A gentle reminder that the UK voted to leave the EU by the narrow margin of 52% to 48%.
Reading some comments on here, a visitor would think that it was closer to 70:30. As others have said, Brexit shouldn't be much of an issue by 2024. But even if it is, it doesn't benefit the government quite as much as some on here would believe. Incredibly, even in the northern and midlands towns quite a lot of folk voted to stay in the EU.
As a semi-native West Virginian, yours truly feels an affinity with County Durham. It may be Almost Heaven, but WVa has NOTHING that can hold a candle to Durham Cathedral and University. (On the other hand, the North of England Outback cannot match the New River Gorge, so there).
I note that both County Durham & West Virginia are all-but-certain to lose representation in the national legislature.
In the Mountain State, congressional districts are shrinking from three to two (there were six in the 1950s, the height of the coal boom) with the current central district almost certain to be split between existing northern & southern seats. Both of which should remain virtually-sure to elect Republicans for rest of the reeling '20s.
In County Durham, will reduction and consequent (or otherwise) boundary changes tend to help or hurt Labour and Conservative prospects, and do any others have a chance? Generally where seats are totally or partially removed, with respect to incumbents it's usually a case of the weakest to the wall.
Why I wonder are the most Brexity seats mainly small miserable Northern and Eastern towns that only those without imagination and talent wouldn't have moved out of at the first possible opportunity?
Why did all the vibrant Cities vote solidly to Remain? It seems to cut across traditional Party lines. Maybe these 'Red Wall' seats are the wrong way of dividing the country. Scotland is pretty solidly anti Brexit and is likely to leave the UK. Similarly N.Ireland who will certainly thrive as part of a united ireland.
There is a good chance and an irony that when the negative effects of Brexit finally hit us it's going to be the Brexit voting areas that are going to be hit the hardest. The voters in those areas might even ask themselves where their country has gone!
But the interesting question is who will they blame? Those who led them down this back alley or they themselves who voted for it? Unlikely to be themselves but I'd be very surprised if Johnson and his henchmen escape unscathed
Voters are notoriously ungrateful, but the one thing you can be certain of is that they won't blame themselves!
It will take some years for this country to get over its political xenophobia.
Reducing Brexit to "political xenophobia" is precisely the kind of arrogant Metropolitan elitist sneering which caused them to win in the first place.
Let me turn it around: policies are not, usually, particularly interesting to 90% of the population. Most people care about their family, their livelihoods, their neighbourhood, their job, and their prospects.
Outside of us obsessives, Brexit is not desired for the sake of Brexit. It is desired because of the prospect of tangible benefits.
Right now, with the EU having bugled vaccines worse than Bungle, things look good.
But in the medium term, relativity to other countries doesn't win many votes. Am I better off than I was one, three and five years ago? Am I more optimistic?
We don't know the answer to those questions yet.
Bar those who cant accept the result, Brexit means increasingly less to people as the years go on. "Events" are taking over and bear more relevance to the future than a vote in 2016.
Spot on.
It's time to stop even mentioning Brexit. (Worth noting, of course, that even Starmer is reconciled to this and supported the government's legislation on this matter.)
Agreed. Having delivered Brexit will not be a compelling reason for voting for Boris in 2024. Voters are notoriously ungrateful and in any event a UK free of the EU will be the new normal.
Boris will need other reasons for those red wall seats to remain blue. The economic position of the government is both an asset and a liability here. On the one hand the deficit ought to make large scale programs in the north difficult. On the other Boris will argue (possibly correctly) that the economy needs a boost to get out of recession after Covid. My guess is that he will spend, spend, spend. Northern voters used to be taken for granted by Labour and ignored by the Tories may well like it.
That's a non sequitur.
Just because it's time to stop mentioning Brexit does not mean voters will forget. They've relaxed now because remainers were kicked into touch, but only after a long game with a parliament that tried to thwart the will of the people at every turn and with every trick in the book.
But it takes a generation for voters to regain trust after something that seismic. Look at Black Wednesday: it was a generation before the tories were trusted again on the economy.
It will be the same on Brexit. It will be a generation before Labour are trusted again.
And that, my friends, is why it will be a very, very, long time before you see another British Labour Prime Minister.
Have a good day
I think that people will remember that they called it wrong. Even worse they will remember that they wouldn't do what they were told. The TIG members at that dinner where not one is still an MP comes to mind. They have to make it clear that they respect the wishes of their employers and that it is not acceptable to argue that you somehow know better. But I don't think this will be the kind of insuperable barrier that you do.
Scotland is pretty solidly anti Brexit and is likely to leave the UK.
4 out of 10 Scots voted to leave the EU.
That doesn't strike me as "pretty solidly anti-Brexit".
If it was only 20% rather than just under 40% - yes. However, it wasn't.
62-38 (on a 67% turnout so not ‘4 out of 10 Scots’) would be accounted to be a landslide on most electoral measures. More importantly Scottish polling has stayed constant on the matter, edging towards an even higher anti Brexit pro EU numbers on occasion. Pretty solidly anti-Brexit seems on the button to me.
[Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary] added: "We now urgently need government to set out how they will prioritise those outside of the first nine groups - it's perfectly reasonable for teachers, police officers and other key workers who haven't been able to stay at home in the lockdown to ask when their turn will be.
"If government aren't going to prioritise by occupation in the next phase they need to set out why."
(a) Assuming the JCVI does indeed recommend prioritisation solely by age, "I don't know about you but we're following the science" (b) Trying to sift out all the special pleaders from the general population would be a massive ball ache and slow the whole project down, to the general detriment of everybody (c) Turning to have a quiet word with private sector workers, especially those in areas like manufacturing who've had to go out to work throughout all of this but do not get constantly lionised for their trouble, "Do you really want to wait an extra couple of months at the back of the queue whilst we butter up Labour's client voters?"
The polls suggest that people want young teachers prioritised ahead of 49 year olds, but I bet that they're answering those questions in just the same way that they respond in the affirmative to ones about paying more taxes to fund public services. What they really mean is that it's a good idea for other people to be made to wait whilst my kids' teachers or PC Plod get their vaccines, just so long as it's not me.
A gentle reminder that the UK voted to leave the EU by the narrow margin of 52% to 48%.
Reading some comments on here, a visitor would think that it was closer to 70:30. As others have said, Brexit shouldn't be much of an issue by 2024. But even if it is, it doesn't benefit the government quite as much as some on here would believe. Incredibly, even in the northern and midlands towns quite a lot of folk voted to stay in the EU.
Listening to Keir Starmer this morning there is no political desire to reopen Brexit from either main parties and as much as some will laments it's passing in my opinion, there is no prospect of the UK rejoining the EU in the foreseeable future
Governments get themselves oppositions. Over time they upset people, for one reason or another.
The Falkland's War obscured this for a while. So did Brexit.
And I don't know if the opposition will come from Labour, Reform, the Greens, the LibDems or whoever.
But it will come from somewhere.
Local election bases will erode. By-elections will be lost. And then suddenly, someone else will be in Number 10.
In 2024? On the balance of probabilities, I'd say "no".
But it will happen.
Pendulums are like that.
Very true pendulums are like that though Boris seems to have done a good job at resetting the pendulum so 2019 was year zero of his government rather than 2010. Whether that will last is another question.
Though the pendulum shouldn't just apply to England or the UK should it? How about Wales? Scotland?
When will the English/UK next get a non Tory Government is an interesting question. When will the Welsh next get a non Labour one? When will the Scots next get a non SNP one?
All interesting questions and there seems to me to be no divine rule why it must be the English/UK one that changes first.
I inclined to think that that is more linked to a wider vaccination in the whole population.
Then you’ve missed the direct comparison in the story. Comparing to two other cohorts who have not been vaccinated those who have are showing a bigger reduction.
But surely this is obvious. Young people are much more active, they are out and about much more, they are more likely to have jobs which involve meeting and dealing with large numbers of the public. Of course most super spreaders are going to be young and of course immunising them will do more to reduce the R rate than vaccinating those secure in care homes (to take the other extreme).
The point is that those in the care homes are far, far more likely to die if they get infected before the vaccination has an effect. If you want to reduce the number of cases vaccinate the young. If you want to reduce death and serious illness vaccinate the old. Simples.
Also, of course, young people are supposed to be in schools, which are ideal spreading grounds for the virus (especially in Israel, where they have a positive addiction to aircon).
"On Wednesday, The European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen called on Russia to explain why it’s sending “millions and millions” of vaccines to countries around the globe, but continues to struggle to vaccinate its own people."
And that's not the first disastrous policy mistake by Starmer. As DPP he instituted the 'believe all victims' policy which fed the Carl Beech scandal. Beech would not have got away with it had the (admittedly stupid) police officers not been instructed in the first place to believe him as "credible and true."
This is bollocks. I’ve seen on this very board Starmer blamed for the Rochdale and Saville scandals, where victims were not believed, and Carl Beech, where they were. I’m not aware of this supposed “believe all victims policy” and would be very imterested if you could provide a link or citation.
Wiltshire police had such a policy.
But the reason they had it is they are a bit dim and were trying to overcorrect.
Didn’t Cyclefree do a thread header on this a while back?
And that's not the first disastrous policy mistake by Starmer. As DPP he instituted the 'believe all victims' policy which fed the Carl Beech scandal. Beech would not have got away with it had the (admittedly stupid) police officers not been instructed in the first place to believe him as "credible and true."
This is bollocks. I’ve seen on this very board Starmer blamed for the Rochdale and Saville scandals, where victims were not believed, and Carl Beech, where they were. I’m not aware of this supposed “believe all victims policy” and would be very imterested if you could provide a link or citation.
Well then you should be as it's certainly NOT 'bollocks'. As a journalist I covered this extensively.
Starmer chaired the Labour party's victims taskforce and was instrumental in the policy shift that came into play.
I know the Carl Beech story inside out and he is unlikely to have got away with it without the policy shift, which was a reaction of course to the Jimmy Savile scandal.
Reactive policy decisions are rarely good ones and Keir Starmer got this badly wrong. As he did with Labour on the EU.
Still bollocks I’m afraid @Mysticrose . You said “as DPP”. The first of the articles you post was written less than a month before he stepped down. The other two post date his resignation. There was no policy shift “as DPP” as you allege. You’re a journalist, sure, I’m a lawyer. Starmer’s time as DPP almost exactly overlapped with my time at Kingsley Napley where we were more than a little cognisant of such changes being, as KN is, a specialist criminal law firm. Your assertion has no basis in fact.
As a semi-native West Virginian, yours truly feels an affinity with County Durham. It may be Almost Heaven, but WVa has NOTHING that can hold a candle to Durham Cathedral and University. (On the other hand, the North of England Outback cannot match the New River Gorge, so there).
I note that both County Durham & West Virginia are all-but-certain to lose representation in the national legislature.
In the Mountain State, congressional districts are shrinking from three to two (there were six in the 1950s, the height of the coal boom) with the current central district almost certain to be split between existing northern & southern seats. Both of which should remain virtually-sure to elect Republicans for rest of the reeling '20s.
In County Durham, will reduction and consequent (or otherwise) boundary changes tend to help or hurt Labour and Conservative prospects, and do any others have a chance? Generally where seats are totally or partially removed, with respect to incumbents it's usually a case of the weakest to the wall.
Why I wonder are the most Brexity seats mainly small miserable Northern and Eastern towns that only those without imagination and talent wouldn't have moved out of at the first possible opportunity?
Why did all the vibrant Cities vote solidly to Remain? It seems to cut across traditional Party lines. Maybe these 'Red Wall' seats are the wrong way of dividing the country. Scotland is pretty solidly anti Brexit and is likely to leave the UK. Similarly N.Ireland who will certainly thrive as part of a united ireland.
There is a good chance and an irony that when the negative effects of Brexit finally hit us it's going to be the Brexit voting areas that are going to be hit the hardest. The voters in those areas might even ask themselves where their country has gone!
But the interesting question is who will they blame? Those who led them down this back alley or they themselves who voted for it? Unlikely to be themselves but I'd be very surprised if Johnson and his henchmen escape unscathed
Voters are notoriously ungrateful, but the one thing you can be certain of is that they won't blame themselves!
It will take some years for this country to get over its political xenophobia.
Reducing Brexit to "political xenophobia" is precisely the kind of arrogant Metropolitan elitist sneering which caused them to win in the first place.
Let me turn it around: policies are not, usually, particularly interesting to 90% of the population. Most people care about their family, their livelihoods, their neighbourhood, their job, and their prospects.
Outside of us obsessives, Brexit is not desired for the sake of Brexit. It is desired because of the prospect of tangible benefits.
Right now, with the EU having bugled vaccines worse than Bungle, things look good.
But in the medium term, relativity to other countries doesn't win many votes. Am I better off than I was one, three and five years ago? Am I more optimistic?
We don't know the answer to those questions yet.
Bar those who cant accept the result, Brexit means increasingly less to people as the years go on. "Events" are taking over and bear more relevance to the future than a vote in 2016.
