous doing so and both looked much more convincing after giving up the leadership and feeling free to be themselves.
Hague was never in a position to beat Blair in 2001 (no one was), but Miliband, had he kicked out some of his advisors/speech writers and/or had the balls not to care what people thought of him... Who knows? And what a different place we might be in now if he'd won! For better or worse, depending on your point of view, but we might have been arguing about quite different things for the past three and a half years!
If he’d agreed to a referendum, maybe the Tories wouldn’t have won a majority
Maybe! Although my vote would perhaps have moved in the opposite direction, if so! (Not certain which way I would have gone, but Miliband ruling out the ref was one of the big factors in me voting Labour - I thought the country had much more important problems)
And his polling numbers aren't that bad. His supporters (somehow) like what he's doing. This assumption that the Dems can run anyone and still beat Trump is moronic, and very likely going to be costly.
He's at -6, and improving. Not far off where Obama was 1,150 days in.
They can't run anyone. But what I disagree with is that they have to run a centrist to have a chance. I think this is reading across far too much from here and Corbyn. Sanders is nothing like Corbyn and there is no distorting Brexit divide there. IMO any good candidate beats Trump in November and all of those in the running will, if they get the nomination, prove to be good candidates. The boil is about to be lanced.
She was desperately avoiding the question when interviewed earlier.
Red Herring, pushed by the Beeboids.
The people expelled from Uganda were refugees, and in addition those who came to the UK mainly already had British Passports iirc.
Patel's parents weren't part of the Amin-induced exodus.
Her parents came over from Kenya, so did my grandparents. Almost all of those who came had British citizenship. I'd be very surprised if Priti Patel's parents didn't.
Big move by Starmer this morning. Most of the rather modest talent in Labour has sat on the back benches rather than be tainted by the morally repulsive Corbyn but bringing back Ed will almost certainly bring other former ministers and shadow ministers back with him. The RLB wing won't like it much but Labour could look both more united and competent after this.
Do the RLB wing dislike Ed? They may have an issue with other former ministers, but I'd always thought they viewed him as lacking the courage of his convictions but a solid lefty who had acted with honour in the main.
He has a very thoughtful and informed podcast; Reasons to be Cheerful. With a chap called Geoff Lloyd.
I agree, he's one of those politicians who seems to have learned lessons from doing poorly at a big job and may well be better second time around. Hague was the same, a strong cabinet minister after an iffy LoTO.
Both took the job too early and tried/were persuaded to be someone they were not. They both looked faintly ridiculous doing so and both looked much more convincing after giving up the leadership and feeling free to be themselves.
Hague was never in a position to beat Blair in 2001 (no one was), but Miliband, had he kicked out some of his advisors/speech writers and/or had the balls not to care what people thought of him... Who knows? And what a different place we might be in now if he'd won! For better or worse, depending on your point of view, but we might have been arguing about quite different things for the past three and a half years!
It's often forgotten that the 2015 election wasn't a conventional Labour vs Tory fight. That ended up more or less even, but the Tories lost more seats to Labour than they won from them. The Tories won their majority by taking seats from their Coalition partners, and Labour lost heavily to the SNP.. It was the collapse of LD's and the rise of the SNP which ushered in the period of disastrous politics which we are now experiencing.
True, but Labour might have attracted more of the collapsing LD vote with a better leader (or same leader performing better). Who knows? Rise of SNP was probably almost unstoppable at that point.
Outright Labour majority probably a stretch, so we might have got to experience chaos with Ed Miliband (and some kind of SNP involvement).
If the media consensus is that Bloomberg had a bad night it probably means he did quite well as far as ordinary voters are concerned, (going by previous experience).
All 4 of my grandparents came to this country from abroad. 2 after anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia and Ukraine and 1 following the release from a prison camp in Siberia when Nazi Germany invaded Soviet Russia.
Nothing to do with the EU of course but none of them would have met any points requirements.
She was desperately avoiding the question when interviewed earlier.
Red Herring, pushed by the Beeboids.
The people expelled from Uganda were refugees, and in addition those who came to the UK mainly already had British Passports iirc.
Patel's parents weren't part of the Amin-induced exodus.
Her parents came over from Kenya, so did my grandparents. Almost all of those who came had British citizenship. I'd be very surprised if Priti Patel's parents didn't.
I'm not totally certain that they had right of abode though. I recall arguing strongly that they should be allowed to come and indeed helping to furnish a house, and providing employment
On a lighter note, did anyone follow my Warren suggestion yesterday ? Good for just under 3x stake overnight.
I did, thank you.
Probably a good time for the past performance is not a guide to future performance warning...
