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What YouGov was reporting a year ago today – politicalbetting.com

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  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    If UK wasn't going to have a pause on 1st doses this month, we would be past Israel in no time.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,286
    edited April 2021

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Mortimer said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    What's the point then. Unless they're seriously saying that the night economy will need to stay closed until then?!
    Not read the small print beyond the headline, but surely 21 June is "months" away?

    If any of these venues are closed after 21 June that is a massive failure as far as I'm concerned.
    Bear in mind the app, that will no doubt come with a multi billion pound price tag, isn't expected until the Autumn. Bear in mind, also, that government technology projects rarely deliver on time.

    So, are we planning on reopening venues without Vaxports, and then requiring them in 2022? Or are we planning to not reopen the venues, even though much of the population will be fully vaccinated, and CV19 incidence is going to be very low?
    Utter madness.

    This app will be at best laughed at, at worst an albatross around the neck of this Govt.
    Is it Boris' method of revenge on Gove? That is honestly the only reason I can see for getting him to do this job....
    Erm, we already have an NHS app, and an NHS Covid app. Displaying a vaccination status is not a hard thing to achieve. This isn’t complex like the contact detection.
    It's a hugely complicated thing to do as it needs a secure chain scanning system operated by third parties almost like the actual passports system in airports but open to people who sell you popcorn in cinemas, not people who have had years of training for it. In addition it needs real time database response for a huge number of simultaneous checks per second in peak usage scenarios. Making 100,000 requests to a database per second without having the likes of Cloudflare involved due to the sensitive nature of the data in question.

    The app that is needed is nothing like what has been built. It needs a whole new data infrastructure that is essentially bomb proof or it will result in crowd crushes at football stadiums.
    I don't agree with this. The verification function can be quite separate from a track-and-trace function, and doesn't need online access. (Also 100,000 requests per second is the entire population in 10 minutes, which doesn't seem very realistic.) I'm not saying that they *will* do this well, and temptation to centralize a database they could much more sensibly be federal will cause them trouble, but a scalable design is easy to envisage.

    (I've done consultancy on projects not dissimilar to this.)

    --AS
    The verification system will need a secure chain. The point is the peak usage will be very high as on weekends sports stadiums will be open all over the country and millions of people will go to football matches at 3pm. The Premier League alone will have around 1m spectators per weekend in a short space of time, then you've got championship and other sports as well with similar usage times. Then in the evenings clubs and bars will also have very high peak usage from 9pm to 12am.

    The database would need to be a row ordered single source of truth running on mega cluster on AWS or GCP with capacity for at least 100k simultaneous accesses. As far as databases go it's not such a big deal IMO. It's the secure chain and giving access to every Tom, Dick and Harry in the country while maintaining some kind of security over the information in it. That isn't going to be easy. For international travel it is because they can link any system to Amadeus and essential airlines can require it during the booking process.

    I think the temptation will be to go with a dual app system with a BYOD on the check side, but that would be horribly insecure.
    Like I say, I think this can be done differently. The check can be pushed to offline devices via a digital signature, unless the government is planning to record every access (I have no reason to think that they need to). All the authentication is done by the issuer of the token. Track and trace data can be stored locally and pseudonymously until and unless required by the track and trace system. Absent some clever crypto (which I cannot be bothered to think about at the moment) the pseudonymity would be imperfect, in that venues could theoretically conspire to track unnamed individuals across sites, but this is unlikely to be a major concern.

    I'm not saying they won't screw it up, not least because they are probably not consulting experts about it, but in my professional opinion it can be done relatively lightweight.

    --AS
    I think they are planning to record device level accesses so they can use the information to ping users with isolation notices that no one will pay any attention to. That's the complicating factor IMO.

    A simple checking system wouldn't be an issue and most people would just deal with it, the issue is that they're also proposing to use the checking system as a tracking system with movement data stored. There's about a million reasons why this is a terrible idea and the stuff about people scanning the vaccine status of their friends probably means they want a BYOD and publicly accessible API with minimal authentication. To my mind it's a real recipe for disaster, even if the location data is stored on a write access only database to authenticated users it's dangerously public and it's a virtual certainty that the security will fuck up and people will be able to get read access.
    Hmm, that does sound complex. I hadn't heard that they were planning to let people check their friends' status.