I can see why Brexiteers no longer want to be bound by their promises of sunlit uplands.
Im getting my jab next month, not in August. Seems good to me.l
If today’s media reports are correct, coupled with what we’re seeing in vaccinated cohorts who get infected before building immunity. it looks as though my jab won’t be before August.
Which is bloody annoying, but due to constant missed opportunities and bungling by the government probably can’t be helped either.
I think you need at least one seat in the North and Midlands that is trending Labour due to affluence. There are enough targets to substantially reduce the scale of need for regaining the red wall.
As I've said many times before, the red wall realignment of the North merely brings the North into line with what has happened in very similar looking, often Distribution industry led, Southern seats, especially in Essex and North Kent. There may have been a pit once (also true in North Kent), but these are often a mix of semi-rural and left behind traditionalist. Strip out the history and look just at the 2020 demographics and there are probably more obvious Labour target seats than Bassetlaw.
The Calder Valley, Altrincham & Sale West and Southport equivalent seats will be must for Labour, I'd have thought, and if Labour do really well, you'd still think them more likely to land Macclesfield than regain Mansfield. And given some of the Tory majorities Macclesfield once returned, that would be iconic.
As a semi-native West Virginian, yours truly feels an affinity with County Durham. It may be Almost Heaven, but WVa has NOTHING that can hold a candle to Durham Cathedral and University. (On the other hand, the North of England Outback cannot match the New River Gorge, so there).
I note that both County Durham & West Virginia are all-but-certain to lose representation in the national legislature.
In the Mountain State, congressional districts are shrinking from three to two (there were six in the 1950s, the height of the coal boom) with the current central district almost certain to be split between existing northern & southern seats. Both of which should remain virtually-sure to elect Republicans for rest of the reeling '20s.
In County Durham, will reduction and consequent (or otherwise) boundary changes tend to help or hurt Labour and Conservative prospects, and do any others have a chance? Generally where seats are totally or partially removed, with respect to incumbents it's usually a case of the weakest to the wall.
Why I wonder are the most Brexity seats mainly small miserable Northern and Eastern towns that only those without imagination and talent wouldn't have moved out of at the first possible opportunity?
Why did all the vibrant Cities vote solidly to Remain? It seems to cut across traditional Party lines. Maybe these 'Red Wall' seats are the wrong way of dividing the country. Scotland is pretty solidly anti Brexit and is likely to leave the UK. Similarly N.Ireland who will certainly thrive as part of a united ireland.
There is a good chance and an irony that when the negative effects of Brexit finally hit us it's going to be the Brexit voting areas that are going to be hit the hardest. The voters in those areas might even ask themselves where their country has gone!
But the interesting question is who will they blame? Those who led them down this back alley or they themselves who voted for it? Unlikely to be themselves but I'd be very surprised if Johnson and his henchmen escape unscathed
Voters are notoriously ungrateful, but the one thing you can be certain of is that they won't blame themselves!
It will take some years for this country to get over its political xenophobia.
Reducing Brexit to "political xenophobia" is precisely the kind of arrogant Metropolitan elitist sneering which caused them to win in the first place.
Let me turn it around: policies are not, usually, particularly interesting to 90% of the population. Most people care about their family, their livelihoods, their neighbourhood, their job, and their prospects.
Outside of us obsessives, Brexit is not desired for the sake of Brexit. It is desired because of the prospect of tangible benefits.
Right now, with the EU having bugled vaccines worse than Bungle, things look good.
But in the medium term, relativity to other countries doesn't win many votes. Am I better off than I was one, three and five years ago? Am I more optimistic?
We don't know the answer to those questions yet.
Bar those who cant accept the result, Brexit means increasingly less to people as the years go on. "Events" are taking over and bear more relevance to the future than a vote in 2016.
I can see why Brexiteers no longer want to be bound by their promises of sunlit uplands.
Im getting my jab next month, not in August. Seems good to me.l
If today’s media reports are correct, coupled with what we’re seeing in vaccinated cohorts who get infected before building immunity. it looks as though my jab won’t be before August.
Which is bloody annoying, but due to constant missed opportunities and bungling by the government probably can’t be helped either.
What makes you think that? I thought that we were still on target to give everyone at least their first jab by the end of the first week in May and the second by end June. We are over 17m already.
[Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary] added: "We now urgently need government to set out how they will prioritise those outside of the first nine groups - it's perfectly reasonable for teachers, police officers and other key workers who haven't been able to stay at home in the lockdown to ask when their turn will be.
"If government aren't going to prioritise by occupation in the next phase they need to set out why."
(a) Assuming the JCVI does indeed recommend prioritisation solely by age, "I don't know about you but we're following the science" (b) Trying to sift out all the special pleaders from the general population would be a massive ball ache and slow the whole project down, to the general detriment of everybody (c) Turning to have a quiet word with private sector workers, especially those in areas like manufacturing who've had to go out to work throughout all of this but do not get constantly lionised for their trouble, "Do you really want to wait an extra couple of months at the back of the queue whilst we butter up Labour's client voters?"
The polls suggest that people want young teachers prioritised ahead of 49 year olds, but I bet that they're answering those questions in just the same way that they respond in the affirmative to ones about paying more taxes to fund public services. What they really mean is that it's a good idea for other people to be made to wait whilst my kids' teachers or PC Plod get their vaccines, just so long as it's not me.
I’m getting concerned about my jab, because from the anecdotal information I’m getting actually it is starting to look as though it’s a very bad idea to be infected either when jabbed or in the first two weeks after being jabbed.
Which means if I am working in a school - which is, the lies of certain Edinburgh based professors who admire Toby Young notwithstanding, a high risk environment for infection - I do not want the jab. I will wait until I have a few weeks off, isolate for ten days and *then* get it, before isolating for another two weeks.
That also means, however, if they do go down this route, that I would be ruled out of teaching in the summer holidays if they want me back in the classroom ina September.
Maybe I’m overthinking this; hopefully I am. But if I’m not it’s going to cause complications.
Not anti- English at all SNP supporter approvingly posts tweet calling for English national flag to be banned 🤔
It was the St Pauli bit to which I was referring, couldn’t give a fuck about the opinion of a US rock musician resident in Berlin on the ‘English national flag’.
I think you need at least one seat in the North and Midlands that is trending Labour due to affluence. There are enough targets to substantially reduce the scale of need for regaining the red wall.
As I've said many times before, the red wall realignment of the North merely brings the North into line with what has happened in very similar looking, often Distribution industry led, Southern seats, especially in Essex and North Kent. There may have been a pit once (also true in North Kent), but these are often a mix of semi-rural and left behind traditionalist. Strip out the history and look just at the 2020 demographics and there are probably more obvious Labour target seats than Bassetlaw.
The Calder Valley, Altrincham & Sale West and Southport equivalent seats will be must for Labour, I'd have thought, and if Labour do really well, you'd still think them more likely to land Macclesfield than regain Mansfield. And given some of the Tory majorities Macclesfield once returned, that would be iconic.
....peers at Electoral Calculus.... how about Rushcliffe.
Don't get me wrong, parts of v the red wall need retaking by Labour, but too obsessive a red wall focus feels like fighting the last war.
Not anti- English at all SNP supporter approvingly posts tweet calling for English national flag to be banned 🤔
It was the St Pauli bit to which I was referring, couldn’t give a fuck about the opinion of a US rock musician resident in Berlin on the ‘English national flag’.
Thin skinned obsessives gotta obsess I guess.
Very self aware your last sentence there. Credit to you for being so honest and reflective.
Dr. Foxy, fanciful to imagine the right are whipping up, rather than reacting to, a culture war. It isn't the right that thinks whiteness is a problem or that people should indulge in cultish symbolism like kneeling to show they're not guilty of wrongthink.
It's a bit of both, depending on the person. Its certainly lazy and untrue to act like theres nothing whatsoever to react to, even though some people are happy to have it to react to.
I inclined to think that that is more linked to a wider vaccination in the whole population.
Then you’ve missed the direct comparison in the story. Comparing to two other cohorts who have not been vaccinated those who have are showing a bigger reduction.
But surely this is obvious. Young people are much more active, they are out and about much more, they are more likely to have jobs which involve meeting and dealing with large numbers of the public. Of course most super spreaders are going to be young and of course immunising them will do more to reduce the R rate than vaccinating those secure in care homes (to take the other extreme).
The point is that those in the care homes are far, far more likely to die if they get infected before the vaccination has an effect. If you want to reduce the number of cases vaccinate the young. If you want to reduce death and serious illness vaccinate the old. Simples.
I think you need to read it again. The comparison age groups are young to young. It’s quite clear.
A gentle reminder that the UK voted to leave the EU by the narrow margin of 52% to 48%.
Reading some comments on here, a visitor would think that it was closer to 70:30. As others have said, Brexit shouldn't be much of an issue by 2024. But even if it is, it doesn't benefit the government quite as much as some on here would believe. Incredibly, even in the northern and midlands towns quite a lot of folk voted to stay in the EU.
Listening to Keir Starmer this morning there is no political desire to reopen Brexit from either main parties and as much as some will laments it's passing in my opinion, there is no prospect of the UK rejoining the EU in the foreseeable future
Of course SKS is saying that. But he's a politician- it's not a forever promise, is it?
And meanwhile, even with the Christmas Deal and the Vaccine Fiasco, the latest YouGov tracker still has a lead for "with hindsight, voting Leave was a mistake".
I don't know how that plays out politically- badly I expect. But insisting the matter is closed doesn't make it so.
(For avoidance of doubt, the fact that the issue isn't settled is a Bad Thing. I'd much rather make this setup work as well as possible, and see where we are in a decade or so. But I don't see that happening either.)
A gentle reminder that the UK voted to leave the EU by the narrow margin of 52% to 48%.
Reading some comments on here, a visitor would think that it was closer to 70:30. As others have said, Brexit shouldn't be much of an issue by 2024. But even if it is, it doesn't benefit the government quite as much as some on here would believe. Incredibly, even in the northern and midlands towns quite a lot of folk voted to stay in the EU.
That is all very true. We have lived through a very unusual time but for the sake of argument supposing everything turns to crap over the next two years The Scots revolt unemployment soars the streets fill with the homeless money gets tight businesses close etc etc. For once in a very long time there will be no excuses. A unique moment in history. All the leading Brexiteers and all those responsible will be together in one room. Not a snowball in Hell's chance of passing the buck. The Johnson administration will be screwed
Not anti- English at all SNP supporter approvingly posts tweet calling for English national flag to be banned 🤔
It was the St Pauli bit to which I was referring, couldn’t give a fuck about the opinion of a US rock musician resident in Berlin on the ‘English national flag’.
Thin skinned obsessives gotta obsess I guess.
Very self aware your last sentence there. Credit to you for being so honest and reflective.
Ah, the old ‘I’ve turned your own words back on you, haw, haw, that larned ye!’
Funny how our ‘exchanges’ almost always centre on you latching onto one of my posts.
And that's not the first disastrous policy mistake by Starmer. As DPP he instituted the 'believe all victims' policy which fed the Carl Beech scandal. Beech would not have got away with it had the (admittedly stupid) police officers not been instructed in the first place to believe him as "credible and true."
This is bollocks. I’ve seen on this very board Starmer blamed for the Rochdale and Saville scandals, where victims were not believed, and Carl Beech, where they were. I’m not aware of this supposed “believe all victims policy” and would be very imterested if you could provide a link or citation.
Wiltshire police had such a policy.
But the reason they had it is they are a bit dim and were trying to overcorrect.
Didn’t Cyclefree do a thread header on this a while back?
Yes and they wasted millions of tax payers money (I have a dog in this fight as I am one of the tax payers) trying to prove someone who was dead was a peadophile, based only on evidence of a liar, whose lies fell apart under the briefest scrutiny. The actions they took were disgusting.
Starmer DOESN'T call for Hancock's resignation over PPE contracts. Is he the last hope for a return to the politics of the past? No doubt he'll be roundly criticised from the left. And probably the Conservatives will bank it, but not take reciprocal stances in future...
What this header shows is Labour's small to medium-sized urban area problem. They sweep the board in core cities, university constitutencies, and Merseyside, and have a legacy vote in the Welsh Valleys, but that's not anywhere near enough to win. The party's fall from grace in so many such constituencies, which were either safe for the party, or marginal seats which they held comfortably from 1997 - 2010, has been striking.
Mr. Divvie, it seems unreasonable to accuse someone of being obsessive when they have the temerity to point out what your own linked tweet calls for (namely the banning of the flag of England).
The seat I will be watching is Canterbury. Will the student vote still be as enthusiastic to turn out for labour as in 2017/2019?
Labour's pitch will be something along the lines of
'hey, we know we cheered enthusiastically as lockdown measures significantly disrupted your education as a child and damaged your life chances, but you should still vote for us. deffo.'
Not anti- English at all SNP supporter approvingly posts tweet calling for English national flag to be banned 🤔
It was the St Pauli bit to which I was referring, couldn’t give a fuck about the opinion of a US rock musician resident in Berlin on the ‘English national flag’.
