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The case for Labour making an electoral pact – politicalbetting.com
The case for Labour making an electoral pact – politicalbetting.com
There’s a lot of water to flow under the bridge before the next general election. The future of Scotland and potential boundary changes are just two issues that would change the dynamics. Nevertheless, this piece assesses the potential for opposition parties and their voters working together to deny the Conservatives a majority at the next election. The data behind the analysis can be found here.
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Turns it was and my first in ages.
Equally, the north east of Wales is trending gradually blue anyway with the large number of English retirees (in particular) wandering into it.
What may look like a simple bit of maths requires very, very smart politics and analysis to ensure the voter attrition rate isn't higher than voters gained in enough seats to be a net loss of seats overall when taking marginal defences into account.
Personally speaking I could easily be a Lib Dem voters, especially orange book, but not Labour.
In 1983 didn't the opinion polls show that most Alliance voters preferred a Thatcher government over a Foot one? So quite possibly the Alliance far from splitting the "anti-Conservative" vote could have split the anti-Foot vote too.
That I should even have to point this out to a former minister is shameful.
https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1393917412714721280
https://twitter.com/Edwina_Currie/status/1393661683789406211
Labour’s payoff is the chance of putting forward the next Prime Minister, as the largest party from the ‘pact’ in parliament after all the chips have fallen. They get this prize whether they win 200 or 260 seats, provided than enough of the remainder don’t fall to the Tories. That prize is worth a lot more to them than a batch of extra MPs whilst staying in perpetual opposition.
On 1983, for sure it's foolish to think that the SDP voters would have preferred Labour to the Conservatives. But it's undoubtedly true that by 1992, voters were very much voting against the Tories.
Besides which, it'll never happen because Labour is too dominant. I think that the base assumption is that the party is entitled to office and only has to hang on until the Tories make a sufficient number of mistakes and/or the public gets bored enough of them before it gets back in. So why give your smaller rivals oxygen?
Fascinating to read the dismantling of David Cameron's reputation.
The same will happen to Boris Johnson one day ...
It's odd to see the vilification of Cameron now - at the time, he was considered a political genius and let's not forget not only did he get the Conservatives back into power, he won a majority for the first time in 23 years and smashed the party's principal opponents.
None of that matters now.
History has two fates for ex-PMs, they get forgotten or they get rehabilitated. In both cases, it needs for them to be away from the public eye for a while.
Thanks for the piece, @tlg86.
At the moment, as an ex-LD member, I would still vote LD and I would rather entrust my crown jewels to a psychopath with a rusty saw than vote for either Johnson or Starmer.
As far as Woking is concerned, Labour contested the County division of Goldsworth East and Horsell Village (the Greens did not). The LDs won the seat by 200 votes defeating the Deputy Leader of the Council but Labour polled 510 votes. Had Labour not stood, how many of those 510 would have voted LD or not bothered - I can't say.
You can look across Surrey for all sorts of examples where non-Conservative parties standing against each other helped the Conservatives hold or win a seat and if that's a problem at local level, how much greater a problem would it be at a GE?
IF you want a pact, it has to be more than an electoral arrangement. It has to be the legislative programme for the first year of a non-Conservative Government (perhaps with electoral reform).
I can't see that happening at this time. It will only happen when Labour ceases to be the viable alternative Government or when Labour accepts it cannot win a majority under the current conditions. After 1992, Labour thought they could win because they had done remarkably well (even if not well enough and a disappointment in the end) to reduce the Conservative majority from 101 to 21.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/16/lockdowns-and-panic-buying-in-taiwan-as-covid-cases-rise
Quite extraordinary that we are 18 months into this wretched business and it can still do this to us
Reform (which I doubt will ever happen) would be better than some flaky pact.
That's inside the Labour party - how is it to form an alliance with other parties when it cannot form alliances with itself?
In a way, I'm surprised the Tories haven't been given a bigger kicking from the voters of Woking.
Part of my motivation for writing this piece is that I've spent all my 34 years in a seats considered fairly safe for the Tories. I'd be intrigued to see how things would play out if it was considered to be in play.
The proportions might well be different in a Labour-dominated area, where LibDems might shift more to Tories as the joint opposition (Greens less so, I think). On the other hand, an explicit pact endorsed by both/all leaderships would be stronger than if voters are left to figure it out.