It seemed astute, although I think Warren is done she is not out of it yet and given this was going to be Bloomberg's first debate there was always a chance for a blood in the water moment.
Witness KLOBUCHAR's price surge after she eviscerated Mayor Pete at the last debate.
I would dearly like a surprise second place in Nevada for Warren though. That would jolt her campaign and my book back to life. I made some really bad lays of Sanders and Pete that mean I'm basically negative on the field ( including Bloomberg ) and neutral on all the other runners apart from Warren and Klobuchar.
He has a very thoughtful and informed podcast; Reasons to be Cheerful. With a chap called Geoff Lloyd.
I agree, he's one of those politicians who seems to have learned lessons from doing poorly at a big job and may well be better second time around. Hague was the same, a strong cabinet minister after an iffy LoTO.
Both took the job too early and tried/were persuaded to be someone they were not. They both looked faintly ridiculous doing so and both looked much more convincing after giving up the leadership and feeling free to be themselves.
Hague was never in a position to beat Blair in 2001 (no one was), but Miliband, had he kicked out some of his advisors/speech writers and/or had the balls not to care what people thought of him... Who knows? And what a different place we might be in now if he'd won! For better or worse, depending on your point of view, but we might have been arguing about quite different things for the past three and a half years!
It's often forgotten that the 2015 election wasn't a conventional Labour vs Tory fight. That ended up more or less even, but the Tories lost more seats to Labour than they won from them. The Tories won their majority by taking seats from their Coalition partners, and Labour lost heavily to the SNP.. It was the collapse of LD's and the rise of the SNP which ushered in the period of disastrous politics which we are now experiencing.
True, but Labour might have attracted more of the collapsing LD vote with a better leader (or same leader performing better). Who knows? Rise of SNP was probably almost unstoppable at that point.
Outright Labour majority probably a stretch, so we might have got to experience chaos with Ed Miliband (and some kind of SNP involvement).
IIRC Labour won all the seats from the LD's that it might have been reasonable expected to.
Yep, the current US economy is pretty scary, and if Sanders gets in then the house of cards collapses then it will re-toxify the socialist tag in the US for the next few decades.
However the average person doesn't really look into or understand that, all they see and feel is that the economy doing well and paypackets are rising. An incumbent vs someone promising radical change when people are on the whole doing pretty well is not a good matchup for the radical.
Sounds like the @rcs1000 offering that it would be preferable for Trump to get a 2nd term so that it all goes pop on his watch. I get this, but my aversion to him is too strong to go along with it.
And the argument that the public does not have the intellectual tools or the moral compass to either spot or care that a politician is trashing the public finances to buy personal electoral success now at the price of penury for others in the future - this if true (which it might be) is a very strong argument that there must be a better way of choosing a government than having it decided by universal suffrage.
Bloomberg would be wise to avoid any future debates and focus on his endless ad campaigns instead. If you are going to buy the presidency you should really commit to it fully. The poor performance in the debates has changed the narrative around him overnight. He would fare much better in the general against trump than he will trying to debate Sanders and Warren etc in the primary.
Hes about the only one I could see potentially beating Trump in the general. Doesn't need to debate Trump either if he can just buy billions of ads against him. The ads were working for Bloomberg so far.
At this point with the US economy doing OK there will be no appetite for a radical solution like Bernie or Warren.
Modest growth and even that only bought with fiscal and monetary recklessness bordering on the lunatic. The US economy might look OK superficially but it's screwed. It's like a gravely ill patient who still goes to the hairdressers and the tanning salon, hoping to fool loved ones for that little bit longer.
Yep, the current US economy is pretty scary, and if Sanders gets in then the house of cards collapses then it will re-toxify the socialist tag in the US for the next few decades.
However the average person doesn't really look into or understand that, all they see and feel is that the economy doing well and paypackets are rising. An incumbent vs someone promising radical change when people are on the whole doing pretty well is not a good matchup for the radical.
PAy packerts are not rising in the rustbelt states that Trump won by razor thin margins. They are rising in deep red states that are a lock and deep blue costal states he has no chance in.
He has a very thoughtful and informed podcast; Reasons to be Cheerful. With a chap called Geoff Lloyd.
I agree, he's one of those politicians who seems to have learned lessons from doing poorly at a big job and may well be better second time around. Hague was the same, a strong cabinet minister after an iffy LoTO.
Both took the job too early and tried/were persuaded to be someone they were not. They both looked faintly ridiculous doing so and both looked much more convincing after giving up the leadership and feeling free to be themselves.
