The tragedy for the Lib Dems is that neither Davey nor Moran are the right fit for today.
The best hope is for Moran to soften her madder streak and obvious private education and model herself of an the NZ pm.
Davey is a total dead loss.
What other options do the Lib Dem’s actually have?
Wilson or Farron would be better.
Farron was poor. His evangelical Christianity was a major problem as he couldn't see past his resurgent faith (which I share to some extent) that what he thinks isn't what everyone thinks. I struggle to think of something more illiberal than ramming something as personal as your own faith down other people's throats.
Farron may well have been poor, bit is still better positioned than Davey to make a fresh start as a third party.
If the strategy is for LDs to become the old one nation Tory party and attract Rudd and co, then Davey is your man.
Whed "red" Ed Milliband unveiled "One Nation Labour" I was delighted. One Nation politics is the politics of consensus - trying to accomodate those at the top making money without forgetting those at the bottom struggling to survive. Post war both main parties got it - MacMillan campaigning on how many hundreds of thousands of council houses his Tory government were building etc.
So yes, I do want Davey to be One Nation. And to attract more people like Gymah and Allen and Umunna and Berger. Bring in sane people with ideas from both parties, ditch the ideological baggage and do what works. Tory voters are people too. Any party that wants to for a government has to win the support of currently Tory voters. It isn't some kind of negative mark to say so...
It’s a strategy. Go full unapologetically pro coalition. Become the old Tory party. Get a few big hitters like Rudd, Clarke and Gauke to join. A risk. But an option.
We're a third party. Soft left but extending into the soft right. With Labour and Tory moving quite significantly along their own left right axes it feels impossible to triangulate a position against them even if it was sensible to do so.
Aren't most voters a coalition? This government has a thumping majority precisely because punters went blue for the first time ever. Within the space of 25 years we have seen all kinds of unlikely seats flip between various colours whether it be Labour winning unlikely southern places then the Tories unlikely northern ones. Some have been red yellow and blue in less than a decade. People are far more open to ideas and far less wedded to old habits or loyalties than they were.
I blame the LDs for unlocking Pandora’s box. They’ve done it twice. Once by giving the Tories their shot at power and offering little restraint. And then most recently by giving Boris his December election. They just can’t help themselves. I think it makes them feel important, which is real what they crave.
Yes, the clamour for a December election by the LDs was somewhat odd and counter productive, but don't forget the real mastermind behind Johnson's stunning early victory was Jeremy Corbyn.
How so? You can blame Corbyn for many, many things, but not that. Once the Lib Dens failed to hold the line it all came crashing down.
Corbyn had been banging on about an election since 2017. Even when the writing was on the wall that against Johnson in 2019 Labour would be hung out to dry, he still went for it. Corbyn could have prevented a December 2019 election. The one big upside is that from that decision, Corbyn is no more.
yes he is even voted against by his former mates when he tried to get a position with Labour. I wonder how those who put him up for leader sleep at night...
If Clegg had given C&S in 2010 we would be far better off today.
Still bemused why he didn't do that.
Because he wanted to be Deputy PM ?
And he wanted to show what the LibDems could do in government.
Before the coalition there was a theory that if the LibDems could break the 'wasted vote' image they would get over 30% national support.
And because you cant really argue for PR without believing in coalitions. While the LibDems came out of the experience badly, they did at least prove that coalitions can work and provide good government - certainly compared to what followed (or went before). Remember that the surprise from the coalition period was that LibDem MPs (and members) proved a lot more resolute and reliable than many of their Tory counterparts.
If Clegg had given C&S in 2010 we would be far better off today.
Still bemused why he didn't do that.
They traded all their influence and a few principles for an AV referendum and 5 ministerial salaries.
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I seem to recall that the pound had been sliding under Brown and the markets were getting quite nervous at the sight of an apparently unstable Government.
The drastic cuts, which would also close airfields and take helicopters out of service, were drawn up in response to Treasury demands that Whitehall departments map out cuts of 5% or more as part of the government’s comprehensive spending review.
Mr. Battery, that could've seen a bigger Conservative win. However, I do think an anti-Brexit coalition with someone like Starmer leading Labour into 2019 against Johnson would've stood a very good chance of getting more seats.
Incidentally, I looked through that Epstein address book someone posted on here and was not that surprised to find that I knew personally a number of the people listed and even less surprised to find that I have investigated one, for alleged corruption of public officials.
Boring as it may seem I am rather more interested in how Epstein made - and kept - his money. He seems to have risen without trace.
The sorts of people who were friendly with Epstein are exactly the sorts of people you would *expect* to be friendly with him.
The odd thing is (going solely by his wikipedia entry) is that he lost huge amounts of money on numerous occasions. Perhaps his fortune was nowhere near what people thought it was.
One plausible explanation for Epstein's wealth is that he basically ran a tracker fund. His cronies would invest in Epstein's fund, so he'd rake off management fees and the investors would be richer as the market always went up.
Perhaps the LDs should consider a leader outside Westminster. They don’t have the third party platform at PMQs, so it’s not a huge loss. It would position them nicely as insurgent outsiders. Not being an MP never harmed Nigels presence.
Hasn't really worked for the Greens. I bet most people still think Lucas is the leader, and even people who follow politics may not realise it is no longer Lucas and Bartley.
You have to pick a leader with a personality and charisma to go down this path.
Excepting the case where you have a devolved authority as an alternative platform, how likely is it that any smaller party has a figure of potential nationwide appeal and charisma who isn't already in parliament?
Of the top 50 LD target seats, 43 are held by the Tories and just 4 are held by Labour so the LDs need to pick a leader to appeal to Tory Remain voters in those seats at the next general election. Davey being on the liberal wing of the party would be better placed to do that than Moran who is on the more social democratic wing
Historically the LDs need to mop up all the Labour votes to win those seats.
In most of them the Labour vote is below 10% and Labour voters there will largely be tactically voting for the LDs anyway, it is Tory Remain voters they have to win over in them
Of the top 50 LD target seats, 43 are held by the Tories and just 4 are held by Labour so the LDs need to pick a leader to appeal to Tory Remain voters in those seats at the next general election. Davey being on the liberal wing of the party would be better placed to do that than Moran who is on the more social democratic wing
Historically the LDs need to mop up all the Labour votes to win those seats.
In none of them is the Labour vote above 10% and Labour voters there will almost all be tactically voting for the LDs anyway, it is Tory Remain voters they have to win over in them
The circumstances needed are a degree of unhappiness with a Tory government and relative calmness about the prospect of a Labour one.
LDs only do well when the Tory vote is going down.
Incidentally, I looked through that Epstein address book someone posted on here and was not that surprised to find that I knew personally a number of the people listed and even less surprised to find that I have investigated one, for alleged corruption of public officials.
Boring as it may seem I am rather more interested in how Epstein made - and kept - his money. He seems to have risen without trace.
The sorts of people who were friendly with Epstein are exactly the sorts of people you would *expect* to be friendly with him.
The odd thing is (going solely by his wikipedia entry) is that he lost huge amounts of money on numerous occasions. Perhaps his fortune was nowhere near what people thought it was.
One plausible explanation for Epstein's wealth is that he basically ran a tracker fund. His cronies would invest in Epstein's fund, so he'd rake off management fees and the investors would be richer as the market always went up.
Given that he and Maxwell procured a string of underage girls there are of course alternative possibilities?
If Clegg had given C&S in 2010 we would be far better off today.
Still bemused why he didn't do that.
Because he wanted to be Deputy PM ?
And he wanted to show what the LibDems could do in government.
Before the coalition there was a theory that if the LibDems could break the 'wasted vote' image they would get over 30% national support.
And because you cant really argue for PR without believing in coalitions. While the LibDems came out of the experience badly, they did at least prove that coalitions can work and provide good government - certainly compared to what followed (or went before). Remember that the surprise from the coalition period was that LibDem MPs (and members) proved a lot more resolute and reliable than many of their Tory counterparts.
What they couldnt do was believe in coalitions as a party themselves and try and sell it to the country a second time. Quite strange but also quite similar to Blair being the most unpopular Labour leader despite delivering more for Labour causes than the popular ones.
The left and centre in British politics dont make things easy for themselves!
The Lib Dems biggest problem is carving out a distinctive policy platform. As a keen political observer, I'm not quite sure what they stand for other than "not Lab/Con", or in between Lab/Con - i.e. centrist.
At the last election the only policy that got traction was the disastrous revocation. They can go green - but both Labour and the Greens will be at least as green, and more so in the latter case. On tax and spend, they can be a bit redistributive - but Labour will also be, and the Tories may be forced to raise taxes. They can push the small 'l' liberal agenda, but I'm not sure that in the current climate there's too much mileage in that. They can be internationalist, but so will Starmer.
So I suspect they will be left with not that many voters - mainly those soft Tories who don't like this government but can't bring themselves to vote Labour. Even this number looks likely to dwindle under Starmer.
And finally, I don't rate either Davey or Moran particularly - not sure either have got the real leadership skills required. If I were a Lib Dem, I'd be a bit gloomy.
Id agree with your analysis but perhaps that will lead them to where they should be, going green in a big way but in conjunction with business, trade and tech which would be quite distinctive from the green party. Also covid may also point to some quite radical and effective policies that can help transform our economy, health and educations services, that the bigger parties may be scared of committing to.
How would that be any different to the Tories?
There are some Tories who indeed want to be in that space and lots more who talk about it. Others say F business, are anti trade and cant build a simple app when it was one of the governments main priorities.
Most LD target seats are vs Tories, so its fairly inevitable they will often be competing on similar policies.
The Tories have been very green but in a way that works with business throughout their decade in office. We've gone from 80% coal to eliminating coal in a decade. Net zero is government policy and in headline speeches for the aviation industry the PM is talking about JetZero.
If the Lib Dems want the same things as the government then good for them. More for us to work with together in the future if it becomes necessary to work together again after the next election once Brexit has faded into history.
Broken record mode=on. Labour should have spent the last decade or more attacking the Conservatives over defence cuts. The Tories have been decimating the armed forces from the 1980s onwards. As George Bush's election guru Karl Rove used to recommend: attack your opponent's strengths. In 2017 Jeremy Corbyn did this when attacking the Party of Law and Order over its police cuts.