I'm in favour. But the deal should provide a quid pro quo for the constituency party making the sacrifice - the party that benefits should agree to do their best to help them gain some local council seats in the same area that they wouldn't otherwise have won. It's not realistic to expect constituency party X to stand down in return for a reciprocal concession in Y 100 miles away.
Without wanting to be rude, you're perhaps biased because IIRC you quit Labour to campaign for the LibDems, then changed your mind and ran into the "hasn't campaigned for another party for 3 years" rule. That's different - parties are fussy about people constantly switching in and out. Perhaps they shouldn't be, but anyway it's not the same as being unwilling to cooperate.
Personally as a Lib Dem party member my preference between the two main parties has varied over time. Right now I strongly prefer Starmer to Johnson, but couldn't have brought myself to vote for either when it was Corbyn v Johnson and would have preferred Cameron to Corbyn.
Stop. Stop. It's already dead.
(Entry for PB tasteless competition)
Horrifying stuff. Quadruply worse because it's on Finchley road, one of the main places of residence for British Jews
People do know that when they're demanding answers like "what are they assuming?!?", the models are published on line, with the assumptions up front?eg here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/984533/S1229_Warwick_Road_Map_Scenarios_and_Sensitivity_Steps_3_and_4.pdf )
And the models aren't firm predictions, but "if it's transmissible to this degree, or that degree, or that degree, this is what happens," "if vaccine rollout speeds are this, or if they are that..." and "If vaccine efficacy is this, or if it is that..."
... and they also have "optimistic combination" and "pessimistic combination" answers.
And I'm a bit sick of the "either the vaccine works or it doesn't" line. It's either 100% or 0%, right? Or maybe it's neither? And the degree to which it is neither is one of the factors in the models (with varying assumptions, most of which are based on published studies).
And, of course, we have the "everyone vulnerable is already vaccinated" line, ignoring that even a 20-year-old in excellent health has a greater than 1% chance of hospitalisation if infected and unvaccinated, increasing from there (so about a 1% to 2% hospitalisation chance on average of all the 30 million currently left unvaccinated - so even without breakthrough infections, that'd be 300,000-600,000 possible hospitalisations).
The implications of the assumptions lead me to assume that the chances of things going very wrong are very low, as B1.617.2 is susceptible to vaccination. But the incessant "It's all a conspiracy!", "What are they thinking!?" (go and look?), "Well, the vaccines work or they don't, right?" lines do rather pall after a while.
I mean, yes, the media are bloody awful in amplifying the most dramatic possible "coulds" and "possiblys" in trying to imply that [INSERT_GROUP] are preacing disaster, but that doesn't mean we need to fall for it every bloody time.
Vaccinations aren't supposed to convey much, if any, protection for 2-3 weeks until after the jab, although large numbers of people aren't aware of that. So introducing such a programme specifically in a current "hotspot" area could easily actually be throwing fuel on to the fire. And if the transmissibility is as high as the scientists are said to be "fearing", then it will spread way beyond the immediate area long before any vaccines are likely to have any effect.
Or have i misunderstood and the "surge vaccinations" are actually 2nd doses which i guess work in a different way and more rapidly?
I do hope that its being emphasised that vaccination does not have an immediate effect.
That being said, another option for Labour perhaps at next GE, is a "paper candidate" whereby candidates stand in hopeless third or fourth place seats and are nor supported in the campaign.
Plus millions of them will already have immunity from prior infection.
Have you had a past life in which you were very wicked ?
As it does for all parties.
53% say the party needs to focus on message and ideas to win over more voters, but 47% say the GOP already has enough voters and should focus on pushing for changes to voting rules instead.
https://twitter.com/CBSNewsPoll/status/1393938110426275840
Jota out for the season thanks to a dirty Manc damaging Jota's foot.
And it's shit right across northern Europe, Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Stockholm: rain and cold
Northern Europe is being punished collectively
Brussels for the next 14 days:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/2800866
Voters are an ornery bunch. Tell them "Here is the Anti-Tory candidate - vote for them to boot the Tories out!", a significant proportion will say "No. We don't like the result being fixed by your collusion. Go away and give me a positive reason to vote for YOU."
The questions are: (1) will the vaccination programme take us to herd immunity, (2) if not, how many more people will need to be infected to get us to herd immunity, and (3) what percentage of those people will be hospitalised and what percentage will die?
