Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
With hindsight, the coalition was a massive political mistake by Clegg. He should have screwed the Tories with a one year confidence and supply agreement and then forced an election when it suited the Lib Dems. They chose office over power.
It may have been a political mistake, but it actually made for good government. Probably the best in my lifetime IMO. I would like to see more broad based coalitions -although the caveat being that allowing the hate filled SNP in would definitely be a mistake. Johnson's government is the antithesis of a coalition. It is a rabble of the narrowminded and lightweight. It is an example of the limitations and risks of FPTP
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
With hindsight, the coalition was a massive political mistake by Clegg. He should have screwed the Tories with a one year confidence and supply agreement and then forced an election when it suited the Lib Dems. They chose office over power.
For those of us not of the Conservative faith we need a resurgent LD Party.
I find it remarkable that during a six month period of Laurel and Hardy style incompetence the Conservative vote has remained so resilient and robust. Starmer's Labour are almost at their ceiling, and the Conservatives still remain a point or two ahead, so where are the LDs to drop that Tory vote down to the mid 30s when we need them?
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I disagree with this. It was not because the LDs formed a government with the Conservatives that led to their collapse. It was that they caputilated to the Tories and signed on the dotted line in under a week.
They ended up being light blues and the Ministers and MPs were actively supporting the Conservative policies. Once they started acting like Tories, they lost most of their support from the centre and centre left.
That one week undid thirty years of steady progress. Thirty years to finally get a shot at negotiating a proper coalition agreement, and they roll over in a few days.
LOL. QED.
They emerged from a 30-yr fantasy cocoon and were given a shot at power which they grasped. And of course, as junior members of a coalition they got turned over on occasion. But they also contributed a lot that they wouldn't have been able to had they stayed pure and out of government.
Your post reads a lot like those from the Corbynistas.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I disagree with this. It was not because the LDs formed a government with the Conservatives that led to their collapse. It was that they caputilated to the Tories and signed on the dotted line in under a week.
They ended up being light blues and the Ministers and MPs were actively supporting the Conservative policies. Once they started acting like Tories, they lost most of their support from the centre and centre left.
That one week undid thirty years of steady progress. Thirty years to finally get a shot at negotiating a proper coalition agreement, and they roll over in a few days.
There was a national crisis at that time, but yes, they should have taken longer, and made a big mistake on not getting a better deal on electoral reform.
This is fun. Fish frier, funeral director, secret agent for national security, cake decorator, head chef and beauty consultant are amongst my suggested alternative careers. Which to choose?
The only option I was suggested that I might consider would be waiter, which is a job I have done in the past and quite enjoyed. Although the pay doesn't look like it's picked up that much from when I did it for £1.50 an hour...
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
With hindsight, the coalition was a massive political mistake by Clegg. He should have screwed the Tories with a one year confidence and supply agreement and then forced an election when it suited the Lib Dems. They chose office over power.
It may have been a political mistake, but it actually made for good government. Probably the best in my lifetime IMO. I would like to see more broad based coalitions -although the caveat being that allowing the hate filled SNP in would definitely be a mistake. Johnson's government is the antithesis of a coalition. It is a rabble of the narrowminded and lightweight. It is an example of the limitations and risks of FPTP
Totally agreed. The Coalition was an excellent period of government. The fact that the greatest political storm of that era was a dispute about VAT on pasties speaks volumes.
This is fun. Fish frier, funeral director, secret agent for national security, cake decorator, head chef and beauty consultant are amongst my suggested alternative careers. Which to choose?
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
With hindsight, the coalition was a massive political mistake by Clegg. He should have screwed the Tories with a one year confidence and supply agreement and then forced an election when it suited the Lib Dems. They chose office over power.
An election at whatever time would likely not have delivered a majority to the LDs. They had a chance, they took it. And they did contribute a lot.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
Sir Ed has been pretty well invisible. Reading your post, I momentarily forgot about him, thinking what has (PBs own) Mr Ed got to do with the LDs?
Amazing the lack of commentary on the economy today.
With the rebound faltering way short of a v shape, and debt soaring, Rishi Sunak is going to borrow billions to make a major part of the UK economy unproductive.
Goodness knows what follows now. The greatest policy error by any British government ever. A complete and utter failure.
They are doubling down on it now because to admit that error is just going to be too grave a move. The catastrophe is too big now. Only bankruptcy will stop them, I think.
Still, that's a step closer today.
And yet the public support lockdowns by a big majority suggesting they see health before wealth
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I disagree with this. It was not because the LDs formed a government with the Conservatives that led to their collapse. It was that they caputilated to the Tories and signed on the dotted line in under a week.
They ended up being light blues and the Ministers and MPs were actively supporting the Conservative policies. Once they started acting like Tories, they lost most of their support from the centre and centre left.
That one week undid thirty years of steady progress. Thirty years to finally get a shot at negotiating a proper coalition agreement, and they roll over in a few days.
LOL. QED.
They emerged from a 30-yr fantasy cocoon and were given a shot at power which they grasped. And of course, as junior members of a coalition they got turned over on occasion. But they also contributed a lot that they wouldn't have been able to had they stayed pure and out of government.
Your post reads a lot like those from the Corbynistas.
They were leading in the polls just a few weeks previously and people were talking about Clegg as PM. The power play would not have been to sign up to being a junior coalition partner but to exploit the hung parliament and aim to win a majority. With more ruthless leadership and better strategy, there could have been a Lib Dem PM in 2012.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
Given that literally everyone I know with children at university has a tale of their children, their childrens' flatmates/housemates, or bubble mates testing positive I am not at all surprised at the stats.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
Unfortunately it looks like last week's ONS infection survey was below reality due to statistical noise. The figures this week are a big disappointment.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
I keep harping back to this argument. Labour are in opposition (they are called HM's Opposition) and they are four years out from a GE. They don't need a plan, their job is to oppose. That is what it says on the tin!
This laughable assertion that we are in our current predicament because Starmer has not produced a Covid-19 response plan, would be 24 carat gold comedy, were the pandemic not so serious.
Amazing the lack of commentary on the economy today.
With the rebound faltering way short of a v shape, and debt soaring, Rishi Sunak is going to borrow billions to make a major part of the UK economy unproductive.
Goodness knows what follows now. The greatest policy error by any British government ever. A complete and utter failure.
They are doubling down on it now because to admit that error is just going to be too grave a move. The catastrophe is too big now. Only bankruptcy will stop them, I think.
Still, that's a step closer today.
And yet the public support lockdowns by a big majority suggesting they see health before wealth
They will soon find out that wealth = health
Poverty = disease, misery, social breakdown and early death.
Looks like they will have to find out the hard way.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
With hindsight, the coalition was a massive political mistake by Clegg. He should have screwed the Tories with a one year confidence and supply agreement and then forced an election when it suited the Lib Dems. They chose office over power.
An election at whatever time would likely not have delivered a majority to the LDs. They had a chance, they took it. And they did contribute a lot.
They took a chance and sold their supporters down the river. Why should they ever be trusted again?
They committed to abolishing tuition fees and trebled them instead. The consequences were inevitable, why on earth they agreed to that is a question for the ages. They should have made that the reddest of red lines but the simple fact is they were pandering to students but didn't really care about them - they did care about electoral reform so made that their priority instead.
The mask came off the LDs and they showed their true colours.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
I think in the scheme of things, the excessive time they spent not opposing will not count against them. SKS is surely playing the long game. GE in 2024 means he must build and he has spent the past few months building a non-Corbyn, responsible national politician structure around himself.
If he chooses now to go on the attack it is about the right time give or take a week or two.
Given that literally everyone I know with children at university has a tale of their children, their childrens' flatmates/housemates, or bubble mates testing positive I am not at all surprised at the stats.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
The great fear, of course, is that it starts to spread more rapidly from the student incubators into the general population and the death rate starts to rocket. All efforts need to be devoted into stopping this from happening.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
No, the issue is that Labour have been saying nothing. The comparison to the 26 point lead is complete rubbish, it was never a real benchmark, just a rally round the flag effect of heading into a crisis. You're a Labour member, please outline Labour's alternative policy base vs what the government have been offering.
Amazing the lack of commentary on the economy today.
With the rebound faltering way short of a v shape, and debt soaring, Rishi Sunak is going to borrow billions to make a major part of the UK economy unproductive.
Goodness knows what follows now. The greatest policy error by any British government ever. A complete and utter failure.
They are doubling down on it now because to admit that error is just going to be too grave a move. The catastrophe is too big now. Only bankruptcy will stop them, I think.
Still, that's a step closer today.
And yet the public support lockdowns by a big majority suggesting they see health before wealth
They will soon find out that wealth = health
Poverty = disease, misery, social breakdown and early death.
Looks like they will have to find out the hard way.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
With hindsight, the coalition was a massive political mistake by Clegg. He should have screwed the Tories with a one year confidence and supply agreement and then forced an election when it suited the Lib Dems. They chose office over power.
An election at whatever time would likely not have delivered a majority to the LDs. They had a chance, they took it. And they did contribute a lot.
They took a chance and sold their supporters down the river. Why should they ever be trusted again?
They committed to abolishing tuition fees and trebled them instead. The consequences were inevitable, why on earth they agreed to that is a question for the ages. They should have made that the reddest of red lines but the simple fact is they were pandering to students but didn't really care about them - they did care about electoral reform so made that their priority instead.
The mask came off the LDs and they showed their true colours.
That's ridiculous hyperbole. The simple fact is that the influence of a junior coalition partner is very limited and compromises have to be made. Any rational thinker understands this.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
With hindsight, the coalition was a massive political mistake by Clegg. He should have screwed the Tories with a one year confidence and supply agreement and then forced an election when it suited the Lib Dems. They chose office over power.
