London is looking closer than expected, but only Lab, Con and Green are going to keep their hefty deposits. £170k being a big chunk of the cost of running the election.
Is it just me or is the constant political with a same p on Sky Sports and BT Sports getting incredibly irriating. I just want to watch the footy, but every advert break is bombarded by social media abuse, BLM, eco campaigns and no escape while watching the game as they flash up BLM banner next to the score.
Sky is now owned by Democrat shilling ComCast - not Rupert Murdoch.
I note the Kentucky Derby beat the Oscars for viewing figures in the US this year - draw your own conclusions.
Ever heard of the pause button and FF....
But sodding BT and Sky have baked this into the actual match now...Kane goes through, he scores, lets go to the replay brought to you by our campaign against online hate speech....its like the worst of US sports coverage with constant sponsorship stuff, but rather than this brought to you in association with pepsi, its their political campaign.
Not hating people really ought to be apolitical. 🤷🏻♂️
BLM is no apolitical though.
It ought to be. If everyone says it then it becomes meaningless, other than the bit everyone agrees to.
It's only political if you let one group own the phrase.
London is looking closer than expected, but only Lab, Con and Green are going to keep their hefty deposits. £170k being a big chunk of the cost of running the election.
Is it just me or is the constant political with a same p on Sky Sports and BT Sports getting incredibly irriating. I just want to watch the footy, but every advert break is bombarded by social media abuse, BLM, eco campaigns and no escape while watching the game as they flash up BLM banner next to the score.
Sky is now owned by Democrat shilling ComCast - not Rupert Murdoch.
I note the Kentucky Derby beat the Oscars for viewing figures in the US this year - draw your own conclusions.
Ever heard of the pause button and FF....
But sodding BT and Sky have baked this into the actual match now...Kane goes through, he scores, lets go to the replay brought to you by our campaign against online hate speech....its like the worst of US sports coverage with constant sponsorship stuff, but rather than this brought to you in association with pepsi, its their political campaign.
Not hating people really ought to be apolitical. 🤷🏻♂️
Their campaigns want change in government policy in social media, the environment, etc.
Glitch, the "charity" who BT have partnered with, is the lobbying group setup by a former Labour politician who aim is to change government and big tech policies.
In London, it looks as if Shaun Bailey will lose by about 44/45 to 56/55, which is a more creditable performance than seemed likely.
And would give the lie to the idea that London is lost to the blues in an ocean of woke liberalism yearning for the sunlit uphills of Angela von de Leydenland.
These jaundiced generalizations about large groups of people do tend to be nonsense, don't they?
Sadly for Labour proving only too true......
That's right, Felix. Jaundiced generalizations about large groups of people are only accurate when made by Tories.
You mean like the left description immortalised by tim of PBTories..
Afore my time. Bit of an "acid wit" by all accounts.
London is looking closer than expected, but only Lab, Con and Green are going to keep their hefty deposits. £170k being a big chunk of the cost of running the election.
I just looked up their website. Galloway appears to be using the RAF roundel. How did they let him get away with that?!
Possibly because it's not a pukka Raff roundel with the radii in equal steps. I have a feeling it was like that to begin with. Edit: But I suspect it had to be changed - perhaps to avoid royalty payments. It doesn't correspond to any of the lower visiblity variants (with narrower white rings) as seen in WW2 etc either.
Senior Tories believe @theSNP is now going to get a majority. They say #BothVotesSNP list strategy appears to have done the business
Makes no sense. In the list votes we've seen so far the SNP are down on 2016 AND they have picked up constiuency seats. Where do these "Senior Tories" think the List gain(s) are coming from?
Surprises me too. Expectation management?
Beeb feed -
David Mundell anticipates SNP majority
Former Scottish Secretary David MundellImage caption: Former Scottish Secretary David Mundell David Mundell accepts the SNP are going to win and he anticipates they will have a majority, as they will pick up some list seats. etc etc
A ludicrous statement from David Mundell. The leader of the ScotCons - @HYUFD - has made it clear that there will be NO majority for the Junts pel Si and that there will be no mandate for another referendum in Catalonia.
Owen Jones is always at his best when eviscerating the soft Left. His latest effort is a corker.
Starmer’s pitch was always relational – he was more capable than his predecessor and opponent. His team believed that by acting like the grownups in the room, like the characters in Bugsy Malone, it would all fall into place. But they bet the house on competence – a dividing line incinerated by the NHS’s successful vaccine rollout – rather than a compelling alternative vision for the country. Having lost a seat that Corbyn outperformed him in twice, it’s Starmer who looks like the less than competent politician now, with no values to compensate. Instead of pointing out what he stood against, he should have decided what he stood for. The electorate doesn’t have a clue – and increasingly, it seems, neither does he.
Is it just me or is the constant political with a same p on Sky Sports and BT Sports getting incredibly irriating. I just want to watch the footy, but every advert break is bombarded by social media abuse, BLM, eco campaigns and no escape while watching the game as they flash up BLM banner next to the score.
Sky is now owned by Democrat shilling ComCast - not Rupert Murdoch.
I note the Kentucky Derby beat the Oscars for viewing figures in the US this year - draw your own conclusions.
Ever heard of the pause button and FF....
But sodding BT and Sky have baked this into the actual match now...Kane goes through, he scores, lets go to the replay brought to you by our campaign against online hate speech....its like the worst of US sports coverage with constant sponsorship stuff, but rather than this brought to you in association with pepsi, its their political campaign.
Not hating people really ought to be apolitical. 🤷🏻♂️
Their campaigns want change in government policy in social media, the environment, etc.
Only if you let extremists own the phrase. Its the same as abandoning the flag to fascists.
If everyone says black lives matter then all it means is that black lives matter.
Trivial to identify Labour's problems as he does. Coming up with plausible, workable, pragmatic solutions to them would be far more interesting, and challenging.
In simple terms Con are now Leave and Lab are now Remain - the leaders of the parties were the main faces of Leave and the ‘Peoples Vote’ after all. Hartlepool seems to indicate that Leavers who were formerly Lab voters don’t mind voting Tory now, & Labour are doing well in southern Remain areas.
I guess the big problem for Labour, if the it is true that voters are staying with their Brexit vote rather than their traditional party, is that Leave won roughly 64% of parliamentary constituencies according to Hanretty, so the Tories have an inbuilt advantage while that stays relevant.
It’s probably true to say it was Starmer’s Brexit policy, a second referendum in which Labour would campaign for Remain, that lost the Red Wall rather than anti Corbyn sentiment, now we know for sure that Leave areas don’t vote for Sir Keir’s Corbyn-less Labour
Whilst there is still a strong leave identity, there really isnt a strong remain one. Brexit is done. All I ask is the government gets credit/blame for how it turns out and doesnt seek to blame it on others. Remain is a terrible place for Labour to build from compared to say workers, or even current under 50s.
This is at the heart of the problem imo. The Leave identity is bigger AND stronger AND more unified than Remain. The Tories own it and until this changes will be a bugger to remove from power under FPTP.
That's only the case so long as people care about the Leave identity and not some other Big Idea that they care about more.
However Keir is Idea-free.
Yes, the crumbling of the Leave identity (or at least the Con ownership of it) is a pre-requisite for the next GE being competitive. I'm hopeful. Either Starmer will step up post pandemic or he'll be replaced in summer next year by someone who can.
The leave identity won't crumble though, Labour needs to get on board with being a brexit cheerleader. It needs to start welcoming independent trade deals and make whatever number of pledges necessary to not reopen the existing brexit deal.
Labour simply isn't trusted not to sell out brexit as soon as they get power in tandem with the SNP. I know more leave voters than you and all of them suspect that Starmer will sign us up to the single market and customs union within a year of becoming PM. He was remainer and mischief maker in chief from 2016-2020 literally until the day we left the EU. He was the guy who pivoted Labour from Corbyn's "deliver a Labour brexit" idea to proposing a second referendum in 2019. Leave voters have long memories and Labour is tainted from the 2016-2019 brexit blocking shenanigans instigated by their current leader.
The Labour pivot to Ref2 wasn't about Starmer. It was forced by the membership and by a realpolitik imperative - to mitigate the risk of being eclipsed by the LDs if they were left to swim the "stop Brexit" lane alone.
I take your general point that Labour will continue to struggle with Leavers if they don't embrace the future outside the EU. I think they'll be able to do that whilst advocating closer ties (so long as the dreaded free movement is not a part of it.)
But Labour's core support are not Leavers and this will not be changing. They have to retain and expand their Remainer vote and at the same time win back enough Leavers to get competitive. A difficult task, whoever the leader is.