Thin skinned obsessives gotta obsess I guess.
Very self aware your last sentence there. Credit to you for being so honest and reflective.
Ah, the old ‘I’ve turned your own words back on you, haw, haw, that larned ye!’
Funny how our ‘exchanges’ almost always centre on you latching onto one of my posts.
Incredible. You've finally worked out how a message board operates. Yes indeed, people read posts, and then they respond to them! Next you'll be figuring out how hyperlinks work. Keep it up!
I think you need at least one seat in the North and Midlands that is trending Labour due to affluence. There are enough targets to substantially reduce the scale of need for regaining the red wall.
As I've said many times before, the red wall realignment of the North merely brings the North into line with what has happened in very similar looking, often Distribution industry led, Southern seats, especially in Essex and North Kent. There may have been a pit once (also true in North Kent), but these are often a mix of semi-rural and left behind traditionalist. Strip out the history and look just at the 2020 demographics and there are probably more obvious Labour target seats than Bassetlaw.
The Calder Valley, Altrincham & Sale West and Southport equivalent seats will be must for Labour, I'd have thought, and if Labour do really well, you'd still think them more likely to land Macclesfield than regain Mansfield. And given some of the Tory majorities Macclesfield once returned, that would be iconic.
'Trending Labour due to affluence' says it all really. If Labour's USP is going to be that we win the rich, the benefits folk, the woke, Liverpool, students and BAME's they have a big problem.
[Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary] added: "We now urgently need government to set out how they will prioritise those outside of the first nine groups - it's perfectly reasonable for teachers, police officers and other key workers who haven't been able to stay at home in the lockdown to ask when their turn will be.
"If government aren't going to prioritise by occupation in the next phase they need to set out why."
(a) Assuming the JCVI does indeed recommend prioritisation solely by age, "I don't know about you but we're following the science" (b) Trying to sift out all the special pleaders from the general population would be a massive ball ache and slow the whole project down, to the general detriment of everybody (c) Turning to have a quiet word with private sector workers, especially those in areas like manufacturing who've had to go out to work throughout all of this but do not get constantly lionised for their trouble, "Do you really want to wait an extra couple of months at the back of the queue whilst we butter up Labour's client voters?"
The polls suggest that people want young teachers prioritised ahead of 49 year olds, but I bet that they're answering those questions in just the same way that they respond in the affirmative to ones about paying more taxes to fund public services. What they really mean is that it's a good idea for other people to be made to wait whilst my kids' teachers or PC Plod get their vaccines, just so long as it's not me.
I’m getting concerned about my jab, because from the anecdotal information I’m getting actually it is starting to look as though it’s a very bad idea to be infected either when jabbed or in the first two weeks after being jabbed.
Which means if I am working in a school - which is, the lies of certain Edinburgh based professors who admire Toby Young notwithstanding, a high risk environment for infection - I do not want the jab. I will wait until I have a few weeks off, isolate for ten days and *then* get it, before isolating for another two weeks.
That also means, however, if they do go down this route, that I would be ruled out of teaching in the summer holidays if they want me back in the classroom ina September.
Maybe I’m overthinking this; hopefully I am. But if I’m not it’s going to cause complications.
I think you are overthinking. Also what is the anecdotal evidence about infections just prior to vaccination? I’ve seen a potential rise in the week after vaccination, which some attribute to relaxation, but no evidence of greater risk.
The seat I will be watching is Canterbury. Will the student vote still be as enthusiastic to turn out for labour as in 2017/2019?
Labour's pitch will be something along the lines of
'hey, we know we cheered enthusiastically as lockdown measures significantly disrupted your education as a child and damaged your life chances, but you should still vote for us. deffo.'
The real pitch - 'we tried to support the government as they tried to save your granny's life, but they and we failed dismally' - may not be a much easier sell, of course.
The seat I will be watching is Canterbury. Will the student vote still be as enthusiastic to turn out for labour as in 2017/2019?
Labour's pitch will be something along the lines of
'hey, we know we cheered enthusiastically as lockdown measures significantly disrupted your education as a child and damaged your life chances, but you should still vote for us. deffo.'
The student vote wasn't that important in 2019 on the basis that it was the Christmas vacation when it happened. Everyone around here was sure it would turn blue again for that reason but it was Islington-on-Sea (i.e. Whitstable) and the very liberal City Centre that won it. If Herne Bay (in the Canterbury CC local govt district but part of Roger Gale's North Thanet parliamentary constituency) had been in the Canterbury constituency then that would probably have meant it going Tory. If the boundaries matched up then Canterbury would have voted remain in 2016.
A gentle reminder that the UK voted to leave the EU by the narrow margin of 52% to 48%.
Reading some comments on here, a visitor would think that it was closer to 70:30. As others have said, Brexit shouldn't be much of an issue by 2024. But even if it is, it doesn't benefit the government quite as much as some on here would believe. Incredibly, even in the northern and midlands towns quite a lot of folk voted to stay in the EU.
That is all very true. We have lived through a very unusual time but for the sake of argument supposing everything turns to crap over the next two years The Scots revolt unemployment soars the streets fill with the homeless money gets tight businesses close etc etc. For once in a very long time there will be no excuses. A unique moment in history. All the leading Brexiteers and all those responsible will be together in one room. Not a snowball in Hell's chance of passing the buck. The Johnson administration will be screwed
But if that happens the government will blame Covid, not Brexit, and may get away with it. That's why Starmer is ignoring Brexit downsides (for now) and trying to make the case that Labour would deal better with Covid, and its impending shocks to the economy, than the Tories.
The seat I will be watching is Canterbury. Will the student vote still be as enthusiastic to turn out for labour as in 2017/2019?
Labour's pitch will be something along the lines of
'hey, we know we cheered enthusiastically as lockdown measures significantly disrupted your education as a child and damaged your life chances, but you should still vote for us. deffo.'
The real pitch - 'we tried to support the government as they tried to save your granny's life, but they and we failed dismally' - may not be a much easier sell, of course.
Young voters will be feeling very unloved. Not a problem for the tories. Significant problem for labour if turnout drops.
[Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary] added: "We now urgently need government to set out how they will prioritise those outside of the first nine groups - it's perfectly reasonable for teachers, police officers and other key workers who haven't been able to stay at home in the lockdown to ask when their turn will be.
"If government aren't going to prioritise by occupation in the next phase they need to set out why."
(a) Assuming the JCVI does indeed recommend prioritisation solely by age, "I don't know about you but we're following the science" (b) Trying to sift out all the special pleaders from the general population would be a massive ball ache and slow the whole project down, to the general detriment of everybody (c) Turning to have a quiet word with private sector workers, especially those in areas like manufacturing who've had to go out to work throughout all of this but do not get constantly lionised for their trouble, "Do you really want to wait an extra couple of months at the back of the queue whilst we butter up Labour's client voters?"
The polls suggest that people want young teachers prioritised ahead of 49 year olds, but I bet that they're answering those questions in just the same way that they respond in the affirmative to ones about paying more taxes to fund public services. What they really mean is that it's a good idea for other people to be made to wait whilst my kids' teachers or PC Plod get their vaccines, just so long as it's not me.
I’m getting concerned about my jab, because from the anecdotal information I’m getting actually it is starting to look as though it’s a very bad idea to be infected either when jabbed or in the first two weeks after being jabbed.
Which means if I am working in a school - which is, the lies of certain Edinburgh based professors who admire Toby Young notwithstanding, a high risk environment for infection - I do not want the jab. I will wait until I have a few weeks off, isolate for ten days and *then* get it, before isolating for another two weeks.
That also means, however, if they do go down this route, that I would be ruled out of teaching in the summer holidays if they want me back in the classroom ina September.
Maybe I’m overthinking this; hopefully I am. But if I’m not it’s going to cause complications.
I think you are overthinking. Also what is the anecdotal evidence about infections just prior to vaccination? I’ve seen a potential rise in the week after vaccination, which some attribute to relaxation, but no evidence of greater risk.
The people on here muttering about deaths among those newly vaccinated!
Hopefully you are right though, although as it happens I have youth and physical fitness on my side so I am hardly a high priority for vaccination from a personal point of view - equally, I would like to not be a nexus of infection for everyone else asap.
Not anti- English at all SNP supporter approvingly posts tweet calling for English national flag to be banned 🤔
It was the St Pauli bit to which I was referring, couldn’t give a fuck about the opinion of a US rock musician resident in Berlin on the ‘English national flag’.
Thin skinned obsessives gotta obsess I guess.
Very self aware your last sentence there. Credit to you for being so honest and reflective.
Ah, the old ‘I’ve turned your own words back on you, haw, haw, that larned ye!’
Funny how our ‘exchanges’ almost always centre on you latching onto one of my posts.
Incredible. You've finally worked out how a message board operates. Yes indeed, people read posts, and then they respond to them! Next you'll be figuring out how hyperlinks work. Keep it up!
Hey, I get it, with Malc absent you need your stalk a racist-against-the-English Nat fix. Pleased that I can give you an opportunity to scratch that itch.
The seat I will be watching is Canterbury. Will the student vote still be as enthusiastic to turn out for labour as in 2017/2019?
Labour's pitch will be something along the lines of
'hey, we know we cheered enthusiastically as lockdown measures significantly disrupted your education as a child and damaged your life chances, but you should still vote for us. deffo.'
If my adult grandchildren are any guide it's the Tories who have a problem coming over the hill at them. Just maybe, though, Labour need to do a deal with, or take over, the Greens.
And that's not the first disastrous policy mistake by Starmer. As DPP he instituted the 'believe all victims' policy which fed the Carl Beech scandal. Beech would not have got away with it had the (admittedly stupid) police officers not been instructed in the first place to believe him as "credible and true."
This is bollocks. I’ve seen on this very board Starmer blamed for the Rochdale and Saville scandals, where victims were not believed, and Carl Beech, where they were. I’m not aware of this supposed “believe all victims policy” and would be very imterested if you could provide a link or citation.
Wiltshire police had such a policy.
But the reason they had it is they are a bit dim and were trying to overcorrect.
Didn’t Cyclefree do a thread header on this a while back?
The judge who wrote the very critical report on the police's behaviour, Sir Richard Henriques, was on the radio a couple of weeks back criticising them again for completely ignoring what he wrote ie what the law says about the burden and standard of proof.
The Met Commissioner in charge when this execrable and unlawful behaviour happened, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, has just been put in charge of looking into why the police lost a whole load of sensitive crime data.
The new constitutional principle of "rewards for failure" continues merrily along.
Not anti- English at all SNP supporter approvingly posts tweet calling for English national flag to be banned 🤔
It was the St Pauli bit to which I was referring, couldn’t give a fuck about the opinion of a US rock musician resident in Berlin on the ‘English national flag’.
Thin skinned obsessives gotta obsess I guess.
Very self aware your last sentence there. Credit to you for being so honest and reflective.
Ah, the old ‘I’ve turned your own words back on you, haw, haw, that larned ye!’
Funny how our ‘exchanges’ almost always centre on you latching onto one of my posts.
Incredible. You've finally worked out how a message board operates. Yes indeed, people read posts, and then they respond to them! Next you'll be figuring out how hyperlinks work. Keep it up!
Hey, I get it, with Malc absent you need your stalk a racist-against-the-English Nat fix. Pleased that I can give you an opportunity to scratch that itch.
Interesting piece, thanks Alastair. I’ve never been to Colchester, but chocolate box isn’t how I imagine it.
I had family in Colchester for years, and it always seems to me to be very spread out. You are into the built up a hellishly long time before you reach the centre.
Like Birmingham - miles and miles of roadside development. Even London seems more compact when driving in, at least from the North.
Interesting - I notice that is looks a much bigger seat (in terms of area) than near by Ipswich.
Any UK Labour majority depends on at least a partial recovery in Scotland.
Perhaps nothing is more redolent of SKS's tired thinking than the fact he put Gordon Brown in charge of Labour's "bold" constitutional review. Gordon is 70 years old, and really belongs to another age in Scottish politics.
I was unable to find any of the other members of Labour's constitutional review commission. Is it just Gordon chuntering in Kirkcaldy ?
Really, everything SKS does seems a throwback to New Labour. It is as if he has no ideas on how to confront Labour's problems other than backward, adoring looks to the Era of Tony Blair.
And if you are going to have a "bold" constitutional review, you need to get the timing right. You absolutely need it to report its "bold" ideas now, before the Welsh/Scottish elections.
Scotland is pretty solidly anti Brexit and is likely to leave the UK.
4 out of 10 Scots voted to leave the EU.
That doesn't strike me as "pretty solidly anti-Brexit".
If it was only 20% rather than just under 40% - yes. However, it wasn't.
62-38 (on a 67% turnout so not ‘4 out of 10 Scots’) would be accounted to be a landslide on most electoral measures. More importantly Scottish polling has stayed constant on the matter, edging towards an even higher anti Brexit pro EU numbers on occasion. Pretty solidly anti-Brexit seems on the button to me.
