The one thing that I picked up from my brief period of political activism is the hatred of labour towards the LDs is absolutely visceral, but this is not necessarily shared by their voters. Labour will not concede any of their strongholds to the LDs. The progressive parties won't seriously unite, they will fight each other to mutual destruction, but the voters are less bothered. Until someone finds a way around this, the tories will largely stay in power; it could almost be a one party state for an entire generation.
On the swing last night over 200 Tory seats, mainly in the South, would go LD.
This is not a morning for Tory complacency at all, indeed for southern Home Counties Tories it is a morning for panic
Oh give over.
It's a by election.
As so many Tories on here didn't say the morning after Hartlepool.
Not sure C&A tells us anything about Batley. Pretty different worlds frankly.
Indeed.
But it's amusing if in a Con/LD seat the LD can take it, while in a Lab/Con seat, Lab not only were to lose it but come third.
Labour are getting squeezed, outside London and Wales and the biggest cities in the South Remainers are going LD (and a few to the Greens) and in the North and Midlands Leavers are going Tory
Can you remind me who you said could get 10-15% in this election as to be honest I had ot heard of them and it looks as if no one else had
For now they have not made an impact, if Freedom Day continues to be postponed they might start to
Oh to be a fly on the wall in No 10 this morning. It's a long time since Boris has been on the losing side. I'd stay out of the way if I were you, Dilyn.
His seat is not too demographically dissimilar to C and A is it not...
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
That is why Rayner is in pole position. Labour rules make defenestration very difficult, as we saw with Corbyn, so a leadership contest is most likely following a resignation by SKS. Rayner wants it, and would be acting leader at the time, and is clearly not anathema to the left in the way Starmer is. I rate Rayner, and think her a much more subtle politician than she is often given credit for.
Rayner would be a disaster, Remain Tories would fear her in a way they don't fear Starmer so the LD gains last night would end overnight for as with Corbyn Southern Remain Tories would have to vote Tory not LD to keep out Rayner.
Whether she would win a GE is down the road a bit, the question is whether she would win the Labour selectorate. I think she would.
She is a subtle politician, for example over Brexit she was not associated with efforts to stifle it, so has fairly clean hands.
She might and if she did she might finally kill off the Labour Party too.
Following the Tory win in Hartlepool and last night's LD win in Chesham and Amersham and the pattern of the local elections the Tories would become the party of the North and Midlands, the Liberal Democrats would become the party of the South and Labour would become a rump minor party confined to the poorer parts of London and the inner cities and south Wales.
We would be back to the pre 1920s
The Tories have a hammer lock over most of the South West, Kent, Essex, East Anglia, Hertfordshire, so they are nowhere close to losing the South. Where the Lib Dems have an opening is in some commuter-belt constituencies.
Genuinely awesome LibDem result which I regret not staying up for - kudos to Mike for having pointed us at it for weeks. It'll be fascinating to see what the national polls do now. Clearly a risk for Labour as well as tories, especially if B+S is lost.
The Reform UK flop is a reminder of how little traction the "freedom" line has outside political circles like PB.
have to say I am pleased with the result overnight. Seeing Johnson get a bloody nose has certainly brightened my morning.
Lots of people on here with strident, overly confident views on what the causes were and what the implications are - Brexit, HS2, arrogant centralised decision making, the political cycle, NIMBYism, never-ending Lockdown and Tory socialism being just a few I have seen mentioned so far.
I have my own views on what I would like for it to have ben about and what that might mean going forward but I would suggest that no one really knows and all everyone is doing is projecting their own bias on to this result.
Given that OGH was (almost) the only person even considering this was a likely result (I would love to dig out a few of the quotes from as recently as yesterday about how there was no way the Tories would lose) then it might be worth reflecting how poorly the PB mind set reflects the views of the real voters on the ground. I aim this particularly at those on here who have quite rightly attacked the Government (both Labour and Tory) in the past for sneering at the electorate. A fair few comments on here this morning are doing exactly that.
That's a fallacy. There isn't a mindset of voters on the ground, there are multiple mindsets, one per voter. To adopt one of those at the expense of others is not sneering at anyone.
You misread my post (being generous). It is the sneerers who are projecting their views of the result onto the electorate and then using that as the basis for attacking the voters. Look at the NIMBY comments on here this morning already (as just one example).
It is all part of the process of trivialising the many and varied concerns of the local voters as a precursor to ignoring them. Rationalise that the voters are the ones being unreasonable and use that as an excuse to carry on regardless with no serious analysis or reflection. We saw Labour do it time and time again when they were in power and Corbynistas do it in the aftermath of 2019. Now it is Tories (and others) on here.
It's not sneering to be mentioning NIMBYism since it was a key element of the Lib Dems campaign.
All week this week I've said that the Tories deserve to lose the seat following Boris failing to proceed with Step 4, but it's a shame the LDs are going down the NIMBY path which is popular but wrong ethically to me.
Why following the result should anything else be said.
NIMBYism is a flaw in democracy. If 60% of a seat think they can make themselves richer by making 40% poorer then that can be popular democratically even if it's unethical and wrong economically.
Still democracy is better than any alternative system.
I'm surprised that Labour got as many as 622 votes last night. Why would you vote Labour under those particular circumstances? Even I, as loyal a Labour voter as you could imagine, would have held my nose and voted Lib Dem - for once, defeating the Tories was the only aim. I don't think this says much about Labour, or the Lib Dems for that matter, who have hardly resonated with the public generally in recent times.
Batley & Spen is a different matter entirely, of course.
> candidate selection pro & con (including personal vote of late Dame Cheryl Gillan MP)
> HS2 and housing pros and esp. cons
> by-election blast OR political transformation?
Except for HS2, all of the above were also apply to Hartlepool AND Batley & Spen. Just in different ways & degrees.
I’d expect it to revert to the Conservatives at the GE, unless the new MP can build up a very big personal vote.
A realignment on the basis of Brexit/anti-Brexit benefits the Tories because the Brexit vote is more efficiently distributed than the anti-Brexit vote.
I really hope this kind of complacency is typical of the Tory party as a whole, but I don’t know if it is.
Not complacency, just based upon 35 years' observation of politics.
The one thing that I picked up from my brief period of political activism is the hatred of labour towards the LDs is absolutely visceral, but this is not necessarily shared by their voters. Labour will not concede any of their strongholds to the LDs. The progressive parties won't seriously unite, they will fight each other to mutual destruction, but the voters are less bothered. Until someone finds a way around this, the tories will largely stay in power; it could almost be a one party state for an entire generation.
On the swing last night over 200 Tory seats, mainly in the South, would go LD.
This is not a morning for Tory complacency at all, indeed for southern Home Counties Tories it is a morning for panic
Oh give over.
It's a by election.
As so many Tories on here didn't say the morning after Hartlepool.
By elections tend to see the government get a bloody nose, not the opposition.
The one thing that I picked up from my brief period of political activism is the hatred of labour towards the LDs is absolutely visceral, but this is not necessarily shared by their voters. Labour will not concede any of their strongholds to the LDs. The progressive parties won't seriously unite, they will fight each other to mutual destruction, but the voters are less bothered. Until someone finds a way around this, the tories will largely stay in power; it could almost be a one party state for an entire generation.
On the swing last night over 200 Tory seats, mainly in the South, would go LD.
This is not a morning for Tory complacency at all, indeed for southern Home Counties Tories it is a morning for panic
Oh give over.
It's a by election.
It is a pattern we also saw in the local elections across the Home Counties, a surge of Nimbyism and votes going from Tory to LD and Green in opposition to any new building on the greenbelt exacerbated in Chesham and Amersham last night as it was 55% Remain and anti Brexit
This is such a brilliant result for the LibDems and for everyone who hates this nasty and ghastly Alf Garnett leaning tory agenda. Well, everyone who knows that Boris Johnson is a schmuck.
What has been forgotten in the tories' recent fleg strewn auto da fé is that there are still millions of people and therefore voters who fucking hate Brexit. Not even so much the actuality of it but the reactionary, intellectually impoverished and essentially eugenicist worldview it typifies.
Let me disavow you of something straight away: this by-election isn't about Brexit.
See my post on confirmation bias.
Yes and no. Not dissatisfaction with Brexit specifically, but Brexit is part of the Tories’ shift away from the educated middle classes in search of its new constituency, and that new constituency isn’t C & A.
I'd say if Brexit was your chief concern you'd have been amongst the 25k that voted for Labour, LD or the Greens at the 2019 election, no? And I note the LDs got only 15k of that.
Sarah Greens grand vote total is less than that at 21k.
It looks to me like all progressives rallied around her, and turned out, whilst Conservatives sat at home. If they'd all turned out at GE levels it would have been (by my reckoning) very marginal.
The key point is this: if you were virulently anti-Brexit (and there's definitely c.25% of the population like that) you were already voting Lib Dem.
That linked Times article, from which I copied some extracts above, says it very clearly
Yes, it's a good article.