At heart is Labour’s desperation (or determination) to hang onto its position as sole opposition party and hence reject pluralist politics.
Strategically, they’d have been better to let the LibDems take what they could from the Tories in areas that Labour is unlikely ever to win, as Blair did.
The biggest question for Labour over coming years is whether it will embrace pluralism, and co-operation with other centre left parties, or whether it will continue to search for a formula that will somehow deliver 45% of the vote for them alone (and even with that, a majority requires that other parties mop up another 15% of the vote)
Looks like it's worked to me. Nicola has destroyed Alba, whereas if SNP voters had second voted for Alba there'd be dozens of extra pro independence MSPs.
London is looking closer than expected, but only Lab, Con and Green are going to keep their hefty deposits. £170k being a big chunk of the cost of running the election.
Once the Celtic scroungers have all gone the English will soon realise that Labour are completely unelectable and as nature abhors a vacumn, we will see a complete realignment of politics. An independent Scotland will no doubt go back to voting Labour but with nobody left to subsidise them....
I can't agree with the use of the term "Celtic Scroungers" but I agree with the second point. The loss of the Scottish block has meant that Labour will never govern on its own again in my opinion.
Really? Ninety years after independence we still had to bail out Ireland.
On a potential Scottish referendum. will we soon be in a position that Johnston is arguing against but hoping that his hand is forced and Sturgeon is arguing for but hoping that it is blocked?
It is absolutely in the best interests of the Greens and SNP for the referendum mandate to be blocked by Westminster. You'll get an immediate big spike in support for independence so that when it does happen it won't even be close.
Looks like it's worked to me. Nicola has destroyed Alba, whereas if SNP voters had second voted for Alba there'd be dozens of extra pro independence MSPs.
Even if Nicola has stormed it on the list she won't get more seats.
(1) Her list vote will almost certainly be lower than her constituency vote (2) her consistency vote is only 47% this time, as opposed to 46.5% last time (3) she'll take 60-62 of the 73 available constituency seats, meaning her scope for top-ups is very small with a minority vote share (4) she can only really get top-ups in the South of Scotland, or in Highlands & Islands, and only 2-3 at that.
If everything went right she might just be able to squeeze 65 but that's a stretch.
He might mean that there will be a nationalist majority, or he might mean it's "worked" in the sense it's locked out Alba, or he might just be talking bollocks for the reasons @Theuniondivvie says.
Mr. Fishing, aye. Labour dicking about with the constitutional arrangement because they complacently thought they'd have Celtic fiefdoms forever has not been a great success for either the integrity of the UK or the electoral prospects of the Labour Party.
They were afraid of the nationalists and hoped it would solve the issue.
The history of New Labour was them being too clever by half, and it backfiring badly:
- Scottish devolution - dodgy dossiers - financial regulation - mass immigration to "rub the right's noses in diversity" - allowing a house price boom to placate middle England but pricing the young out of the market - letting Northern Irish terrorists turn into gangsters to keep them quiet
etc etc etc.
Unfortunately for the country, they were not nearly as clever as they thought they were.
One of the main advantages to Scotland falling off would be to kick the faltering Labour Party's walking stick away. How soon we forget 2017! We came within a hair's breadth of having Prime Minister Corbyn propped up by the SNP. The best insurance against a future far left Government in England: get shot of the Scottish MPs.
Of course, you could argue that if we had an English Parliament, equity would be restored to the Union and an accommodation between a Labour minority and Scottish nationalism at UK level wouldn't be half so destructive. But we're not getting an English Parliament, so we must deal with the reality of things as they are. Separation is therefore best for everyone, except Labour which richly deserves to suffer the consequences of the hubristic imbecility of Blair, Brown, Dewar and all the rest of them.
The Labour Party killed Britain. It deserves to be thrown into the grave along with it.
Elections fact for today: In 2015 David Cameron’s Conservatives won the UK election with a manifesto commitment to hold a Brexit Referendum. They went onto deliver on that pledge. They did so having won 36.9% of the vote. https://twitter.com/AndrewWilson/status/1390953859078569984
I think this article is absolutely bang on, not a foot wrong. The SNP have to argue for a referendum and use Brexit as leverage to create grievance but if they ever got the referendum they'd be screwed.
Is it just me or is the constant political with a same p on Sky Sports and BT Sports getting incredibly irriating. I just want to watch the footy, but every advert break is bombarded by social media abuse, BLM, eco campaigns and no escape while watching the game as they flash up BLM banner next to the score.
Sky is now owned by Democrat shilling ComCast - not Rupert Murdoch.
I note the Kentucky Derby beat the Oscars for viewing figures in the US this year - draw your own conclusions.
Ever heard of the pause button and FF....
But sodding BT and Sky have baked this into the actual match now...Kane goes through, he scores, lets go to the replay brought to you by our campaign against online hate speech....its like the worst of US sports coverage with constant sponsorship stuff, but rather than this brought to you in association with pepsi, its their political campaign.
Not hating people really ought to be apolitical. 🤷🏻♂️
Their campaigns want change in government policy in social media, the environment, etc.
Only if you let extremists own the phrase. Its the same as abandoning the flag to fascists.
If everyone says black lives matter then all it means is that black lives matter.
As i said, BT partnered with Glitch. Its a lobby group who aim to change the laws around social media and setup by a politician.
Sky eco campaign want change in world government policies.
London is looking closer than expected, but only Lab, Con and Green are going to keep their hefty deposits. £170k being a big chunk of the cost of running the election.
Curtice says, if all the stars aligned the SNP might hit 65 seats, but they probably won't, and Alba is in the zone where they are doing damage to the SNP list rather than adding to a nationalist majority.
Also, the Greens seem to be slightly underperforming the 10% in the polls:
Owen Jones is always at his best when eviscerating the soft Left. His latest effort is a corker.
Starmer’s pitch was always relational – he was more capable than his predecessor and opponent. His team believed that by acting like the grownups in the room, like the characters in Bugsy Malone, it would all fall into place. But they bet the house on competence – a dividing line incinerated by the NHS’s successful vaccine rollout – rather than a compelling alternative vision for the country. Having lost a seat that Corbyn outperformed him in twice, it’s Starmer who looks like the less than competent politician now, with no values to compensate. Instead of pointing out what he stood against, he should have decided what he stood for. The electorate doesn’t have a clue – and increasingly, it seems, neither does he.
I just looked up their website. Galloway appears to be using the RAF roundel. How did they let him get away with that?!
Possibly because it's not a pukka Raff roundel with the radii in equal steps. I have a feeling it was like that to begin with. Edit: But I suspect it had to be changed - perhaps to avoid royalty payments. It doesn't correspond to any of the lower visiblity variants (with narrower white rings) as seen in WW2 etc either.
Fair point. Might be a hard thing to trade mark, because other roundels exist, so it may be that as you say the RAF has to go super specific.
Once the Celtic scroungers have all gone the English will soon realise that Labour are completely unelectable and as nature abhors a vacumn, we will see a complete realignment of politics. An independent Scotland will no doubt go back to voting Labour but with nobody left to subsidise them....
I wonder if, in the end, what the SNP represents is the world's biggest and best organised protection racket. It works along the lines of 'nice little union you have got there, be a shame if anything happened to it.'
They work it so well. Notice how the SNP's share is always big enough to be a massive threat, but not quite big enough for the government in Westminster to say 'its a fair cop, its clear you want to leave, we have to give you independence now'
Westminster is still in the game, just, always.
The only reason why is the Scots want to know how big a jockgeld Johnson is prepared to pay. Looks like its going to be pretty big.
That figure is a drect result of the Labour-LD gerrymkandering of the Scottish Parliament. Of course it is going to be borderline, it was designed that way.
If by "gerrymandering" you mean making sure that minority views get some representation, then I think the answer must be yes. And a good thing too.
Up until now, "gerrymandering" used to mean rigging the boundaries in order that some points of view might get even more representation than they deserve. A bad thing. And what you get to some extent with FPTP. This is the system preferred by most Conservatives and Labourites.
London is looking closer than expected, but only Lab, Con and Green are going to keep their hefty deposits. £170k being a big chunk of the cost of running the election.
Trivial to identify Labour's problems as he does. Coming up with plausible, workable, pragmatic solutions to them would be far more interesting, and challenging.
In simple terms Con are now Leave and Lab are now Remain - the leaders of the parties were the main faces of Leave and the ‘Peoples Vote’ after all. Hartlepool seems to indicate that Leavers who were formerly Lab voters don’t mind voting Tory now, & Labour are doing well in southern Remain areas.