So 4 out of 10 Scots voted to remain (with even fewer voting to leave).
Interestingly if all those in Scotland who voted Leave had voted Remain instead, my calculations (which could be wrong) make it that Remain would have won overall. Leave only won because of Scottish votes.
(My working; Leave won by 1.3 million votes. Leave got 1 million Scottish votes, so if all of those votes had been Remain, Remain would have won by 0.7 million votes).
The seat I will be watching is Canterbury. Will the student vote still be as enthusiastic to turn out for labour as in 2017/2019?
Labour's pitch will be something along the lines of
'hey, we know we cheered enthusiastically as lockdown measures significantly disrupted your education as a child and damaged your life chances, but you should still vote for us. deffo.'
As the Tories also cheered enthusiastically for locldown measures, bar one or two, and voting for anyone else will just see a Tory win anyway, it may not be much of an issue, but as a general point if the youth vote, such as it is, holds up, will have an impact in a few seats.
I'm surprised its taken a week for a paper to pick up the fact - I remember it from early in the week or even the week before and probably from this site as it's not the sort of thing my twitter feed would have seen.
You don't suddenly stop paying someone's pension unless they aren't around to need it.
Interesting that the authorities didn’t think to massage the figures.
Governments get themselves oppositions. Over time they upset people, for one reason or another.
The Falkland's War obscured this for a while. So did Brexit.
And I don't know if the opposition will come from Labour, Reform, the Greens, the LibDems or whoever.
But it will come from somewhere.
Local election bases will erode. By-elections will be lost. And then suddenly, someone else will be in Number 10.
In 2024? On the balance of probabilities, I'd say "no".
But it will happen.
Pendulums are like that.
Very true pendulums are like that though Boris seems to have done a good job at resetting the pendulum so 2019 was year zero of his government rather than 2010. Whether that will last is another question.
Though the pendulum shouldn't just apply to England or the UK should it? How about Wales? Scotland?
When will the English/UK next get a non Tory Government is an interesting question. When will the Welsh next get a non Labour one? When will the Scots next get a non SNP one?
All interesting questions and there seems to me to be no divine rule why it must be the English/UK one that changes first.
Astute point that the change from May's minority Government limping from one Brexit defeat to another to Boris with an 80 seta majority Getting Stuff Done did feel as much of a change of Government as say Callaghan's similar limping effort replaced by Maggie.
It did indeed reset the clock. There won't any element of Buggins' Turn in 2024.
Starmer DOESN'T call for Hancock's resignation over PPE contracts. Is he the last hope for a return to the politics of the past? No doubt he'll be roundly criticised from the left. And probably the Conservatives will bank it, but not take reciprocal stances in future...
SKS agrees that actually the Conservatives would be better running the country...
Lol Is there any point voting for Starmer ? Like ordering a diet coke. Now I do actually order diet coke, it won't get you fat but...
Scotland is pretty solidly anti Brexit and is likely to leave the UK.
4 out of 10 Scots voted to leave the EU.
That doesn't strike me as "pretty solidly anti-Brexit".
If it was only 20% rather than just under 40% - yes. However, it wasn't.
About the same proportion in Stoke or Hartlepool who wanted to Remain. So to put things equally, Scotland was no more for Remain than Stoke for Leave.
It suits political discourse to depict the Purple wall as Leaverstan and Scotland as Romania, but the reality is far more complex and interesting.
A large part of the reason that small towns, (whether post industrial North or seaside) voted Brexit is age profile. If the voting youngsters have moved to the metropolises, then the residue are older. That is why the areas of the country with shrinking populations were most Brexity. Not so much immigrants taking jobs, as no decent jobs to be had.
Though many Brexitty voters in Brexitty places aren't in the market for jobs themselves any more, the age profile of the Leave-Remain divide being what it is.
The government might need to be careful about moving a lot of metropolitan elite types into Midlands and northern towns. If civil servants and their families take their London mores with them, the resulting regeneration might not be was the left behind were hoping for.
Not often mentioned are the 5 million or so EU citizens who have obtained residency and will be obtaining UK naturalisation and thus voting rights over the next few years.
I'd be very surprised if that many become citizens. It is a much bigger step than residency. Very few Uk immigrants here in Spain would consider becoming citizens.
The seat I will be watching is Canterbury. Will the student vote still be as enthusiastic to turn out for labour as in 2017/2019?
Labour's pitch will be something along the lines of
'hey, we know we cheered enthusiastically as lockdown measures significantly disrupted your education as a child and damaged your life chances, but you should still vote for us. deffo.'
If my adult grandchildren are any guide it's the Tories who have a problem coming over the hill at them. Just maybe, though, Labour need to do a deal with, or take over, the Greens.
And/or the lib dems.
A united party of the left ''Progressive Party?'' could certainly get a majority. Especially if reform/reclaim could peel of a bit of the tory vote.
Not anti- English at all SNP supporter approvingly posts tweet calling for English national flag to be banned 🤔
It was the St Pauli bit to which I was referring, couldn’t give a fuck about the opinion of a US rock musician resident in Berlin on the ‘English national flag’.
Thin skinned obsessives gotta obsess I guess.
Very self aware your last sentence there. Credit to you for being so honest and reflective.
Ah, the old ‘I’ve turned your own words back on you, haw, haw, that larned ye!’
Funny how our ‘exchanges’ almost always centre on you latching onto one of my posts.
Incredible. You've finally worked out how a message board operates. Yes indeed, people read posts, and then they respond to them! Next you'll be figuring out how hyperlinks work. Keep it up!
Hey, I get it, with Malc absent you need your stalk a racist-against-the-English Nat fix. Pleased that I can give you an opportunity to scratch that itch.
I think you overestimate your importance and need to use a dictionary. I don't stalk you. Replying publically to a public message on a public message board using the public "Reply" function is, under no definition, "stalking". My replies to you represent a tiny minority of both my overall posts and responses to you. I don't think Scottish Nationalists are anti-English FWIW. I just think you and Malc are. The fact that you are both psychologically incapable of accepting criticism and intellectually incapable of doing anything but respond with ludicrous ad-hominem attacks like (like "stalking" FFS) is something I cannot help.
At 13.2% of the latest batch France was fractionally ahead of its share of the UK+EU population which is an improvement, albeit not doing a lot to address the slow start.
I am getting slightly concerned about the UK. Although we are still vaccinating roughly 3x as fast as anyone else of any size the early momentum has clearly waned. We need to push on a bit more.
Governments get themselves oppositions. Over time they upset people, for one reason or another.
The Falkland's War obscured this for a while. So did Brexit.
And I don't know if the opposition will come from Labour, Reform, the Greens, the LibDems or whoever.
But it will come from somewhere.
Local election bases will erode. By-elections will be lost. And then suddenly, someone else will be in Number 10.
In 2024? On the balance of probabilities, I'd say "no".
But it will happen.
Pendulums are like that.
Very true pendulums are like that though Boris seems to have done a good job at resetting the pendulum so 2019 was year zero of his government rather than 2010. Whether that will last is another question.
Though the pendulum shouldn't just apply to England or the UK should it? How about Wales? Scotland?
When will the English/UK next get a non Tory Government is an interesting question. When will the Welsh next get a non Labour one? When will the Scots next get a non SNP one?
All interesting questions and there seems to me to be no divine rule why it must be the English/UK one that changes first.
Welsh Labour will be in charge as long as any of us are alive and probably for a very long time after that. It's done much better in response to nationalism than its hopeless Scottish cousin, the Tories are a minority interest party for the more rural areas and Plaid are bloody useless.
The SNP will be in charge until independence and probably for two or three decades after that. Combination of splintered and inept opposition, and liberation movement effect. Sort of like a developed world version of ZANU-PF.
The UK is more complicated because we don't know if Labour is capable of getting itself back into the game in England, or when Scotland will fall off. There is the potential for the Tories to become here what the LDP are in Japan and rule almost perpetually for want of an effective opposition, but it's too soon to tell whether this might happen.
The seat I will be watching is Canterbury. Will the student vote still be as enthusiastic to turn out for labour as in 2017/2019?
Labour's pitch will be something along the lines of
'hey, we know we cheered enthusiastically as lockdown measures significantly disrupted your education as a child and damaged your life chances, but you should still vote for us. deffo.'
The real pitch - 'we tried to support the government as they tried to save your granny's life, but they and we failed dismally' - may not be a much easier sell, of course.
It is quite touching that so many people on pb.com believe that students are very interested in gramps and grannies.
Scotland is pretty solidly anti Brexit and is likely to leave the UK.
4 out of 10 Scots voted to leave the EU.
That doesn't strike me as "pretty solidly anti-Brexit".
If it was only 20% rather than just under 40% - yes. However, it wasn't.
About the same proportion in Stoke or Hartlepool who wanted to Remain. So to put things equally, Scotland was no more for Remain than Stoke for Leave.
It suits political discourse to depict the Purple wall as Leaverstan and Scotland as Romania, but the reality is far more complex and interesting.
A large part of the reason that small towns, (whether post industrial North or seaside) voted Brexit is age profile. If the voting youngsters have moved to the metropolises, then the residue are older. That is why the areas of the country with shrinking populations were most Brexity. Not so much immigrants taking jobs, as no decent jobs to be had.
Though many Brexitty voters in Brexitty places aren't in the market for jobs themselves any more, the age profile of the Leave-Remain divide being what it is.
The government might need to be careful about moving a lot of metropolitan elite types into Midlands and northern towns. If civil servants and their families take their London mores with them, the resulting regeneration might not be was the left behind were hoping for.
Not often mentioned are the 5 million or so EU citizens who have obtained residency and will be obtaining UK naturalisation and thus voting rights over the next few years.
I'd be very surprised if that many become citizens. It is a much bigger step than residency. Very few Uk immigrants here in Spain would consider becoming citizens.
We've been getting a lot of naturalisation applications at work as a safety net against a rightward turn in government pushing against permenant residents.
What this header shows is Labour's small to medium-sized urban area problem. They sweep the board in core cities, university constitutencies, and Merseyside, and have a legacy vote in the Welsh Valleys, but that's not anywhere near enough to win. The party's fall from grace in so many such constituencies, which were either safe for the party, or marginal seats which they held comfortably from 1997 - 2010, has been striking.
I remember some very good thread headers to that effect by @AlastairMeeks in the run up to the 2017 election in particular. Its the towns and suburbs that determine our elections and there is little sign of a Labour recovery there.
Interesting piece, thanks Alastair. I’ve never been to Colchester, but chocolate box isn’t how I imagine it.
I had family in Colchester for years, and it always seems to me to be very spread out. You are into the built up a hellishly long time before you reach the centre.
Like Birmingham - miles and miles of roadside development. Even London seems more compact when driving in, at least from the North.
Interesting - I notice that is looks a much bigger seat (in terms of area) than near by Ipswich.
The 'Borough' is much bigger than the 'town'. Stretches down as far as Mersea Island. There's been a massive amount of building in the town, too, to the SW as well as to the North. Some of the town, the Tiptree and Stanway areas, which is well to the S/SW is in the Witham constituency.
Certainly to force a hung parliament and at least be able to get into government with the SNP and LDs, Labour will need to gain about 60 seats at least, which would mean taking at least Wycombe and Don Valley and of course holding Bedford.
To become largest party and overtake the Tories on seats and also not be reliant on the SNP to form a government, Labour will need to gain about 85 seats which would include Worcester and Kircaldy and Cowdenbeath.
To win an overall majority Labour would need to win 124 seats, including Bishop Auckland, Colchester and Rossendale and Darwen. Colchester is interesting as unlike all the other seats above which Blair won when Labour was in government, or at least Labour was in second place in in the case of Wycombe, the LDs won Colchester in the Blair years so it shows how far the LDs have fallen since outside diehard Remain areas that Labour are the main challengers there now.
Morley and Outwood and Stafford are probably likely to stay Tory for the foreseeable future. If they both fell too then Starmer would have a comfortable Labour majority on a huge swing in 2024. Of course Cameron lost Stafford in 1997 when he first stood for Parliament and it fell in the Blair landslide but there is no sign Starmer is anywhere near the levels of popularity Blair reached in 1997, he would do better aiming to be a Harold Wilson and scrape a win as Wilson did in 1964.
At 13.2% of the latest batch France was fractionally ahead of its share of the UK+EU population which is an improvement, albeit not doing a lot to address the slow start.
I am getting slightly concerned about the UK. Although we are still vaccinating roughly 3x as fast as anyone else of any size the early momentum has clearly waned. We need to push on a bit more.
Holding back 2nd dose supply is the thought of reason.
Good article, it's always nice to take a bit of deep delve into specific constituencies, or in this case likely constituencies.
While I don't go as far as mysticrose's suggesting of 'restarting the counter' as it were when it comes to treating the Tories like they have only been in office 1 year, I think it is right that politics has been a bit weird for a few years, which is in their favour. It's unusual to win a big majority 3 GEs after getting into power, albeit there might have only been 1-2 further GEs in that period in normal times.