Stop Brexit has already flown but once you take that out the paucity of ambition is painful. A penny for the NHS (again). 20k more teachers. Well, its a nice round number. Free childcare. They should ask the Scottish government how that works or doesn't. 80% of energy from renewables by 2030. Presumably all campaigns against windfarms etc are to be banned. A tax on frequent flyers. Seems a bit irrelevant right now.
It doesn't exactly set the pulse racing does it? Given the lack of interest I genuinely don't know if either of the candidates have come up with anything better.
I agree with those down thread that say that Green is a way for the Lib Dems to go. Some of their former policies already fit that theme and they could add things like rapid build out of electrical charging point infrastructure in city centres with an early target for the banning of diesel and petrol vehicles everywhere air quality targets are being threatened.
Yes, the clamour for a December election by the LDs was somewhat odd and counter productive, but don't forget the real mastermind behind Johnson's stunning early victory was Jeremy Corbyn.
This is an old argument which never goes anywhere, but I completely disagree with this bit of conventional wisdom. The December election was a bad option, but better than the alternatives for the party.
Johnson's Brexit Withdrawal Bill passed at a 2nd reading, it was only the very short programme motion which was rejected. The Lib Dems had 3 options:
1. Block an election, see a longer programme motion be passed and then the bill be passed, have an election in early 2020 once Brexit was confirmed; 2. Block an election, see the bill be passed as #1, continue blocking elections (and everything else?) until 2022 or whenever opposition discipline broke down; or 3. Vote for an election taking place before the bill was passed and hope for a shock result like 2017 allowing a 2nd Ref coalition to form.
#3 is hella risky, but #1 and #2 are even worse. Both end the final chance to stop Brexit (which, whatever your views on it, was a key policy of the party) and there's no reason to believe the election would have gone worse for Johnson that 2019 did. Especially option #2, which would have been even more establishment vs the people's choice than we had!
Perhaps there was an option which I've missed, but I don't see how the Lib Dems could have delayed an election to a better time (which isn't to say December was a good time, but that things weren't going to get better if it was blocked for a while) or had a better chance to stop Brexit than an election (which, again, isn't to say December 2019 was a good chance to stop Brexit but it was a better chance than doing so after the Withdrawal Bill was passed!).
The opinion polls implied anything other than a decent Johnson victory was unlikely. The early election allowed Brexit to be done on Cummings term's. All the options for Remainers were bad, but I felt by hanging on longer something might have come up, which could have changed the dynamic, and it has.
And yet, even in a world where the dynamic has changed apparently proving you right this tactic wouldn't have worked. The votes in the Commons against an election and the Withdrawal Bill might have held until early 2020 but never June or July. Most likely we'd have had an election probably with Withdrawal Bill passed into law and Johnson enjoying the 'Rally round the Flag' benefit of the early stages of the pandemic.
Plus it's likely the dynamic wouldn't have changed nearly as much if Corbyn was still Labour leader, and there was no way he was going before an election.
Yes, the clamour for a December election by the LDs was somewhat odd and counter productive, but don't forget the real mastermind behind Johnson's stunning early victory was Jeremy Corbyn.
This is an old argument which never goes anywhere, but I completely disagree with this bit of conventional wisdom. The December election was a bad option, but better than the alternatives for the party.
Johnson's Brexit Withdrawal Bill passed at a 2nd reading, it was only the very short programme motion which was rejected. The Lib Dems had 3 options:
1. Block an election, see a longer programme motion be passed and then the bill be passed, have an election in early 2020 once Brexit was confirmed; 2. Block an election, see the bill be passed as #1, continue blocking elections (and everything else?) until 2022 or whenever opposition discipline broke down; or 3. Vote for an election taking place before the bill was passed and hope for a shock result like 2017 allowing a 2nd Ref coalition to form.
#3 is hella risky, but #1 and #2 are even worse. Both end the final chance to stop Brexit (which, whatever your views on it, was a key policy of the party) and there's no reason to believe the election would have gone worse for Johnson that 2019 did. Especially option #2, which would have been even more establishment vs the people's choice than we had!
Perhaps there was an option which I've missed, but I don't see how the Lib Dems could have delayed an election to a better time (which isn't to say December was a good time, but that things weren't going to get better if it was blocked for a while) or had a better chance to stop Brexit than an election (which, again, isn't to say December 2019 was a good chance to stop Brexit but it was a better chance than doing so after the Withdrawal Bill was passed!).
The opinion polls implied anything other than a decent Johnson victory was unlikely. The early election allowed Brexit to be done on Cummings term's. All the options for Remainers were bad, but I felt by hanging on longer something might have come up, which could have changed the dynamic, and it has.
It was the SNP that pulled off the real stunt, championing the election in what they knew were perfect circumstances for the Tories, taking the long view that a Tory majority was in the best interests of their strategic goal of independence. I doubt they explained this to the other opposition parties, who might usefully have worked it out for themselves.
Jeremy was delusional enough to believe despite all the evidence the working people of the United Kingdom would deliver a working class hero into No 10, and that working class hero was him.
He got part of the equation right as the working people of the UK did deliver the keys of number 10 to someone they saw as a working class hero, but his name wasn't Jeremy.
1. Davey has a track record on green energy and makes this a clre component of his pitch. Whilst I am sympathetic to the Green Party/movement there's too much tree-hugging hippy ban cars to save Gaia about them. Green is needed because there truly are major environmental problems to deal with, but it should also be a positive. Davey is talking up the economic opportunity for Green energy. We're a windy wet island who also gets the sun. We should be investing in technology which we can sell to the world. We can scale up pretty significantly things like domestic solar panels and local power generation. Make the green revolution pay and people will get interested. A hand up not a hair shirt.
2. The Rona has seen a significant generational shift in attitudes and practice which we haven't yet fully grasped. Tying into green economics the sizeable shift to WFH is a huge opportunity to restructure the economy, our lived environment, work-life balance etc etc. Similarly big is the shift away from me to us. Brexit was the last throw of the dice for Me politics. We talked a bit about Farage but his time is done and I think he knows it. Rona has forced people to look again at their community and their neighbours and ask how we together can look after each other. Not everyone is on board, but the shift is there, which means comments harping back to pre-Rona or pre-Brexit are hoping that we all go back to how things were with minimal changes. If we don't - and I don't think we will - these considerations become moot.
Stop Brexit has already flown but once you take that out the paucity of ambition is painful. A penny for the NHS (again). 20k more teachers. Well, its a nice round number. Free childcare. They should ask the Scottish government how that works or doesn't. 80% of energy from renewables by 2030. Presumably all campaigns against windfarms etc are to be banned. A tax on frequent flyers. Seems a bit irrelevant right now.
It doesn't exactly set the pulse racing does it? Given the lack of interest I genuinely don't know if either of the candidates have come up with anything better.
I agree with those down thread that say that Green is a way for the Lib Dems to go. Some of their former policies already fit that theme and they could add things like rapid build out of electrical charging point infrastructure in city centres with an early target for the banning of diesel and petrol vehicles everywhere air quality targets are being threatened.
"Presumably all campaigns against windfarms etc are to be banned."
No need for any more onshore wind. The massive array in the N Sea (like Hornsea) will provide masses of power. The new turbines are immense. We could be exporters of green energy in near future.
Incidentally, I looked through that Epstein address book someone posted on here and was not that surprised to find that I knew personally a number of the people listed and even less surprised to find that I have investigated one, for alleged corruption of public officials.
Boring as it may seem I am rather more interested in how Epstein made - and kept - his money. He seems to have risen without trace.
The sorts of people who were friendly with Epstein are exactly the sorts of people you would *expect* to be friendly with him.
The odd thing is (going solely by his wikipedia entry) is that he lost huge amounts of money on numerous occasions. Perhaps his fortune was nowhere near what people thought it was.
One plausible explanation for Epstein's wealth is that he basically ran a tracker fund. His cronies would invest in Epstein's fund, so he'd rake off management fees and the investors would be richer as the market always went up.
Given that he and Maxwell procured a string of underage girls there are of course alternative possibilities?
The question was how Epstein made money. I cannot rule out that the reason the wealthy invested in Epstein's fund was sex, though in truth I suspect it was less about rubbing 17-year-olds and more about rubbing shoulders with the elite: royalty, presidents and billionaires.
The Lib Dems biggest problem is carving out a distinctive policy platform. As a keen political observer, I'm not quite sure what they stand for other than "not Lab/Con", or in between Lab/Con - i.e. centrist.
At the last election the only policy that got traction was the disastrous revocation. They can go green - but both Labour and the Greens will be at least as green, and more so in the latter case. On tax and spend, they can be a bit redistributive - but Labour will also be, and the Tories may be forced to raise taxes. They can push the small 'l' liberal agenda, but I'm not sure that in the current climate there's too much mileage in that. They can be internationalist, but so will Starmer.
So I suspect they will be left with not that many voters - mainly those soft Tories who don't like this government but can't bring themselves to vote Labour. Even this number looks likely to dwindle under Starmer.
And finally, I don't rate either Davey or Moran particularly - not sure either have got the real leadership skills required. If I were a Lib Dem, I'd be a bit gloomy.
Id agree with your analysis but perhaps that will lead them to where they should be, going green in a big way but in conjunction with business, trade and tech which would be quite distinctive from the green party. Also covid may also point to some quite radical and effective policies that can help transform our economy, health and educations services, that the bigger parties may be scared of committing to.
How would that be any different to the Tories?
There are some Tories who indeed want to be in that space and lots more who talk about it. Others say F business, are anti trade and cant build a simple app when it was one of the governments main priorities.
Most LD target seats are vs Tories, so its fairly inevitable they will often be competing on similar policies.
The Tories have been very green but in a way that works with business throughout their decade in office. We've gone from 80% coal to eliminating coal in a decade. Net zero is government policy and in headline speeches for the aviation industry the PM is talking about JetZero.
If the Lib Dems want the same things as the government then good for them. More for us to work with together in the future if it becomes necessary to work together again after the next election once Brexit has faded into history.
Yes all parties want to be "green" and it is something that the LDs may be able gain traction on in a coalition with either party if they get enough seats, they just need to claim credit for things next time rather than apologise for what they couldnt do.
Yes, the clamour for a December election by the LDs was somewhat odd and counter productive, but don't forget the real mastermind behind Johnson's stunning early victory was Jeremy Corbyn.