I guess the big problem for Labour, if the it is true that voters are staying with their Brexit vote rather than their traditional party, is that Leave won roughly 64% of parliamentary constituencies according to Hanretty, so the Tories have an inbuilt advantage while that stays relevant.
It’s probably true to say it was Starmer’s Brexit policy, a second referendum in which Labour would campaign for Remain, that lost the Red Wall rather than anti Corbyn sentiment, now we know for sure that Leave areas don’t vote for Sir Keir’s Corbyn-less Labour
Whilst there is still a strong leave identity, there really isnt a strong remain one. Brexit is done. All I ask is the government gets credit/blame for how it turns out and doesnt seek to blame it on others. Remain is a terrible place for Labour to build from compared to say workers, or even current under 50s.
This is at the heart of the problem imo. The Leave identity is bigger AND stronger AND more unified than Remain. The Tories own it and until this changes will be a bugger to remove from power under FPTP.
That's only the case so long as people care about the Leave identity and not some other Big Idea that they care about more.
However Keir is Idea-free.
Yes, the crumbling of the Leave identity (or at least the Con ownership of it) is a pre-requisite for the next GE being competitive. I'm hopeful. Either Starmer will step up post pandemic or he'll be replaced in summer next year by someone who can.
The leave identity won't crumble though, Labour needs to get on board with being a brexit cheerleader. It needs to start welcoming independent trade deals and make whatever number of pledges necessary to not reopen the existing brexit deal.
Labour simply isn't trusted not to sell out brexit as soon as they get power in tandem with the SNP. I know more leave voters than you and all of them suspect that Starmer will sign us up to the single market and customs union within a year of becoming PM. He was remainer and mischief maker in chief from 2016-2020 literally until the day we left the EU. He was the guy who pivoted Labour from Corbyn's "deliver a Labour brexit" idea to proposing a second referendum in 2019. Leave voters have long memories and Labour is tainted from the 2016-2019 brexit blocking shenanigans instigated by their current leader.
The Labour pivot to Ref2 wasn't about Starmer. It was forced by the membership and by a realpolitik imperative - to mitigate the risk of being eclipsed by the LDs if they were left to swim the "stop Brexit" lane alone.
I take your general point that Labour will continue to struggle with Leavers if they don't embrace the future outside the EU. I think they'll be able to do that whilst advocating closer ties (so long as the dreaded free movement is not a part of it.)
But Labour's core support are not Leavers and this will not be changing. They have to retain and expand their Remainer vote and at the same time win back enough Leavers to get competitive. A difficult task, whoever the leader is.
At heart is Labour’s desperation (or determination) to hang onto its position as sole opposition party and hence reject pluralist politics.
Strategically, they’d have been better to let the LibDems take what they could from the Tories in areas that Labour is unlikely ever to win, as Blair did.
The biggest question for Labour over coming years is whether it will embrace pluralism, and co-operation with other centre left parties, or whether it will continue to search for a formula that will somehow deliver 45% of the vote or them alone (and even with that, a majority requires that other parties mop up another 15% of the vote)
If it continues its search, it may find that long-held bastions such as Hull start to fall - to the LibDems. The council there is now Labour 30, LibDems 26.
If Labour held leadership elections every 18 months as a matter of course, do you think Starmer would be favourite to win now? If the answer is no, why bother carrying on with him?
Yes, because there’s no realistic alternative. One reason why Duncan Smith was toppled was that there were two clear cut candidates to replace him in Davis and Howard.
The loss of talent under first Brown, later Miliband and then finally Corbyn really is haunting Labour.
It's not that. There are alternatives. Plus you don't know if someone will be good as leader until they are the leader.
The reason not to junk Starmer is because he hasn't yet had the chance to show what he can do in a scenario where Covid is not blotting out normal politics.
This starts now. Keir has a Yeir.
Covid will be blotting out normal politics this time next year.
To some extent (as a global story) but not here.
Plus, soon as it's only people in the third world suffering we'll lose interest.
Unless that doesn't happen. No fat ladies have sung anywhere yet.
Plus pms and lotos have to deal with what comes up. Not a good covid loto is a "wrong sort of snow" sort of claim. And let's not forget how often it's been said over the last year that covid does not play to Johnson's strengths either.
Yes, I'm assuming no shockers from the virus. Hope I'm not tempting fate.
On Starmer, I take your point, I really do, but all I'm saying is that he should - and will - get a year of (hopefully) post pandemic domestic politics to see if he can do some damage (to the Tories, I mean, not to Labour).
Curtice says, if all the stars aligned the SNP might hit 65 seats, but they probably won't, and Alba is in the zone where they are doing damage to the SNP list rather than adding to a nationalist majority.
Also, the Greens seem to be slightly underperforming the 10% in the polls:
There is a polling problem for the Greens. I presume because their voters skew young and activist they appear too much in online panels. They underperformed polling in 2016 and then again at the Euros and now again this time out.
Is it just me or is the constant political with a same p on Sky Sports and BT Sports getting incredibly irriating. I just want to watch the footy, but every advert break is bombarded by social media abuse, BLM, eco campaigns and no escape while watching the game as they flash up BLM banner next to the score.
Sky is now owned by Democrat shilling ComCast - not Rupert Murdoch.
I note the Kentucky Derby beat the Oscars for viewing figures in the US this year - draw your own conclusions.
Ever heard of the pause button and FF....
But sodding BT and Sky have baked this into the actual match now...Kane goes through, he scores, lets go to the replay brought to you by our campaign against online hate speech....its like the worst of US sports coverage with constant sponsorship stuff, but rather than this brought to you in association with pepsi, its their political campaign.
Not hating people really ought to be apolitical. 🤷🏻♂️
Their campaigns want change in government policy in social media, the environment, etc.
Only if you let extremists own the phrase. Its the same as abandoning the flag to fascists.
If everyone says black lives matter then all it means is that black lives matter.
As i said, BT partnered with Glitch. Its a lobby group who aim to change the laws around social media and setup by a politician.
Sky eco campaign want change in world government policies.
The Sky F1 channel is very different to the football channels then. Just wall-to-wall gambling ads in between the racing cars.
Owen Jones Rose @OwenJones84 · 1h Labour figures are now saying that “tackling injustice and inequality” is the party’s mission. But that’s an abstraction to most voters: you need to talk about concrete things that matter to people’s lives - like housing, jobs, pay, services - and what you’ll do about them
Blimey, Jones has said something that is a correct analysis.
Labour should ban the words 'social justice', 'injustice', 'inequality' etc. from use by the party.
I doubt many voters have a clue what the party means by them, but many will have a suspicion it involves loads of bonkers pc stuff and/or giving free money to people they think are undeserving.
Labour should ban words like "inequality" and "injustice" because voters don't have a clue what they mean? I doubt voters really are that thick.
But if they are, what do you suggest we talk to them about instead - their favourite shampoo?
Owen Jones gave some non-shampoo examples. As I posted yesterday they should talk about pay and conditions - specifically the gig economy stuff, lack of security and so on.
"You'll no longer be one pay cheque away from destitution and losing the roof over your head" is far more direct and promising than "we will tackle inequality wherever we see it & fight for social justice for all."
And stop banging on about how it is terrible that some people are rich. My experience of voters is they don't really care and just want to know whether their own lives will steadily improve rather than go backwards and especially whether their kids will be alright. Most don't sit around in spasms of jealously and angst that there are rich people in London.
As a related aside, Philip Gould always used to say one of Labour's problems was it never talked about people's aspirations.
Another thing is that while a small number of slightly damaged people like to speak of their permanent victimhood, and make a lot of noise in social media about it, most people don't want or need to be treated as victims needing economic or social therapy, or political charity. Generally the Tory language about this is better than labour's.
Trivial to identify Labour's problems as he does. Coming up with plausible, workable, pragmatic solutions to them would be far more interesting, and challenging.
In simple terms Con are now Leave and Lab are now Remain - the leaders of the parties were the main faces of Leave and the ‘Peoples Vote’ after all. Hartlepool seems to indicate that Leavers who were formerly Lab voters don’t mind voting Tory now, & Labour are doing well in southern Remain areas.
I guess the big problem for Labour, if the it is true that voters are staying with their Brexit vote rather than their traditional party, is that Leave won roughly 64% of parliamentary constituencies according to Hanretty, so the Tories have an inbuilt advantage while that stays relevant.