Bottom line is 80 is a big majority to lose, and that while Corbyn and Brexit turbocharged things, they were not the only factor, as many of the new seats they won were trending Tory for quite some time, so I while I think some of the Red Wall seats listed will be lost, I think they'll hold old to a fair number of them. Outside a landslide situation many of the potentially vulnerable Tory seats in the south probably need a couple more GEs before they trend far enough.
What this header shows is Labour's small to medium-sized urban area problem. They sweep the board in core cities, university constitutencies, and Merseyside, and have a legacy vote in the Welsh Valleys, but that's not anywhere near enough to win. The party's fall from grace in so many such constituencies, which were either safe for the party, or marginal seats which they held comfortably from 1997 - 2010, has been striking.
Indeed, Harlow, which was won by Labour in 1997 and held by Labour until 2010, has now been turned by the excellent Rob Halfon into a near safe Tory seat and is a prominent example of that. It is now 191st on the Labour target list, even higher up than Stafford at 160th which is the example of a seat Alistair has used that Labour needs to gain for a healthy majority. Harlow would therefore only fall in the event of a Starmer landslide even bigger than Blair's (Blair gained 145 seats in 1997).
Governments get themselves oppositions. Over time they upset people, for one reason or another.
The Falkland's War obscured this for a while. So did Brexit.
And I don't know if the opposition will come from Labour, Reform, the Greens, the LibDems or whoever.
But it will come from somewhere.
Local election bases will erode. By-elections will be lost. And then suddenly, someone else will be in Number 10.
In 2024? On the balance of probabilities, I'd say "no".
But it will happen.
Pendulums are like that.
Very true pendulums are like that though Boris seems to have done a good job at resetting the pendulum so 2019 was year zero of his government rather than 2010. Whether that will last is another question.
Though the pendulum shouldn't just apply to England or the UK should it? How about Wales? Scotland?
When will the English/UK next get a non Tory Government is an interesting question. When will the Welsh next get a non Labour one? When will the Scots next get a non SNP one?
All interesting questions and there seems to me to be no divine rule why it must be the English/UK one that changes first.
Welsh Labour will be in charge as long as any of us are alive and probably for a very long time after that. It's done much better in response to nationalism than its hopeless Scottish cousin, the Tories are a minority interest party for the more rural areas and Plaid are bloody useless.
The SNP will be in charge until independence and probably for two or three decades after that. Combination of splintered and inept opposition, and liberation movement effect. Sort of like a developed world version of ZANU-PF.
The UK is more complicated because we don't know if Labour is capable of getting itself back into the game in England, or when Scotland will fall off. There is the potential for the Tories to become here what the LDP are in Japan and rule almost perpetually for want of an effective opposition, but it's too soon to tell whether this might happen.
At 13.2% of the latest batch France was fractionally ahead of its share of the UK+EU population which is an improvement, albeit not doing a lot to address the slow start.
I am getting slightly concerned about the UK. Although we are still vaccinating roughly 3x as fast as anyone else of any size the early momentum has clearly waned. We need to push on a bit more.
AIUI there's going to be a few weeks of this. A bottleneck in supply has certainly been heavily trailed by both Sturgeon and Drakeford. However, if the extensive briefing to the papers turns out to be true and the UK Government is bringing its vaccination targets forward, then that has to be a good sign (and you don't have to trust them to believe it - they only damage themselves if they over-promise and under-deliver, and it'll become obvious fairly quickly if they've done so.) Besides which, most people laughed when the original February 15th target for the first four cohorts was set, yet they got to it.
At this stage, we have to suspect that they know things about the supply that we don't and that it will ramp up again in the not-too-distant future.
[Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary] added: "We now urgently need government to set out how they will prioritise those outside of the first nine groups - it's perfectly reasonable for teachers, police officers and other key workers who haven't been able to stay at home in the lockdown to ask when their turn will be.
"If government aren't going to prioritise by occupation in the next phase they need to set out why."
(a) Assuming the JCVI does indeed recommend prioritisation solely by age, "I don't know about you but we're following the science" (b) Trying to sift out all the special pleaders from the general population would be a massive ball ache and slow the whole project down, to the general detriment of everybody (c) Turning to have a quiet word with private sector workers, especially those in areas like manufacturing who've had to go out to work throughout all of this but do not get constantly lionised for their trouble, "Do you really want to wait an extra couple of months at the back of the queue whilst we butter up Labour's client voters?"
The polls suggest that people want young teachers prioritised ahead of 49 year olds, but I bet that they're answering those questions in just the same way that they respond in the affirmative to ones about paying more taxes to fund public services. What they really mean is that it's a good idea for other people to be made to wait whilst my kids' teachers or PC Plod get their vaccines, just so long as it's not me.
I’m getting concerned about my jab, because from the anecdotal information I’m getting actually it is starting to look as though it’s a very bad idea to be infected either when jabbed or in the first two weeks after being jabbed.
Which means if I am working in a school - which is, the lies of certain Edinburgh based professors who admire Toby Young notwithstanding, a high risk environment for infection - I do not want the jab. I will wait until I have a few weeks off, isolate for ten days and *then* get it, before isolating for another two weeks.
That also means, however, if they do go down this route, that I would be ruled out of teaching in the summer holidays if they want me back in the classroom ina September.
Maybe I’m overthinking this; hopefully I am. But if I’m not it’s going to cause complications.
I think you are overthinking. Also what is the anecdotal evidence about infections just prior to vaccination? I’ve seen a potential rise in the week after vaccination, which some attribute to relaxation, but no evidence of greater risk.
The people on here muttering about deaths among those newly vaccinated!
Hopefully you are right though, although as it happens I have youth and physical fitness on my side so I am hardly a high priority for vaccination from a personal point of view - equally, I would like to not be a nexus of infection for everyone else asap.
Have a good morning.
All work and no play for teacher in their 30s for a bit.
Bedford may not be top of the list any longer because the swing in 2019 was 0.7% from Lab to Con compared to 4.7% overall in GB.
We all know that Bedford is the bellwether of all bellwether seats. What happens in Bedford today happens in Nuneaton, Worcester and Kensington and Chelsea tomorrow.
At 13.2% of the latest batch France was fractionally ahead of its share of the UK+EU population which is an improvement, albeit not doing a lot to address the slow start.
I am getting slightly concerned about the UK. Although we are still vaccinating roughly 3x as fast as anyone else of any size the early momentum has clearly waned. We need to push on a bit more.
AIUI there's going to be a few weeks of this. A bottleneck in supply has certainly been heavily trailed by both Sturgeon and Drakeford. However, if the extensive briefing to the papers turns out to be true and the UK Government is bringing its vaccination targets forward, then that has to be a good sign (and you don't have to trust them to believe it - they only damage themselves if they over-promise and under-deliver, and it'll become obvious fairly quickly if they've done so.) Besides which, most people laughed when the original February 15th target for the first four cohorts was set, yet they got to it.
At this stage, we have to suspect that they know things about the supply that we don't and that it will ramp up again in the not-too-distant future.
I hope so but the mutterings of both Sturgeon and Drakeford hint otherwise. Nothing is more urgent both in terms of deaths and the economy, especially the latter to be honest.
Scotland is pretty solidly anti Brexit and is likely to leave the UK.
4 out of 10 Scots voted to leave the EU.
That doesn't strike me as "pretty solidly anti-Brexit".
If it was only 20% rather than just under 40% - yes. However, it wasn't.
About the same proportion in Stoke or Hartlepool who wanted to Remain. So to put things equally, Scotland was no more for Remain than Stoke for Leave.
It suits political discourse to depict the Purple wall as Leaverstan and Scotland as Romania, but the reality is far more complex and interesting.
A large part of the reason that small towns, (whether post industrial North or seaside) voted Brexit is age profile. If the voting youngsters have moved to the metropolises, then the residue are older. That is why the areas of the country with shrinking populations were most Brexity. Not so much immigrants taking jobs, as no decent jobs to be had.
Though many Brexitty voters in Brexitty places aren't in the market for jobs themselves any more, the age profile of the Leave-Remain divide being what it is.
The government might need to be careful about moving a lot of metropolitan elite types into Midlands and northern towns. If civil servants and their families take their London mores with them, the resulting regeneration might not be was the left behind were hoping for.
Not often mentioned are the 5 million or so EU citizens who have obtained residency and will be obtaining UK naturalisation and thus voting rights over the next few years.
I'd be very surprised if that many become citizens. It is a much bigger step than residency. Very few Uk immigrants here in Spain would consider becoming citizens.
We've been getting a lot of naturalisation applications at work as a safety net against a rightward turn in government pushing against permenant residents.
Interesting - enough tom influence elections? Not unless you assume they'll all be voting Labour. Until you have some meaningful statistics on this it's just p*****g in the wind. I might just as well say 300K Hong Kongers pouring into London will turn the city blue. Not that simple.
Governments get themselves oppositions. Over time they upset people, for one reason or another.
The Falkland's War obscured this for a while. So did Brexit.
And I don't know if the opposition will come from Labour, Reform, the Greens, the LibDems or whoever.
But it will come from somewhere.
Local election bases will erode. By-elections will be lost. And then suddenly, someone else will be in Number 10.
In 2024? On the balance of probabilities, I'd say "no".
But it will happen.
Pendulums are like that.
Very true pendulums are like that though Boris seems to have done a good job at resetting the pendulum so 2019 was year zero of his government rather than 2010. Whether that will last is another question.
Though the pendulum shouldn't just apply to England or the UK should it? How about Wales? Scotland?
When will the English/UK next get a non Tory Government is an interesting question. When will the Welsh next get a non Labour one? When will the Scots next get a non SNP one?
All interesting questions and there seems to me to be no divine rule why it must be the English/UK one that changes first.
Welsh Labour will be in charge as long as any of us are alive and probably for a very long time after that. It's done much better in response to nationalism than its hopeless Scottish cousin, the Tories are a minority interest party for the more rural areas and Plaid are bloody useless.
Welsh Labour control the Senedd with the biggest gerrymander in the world. Turnout in Senedd elections is ~ 40 per cent. Labour get about ~ 30 per cent of the vote.
So, on the votes of ~ 12 per cent of the electorate, Labour get ~ 50 percent of the Seneedd seats.
This tells you that Wales is not far off becoming another Scotland. The enthusiasm for Labour is wafer-thin, & it is masked by the grossest electoral system in the UK.
Labour will lose Wales when a party (existing or new) claims some of the ~ 60 per cent of the electorate who do not vote.
At 13.2% of the latest batch France was fractionally ahead of its share of the UK+EU population which is an improvement, albeit not doing a lot to address the slow start.
I am getting slightly concerned about the UK. Although we are still vaccinating roughly 3x as fast as anyone else of any size the early momentum has clearly waned. We need to push on a bit more.
I think that the July target would not have been made so public, and by the Prime Minister, if what are widely acknowledged to be supply issues in the coming weeks were not to be overcome.
I think you need at least one seat in the North and Midlands that is trending Labour due to affluence. There are enough targets to substantially reduce the scale of need for regaining the red wall.
As I've said many times before, the red wall realignment of the North merely brings the North into line with what has happened in very similar looking, often Distribution industry led, Southern seats, especially in Essex and North Kent. There may have been a pit once (also true in North Kent), but these are often a mix of semi-rural and left behind traditionalist. Strip out the history and look just at the 2020 demographics and there are probably more obvious Labour target seats than Bassetlaw.
The Calder Valley, Altrincham & Sale West and Southport equivalent seats will be must for Labour, I'd have thought, and if Labour do really well, you'd still think them more likely to land Macclesfield than regain Mansfield. And given some of the Tory majorities Macclesfield once returned, that would be iconic.
'Trending Labour due to affluence' says it all really. If Labour's USP is going to be that we win the rich, the benefits folk, the woke, Liverpool, students and BAME's they have a big problem.
Income levels are no longer a reliable predictor of voting intention (for example, being on benefits doesn't predict Labour voting, as you seem to think) - overwhelmingly it's age and to a lesser extent education (highly-educated Tories are less common). The young mainly vote Labour/Green/LibDem in that order, depending on local circs, IF they are registered and motivated. People of working age overall prefer Labour with decreasing enthusiasm as they approach 65. After 65, the Tories are rampant. A Tory strategy is to instruct the Boundary Commission to set boundaries by registered voters rather than those eligible to register (which penalises areas with people who move around a lot - notably students) and harder to vote without ID, which favours settled retired folk with any number of bank statements and utility bills.
Labour needs either to find an approach that will appeal to the elderly - getting a third of them would do - or to make very sure that people of working age are seriously motivated. Starmer's pitch to be the "serious, competent" leader aims more at the former: most people respect him without getting very excited about it. It's possible that by 2024 after 14 years in power, anti-Tory sentiment will deliver the latter.
At 13.2% of the latest batch France was fractionally ahead of its share of the UK+EU population which is an improvement, albeit not doing a lot to address the slow start.
