I don't especially like Andy Burnham but I wonder if Labour have missed something important. A Labour leader who is Scottish helps their vote there. A Labour leader who is northern would help their vote there. And, let's be clear about this, as MM states below, if Labour can't win back the northern Brexit Labour vote then they are never going to regain office.
Can you see remainer Sir Keir Starmer winning them back? I can't.
Burnham is my go-to guy to replace Starmer.
He seems to be wearing around the edges a little now, less like a mascara'd up Thunderbirds puppet, more like a decent-sounding bloke who has had a sound pandemic.
Burnham leading Labour into the next election would cause Boris more sleepless nights than Starmer. Although I suspect Boris would work better with Burnham in delivering stuff for the North. They'd both look good.
Not sure how that shakes up politics materially in Labour's favour, but they would still look credible as a force. Which would have to be an improvement on what they've had - and what they've got.
When Mr Burnham stood for election as leader, ISTR he was categorised as 'He'll do I suppose.' Be interesting if he looks a better candidate next time.
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.
Has something happened to Malc?
He messaged me to say that he's taking a rest from PB because he's getting perpetual 24hr bans while other folk seem to be getting away with murder. Malc and the missus are both fine and vaccinated btw.
[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.
Of course there will be some who die within a couple of weeks of getting the vaccine, but that is before the vaccine can have any effect. It’s merely a coincidence. You know better than to listen to the muttering son pb...
Even with his reasoning - that this is a terrible time for a change - it is rather remarkable that a LOTO has not called for a government minister's resignation on the slightest pretext, let alone when that minister was found to have acted unlawfully.
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.
Has something happened to Malc?
He messaged me to say that he's taking a rest from PB because he's getting perpetual 24hr bans while other folk seem to be getting away with murder. Malc and the missus are both fine and vaccinated btw.
Glad to hear that they are well. Sorry to hear he's stepping back. I enjoy his posts.
I think he, or some of his people, have in the past whinged about how he is not as popular as Federer or Nadal despite being equivalent in achievement (indeed, given his age there's a good chance he exceeds them both). But personality does matter.
[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.
Of course there will be some who die within a couple of weeks of getting the vaccine, but that is before the vaccine can have any effect. It’s merely a coincidence. You know better than to listen to the muttering son pb...
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.
The massively increased efficiency of the Tory vote has been, in part, because they have been winning their southern and eastern safe seats by smaller margins than they once did. Some of this at the last election was undoubtedly a Brexit remainer effect. It will be interesting to see how that group (which seems pretty well represented on this board) moves as we approach the next election.
I think general elections are won on one or two of the following factors:
Personality Performance Policies Positioning
Personality needs to be positive, appealing and in permanent campaigning mode. Johnson has it. Trump had it. Sturgeon has it. Starmer hasn't. Davey hasn't.
Performance is a mixture of gripping success/failure stories, a longer term narrative, and a perception of the "team". Trust is important too.
Policies are policies. Meh. Unless a particular policy is weaponised by the opposition. Policies are best avoided.
Positioning. It used to be workers versus capital. Now it is more identity conservatives (white, non graduates who feel threatened by changes) versus conviction liberals (white urban graduates) and necessity liberals (ethnic minorities who feel they need liberal protection but may not be socially liberal themselves).
You can apply this framework to England, US, Scotland (positioning is nationalism) and other nations.
Applying this to England:
Labour (and LibDems) can't win on personality! But NB it is possible to defeat personality using other factors viz Biden versus Trump. Labour has a chance on performance. Johnson is riding high at the moment on vaccines but he has a crap cabinet and events dear boy. Starmer needs to strengthen his shadow cabinet and give them space to shine. The policies are almost indistinguishable and not a basis of competition but might provide pooh traps. Best avoided. Positioning: Starmer is trying to straddle both camps. Triangulation. But he may end up antagonising both. Vote Conservative is you want conservative values. Vote LIbDem if you want liberal values. NB Identity conservatives used to be in the majority (white non-graduates) but are quite rapidly shrinking as a proportion of the population. That is why they feel threatened. They are not just Labour working class. Lots of Tories too.
My conclusion Tory best strategy is personality and positioning (the Trump strategy) Labour best strategy is performance. LibDem best strategy is positioning
PS I've just made this up. Nothing better to do on a lockdown Sunday. But I like frameworks. They help me think.
I think he, or some of his people, have in the past whinged about how he is not as popular as Federer or Nadal despite being equivalent in achievement (indeed, given his age there's a good chance he exceeds them both). But personality does matter.
Yes it does, he's always struck me as an ungracious person but I could never put my finger on any I felt that way about him.
I don't especially like Andy Burnham but I wonder if Labour have missed something important. A Labour leader who is Scottish helps their vote there. A Labour leader who is northern would help their vote there. And, let's be clear about this, as MM states below, if Labour can't win back the northern Brexit Labour vote then they are never going to regain office.
Can you see remainer Sir Keir Starmer winning them back? I can't.
Burnham is my go-to guy to replace Starmer.
He seems to be wearing around the edges a little now, less like a mascara'd up Thunderbirds puppet, more like a decent-sounding bloke who has had a sound pandemic.
Burnham leading Labour into the next election would cause Boris more sleepless nights than Starmer. Although I suspect Boris would work better with Burnham in delivering stuff for the North. They'd both look good.
Not sure how that shakes up politics materially in Labour's favour, but they would still look credible as a force. Which would have to be an improvement on what they've had - and what they've got.
When Mr Burnham stood for election as leader, ISTR he was categorised as 'He'll do I suppose.' Be interesting if he looks a better candidate next time.
Good morning, everyone.
Burnham embodies everything voters outside Greater Manchester detest about Labour. Burnham is both a Blairite and a class warrior. He is also a gobby Northerner.
Very kind though it is, for @MarqueeMark to offer left of centre voters Prime Minister Burnham, in the same spirit can I offer him Gavin Williamson for Prime Minister?
I think he, or some of his people, have in the past whinged about how he is not as popular as Federer or Nadal despite being equivalent in achievement (indeed, given his age there's a good chance he exceeds them both). But personality does matter.
Yes it does, he's always struck me as an ungracious person but I could never put my finger on any I felt that way about him.
Early in his career he had a couple instances where he pulled out injured during matches when he losing, a bit too many times for it to seem plausible, but there's no doubting his talent. But whether its fair or not some people are just more likable than others. Federer is cool, Nadal is charismatic, even just in the limited interactions we see with them on a court. Djokovich? He has never left me much impression. That he's an anti-vaxxer isn't going to help.
I don't especially like Andy Burnham but I wonder if Labour have missed something important. A Labour leader who is Scottish helps their vote there. A Labour leader who is northern would help their vote there. And, let's be clear about this, as MM states below, if Labour can't win back the northern Brexit Labour vote then they are never going to regain office.
Can you see remainer Sir Keir Starmer winning them back? I can't.
Burnham is my go-to guy to replace Starmer.
He seems to be wearing around the edges a little now, less like a mascara'd up Thunderbirds puppet, more like a decent-sounding bloke who has had a sound pandemic.
Burnham leading Labour into the next election would cause Boris more sleepless nights than Starmer. Although I suspect Boris would work better with Burnham in delivering stuff for the North. They'd both look good.
Not sure how that shakes up politics materially in Labour's favour, but they would still look credible as a force. Which would have to be an improvement on what they've had - and what they've got.
When Mr Burnham stood for election as leader, ISTR he was categorised as 'He'll do I suppose.' Be interesting if he looks a better candidate next time.
Good morning, everyone.
When you've tried the rest, "He'll do I suppose...." looks rather more attractive. In a ten-minutes-'til-the-disco-closes kind of way.
Burnham leader, Nandy deputy-leader still looks a rather more enticing prospect than Captain Dad-dancing.
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.
Of course and historically only the one party has a history, nay even a main purpose, of adapting to the needs of the electorate to take the lion's share of power. Only one Labour leader in recent times was able to pull it off - and his party has never forgiven him. On the broader point assumptions about how people will vote are very difficult. Just think of all the radicals in their 20's morph into Conservatives by their 50s. I wonder how many Poles/Spaniards/French/etc who've had the energy and foresight to seek pastures new are naturals for a Starmer led Labour party. And how might citizenship affect people's views - with bridges burnt to their homeland how many will 'go native'?Finally I voted remain - unlike many millions of pro EU youngsters. Can we assume up to 5m EU 'citizens' will automatically vote for the EU now? None of it is certain.
I think general elections are won on one or two of the following factors:
Personality Performance Policies Positioning
Personality needs to be positive, appealing and in permanent campaigning mode. Johnson has it. Trump had it. Sturgeon has it. Starmer hasn't. Davey hasn't.
Performance is a mixture of gripping success/failure stories, a longer term narrative, and a perception of the "team". Trust is important too.
Policies are policies. Meh. Unless a particular policy is weaponised by the opposition. Policies are best avoided.
Positioning. It used to be workers versus capital. Now it is more identity conservatives (white, non graduates who feel threatened by changes) versus conviction liberals (white urban graduates) and necessity liberals (ethnic minorities who feel they need liberal protection but may not be socially liberal themselves).
You can apply this framework to England, US, Scotland (positioning is nationalism) and other nations.
Applying this to England:
Labour (and LibDems) can't win on personality! But NB it is possible to defeat personality using other factors viz Trump. Labour has a chance on performance. Johnson is riding high at the moment on vaccines but he has a crap cabinet and events dear boy. Starmer needs to strengthen his shadow cabinet and give them space to shine. The policies are almost indistinguishable and not a basis of competition but might provide pooh traps. Best avoided. Positioning: Starmer is trying to straddle both camps. Triangulation. But he may end up antagonising both. Vote Conservative is you want conservative values. Vote LIbDem if you want liberal values. NB Identity conservatives used to be in the majority (white non-graduates) but are quite rapidly shrinking as a proportion of the population. That is why they feel threatened. They are not just Labour working class. Lots of Tories too.
My conclusion Tory best strategy is personality and positioning (the Trump strategy) Labour best strategy is performance. LibDem best strategy is positioning
PS I've just made this up. Nothing better to do on a lockdown Sunday. But I like frameworks. They help me think.
I don't especially like Andy Burnham but I wonder if Labour have missed something important. A Labour leader who is Scottish helps their vote there. A Labour leader who is northern would help their vote there. And, let's be clear about this, as MM states below, if Labour can't win back the northern Brexit Labour vote then they are never going to regain office.
Can you see remainer Sir Keir Starmer winning them back? I can't.
Burnham is my go-to guy to replace Starmer.
He seems to be wearing around the edges a little now, less like a mascara'd up Thunderbirds puppet, more like a decent-sounding bloke who has had a sound pandemic.
Burnham leading Labour into the next election would cause Boris more sleepless nights than Starmer. Although I suspect Boris would work better with Burnham in delivering stuff for the North. They'd both look good.
Not sure how that shakes up politics materially in Labour's favour, but they would still look credible as a force. Which would have to be an improvement on what they've had - and what they've got.
When Mr Burnham stood for election as leader, ISTR he was categorised as 'He'll do I suppose.' Be interesting if he looks a better candidate next time.
Good morning, everyone.
Burnham embodies everything voters outside Greater Manchester detest about Labour. Burnham is both a Blairite and a class warrior. He is also a gobby Northerner.
Very kind though it is, for @MarqueeMark to offer left of centre voters Prime Minister Burnham, in the same spirit can I offer him Gavin Williamson for Prime Minister?
Burnham is not really a Blairite, more between Blair and Brown.
Had Burnham won the Labour leadership in 2015 and been Labour leader in 2017 he may even have won more seats than May
I don't especially like Andy Burnham but I wonder if Labour have missed something important. A Labour leader who is Scottish helps their vote there. A Labour leader who is northern would help their vote there. And, let's be clear about this, as MM states below, if Labour can't win back the northern Brexit Labour vote then they are never going to regain office.
Can you see remainer Sir Keir Starmer winning them back? I can't.
Burnham is my go-to guy to replace Starmer.
He seems to be wearing around the edges a little now, less like a mascara'd up Thunderbirds puppet, more like a decent-sounding bloke who has had a sound pandemic.
Burnham leading Labour into the next election would cause Boris more sleepless nights than Starmer. Although I suspect Boris would work better with Burnham in delivering stuff for the North. They'd both look good.