It’s probably true to say it was Starmer’s Brexit policy, a second referendum in which Labour would campaign for Remain, that lost the Red Wall rather than anti Corbyn sentiment, now we know for sure that Leave areas don’t vote for Sir Keir’s Corbyn-less Labour
Whilst there is still a strong leave identity, there really isnt a strong remain one. Brexit is done. All I ask is the government gets credit/blame for how it turns out and doesnt seek to blame it on others. Remain is a terrible place for Labour to build from compared to say workers, or even current under 50s.
This is at the heart of the problem imo. The Leave identity is bigger AND stronger AND more unified than Remain. The Tories own it and until this changes will be a bugger to remove from power under FPTP.
That's only the case so long as people care about the Leave identity and not some other Big Idea that they care about more.
However Keir is Idea-free.
Yes, the crumbling of the Leave identity (or at least the Con ownership of it) is a pre-requisite for the next GE being competitive. I'm hopeful. Either Starmer will step up post pandemic or he'll be replaced in summer next year by someone who can.
The leave identity won't crumble though, Labour needs to get on board with being a brexit cheerleader. It needs to start welcoming independent trade deals and make whatever number of pledges necessary to not reopen the existing brexit deal.
Labour simply isn't trusted not to sell out brexit as soon as they get power in tandem with the SNP. I know more leave voters than you and all of them suspect that Starmer will sign us up to the single market and customs union within a year of becoming PM. He was remainer and mischief maker in chief from 2016-2020 literally until the day we left the EU. He was the guy who pivoted Labour from Corbyn's "deliver a Labour brexit" idea to proposing a second referendum in 2019. Leave voters have long memories and Labour is tainted from the 2016-2019 brexit blocking shenanigans instigated by their current leader.
The Labour pivot to Ref2 wasn't about Starmer. It was forced by the membership and by a realpolitik imperative - to mitigate the risk of being eclipsed by the LDs if they were left to swim the "stop Brexit" lane alone.
I take your general point that Labour will continue to struggle with Leavers if they don't embrace the future outside the EU. I think they'll be able to do that whilst advocating closer ties (so long as the dreaded free movement is not a part of it.)
But Labour's core support are not Leavers and this will not be changing. They have to retain and expand their Remainer vote and at the same time win back enough Leavers to get competitive. A difficult task, whoever the leader is.
At heart is Labour’s desperation (or determination) to hang onto its position as sole opposition party and hence reject pluralist politics.
Strategically, they’d have been better to let the LibDems take what they could from the Tories in areas that Labour is unlikely ever to win, as Blair did.
The biggest question for Labour over coming years is whether it will embrace pluralism, and co-operation with other centre left parties, or whether it will continue to search for a formula that will somehow deliver 45% of the vote or them alone (and even with that, a majority requires that other parties mop up another 15% of the vote)
If it continues its search, it may find that long-held bastions such as Hull start to fall - to the LibDems. The council there is now Labour 30, LibDems 26.
The Hull LibDems are a youthful, dynamic bunch, and they did take the council from Labour until the coalition hit them. It’s good to see them steadily coming back.
On a potential Scottish referendum. will we soon be in a position that Johnston is arguing against but hoping that his hand is forced and Sturgeon is arguing for but hoping that it is blocked?
It is absolutely in the best interests of the Greens and SNP for the referendum mandate to be blocked by Westminster. You'll get an immediate big spike in support for independence so that when it does happen it won't even be close.
Like Abe Lincoln and Fort Sumter. Wait for the other side to fire the first shot, to rally your waverers.
Elections fact for today: In 2015 David Cameron’s Conservatives won the UK election with a manifesto commitment to hold a Brexit Referendum. They went onto deliver on that pledge. They did so having won 36.9% of the vote. https://twitter.com/AndrewWilson/status/1390953859078569984
Cameron's majority gave him the power to do so.
Sturgeon's gives her the power to moan about it some more.
As referred to downthread, that Owen Jones article is very good indeed:
“But Starmer’s team has decided there is nothing to be learned or salvaged from the Corbyn era, violating the promises made during Starmer’s election campaign. Rather than a new vision being crafted, the void is being filled by soundbites gleaned from focus groups, echoing and affirming the current political climate – one in which the party doesn’t thrive.”
“Starmer’s team are [sic] on safari, knowing nothing about communities they didn’t grow up in, leading to cosplay, caricature and flag-waving, which screeches inauthenticity and nothing more. “
Is it just me or is the constant political with a same p on Sky Sports and BT Sports getting incredibly irriating. I just want to watch the footy, but every advert break is bombarded by social media abuse, BLM, eco campaigns and no escape while watching the game as they flash up BLM banner next to the score.
Sky is now owned by Democrat shilling ComCast - not Rupert Murdoch.
I note the Kentucky Derby beat the Oscars for viewing figures in the US this year - draw your own conclusions.
Ever heard of the pause button and FF....
But sodding BT and Sky have baked this into the actual match now...Kane goes through, he scores, lets go to the replay brought to you by our campaign against online hate speech....its like the worst of US sports coverage with constant sponsorship stuff, but rather than this brought to you in association with pepsi, its their political campaign.
Not hating people really ought to be apolitical. 🤷🏻♂️
Their campaigns want change in government policy in social media, the environment, etc.
Only if you let extremists own the phrase. Its the same as abandoning the flag to fascists.
If everyone says black lives matter then all it means is that black lives matter.
As i said, BT partnered with Glitch. Its a lobby group who aim to change the laws around social media and setup by a politician.
Sky eco campaign want change in world government policies.
The Sky F1 channel is very different to the football channels then. Just wall-to-wall gambling ads in between the racing cars.
The NFL worked this out quickly...plastering BLM everywhere is seen as political, the NBA did it and ratings went through the floor. NFL instead setup their own "inspire change", a far more positive inclusive campaign without all the defund the police stuff.
The NFL also don't bombard you every other minute with it, crowbarring it into every replay or advert break.
If Labour held leadership elections every 18 months as a matter of course, do you think Starmer would be favourite to win now? If the answer is no, why bother carrying on with him?
Yes, because there’s no realistic alternative. One reason why Duncan Smith was toppled was that there were two clear cut candidates to replace him in Davis and Howard.
The loss of talent under first Brown, later Miliband and then finally Corbyn really is haunting Labour.
It's not that. There are alternatives. Plus you don't know if someone will be good as leader until they are the leader.
The reason not to junk Starmer is because he hasn't yet had the chance to show what he can do in a scenario where Covid is not blotting out normal politics.
This starts now. Keir has a Yeir.
Covid will be blotting out normal politics this time next year.
To some extent (as a global story) but not here.
Plus, soon as it's only people in the third world suffering we'll lose interest.
I think the public are ready to move on from Covid - but are the government ? The media aren't as it's keeping them relevant.
They may need to shill for Indy ref 2 to keep them in a job - they have already started.
The government will seek to keep global Covid in the news (to emphasize our success), ditto Brexit in the sense of picking fights with the EU to keep Leavers tickled up. But there should be plenty of room for other issues. This is the big difference.
Once the Celtic scroungers have all gone the English will soon realise that Labour are completely unelectable and as nature abhors a vacumn, we will see a complete realignment of politics. An independent Scotland will no doubt go back to voting Labour but with nobody left to subsidise them....
I wonder if, in the end, what the SNP represents is the world's biggest and best organised protection racket. It works along the lines of 'nice little union you have got there, be a shame if anything happened to it.'
They work it so well. Notice how the SNP's share is always big enough to be a massive threat, but not quite big enough for the government in Westminster to say 'its a fair cop, its clear you want to leave, we have to give you independence now'
Westminster is still in the game, just, always.
The only reason why is the Scots want to know how big a jockgeld Johnson is prepared to pay. Looks like its going to be pretty big.
That figure is a drect result of the Labour-LD gerrymkandering of the Scottish Parliament. Of course it is going to be borderline, it was designed that way.
If by "gerrymandering" you mean making sure that minority views get some representation, then I think the answer must be yes. And a good thing too.
Up until now, "gerrymandering" used to mean rigging the boundaries in order that some points of view might get even more representation than they deserve. A bad thing. And what you get to some extent with FPTP. This is the system preferred by most Conservatives and Labourites.
Fair enough, but the fact remains that the representation in the Scottish Pmt is a non-linear function of votes cast in a way quite deliberately designed to deny a majority its due representation. The mirror image of FPTP which has the opposite effect.
Curtice says, if all the stars aligned the SNP might hit 65 seats, but they probably won't, and Alba is in the zone where they are doing damage to the SNP list rather than adding to a nationalist majority.
