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Why getting to Number 10 at the next election could be a tad easier for Starmer than Johnson – polit
Why getting to Number 10 at the next election could be a tad easier for Starmer than Johnson – politicalbetting.com
A big advantage for Starmer over Johnson at the next general election is that he is in with a good chance of becoming PM if the Tories lose their majority. This would be the case even if LAB has fewer seats. The converse is that Johnson’s Tories almost certainly have to win an overall majority of Commons seats to retain power.
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The Tories would have an absolute majority of English votes so could simply veto any English laws under EVEL.
Even if EVEL were abolished then the SNP could simply make a principle of abstaining at any opportunities that suit them and the Tories can then vote down the English law with impunity - the SNP would simply be doing the "honorable" thing of not voting on English matters and Westminster would come to a crashing mess . . . which plays neatly into the SNPs hands. The more havoc in Westminster the better for them.
The SNP, Plaid, Green & SDLP would never prop up the Tories.
Davey would probably support Starmer over Johnson if push and shove came.
So Starrmer's potential allies in parliament are greater than Johnson's.
BJ 2nd term more likely due to this I reckon
Morph (who's only 43) has had his shot!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9251771/Britain-brink-hitting-15m-vaccine-target-Morph-shot.html
People who have received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine have been found to have strong T-cell responses against the Kent and South African variants of Covid, suggesting that the vaccine will continue to protect against serious disease in the coming months.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/11/pfizer-vaccine-strong-response-new-covid-variants
That's according to the results of a survey by the Financial Conduct Authority, the country's top banking regulator. The survey also found that nearly 40% of British adults suffered financially as a consequence of the pandemic, with younger workers, Black people and the self-employed among the hardest hit.
The number of Britons showing "characteristics of vulnerability" swelled to 27.7 million, climbing by 3.7 million — or 15% — between March and October 2020, the FCA said. The number suffering from low financial resilience climbed by 3.5 million over the same period to 14.2 million.
"Since the start of the pandemic, the number of people experiencing low financial resilience or negative life events has grown," Nisha Arora, director of consumer and retail policy at the FCA, said in a statement.
People aged 18 to 34, the self-employed, lower earners, Black people and groups who do not identify as White have been hit particularly hard.
We've had five such governments since 1945: 1950-1, 1964-6, 1974-9, 1992-7 and 2017-9. Governments tend to be re-elected in this country, but in only one of those did the PM lead his party to victory at the following election.
Governments without a working majority always have the smell of death about them. Their MPs are harassed; they can't get the more difficult parts of their agenda through; foreign governments and the media despise them; and everybody knows they're only there till a better alternative comes along.
(It was Gordon Brown's unique achievement to run such a government even with a healthy overall majority).
Mr. B2, I wonder how those stats compare with normal times. I remember reading somewhere a large number of people save little or nothing.
1974-1974 and 2010-2015
It's evidently a slow news day when the statements of the bleedin' obvious need to be brought back out for discussion. This topic has already been done to death: we know that the Tories need an outright win next time, or else they'll probably be replaced by a Labour minority (and then we get into the associated topic of SNP dependency, and all things Scottish end up descending into the same circular arguments repeated ad infinitum.) Moreover, the next General Election is unlikely to take place for several years, so there's little or no point in trying to work out which party will win what, and the likely consequences thereof.
Now, what else is going on? It looks like it might be Wales is Wonderful Day...
1. Wales reaches the first major vaccine project goal:
Wales will be the first UK nation to have offered the top four priority groups a Covid jab, the Welsh Government has said.
Within hours, officials say, all over 70s including care home residents, will have been offered a first dose.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-56025773
2. Part of Stonehenge may be a second-hand Welsh monument:
One of Britain's biggest and oldest stone circles has been found in Wales - and could be the original building blocks of Stonehenge.
Archaeologists uncovered the remains of the Waun Mawn site in Pembrokeshire's Preseli Hills.
They believe the stones could have been dismantled and rebuilt 150 miles (240 km) away on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-56029203
3. Covid genomic sequencing is very advanced in Wales:
Meet Jess Hey, a Public Health Wales scientist who is working on hunting down new variants of Covid-19.
She is part of a team of 16, based in Cardiff, that has been able to sequence between 15 to 20% of all positive cases in Wales since Covid arrived, one of the highest rates anywhere in the world.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-56034659
Shocks like this largely exacerbate existing inequalities. Some previously secure households will be in real difficulties because of unemployment, but mostly it'll be a tale of the struggling continuing to struggle and the wealthy becoming more secure.