Not sure how that shakes up politics materially in Labour's favour, but they would still look credible as a force. Which would have to be an improvement on what they've had - and what they've got.
When Mr Burnham stood for election as leader, ISTR he was categorised as 'He'll do I suppose.' Be interesting if he looks a better candidate next time.
Good morning, everyone.
Burnham embodies everything voters outside Greater Manchester detest about Labour. Burnham is both a Blairite and a class warrior. He is also a gobby Northerner.
Very kind though it is, for @MarqueeMark to offer left of centre voters Prime Minister Burnham, in the same spirit can I offer him Gavin Williamson for Prime Minister?
If you don't want to listen to who the Tories DON'T want to fight....fine by me. Carry on with that excellent tradition of picking those we are happy to battle: Miliband, Corbyn, Starmer.....
I think general elections are won on one or two of the following factors:
Personality Performance Policies Positioning
Personality needs to be positive, appealing and in permanent campaigning mode. Johnson has it. Trump had it. Sturgeon has it. Starmer hasn't. Davey hasn't.
Performance is a mixture of gripping success/failure stories, a longer term narrative, and a perception of the "team". Trust is important too.
Policies are policies. Meh. Unless a particular policy is weaponised by the opposition. Policies are best avoided.
Positioning. It used to be workers versus capital. Now it is more identity conservatives (white, non graduates who feel threatened by changes) versus conviction liberals (white urban graduates) and necessity liberals (ethnic minorities who feel they need liberal protection but may not be socially liberal themselves).
You can apply this framework to England, US, Scotland (positioning is nationalism) and other nations.
Applying this to England:
Labour (and LibDems) can't win on personality! But NB it is possible to defeat personality using other factors viz Trump. Labour has a chance on performance. Johnson is riding high at the moment on vaccines but he has a crap cabinet and events dear boy. Starmer needs to strengthen his shadow cabinet and give them space to shine. The policies are almost indistinguishable and not a basis of competition but might provide pooh traps. Best avoided. Positioning: Starmer is trying to straddle both camps. Triangulation. But he may end up antagonising both. Vote Conservative is you want conservative values. Vote LIbDem if you want liberal values. NB Identity conservatives used to be in the majority (white non-graduates) but are quite rapidly shrinking as a proportion of the population. That is why they feel threatened. They are not just Labour working class. Lots of Tories too.
My conclusion Tory best strategy is personality and positioning (the Trump strategy) Labour best strategy is performance. LibDem best strategy is positioning
PS I've just made this up. Nothing better to do on a lockdown Sunday. But I like frameworks. They help me think.
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.
Because younger people have fewer decades of getting used to it, hunt in packs, believe they are being individualist by all signing up to groupthink, think more in primary colours than shades of grey and have less experience of what ideologues are like once you let them loose. I wouldn't have it any different and love them all.
But why do you think that on election day 2017 and 2019 there was a queue at the polling station (small town, industrial, apparently a-political) of the sort of older people that Labour now ignore, at 7 am just to make sure it didn't happen.
The same people vote in a known, moderate Labour person as county councillor without hesitation every time.
One might venture to suggest that everything from at least Rushcliffe downwards is safe Tory except in the event of a 1997-style implosion, and who can tell what the effect of radical boundary change will be on the Welsh seats? That leaves, perhaps, ten or eleven English constituencies apparently at increased risk of falling to Labour due to demographic trending, and the three most marginal of those are in London which is shifting ever leftwards anyway.
If Labour were to rely on the olds dying off and the youth bailing it out in England (and I don't think they would, they're not that stupid,) then this suggests that they'd be likely to be kept waiting for a very, very long time.
EDIT: reply to @Andy_JS - comment system threw a very strange wobbly when I tried to include his original post?!?!
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.
Has something happened to Malc?
He messaged me to say that he's taking a rest from PB because he's getting perpetual 24hr bans while other folk seem to be getting away with murder. Malc and the missus are both fine and vaccinated btw.
Good about the health. Miss his comments, though. If you're in touch, give him my good wishes.
One might venture to suggest that everything from at least Rushcliffe downwards is safe Tory except in the event of a 1997-style implosion, and who can tell what the effect of radical boundary change will be on the Welsh seats? That leaves, perhaps, ten or eleven English constituencies apparently at increased risk of falling to Labour due to demographic trending, and the three most marginal of those are in London which is shifting ever leftwards anyway.
If Labour were to rely on the olds dying off and the youth bailing it out in England (and I don't think they would, they're not that stupid,) then this suggests that they'd be likely to be kept waiting for a very, very long time.
Most of them also urban or suburban or commuter belt Remain voting seats or at most only narrow Leave
Starmer is a bit dull. He is too much the lawyer and too little the politician. He is not a very experienced politician, after all.
Osborne rather cattily but accurately commented that his style is "forensic commentary" which is not enough.
Miles better than Corbyn but whether that will be enough to overcome an 80-seat majority is unclear. Much will depend on events. The economic and social consequences of Covid and Brexit are not at all clear yet. Nor is it clear which party has any sort of programme or story to tell about this changed world.
I don't especially like Andy Burnham but I wonder if Labour have missed something important. A Labour leader who is Scottish helps their vote there. A Labour leader who is northern would help their vote there. And, let's be clear about this, as MM states below, if Labour can't win back the northern Brexit Labour vote then they are never going to regain office.
Can you see remainer Sir Keir Starmer winning them back? I can't.
Burnham is my go-to guy to replace Starmer.
He seems to be wearing around the edges a little now, less like a mascara'd up Thunderbirds puppet, more like a decent-sounding bloke who has had a sound pandemic.
Burnham leading Labour into the next election would cause Boris more sleepless nights than Starmer. Although I suspect Boris would work better with Burnham in delivering stuff for the North. They'd both look good.
Not sure how that shakes up politics materially in Labour's favour, but they would still look credible as a force. Which would have to be an improvement on what they've had - and what they've got.
When Mr Burnham stood for election as leader, ISTR he was categorised as 'He'll do I suppose.' Be interesting if he looks a better candidate next time.
Good morning, everyone.
Burnham embodies everything voters outside Greater Manchester detest about Labour. Burnham is both a Blairite and a class warrior. He is also a gobby Northerner.
Very kind though it is, for @MarqueeMark to offer left of centre voters Prime Minister Burnham, in the same spirit can I offer him Gavin Williamson for Prime Minister?
Burnham is not really a Blairite, more between Blair and Brown.
Had Burnham won the Labour leadership in 2015 and been Labour leader in 2017 he may even have won more seats than May
Hand anyone apart from Corbyn won the leadership in 2015 chances are we wouldn't have had Brexit..
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.
Has something happened to Malc?
He messaged me to say that he's taking a rest from PB because he's getting perpetual 24hr bans while other folk seem to be getting away with murder. Malc and the missus are both fine and vaccinated btw.
Glad to hear that they are well. Sorry to hear he's stepping back. I enjoy his posts.
He doesn't help himself though. He's extremely aggressive.
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.
Has something happened to Malc?
He messaged me to say that he's taking a rest from PB because he's getting perpetual 24hr bans while other folk seem to be getting away with murder. Malc and the missus are both fine and vaccinated btw.
Good about the health. Miss his comments, though. If you're in touch, give him my good wishes.
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.
Of course and historically only the one party has a history, nay even a main purpose, of adapting to the needs of the electorate to take the lion's share of power. Only one Labour leader in recent times was able to pull it off - and his party has never forgiven him. On the broader point assumptions about how people will vote are very difficult. Just think of all the radicals in their 20's morph into Conservatives by their 50s. I wonder how many Poles/Spaniards/French/etc who've had the energy and foresight to seek pastures new are naturals for a Starmer led Labour party. And how might citizenship affect people's views - with bridges burnt to their homeland how many will 'go native'?Finally I voted remain - unlike many millions of pro EU youngsters. Can we assume up to 5m EU 'citizens' will automatically vote for the EU now? None of it is certain.
All being well I am moving to Connecticut next year but shall be voting in the UK for so long as I am able. You are an ex-pat and would know better but I am reasonably sure that if I were ever to become an American citizen then the party that wanted to maintain good relationships with my former country would impact my vote. I don't think US-UK bilateral relations are a major policy platform for either party over there though.
On topic, a useful and interesting thread, as usual with detailed electoral analysis from the writer. As others have commented, these really show Labour's problems with small town and rural Britain, especially England.
Tbh I thought the Union Unit/Union Directorate/whatever twattish name they think of next was already a taxpayer funded astroturf pro-union campaign. Must be costing a fortune in taxpayer funded severance payments apart from anything else.
I think general elections are won on one or two of the following factors:
Personality Performance Policies Positioning
Personality needs to be positive, appealing and in permanent campaigning mode. Johnson has it. Trump had it. Sturgeon has it. Starmer hasn't. Davey hasn't.
Performance is a mixture of gripping success/failure stories, a longer term narrative, and a perception of the "team". Trust is important too.
Policies are policies. Meh. Unless a particular policy is weaponised by the opposition. Policies are best avoided.
Positioning. It used to be workers versus capital. Now it is more identity conservatives (white, non graduates who feel threatened by changes) versus conviction liberals (white urban graduates) and necessity liberals (ethnic minorities who feel they need liberal protection but may not be socially liberal themselves).
You can apply this framework to England, US, Scotland (positioning is nationalism) and other nations.
Applying this to England:
Labour (and LibDems) can't win on personality! But NB it is possible to defeat personality using other factors viz Trump. Labour has a chance on performance. Johnson is riding high at the moment on vaccines but he has a crap cabinet and events dear boy. Starmer needs to strengthen his shadow cabinet and give them space to shine. The policies are almost indistinguishable and not a basis of competition but might provide pooh traps. Best avoided. Positioning: Starmer is trying to straddle both camps. Triangulation. But he may end up antagonising both. Vote Conservative is you want conservative values. Vote LIbDem if you want liberal values. NB Identity conservatives used to be in the majority (white non-graduates) but are quite rapidly shrinking as a proportion of the population. That is why they feel threatened. They are not just Labour working class. Lots of Tories too.
My conclusion Tory best strategy is personality and positioning (the Trump strategy) Labour best strategy is performance. LibDem best strategy is positioning
PS I've just made this up. Nothing better to do on a lockdown Sunday. But I like frameworks. They help me think.
Looks like a thread header to me
I considered offering it! But I'm shy.
Go for it. Brilliant. But I think you underestimate the place of policy for Labour. There has to be a strong retail offer for ordinary apparently a-political people to vote for. And any sort of threat (separatism within GB, wokes in charge, the left, the 'Tory vermin' tendency - 'only idiots vote Tory, please, idiot, change and vote for us') has to be neutralised. This can only be done by the strength of the front bench - nowhere close yet - constantly seeming like a better government so that people can forget it's the party of Pidcock and Burgon.
I think general elections are won on one or two of the following factors:
Personality Performance Policies Positioning
Personality needs to be positive, appealing and in permanent campaigning mode. Johnson has it. Trump had it. Sturgeon has it. Starmer hasn't. Davey hasn't.
Performance is a mixture of gripping success/failure stories, a longer term narrative, and a perception of the "team". Trust is important too.
Policies are policies. Meh. Unless a particular policy is weaponised by the opposition. Policies are best avoided.
Positioning. It used to be workers versus capital. Now it is more identity conservatives (white, non graduates who feel threatened by changes) versus conviction liberals (white urban graduates) and necessity liberals (ethnic minorities who feel they need liberal protection but may not be socially liberal themselves).
You can apply this framework to England, US, Scotland (positioning is nationalism) and other nations.
Applying this to England:
Labour (and LibDems) can't win on personality! But NB it is possible to defeat personality using other factors viz Trump. Labour has a chance on performance. Johnson is riding high at the moment on vaccines but he has a crap cabinet and events dear boy. Starmer needs to strengthen his shadow cabinet and give them space to shine. The policies are almost indistinguishable and not a basis of competition but might provide pooh traps. Best avoided. Positioning: Starmer is trying to straddle both camps. Triangulation. But he may end up antagonising both. Vote Conservative is you want conservative values. Vote LIbDem if you want liberal values. NB Identity conservatives used to be in the majority (white non-graduates) but are quite rapidly shrinking as a proportion of the population. That is why they feel threatened. They are not just Labour working class. Lots of Tories too.