An election at whatever time would likely not have delivered a majority to the LDs. They had a chance, they took it. And they did contribute a lot.
If not a majority, it would have put them in a much stronger position to negotiate a true coalition, either with a chastened Labour or a weakened Conservative Party.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
I think in the scheme of things, the excessive time they spent not opposing will not count against them. SKS is surely playing the long game. GE in 2024 means he must build and he has spent the past few months building a non-Corbyn, responsible national politician structure around himself.
If he chooses now to go on the attack it is about the right time give or take a week or two.
He can go on the attack now, yes but he has no Labour ideas to point at, it will be all empty words and hindsight and he'll make no impression on a nation that is crying out for someone to take leadership.
Given that literally everyone I know with children at university has a tale of their children, their childrens' flatmates/housemates, or bubble mates testing positive I am not at all surprised at the stats.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
The great fear, of course, is that it starts to spread more rapidly from the student incubators into the general population and the death rate starts to rocket. All efforts need to be devoted into stopping this from happening.
This the only reason I think a circuit break might actually do anything productive.
A circuit break is in itself probably absolutely bloody useless. The only thing I can think of though is so long as the students remain where they are that this circuit break might potentially allow time for the virus to burn out amongst students without transferring from students to the wider community as much.
I doubt it though. I'm not optimistic that a circuit break will do anything other than put in restrictions that will end up being extended before the end of the fortnight.
Amazing the lack of commentary on the economy today.
With the rebound faltering way short of a v shape, and debt soaring, Rishi Sunak is going to borrow billions to make a major part of the UK economy unproductive.
Goodness knows what follows now. The greatest policy error by any British government ever. A complete and utter failure.
They are doubling down on it now because to admit that error is just going to be too grave a move. The catastrophe is too big now. Only bankruptcy will stop them, I think.
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
Quitting Parliament has been the making of Andy Burnham. If Labour lose the next election then its entirely possible he could be the next former Mayor to end up returning to Parliament and becoming PM.
Those services numbers are horrific given August was Eat Out to Help Out month. And Services are going to be very badly affected by whatever Brexit deal we do or don’t end up with. Thankfully, services are only a small part of the UK economy ...
In normal times the August growth figures would be little short of sensational and we would be worrying about uncontrolled booms. What I think can be said is that the horrendous damage caused by Covid and the lockdown is being undone but not quite as fast as it was in the summer. Of course August had the higher base of July for a monthly comparison but even so the force of the bounce back faded somewhat.
I don't agree that the services figure is particularly bad, let alone horrific. Most services are still operating with significantly reduced capacity and that includes restaurants and bars. What is clear is that the new restrictions that we have in Scotland and much of the north of England will drive those figures down further in the coming weeks with severe job implications.
The brutal truth is that our economy cannot operate at its previous level when we have to stay 2m apart, where the capacity of a pub or restaurant or even court house is measured on the fingers of a couple of hands. We are trying to live virtually. Its not working.
I understand why the services numbers are horrific, but they are horrific. And come January a major market for our services sector will become much harder to access. That’s just a fact. Covid we can’t do much about. The rest is about choices our government has made.
We can do a lot about our response to Covid and that will have vastly more effect on our service industries than the end of the transitional arrangements, whatever replaces them.
So far the blessed Nicola has been the mother of the nation in Scotland riding high on a wave of approval but I am detecting a lot of opposition to her most recent measures, a surprising amount of it from SNP supporters. I think we are at the limits of what people are willing to accept in terms of limits on our economy. The price is now payable and people are shocked by it. All too soon, as furlough unwinds, they will be appalled. I think at that point the consensus will switch to living with the virus rather than trying to eliminate it.
Is the juice worth the squeeze? If nothing but total lockdown helps control the virus and local lockdowns seem to make it worse, then it is obvious we have to learn to live with it. Unfortunately Politicians want to be seen to be in control, and they want to get back to what they saw as control in Spring. Unfortunately they (and we) cannot now afford to do that again - and lesser measures don’t seem to help.
Ideally they would be preparing the public saying that if measures don’t work then we will have to go back to the simple measures of hands face space, and protecting to vulnerable, which seem to have the clearest benefits.
I think that's right. We cannot afford to keep going like this. Perhaps we should think about cutting public sector wages by a percentage each week to reflect the declining tax take? Too many people are not sharing the costs of this.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I disagree with this. It was not because the LDs formed a government with the Conservatives that led to their collapse. It was that they caputilated to the Tories and signed on the dotted line in under a week.
They ended up being light blues and the Ministers and MPs were actively supporting the Conservative policies. Once they started acting like Tories, they lost most of their support from the centre and centre left.
That one week undid thirty years of steady progress. Thirty years to finally get a shot at negotiating a proper coalition agreement, and they roll over in a few days.
LOL. QED.
They emerged from a 30-yr fantasy cocoon and were given a shot at power which they grasped. And of course, as junior members of a coalition they got turned over on occasion. But they also contributed a lot that they wouldn't have been able to had they stayed pure and out of government.
Your post reads a lot like those from the Corbynistas.
They were leading in the polls just a few weeks previously and people were talking about Clegg as PM. The power play would not have been to sign up to being a junior coalition partner but to exploit the hung parliament and aim to win a majority. With more ruthless leadership and better strategy, there could have been a Lib Dem PM in 2012.
Could there bollocks. There could have been a long term and effective bloc which held a Tory minority government hostage. And maybe later a Labour one too. But they chose not to.
Boris really is a performance act. I can't think of another politician in history who is lauded simply for what he says and how he says it - what he actually does seems to be a complete irrelevance to many.
Yep. And this troubles me. That so many members of the public are prepared to apply rock bottom standards to Johnson because they are entertained by his persona. When you sell your support that cheaply you lose self-respect and you invite contempt from the beneficiary. You can see and sense that. Or I can anyway. His contempt.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
With hindsight, the coalition was a massive political mistake by Clegg. He should have screwed the Tories with a one year confidence and supply agreement and then forced an election when it suited the Lib Dems. They chose office over power.
An election at whatever time would likely not have delivered a majority to the LDs. They had a chance, they took it. And they did contribute a lot.
They took a chance and sold their supporters down the river. Why should they ever be trusted again?
They committed to abolishing tuition fees and trebled them instead. The consequences were inevitable, why on earth they agreed to that is a question for the ages. They should have made that the reddest of red lines but the simple fact is they were pandering to students but didn't really care about them - they did care about electoral reform so made that their priority instead.
The mask came off the LDs and they showed their true colours.
The fact remains that as members of government they, and the Conservative front bench of the time, made a proper fist of running the country in a decent and pragmatic way. Compare and contrast with this bunch of lightweights and incompetents that you (unsurprisingly) show a diehard devotion to. Philip Thompson (if you are only one person) will be the last devotee of Bozo the Clown, the worst Prime Minister, and by far the worst ever leader of the Conservative Party in the history of these islands.
Those services numbers are horrific given August was Eat Out to Help Out month. And Services are going to be very badly affected by whatever Brexit deal we do or don’t end up with. Thankfully, services are only a small part of the UK economy ...
Mixed bag. The growth figures are disappointing (though I'm extremely sceptical about the construction figures, they don't pass the sniff test).
On the other hand having a trade surplus is an excellent position to be in - and also surprising given how many people have been still continuing to order stuff from Amazon etc online it seems interesting that there is a trade surplus.
Alternatively doesn't it suggest that that anecdotal evidence (which possibly sometimes focuses on some things at the expense of others) is a bad judge of the overall state of the economy. Big backlogs on construction projects could be indicative of a shortage of workers, or retrenchment from some firms leading to general supply shortages or whatever? Also maybe construction didn't as fall as far in the first place.
There doesn't seem any intuitive or logical explanation why the crash in Construction would be worse than the crash in Services. It doesn't make any sense to me at least.
It may be right, but it doesn't seem logical. Especially since the 2 metre restrictions etc seem to be more vigorously enforced in Services than in Construction.
Construction was allowed to remain open through the summer when many Services weren't too, so why would Construction have had such a heavier decline? It seems very odd to me.
I guess it depends in how construction is actually defined. A lot of regular maintenance work will have been mothballed, for example. My nephew is an electrician in London and is struggling to find work currently.
I agree. Many, many projects have been mothballed until it can be determined whether they are still viable. Its one of the reasons that Boris was going on about offshore windfarms the other day. He is anxious to get as many projects as possible back on track.
He's not anxious to get the repair of Hammersmith Bridge back on track.
The bridge is now closed to all pedestrians as well as traffic. Literally thousands of school children are having to make 1+ hour detours at the start and end of the school day. The only thing holding up repairs is the government holding up funding for this key shovel ready infrastructure project. The government is the only body with the funds (£0.14b out of the £100b infrastructure spend promised in the Tory manifesto).
I can only think this is retribution on the local citizens for throwing out Boris's pal Zac at the last election. But it is the kids who are suffering most.
As someone who lives in the area - the problem in that the two councils involved are both trying to avoid responsibility. Their attempt to dump it on central government was a farce. The first demand for money under the infrastructure spending boost left out a few items.
Cost Estimated time. What their solution was
Yes, they asked the government for money on the basis of "Give us a pile of cash to do bridgy things to, from, at, or near Hammersmith Bridge. Sorry, we don't know what we will do with the money, or how long it will take. But hey!"
A bit later they tried on the basis of maybe getting the bridge re-opened to pedestrians...
What! Not so. I live about 100 yards from the bridge so I am directly affected and am following events very closely. The two councils and Tfl do not have the funds (£0.14b) to repair this major link between north and south of the river.
There is an estimate of the cost (£0.14b), time (3 years) and solution (temp pedestrian bridge will major repairs to bridge are carried out). Both Councils are ready to rapidly progress planning permissions etc.
