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Why Isn’t Labour Cutting Through? – politicalbetting.com
Why Isn’t Labour Cutting Through? – politicalbetting.com
The Shadow Chancellor’s response to Sunak’s updated support package this week was well made. Ms Dodds has been saying much the same these past few months, if sotto voce. Perhaps because of this – and despite Starmer generally getting the better of the PM at PMQs – Labour has not broken through in the polls. The Tories’ large leads have largely evaporated so that is something. But the question remains. Why hasn’t Labour made more of an impact?
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He is so easy to ignore. Only the Lib Dems are worse. It also does not help that we have a performing monkey who loves the limelight as PM.
And whilst I remember...
First!
Black Wednesday was an utter disaster for the Tories because it affected the 80% in the middle. The Tories basically said to the public, we'll hike up your mortgage payments to pay for our pro-Euro ideology.
Starmer et al need to think about how they're going to appeal to the lower-middle classes. Perhaps Brexit will offer Labour a chance similar to that provided by Black Wednesday, but Labour need to focus on the people who decide elections. As nice as Marcus Rashford is, the people he's focussing on don't decide elections.
And, belatedly, Good Morning fellow larks!
King Cole, is it early enough to be considered a lark?
Today's equivalent would be a backlash against Boris/SNP/Welsh Labour if the lockdowns, lost jobs and other sacrifices do not make a dent in the pandemic, though in this case a vaccine might yet ride to their rescue.
There were other factors, of course. One was that it impacted the government's natural supporters. Mrs Thatcher had done a great deal of harm to people who did not support her in the first place so the electoral consequences were minimal. Black Wednesday, or rather the economic measures leading up to it, had hurt savers, home buyers and entrepreneurs, the sort of people who would normally place their X in the blue box.
That may be why the government can get away with not feeding children. Families who depend on free school meals probably do not vote Conservative so cannot withdraw their support, although superforecasters might want to check red wall Brexit supporters.
A senior minister said ... "[Companies] are reporting that productivity is going down, they can't bring in new clients because it's not something you can really do over Zoom, and people aren't sparking off each other and having ideas because they're all stuck at home.
"They are also having real problems training new staff. There's only so much you can do over a video link, and new recruits aren't getting all that vital experience of working alongside experienced colleagues and picking up all the things you get from watching how someone else does the job."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/23/government-fears-working-home-lockdown-hitting-uk-economy-hard/
The trend for wfh is clearly here to stay, and will increase over time, but the office and office life is far from dead.
Even if voters agree that Boris is making a right mess of things, Labour is not saying it would do anything else; just that its tiers, lockdowns and financial support would be a bit better. More efficient, more humane, perhaps even more effective, but not fundamentally different.
Logically we will therefore extend the decision to just post the 2024 election, although no idea how they achieve that. Not long to find out.
I dont think the Labour party being more vocal and critical would help them at all, probably the opposite, they have the balance about right (apart from in Wales!).
More subtly, even if there is no loss of employment so WFH employees keep their savings, that can be bad for the wider economy, especially if they save instead of spend (for all that @rcs1000 deplores low household savings rates). No spending means no VAT is paid; no money circulates through the economy; essential services need more subsidies (eg railways need more money because no-one is buying season tickets but the trains still need to run).
And when they experience that, people aren't going to like it.
So it asked for the status quo to be maintained and the EU, understandably, said No.
In this context, now one can travel to the Canary Islands again, people are trying to do so, and, in the event that that situation will prevail over Christmas, many people are going to be coming back after New Year. Wonder if there are going to stories of hold-ups while returning.
As far as Labour is concerned, voters are looking at Wales where nonessential purchases in shops and many English visitors are banned, and at London where the Mayor is trying to push down the economy and the transport system even more. If this shows what a Labour government would be like, it is not an enticing prospect. The Labour vision seems to involve shutting down much of the country and huge public borrowing, which is not realistic. They have not shown how they would control the public deficits.
https://twitter.com/spike67spike/status/1319791314049916928
Which will happen as, for example, University cases fall, and students return to normality.
Boris's local lockdowns and tiers 2 and 3 are not noticeably different from the Welsh firebreak, and what's the difference between a firebreak and the circuit breakers Starmer advocates? What's the difference between Boris's three tiers and Nicola Sturgeon's five? It is all the same thing, more or less.
Starmer is proving pretty dull and ineffective, following his early "not Corbyn" boost. I would like to see more of Ms Rayner, who is a star in the making. Favourite for next Labour leader, and 250/1 as next PM. Effectively that is a vote on Starmer going and Johnson staying, but a good value longshot IMO.
If you’ve arrived in Frankfurt on a A319 just after an A380 has arrived from China you know the value of the EU passport lane.
It is more of an issue for commercial travellers, but when is that coming back?
