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Just 13 of the 31 local seats in Hartlepool on Westminster by-election day have Tory contenders – po

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Comments

  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,410
    edited April 2021
    kle4 said:

    Old_Hand said:

    I may have missed this earlier in the thread but have the Conservatives put forward at least one candidate in each Ward? If so, the Conservative voter would have a Conservative candidate in both elections. And of course there is a PCC election at the same time. The key point is that the Party has a candidate on every ballot paper that the elector will receive.

    Yes (though in fact apparently one ward has no conservative council candidate), but having a full slate of candidates for the council wouldn't diminsh the vote elsewhere, and not even having enough local candidates to theoretically take control of the council is not very positive - I've often seen outcomes for parties where they'd have won additional seats easily, if only they had enough candidates.
    Edited for accuracy.
    Incidentally. The Tories won less than 14% of the vote in every ward bar one last time.
    Still reckon they'll win the by election, but I don't think anyone knows for sure.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,101

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    Re: Hartlepool, cannot claim any expertise beyond actually having spent maybe 15 minutes there over 20 years ago.

    However, that will NOT stop me from sharing my learned commentary!

    On the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where Democrats have dominated the legislature since the Eisenhower Administration, but where voters regularly elect Republicans as Governor, for example Mitt Romney and current incumbent Charlie Baker (reportedly poised to launch a bid for US Senate).

    Somewhat similar to how Harlepool has a Conservative mayor?

    Another possible comparison in another quarter, is fact that (based on a map I saw days ago) the Social Democrats in Germany currently control quite a few local city & district councils, including in wide swaths of the country where they have done (and apparently still are doing) far less well in state AND federal elections.

    So whither the Harlepool by-election? So far still in lap o' the gods territory.

    On general recent GE polling: Labour hold - they are doing better than at the GE when they held it.
    On constituency polling (1 small one): Tory win, but allowing for usual margin of error it could be between very close and biggish Tory win.
    So it all depends on GOTV and the split of former Brexit votes (lots of them). The small poll suggests that former Brexit voters are not returning to Labour, but you have to ask if will they turn out at all.
    Labour candidate doesn't seem stellar.
    Conclusion: Personally I think Labour narrow hold but on the evidence it looks about 60/40 in favour of the Tories.

    By and large everyone is predicting that their party will lose. A good sign that no-one has a clue? However the thought that Labour are playing down the significance of losing (which in truth is of course enormous) suggests it may be worse for them than I am suggesting. I should think they have a decent idea. The Tories will say nothing in advance as they have nothing to lose.
    I have put a lot into this and I'm calling a Tory win.

    But I disagree with the significance of that being enormous. Not now. It would have gone Tory at the GE but for the BXP vote and the GE was not long ago. The Cons have delivered a good hard Brexit and we are coming out of the pandemic thanks to vaccines for which the government is getting the credit. These things outweigh the electoral benefit to Labour of not having Corbyn. Starmer has not yet cut through. He's a neutral at best. Johnson OTOH is an asset.

    No, this is a Tory seat right now. It's the capital of WWC Leave. The Tories own that demographic. They will win it. Perhaps quite easily. The greater genuine significance is if I'm wrong and they don't. If Labour hold on. That would tell us that they are not quite as doomed longer term - eg for GE24 - as many are thinking.

    See, some people DO have a clue. ☺
    Although the notion that the Tories will win at a canter does rather rest on the 2019 BXP vote (a) bothering to turn out and (b) breaking heavily for the Conservatives if they do. Motivation to vote in the first place seems like the greater issue.

    I'm sticking to a modest Labour win on a very low turnout. But we shall know the truth of it soon enough.
    Assuming the Brexit Party vote goes Tory then it should be an easy Tory win, in 2019 the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote was 55%, even higher the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote of 46% across the UK as a whole.

    Hartlepool was also 69.6% Leave in 2016, one of the highest Leave votes in the country.

    If Labour are able to still hold Hartlepool therefore that will be a big boost to Starmer and a blow to Boris as it will show working class Leave voters are returning to their traditional Labour allegience in the Red Wall now Brexit has been delivered
    No HYUFD. LAB is a nailed on hold in Hartlepool. No comfort for LAB at all. Maybe if they win by 30%.
    Yougov today has the Tories on 68% with Leave voters and Labour on just 12%, compared to a UK wide Tory total of 41% to 34% for Labour.

    So if Labour hold Hartlepool, a seat which was 69% Leave it would suggest Starmer is doing far better with Leave voters than the polling suggests

    https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/jeby9n4ffe/TheTimes_Voting_Intention_Track_210408_W.pdf
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    Re: Hartlepool, cannot claim any expertise beyond actually having spent maybe 15 minutes there over 20 years ago.

    However, that will NOT stop me from sharing my learned commentary!

    On the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where Democrats have dominated the legislature since the Eisenhower Administration, but where voters regularly elect Republicans as Governor, for example Mitt Romney and current incumbent Charlie Baker (reportedly poised to launch a bid for US Senate).

    Somewhat similar to how Harlepool has a Conservative mayor?

    Another possible comparison in another quarter, is fact that (based on a map I saw days ago) the Social Democrats in Germany currently control quite a few local city & district councils, including in wide swaths of the country where they have done (and apparently still are doing) far less well in state AND federal elections.

    So whither the Harlepool by-election? So far still in lap o' the gods territory.

    On general recent GE polling: Labour hold - they are doing better than at the GE when they held it.
    On constituency polling (1 small one): Tory win, but allowing for usual margin of error it could be between very close and biggish Tory win.
    So it all depends on GOTV and the split of former Brexit votes (lots of them). The small poll suggests that former Brexit voters are not returning to Labour, but you have to ask if will they turn out at all.
    Labour candidate doesn't seem stellar.
    Conclusion: Personally I think Labour narrow hold but on the evidence it looks about 60/40 in favour of the Tories.

    By and large everyone is predicting that their party will lose. A good sign that no-one has a clue? However the thought that Labour are playing down the significance of losing (which in truth is of course enormous) suggests it may be worse for them than I am suggesting. I should think they have a decent idea. The Tories will say nothing in advance as they have nothing to lose.
    I have put a lot into this and I'm calling a Tory win.

    But I disagree with the significance of that being enormous. Not now. It would have gone Tory at the GE but for the BXP vote and the GE was not long ago. The Cons have delivered a good hard Brexit and we are coming out of the pandemic thanks to vaccines for which the government is getting the credit. These things outweigh the electoral benefit to Labour of not having Corbyn. Starmer has not yet cut through. He's a neutral at best. Johnson OTOH is an asset.

    No, this is a Tory seat right now. It's the capital of WWC Leave. The Tories own that demographic. They will win it. Perhaps quite easily. The greater genuine significance is if I'm wrong and they don't. If Labour hold on. That would tell us that they are not quite as doomed longer term - eg for GE24 - as many are thinking.

    See, some people DO have a clue. ☺
    Although the notion that the Tories will win at a canter does rather rest on the 2019 BXP vote (a) bothering to turn out and (b) breaking heavily for the Conservatives if they do. Motivation to vote in the first place seems like the greater issue.

    I'm sticking to a modest Labour win on a very low turnout. But we shall know the truth of it soon enough.
    Assuming the Brexit Party vote goes Tory then it should be an easy Tory win, in 2019 the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote was 55% in Hartlepool, even higher the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote of 46% across the UK as a whole.

    Hartlepool was also 69.6% Leave in 2016, one of the highest Leave votes in the country.

    If Labour are able to still hold Hartlepool therefore that will be a big boost to Starmer and a blow to Boris as it will show working class Leave voters are returning to their traditional Labour allegience in the Red Wall now Brexit has been delivered
    Depends entirely on the margin of victory. If the Labour margin of victory is proportionately the same as it was in 2019, or even if it's drifted a little higher in line with the opinion polls, then it will tell us nothing of the sort. If we're looking for any sort of Labour revival in these kinds of areas then we should be observing a substantial increase in Labour vote share, indicative of the Brexit Party vote going back home.

    Hartlepool is not the kind of area in which the current iteration of Labour will be welcomed with wild abandon by the great mass of the people. I'll believe a big win when I see it.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,586
    "Londoners dance on streets of Soho on first night of freedom as Covid lockdown measures ease"

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-soho-lockdown-shops-pubs-dancing-b929341.html
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited April 2021
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    Re: Hartlepool, cannot claim any expertise beyond actually having spent maybe 15 minutes there over 20 years ago.

    However, that will NOT stop me from sharing my learned commentary!

    On the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where Democrats have dominated the legislature since the Eisenhower Administration, but where voters regularly elect Republicans as Governor, for example Mitt Romney and current incumbent Charlie Baker (reportedly poised to launch a bid for US Senate).

    Somewhat similar to how Harlepool has a Conservative mayor?

    Another possible comparison in another quarter, is fact that (based on a map I saw days ago) the Social Democrats in Germany currently control quite a few local city & district councils, including in wide swaths of the country where they have done (and apparently still are doing) far less well in state AND federal elections.

    So whither the Harlepool by-election? So far still in lap o' the gods territory.

    On general recent GE polling: Labour hold - they are doing better than at the GE when they held it.
    On constituency polling (1 small one): Tory win, but allowing for usual margin of error it could be between very close and biggish Tory win.
    So it all depends on GOTV and the split of former Brexit votes (lots of them). The small poll suggests that former Brexit voters are not returning to Labour, but you have to ask if will they turn out at all.
    Labour candidate doesn't seem stellar.
    Conclusion: Personally I think Labour narrow hold but on the evidence it looks about 60/40 in favour of the Tories.

    By and large everyone is predicting that their party will lose. A good sign that no-one has a clue? However the thought that Labour are playing down the significance of losing (which in truth is of course enormous) suggests it may be worse for them than I am suggesting. I should think they have a decent idea. The Tories will say nothing in advance as they have nothing to lose.
    I have put a lot into this and I'm calling a Tory win.

    But I disagree with the significance of that being enormous. Not now. It would have gone Tory at the GE but for the BXP vote and the GE was not long ago. The Cons have delivered a good hard Brexit and we are coming out of the pandemic thanks to vaccines for which the government is getting the credit. These things outweigh the electoral benefit to Labour of not having Corbyn. Starmer has not yet cut through. He's a neutral at best. Johnson OTOH is an asset.

    No, this is a Tory seat right now. It's the capital of WWC Leave. The Tories own that demographic. They will win it. Perhaps quite easily. The greater genuine significance is if I'm wrong and they don't. If Labour hold on. That would tell us that they are not quite as doomed longer term - eg for GE24 - as many are thinking.

    See, some people DO have a clue. ☺
    Although the notion that the Tories will win at a canter does rather rest on the 2019 BXP vote (a) bothering to turn out and (b) breaking heavily for the Conservatives if they do. Motivation to vote in the first place seems like the greater issue.