Some core cost of living stuff there. Basically, the Tories need to end the triple lock now (don't care about the manifesto: blame it on Covid.. whatever; they've had a great 10 years) and flip the funding to housing, childcare, and infrastructure improvements.
By the time of the next election the oldies will have got over it, and maybe a few more of working age (particularly in their 30s) will consider Tory.
My issue is that every spending pledge for the North, Scotland, Midlands and everywhere else in the country just adds up to higher taxes for people in London and the South East. I don't think I'm alone in that and the voters of C&A have shown this. This government is bribing voters in the North with our tax.
Add in the lockdown delay and the resultant loss of the vaccine bounce and we can expect this kind of result to become normal in the pissed off English South.
The obvious way to square the circle is to keep the tax burden the same but strip the welfare off the retired and "solve" social care, and then use those savings to level up the north.
The Tories can then keep a modest tax and fiscally dry prospectus nationwide. The oldies will still vote for them in 2-3 years time.
Yup, the triple lock needs to go. It's a huge cost to the nation. NI on pension income and windfall taxes on defined benefit pension income.
have to say I am pleased with the result overnight. Seeing Johnson get a bloody nose has certainly brightened my morning.
Lots of people on here with strident, overly confident views on what the causes were and what the implications are - Brexit, HS2, arrogant centralised decision making, the political cycle, NIMBYism, never-ending Lockdown and Tory socialism being just a few I have seen mentioned so far.
I have my own views on what I would like for it to have ben about and what that might mean going forward but I would suggest that no one really knows and all everyone is doing is projecting their own bias on to this result.
Given that OGH was (almost) the only person even considering this was a likely result (I would love to dig out a few of the quotes from as recently as yesterday about how there was no way the Tories would lose) then it might be worth reflecting how poorly the PB mind set reflects the views of the real voters on the ground. I aim this particularly at those on here who have quite rightly attacked the Government (both Labour and Tory) in the past for sneering at the electorate. A fair few comments on here this morning are doing exactly that.
That's a fallacy. There isn't a mindset of voters on the ground, there are multiple mindsets, one per voter. To adopt one of those at the expense of others is not sneering at anyone.
You misread my post (being generous). It is the sneerers who are projecting their views of the result onto the electorate and then using that as the basis for attacking the voters. Look at the NIMBY comments on here this morning already (as just one example).
It is all part of the process of trivialising the many and varied concerns of the local voters as a precursor to ignoring them. Rationalise that the voters are the ones being unreasonable and use that as an excuse to carry on regardless with no serious analysis or reflection. We saw Labour do it time and time again when they were in power and Corbynistas do it in the aftermath of 2019. Now it is Tories (and others) on here.
If 60% of a seat think they can make themselves richer by making 40% poorer then that can be popular democratically even if it's unethical and wrong economically.
Yes, that is precisely what is wrong with the divisive Populism of the current Tory party. NIMBYism writ large.
Turning to the footy tonight, I mentioned yesterday that Scotland are overpriced IMO to win 1-0 at 26. I now see the price is 29. I've topped up. If I were pricing that I'd go about 12's I think. 14 tops.
I know the LDs have won an unlikely by-election, but don't get too carried away..
Stocky is a top tipster when it comes to football, and I have to say 1-0 to Scotland is not inconceivable.
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
That is why Rayner is in pole position. Labour rules make defenestration very difficult, as we saw with Corbyn, so a leadership contest is most likely following a resignation by SKS. Rayner wants it, and would be acting leader at the time, and is clearly not anathema to the left in the way Starmer is. I rate Rayner, and think her a much more subtle politician than she is often given credit for.
Rayner would be a disaster, Remain Tories would fear her in a way they don't fear Starmer so the LD gains last night would end overnight for as with Corbyn Southern Remain Tories would have to vote Tory not LD to keep out Rayner.
Don't underestimate labour members, who elected Corbyn twice.
If they are that stupid to pick Rayner then Labour will come third behind the Tories and LDs and deserve to.
Rayner would finally kill of the Labour Party as the main party of opposition and for that we should be thankful
We can but hope.
Rayner is one of their better options. There is a lack of talent due to the fact that a lot of the Corbyn era MPs are just really local campaigners who arrived on the scene accidentally. Many of them just don't seem to be particularly bright. They need to find someone who can engineer a Boris like reinvention of the party, but this is made difficult by the lack of authority that they have as leader. The more likely outcome is a decline in to irrellevance.
Oh to be a fly on the wall in No 10 this morning. It's a long time since Boris has been on the losing side. I'd stay out of the way if I were you, Dilyn.
His seat is not too demographically dissimilar to C and A is it not...
Not quite as rich but it's the end of a different part of the Metropolitan line.
Not sure C&A tells us anything about Batley. Pretty different worlds frankly.
Indeed.
But it's amusing if in a Con/LD seat the LD can take it, while in a Lab/Con seat, Lab not only were to lose it but come third.
Labour are getting squeezed, outside London and Wales and the biggest cities in the South Remainers are going LD (and a few to the Greens) and in the North and Midlands Leavers are going Tory
Can you remind me who you said could get 10-15% in this election as to be honest I had ot heard of them and it looks as if no one else had
For now they have not made an impact, if Freedom Day continues to be postponed they might start to
It has to be said it is a disappointing result for Reform. Alnost no cut through right now.
Maybe when conservative voters are unhappy, they simply do not vote.
Hurrah. Love the way that the usual suspects on the left and right are uniting to spin this terrific result for the LDs as bad for Labour.
This is all about showing there is life in the yellow dog yet. If it is about anything else, it is about providing evidence that the Tory blue underbelly is soft.
Nicely done.
Well, objectively, it is a bad result for Labour. Their voters have clearly switched en masse to the Lib Dems. That might help them in a general election if it cost the Tories Esher and Walton, Henley, Maidenhead, Cheltenham etc but then again, it might not.
But it is a much worse result for the Tories, who clearly also lost votes to the Lib Dems and to the NOTA party. They do not want that result to be replicated across the Home Counties at the next election.
If Lib/Lab tactical voting is now a thing again, that is nothing but a good news for Labour and the Lib Dems.
For the Lib Dems it may be good news.
Where will Labour find a Lib Dem vote for reciprocal squeezing?
There are plenty of southern towns and cities in particular where reciprocity would work for Labour. I'm thinking of places like Exeter, Bristol, Portsmouth and along the southern coast. And then there's London which could really benefit from both parties getting their heads together.
What Labour doesn’t, yet, understand is that the reciprocity won’t come in terms of votes or in terms of seats, but from being the largest party in the first non-Tory government for what by then will have been a long time. We don’t get there until Labour comes to terms with not being able to win a majority; whatever people say about SKS, you can’t fault him for not seeing the bigger picture and focusing on bringing this reality home to his party.
That's a good point. Can they voluntarily give up the idea of two party duopoly, though ? Labour, perhaps even more than the Tories, are hooked on the power FPTP gives governments to remake society in their image, on a minority of the popular vote.
O/t, I realise, but is it expected that there will be an election in Northern Ireland. The DUP seem to be in 'ferrets in a sack' mode. Could surely lead to an SF led Administration.
Yes. The DUP really have turned into Gozer the Destructor if you are a Unionist. Sweeping aside the UUP their grand old man managed to set aside decades of NO! and make peace with the IRA. Look what his successors have done with that amazing political settlement!
The reality check is that the DUP deserve to be swept away. Electing a psychotic creationist as leader, being anti-women's rights, anti-21st Century societal progress and apparently pro-separation from GB.
Lets have an election (again). A few will vote for the ultra-hard line alternative, the rest (hopefully) vote for the Alliance and softer UUP. If Sinn Fein top the poll, well...
I don't know what they're playing at. There must be a good chance of the UUP now topping 20%. Their leader seems like a good man.
Not sure C&A tells us anything about Batley. Pretty different worlds frankly.
Indeed.
But it's amusing if in a Con/LD seat the LD can take it, while in a Lab/Con seat, Lab not only were to lose it but come third.
Labour are getting squeezed, outside London and Wales and the biggest cities in the South Remainers are going LD (and a few to the Greens) and in the North and Midlands Leavers are going Tory
Can you remind me who you said could get 10-15% in this election as to be honest I had ot heard of them and it looks as if no one else had
For now they have not made an impact, if Freedom Day continues to be postponed they might start to
Freedom Day was yesterday, young HY. It is the beginning of the end for this centralised authoritarian government. We the electorate are beginning to Take Back Control.
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
That is why Rayner is in pole position. Labour rules make defenestration very difficult, as we saw with Corbyn, so a leadership contest is most likely following a resignation by SKS. Rayner wants it, and would be acting leader at the time, and is clearly not anathema to the left in the way Starmer is. I rate Rayner, and think her a much more subtle politician than she is often given credit for.
Rayner would be a disaster, Remain Tories would fear her in a way they don't fear Starmer so the LD gains last night would end overnight for as with Corbyn Southern Remain Tories would have to vote Tory not LD to keep out Rayner.
Whether she would win a GE is down the road a bit, the question is whether she would win the Labour selectorate. I think she would.