I am getting slightly concerned about the UK. Although we are still vaccinating roughly 3x as fast as anyone else of any size the early momentum has clearly waned. We need to push on a bit more.
7 day average has dropped about 50k from the peak (though prior to this week it was pretty consistent at just under 3m a week for 3 weeks). We know they can go faster, so any dip has to be supply based, which is unforunate, but at least it's supply slowdown after 25% of the population has received some level of protection.
A gentle reminder that the UK voted to leave the EU by the narrow margin of 52% to 48%.
Reading some comments on here, a visitor would think that it was closer to 70:30. As others have said, Brexit shouldn't be much of an issue by 2024. But even if it is, it doesn't benefit the government quite as much as some on here would believe. Incredibly, even in the northern and midlands towns quite a lot of folk voted to stay in the EU.
That is all very true. We have lived through a very unusual time but for the sake of argument supposing everything turns to crap over the next two years The Scots revolt unemployment soars the streets fill with the homeless money gets tight businesses close etc etc. For once in a very long time there will be no excuses. A unique moment in history. All the leading Brexiteers and all those responsible will be together in one room. Not a snowball in Hell's chance of passing the buck. The Johnson administration will be screwed
But if that happens the government will blame Covid, not Brexit, and may get away with it. That's why Starmer is ignoring Brexit downsides (for now) and trying to make the case that Labour would deal better with Covid, and its impending shocks to the economy, than the Tories.
To an extent this makes sense, particularly when it comes to a policy of not antagonising Red Wallers. However, it is an error. Red Wallers are the very people, in the event of economic chaos, that need to be told they contributed to it in June 2016.
The Covid media narrative has been one, that of those programmes the government have executed well, namely vaccinations, was solely down to Boris and the Government's genius. The bits that went badly, namely lockdowns, fatalities, track and trace, PPE provision, cancellation of elective surgery, and so on and so forth were the fault of (delete as appropriate); Covid-19, Sage, PHE, the EU, Whitty, Ferguson, Vallence, Stephens, Sturgeon, Drakeford, O'Neill, Starmer, Ashworth, Von Der Leyen, Macron, NHS track and trace ( but not Dido) and the Pfizer Vice-President (Production). On that basis, blaming Johnson and the Conservatives for out of their control Covid economic chaos might be a big ask for Starmer. Throw in Brexit and the burden is eased slightly.
The seat I will be watching is Canterbury. Will the student vote still be as enthusiastic to turn out for labour as in 2017/2019?
Labour's pitch will be something along the lines of
'hey, we know we cheered enthusiastically as lockdown measures significantly disrupted your education as a child and damaged your life chances, but you should still vote for us. deffo.'
If my adult grandchildren are any guide it's the Tories who have a problem coming over the hill at them. Just maybe, though, Labour need to do a deal with, or take over, the Greens.
The Tories have nearly always been unpopular with younger voters. In 1974 they came third with the youngest age group, who are now in their mid 60s. The only exception AFAIK was 1987.
At 13.2% of the latest batch France was fractionally ahead of its share of the UK+EU population which is an improvement, albeit not doing a lot to address the slow start.
I am getting slightly concerned about the UK. Although we are still vaccinating roughly 3x as fast as anyone else of any size the early momentum has clearly waned. We need to push on a bit more.
Holding back 2nd dose supply is the thought of reason.
Maybe or it may be that our early mover advantage is just unwinding a bit. But we should be heading into a time when supply is less of a determining factor than the logistics of distribution and we are just not seeing it to date.
Governments get themselves oppositions. Over time they upset people, for one reason or another.
The Falkland's War obscured this for a while. So did Brexit.
And I don't know if the opposition will come from Labour, Reform, the Greens, the LibDems or whoever.
But it will come from somewhere.
Local election bases will erode. By-elections will be lost. And then suddenly, someone else will be in Number 10.
In 2024? On the balance of probabilities, I'd say "no".
But it will happen.
Pendulums are like that.
Very true pendulums are like that though Boris seems to have done a good job at resetting the pendulum so 2019 was year zero of his government rather than 2010. Whether that will last is another question.
Though the pendulum shouldn't just apply to England or the UK should it? How about Wales? Scotland?
When will the English/UK next get a non Tory Government is an interesting question. When will the Welsh next get a non Labour one? When will the Scots next get a non SNP one?
All interesting questions and there seems to me to be no divine rule why it must be the English/UK one that changes first.
Welsh Labour will be in charge as long as any of us are alive and probably for a very long time after that. It's done much better in response to nationalism than its hopeless Scottish cousin, the Tories are a minority interest party for the more rural areas and Plaid are bloody useless.
Welsh Labour control the Senedd with the biggest gerrymander in the world. Turnout in Senedd elections is ~ 40 per cent. Labour get about ~ 30 per cent of the vote.
So, on the votes of ~ 12 per cent of the electorate, Labour get ~ 50 percent of the Seneedd seats.
This tells you that Wales is not far off becoming another Scotland. The enthusiasm for Labour is wafer-thin, & it is masked by the grossest electoral system in the UK.
Labour will lose Wales when a party (existing or new) claims some of the ~ 60 per cent of the electorate who do not vote.
Perhaps now it is a parliament and not an assembly enthusiasm for it will rocket and turnout will rise.
Governments get themselves oppositions. Over time they upset people, for one reason or another.
The Falkland's War obscured this for a while. So did Brexit.
And I don't know if the opposition will come from Labour, Reform, the Greens, the LibDems or whoever.
But it will come from somewhere.
Local election bases will erode. By-elections will be lost. And then suddenly, someone else will be in Number 10.
In 2024? On the balance of probabilities, I'd say "no".
But it will happen.
Pendulums are like that.
Very true pendulums are like that though Boris seems to have done a good job at resetting the pendulum so 2019 was year zero of his government rather than 2010. Whether that will last is another question.
Though the pendulum shouldn't just apply to England or the UK should it? How about Wales? Scotland?
When will the English/UK next get a non Tory Government is an interesting question. When will the Welsh next get a non Labour one? When will the Scots next get a non SNP one?
All interesting questions and there seems to me to be no divine rule why it must be the English/UK one that changes first.
Welsh Labour will be in charge as long as any of us are alive and probably for a very long time after that. It's done much better in response to nationalism than its hopeless Scottish cousin, the Tories are a minority interest party for the more rural areas and Plaid are bloody useless.
Welsh Labour control the Senedd with the biggest gerrymander in the world. Turnout in Senedd elections is ~ 40 per cent. Labour get about ~ 30 per cent of the vote.
So, on the votes of ~ 12 per cent of the electorate, Labour get ~ 50 percent of the Seneedd seats.
This tells you that Wales is not far off becoming another Scotland. The enthusiasm for Labour is wafer-thin, & it is masked by the grossest electoral system in the UK.
Labour will lose Wales when a party (existing or new) claims some of the ~ 60 per cent of the electorate who do not vote.
Perhaps now it is a parliament and not an assembly enthusiasm for it will rocket and turnout will rise.
If he wants to ban the English St George's cross, presumably he also wants to ban the Scottish Saltire and Welsh dragon too and just have the Union flag?
Scotland is pretty solidly anti Brexit and is likely to leave the UK.
4 out of 10 Scots voted to leave the EU.
That doesn't strike me as "pretty solidly anti-Brexit".
If it was only 20% rather than just under 40% - yes. However, it wasn't.
62-38 (on a 67% turnout so not ‘4 out of 10 Scots’) would be accounted to be a landslide on most electoral measures. More importantly Scottish polling has stayed constant on the matter, edging towards an even higher anti Brexit pro EU numbers on occasion. Pretty solidly anti-Brexit seems on the button to me.
So 4 out of 10 Scots voted to remain (with even fewer voting to leave).
Interestingly if all those in Scotland who voted Leave had voted Remain instead, my calculations (which could be wrong) make it that Remain would have won overall. Leave only won because of Scottish votes.
(My working; Leave won by 1.3 million votes. Leave got 1 million Scottish votes, so if all of those votes had been Remain, Remain would have won by 0.7 million votes).
I said at the time that maximum entertainment value would have been England voting leave but the UK result being remain due to Scottish votes, and it turned out to be a much more likely possibly outcome than I’d thought. I think that really would have shaken the UK apart.
At 13.2% of the latest batch France was fractionally ahead of its share of the UK+EU population which is an improvement, albeit not doing a lot to address the slow start.
I am getting slightly concerned about the UK. Although we are still vaccinating roughly 3x as fast as anyone else of any size the early momentum has clearly waned. We need to push on a bit more.
AIUI there's going to be a few weeks of this. A bottleneck in supply has certainly been heavily trailed by both Sturgeon and Drakeford. However, if the extensive briefing to the papers turns out to be true and the UK Government is bringing its vaccination targets forward, then that has to be a good sign (and you don't have to trust them to believe it - they only damage themselves if they over-promise and under-deliver, and it'll become obvious fairly quickly if they've done so.) Besides which, most people laughed when the original February 15th target for the first four cohorts was set, yet they got to it.
At this stage, we have to suspect that they know things about the supply that we don't and that it will ramp up again in the not-too-distant future.
We may get some more detail on this tomorrow, as the supply and distribution of vaccine is going to be fundamental to underpinning any announcement Boris is going to make.
To date, the expectations on vaccines have been managed to perfection. I suspect where we are now is the UK is in receipt of a large batch of vaccine that has not been QC'd or filled into vials. There is no reason either stage should have a hold up, but whilst the planning to use them is going ahead, the announcement is not. Just in case.
Morning all! Good piece Alastair - in order for Labour to start taking seats like Worcester and holding seats in places like Wolves or Coventry it needs to thoroughly reinvent itself. The sad reality is that MPs like the idiot Sultana binned off almost the entire majority because she is fundamentally against what the majority of people in the city are about.
Starmer nailed the key issue - be seen as a partner to business. Problem is that he doesn't sound convincing, and still has morons like Sultana in his party who think the purpose of business is to Go Away so that they can bring back National Carriers.
As early as 2015 Labour had utterly lost touch with normals. Ed Milliband - like Starmer - also nailed the key issue. In 2015 it was the cost of living crisis and the squeezed middle. All those millions of hard working grafters still struggling to get by no matter how hard they work. "One Nation Labour" was the framework - "brilliant", I thought. Then you realise that its just another empty slogan with no substance.
In 2015 Labour had little to say to the middle ground squeezed or otherwise. By 2019 it spoke only to the bottom 5% and against the top 1%. To everyone else, why weren't you in a union or on benefits or otherwise worthy?
Starmer cannot reconnect with the public with the likes of Sultana in it, spending every minute of every day working to undermine his efforts to renew and to drive more voters away. The problem is that he doesn't have the balls to do it. He could do as Blair did - tell them they are irrelevant and ignore them so hard that nobody cared what they said, or do as Kinnock did and expel them in large numbers. In doing neither, he has shown himself to be as effective as name your cliche...
I think you need at least one seat in the North and Midlands that is trending Labour due to affluence. There are enough targets to substantially reduce the scale of need for regaining the red wall.
As I've said many times before, the red wall realignment of the North merely brings the North into line with what has happened in very similar looking, often Distribution industry led, Southern seats, especially in Essex and North Kent. There may have been a pit once (also true in North Kent), but these are often a mix of semi-rural and left behind traditionalist. Strip out the history and look just at the 2020 demographics and there are probably more obvious Labour target seats than Bassetlaw.
The Calder Valley, Altrincham & Sale West and Southport equivalent seats will be must for Labour, I'd have thought, and if Labour do really well, you'd still think them more likely to land Macclesfield than regain Mansfield. And given some of the Tory majorities Macclesfield once returned, that would be iconic.
'Trending Labour due to affluence' says it all really. If Labour's USP is going to be that we win the rich, the benefits folk, the woke, Liverpool, students and BAME's they have a big problem.
Income levels are no longer a reliable predictor of voting intention (for example, being on benefits doesn't predict Labour voting, as you seem to think) - overwhelmingly it's age and to a lesser extent education (highly-educated Tories are less common). The young mainly vote Labour/Green/LibDem in that order, depending on local circs, IF they are registered and motivated. People of working age overall prefer Labour with decreasing enthusiasm as they approach 65. After 65, the Tories are rampant. A Tory strategy is to instruct the Boundary Commission to set boundaries by registered voters rather than those eligible to register (which penalises areas with people who move around a lot - notably students) and harder to vote without ID, which favours settled retired folk with any number of bank statements and utility bills.
Labour needs either to find an approach that will appeal to the elderly - getting a third of them would do - or to make very sure that people of working age are seriously motivated. Starmer's pitch to be the "serious, competent" leader aims more at the former: most people respect him without getting very excited about it. It's possible that by 2024 after 14 years in power, anti-Tory sentiment will deliver the latter.
Largely agree actually. Older people tend to be slower to change, so going for the older vote is not easy, and the Tories have tried to shoot that particular fox by their support for reasonable state pensions and the NHs. With younger voters they have the problem of getting them out of bed on the right day/posting the form/registering and once past those hurdles, they have three/four parties to vote on the centre left, L, LD, SNP/PC, Green. At the moment only one party is angling for the centre right vote.