Hague was never in a position to beat Blair in 2001 (no one was), but Miliband, had he kicked out some of his advisors/speech writers and/or had the balls not to care what people thought of him... Who knows? And what a different place we might be in now if he'd won! For better or worse, depending on your point of view, but we might have been arguing about quite different things for the past three and a half years!
It's often forgotten that the 2015 election wasn't a conventional Labour vs Tory fight. That ended up more or less even, but the Tories lost more seats to Labour than they won from them. The Tories won their majority by taking seats from their Coalition partners, and Labour lost heavily to the SNP.. It was the collapse of LD's and the rise of the SNP which ushered in the period of disastrous politics which we are now experiencing.
Yes, the government majority was slashed to the bone.
He has a very thoughtful and informed podcast; Reasons to be Cheerful. With a chap called Geoff Lloyd.
I agree, he's one of those politicians who seems to have learned lessons from doing poorly at a big job and may well be better second time around. Hague was the same, a strong cabinet minister after an iffy LoTO.
Both took the job too early and tried/were persuaded to be someone they were not. They both looked faintly ridiculous doing so and both looked much more convincing after giving up the leadership and feeling free to be themselves.
Hague was never in a position to beat Blair in 2001 (no one was), but Miliband, had he kicked out some of his advisors/speech writers and/or had the balls not to care what people thought of him... Who knows? And what a different place we might be in now if he'd won! For better or worse, depending on your point of view, but we might have been arguing about quite different things for the past three and a half years!
He has a very thoughtful and informed podcast; Reasons to be Cheerful. With a chap called Geoff Lloyd.
I agree, he's one of those politicians who seems to have learned lessons from doing poorly at a big job and may well be better second time around. Hague was the same, a strong cabinet minister after an iffy LoTO.
Both took the job too early and tried/were persuaded to be someone they were not. They both looked faintly ridiculous doing so and both looked much more convincing after giving up the leadership and feeling free to be themselves.
Hague was never in a position to beat Blair in 2001 (no one was), but Miliband, had he kicked out some of his advisors/speech writers and/or had the balls not to care what people thought of him... Who knows? And what a different place we might be in now if he'd won! For better or worse, depending on your point of view, but we might have been arguing about quite different things for the past three and a half years!
It's often forgotten that the 2015 election wasn't a conventional Labour vs Tory fight. That ended up more or less even, but the Tories lost more seats to Labour than they won from them. The Tories won their majority by taking seats from their Coalition partners, and Labour lost heavily to the SNP.. It was the collapse of LD's and the rise of the SNP which ushered in the period of disastrous politics which we are now experiencing.
Yes, the government majority was slashed to the bone.
330 Tory seats... overall majority of 8, ignoring Shinners.
Incidentally and totally O/T, does anyone know how one can block scam calls purporting to come from Amazon telling me my Pride account will be renewed, and asking me to press button 1 to stop it. I haven't got a Pride account, and Mrs C and I both check our accounts regularly to see there's no diodgy payments.
If the media consensus is that Bloomberg had a bad night it probably means he did quite well as far as ordinary voters are concerned, (going by previous experience).
Bloomberg did genuinely have a bad night. And it probably won't help his minority numbers which had been pretty decent.
That said it's true that these issues are most exercising to people on the left of the party who are voting Sanders/Warren anyway.
Warren's problem is that she's triangulated herself to death. It doesn't matter who she goes after, voters don't give her any credit for it because she has no consistency. She's trying to keep a toe in every lane, and instead she's just alienated everyone.
Hopefully she's poisoned her relationship with Bernie enough that he doesn't pick her as a running mate. Her politics instincts are dreadful, and the Native American debacle should have disqualified her from ever being taken seriously.
Incidentally and totally O/T, does anyone know how one can block scam calls purporting to come from Amazon telling me my Pride account will be renewed, and asking me to press button 1 to stop it. I haven't got a Pride account, and Mrs C and I both check our accounts regularly to see there's no diodgy payments.
It's an autromated spam call, nothing to do with Amazon. Like the "windows" support calls, they try to get remote access to your PC, and from there persuade you to pay a few hundred quid for PC maintenance/software you don't need.
The other common variant of this is a call claiming that your broadband is about to be suspended.
@Stereotomy I think your instincts & insight on the US race have been top notch away from the madding crowds. Do you think Sanders could beat Trump in the general ?
She was desperately avoiding the question when interviewed earlier.
Red Herring, pushed by the Beeboids.
The people expelled from Uganda were refugees, and in addition those who came to the UK mainly already had British Passports iirc.
Patel's parents weren't part of the Amin-induced exodus.