But I'm not going to get into a tit-for-tat political discussion with you on here. It really wouldn't be productive. My energies on this are directed elsewhere.
The only problem is that no-one will agree on a solution - Hammersmith bridge can't be made into a road bridge again. You could do a fake - where all the structure is replaced and the pretty bits stuck on top. But the bridge is fundamentally junk.
It needs knocking down completely. But that can't happen - TIB - This Is Britain.
The temp bridge ideas keep getting knocked back because someone objects to something. The latest farce was the suggestion of a ferry service. Given the tidal range, that would be perfect for about 1 hour a day. With piers pretty much meeting in the middle of the river.... You could put a plank between them, probably.
A temporary foot bridge wouldn't cost even a fraction of 140 million - standard military bridging kit would do the job. Meccano at 1-1 scale... IIRC the timescale for doing a bridge crossing of a river that size, *under fire* is hours.... But that would involve doing something.
The problem with having the army throw a temporary bridge across the Thames, is some parent getting uppity about the hight of the handrails and the spacing of bars, the first time some horseplaying kid has to get fished out of the drink by the coast guard. Putting a big sign up saying “temporary military bridge, cross at your own risk” isn’t allowed in 2020.
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
Quitting Parliament has been the making of Andy Burnham. If Labour lose the next election then its entirely possible he could be the next former Mayor to end up returning to Parliament and becoming PM.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
No, the issue is that Labour have been saying nothing. The comparison to the 26 point lead is complete rubbish, it was never a real benchmark, just a rally round the flag effect of heading into a crisis. You're a Labour member, please outline Labour's alternative policy base vs what the government have been offering.
Far better control and oversight of track and trace - the key to getting the pandemic under some kind of control.
Much closer coordination with local authorities on local lockdowns.
Financial support for businesses and employees affected by local lockdowns.
No end to the furlough and its extension to cover other areas where it has not been applied.
Labour will not support an opening up of the country as things stand. I think that is the right position to take.
It is just a matter of fact that Labour was well over 20 poionts behind when Starmer took over. It was close to 20 points behind before lockdown. But even if you want to go by the December result, there has been significant progress in the last six months. It's a long journey with much damage to undo. The strat has been a positive one.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
With hindsight, the coalition was a massive political mistake by Clegg. He should have screwed the Tories with a one year confidence and supply agreement and then forced an election when it suited the Lib Dems. They chose office over power.
An election at whatever time would likely not have delivered a majority to the LDs. They had a chance, they took it. And they did contribute a lot.
They took a chance and sold their supporters down the river. Why should they ever be trusted again?
They committed to abolishing tuition fees and trebled them instead. The consequences were inevitable, why on earth they agreed to that is a question for the ages. They should have made that the reddest of red lines but the simple fact is they were pandering to students but didn't really care about them - they did care about electoral reform so made that their priority instead.
The mask came off the LDs and they showed their true colours.
That's ridiculous hyperbole. The simple fact is that the influence of a junior coalition partner is very limited and compromises have to be made. Any rational thinker understands this.
When your number one commitment at the election is to abolish tuition fees then how is trebling tuition fees a "compromise"?
A tuition fee freeze would have been a compromise. Trebling tuition fees was not a compromise in any stretch of the imagination.
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
Quitting Parliament has been the making of Andy Burnham. If Labour lose the next election then its entirely possible he could be the next former Mayor to end up returning to Parliament and becoming PM.
He was OK on QT last night, but as Gillian Keegan was his opponent, and so witheringly stupid, Corbyn too, would have looked good under the circumstances.
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
Quitting Parliament has been the making of Andy Burnham. If Labour lose the next election then its entirely possible he could be the next former Mayor to end up returning to Parliament and becoming PM.
He is far more impressive than Sadiq Khan, that is for sure. Labour will do everything it can to ensure the next leader is a woman, though.
Given that literally everyone I know with children at university has a tale of their children, their childrens' flatmates/housemates, or bubble mates testing positive I am not at all surprised at the stats.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
The great fear, of course, is that it starts to spread more rapidly from the student incubators into the general population and the death rate starts to rocket. All efforts need to be devoted into stopping this from happening.
This the only reason I think a circuit break might actually do anything productive.
A circuit break is in itself probably absolutely bloody useless. The only thing I can think of though is so long as the students remain where they are that this circuit break might potentially allow time for the virus to burn out amongst students without transferring from students to the wider community as much.
I doubt it though. I'm not optimistic that a circuit break will do anything other than put in restrictions that will end up being extended before the end of the fortnight.
We are still almost ten per cent short of where the economy was in February,
Now Sunak wants to put the patient back into a coma with borrowed money.
FFS wake up. We are oing to end up with an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with far, far larger debt mountain to try to sustain.
It is not going to effing work. We are looking at a bloody catastrophe the like of which we have never seen. For a disease that prays on 82 year olds.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I disagree with this. It was not because the LDs formed a government with the Conservatives that led to their collapse. It was that they caputilated to the Tories and signed on the dotted line in under a week.
They ended up being light blues and the Ministers and MPs were actively supporting the Conservative policies. Once they started acting like Tories, they lost most of their support from the centre and centre left.
That one week undid thirty years of steady progress. Thirty years to finally get a shot at negotiating a proper coalition agreement, and they roll over in a few days.
LOL. QED.
They emerged from a 30-yr fantasy cocoon and were given a shot at power which they grasped. And of course, as junior members of a coalition they got turned over on occasion. But they also contributed a lot that they wouldn't have been able to had they stayed pure and out of government.
Your post reads a lot like those from the Corbynistas.
They were leading in the polls just a few weeks previously and people were talking about Clegg as PM. The power play would not have been to sign up to being a junior coalition partner but to exploit the hung parliament and aim to win a majority. With more ruthless leadership and better strategy, there could have been a Lib Dem PM in 2012.
Could there bollocks. There could have been a long term and effective bloc which held a Tory minority government hostage. And maybe later a Labour one too. But they chose not to.
In an alternative world, the UKIPification of the Tories would have seen them lose 100+ seats to the Lib Dems. They had the ideal baseline to work from in 2010 but then threw it away thinking that was the best they could do.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I disagree with this. It was not because the LDs formed a government with the Conservatives that led to their collapse. It was that they caputilated to the Tories and signed on the dotted line in under a week.
They ended up being light blues and the Ministers and MPs were actively supporting the Conservative policies. Once they started acting like Tories, they lost most of their support from the centre and centre left.
That one week undid thirty years of steady progress. Thirty years to finally get a shot at negotiating a proper coalition agreement, and they roll over in a few days.
LOL. QED.
They emerged from a 30-yr fantasy cocoon and were given a shot at power which they grasped. And of course, as junior members of a coalition they got turned over on occasion. But they also contributed a lot that they wouldn't have been able to had they stayed pure and out of government.
Your post reads a lot like those from the Corbynistas.
They were leading in the polls just a few weeks previously and people were talking about Clegg as PM. The power play would not have been to sign up to being a junior coalition partner but to exploit the hung parliament and aim to win a majority. With more ruthless leadership and better strategy, there could have been a Lib Dem PM in 2012.
Could there bollocks. There could have been a long term and effective bloc which held a Tory minority government hostage. And maybe later a Labour one too. But they chose not to.
Given where the nation was economically in 2010 the coalition agreement was the right thing to do, anything else would have been irresponsible. The issue is that they folded on the wrong red lines. They should have folded on boundary reform (an issue that has zero play with the public and would have been neutral for them in terms of seats) and held firm on tuition fees which was a critical issue with their base of students and middle class graduates.
They had a lot of other successes such as bringin the tax free allowance up to £10k but they let the Tories take credit for it because the Lib Dems were so desperate to disown the whole 5 years of government.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
No, the issue is that Labour have been saying nothing. The comparison to the 26 point lead is complete rubbish, it was never a real benchmark, just a rally round the flag effect of heading into a crisis. You're a Labour member, please outline Labour's alternative policy base vs what the government have been offering.
Labour are in opposition, they are not in government (except in Wales) they do not need an alternative Covid strategy.
I eagerly await Paul Davies' alternative strategy for Wales.
Given that literally everyone I know with children at university has a tale of their children, their childrens' flatmates/housemates, or bubble mates testing positive I am not at all surprised at the stats.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
I thought that the ONS survey didn't include students at university. Can anyone confirm?
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
No, the issue is that Labour have been saying nothing. The comparison to the 26 point lead is complete rubbish, it was never a real benchmark, just a rally round the flag effect of heading into a crisis. You're a Labour member, please outline Labour's alternative policy base vs what the government have been offering.
Far better control and oversight of track and trace - the key to getting the pandemic under some kind of control.
Much closer coordination with local authorities on local lockdowns.
Financial support for businesses and employees affected by local lockdowns.
No end to the furlough and its extension to cover other areas where it has not been applied.
Labour will not support an opening up of the country as things stand. I think that is the right position to take.
It is just a matter of fact that Labour was well over 20 poionts behind when Starmer took over. It was close to 20 points behind before lockdown. But even if you want to go by the December result, there has been significant progress in the last six months. It's a long journey with much damage to undo. The strat has been a positive one.
How do you run an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with a hugely larger debt mountain to service? seriously, how do you do it? without collapse? to save all the 82 year olds out there?
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
Quitting Parliament has been the making of Andy Burnham. If Labour lose the next election then its entirely possible he could be the next former Mayor to end up returning to Parliament and becoming PM.
He is far more impressive than Sadiq Khan, that is for sure. Labour will do everything it can to ensure the next leader is a woman, though.
Quick find Laura Pidcock a safe seat...oh wait she had one!