Also, the Greens seem to be slightly underperforming the 10% in the polls:
There is a polling problem for the Greens. I presume because their voters skew young and activist they appear too much in online panels. They underperformed polling in 2016 and then again at the Euros and now again this time out.
Excellent assessment. But I'd add that their older voters are also highly visible and vocal too.
Trivial to identify Labour's problems as he does. Coming up with plausible, workable, pragmatic solutions to them would be far more interesting, and challenging.
In simple terms Con are now Leave and Lab are now Remain - the leaders of the parties were the main faces of Leave and the ‘Peoples Vote’ after all. Hartlepool seems to indicate that Leavers who were formerly Lab voters don’t mind voting Tory now, & Labour are doing well in southern Remain areas.
I guess the big problem for Labour, if the it is true that voters are staying with their Brexit vote rather than their traditional party, is that Leave won roughly 64% of parliamentary constituencies according to Hanretty, so the Tories have an inbuilt advantage while that stays relevant.
It’s probably true to say it was Starmer’s Brexit policy, a second referendum in which Labour would campaign for Remain, that lost the Red Wall rather than anti Corbyn sentiment, now we know for sure that Leave areas don’t vote for Sir Keir’s Corbyn-less Labour
Whilst there is still a strong leave identity, there really isnt a strong remain one. Brexit is done. All I ask is the government gets credit/blame for how it turns out and doesnt seek to blame it on others. Remain is a terrible place for Labour to build from compared to say workers, or even current under 50s.
This is at the heart of the problem imo. The Leave identity is bigger AND stronger AND more unified than Remain. The Tories own it and until this changes will be a bugger to remove from power under FPTP.
That's only the case so long as people care about the Leave identity and not some other Big Idea that they care about more.
However Keir is Idea-free.
Yes, the crumbling of the Leave identity (or at least the Con ownership of it) is a pre-requisite for the next GE being competitive. I'm hopeful. Either Starmer will step up post pandemic or he'll be replaced in summer next year by someone who can.
The leave identity won't crumble though, Labour needs to get on board with being a brexit cheerleader. It needs to start welcoming independent trade deals and make whatever number of pledges necessary to not reopen the existing brexit deal.
Labour simply isn't trusted not to sell out brexit as soon as they get power in tandem with the SNP. I know more leave voters than you and all of them suspect that Starmer will sign us up to the single market and customs union within a year of becoming PM. He was remainer and mischief maker in chief from 2016-2020 literally until the day we left the EU. He was the guy who pivoted Labour from Corbyn's "deliver a Labour brexit" idea to proposing a second referendum in 2019. Leave voters have long memories and Labour is tainted from the 2016-2019 brexit blocking shenanigans instigated by their current leader.
Here's the thing though.
There are an awful lot of people who are of the view that the UK is making a mistake here. Apart from at the height of the vaccine wars, "2016 was the wrong decision" outpolls "2016 was the right decision". I've posted this link before, but it's important;
If Labour gets on board as a Brexit cheerleader, they ship lots of votes- mostly younger, urban voters.
I don't know what the answer is, but getting on board with Brexit isn't it.
Labour are doomed to opposition for the next 2 or 3 cycles in that case. The Tory voter coalition is built on the back of brexit and traditional culture, I don't see how that can be broken apart by the current Labour party. In the same way Dave shat on the blue rinse brigade and turnip taliban to win in 2010 and 2015 Starmer needs to do the same with his remoaners and ultra woke types. They have nowhere else to go if they want to win.
Cameron didn't win in 2010 because he moved to the centre. Well, he didn't really win at all. 2010 was an indecisive tie in his favour. But insofar as he did win, it was because the Labour Government screwed up badly and unmistakably on the economy in a way that affected tens of millions of people. That's what Labour need now, far more than a better leader.
Also G. Brown was nowhere near as popular/competent as the media kept telling everyone he was.
The hype was Brown had a towering intellect. Actually he was th8ck as f8ck. His UK gold sale alone cost the country billions.
A comment proving beyond a doubt that the epithet belongs to the author.
Is it just me or is the constant political with a same p on Sky Sports and BT Sports getting incredibly irriating. I just want to watch the footy, but every advert break is bombarded by social media abuse, BLM, eco campaigns and no escape while watching the game as they flash up BLM banner next to the score.
Sky is now owned by Democrat shilling ComCast - not Rupert Murdoch.
I note the Kentucky Derby beat the Oscars for viewing figures in the US this year - draw your own conclusions.
Ever heard of the pause button and FF....
But sodding BT and Sky have baked this into the actual match now...Kane goes through, he scores, lets go to the replay brought to you by our campaign against online hate speech....its like the worst of US sports coverage with constant sponsorship stuff, but rather than this brought to you in association with pepsi, its their political campaign.
Not hating people really ought to be apolitical. 🤷🏻♂️
BLM is no apolitical though.
It ought to be. If everyone says it then it becomes meaningless, other than the bit everyone agrees to.
It's only political if you let one group own the phrase.
The group who own the phrase are a registered political party. If you say BLM you are saying a very political thing and you are endorsing a set of ideas. If you say blm, not so.
Is it just me or is the constant political with a same p on Sky Sports and BT Sports getting incredibly irriating. I just want to watch the footy, but every advert break is bombarded by social media abuse, BLM, eco campaigns and no escape while watching the game as they flash up BLM banner next to the score.
Sky is now owned by Democrat shilling ComCast - not Rupert Murdoch.
I note the Kentucky Derby beat the Oscars for viewing figures in the US this year - draw your own conclusions.
Ever heard of the pause button and FF....
But sodding BT and Sky have baked this into the actual match now...Kane goes through, he scores, lets go to the replay brought to you by our campaign against online hate speech....its like the worst of US sports coverage with constant sponsorship stuff, but rather than this brought to you in association with pepsi, its their political campaign.
Not hating people really ought to be apolitical. 🤷🏻♂️
Their campaigns want change in government policy in social media, the environment, etc.
Only if you let extremists own the phrase. Its the same as abandoning the flag to fascists.
If everyone says black lives matter then all it means is that black lives matter.
As i said, BT partnered with Glitch. Its a lobby group who aim to change the laws around social media and setup by a politician.
Sky eco campaign want change in world government policies.
The Sky F1 channel is very different to the football channels then. Just wall-to-wall gambling ads in between the racing cars.
The NFL worked this out quickly...plastering BLM everywhere is seen as political, the NBA did it and ratings went through the floor. NFL instead setup their own "inspire change", a far more positive inclusive campaign without all the defund the police stuff.
The NFL also don't bombard you every other minute with it, crowbarring it into every replay or advert break.
My favourite bit is when Jordan Henderson says they're fighting against inequality.
Paul Middleton @ProfPMiddleton If @theSNP end up on 64 seats, I'm sure they'll allow another party to take Presiding Officer. That would mean a 64-64 Parliament! #SP2021 #SP21 #indyref2
Not sure they want to give up that control.
The current Presiding Officer at dissolution was from Labour,
Patrick Harvie in the Cabinet and a green MSP as presiding officer? That would be an epic way to troll the opposition to Nicola’s hate crime and gender recognition legislation.
Owen Jones Rose @OwenJones84 · 1h Labour figures are now saying that “tackling injustice and inequality” is the party’s mission. But that’s an abstraction to most voters: you need to talk about concrete things that matter to people’s lives - like housing, jobs, pay, services - and what you’ll do about them
Blimey, Jones has said something that is a correct analysis.
Labour should ban the words 'social justice', 'injustice', 'inequality' etc. from use by the party.
I doubt many voters have a clue what the party means by them, but many will have a suspicion it involves loads of bonkers pc stuff and/or giving free money to people they think are undeserving.
Labour should ban words like "inequality" and "injustice" because voters don't have a clue what they mean? I doubt voters really are that thick.
But if they are, what do you suggest we talk to them about instead - their favourite shampoo?
Owen Jones gave some non-shampoo examples. As I posted yesterday they should talk about pay and conditions - specifically the gig economy stuff, lack of security and so on.
"You'll no longer be one pay cheque away from destitution and losing the roof over your head" is far more direct and promising than "we will tackle inequality wherever we see it & fight for social justice for all."
And stop banging on about how it is terrible that some people are rich. My experience of voters is they don't really care and just want to know whether their own lives will steadily improve rather than go backwards and especially whether their kids will be alright. Most don't sit around in spasms of jealously and angst that there are rich people in London.
As a related aside, Philip Gould always used to say one of Labour's problems was it never talked about people's aspirations.
The problem is Labour instinct has been gig economy bad, ban ZHC, ban Uber etc....when we know lots of people actually like the job, its allows them to earn around family commitments or as a side hustle.
