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An LD Chesham & Amersham share of 40%+ would shake Tory complacency – politicalbetting.com
An LD Chesham & Amersham share of 40%+ would shake Tory complacency – politicalbetting.com
While almost all the media focus has been on the July 1st Batley and Spen by-election there’s been hardly any coverage of the Tory defence in Chesham & Amersham where they are defending a 29.1% majority. It is as though the lessons of Hartlepool are being applied in this part of southern England where so many things are different.
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No, it won't. The LDs are finished
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Buckinghamshire_Council_election
That suggests it could be close but the Tories should scrape home
Anyway, they may be on a national level, but they are the main opposition to the Conservatives across swathes of southern England.
https://twitter.com/alexpartridge87/status/1403001506425622528
Wiki article on Bristol says "The city council boundary is the narrowest definition of the city itself. However, it unusually includes a large, roughly rectangular section of the western Severn Estuary ending at (but not including) the islands of Steep Holm and Flat Holm.[121] This "seaward extension" can be traced back to the original boundary of the County of Bristol laid out in the charter granted to the city by Edward III in 1373."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol
IF you look closely at the map on the Twitter focusing in on Flat Holm, it appears that the Bristol Northwest Boundary does NOT include any of the island itself (as per above) but rather goes to the high-water mark (think that's what it is).
But check it out your yourselves!
And they have shrunk so badly at Westminster they are probably beyond recovery. They will live on but wither slowly but definitively, like the Methodist Church - once closely linked to them
That will not get them into power nationally but does mean they can still be in contention in local elections and by elections in the Home Counties particularly.
Whatever happens at the next general election the LDs will almost certainly have more MPs than the Greens under FPTP too, so if there is a hung parliament they will be influential again
But the key thing to understand, is that for Corbyn, it is always 1983.
It's only a matter of time.
Item 1: the late Dame Cheryl secured 55% of all votes cast just eighteen months ago. Neither the demography of the area nor the opinions of its citizenry are liable to have shifted that radically in the intervening period
Item 2: the notion that all the leftist voters will obediently line up behind the Lib Dems to inflict a chastening defeat on the hated Tories is probably overdone as well. If the fifth of the electorate that put their stubby pencil marks next to Labour or the Greens last time around wouldn't unite to throw Boris Johnson out in 2019, then how many of them are going to change their minds now?
You can see the absolute Tory majority being cut by something like a half or even two-thirds, on a much-reduced turnout, but a proper nailbiter? It's possible but seems unlikely. It's 2021 not 1993, after all.
The Labour Party is now a very different beast, and every vote for a Liberal Democrat MP is a vote for a Labour-led coalition. Not sure you're going to get nearly so many takers, and the closer it looks like Labour is getting to power, the more potential Tory defectors are liable to get the collywobbles.
Back in 2005, that was the Iraq war. It could have been Europe (if the LDs had gone the David Penhaligon route) in the mid-2010s.
Right now, it's *maybe* being a bit more aggressive at easing lockdowns. But they really don't have that "thing" that resonates.
For the record, I think that's the Greens problem in the UK too. If Labour and the Conservatives were all in favour of heavy industry and cars and coal, then they'd clearly be well positioned. But the Conservative government has pretty impeccable Green credentials, so the Greens need to be so extreme, they're practically Extinction Rebellion, and while that works in Brighton and Bristol, it's not clear where else it resonates.
Of course, maybe that thing is Europe and the EU. Maybe their role is to say "wouldn't it be great it if we were closer to and nicer to those nice Europeans".
Or maybe their role right now is to argue for fiscal restraint, and to warn against big government causing inflation. There's probably a niche there.
We may need a captive breeding program for them to survive.
If you know of any hot & horny LibDems ...
I do know they won't take the seat.
It's not the 1990s anymore and they simply won't peel away core Conservatives in the current climate.
Can the LDs gather the anti-Tory vote in C&A? Probably yes. They're quite good at that. And they did it pretty well in nearby Witney in 2016 where they went from fourth to a decent second place.