This is an old argument which never goes anywhere, but I completely disagree with this bit of conventional wisdom. The December election was a bad option, but better than the alternatives for the party.
Johnson's Brexit Withdrawal Bill passed at a 2nd reading, it was only the very short programme motion which was rejected. The Lib Dems had 3 options:
1. Block an election, see a longer programme motion be passed and then the bill be passed, have an election in early 2020 once Brexit was confirmed; 2. Block an election, see the bill be passed as #1, continue blocking elections (and everything else?) until 2022 or whenever opposition discipline broke down; or 3. Vote for an election taking place before the bill was passed and hope for a shock result like 2017 allowing a 2nd Ref coalition to form.
#3 is hella risky, but #1 and #2 are even worse. Both end the final chance to stop Brexit (which, whatever your views on it, was a key policy of the party) and there's no reason to believe the election would have gone worse for Johnson that 2019 did. Especially option #2, which would have been even more establishment vs the people's choice than we had!
Perhaps there was an option which I've missed, but I don't see how the Lib Dems could have delayed an election to a better time (which isn't to say December was a good time, but that things weren't going to get better if it was blocked for a while) or had a better chance to stop Brexit than an election (which, again, isn't to say December 2019 was a good chance to stop Brexit but it was a better chance than doing so after the Withdrawal Bill was passed!).
The opinion polls implied anything other than a decent Johnson victory was unlikely. The early election allowed Brexit to be done on Cummings term's. All the options for Remainers were bad, but I felt by hanging on longer something might have come up, which could have changed the dynamic, and it has.
And yet, even in a world where the dynamic has changed apparently proving you right this tactic wouldn't have worked. The votes in the Commons against an election and the Withdrawal Bill might have held until early 2020 but never June or July. Most likely we'd have had an election probably with Withdrawal Bill passed into law and Johnson enjoying the 'Rally round the Flag' benefit of the early stages of the pandemic.
Plus it's likely the dynamic wouldn't have changed nearly as much if Corbyn was still Labour leader, and there was no way he was going before an election.
You may be right. With the spectre of Jeremy Corbyn looming large, a Johnson victory was always inevitable.
Stop Brexit has already flown but once you take that out the paucity of ambition is painful. A penny for the NHS (again). 20k more teachers. Well, its a nice round number. Free childcare. They should ask the Scottish government how that works or doesn't. 80% of energy from renewables by 2030. Presumably all campaigns against windfarms etc are to be banned. A tax on frequent flyers. Seems a bit irrelevant right now.
It doesn't exactly set the pulse racing does it? Given the lack of interest I genuinely don't know if either of the candidates have come up with anything better.
I agree with those down thread that say that Green is a way for the Lib Dems to go. Some of their former policies already fit that theme and they could add things like rapid build out of electrical charging point infrastructure in city centres with an early target for the banning of diesel and petrol vehicles everywhere air quality targets are being threatened.
"Presumably all campaigns against windfarms etc are to be banned."
No need for any more onshore wind. The massive array in the N Sea (like Hornsea) will provide masses of power. The new turbines are immense. We could be exporters of green energy in near future.
Yes, I was surprised that the BBC commentary thought this target was very ambitious. It seems to me that we may well be on track for it already. Very good for the balance of payments too.
1. Davey has a track record on green energy and makes this a clre component of his pitch. Whilst I am sympathetic to the Green Party/movement there's too much tree-hugging hippy ban cars to save Gaia about them. Green is needed because there truly are major environmental problems to deal with, but it should also be a positive. Davey is talking up the economic opportunity for Green energy. We're a windy wet island who also gets the sun. We should be investing in technology which we can sell to the world. We can scale up pretty significantly things like domestic solar panels and local power generation. Make the green revolution pay and people will get interested. A hand up not a hair shirt.
2. The Rona has seen a significant generational shift in attitudes and practice which we haven't yet fully grasped. Tying into green economics the sizeable shift to WFH is a huge opportunity to restructure the economy, our lived environment, work-life balance etc etc. Similarly big is the shift away from me to us. Brexit was the last throw of the dice for Me politics. We talked a bit about Farage but his time is done and I think he knows it. Rona has forced people to look again at their community and their neighbours and ask how we together can look after each other. Not everyone is on board, but the shift is there, which means comments harping back to pre-Rona or pre-Brexit are hoping that we all go back to how things were with minimal changes. If we don't - and I don't think we will - these considerations become moot.
The current pandemic has been a shocker, and not just here, so I agree with Mr P's excellent post. I think it's one of those seismic events after which things will never be quite the same again. I know that, so far, it's only been three months, but I suggest that the events of last night indicate that people are being more cautious than might have been expected.
So the predictions that England would turn into Mordor on 'sunny Saturday' were as inaccurate as the description 'sunny'.
Some odd spots of trouble, but basically went off fairly well.
I must confess I was wrong on this, as I was on here predicting drunken carnage.
I didn't expect fights and riots (that was Sarah Vine). But what we saw was really bad - a huge number of people potentially spreading the virus to each other. Not Good. Thats not every pub of course, but the bad places were really really bad.
This thread only goes to underline again what a total cosmic disaster Jo Swinsons leadership was. I feel sorry for her personally, but good grief - how to get it wrong!
There needed to be a general election. Parliament was turning into a farce.
Yes, the clamour for a December election by the LDs was somewhat odd and counter productive, but don't forget the real mastermind behind Johnson's stunning early victory was Jeremy Corbyn.
This is an old argument which never goes anywhere, but I completely disagree with this bit of conventional wisdom. The December election was a bad option, but better than the alternatives for the party.
Johnson's Brexit Withdrawal Bill passed at a 2nd reading, it was only the very short programme motion which was rejected. The Lib Dems had 3 options:
1. Block an election, see a longer programme motion be passed and then the bill be passed, have an election in early 2020 once Brexit was confirmed; 2. Block an election, see the bill be passed as #1, continue blocking elections (and everything else?) until 2022 or whenever opposition discipline broke down; or 3. Vote for an election taking place before the bill was passed and hope for a shock result like 2017 allowing a 2nd Ref coalition to form.
#3 is hella risky, but #1 and #2 are even worse. Both end the final chance to stop Brexit (which, whatever your views on it, was a key policy of the party) and there's no reason to believe the election would have gone worse for Johnson that 2019 did. Especially option #2, which would have been even more establishment vs the people's choice than we had!
Perhaps there was an option which I've missed, but I don't see how the Lib Dems could have delayed an election to a better time (which isn't to say December was a good time, but that things weren't going to get better if it was blocked for a while) or had a better chance to stop Brexit than an election (which, again, isn't to say December 2019 was a good chance to stop Brexit but it was a better chance than doing so after the Withdrawal Bill was passed!).
The opinion polls implied anything other than a decent Johnson victory was unlikely. The early election allowed Brexit to be done on Cummings term's. All the options for Remainers were bad, but I felt by hanging on longer something might have come up, which could have changed the dynamic, and it has.
It was the SNP that pulled off the real stunt, championing the election in what they knew were perfect circumstances for the Tories, taking the long view that a Tory majority was in the best interests of their strategic goal of independence. I doubt they explained this to the other opposition parties, who might usefully have worked it out for themselves.
Jeremy was delusional enough to believe despite all the evidence the working people of the United Kingdom would deliver a working class hero into No 10, and that working class hero was him.
He got part of the equation right as the working people of the UK did deliver the keys of number 10 to someone they saw as a working class hero, but his name wasn't Jeremy.
I think he knew his time was running out and he genuinely believed that he could repeat 2017. But Boris is no May.
This is why I think the economy is screwed, people are not going to be going out in a hurry.
Several friends sent me vid clips from empty pubs. Which is good news for pandemic control, bad news for the pubs. Do people want to go to pubs as much? Drinking at home is so much cheaper
Stop Brexit has already flown but once you take that out the paucity of ambition is painful. A penny for the NHS (again). 20k more teachers. Well, its a nice round number. Free childcare. They should ask the Scottish government how that works or doesn't. 80% of energy from renewables by 2030. Presumably all campaigns against windfarms etc are to be banned. A tax on frequent flyers. Seems a bit irrelevant right now.
It doesn't exactly set the pulse racing does it? Given the lack of interest I genuinely don't know if either of the candidates have come up with anything better.
I agree with those down thread that say that Green is a way for the Lib Dems to go. Some of their former policies already fit that theme and they could add things like rapid build out of electrical charging point infrastructure in city centres with an early target for the banning of diesel and petrol vehicles everywhere air quality targets are being threatened.
Fair points. The LDs backed the house on 'stop Brexit' and it didn't work. Now they need to come up with an attractive policy platform for mainstream issues, of the sort they had during the 1970s and 80s. The risk is that their young-ish membership might instead prefer batting on about fringe issues of identity.
What's all this about Kayne West running as an independent in US?
Can he still get on the ballots?
Unlikely to have the machine to get on the ballot in all 50 states, Oklahoma is the hardest one to get on or used to be,
In theory someone could become president by just winning enough states with enough college votes and not even bother standing in any other states.
In practice though he's got no chance whatsoever and would only be wasting his time and money.
Sounds like a pipedream.
But in theory do we know happens in the US if there are 3 viable candidates running for POTUS (dem, rep, indy) and they end up with an EC split of say 45/30/25?
The Lib Dems need to figure out how to make the policies identified in this piece by the FT’s Martin Sandbu resonate for the Waitrose Shoppers in Lewes - ie the voters they need to win over to earn another 15 seats.
All of these polices will be mainstream thinking within 10 years. If the Lib Dems don’t plant their flag on them, Labour or the Greens will.
Oh, and a thousand times, Ed Davey needs to renounce tuition fees and blame the wicked traitor Clegg for his “Clause 4” moment. Clegg’s reputation is now utterly toileted due to his work with Facebook.
This is why I think the economy is screwed, people are not going to be going out in a hurry.
Several friends sent me vid clips from empty pubs. Which is good news for pandemic control, bad news for the pubs. Do people want to go to pubs as much? Drinking at home is so much cheaper
Certainly what me and my friends have found. Why bother when you can drink in your garden (if you're lucky enough to have one)?
Personally, I think as long as the risk of corona is there, people will go out less and spend less money. And that is why encouraging people won't work as there want to protect themselves overrides any idea to spend money.
Additionally, I have certainly found I can save a lot of money by not doing things I don't really miss and I intend to continue that.