She is a subtle politician, for example over Brexit she was not associated with efforts to stifle it, so has fairly clean hands.
She might and if she did she might finally kill off the Labour Party too.
Following the Tory win in Hartlepool and last night's LD win in Chesham and Amersham and the pattern of the local elections the Tories would become the party of the North and Midlands, the Liberal Democrats would become the party of the South and Labour would become a rump minor party confined to the poorer parts of London and the inner cities and south Wales.
We would be back to the pre 1920s
The Tories have a hammer lock over most of the South West, Kent, Essex, East Anglia, Hertfordshire, so they are nowhere close to losing the South. Where the Lib Dems have an opening is in some commuter-belt constituencies.
True but those were more Leave areas of the South (excluding say St Albans or Cambridge and Bristol), however if you are a Tory MP in Surrey, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire or Hampshire (or indeed Tunbridge Wells) this morning which were more Remain and where the LDs are your main opponents you would be in panic mode this morning
New house building in C&A type seats leads to lower house prices overall.
New house building in 'red wall' seats leads to higher house prices overall.
The difference being that new housing in C&A is smaller and cheaper than that already there - I'm not sure of this, not my area.
Whereas the new estates built in old mining areas have houses that are bigger and more expensive than those in the pit villages.
That is certainly true for somewhere like Pontefract. Loads of new houses built on the old pit sites populated by those previously referred to as 'Mondeo Man' and his family.
New house building in C&A type seats leads to lower house prices overall.
New house building in 'red wall' seats leads to higher house prices overall.
The difference being that new housing in C&A is smaller and cheaper than that already there - I'm not sure of this, not my area.
Whereas the new estates built in old mining areas have houses that are bigger and more expensive than those in the pit villages.
Yes, a very useful observation. Very true of the new estates around Coalville in NWLeics, now a safe Tory seat despite having a contender for stupidest Tory MP in Andrew Bridgen.
Not sure C&A tells us anything about Batley. Pretty different worlds frankly.
Indeed.
But it's amusing if in a Con/LD seat the LD can take it, while in a Lab/Con seat, Lab not only were to lose it but come third.
Labour are getting squeezed, outside London and Wales and the biggest cities in the South Remainers are going LD (and a few to the Greens) and in the North and Midlands Leavers are going Tory
Can you remind me who you said could get 10-15% in this election as to be honest I had ot heard of them and it looks as if no one else had
For now they have not made an impact, if Freedom Day continues to be postponed they might start to
It has to be said it is a disappointing result for Reform. Alnost no cut through right now.
Maybe when conservative voters are unhappy, they simply do not vote.
Quite a few vote LibDem as this result shows. Just imagine what the LDs could achieve if they become vocal about the withdrawal of personal liberties.
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
That is why Rayner is in pole position. Labour rules make defenestration very difficult, as we saw with Corbyn, so a leadership contest is most likely following a resignation by SKS. Rayner wants it, and would be acting leader at the time, and is clearly not anathema to the left in the way Starmer is. I rate Rayner, and think her a much more subtle politician than she is often given credit for.
Rayner would be a disaster, Remain Tories would fear her in a way they don't fear Starmer so the LD gains last night would end overnight for as with Corbyn Southern Remain Tories would have to vote Tory not LD to keep out Rayner.
Whether she would win a GE is down the road a bit, the question is whether she would win the Labour selectorate. I think she would.
She is a subtle politician, for example over Brexit she was not associated with efforts to stifle it, so has fairly clean hands.
She might and if she did she might finally kill off the Labour Party too.
Following the Tory win in Hartlepool and last night's LD win in Chesham and Amersham and the pattern of the local elections the Tories would become the party of the North and Midlands, the Liberal Democrats would become the party of the South and Labour would become a rump minor party confined to the poorer parts of London and the inner cities and south Wales.
We would be back to the pre 1920s
The Tories have a hammer lock over most of the South West, Kent, Essex, East Anglia, Hertfordshire, so they are nowhere close to losing the South. Where the Lib Dems have an opening is in some commuter-belt constituencies.
True but those were more Leave areas of the South (excluding say St Albans or Cambridge and Bristol), if you are a Tory MP in Surrey, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire or Hampshire (or indeed Tunbridge Wells) this morning which were more Remain and where the LDs are your main opponents however you would be in panic mode this morning
Even in the South East, 51% went for Brexit. The majority of South Eastern seats are pro-Brexit.
Ultimately, though, the impact of Brexit will fade. The Conservatives need to keep their nerve on housebuilding, even if it alienates some existing homeowners. In the long run, people who own their own homes are likely to vote Conservative, and those who don't won't.
I've just received a surprisingly quick response to an NHS referral for a non-urgent condition (nasal polyp).
I wonder if some extra-caution wrt unlocking is being exercised to keep NHS services ramping back more quickly without disruption, and how heavily non-Covid deaths are weighing in the balance?
It has to be said it is a disappointing result for Reform. Alnost no cut through right now.
Maybe when conservative voters are unhappy, they simply do not vote.
Banging on about lockdown just isn't enough to excite the caravan dwelling loons in fag burned cardigans that are their target audience. Immigration would have been more fertile ground for them.
It is refereshing to have some proper politics to discuss instead of those endless fucking graphs being dissected by TK Maxx epidemiologists.
Not sure C&A tells us anything about Batley. Pretty different worlds frankly.
Indeed.
But it's amusing if in a Con/LD seat the LD can take it, while in a Lab/Con seat, Lab not only were to lose it but come third.
Labour are getting squeezed, outside London and Wales and the biggest cities in the South Remainers are going LD (and a few to the Greens) and in the North and Midlands Leavers are going Tory
Can you remind me who you said could get 10-15% in this election as to be honest I had ot heard of them and it looks as if no one else had
For now they have not made an impact, if Freedom Day continues to be postponed they might start to
Freedom Day was yesterday, young HY. It is the beginning of the end for this centralised authoritarian government. We the electorate are beginning to Take Back Control.
Well done BTW. I thought LDs might scrape it, but you were calling it for a substantial win last week as I recall.
Rightly or wrongly political coverage is built on narratives. Chesham looks like changing the mood a bit. Great result for the Lib Dems first and foremost but Batley & Spen now provides Starmer with an opportunity to reset the narrative on his leadership too. But can he take it?
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
That is why Rayner is in pole position. Labour rules make defenestration very difficult, as we saw with Corbyn, so a leadership contest is most likely following a resignation by SKS. Rayner wants it, and would be acting leader at the time, and is clearly not anathema to the left in the way Starmer is. I rate Rayner, and think her a much more subtle politician than she is often given credit for.
I must say the subtlety has been lost on me
She doesn't accumulate enemies within the party, and that is a very useful skill indeed. She is a loyalist to the leadership, standing by Corbyn when few others in the PLP would, and even not directly criticising Starmer when he was trying to sack her after Hartlepool.
She was a successful union negotiator, and that shows. Called in for a sacking by SKS, but leaving the room with a better portfolio.
Never confuse a lack of formal education with a lack of intelligence.
That's all true. Maybe it's just having various templates of what a Prime Minister looks/sounds like and she doesn't fit any of them. I'd prefer Jess Phillips. She's got fire and a personality which is something I struggle to see in Rayner
Legendary modesty klaxon time, ditto for OGH as well.
The winnings will make this weekend in Blackpool even more memorable/debauched.
My big takeaway here.
The Labour voters have finally forgiven the Lib Dems for the coalition.
The Labour vote cratering here for the greater good is similar to the Newbury and Christchurch in 1993 when Labour polled 2% and 2.7%.
Labour did alright in the next general election.
I'd be shitting bricks if I were Raab, Redwood, et al.
Henley could be the mother of all results at the GE.
Oops, I meant Uxbridge.
Which might mean the Honourable Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip will not stand again and risk defeat, meaning a later general election and/or an earlier retirement from Number 10.
Not sure C&A tells us anything about Batley. Pretty different worlds frankly.
Indeed.
But it's amusing if in a Con/LD seat the LD can take it, while in a Lab/Con seat, Lab not only were to lose it but come third.
Labour are getting squeezed, outside London and Wales and the biggest cities in the South Remainers are going LD (and a few to the Greens) and in the North and Midlands Leavers are going Tory
Can you remind me who you said could get 10-15% in this election as to be honest I had ot heard of them and it looks as if no one else had
For now they have not made an impact, if Freedom Day continues to be postponed they might start to
It has to be said it is a disappointing result for Reform. Alnost no cut through right now.
Maybe when conservative voters are unhappy, they simply do not vote.
Quite a few vote LibDem as this result shows. Just imagine what the LDs could achieve if they become vocal about the withdrawal of personal liberties.
Indeed and here's the downside for the conservatives.
Every party right now, every party, is the party of high taxes.
Look at the public finances. You more or less have to be.
Not sure C&A tells us anything about Batley. Pretty different worlds frankly.
Indeed.
But it's amusing if in a Con/LD seat the LD can take it, while in a Lab/Con seat, Lab not only were to lose it but come third.