Her parents came over from Kenya, so did my grandparents. Almost all of those who came had British citizenship. I'd be very surprised if Priti Patel's parents didn't.
1971 was the big cutoff date for Commonwealth immigration. I doubt her parents would be able to come now, but of themselves Patel's "reforms" wouldn't make any difference to her parents' ability to come to the UK, I believe. The big issue with the changes is that they will probably do the opposite of what's claimed for them:: "attract the brightest and the best from around the globe, boosting the economy and our communities, and unleash this country's full potential"
Incidentally and totally O/T, does anyone know how one can block scam calls purporting to come from Amazon telling me my Pride account will be renewed, and asking me to press button 1 to stop it. I haven't got a Pride account, and Mrs C and I both check our accounts regularly to see there's no diodgy payments.
If you are on an Andriod phone, you can add a number to the "Block numbers list". This has an interesting feature that not many people use which is that you can block a pattern of numbers.
For instance if you got calls from
01234 567 890 01234 567 880
You could block 01234 567 8 which blocks any number beginning with that pattern.
Another alternative is to block "Unknown callers". If they are not in your contacts list, the phone rejects them.
Tap the Phone icon, then tap the 3 vertical dots for the menu, then settings.
All 4 of my grandparents came to this country from abroad. 2 after anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia and Ukraine and 1 following the release from a prison camp in Siberia when Nazi Germany invaded Soviet Russia.
Nothing to do with the EU of course but none of them would have met any points requirements.
Would they not have been refugees? The rules are for economic migrants.
Blair says he wonders if Labour leadership candidates have sufficient hunger for power and says while a more moderate leader would help Labour must also adapt to technological change and redefine radicalism.
He also says the party just not get into a culture war on trans rights
You can when 70% of Alliance voters in that poll oppose a United Ireland and they are the key swing voters in Northern Ireland
Once, just once, could you try reading what was linked to rather than going into auto-HYUFD? There's a very specific and interesting point being made, one which requires careful thought rather than leading to easy conclusions (and which, incidentally, throws into question your polloid).
You can when 70% of Alliance voters in that poll oppose a United Ireland and they are the key swing voters in Northern Ireland
Wait a year and see what things look like after Boris's plans are in effect..
It will change zilch, Alliance voters are appalled at the surge of the political wing of the IRA in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland has the best of both worlds post Brexit, still technically part of the UK while staying part of a customs union and most of the single market and avoiding a hard border with the Republic of Ireland
Goodness me, listening to the clips from last night's debate brought home to me how much the DNC have messed up the contest for the Democratic presidential nominee. Trump was always highly vulnerable, yet they took a risk by backing from the outset a near-geriatric establishment candidate with a track record of gaffes. They could have set rules which forced candidates to drop out earlier after failing to meet much higher thresholds to qualify for debates, but didn't...
Had they followed the second of your suggestions, the likelihood is that the battle would now be between the near geriatric establishment candidate, and the near geriatric anti-establishment candidate...
You can't take the points in isolation. A lot derives from the first point - the choice of Biden - his failings resulting in his inability to consolidate as a front running. Given that, the second point assumes more importance. That led to a lot more fringe candidates staying in the frame and weakened those with better potential to challenge Biden as alternatives to Sanders. Starting debates with 20 candidates was ridiculous and just spread support around so that no centrist was really able to emerge early enough to properly challenge Biden in 2019. I think that was probably planned, but what they didn't realise was that Biden would be unable to take advantage.
Blair says he wonders if Labour leadership candidates have sufficient hunger for power and says while a more moderate leader would help Labour must also adapt to technological change and redefine radicalism.
He also says the party just not get into a culture war on trans rights
How the hell did super-methodical Bloomberg not get himself prepared for these entirely predictable attacks with well-crafted responses? Surely it should all have been rehearsed. He's failed the most basic test.
It’s hard to tell Billionaires they’re not good at something.
He has a very thoughtful and informed podcast; Reasons to be Cheerful. With a chap called Geoff Lloyd.
I agree, he's one of those politicians who seems to have learned lessons from doing poorly at a big job and may well be better second time around. Hague was the same, a strong cabinet minister after an iffy LoTO.
Both took the job too early and tried/were persuaded to be someone they were not. They both looked faintly ridiculous doing so and both looked much more convincing after giving up the leadership and feeling free to be themselves.
Hague was never in a position to beat Blair in 2001 (no one was), but Miliband, had he kicked out some of his advisors/speech writers and/or had the balls not to care what people thought of him... Who knows? And what a different place we might be in now if he'd won! For better or worse, depending on your point of view, but we might have been arguing about quite different things for the past three and a half years!
