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.
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?
Unlikely, been a while since the conferences were held at the seaside.
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?
It is a disaster for the Tories. They have permanently lost me, and I'm a lifelong Tory public school Oxford classicist fed up with government by a fat clown and a fifth rate Clara Petacci. And I don't see any potential successor tempting me back. This is not aa one off result.
I think the only party that can be in any way happy with that result is the Lib Dems. For them, it’s perfect. A landslide in a remainery seat with a campaign on local issues is the Grimond strategy successfully modernised. Lots of lovely publicity. A new MP increasing their parliamentary strength by 8%. Ed Davey’s recent strategy vindicated. Plenty of similar seats to target for next time.
But the Tories - lost the seat (nuff said) Greens - nowhere at all, so much for being a repository for ex-Labour votes Labour - did worse than the Greens in a seat where they were second less than five years ago. RefUK - did worse than Labour. That is surely the end of them as a party.
Not often you get such a binary result. Usually one party tries to spin some positive out of a defeat. Even ridiculously (Hazel Blears springs to mind). Nobody can do that here.
What's happening in the south is that non-Tory voters are largely unpartisan these days, spurred on by the lack of noticable policy by any of the non-Tory parties. The visceral Labour anti-LD vote post-coalition has almost disappeared, as rcs1000 points out, and conversely non-Tories are willing to vote Labour (which at a micro-level is why I'm a councillor in a ward that hasn't been Labour for 20 years). Davey and SKS both seem neither scary nor ridiculous, and if there are important policy differences between them they aren't telling us about them.
In the north, there is a degree of anti-Labour voting from people fed up with Labour after decades of party complacency. Being unobjectionable like SKS isn't enough there. That will remain a problem in B&S (plus the surprising pro-Palestinian revolt which Owen Jones reported the other day - a case where the Corbyn->SKS switch has caused problems) - Labour needs to mean something concrete again to recover there. If we succeed in that, then clearly the Tories have a strategic problem, especially if there is an understanding between Labour and LDs on where to fight hard.
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.
You often only get one, imperfect, chance at the big decisions. Like Brexit, like reverse the referendum (2019 election), like Scottish independence (!), like getting rid of Trump, like the GFA, like winning the first Test against NZ.
So no one knows anything about by elections! But these things happen with HS2 being more important than the vaccine rollout it would appear. No doubt Batley will be an upredictable ride too.
More importantly Ive been up since 6am worrying about tonight's match. 7 pints minimum before heading to Wembley, though I'd happily fast forward to 10pm and 3 points right now.
Who would have thought the Lib Dems to poll 45%-50% bet would be a loser on the UPSIDE?
Ha! You just reminded me that I'd backed LibDems to get over 50% at 40/1 with Ladbrokes. I wanted a very speculative tenner but the buggers only let me put 50p on!
I am enjoying the complete 180 of the Spectator who were absolutely sure of a Tory win.
And Hodges trying to explain how this result is different to Hartlepool because reasons
It is different, however, if Labour were to hold a similar number of seats as in 2019, maybe pick up some southern seats and lose a few more red wall seats and the LDs have a 2010 result in the South it becomes very tight for Johnson, and as I believe Starmer, though weak is far less toxic than Corbyn, picking up a handful of Northern seats lost in 2019 is not beyond the imagination.
OK there are local issues re: HS2 but don't forget we are at peak Johnson, so it shouldn't have happened.
And let's face it the "charisma" theory nonsense that only charismatic figures can win elections goes out of the window here as Davey is more of a wallflower than Starmer.
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?
It is a disaster for the Tories. They have permanently lost me, and I'm a lifelong Tory public school Oxford classicist fed up with government by a fat clown and a fifth rate Clara Petacci. And I don't see any potential successor tempting me back. This is not aa one off result.
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
Does anyone want this bloody HS2?
£120bn+ is going somewhere, those people certainly do.
So no one knows anything about by elections! But these things happen with HS2 being more important than the vaccine rollout it would appear. No doubt Batley will be an upredictable ride too.
More importantly Ive been up since 6am worrying about tonight's match. 7 pints minimum before heading to Wembley, though I'd happily fast forward to 10pm and 3 points right now.
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?