Labour are getting squeezed, outside London and Wales and the biggest cities in the South Remainers are going LD (and a few to the Greens) and in the North and Midlands Leavers are going Tory
Can you remind me who you said could get 10-15% in this election as to be honest I had ot heard of them and it looks as if no one else had
For now they have not made an impact, if Freedom Day continues to be postponed they might start to
Freedom Day was yesterday, young HY. It is the beginning of the end for this centralised authoritarian government. We the electorate are beginning to Take Back Control.
Last night's result was more NIMBY Day than Freedom Day
They’ll be playing this clip on repeat in LibDem By-Election School: “the LibDems not only threw the kitchen sink at this but the microwave, the oven, the table, the dog and the cat”
have to say I am pleased with the result overnight. Seeing Johnson get a bloody nose has certainly brightened my morning.
Lots of people on here with strident, overly confident views on what the causes were and what the implications are - Brexit, HS2, arrogant centralised decision making, the political cycle, NIMBYism, never-ending Lockdown and Tory socialism being just a few I have seen mentioned so far.
I have my own views on what I would like for it to have ben about and what that might mean going forward but I would suggest that no one really knows and all everyone is doing is projecting their own bias on to this result.
Given that OGH was (almost) the only person even considering this was a likely result (I would love to dig out a few of the quotes from as recently as yesterday about how there was no way the Tories would lose) then it might be worth reflecting how poorly the PB mind set reflects the views of the real voters on the ground. I aim this particularly at those on here who have quite rightly attacked the Government (both Labour and Tory) in the past for sneering at the electorate. A fair few comments on here this morning are doing exactly that.
Good post but OGH, and others, were not saying this was a likely result; rather that the probability of a LD win was considerably higher than the odds implied.
True but there was at least an acceptance that it was both possible and more likely than the PB talking heads were implying.
Having made a modest few bob on this one (a vanishingly rare occurrence, being the world's worst predictor) I offer this thought: At no point was there any real publicly available data as to how this election was going, although it was always obvious that it was Con v LD. No polling. Little worthwhile press coverage. Nothing LDs say can be relied on. So on the data available, given the LDs track record in by elections and the entitled, remainery, elite nature of the constituency, it was in truth an even money bet between the two. So I backed the LDs given the odds, like everyone else not having a clue which would win.
One other thought: C & A are too late. Their big chance fell in 2019 when urban and southern Remainland could have voted in a GE to Remain they conspicuously didn't. Lab, LD, Green and SNP had a huge opportunity to take the matter back into their hands. Politicians and voters screwed up big time and there is no going back.
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
That is why Rayner is in pole position. Labour rules make defenestration very difficult, as we saw with Corbyn, so a leadership contest is most likely following a resignation by SKS. Rayner wants it, and would be acting leader at the time, and is clearly not anathema to the left in the way Starmer is. I rate Rayner, and think her a much more subtle politician than she is often given credit for.
Rayner would be a disaster, Remain Tories would fear her in a way they don't fear Starmer so the LD gains last night would end overnight for as with Corbyn Southern Remain Tories would have to vote Tory not LD to keep out Rayner.
Whether she would win a GE is down the road a bit, the question is whether she would win the Labour selectorate. I think she would.
She is a subtle politician, for example over Brexit she was not associated with efforts to stifle it, so has fairly clean hands.
She might and if she did she might finally kill off the Labour Party too.
Following the Tory win in Hartlepool and last night's LD win in Chesham and Amersham and the pattern of the local elections the Tories would become the party of the North and Midlands, the Liberal Democrats would become the party of the South and Labour would become a rump minor party confined to the poorer parts of London and the inner cities and south Wales.
We would be back to the pre 1920s
The Tories have a hammer lock over most of the South West, Kent, Essex, East Anglia, Hertfordshire, so they are nowhere close to losing the South. Where the Lib Dems have an opening is in some commuter-belt constituencies.
True but those were more Leave areas of the South (excluding say St Albans or Cambridge and Bristol), if you are a Tory MP in Surrey, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire or Hampshire (or indeed Tunbridge Wells) this morning which were more Remain and where the LDs are your main opponents however you would be in panic mode this morning
Even in the South East, 51% went for Brexit. The majority of South Eastern seats are pro-Brexit.
Ultimately, though, the impact of Brexit will fade. The Conservatives need to keep their nerve on housebuilding, even if it alienates some existing homeowners. In the long run, people who own their own homes are likely to vote Conservative, and those who don't won't.
The LDs got a 25% swing last night in a seat which voted 45% for Brexit.
If that swing was repeated in 2024 every single Tory Remain seat in the South would go LD and indeed every southern Tory Seat which voted for Brexit by less than 60% would also be at risk of going LD.
Housebuilding just adds to that shift to the LDs further, these are not seats at risk of going Labour because too many rent (that is more a London Tories problem), these are seats still majority owner occupier being pushed LD because of fury at proposed developments in the greenbelt
I've just received a surprisingly quick response to an NHS referral for a non-urgent condition (nasal polyp).
I wonder if some extra-caution wrt unlocking is being exercised to keep NHS services ramping back more quickly without disruption, and how heavily non-Covid deaths are weighing in the balance?
> candidate selection pro & con (including personal vote of late Dame Cheryl Gillan MP)
> HS2 and housing pros and esp. cons
> by-election blast OR political transformation?
Except for HS2, all of the above were also apply to Hartlepool AND Batley & Spen. Just in different ways & degrees.
I’d expect it to revert to the Conservatives at the GE, unless the new MP can build up a very big personal vote.
A realignment on the basis of Brexit/anti-Brexit benefits the Tories because the Brexit vote is more efficiently distributed than the anti-Brexit vote.
I really hope this kind of complacency is typical of the Tory party as a whole, but I don’t know if it is.
The challenge, as ever, for the LDs is how they scale (a brilliant) by-election result into a GE - they can't. Ed Davey can't visit 600+ constituencies eleven times as he did here. By-elections and general elections are different beasts.
Super target 50 if you've got the money, rest make do. Not sure that's very different to previous strategies though. They won Bath partly as everyone locally was pulled into it.
Not sure C&A tells us anything about Batley. Pretty different worlds frankly.
Indeed.
But it's amusing if in a Con/LD seat the LD can take it, while in a Lab/Con seat, Lab not only were to lose it but come third.
Labour are getting squeezed, outside London and Wales and the biggest cities in the South Remainers are going LD (and a few to the Greens) and in the North and Midlands Leavers are going Tory
Can you remind me who you said could get 10-15% in this election as to be honest I had ot heard of them and it looks as if no one else had
For now they have not made an impact, if Freedom Day continues to be postponed they might start to
Freedom Day was yesterday, young HY. It is the beginning of the end for this centralised authoritarian government. We the electorate are beginning to Take Back Control.
Last night's result was more NIMBY Day than Freedom Day
Perhaps some tory voters are looking at the public finances and thinking 'lets try to preserve something...our homes and their situation....'
If he still badly underperforms this weekend, the chatter about his seat will intensify.
And Pirelli confirm the tyre failures were as a result of Red Bull and Aston Martin running them at too low a pressure. The rule tightening will almost certainly affect their performance.
The latest suggestion was that RB were using hot and humid ‘air’ to fill the tyres, just before the pressure measurement was taken. This air then cools off and the pressure drops. From next year, they will have to run a standard pressure monitoring system feeding back to the FIA.
The first rule change impacts this weekend, though - an extra PSI overall, plus stricter checks. The latter ought to impact Red bull disproportionately, since they'll have to stop gaming the rules.
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
That is why Rayner is in pole position. Labour rules make defenestration very difficult, as we saw with Corbyn, so a leadership contest is most likely following a resignation by SKS. Rayner wants it, and would be acting leader at the time, and is clearly not anathema to the left in the way Starmer is. I rate Rayner, and think her a much more subtle politician than she is often given credit for.
I must say the subtlety has been lost on me
She doesn't accumulate enemies within the party, and that is a very useful skill indeed. She is a loyalist to the leadership, standing by Corbyn when few others in the PLP would, and even not directly criticising Starmer when he was trying to sack her after Hartlepool.
She was a successful union negotiator, and that shows. Called in for a sacking by SKS, but leaving the room with a better portfolio.
Never confuse a lack of formal education with a lack of intelligence.
That's all true. Maybe it's just having various templates of what a Prime Minister looks/sounds like and she doesn't fit any of them. I'd prefer Jess Phillips. She's got fire and a personality which is something I struggle to see in Rayner
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
That is why Rayner is in pole position. Labour rules make defenestration very difficult, as we saw with Corbyn, so a leadership contest is most likely following a resignation by SKS. Rayner wants it, and would be acting leader at the time, and is clearly not anathema to the left in the way Starmer is. I rate Rayner, and think her a much more subtle politician than she is often given credit for.
I must say the subtlety has been lost on me
She doesn't accumulate enemies within the party, and that is a very useful skill indeed. She is a loyalist to the leadership, standing by Corbyn when few others in the PLP would, and even not directly criticising Starmer when he was trying to sack her after Hartlepool.