Are you saying they wouldn’t like to be paid more and have better conditions of employment?
No, not saying that.
I know a couple of workers in the gig economy, and what they want most, rather than sick pay or whatever, is more gigs. But giving them benefits would result in higher prices, so get them less work - either their employers would raise their prices to customers, or exit the market completely.
(Also not a few of them are working illegally so wouldn't get benefits anyway, but that's another story...)
The entire business model collapses. Uber without the gig economy is just a local taxi firm with an app and a lot of investors losing money.
Curtice says, if all the stars aligned the SNP might hit 65 seats, but they probably won't, and Alba is in the zone where they are doing damage to the SNP list rather than adding to a nationalist majority.
Also, the Greens seem to be slightly underperforming the 10% in the polls:
There is a polling problem for the Greens. I presume because their voters skew young and activist they appear too much in online panels. They underperformed polling in 2016 and then again at the Euros and now again this time out.
Perhaps activist skew in particular is problematic re: online panel polling?
Is it just me or is the constant political with a same p on Sky Sports and BT Sports getting incredibly irriating. I just want to watch the footy, but every advert break is bombarded by social media abuse, BLM, eco campaigns and no escape while watching the game as they flash up BLM banner next to the score.
Sky is now owned by Democrat shilling ComCast - not Rupert Murdoch.
I note the Kentucky Derby beat the Oscars for viewing figures in the US this year - draw your own conclusions.
Ever heard of the pause button and FF....
But sodding BT and Sky have baked this into the actual match now...Kane goes through, he scores, lets go to the replay brought to you by our campaign against online hate speech....its like the worst of US sports coverage with constant sponsorship stuff, but rather than this brought to you in association with pepsi, its their political campaign.
Not hating people really ought to be apolitical. 🤷🏻♂️
BLM is no apolitical though.
It ought to be. If everyone says it then it becomes meaningless, other than the bit everyone agrees to.
It's only political if you let one group own the phrase.
The group who own the phrase are a registered political party. If you say BLM you are saying a very political thing and you are endorsing a set of ideas. If you say blm, not so.
When David Cameron said Vote Blue, Go Green was he endorsing Green Party Marxist tax policies? Of course not!
How many votes did this supposed BLM Party get on Thursday? How many seats did they win? Even easier than with the Greens for anyone not racist and not Marxist to co-opt the words but without any extraneous bullshit.
If Labour held leadership elections every 18 months as a matter of course, do you think Starmer would be favourite to win now? If the answer is no, why bother carrying on with him?
Yes, because there’s no realistic alternative. One reason why Duncan Smith was toppled was that there were two clear cut candidates to replace him in Davis and Howard.
The loss of talent under first Brown, later Miliband and then finally Corbyn really is haunting Labour.
It's not that. There are alternatives. Plus you don't know if someone will be good as leader until they are the leader.
The reason not to junk Starmer is because he hasn't yet had the chance to show what he can do in a scenario where Covid is not blotting out normal politics.
This starts now. Keir has a Yeir.
What happens after a year should things not improve and he doesn't resign? The LP is not good as dispensing with its leaders.
I think if things look as bleak for Labour this time next year he will resign. He'll have no choice.
Corbyn was in a far bleaker situation in 2016-17 and didn’t resign.
And, to Labour’s later great misfortune, staged at least a partial recovery.
A recovery that included removing the Con majority in a GE in which he won the biggest Labour share of the English vote since 1997.
If Labour held leadership elections every 18 months as a matter of course, do you think Starmer would be favourite to win now? If the answer is no, why bother carrying on with him?
Yes, because there’s no realistic alternative. One reason why Duncan Smith was toppled was that there were two clear cut candidates to replace him in Davis and Howard.
The loss of talent under first Brown, later Miliband and then finally Corbyn really is haunting Labour.
It's not that. There are alternatives. Plus you don't know if someone will be good as leader until they are the leader.
The reason not to junk Starmer is because he hasn't yet had the chance to show what he can do in a scenario where Covid is not blotting out normal politics.
This starts now. Keir has a Yeir.
What happens after a year should things not improve and he doesn't resign? The LP is not good as dispensing with its leaders.
I think if things look as bleak for Labour this time next year he will resign. He'll have no choice.
Corbyn was in a far bleaker situation in 2016-17 and didn’t resign.
And, to Labour’s later great misfortune, staged at least a partial recovery.
A recovery that included removing the Con majority in a GE in which he won the biggest Labour share of the English vote since 1997.
Trivial to identify Labour's problems as he does. Coming up with plausible, workable, pragmatic solutions to them would be far more interesting, and challenging.
In simple terms Con are now Leave and Lab are now Remain - the leaders of the parties were the main faces of Leave and the ‘Peoples Vote’ after all. Hartlepool seems to indicate that Leavers who were formerly Lab voters don’t mind voting Tory now, & Labour are doing well in southern Remain areas.
I guess the big problem for Labour, if the it is true that voters are staying with their Brexit vote rather than their traditional party, is that Leave won roughly 64% of parliamentary constituencies according to Hanretty, so the Tories have an inbuilt advantage while that stays relevant.
It’s probably true to say it was Starmer’s Brexit policy, a second referendum in which Labour would campaign for Remain, that lost the Red Wall rather than anti Corbyn sentiment, now we know for sure that Leave areas don’t vote for Sir Keir’s Corbyn-less Labour
Whilst there is still a strong leave identity, there really isnt a strong remain one. Brexit is done. All I ask is the government gets credit/blame for how it turns out and doesnt seek to blame it on others. Remain is a terrible place for Labour to build from compared to say workers, or even current under 50s.
This is at the heart of the problem imo. The Leave identity is bigger AND stronger AND more unified than Remain. The Tories own it and until this changes will be a bugger to remove from power under FPTP.
That's only the case so long as people care about the Leave identity and not some other Big Idea that they care about more.
However Keir is Idea-free.
Yes, the crumbling of the Leave identity (or at least the Con ownership of it) is a pre-requisite for the next GE being competitive. I'm hopeful. Either Starmer will step up post pandemic or he'll be replaced in summer next year by someone who can.
The leave identity won't crumble though, Labour needs to get on board with being a brexit cheerleader. It needs to start welcoming independent trade deals and make whatever number of pledges necessary to not reopen the existing brexit deal.
Labour simply isn't trusted not to sell out brexit as soon as they get power in tandem with the SNP. I know more leave voters than you and all of them suspect that Starmer will sign us up to the single market and customs union within a year of becoming PM. He was remainer and mischief maker in chief from 2016-2020 literally until the day we left the EU. He was the guy who pivoted Labour from Corbyn's "deliver a Labour brexit" idea to proposing a second referendum in 2019. Leave voters have long memories and Labour is tainted from the 2016-2019 brexit blocking shenanigans instigated by their current leader.
"I'm really pleased that, whatever outcome the next Prime Minister puts before us, whether that's a deal of some sort or no deal, we've agreed that it must be subject to another referendum, and in that referendum Remain must be an option, and Labour will be campaigning for Remain.
That's a really important point of principle" - Sir Keir Starmer 2019
That's why he will never be PM - nearly two thirds of constituencies voted Leave
I never thought I would type these words but I agree with @bigjohnowls and @TheJezziah, getting rid of Corbyn was the worst thing for Labour, Two thoughts:
1. Labour didn't get hammered in 2019 because of Corbyn but because Corbyn was NOT Corbyn i.e. he was constantly being told by SKS and others that Labour needed to do everything it could do to hang on the Labour vote. The Corbyn of 2017 was successful because he had a lot to offer a significant chunk of the Labour base with his policies and, crucially, he recognised that Labour needed to recognise the Brexit vote. It was only when the likes of SKS were telling him how he needed to cut and turn and play that he lost a lot of the Brexit-supporting WWC base. Starmer was a fucking disaster for Labour's 2019 campaign in the same way as he is as leader.
2. It's time for Labour to throw the middle class woke brigade overboard and concentrate on a strategy that builds from its traditional WWC base whilst keeping the Black / Bangladeshi / Pakistani vote. Crucially, keeping the latter minimises seat loss risk in the inner-city seats. If the wokeists bugger off from Labour to the Greens in Hackney or Southwark, yes, Labour's majority may get cut from 30K-40K to 10K-15K but so what? They are still safe seats and Labour would benefit from gaining seats in its traditional areas.
Corbyn came 700,000 votes behind in 2017 following the worst Tory campaign ever. He would have been slaughtered in 2019 come whatever as long as Boris was the Tory leader. He would have done worse in both elections if his younger woke voters knew he was a proper lifelong Brexiteer. And the Brexit voting WWC would not turn out in sufficient numbers for a unilateralist.