My conclusion Tory best strategy is personality and positioning (the Trump strategy) Labour best strategy is performance. LibDem best strategy is positioning
PS I've just made this up. Nothing better to do on a lockdown Sunday. But I like frameworks. They help me think.
Looks like a thread header to me
I considered offering it! But I'm shy.
Expand it and send it in. Certainly a fine basis for discussion, whether or not one agrees with it.
I don't especially like Andy Burnham but I wonder if Labour have missed something important. A Labour leader who is Scottish helps their vote there. A Labour leader who is northern would help their vote there. And, let's be clear about this, as MM states below, if Labour can't win back the northern Brexit Labour vote then they are never going to regain office.
Can you see remainer Sir Keir Starmer winning them back? I can't.
Burnham is my go-to guy to replace Starmer.
He seems to be wearing around the edges a little now, less like a mascara'd up Thunderbirds puppet, more like a decent-sounding bloke who has had a sound pandemic.
Burnham leading Labour into the next election would cause Boris more sleepless nights than Starmer. Although I suspect Boris would work better with Burnham in delivering stuff for the North. They'd both look good.
Not sure how that shakes up politics materially in Labour's favour, but they would still look credible as a force. Which would have to be an improvement on what they've had - and what they've got.
When Mr Burnham stood for election as leader, ISTR he was categorised as 'He'll do I suppose.' Be interesting if he looks a better candidate next time.
Good morning, everyone.
When you've tried the rest, "He'll do I suppose...." looks rather more attractive. In a ten-minutes-'til-the-disco-closes kind of way.
Burnham leader, Nandy deputy-leader still looks a rather more enticing prospect than Captain Dad-dancing.
I hadn’t given it much thought, but Burnham certainly comes across far better than he used to. No one really knows how someone will turn out when they get the top job, but there would be worse gambles for Labour if at some point they give up on Starmer.
Another UK tech company (Cazoo) chooses New York for its listing meaning domestic UK investors will miss out on future dividends and growth from a UK focussed business.
The chancellor needs to figure this out yesterday, we can't keep losing out to New York for these listings. The rules are just far, far too strict and we need to be able to get dual share structures and enable a larger level loss making for tech startups which have investor backing.
I'd actually call it the single most critical issue the chancellor has in his in-tray right now outside of the pandemic stuff.
Starmer is a bit dull. He is too much the lawyer and too little the politician. He is not a very experienced politician, after all.
Osborne rather cattily but accurately commented that his style is "forensic commentary" which is not enough.
Miles better than Corbyn but whether that will be enough to overcome an 80-seat majority is unclear. Much will depend on events. The economic and social consequences of Covid and Brexit are not at all clear yet. Nor is it clear which party has any sort of programme or story to tell about this changed world.
Not helped when he flies off the handle and has to be pulled away from Boris over a point it turns out he did say after all. The "I thought he was saying I'd made a different point" doesn't look very, well, forensic....
I think general elections are won on one or two of the following factors:
Personality Performance Policies Positioning
Personality needs to be positive, appealing and in permanent campaigning mode. Johnson has it. Trump had it. Sturgeon has it. Starmer hasn't. Davey hasn't.
Performance is a mixture of gripping success/failure stories, a longer term narrative, and a perception of the "team". Trust is important too.
Policies are policies. Meh. Unless a particular policy is weaponised by the opposition. Policies are best avoided.
Positioning. It used to be workers versus capital. Now it is more identity conservatives (white, non graduates who feel threatened by changes) versus conviction liberals (white urban graduates) and necessity liberals (ethnic minorities who feel they need liberal protection but may not be socially liberal themselves).
You can apply this framework to England, US, Scotland (positioning is nationalism) and other nations.
Applying this to England:
Labour (and LibDems) can't win on personality! But NB it is possible to defeat personality using other factors viz Trump. Labour has a chance on performance. Johnson is riding high at the moment on vaccines but he has a crap cabinet and events dear boy. Starmer needs to strengthen his shadow cabinet and give them space to shine. The policies are almost indistinguishable and not a basis of competition but might provide pooh traps. Best avoided. Positioning: Starmer is trying to straddle both camps. Triangulation. But he may end up antagonising both. Vote Conservative is you want conservative values. Vote LIbDem if you want liberal values. NB Identity conservatives used to be in the majority (white non-graduates) but are quite rapidly shrinking as a proportion of the population. That is why they feel threatened. They are not just Labour working class. Lots of Tories too.
My conclusion Tory best strategy is personality and positioning (the Trump strategy) Labour best strategy is performance. LibDem best strategy is positioning
PS I've just made this up. Nothing better to do on a lockdown Sunday. But I like frameworks. They help me think.
Looks like a thread header to me
I considered offering it! But I'm shy.
Don't worry; they will be kind for at least one article.
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.
Has something happened to Malc?
He messaged me to say that he's taking a rest from PB because he's getting perpetual 24hr bans while other folk seem to be getting away with murder. Malc and the missus are both fine and vaccinated btw.
Glad to hear that they are well. Sorry to hear he's stepping back. I enjoy his posts.
He doesn't help himself though. He's extremely aggressive.
I think you make a mistake if you take him entirely seriously. Its not a mistake he often makes himself.
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.
The massively increased efficiency of the Tory vote has been, in part, because they have been winning their southern and eastern safe seats by smaller margins than they once did. Some of this at the last election was undoubtedly a Brexit remainer effect. It will be interesting to see how that group (which seems pretty well represented on this board) moves as we approach the next election.
We'll be several years on from Brexit by that point. One would've thought that, assuming Labour remains soft left and the Lib Dems completely moribund, the Tory majorities will most likely start going back up in most of the South. That's down to the defence of bank balances and inheritances, laced perhaps with cultural suspicion of Labour post the Corbyn eruption. Only a serious and sustained economic downturn that is widespread enough to shake up wealthier areas is likely to change that.
On topic, a useful and interesting thread, as usual with detailed electoral analysis from the writer. As others have commented, these really show Labour's problems with small town and rural Britain, especially England.
I get why Keith didn't mention Brexit - people think you're trying to unpick leaving the EU. The debate has long moved on (unless you are a hard Brexit/Remain crazy) to the world after Brexit. Starmer understands that business is key - far more so apparently than the Tories do. If Starmer could apply a forensic analysis of the economic problems and work with business on ways to fix them, he absolutely could out-manuever the Tories.
The problem of course is that he can't do that. To side with business is to side with crony capitalism which has to be brought down. Nor could he side with the kind of Peter Mandleson figure needed to get the message across to business that Labour gets them.
This *could* be an opportunity for the LibDems. There is a vacuum at the heart of the British Polity and things get sucked into that space. Someone will have to start speaking up for jobs and prosperity. As the Tories won't and Labour can't, that suggests a 3rd party.
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.
That's a really interesting analysis, but I don't agree with all your conclusions.
What has replaced unionised labour? In large parts, low-paid jobs in call centres, warehousing, delivery, hospitality and so forth. You may be right that Boris (and Trump) addressed some of the concerns of this huge non-unionised workforce: patriotism/nationalism, anti-wokeness, Brexit and so on. But the jobs themselves are still crap: low paid, precarious, often lacking dignity (e.g. Amazon warehouses, JD Sports etc.) and not fulfilling. While Boris and Trump have appealed successfully to the sentiments of these workers, they've done little to improve their pay, working conditions, or sense of personal fulfillment through labour. And that's where Labour should focus, and there are signs of a strategy for Starmer there. Detoxify the woke/patriotism/Brexit stuff, and focus on well-paid jobs that offer dignity and security.
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.
The massively increased efficiency of the Tory vote has been, in part, because they have been winning their southern and eastern safe seats by smaller margins than they once did. Some of this at the last election was undoubtedly a Brexit remainer effect. It will be interesting to see how that group (which seems pretty well represented on this board) moves as we approach the next election.
We'll be several years on from Brexit by that point. One would've thought that, assuming Labour remains soft left and the Lib Dems completely moribund, the Tory majorities will most likely start going back up in most of the South. That's down to the defence of bank balances and inheritances, laced perhaps with cultural suspicion of Labour post the Corbyn eruption. Only a serious and sustained economic downturn that is widespread enough to shake up wealthier areas is likely to change that.
Which is why even if Starmer does win in 2024, it will likely be because of support from Scottish MPs, whether SNP or any regained by Labour and Welsh Labour MPs, England will still have a Tory majority even if Labour improves on its 2019 performance there
On topic, a useful and interesting thread, as usual with detailed electoral analysis from the writer. As others have commented, these really show Labour's problems with small town and rural Britain, especially England.
I get why Keith didn't mention Brexit - people think you're trying to unpick leaving the EU. The debate has long moved on (unless you are a hard Brexit/Remain crazy) to the world after Brexit. Starmer understands that business is key - far more so apparently than the Tories do. If Starmer could apply a forensic analysis of the economic problems and work with business on ways to fix them, he absolutely could out-manuever the Tories.
The problem of course is that he can't do that. To side with business is to side with crony capitalism which has to be brought down. Nor could he side with the kind of Peter Mandleson figure needed to get the message across to business that Labour gets them.
This *could* be an opportunity for the LibDems. There is a vacuum at the heart of the British Polity and things get sucked into that space. Someone will have to start speaking up for jobs and prosperity. As the Tories won't and Labour can't, that suggests a 3rd party.
And yet Starmer proposed Flagshagging Bonds that compete with private sector investment funds and banks that will end up costing the nation billions in unnecessary interest payments and capital losses.
He's got no answers. Completely and utterly clueless. One of the biggest issues facing us right now is that our most productive sectors are tech and fintech but they all choose to list in the US meaning UK based investment funds such as pensions are completely missing out on potential dividends and capital growth from our two highest growth sectors, we're not benefiting from our own economy as much as we could. What is Starmer proposing to ensure that we do?
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.
Has something happened to Malc?
He messaged me to say that he's taking a rest from PB because he's getting perpetual 24hr bans while other folk seem to be getting away with murder. Malc and the missus are both fine and vaccinated btw.
Glad to hear that they are well. Sorry to hear he's stepping back. I enjoy his posts.
He doesn't help himself though. He's extremely aggressive.
I think you make a mistake if you take him entirely seriously. Its not a mistake he often makes himself.
Perhaps a matter to take up with whoever keeps slapping all these bans on him? Nobody else keeps getting "disappeared" at regular intervals. I wonder why...?
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.
The massively increased efficiency of the Tory vote has been, in part, because they have been winning their southern and eastern safe seats by smaller margins than they once did. Some of this at the last election was undoubtedly a Brexit remainer effect. It will be interesting to see how that group (which seems pretty well represented on this board) moves as we approach the next election.
We'll be several years on from Brexit by that point. One would've thought that, assuming Labour remains soft left and the Lib Dems completely moribund, the Tory majorities will most likely start going back up in most of the South. That's down to the defence of bank balances and inheritances, laced perhaps with cultural suspicion of Labour post the Corbyn eruption. Only a serious and sustained economic downturn that is widespread enough to shake up wealthier areas is likely to change that.
A factor which won't entirely disappear is this: Brexit is a done deal and no-one thinks we are going back soon. So, whatever you think and whatever the regrets, do you vote for a party who seem to have their hearts in Brexit (Tories the only option) or for a party that accepts Brexit but doesn't believe in it? In England it's a problem for Labour. In Scotland it's hopeless.
If all the centre left parties could agree on EEA/EFTA there could be a sane position to be had but not unless. It won't happen, though it should have happened in 2016 onwards.
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.
That's a really interesting analysis, but I don't agree with all your conclusions.
What has replaced unionised labour? In large parts, low-paid jobs in call centres, warehousing, delivery, hospitality and so forth. You may be right that Boris (and Trump) addressed some of the concerns of this huge non-unionised workforce: patriotism/nationalism, anti-wokeness, Brexit and so on. But the jobs themselves are still crap: low paid, precarious, often lacking dignity (e.g. Amazon warehouses, JD Sports etc.) and not fulfilling. While Boris and Trump have appealed successfully to the sentiments of these workers, they've done little to improve their pay, working conditions, or sense of personal fulfillment through labour. And that's where Labour should focus, and there are signs of a strategy for Starmer there. Detoxify the woke/patriotism/Brexit stuff, and focus on well-paid jobs that offer dignity and security.