    I'm sticking to a modest Labour win on a very low turnout. But we shall know the truth of it soon enough.
    Assuming the Brexit Party vote goes Tory then it should be an easy Tory win, in 2019 the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote was 55%, even higher the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote of 46% across the UK as a whole.

    Hartlepool was also 69.6% Leave in 2016, one of the highest Leave votes in the country.

    If Labour are able to still hold Hartlepool therefore that will be a big boost to Starmer and a blow to Boris as it will show working class Leave voters are returning to their traditional Labour allegience in the Red Wall now Brexit has been delivered
    No HYUFD. LAB is a nailed on hold in Hartlepool. No comfort for LAB at all. Maybe if they win by 30%.
    Yougov today has the Tories on 68% with Leave voters and Labour on just 12%, compared to a UK wide Tory total of 41% to 34% for Labour.

    So if Labour hold Hartlepool, a seat which was 69% Leave it would suggest Starmer is doing far better with Leave voters than the polling suggests

    https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/jeby9n4ffe/TheTimes_Voting_Intention_Track_210408_W.pdf
    Or national macro polling figures don't apply evenly across the nation even to micro areas. That 12% Labour isn't evenly distributed and Hartlepool is somewhere it is more heavily distributed.

    Your logic is like saying that because of the small percentage of Lib Dem votes, no individual seat could ever go Lib Dem. Patently untrue.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,101

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    Re: Hartlepool, cannot claim any expertise beyond actually having spent maybe 15 minutes there over 20 years ago.

    However, that will NOT stop me from sharing my learned commentary!

    On the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where Democrats have dominated the legislature since the Eisenhower Administration, but where voters regularly elect Republicans as Governor, for example Mitt Romney and current incumbent Charlie Baker (reportedly poised to launch a bid for US Senate).

    Somewhat similar to how Harlepool has a Conservative mayor?

    Another possible comparison in another quarter, is fact that (based on a map I saw days ago) the Social Democrats in Germany currently control quite a few local city & district councils, including in wide swaths of the country where they have done (and apparently still are doing) far less well in state AND federal elections.

    So whither the Harlepool by-election? So far still in lap o' the gods territory.

    On general recent GE polling: Labour hold - they are doing better than at the GE when they held it.
    On constituency polling (1 small one): Tory win, but allowing for usual margin of error it could be between very close and biggish Tory win.
    So it all depends on GOTV and the split of former Brexit votes (lots of them). The small poll suggests that former Brexit voters are not returning to Labour, but you have to ask if will they turn out at all.
    Labour candidate doesn't seem stellar.
    Conclusion: Personally I think Labour narrow hold but on the evidence it looks about 60/40 in favour of the Tories.

    By and large everyone is predicting that their party will lose. A good sign that no-one has a clue? However the thought that Labour are playing down the significance of losing (which in truth is of course enormous) suggests it may be worse for them than I am suggesting. I should think they have a decent idea. The Tories will say nothing in advance as they have nothing to lose.
    I have put a lot into this and I'm calling a Tory win.

    But I disagree with the significance of that being enormous. Not now. It would have gone Tory at the GE but for the BXP vote and the GE was not long ago. The Cons have delivered a good hard Brexit and we are coming out of the pandemic thanks to vaccines for which the government is getting the credit. These things outweigh the electoral benefit to Labour of not having Corbyn. Starmer has not yet cut through. He's a neutral at best. Johnson OTOH is an asset.

    No, this is a Tory seat right now. It's the capital of WWC Leave. The Tories own that demographic. They will win it. Perhaps quite easily. The greater genuine significance is if I'm wrong and they don't. If Labour hold on. That would tell us that they are not quite as doomed longer term - eg for GE24 - as many are thinking.

    See, some people DO have a clue. ☺
    Although the notion that the Tories will win at a canter does rather rest on the 2019 BXP vote (a) bothering to turn out and (b) breaking heavily for the Conservatives if they do. Motivation to vote in the first place seems like the greater issue.

    I'm sticking to a modest Labour win on a very low turnout. But we shall know the truth of it soon enough.
    Assuming the Brexit Party vote goes Tory then it should be an easy Tory win, in 2019 the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote was 55%, even higher the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote of 46% across the UK as a whole.

    Hartlepool was also 69.6% Leave in 2016, one of the highest Leave votes in the country.

    If Labour are able to still hold Hartlepool therefore that will be a big boost to Starmer and a blow to Boris as it will show working class Leave voters are returning to their traditional Labour allegience in the Red Wall now Brexit has been delivered
    No HYUFD. LAB is a nailed on hold in Hartlepool. No comfort for LAB at all. Maybe if they win by 30%.
    Yougov today has the Tories on 68% with Leave voters and Labour on just 12%, compared to a UK wide Tory total of 41% to 34% for Labour.

    So if Labour hold Hartlepool, a seat which was 69% Leave it would suggest Starmer is doing far better with Leave voters than the polling suggests

    https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/jeby9n4ffe/TheTimes_Voting_Intention_Track_210408_W.pdf
    Or national macro polling figures don't apply evenly across the nation even to micro areas. That 12% Labour isn't evenly distributed and Hartlepool is somewhere it is more heavily distributed.

    Your logic is like saying that because of the small percentage of Lib Dem votes, no individual seat could ever go Lib Dem. Patently untrue.
    It was only the high Brexit Party vote in Hartlepool in 2019 which stopped it going Tory, that is the point
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,421
    edited April 2021
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    Re: Hartlepool, cannot claim any expertise beyond actually having spent maybe 15 minutes there over 20 years ago.

    However, that will NOT stop me from sharing my learned commentary!

    On the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where Democrats have dominated the legislature since the Eisenhower Administration, but where voters regularly elect Republicans as Governor, for example Mitt Romney and current incumbent Charlie Baker (reportedly poised to launch a bid for US Senate).

    Somewhat similar to how Harlepool has a Conservative mayor?

    Another possible comparison in another quarter, is fact that (based on a map I saw days ago) the Social Democrats in Germany currently control quite a few local city & district councils, including in wide swaths of the country where they have done (and apparently still are doing) far less well in state AND federal elections.

    So whither the Harlepool by-election? So far still in lap o' the gods territory.

    On general recent GE polling: Labour hold - they are doing better than at the GE when they held it.
    On constituency polling (1 small one): Tory win, but allowing for usual margin of error it could be between very close and biggish Tory win.
    So it all depends on GOTV and the split of former Brexit votes (lots of them). The small poll suggests that former Brexit voters are not returning to Labour, but you have to ask if will they turn out at all.
    Labour candidate doesn't seem stellar.
    Conclusion: Personally I think Labour narrow hold but on the evidence it looks about 60/40 in favour of the Tories.

    By and large everyone is predicting that their party will lose. A good sign that no-one has a clue? However the thought that Labour are playing down the significance of losing (which in truth is of course enormous) suggests it may be worse for them than I am suggesting. I should think they have a decent idea. The Tories will say nothing in advance as they have nothing to lose.
    I have put a lot into this and I'm calling a Tory win.

    But I disagree with the significance of that being enormous. Not now. It would have gone Tory at the GE but for the BXP vote and the GE was not long ago. The Cons have delivered a good hard Brexit and we are coming out of the pandemic thanks to vaccines for which the government is getting the credit. These things outweigh the electoral benefit to Labour of not having Corbyn. Starmer has not yet cut through. He's a neutral at best. Johnson OTOH is an asset.

    No, this is a Tory seat right now. It's the capital of WWC Leave. The Tories own that demographic. They will win it. Perhaps quite easily. The greater genuine significance is if I'm wrong and they don't. If Labour hold on. That would tell us that they are not quite as doomed longer term - eg for GE24 - as many are thinking.

    See, some people DO have a clue. ☺
    Although the notion that the Tories will win at a canter does rather rest on the 2019 BXP vote (a) bothering to turn out and (b) breaking heavily for the Conservatives if they do. Motivation to vote in the first place seems like the greater issue.

    I'm sticking to a modest Labour win on a very low turnout. But we shall know the truth of it soon enough.
    Assuming the Brexit Party vote goes Tory then it should be an easy Tory win, in 2019 the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote was 55%, even higher the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote of 46% across the UK as a whole.

    Hartlepool was also 69.6% Leave in 2016, one of the highest Leave votes in the country.

    If Labour are able to still hold Hartlepool therefore that will be a big boost to Starmer and a blow to Boris as it will show working class Leave voters are returning to their traditional Labour allegience in the Red Wall now Brexit has been delivered
    No HYUFD. LAB is a nailed on hold in Hartlepool. No comfort for LAB at all. Maybe if they win by 30%.
    Yougov today has the Tories on 68% with Leave voters and Labour on just 12%, compared to a UK wide Tory total of 41% to 34% for Labour.

    So if Labour hold Hartlepool, a seat which was 69% Leave it would suggest Starmer is doing far better with Leave voters than the polling suggests

    https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/jeby9n4ffe/TheTimes_Voting_Intention_Track_210408_W.pdf
    Or national macro polling figures don't apply evenly across the nation even to micro areas. That 12% Labour isn't evenly distributed and Hartlepool is somewhere it is more heavily distributed.

    Your logic is like saying that because of the small percentage of Lib Dem votes, no individual seat could ever go Lib Dem. Patently untrue.
    It was only the high Brexit Party vote in Hartlepool in 2019 which stopped it going Tory, that is the point
    Or maybe it wasn't going Tory and so it had a high Brexit Party vote.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,410
    edited April 2021

    Old_Hand said:

    I may have missed this earlier in the thread but have the Conservatives put forward at least one candidate in each Ward? If so, the Conservative voter would have a Conservative candidate in both elections. And of course there is a PCC election at the same time. The key point is that the Party has a candidate on every ballot paper that the elector will receive.

    Insofar as I can make out, Hartlepool appears to elect its entire council in one go rather than in thirds. There are thirty outgoing councillors (no idea if there are any vacancies) and it appears that they're going to be electing thirty-six new ones next month - three from each of twelve wards. The SOPN indicates that the Tories are fielding one candidate in every ward except for the Rural West ward, where they have three sitting councillors who are all standing for re-election. This would imply that the Conservatives are fielding 14 of 36 seats, and not 13 of 31 as suggested by the thread header. Relevant sources:

    https://www.hartlepool.gov.uk/downloads/file/6766/notice_of_election_-_local_government_elections_6_may_2021

    https://www.hartlepool.gov.uk/info/20033/elections_and_voting/1037/local_government_elections_-_6_may_2021/3

    Beyond that, we obviously have the Hartlepool by-election, the PCC election for the Cleveland force area, and the Tees Valley mayoral election. So yes: every "lucky" elector in Hartlepool gets the chance to vote Conservative at least four times.
    Hartlepool is electing the entire Council due to re-distribution of Wards. Increasing from 11 to 12. It usually elects a third each time.
    This is standard procedure when there have been boundary changes.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,486

    I'm not happy to put up with it. Enough is enough.

    May is one of the best months of the year and to have it pissed away out of stubbornness is ridiculous. The data can not defend us being locked down anymore, its intolerable.