It is a disaster for the Tories. They have permanently lost me, and I'm a lifelong Tory public school Oxford classicist fed up with government by a fat clown and a fifth rate Clara Petacci. And I don't see any potential successor tempting me back. This is not aa one off result.
This is the Tory strategy. Lose 1 toff and gain 2 chavs.
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?
It is a disaster for the Tories. They have permanently lost me, and I'm a lifelong Tory public school Oxford classicist fed up with government by a fat clown and a fifth rate Clara Petacci. And I don't see any potential successor tempting me back. This is not aa one off result.
Welcome to the dark side.
Wait till you see the Animal Sentience Bill, doubtless to be followed by Water (Liquidity at Room Temperature) Bill.
I am enjoying the complete 180 of the Spectator who were absolutely sure of a Tory win.
And Hodges trying to explain how this result is different to Hartlepool because reasons
It is different, however, if Labour were to hold a similar number of seats as in 2019, maybe pick up some southern seats and lose a few more red wall seats and the LDs have a 2010 result in the South it becomes very tight for Johnson, and as I believe Starmer, though weak is far less toxic than Corbyn, picking up a handful of Northern seats lost in 2019 is not beyond the imagination.
OK there are local issues re: HS2 but don't forget we are at peak Johnson, so it shouldn't have happened.
And let's face it the "charisma" theory nonsense that only charismatic figures can win elections goes out of the window here as Davey is more of a wallflower than Starmer.
Charisma gets you noticed, to be sure. That doesn't help if being noticed cases people to notice that you're not very competent and actually more than a bit nasty.
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
Does anyone want this bloody HS2?
It's about a 21C transport network for the whole country. So yes - the sooner the better.
I don't hold with stuffing Nimbies' mouths with gold, however.
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
Does anyone want this bloody HS2?
Only those who are nowhere near it.
My brother had a rare office day yesterday in the Smoke. Train half full even at rush hour, and plenty of spare seats.
We may need to consider that railways will not return to the days BC, and revise plans.
I am enjoying the complete 180 of the Spectator who were absolutely sure of a Tory win.
And Hodges trying to explain how this result is different to Hartlepool because reasons
I think it is a really interesting result, but I'm not sure that it is any different from many other Lib Dem (or whatever the existing variant was)big wins in By Elections where they have poured resources in like a UEFA Finals tour party.
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?
It is a disaster for the Tories. They have permanently lost me, and I'm a lifelong Tory public school Oxford classicist fed up with government by a fat clown and a fifth rate Clara Petacci. And I don't see any potential successor tempting me back. This is not aa one off result.
This is the Tory strategy. Lose 1 toff and gain 2 chavs.
As they say in sport, chavs are temporary. Toffs is permanent.
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.
You often only get one, imperfect, chance at the big decisions. Like Brexit, like reverse the referendum (2019 election), like Scottish independence (!), like getting rid of Trump, like the GFA, like winning the first Test against NZ.
I wonder if Joe Root now regrets not taking a chance in the first test.
I am enjoying the complete 180 of the Spectator who were absolutely sure of a Tory win.
And Hodges trying to explain how this result is different to Hartlepool because reasons
It is different, however, if Labour were to hold a similar number of seats as in 2019, maybe pick up some southern seats and lose a few more red wall seats and the LDs have a 2010 result in the South it becomes very tight for Johnson, and as I believe Starmer, though weak is far less toxic than Corbyn, picking up a handful of Northern seats lost in 2019 is not beyond the imagination.
OK there are local issues re: HS2 but don't forget we are at peak Johnson, so it shouldn't have happened.
And let's face it the "charisma" theory nonsense that only charismatic figures can win elections goes out of the window here as Davey is more of a wallflower than Starmer.
Haha, if someone were programmed to misunderstand the charisma theory, they couldn’t do it better than you!
I think the only party that can be in any way happy with that result is the Lib Dems. For them, it’s perfect. A landslide in a remainery seat with a campaign on local issues is the Grimond strategy successfully modernised. Lots of lovely publicity. A new MP increasing their parliamentary strength by 8%. Ed Davey’s recent strategy vindicated. Plenty of similar seats to target for next time.
But the Tories - lost the seat (nuff said) Greens - nowhere at all, so much for being a repository for ex-Labour votes Labour - did worse than the Greens in a seat where they were second less than five years ago. RefUK - did worse than Labour. That is surely the end of them as a party.