They absolutely are crap and these people are missing out almost entirely on our country's affluence. Its why I suggested my Workers Charter idea the other day. I would be delighted (and a bit surprised) if the government took it up instead of SKS.
But this is where the much more interesting analysis by @Barnesian comes into play. Positioning is really, really important. And if you think that this group are ignorant, racist, homophobic and more than just a bit thick selling them your economic policies is going to be an interesting challenge.
American democracy is just completely fecked. And the Republican party (within the context of a functioning democracy) even more so. They have no policy platform whatsover beyond "pro guns (and by extension ANY measure taken to control their misuse", "anti-abortion", and "owning the liberals/"radical extremist left" (aka "Democrats") - not that this can be considered a 'policy platform'. And many of their current "public faces" are in danger of elevating the likes of Bridgen and Francois to Brain of Britain standards.
OK, pushing it a bit on the last point, but got to stand up for the traditional British court jesters.
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.
Has something happened to Malc?
He messaged me to say that he's taking a rest from PB because he's getting perpetual 24hr bans while other folk seem to be getting away with murder. Malc and the missus are both fine and vaccinated btw.
Glad to hear that they are well. Sorry to hear he's stepping back. I enjoy his posts.
He doesn't help himself though. He's extremely aggressive.
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.
That's a really interesting analysis, but I don't agree with all your conclusions.
What has replaced unionised labour? In large parts, low-paid jobs in call centres, warehousing, delivery, hospitality and so forth. You may be right that Boris (and Trump) addressed some of the concerns of this huge non-unionised workforce: patriotism/nationalism, anti-wokeness, Brexit and so on. But the jobs themselves are still crap: low paid, precarious, often lacking dignity (e.g. Amazon warehouses, JD Sports etc.) and not fulfilling. While Boris and Trump have appealed successfully to the sentiments of these workers, they've done little to improve their pay, working conditions, or sense of personal fulfillment through labour. And that's where Labour should focus, and there are signs of a strategy for Starmer there. Detoxify the woke/patriotism/Brexit stuff, and focus on well-paid jobs that offer dignity and security.
They absolutely are crap and these people are missing out almost entirely on our country's affluence. Its why I suggested my Workers Charter idea the other day. I would be delighted (and a bit surprised) if the government took it up instead of SKS.
But this is where the much more interesting analysis by @Barnesian comes into play. Positioning is really, really important. And if you think that this group are ignorant, racist, homophobic and more than just a bit thick selling them your economic policies is going to be an interesting challenge.
Yes, I noted your interesting Workers' Charter. Much of it was in Labour's manifesto in both 2017 and 2019. Though the diffusion of their offer meant it didn't cut through at all.
On topic, a useful and interesting thread, as usual with detailed electoral analysis from the writer. As others have commented, these really show Labour's problems with small town and rural Britain, especially England.
I get why Keith didn't mention Brexit - people think you're trying to unpick leaving the EU. The debate has long moved on (unless you are a hard Brexit/Remain crazy) to the world after Brexit. Starmer understands that business is key - far more so apparently than the Tories do. If Starmer could apply a forensic analysis of the economic problems and work with business on ways to fix them, he absolutely could out-manuever the Tories.
The problem of course is that he can't do that. To side with business is to side with crony capitalism which has to be brought down. Nor could he side with the kind of Peter Mandleson figure needed to get the message across to business that Labour gets them.
This *could* be an opportunity for the LibDems. There is a vacuum at the heart of the British Polity and things get sucked into that space. Someone will have to start speaking up for jobs and prosperity. As the Tories won't and Labour can't, that suggests a 3rd party.
And yet Starmer proposed Flagshagging Bonds that compete with private sector investment funds and banks that will end up costing the nation billions in unnecessary interest payments and capital losses.
He's got no answers. Completely and utterly clueless. One of the biggest issues facing us right now is that our most productive sectors are tech and fintech but they all choose to list in the US meaning UK based investment funds such as pensions are completely missing out on potential dividends and capital growth from our two highest growth sectors, we're not benefiting from our own economy as much as we could. What is Starmer proposing to ensure that we do?
Nothing, because nobody but briefcase wankers who vote tory anyway gives a fuck about it.
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.
The massively increased efficiency of the Tory vote has been, in part, because they have been winning their southern and eastern safe seats by smaller margins than they once did. Some of this at the last election was undoubtedly a Brexit remainer effect. It will be interesting to see how that group (which seems pretty well represented on this board) moves as we approach the next election.
We'll be several years on from Brexit by that point. One would've thought that, assuming Labour remains soft left and the Lib Dems completely moribund, the Tory majorities will most likely start going back up in most of the South. That's down to the defence of bank balances and inheritances, laced perhaps with cultural suspicion of Labour post the Corbyn eruption. Only a serious and sustained economic downturn that is widespread enough to shake up wealthier areas is likely to change that.
A factor which won't entirely disappear is this: Brexit is a done deal and no-one thinks we are going back soon. So, whatever you think and whatever the regrets, do you vote for a party who seem to have their hearts in Brexit (Tories the only option) or for a party that accepts Brexit but doesn't believe in it? In England it's a problem for Labour. In Scotland it's hopeless.
If all the centre left parties could agree on EEA/EFTA there could be a sane position to be had but not unless. It won't happen, though it should have happened in 2016 onwards.
EEA/EFTA is a total non-starter. EEA is basically the Norway option (a fax democracy, which can and will be framed as the ante-chamber back into EU membership,) and EFTA might accept an independent Scotland but it doesn't want the UK. Too big, too disruptive.
In any event, as you say there's also no prospect of a united centre-left front on this. Only two centre-left parties really matter, and the SNP has pounded Labour to rubble on its patch and has nothing to gain from working with it on anything (save for holding a Labour minority to ransom in the event that it ends up controlling the balance of power in a future hung Parliament.)
I think general elections are won on one or two of the following factors:
Personality Performance Policies Positioning
Personality needs to be positive, appealing and in permanent campaigning mode. Johnson has it. Trump had it. Sturgeon has it. Starmer hasn't. Davey hasn't.
Performance is a mixture of gripping success/failure stories, a longer term narrative, and a perception of the "team". Trust is important too.
Policies are policies. Meh. Unless a particular policy is weaponised by the opposition. Policies are best avoided.
Positioning. It used to be workers versus capital. Now it is more identity conservatives (white, non graduates who feel threatened by changes) versus conviction liberals (white urban graduates) and necessity liberals (ethnic minorities who feel they need liberal protection but may not be socially liberal themselves).
You can apply this framework to England, US, Scotland (positioning is nationalism) and other nations.
Applying this to England:
Labour (and LibDems) can't win on personality! But NB it is possible to defeat personality using other factors viz Trump. Labour has a chance on performance. Johnson is riding high at the moment on vaccines but he has a crap cabinet and events dear boy. Starmer needs to strengthen his shadow cabinet and give them space to shine. The policies are almost indistinguishable and not a basis of competition but might provide pooh traps. Best avoided. Positioning: Starmer is trying to straddle both camps. Triangulation. But he may end up antagonising both. Vote Conservative is you want conservative values. Vote LIbDem if you want liberal values. NB Identity conservatives used to be in the majority (white non-graduates) but are quite rapidly shrinking as a proportion of the population. That is why they feel threatened. They are not just Labour working class. Lots of Tories too.
My conclusion Tory best strategy is personality and positioning (the Trump strategy) Labour best strategy is performance. LibDem best strategy is positioning
PS I've just made this up. Nothing better to do on a lockdown Sunday. But I like frameworks. They help me think.
Looks like a thread header to me
I considered offering it! But I'm shy.
Expand it and send it in. Certainly a fine basis for discussion, whether or not one agrees with it.
I do think there's an issue about the relationship of the Press, whether traditional or otherwise, and the ability/willingness to 'campaign' on social media to be taken into account. Look at the way Trump has been diminished by his absence from Twitter etc. And it's not just his contributions; because he can't make any, no-one talks about them!
What did Oscar Wilde say; there's only one thing worse than being talked about and that's not being talked about. IIRC.
Another UK tech company (Cazoo) chooses New York for its listing meaning domestic UK investors will miss out on future dividends and growth from a UK focussed business.
The chancellor needs to figure this out yesterday, we can't keep losing out to New York for these listings. The rules are just far, far too strict and we need to be able to get dual share structures and enable a larger level loss making for tech startups which have investor backing.
I'd actually call it the single most critical issue the chancellor has in his in-tray right now outside of the pandemic stuff.
There are others reasons - principally the far larger size of the US tech market (and investor appetite) - which is especially true if the biotech sector - but absolutely agree with you on this.
On topic, a useful and interesting thread, as usual with detailed electoral analysis from the writer. As others have commented, these really show Labour's problems with small town and rural Britain, especially England.
I get why Keith didn't mention Brexit - people think you're trying to unpick leaving the EU. The debate has long moved on (unless you are a hard Brexit/Remain crazy) to the world after Brexit. Starmer understands that business is key - far more so apparently than the Tories do. If Starmer could apply a forensic analysis of the economic problems and work with business on ways to fix them, he absolutely could out-manuever the Tories.
The problem of course is that he can't do that. To side with business is to side with crony capitalism which has to be brought down. Nor could he side with the kind of Peter Mandleson figure needed to get the message across to business that Labour gets them.
This *could* be an opportunity for the LibDems. There is a vacuum at the heart of the British Polity and things get sucked into that space. Someone will have to start speaking up for jobs and prosperity. As the Tories won't and Labour can't, that suggests a 3rd party.
And yet Starmer proposed Flagshagging Bonds that compete with private sector investment funds and banks that will end up costing the nation billions in unnecessary interest payments and capital losses.
He's got no answers. Completely and utterly clueless. One of the biggest issues facing us right now is that our most productive sectors are tech and fintech but they all choose to list in the US meaning UK based investment funds such as pensions are completely missing out on potential dividends and capital growth from our two highest growth sectors, we're not benefiting from our own economy as much as we could. What is Starmer proposing to ensure that we do?
Nothing, because nobody but briefcase wankers who vote tory anyway gives a fuck about it.
Sure, but isn't Keith supposed to be some kind of forensic investigator?
On older voters, I think Starmer should be brave. Just before the 2017 election, my dad got chatting to a guy (late 60s) in the pub. He told my dad that he was voting labour for the first time in his life because he didn’t want his grandchildren to pay tuition fees.
Now, clearly there would be issues if fees were scrapped entirely, but the point is that the way to win older voters isn’t necessarily through bribing them. They care about their children and grandchildren.
American democracy is just completely fecked. And the Republican party (within the context of a functioning democracy) even more so. They have no policy platform whatsover beyond "pro guns (and by extension ANY measure taken to control their misuse", "anti-abortion", and "owning the liberals/"radical extremist left" (aka "Democrats") - not that this can be considered a 'policy platform'. And many of their current "public faces" are in danger of elevating the likes of Bridgen and Francois to Brain of Britain standards.
OK, pushing it a bit on the last point, but got to stand up for the traditional British court jesters.
The GoP is certainly split and until recently I was unsure as to how this would be resolved.
My money is on O'Connell. He is purely interested in power and if he thought allying with Trump were a credible long-term policy he would have gone that way. His openly declared hostility to The Orange One indicates to me that he thinks the traditional Republican Party will succeed in the end.
The strategy seems to be to ignore Trump as far as possible and operate through traditional Party workers. Trump supporters may make a lot of noise but they don't do much work, rather like Trump himself.
Mr. 86, that's true, but both sides of the political divide have a difficult task when to comes to coming up with an economic platform. That also presents opportunity for Starmer.
Another UK tech company (Cazoo) chooses New York for its listing meaning domestic UK investors will miss out on future dividends and growth from a UK focussed business.
The chancellor needs to figure this out yesterday, we can't keep losing out to New York for these listings. The rules are just far, far too strict and we need to be able to get dual share structures and enable a larger level loss making for tech startups which have investor backing.
I'd actually call it the single most critical issue the chancellor has in his in-tray right now outside of the pandemic stuff.
There are others reasons - principally the far larger size of the US tech market (and investor appetite) - which is especially true if the biotech sector - but absolutely agree with you on this.