She was a successful union negotiator, and that shows. Called in for a sacking by SKS, but leaving the room with a better portfolio.
Never confuse a lack of formal education with a lack of intelligence.
That's all true. Maybe it's just having various templates of what a Prime Minister looks/sounds like and she doesn't fit any of them. I'd prefer Jess Phillips. She's got fire and a personality which is something I struggle to see in Rayner
Boris v Jess Phillips would be proper box office, and as with Boris v Sturgeon you can't be sure he would win. Rayner, like SKS could never win a GE.
The one thing that I picked up from my brief period of political activism is the hatred of labour towards the LDs is absolutely visceral, but this is not necessarily shared by their voters. Labour will not concede any of their strongholds to the LDs. The progressive parties won't seriously unite, they will fight each other to mutual destruction, but the voters are less bothered. Until someone finds a way around this, the tories will largely stay in power; it could almost be a one party state for an entire generation.
On the swing last night over 200 Tory seats, mainly in the South, would go LD.
This is not a morning for Tory complacency at all, indeed for southern Home Counties Tories it is a morning for panic
Oh give over.
It's a by election.
There are two reactions to by elections, complacency and panic, and usually each is an overreaction. Thats why they are fun.
The one thing that I picked up from my brief period of political activism is the hatred of labour towards the LDs is absolutely visceral, but this is not necessarily shared by their voters. Labour will not concede any of their strongholds to the LDs. The progressive parties won't seriously unite, they will fight each other to mutual destruction, but the voters are less bothered. Until someone finds a way around this, the tories will largely stay in power; it could almost be a one party state for an entire generation.
On the swing last night over 200 Tory seats, mainly in the South, would go LD.
This is not a morning for Tory complacency at all, indeed for southern Home Counties Tories it is a morning for panic
Oh give over.
It's a by election.
As so many Tories on here didn't say the morning after Hartlepool.
The morning when one commenter called Hartlepool peak Boris.
have to say I am pleased with the result overnight. Seeing Johnson get a bloody nose has certainly brightened my morning.
Lots of people on here with strident, overly confident views on what the causes were and what the implications are - Brexit, HS2, arrogant centralised decision making, the political cycle, NIMBYism, never-ending Lockdown and Tory socialism being just a few I have seen mentioned so far.
I have my own views on what I would like for it to have ben about and what that might mean going forward but I would suggest that no one really knows and all everyone is doing is projecting their own bias on to this result.
Given that OGH was (almost) the only person even considering this was a likely result (I would love to dig out a few of the quotes from as recently as yesterday about how there was no way the Tories would lose) then it might be worth reflecting how poorly the PB mind set reflects the views of the real voters on the ground. I aim this particularly at those on here who have quite rightly attacked the Government (both Labour and Tory) in the past for sneering at the electorate. A fair few comments on here this morning are doing exactly that.
Good post but OGH, and others, were not saying this was a likely result; rather that the probability of a LD win was considerably higher than the odds implied.
True but there was at least an acceptance that it was both possible and more likely than the PB talking heads were implying.
Having made a modest few bob on this one (a vanishingly rare occurrence, being the world's worst predictor) I offer this thought: At no point was there any real publicly available data as to how this election was going, although it was always obvious that it was Con v LD. No polling. Little worthwhile press coverage. Nothing LDs say can be relied on. So on the data available, given the LDs track record in by elections and the entitled, remainery, elite nature of the constituency, it was in truth an even money bet between the two. So I backed the LDs given the odds, like everyone else not having a clue which would win.
One other thought: C & A are too late. Their big chance fell in 2019 when urban and southern Remainland could have voted in a GE to Remain they conspicuously didn't. Lab, LD, Green and SNP had a huge opportunity to take the matter back into their hands. Politicians and voters screwed up big time and there is no going back.
Yes, could well have happened if Corbyn hadn’t been leader of the Labour Party.
Wow, quite the win for the yellows that. Well done to Mike and everyone else who backed them.
I’m not sure it changes too much - Tory MPs in the commuter belt know that the LDs are clearly a threat. The problem for the LDs is that when we get to the GE, voters will know that a vote for the LDs is a vote for a coalition with Labour and the SNP. And when it comes to it, I’m not sure the Cheshams, Guildfords, and Winchesters have it in them.
Not just the general - even in the locals last month there was very little appetite for it.
There certainly was all over Surrey - in my area the Tories collapsed from 7 to 2 County seats last month after two years of LD-Lab-Green alliance at Borough level, and simklar results were seen across much of the county.
It is bad news for the Conservatives, but it could be even worse for Labour. The Liberal Democrat by-election victory in Chesham and Amersham reflects the realignment of British politics, as the Conservatives gain support in northern working-class Leave areas – which means they are vulnerable in southern middle-class Remainland. But while it is Labour that loses out in places such as Hartlepool, the main opposition party doesn’t gain in places such as Chesham and Amersham.
Most of us can remember big byelection upsets that didn't amount to much in the long term but I think this does give the LDs a chance to reshape the landscape.
The strategy of an informal anti-Tory alliance with Labour would be a mistake. Anti-Tory voters in the south will know what to do in any case. LDs need to make it clear that they wouldn't be pushed into propping up a minority Labour government with the support of the SNP ("coalition of chaos"). The LDs need to attack Labour with about one third of their messaging as intolerant, too woke and extremist. They have a window to displace Labour. What most commentators proposing cooperation between LDs and Labour are missing is that Labour are in a death spiral (even if they retain the seat today). The leader isn't the problem. Rather it is the policies and the membership and much of the parliamentary party. If the LDs position themselves as a Liberal (old sense) left of centre party they can seize the moment.
Legendary modesty klaxon time, ditto for OGH as well.
The winnings will make this weekend in Blackpool even more memorable/debauched.
My big takeaway here.
The Labour voters have finally forgiven the Lib Dems for the coalition.
The Labour vote cratering here for the greater good is similar to the Newbury and Christchurch in 1993 when Labour polled 2% and 2.7%.
Labour did alright in the next general election.
I'd be shitting bricks if I were Raab, Redwood, et al.
Henley could be the mother of all results at the GE.
Oops, I meant Uxbridge.
I'm trying to picture a debauched weekend in Blackpool.
Sex on the big dipper?
I'm staying in one of the suites at The Imperial Hotel, chances are one of the party leaders like Thatcher, Major, Blair, Wilson, Callaghan, Kinnock, or Foot had sex in that suite and leave it at that.
Does this result mean that 19 July if more likely to be adhered to or less? Or does it make no difference?
If there's genuinely a surge then I'm sure they will still extend, but the need to seem competent and positive may play on their minds in a 50/50 call.
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
That is why Rayner is in pole position. Labour rules make defenestration very difficult, as we saw with Corbyn, so a leadership contest is most likely following a resignation by SKS. Rayner wants it, and would be acting leader at the time, and is clearly not anathema to the left in the way Starmer is. I rate Rayner, and think her a much more subtle politician than she is often given credit for.
I must say the subtlety has been lost on me
She doesn't accumulate enemies within the party, and that is a very useful skill indeed. She is a loyalist to the leadership, standing by Corbyn when few others in the PLP would, and even not directly criticising Starmer when he was trying to sack her after Hartlepool.
She was a successful union negotiator, and that shows. Called in for a sacking by SKS, but leaving the room with a better portfolio.
Never confuse a lack of formal education with a lack of intelligence.
That's all true. Maybe it's just having various templates of what a Prime Minister looks/sounds like and she doesn't fit any of them. I'd prefer Jess Phillips. She's got fire and a personality which is something I struggle to see in Rayner
I think that labour have a problem in general with male voters - rightly or wrongly Jess Phillips is not going to help with that.
It has to be said it is a disappointing result for Reform. Alnost no cut through right now.
Maybe when conservative voters are unhappy, they simply do not vote.
Banging on about lockdown just isn't enough to excite the caravan dwelling loons in fag burned cardigans that are their target audience. Immigration would have been more fertile ground for them.
It is refereshing to have some proper politics to discuss instead of those endless fucking graphs being dissected by TK Maxx epidemiologists.
The graphs are trumped to fuck by the what sort of air some Italians put in their car tyres dissertations, to be fair.
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
That is why Rayner is in pole position. Labour rules make defenestration very difficult, as we saw with Corbyn, so a leadership contest is most likely following a resignation by SKS. Rayner wants it, and would be acting leader at the time, and is clearly not anathema to the left in the way Starmer is. I rate Rayner, and think her a much more subtle politician than she is often given credit for.
Rayner would be a disaster, Remain Tories would fear her in a way they don't fear Starmer so the LD gains last night would end overnight for as with Corbyn Southern Remain Tories would have to vote Tory not LD to keep out Rayner.
Whether she would win a GE is down the road a bit, the question is whether she would win the Labour selectorate. I think she would.
She is a subtle politician, for example over Brexit she was not associated with efforts to stifle it, so has fairly clean hands.
She might and if she did she might finally kill off the Labour Party too.