    Yes, the problem with the May 17 change isn’t so much the indoor pubs opening (I’d hope it will be warm enough to sit outside then), it’s that it’s coupled with the end of the ‘no staying over’ rule. Which pretty much rules out going to visit most of my relatives, because they live hundreds of miles away. Could they at least relax that?
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,031

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53511877

    It's hard not to look at the Scotland covid numbers and wonder "what the fuck is it we're waiting for here?"

    For England to fuck up.....
    Quite. If things go badly down South then Sturgeon's loyal voters will praise her for being cautious. If, on the other hand, and as we all hope, they go well, then Sturgeon's loyal voters will still forgive her for being cautious anyway. She has nothing to lose by foot dragging, especially with the UK Government picking up the tab for furlough.
    There is anger in Wales that England has opened up as Drakeford keeps lockdown and of course to border towns fury as Welsh residents can now drive into England and enjoy English freedoms

    Welsh business is furious
    Anger and fury. Your account would appear to have been hacked by a journalist from the Daily Mail.

  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    Re: Hartlepool, cannot claim any expertise beyond actually having spent maybe 15 minutes there over 20 years ago.

    However, that will NOT stop me from sharing my learned commentary!

    On the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where Democrats have dominated the legislature since the Eisenhower Administration, but where voters regularly elect Republicans as Governor, for example Mitt Romney and current incumbent Charlie Baker (reportedly poised to launch a bid for US Senate).

    Somewhat similar to how Harlepool has a Conservative mayor?

    Another possible comparison in another quarter, is fact that (based on a map I saw days ago) the Social Democrats in Germany currently control quite a few local city & district councils, including in wide swaths of the country where they have done (and apparently still are doing) far less well in state AND federal elections.

    So whither the Harlepool by-election? So far still in lap o' the gods territory.

    On general recent GE polling: Labour hold - they are doing better than at the GE when they held it.
    On constituency polling (1 small one): Tory win, but allowing for usual margin of error it could be between very close and biggish Tory win.
    So it all depends on GOTV and the split of former Brexit votes (lots of them). The small poll suggests that former Brexit voters are not returning to Labour, but you have to ask if will they turn out at all.
    Labour candidate doesn't seem stellar.
    Conclusion: Personally I think Labour narrow hold but on the evidence it looks about 60/40 in favour of the Tories.

    By and large everyone is predicting that their party will lose. A good sign that no-one has a clue? However the thought that Labour are playing down the significance of losing (which in truth is of course enormous) suggests it may be worse for them than I am suggesting. I should think they have a decent idea. The Tories will say nothing in advance as they have nothing to lose.
    I have put a lot into this and I'm calling a Tory win.

    But I disagree with the significance of that being enormous. Not now. It would have gone Tory at the GE but for the BXP vote and the GE was not long ago. The Cons have delivered a good hard Brexit and we are coming out of the pandemic thanks to vaccines for which the government is getting the credit. These things outweigh the electoral benefit to Labour of not having Corbyn. Starmer has not yet cut through. He's a neutral at best. Johnson OTOH is an asset.

    No, this is a Tory seat right now. It's the capital of WWC Leave. The Tories own that demographic. They will win it. Perhaps quite easily. The greater genuine significance is if I'm wrong and they don't. If Labour hold on. That would tell us that they are not quite as doomed longer term - eg for GE24 - as many are thinking.

    See, some people DO have a clue. ☺
    Although the notion that the Tories will win at a canter does rather rest on the 2019 BXP vote (a) bothering to turn out and (b) breaking heavily for the Conservatives if they do. Motivation to vote in the first place seems like the greater issue.

    I'm sticking to a modest Labour win on a very low turnout. But we shall know the truth of it soon enough.
    Assuming the Brexit Party vote goes Tory then it should be an easy Tory win, in 2019 the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote was 55%, even higher the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote of 46% across the UK as a whole.

    Hartlepool was also 69.6% Leave in 2016, one of the highest Leave votes in the country.

    If Labour are able to still hold Hartlepool therefore that will be a big boost to Starmer and a blow to Boris as it will show working class Leave voters are returning to their traditional Labour allegience in the Red Wall now Brexit has been delivered
    No HYUFD. LAB is a nailed on hold in Hartlepool. No comfort for LAB at all. Maybe if they win by 30%.
    Yougov today has the Tories on 68% with Leave voters and Labour on just 12%, compared to a UK wide Tory total of 41% to 34% for Labour.

    So if Labour hold Hartlepool, a seat which was 69% Leave it would suggest Starmer is doing far better with Leave voters than the polling suggests

    https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/jeby9n4ffe/TheTimes_Voting_Intention_Track_210408_W.pdf
    Or national macro polling figures don't apply evenly across the nation even to micro areas. That 12% Labour isn't evenly distributed and Hartlepool is somewhere it is more heavily distributed.

    Your logic is like saying that because of the small percentage of Lib Dem votes, no individual seat could ever go Lib Dem. Patently untrue.
    It was only the high Brexit Party vote in Hartlepool in 2019 which stopped it going Tory, that is the point
    Without the Brexit Party the high Brexit vote may have been neverTories and gone Labour, or not voted, in 2019. No reason to assume it was Tory if Brexit didn't exist.

    If they wanted to vote to Get Brexit Done, they had the option to do so. They chose not to.
  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,639

    I'm not happy to put up with it. Enough is enough.

    May is one of the best months of the year and to have it pissed away out of stubbornness is ridiculous. The data can not defend us being locked down anymore, its intolerable.

    Yes, the problem with the May 17 change isn’t so much the indoor pubs opening (I’d hope it will be warm enough to sit outside then), it’s that it’s coupled with the end of the ‘no staying over’ rule. Which pretty much rules out going to visit most of my relatives, because they live hundreds of miles away. Could they at least relax that?
    It was cold in the pub garden this evening.
  • https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53511877

    It's hard not to look at the Scotland covid numbers and wonder "what the fuck is it we're waiting for here?"

    For England to fuck up.....
    Quite. If things go badly down South then Sturgeon's loyal voters will praise her for being cautious. If, on the other hand, and as we all hope, they go well, then Sturgeon's loyal voters will still forgive her for being cautious anyway. She has nothing to lose by foot dragging, especially with the UK Government picking up the tab for furlough.
    There is anger in Wales that England has opened up as Drakeford keeps lockdown and of course to border towns fury as Welsh residents can now drive into England and enjoy English freedoms

    Welsh business is furious
    Anger and fury. Your account would appear to have been hacked by a journalist from the Daily Mail.

    Not at all - just responses on Welsh news bulletins from real people living in Welsh Borders towns
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,101
    edited April 2021

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    Re: Hartlepool, cannot claim any expertise beyond actually having spent maybe 15 minutes there over 20 years ago.

    However, that will NOT stop me from sharing my learned commentary!

    On the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where Democrats have dominated the legislature since the Eisenhower Administration, but where voters regularly elect Republicans as Governor, for example Mitt Romney and current incumbent Charlie Baker (reportedly poised to launch a bid for US Senate).

    Somewhat similar to how Harlepool has a Conservative mayor?

    Another possible comparison in another quarter, is fact that (based on a map I saw days ago) the Social Democrats in Germany currently control quite a few local city & district councils, including in wide swaths of the country where they have done (and apparently still are doing) far less well in state AND federal elections.

    So whither the Harlepool by-election? So far still in lap o' the gods territory.

    On general recent GE polling: Labour hold - they are doing better than at the GE when they held it.
    On constituency polling (1 small one): Tory win, but allowing for usual margin of error it could be between very close and biggish Tory win.
    So it all depends on GOTV and the split of former Brexit votes (lots of them). The small poll suggests that former Brexit voters are not returning to Labour, but you have to ask if will they turn out at all.
    Labour candidate doesn't seem stellar.
    Conclusion: Personally I think Labour narrow hold but on the evidence it looks about 60/40 in favour of the Tories.

    By and large everyone is predicting that their party will lose. A good sign that no-one has a clue? However the thought that Labour are playing down the significance of losing (which in truth is of course enormous) suggests it may be worse for them than I am suggesting. I should think they have a decent idea. The Tories will say nothing in advance as they have nothing to lose.
    I have put a lot into this and I'm calling a Tory win.

    But I disagree with the significance of that being enormous. Not now. It would have gone Tory at the GE but for the BXP vote and the GE was not long ago. The Cons have delivered a good hard Brexit and we are coming out of the pandemic thanks to vaccines for which the government is getting the credit. These things outweigh the electoral benefit to Labour of not having Corbyn. Starmer has not yet cut through. He's a neutral at best. Johnson OTOH is an asset.

    No, this is a Tory seat right now. It's the capital of WWC Leave. The Tories own that demographic. They will win it. Perhaps quite easily. The greater genuine significance is if I'm wrong and they don't. If Labour hold on. That would tell us that they are not quite as doomed longer term - eg for GE24 - as many are thinking.

    See, some people DO have a clue. ☺
    Although the notion that the Tories will win at a canter does rather rest on the 2019 BXP vote (a) bothering to turn out and (b) breaking heavily for the Conservatives if they do. Motivation to vote in the first place seems like the greater issue.

    I'm sticking to a modest Labour win on a very low turnout. But we shall know the truth of it soon enough.
    Assuming the Brexit Party vote goes Tory then it should be an easy Tory win, in 2019 the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote was 55%, even higher the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote of 46% across the UK as a whole.

    Hartlepool was also 69.6% Leave in 2016, one of the highest Leave votes in the country.

    If Labour are able to still hold Hartlepool therefore that will be a big boost to Starmer and a blow to Boris as it will show working class Leave voters are returning to their traditional Labour allegience in the Red Wall now Brexit has been delivered
    No HYUFD. LAB is a nailed on hold in Hartlepool. No comfort for LAB at all. Maybe if they win by 30%.
    Yougov today has the Tories on 68% with Leave voters and Labour on just 12%, compared to a UK wide Tory total of 41% to 34% for Labour.

    So if Labour hold Hartlepool, a seat which was 69% Leave it would suggest Starmer is doing far better with Leave voters than the polling suggests

    https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/jeby9n4ffe/TheTimes_Voting_Intention_Track_210408_W.pdf
    Or national macro polling figures don't apply evenly across the nation even to micro areas. That 12% Labour isn't evenly distributed and Hartlepool is somewhere it is more heavily distributed.

    Your logic is like saying that because of the small percentage of Lib Dem votes, no individual seat could ever go Lib Dem. Patently untrue.
    It was only the high Brexit Party vote in Hartlepool in 2019 which stopped it going Tory, that is the point
    Without the Brexit Party the high Brexit vote may have been neverTories and gone Labour, or not voted, in 2019. No reason to assume it was Tory if Brexit didn't exist.

    If they wanted to vote to Get Brexit Done, they had the option to do so. They chose not to.
    If Labour holds Hartlepool because Brexit Party voters return to it then that would also be a boost to Starmer, he would be winning over Leave voting Brexit Party voters from 2019 as well as the Remain voting LD 2019 voters he has won over.