    Clearly there has been some briefing and counter-briefing in the media, so I'm reserving judgement until they actually publish proposals. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me to do automatic isolation notices for the use-cases that they have been most recently leaking (stadiums, concerts, broadly large scale venues).

    If only they took expert advice (as opposed to management consultant advice) this could have been cleared up much earlier in the process. The way the leaks have been veering all over the place suggests that either there is a lot of infighting, or that they are still trying to work out what they are trying to achieve. Which doesn't usually end well. I guess we'll find out in due course.

    --AS
    The whole thing sounds like a 1984 nightmare to me. But the polls show most people aren't bothered about it.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,840
    TOPPING said:

    dixiedean said:

    TOPPING said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    Mortimer said:

    Leon said:

    Mortimer said:

    MaxPB said:

    Mortimer said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    What's the point then. Unless they're seriously saying that the night economy will need to stay closed until then?!
    Not read the small print beyond the headline, but surely 21 June is "months" away?

    If any of these venues are closed after 21 June that is a massive failure as far as I'm concerned.
    Bear in mind the app, that will no doubt come with a multi billion pound price tag, isn't expected until the Autumn. Bear in mind, also, that government technology projects rarely deliver on time.

    So, are we planning on reopening venues without Vaxports, and then requiring them in 2022? Or are we planning to not reopen the venues, even though much of the population will be fully vaccinated, and CV19 incidence is going to be very low?
    Utter madness.

    This app will be at best laughed at, at worst an albatross around the neck of this Govt.
    Is it Boris' method of revenge on Gove? That is honestly the only reason I can see for getting him to do this job....
    Erm, we already have an NHS app, and an NHS Covid app. Displaying a vaccination status is not a hard thing to achieve. This isn’t complex like the contact detection.
    It's a hugely complicated thing to do as it needs a secure chain scanning system operated by third parties almost like the actual passports system in airports but open to people who sell you popcorn in cinemas, not people who have had years of training for it. In addition it needs real time database response for a huge number of simultaneous checks per second in peak usage scenarios. Making 100,000 requests to a database per second without having the likes of Cloudflare involved due to the sensitive nature of the data in question.

    The app that is needed is nothing like what has been built. It needs a whole new data infrastructure that is essentially bomb proof or it will result in crowd crushes at football stadiums.
    Quite.

    The good news, as I said a few days ago, is it won't be built correctly in the first place because of some massive architectural flaw. So it will go back to the drawing board. And then there will be a JR. Around November they may have a MVP. By which people will laugh at a government who thought such a ridiculous waste of time was required.
    Except that EU countries are bringing them in. And international airlines are demanding them. Apart from that, they are a ridiculous waste of time and won’t happen. Ok
    Moving your goalposts again are you?

    We are not talking about your obsession for airlines and borders (anyone would think you were a travel writer), we're talking about demanding papers for domestic uses. Absolutely idiotic, a massively failure of public health policy, a civil liberties abomination and decidedly unBritish.

    The fearties can just stay in the jungle forever if they like; the rest of the county wants to crack on with normal life.
    But your obsessions collide with, well, reality. If it can be done internationally it can be done domestically. There is no technological problem. Might the government shy from the fence because of some diehard libertarians? Perhaps. But I doubt it. They will bring it in for a few months to nudge the vax-hesitant. That is the biggest win
    You must have become an enfeebled degenerate to think today was freezing.

    Time to dispense with your wearied urban soul and delicate eloi physique and rediscover your Nietzschean superman by seeing some of England during this wonderful spring weather.
    Minus 2 here Tuesday
    For a couple of hours in the middle of the night maybe.

    So what ?

    Its going to be sunny and dry tomorrow and Monday while people are off work.
    At 10am, although that is a ‘feels like -2” apparently.
    15 degrees and sunny tomorrow. Apparently. Tried in vain to find someone who's not already going out to lunch with friends...
    I'm not.
    Though in my defence partner and kids are off to the in laws.
    I'm gonna spend a few hours alone in my house for the first time in 2 348 713 days.
    Binge watch/play something? Over the past year I had dinner three times with friends. Three times. Amazing to think about it like that.
    Do you know what? I'm planning on reading a book and having a nap. Without interruption. Phone off.
    Amazing to think I am actually looking forward to that.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,280
    edited April 2021

    Support for independence when undecideds are excluded is 51 per cent, with 49 per cent opposed, and more than half (54 per cent) want another referendum within the next five years.