It's often forgotten that the 2015 election wasn't a conventional Labour vs Tory fight. That ended up more or less even, but the Tories lost more seats to Labour than they won from them. The Tories won their majority by taking seats from their Coalition partners, and Labour lost heavily to the SNP.. It was the collapse of LD's and the rise of the SNP which ushered in the period of disastrous politics which we are now experiencing.
Yes, the government majority was slashed to the bone.
330 Tory seats... overall majority of 8, ignoring Shinners.
Incidentally and totally O/T, does anyone know how one can block scam calls purporting to come from Amazon telling me my Pride account will be renewed, and asking me to press button 1 to stop it. I haven't got a Pride account, and Mrs C and I both check our accounts regularly to see there's no diodgy payments.
Yes getting those every day, almost tempted to press 1 and waste their time - but I'd be wasting my time too.
That's it, Biden is done. Electability was his one strength, it what got him his massive African-American vote.
The AA vote is now up for grabs.
The person who has been eating into Biden's lead with African Americans was Bloomberg, mostly. After the Stop and Frisk talk that may go back the other way.
Biden had an alright night, it was one of his better performances. Buttigieg had an even better performance, but I'm sceptical that will translate into better numbers for him among AAs.
Blair says he wonders if Labour leadership candidates have sufficient hunger for power and says while a more moderate leader would help Labour must also adapt to technological change and redefine radicalism.
He also says the party just not get into a culture war on trans rights
@Stereotomy I think your instincts & insight on the US race have been top notch away from the madding crowds. Do you think Sanders could beat Trump in the general ?
I'm flattered, thanks!
I'm extremely unconfident in making any predictions about the general. My personal feeling is that Sanders is best placed to do that, but I'm probably nearly as driven by my own biases in that assessment as rottenborough is in believing the opposite.
I would say that anybody who's trying to get a gut feeling for the US should be careful to take into account how much worse things are there than here in many ways: people are dying because they can't afford insulin or being bankrupted when somebody calls them an ambulance, healthcare costs run into the thousands even if you're insured, the police are gunning down innocent people without provocation- often on camera- and getting away with it, or locking them up for years awaiting trial, minimum wage is unlivable, kids get active shooter drills at schools, there are concentration camps at the border, student debt runs into the hundreds of thousands, the list goes on.
There's a real desperate need and a real revulsion with business-as-usual politics which doesn't exist in anywhere near the same magnitude here. People are sick of hearing that what they can vote for is whether kids will be locked in the same cage as their parents, or whether gender nonbinary soldiers will be allowed to fight in the next war. They're sick of blue ticks yaas queening Nancy Pelosi because she gave Trump a sarcastic eyeroll while voting to expand his military budget by hundreds of billions.
It's by no means guaranteed that Bernie will be able to channel all of this into victory, but if you want to make informed speculation about what might happen, you need to understand the conditions there.
The Italian Guardian doesn’t like immigration control
It's hard to judge from a headline, but surely La Repubblica's argument is that it is shameful for the UK to treat Europeans the same way as, say, Africans?
I suspect there isn't a huge groundswell of opinion in NI for a united Ireland, but when the status quo is apparently not an option, you have to choose one of the alternatives. The alternatives don't look attractive from a NI perspective, hence the absolute rejection across the board for Johnson's shabby protocol deal.
So what will happen?
1. The UK actually implements the sea border it agreed with the EU. As the land border will be open and the sea border imposes major costs on what passes for a NI economy, the orientation of that economy will probably switch to the south from the east. Add in the facts that most NI people have Irish/EU passports and EU legislation will have greater immediate impact on them than UK equivalents, we are likely to see NI move into an Irish sphere whether or not it formally separates from the UK.
2. The UK doesn't implement the sea border it agreed with the EU. The hard border switches to the land border. Most thinking people realise this would be a disaster and there are likely IMO to be very urgent calls to get NI formally into the Republic.
Either way, we are likely to greater integration of NI into Ireland, revealing unionists' massive strategic error in undermining the status quo that was their best friend.
I suspect there isn't a huge groundswell of opinion in NI for a united Ireland, but when the status quo is apparently not an option, you have to choose one of the alternatives. The alternatives don't look attractive from a NI perspective, hence the absolute rejection across the board for Johnson's shabby protocol deal.
So what will happen?
1. The UK actually implements the sea border it agreed with the EU. As the land border will be open and the sea border imposes major costs on what passes for a NI economy, the orientation of that economy will probably switch to the south from the east. Add in the facts that most NI people have Irish/EU passports and EU legislation will have greater immediate impact on them than UK equivalents, we are likely to see NI move into an Irish sphere whether or not it formally separates from the UK.