It is hard to see SKS enthusing the younger voter as much as Jezza did in 2017.
What this header shows is Labour's small to medium-sized urban area problem. They sweep the board in core cities, university constitutencies, and Merseyside, and have a legacy vote in the Welsh Valleys, but that's not anywhere near enough to win. The party's fall from grace in so many such constituencies, which were either safe for the party, or marginal seats which they held comfortably from 1997 - 2010, has been striking.
I remember some very good thread headers to that effect by @AlastairMeeks in the run up to the 2017 election in particular. Its the towns and suburbs that determine our elections and there is little sign of a Labour recovery there.
Time for the regular reminder that there are huge swathes of territory in which the Opposition has been almost wiped out at Parliamentary level. Much attention (and understandably so) goes to the fact that the SNP now command all but 11 seats in Scotland, but look at Southern England and the total number of non-Tory constituencies presently stands at 10 in the South East, 7 in the South West and only 6 in Eastern England. All three of those regions are more populous than Scotland (the SE substantially so.) Between them they'll return 210 MPs post the next boundary review and there's little hope of Labour progress there unless the Government implodes: the result of the 2019 election has decisively shifted the battleground northward, in terms of both Tory and Labour marginal defences.
Scotland is pretty solidly anti Brexit and is likely to leave the UK.
4 out of 10 Scots voted to leave the EU.
That doesn't strike me as "pretty solidly anti-Brexit".
If it was only 20% rather than just under 40% - yes. However, it wasn't.
About the same proportion in Stoke or Hartlepool who wanted to Remain. So to put things equally, Scotland was no more for Remain than Stoke for Leave.
It suits political discourse to depict the Purple wall as Leaverstan and Scotland as Romania, but the reality is far more complex and interesting.
A large part of the reason that small towns, (whether post industrial North or seaside) voted Brexit is age profile. If the voting youngsters have moved to the metropolises, then the residue are older. That is why the areas of the country with shrinking populations were most Brexity. Not so much immigrants taking jobs, as no decent jobs to be had.
Though many Brexitty voters in Brexitty places aren't in the market for jobs themselves any more, the age profile of the Leave-Remain divide being what it is.
The government might need to be careful about moving a lot of metropolitan elite types into Midlands and northern towns. If civil servants and their families take their London mores with them, the resulting regeneration might not be was the left behind were hoping for.
Not often mentioned are the 5 million or so EU citizens who have obtained residency and will be obtaining UK naturalisation and thus voting rights over the next few years.
I'd be very surprised if that many become citizens. It is a much bigger step than residency. Very few Uk immigrants here in Spain would consider becoming citizens.
We've been getting a lot of naturalisation applications at work as a safety net against a rightward turn in government pushing against permenant residents.
Interesting - enough tom influence elections? Not unless you assume they'll all be voting Labour. Until you have some meaningful statistics on this it's just p*****g in the wind. I might just as well say 300K Hong Kongers pouring into London will turn the city blue. Not that simple.
We will have to see. Put it this way, if 5 million EU citizens had been able to vote in 2016, I think the result would have been different. Similarly I think the votes of Scots born in England impacted the result in 2014. It's one to watch anyway. They don't all have to vote Labour - it is a constituency that the main parties may have to take into account though.
I think you need at least one seat in the North and Midlands that is trending Labour due to affluence. There are enough targets to substantially reduce the scale of need for regaining the red wall.
As I've said many times before, the red wall realignment of the North merely brings the North into line with what has happened in very similar looking, often Distribution industry led, Southern seats, especially in Essex and North Kent. There may have been a pit once (also true in North Kent), but these are often a mix of semi-rural and left behind traditionalist. Strip out the history and look just at the 2020 demographics and there are probably more obvious Labour target seats than Bassetlaw.
The Calder Valley, Altrincham & Sale West and Southport equivalent seats will be must for Labour, I'd have thought, and if Labour do really well, you'd still think them more likely to land Macclesfield than regain Mansfield. And given some of the Tory majorities Macclesfield once returned, that would be iconic.
'Trending Labour due to affluence' says it all really. If Labour's USP is going to be that we win the rich, the benefits folk, the woke, Liverpool, students and BAME's they have a big problem.
Income levels are no longer a reliable predictor of voting intention (for example, being on benefits doesn't predict Labour voting, as you seem to think) - overwhelmingly it's age and to a lesser extent education (highly-educated Tories are less common). The young mainly vote Labour/Green/LibDem in that order, depending on local circs, IF they are registered and motivated. People of working age overall prefer Labour with decreasing enthusiasm as they approach 65. After 65, the Tories are rampant. A Tory strategy is to instruct the Boundary Commission to set boundaries by registered voters rather than those eligible to register (which penalises areas with people who move around a lot - notably students) and harder to vote without ID, which favours settled retired folk with any number of bank statements and utility bills.
Labour needs either to find an approach that will appeal to the elderly - getting a third of them would do - or to make very sure that people of working age are seriously motivated. Starmer's pitch to be the "serious, competent" leader aims more at the former: most people respect him without getting very excited about it. It's possible that by 2024 after 14 years in power, anti-Tory sentiment will deliver the latter.
Largely agree actually. Older people tend to be slower to change, so going for the older vote is not easy, and the Tories have tried to shoot that particular fox by their support for reasonable state pensions and the NHs. With younger voters they have the problem of getting them out of bed on the right day/posting the form/registering and once past those hurdles, they have three/four parties to vote on the centre left, L, LD, SNP/PC, Green. At the moment only one party is angling for the centre right vote.
It is hard to see SKS enthusing the younger voter as much as Jezza did in 2017.
I confess, while I could see why Corbyn appealed to some people, I never really got why young people in particular were so damn enthusiastic about a guy just saying the same things he'd been saying for decades.
Scotland is pretty solidly anti Brexit and is likely to leave the UK.
4 out of 10 Scots voted to leave the EU.
That doesn't strike me as "pretty solidly anti-Brexit".
If it was only 20% rather than just under 40% - yes. However, it wasn't.
62-38 (on a 67% turnout so not ‘4 out of 10 Scots’) would be accounted to be a landslide on most electoral measures. More importantly Scottish polling has stayed constant on the matter, edging towards an even higher anti Brexit pro EU numbers on occasion. Pretty solidly anti-Brexit seems on the button to me.
So 4 out of 10 Scots voted to remain (with even fewer voting to leave).
Interestingly if all those in Scotland who voted Leave had voted Remain instead, my calculations (which could be wrong) make it that Remain would have won overall. Leave only won because of Scottish votes.
(My working; Leave won by 1.3 million votes. Leave got 1 million Scottish votes, so if all of those votes had been Remain, Remain would have won by 0.7 million votes).
I said at the time that maximum entertainment value would have been England voting leave but the UK result being remain due to Scottish votes, and it turned out to be a much more likely possibly outcome than I’d thought. I think that really would have shaken the UK apart.
It would have led to a rise in English nationalism but Scotland become more pro Union.
It may come still in a lesser form if Starmer becomes PM in 2024 but only due to SNP support
The seat I will be watching is Canterbury. Will the student vote still be as enthusiastic to turn out for labour as in 2017/2019?
Labour's pitch will be something along the lines of
'hey, we know we cheered enthusiastically as lockdown measures significantly disrupted your education as a child and damaged your life chances, but you should still vote for us. deffo.'
The real pitch - 'we tried to support the government as they tried to save your granny's life, but they and we failed dismally' - may not be a much easier sell, of course.
It is quite touching that so many people on pb.com believe that students are very interested in gramps and grannies.
They are old people. And all old people have Loadsamoney.
Scotland is pretty solidly anti Brexit and is likely to leave the UK.
4 out of 10 Scots voted to leave the EU.
That doesn't strike me as "pretty solidly anti-Brexit".
If it was only 20% rather than just under 40% - yes. However, it wasn't.
62-38 (on a 67% turnout so not ‘4 out of 10 Scots’) would be accounted to be a landslide on most electoral measures. More importantly Scottish polling has stayed constant on the matter, edging towards an even higher anti Brexit pro EU numbers on occasion. Pretty solidly anti-Brexit seems on the button to me.
So 4 out of 10 Scots voted to remain (with even fewer voting to leave).
Interestingly if all those in Scotland who voted Leave had voted Remain instead, my calculations (which could be wrong) make it that Remain would have won overall. Leave only won because of Scottish votes.
(My working; Leave won by 1.3 million votes. Leave got 1 million Scottish votes, so if all of those votes had been Remain, Remain would have won by 0.7 million votes).
I said at the time that maximum entertainment value would have been England voting leave but the UK result being remain due to Scottish votes, and it turned out to be a much more likely possibly outcome than I’d thought. I think that really would have shaken the UK apart.
That in effect was what happened in the House of Commons, with the Remain/Second Referendum camp being given much greater force because of the solid bloc of SNP MPs set against implementing Brexit.
Morning all! Good piece Alastair - in order for Labour to start taking seats like Worcester and holding seats in places like Wolves or Coventry it needs to thoroughly reinvent itself. The sad reality is that MPs like the idiot Sultana binned off almost the entire majority because she is fundamentally against what the majority of people in the city are about.
Starmer nailed the key issue - be seen as a partner to business. Problem is that he doesn't sound convincing, and still has morons like Sultana in his party who think the purpose of business is to Go Away so that they can bring back National Carriers.
As early as 2015 Labour had utterly lost touch with normals. Ed Milliband - like Starmer - also nailed the key issue. In 2015 it was the cost of living crisis and the squeezed middle. All those millions of hard working grafters still struggling to get by no matter how hard they work. "One Nation Labour" was the framework - "brilliant", I thought. Then you realise that its just another empty slogan with no substance.
In 2015 Labour had little to say to the middle ground squeezed or otherwise. By 2019 it spoke only to the bottom 5% and against the top 1%. To everyone else, why weren't you in a union or on benefits or otherwise worthy?
Starmer cannot reconnect with the public with the likes of Sultana in it, spending every minute of every day working to undermine his efforts to renew and to drive more voters away. The problem is that he doesn't have the balls to do it. He could do as Blair did - tell them they are irrelevant and ignore them so hard that nobody cared what they said, or do as Kinnock did and expel them in large numbers. In doing neither, he has shown himself to be as effective as name your cliche...
Labour was once a coalition of middle class, largely public sector professionals and unionised Labour. The latter strand kept the party focused on the working man (and it was mainly men the women being less unionised). That strand has (a) disintegrated with the loss of union based workforces in the private sector and (b) changed its nature because of the dominance of public sector unions representing a different class of people, more educated, qualified and entitled than the average.
The result is Labour no longer really represents the working man or woman. They are much more focused on public sector entitlements, pay and maintaining a customer class in benefit recipients who are supposed to be duly grateful but don't vote as often as they might.
It is the more populist Boris (and indeed Trump in the US) who has addressed the concerns of the blue collar and non-unionised workforce. We see similar trends all over the western world. The attitude of Labour is typical, it is patronising, abusive and indifferent thinking that they are better educated (which they are) and more liberal (ditto) and therefore better (not so much). They find this group increasingly difficult to relate to. Until they do, however, majorities are going to prove elusive.
The seat I will be watching is Canterbury. Will the student vote still be as enthusiastic to turn out for labour as in 2017/2019?
Labour's pitch will be something along the lines of
'hey, we know we cheered enthusiastically as lockdown measures significantly disrupted your education as a child and damaged your life chances, but you should still vote for us. deffo.'
The real pitch - 'we tried to support the government as they tried to save your granny's life, but they and we failed dismally' - may not be a much easier sell, of course.
It is quite touching that so many people on pb.com believe that students are very interested in gramps and grannies.
They are old people. And all old people have Loadsamoney.
Don't they?
No; enough maybe but not loads. And when there are several grandchildren the possibility of reasonable levels of inheritance diminishes!
Comments
Reading some comments on here, a visitor would think that it was closer to 70:30. As others have said, Brexit shouldn't be much of an issue by 2024. But even if it is, it doesn't benefit the government quite as much as some on here would believe. Incredibly, even in the northern and midlands towns quite a lot of folk voted to stay in the EU.
[Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary] added: "We now urgently need government to set out how they will prioritise those outside of the first nine groups - it's perfectly reasonable for teachers, police officers and other key workers who haven't been able to stay at home in the lockdown to ask when their turn will be.
"If government aren't going to prioritise by occupation in the next phase they need to set out why."
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-all-adults-to-be-offered-vaccine-by-end-of-july-under-pms-accelerated-plan-12224309
To take a wild guess at the Government response:
(a) Assuming the JCVI does indeed recommend prioritisation solely by age, "I don't know about you but we're following the science"
(b) Trying to sift out all the special pleaders from the general population would be a massive ball ache and slow the whole project down, to the general detriment of everybody
(c) Turning to have a quiet word with private sector workers, especially those in areas like manufacturing who've had to go out to work throughout all of this but do not get constantly lionised for their trouble, "Do you really want to wait an extra couple of months at the back of the queue whilst we butter up Labour's client voters?"