    Completely divided, 50/50. And nearly half don’t even want a new vote within 5 years

    Boris will bat them away, then let Salmond fight Sturgeon to the death. It’s so obvious. Salmond is gonna kill Indy. One of the great minor ironies of European history
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    dixiedean said:

    TOPPING said:

    dixiedean said:

    TOPPING said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    Mortimer said:

    Leon said:

    Mortimer said:

    MaxPB said:

    Mortimer said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    What's the point then. Unless they're seriously saying that the night economy will need to stay closed until then?!
    Not read the small print beyond the headline, but surely 21 June is "months" away?

    If any of these venues are closed after 21 June that is a massive failure as far as I'm concerned.
    Bear in mind the app, that will no doubt come with a multi billion pound price tag, isn't expected until the Autumn. Bear in mind, also, that government technology projects rarely deliver on time.

    So, are we planning on reopening venues without Vaxports, and then requiring them in 2022? Or are we planning to not reopen the venues, even though much of the population will be fully vaccinated, and CV19 incidence is going to be very low?
    Utter madness.

    This app will be at best laughed at, at worst an albatross around the neck of this Govt.
    Is it Boris' method of revenge on Gove? That is honestly the only reason I can see for getting him to do this job....
    Erm, we already have an NHS app, and an NHS Covid app. Displaying a vaccination status is not a hard thing to achieve. This isn’t complex like the contact detection.
    It's a hugely complicated thing to do as it needs a secure chain scanning system operated by third parties almost like the actual passports system in airports but open to people who sell you popcorn in cinemas, not people who have had years of training for it. In addition it needs real time database response for a huge number of simultaneous checks per second in peak usage scenarios. Making 100,000 requests to a database per second without having the likes of Cloudflare involved due to the sensitive nature of the data in question.

    The app that is needed is nothing like what has been built. It needs a whole new data infrastructure that is essentially bomb proof or it will result in crowd crushes at football stadiums.
    Quite.

    The good news, as I said a few days ago, is it won't be built correctly in the first place because of some massive architectural flaw. So it will go back to the drawing board. And then there will be a JR. Around November they may have a MVP. By which people will laugh at a government who thought such a ridiculous waste of time was required.
    Except that EU countries are bringing them in. And international airlines are demanding them. Apart from that, they are a ridiculous waste of time and won’t happen. Ok
    Moving your goalposts again are you?

    We are not talking about your obsession for airlines and borders (anyone would think you were a travel writer), we're talking about demanding papers for domestic uses. Absolutely idiotic, a massively failure of public health policy, a civil liberties abomination and decidedly unBritish.

    The fearties can just stay in the jungle forever if they like; the rest of the county wants to crack on with normal life.
    But your obsessions collide with, well, reality. If it can be done internationally it can be done domestically. There is no technological problem. Might the government shy from the fence because of some diehard libertarians? Perhaps. But I doubt it. They will bring it in for a few months to nudge the vax-hesitant. That is the biggest win
    You must have become an enfeebled degenerate to think today was freezing.

    Time to dispense with your wearied urban soul and delicate eloi physique and rediscover your Nietzschean superman by seeing some of England during this wonderful spring weather.
    Minus 2 here Tuesday
    For a couple of hours in the middle of the night maybe.

    So what ?

    Its going to be sunny and dry tomorrow and Monday while people are off work.
    At 10am, although that is a ‘feels like -2” apparently.
    15 degrees and sunny tomorrow. Apparently. Tried in vain to find someone who's not already going out to lunch with friends...
    I'm not.
    Though in my defence partner and kids are off to the in laws.
    I'm gonna spend a few hours alone in my house for the first time in 2 348 713 days.
    Binge watch/play something? Over the past year I had dinner three times with friends. Three times. Amazing to think about it like that.
    Do you know what? I'm planning on reading a book and having a nap. Without interruption. Phone off.
    Amazing to think I am actually looking forward to that.
    And why not! I just finished Klara and the Sun. Very good if you like him. Of a piece with Never Let Me Go. Let us know what you decide on.
  • While 93 per cent of those who back Alba believe that Salmond is “a fit person to stand for election”, only 13 per cent of SNP supporters and 15 per cent of Green voters take the same view.