1. Tories retain their majority. 80 seats is a big cushion. But...Covid. Boris got the jab acquisition and roll-out right, so those who put him in with that majority - the older generation - may give him a thank you vote for that. But tax rises to pay for Covid may prove painful. Not a given this far out, but more likely than
2. Labour gain an outright majority. It's going to need them to engage in Battle Royale. 15 months into this Government, no real sign of that. No Big Ideas yet. Frankly, no little ones either. A Micawber Opposition, waiting for something to come up. That something is likely to be
3. Coalition government. Ugh. I mean, really ugh - a deeply unwelcome prospect. It is the first choice of very few. Nationalists maybe - who want to use the confusion as cover for departure from the UK. So just a means to an end, rather than a desired outcome in its own right. I'm not sure even the LibDems would go "Yippee - our 7 MPs can taste power again!"
The English especially have an aversion to weak governments. Even weak (initially) majority Governments are hated and punished - John Major was hammered, James Callaghan before that. At regional and local level, coalitions barely make it to the next electoral test. Hell, Scotland put in place a majority SNP regime even though the system was designed to make that impossible. The default setting is a preference for strong, stable government that can implement a voter-approved manifesto.
So if we get to the next election and the polls show we are headed for a messy coalition - with re-runs of Starmer in Sturgeon's pocket ads - I fully expect the Tories to do better from an aversion to Coalition than Labour. Just because the previous election was so much about "get Brexit done", and that has been delivered. A Labour majority is such a huge thing to deliver. The Tories post poll tax and Maggie were not in a great place, but still stayed in power when the other option was Kinnock. Many thought 1992 a shock Tory win - but I predicted the result to within an accuracy of 2 seats.
So my take is different to Mike.
https://twitter.com/BarneyGrahamMD/status/1360016253545566211
A remote worker and a waitress might make similar money in normal times. One will be unaffected professionally by the current situation, the other will have been unable to work consistently at all, with only minor periods of work (if she even still has a job).
I agree with the general tenor of your post but we should be aware of differences like that.
(No, probably not.)
1) It’s a *net* loss of 47 seats that would be needed to deprive the Tories of their majority. This may be harder than it seems. Quite a number of seats in the North and Wales have been trending Tory over time and may still fall even if the national trend flows against them.
2) Brown has very foolishly set a precedent that the PM is the PM is the PM. That was not (contrary to the inept advice of O’Donnell) the case previously, where it was accepted and had been accepted since 1929 that an incumbent government that came a clear second in the seat count should resign office. This precedent makes a minority government taking power much harder. It means that Johnson can squat like a
Gordongargoyle in Number 10 and to remove him there needs to be a positive vote in the House for an alternative.So if Starmer is second in terms of seats he needs a deal for positive support, which will be much harder than if he tops the chart in terms of seats and just needs to ask everyone to abstain.
That increases the calculation to around 80 net gains for Labour.
Possible? Yes. Easy? Ummm...
But how much more embarrassing for the EU is it that this stuff is so simple even Drakeford can get it right?
* I believe Northern Ireland is poorer on average, but is not technically in Britain.
Their price is obvious.
It isn't in Great Britain which is the easterly of the British Isles.
It is of course in the United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland),
TES ran an online poll to get the views of teachers on the performance of the DfE. They had eight thousand responses, which is as near as bugger it 1% of the education workforce. Probably a majority of them were teachers, although many other school staff read the TES as well (as it’s about the only reliable resource for finding out what’s happening in education - and that includes DfE announcements).
Now normally I would of course dismiss such polls as bollocks, as when
exploitative business owner with links to UNITEunemployed carer and ordinary person Rachael from Swindon runs a similar poll and finds 92% of people still think the Jezaster is awesome.But here is one thing that did strike me.
Of those 8,000 respondents not a single one based in England has complete confidence in the DfE. Not ONE.
Only 4% have even *reasonable* confidence.
Now, such polling being self selecting, to put too much weight on it would be as foolish and dishonest a use of statistics as Nick Gibb trying to justify his hamfisted bullying to keep open schools.
But how the actual fuck did the DfE manage to mess things up so badly that in a large sample size of education professionals of all grades not a single person believes they know what they’re doing?
That tells me that the DfE is in for a very nasty ride. It might even have to close over this.
Good riddance, admittedly, as long as the inept fools working in it are sacked and not redeployed to ruin other departments.
Edit - article (complete with undue weight on stats) is here:
https://www.tes.com/news/exclusive-school-staff-trust-dfe-covid-plummets
Hardly surprising..
If I’m entirely honest, my decision to say it’s not in Britain was largely because I wanted a better punchline.
Wasn't the initial Covid economic prediction for 14% decline in 2020, 15% growth in 2021? Which works out as being net 1% down?
The decline in 2020 seems a lot less than initially expected.
I doubt that there will be a formal coalition but plenty of horsetrading including a referendum on Scotland and PR.
The voters will be told that the choice at the election is not between a majority Tory government or a majority Labour government, but between a strong and stable Tory majority government or Labour's coalition of chaos led from Holyrood.