    Even if he has not won over barely any 2019 Tory voters, Labour would still win a number of Tory held seats on such a swing
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,031

    Old_Hand said:

    I may have missed this earlier in the thread but have the Conservatives put forward at least one candidate in each Ward? If so, the Conservative voter would have a Conservative candidate in both elections. And of course there is a PCC election at the same time. The key point is that the Party has a candidate on every ballot paper that the elector will receive.

    Insofar as I can make out, Hartlepool appears to elect its entire council in one go rather than in thirds. There are thirty outgoing councillors (no idea if there are any vacancies) and it appears that they're going to be electing thirty-six new ones next month - three from each of twelve wards. The SOPN indicates that the Tories are fielding one candidate in every ward except for the Rural West ward, where they have three sitting councillors who are all standing for re-election. This would imply that the Conservatives are fielding 14 of 36 seats, and not 13 of 31 as suggested by the thread header. Relevant sources:

    https://www.hartlepool.gov.uk/downloads/file/6766/notice_of_election_-_local_government_elections_6_may_2021

    https://www.hartlepool.gov.uk/info/20033/elections_and_voting/1037/local_government_elections_-_6_may_2021/3

    Beyond that, we obviously have the Hartlepool by-election, the PCC election for the Cleveland force area, and the Tees Valley mayoral election. So yes: every "lucky" elector in Hartlepool gets the chance to vote Conservative at least four times.
    Ah, yes. The poor buggers still have a PCC because the mayor's patch includes Darlo, which comes under Durham police. Local government disorganisation.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    The Brexit Party vote was non existent to negligible in most Tory seats.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,410
    edited April 2021

    Old_Hand said:

    I may have missed this earlier in the thread but have the Conservatives put forward at least one candidate in each Ward? If so, the Conservative voter would have a Conservative candidate in both elections. And of course there is a PCC election at the same time. The key point is that the Party has a candidate on every ballot paper that the elector will receive.

    Insofar as I can make out, Hartlepool appears to elect its entire council in one go rather than in thirds. There are thirty outgoing councillors (no idea if there are any vacancies) and it appears that they're going to be electing thirty-six new ones next month - three from each of twelve wards. The SOPN indicates that the Tories are fielding one candidate in every ward except for the Rural West ward, where they have three sitting councillors who are all standing for re-election. This would imply that the Conservatives are fielding 14 of 36 seats, and not 13 of 31 as suggested by the thread header. Relevant sources:

    https://www.hartlepool.gov.uk/downloads/file/6766/notice_of_election_-_local_government_elections_6_may_2021

    https://www.hartlepool.gov.uk/info/20033/elections_and_voting/1037/local_government_elections_-_6_may_2021/3

    Beyond that, we obviously have the Hartlepool by-election, the PCC election for the Cleveland force area, and the Tees Valley mayoral election. So yes: every "lucky" elector in Hartlepool gets the chance to vote Conservative at least four times.
    Ah, yes. The poor buggers still have a PCC because the mayor's patch includes Darlo, which comes under Durham police. Local government disorganisation.
    Preach. We have the same. A PCC area which includes Gateshead, South Tyneside and Sunderland outwith the mayor's remit.
    Still. At least we have the fragrant Kim McGuinness. As compensation for the less than Jamie Driscoll.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,410

    The Brexit Party vote was non existent to negligible in most Tory seats.

    That they didn't stand in Tory held seats probably helped.
  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,639
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    Re: Hartlepool, cannot claim any expertise beyond actually having spent maybe 15 minutes there over 20 years ago.

    However, that will NOT stop me from sharing my learned commentary!

    On the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where Democrats have dominated the legislature since the Eisenhower Administration, but where voters regularly elect Republicans as Governor, for example Mitt Romney and current incumbent Charlie Baker (reportedly poised to launch a bid for US Senate).

    Somewhat similar to how Harlepool has a Conservative mayor?

    Another possible comparison in another quarter, is fact that (based on a map I saw days ago) the Social Democrats in Germany currently control quite a few local city & district councils, including in wide swaths of the country where they have done (and apparently still are doing) far less well in state AND federal elections.

    So whither the Harlepool by-election? So far still in lap o' the gods territory.

    On general recent GE polling: Labour hold - they are doing better than at the GE when they held it.
    On constituency polling (1 small one): Tory win, but allowing for usual margin of error it could be between very close and biggish Tory win.
    So it all depends on GOTV and the split of former Brexit votes (lots of them). The small poll suggests that former Brexit voters are not returning to Labour, but you have to ask if will they turn out at all.
    Labour candidate doesn't seem stellar.
    Conclusion: Personally I think Labour narrow hold but on the evidence it looks about 60/40 in favour of the Tories.

    By and large everyone is predicting that their party will lose. A good sign that no-one has a clue? However the thought that Labour are playing down the significance of losing (which in truth is of course enormous) suggests it may be worse for them than I am suggesting. I should think they have a decent idea. The Tories will say nothing in advance as they have nothing to lose.
    I have put a lot into this and I'm calling a Tory win.

    But I disagree with the significance of that being enormous. Not now. It would have gone Tory at the GE but for the BXP vote and the GE was not long ago. The Cons have delivered a good hard Brexit and we are coming out of the pandemic thanks to vaccines for which the government is getting the credit. These things outweigh the electoral benefit to Labour of not having Corbyn. Starmer has not yet cut through. He's a neutral at best. Johnson OTOH is an asset.

    No, this is a Tory seat right now. It's the capital of WWC Leave. The Tories own that demographic. They will win it. Perhaps quite easily. The greater genuine significance is if I'm wrong and they don't. If Labour hold on. That would tell us that they are not quite as doomed longer term - eg for GE24 - as many are thinking.

    See, some people DO have a clue. ☺
    Although the notion that the Tories will win at a canter does rather rest on the 2019 BXP vote (a) bothering to turn out and (b) breaking heavily for the Conservatives if they do. Motivation to vote in the first place seems like the greater issue.

    I'm sticking to a modest Labour win on a very low turnout. But we shall know the truth of it soon enough.
    Assuming the Brexit Party vote goes Tory then it should be an easy Tory win, in 2019 the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote was 55%, even higher the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote of 46% across the UK as a whole.

    Hartlepool was also 69.6% Leave in 2016, one of the highest Leave votes in the country.

    If Labour are able to still hold Hartlepool therefore that will be a big boost to Starmer and a blow to Boris as it will show working class Leave voters are returning to their traditional Labour allegience in the Red Wall now Brexit has been delivered
    No HYUFD. LAB is a nailed on hold in Hartlepool. No comfort for LAB at all. Maybe if they win by 30%.
    Yougov today has the Tories on 68% with Leave voters and Labour on just 12%, compared to a UK wide Tory total of 41% to 34% for Labour.

    So if Labour hold Hartlepool, a seat which was 69% Leave it would suggest Starmer is doing far better with Leave voters than the polling suggests

    https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/jeby9n4ffe/TheTimes_Voting_Intention_Track_210408_W.pdf
    Or national macro polling figures don't apply evenly across the nation even to micro areas. That 12% Labour isn't evenly distributed and Hartlepool is somewhere it is more heavily distributed.

    Your logic is like saying that because of the small percentage of Lib Dem votes, no individual seat could ever go Lib Dem. Patently untrue.
    It was only the high Brexit Party vote in Hartlepool in 2019 which stopped it going Tory, that is the point
    Without the Brexit Party the high Brexit vote may have been neverTories and gone Labour, or not voted, in 2019. No reason to assume it was Tory if Brexit didn't exist.

    If they wanted to vote to Get Brexit Done, they had the option to do so. They chose not to.
    If Labour holds Hartlepool because Brexit Party voters return to it then that would also be a boost to Starmer, he would be winning over Leave voting Brexit Party voters from 2019 as well as the Remain voting LD 2019 voters he has won over.

    Even if he has not won over barely any 2019 Tory voters, Labour would still win a number of Tory held seats on such a swing
    No election until 2024. LAB have to be winning everywhere big at the local elections to have credibility for 2024. It's not happening.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,101

    The Brexit Party vote was non existent to negligible in most Tory seats.

    Not in seats the Tories gained.

    To take some examples, in Bury North the Tory majority was 105 and the BXP got 1,240 votes, in Stoke Central the Tory majority was 670 and the BXP got 1,691 votes, in Durham NW the Tory majority was 1,144 and the BXP got 3,193 votes and in Leigh the Tory majority was 1,965 votes and the BXP got 3,161 votes.

    So if Labour hold Hartlepool by regaining BXP votes then all the above Tory marginals would likely go Labour on the same swing at the next general election
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,206
    Charles said:

    eek said:

    You know we were talking about Deliveroo last week

    Well Uber has published new figures and it is on target to delivery $52bn of food over the next year worldwide

    https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/1381632619004235779

    Uber’s delivery business is at a run-rate of $52bn. 🤯 (Though total 2019 US restaurant spending was $770bn) https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001543151/84bcb1ae-108c-493b-a622-c8fcd2bb29b7.pdf

    It also says there will be an impact due to the Employment tribunal result and there are other tax issues in the UK (which is the VAT case we talked about on Friday).

    Run rate

    I love run rate

    We have a concept called Pro Forma Adjusted Run Rate EBITDA (also known as “Rothschild Run Rate”) which roughly translates as “these forecasts are utter bullshit”
    I've always been a big fan of EBC, or Earnings Before Costs.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    rcs1000 said:

    Charles said:

    eek said:

    You know we were talking about Deliveroo last week

    Well Uber has published new figures and it is on target to delivery $52bn of food over the next year worldwide

    https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/1381632619004235779

    Uber’s delivery business is at a run-rate of $52bn. 🤯 (Though total 2019 US restaurant spending was $770bn) https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001543151/84bcb1ae-108c-493b-a622-c8fcd2bb29b7.pdf

    It also says there will be an impact due to the Employment tribunal result and there are other tax issues in the UK (which is the VAT case we talked about on Friday).

    Run rate

    I love run rate

    We have a concept called Pro Forma Adjusted Run Rate EBITDA (also known as “Rothschild Run Rate”) which roughly translates as “these forecasts are utter bullshit”
    I've always been a big fan of EBC, or Earnings Before Costs.
    Warren Buffett used to call it EBBS

    Earnings Before Bad Stuff
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    HYUFD said:

    The Brexit Party vote was non existent to negligible in most Tory seats.

    Not in seats the Tories gained.

    To take some examples, in Bury North the Tory majority was 105 and the BXP got 1,240 votes, in Stoke Central the Tory majority was 670 and the BXP got 1,691 votes, in Durham NW the Tory majority was 1,144 and the BXP got 3,193 votes and in Leigh the Tory majority was 1,965 votes and the BXP got 3,161 votes.