Following the Tory win in Hartlepool and last night's LD win in Chesham and Amersham and the pattern of the local elections the Tories would become the party of the North and Midlands, the Liberal Democrats would become the party of the South and Labour would become a rump minor party confined to the poorer parts of London and the inner cities and south Wales.
We would be back to the pre 1920s
The Tories have a hammer lock over most of the South West, Kent, Essex, East Anglia, Hertfordshire, so they are nowhere close to losing the South. Where the Lib Dems have an opening is in some commuter-belt constituencies.
True but those were more Leave areas of the South (excluding say St Albans or Cambridge and Bristol), if you are a Tory MP in Surrey, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire or Hampshire (or indeed Tunbridge Wells) this morning which were more Remain and where the LDs are your main opponents however you would be in panic mode this morning
Even in the South East, 51% went for Brexit. The majority of South Eastern seats are pro-Brexit.
Ultimately, though, the impact of Brexit will fade. The Conservatives need to keep their nerve on housebuilding, even if it alienates some existing homeowners. In the long run, people who own their own homes are likely to vote Conservative, and those who don't won't.
The LDs got a 25% swing last night in a seat which voted 45% for Brexit.
If that swing was repeated in 2024 every single Tory Remain seat in the South would go LD and indeed every southern Tory Seat which voted for Brexit by less than 60% would also be at risk of going LD.
Housebuilding just adds to that shift to the LDs further, these are not seats at risk of going Labour because too many rent (that is more a London Tories problem), these are seats still majority owner occupier being pushed LD because of fury at proposed developments in the greenbelt
Go back to your constituency and prepare for reality.
This is why Boris Johnson is so bad, particularly during a pandemic.
Thousands of VIPs will be allowed into England without the need to quarantine under plans to stop the final of the European Championship being moved from Wembley to Budapest, The Times can reveal.
Ministers are discussing a proposal to exempt Uefa and Fifa officials, politicians, sponsors and broadcasters from having to self-isolate on arrival despite concerns that this could lead to an increase in coronavirus infections and provoke a backlash from the public.
About 2,500 designated VIPs attending games at Wembley would not have to abide by the quarantine restrictions imposed on ordinary travellers. They would be allowed to attend matches at Wembley during the knockout phase of the tournament as well as training sessions and meetings with the UK government.
Ministers are concerned that if they do not relax the rules the semi-finals and final will be moved to Hungary, which will have no border restrictions for travel within the Schengen zone from next week and would host the games with full stadiums.
Cabinet ministers are understood to have acknowledged that amending the law on border restrictions for VIPs could cause controversy at a time when millions of Britons are unable to take holidays abroad.
There have also been talks within government on the public health risks and the potential for exempted travellers to contract the Delta, or Indian, variant in Britain.
Boris Johnson is said to be drawn to the plans on the grounds that they could boost a joint Home Nations bid for the 2030 World Cup. The proposed exemptions would allow the prime minister to meet senior figures from Uefa, the sport’s governing body in Europe, in person as he attempts to secure their backing for the first major international tournament held entirely on British soil since 1996.
Why is Hartlepool a disaster for Labour and yet this by-election is not a disaster for the Tories?
I’ve been saying for months the Tories are in trouble in the South. It was always going to be the case that abandoning the former Tory south and chasing the North was going to result in losses. It’s an electoral strategy that so far has worked well for the Tories - but how much of the Southern retention was due to Corbyn?
What this shows is that Labour voters are prepared to vote tactically once again as they have in the past. Will the same occur in Labour targets going forward?
Legendary modesty klaxon time, ditto for OGH as well.
The winnings will make this weekend in Blackpool even more memorable/debauched.
My big takeaway here.
The Labour voters have finally forgiven the Lib Dems for the coalition.
The Labour vote cratering here for the greater good is similar to the Newbury and Christchurch in 1993 when Labour polled 2% and 2.7%.
Labour did alright in the next general election.
I'd be shitting bricks if I were Raab, Redwood, et al.
Henley could be the mother of all results at the GE.
Oops, I meant Uxbridge.
I'm trying to picture a debauched weekend in Blackpool.
Sex on the big dipper?
I'm staying in one of the suites at The Imperial Hotel, chances are one of the party leaders like Thatcher, Major, Blair, Wilson, Callaghan, Kinnock, or Foot had sex in that suite and leave it at that.
I've just received a surprisingly quick response to an NHS referral for a non-urgent condition (nasal polyp).
I wonder if some extra-caution wrt unlocking is being exercised to keep NHS services ramping back more quickly without disruption, and how heavily non-Covid deaths are weighing in the balance?
My department still has loads of routine appointments from referrals sent in August that we haven't given dates to.
With social distancing and PPE, each week we dig our hole a bit deeper.
My referral from my GP to the local hosp was in, I think, April. This is the EN&T assessment (preceded by a mandatory COVID test at 8.25am on Sunday !). Then it will be for the op if thought necessary.
Perhaps as a Covid Extremely Vulnerable there is some priority (?), or they are just in a better position to split treatments; they were going fairly full stream last summer here - when I had my lukemia treatment teh car park was way fuller than pre-Covid.
But anyway - all praise to Sherwood Hospitals Trust on the last 15 months from my POV.
Morning all. No doubt the PB Europhiles and LibDems wil be hailing the end of the Conservative Government. This result is a good mid-term win for the LibDems but was fairly common in Margaret Thatchers mid-terms. Remember Shirley Williams and Crosby overturning something like a 19,000 majority. She lost the seat back to the Tories. Incidentally how does this seat do in the boundary changes?
I hope all the happy remainers who voted LibDem yesterday ask their shiny new LibDem MP what good she is doing as the HS2 bulldozers go straight through their villages. No doubt Ed Davey will follow the road of his predecessors and be gone the day after the next General Election.
If I were Johnson I would reroute HS2 straight through the villages and build some fuck off big social housing estates there. Pour encourager les autres
Legendary modesty klaxon time, ditto for OGH as well.
The winnings will make this weekend in Blackpool even more memorable/debauched.
My big takeaway here.
The Labour voters have finally forgiven the Lib Dems for the coalition.
The Labour vote cratering here for the greater good is similar to the Newbury and Christchurch in 1993 when Labour polled 2% and 2.7%.
Labour did alright in the next general election.
I'd be shitting bricks if I were Raab, Redwood, et al.
Henley could be the mother of all results at the GE.
Oops, I meant Uxbridge.
Which might mean the Honourable Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip will not stand again and risk defeat, meaning a later general election and/or an earlier retirement from Number 10.
The Tories winning but the sitting PM losing his deal would be both amusing and an interesting test of convention. Would the Tories find a safe seat and force someone to resign (yet even those are risky if voters think you are taking the piss), would a PM be named from the MPs, only to change quickly after a leadership contest.
Why is Hartlepool a disaster for Labour and yet this by-election is not a disaster for the Tories?
I’ve been saying for months the Tories are in trouble in the South. It was always going to be the case that abandoning the former Tory south and chasing the North was going to result in losses. It’s an electoral strategy that so far has worked well for the Tories - but how much of the Southern retention was due to Corbyn?
What this shows is that Labour voters are prepared to vote tactically once again as they have in the past. Will the same occur in Labour targets going forward?
Much as I am enjoying a rare bit of positive election news, this was only a by-election.
Very welcome publicity boost and filip for the LDs though. It will be a long road back from the wipeout of 2015, but that seems like ancient history now.
I've just received a surprisingly quick response to an NHS referral for a non-urgent condition (nasal polyp).
I wonder if some extra-caution wrt unlocking is being exercised to keep NHS services ramping back more quickly without disruption, and how heavily non-Covid deaths are weighing in the balance?
Tottenham will not be appointing Gennaro Gattuso as manager
Tottenham’s protracted search for a new manager will continue after the north London club decided against appointing Gennaro Gattuso to the vacant position, The Athletic can reveal.
The Italian emerged as a potential option for Spurs yesterday alongside Paulo Fonseca, with whom talks are believed to have broken down.
Earlier in the day, Gattuso surprisingly departed Fiorentina after only 23 days at the helm.
What happened on Thursday?
Conversations took place between Tottenham and the 43-year-old former AC Milan and Napoli manager — as they have done with numerous contenders — however Gattuso will not be getting the job.
There was a huge backlash from Spurs fans after reports that Gattuso was the leading candidate.
Historic comments allegedly made by the ex-Italy midfielder about the role of women in football, same-sex marriage and racism were repeatedly shared by Tottenham supporters on social media, accompanied by the hashtag #NoToGattuso, which was trending in the United Kingdom last night.
Rightly or wrongly political coverage is built on narratives. Chesham looks like changing the mood a bit. Great result for the Lib Dems first and foremost but Batley & Spen now provides Starmer with an opportunity to reset the narrative on his leadership too. But can he take it?
Yes, the party should be winning it anyway, but he can frame it as another part of the wheels coming off the bojo bus as well as restoring his own fortunes.
This is why Boris Johnson is so bad, particularly during a pandemic.
Thousands of VIPs will be allowed into England without the need to quarantine under plans to stop the final of the European Championship being moved from Wembley to Budapest, The Times can reveal.