Indeed, the LDs best hope is that C&A will follow Witney (the constituencies are pretty similar in terms of vote share trends). In this circumstance, the Conservative vote largely stays home (from 35k to 17k), while the LDs motivate the anti-Tory vote.
My forecast: Conservatives 20k, Libdems 17k. Con hold, but a worthy bet at current odds.
"What did you vote?!
"Oh I voted Green, OF COURSE" = you really care about animals, flowers, the planet, big things, being nice to small things, saving nature, windmills, villages, kittens, probably the EU, and you dislike massive nuclear power stations, war, dying swans tangled in plastic, massive factories belching smoke. It's a statement of who you are and it's positive
If you answer
"Oh I voted Lib Dems" you will get puzzled looks. You can't say "of course" because no one knows why anyone would vote Lib Dem. Who is their leader? What are their policies?
The Greens will supersede them
If so I have not noticed it.
So if it went down, that would be Glasgow East on steroids.
But it would - alarmingly for Labour - suggest the Tories are doing even better than we think in areas where they haven’t traditionally been strong, especially in the North of England.
After all, if younger voters really prefer the Greens and are still keeping alive the folk memory of the tuition fee volte face, then the Lib Dems might as well shit on them and concentrate on age groups that actually bother to turn out. It's worked a treat for the Conservatives, after all.
And this *could* involve tariffs, restricting access to single market for fish exports and even interruptions to Jersey or GB electricity supply
https://twitter.com/SamCoatesSky/status/1403051246576193550
You're voting for a party explicitly trying to put back progress.
In Germany - by contrast - you're voting for a centrist party that is a lot more sensible than the SPD or Linke.
The LibDems succeeded by having local power and then leveraging that for parliamentary success. And people saw their local council was boringly run by the LibDems and it was OK.
I think that's a hard route for the Greens.
I can see the LDs and the Greens cancelling each other out for the Middle Class, not Lab or Con, vote. But I struggle to see a route to power that does not include local government success for the Greens. And I struggle to see them as successful local custodians.
https://twitter.com/JessieJoeJacobs/status/1403074319744389123
Of course, that was correct for Eastbourne too (until the 1990 by-election), and wasn't very far from correct for Witney as well.
Diluting and corrupting the message is a major strategic error for the Greens. If they are letting themselves get taken over by Momentumites and their fellow travellers they not only screwing themselves they are screwing the radical environmental agenda.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/09/us/pentagon-papers-oral-history.html
VERY interesting IF you can get behind the paywall.
Linda Amster, head researcher NYT
"The Times had a news research staff — the first that any American newspaper ever had. There were five of us initially — all young women in our 20s — and when we were hired we might have doubled the number of women in the newsroom. We were at the back of the newsroom, which was a huge space of about an acre.
James Greenfield came over to me and said, “Follow me.” That’s all he said. So I followed him. He turned his back on me and walked to the front of the newsroom, which was a long walk — didn’t say a word. We got to the front, where all the newsroom executives were — including Peter Millones, who was an assistant to the managing editor in charge of news administration. Jim presented me at his desk. Peter got up. Without saying a word, Jim got on my right side; Peter got on my left side. And they walked out of the newsroom, to the elevators, down to the lobby, through the lobby — not a word said — and got into a cab. Peter told the driver, “Hilton Hotel.” And the driver took us to the Hilton Hotel. Not a word was said.
We got to the hotel, went through the lobby to the elevators, to the 11th floor. And Peter did a secret knock on the door, just the way they do it in all the spy movies. I was beyond flabbergasted. The door opened, and in the room I noticed a few people that I knew from the newsroom.
Finally, I think it was Peter who said, “Well I guess you want to know why you’re here.” I said, “Yes.” And he said: “Well, we have obtained a secret history of the war in Vietnam commissioned by [former Secretary of Defense Robert S.] McNamara. It’s top secret. We can all be arrested and imprisoned because we have it, and we’re planning to publish it. And we need research, and we wonder if you will do it.” And I said, without blinking an eye, “Show me the papers.”