Investor appetite absolutely exists here for these kinds of companies, every time one has listed it has been hugely successful even with the even more opaque rules permitted on AIM. We need to simply copy NYSE listing rules and build up a tech focussed exchange similar to NASDAQ. It will be tough going for a few years but we have got a huge domestic sector that can begin to list domestically and draw in secondary listings from Asia and Europe.
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.
The massively increased efficiency of the Tory vote has been, in part, because they have been winning their southern and eastern safe seats by smaller margins than they once did. Some of this at the last election was undoubtedly a Brexit remainer effect. It will be interesting to see how that group (which seems pretty well represented on this board) moves as we approach the next election.
We'll be several years on from Brexit by that point. One would've thought that, assuming Labour remains soft left and the Lib Dems completely moribund, the Tory majorities will most likely start going back up in most of the South. That's down to the defence of bank balances and inheritances, laced perhaps with cultural suspicion of Labour post the Corbyn eruption. Only a serious and sustained economic downturn that is widespread enough to shake up wealthier areas is likely to change that.
A factor which won't entirely disappear is this: Brexit is a done deal and no-one thinks we are going back soon. So, whatever you think and whatever the regrets, do you vote for a party who seem to have their hearts in Brexit (Tories the only option) or for a party that accepts Brexit but doesn't believe in it? In England it's a problem for Labour. In Scotland it's hopeless.
If all the centre left parties could agree on EEA/EFTA there could be a sane position to be had but not unless. It won't happen, though it should have happened in 2016 onwards.
EEA/EFTA is a total non-starter. EEA is basically the Norway option (a fax democracy, which can and will be framed as the ante-chamber back into EU membership,) and EFTA might accept an independent Scotland but it doesn't want the UK. Too big, too disruptive.
In any event, as you say there's also no prospect of a united centre-left front on this. Only two centre-left parties really matter, and the SNP has pounded Labour to rubble on its patch and has nothing to gain from working with it on anything (save for holding a Labour minority to ransom in the event that it ends up controlling the balance of power in a future hung Parliament.)
Full EEA membership is unlikely as it would require free movement again but a Starmer premiership would certainly align the UK closer to EEA regulations and the customs union
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.
I think that the older population of Brexity voters in Brexity places simply want good quality jobs like they had, so their children don't have to choose between poverty and moving away.
There was an interesting piece of work a month or so back that showed opinion in backwater towns. People didn't want incomers, even if it led to economic development.
But many of the jobs and lifestyles that The Young want don't make sense in the classic small town. They happen in Leeds and Manchester for sure, maybe in Huddersfield if you look hard enough. But not in Dewsbury, let alone Heckmondwicke.
It's a wicked problem, and I don't think anyone has a good answer to it.
But there's often a difference between what the young want and what the young get.
By their mid 20s what so many of the young who have gone to Leeds, Manchester and most of all London have ?
A degree which turns out to be not as useful as they were promised, a crap job, lots of debt and a rented room in Walthamstow.
Whereas those who stayed in Huddersfield, Dewsbury and even Heckmondwike might have useful skills, earning good money, have no debt and are buying a house.
I must admit that it had passed me by that Wycombe was trending marginal. It wouldn't surprise me if Steve Baker stands down, to be honest.
As others have said though this analysis isn't complete without including the Labour seats that will flip Tory.
There will definitely be some, and the country could continue to pivot around an inverted axis.
Given the Tories had a 12% lead in 2019 and no poll has the Tories with a bigger lead than that and most polls have the Tories with a significantly smaller lead it is highly unlikely any further Labour seats will flip Tory
On older voters, I think Starmer should be brave. Just before the 2017 election, my dad got chatting to a guy (late 60s) in the pub. He told my dad that he was voting labour for the first time in his life because he didn’t want his grandchildren to pay tuition fees.
Now, clearly there would be issues if fees were scrapped entirely, but the point is that the way to win older voters isn’t necessarily through bribing them. They care about their children and grandchildren.
The idea that young people are intrinsically hard-Left is - in my view - misplaced.
Think of it from their point of view: when they are voting against tuition fees (an extra 9% of their salary above £26k being taken from their paypacket forevermore) they are voting for a tax cut.
One might venture to suggest that everything from at least Rushcliffe downwards is safe Tory except in the event of a 1997-style implosion, and who can tell what the effect of radical boundary change will be on the Welsh seats? That leaves, perhaps, ten or eleven English constituencies apparently at increased risk of falling to Labour due to demographic trending, and the three most marginal of those are in London which is shifting ever leftwards anyway.
If Labour were to rely on the olds dying off and the youth bailing it out in England (and I don't think they would, they're not that stupid,) then this suggests that they'd be likely to be kept waiting for a very, very long time.
EDIT: reply to @Andy_JS - comment system threw a very strange wobbly when I tried to include his original post?!?!
Mr. 86, that's true, but both sides of the political divide have a difficult task when to comes to coming up with an economic platform. That also presents opportunity for Starmer.
Until the economic changes engendered by Covid become apparent I would suggest it is a little unwise to think about economic strategy. A return to how things were precovid, everyone commuting and in the office 9 to 5 economic strategy will need to be quite different to a major exodus from office bound jobs to working from home with a diaspora of workers to cheaper areas strategy.
My real fear is we will get the latter and then economic strategy will be crafted on a "how to we cram people back into offices" basis
I must admit that it had passed me by that Wycombe was trending marginal. It wouldn't surprise me if Steve Baker stands down, to be honest.
As others have said though this analysis isn't complete without including the Labour seats that will flip Tory.
There will definitely be some, and the country could continue to pivot around an inverted axis.
Given the Tories had a 12% lead in 2019 and no poll has the Tories with a bigger lead than that and most polls have the Tories with a significantly smaller leader it is highly unlikely any further Labour seats will flip Tory
There are many Labour seats that have been trending Tory for quite a time and will continue to do so. Neither Ed Miliband not Yvette Cooper are safe, and the decline of the Brexit party helps them further.
Remember: even if Labour knocked it out the park you'd still expect 3-7 seats to flip Labour to Tory, and I expect more than that because they won't.
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.
That's a really interesting analysis, but I don't agree with all your conclusions.
What has replaced unionised labour? In large parts, low-paid jobs in call centres, warehousing, delivery, hospitality and so forth. You may be right that Boris (and Trump) addressed some of the concerns of this huge non-unionised workforce: patriotism/nationalism, anti-wokeness, Brexit and so on. But the jobs themselves are still crap: low paid, precarious, often lacking dignity (e.g. Amazon warehouses, JD Sports etc.) and not fulfilling. While Boris and Trump have appealed successfully to the sentiments of these workers, they've done little to improve their pay, working conditions, or sense of personal fulfillment through labour. And that's where Labour should focus, and there are signs of a strategy for Starmer there. Detoxify the woke/patriotism/Brexit stuff, and focus on well-paid jobs that offer dignity and security.
They absolutely are crap and these people are missing out almost entirely on our country's affluence. Its why I suggested my Workers Charter idea the other day. I would be delighted (and a bit surprised) if the government took it up instead of SKS.
But this is where the much more interesting analysis by @Barnesian comes into play. Positioning is really, really important. And if you think that this group are ignorant, racist, homophobic and more than just a bit thick selling them your economic policies is going to be an interesting challenge.
For instance, what is Labour's response on the Supreme Court decision on Uber workers and the whole gig economy?
There is something very 19th century about the gig economy: people having no security and being dependant on whatever work may be available while those using them become ever richer and work out more ways to avoid using them at all or doing so at lower and lower cost. OTOH flexibility and freelance work is attractive to others and can be a good thing for an economy and society.
What is the boundary between the two? Should there be more action to break up these rich monopolistic behemoths? What sort of security should workers get? What kind of society will we have if only a fortunate few have any sort of financial security or ability to make plans for the future? Covid and Brexit have make the divide between the fortunate few and those with little security very stark. And many who thought themselves fortunate - those with businesses or secure jobs or savings - are now finding themselves in a much more precarious position. Some of those jobs are not necessary or will migrate overseas or disappear. Many businesses have been hard hit and will not recover or take years to do so. Many freelancers have lost income. Savings are being used up.
There is a lot of insecurity and concern about. Much of it has been masked by the understandable concern about Covid. But it will still be there. Labour should be thinking about this.
"That these marginal seats will decide the next election is not news. But look at the pattern the 201 marginal seats highlighted make. They dont concentrate in Wales, Scotland, London, the major cities or the truly rural areas. They arent really regional. They are heavily concentrated in Medium English Towns and Their Hinterlands (METTHs from now on)."
Interesting piece, thanks Alastair. I’ve never been to Colchester, but chocolate box isn’t how I imagine it. Curious that it was a Lib Dem seat and it’s taken a few elections for Labour to become the main challenger.
Colchester looks a bit like my seat of Woking in that the Tories look beatable, but the challenger isn’t strong enough to hoover up most of the non-Tory votes. Perhaps that will be different in such seats in 2024.
It’s also interesting to wonder if Tories might win a few more seats in the red wall next time even if they suffer a net loss overall. Labour just held on to Normanton, Castleford and Pontefract (Yvette Cooper’s seat) last time. I think that and Chesterfield might be possible gains for the Tories.
Hemsworth might be an interesting bet for a Conservative gain.
Majority of under 3%, Jon Trickett very likely to stand down, demographically trending Conservative and even the likes of South Elmsall showing signs of gentrification.
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.
Has something happened to Malc?
He messaged me to say that he's taking a rest from PB because he's getting perpetual 24hr bans while other folk seem to be getting away with murder. Malc and the missus are both fine and vaccinated btw.
Can you blame him? Faced daily with the Kumbaya PB Sextet any sane person would lose it occasionally. A wit like his is rare
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.
That's a really interesting analysis, but I don't agree with all your conclusions.
What has replaced unionised labour? In large parts, low-paid jobs in call centres, warehousing, delivery, hospitality and so forth. You may be right that Boris (and Trump) addressed some of the concerns of this huge non-unionised workforce: patriotism/nationalism, anti-wokeness, Brexit and so on. But the jobs themselves are still crap: low paid, precarious, often lacking dignity (e.g. Amazon warehouses, JD Sports etc.) and not fulfilling. While Boris and Trump have appealed successfully to the sentiments of these workers, they've done little to improve their pay, working conditions, or sense of personal fulfillment through labour. And that's where Labour should focus, and there are signs of a strategy for Starmer there. Detoxify the woke/patriotism/Brexit stuff, and focus on well-paid jobs that offer dignity and security.
They can't detoxify on all that because they think those that disagree with them are the ones with the problem, and are prosecuting a "culture war" as a consequence.
Just look at the comments on here today, and from some of our Labour regulars.
The BBC's Andrew Marr also asks the health secretary how many cases of the problematic South Africa variant there are in England at the moment.
Matt Hancock says: "In total we've seen around 300 but most of those are historic cases from over a month ago and the latest data shows there are a dozen new ones so a much, much smaller number.
"And each time we find a new one we absolutely clamp down on it with enhanced contract tracing."
Marr asks if the spread of the South Africa variant is "shrinking".
Hancock replies: "I think that's a good summary yes".
He says there were fewer cases coming into the country thanks to tougher border restrictions.
Certainly good news.
I wonder if the South Africa variant is less contagious than the UK variant.
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.
That's a really interesting analysis, but I don't agree with all your conclusions.
What has replaced unionised labour? In large parts, low-paid jobs in call centres, warehousing, delivery, hospitality and so forth. You may be right that Boris (and Trump) addressed some of the concerns of this huge non-unionised workforce: patriotism/nationalism, anti-wokeness, Brexit and so on. But the jobs themselves are still crap: low paid, precarious, often lacking dignity (e.g. Amazon warehouses, JD Sports etc.) and not fulfilling. While Boris and Trump have appealed successfully to the sentiments of these workers, they've done little to improve their pay, working conditions, or sense of personal fulfillment through labour. And that's where Labour should focus, and there are signs of a strategy for Starmer there. Detoxify the woke/patriotism/Brexit stuff, and focus on well-paid jobs that offer dignity and security.
They can't detoxify on all that because they think those that disagree with them are the ones with the problem, and are prosecuting a "culture war" as a consequence.
Just look at the comments on here today, and from some of our Labour regulars.
The delusion is off the scale.