    Alba is appealing to a section of the nationalist movement that wants a rapid timetable for indyref2 and which still admires Salmond. As many as 70 per cent of Alba supporters want a referendum within 12 months compared with 48 per cent of SNP list voters and 35 per cent of Green voters.

    9 per cent of those who say they will vote SNP on the constituency vote state that they will back Alba on the list vote.

    As many as 10 per cent of those who say they will back the SNP on the constituency vote propose to back the Greens on the list.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    Andy_JS said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Mortimer said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    What's the point then. Unless they're seriously saying that the night economy will need to stay closed until then?!
    Not read the small print beyond the headline, but surely 21 June is "months" away?

    If any of these venues are closed after 21 June that is a massive failure as far as I'm concerned.
    Bear in mind the app, that will no doubt come with a multi billion pound price tag, isn't expected until the Autumn. Bear in mind, also, that government technology projects rarely deliver on time.

    So, are we planning on reopening venues without Vaxports, and then requiring them in 2022? Or are we planning to not reopen the venues, even though much of the population will be fully vaccinated, and CV19 incidence is going to be very low?
    Utter madness.

    This app will be at best laughed at, at worst an albatross around the neck of this Govt.
    Is it Boris' method of revenge on Gove? That is honestly the only reason I can see for getting him to do this job....
    Erm, we already have an NHS app, and an NHS Covid app. Displaying a vaccination status is not a hard thing to achieve. This isn’t complex like the contact detection.
    It's a hugely complicated thing to do as it needs a secure chain scanning system operated by third parties almost like the actual passports system in airports but open to people who sell you popcorn in cinemas, not people who have had years of training for it. In addition it needs real time database response for a huge number of simultaneous checks per second in peak usage scenarios. Making 100,000 requests to a database per second without having the likes of Cloudflare involved due to the sensitive nature of the data in question.

    The app that is needed is nothing like what has been built. It needs a whole new data infrastructure that is essentially bomb proof or it will result in crowd crushes at football stadiums.
    I don't agree with this. The verification function can be quite separate from a track-and-trace function, and doesn't need online access. (Also 100,000 requests per second is the entire population in 10 minutes, which doesn't seem very realistic.) I'm not saying that they *will* do this well, and temptation to centralize a database they could much more sensibly be federal will cause them trouble, but a scalable design is easy to envisage.

    (I've done consultancy on projects not dissimilar to this.)

    --AS
    The verification system will need a secure chain. The point is the peak usage will be very high as on weekends sports stadiums will be open all over the country and millions of people will go to football matches at 3pm. The Premier League alone will have around 1m spectators per weekend in a short space of time, then you've got championship and other sports as well with similar usage times. Then in the evenings clubs and bars will also have very high peak usage from 9pm to 12am.

    The database would need to be a row ordered single source of truth running on mega cluster on AWS or GCP with capacity for at least 100k simultaneous accesses. As far as databases go it's not such a big deal IMO. It's the secure chain and giving access to every Tom, Dick and Harry in the country while maintaining some kind of security over the information in it. That isn't going to be easy. For international travel it is because they can link any system to Amadeus and essential airlines can require it during the booking process.

    I think the temptation will be to go with a dual app system with a BYOD on the check side, but that would be horribly insecure.
    Like I say, I think this can be done differently. The check can be pushed to offline devices via a digital signature, unless the government is planning to record every access (I have no reason to think that they need to). All the authentication is done by the issuer of the token. Track and trace data can be stored locally and pseudonymously until and unless required by the track and trace system. Absent some clever crypto (which I cannot be bothered to think about at the moment) the pseudonymity would be imperfect, in that venues could theoretically conspire to track unnamed individuals across sites, but this is unlikely to be a major concern.

    I'm not saying they won't screw it up, not least because they are probably not consulting experts about it, but in my professional opinion it can be done relatively lightweight.

    --AS
    I think they are planning to record device level accesses so they can use the information to ping users with isolation notices that no one will pay any attention to. That's the complicating factor IMO.