What's all this about Kayne West running as an independent in US?
Can he still get on the ballots?
Unlikely to have the machine to get on the ballot in all 50 states, Oklahoma is the hardest one to get on or used to be,
In theory someone could become president by just winning enough states with enough college votes and not even bother standing in any other states.
In practice though he's got no chance whatsoever and would only be wasting his time and money.
Sounds like a pipedream.
But in theory do we know happens in the US if there are 3 viable candidates running for POTUS (dem, rep, indy) and they end up with an EC split of say 45/30/25?
House of representatives votes on the president, the senate on the vice president.
For all her failures, Swinson did make pretty decent progress in a lot of South East seats, e.g. Winchester, where the Lib Dems aren't that far behind the Tories.
Will these voters still be angry next time and vote Lib Dem again? I note in Winchester the Labour vote was what prevented a Lib Dem victory there
Seems Panelbase have cornered the market in Scotch polling.
....and its irrelevant because there isn't going to be a poll that the sainted Nicola doesn't really want .. Agitate for it but have it.. naaah...
Well, no one cares what you think, but I look forward to your overlords carrying one with that same line.
'Curtice said: “Never before have the foundations of public support for the Union looked so weak. Unsurprisingly, for many nationalists, the past three months have exemplified how Scotland could govern itself better as an independent, small country. More importantly, it may have persuaded some former unionists of the merits of that claim, too.”
There is increasing gloom among senior unionist politicians in Conservative and Labour ranks in Scotland that independence is inevitable.'
It does look that way. It's very sad. As a Unionist resident in Edinburgh I'm not sure how I can convince people not to want to be Independent. Identities, once formed, are hard to change.
Looking back, the 2015 GE campaign looks crucial. The Conservatives in England made the choice to trade Scotland in return for political advantage in England, by arguing that a Labour government with support from SNP MPs would be something to fear.
They learnt the lesson that bashing Scotland was to their advantage in England, and they haven't looked back.
This is why I think the economy is screwed, people are not going to be going out in a hurry.
Several friends sent me vid clips from empty pubs. Which is good news for pandemic control, bad news for the pubs. Do people want to go to pubs as much? Drinking at home is so much cheaper
Certainly what me and my friends have found. Why bother when you can drink in your garden (if you're lucky enough to have one)?
Personally, I think as long as the risk of corona is there, people will go out less and spend less money. And that is why encouraging people won't work as there want to protect themselves overrides any idea to spend money.
Additionally, I have certainly found I can save a lot of money by not doing things I don't really miss and I intend to continue that.
I really think we're in a giant mess.
Not only have I found I don’t need to spend money on so many things anymore, I am also shit-scared of losing my job. My household income is already down around 20%.
This is why I think the economy is screwed, people are not going to be going out in a hurry.
Several friends sent me vid clips from empty pubs. Which is good news for pandemic control, bad news for the pubs. Do people want to go to pubs as much? Drinking at home is so much cheaper
I'll have a look past my local on the run I'm about to go on to sweat out last night's booze.
The future for the lib dems depends on how long large sections of the electorate that vote for either outdated organized labour or a self serving elite who are only interested in feathering their and their friends nests. If there is to be a recovery it will come from the ground up and next years local elections will indicate if the party still has a core activist base.
Stop Brexit has already flown but once you take that out the paucity of ambition is painful. A penny for the NHS (again). 20k more teachers. Well, its a nice round number. Free childcare. They should ask the Scottish government how that works or doesn't. 80% of energy from renewables by 2030. Presumably all campaigns against windfarms etc are to be banned. A tax on frequent flyers. Seems a bit irrelevant right now.
It doesn't exactly set the pulse racing does it? Given the lack of interest I genuinely don't know if either of the candidates have come up with anything better.
I agree with those down thread that say that Green is a way for the Lib Dems to go. Some of their former policies already fit that theme and they could add things like rapid build out of electrical charging point infrastructure in city centres with an early target for the banning of diesel and petrol vehicles everywhere air quality targets are being threatened.
Fair points. The LDs backed the house on 'stop Brexit' and it didn't work. Now they need to come up with an attractive policy platform for mainstream issues, of the sort they had during the 1970s and 80s. The risk is that their young-ish membership might instead prefer batting on about fringe issues of identity.
I agreed with your suggestion down thread that there is a real opportunity to say something innovative and productive on our disastrous drug policies. This would get the Lib Dems spoken about too and give them some much needed attention.
Stop Brexit has already flown but once you take that out the paucity of ambition is painful. A penny for the NHS (again). 20k more teachers. Well, its a nice round number. Free childcare. They should ask the Scottish government how that works or doesn't. 80% of energy from renewables by 2030. Presumably all campaigns against windfarms etc are to be banned. A tax on frequent flyers. Seems a bit irrelevant right now.
It doesn't exactly set the pulse racing does it? Given the lack of interest I genuinely don't know if either of the candidates have come up with anything better.
I agree with those down thread that say that Green is a way for the Lib Dems to go. Some of their former policies already fit that theme and they could add things like rapid build out of electrical charging point infrastructure in city centres with an early target for the banning of diesel and petrol vehicles everywhere air quality targets are being threatened.
Legalisation of drugs is one policy the LibDems could go for.
The basic problem for the Lib Dems is that Davey and Moran shouldn't be in the same party. Moran is a raging identity politics lefty who seems like she would fit in with Corbynite Labour and Davey would be better making a stand in the Tory party and taking it back to Cameron politics.
People have realised that the party can't stand up to the rigours of government, they have too many internal contradictions and incompatible policies from both wings of the party.
Until the yellows decide to be one or the other wing they will be struggling to get to into the teens. Out of the EU, I'd vote for the Liberal party, I might even join it. I'd never join or vote for a political movement that people like @RochdalePioneers calls home. Therein lies the problem.
1. Davey has a track record on green energy and makes this a clre component of his pitch. Whilst I am sympathetic to the Green Party/movement there's too much tree-hugging hippy ban cars to save Gaia about them. Green is needed because there truly are major environmental problems to deal with, but it should also be a positive. Davey is talking up the economic opportunity for Green energy. We're a windy wet island who also gets the sun. We should be investing in technology which we can sell to the world. We can scale up pretty significantly things like domestic solar panels and local power generation. Make the green revolution pay and people will get interested. A hand up not a hair shirt.
2. The Rona has seen a significant generational shift in attitudes and practice which we haven't yet fully grasped. Tying into green economics the sizeable shift to WFH is a huge opportunity to restructure the economy, our lived environment, work-life balance etc etc. Similarly big is the shift away from me to us. Brexit was the last throw of the dice for Me politics. We talked a bit about Farage but his time is done and I think he knows it. Rona has forced people to look again at their community and their neighbours and ask how we together can look after each other. Not everyone is on board, but the shift is there, which means comments harping back to pre-Rona or pre-Brexit are hoping that we all go back to how things were with minimal changes. If we don't - and I don't think we will - these considerations become moot.
The current pandemic has been a shocker, and not just here, so I agree with Mr P's excellent post. I think it's one of those seismic events after which things will never be quite the same again. I know that, so far, it's only been three months, but I suggest that the events of last night indicate that people are being more cautious than might have been expected.
Having ceased to follow the corona numbers for a while I came across a table yesterday which ranked the nations of the world on deaths as a proportion of population (surely the best measure of relative performance).
We - the UK - are about as bad as we could possibly be. Only Belgium is worse. We have the worst outcome on the planet apart from Belgium. Germany is many many times better than us. We are worse than America or Brazil. Worse than India. Worse than "no lockdown" Sweden. Worse than (insert any country in any region).
If you knew nothing of the virus and were shown this data you would assume it had started in a market in Croydon not in Wuhan, China.
Stop Brexit has already flown but once you take that out the paucity of ambition is painful. A penny for the NHS (again). 20k more teachers. Well, its a nice round number. Free childcare. They should ask the Scottish government how that works or doesn't. 80% of energy from renewables by 2030. Presumably all campaigns against windfarms etc are to be banned. A tax on frequent flyers. Seems a bit irrelevant right now.
It doesn't exactly set the pulse racing does it? Given the lack of interest I genuinely don't know if either of the candidates have come up with anything better.
I agree with those down thread that say that Green is a way for the Lib Dems to go. Some of their former policies already fit that theme and they could add things like rapid build out of electrical charging point infrastructure in city centres with an early target for the banning of diesel and petrol vehicles everywhere air quality targets are being threatened.
Legalisation of drugs is one policy the LibDems could go for.
Yes, and it is also a policy that is liberal in the true sense, which Labour cannot steal, and which would restore the Lib Dems some credibility with students.
A lot of comments talking down LD prospects are assuming that Labour will track convincingly to the centre left. I'm not sure that is a given and if they don't then LDs on a an imaginative but reasonably pragmatic manifesto could do very well if the government become very unpopular. In any case they have to be distinct from Labour and attack both major parties IMO.
What's all this about Kayne West running as an independent in US?
Can he still get on the ballots?
Unlikely to have the machine to get on the ballot in all 50 states, Oklahoma is the hardest one to get on or used to be,
In theory someone could become president by just winning enough states with enough college votes and not even bother standing in any other states.
In practice though he's got no chance whatsoever and would only be wasting his time and money.
Sounds like a pipedream.
But in theory do we know happens in the US if there are 3 viable candidates running for POTUS (dem, rep, indy) and they end up with an EC split of say 45/30/25?
Might you have a deal made between two candidates to merge their tickets so they win the EC vote?
This is why I think the economy is screwed, people are not going to be going out in a hurry.
Several friends sent me vid clips from empty pubs. Which is good news for pandemic control, bad news for the pubs. Do people want to go to pubs as much? Drinking at home is so much cheaper
I'll have a look past my local on the run I'm about to go on to sweat out last night's booze.
Did 62k on the bike yesterday afternoon. Rode past various pubs - suburban, country, little village. A few were busy but spaced, several quiet, only one (main road in Darlington) looked stupid
Incidentally, I looked through that Epstein address book someone posted on here and was not that surprised to find that I knew personally a number of the people listed and even less surprised to find that I have investigated one, for alleged corruption of public officials.
Boring as it may seem I am rather more interested in how Epstein made - and kept - his money. He seems to have risen without trace.
The sorts of people who were friendly with Epstein are exactly the sorts of people you would *expect* to be friendly with him.