    So if Labour hold Hartlepool by regaining BXP votes then all the above Tory marginals would likely go Labour on the same swing at the next general election
    You're assuming the options are either the BXP vote goes all Tory, or all Labour. 🤦‍♂️

    If the BXP vote splits fifty/fifty (or does not vote, same thing) then with all else being equal the Tories hold all their gains, Labour holds Hartlepool.

    Labour could hold Hartlepool even if there's a swing to the Tories bringing other Labour seats into play, not a swing to Labour.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    dixiedean said:

    The Brexit Party vote was non existent to negligible in most Tory seats.

    That they didn't stand in Tory held seats probably helped.
    They didn't stand in Tory held seats because they weren't going to get many votes and even their own candidates had started saying it was ridiculous to stand in those seats and were standing down.

    Farage made a virtue out of a necessity because he was outplayed. Had he been due to get substantial votes he wouldn't have stood down.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,486
    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Charles said:

    eek said:

    You know we were talking about Deliveroo last week

    Well Uber has published new figures and it is on target to delivery $52bn of food over the next year worldwide

    https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/1381632619004235779

    Uber’s delivery business is at a run-rate of $52bn. 🤯 (Though total 2019 US restaurant spending was $770bn) https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001543151/84bcb1ae-108c-493b-a622-c8fcd2bb29b7.pdf

    It also says there will be an impact due to the Employment tribunal result and there are other tax issues in the UK (which is the VAT case we talked about on Friday).

    Run rate

    I love run rate

    We have a concept called Pro Forma Adjusted Run Rate EBITDA (also known as “Rothschild Run Rate”) which roughly translates as “these forecasts are utter bullshit”
    I've always been a big fan of EBC, or Earnings Before Costs.
    Warren Buffett used to call it EBBS

    Earnings Before Bad Stuff
    A twist on the old adage: turnover is vanity, profit is sanity.
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,468
    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Charles said:

    eek said:

    You know we were talking about Deliveroo last week

    Well Uber has published new figures and it is on target to delivery $52bn of food over the next year worldwide

    https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/1381632619004235779

    Uber’s delivery business is at a run-rate of $52bn. 🤯 (Though total 2019 US restaurant spending was $770bn) https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001543151/84bcb1ae-108c-493b-a622-c8fcd2bb29b7.pdf

    It also says there will be an impact due to the Employment tribunal result and there are other tax issues in the UK (which is the VAT case we talked about on Friday).

    Run rate

    I love run rate

    We have a concept called Pro Forma Adjusted Run Rate EBITDA (also known as “Rothschild Run Rate”) which roughly translates as “these forecasts are utter bullshit”
    I've always been a big fan of EBC, or Earnings Before Costs.
    Warren Buffett used to call it EBBS

    Earnings Before Bad Stuff
    You sure it's not Earnings Before Bullshit
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,468
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,206

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    Re: Hartlepool, cannot claim any expertise beyond actually having spent maybe 15 minutes there over 20 years ago.

    However, that will NOT stop me from sharing my learned commentary!

    On the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where Democrats have dominated the legislature since the Eisenhower Administration, but where voters regularly elect Republicans as Governor, for example Mitt Romney and current incumbent Charlie Baker (reportedly poised to launch a bid for US Senate).

    Somewhat similar to how Harlepool has a Conservative mayor?

    Another possible comparison in another quarter, is fact that (based on a map I saw days ago) the Social Democrats in Germany currently control quite a few local city & district councils, including in wide swaths of the country where they have done (and apparently still are doing) far less well in state AND federal elections.

    So whither the Harlepool by-election? So far still in lap o' the gods territory.

    On general recent GE polling: Labour hold - they are doing better than at the GE when they held it.
    On constituency polling (1 small one): Tory win, but allowing for usual margin of error it could be between very close and biggish Tory win.
    So it all depends on GOTV and the split of former Brexit votes (lots of them). The small poll suggests that former Brexit voters are not returning to Labour, but you have to ask if will they turn out at all.
    Labour candidate doesn't seem stellar.
    Conclusion: Personally I think Labour narrow hold but on the evidence it looks about 60/40 in favour of the Tories.

    By and large everyone is predicting that their party will lose. A good sign that no-one has a clue? However the thought that Labour are playing down the significance of losing (which in truth is of course enormous) suggests it may be worse for them than I am suggesting. I should think they have a decent idea. The Tories will say nothing in advance as they have nothing to lose.
    I have put a lot into this and I'm calling a Tory win.

    But I disagree with the significance of that being enormous. Not now. It would have gone Tory at the GE but for the BXP vote and the GE was not long ago. The Cons have delivered a good hard Brexit and we are coming out of the pandemic thanks to vaccines for which the government is getting the credit. These things outweigh the electoral benefit to Labour of not having Corbyn. Starmer has not yet cut through. He's a neutral at best. Johnson OTOH is an asset.

    No, this is a Tory seat right now. It's the capital of WWC Leave. The Tories own that demographic. They will win it. Perhaps quite easily. The greater genuine significance is if I'm wrong and they don't. If Labour hold on. That would tell us that they are not quite as doomed longer term - eg for GE24 - as many are thinking.

    See, some people DO have a clue. ☺
    Although the notion that the Tories will win at a canter does rather rest on the 2019 BXP vote (a) bothering to turn out and (b) breaking heavily for the Conservatives if they do. Motivation to vote in the first place seems like the greater issue.

    I'm sticking to a modest Labour win on a very low turnout. But we shall know the truth of it soon enough.
    Assuming the Brexit Party vote goes Tory then it should be an easy Tory win, in 2019 the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote was 55%, even higher the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote of 46% across the UK as a whole.

    Hartlepool was also 69.6% Leave in 2016, one of the highest Leave votes in the country.

    If Labour are able to still hold Hartlepool therefore that will be a big boost to Starmer and a blow to Boris as it will show working class Leave voters are returning to their traditional Labour allegience in the Red Wall now Brexit has been delivered
    No HYUFD. LAB is a nailed on hold in Hartlepool. No comfort for LAB at all. Maybe if they win by 30%.
    Yougov today has the Tories on 68% with Leave voters and Labour on just 12%, compared to a UK wide Tory total of 41% to 34% for Labour.

    So if Labour hold Hartlepool, a seat which was 69% Leave it would suggest Starmer is doing far better with Leave voters than the polling suggests

    https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/jeby9n4ffe/TheTimes_Voting_Intention_Track_210408_W.pdf
    Or national macro polling figures don't apply evenly across the nation even to micro areas. That 12% Labour isn't evenly distributed and Hartlepool is somewhere it is more heavily distributed.

    Your logic is like saying that because of the small percentage of Lib Dem votes, no individual seat could ever go Lib Dem. Patently untrue.
    It was only the high Brexit Party vote in Hartlepool in 2019 which stopped it going Tory, that is the point
    Without the Brexit Party the high Brexit vote may have been neverTories and gone Labour, or not voted, in 2019. No reason to assume it was Tory if Brexit didn't exist.

    If they wanted to vote to Get Brexit Done, they had the option to do so. They chose not to.
    If Labour holds Hartlepool because Brexit Party voters return to it then that would also be a boost to Starmer, he would be winning over Leave voting Brexit Party voters from 2019 as well as the Remain voting LD 2019 voters he has won over.

    Even if he has not won over barely any 2019 Tory voters, Labour would still win a number of Tory held seats on such a swing
    No election until 2024. LAB have to be winning everywhere big at the local elections to have credibility for 2024. It's not happening.
    Labour isn't doing very well right now. Partly that's Starmer's fault. Partly it's events.

    Boris Johnson's government has gotten vaccines absolutely right, and they deserve credit. Not only that, but the elections are happening at just the right time for the government - restrictions are being lifted, the weather is improving, people are going outside and normality is returning.

    Now, yes, I would be more aggressive in relaxing restrictions. But I understand their caution. Like everyone else, I am keen to avoid a yoyoing restrictions and the slow pace of relaxation is just a reaction to that.

    Back on topic. Boris Johnson's government is deservedly popular now. But who knows what things - good, bad or ugly - will happen in the next three years. Things move quickly. The LibDems went from second place in the European elections and 20% in the polls, to losing seats over the space of about four months.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,586
    "The term 'outs' could be used instead of 'wickets' when The Hundred launches this summer.

    The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is discussing the idea as one of the ways to potentially make cricket more accessible to newcomers.

    But the governing body is not looking to completely replace terms."

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/56724330
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,930
    Andy_JS said:

    "The term 'outs' could be used instead of 'wickets' when The Hundred launches this summer.

    The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is discussing the idea as one of the ways to potentially make cricket more accessible to newcomers.

    But the governing body is not looking to completely replace terms."

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/56724330

    Utterly ridiculous. They are two words, "out" or "wicket". One does not make the sport more inclusive.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    rcs1000 said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    Re: Hartlepool, cannot claim any expertise beyond actually having spent maybe 15 minutes there over 20 years ago.

    However, that will NOT stop me from sharing my learned commentary!

    On the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where Democrats have dominated the legislature since the Eisenhower Administration, but where voters regularly elect Republicans as Governor, for example Mitt Romney and current incumbent Charlie Baker (reportedly poised to launch a bid for US Senate).

    Somewhat similar to how Harlepool has a Conservative mayor?

    Another possible comparison in another quarter, is fact that (based on a map I saw days ago) the Social Democrats in Germany currently control quite a few local city & district councils, including in wide swaths of the country where they have done (and apparently still are doing) far less well in state AND federal elections.

    So whither the Harlepool by-election? So far still in lap o' the gods territory.

    On general recent GE polling: Labour hold - they are doing better than at the GE when they held it.
    On constituency polling (1 small one): Tory win, but allowing for usual margin of error it could be between very close and biggish Tory win.
    So it all depends on GOTV and the split of former Brexit votes (lots of them). The small poll suggests that former Brexit voters are not returning to Labour, but you have to ask if will they turn out at all.
    Labour candidate doesn't seem stellar.
    Conclusion: Personally I think Labour narrow hold but on the evidence it looks about 60/40 in favour of the Tories.

    By and large everyone is predicting that their party will lose. A good sign that no-one has a clue? However the thought that Labour are playing down the significance of losing (which in truth is of course enormous) suggests it may be worse for them than I am suggesting. I should think they have a decent idea. The Tories will say nothing in advance as they have nothing to lose.
    I have put a lot into this and I'm calling a Tory win.

    But I disagree with the significance of that being enormous. Not now. It would have gone Tory at the GE but for the BXP vote and the GE was not long ago. The Cons have delivered a good hard Brexit and we are coming out of the pandemic thanks to vaccines for which the government is getting the credit. These things outweigh the electoral benefit to Labour of not having Corbyn. Starmer has not yet cut through. He's a neutral at best. Johnson OTOH is an asset.

    No, this is a Tory seat right now. It's the capital of WWC Leave. The Tories own that demographic. They will win it. Perhaps quite easily. The greater genuine significance is if I'm wrong and they don't. If Labour hold on. That would tell us that they are not quite as doomed longer term - eg for GE24 - as many are thinking.