    A simple checking system wouldn't be an issue and most people would just deal with it, the issue is that they're also proposing to use the checking system as a tracking system with movement data stored. There's about a million reasons why this is a terrible idea and the stuff about people scanning the vaccine status of their friends probably means they want a BYOD and publicly accessible API with minimal authentication. To my mind it's a real recipe for disaster, even if the location data is stored on a write access only database to authenticated users it's dangerously public and it's a virtual certainty that the security will fuck up and people will be able to get read access.
    Hmm, that does sound complex. I hadn't heard that they were planning to let people check their friends' status.

    Clearly there has been some briefing and counter-briefing in the media, so I'm reserving judgement until they actually publish proposals. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me to do automatic isolation notices for the use-cases that they have been most recently leaking (stadiums, concerts, broadly large scale venues).

    If only they took expert advice (as opposed to management consultant advice) this could have been cleared up much earlier in the process. The way the leaks have been veering all over the place suggests that either there is a lot of infighting, or that they are still trying to work out what they are trying to achieve. Which doesn't usually end well. I guess we'll find out in due course.

    --AS
    The whole thing sounds like a 1984 nightmare to me. But the polls show most people aren't bothered about it.
    It's amazing isn't it. "A few more months" they say, lightly.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,789
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    Andy_JS said:

    Guess what? It's another app!

    "Grandparents could use Covid passport app to screen birthday party guests "

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/03/grandparents-could-use-covid-passport-app-screen-birthday-party/

    This is a bit like the idea people were going to meet in the garden for christmas dinner
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    Some peoole really do get triggered don't they, normally the ones with the EU flag in their handle.
  • isamisam Posts: 40,731
    More bad polling for Sir Keir in the Sunday’s, and apparently Tony Blair has had enough of him now too

    Anyway here’s a cartoon

    https://twitter.com/mortenmorland/status/1378484840123805696?s=21

  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    Intimidating? lol
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Looks like their vaccination percentage is flatlining at a concerningly low rate. Sub 60% is really not ideal.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Considering this person has a flag in their name and a flag in their avatar, that has to be some form of satire surely?
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    Considering this person has a flag in their name and a flag in their avatar, that has to be some form of satire surely?
    Na. EU good, UK bad.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    isam said:

    More bad polling for Sir Keir in the Sunday’s, and apparently Tony Blair has had enough of him now too

    Anyway here’s a cartoon

    https://twitter.com/mortenmorland/status/1378484840123805696?s=21

    Wow, a funny Morland cartoon.

    Now I've seen everything.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842

    Looks like their vaccination percentage is flatlining at a concerningly low rate. Sub 60% is really not ideal.
    It's indicative of around 83% takeup, Israel has a young population.
    They won't be able to up it till vaccines have paediatric approval
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Reports suggest that vacport trials will begin in April.

    Doesn't seem to align with the idea the software won't exist until September?

    If this is going to be done, it should be done and ready by 21 June. Any bloat, any extra features, anything that gets in the way of preventing that from being plausibly achieved should be axed. Israel had its live months ago.

    There are a great many reasons not to do this. But if we're going to do it then at least have it ready to be live by 21 June so businesses can open on time, otherwise what's the frigging point?
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Pulpstar said:

    Looks like their vaccination percentage is flatlining at a concerningly low rate. Sub 60% is really not ideal.
    It's indicative of around 83% takeup, Israel has a young population.
    They won't be able to up it till vaccines have paediatric approval
    Indeed but 83% isn't good.

    I know they have religious cranks to deal with, but we should be getting well past 83% takeup.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    Pulpstar said:

    Looks like their vaccination percentage is flatlining at a concerningly low rate. Sub 60% is really not ideal.
    It's indicative of around 83% takeup, Israel has a young population.
    They won't be able to up it till vaccines have paediatric approval
    Sorry it'll be around 77 %, over 80 would push them over 60. 28 odd% 15 or under there
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Pulpstar said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Looks like their vaccination percentage is flatlining at a concerningly low rate. Sub 60% is really not ideal.
    It's indicative of around 83% takeup, Israel has a young population.
    They won't be able to up it till vaccines have paediatric approval
    Sorry it'll be around 77 %, over 80 would push them over 60. 28 odd% 15 or under there
    So nearly a quarter turning down the vaccine? That's not great, is it?
  • fitalassfitalass Posts: 4,279
    edited April 2021
    Deleted.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    70% would indicate 90% takeup for us.
    Paediatric approval is really needed to push anything higher
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,286