The odd thing is (going solely by his wikipedia entry) is that he lost huge amounts of money on numerous occasions. Perhaps his fortune was nowhere near what people thought it was.
One plausible explanation for Epstein's wealth is that he basically ran a tracker fund. His cronies would invest in Epstein's fund, so he'd rake off management fees and the investors would be richer as the market always went up.
Given that he and Maxwell procured a string of underage girls there are of course alternative possibilities?
The question was how Epstein made money. I cannot rule out that the reason the wealthy invested in Epstein's fund was sex, though in truth I suspect it was less about rubbing 17-year-olds and more about rubbing shoulders with the elite: royalty, presidents and billionaires.
But how did he get into the position of having a fund in the first place?
Stop Brexit has already flown but once you take that out the paucity of ambition is painful. A penny for the NHS (again). 20k more teachers. Well, its a nice round number. Free childcare. They should ask the Scottish government how that works or doesn't. 80% of energy from renewables by 2030. Presumably all campaigns against windfarms etc are to be banned. A tax on frequent flyers. Seems a bit irrelevant right now.
It doesn't exactly set the pulse racing does it? Given the lack of interest I genuinely don't know if either of the candidates have come up with anything better.
I agree with those down thread that say that Green is a way for the Lib Dems to go. Some of their former policies already fit that theme and they could add things like rapid build out of electrical charging point infrastructure in city centres with an early target for the banning of diesel and petrol vehicles everywhere air quality targets are being threatened.
Legalisation of drugs is one policy the LibDems could go for.
I believe legalising cannabis is already party policy, other drugs not yet.
The basic problem for the Lib Dems is that Davey and Moran shouldn't be in the same party. Moran is a raging identity politics lefty who seems like she would fit in with Corbynite Labour and Davey would be better making a stand in the Tory party and taking it back to Cameron politics.
People have realised that the party can't stand up to the rigours of government, they have too many internal contradictions and incompatible policies from both wings of the party.
Until the yellows decide to be one or the other wing they will be struggling to get to into the teens. Out of the EU, I'd vote for the Liberal party, I might even join it. I'd never join or vote for a political movement that people like @RochdalePioneers calls home. Therein lies the problem.
Stop Brexit has already flown but once you take that out the paucity of ambition is painful. A penny for the NHS (again). 20k more teachers. Well, its a nice round number. Free childcare. They should ask the Scottish government how that works or doesn't. 80% of energy from renewables by 2030. Presumably all campaigns against windfarms etc are to be banned. A tax on frequent flyers. Seems a bit irrelevant right now.
It doesn't exactly set the pulse racing does it? Given the lack of interest I genuinely don't know if either of the candidates have come up with anything better.
I agree with those down thread that say that Green is a way for the Lib Dems to go. Some of their former policies already fit that theme and they could add things like rapid build out of electrical charging point infrastructure in city centres with an early target for the banning of diesel and petrol vehicles everywhere air quality targets are being threatened.
Legalisation of drugs is one policy the LibDems could go for.
Yes, and it is also a policy that is liberal in the true sense, which Labour cannot steal, and which would restore the Lib Dems some credibility with students.
On topic, what do I want from the LibDems and why did I join? I've been on a political journey in recent years - voted for Corbyn as leader, voted for Brexit, realised the stupidity of crawling down that rabbit hole and started digging my way out - voted for Smith before finally quitting Labour in revulsion last year and then after a break joining the LibDems.
My sense and experience as a political activist is that most normals aren't ideological. They may often lean in one direction or another but not because of "left" or "right" but a sense of policy x will work for me and policy y won't. All the obsessive frothing from Labour and Tory members about shades of red and blue where having to fit into a moving box in the overton window of whatever version of "left" or "right" is currently orthodoxy simply doesn't apply to most normals.
What appealed last year was the sense that political tectonic plates were smashing apart. The LibDems recruited voters from old left and old right, and were competitive in seats held by both old parties. I'm comfortably centrist / third way / neo-Blairite at the moment, and policies that work appeals more than dogwhistle idolatry. Whats more many voters feel that way as well - Blair was literally hated for "right wing" law and order policies which were just normal to so many working class Labour voters. On the flip side the Tories seem quite happy to steal yellow clothes when it comes to things like the pupil premium and gay marriage.
So I'm voting for Ed Davey precisely because I think he can bridge across the party barriers. Him being a Secretary of State in the coalition is for me an advantage. Instead of sensible policies on energy market regulation being branded "marxist" by the Tories before largely being adopted, how about we drop the left/right labels and ask what we want from the energy market? Free broadband was absurdly ideological but we desperately need heavy investment in fast fibre - the state providing the infrastructure that private business can then buy access to (and sell to consumers) feels like a 21st century version of the Manchester Corporation building a hydraulic power network that businesses could plug into to make the city prosper. It isn't ideologically left or right, it just works.
Others will disagree of course. I don't care about narrow arguments about "policy x triangulates against position y" because its short term and stupid. You cant "tack to the left of Labour" as Moran proposes when "left" isn't a fixed point. Set out what you stand for, propose some policies, stand on your own turf.
Good post. And I think your blame Clegg idea entirely plausible.
This is why I think the economy is screwed, people are not going to be going out in a hurry.
Several friends sent me vid clips from empty pubs. Which is good news for pandemic control, bad news for the pubs. Do people want to go to pubs as much? Drinking at home is so much cheaper
Certainly what me and my friends have found. Why bother when you can drink in your garden (if you're lucky enough to have one)?
Personally, I think as long as the risk of corona is there, people will go out less and spend less money. And that is why encouraging people won't work as there want to protect themselves overrides any idea to spend money.
Additionally, I have certainly found I can save a lot of money by not doing things I don't really miss and I intend to continue that.
I really think we're in a giant mess.
Not only have I found I don’t need to spend money on so many things anymore, I am also shit-scared of losing my job. My household income is already down around 20%.
I am praying for a V-shape, but I can’t see it.
Some advanced data we've been seeing (backed up by the Bank a few weeks after I first posted about it) - the economy is bouncing back, order books are filling up, certain sectors are having to recall workers earlier than expected, non-hospitality services are growing again, and at a pretty fast rate, manufacturing is growing much faster than expected.
Businesses are waiting to see what the fall out of the 4th July opening is in terms of viral growth before committing more money to recalling employees. We should get a good sense of the latter by early next week, if there's no spike in infections then I expect another wave of employees being recalled and economic growth to pick up again.
The advanced data research team thinks we'll end up at -7% for the year without a vaccine and at -1% with a vaccine. I'm a bit more pessimistic but around that level.
The basic problem for the Lib Dems is that Davey and Moran shouldn't be in the same party. Moran is a raging identity politics lefty who seems like she would fit in with Corbynite Labour and Davey would be better making a stand in the Tory party and taking it back to Cameron politics.
People have realised that the party can't stand up to the rigours of government, they have too many internal contradictions and incompatible policies from both wings of the party.
Until the yellows decide to be one or the other wing they will be struggling to get to into the teens. Out of the EU, I'd vote for the Liberal party, I might even join it. I'd never join or vote for a political movement that people like @RochdalePioneers calls home. Therein lies the problem.
I would like the see the Lib Dems propose three new AONBs: Epping Forest/Lee Valley; Belvoir Vale/Nottinghamshire Wolds/Charnwood; and the Cambrian Mountains.
We need more countryside, and more accessibility to it.
Stop Brexit has already flown but once you take that out the paucity of ambition is painful. A penny for the NHS (again). 20k more teachers. Well, its a nice round number. Free childcare. They should ask the Scottish government how that works or doesn't. 80% of energy from renewables by 2030. Presumably all campaigns against windfarms etc are to be banned. A tax on frequent flyers. Seems a bit irrelevant right now.
It doesn't exactly set the pulse racing does it? Given the lack of interest I genuinely don't know if either of the candidates have come up with anything better.
I agree with those down thread that say that Green is a way for the Lib Dems to go. Some of their former policies already fit that theme and they could add things like rapid build out of electrical charging point infrastructure in city centres with an early target for the banning of diesel and petrol vehicles everywhere air quality targets are being threatened.
Fair points. The LDs backed the house on 'stop Brexit' and it didn't work. Now they need to come up with an attractive policy platform for mainstream issues, of the sort they had during the 1970s and 80s. The risk is that their young-ish membership might instead prefer batting on about fringe issues of identity.
I agreed with your suggestion down thread that there is a real opportunity to say something innovative and productive on our disastrous drug policies. This would get the Lib Dems spoken about too and give them some much needed attention.
Which points directly to the LibDems' biggest dilemma.
As a small party mostly untroubled by either likelihood or desire to be in government, but needing to get noticed, they are ideally positioned to champion new causes and ideas. Most of their members are more interested in ideas than power (most people of an opposite persuasion will join either Tory or Labour); why would you give up time and money to be active in the LibDems if you were prepared to compromise and take whatever Labour or the Tories offer?
Under PR there would be no difficulty in taking such a path and there are plenty of good role models in other countries.
Yet to get elected as a third party MP under our voting system means gathering together a disparate group of voters; natural liberals are spread evenly in insufficient numbers to win any seat and so our MPs have attracted votes from tactical voters and personal voters and voters impressed by the hard work of your team or local council. Once elected, commonly with a small majority, our MPs can tend to be exceptionally risk averse and certainly wary of upsetting a slice of their constituency by being too bold (within the party the fates of former MPs for Taunton and Oxford W are offered as examples of how to go wrong).
Thus the internal dynamic of the LibDems is a membership eager to make a distinctive and radical stance but a batch of elected representatives concerned to hang onto their seats, which isnt always a happy mix.
Incidentally, I looked through that Epstein address book someone posted on here and was not that surprised to find that I knew personally a number of the people listed and even less surprised to find that I have investigated one, for alleged corruption of public officials.
Boring as it may seem I am rather more interested in how Epstein made - and kept - his money. He seems to have risen without trace.
The sorts of people who were friendly with Epstein are exactly the sorts of people you would *expect* to be friendly with him.
The odd thing is (going solely by his wikipedia entry) is that he lost huge amounts of money on numerous occasions. Perhaps his fortune was nowhere near what people thought it was.
One plausible explanation for Epstein's wealth is that he basically ran a tracker fund. His cronies would invest in Epstein's fund, so he'd rake off management fees and the investors would be richer as the market always went up.