2. The UK doesn't implement the sea border it agreed with the EU. The hard border switches to the land border. Most thinking people realise this would be a disaster and there are likely IMO to be very urgent calls to get NI formally into the Republic.
Either way, we are likely to greater integration of NI into Ireland, revealing unionists' massive strategic error in undermining the status quo that was their best friend.
The Irish border will remain exactly as it was before Brexit as per the GFA
Depends how much the debate moves votes. Klobuchar did well before NH and then surged to 3rd and 20%, if that was causation and not mostly correlation/luck then Warren could do the same. I'm skeptical the debate will have that big an impact, but we'll know in a few days.
On a related note, Bloomberg is barely still 2nd favourite on Betfair now, out to 5/1 from 5/2. That seems a big swing when there is no confirmation yet the debate has moved any voters.
Blair says he wonders if Labour leadership candidates have sufficient hunger for power and says while a more moderate leader would help Labour must also adapt to technological change and redefine radicalism.
He also says the party just not get into a culture war on trans rights
You can when 70% of Alliance voters in that poll oppose a United Ireland and they are the key swing voters in Northern Ireland
Once, just once, could you try reading what was linked to rather than going into auto-HYUFD? There's a very specific and interesting point being made, one which requires careful thought rather than leading to easy conclusions (and which, incidentally, throws into question your polloid).
You can when 70% of Alliance voters in that poll oppose a United Ireland and they are the key swing voters in Northern Ireland
Once, just once, could you try reading what was linked to rather than going into auto-HYUFD? There's a very specific and interesting point being made, one which requires careful thought rather than leading to easy conclusions (and which, incidentally, throws into question your polloid).
On a related note, Bloomberg is barely still 2nd favourite on Betfair now, out to 5/1 from 5/2. That seems a big swing when there is no confirmation yet the debate has moved any voters.
You have to wonder what the markets *thought* was going to happen when an old geezer too rich for anyone to disagree with him at any time in the last 7 years ambled up to a pack of sharp, hungry professional politicians who have been doing this since the middle of last year.
You can when 70% of Alliance voters in that poll oppose a United Ireland and they are the key swing voters in Northern Ireland
Once, just once, could you try reading what was linked to rather than going into auto-HYUFD? There's a very specific and interesting point being made, one which requires careful thought rather than leading to easy conclusions (and which, incidentally, throws into question your polloid).
I suspect there isn't a huge groundswell of opinion in NI for a united Ireland, but when the status quo is apparently not an option, you have to choose one of the alternatives. The alternatives don't look attractive from a NI perspective, hence the absolute rejection across the board for Johnson's shabby protocol deal.
So what will happen?
1. The UK actually implements the sea border it agreed with the EU. As the land border will be open and the sea border imposes major costs on what passes for a NI economy, the orientation of that economy will probably switch to the south from the east. Add in the facts that most NI people have Irish/EU passports and EU legislation will have greater immediate impact on them than UK equivalents, we are likely to see NI move into an Irish sphere whether or not it formally separates from the UK.
2. The UK doesn't implement the sea border it agreed with the EU. The hard border switches to the land border. Most thinking people realise this would be a disaster and there are likely IMO to be very urgent calls to get NI formally into the Republic.
Either way, we are likely to greater integration of NI into Ireland, revealing unionists' massive strategic error in undermining the status quo that was their best friend.
The Irish border will remain exactly as it was before Brexit as per the GFA
Will the UK government impose two way checks on goods as they have agreed in the protocol so goods entering into NI can freely flow in and out of the Republic? This will impose very significant costs on NI businesses that trade with the rUK, to the extent of bankrupting quite a few of them on their current business model. In that case will business look to EU trade, which is frictionless and freeflow? Given all that do you accept my option 1 of a NI becoming part of the Irish sphere the likely one? Furthermore, that there is no prospect at all of the status quo holding?
The Dems need a young-ish Teflon bullshitter who inspires them (and then mostly lets them down in office). Kennedy, Clinton, Obama.
None of the candidates seem remotely to rise to that level at this stage.
Or they need the Republicans to screw up disastrously - Jimmy Carter. Possible, but they'd be unwise to rely on that.
So maybe they should just go for broke with Sanders.
Yes and if he loses and Bobby Kennedy's grandson Joe Kennedy III wins the Massachusetts Senate race in November he will be in pole position for 2024 v Pence
You can when 70% of Alliance voters in that poll oppose a United Ireland and they are the key swing voters in Northern Ireland
Once, just once, could you try reading what was linked to rather than going into auto-HYUFD? There's a very specific and interesting point being made, one which requires careful thought rather than leading to easy conclusions (and which, incidentally, throws into question your polloid).