Not often you get such a binary result. Usually one party tries to spin some positive out of a defeat. Even ridiculously (Hazel Blears springs to mind). Nobody can do that here.
What's happening in the south is that non-Tory voters are largely unpartisan these days, spurred on by the lack of noticable policy by any of the non-Tory parties. The visceral Labour anti-LD vote post-coalition has almost disappeared, as rcs1000 points out, and conversely non-Tories are willing to vote Labour (which at a micro-level is why I'm a councillor in a ward that hasn't been Labour for 20 years). Davey and SKS both seem neither scary nor ridiculous, and if there are important policy differences between them they aren't telling us about them.
In the north, there is a degree of anti-Labour voting from people fed up with Labour after decades of party complacency. Being unobjectionable like SKS isn't enough there. That will remain a problem in B&S (plus the surprising pro-Palestinian revolt which Owen Jones reported the other day - a case where the Corbyn->SKS switch has caused problems) - Labour needs to mean something concrete again to recover there. If we succeed in that, then clearly the Tories have a strategic problem, especially if there is an understanding between Labour and LDs on where to fight hard.
Thanks good post.
I think an indication of how and whether Lab are getting there is for you, or anyone, to write such a sober analysis on Lab's current electoral prospects without using the word "Palestinian".
I think the only party that can be in any way happy with that result is the Lib Dems. For them, it’s perfect. A landslide in a remainery seat with a campaign on local issues is the Grimond strategy successfully modernised. Lots of lovely publicity. A new MP increasing their parliamentary strength by 8%. Ed Davey’s recent strategy vindicated. Plenty of similar seats to target for next time.
But the Tories - lost the seat (nuff said) Greens - nowhere at all, so much for being a repository for ex-Labour votes Labour - did worse than the Greens in a seat where they were second less than five years ago. RefUK - did worse than Labour. That is surely the end of them as a party.
Not often you get such a binary result. Usually one party tries to spin some positive out of a defeat. Even ridiculously (Hazel Blears springs to mind). Nobody can do that here.
What's happening in the south is that non-Tory voters are largely unpartisan these days, spurred on by the lack of noticable policy by any of the non-Tory parties. The visceral Labour anti-LD vote post-coalition has almost disappeared, as rcs1000 points out, and conversely non-Tories are willing to vote Labour (which at a micro-level is why I'm a councillor in a ward that hasn't been Labour for 20 years). Davey and SKS both seem neither scary nor ridiculous, and if there are important policy differences between them they aren't telling us about them.
In the north, there is a degree of anti-Labour voting from people fed up with Labour after decades of party complacency. Being unobjectionable like SKS isn't enough there. That will remain a problem in B&S (plus the surprising pro-Palestinian revolt which Owen Jones reported the other day - a case where the Corbyn->SKS switch has caused problems) - Labour needs to mean something concrete again to recover there. If we succeed in that, then clearly the Tories have a strategic problem, especially if there is an understanding between Labour and LDs on where to fight hard.
Great post.
If there is any sort of "understanding" between Labour and LDs the LDs will lose my vote.
Has there ever been a by-election with such a concoction of issues, many locally driven contributing to the result?
HS2, planning reform, the nationalist and culture war rhetoric turning off many liberal Tories, the death rattle of Brexit, the villification of graduates and educated professionals by the Torieszm, the leveling up agenda which rightly or wrongly is seen by many in the South as taking their taxes to bribe the North.
In retrospect, completely unsurprising that what I suspect was a motley coalition of anti-government voters decided to give a bloody nose in a fairly inconsequential by-election.
Yes there is some realignment clearly going on in the South, but I wouldn't be panicking if I was a Tory. It is a timely reminder that they can't completely ignore their Southern core vote as they woo the Northern post industrial towns and The Midlands.
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
Does anyone want this bloody HS2?
Only those who are nowhere near it.
My brother had a rare office day yesterday in the Smoke. Train half full even at rush hour, and plenty of spare seats.
We may need to consider that railways will not return to the days BC, and revise plans.
I am currently on a deserted peak time train from London to Newbury.
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.
I'd agree with that though possibly for different reasons.
Amidst all the shouts of "NIMBY", Chesham & Amersham is an objectively lousy place to build houses. It's in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, of which we don't have many. It's at the end of a crap "tube" line to London which is actually slower than getting the train from somewhere like Oxford.