Even Lord Adonis would struggle to justify that one. Although I dare say he'd choose to blame Vote Leave for it regardless.
And replacing the Lib Dems is not that hard, given the great power in the Green brand, worldwide
And they should become the party of Rejoin, of course (if they're not already?)
I can see that getting 10-20% of the vote in the UK, this decade. Maybe more
To be the party that isn't the vulgar Tories to vote for in areas where for atavistic reasons you can't vote Labour because the chap with 11 children who grows veg in his long front garden and whose wives and daughters do your cleaning vote Labour and it wouldn't do.
To be the party that gets enough votes so that the Tories win what would be otherwise Con/Lab marginals, so that in large parts of prosperous England we can have a Tory government without committing the heinous sin of voting for them.
To be the party to vote for when you want 8 million houses built right now but none of them on your neighbouring glebe, and want to be seen to be green without sacrificing anything at all.
For example, the first Green Labour target is Bristol West which they need an 18% swing to win and the first Green target seat held by the Tories is Isle of Wight which they need a huge 20% swing to win.
http://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/green
By contrast the LDs would win 10 Labour seats on an 18% swing and would gain 83 Tory seats on a 20% swing
http://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/liberal-democrat
...
The Left is consuming itself in anger with this insane Woke Shit. See the Trans wars in Scotland.
Most people are bemused and dismayed, or outright horrified - the more they learn. Yet the Left is oblivious to the danger, they hurtle on to ever greater craziness, they can't help it, they are in the throes of a mad religious frenzy: Savanorola stands in the piazza, burning the heretics, and the lunatic moaning gets louder
In contrast, the Tories (and Republicans?) will seem like the only sane option. Another decade of power beckons
James Greenfield, foreign editor - We had the whole package, all 10 installments. We finished them, edited them, annotated them, sorted out the secret papers we wanted printed with it. The whole thing was done. We always knew we could be stopped at some point, but it also didn’t make sense to run the whole damn thing in one day. It would have been longer than “Gone With the Wind.” We couldn’t just go down to the composing room and say, “All right, fellas, here you go.” We were afraid they would report us. So we moved some Linotype machines up to a private section of The Times, and we actually set the stories there.
Max Frankel, Washington bureau chief - We were stunned the next day. Sunday was the first day out. Mel Laird, the defense secretary, was a guest on one of the morning talk shows. The subject never came up. It probably would have died a quick death if the government had not tried to censor it.
Max Frankel - This turned into a battle between The Times and Nixon, even though Nixon’s first reaction was, “This is all about the terrible things that Democrats did. Why should I care?” It’s only [Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger who persuaded him that “Oh, Mr. President, one secret gets out there, all the secrets will be out, and the Chinese won’t trust you, et cetera. So we got to go to these guys.”
Robert J. Rosenthal, news assistant - I was back in the newsroom that Monday. I think The Times had been tipped that there might be a message coming in over one of the wire machines from the White House or the attorney general, John Mitchell. And I was standing there literally when the thing started clacking. And I see a Telex coming, “To the publisher of The New York Times, from Attorney General John Mitchell, blah, blah, national security.” And I ripped it off — which you don’t do normally because the guys who rip stuff off the machines are in a different union — and I ran down and I just handed it to Greenfield.
James C. Goodale, general counsel - I came to the Pentagon Papers knowing that an order not to print, which is known as a prior restraint, was not protected under the First Amendment or under the law of the United States. There was one law that possibly applied other than the First Amendment, and that was the Espionage Act. But the Espionage Act was for espionage, and what was given to me as the facts with respect to the leak to Sheehan was not espionage, obviously. So I looked at the message. And I said: “You can’t obey a telegram. If you obey this, do you know what the fate of journalism will be in this country? You can’t do it.” We were all gathered around the speaker. And Punch [Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, publisher of NYT) said, “OK, send a telegram back and tell the government we’re not going to do it.”
So not only would the Greens have to overtake the LDs they would have to overtake Labour too.