This is why a resurgence in Scotland is so crucial to Labour's hopes at Westminster. It's not because, numerically, they need Scottish seats. They can win enough English seats. It's because it kills off the political argument of a Labour government propped up by the SNP.
Without that it would be rather more than 10%.
https://twitter.com/holmescnn/status/1360008741001781258?s=19
I strongly suspect this is the future of our energy in this country and the best way to combine wind with the water around our island. This allows on-demand energy, unlike nuclear or tidal etc, and allows the replacement of gas boilers etc
We need some form of storage method to reliably and on-demand produce energy when there's no wind, this seems like a smart choice.
Scottish parliament voting intention(s): Savanta Com Res.
Constituency:
SNP: 54% (+1)
CON: 23% (+4)
LAB: 16% (-2)
LDEM: 5% (-1)
List:
SNP: 43% (-1)
CON: 21% (+5)
LAB: 18% (-)
GRN: 10% (-1)
They'll be claiming the Rolling Stones next.
Good header. It shows that despite LibDems only being on 6 or 7% in national polls what really matters is what their support is like in their key Con "winnable" seats.
It was right to criticise his initial decision to keep so many doses in the freezer but he's listened to the criticism and mocking, changed course and done the right thing eventually. U-turns like that should be applauded so well done.
We all thought Mark was in for a bashing from Boris, Arlene & Nicola. We all thought he'd end up busted and on the floor, with the Tories kicking in his sorry ass & with Nicola on top as usual
Instead, it's the greatest moment in Mark's life.
After all, how many great moments does a shabbily-dressed, bumbling university professor ever get?
It is a beautiful, heart-warming story to start off pb.com's day. We can't be angry or rude to each other now.
Every loser wins ... once the dream begins
Australia should have invested in domestic manufacturing of the vaccine - potentially to supply themselves and New Zealand - and initiated rollout ASAP while social lockdowns and mixing weren't required. These sorts of stop-start lockdowns are going to be inevitable for them until the vaccine rollout occurs.
Have a good morning,
Few thought he was even a starter.
There were many in life who were smarter.
But he finished PM,
A CH, an OM,
An earl and a Knight of the Garter.
Ands while I don't in any way expect the last two lines to come true, and I doubt very much whether Drakeford has (m)any Westminster ambitions .........
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9251771/Britain-brink-hitting-15m-vaccine-target-Morph-shot.html
January is going to be really awful, so is Feb with so much of the economy simply closed. I don't expect any big bounce back in March either.
These numbers do underline the necessity of ending lockdowns. Anyone in the government that thinks it's acceptable to continue them until September needs booting out.
The SNP as the scorpion 🦂 has no reason to make a success of a minority Labour frog 🐸 government.
The SNP has every incentive to allow a Labour PM to be in office but for Westminster to be a catastrophe. They are agents of chaos, they have no incentive or desire to make your Westminster government work.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/774228.stm
"A Cardiff academic has published new evidence that Elvis's ancestors came from the Preseli hills in west Wales.
Mr Breverton claims the family could well have had links with a nearby chapel dedicated to St Elvis - the only one known in Britain."
I actually think the header is quite wrong & SKS does not want to deprive the Tories of a majority in 2024.
For the Labour Party, the very best thing is to win an absolute majority, of course. But, barring a huge improvement in their performance in Scotland, that is very, very unlikely, IMO.
Given that the options for SKS are
1. Deprive the Tories of a majority, and lead a minority Govt backed by an unstable hodge-podge of a coalition. This will lead to squabbling chaos and probable collapse in short order.
2. Leave the Tories in power with a majority of ~ 5 to deal with the mess, with the likelihood that within a year, it is the Tory Govt that will have collapsed in squabbling chaos. A second election in quick succession is much more likely to deliver what SKS wants, which is a Labour majority.
Surely, SKS needs option 2.
It doesn't work.
If you expect Ian Blackford to be playing nice marching through the lobbies every day in order to make Westminster succeed then you have another thing coming.
In particular a year or two negotiating what an Independence deal would look like, in advance of a referendum, so as to learn the Brexit lesson. Not only would such a deal inform the plebiscite, it would bind both governments into making the negotiations constructive.
In the 2024 scenario sketched out here, Nicky S either topples the Conservative government or permits them to continue.
She doesn't really have a choice, does she?
What would his government look like? Perhaps lasting two years, takes over a huge govt debt, unable to do anything bar deal with Scottish independence and a PR referendum for rUK that they probably lose. As soon as Scotland vote for indy his majority vanishes.
The last few years have shown plenty of global politicians take very stupid decisions with only short term upside so I could see it happening, but equally Starmer and Labour may prefer another election straight after or even to leave the mess to the Tories.