Building in C&A just reinforces London's dominance and creates more rubbish dormitory housing. We should be building up regional capitals in Bristol and Manchester and the like, not exacerbating sprawl in the M25 belt.
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?
It is a disaster for the Tories. They have permanently lost me, and I'm a lifelong Tory public school Oxford classicist fed up with government by a fat clown and a fifth rate Clara Petacci. And I don't see any potential successor tempting me back. This is not aa one off result.
Off to join the party of NIMBYism? Why am I not surprised?
I think the only party that can be in any way happy with that result is the Lib Dems. For them, it’s perfect. A landslide in a remainery seat with a campaign on local issues is the Grimond strategy successfully modernised. Lots of lovely publicity. A new MP increasing their parliamentary strength by 8%. Ed Davey’s recent strategy vindicated. Plenty of similar seats to target for next time.
But the Tories - lost the seat (nuff said) Greens - nowhere at all, so much for being a repository for ex-Labour votes Labour - did worse than the Greens in a seat where they were second less than five years ago. RefUK - did worse than Labour. That is surely the end of them as a party.
Not often you get such a binary result. Usually one party tries to spin some positive out of a defeat. Even ridiculously (Hazel Blears springs to mind). Nobody can do that here.
What's happening in the south is that non-Tory voters are largely unpartisan these days, spurred on by the lack of noticable policy by any of the non-Tory parties. The visceral Labour anti-LD vote post-coalition has almost disappeared, as rcs1000 points out, and conversely non-Tories are willing to vote Labour (which at a micro-level is why I'm a councillor in a ward that hasn't been Labour for 20 years). Davey and SKS both seem neither scary nor ridiculous, and if there are important policy differences between them they aren't telling us about them.
In the north, there is a degree of anti-Labour voting from people fed up with Labour after decades of party complacency. Being unobjectionable like SKS isn't enough there. That will remain a problem in B&S (plus the surprising pro-Palestinian revolt which Owen Jones reported the other day - a case where the Corbyn->SKS switch has caused problems) - Labour needs to mean something concrete again to recover there. If we succeed in that, then clearly the Tories have a strategic problem, especially if there is an understanding between Labour and LDs on where to fight hard.
Thanks good post.
I think an indication of how and whether Lab are getting there is for you, or anyone, to write such a sober analysis on Lab's current electoral prospects without using the word "Palestinian".
It is an issue for some. Palestine car flags are not unusual in parts of Leicester.
Though when I went down to London last Saturday there were a bunch of youngsters waving Israel flags from a bridge over the M1 in North London.
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
Does anyone want this bloody HS2?
It's about a 21C transport network for the whole country. So yes - the sooner the better.
I don't hold with stuffing Nimbies' mouths with gold, however.
For me this was the ultimate NIMBY by-election. HS2 was the overriding factor. You just need to drive through the constituency to see protests everywhere. Tories are delivering HS2 and they were going to get punished.
The LDs did their normal approach of saying completely different things in different parts of the country to win. Candidate was massively against HS2 in C&A but her party is massively for it.
The Tory agenda of levelling up places in the North, one part of which is building HS2, has a downside. The loss of C&A was the embodiment of that.
For Labour the result is worse than the Tories. They are still losing votes in the North but their supporters in the South are prepared to vote LD instead to stop the Tories. Where do they get their votes from now?
The big question for me is what would happen in a GE? As we all know, by-elections are very different. In the South will Labour voters and previous Tory voters be prepared to vote LD then? At the last GE there were many voters in the South who would have voted LD but they were so terrified of Corbyn getting in that they couldn't risk it. For all SKS faults he isn't seen as a threat in the Home Counties quite like Corbyn was. My mother is in Wokingham and really dislikes Redwood but wasn't going to risk Corbyn in 2019. At the next GE she might be tempted to go LD. So SKS's de-toxification of Labour just helps the LDs in the South.
B&S will be very interesting to get some more details of what is happening in the North. Right now the Tories are in danger at the next GE of losing a host of Remainerland seats to the LDs. If the Tories continue to make progress in the North then it would probably equal-out. In that scenario, Labour will be the only losers.
Since the Brexit vote the political landscape in this country has been massively changing. I think we are only half-way through it and the next 5 years will be very interesting, particularly the next GE.