Given that he and Maxwell procured a string of underage girls there are of course alternative possibilities?
The question was how Epstein made money. I cannot rule out that the reason the wealthy invested in Epstein's fund was sex, though in truth I suspect it was less about rubbing 17-year-olds and more about rubbing shoulders with the elite: royalty, presidents and billionaires.
But how did he get into the position of having a fund in the first place?
Also the nats aren't going to want to hear it - Scotland is not bouncing back economically the data is showing a stabilisation at a low point rather than a bounce back in activity. Hopefully it's just temporary and it catches up to the rest of the country before all of the employment and business support schemes are ended.
What's all this about Kayne West running as an independent in US?
Can he still get on the ballots?
Unlikely to have the machine to get on the ballot in all 50 states, Oklahoma is the hardest one to get on or used to be,
In theory someone could become president by just winning enough states with enough college votes and not even bother standing in any other states.
In practice though he's got no chance whatsoever and would only be wasting his time and money.
Sounds like a pipedream.
But in theory do we know happens in the US if there are 3 viable candidates running for POTUS (dem, rep, indy) and they end up with an EC split of say 45/30/25?
Might you have a deal made between two candidates to merge their tickets so they win the EC vote?
That's what I'm wondering. You have to have a POTUS so how would it get sorted? Would it need a deal between 2 of the 3?
Stop Brexit has already flown but once you take that out the paucity of ambition is painful. A penny for the NHS (again). 20k more teachers. Well, its a nice round number. Free childcare. They should ask the Scottish government how that works or doesn't. 80% of energy from renewables by 2030. Presumably all campaigns against windfarms etc are to be banned. A tax on frequent flyers. Seems a bit irrelevant right now.
It doesn't exactly set the pulse racing does it? Given the lack of interest I genuinely don't know if either of the candidates have come up with anything better.
I agree with those down thread that say that Green is a way for the Lib Dems to go. Some of their former policies already fit that theme and they could add things like rapid build out of electrical charging point infrastructure in city centres with an early target for the banning of diesel and petrol vehicles everywhere air quality targets are being threatened.
Legalisation of drugs is one policy the LibDems could go for.
Yes, and it is also a policy that is liberal in the true sense, which Labour cannot steal, and which would restore the Lib Dems some credibility with students.
Not just students. Although not a user myself.
It needs to be carefully explained and introduced into a controlled environment. The benefits are huge from reducing organized crime to bringing addicts into safe environments. The tax revenue could be significant and the pull of doing something illegal is no longer the attraction.
On topic, what do I want from the LibDems and why did I join? I've been on a political journey in recent years - voted for Corbyn as leader, voted for Brexit, realised the stupidity of crawling down that rabbit hole and started digging my way out - voted for Smith before finally quitting Labour in revulsion last year and then after a break joining the LibDems.
My sense and experience as a political activist is that most normals aren't ideological. They may often lean in one direction or another but not because of "left" or "right" but a sense of policy x will work for me and policy y won't. All the obsessive frothing from Labour and Tory members about shades of red and blue where having to fit into a moving box in the overton window of whatever version of "left" or "right" is currently orthodoxy simply doesn't apply to most normals.
What appealed last year was the sense that political tectonic plates were smashing apart. The LibDems recruited voters from old left and old right, and were competitive in seats held by both old parties. I'm comfortably centrist / third way / neo-Blairite at the moment, and policies that work appeals more than dogwhistle idolatry. Whats more many voters feel that way as well - Blair was literally hated for "right wing" law and order policies which were just normal to so many working class Labour voters. On the flip side the Tories seem quite happy to steal yellow clothes when it comes to things like the pupil premium and gay marriage.
So I'm voting for Ed Davey precisely because I think he can bridge across the party barriers. Him being a Secretary of State in the coalition is for me an advantage. Instead of sensible policies on energy market regulation being branded "marxist" by the Tories before largely being adopted, how about we drop the left/right labels and ask what we want from the energy market? Free broadband was absurdly ideological but we desperately need heavy investment in fast fibre - the state providing the infrastructure that private business can then buy access to (and sell to consumers) feels like a 21st century version of the Manchester Corporation building a hydraulic power network that businesses could plug into to make the city prosper. It isn't ideologically left or right, it just works.
Others will disagree of course. I don't care about narrow arguments about "policy x triangulates against position y" because its short term and stupid. You cant "tack to the left of Labour" as Moran proposes when "left" isn't a fixed point. Set out what you stand for, propose some policies, stand on your own turf.
Er, I've lost track. Didn't you join the LibDems and then rejoin Labour? Why do you have a vote in the LibDem leadership? Have you rejoined them again?
Not a criticism, by the way, everyone's entitled to switch when they wish.
Stop Brexit has already flown but once you take that out the paucity of ambition is painful. A penny for the NHS (again). 20k more teachers. Well, its a nice round number. Free childcare. They should ask the Scottish government how that works or doesn't. 80% of energy from renewables by 2030. Presumably all campaigns against windfarms etc are to be banned. A tax on frequent flyers. Seems a bit irrelevant right now.
It doesn't exactly set the pulse racing does it? Given the lack of interest I genuinely don't know if either of the candidates have come up with anything better.
I agree with those down thread that say that Green is a way for the Lib Dems to go. Some of their former policies already fit that theme and they could add things like rapid build out of electrical charging point infrastructure in city centres with an early target for the banning of diesel and petrol vehicles everywhere air quality targets are being threatened.
"Presumably all campaigns against windfarms etc are to be banned."
No need for any more onshore wind. The massive array in the N Sea (like Hornsea) will provide masses of power. The new turbines are immense. We could be exporters of green energy in near future.
Yes, I was surprised that the BBC commentary thought this target was very ambitious. It seems to me that we may well be on track for it already. Very good for the balance of payments too.
The one blocker to more renewables is the storage/base load issue.
However, building the equivalent of Dinorwig using https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/megapack would be $2.7Bn. And falling each year. How much would Dinorwig cost to build now?
Stop Brexit has already flown but once you take that out the paucity of ambition is painful. A penny for the NHS (again). 20k more teachers. Well, its a nice round number. Free childcare. They should ask the Scottish government how that works or doesn't. 80% of energy from renewables by 2030. Presumably all campaigns against windfarms etc are to be banned. A tax on frequent flyers. Seems a bit irrelevant right now.
It doesn't exactly set the pulse racing does it? Given the lack of interest I genuinely don't know if either of the candidates have come up with anything better.
I agree with those down thread that say that Green is a way for the Lib Dems to go. Some of their former policies already fit that theme and they could add things like rapid build out of electrical charging point infrastructure in city centres with an early target for the banning of diesel and petrol vehicles everywhere air quality targets are being threatened.
Legalisation of drugs is one policy the LibDems could go for.
I believe legalising cannabis is already party policy, other drugs not yet.
Legalising them is an excellent liberal idea I would wholeheartedly support. I'd go as far as legalising cocaine too.
Which is not to say I support people taking it or think it's a good idea to take it - it's stupid. But if it's going to be sold better by legitimate businesses without quality control and licensing regulations and safeguarding regulations (and taxes) than gangsters with knives and guns.
For all her failures, Swinson did make pretty decent progress in a lot of South East seats, e.g. Winchester, where the Lib Dems aren't that far behind the Tories.
Will these voters still be angry next time and vote Lib Dem again? I note in Winchester the Labour vote was what prevented a Lib Dem victory there
Labour got its lowest ever vote in Winchester and lost its deposit.
What's all this about Kayne West running as an independent in US?
Can he still get on the ballots?
Unlikely to have the machine to get on the ballot in all 50 states, Oklahoma is the hardest one to get on or used to be,
In theory someone could become president by just winning enough states with enough college votes and not even bother standing in any other states.
In practice though he's got no chance whatsoever and would only be wasting his time and money.
Sounds like a pipedream.
But in theory do we know happens in the US if there are 3 viable candidates running for POTUS (dem, rep, indy) and they end up with an EC split of say 45/30/25?
Might you have a deal made between two candidates to merge their tickets so they win the EC vote?
That's what I'm wondering. You have to have a POTUS so how would it get sorted? Would it need a deal between 2 of the 3?
In principle you might be able to have an EC deal, though some state laws now require EC voters to vote in accordance with the state's popular vote* so that might prevent one. There's a Supreme Court case coming up on whether those laws are constitutional as it happens. If you couldn't do this and no candidate gets to 270 votes then the House of Reps chooses between anyone who got any EC votes (i.e. Trump wins).
*(Not to be confused with the Interstate Compact whereby some states have passed laws saying that, if a majority of EC votes are in states which sign up, then they will order EC voters to support the national popular vote winner)
What's all this about Kayne West running as an independent in US?
Can he still get on the ballots?
Unlikely to have the machine to get on the ballot in all 50 states, Oklahoma is the hardest one to get on or used to be,
In theory someone could become president by just winning enough states with enough college votes and not even bother standing in any other states.
In practice though he's got no chance whatsoever and would only be wasting his time and money.
Sounds like a pipedream.
But in theory do we know happens in the US if there are 3 viable candidates running for POTUS (dem, rep, indy) and they end up with an EC split of say 45/30/25?
House of representatives votes on the president, the senate on the vice president.
As State blocs not as individual Representatives though which matters. Currently the Democrats have more Representatives but the GOP have more States.
The basic problem for the Lib Dems is that Davey and Moran shouldn't be in the same party. Moran is a raging identity politics lefty who seems like she would fit in with Corbynite Labour and Davey would be better making a stand in the Tory party and taking it back to Cameron politics.
People have realised that the party can't stand up to the rigours of government, they have too many internal contradictions and incompatible policies from both wings of the party.
Until the yellows decide to be one or the other wing they will be struggling to get to into the teens. Out of the EU, I'd vote for the Liberal party, I might even join it. I'd never join or vote for a political movement that people like @RochdalePioneers calls home. Therein lies the problem.
Yet in 1997 the LDs won 46 seats on just 16% of the vote as it could win seats in the South from the Tories Labour could not at a time the mood was to change the Government from the Tories.
The basic problem for the Lib Dems is that Davey and Moran shouldn't be in the same party. Moran is a raging identity politics lefty who seems like she would fit in with Corbynite Labour and Davey would be better making a stand in the Tory party and taking it back to Cameron politics.
People have realised that the party can't stand up to the rigours of government, they have too many internal contradictions and incompatible policies from both wings of the party.