The polls suggest that people want young teachers prioritised ahead of 49 year olds, but I bet that they're answering those questions in just the same way that they respond in the affirmative to ones about paying more taxes to fund public services. What they really mean is that it's a good idea for other people to be made to wait whilst my kids' teachers or PC Plod get their vaccines, just so long as it's not me.
Though the pendulum shouldn't just apply to England or the UK should it? How about Wales? Scotland?
When will the English/UK next get a non Tory Government is an interesting question.
When will the Welsh next get a non Labour one?
When will the Scots next get a non SNP one?
All interesting questions and there seems to me to be no divine rule why it must be the English/UK one that changes first.
"On Wednesday, The European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen called on Russia to explain why it’s sending “millions and millions” of vaccines to countries around the globe, but continues to struggle to vaccinate its own people."
https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-vaccine-updates-02-18-21/h_d318ef19d82fe3dfaf4d4800feac8b65
But the reason they had it is they are a bit dim and were trying to overcorrect.
Didn’t Cyclefree do a thread header on this a while back?
https://twitter.com/antonnewcombe/status/1363404256708034561?s=21
Which is bloody annoying, but due to constant missed opportunities and bungling by the government probably can’t be helped either.
As I've said many times before, the red wall realignment of the North merely brings the North into line with what has happened in very similar looking, often Distribution industry led, Southern seats, especially in Essex and North Kent. There may have been a pit once (also true in North Kent), but these are often a mix of semi-rural and left behind traditionalist. Strip out the history and look just at the 2020 demographics and there are probably more obvious Labour target seats than Bassetlaw.
The Calder Valley, Altrincham & Sale West and Southport equivalent seats will be must for Labour, I'd have thought, and if Labour do really well, you'd still think them more likely to land Macclesfield than regain Mansfield. And given some of the Tory majorities Macclesfield once returned, that would be iconic.
Which means if I am working in a school - which is, the lies of certain Edinburgh based professors who admire Toby Young notwithstanding, a high risk environment for infection - I do not want the jab. I will wait until I have a few weeks off, isolate for ten days and *then* get it, before isolating for another two weeks.
That also means, however, if they do go down this route, that I would be ruled out of teaching in the summer holidays if they want me back in the classroom ina September.
Maybe I’m overthinking this; hopefully I am. But if I’m not it’s going to cause complications.
Thin skinned obsessives gotta obsess I guess.
Don't get me wrong, parts of v the red wall need retaking by Labour, but too obsessive a red wall focus feels like fighting the last war.
And meanwhile, even with the Christmas Deal and the Vaccine Fiasco, the latest YouGov tracker still has a lead for "with hindsight, voting Leave was a mistake".
I don't know how that plays out politically- badly I expect. But insisting the matter is closed doesn't make it so.
(For avoidance of doubt, the fact that the issue isn't settled is a Bad Thing. I'd much rather make this setup work as well as possible, and see where we are in a decade or so. But I don't see that happening either.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vote_referendum
Funny how our ‘exchanges’ almost always centre on you latching onto one of my posts.
Labour's pitch will be something along the lines of
'hey, we know we cheered enthusiastically as lockdown measures significantly disrupted your education as a child and damaged your life chances, but you should still vote for us. deffo.'
https://www.politico.eu/coronavirus-in-europe/
Hopefully you are right though, although as it happens I have youth and physical fitness on my side so I am hardly a high priority for vaccination from a personal point of view - equally, I would like to not be a nexus of infection for everyone else asap.
Have a good morning.
However, for referendums one example is Scottish Devolution in 1997
"Do you agree that there should be a Scottish Parliament as proposed by the Government?"
Yes: 74% : No: 26%
"Do you agree that a Scottish Parliament should have tax-raising powers as proposed by the Government?"
Yes: 63% : No: 37%
I'm not going through all the scores of Referedums we have had in the last half century - there are probably more.
The judge who wrote the very critical report on the police's behaviour, Sir Richard Henriques, was on the radio a couple of weeks back criticising them again for completely ignoring what he wrote ie what the law says about the burden and standard of proof.
The Met Commissioner in charge when this execrable and unlawful behaviour happened, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, has just been put in charge of looking into why the police lost a whole load of sensitive crime data.
The new constitutional principle of "rewards for failure" continues merrily along.
Perhaps nothing is more redolent of SKS's tired thinking than the fact he put Gordon Brown in charge of Labour's "bold" constitutional review. Gordon is 70 years old, and really belongs to another age in Scottish politics.
I was unable to find any of the other members of Labour's constitutional review commission. Is it just Gordon chuntering in Kirkcaldy ?
Really, everything SKS does seems a throwback to New Labour. It is as if he has no ideas on how to confront Labour's problems other than backward, adoring looks to the Era of Tony Blair.
And if you are going to have a "bold" constitutional review, you need to get the timing right. You absolutely need it to report its "bold" ideas now, before the Welsh/Scottish elections.
Interestingly if all those in Scotland who voted Leave had voted Remain instead, my calculations (which could be wrong) make it that Remain would have won overall. Leave only won because of Scottish votes.
(My working; Leave won by 1.3 million votes. Leave got 1 million Scottish votes, so if all of those votes had been Remain, Remain would have won by 0.7 million votes).
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11T6XLQh2ss-Ul9UjG8TzJCvhEFMp0VmsbR8KbSZ_FL0/edit#gid=0
Bedford may not be top of the list any longer because the swing in 2019 was 0.7% from Lab to Con compared to 4.7% overall in GB.
It did indeed reset the clock. There won't any element of Buggins' Turn in 2024.
Lol Is there any point voting for Starmer ?
Like ordering a diet coke. Now I do actually order diet coke, it won't get you fat but...
A united party of the left ''Progressive Party?'' could certainly get a majority. Especially if reform/reclaim could peel of a bit of the tory vote.
I am getting slightly concerned about the UK. Although we are still vaccinating roughly 3x as fast as anyone else of any size the early momentum has clearly waned. We need to push on a bit more.
The SNP will be in charge until independence and probably for two or three decades after that. Combination of splintered and inept opposition, and liberation movement effect. Sort of like a developed world version of ZANU-PF.
The UK is more complicated because we don't know if Labour is capable of getting itself back into the game in England, or when Scotland will fall off. There is the potential for the Tories to become here what the LDP are in Japan and rule almost perpetually for want of an effective opposition, but it's too soon to tell whether this might happen.
Certainly to force a hung parliament and at least be able to get into government with the SNP and LDs, Labour will need to gain about 60 seats at least, which would mean taking at least Wycombe and Don Valley and of course holding Bedford.
To become largest party and overtake the Tories on seats and also not be reliant on the SNP to form a government, Labour will need to gain about 85 seats which would include Worcester and Kircaldy and Cowdenbeath.
To win an overall majority Labour would need to win 124 seats, including Bishop Auckland, Colchester and Rossendale and Darwen. Colchester is interesting as unlike all the other seats above which Blair won when Labour was in government, or at least Labour was in second place in in the case of Wycombe, the LDs won Colchester in the Blair years so it shows how far the LDs have fallen since outside diehard Remain areas that Labour are the main challengers there now.
Morley and Outwood and Stafford are probably likely to stay Tory for the foreseeable future. If they both fell too then Starmer would have a comfortable Labour majority on a huge swing in 2024. Of course Cameron lost Stafford in 1997 when he first stood for Parliament and it fell in the Blair landslide but there is no sign Starmer is anywhere near the levels of popularity Blair reached in 1997, he would do better aiming to be a Harold Wilson and scrape a win as Wilson did in 1964.
While I don't go as far as mysticrose's suggesting of 'restarting the counter' as it were when it comes to treating the Tories like they have only been in office 1 year, I think it is right that politics has been a bit weird for a few years, which is in their favour. It's unusual to win a big majority 3 GEs after getting into power, albeit there might have only been 1-2 further GEs in that period in normal times.
Bottom line is 80 is a big majority to lose, and that while Corbyn and Brexit turbocharged things, they were not the only factor, as many of the new seats they won were trending Tory for quite some time, so I while I think some of the Red Wall seats listed will be lost, I think they'll hold old to a fair number of them. Outside a landslide situation many of the potentially vulnerable Tory seats in the south probably need a couple more GEs before they trend far enough.
At this stage, we have to suspect that they know things about the supply that we don't and that it will ramp up again in the not-too-distant future.
The gravity of the red wall, plus the steep bills and economic disruption for lockdown and brexit might well depress traditional tory turnout.
So, on the votes of ~ 12 per cent of the electorate, Labour get ~ 50 percent of the Seneedd seats.
This tells you that Wales is not far off becoming another Scotland. The enthusiasm for Labour is wafer-thin, & it is masked by the grossest electoral system in the UK.
Labour will lose Wales when a party (existing or new) claims some of the ~ 60 per cent of the electorate who do not vote.
Labour needs either to find an approach that will appeal to the elderly - getting a third of them would do - or to make very sure that people of working age are seriously motivated. Starmer's pitch to be the "serious, competent" leader aims more at the former: most people respect him without getting very excited about it. It's possible that by 2024 after 14 years in power, anti-Tory sentiment will deliver the latter.
The Covid media narrative has been one, that of those programmes the government have executed well, namely vaccinations, was solely down to Boris and the Government's genius. The bits that went badly, namely lockdowns, fatalities, track and trace, PPE provision, cancellation of elective surgery, and so on and so forth were the fault of (delete as appropriate); Covid-19, Sage, PHE, the EU, Whitty, Ferguson, Vallence, Stephens, Sturgeon, Drakeford, O'Neill, Starmer, Ashworth, Von Der Leyen, Macron, NHS track and trace ( but not Dido) and the Pfizer Vice-President (Production). On that basis, blaming Johnson and the Conservatives for out of their control Covid economic chaos might be a big ask for Starmer. Throw in Brexit and the burden is eased slightly.
To date, the expectations on vaccines have been managed to perfection. I suspect where we are now is the UK is in receipt of a large batch of vaccine that has not been QC'd or filled into vials. There is no reason either stage should have a hold up, but whilst the planning to use them is going ahead, the announcement is not. Just in case.
Starmer nailed the key issue - be seen as a partner to business. Problem is that he doesn't sound convincing, and still has morons like Sultana in his party who think the purpose of business is to Go Away so that they can bring back National Carriers.
As early as 2015 Labour had utterly lost touch with normals. Ed Milliband - like Starmer - also nailed the key issue. In 2015 it was the cost of living crisis and the squeezed middle. All those millions of hard working grafters still struggling to get by no matter how hard they work. "One Nation Labour" was the framework - "brilliant", I thought. Then you realise that its just another empty slogan with no substance.
In 2015 Labour had little to say to the middle ground squeezed or otherwise. By 2019 it spoke only to the bottom 5% and against the top 1%. To everyone else, why weren't you in a union or on benefits or otherwise worthy?
Starmer cannot reconnect with the public with the likes of Sultana in it, spending every minute of every day working to undermine his efforts to renew and to drive more voters away. The problem is that he doesn't have the balls to do it. He could do as Blair did - tell them they are irrelevant and ignore them so hard that nobody cared what they said, or do as Kinnock did and expel them in large numbers. In doing neither, he has shown himself to be as effective as name your cliche...
There is quite a lot of pigeon-crap, though. It seems to be the main sign of activity.
If you are right, Nuneaton, Worcester and Kensington and Chelsea can look forward to a lot of bird-shit.
It is hard to see SKS enthusing the younger voter as much as Jezza did in 2017.
It may come still in a lesser form if Starmer becomes PM in 2024 but only due to SNP support
Don't they?
The result is Labour no longer really represents the working man or woman. They are much more focused on public sector entitlements, pay and maintaining a customer class in benefit recipients who are supposed to be duly grateful but don't vote as often as they might.
It is the more populist Boris (and indeed Trump in the US) who has addressed the concerns of the blue collar and non-unionised workforce. We see similar trends all over the western world. The attitude of Labour is typical, it is patronising, abusive and indifferent thinking that they are better educated (which they are) and more liberal (ditto) and therefore better (not so much). They find this group increasingly difficult to relate to. Until they do, however, majorities are going to prove elusive.
2019 swing from Lab to Con, GB=4.7%:
Aberconwy 2.2%
Worthing East & Shoreham 2.2%
Uxbridge & South Ruislip 2.1%
Watford 2.0%
Macclesfield 2.0%
Monmouth 1.7%
Shipley 1.4%
Reading West 1.3%
Southport 1.3%
Vale of Glamorgan 1.2%
Filton & Bradley Stoke 1.1%
Bournemouth East 0.8%
Chipping Barnet 0.7%
Truro & Falmouth 0.5%
Kensington 0.2%
Altrincham & Sale West -0.5%
Rushcliffe -0.6%
Chingford & Woodford Green -1.3%
Wycombe -2.3%