A Labour which was WWC + BAME would be interesting. Where would it stand on gay marriage and a few other matters?
It would further splinter the non Tory vote - a fact which is already hugely to Tory advantage. The woke would split all over the place.
Labour should look for a merger - perhaps with the Greens. Rebrand and start again.
They can fuck off. Labour are a party of reactionary capital.
If Labour held leadership elections every 18 months as a matter of course, do you think Starmer would be favourite to win now? If the answer is no, why bother carrying on with him?
Yes, because there’s no realistic alternative. One reason why Duncan Smith was toppled was that there were two clear cut candidates to replace him in Davis and Howard.
The loss of talent under first Brown, later Miliband and then finally Corbyn really is haunting Labour.
It's not that. There are alternatives. Plus you don't know if someone will be good as leader until they are the leader.
The reason not to junk Starmer is because he hasn't yet had the chance to show what he can do in a scenario where Covid is not blotting out normal politics.
This starts now. Keir has a Yeir.
But what IS his big Ideir?
Patience. You'll find out in a yeir.
Agree. And if you want to find out his big ideir earlier, go and have a beer with Keir (up north where it's not dear).
Trivial to identify Labour's problems as he does. Coming up with plausible, workable, pragmatic solutions to them would be far more interesting, and challenging.
In simple terms Con are now Leave and Lab are now Remain - the leaders of the parties were the main faces of Leave and the ‘Peoples Vote’ after all. Hartlepool seems to indicate that Leavers who were formerly Lab voters don’t mind voting Tory now, & Labour are doing well in southern Remain areas.
I guess the big problem for Labour, if the it is true that voters are staying with their Brexit vote rather than their traditional party, is that Leave won roughly 64% of parliamentary constituencies according to Hanretty, so the Tories have an inbuilt advantage while that stays relevant.
It’s probably true to say it was Starmer’s Brexit policy, a second referendum in which Labour would campaign for Remain, that lost the Red Wall rather than anti Corbyn sentiment, now we know for sure that Leave areas don’t vote for Sir Keir’s Corbyn-less Labour
Whilst there is still a strong leave identity, there really isnt a strong remain one. Brexit is done. All I ask is the government gets credit/blame for how it turns out and doesnt seek to blame it on others. Remain is a terrible place for Labour to build from compared to say workers, or even current under 50s.
This is at the heart of the problem imo. The Leave identity is bigger AND stronger AND more unified than Remain. The Tories own it and until this changes will be a bugger to remove from power under FPTP.
That's only the case so long as people care about the Leave identity and not some other Big Idea that they care about more.
However Keir is Idea-free.
Yes, the crumbling of the Leave identity (or at least the Con ownership of it) is a pre-requisite for the next GE being competitive. I'm hopeful. Either Starmer will step up post pandemic or he'll be replaced in summer next year by someone who can.
The leave identity won't crumble though, Labour needs to get on board with being a brexit cheerleader. It needs to start welcoming independent trade deals and make whatever number of pledges necessary to not reopen the existing brexit deal.
Labour simply isn't trusted not to sell out brexit as soon as they get power in tandem with the SNP. I know more leave voters than you and all of them suspect that Starmer will sign us up to the single market and customs union within a year of becoming PM. He was remainer and mischief maker in chief from 2016-2020 literally until the day we left the EU. He was the guy who pivoted Labour from Corbyn's "deliver a Labour brexit" idea to proposing a second referendum in 2019. Leave voters have long memories and Labour is tainted from the 2016-2019 brexit blocking shenanigans instigated by their current leader.
"I'm really pleased that, whatever outcome the next Prime Minister puts before us, whether that's a deal of some sort or no deal, we've agreed that it must be subject to another referendum, and in that referendum Remain must be an option, and Labour will be campaigning for Remain.
That's a really important point of principle" - Sir Keir Starmer 2019
That's why he will never be PM - nearly two thirds of constituencies voted Leave
I never thought I would type these words but I agree with @bigjohnowls and @TheJezziah, getting rid of Corbyn was the worst thing for Labour, Two thoughts:
1. Labour didn't get hammered in 2019 because of Corbyn but because Corbyn was NOT Corbyn i.e. he was constantly being told by SKS and others that Labour needed to do everything it could do to hang on the Labour vote. The Corbyn of 2017 was successful because he had a lot to offer a significant chunk of the Labour base with his policies and, crucially, he recognised that Labour needed to recognise the Brexit vote. It was only when the likes of SKS were telling him how he needed to cut and turn and play that he lost a lot of the Brexit-supporting WWC base. Starmer was a fucking disaster for Labour's 2019 campaign in the same way as he is as leader.
2. It's time for Labour to throw the middle class woke brigade overboard and concentrate on a strategy that builds from its traditional WWC base whilst keeping the Black / Bangladeshi / Pakistani vote. Crucially, keeping the latter minimises seat loss risk in the inner-city seats. If the wokeists bugger off from Labour to the Greens in Hackney or Southwark, yes, Labour's majority may get cut from 30K-40K to 10K-15K but so what? They are still safe seats and Labour would benefit from gaining seats in its traditional areas.
Corbyn came 700,000 votes behind in 2017 following the worst Tory campaign ever. He would have been slaughtered in 2019 come whatever as long as Boris was the Tory leader. He would have done worse in both elections if his younger woke voters knew he was a proper lifelong Brexiteer. And the Brexit voting WWC would not turn out in sufficient numbers for a unilateralist.
A Labour which was WWC + BAME would be interesting. Where would it stand on gay marriage and a few other matters?
It would further splinter the non Tory vote - a fact which is already hugely to Tory advantage. The woke would split all over the place.
Labour should look for a merger - perhaps with the Greens. Rebrand and start again.
They can fuck off. Labour are a party of reactionary capital.
Maybe Liam Byrne was onto something when he said the rumours about him losing were bollocks?
I would expect Labour candidate to win Birmingham, Sandwell, Wolverhampton and Coventry comfortably and to lose Dudley, Walsall and Solihull comfortably. Wolverhampton and Dudley are probably going to be the closest.
Street has polled ca. 10k more in Birmingham than he did in 2017.
London is looking closer than expected, but only Lab, Con and Green are going to keep their hefty deposits. £170k being a big chunk of the cost of running the election.
That is my point - Birmingham is part of the WM mayoral election - and by far Labour's strongest part. I'm therefore unclear what point you were trying to make.
Trivial to identify Labour's problems as he does. Coming up with plausible, workable, pragmatic solutions to them would be far more interesting, and challenging.
In simple terms Con are now Leave and Lab are now Remain - the leaders of the parties were the main faces of Leave and the ‘Peoples Vote’ after all. Hartlepool seems to indicate that Leavers who were formerly Lab voters don’t mind voting Tory now, & Labour are doing well in southern Remain areas.
I guess the big problem for Labour, if the it is true that voters are staying with their Brexit vote rather than their traditional party, is that Leave won roughly 64% of parliamentary constituencies according to Hanretty, so the Tories have an inbuilt advantage while that stays relevant.
It’s probably true to say it was Starmer’s Brexit policy, a second referendum in which Labour would campaign for Remain, that lost the Red Wall rather than anti Corbyn sentiment, now we know for sure that Leave areas don’t vote for Sir Keir’s Corbyn-less Labour
Whilst there is still a strong leave identity, there really isnt a strong remain one. Brexit is done. All I ask is the government gets credit/blame for how it turns out and doesnt seek to blame it on others. Remain is a terrible place for Labour to build from compared to say workers, or even current under 50s.
This is at the heart of the problem imo. The Leave identity is bigger AND stronger AND more unified than Remain. The Tories own it and until this changes will be a bugger to remove from power under FPTP.
That's only the case so long as people care about the Leave identity and not some other Big Idea that they care about more.
However Keir is Idea-free.
Yes, the crumbling of the Leave identity (or at least the Con ownership of it) is a pre-requisite for the next GE being competitive. I'm hopeful. Either Starmer will step up post pandemic or he'll be replaced in summer next year by someone who can.
The leave identity won't crumble though, Labour needs to get on board with being a brexit cheerleader. It needs to start welcoming independent trade deals and make whatever number of pledges necessary to not reopen the existing brexit deal.