That is not impossible, in Germany the Greens have now overtaken the SPD but Germany has PR and the SPD are in power and the Greens the main opposition to the CDU-SPD coalition at present.
Under FPTP however most likely a surge to the Greens would just split the centre left vote in key marginals between Labour and the Greens leading to Tory government almost indefinitely unless we ever got PR
They can’t really block weddings, and indeed have briefed the Times that they’ll unlock those.
They might well continue the mask mandate in public settings and extend the WFH guidance.
They might block nightclubs as a politically easy fudge.
If he steps down in 2024 and a woke candidate like Harris or AOC replaces him then yes the Democrats could be in trouble.
Here Labour's best bet is Burnham who is relatively unwoke by Labour standards eg criticising the decision of Magdalen students to take down the Queen's picture yesterday and also northern.
All the momentum and energy is with the Greens now, (at least compared to the LDs), I think this could change fairly rapidly. If/When the greens overtake the LDs and switch 3rd and 4th places in England, I think they will find it very hard to change back, if you think its hard to be the 3rd party in a First past the post voting system, its even harder to be the 4th!!!
They are a corrupting influence who do not share the ethos of the Green movement.
Trots, Wokists, assorted hand-wingers. None of them belong in the Green Party.
They don't belong in the Labour Party either, mind.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-9672949/amp/Scotland-confirm-NOT-knee-Euro-2020-manager-Steve-Clarke-held-meeting.html?ito=amp_twitter_share-top&__twitter_impression=true
I think it was poorly rated at the time, but it is downright eerie in this time of Covid and UFOs.
By contrast in the Home Counties the main opposition to the Tories in most areas is the LDs, wealthy voters there might consider the LDs, they will rarely go Green
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/politics/15224048/nightclubs-plan-open-regardless-june-21-push-roadmap-delay/
The government needs fresh legislation to block openings beyond 30 June. My guess is there will be a huge Tory rebellion if they seek it. And I don’t think Labour will support it. But not sure.
We’ll see.
I think the rational thing is to get it done.
But it's also tough under FPTP. UKIP got 13% in 2015 and got one seat. The LibDems have turned localism into local strength and used that to secure tactical votes.
Look at LibDem seats: there's hardly any (if any at all) that do not also have LibDem run councils.
My gut - which I admit is often wrong - is that the Greens need to win local power to prove they are the challenger.
And while they did pretty well this year, their gain of 70-odd seats is (at the end of the day) basically sweet fuck all. They haven't really got local power, and without local power you don't get the councillors who are the backbone of successful campaigns for smaller parties.
What I think is a very real possibility - particularly if the Labour Party decides to become more "patriotic" and to target the former Red Wall seats - is that the Labour Party is challenged by the Greens in University seats.
* Outside party primaries, where momentum is massive
LDs are bumping along with our core vote, and about as much again that is willing to vote tactically if given a chance. It has been like that for most of my life apart from 1997-2015 when we had about 50 seats. I don't think that we will see that again for a while, but I wouldn't expect to go down much either in the popular vote. Boundaries may do for some MPs.
Normal politics isn't happening at the moment, but will return, and few things are as perennial as an LD bar chart.
If they can persuade people to "vote for us to send a message no more lockdowns... oh yeah and to stop the closure of the local hospital..." then they stand a real chance.
I cannot imagine the reaction among the nation’s women if the government grants the former but backtracks on the latter…
It runs in digs little holes, buries its nuts, steals some birdseed, does geodesic monocoloured shits and generally pisses me off but other than that it's just an irritant.
I still have a nice garden, and, ultimately, the option of a shotgun.
What makes me think they are destined for success is that I voted for them positively. Whereas my votes for the Lib Dems have been tactical (I don't really approve of them, but they are better than Labour), and my other non-Tory votes have been protest (UKIP for the EP) or a joke (Count Binface, Lozza Fox, etc etc)
Whereas the odd occasion I have voted Green it is when I am outraged at the despoliation of the planet. When I think about microplastics, or litter, or the pollution of our sacred rivers, or disposable nappies, or diesel fumes, or whales choked by plastic bags - I get this primal anger and I think Fuck it: GREEN, SAVE THE WORLD
I am sure millions feel the same daily. in the UK. Even the apolitical. This is a mighty human emotion and if the Greens learn to truly harness it - like windfarms harvesting the gale! - they will do very well indeed
But drop the ultra-Wokeness, PLEASE
Isn't Gove behind the delay to implementation?