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Given that literally everyone I know with children at university has a tale of their children, their childrens' flatmates/housemates, or bubble mates testing positive I am not at all surprised at the stats.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
The great fear, of course, is that it starts to spread more rapidly from the student incubators into the general population and the death rate starts to rocket. All efforts need to be devoted into stopping this from happening.
This the only reason I think a circuit break might actually do anything productive.
A circuit break is in itself probably absolutely bloody useless. The only thing I can think of though is so long as the students remain where they are that this circuit break might potentially allow time for the virus to burn out amongst students without transferring from students to the wider community as much.
I doubt it though. I'm not optimistic that a circuit break will do anything other than put in restrictions that will end up being extended before the end of the fortnight.
We are still almost ten per cent short of where the economy was in February,
Now Sunak wants to put the patient back into a coma with borrowed money.
FFS wake up. We are oing to end up with an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with far, far larger debt mountain to try to sustain.
It is not going to effing work. We are looking at a bloody catastrophe the like of which we have never seen. For a disease that prays on 82 year olds.
The economy is going to be smaller either way. There is a major health crisis and people are not going out whether there is a formal lockdown or not.
People talk about shielding the vulnerable but having hospitality get back to normal but not only do the vulnerable rely upon the healthy . . . but hospitality relies upon the vulnerable. A great many pounds spent in pubs, restaurants etc normally are spent by people who now need to shield and will shield regardless of what the government says because they are afraid and don't want to die.
The only way to get the economy back to normal is to put the health crisis behind us. That means either a vaccine, herd immunity (which would be hundreds of thousands more deaths) or suppressing the virus.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
No, the issue is that Labour have been saying nothing. The comparison to the 26 point lead is complete rubbish, it was never a real benchmark, just a rally round the flag effect of heading into a crisis. You're a Labour member, please outline Labour's alternative policy base vs what the government have been offering.
Labour are in opposition, they are not in government (except in Wales) they do not need an alternative Covid strategy.
I eagerly await Paul Davies' alternative strategy for Wales.
Starmer needs to because he needs to have a stock of ideas he can point to and say "I was right, Boris was wrong, vote for me". At the moment he just carps from the sidelines with the benefit of hindsight.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
With hindsight, the coalition was a massive political mistake by Clegg. He should have screwed the Tories with a one year confidence and supply agreement and then forced an election when it suited the Lib Dems. They chose office over power.
An election at whatever time would likely not have delivered a majority to the LDs. They had a chance, they took it. And they did contribute a lot.
They took a chance and sold their supporters down the river. Why should they ever be trusted again?
They committed to abolishing tuition fees and trebled them instead. The consequences were inevitable, why on earth they agreed to that is a question for the ages. They should have made that the reddest of red lines but the simple fact is they were pandering to students but didn't really care about them - they did care about electoral reform so made that their priority instead.
The mask came off the LDs and they showed their true colours.
That's ridiculous hyperbole. The simple fact is that the influence of a junior coalition partner is very limited and compromises have to be made. Any rational thinker understands this.
When your number one commitment at the election is to abolish tuition fees then how is trebling tuition fees a "compromise"?
A tuition fee freeze would have been a compromise. Trebling tuition fees was not a compromise in any stretch of the imagination.
If the Lib Dems had had a majority, then they could have abolished or frozen tuition fees. But the electorate didn't give them a majority, therefore they were not in a position to implement all of their policies. That's how democracy works. The LDs were able to implement some of their policies: pupil premiums, green energy initiatives, AV vote, but at the cost of allowing the Tories to triple tuition fees. That was the compromise.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
No, the issue is that Labour have been saying nothing. The comparison to the 26 point lead is complete rubbish, it was never a real benchmark, just a rally round the flag effect of heading into a crisis. You're a Labour member, please outline Labour's alternative policy base vs what the government have been offering.
Labour are in opposition, they are not in government (except in Wales) they do not need an alternative Covid strategy.
I eagerly await Paul Davies' alternative strategy for Wales.
Starmer needs to because he needs to have a stock of ideas he can point to and say "I was right, Boris was wrong, vote for me". At the moment he just carps from the sidelines with the benefit of hindsight.
True, but in three and a half years time. No hostages to fortune required now.
Given that literally everyone I know with children at university has a tale of their children, their childrens' flatmates/housemates, or bubble mates testing positive I am not at all surprised at the stats.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
I thought that the ONS survey didn't include students at university. Can anyone confirm?
The ONS say:
"Only private residential households, otherwise known as the target population in this bulletin, are included in the sample. People in hospitals, care homes and other institutional settings are not included."
It's not clear to me whether they would have a term-time address for a student who was in a household that had been recruited to the survey. It seems unlikely.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I disagree with this. It was not because the LDs formed a government with the Conservatives that led to their collapse. It was that they caputilated to the Tories and signed on the dotted line in under a week.
They ended up being light blues and the Ministers and MPs were actively supporting the Conservative policies. Once they started acting like Tories, they lost most of their support from the centre and centre left.
That one week undid thirty years of steady progress. Thirty years to finally get a shot at negotiating a proper coalition agreement, and they roll over in a few days.
LOL. QED.
They emerged from a 30-yr fantasy cocoon and were given a shot at power which they grasped. And of course, as junior members of a coalition they got turned over on occasion. But they also contributed a lot that they wouldn't have been able to had they stayed pure and out of government.
Your post reads a lot like those from the Corbynistas.
They were leading in the polls just a few weeks previously and people were talking about Clegg as PM. The power play would not have been to sign up to being a junior coalition partner but to exploit the hung parliament and aim to win a majority. With more ruthless leadership and better strategy, there could have been a Lib Dem PM in 2012.
Could there bollocks. There could have been a long term and effective bloc which held a Tory minority government hostage. And maybe later a Labour one too. But they chose not to.
In an alternative world, the UKIPification of the Tories would have seen them lose 100+ seats to the Lib Dems. They had the ideal baseline to work from in 2010 but then threw it away thinking that was the best they could do.
That might still happen. The reality is that this Brexit Party-Lite incarnation of the Conservative Party threw 40% of its more intelligent followers under a bus on the gamble they would not vote for Corbyn. It worked in the short term, but now a Labour government looks much less scary the LDs and Labour have 4 years to chip away at the credibility of the Conservatives, which will not be difficult with The Clown in charge.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I disagree with this. It was not because the LDs formed a government with the Conservatives that led to their collapse. It was that they caputilated to the Tories and signed on the dotted line in under a week.
They ended up being light blues and the Ministers and MPs were actively supporting the Conservative policies. Once they started acting like Tories, they lost most of their support from the centre and centre left.
That one week undid thirty years of steady progress. Thirty years to finally get a shot at negotiating a proper coalition agreement, and they roll over in a few days.
LOL. QED.
They emerged from a 30-yr fantasy cocoon and were given a shot at power which they grasped. And of course, as junior members of a coalition they got turned over on occasion. But they also contributed a lot that they wouldn't have been able to had they stayed pure and out of government.
Your post reads a lot like those from the Corbynistas.
They were leading in the polls just a few weeks previously and people were talking about Clegg as PM. The power play would not have been to sign up to being a junior coalition partner but to exploit the hung parliament and aim to win a majority. With more ruthless leadership and better strategy, there could have been a Lib Dem PM in 2012.
Could there bollocks. There could have been a long term and effective bloc which held a Tory minority government hostage. And maybe later a Labour one too. But they chose not to.
In an alternative world, the UKIPification of the Tories would have seen them lose 100+ seats to the Lib Dems. They had the ideal baseline to work from in 2010 but then threw it away thinking that was the best they could do.
Agree with that. A LD majority in anything other than the very long term, was, however, hyperbole.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
No, the issue is that Labour have been saying nothing. The comparison to the 26 point lead is complete rubbish, it was never a real benchmark, just a rally round the flag effect of heading into a crisis. You're a Labour member, please outline Labour's alternative policy base vs what the government have been offering.
Far better control and oversight of track and trace - the key to getting the pandemic under some kind of control.
Much closer coordination with local authorities on local lockdowns.
Financial support for businesses and employees affected by local lockdowns.
No end to the furlough and its extension to cover other areas where it has not been applied.
Labour will not support an opening up of the country as things stand. I think that is the right position to take.
It is just a matter of fact that Labour was well over 20 poionts behind when Starmer took over. It was close to 20 points behind before lockdown. But even if you want to go by the December result, there has been significant progress in the last six months. It's a long journey with much damage to undo. The strat has been a positive one.
How do you run an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with a hugely larger debt mountain to service? seriously, how do you do it? without collapse? to save all the 82 year olds out there?
You don't run it permanently in the way that it is being run now. No-one is advocating that. But an economy in which 50% of the population is too scared to leave the home is not one that is going to function in any meaningful way. A targeted approach to lockdowns, more financial support for those affected by them and a functioning track and trace system are the requirements for where we are now. The government is offering none of these things currently.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
With hindsight, the coalition was a massive political mistake by Clegg. He should have screwed the Tories with a one year confidence and supply agreement and then forced an election when it suited the Lib Dems. They chose office over power.
An election at whatever time would likely not have delivered a majority to the LDs. They had a chance, they took it. And they did contribute a lot.
They took a chance and sold their supporters down the river. Why should they ever be trusted again?
They committed to abolishing tuition fees and trebled them instead. The consequences were inevitable, why on earth they agreed to that is a question for the ages. They should have made that the reddest of red lines but the simple fact is they were pandering to students but didn't really care about them - they did care about electoral reform so made that their priority instead.
The mask came off the LDs and they showed their true colours.
That's ridiculous hyperbole. The simple fact is that the influence of a junior coalition partner is very limited and compromises have to be made. Any rational thinker understands this.
When your number one commitment at the election is to abolish tuition fees then how is trebling tuition fees a "compromise"?
A tuition fee freeze would have been a compromise. Trebling tuition fees was not a compromise in any stretch of the imagination.