Labour simply isn't trusted not to sell out brexit as soon as they get power in tandem with the SNP. I know more leave voters than you and all of them suspect that Starmer will sign us up to the single market and customs union within a year of becoming PM. He was remainer and mischief maker in chief from 2016-2020 literally until the day we left the EU. He was the guy who pivoted Labour from Corbyn's "deliver a Labour brexit" idea to proposing a second referendum in 2019. Leave voters have long memories and Labour is tainted from the 2016-2019 brexit blocking shenanigans instigated by their current leader.
"I'm really pleased that, whatever outcome the next Prime Minister puts before us, whether that's a deal of some sort or no deal, we've agreed that it must be subject to another referendum, and in that referendum Remain must be an option, and Labour will be campaigning for Remain.
That's a really important point of principle" - Sir Keir Starmer 2019
That's why he will never be PM - nearly two thirds of constituencies voted Leave
I never thought I would type these words but I agree with @bigjohnowls and @TheJezziah, getting rid of Corbyn was the worst thing for Labour, Two thoughts:
1. Labour didn't get hammered in 2019 because of Corbyn but because Corbyn was NOT Corbyn i.e. he was constantly being told by SKS and others that Labour needed to do everything it could do to hang on the Labour vote. The Corbyn of 2017 was successful because he had a lot to offer a significant chunk of the Labour base with his policies and, crucially, he recognised that Labour needed to recognise the Brexit vote. It was only when the likes of SKS were telling him how he needed to cut and turn and play that he lost a lot of the Brexit-supporting WWC base. Starmer was a fucking disaster for Labour's 2019 campaign in the same way as he is as leader.
2. It's time for Labour to throw the middle class woke brigade overboard and concentrate on a strategy that builds from its traditional WWC base whilst keeping the Black / Bangladeshi / Pakistani vote. Crucially, keeping the latter minimises seat loss risk in the inner-city seats. If the wokeists bugger off from Labour to the Greens in Hackney or Southwark, yes, Labour's majority may get cut from 30K-40K to 10K-15K but so what? They are still safe seats and Labour would benefit from gaining seats in its traditional areas.
Comments
Where can I get raw totals?
When she quit, he stood against weaker opposition
It's only political if you let one group own the phrase.
Glitch, the "charity" who BT have partnered with, is the lobbying group setup by a former Labour politician who aim is to change government and big tech policies.
But the Tynemouth part of the Borough is trending Labour (not gained until 1997 but stayed Labour in 2019 by a comfortable margin).
Starmer’s pitch was always relational – he was more capable than his predecessor and opponent. His team believed that by acting like the grownups in the room, like the characters in Bugsy Malone, it would all fall into place. But they bet the house on competence – a dividing line incinerated by the NHS’s successful vaccine rollout – rather than a compelling alternative vision for the country. Having lost a seat that Corbyn outperformed him in twice, it’s Starmer who looks like the less than competent politician now, with no values to compensate. Instead of pointing out what he stood against, he should have decided what he stood for. The electorate doesn’t have a clue – and increasingly, it seems, neither does he.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/07/hartlepool-labour-lack-vision-corbyn-starmer
If everyone says black lives matter then all it means is that black lives matter.
Strategically, they’d have been better to let the LibDems take what they could from the Tories in areas that Labour is unlikely ever to win, as Blair did.
The biggest question for Labour over coming years is whether it will embrace pluralism, and co-operation with other centre left parties, or whether it will continue to search for a formula that will somehow deliver 45% of the vote for them alone (and even with that, a majority requires that other parties mop up another 15% of the vote)
Grn: 54.9% (+49.1)
Con: 39.7% (-3.4)
Lab: 3.1% (-3.4)
LDem: 2.3% (+2.3)
No Ind (-38.4) as prev.
Grn GAIN from Con
Accrington South (Lancashire) council result:
Con: 49.8% (+5.2)
Lab: 43.7% (-3.4)
Grn: 6.5% (+6.5)
No UKIP (-8.3) as prev.
Con GAIN from Lab
In Newham and Tower Hamlets only 20% have been verified, for ex.
(1) Her list vote will almost certainly be lower than her constituency vote (2) her consistency vote is only 47% this time, as opposed to 46.5% last time (3) she'll take 60-62 of the 73 available constituency seats, meaning her scope for top-ups is very small with a minority vote share (4) she can only really get top-ups in the South of Scotland, or in Highlands & Islands, and only 2-3 at that.
If everything went right she might just be able to squeeze 65 but that's a stretch.
He might mean that there will be a nationalist majority, or he might mean it's "worked" in the sense it's locked out Alba, or he might just be talking bollocks for the reasons @Theuniondivvie says.
Norma Redfearn has been incumbent since 2013. I think that may be her lowest vote % but would have to check.
When's the grand prix qualy again?
https://twitter.com/AndrewWilson/status/1390953859078569984
Why didn't Salmond stand in Almond Valley?
Sky eco campaign want change in world government policies.
Barnet & Camden 51%
Croydon & Sutton 40%
City and East 19%
Enfield & Haringey 48%
Greenwich & Lewisham 49%
Merton & Wandsworth 61%
South West 40%
Rest 100% because counted yesterday
Also, the Greens seem to be slightly underperforming the 10% in the polls:
https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/politics/scottish-politics/2203741/sir-john-curtice-snp-not-being-helped-by-alex-salmonds-alba-party-in-highlands-and-islands-regional-list/?utm_source=twitter
Hasnt Owen spent a year screeching that everything has been a disaster and it's the government's fault?
Up until now, "gerrymandering" used to mean rigging the boundaries in order that some points of view might get even more representation than they deserve. A bad thing. And what you get to some extent with FPTP. This is the system preferred by most Conservatives and Labourites.
We should perhaps have a moment of quiet mourning for those creatures we may never see again asking for our vote ...
Mark Reckless, Neil Hamilton, Alex Salmond, George Galloway.
On Starmer, I take your point, I really do, but all I'm saying is that he should - and will - get a year of (hopefully) post pandemic domestic politics to see if he can do some damage (to the Tories, I mean, not to Labour).
If he fails in this, he's out.
It didn’t look very clean, the last time I was there?
I remember the winner got caught up in a prosecution about child porn i think, but was cleared. Career ruined.
Sturgeon's gives her the power to moan about it some more.
“But Starmer’s team has decided there is nothing to be learned or salvaged from the Corbyn era, violating the promises made during Starmer’s election campaign. Rather than a new vision being crafted, the void is being filled by soundbites gleaned from focus groups, echoing and affirming the current political climate – one in which the party doesn’t thrive.”
“Starmer’s team are [sic] on safari, knowing nothing about communities they didn’t grow up in, leading to cosplay, caricature and flag-waving, which screeches inauthenticity and nothing more. “
Conservatives: 2 seats
Plaid Cymru: 2 seats
Wales have finished
Labour 30 seats (+1)
Conservatives 16 (+5)
Plaid Cymru 13 (+1)
Liberal Democrats 1 (=)
The NFL also don't bombard you every other minute with it, crowbarring it into every replay or advert break.
Fantastic result for Labour
And, swiftly moving on......
It's like I've said many times before, it is time for Labour to discover a new heartland.
And Peter Piper ate a peck of pickled peppers!
I assume Elin Jones will get the gig if she stands again.
With Ann Jones retiring, Labour will presumably try and get a Tory elected if they can to achieve a majority.
However, even if legal (and I’ve got a feeling the rule is, one from Govt and one from Oppo) the Tories would be mad to play that game.
Therefore, if Labour want a majority they will have to work with Plaid, or Jane Dodds.
So Huw Irranca Davies was rather foolish to rule that out this morning. Touch of hubris there.
How many votes did this supposed BLM Party get on Thursday? How many seats did they win? Even easier than with the Greens for anyone not racist and not Marxist to co-opt the words but without any extraneous bullshit.
The sort of frugal leadership the country needs.
The vaccine boost in full swing, so how much can we conclude the 6 point Tory lead is because of that? I am going to conclude a lot
(and that's also enough - ed)
Street will win.
Good to see an Irishman getting some preferment!
BTW could not help noticing that from his pix JohnO is a Man of Surrey withOUT the fringe on top!
(FYI yours truly is riding in the same buggy.)
The Surrey With The Fringe On Top
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIG_GVE-KiE
Street has polled ca. 10k more in Birmingham than he did in 2017.
Do you have a link to vote tallies?
Perthshire South & Kinross-shire (Mid & Fife) Constituency Vote:
SNP ~ 20126 (45.7%, +3.3)
Conservative ~ 18178 (41.2%, +2.8)
Labour ~ 2943 (6.7%, -2.7)
Lib Dem ~ 2823 (6.4%, -1.9)
#SP21 #BBS21 http://ballotbox.scot