Though in fairness, Scottish supporters are more in favour of their team's approach (whodathunkit - Glenda Slag)
https://www.opb.org/article/2021/06/10/oregon-state-rep-mike-nearman-expulsion-vote/
Lawmakers were making arrangements for a rare evening floor session to take up a potentially historic vote.
The Oregon House is likely to fast track a vote to expel Republican state Rep. Mike Nearman, holding a rare evening session on Thursday to consider ejecting one of its own for the first time in state history.
Following revelations last week that Nearman plotted with supporters before allowing an incursion of the state Capitol on Dec. 21, lawmakers have been negotiating how best to proceed quickly. . . .
The fast tracking of the expulsion measure, which was introduced Monday, is indicative of just how quickly sentiment toward Nearman has shifted in the statehouse.
House Republicans had been largely silent on Nearman’s actions since January, when footage of him allowing the Capitol incursion came to light. To the extent that any GOP members discussed the matter, it was to insist that Nearman deserved due process and a full airing of facts, even as Democrats and their allies roundly called for the lawmaker’s resignation or expulsion.
In the last week, that situation has fundamentally changed. Faced with evidence that Nearman gave supporters his cell phone number so they could tell him which door to open as lawmakers met in special session, all of Nearman’s House Republican colleagues have called on him to resign. . . .
State Rep. Bill Post, R-Keizer, had been one of the most vocal members calling for due process. But Post joined in asking for Nearman’s resignation this week, he said, because he felt lied to.
“About five weeks ago, as one of the closest colleagues he has in the Capitol, I asked ‘is there ANY further video or other evidence?’” Post wrote on his personal website. “He said ‘no.’ That is the crux of the problem: he lied. To me personally and to the Republican caucus.” . . . .
After Nearman allowed the group into the Capitol on Dec. 21, some scuffled with police, and one man allegedly used bear mace on officers. But the group was contained to a vestibule just off the building’s rotunda, and ultimately allowed to leave following a handful of arrests. . . .
Nearman has not answered repeated inquiries from OPB in recent months. But the lawmaker told conservative radio host Lars Larson this week that he anticipates House members will vote to expel him, a decision that requires a two-thirds vote by the chamber. . . .
If Nearman is expelled on Thursday, he would become the first member of the House in state history to be ejected from the body. But his potential consequences won’t end there. He is also facing two misdemeanor charges in Marion County Circuit Court stemming from the Dec. 21 incident.
You'd think at least one would be making these points. But they seem to have lost their compass.
Thatcher responded by making the first 'green' issues speech by a PM.
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/squeeze-pfizer-vaccine-supplies-doubt-21-june-reopening-1046212
As climate change, pollution, species death, rainforest burning, and the rest of the sad litany grows in noise I can't see Green support FADING, unless they fuck their own future by veering off into tiny lefty "issues"
They could have:
1. The government is terrible, and has cut lots of things they should not, and need punishing, -To attract back the votes they had lost.
or
2. The cuts where hard but necessary after the mess Lab had made, we would of liked to do slightly difently, but its a coalition, and anyway some important things we did win, e.g. Gay Marage. and Looked for Tactical voting from Torys to make up lost votes to Lab,
Strategy 2. might have helped the Con a bit, but more importantly would probably have helped them keep some of the 49 seats they lost, 35 IIRC where direct to con, and others might have held if there had been more Con tactual voting. It wold probably have meant another coalition, there probably would not have been a about for BREXIT. the would would be very diffent.
This would not have worked in The Leaders seat, as there where very few con votes to take, perhaps that's why they chose stratagem 1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey,_Cheatem_&_Howe