    See, some people DO have a clue. ☺
    Although the notion that the Tories will win at a canter does rather rest on the 2019 BXP vote (a) bothering to turn out and (b) breaking heavily for the Conservatives if they do. Motivation to vote in the first place seems like the greater issue.

    I'm sticking to a modest Labour win on a very low turnout. But we shall know the truth of it soon enough.
    Assuming the Brexit Party vote goes Tory then it should be an easy Tory win, in 2019 the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote was 55%, even higher the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote of 46% across the UK as a whole.

    Hartlepool was also 69.6% Leave in 2016, one of the highest Leave votes in the country.

    If Labour are able to still hold Hartlepool therefore that will be a big boost to Starmer and a blow to Boris as it will show working class Leave voters are returning to their traditional Labour allegience in the Red Wall now Brexit has been delivered
    No HYUFD. LAB is a nailed on hold in Hartlepool. No comfort for LAB at all. Maybe if they win by 30%.
    Yougov today has the Tories on 68% with Leave voters and Labour on just 12%, compared to a UK wide Tory total of 41% to 34% for Labour.

    So if Labour hold Hartlepool, a seat which was 69% Leave it would suggest Starmer is doing far better with Leave voters than the polling suggests

    https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/jeby9n4ffe/TheTimes_Voting_Intention_Track_210408_W.pdf
    Or national macro polling figures don't apply evenly across the nation even to micro areas. That 12% Labour isn't evenly distributed and Hartlepool is somewhere it is more heavily distributed.

    Your logic is like saying that because of the small percentage of Lib Dem votes, no individual seat could ever go Lib Dem. Patently untrue.
    It was only the high Brexit Party vote in Hartlepool in 2019 which stopped it going Tory, that is the point
    Without the Brexit Party the high Brexit vote may have been neverTories and gone Labour, or not voted, in 2019. No reason to assume it was Tory if Brexit didn't exist.

    If they wanted to vote to Get Brexit Done, they had the option to do so. They chose not to.
    If Labour holds Hartlepool because Brexit Party voters return to it then that would also be a boost to Starmer, he would be winning over Leave voting Brexit Party voters from 2019 as well as the Remain voting LD 2019 voters he has won over.

    Even if he has not won over barely any 2019 Tory voters, Labour would still win a number of Tory held seats on such a swing
    No election until 2024. LAB have to be winning everywhere big at the local elections to have credibility for 2024. It's not happening.
    Labour isn't doing very well right now. Partly that's Starmer's fault. Partly it's events.

    Boris Johnson's government has gotten vaccines absolutely right, and they deserve credit. Not only that, but the elections are happening at just the right time for the government - restrictions are being lifted, the weather is improving, people are going outside and normality is returning.

    Now, yes, I would be more aggressive in relaxing restrictions. But I understand their caution. Like everyone else, I am keen to avoid a yoyoing restrictions and the slow pace of relaxation is just a reaction to that.

    Back on topic. Boris Johnson's government is deservedly popular now. But who knows what things - good, bad or ugly - will happen in the next three years. Things move quickly. The LibDems went from second place in the European elections and 20% in the polls, to losing seats over the space of about four months.
    To be fair the European Elections were always a joke at the best of times.

    Though surely its just as noteworthy that the Tories went from fifth in the European Parliament elections, with 8.8% of the vote, to winning an 80 seat majority and 45% of the vote.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,692
    RobD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "The term 'outs' could be used instead of 'wickets' when The Hundred launches this summer.

    The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is discussing the idea as one of the ways to potentially make cricket more accessible to newcomers.

    But the governing body is not looking to completely replace terms."

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/56724330

    Utterly ridiculous. They are two words, "out" or "wicket". One does not make the sport more inclusive.
    Perhaps they want to attract the monosyllabic community.
  • justin124justin124 Posts: 11,527
    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    Re: Hartlepool, cannot claim any expertise beyond actually having spent maybe 15 minutes there over 20 years ago.

    However, that will NOT stop me from sharing my learned commentary!

    On the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where Democrats have dominated the legislature since the Eisenhower Administration, but where voters regularly elect Republicans as Governor, for example Mitt Romney and current incumbent Charlie Baker (reportedly poised to launch a bid for US Senate).

    Somewhat similar to how Harlepool has a Conservative mayor?

    Another possible comparison in another quarter, is fact that (based on a map I saw days ago) the Social Democrats in Germany currently control quite a few local city & district councils, including in wide swaths of the country where they have done (and apparently still are doing) far less well in state AND federal elections.

    So whither the Harlepool by-election? So far still in lap o' the gods territory.

    On general recent GE polling: Labour hold - they are doing better than at the GE when they held it.
    On constituency polling (1 small one): Tory win, but allowing for usual margin of error it could be between very close and biggish Tory win.
    So it all depends on GOTV and the split of former Brexit votes (lots of them). The small poll suggests that former Brexit voters are not returning to Labour, but you have to ask if will they turn out at all.
    Labour candidate doesn't seem stellar.
    Conclusion: Personally I think Labour narrow hold but on the evidence it looks about 60/40 in favour of the Tories.

    By and large everyone is predicting that their party will lose. A good sign that no-one has a clue? However the thought that Labour are playing down the significance of losing (which in truth is of course enormous) suggests it may be worse for them than I am suggesting. I should think they have a decent idea. The Tories will say nothing in advance as they have nothing to lose.
    I have put a lot into this and I'm calling a Tory win.

    But I disagree with the significance of that being enormous. Not now. It would have gone Tory at the GE but for the BXP vote and the GE was not long ago. The Cons have delivered a good hard Brexit and we are coming out of the pandemic thanks to vaccines for which the government is getting the credit. These things outweigh the electoral benefit to Labour of not having Corbyn. Starmer has not yet cut through. He's a neutral at best. Johnson OTOH is an asset.

    No, this is a Tory seat right now. It's the capital of WWC Leave. The Tories own that demographic. They will win it. Perhaps quite easily. The greater genuine significance is if I'm wrong and they don't. If Labour hold on. That would tell us that they are not quite as doomed longer term - eg for GE24 - as many are thinking.

    See, some people DO have a clue. ☺
    It would imply a Tory lead in the national polls in excess of 20%.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,930
    justin124 said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    Re: Hartlepool, cannot claim any expertise beyond actually having spent maybe 15 minutes there over 20 years ago.

    However, that will NOT stop me from sharing my learned commentary!

    On the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where Democrats have dominated the legislature since the Eisenhower Administration, but where voters regularly elect Republicans as Governor, for example Mitt Romney and current incumbent Charlie Baker (reportedly poised to launch a bid for US Senate).

    Somewhat similar to how Harlepool has a Conservative mayor?

    Another possible comparison in another quarter, is fact that (based on a map I saw days ago) the Social Democrats in Germany currently control quite a few local city & district councils, including in wide swaths of the country where they have done (and apparently still are doing) far less well in state AND federal elections.

    So whither the Harlepool by-election? So far still in lap o' the gods territory.

    On general recent GE polling: Labour hold - they are doing better than at the GE when they held it.
    On constituency polling (1 small one): Tory win, but allowing for usual margin of error it could be between very close and biggish Tory win.
    So it all depends on GOTV and the split of former Brexit votes (lots of them). The small poll suggests that former Brexit voters are not returning to Labour, but you have to ask if will they turn out at all.
    Labour candidate doesn't seem stellar.
    Conclusion: Personally I think Labour narrow hold but on the evidence it looks about 60/40 in favour of the Tories.

    By and large everyone is predicting that their party will lose. A good sign that no-one has a clue? However the thought that Labour are playing down the significance of losing (which in truth is of course enormous) suggests it may be worse for them than I am suggesting. I should think they have a decent idea. The Tories will say nothing in advance as they have nothing to lose.
    I have put a lot into this and I'm calling a Tory win.

    But I disagree with the significance of that being enormous. Not now. It would have gone Tory at the GE but for the BXP vote and the GE was not long ago. The Cons have delivered a good hard Brexit and we are coming out of the pandemic thanks to vaccines for which the government is getting the credit. These things outweigh the electoral benefit to Labour of not having Corbyn. Starmer has not yet cut through. He's a neutral at best. Johnson OTOH is an asset.

    No, this is a Tory seat right now. It's the capital of WWC Leave. The Tories own that demographic. They will win it. Perhaps quite easily. The greater genuine significance is if I'm wrong and they don't. If Labour hold on. That would tell us that they are not quite as doomed longer term - eg for GE24 - as many are thinking.

    See, some people DO have a clue. ☺
    It would imply a Tory lead in the national polls in excess of 20%.
    What assumptions go into that, UNS? I don't think it's that straightforward given the other parties.
  • justin124justin124 Posts: 11,527
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    Re: Hartlepool, cannot claim any expertise beyond actually having spent maybe 15 minutes there over 20 years ago.

    However, that will NOT stop me from sharing my learned commentary!

    On the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where Democrats have dominated the legislature since the Eisenhower Administration, but where voters regularly elect Republicans as Governor, for example Mitt Romney and current incumbent Charlie Baker (reportedly poised to launch a bid for US Senate).

    Somewhat similar to how Harlepool has a Conservative mayor?

    Another possible comparison in another quarter, is fact that (based on a map I saw days ago) the Social Democrats in Germany currently control quite a few local city & district councils, including in wide swaths of the country where they have done (and apparently still are doing) far less well in state AND federal elections.

    So whither the Harlepool by-election? So far still in lap o' the gods territory.

    On general recent GE polling: Labour hold - they are doing better than at the GE when they held it.
    On constituency polling (1 small one): Tory win, but allowing for usual margin of error it could be between very close and biggish Tory win.
    So it all depends on GOTV and the split of former Brexit votes (lots of them). The small poll suggests that former Brexit voters are not returning to Labour, but you have to ask if will they turn out at all.
    Labour candidate doesn't seem stellar.
    Conclusion: Personally I think Labour narrow hold but on the evidence it looks about 60/40 in favour of the Tories.

    By and large everyone is predicting that their party will lose. A good sign that no-one has a clue? However the thought that Labour are playing down the significance of losing (which in truth is of course enormous) suggests it may be worse for them than I am suggesting. I should think they have a decent idea. The Tories will say nothing in advance as they have nothing to lose.
    I have put a lot into this and I'm calling a Tory win.

    But I disagree with the significance of that being enormous. Not now. It would have gone Tory at the GE but for the BXP vote and the GE was not long ago. The Cons have delivered a good hard Brexit and we are coming out of the pandemic thanks to vaccines for which the government is getting the credit. These things outweigh the electoral benefit to Labour of not having Corbyn. Starmer has not yet cut through. He's a neutral at best. Johnson OTOH is an asset.

    No, this is a Tory seat right now. It's the capital of WWC Leave. The Tories own that demographic. They will win it. Perhaps quite easily. The greater genuine significance is if I'm wrong and they don't. If Labour hold on. That would tell us that they are not quite as doomed longer term - eg for GE24 - as many are thinking.