Ministers are discussing a proposal to exempt Uefa and Fifa officials, politicians, sponsors and broadcasters from having to self-isolate on arrival despite concerns that this could lead to an increase in coronavirus infections and provoke a backlash from the public.
About 2,500 designated VIPs attending games at Wembley would not have to abide by the quarantine restrictions imposed on ordinary travellers. They would be allowed to attend matches at Wembley during the knockout phase of the tournament as well as training sessions and meetings with the UK government.
Ministers are concerned that if they do not relax the rules the semi-finals and final will be moved to Hungary, which will have no border restrictions for travel within the Schengen zone from next week and would host the games with full stadiums.
Cabinet ministers are understood to have acknowledged that amending the law on border restrictions for VIPs could cause controversy at a time when millions of Britons are unable to take holidays abroad.
There have also been talks within government on the public health risks and the potential for exempted travellers to contract the Delta, or Indian, variant in Britain.
Boris Johnson is said to be drawn to the plans on the grounds that they could boost a joint Home Nations bid for the 2030 World Cup. The proposed exemptions would allow the prime minister to meet senior figures from Uefa, the sport’s governing body in Europe, in person as he attempts to secure their backing for the first major international tournament held entirely on British soil since 1996.
Much as I am enjoying a rare bit of positive election news, this was only a by-election.
Very welcome publicity boost and filip for the LDs though. It will be a long road back from the wipeout of 2015, but that seems like ancient history now.
The scale of the win is helpful in countering 'just a by election' realism. Soin would happen with a tight win too, but it looks more credible with a result like this, since even activists aren't fools and know a very tight result probably presage nothing.
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
That is why Rayner is in pole position. Labour rules make defenestration very difficult, as we saw with Corbyn, so a leadership contest is most likely following a resignation by SKS. Rayner wants it, and would be acting leader at the time, and is clearly not anathema to the left in the way Starmer is. I rate Rayner, and think her a much more subtle politician than she is often given credit for.
Rayner would be a disaster, Remain Tories would fear her in a way they don't fear Starmer so the LD gains last night would end overnight for as with Corbyn Southern Remain Tories would have to vote Tory not LD to keep out Rayner.
Whether she would win a GE is down the road a bit, the question is whether she would win the Labour selectorate. I think she would.
She is a subtle politician, for example over Brexit she was not associated with efforts to stifle it, so has fairly clean hands.
She might and if she did she might finally kill off the Labour Party too.
Following the Tory win in Hartlepool and last night's LD win in Chesham and Amersham and the pattern of the local elections the Tories would become the party of the North and Midlands, the Liberal Democrats would become the party of the South and Labour would become a rump minor party confined to the poorer parts of London and the inner cities and south Wales.
We would be back to the pre 1920s
The Tories have a hammer lock over most of the South West, Kent, Essex, East Anglia, Hertfordshire, so they are nowhere close to losing the South. Where the Lib Dems have an opening is in some commuter-belt constituencies.
True but those were more Leave areas of the South (excluding say St Albans or Cambridge and Bristol), if you are a Tory MP in Surrey, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire or Hampshire (or indeed Tunbridge Wells) this morning which were more Remain and where the LDs are your main opponents however you would be in panic mode this morning
Even in the South East, 51% went for Brexit. The majority of South Eastern seats are pro-Brexit.
Ultimately, though, the impact of Brexit will fade. The Conservatives need to keep their nerve on housebuilding, even if it alienates some existing homeowners. In the long run, people who own their own homes are likely to vote Conservative, and those who don't won't.
The LDs got a 25% swing last night in a seat which voted 45% for Brexit.
If that swing was repeated in 2024 every single Tory Remain seat in the South would go LD and indeed every southern Tory Seat which voted for Brexit by less than 60% would also be at risk of going LD.
Housebuilding just adds to that shift to the LDs further, these are not seats at risk of going Labour because too many rent (that is more a London Tories problem), these are seats still majority owner occupier being pushed LD because of fury at proposed developments in the greenbelt
Spartan If, there. The next general election will not see the Lib Dem vote share rise by 30%, nor the Conservative vote share fall by 19%.
I think the seat is a Tory hold at the next GE still
I am not sure that is necessarily the case with the changeing demographic and the potential economic fallout of Covid and Brexit coming down the line.. We have inflation, quality job losses (but not necessarily high unemployment) and house price deflation on the way.
Could be a BlueWall hold!
Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government
Why is Hartlepool a disaster for Labour and yet this by-election is not a disaster for the Tories?
I’ve been saying for months the Tories are in trouble in the South. It was always going to be the case that abandoning the former Tory south and chasing the North was going to result in losses. It’s an electoral strategy that so far has worked well for the Tories - but how much of the Southern retention was due to Corbyn?
What this shows is that Labour voters are prepared to vote tactically once again as they have in the past. Will the same occur in Labour targets going forward?
Yet the local elections weren't a disaster for the Conservatives in the South.
Nor do the opinion polls point to that.
That leaves a byelection and they've happened before and will happen again.
So why is this any different to other byelections ?
Now there maybe long term issues for the Conservatives in the South, in particular connected with housing.
But a 5% Conservative vote decrease in the South but a 5% increase in the Conservative vote in the North makes the Conservative vote overall more efficient.
I've just received a surprisingly quick response to an NHS referral for a non-urgent condition (nasal polyp).
I wonder if some extra-caution wrt unlocking is being exercised to keep NHS services ramping back more quickly without disruption, and how heavily non-Covid deaths are weighing in the balance?
My department still has loads of routine appointments from referrals sent in August that we haven't given dates to.
With social distancing and PPE, each week we dig our hole a bit deeper.
On the last point: would that have been scrapped on 21st June if it had gone ahead?
No. We were told a week before by NHS England that whatever else changed SD and PPE measures would not be changing in healthcare for the foreseeable. It is a major drag on productivity.
I have not personally asked each of them but it is highly likely that those Cons voters who disapprove of the Cons' pandemic handling registered their vote via the LDs.
Cons voters of the type in C&A are not typically the sort who would vote for a protest party rather than an established one.
Legendary modesty klaxon time, ditto for OGH as well.
The winnings will make this weekend in Blackpool even more memorable/debauched.
My big takeaway here.
The Labour voters have finally forgiven the Lib Dems for the coalition.
The Labour vote cratering here for the greater good is similar to the Newbury and Christchurch in 1993 when Labour polled 2% and 2.7%.
Labour did alright in the next general election.
I'd be shitting bricks if I were Raab, Redwood, et al.
Henley could be the mother of all results at the GE.
Oops, I meant Uxbridge.
I'm trying to picture a debauched weekend in Blackpool.
Sex on the big dipper?
I'm staying in one of the suites at The Imperial Hotel, chances are one of the party leaders like Thatcher, Major, Blair, Wilson, Callaghan, Kinnock, or Foot had sex in that suite and leave it at that.
Who knows, Brooks Newmark might even have texted photos of his genitalia from that very suite?
Morning all. No doubt the PB Europhiles and LibDems wil be hailing the end of the Conservative Government. This result is a good mid-term win for the LibDems but was fairly common in Margaret Thatchers mid-terms. Remember Shirley Williams and Crosby overturning something like a 19,000 majority. She lost the seat back to the Tories. Incidentally how does this seat do in the boundary changes?
I hope all the happy remainers who voted LibDem yesterday ask their shiny new LibDem MP what good she is doing as the HS2 bulldozers go straight through their villages. No doubt Ed Davey will follow the road of his predecessors and be gone the day after the next General Election.
If I were Johnson I would reroute HS2 straight through the villages and build some fuck off big social housing estates there. Pour encourager les autres
Which would see an even bigger swing to the LDs in the South East, not a good idea.
This result shows the Tories should focus on building new infrastructure in the North and new houses to own in majority rent London. They should cut back on the number of proposed new developments in the still majority owner occupier South and especially cut back on any new developments in the greenbelt in the Home Counties.
Comments
The Reform UK flop is a reminder of how little traction the "freedom" line has outside political circles like PB.
All week this week I've said that the Tories deserve to lose the seat following Boris failing to proceed with Step 4, but it's a shame the LDs are going down the NIMBY path which is popular but wrong ethically to me.
Why following the result should anything else be said.
NIMBYism is a flaw in democracy. If 60% of a seat think they can make themselves richer by making 40% poorer then that can be popular democratically even if it's unethical and wrong economically.
Still democracy is better than any alternative system.
Batley & Spen is a different matter entirely, of course.
New house building in C&A type seats leads to lower house prices overall.
New house building in 'red wall' seats leads to higher house prices overall.
The difference being that new housing in C&A is smaller and cheaper than that already there - I'm not sure of this, not my area.
Whereas the new estates built in old mining areas have houses that are bigger and more expensive than those in the pit villages.
Is Boris Captain Kirk then?
And on a minor point - World Test final could be a bit of a damp squib...
Nice when you not only have the satisfaction of kicking a nasty piece of shit in the groin but you make money out of it too!
Maybe when conservative voters are unhappy, they simply do not vote.