    Pulpstar said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Looks like their vaccination percentage is flatlining at a concerningly low rate. Sub 60% is really not ideal.
    It's indicative of around 83% takeup, Israel has a young population.
    They won't be able to up it till vaccines have paediatric approval
    Sorry it'll be around 77 %, over 80 would push them over 60. 28 odd% 15 or under there
    So nearly a quarter turning down the vaccine? That's not great, is it?
    Especially when they were so far ahead of everyone else until just recently.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    Ourworldindata has Israel slightly above 60%
    Mind you that has Gibraltar at a frankly unbelievable 95.85%.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,286
    edited April 2021
    "Keir Starmer has ordered the Labour party to prepare to fight an early general election in May 2023 as he pledges today to “take off the mask” and show the British people why he should be the next prime minister."

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/apr/03/keir-starmer-ill-take-my-mask-off-and-show-why-i-should-be-prime-minister
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,774

    Pulpstar said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Looks like their vaccination percentage is flatlining at a concerningly low rate. Sub 60% is really not ideal.
    It's indicative of around 83% takeup, Israel has a young population.
    They won't be able to up it till vaccines have paediatric approval
    Sorry it'll be around 77 %, over 80 would push them over 60. 28 odd% 15 or under there
    So nearly a quarter turning down the vaccine? That's not great, is it?
    You need to look at the numbers for some of the US states - places like Alabama are seeing vaccination numbers start to stagnate, and they're only at about 25% vaccinated.

  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,768
    justin124 said:

    ydoethur said:

    justin124 said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    dixiedean said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    Under the FTPA the latest an election can be held is the 2nd of July 2024.

    Repealing the FTPA isn't as easy as assumed, it's going to be tricky trying to restore a royal prerogative power especially as the government is going to argue the prerogative powers are not judicially reviewable, that's why the government has got the Lords involved at this early stage.

    Perhaps you'd care to clarify? - seems out of line with the 'five year term'.
    Click the download report here

    https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06111/

    On page 8 you'll notice this

    Following the early election, in December 2019, the next election is scheduled to take place on 2 May 2024. Parliament will be dissolved on 26 March 2024.

    and

    There is provision for the Prime Minister to make an order to extend this date for a maximum of two months to deal with unexpected developments. He/she must set out the reasons for the delay, and such an order must be approved by both Houses of Parliament before it can be made. One precedent is the foot and mouth disease outbreak in 2001 which delayed local elections by one month. (In 2001, the general election was held on the same day as the delayed local elections.)
    Thanks. I hadn't appreciated that May was explicitly favoued.

    Ok, so May 2024 is an even more likely date than I'd thought.
    I think May 2024 will be the date for GE simply for no other reason that boundary changes recommendations will not be received until July 2023.

    The primary legislation has been passed but I suspect there may be issues from the Welsh and the Tories (if the Tories look like they will win Wales) about reducing the Welsh number of MPs by 20%.
    The Tories are more likely to favour the reduction in seats because it makes it plausible for them to win Wales. It’s the Valleys where the heaviest cuts will fall and although the Tories have made progress there they’re still not in serious contention to win any seats on current boundaries except possibly Gower and a very long shot at Blaenau Gwent.

    Plus the changes if along the lines proposed would exterminate Labour outside the south, cut Plaid Cymru in half by costing them the current Carmarthen East and Ceredigion seats and leave Newport and Llanelli both looking vulnerable to a fairly modest Tory swing.

    So I do not see that as a problem. There might be a couple of cases of two Tory MPs fighting for the same seat in the north east but actually there are enough tempting targets to go round to buy off any losers.
    I was talking more about the optics, it isn't inconceivable that the Tories win* the Senedd elections next month that creates momentum for them for them in the GE, it'll be easy attack line for Labour to use about the Tories reducing Welsh influence in Parliament when they need it the most.
    I do not think that will resonate outside the Cardiff/Swansea/Merthyr triangle, if I’m honest. The immediate riposte is ‘you’ve had influence for years and things keep getting worse. Let’s try influencing the other lot.’