If the Lib Dems had had a majority, then they could have abolished or frozen tuition fees. But the electorate didn't give them a majority, therefore they were not in a position to implement all of their policies. That's how democracy works. The LDs were able to implement some of their policies: pupil premiums, green energy initiatives, AV vote, but at the cost of allowing the Tories to triple tuition fees. That was the compromise.
The Tories didn't triple Tuition Fees, the LDs and Tories did. It was their Government. The LDs had made their number one policy Tuition Fees. Trebling them was not a compromise. That should have been their reddest of red lines and not only did they not do their policy but they did the polar opposite.
A Tory equivalent would be if following the 2015 election there was a hung Parliament and the Tory promise of an EU Brexit referendum was scrapped . . . and we instead joined the Euro without a referendum.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
With hindsight, the coalition was a massive political mistake by Clegg. He should have screwed the Tories with a one year confidence and supply agreement and then forced an election when it suited the Lib Dems. They chose office over power.
An election at whatever time would likely not have delivered a majority to the LDs. They had a chance, they took it. And they did contribute a lot.
They took a chance and sold their supporters down the river. Why should they ever be trusted again?
They committed to abolishing tuition fees and trebled them instead. The consequences were inevitable, why on earth they agreed to that is a question for the ages. They should have made that the reddest of red lines but the simple fact is they were pandering to students but didn't really care about them - they did care about electoral reform so made that their priority instead.
The mask came off the LDs and they showed their true colours.
That's ridiculous hyperbole. The simple fact is that the influence of a junior coalition partner is very limited and compromises have to be made. Any rational thinker understands this.
When your number one commitment at the election is to abolish tuition fees then how is trebling tuition fees a "compromise"?
A tuition fee freeze would have been a compromise. Trebling tuition fees was not a compromise in any stretch of the imagination.
You miss the fact that behind the tripling of fees were very significant exclusions and other measures to mitigate the increase. In the real world you are doing well enough to pay it back or you never do, it’s a tax by any other name.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
With hindsight, the coalition was a massive political mistake by Clegg. He should have screwed the Tories with a one year confidence and supply agreement and then forced an election when it suited the Lib Dems. They chose office over power.
An election at whatever time would likely not have delivered a majority to the LDs. They had a chance, they took it. And they did contribute a lot.
They took a chance and sold their supporters down the river. Why should they ever be trusted again?
They committed to abolishing tuition fees and trebled them instead. The consequences were inevitable, why on earth they agreed to that is a question for the ages. They should have made that the reddest of red lines but the simple fact is they were pandering to students but didn't really care about them - they did care about electoral reform so made that their priority instead.
The mask came off the LDs and they showed their true colours.
That's ridiculous hyperbole. The simple fact is that the influence of a junior coalition partner is very limited and compromises have to be made. Any rational thinker understands this.
When your number one commitment at the election is to abolish tuition fees then how is trebling tuition fees a "compromise"?
A tuition fee freeze would have been a compromise. Trebling tuition fees was not a compromise in any stretch of the imagination.
If the Lib Dems had had a majority, then they could have abolished or frozen tuition fees. But the electorate didn't give them a majority, therefore they were not in a position to implement all of their policies. That's how democracy works. The LDs were able to implement some of their policies: pupil premiums, green energy initiatives, AV vote, but at the cost of allowing the Tories to triple tuition fees. That was the compromise.
Nobody forced them to go into coalition. The sense of crisis was just a convenient narrative.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
No, the issue is that Labour have been saying nothing. The comparison to the 26 point lead is complete rubbish, it was never a real benchmark, just a rally round the flag effect of heading into a crisis. You're a Labour member, please outline Labour's alternative policy base vs what the government have been offering.
Labour are in opposition, they are not in government (except in Wales) they do not need an alternative Covid strategy.
I eagerly await Paul Davies' alternative strategy for Wales.
Starmer needs to because he needs to have a stock of ideas he can point to and say "I was right, Boris was wrong, vote for me". At the moment he just carps from the sidelines with the benefit of hindsight.
P.S. On the proviso that "government lose elections, rather than oppositions winning them" carping from the sidelines is just what he needs to do.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I disagree with this. It was not because the LDs formed a government with the Conservatives that led to their collapse. It was that they caputilated to the Tories and signed on the dotted line in under a week.
They ended up being light blues and the Ministers and MPs were actively supporting the Conservative policies. Once they started acting like Tories, they lost most of their support from the centre and centre left.
That one week undid thirty years of steady progress. Thirty years to finally get a shot at negotiating a proper coalition agreement, and they roll over in a few days.
LOL. QED.
They emerged from a 30-yr fantasy cocoon and were given a shot at power which they grasped. And of course, as junior members of a coalition they got turned over on occasion. But they also contributed a lot that they wouldn't have been able to had they stayed pure and out of government.
Your post reads a lot like those from the Corbynistas.
They were leading in the polls just a few weeks previously and people were talking about Clegg as PM. The power play would not have been to sign up to being a junior coalition partner but to exploit the hung parliament and aim to win a majority. With more ruthless leadership and better strategy, there could have been a Lib Dem PM in 2012.
Could there bollocks. There could have been a long term and effective bloc which held a Tory minority government hostage. And maybe later a Labour one too. But they chose not to.
Given where the nation was economically in 2010 the coalition agreement was the right thing to do, anything else would have been irresponsible. The issue is that they folded on the wrong red lines. They should have folded on boundary reform (an issue that has zero play with the public and would have been neutral for them in terms of seats) and held firm on tuition fees which was a critical issue with their base of students and middle class graduates.
They had a lot of other successes such as bringin the tax free allowance up to £10k but they let the Tories take credit for it because the Lib Dems were so desperate to disown the whole 5 years of government.
One crucial error was not insisting on complete control of a handful of ministries.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
No, the issue is that Labour have been saying nothing. The comparison to the 26 point lead is complete rubbish, it was never a real benchmark, just a rally round the flag effect of heading into a crisis. You're a Labour member, please outline Labour's alternative policy base vs what the government have been offering.
Labour are in opposition, they are not in government (except in Wales) they do not need an alternative Covid strategy.
I eagerly await Paul Davies' alternative strategy for Wales.
Starmer needs to because he needs to have a stock of ideas he can point to and say "I was right, Boris was wrong, vote for me". At the moment he just carps from the sidelines with the benefit of hindsight.
It is absolutely farcical because his stock of ideas don't even need to work, since they won't be tested unless they're adopted by the Government. He has a blank cheque to write whatever alternative proposals he wants to make, what has he got to lose? If the Government adopts the ideas he can say that he was leading the way first. If the Government adopts them and they fail he can blame Government implementation. If the Government doesn't adopt them he has an alternative to point to saying "you should be doing this".
Madness. All I can think is that Starmer is is afraid of putting anything out.
Given that literally everyone I know with children at university has a tale of their children, their childrens' flatmates/housemates, or bubble mates testing positive I am not at all surprised at the stats.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
The great fear, of course, is that it starts to spread more rapidly from the student incubators into the general population and the death rate starts to rocket. All efforts need to be devoted into stopping this from happening.
This the only reason I think a circuit break might actually do anything productive.
A circuit break is in itself probably absolutely bloody useless. The only thing I can think of though is so long as the students remain where they are that this circuit break might potentially allow time for the virus to burn out amongst students without transferring from students to the wider community as much.
I doubt it though. I'm not optimistic that a circuit break will do anything other than put in restrictions that will end up being extended before the end of the fortnight.
We are still almost ten per cent short of where the economy was in February,
Now Sunak wants to put the patient back into a coma with borrowed money.
FFS wake up. We are oing to end up with an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with far, far larger debt mountain to try to sustain.
It is not going to effing work. We are looking at a bloody catastrophe the like of which we have never seen. For a disease that prays on 82 year olds.
The economy is going to be smaller either way. There is a major health crisis and people are not going out whether there is a formal lockdown or not.
People talk about shielding the vulnerable but having hospitality get back to normal but not only do the vulnerable rely upon the healthy . . . but hospitality relies upon the vulnerable. A great many pounds spent in pubs, restaurants etc normally are spent by people who now need to shield and will shield regardless of what the government says because they are afraid and don't want to die.
The only way to get the economy back to normal is to put the health crisis behind us. That means either a vaccine, herd immunity (which would be hundreds of thousands more deaths) or suppressing the virus.
The average age of covid deaths is 82. The media are having a giant canary over Trump recovering because it blasts a gargantuan hole in their and your narrative of collapse.
Which is what we are going to get.
But OK. People will see that poverty, unemployment and destitution kill. Kill far worse that corona.
Plenty of money waiting to be taken for Dems / Biden at 1.51 / 1.53.
I`m having to restrain myself from putting stupid amounts of money on at these prices.
There is still a disconnect between the polling data and punter`s views. I wonder whether the bookies have taken a shedload on Trump, perhaps a while ago, and are still balancing their books. Trump looks way underpriced to me, should be 5/1 or 6/1 I`d say.
I think Shadsy has commented elsewhere that Trump is a loser in Lads' books. Guess that's why they won't push him out yet. But I agree with you about the value.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I disagree with this. It was not because the LDs formed a government with the Conservatives that led to their collapse. It was that they caputilated to the Tories and signed on the dotted line in under a week.
They ended up being light blues and the Ministers and MPs were actively supporting the Conservative policies. Once they started acting like Tories, they lost most of their support from the centre and centre left.
That one week undid thirty years of steady progress. Thirty years to finally get a shot at negotiating a proper coalition agreement, and they roll over in a few days.
LOL. QED.
They emerged from a 30-yr fantasy cocoon and were given a shot at power which they grasped. And of course, as junior members of a coalition they got turned over on occasion. But they also contributed a lot that they wouldn't have been able to had they stayed pure and out of government.