We don't really have the information to do more than guess at the answers to those questions. But if the Indian variant really had an R0 of 5-6, and if AstraZeneca were only 50-60% effective against infection (and that is for the original version of the virus), as trials suggest, then the answer to (1) would be "no, nothing like". In that case, the key question would be how much more effective AstraZeneca was against death than against infection. That is even less certain, but probably the answer is more effective but not hugely more effective. In which case it's not at all surprising that the modelling is suggesting the possibility of a lot more deaths.
And they have been filmed and the Met Police can identify them by the Car Reg
Arrest and prosecute, hard
https://twitter.com/AAPrager/status/1393926282711347207?s=20
Despite scares of the latest variant of concern running wild - our data show no increases for the last few days and risks at an individual level still very low - all thanks to vaccination which is reducing infections and severity as with all variants so far. Thanks for logging!
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/16/the-view-inside-the-peoples-republic-of-chipping-norton
Labour can count on unionised workers, mostly in the public sector, and increasingly professionals too. “The cottages that used to be for tweed mill workers 100 years ago are now full of university professors and teachers – that’s where I get lots of my votes,” says Saul.
Took them all of 5 minutes to arrest the doddery old Christian quoting the Bible. These guys are driving through Jewish districts of London demanding rape and threatening murder. FFS
Or a man flying a Confederate flag, As happened in Norwich.
Boris Johnson
@BorisJohnson
·
9m
United Kingdom government official
There is no place for antisemitism in our society. Ahead of Shavuot, I stand with Britain’s Jews who should not have to endure the type of shameful racism we have seen today.
Those vile fuckwits in the cars are going to get banged up.
Your whole premise is flawed.
But with the property prices its not as good value.
Lots of people are dying in India (although any serious outbreak in India is always going to result in lots of people dying - it's got 1.4billion people!), this variant was first identified in India, ergo we need to worry about it.
And then produce models which, like all models, have inputs which can be tweaked at will - surrounding transmissibility of variant, effectiveness of vaccine etc etc, and use them to generate "reasonable worse case scenarios" to justify caution. The reasonable worst case scenarios being defined almost entirely by the initial guesswork on variable system inputs lacking substantial evidence to justify them.
Priti Patel
@pritipatel
·
10m
This is disgusting antisemitism.
There is no place for this hatred in the UK.
I expect
@metpoliceuk
to be taking this seriously.
https://twitter.com/pritipatel/status/1393946139632840705?s=20
The coppers will on it already
https://twitter.com/Elad_Si/status/1393634620663640064?s=20
Incredible scenes, one of the major unthought of down sides of multiculturalism. The people who introduced the concept - Roy Jenkins, Lord Lester etc - arrogantly thought that the commonwealth immigrants and their descendants would be so happy to be called British they'd forget their roots
My numbers came from the AstraZeneca Phase III trial. Where did yours come from?
You mean like this:
probably the answer is more effective but not hugely more effective
Perhaps you can provide some data showing that the vaccines are 'not hugely more effective' against death than against infection.
The situation is so bloody depressing for the moderates who simply believe in not treating other people like shit.
Those people in the videos are the reason I’ve never joined or actively supported pro-Palestinian rallies.
https://twitter.com/kevverage/status/1393944920419938307?s=20
I hope Malc's got his mortgage paid off.....
Most of the scientific comment i've seen on this Indian variant is still clearly at the initial stages - particularly where it comes to things like transmissibility. They have a wide range of possibilities but are not, as yet, ruling out the worse case scenarios. And for those who prefer caution they are arguing for this until that can be done.
Although TBF it’s struggling somewhat down here, coming and going in between showers.
AIUI in Bolton and Blackburn the Asian population is predominantly Muslim and I would assume of Pakistani heritage.
Yet both have had outbreaks of the Indian variant.
Whereas places associated with Asians of Indian heritage - Leicester, Harrow, Brent, Hounslow - have only seen increases of at most marginal levels.
Would the Asians in Bolton be possibly more Muslims of Indian heritage rather than Pakistani heritage compared with other northern mill towns ?
Or perhaps the Indian heritage population in Bolton would be more likely to live in multi generational homes than those in London and Leicester ?
Or maybe its just been 'the luck of the draw'.