    See, some people DO have a clue. ☺
    Although the notion that the Tories will win at a canter does rather rest on the 2019 BXP vote (a) bothering to turn out and (b) breaking heavily for the Conservatives if they do. Motivation to vote in the first place seems like the greater issue.

    I'm sticking to a modest Labour win on a very low turnout. But we shall know the truth of it soon enough.
    Assuming the Brexit Party vote goes Tory then it should be an easy Tory win, in 2019 the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote was 55%, even higher the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote of 46% across the UK as a whole.

    Hartlepool was also 69.6% Leave in 2016, one of the highest Leave votes in the country.

    If Labour are able to still hold Hartlepool therefore that will be a big boost to Starmer and a blow to Boris as it will show working class Leave voters are returning to their traditional Labour allegience in the Red Wall now Brexit has been delivered
    No HYUFD. LAB is a nailed on hold in Hartlepool. No comfort for LAB at all. Maybe if they win by 30%.
    Yougov today has the Tories on 68% with Leave voters and Labour on just 12%, compared to a UK wide Tory total of 41% to 34% for Labour.

    So if Labour hold Hartlepool, a seat which was 69% Leave it would suggest Starmer is doing far better with Leave voters than the polling suggests

    https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/jeby9n4ffe/TheTimes_Voting_Intention_Track_210408_W.pdf
    Or national macro polling figures don't apply evenly across the nation even to micro areas. That 12% Labour isn't evenly distributed and Hartlepool is somewhere it is more heavily distributed.

    Your logic is like saying that because of the small percentage of Lib Dem votes, no individual seat could ever go Lib Dem. Patently untrue.
    It was only the high Brexit Party vote in Hartlepool in 2019 which stopped it going Tory, that is the point
    That is far from clear. In 2017 it was widely assumed that the substantial 2015 Ukip vote would switch en bloc to the Tories. In many seats that did not happen - indeed the withdrawal of Ukip candidates often helped Labour.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    justin124 said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    Re: Hartlepool, cannot claim any expertise beyond actually having spent maybe 15 minutes there over 20 years ago.

    However, that will NOT stop me from sharing my learned commentary!

    On the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where Democrats have dominated the legislature since the Eisenhower Administration, but where voters regularly elect Republicans as Governor, for example Mitt Romney and current incumbent Charlie Baker (reportedly poised to launch a bid for US Senate).

    Somewhat similar to how Harlepool has a Conservative mayor?

    Another possible comparison in another quarter, is fact that (based on a map I saw days ago) the Social Democrats in Germany currently control quite a few local city & district councils, including in wide swaths of the country where they have done (and apparently still are doing) far less well in state AND federal elections.

    So whither the Harlepool by-election? So far still in lap o' the gods territory.

    On general recent GE polling: Labour hold - they are doing better than at the GE when they held it.
    On constituency polling (1 small one): Tory win, but allowing for usual margin of error it could be between very close and biggish Tory win.
    So it all depends on GOTV and the split of former Brexit votes (lots of them). The small poll suggests that former Brexit voters are not returning to Labour, but you have to ask if will they turn out at all.
    Labour candidate doesn't seem stellar.
    Conclusion: Personally I think Labour narrow hold but on the evidence it looks about 60/40 in favour of the Tories.

    By and large everyone is predicting that their party will lose. A good sign that no-one has a clue? However the thought that Labour are playing down the significance of losing (which in truth is of course enormous) suggests it may be worse for them than I am suggesting. I should think they have a decent idea. The Tories will say nothing in advance as they have nothing to lose.
    I have put a lot into this and I'm calling a Tory win.

    But I disagree with the significance of that being enormous. Not now. It would have gone Tory at the GE but for the BXP vote and the GE was not long ago. The Cons have delivered a good hard Brexit and we are coming out of the pandemic thanks to vaccines for which the government is getting the credit. These things outweigh the electoral benefit to Labour of not having Corbyn. Starmer has not yet cut through. He's a neutral at best. Johnson OTOH is an asset.

    No, this is a Tory seat right now. It's the capital of WWC Leave. The Tories own that demographic. They will win it. Perhaps quite easily. The greater genuine significance is if I'm wrong and they don't. If Labour hold on. That would tell us that they are not quite as doomed longer term - eg for GE24 - as many are thinking.

    See, some people DO have a clue. ☺
    Although the notion that the Tories will win at a canter does rather rest on the 2019 BXP vote (a) bothering to turn out and (b) breaking heavily for the Conservatives if they do. Motivation to vote in the first place seems like the greater issue.

    I'm sticking to a modest Labour win on a very low turnout. But we shall know the truth of it soon enough.
    Assuming the Brexit Party vote goes Tory then it should be an easy Tory win, in 2019 the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote was 55%, even higher the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote of 46% across the UK as a whole.

    Hartlepool was also 69.6% Leave in 2016, one of the highest Leave votes in the country.

    If Labour are able to still hold Hartlepool therefore that will be a big boost to Starmer and a blow to Boris as it will show working class Leave voters are returning to their traditional Labour allegience in the Red Wall now Brexit has been delivered
    No HYUFD. LAB is a nailed on hold in Hartlepool. No comfort for LAB at all. Maybe if they win by 30%.
    Yougov today has the Tories on 68% with Leave voters and Labour on just 12%, compared to a UK wide Tory total of 41% to 34% for Labour.

    So if Labour hold Hartlepool, a seat which was 69% Leave it would suggest Starmer is doing far better with Leave voters than the polling suggests

    https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/jeby9n4ffe/TheTimes_Voting_Intention_Track_210408_W.pdf
    Or national macro polling figures don't apply evenly across the nation even to micro areas. That 12% Labour isn't evenly distributed and Hartlepool is somewhere it is more heavily distributed.

    Your logic is like saying that because of the small percentage of Lib Dem votes, no individual seat could ever go Lib Dem. Patently untrue.
    It was only the high Brexit Party vote in Hartlepool in 2019 which stopped it going Tory, that is the point
    That is far from clear. In 2017 it was widely assumed that the substantial 2015 Ukip vote would switch en bloc to the Tories. In many seats that did not happen - indeed the withdrawal of Ukip candidates often helped Labour.
    Absolutely 100% correct.

    The simplistic naivety that some show in thinking BXP and Tory are interchangeable is mindboggling.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,429
    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Realtime report from the trenches of north London,


    Today felt pivotal in all ways. Like, say, Stalingrad. BUT MORE IMPORTANT

    It started off cold, grey and wintry (like almost every day this year), I went to my celebratory pub lunch with a pal in trepidation, and wearing thermals. The pub, in Highgate, had roofed over their beer garden and rigged up patio heaters for all. It was cold.

    But the buzz, as soon as you walked in, was obvious. People staring at pints - pints! - in amazement. Waiters and waitresses giggly and excited. The long expected moment, arriving, finally.

    Half a dozen fine British oysters, a plate of griddled padron peppers, some good sourdough, a thick Galician fish stew and 1 and a half bottles of Picpoul later, I can report that London is reborn. There is noise everywhere. The sun is properly out. Spring is here. The beer gardens are rocking and someone is playing the bagpipes.

    Happy Unlockdownmas, War is Over

    Why not just have a lager?
    How often does a fucking plague end?

    Lager????
    A couple then. Or bitter.

    Just that your complex, opulent choices seemed at odds with what an English public house is meant to be all about.

    To me anyway.
    I am an Englishman, an English pub is what I choose it to be. Literally

    And for me the best do fine oysters
    It's a sense of looseness and entitlement I just don't have.

    I'm austere. When I visit a pub I drink pints of beer and that's it. Maybe switch to vodka when I can take no more volume but definitely not oysters or fine wines.
    Sad. Really.

    Really sad.
    Way to be. It's authentic. That's what's most important in life.

    But anyway, time for my evening of flesh & blood activities to commence.
    That's fair, up to you

    I wonder how much of this is a faint but definite gradation by age and class.

    I am maybe 10 years younger than you AT MOST. You are northern, I am southern

    I grew up and moved to London not long before the gastropub revolution started: the Eagle, in Farringdon.

    https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/apr/19/enduring-love-30-years-of-the-great-british-gastropub

    It was supposedly the first but a few had been round before then (they just didn't nail the formula, bare chairs, handwritten menu, open kitchen)

    So I spent my formative years expecting cool new pubs to have decent food, because in London, in my 20s and 30s, they did

    Et voila
    We're about the same age and I've been in London since I was 17 so this does not explain it. No, I sense it's something more elemental and quintessentially English. The old Cavalier v Roundhead schism. A good way to understand the difference and the dynamic is to think of yourself as Michael Winner and me as Oliver Cromwell.
    Lol

    You may be right tho politically I have a soft spot for Oliver Cromwell, eg the way he deterred Saracen slavers of the Cornish - by killing the Saracens. I suspect I’d be nearer to him in opinion than you

    It is also a myth to think he was a joyless geeky Puritan (like so many on PB, it turns out). He liked wine, dance and the kissing of women.

    Also he’d have TOTALLY solved the northern Irish protocol problem
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,429

    Is it me, or has everyone who spent the last four months telling us Lockdown would never end, spent today telling us Lockdown will never end from a pub.

    https://twitter.com/DPJHodges?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author

    Made me laugh anyway.

    Yay. That’s the london I saw and heard today

    We’re BACK
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,206

    rcs1000 said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    Re: Hartlepool, cannot claim any expertise beyond actually having spent maybe 15 minutes there over 20 years ago.

    However, that will NOT stop me from sharing my learned commentary!

    On the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where Democrats have dominated the legislature since the Eisenhower Administration, but where voters regularly elect Republicans as Governor, for example Mitt Romney and current incumbent Charlie Baker (reportedly poised to launch a bid for US Senate).

    Somewhat similar to how Harlepool has a Conservative mayor?

    Another possible comparison in another quarter, is fact that (based on a map I saw days ago) the Social Democrats in Germany currently control quite a few local city & district councils, including in wide swaths of the country where they have done (and apparently still are doing) far less well in state AND federal elections.

    So whither the Harlepool by-election? So far still in lap o' the gods territory.

    On general recent GE polling: Labour hold - they are doing better than at the GE when they held it.
    On constituency polling (1 small one): Tory win, but allowing for usual margin of error it could be between very close and biggish Tory win.
    So it all depends on GOTV and the split of former Brexit votes (lots of them). The small poll suggests that former Brexit voters are not returning to Labour, but you have to ask if will they turn out at all.
    Labour candidate doesn't seem stellar.
    Conclusion: Personally I think Labour narrow hold but on the evidence it looks about 60/40 in favour of the Tories.

    By and large everyone is predicting that their party will lose. A good sign that no-one has a clue? However the thought that Labour are playing down the significance of losing (which in truth is of course enormous) suggests it may be worse for them than I am suggesting. I should think they have a decent idea. The Tories will say nothing in advance as they have nothing to lose.
    I have put a lot into this and I'm calling a Tory win.