Until the yellows decide to be one or the other wing they will be struggling to get to into the teens. Out of the EU, I'd vote for the Liberal party, I might even join it. I'd never join or vote for a political movement that people like @RochdalePioneers calls home. Therein lies the problem.
Yet in 1997 the LDs won 46 seats on just 16% of the vote as it could win seats in the South from the Tories Labour could not at a time the mood was to change the Government from the Tories.
The same could happen next time
Massive tactical voting in that election + unofficial pact between Ashdown and Blair.
Davey + Starmer would be wise to consider such a thing again
Seems Panelbase have cornered the market in Scotch polling.
....and its irrelevant because there isn't going to be a poll that the sainted Nicola doesn't really want .. Agitate for it but have it.. naaah...
Well, no one cares what you think, but I look forward to your overlords carrying one with that same line.
'Curtice said: “Never before have the foundations of public support for the Union looked so weak. Unsurprisingly, for many nationalists, the past three months have exemplified how Scotland could govern itself better as an independent, small country. More importantly, it may have persuaded some former unionists of the merits of that claim, too.”
There is increasing gloom among senior unionist politicians in Conservative and Labour ranks in Scotland that independence is inevitable.'
It does look that way. It's very sad. As a Unionist resident in Edinburgh I'm not sure how I can convince people not to want to be Independent. Identities, once formed, are hard to change.
Looking back, the 2015 GE campaign looks crucial. The Conservatives in England made the choice to trade Scotland in return for political advantage in England, by arguing that a Labour government with support from SNP MPs would be something to fear.
They learnt the lesson that bashing Scotland was to their advantage in England, and they haven't looked back.
Yes but as the Tories will block indyref2 and Sturgeon has said she will not declare UDI, unless and until Labour form another UK government there will be no second independence referendum and need to campaign for the Union
For all her failures, Swinson did make pretty decent progress in a lot of South East seats, e.g. Winchester, where the Lib Dems aren't that far behind the Tories.
Will these voters still be angry next time and vote Lib Dem again? I note in Winchester the Labour vote was what prevented a Lib Dem victory there
Labour got its lowest ever vote in Winchester and lost its deposit.
Incidentally, I looked through that Epstein address book someone posted on here and was not that surprised to find that I knew personally a number of the people listed and even less surprised to find that I have investigated one, for alleged corruption of public officials.
Boring as it may seem I am rather more interested in how Epstein made - and kept - his money. He seems to have risen without trace.
The sorts of people who were friendly with Epstein are exactly the sorts of people you would *expect* to be friendly with him.
The odd thing is (going solely by his wikipedia entry) is that he lost huge amounts of money on numerous occasions. Perhaps his fortune was nowhere near what people thought it was.
One plausible explanation for Epstein's wealth is that he basically ran a tracker fund. His cronies would invest in Epstein's fund, so he'd rake off management fees and the investors would be richer as the market always went up.
Given that he and Maxwell procured a string of underage girls there are of course alternative possibilities?
The question was how Epstein made money. I cannot rule out that the reason the wealthy invested in Epstein's fund was sex, though in truth I suspect it was less about rubbing 17-year-olds and more about rubbing shoulders with the elite: royalty, presidents and billionaires.
But how did he get into the position of having a fund in the first place?
Epstein got into trading at the very start of the mathematical pricing revolution - this was when https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black–Scholes_model was a revelation.
My guess as to what happened is this -
He was mathematically bright to a certain extent. So in the early days of this he prospered. Quite rapidly, the market moved as all traders adopted the new ideas. So to keep up, the maths got more intense. At some point his trading strategies stopped working. And he couldn't keep up.
So he got in to regulatory trouble and had to leave the company he was working for (Bear Sterns).
He then used his reputation as a trader, maths wizz etc to start a consultancy, and worked/schmoozed the rich investor circuit to try and get enough investment to start his own fund. Which he did, eventually.
Running a feeder fund makes sense - he didn't have to do much.
And it explains the criminal aspect - His payoff was the money he was charging in fees for investing in other hedge funds. Instead of just blackmailing people, he could just "encourage" them to use his fund.
I think the only advantage that the LDs have next time for sure us they won't be hobbled by egotists like Chukka Umuna and Sam Gyimah taking over the airwaves and turning people off with their blatant treachery to their former parties.
This is why I think the economy is screwed, people are not going to be going out in a hurry.
Several friends sent me vid clips from empty pubs. Which is good news for pandemic control, bad news for the pubs. Do people want to go to pubs as much? Drinking at home is so much cheaper
Certainly what me and my friends have found. Why bother when you can drink in your garden (if you're lucky enough to have one)?
Personally, I think as long as the risk of corona is there, people will go out less and spend less money. And that is why encouraging people won't work as there want to protect themselves overrides any idea to spend money.
Additionally, I have certainly found I can save a lot of money by not doing things I don't really miss and I intend to continue that.
I really think we're in a giant mess.
Not only have I found I don’t need to spend money on so many things anymore, I am also shit-scared of losing my job. My household income is already down around 20%.
I am praying for a V-shape, but I can’t see it.
Some advanced data we've been seeing (backed up by the Bank a few weeks after I first posted about it) - the economy is bouncing back, order books are filling up, certain sectors are having to recall workers earlier than expected, non-hospitality services are growing again, and at a pretty fast rate, manufacturing is growing much faster than expected.
Businesses are waiting to see what the fall out of the 4th July opening is in terms of viral growth before committing more money to recalling employees. We should get a good sense of the latter by early next week, if there's no spike in infections then I expect another wave of employees being recalled and economic growth to pick up again.
The advanced data research team thinks we'll end up at -7% for the year without a vaccine and at -1% with a vaccine. I'm a bit more pessimistic but around that level.
An interesting factor is the behaviour of companies in the supply chains.
Many have furloughed nearly all the staff. On building supplier is trying to run its operations with a couple of secretaries, while orders are piling up.
This causes me to wonder - how many businesses will go under because of this kind of stupidity?
Alternatively, will we suddenly find the productivity gap closing in the UK?
The basic problem for the Lib Dems is that Davey and Moran shouldn't be in the same party. Moran is a raging identity politics lefty who seems like she would fit in with Corbynite Labour and Davey would be better making a stand in the Tory party and taking it back to Cameron politics.
People have realised that the party can't stand up to the rigours of government, they have too many internal contradictions and incompatible policies from both wings of the party.
Until the yellows decide to be one or the other wing they will be struggling to get to into the teens. Out of the EU, I'd vote for the Liberal party, I might even join it. I'd never join or vote for a political movement that people like @RochdalePioneers calls home. Therein lies the problem.
All political parties above a certain size have to be a coalition of different ideas - because there are so many different ideas. This is true of the Conservatives and Labour, probably to a greater extent than the Lib Dems. It isn't at all surprising that at either extreme (on a left-right axis) that the Lib Dems will overlap with the two other parties.
What parties need to have is a minimal set of common ideas that they agree on which sets them apart from the other parties. For Labour I would argue that it is the basic idea that the free market sees the strong prey on the weak, and the weak can use the power of the state to protect them. For the Tories it's a bit trickier for me to come up with what this unifying idea is, because I am so used to being critical of them. Perhaps it is that only individuals can help themselves, because only individuals know what help they want, and so the state should stay out of the way as much as possible.
This sets up a fairly clear divide. On the one hand Labour will always argue that "something must be done", while Tories will instinctively argue that "if we do something it will make things worse".
I'm not sure where the Lib Dems fit in to this. People will always wonder whose side they are on. They need to be able to define a third side, in opposition to the two that I have identified, but I don't see the space for one. Maybe, through the process of writing this comment I've come to realise that I agree with the one I was replying to.
Stop Brexit has already flown but once you take that out the paucity of ambition is painful. A penny for the NHS (again). 20k more teachers. Well, its a nice round number. Free childcare. They should ask the Scottish government how that works or doesn't. 80% of energy from renewables by 2030. Presumably all campaigns against windfarms etc are to be banned. A tax on frequent flyers. Seems a bit irrelevant right now.
It doesn't exactly set the pulse racing does it? Given the lack of interest I genuinely don't know if either of the candidates have come up with anything better.
I agree with those down thread that say that Green is a way for the Lib Dems to go. Some of their former policies already fit that theme and they could add things like rapid build out of electrical charging point infrastructure in city centres with an early target for the banning of diesel and petrol vehicles everywhere air quality targets are being threatened.
Legalisation of drugs is one policy the LibDems could go for.
I believe legalising cannabis is already party policy, other drugs not yet.
Legalising them is an excellent liberal idea I would wholeheartedly support. I'd go as far as legalising cocaine too.
Which is not to say I support people taking it or think it's a good idea to take it - it's stupid. But if it's going to be sold better by legitimate businesses without quality control and licensing regulations and safeguarding regulations (and taxes) than gangsters with knives and guns.
The important thing to to legalise, control and regulate the entire supply chain. From the farming to the user.
This is why I think the economy is screwed, people are not going to be going out in a hurry.
Several friends sent me vid clips from empty pubs. Which is good news for pandemic control, bad news for the pubs. Do people want to go to pubs as much? Drinking at home is so much cheaper
Certainly what me and my friends have found. Why bother when you can drink in your garden (if you're lucky enough to have one)?
Personally, I think as long as the risk of corona is there, people will go out less and spend less money. And that is why encouraging people won't work as there want to protect themselves overrides any idea to spend money.
Additionally, I have certainly found I can save a lot of money by not doing things I don't really miss and I intend to continue that.
I really think we're in a giant mess.
Not only have I found I don’t need to spend money on so many things anymore, I am also shit-scared of losing my job. My household income is already down around 20%.
I am praying for a V-shape, but I can’t see it.
Some advanced data we've been seeing (backed up by the Bank a few weeks after I first posted about it) - the economy is bouncing back, order books are filling up, certain sectors are having to recall workers earlier than expected, non-hospitality services are growing again, and at a pretty fast rate, manufacturing is growing much faster than expected.
Businesses are waiting to see what the fall out of the 4th July opening is in terms of viral growth before committing more money to recalling employees. We should get a good sense of the latter by early next week, if there's no spike in infections then I expect another wave of employees being recalled and economic growth to pick up again.
The advanced data research team thinks we'll end up at -7% for the year without a vaccine and at -1% with a vaccine. I'm a bit more pessimistic but around that level.