Yup, this is the hilarious part of it. The constant accusations against the right of waging a culture war while saying that what they're proposing is simply progress and can't ever be questioned. Letting men in dresses into women's spaces is absolutely fine and anyone who questions it is a bigot and trying to start a culture war.
On topic, a useful and interesting thread, as usual with detailed electoral analysis from the writer. As others have commented, these really show Labour's problems with small town and rural Britain, especially England.
I get why Keith didn't mention Brexit - people think you're trying to unpick leaving the EU. The debate has long moved on (unless you are a hard Brexit/Remain crazy) to the world after Brexit. Starmer understands that business is key - far more so apparently than the Tories do. If Starmer could apply a forensic analysis of the economic problems and work with business on ways to fix them, he absolutely could out-manuever the Tories.
The problem of course is that he can't do that. To side with business is to side with crony capitalism which has to be brought down. Nor could he side with the kind of Peter Mandleson figure needed to get the message across to business that Labour gets them.
This *could* be an opportunity for the LibDems. There is a vacuum at the heart of the British Polity and things get sucked into that space. Someone will have to start speaking up for jobs and prosperity. As the Tories won't and Labour can't, that suggests a 3rd party.
And yet Starmer proposed Flagshagging Bonds that compete with private sector investment funds and banks that will end up costing the nation billions in unnecessary interest payments and capital losses.
He's got no answers. Completely and utterly clueless. One of the biggest issues facing us right now is that our most productive sectors are tech and fintech but they all choose to list in the US meaning UK based investment funds such as pensions are completely missing out on potential dividends and capital growth from our two highest growth sectors, we're not benefiting from our own economy as much as we could. What is Starmer proposing to ensure that we do?
Nothing, because nobody but briefcase wankers who vote tory anyway gives a fuck about it.
Sure, but isn't Keith supposed to be some kind of forensic investigator?
Why do you not use his name. Is it just a derogatory term.
American democracy is just completely fecked. And the Republican party (within the context of a functioning democracy) even more so. They have no policy platform whatsover beyond "pro guns (and by extension ANY measure taken to control their misuse", "anti-abortion", and "owning the liberals/"radical extremist left" (aka "Democrats") - not that this can be considered a 'policy platform'. And many of their current "public faces" are in danger of elevating the likes of Bridgen and Francois to Brain of Britain standards.
OK, pushing it a bit on the last point, but got to stand up for the traditional British court jesters.
The GoP is certainly split and until recently I was unsure as to how this would be resolved.
My money is on O'Connell. He is purely interested in power and if he thought allying with Trump were a credible long-term policy he would have gone that way. His openly declared hostility to The Orange One indicates to me that he thinks the traditional Republican Party will succeed in the end.
The strategy seems to be to ignore Trump as far as possible and operate through traditional Party workers. Trump supporters may make a lot of noise but they don't do much work, rather like Trump himself.
A desperate pivot to go after the Irish vote?
His analysis that the Republicans can't win (at a national level) fairly on a Trumpist platform is surely true. But many Republicans have simply given up on winning fairly and/or nationally. So i don't think it is certain that he will win the fight within the Republican Party. And there is a further issue that there is a serious problem for them that the Republicans had lost their way a long time before Trump. If anything Trump brought a whole new tranche of voters with him and gave them a temporary shot in the arm. There is a serious argument that electorally the two factions are utterly dependent on each other and neither can win without another.
But, for US democracy, there remains a danger that the more of a joke the Republican party become the more fissures might emerge within the Democratic Party. They really are stuck in a position where the route to power is to hold 50+1% of the support in the party with 50+1% of the support in the country.
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.
Has something happened to Malc?
He messaged me to say that he's taking a rest from PB because he's getting perpetual 24hr bans while other folk seem to be getting away with murder. Malc and the missus are both fine and vaccinated btw.
Can you blame him? Faced daily with the Kumbaya PB Sextet any sane person would lose it occasionally. A wit like his is rare
Let's not make a martyr of Malc, I doubt that's the sort of thing he would want or need. He's always aggressive, that's his style, and fair play we don't want just milquetoast automatons, and he can take it as well as give it rather than those who give but not take, but it's pretty self evident that if you are aggressive you are more likely to cross the line. Certain people periodically have to start up new identities as a result.
I must admit that it had passed me by that Wycombe was trending marginal. It wouldn't surprise me if Steve Baker stands down, to be honest.
As others have said though this analysis isn't complete without including the Labour seats that will flip Tory.
There will definitely be some, and the country could continue to pivot around an inverted axis.
Given the Tories had a 12% lead in 2019 and no poll has the Tories with a bigger lead than that and most polls have the Tories with a significantly smaller leader it is highly unlikely any further Labour seats will flip Tory
There are many Labour seats that have been trending Tory for quite a time and will continue to do so. Neither Ed Miliband not Yvette Cooper are safe, and the decline of the Brexit party helps them further.
Remember: even if Labour knocked it out the park you'd still expect 3-7 seats to flip Labour to Tory, and I expect more than that because they won't.
If the national swing is all one way the seats tend to follow. In 1997 for example Labour lost not a single seat to the Tories, and in 2010 the Tories lost not a single seat to Labour. In 2019 only 1 Tory seat went Labour, Putney.
Most likely if Labour does lose any seats it will be because they made net gains but still lost the election. That was the case in 1992 for example when Kinnock gained 35 seats from the Tories but lost 5 as well, 3 of them in Scotland or Wales.
American democracy is just completely fecked. And the Republican party (within the context of a functioning democracy) even more so. They have no policy platform whatsover beyond "pro guns (and by extension ANY measure taken to control their misuse", "anti-abortion", and "owning the liberals/"radical extremist left" (aka "Democrats") - not that this can be considered a 'policy platform'. And many of their current "public faces" are in danger of elevating the likes of Bridgen and Francois to Brain of Britain standards.
OK, pushing it a bit on the last point, but got to stand up for the traditional British court jesters.
The GoP is certainly split and until recently I was unsure as to how this would be resolved.
My money is on O'Connell. He is purely interested in power and if he thought allying with Trump were a credible long-term policy he would have gone that way. His openly declared hostility to The Orange One indicates to me that he thinks the traditional Republican Party will succeed in the end.
The strategy seems to be to ignore Trump as far as possible and operate through traditional Party workers. Trump supporters may make a lot of noise but they don't do much work, rather like Trump himself.
A desperate pivot to go after the Irish vote?
His analysis that the Republicans can't win (at a national level) fairly on a Trumpist platform is surely true. But many Republicans have simply given up on winning fairly and/or nationally. So i don't think it is certain that he will win the fight within the Republican Party. And there is a further issue that there is a serious problem for them that the Republicans had lost their way a long time before Trump. If anything Trump brought a whole new tranche of voters with him and gave them a temporary shot in the arm. There is a serious argument that electorally the two factions are utterly dependent on each other and neither can win without another.
*it is astonishing now to think that only 12 years ago the Democrats held 59 (57+2) seats in the Senate and 259 seats in the House. If they'd only acted sooner in their reluctance to overturn the filibuster we'd probably be in a very different world today.
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.
The massively increased efficiency of the Tory vote has been, in part, because they have been winning their southern and eastern safe seats by smaller margins than they once did. Some of this at the last election was undoubtedly a Brexit remainer effect. It will be interesting to see how that group (which seems pretty well represented on this board) moves as we approach the next election.
We'll be several years on from Brexit by that point. One would've thought that, assuming Labour remains soft left and the Lib Dems completely moribund, the Tory majorities will most likely start going back up in most of the South. That's down to the defence of bank balances and inheritances, laced perhaps with cultural suspicion of Labour post the Corbyn eruption. Only a serious and sustained economic downturn that is widespread enough to shake up wealthier areas is likely to change that.
A factor which won't entirely disappear is this: Brexit is a done deal and no-one thinks we are going back soon. So, whatever you think and whatever the regrets, do you vote for a party who seem to have their hearts in Brexit (Tories the only option) or for a party that accepts Brexit but doesn't believe in it? In England it's a problem for Labour. In Scotland it's hopeless.
If all the centre left parties could agree on EEA/EFTA there could be a sane position to be had but not unless. It won't happen, though it should have happened in 2016 onwards.
EEA/EFTA is a total non-starter. EEA is basically the Norway option (a fax democracy, which can and will be framed as the ante-chamber back into EU membership,) and EFTA might accept an independent Scotland but it doesn't want the UK. Too big, too disruptive.
In any event, as you say there's also no prospect of a united centre-left front on this. Only two centre-left parties really matter, and the SNP has pounded Labour to rubble on its patch and has nothing to gain from working with it on anything (save for holding a Labour minority to ransom in the event that it ends up controlling the balance of power in a future hung Parliament.)
Well your description of the EFTA and Norway in particular is so far from the truth that it undermines your whole argument. The fax democracy and EU ante-chamber myth was killed years ago and was only ever used by those who were desperate for any argument to either get Norway into the EU or prevent the UK leaving. In both cases they failed dismally because what they were saying was utter rubbish.
I must admit that it had passed me by that Wycombe was trending marginal. It wouldn't surprise me if Steve Baker stands down, to be honest.
As others have said though this analysis isn't complete without including the Labour seats that will flip Tory.
There will definitely be some, and the country could continue to pivot around an inverted axis.
Given the Tories had a 12% lead in 2019 and no poll has the Tories with a bigger lead than that and most polls have the Tories with a significantly smaller lead it is highly unlikely any further Labour seats will flip Tory
You get results against the grain. #RememberPutney.
Unless it's a 2019 or even 1997 style result, there will presumably be a few flips to the Tories - the Coventry's being possibles
Interesting piece, thanks Alastair. I’ve never been to Colchester, but chocolate box isn’t how I imagine it. Curious that it was a Lib Dem seat and it’s taken a few elections for Labour to become the main challenger.
Colchester looks a bit like my seat of Woking in that the Tories look beatable, but the challenger isn’t strong enough to hoover up most of the non-Tory votes. Perhaps that will be different in such seats in 2024.
It’s also interesting to wonder if Tories might win a few more seats in the red wall next time even if they suffer a net loss overall. Labour just held on to Normanton, Castleford and Pontefract (Yvette Cooper’s seat) last time. I think that and Chesterfield might be possible gains for the Tories.
Hemsworth might be an interesting bet for a Conservative gain.
Majority of under 3%, Jon Trickett very likely to stand down, demographically trending Conservative and even the likes of South Elmsall showing signs of gentrification.
My goodness! I used to work out of Kinsley, the pit village at the end of the Universe. If Hemsworth goes solidly Tory, something very strange has occurred.
"That these marginal seats will decide the next election is not news. But look at the pattern the 201 marginal seats highlighted make. They dont concentrate in Wales, Scotland, London, the major cities or the truly rural areas. They arent really regional. They are heavily concentrated in Medium English Towns and Their Hinterlands (METTHs from now on)."
I must admit that it had passed me by that Wycombe was trending marginal. It wouldn't surprise me if Steve Baker stands down, to be honest.
As others have said though this analysis isn't complete without including the Labour seats that will flip Tory.
There will definitely be some, and the country could continue to pivot around an inverted axis.
Given the Tories had a 12% lead in 2019 and no poll has the Tories with a bigger lead than that and most polls have the Tories with a significantly smaller lead it is highly unlikely any further Labour seats will flip Tory
Well you don't have to go far from your neck of the Forest to find the reverse examples.
Ilford North was Conservative in 2005 and Labour in 2019.
Enfield North would have been Conservative on the current boundaries in 2001 but went Labour in 2015.
Chingford had a much smaller Conservative majority in 2019 than in 1997.
American democracy is just completely fecked. And the Republican party (within the context of a functioning democracy) even more so. They have no policy platform whatsover beyond "pro guns (and by extension ANY measure taken to control their misuse", "anti-abortion", and "owning the liberals/"radical extremist left" (aka "Democrats") - not that this can be considered a 'policy platform'. And many of their current "public faces" are in danger of elevating the likes of Bridgen and Francois to Brain of Britain standards.
OK, pushing it a bit on the last point, but got to stand up for the traditional British court jesters.
In my increasingly rare hopeful moments I keep thinking that the traditional, bland cant of 'while party x/pol y may have different political views we all have the interests of our country and people at heart' is finally going to be fired in to the heart of the sun and voters will start seeing individuals and institutions for the self serving, lying hypocrites that they are (example one Ted Cruz), but no, they may be an arsehole but they're our arsehole wins out every time.