Can they voluntarily give up the idea of two party duopoly, though ? Labour, perhaps even more than the Tories, are hooked on the power FPTP gives governments to remake society in their image, on a minority of the popular vote.
And some astute anti-Tory tactical voting to give the yellows their thumping win.
Next stop Batley.
The winnings will make this weekend in Blackpool even more memorable/debauched.
My big takeaway here.
The Labour voters have finally forgiven the Lib Dems for the coalition.
The Labour vote cratering here for the greater good is similar to the Newbury and Christchurch in 1993 when Labour polled 2% and 2.7%.
Labour did alright in the next general election.
I'd be shitting bricks if I were Raab, Redwood, et al.
Henley could be the mother of all results at the GE.
Oops, I meant Uxbridge.
blockquote class="Quote" rel="RochdalePioneers"> Yes. The DUP really have turned into Gozer the Destructor if you are a Unionist. Sweeping aside the UUP their grand old man managed to set aside decades of NO! and make peace with the IRA. Look what his successors have done with that amazing political settlement!
The reality check is that the DUP deserve to be swept away. Electing a psychotic creationist as leader, being anti-women's rights, anti-21st Century societal progress and apparently pro-separation from GB.
Lets have an election (again). A few will vote for the ultra-hard line alternative, the rest (hopefully) vote for the Alliance and softer UUP. If Sinn Fein top the poll, well...
I don't know what they're playing at. There must be a good chance of the UUP now topping 20%. Their leader seems like a good man.
For there is now a large number of potential wins there but it will require numbers to win the many options.
So that's OGH's Tesla sorted, then.
Well done to the Yellow Peril - I wonder what this will do for Ed's leadership?
Ultimately, though, the impact of Brexit will fade. The Conservatives need to keep their nerve on housebuilding, even if it alienates some existing homeowners. In the long run, people who own their own homes are likely to vote Conservative, and those who don't won't.
All parties talk about empowering local government too, butbwhen given the chance it's not a priority.
I've just received a surprisingly quick response to an NHS referral for a non-urgent condition (nasal polyp).
I wonder if some extra-caution wrt unlocking is being exercised to keep NHS services ramping back more quickly without disruption, and how heavily non-Covid deaths are weighing in the balance?
But I have no numbers.
@Foxy ?
It is refereshing to have some proper politics to discuss instead of those endless fucking graphs being dissected by TK Maxx epidemiologists.
https://twitter.com/keiranpedley/status/1405792606219550720?s=20
Every party right now, every party, is the party of high taxes.
Look at the public finances. You more or less have to be.
https://twitter.com/janemerrick23/status/1405792768203575296?s=20
And pretty good concession speech from Fleet.
One other thought: C & A are too late. Their big chance fell in 2019 when urban and southern Remainland could have voted in a GE to Remain they conspicuously didn't. Lab, LD, Green and SNP had a huge opportunity to take the matter back into their hands. Politicians and voters screwed up big time and there is no going back.
• First time since 1992-1997 parliament (Christchurch & Newbury) that the first two by-elections have resulted in seats changing hands
If that swing was repeated in 2024 every single Tory Remain seat in the South would go LD and indeed every southern Tory Seat which voted for Brexit by less than 60% would also be at risk of going LD.
Housebuilding just adds to that shift to the LDs further, these are not seats at risk of going Labour because too many rent (that is more a London Tories problem), these are seats still majority owner occupier being pushed LD because of fury at proposed developments in the greenbelt
My department still has loads of routine appointments from referrals sent in August that we haven't given dates to.
With social distancing and PPE, each week we dig our hole a bit deeper.
80 - 82 - 80.
Sex on the big dipper?
It is bad news for the Conservatives, but it could be even worse for Labour. The Liberal Democrat by-election victory in Chesham and Amersham reflects the realignment of British politics, as the Conservatives gain support in northern working-class Leave areas – which means they are vulnerable in southern middle-class Remainland. But while it is Labour that loses out in places such as Hartlepool, the main opposition party doesn’t gain in places such as Chesham and Amersham.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/lib-dems-by-election-victory-b1868330.html
The strategy of an informal anti-Tory alliance with Labour would be a mistake. Anti-Tory voters in the south will know what to do in any case. LDs need to make it clear that they wouldn't be pushed into propping up a minority Labour government with the support of the SNP ("coalition of chaos"). The LDs need to attack Labour with about one third of their messaging as intolerant, too woke and extremist. They have a window to displace Labour. What most commentators proposing cooperation between LDs and Labour are missing is that Labour are in a death spiral (even if they retain the seat today). The leader isn't the problem. Rather it is the policies and the membership and much of the parliamentary party. If the LDs position themselves as a Liberal (old sense) left of centre party they can seize the moment.
Thousands of VIPs will be allowed into England without the need to quarantine under plans to stop the final of the European Championship being moved from Wembley to Budapest, The Times can reveal.
Ministers are discussing a proposal to exempt Uefa and Fifa officials, politicians, sponsors and broadcasters from having to self-isolate on arrival despite concerns that this could lead to an increase in coronavirus infections and provoke a backlash from the public.
About 2,500 designated VIPs attending games at Wembley would not have to abide by the quarantine restrictions imposed on ordinary travellers. They would be allowed to attend matches at Wembley during the knockout phase of the tournament as well as training sessions and meetings with the UK government.
Ministers are concerned that if they do not relax the rules the semi-finals and final will be moved to Hungary, which will have no border restrictions for travel within the Schengen zone from next week and would host the games with full stadiums.
Cabinet ministers are understood to have acknowledged that amending the law on border restrictions for VIPs could cause controversy at a time when millions of Britons are unable to take holidays abroad.
There have also been talks within government on the public health risks and the potential for exempted travellers to contract the Delta, or Indian, variant in Britain.
Boris Johnson is said to be drawn to the plans on the grounds that they could boost a joint Home Nations bid for the 2030 World Cup. The proposed exemptions would allow the prime minister to meet senior figures from Uefa, the sport’s governing body in Europe, in person as he attempts to secure their backing for the first major international tournament held entirely on British soil since 1996.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/uefa-threat-euro-2020-final-quaranting-hungary-budapest-0f3jhc99v
Some people pay premiums to live in an area where there are still Grammar schools and they were incensed with closures and disruption apparently.
Johnson's decision to close down schools in January was a factor?
We should never let any government close down our schools again.
Conservative 1.45 or 4/9
Labour 5/2 Hills and Betway (only 3 aka 2/1 on Betfair)
Workers Party of George Galloway 100
I’ve been saying for months the Tories are in trouble in the South. It was always going to be the case that abandoning the former Tory south and chasing the North was going to result in losses. It’s an electoral strategy that so far has worked well for the Tories - but how much of the Southern retention was due to Corbyn?
What this shows is that Labour voters are prepared to vote tactically once again as they have in the past. Will the same occur in Labour targets going forward?
Perhaps as a Covid Extremely Vulnerable there is some priority (?), or they are just in a better position to split treatments; they were going fairly full stream last summer here - when I had my lukemia treatment teh car park was way fuller than pre-Covid.
But anyway - all praise to Sherwood Hospitals Trust on the last 15 months from my POV.
Very welcome publicity boost and filip for the LDs though. It will be a long road back from the wipeout of 2015, but that seems like ancient history now.
Tottenham will not be appointing Gennaro Gattuso as manager
Tottenham’s protracted search for a new manager will continue after the north London club decided against appointing Gennaro Gattuso to the vacant position, The Athletic can reveal.
The Italian emerged as a potential option for Spurs yesterday alongside Paulo Fonseca, with whom talks are believed to have broken down.
Earlier in the day, Gattuso surprisingly departed Fiorentina after only 23 days at the helm.
What happened on Thursday?
Conversations took place between Tottenham and the 43-year-old former AC Milan and Napoli manager — as they have done with numerous contenders — however Gattuso will not be getting the job.
There was a huge backlash from Spurs fans after reports that Gattuso was the leading candidate.
Historic comments allegedly made by the ex-Italy midfielder about the role of women in football, same-sex marriage and racism were repeatedly shared by Tottenham supporters on social media, accompanied by the hashtag #NoToGattuso, which was trending in the United Kingdom last night.
https://theathletic.com/news/tottenham-gattuso-fonseca-next-manager/gMDVgY6icgRu
All down to Palestine, for some reason.
Could be a BlueWall hold!
Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government
Nor do the opinion polls point to that.
That leaves a byelection and they've happened before and will happen again.
So why is this any different to other byelections ?
Now there maybe long term issues for the Conservatives in the South, in particular connected with housing.
But a 5% Conservative vote decrease in the South but a 5% increase in the Conservative vote in the North makes the Conservative vote overall more efficient.
Cons voters of the type in C&A are not typically the sort who would vote for a protest party rather than an established one.
And Hodges trying to explain how this result is different to Hartlepool because reasons
This result shows the Tories should focus on building new infrastructure in the North and new houses to own in majority rent London. They should cut back on the number of proposed new developments in the still majority owner occupier South and especially cut back on any new developments in the greenbelt in the Home Counties.