The government needs to promote domestic tourism for next year. Flying is off for a while.
https://twitter.com/rupert_pearse/status/1319892663370469377?s=19
Is the government planning? Probably not. Would the government help or hinder the recovery? Probably the latter.
This is just playing politics, the government gets to say "we tried, and those meanies said no", while the rest of us get on with our lives.
She's a Singer songwriter.
I love the way you seem unconvinced that the Tories 'may' not have caused Covid. Such a concession - we feel your pain.
Only a small minority of the public will feel the direct effect of Brexit, so overall it will be similar to other bits of voting, falling on others, such as taxing the rich or allowing poor kids to go hungry.
Sorry, not meaning to snipe but we're days away from the biggest betting event of the year, probably in the next four years. It also happens to be incredibly fascinating at Presidential, Senate, Congressional, Governor and issue level. There are some amazing battles taking place with stacks of polls. Any one of a score of Senate battles is worthy of a thread in its own right, and then some. It's also a result which will dramatically determine the UK's position.
Come on guys, please step up. Let's leave our myopia and focus on America for another week.
All that is left is drink.
Really, that is the biggest mistake of all.
Oh, no, that's the new Radiohead album...
For a start, existence of e-gates at airports is hardly universal (and their existence is more common on arrival back in the UK than on arrival at holiday destinations in the EU). Secondly, even where they exist, many people still don't use them. Especially abroad where it is often difficult to work out if you can, as the instructions tend to be in foreign languages. Thirdly it's not completely an inaccurate national stereotype that the average Brit secretly likes queuing (and complaining about it).
And finally the reasons for e-gates won't go away. They are a cost saver for airports, and a benefit for travellers. So any airport that sees mass arrivals from the UK is going to want them - and ultimately it will be sorted out.
It isn't yet clear that we have done significantly worse than many other countries. The first wave case and deaths totals were certainly worse, largely due to the cock up on care homes, but this didn't really cut through and now the story is the second wave that is hitting everywhere, with only a few countries so far noticeably less affected. The view that Bozo may not be brilliant but everywhere is doing badly is widespread.
Unlike the US, we are not in election mode and hence the opposition is pulling its punches. It would be easy to make a video highlighting all the chopping and changing and Bozo bluster that we have endured since the crisis started, similar to those the Dems have thrown at Trump, but now isnt the time.
Labour ought, going on historical precedent, to be better placed to 'win the peace'. Assuming they actually have a plan. The logic, other than electoral, of taking on pensioners and the wealthy in order to achieve both fairness and financial stability surely points in that direction.
Leaving the e-passport gate scheme, due to not having a data sharing agreement will be a small but meaningful hassle for some travellers.
All you do is whinge about other people's contributions, in between telling us they are too long for your attention span to actually read.
1. Brexit. A lot of punters still want "Brexit". What they think it is and what it actually is aren't the same thing, but there is still a chance that Shagger will utterly capitulate and simply lipstick the pig, in which case the "we're the EU's bitch" model of Brexit may be seen as a great triumph. Alternately no deal, the rapid shutting down of the economy and *then* capitulation. Hard to tell what will happen yet.
2. Covid. As @Cyclefree points out in her great piece Labour hasn't found the attack line that will cut through. TBH I'm not sure Starmer is capable of cutting a great line through even if they find one. Difficult to play politics with the pox - the government couldn't fuck this up harder if it tried, but there isn't an obvious winning strategy to defeat the thing.
3. Players. Shagger widely reported as not being up for staying on for long. The Rise and Fall of Reggie Sunak. The planned revenge of the Corbynites. The SNP Salmond skulduggery. A lot of moving pieces.
In short I am not surprised that the political status quo is largely holding up. We can all point to the things that *might* change things - and letting kids starve is definitely one of them - but hard to tell what will cut through when so many things are in flux.
I’m assuming here that your comment was not itself a joke that I didn’t get...
It's absolutely the wrong timing for Donald Trump and another reason why you should be betting on Joe Biden and his coat tails.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/23/health/us-coronavirus-friday/index.html
We do seem to have been remarkably successful in producing useful hospital clinical trial results - both positive (dexamethasome) and negative (“the hydroxy”) - in a way that the far better funded, but more chaotic US system hasn’t.
Perhaps Keir and Andy could have a word.
Re. the second, it's not my attention span. Some of the UK-centric threads are so full of wind there's just no point.
This is a betting site and we're days away from the biggest betting event between 2019 and 2024 (probably). Take a leaf out of Mike's book and let's have a swathe of betting opportunity threads in the immediate run up. There are still opportunities around especially as the markets are out of kilter with the polls.
Whether there is actually sufficient knowledge of US politics on the site to achieve that (and overcome the partisan/slanted analyses) is another matter. When we have similar situations in the run up to UK elections there is usually enough genuine on the ground expertise to be able to largely disregard the one sided posters who may be pushing angles.
I do think the Welsh approach seems nuts.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/23/joe-biden-slow-and-steady-campaign-432042