Starmer is a bit dull. He is too much the lawyer and too little the politician. He is not a very experienced politician, after all.
Osborne rather cattily but accurately commented that his style is "forensic commentary" which is not enough.
Miles better than Corbyn but whether that will be enough to overcome an 80-seat majority is unclear. Much will depend on events. The economic and social consequences of Covid and Brexit are not at all clear yet. Nor is it clear which party has any sort of programme or story to tell about this changed world.
Not helped when he flies off the handle and has to be pulled away from Boris over a point it turns out he did say after all. The "I thought he was saying I'd made a different point" doesn't look very, well, forensic....
I don't believe for one second that Keir had to be pulled away from Boris. It has rings of when the Tories could not decide whether to say Ed M was weak and no threat, or whether he was a dangerous menace. If Keir is a boring damp rag, he's also not the type to square up like a school bully to Boris.
I must admit that it had passed me by that Wycombe was trending marginal. It wouldn't surprise me if Steve Baker stands down, to be honest.
As others have said though this analysis isn't complete without including the Labour seats that will flip Tory.
There will definitely be some, and the country could continue to pivot around an inverted axis.
Given the Tories had a 12% lead in 2019 and no poll has the Tories with a bigger lead than that and most polls have the Tories with a significantly smaller leader it is highly unlikely any further Labour seats will flip Tory
There are many Labour seats that have been trending Tory for quite a time and will continue to do so. Neither Ed Miliband not Yvette Cooper are safe, and the decline of the Brexit party helps them further.
Remember: even if Labour knocked it out the park you'd still expect 3-7 seats to flip Labour to Tory, and I expect more than that because they won't.
If the national swing is all one way the seats tend to follow. In 1997 for example Labour lost not a single seat to the Tories, and in 2010 the Tories lost not a single seat to Labour. In 2019 only 1 Tory seat went Labour, Putney.
Most likely if Labour does lose any seats it will be because they made net gains but still lost the election. That was the case in 1992 for example when Kinnock gained 35 seats from the Tories but lost 5 as well, 3 of them in Scotland or Wales.
We live in a world now where seats can, and do, trend in different ways and directions. That's why YouGov MRP has become so important. Old school national swing is a crude tool these days.
And don't forget all those northern seats that trended Tory significantly in GE2017, and stayed Labour, but finally flipped in GE2019.
"That these marginal seats will decide the next election is not news. But look at the pattern the 201 marginal seats highlighted make. They dont concentrate in Wales, Scotland, London, the major cities or the truly rural areas. They arent really regional. They are heavily concentrated in Medium English Towns and Their Hinterlands (METTHs from now on)."
Posts held up in the moderation box might take longer to clear
The BBC's Andrew Marr also asks the health secretary how many cases of the problematic South Africa variant there are in England at the moment.
Matt Hancock says: "In total we've seen around 300 but most of those are historic cases from over a month ago and the latest data shows there are a dozen new ones so a much, much smaller number.
"And each time we find a new one we absolutely clamp down on it with enhanced contract tracing."
Marr asks if the spread of the South Africa variant is "shrinking".
Hancock replies: "I think that's a good summary yes".
He says there were fewer cases coming into the country thanks to tougher border restrictions.
Certainly good news.
I wonder if the South Africa variant is less contagious than the UK variant.
Haven’t watched Marr yet but he gave a similar snippet on Sophy Ridge.
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.
Has something happened to Malc?
He messaged me to say that he's taking a rest from PB because he's getting perpetual 24hr bans while other folk seem to be getting away with murder. Malc and the missus are both fine and vaccinated btw.
Can you blame him? Faced daily with the Kumbaya PB Sextet any sane person would lose it occasionally. A wit like his is rare
Let's not make a martyr of Malc, I doubt that's the sort of thing he would want or need. He's always aggressive, that's his style, and fair play we don't want just milquetoast automatons, and he can take it as well as give it rather than those who give but not take, but it's pretty self evident that if you are aggressive you are more likely to cross the line. Certain people periodically have to start up new identities as a result.
I remember when moderators said that coming back with a new identity was strictly verboten and would result in another banning. Perhaps if you're really shite at creating a new identity you get let off out of pity.
I must admit that it had passed me by that Wycombe was trending marginal. It wouldn't surprise me if Steve Baker stands down, to be honest.
As others have said though this analysis isn't complete without including the Labour seats that will flip Tory.
There will definitely be some, and the country could continue to pivot around an inverted axis.
Given the Tories had a 12% lead in 2019 and no poll has the Tories with a bigger lead than that and most polls have the Tories with a significantly smaller leader it is highly unlikely any further Labour seats will flip Tory
There are many Labour seats that have been trending Tory for quite a time and will continue to do so. Neither Ed Miliband not Yvette Cooper are safe, and the decline of the Brexit party helps them further.
Remember: even if Labour knocked it out the park you'd still expect 3-7 seats to flip Labour to Tory, and I expect more than that because they won't.
If the national swing is all one way the seats tend to follow. In 1997 for example Labour lost not a single seat to the Tories, and in 2010 the Tories lost not a single seat to Labour. In 2019 only 1 Tory seat went Labour, Putney.
Most likely if Labour does lose any seats it will be because they made net gains but still lost the election. That was the case in 1992 for example when Kinnock gained 35 seats from the Tories but lost 5 as well, 3 of them in Scotland or Wales.
If we are talking many Tory gains then game over. Individual seats is a little pointless as we don't know their boundaries as of yet. The quotas are so tight this time that many fewer than is usual will be totally unaffected by change.
On topic, a useful and interesting thread, as usual with detailed electoral analysis from the writer. As others have commented, these really show Labour's problems with small town and rural Britain, especially England.
I get why Keith didn't mention Brexit - people think you're trying to unpick leaving the EU. The debate has long moved on (unless you are a hard Brexit/Remain crazy) to the world after Brexit. Starmer understands that business is key - far more so apparently than the Tories do. If Starmer could apply a forensic analysis of the economic problems and work with business on ways to fix them, he absolutely could out-manuever the Tories.
The problem of course is that he can't do that. To side with business is to side with crony capitalism which has to be brought down. Nor could he side with the kind of Peter Mandleson figure needed to get the message across to business that Labour gets them.
This *could* be an opportunity for the LibDems. There is a vacuum at the heart of the British Polity and things get sucked into that space. Someone will have to start speaking up for jobs and prosperity. As the Tories won't and Labour can't, that suggests a 3rd party.
And yet Starmer proposed Flagshagging Bonds that compete with private sector investment funds and banks that will end up costing the nation billions in unnecessary interest payments and capital losses.
He's got no answers. Completely and utterly clueless. One of the biggest issues facing us right now is that our most productive sectors are tech and fintech but they all choose to list in the US meaning UK based investment funds such as pensions are completely missing out on potential dividends and capital growth from our two highest growth sectors, we're not benefiting from our own economy as much as we could. What is Starmer proposing to ensure that we do?
Nothing, because nobody but briefcase wankers who vote tory anyway gives a fuck about it.
Does anyone still use briefcases anymore? Goodness knows what they wank in now.
American democracy is just completely fecked. And the Republican party (within the context of a functioning democracy) even more so. They have no policy platform whatsover beyond "pro guns (and by extension ANY measure taken to control their misuse", "anti-abortion", and "owning the liberals/"radical extremist left" (aka "Democrats") - not that this can be considered a 'policy platform'. And many of their current "public faces" are in danger of elevating the likes of Bridgen and Francois to Brain of Britain standards.
OK, pushing it a bit on the last point, but got to stand up for the traditional British court jesters.
The GoP is certainly split and until recently I was unsure as to how this would be resolved.
My money is on O'Connell. He is purely interested in power and if he thought allying with Trump were a credible long-term policy he would have gone that way. His openly declared hostility to The Orange One indicates to me that he thinks the traditional Republican Party will succeed in the end.
The strategy seems to be to ignore Trump as far as possible and operate through traditional Party workers. Trump supporters may make a lot of noise but they don't do much work, rather like Trump himself.
Ignoring Trump is one thing but ignoring the causes of Trump is another.
If the GOP return to being cheerleaders for the rich and big business and having a liking for Middle Eastern warmongering then I suspect they'll have serious problems.
I must admit that it had passed me by that Wycombe was trending marginal. It wouldn't surprise me if Steve Baker stands down, to be honest.
As others have said though this analysis isn't complete without including the Labour seats that will flip Tory.
There will definitely be some, and the country could continue to pivot around an inverted axis.
Given the Tories had a 12% lead in 2019 and no poll has the Tories with a bigger lead than that and most polls have the Tories with a significantly smaller lead it is highly unlikely any further Labour seats will flip Tory
Well you don't have to go far from your neck of the Forest to find the reverse examples.
Ilford North was Conservative in 2005 and Labour in 2019.
Enfield North would have been Conservative on the current boundaries in 2001 but went Labour in 2015.
Chingford had a much smaller Conservative majority in 2019 than in 1997.
Once @HYUFD has set out his stall on a conclusion from opinion polls and past histories thereof there is no moving him, or any prospect of him conceding you have a point.
He might move the goalposts and, to be honest, I now essentially take that as the same thing.
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.
Has something happened to Malc?
He messaged me to say that he's taking a rest from PB because he's getting perpetual 24hr bans while other folk seem to be getting away with murder. Malc and the missus are both fine and vaccinated btw.
Can you blame him? Faced daily with the Kumbaya PB Sextet any sane person would lose it occasionally. A wit like his is rare
Let's not make a martyr of Malc, I doubt that's the sort of thing he would want or need. He's always aggressive, that's his style, and fair play we don't want just milquetoast automatons, and he can take it as well as give it rather than those who give but not take, but it's pretty self evident that if you are aggressive you are more likely to cross the line. Certain people periodically have to start up new identities as a result.
I remember when moderators said that coming back with a new identity was strictly verboten and would result in another banning. Perhaps if you're really shite at creating a new identity you get let off out of pity.
Times change - as long as someone isn't two people at the same time, what does it matter?
I think it's the equivalent of dictators adopting new constitutions to reset their term limit, starts them back at zero.
I must admit that it had passed me by that Wycombe was trending marginal. It wouldn't surprise me if Steve Baker stands down, to be honest.
As others have said though this analysis isn't complete without including the Labour seats that will flip Tory.
There will definitely be some, and the country could continue to pivot around an inverted axis.
Given the Tories had a 12% lead in 2019 and no poll has the Tories with a bigger lead than that and most polls have the Tories with a significantly smaller lead it is highly unlikely any further Labour seats will flip Tory
Well you don't have to go far from your neck of the Forest to find the reverse examples.
Ilford North was Conservative in 2005 and Labour in 2019.
Enfield North would have been Conservative on the current boundaries in 2001 but went Labour in 2015.
Chingford had a much smaller Conservative majority in 2019 than in 1997.
Ilford North stayed Tory in 2010, Enfield North went Tory in 2010, they only went Labour in 2015 when there was a 0.3% swing to Labour UK wide (most Tory gains in 2015 came from the LDs not Labour).
Chingford stayed Tory in 2019 even if demographically it has shifted Labour
Comments
Good morning, everyone.
Loud booing at the mention of vaccinations exceeded only by that for the Victorian state government.
If Oz is full of anti-vaxxers then they're going to be stuck in isolation for a very, very long time.
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-novak-djokovic-reveals-hes-an-anti-vaxxer-and-it-may-stop-his-return-to-tennis-11975846
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/53148053
Malc and the missus are both fine and vaccinated btw.
Personality
Performance
Policies
Positioning
Personality needs to be positive, appealing and in permanent campaigning mode. Johnson has it. Trump had it. Sturgeon has it. Starmer hasn't. Davey hasn't.
Performance is a mixture of gripping success/failure stories, a longer term narrative, and a perception of the "team". Trust is important too.
Policies are policies. Meh. Unless a particular policy is weaponised by the opposition. Policies are best avoided.
Positioning. It used to be workers versus capital. Now it is more identity conservatives (white, non graduates who feel threatened by changes) versus conviction liberals (white urban graduates) and necessity liberals (ethnic minorities who feel they need liberal protection but may not be socially liberal themselves).