An interesting factor is the behaviour of companies in the supply chains.
Many have furloughed nearly all the staff. On building supplier is trying to run its operations with a couple of secretaries, while orders are piling up.
This causes me to wonder - how many businesses will go under because of this kind of stupidity?
Alternatively, will we suddenly find the productivity gap closing in the UK?
Any middle manager still on furlough should be seriously worried.
Comments
What's all this about Kayne West running as an independent in US?
Can he still get on the ballots?
Strong on defence
Ah, so austerity is back. No surprise there then.
LDs only do well when the Tory vote is going down.
In theory someone could become president by just winning enough states with enough college votes and not even bother standing in any other states.
In practice though he's got no chance whatsoever and would only be wasting his time and money.
The left and centre in British politics dont make things easy for themselves!
If the Lib Dems want the same things as the government then good for them. More for us to work with together in the future if it becomes necessary to work together again after the next election once Brexit has faded into history.
Stop Brexit has already flown but once you take that out the paucity of ambition is painful. A penny for the NHS (again). 20k more teachers. Well, its a nice round number. Free childcare. They should ask the Scottish government how that works or doesn't. 80% of energy from renewables by 2030. Presumably all campaigns against windfarms etc are to be banned. A tax on frequent flyers. Seems a bit irrelevant right now.
It doesn't exactly set the pulse racing does it? Given the lack of interest I genuinely don't know if either of the candidates have come up with anything better.
I agree with those down thread that say that Green is a way for the Lib Dems to go. Some of their former policies already fit that theme and they could add things like rapid build out of electrical charging point infrastructure in city centres with an early target for the banning of diesel and petrol vehicles everywhere air quality targets are being threatened.
Plus it's likely the dynamic wouldn't have changed nearly as much if Corbyn was still Labour leader, and there was no way he was going before an election.
He got part of the equation right as the working people of the UK did deliver the keys of number 10 to someone they saw as a working class hero, but his name wasn't Jeremy.
I must confess I was wrong on this, as I was on here predicting drunken carnage.
1. Davey has a track record on green energy and makes this a clre component of his pitch. Whilst I am sympathetic to the Green Party/movement there's too much tree-hugging hippy ban cars to save Gaia about them. Green is needed because there truly are major environmental problems to deal with, but it should also be a positive. Davey is talking up the economic opportunity for Green energy. We're a windy wet island who also gets the sun. We should be investing in technology which we can sell to the world. We can scale up pretty significantly things like domestic solar panels and local power generation. Make the green revolution pay and people will get interested. A hand up not a hair shirt.
2. The Rona has seen a significant generational shift in attitudes and practice which we haven't yet fully grasped. Tying into green economics the sizeable shift to WFH is a huge opportunity to restructure the economy, our lived environment, work-life balance etc etc. Similarly big is the shift away from me to us. Brexit was the last throw of the dice for Me politics. We talked a bit about Farage but his time is done and I think he knows it. Rona has forced people to look again at their community and their neighbours and ask how we together can look after each other. Not everyone is on board, but the shift is there, which means comments harping back to pre-Rona or pre-Brexit are hoping that we all go back to how things were with minimal changes. If we don't - and I don't think we will - these considerations become moot.
No need for any more onshore wind. The massive array in the N Sea (like Hornsea) will provide masses of power. The new turbines are immense. We could be exporters of green energy in near future.
This is why I think the economy is screwed, people are not going to be going out in a hurry.
But in theory do we know happens in the US if there are 3 viable candidates running for POTUS (dem, rep, indy) and they end up with an EC split of say 45/30/25?
https://www.ft.com/content/a22d4215-0619-4ad2-9054-3a0765f64620
All of these polices will be mainstream thinking within 10 years. If the Lib Dems don’t plant their flag on them, Labour or the Greens will.
Oh, and a thousand times, Ed Davey needs to renounce tuition fees and blame the wicked traitor Clegg for his “Clause 4” moment. Clegg’s reputation is now utterly toileted due to his work with Facebook.
Personally, I think as long as the risk of corona is there, people will go out less and spend less money. And that is why encouraging people won't work as there want to protect themselves overrides any idea to spend money.
Additionally, I have certainly found I can save a lot of money by not doing things I don't really miss and I intend to continue that.
I really think we're in a giant mess.
"I was raised in Blythe - but I was born in the Royal Navy".
Will these voters still be angry next time and vote Lib Dem again? I note in Winchester the Labour vote was what prevented a Lib Dem victory there
Labour should - as some says upthread - attack these alleged Tory “strengths”.
Looking back, the 2015 GE campaign looks crucial. The Conservatives in England made the choice to trade Scotland in return for political advantage in England, by arguing that a Labour government with support from SNP MPs would be something to fear.
They learnt the lesson that bashing Scotland was to their advantage in England, and they haven't looked back.
I am praying for a V-shape, but I can’t see it.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-05/labor-kristy-mcbain-claims-eden-monaro-nsw-by-election-win/12423210
If there is to be a recovery it will come from the ground up and next years local elections will indicate if the party still has a core activist base.
A thousand people is a lot in the confined streets of Soho. It is a drop in the ocean nationwide.
I don't know whether lots of pubs and restaurants were busy last night. I suspect reasonably. But the consensus view was that they would remain quiet.
People have realised that the party can't stand up to the rigours of government, they have too many internal contradictions and incompatible policies from both wings of the party.
Until the yellows decide to be one or the other wing they will be struggling to get to into the teens. Out of the EU, I'd vote for the Liberal party, I might even join it. I'd never join or vote for a political movement that people like @RochdalePioneers calls home. Therein lies the problem.
We - the UK - are about as bad as we could possibly be. Only Belgium is worse. We have the worst outcome on the planet apart from Belgium. Germany is many many times better than us. We are worse than America or Brazil. Worse than India. Worse than "no lockdown" Sweden. Worse than (insert any country in any region).
If you knew nothing of the virus and were shown this data you would assume it had started in a market in Croydon not in Wuhan, China.
And I think your blame Clegg idea entirely plausible.
Businesses are waiting to see what the fall out of the 4th July opening is in terms of viral growth before committing more money to recalling employees. We should get a good sense of the latter by early next week, if there's no spike in infections then I expect another wave of employees being recalled and economic growth to pick up again.
The advanced data research team thinks we'll end up at -7% for the year without a vaccine and at -1% with a vaccine. I'm a bit more pessimistic but around that level.
Good news because I want him to be still quite fancied by the time his EC spreads go up for me to sell. I plan a killing.
We need more countryside, and more accessibility to it.
He doesn't believe in gestures
As a small party mostly untroubled by either likelihood or desire to be in government, but needing to get noticed, they are ideally positioned to champion new causes and ideas. Most of their members are more interested in ideas than power (most people of an opposite persuasion will join either Tory or Labour); why would you give up time and money to be active in the LibDems if you were prepared to compromise and take whatever Labour or the Tories offer?
Under PR there would be no difficulty in taking such a path and there are plenty of good role models in other countries.
Yet to get elected as a third party MP under our voting system means gathering together a disparate group of voters; natural liberals are spread evenly in insufficient numbers to win any seat and so our MPs have attracted votes from tactical voters and personal voters and voters impressed by the hard work of your team or local council. Once elected, commonly with a small majority, our MPs can tend to be exceptionally risk averse and certainly wary of upsetting a slice of their constituency by being too bold (within the party the fates of former MPs for Taunton and Oxford W are offered as examples of how to go wrong).
Thus the internal dynamic of the LibDems is a membership eager to make a distinctive and radical stance but a batch of elected representatives concerned to hang onto their seats, which isnt always a happy mix.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein#Banking
Not a criticism, by the way, everyone's entitled to switch when they wish.
and the first reply is...
https://twitter.com/YvesAdams/status/1279685355013373952
The usual issues will prevent building another - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station
However, building the equivalent of Dinorwig using https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/megapack would be $2.7Bn. And falling each year. How much would Dinorwig cost to build now?
Which is not to say I support people taking it or think it's a good idea to take it - it's stupid. But if it's going to be sold better by legitimate businesses without quality control and licensing regulations and safeguarding regulations (and taxes) than gangsters with knives and guns.
You can't expect them to fall lower than that.
*(Not to be confused with the Interstate Compact whereby some states have passed laws saying that, if a majority of EC votes are in states which sign up, then they will order EC voters to support the national popular vote winner)
A dangerous combination.
Have to say, if this is the result now and Brexit mess is still to come, I can see this achieving over 60% support
The same could happen next time
Davey + Starmer would be wise to consider such a thing again
My guess as to what happened is this -
He was mathematically bright to a certain extent. So in the early days of this he prospered. Quite rapidly, the market moved as all traders adopted the new ideas. So to keep up, the maths got more intense. At some point his trading strategies stopped working. And he couldn't keep up.
So he got in to regulatory trouble and had to leave the company he was working for (Bear Sterns).
He then used his reputation as a trader, maths wizz etc to start a consultancy, and worked/schmoozed the rich investor circuit to try and get enough investment to start his own fund. Which he did, eventually.
Running a feeder fund makes sense - he didn't have to do much.
And it explains the criminal aspect - His payoff was the money he was charging in fees for investing in other hedge funds. Instead of just blackmailing people, he could just "encourage" them to use his fund.
Many have furloughed nearly all the staff. On building supplier is trying to run its operations with a couple of secretaries, while orders are piling up.
This causes me to wonder - how many businesses will go under because of this kind of stupidity?
Alternatively, will we suddenly find the productivity gap closing in the UK?
What parties need to have is a minimal set of common ideas that they agree on which sets them apart from the other parties. For Labour I would argue that it is the basic idea that the free market sees the strong prey on the weak, and the weak can use the power of the state to protect them. For the Tories it's a bit trickier for me to come up with what this unifying idea is, because I am so used to being critical of them. Perhaps it is that only individuals can help themselves, because only individuals know what help they want, and so the state should stay out of the way as much as possible.
This sets up a fairly clear divide. On the one hand Labour will always argue that "something must be done", while Tories will instinctively argue that "if we do something it will make things worse".
I'm not sure where the Lib Dems fit in to this. People will always wonder whose side they are on. They need to be able to define a third side, in opposition to the two that I have identified, but I don't see the space for one. Maybe, through the process of writing this comment I've come to realise that I agree with the one I was replying to.