If you read the article he says Alliance voters tend to be more undecided but the latest poll has 70% of them opposing a United Ireland after the Sinn Fein rise in the Republic
The Italian Guardian doesn’t like immigration control
You'll have to give me the @isam-approved list of newspapers to quote from. I'm not feeling particularly guilty about citing an article from Italy's second biggest-selling newspaper. It's not exactly the New European or Breitbart.
You can when 70% of Alliance voters in that poll oppose a United Ireland and they are the key swing voters in Northern Ireland
Once, just once, could you try reading what was linked to rather than going into auto-HYUFD? There's a very specific and interesting point being made, one which requires careful thought rather than leading to easy conclusions (and which, incidentally, throws into question your polloid).
If you read the article he says Alliance voters tend to be more undecided but the latest poll has 70% of them opposing a United Ireland after the Sinn Fein rise in the Republic
It hasn't got 70% opposing a United Ireland - that figure comes from your own imagination...
You can when 70% of Alliance voters in that poll oppose a United Ireland and they are the key swing voters in Northern Ireland
Once, just once, could you try reading what was linked to rather than going into auto-HYUFD? There's a very specific and interesting point being made, one which requires careful thought rather than leading to easy conclusions (and which, incidentally, throws into question your polloid).
If you read the article he says Alliance voters tend to be more undecided but the latest poll has 70% of them opposing a United Ireland after the Sinn Fein rise in the Republic
Aren't there a record low number of Unionist MPs in NI?
Given the alternative to the ECJ is unilateral decision on adequacy by EU committee - an adequacy assessment that they can remove at whim - I would suggest ECJ oversight brings legal objectivity and protection for UK interests that at the end of the day are the weaker party.
Comments
Corbyn approval rating 2019: -40
Corbyn approval rating 2017: -40
Obama approval rating Feb 2012: -2
Trump is closer to Obama than Corbyn in net approval, regrettably.
These events seem to have really upset some remainers who have become more hysterical in their comments and just do not accept the UK is following a course to an Independent Nation welcoming peoples from across the world who have the skills to see the Country succeed.
Alll along all they hope for is failure and damage so that we may in some way want to go back into the EU, but that is not going to happen in my lifetime
Hague was never in a position to beat Blair in 2001 (no one was), but Miliband, had he kicked out some of his advisors/speech writers and/or had the balls not to care what people thought of him... Who knows? And what a different place we might be in now if he'd won! For better or worse, depending on your point of view, but we might have been arguing about quite different things for the past three and a half years!
They could go lower than McGovern.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-primary-forecast/?ex_cid=rrpromo
538 now have 'no majority' as the most likely outcome (40%), albeit with the caveat that in most no majority scenarios Sanders will be close enough as makes no difference.
https://twitter.com/gabrielmilland/status/1230439336111419392
https://twitter.com/jennygeras/status/1230229988860973058
However the average person doesn't really look into or understand that, all they see and feel is that the economy doing well and paypackets are rising. An incumbent vs someone promising radical change when people are on the whole doing pretty well is not a good matchup for the radical.
The people expelled from Uganda were refugees, and in addition those who came to the UK mainly already had British Passports iirc.
Should have gone to bed rather than listened to Democrats Debating.
https://twitter.com/WesleyTaylor2/status/1230435596126097408
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Cabinet_of_Ed_Miliband
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Opposition_Shadow_Cabinet_(United_Kingdom)
Outright Labour majority probably a stretch, so we might have got to experience chaos with Ed Miliband (and some kind of SNP involvement).
2 after anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia and Ukraine and 1 following the release from a prison camp in Siberia when Nazi Germany invaded Soviet Russia.
Nothing to do with the EU of course but none of them would have met any points requirements.
Witness KLOBUCHAR's price surge after she eviscerated Mayor Pete at the last debate.
I would dearly like a surprise second place in Nevada for Warren though. That would jolt her campaign and my book back to life. I made some really bad lays of Sanders and Pete that mean I'm basically negative on the field ( including Bloomberg
The AA vote is now up for grabs.
And the argument that the public does not have the intellectual tools or the moral compass to either spot or care that a politician is trashing the public finances to buy personal electoral success now at the price of penury for others in the future - this if true (which it might be) is a very strong argument that there must be a better way of choosing a government than having it decided by universal suffrage.
"Il muro della Brexit per gli europei e la vergogna a punti"
One of our resident Italian speakers can do a better job than me, but I think the gist is "The wall of Brexit for Europeans and the shame in points".