    Bear in mind, there is only one seat Labour have never held at any level in Wales. They’ve held all the others at one time or another and done fuck all with it. A trade Union exec once told me with a straight face that Nicholas Edwards had done far more for Wales than ever Peter Hain did (On the one occasion I met him, Edwards himself agreed, incidentally, and wasn’t amused when I tripped him up over one or two of his claims).

    So I think there isn’t a problem for the Tories in cutting seats outside the Valleys, and there aren’t many likely to go there anyway, while inside the valleys it will make no difference anyway.
    Aren't a number of seats in North Wales to go too? Labour only holds one of them.
    The way the boundaries were being drawn, with Anglesey protected, that Labour seat is in effect the only one that goes.

    There might be a bit of a scuffle between the MP for Montgomeryshire and one of the Clwyd seats, but elsewhere it’s as you were.

    In the south west, helpfully, the redrawn seats pitch incumbent Tories against incumbent PC.
    It doesn't appear to me as if there are sufficient seats in the North to go round for the available Tory MPs, even if we assume that the successor to the current Alyn & Deeside flips Lab to Con and that one extra seat is added, relative to the 2019 proposals, since Wales is now to receive 32 rather than 29 MPs. I guess that whoever is left without a chair when the music stops will be sent to try to lift Ceredigion plus whatever gets tacked onto it from Plaid, although then again I'm not sure I'd much fancy their chances. They might actually have more luck trying to prise Llanelli away from Labour, if it ends up having some more rural hinterland tacked onto it.
    Stephen Crabbe will be the candidate in Ceredigion and North Pembs unless he retires.

    Edit - and I would very much fancy their chances there, on current boundaries it would be a fairly comfortable Tory hold.

    Llanelli is another one the Tories might begin to challenge in.
    Cardigan has never elected a Tory as far as I know - it was Labour-held by Elystan Morgan 1966 - Feb 1974. Rural North Pembrokeshire tends to be less favourable for the Tories than South Pembrokeshire - with significant pockets of support for Plaid and - periodically - the LDs. Tactical anti - Tory voting there might be more effective than many assume.
    Crabb is not a natural fit there and most of his current seat would be likely to fall into the residual Pembroke seat. He is a Scot by birth - and not obviously culturally Welsh really.
    On the proposed boundaries, in 2019, the figures were Con 30,260 Lab 22,636 and Plaid 17,984.

    Plaid simply didn’t register in Preseli while in Ceredigion the Tories managed a solid second place.

    That’s a pretty safe Tory seat. I can’t help it if you don’t like the figures, those remain the figures. Even if Stephen Crabbe lost every single vote the Tories won in Ceredigion, he would still win the seat ahead of Labour. He’s that far ahead.

    And this time, it really is good night.
    With respect, the proposed boundaries imply nothing of the kind! You appear to have simply combined the votes cast in the current Ceredigion and Preseli Pembrokeshie seats and gone on to suggest that the aggeregate figures provide a clear guide as to the likely outcome in the new seat.
    In reality,however, much of Crabbe's existing Preseli seat would form part of the proposed Pembroke seat. Places such as Haverfordwest and Milford Haven and the west coastal areas including Broad Haven , Solva etc would NOT be in the new seat combined with Ceredigion.Fishguard & Goodwick would certainly be included but is not clear that St Davids would be. A significant part of Crabbe's voting strength in his current seat would be excluded. For that reason the figures quoted mean little - even before considering the possibility of anti-Tory tactical voting.
    Those are almost all Labour voting areas, especially Haverfordwest and Milford Haven which is where the bulk of the Labour vote comes from. Crabbe’s personal heartland would stay.

    There are almost no Plaid Cymru voters in the Preseli area. Only 2,773 in the whole seat. They do not register. Therefore, there would be no tactical voting. You are simply making that up because you don’t want to admit you were wrong.

    The bottom line is, the Tories are now reasonably strong in Ceredigion and very strong in North Pembrokeshire, Plaid are strong in Ceredigion and non-existent in North Pembrokeshire. Labour are weak in North Pembrokeshire and weakening in Ceredigion.

    On these boundaries, it is a current Tory hold. Tat ay change at the next election but it’s hard to see a challenger emerging at the moment. I can’t help it if you from the safe distance of the 1950s where extra marital sex apparently never happened don’t like that. You’re wrong.
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