Your post reads a lot like those from the Corbynistas.
They were leading in the polls just a few weeks previously and people were talking about Clegg as PM. The power play would not have been to sign up to being a junior coalition partner but to exploit the hung parliament and aim to win a majority. With more ruthless leadership and better strategy, there could have been a Lib Dem PM in 2012.
Could there bollocks. There could have been a long term and effective bloc which held a Tory minority government hostage. And maybe later a Labour one too. But they chose not to.
In an alternative world, the UKIPification of the Tories would have seen them lose 100+ seats to the Lib Dems. They had the ideal baseline to work from in 2010 but then threw it away thinking that was the best they could do.
That might still happen. The reality is that this Brexit Party-Lite incarnation of the Conservative Party threw 40% of its more intelligent followers under a bus on the gamble they would not vote for Corbyn. It worked in the short term, but now a Labour government looks much less scary the LDs and Labour have 4 years to chip away at the credibility of the Conservatives, which will not be difficult with The Clown in charge.
You're delusional.
If 40% of their supporters were thrown away, if it was all about Corbyn, then why is the Tory poll share still above 40%?
If your claims were right the Tories should now be polling closer to 20%.
The problem with having the army throw a temporary bridge across the Thames, is some parent getting uppity about the hight of the handrails and the spacing of bars, the first time some horseplaying kid has to get fished out of the drink by the coast guard. Putting a big sign up saying “temporary military bridge, cross at your own risk” isn’t allowed in 2020.
The modular BR90s aren't built to last. The longer spans are only designed to have 150 vehicles cross them before they are fucked. They have to be relatively light, and hence not durable, to be able to transported and placed quickly while being shot at by bad bastards.
Given that literally everyone I know with children at university has a tale of their children, their childrens' flatmates/housemates, or bubble mates testing positive I am not at all surprised at the stats.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
The great fear, of course, is that it starts to spread more rapidly from the student incubators into the general population and the death rate starts to rocket. All efforts need to be devoted into stopping this from happening.
This the only reason I think a circuit break might actually do anything productive.
A circuit break is in itself probably absolutely bloody useless. The only thing I can think of though is so long as the students remain where they are that this circuit break might potentially allow time for the virus to burn out amongst students without transferring from students to the wider community as much.
I doubt it though. I'm not optimistic that a circuit break will do anything other than put in restrictions that will end up being extended before the end of the fortnight.
We are still almost ten per cent short of where the economy was in February,
Now Sunak wants to put the patient back into a coma with borrowed money.
FFS wake up. We are oing to end up with an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with far, far larger debt mountain to try to sustain.
It is not going to effing work. We are looking at a bloody catastrophe the like of which we have never seen. For a disease that prays on 82 year olds.
The economy is going to be smaller either way. There is a major health crisis and people are not going out whether there is a formal lockdown or not.
People talk about shielding the vulnerable but having hospitality get back to normal but not only do the vulnerable rely upon the healthy . . . but hospitality relies upon the vulnerable. A great many pounds spent in pubs, restaurants etc normally are spent by people who now need to shield and will shield regardless of what the government says because they are afraid and don't want to die.
The only way to get the economy back to normal is to put the health crisis behind us. That means either a vaccine, herd immunity (which would be hundreds of thousands more deaths) or suppressing the virus.
The average age of covid deaths is 82. The media are having a giant canary over Trump recovering because it blasts a gargantuan hole in their and your narrative of collapse.
Which is what we are going to get.
But OK. People will see that poverty, unemployment and destitution kill. Kill far worse that corona.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
With hindsight, the coalition was a massive political mistake by Clegg. He should have screwed the Tories with a one year confidence and supply agreement and then forced an election when it suited the Lib Dems. They chose office over power.
An election at whatever time would likely not have delivered a majority to the LDs. They had a chance, they took it. And they did contribute a lot.
They took a chance and sold their supporters down the river. Why should they ever be trusted again?
They committed to abolishing tuition fees and trebled them instead. The consequences were inevitable, why on earth they agreed to that is a question for the ages. They should have made that the reddest of red lines but the simple fact is they were pandering to students but didn't really care about them - they did care about electoral reform so made that their priority instead.
The mask came off the LDs and they showed their true colours.
That's ridiculous hyperbole. The simple fact is that the influence of a junior coalition partner is very limited and compromises have to be made. Any rational thinker understands this.
When your number one commitment at the election is to abolish tuition fees then how is trebling tuition fees a "compromise"?
A tuition fee freeze would have been a compromise. Trebling tuition fees was not a compromise in any stretch of the imagination.
If the Lib Dems had had a majority, then they could have abolished or frozen tuition fees. But the electorate didn't give them a majority, therefore they were not in a position to implement all of their policies. That's how democracy works. The LDs were able to implement some of their policies: pupil premiums, green energy initiatives, AV vote, but at the cost of allowing the Tories to triple tuition fees. That was the compromise.
Nobody forced them to go into coalition. The sense of crisis was just a convenient narrative.
Political party "not forced" to go into government.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
No, the issue is that Labour have been saying nothing. The comparison to the 26 point lead is complete rubbish, it was never a real benchmark, just a rally round the flag effect of heading into a crisis. You're a Labour member, please outline Labour's alternative policy base vs what the government have been offering.
Far better control and oversight of track and trace - the key to getting the pandemic under some kind of control.
Much closer coordination with local authorities on local lockdowns.
Financial support for businesses and employees affected by local lockdowns.
No end to the furlough and its extension to cover other areas where it has not been applied.
Labour will not support an opening up of the country as things stand. I think that is the right position to take.
It is just a matter of fact that Labour was well over 20 poionts behind when Starmer took over. It was close to 20 points behind before lockdown. But even if you want to go by the December result, there has been significant progress in the last six months. It's a long journey with much damage to undo. The strat has been a positive one.
How do you run an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with a hugely larger debt mountain to service? seriously, how do you do it? without collapse? to save all the 82 year olds out there?
You don't run it permanently in the way that it is being run now. No-one is advocating that. But an economy in which 50% of the population is too scared to leave the home is not one that is going to function in any meaningful way. A targeted approach to lockdowns, more financial support for those affected by them and a functioning track and trace system are the requirements for where we are now. The government is offering none of these things currently.
We are being told this is the new normal. We are being conditioned by some to accept things as they are. People who are unemployed are being told to retrain as windfarm engineers.
That's where we are. And that is where we are staying. Do you see a time when we are 'out' of this. Because I really can't.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
With hindsight, the coalition was a massive political mistake by Clegg. He should have screwed the Tories with a one year confidence and supply agreement and then forced an election when it suited the Lib Dems. They chose office over power.
An election at whatever time would likely not have delivered a majority to the LDs. They had a chance, they took it. And they did contribute a lot.
They took a chance and sold their supporters down the river. Why should they ever be trusted again?
They committed to abolishing tuition fees and trebled them instead. The consequences were inevitable, why on earth they agreed to that is a question for the ages. They should have made that the reddest of red lines but the simple fact is they were pandering to students but didn't really care about them - they did care about electoral reform so made that their priority instead.
The mask came off the LDs and they showed their true colours.
That's ridiculous hyperbole. The simple fact is that the influence of a junior coalition partner is very limited and compromises have to be made. Any rational thinker understands this.
When your number one commitment at the election is to abolish tuition fees then how is trebling tuition fees a "compromise"?
A tuition fee freeze would have been a compromise. Trebling tuition fees was not a compromise in any stretch of the imagination.
If the Lib Dems had had a majority, then they could have abolished or frozen tuition fees. But the electorate didn't give them a majority, therefore they were not in a position to implement all of their policies. That's how democracy works. The LDs were able to implement some of their policies: pupil premiums, green energy initiatives, AV vote, but at the cost of allowing the Tories to triple tuition fees. That was the compromise.
Nobody forced them to go into coalition. The sense of crisis was just a convenient narrative.
Political party "not forced" to go into government.
If your point is that electoral logic compelled it, then it just shows that the Tories were in the weaker negotiating position. They needed the Lib Dems.
Given that literally everyone I know with children at university has a tale of their children, their childrens' flatmates/housemates, or bubble mates testing positive I am not at all surprised at the stats.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
The great fear, of course, is that it starts to spread more rapidly from the student incubators into the general population and the death rate starts to rocket. All efforts need to be devoted into stopping this from happening.
This the only reason I think a circuit break might actually do anything productive.
A circuit break is in itself probably absolutely bloody useless. The only thing I can think of though is so long as the students remain where they are that this circuit break might potentially allow time for the virus to burn out amongst students without transferring from students to the wider community as much.
I doubt it though. I'm not optimistic that a circuit break will do anything other than put in restrictions that will end up being extended before the end of the fortnight.
We are still almost ten per cent short of where the economy was in February,
Now Sunak wants to put the patient back into a coma with borrowed money.
FFS wake up. We are oing to end up with an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with far, far larger debt mountain to try to sustain.
It is not going to effing work. We are looking at a bloody catastrophe the like of which we have never seen. For a disease that prays on 82 year olds.
The economy is going to be smaller either way. There is a major health crisis and people are not going out whether there is a formal lockdown or not.
People talk about shielding the vulnerable but having hospitality get back to normal but not only do the vulnerable rely upon the healthy . . . but hospitality relies upon the vulnerable. A great many pounds spent in pubs, restaurants etc normally are spent by people who now need to shield and will shield regardless of what the government says because they are afraid and don't want to die.
The only way to get the economy back to normal is to put the health crisis behind us. That means either a vaccine, herd immunity (which would be hundreds of thousands more deaths) or suppressing the virus.
The average age of covid deaths is 82. The media are having a giant canary over Trump recovering because it blasts a gargantuan hole in their and your narrative of collapse.