You can apply this framework to England, US, Scotland (positioning is nationalism) and other nations.
Applying this to England:
Labour (and LibDems) can't win on personality! But NB it is possible to defeat personality using other factors viz Biden versus Trump.
Labour has a chance on performance. Johnson is riding high at the moment on vaccines but he has a crap cabinet and events dear boy. Starmer needs to strengthen his shadow cabinet and give them space to shine.
The policies are almost indistinguishable and not a basis of competition but might provide pooh traps. Best avoided.
Positioning: Starmer is trying to straddle both camps. Triangulation. But he may end up antagonising both. Vote Conservative is you want conservative values. Vote LIbDem if you want liberal values. NB Identity conservatives used to be in the majority (white non-graduates) but are quite rapidly shrinking as a proportion of the population. That is why they feel threatened. They are not just Labour working class. Lots of Tories too.
My conclusion
Tory best strategy is personality and positioning (the Trump strategy)
Labour best strategy is performance.
LibDem best strategy is positioning
PS I've just made this up. Nothing better to do on a lockdown Sunday. But I like frameworks. They help me think.
Very kind though it is, for @MarqueeMark to offer left of centre voters Prime Minister Burnham, in the same spirit can I offer him Gavin Williamson for Prime Minister?
Burnham leader, Nandy deputy-leader still looks a rather more enticing prospect than Captain Dad-dancing.
Had Burnham won the Labour leadership in 2015 and been Labour leader in 2017 he may even have won more seats than May
But why do you think that on election day 2017 and 2019 there was a queue at the polling station (small town, industrial, apparently a-political) of the sort of older people that Labour now ignore, at 7 am just to make sure it didn't happen.
The same people vote in a known, moderate Labour person as county councillor without hesitation every time.
Kensington - target #2, swing to capture 0.17%
Chipping Barnet - #10, 1.05%
Chingford & Woodford Green - #13, 1.30%
Aberconwy - #31, 3.19%
Vale of Glamorgan - #33, 3.25%
Watford - #41, 3.82%
Wycombe - #43, 3.85%
Truro & Falmouth - #44, 3.85%
Reading West - #46, 4.08%
Southport - #48, 4.30%
Filton & Bradley Stoke - #59, 5.25%
Altrincham & Sale West - #64, 5.61%
Shipley - #68, 5.78%
Rushcliffe - #74, 6.32%
Worthing East & Shoreham - #86, 7.03%
Uxbridge & Ruislip South - #91, 7.48%
Bournemouth East - #106, 8.94%
Monmouth - #118, 9.94%
Macclesfield - #119, 9.94%
One might venture to suggest that everything from at least Rushcliffe downwards is safe Tory except in the event of a 1997-style implosion, and who can tell what the effect of radical boundary change will be on the Welsh seats? That leaves, perhaps, ten or eleven English constituencies apparently at increased risk of falling to Labour due to demographic trending, and the three most marginal of those are in London which is shifting ever leftwards anyway.
If Labour were to rely on the olds dying off and the youth bailing it out in England (and I don't think they would, they're not that stupid,) then this suggests that they'd be likely to be kept waiting for a very, very long time.
EDIT: reply to @Andy_JS - comment system threw a very strange wobbly when I tried to include his original post?!?!
Osborne rather cattily but accurately commented that his style is "forensic commentary" which is not enough.
Miles better than Corbyn but whether that will be enough to overcome an 80-seat majority is unclear. Much will depend on events. The economic and social consequences of Covid and Brexit are not at all clear yet. Nor is it clear which party has any sort of programme or story to tell about this changed world.
https://twitter.com/rosscolquhoun/status/1363445377538666505?s=20
Certainly a fine basis for discussion, whether or not one agrees with it.
The chancellor needs to figure this out yesterday, we can't keep losing out to New York for these listings. The rules are just far, far too strict and we need to be able to get dual share structures and enable a larger level loss making for tech startups which have investor backing.
I'd actually call it the single most critical issue the chancellor has in his in-tray right now outside of the pandemic stuff.
The Republicans UnCivil UnWar
Mitch versus Trump? LOL no.
https://thetriad.thebulwark.com/p/the-republicans-uncivil-unwar
The problem of course is that he can't do that. To side with business is to side with crony capitalism which has to be brought down. Nor could he side with the kind of Peter Mandleson figure needed to get the message across to business that Labour gets them.
This *could* be an opportunity for the LibDems. There is a vacuum at the heart of the British Polity and things get sucked into that space. Someone will have to start speaking up for jobs and prosperity. As the Tories won't and Labour can't, that suggests a 3rd party.
What has replaced unionised labour? In large parts, low-paid jobs in call centres, warehousing, delivery, hospitality and so forth. You may be right that Boris (and Trump) addressed some of the concerns of this huge non-unionised workforce: patriotism/nationalism, anti-wokeness, Brexit and so on. But the jobs themselves are still crap: low paid, precarious, often lacking dignity (e.g. Amazon warehouses, JD Sports etc.) and not fulfilling. While Boris and Trump have appealed successfully to the sentiments of these workers, they've done little to improve their pay, working conditions, or sense of personal fulfillment through labour. And that's where Labour should focus, and there are signs of a strategy for Starmer there. Detoxify the woke/patriotism/Brexit stuff, and focus on well-paid jobs that offer dignity and security.
And he doesn't miss.
He's got no answers. Completely and utterly clueless. One of the biggest issues facing us right now is that our most productive sectors are tech and fintech but they all choose to list in the US meaning UK based investment funds such as pensions are completely missing out on potential dividends and capital growth from our two highest growth sectors, we're not benefiting from our own economy as much as we could. What is Starmer proposing to ensure that we do?
If all the centre left parties could agree on EEA/EFTA there could be a sane position to be had but not unless. It won't happen, though it should have happened in 2016 onwards.
But this is where the much more interesting analysis by @Barnesian comes into play. Positioning is really, really important. And if you think that this group are ignorant, racist, homophobic and more than just a bit thick selling them your economic policies is going to be an interesting challenge.
OK, pushing it a bit on the last point, but got to stand up for the traditional British court jesters.
In any event, as you say there's also no prospect of a united centre-left front on this. Only two centre-left parties really matter, and the SNP has pounded Labour to rubble on its patch and has nothing to gain from working with it on anything (save for holding a Labour minority to ransom in the event that it ends up controlling the balance of power in a future hung Parliament.)
What did Oscar Wilde say; there's only one thing worse than being talked about and that's not being talked about.
IIRC.
Now, clearly there would be issues if fees were scrapped entirely, but the point is that the way to win older voters isn’t necessarily through bribing them. They care about their children and grandchildren.
My money is on O'Connell. He is purely interested in power and if he thought allying with Trump were a credible long-term policy he would have gone that way. His openly declared hostility to The Orange One indicates to me that he thinks the traditional Republican Party will succeed in the end.
The strategy seems to be to ignore Trump as far as possible and operate through traditional Party workers. Trump supporters may make a lot of noise but they don't do much work, rather like Trump himself.
I must admit that it had passed me by that Wycombe was trending marginal. It wouldn't surprise me if Steve Baker stands down, to be honest.
As others have said though this analysis isn't complete without including the Labour seats that will flip Tory.
There will definitely be some, and the country could continue to pivot around an inverted axis.
By their mid 20s what so many of the young who have gone to Leeds, Manchester and most of all London have ?
A degree which turns out to be not as useful as they were promised, a crap job, lots of debt and a rented room in Walthamstow.
Whereas those who stayed in Huddersfield, Dewsbury and even Heckmondwike might have useful skills, earning good money, have no debt and are buying a house.
Think of it from their point of view: when they are voting against tuition fees (an extra 9% of their salary above £26k being taken from their paypacket forevermore) they are voting for a tax cut.
My real fear is we will get the latter and then economic strategy will be crafted on a "how to we cram people back into offices" basis
Remember: even if Labour knocked it out the park you'd still expect 3-7 seats to flip Labour to Tory, and I expect more than that because they won't.
There is something very 19th century about the gig economy: people having no security and being dependant on whatever work may be available while those using them become ever richer and work out more ways to avoid using them at all or doing so at lower and lower cost. OTOH flexibility and freelance work is attractive to others and can be a good thing for an economy and society.
What is the boundary between the two? Should there be more action to break up these rich monopolistic behemoths? What sort of security should workers get? What kind of society will we have if only a fortunate few have any sort of financial security or ability to make plans for the future? Covid and Brexit have make the divide between the fortunate few and those with little security very stark. And many who thought themselves fortunate - those with businesses or secure jobs or savings - are now finding themselves in a much more precarious position. Some of those jobs are not necessary or will migrate overseas or disappear. Many businesses have been hard hit and will not recover or take years to do so. Many freelancers have lost income. Savings are being used up.
There is a lot of insecurity and concern about. Much of it has been masked by the understandable concern about Covid. But it will still be there. Labour should be thinking about this.
"IT’S THE ENGLISH TOWNS – STUPID!"
https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2009/09/03/its-the-english-towns-stupid/
"That these marginal seats will decide the next election is not news. But look at the pattern the 201 marginal seats highlighted make. They dont concentrate in Wales, Scotland, London, the major cities or the truly rural areas. They arent really regional. They are heavily concentrated in Medium English Towns and Their Hinterlands (METTHs from now on)."
Majority of under 3%, Jon Trickett very likely to stand down, demographically trending Conservative and even the likes of South Elmsall showing signs of gentrification.
Can you blame him? Faced daily with the Kumbaya PB Sextet any sane person would lose it occasionally. A wit like his is rare
Just look at the comments on here today, and from some of our Labour regulars.
The delusion is off the scale.
The BBC's Andrew Marr also asks the health secretary how many cases of the problematic South Africa variant there are in England at the moment.
Matt Hancock says: "In total we've seen around 300 but most of those are historic cases from over a month ago and the latest data shows there are a dozen new ones so a much, much smaller number.
"And each time we find a new one we absolutely clamp down on it with enhanced contract tracing."
Marr asks if the spread of the South Africa variant is "shrinking".
Hancock replies: "I think that's a good summary yes".
He says there were fewer cases coming into the country thanks to tougher border restrictions.
Certainly good news.
I wonder if the South Africa variant is less contagious than the UK variant.
Is it just a derogatory term.
His analysis that the Republicans can't win (at a national level) fairly on a Trumpist platform is surely true. But many Republicans have simply given up on winning fairly and/or nationally. So i don't think it is certain that he will win the fight within the Republican Party. And there is a further issue that there is a serious problem for them that the Republicans had lost their way a long time before Trump. If anything Trump brought a whole new tranche of voters with him and gave them a temporary shot in the arm. There is a serious argument that electorally the two factions are utterly dependent on each other and neither can win without another.
But, for US democracy, there remains a danger that the more of a joke the Republican party become the more fissures might emerge within the Democratic Party. They really are stuck in a position where the route to power is to hold 50+1% of the support in the party with 50+1% of the support in the country.
Most likely if Labour does lose any seats it will be because they made net gains but still lost the election. That was the case in 1992 for example when Kinnock gained 35 seats from the Tories but lost 5 as well, 3 of them in Scotland or Wales.
Unless it's a 2019 or even 1997 style result, there will presumably be a few flips to the Tories - the Coventry's being possibles
https://web.archive.org/web/20090906095559/https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2009/09/03/its-the-english-towns-stupid/
Ilford North was Conservative in 2005 and Labour in 2019.
Enfield North would have been Conservative on the current boundaries in 2001 but went Labour in 2015.
Chingford had a much smaller Conservative majority in 2019 than in 1997.
And don't forget all those northern seats that trended Tory significantly in GE2017, and stayed Labour, but finally flipped in GE2019.
There will be more to come.
The what now?
Sounds like very good, very important news.
Individual seats is a little pointless as we don't know their boundaries as of yet. The quotas are so tight this time that many fewer than is usual will be totally unaffected by change.
If the GOP return to being cheerleaders for the rich and big business and having a liking for Middle Eastern warmongering then I suspect they'll have serious problems.
He might move the goalposts and, to be honest, I now essentially take that as the same thing.
I think it's the equivalent of dictators adopting new constitutions to reset their term limit, starts them back at zero.
Chingford stayed Tory in 2019 even if demographically it has shifted Labour