So Britain is making new friends everywhere with its drawbridge rhetoric.
Incidentally and totally O/T, does anyone know how one can block scam calls purporting to come from Amazon telling me my Pride account will be renewed, and asking me to press button 1 to stop it. I haven't got a Pride account, and Mrs C and I both check our accounts regularly to see there's no diodgy payments.
That said it's true that these issues are most exercising to people on the left of the party who are voting Sanders/Warren anyway.
Hopefully she's poisoned her relationship with Bernie enough that he doesn't pick her as a running mate. Her politics instincts are dreadful, and the Native American debacle should have disqualified her from ever being taken seriously.
It's an autromated spam call, nothing to do with Amazon. Like the "windows" support calls, they try to get remote access to your PC, and from there persuade you to pay a few hundred quid for PC maintenance/software you don't need.
The other common variant of this is a call claiming that your broadband is about to be suspended.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_Italian_general_election
Do you think Sanders could beat Trump in the general ?
For instance if you got calls from
01234 567 890
01234 567 880
You could block 01234 567 8 which blocks any number beginning with that pattern.
Another alternative is to block "Unknown callers". If they are not in your contacts list, the phone rejects them.
Tap the Phone icon, then tap the 3 vertical dots for the menu, then settings.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/20/opinion/who-won-democratic-debate.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Comeback kid?
‘Born as a radical leftist newspaper it has since moderated to a milder centre-left political stance’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Repubblica
The Italian Guardian doesn’t like immigration control
He also says the party just not get into a culture war on trans rights
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51560294
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-51565348
Meanwhile the Bomb Disposal Squad are attending a suspect device in the centre of Leeds.
Popcorn time folks...
https://skwawkbox.org/2020/02/19/lansman-insults-tens-of-thousands-of-labour-members/
Biden had an alright night, it was one of his better performances. Buttigieg had an even better performance, but I'm sceptical that will translate into better numbers for him among AAs.
I'm extremely unconfident in making any predictions about the general. My personal feeling is that Sanders is best placed to do that, but I'm probably nearly as driven by my own biases in that assessment as rottenborough is in believing the opposite.
I would say that anybody who's trying to get a gut feeling for the US should be careful to take into account how much worse things are there than here in many ways: people are dying because they can't afford insulin or being bankrupted when somebody calls them an ambulance, healthcare costs run into the thousands even if you're insured, the police are gunning down innocent people without provocation- often on camera- and getting away with it, or locking them up for years awaiting trial, minimum wage is unlivable, kids get active shooter drills at schools, there are concentration camps at the border, student debt runs into the hundreds of thousands, the list goes on.
There's a real desperate need and a real revulsion with business-as-usual politics which doesn't exist in anywhere near the same magnitude here. People are sick of hearing that what they can vote for is whether kids will be locked in the same cage as their parents, or whether gender nonbinary soldiers will be allowed to fight in the next war. They're sick of blue ticks yaas queening Nancy Pelosi because she gave Trump a sarcastic eyeroll while voting to expand his military budget by hundreds of billions.
It's by no means guaranteed that Bernie will be able to channel all of this into victory, but if you want to make informed speculation about what might happen, you need to understand the conditions there.
So what will happen?
1. The UK actually implements the sea border it agreed with the EU. As the land border will be open and the sea border imposes major costs on what passes for a NI economy, the orientation of that economy will probably switch to the south from the east. Add in the facts that most NI people have Irish/EU passports and EU legislation will have greater immediate impact on them than UK equivalents, we are likely to see NI move into an Irish sphere whether or not it formally separates from the UK.
2. The UK doesn't implement the sea border it agreed with the EU. The hard border switches to the land border. Most thinking people realise this would be a disaster and there are likely IMO to be very urgent calls to get NI formally into the Republic.
Either way, we are likely to greater integration of NI into Ireland, revealing unionists' massive strategic error in undermining the status quo that was their best friend.
On a related note, Bloomberg is barely still 2nd favourite on Betfair now, out to 5/1 from 5/2. That seems a big swing when there is no confirmation yet the debate has moved any voters.
https://twitter.com/peterdonaghy/status/1230468621467557888?s=20
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1230283753060171776?s=20
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1230289313277059072?s=20
None of the candidates seem remotely to rise to that level at this stage.
Or they need the Republicans to screw up disastrously - Jimmy Carter. Possible, but they'd be unwise to rely on that.
So maybe they should just go for broke with Sanders.
What am I missing?
In a previous article you said some of the "left behind" towns should be re-wilded and the residents moved out. Which ones in particular ?