Which is what we are going to get.
But OK. People will see that poverty, unemployment and destitution kill. Kill far worse that corona.
All of what you say is true.
None of it makes any of what I said any less true.
This is a case of immoveable object meets irresistable force. There is no right easy anyway. A bad economy does kill but we are facing a bad recession no matter what, the only way to avoid it would have been to suppress and prevent the virus getting here in the first place.
Given that literally everyone I know with children at university has a tale of their children, their childrens' flatmates/housemates, or bubble mates testing positive I am not at all surprised at the stats.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
The great fear, of course, is that it starts to spread more rapidly from the student incubators into the general population and the death rate starts to rocket. All efforts need to be devoted into stopping this from happening.
This the only reason I think a circuit break might actually do anything productive.
A circuit break is in itself probably absolutely bloody useless. The only thing I can think of though is so long as the students remain where they are that this circuit break might potentially allow time for the virus to burn out amongst students without transferring from students to the wider community as much.
I doubt it though. I'm not optimistic that a circuit break will do anything other than put in restrictions that will end up being extended before the end of the fortnight.
We are still almost ten per cent short of where the economy was in February,
Now Sunak wants to put the patient back into a coma with borrowed money.
FFS wake up. We are oing to end up with an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with far, far larger debt mountain to try to sustain.
It is not going to effing work. We are looking at a bloody catastrophe the like of which we have never seen. For a disease that prays on 82 year olds.
The economy is going to be smaller either way. There is a major health crisis and people are not going out whether there is a formal lockdown or not.
People talk about shielding the vulnerable but having hospitality get back to normal but not only do the vulnerable rely upon the healthy . . . but hospitality relies upon the vulnerable. A great many pounds spent in pubs, restaurants etc normally are spent by people who now need to shield and will shield regardless of what the government says because they are afraid and don't want to die.
The only way to get the economy back to normal is to put the health crisis behind us. That means either a vaccine, herd immunity (which would be hundreds of thousands more deaths) or suppressing the virus.
The average age of covid deaths is 82. The media are having a giant canary over Trump recovering because it blasts a gargantuan hole in their and your narrative of collapse.
Which is what we are going to get.
But OK. People will see that poverty, unemployment and destitution kill. Kill far worse that corona.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
No, the issue is that Labour have been saying nothing. The comparison to the 26 point lead is complete rubbish, it was never a real benchmark, just a rally round the flag effect of heading into a crisis. You're a Labour member, please outline Labour's alternative policy base vs what the government have been offering.
I'm not sure you've read the post you're responding to. Labour is saying plenty, though some of it is getting drowned out. Most importantly on track and trace - that this should be devolved largely to local authorities rather than outsourced to the private sector.
What Labour isn't saying is that the general drive of government policy - to get infections down through appropriate restrictions - is wrong. That's because Labour believes it is right, and so is not opposing the core government policy for the sake of it. Therefore Labour's attack is focused on incompetent delivery rather than on the policy itself. Seems sensible to me.
Given that literally everyone I know with children at university has a tale of their children, their childrens' flatmates/housemates, or bubble mates testing positive I am not at all surprised at the stats.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
The great fear, of course, is that it starts to spread more rapidly from the student incubators into the general population and the death rate starts to rocket. All efforts need to be devoted into stopping this from happening.
This the only reason I think a circuit break might actually do anything productive.
A circuit break is in itself probably absolutely bloody useless. The only thing I can think of though is so long as the students remain where they are that this circuit break might potentially allow time for the virus to burn out amongst students without transferring from students to the wider community as much.
I doubt it though. I'm not optimistic that a circuit break will do anything other than put in restrictions that will end up being extended before the end of the fortnight.
We are still almost ten per cent short of where the economy was in February,
Now Sunak wants to put the patient back into a coma with borrowed money.
FFS wake up. We are oing to end up with an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with far, far larger debt mountain to try to sustain.
It is not going to effing work. We are looking at a bloody catastrophe the like of which we have never seen. For a disease that prays on 82 year olds.
The economy is going to be smaller either way. There is a major health crisis and people are not going out whether there is a formal lockdown or not.
People talk about shielding the vulnerable but having hospitality get back to normal but not only do the vulnerable rely upon the healthy . . . but hospitality relies upon the vulnerable. A great many pounds spent in pubs, restaurants etc normally are spent by people who now need to shield and will shield regardless of what the government says because they are afraid and don't want to die.
The only way to get the economy back to normal is to put the health crisis behind us. That means either a vaccine, herd immunity (which would be hundreds of thousands more deaths) or suppressing the virus.
The average age of covid deaths is 82. The media are having a giant canary over Trump recovering because it blasts a gargantuan hole in their and your narrative of collapse.
Which is what we are going to get.
But OK. People will see that poverty, unemployment and destitution kill. Kill far worse that corona.
"[Research] shows that the average age of people dying in England and Wales from Covid-19 is 82.4.
This is slightly higher than deaths caused by other illnesses, which has a median age of 81.5."
Sun
So it is virtually indistinguishable from any other disease as far as median age at death is concerned. So your point is what?
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I disagree with this. It was not because the LDs formed a government with the Conservatives that led to their collapse. It was that they caputilated to the Tories and signed on the dotted line in under a week.
They ended up being light blues and the Ministers and MPs were actively supporting the Conservative policies. Once they started acting like Tories, they lost most of their support from the centre and centre left.
That one week undid thirty years of steady progress. Thirty years to finally get a shot at negotiating a proper coalition agreement, and they roll over in a few days.
LOL. QED.
They emerged from a 30-yr fantasy cocoon and were given a shot at power which they grasped. And of course, as junior members of a coalition they got turned over on occasion. But they also contributed a lot that they wouldn't have been able to had they stayed pure and out of government.
Your post reads a lot like those from the Corbynistas.
They were leading in the polls just a few weeks previously and people were talking about Clegg as PM. The power play would not have been to sign up to being a junior coalition partner but to exploit the hung parliament and aim to win a majority. With more ruthless leadership and better strategy, there could have been a Lib Dem PM in 2012.
Could there bollocks. There could have been a long term and effective bloc which held a Tory minority government hostage. And maybe later a Labour one too. But they chose not to.
In an alternative world, the UKIPification of the Tories would have seen them lose 100+ seats to the Lib Dems. They had the ideal baseline to work from in 2010 but then threw it away thinking that was the best they could do.
That might still happen. The reality is that this Brexit Party-Lite incarnation of the Conservative Party threw 40% of its more intelligent followers under a bus on the gamble they would not vote for Corbyn. It worked in the short term, but now a Labour government looks much less scary the LDs and Labour have 4 years to chip away at the credibility of the Conservatives, which will not be difficult with The Clown in charge.
You're delusional.
If 40% of their supporters were thrown away, if it was all about Corbyn, then why is the Tory poll share still above 40%?
If your claims were right the Tories should now be polling closer to 20%.
People catch up over time Philip. Most of them have lives and don't obsess about politics 24/7, and even those that do take a while to admit they might have been wrong. You are a great example. You DO obsess about politics 24/7 (quite how you make a living beats me) and yet you are still deluding yourself that Boris Johnson is a good PM. He is not, he is a numpty with no leadership skills. Eventually even someone as tunnel visioned as your good self/selves will wake up, perhaps in about 30 year maybe? The rest will wake up in the next year or so when they realise having a complete clown as PM is not really a good idea.
@malcolmg was right, I would be back but I think it's an important one
@kinabalu on the Trump odds, I think he will get more of a pounding in the polls in the next week or so, so I am looking for 5/2 or even 3/1 but I will take 2/1
I mentioned a few days back that one big thing to look out for was the audience numbers for the VP debate and whether they followed the same trends as the Presidential debate, which was down 13% from 2016. My point was that, if the VP trends did significantly better, it would suggests that the public was taking a lot more interest in the VP candidates as potential Presidents and therefore this was not just a Trump vs Biden race but would broaden to a greater focus on Pence and Harris as possible Presidents.
Well, the audience numbers have come in and the uplift from 2016 has been huge - so far, 59m have been counted as watching the VP debate, making it the 2nd most watched VP debate since 1976 and over 50% higher than the 2016 VP debate. It is even more remarkable when you consider that TV audiences have been declining across the board over the past several years and that the Presidential debate this time only generated a 70m audience.
My read on this is that punters are now only going to have to think about what voters are thinking about Trump and Biden, but put an important weighting to voters' views on Pence and Harris. My personal view - which many will disagree with - is that Pence is somewhat of a known entity, the interesting one will be how many undecideds will be comfortable with the prospect of a President Harris.
Given that literally everyone I know with children at university has a tale of their children, their childrens' flatmates/housemates, or bubble mates testing positive I am not at all surprised at the stats.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
The great fear, of course, is that it starts to spread more rapidly from the student incubators into the general population and the death rate starts to rocket. All efforts need to be devoted into stopping this from happening.
This the only reason I think a circuit break might actually do anything productive.
A circuit break is in itself probably absolutely bloody useless. The only thing I can think of though is so long as the students remain where they are that this circuit break might potentially allow time for the virus to burn out amongst students without transferring from students to the wider community as much.
I doubt it though. I'm not optimistic that a circuit break will do anything other than put in restrictions that will end up being extended before the end of the fortnight.
We are still almost ten per cent short of where the economy was in February,
Now Sunak wants to put the patient back into a coma with borrowed money.
FFS wake up. We are oing to end up with an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with far, far larger debt mountain to try to sustain.
It is not going to effing work. We are looking at a bloody catastrophe the like of which we have never seen. For a disease that prays on 82 year olds.
The economy is going to be smaller either way. There is a major health crisis and people are not going out whether there is a formal lockdown or not.