    But I disagree with the significance of that being enormous. Not now. It would have gone Tory at the GE but for the BXP vote and the GE was not long ago. The Cons have delivered a good hard Brexit and we are coming out of the pandemic thanks to vaccines for which the government is getting the credit. These things outweigh the electoral benefit to Labour of not having Corbyn. Starmer has not yet cut through. He's a neutral at best. Johnson OTOH is an asset.

    No, this is a Tory seat right now. It's the capital of WWC Leave. The Tories own that demographic. They will win it. Perhaps quite easily. The greater genuine significance is if I'm wrong and they don't. If Labour hold on. That would tell us that they are not quite as doomed longer term - eg for GE24 - as many are thinking.

    See, some people DO have a clue. ☺
    Although the notion that the Tories will win at a canter does rather rest on the 2019 BXP vote (a) bothering to turn out and (b) breaking heavily for the Conservatives if they do. Motivation to vote in the first place seems like the greater issue.

    I'm sticking to a modest Labour win on a very low turnout. But we shall know the truth of it soon enough.
    Assuming the Brexit Party vote goes Tory then it should be an easy Tory win, in 2019 the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote was 55%, even higher the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote of 46% across the UK as a whole.

    Hartlepool was also 69.6% Leave in 2016, one of the highest Leave votes in the country.

    If Labour are able to still hold Hartlepool therefore that will be a big boost to Starmer and a blow to Boris as it will show working class Leave voters are returning to their traditional Labour allegience in the Red Wall now Brexit has been delivered
    No HYUFD. LAB is a nailed on hold in Hartlepool. No comfort for LAB at all. Maybe if they win by 30%.
    Yougov today has the Tories on 68% with Leave voters and Labour on just 12%, compared to a UK wide Tory total of 41% to 34% for Labour.

    So if Labour hold Hartlepool, a seat which was 69% Leave it would suggest Starmer is doing far better with Leave voters than the polling suggests

    https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/jeby9n4ffe/TheTimes_Voting_Intention_Track_210408_W.pdf
    Or national macro polling figures don't apply evenly across the nation even to micro areas. That 12% Labour isn't evenly distributed and Hartlepool is somewhere it is more heavily distributed.

    Your logic is like saying that because of the small percentage of Lib Dem votes, no individual seat could ever go Lib Dem. Patently untrue.
    It was only the high Brexit Party vote in Hartlepool in 2019 which stopped it going Tory, that is the point
    Without the Brexit Party the high Brexit vote may have been neverTories and gone Labour, or not voted, in 2019. No reason to assume it was Tory if Brexit didn't exist.

    If they wanted to vote to Get Brexit Done, they had the option to do so. They chose not to.
    If Labour holds Hartlepool because Brexit Party voters return to it then that would also be a boost to Starmer, he would be winning over Leave voting Brexit Party voters from 2019 as well as the Remain voting LD 2019 voters he has won over.

    Even if he has not won over barely any 2019 Tory voters, Labour would still win a number of Tory held seats on such a swing
    No election until 2024. LAB have to be winning everywhere big at the local elections to have credibility for 2024. It's not happening.
    Labour isn't doing very well right now. Partly that's Starmer's fault. Partly it's events.

    Boris Johnson's government has gotten vaccines absolutely right, and they deserve credit. Not only that, but the elections are happening at just the right time for the government - restrictions are being lifted, the weather is improving, people are going outside and normality is returning.

    Now, yes, I would be more aggressive in relaxing restrictions. But I understand their caution. Like everyone else, I am keen to avoid a yoyoing restrictions and the slow pace of relaxation is just a reaction to that.

    Back on topic. Boris Johnson's government is deservedly popular now. But who knows what things - good, bad or ugly - will happen in the next three years. Things move quickly. The LibDems went from second place in the European elections and 20% in the polls, to losing seats over the space of about four months.
    To be fair the European Elections were always a joke at the best of times.

    Though surely its just as noteworthy that the Tories went from fifth in the European Parliament elections, with 8.8% of the vote, to winning an 80 seat majority and 45% of the vote.
    Yes, that's a much better example.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,692
    Nikki Haley says she won't run in 2024 if Trump does and she will support him.

    https://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP/status/1381705335505879044
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,429
    The UK was overtaken by Italy in deaths per million today, per Worldometer

    That means we are 13th, behind Italy, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Czechia...
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,586
    edited April 2021
    Leon said:

    The UK was overtaken by Italy in deaths per million today, per Worldometer

    That means we are 13th, behind Italy, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Czechia...

    And we were already in 16th place on the Economist's excess deaths table on 9th March. Regrettably they haven't updated it since then, but we must be a lot further down the table by now.

    https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker
  • swing_voterswing_voter Posts: 1,464
    "this is a Tory seat right now. It's the capital of WWC Leave. The Tories own that demographic. They will win it. Perhaps quite easily. The greater genuine significance is if I'm wrong and they don't. If Labour hold on. That would tell us that they are not quite as doomed longer term - eg for GE24 - as many are thinking".....

    Brave words indeed..... not sure it is the capital of WWC leave- more an anti London Labour vote than a passionate leave seat... Tory ownership of that demographic has a short life (older white voters) and shared with NFarage and a host of other loons... looking back, UKIP only got above 3000 votes for the first time in 2015.... so my call is the BREXIT thing is shortlived in Hartlepool... perhaps a Tory seat but not certain....
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,930

    "this is a Tory seat right now. It's the capital of WWC Leave. The Tories own that demographic. They will win it. Perhaps quite easily. The greater genuine significance is if I'm wrong and they don't. If Labour hold on. That would tell us that they are not quite as doomed longer term - eg for GE24 - as many are thinking".....

    Brave words indeed..... not sure it is the capital of WWC leave- more an anti London Labour vote than a passionate leave seat... Tory ownership of that demographic has a short life (older white voters) and shared with NFarage and a host of other loons... looking back, UKIP only got above 3000 votes for the first time in 2015.... so my call is the BREXIT thing is shortlived in Hartlepool... perhaps a Tory seat but not certain....

    Older white voters? Hasn't this been the claim for decades, that the Tory vote is dying off?
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,586
    ""Who would make best Prime Minister?"

    Middle-class
    Keir Starmer 36%
    Boris Johnson 32%

    Working-class
    Keir Starmer 20%
    Boris Johnson 38%

    YouGov April 8"

    https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1381633614836809729
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,429
    Something to be genuinely proud of


    https://twitter.com/scottgottliebmd/status/1381778389959331841?s=21


    The percent of people vaccinated for Covid in the U.K. with at least one dose, by age bracket (the U.K. will soon be extending eligibility to those ages 40-50)
    h/t @BevanShields

    80+: 95.2%
    75-79: 100%
    70-74: 96.9%
    65-69: 93.8%
    60-64: 96.9%
    55-59: 93.6%
    50-54: 87.0%
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,692
    Leon said:

    Something to be genuinely proud of


    https://twitter.com/scottgottliebmd/status/1381778389959331841?s=21


    The percent of people vaccinated for Covid in the U.K. with at least one dose, by age bracket (the U.K. will soon be extending eligibility to those ages 40-50)
    h/t @BevanShields

    80+: 95.2%
    75-79: 100%
    70-74: 96.9%
    65-69: 93.8%
    60-64: 96.9%
    55-59: 93.6%
    50-54: 87.0%

    I like the discussion below with Americans thinking the numbers can't possibly be real. :)
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,598
    edited April 2021
    Leon said:

    Something to be genuinely proud of


    https://twitter.com/scottgottliebmd/status/1381778389959331841?s=21


    The percent of people vaccinated for Covid in the U.K. with at least one dose, by age bracket (the U.K. will soon be extending eligibility to those ages 40-50)
    h/t @BevanShields

    80+: 95.2%
    75-79: 100%
    70-74: 96.9%
    65-69: 93.8%
    60-64: 96.9%
    55-59: 93.6%
    50-54: 87.0%

    Big hand for the SW - given almost everyone here seems to be over 50, 97% of them jabbed is pretty damned good going!

    https://twitter.com/hz_udhr/status/1381735726497345539/photo/2
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,868

    Leon said:

    Something to be genuinely proud of


    https://twitter.com/scottgottliebmd/status/1381778389959331841?s=21


    The percent of people vaccinated for Covid in the U.K. with at least one dose, by age bracket (the U.K. will soon be extending eligibility to those ages 40-50)
    h/t @BevanShields

    80+: 95.2%
    75-79: 100%
    70-74: 96.9%
    65-69: 93.8%
    60-64: 96.9%
    55-59: 93.6%
    50-54: 87.0%

    Big hand for the SW - given almost everyone here seems to be over 50, 97% of them jabbed is pretty damned good going!

    https://twitter.com/hz_udhr/status/1381735726497345539/photo/2
    That is partly because I am pretty sure the locations are based on where people are being injected rather than where they are registered. The SW has a lot of incomers, adding to the nominator and not the denominator of that calculation.
  • sladeslade Posts: 2,041
    RobD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "The term 'outs' could be used instead of 'wickets' when The Hundred launches this summer.

    The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is discussing the idea as one of the ways to potentially make cricket more accessible to newcomers.

    But the governing body is not looking to completely replace terms."

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/56724330

    Utterly ridiculous. They are two words, "out" or "wicket". One does not make the sport more inclusive.
    To be honest there are problems with the term 'wicket.' It can mean the three stumps ( as in hit wicket), it can mean the physical surface of the pitch, or the loss of the batsman's right to be 'in'.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,228

    Scott_xP said:

    @Quicktake: RT @business: DEVELOPING: Police say multiple shooting victims including an officer are reported at a Knoxville, Tennessee high s… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1381703956657758211

    It never ends - so sad
    Time for Big Joe to take his place in history and ban guns in the US. Amend the Bill of Rights.
    The Second Amendment is a typo.

    It was all about the right to arm bears but someone misheard.
    Off Topic

    Talking of arming bears I have just been reminded (The Guardian) that Prince Philip once shot a tiger.
    It is also said that one of his grandchildren shot a couple of endangered hen harriers, rather more recently.

    No prosecution - because the bodies couldn't be found on the Royal estate.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/nov/07/monarchy.wildlife
    "It was said that..."
  • Alphabet_SoupAlphabet_Soup Posts: 3,263
    slade said:

    RobD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "The term 'outs' could be used instead of 'wickets' when The Hundred launches this summer.

    The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is discussing the idea as one of the ways to potentially make cricket more accessible to newcomers.

    But the governing body is not looking to completely replace terms."

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/56724330

    Utterly ridiculous. They are two words, "out" or "wicket". One does not make the sport more inclusive.
    To be honest there are problems with the term 'wicket.' It can mean the three stumps ( as in hit wicket), it can mean the physical surface of the pitch, or the loss of the batsman's right to be 'in'.
    It also means "very good" among the Hundred target audience.
This discussion has been closed.