People talk about shielding the vulnerable but having hospitality get back to normal but not only do the vulnerable rely upon the healthy . . . but hospitality relies upon the vulnerable. A great many pounds spent in pubs, restaurants etc normally are spent by people who now need to shield and will shield regardless of what the government says because they are afraid and don't want to die.
The only way to get the economy back to normal is to put the health crisis behind us. That means either a vaccine, herd immunity (which would be hundreds of thousands more deaths) or suppressing the virus.
The average age of covid deaths is 82. The media are having a giant canary over Trump recovering because it blasts a gargantuan hole in their and your narrative of collapse.
Which is what we are going to get.
But OK. People will see that poverty, unemployment and destitution kill. Kill far worse that corona.
"[Research] shows that the average age of people dying in England and Wales from Covid-19 is 82.4.
This is slightly higher than deaths caused by other illnesses, which has a median age of 81.5."
Sun
So it is virtually indistinguishable from any other disease as far as median age at death is concerned. So your point is what?
Seriously you can't see the point? really? we are destroying countless young lives for this for decades, young people between the ages of 16 and 35 face the worst outlook since our boys went over the top at the Somme. and you can't see the point?
We expect these people to have a rotten terrible youth and still pay for our retirements? what are they, children or bloody slaves?
I'm going to voice an unpopular opinion and suggest that Trump's price is only a little too short.
While Biden's national polling has moved to a landslide, and therefore he could afford to lose votes and win very comfortably, his state polling puts him winning - but not spectacularly.
Based on state polling Biden's margin of victory could be a satisfactory but unremarkable 290 to 248. Biden has enough strength in Wisconsin - Michigan - Pennsylvania - Virginia to support perhaps 1/4 odds (still considerably shorter than 1/2) but not 1/6 or 1/8 as suggested by others here.
Given that literally everyone I know with children at university has a tale of their children, their childrens' flatmates/housemates, or bubble mates testing positive I am not at all surprised at the stats.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
The great fear, of course, is that it starts to spread more rapidly from the student incubators into the general population and the death rate starts to rocket. All efforts need to be devoted into stopping this from happening.
This the only reason I think a circuit break might actually do anything productive.
A circuit break is in itself probably absolutely bloody useless. The only thing I can think of though is so long as the students remain where they are that this circuit break might potentially allow time for the virus to burn out amongst students without transferring from students to the wider community as much.
I doubt it though. I'm not optimistic that a circuit break will do anything other than put in restrictions that will end up being extended before the end of the fortnight.
We are still almost ten per cent short of where the economy was in February,
Now Sunak wants to put the patient back into a coma with borrowed money.
FFS wake up. We are oing to end up with an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with far, far larger debt mountain to try to sustain.
It is not going to effing work. We are looking at a bloody catastrophe the like of which we have never seen. For a disease that prays on 82 year olds.
Comments
I find it remarkable that during a six month period of Laurel and Hardy style incompetence the Conservative vote has remained so resilient and robust. Starmer's Labour are almost at their ceiling, and the Conservatives still remain a point or two ahead, so where are the LDs to drop that Tory vote down to the mid 30s when we need them?
They emerged from a 30-yr fantasy cocoon and were given a shot at power which they grasped. And of course, as junior members of a coalition they got turned over on occasion. But they also contributed a lot that they wouldn't have been able to had they stayed pure and out of government.
Your post reads a lot like those from the Corbynistas.
Looks like the flatline last week may have been a polling error?
It obviously works because I'd be a fucking brilliant actor. I was once Rosalind in an all male production of As You Like It at boarding school.
Out of sight, out of mind.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
This laughable assertion that we are in our current predicament because Starmer has not produced a Covid-19 response plan, would be 24 carat gold comedy, were the pandemic not so serious.
Poverty = disease, misery, social breakdown and early death.
Looks like they will have to find out the hard way.
Amazing really.
But if that's what they want, so be it.
They committed to abolishing tuition fees and trebled them instead. The consequences were inevitable, why on earth they agreed to that is a question for the ages. They should have made that the reddest of red lines but the simple fact is they were pandering to students but didn't really care about them - they did care about electoral reform so made that their priority instead.
The mask came off the LDs and they showed their true colours.
If he chooses now to go on the attack it is about the right time give or take a week or two.
And Greens ahead of Lib Dems
A circuit break is in itself probably absolutely bloody useless. The only thing I can think of though is so long as the students remain where they are that this circuit break might potentially allow time for the virus to burn out amongst students without transferring from students to the wider community as much.
I doubt it though. I'm not optimistic that a circuit break will do anything other than put in restrictions that will end up being extended before the end of the fortnight.
It's fucked.
That do ya?
There could have been a long term and effective bloc which held a Tory minority government hostage.
And maybe later a Labour one too.
But they chose not to.
Much closer coordination with local authorities on local lockdowns.
Financial support for businesses and employees affected by local lockdowns.
No end to the furlough and its extension to cover other areas where it has not been applied.
Labour will not support an opening up of the country as things stand. I think that is the right position to take.
It is just a matter of fact that Labour was well over 20 poionts behind when Starmer took over. It was close to 20 points behind before lockdown. But even if you want to go by the December result, there has been significant progress in the last six months. It's a long journey with much damage to undo. The strat has been a positive one.
A tuition fee freeze would have been a compromise. Trebling tuition fees was not a compromise in any stretch of the imagination.
Now Sunak wants to put the patient back into a coma with borrowed money.
FFS wake up. We are oing to end up with an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with far, far larger debt mountain to try to sustain.
It is not going to effing work. We are looking at a bloody catastrophe the like of which we have never seen. For a disease that prays on 82 year olds.
The.worst.policy.error.by.any.British.government.ever.
They had a lot of other successes such as bringin the tax free allowance up to £10k but they let the Tories take credit for it because the Lib Dems were so desperate to disown the whole 5 years of government.
I eagerly await Paul Davies' alternative strategy for Wales.
He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
People talk about shielding the vulnerable but having hospitality get back to normal but not only do the vulnerable rely upon the healthy . . . but hospitality relies upon the vulnerable. A great many pounds spent in pubs, restaurants etc normally are spent by people who now need to shield and will shield regardless of what the government says because they are afraid and don't want to die.
The only way to get the economy back to normal is to put the health crisis behind us. That means either a vaccine, herd immunity (which would be hundreds of thousands more deaths) or suppressing the virus.
"Only private residential households, otherwise known as the target population in this bulletin, are included in the sample. People in hospitals, care homes and other institutional settings are not included."
It's not clear to me whether they would have a term-time address for a student who was in a household that had been recruited to the survey. It seems unlikely.
A Tory equivalent would be if following the 2015 election there was a hung Parliament and the Tory promise of an EU Brexit referendum was scrapped . . . and we instead joined the Euro without a referendum.
Madness. All I can think is that Starmer is is afraid of putting anything out.
Which is what we are going to get.
But OK. People will see that poverty, unemployment and destitution kill. Kill far worse that corona.
If 40% of their supporters were thrown away, if it was all about Corbyn, then why is the Tory poll share still above 40%?
If your claims were right the Tories should now be polling closer to 20%.
And who is Ed Davey
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1313553163354624006
That's where we are. And that is where we are staying. Do you see a time when we are 'out' of this. Because I really can't.
None of it makes any of what I said any less true.
This is a case of immoveable object meets irresistable force. There is no right easy anyway. A bad economy does kill but we are facing a bad recession no matter what, the only way to avoid it would have been to suppress and prevent the virus getting here in the first place.
What Labour isn't saying is that the general drive of government policy - to get infections down through appropriate restrictions - is wrong. That's because Labour believes it is right, and so is not opposing the core government policy for the sake of it. Therefore Labour's attack is focused on incompetent delivery rather than on the policy itself. Seems sensible to me.
This is slightly higher than deaths caused by other illnesses, which has a median age of 81.5."
Sun
So it is virtually indistinguishable from any other disease as far as median age at death is concerned. So your point is what?
@kinabalu on the Trump odds, I think he will get more of a pounding in the polls in the next week or so, so I am looking for 5/2 or even 3/1 but I will take 2/1
I mentioned a few days back that one big thing to look out for was the audience numbers for the VP debate and whether they followed the same trends as the Presidential debate, which was down 13% from 2016. My point was that, if the VP trends did significantly better, it would suggests that the public was taking a lot more interest in the VP candidates as potential Presidents and therefore this was not just a Trump vs Biden race but would broaden to a greater focus on Pence and Harris as possible Presidents.
https://deadline.com/2020/10/vice-presidential-debate-rating-steady-kamala-harris-mike-pence-susan-page-donald-trump-joe-biden-1234593583/
Well, the audience numbers have come in and the uplift from 2016 has been huge - so far, 59m have been counted as watching the VP debate, making it the 2nd most watched VP debate since 1976 and over 50% higher than the 2016 VP debate. It is even more remarkable when you consider that TV audiences have been declining across the board over the past several years and that the Presidential debate this time only generated a 70m audience.
My read on this is that punters are now only going to have to think about what voters are thinking about Trump and Biden, but put an important weighting to voters' views on Pence and Harris. My personal view - which many will disagree with - is that Pence is somewhat of a known entity, the interesting one will be how many undecideds will be comfortable with the prospect of a President Harris.
We expect these people to have a rotten terrible youth and still pay for our retirements? what are they, children or bloody slaves?
While Biden's national polling has moved to a landslide, and therefore he could afford to lose votes and win very comfortably, his state polling puts him winning - but not spectacularly.
Based on state polling Biden's margin of victory could be a satisfactory but unremarkable 290 to 248. Biden has enough strength in Wisconsin - Michigan - Pennsylvania - Virginia to support perhaps 1/4 odds (still considerably shorter than 1/2) but not 1/6 or 1/8 as suggested by others here.