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
Does anyone want this bloody HS2?
Only those who are nowhere near it.
My brother had a rare office day yesterday in the Smoke. Train half full even at rush hour, and plenty of spare seats.
We may need to consider that railways will not return to the days BC, and revise plans.
I am currently on a deserted peak time train from London to Newbury.
Only one other person in the carriage.
Mind you he isn't looking as ridiculous as I do
Ascot?
I am going surfing. Owing to a premature withdrawal on my part my c & a winnings will cover about 40% of my Bude Town Council carpark ticket.
Has there ever been a by-election with such a concoction of issues, many locally driven contributing to the result?
HS2, planning reform, the nationalist and culture war rhetoric turning off many liberal Tories, the death rattle of Brexit, the villification of graduates and educated professionals by the Torieszm, the leveling up agenda which rightly or wrongly is seen by many in the South as taking their taxes to bribe the North.
In retrospect, completely unsurprising that what I suspect was a motley coalition of anti-government voters decided to give a bloody nose in a fairly inconsequential by-election.
Yes there is some realignment clearly going on in the South, but I wouldn't be panicking if I was a Tory. It is a timely reminder that they can't completely ignore their Southern core vote as they woo the Northern post industrial towns and The Midlands.
Pfizer FIRST DOSE vaccinations at [redacted] for 18 & over. No appt needed, just walk-in
Interestingly now of course 18+ is the rule nationwide so I'm curious if others are getting these texts now too or if it's just me?
I think they're being sent in all areas where vaccine take-up is poor. I know a few people who live in East London who have been getting them fairly regularly, one even used the walk in centre to get her jab about a month before her age group opened up.
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
Does anyone want this bloody HS2?
Only those who are nowhere near it.
My brother had a rare office day yesterday in the Smoke. Train half full even at rush hour, and plenty of spare seats.
We may need to consider that railways will not return to the days BC, and revise plans.
At my large firm, it is rare to hear anyone talk of wanting to return 5 days a week. TWT (Tues, Wed, Thu) seems popular with the extroverts that live in London and the surrounds. Out of towners or those with smaller kids take the view of “I’ll come in once or twice a fortnight”.
One of the major drivers of HS2 was to allow a massive increase of seats on commuter trains from the likes of Milton Keynes, which could triple depending on pathway choices. I just don’t see the demand will be there for that ever again.
Conversely, I think demand for longer distance rail travel will be stronger than ever, as 30-50 somethings that previously grouped around London have scattered around the country for cheaper house prices and proximity to extended family.
Complex it is. But there’s no appetite in government to even start thinking about all this. Instead it’s just “let’s concrete the south east green belt and build a London commuter relief line”.
Aaron Bastani @AaronBastani · 4m Of course Labour’s vote in Chesham and Amersham collapsed because of tactical voting. However, 1.6% is the lowest it has EVER polled in a by-election. What is more this is *exactly* the sort of seat Starmer is meant to appeal to.
Has there ever been a by-election with such a concoction of issues, many locally driven contributing to the result?
HS2, planning reform, the nationalist and culture war rhetoric turning off many liberal Tories, the death rattle of Brexit, the villification of graduates and educated professionals by the Torieszm, the leveling up agenda which rightly or wrongly is seen by many in the South as taking their taxes to bribe the North.
In retrospect, completely unsurprising that what I suspect was a motley coalition of anti-government voters decided to give a bloody nose in a fairly inconsequential by-election.
Yes there is some realignment clearly going on in the South, but I wouldn't be panicking if I was a Tory. It is a timely reminder that they can't completely ignore their Southern core vote as they woo the Northern post industrial towns and The Midlands.
As an ex Tory member and activist I am delighted that the party wants to "level up" and appeal to the whole country.
But it has veered significantly to the right side is run by incompetents and led by a solipsistic twat wholly unsuited to any leadership role least of all leader of the country.
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
Does anyone want this bloody HS2?
Only those who are nowhere near it.
My brother had a rare office day yesterday in the Smoke. Train half full even at rush hour, and plenty of spare seats.
We may need to consider that railways will not return to the days BC, and revise plans.
At my large firm, it is rare to hear anyone talk of wanting to return 5 days a week. TWT (Tues, Wed, Thu) seems popular with the extroverts that live in London and the surrounds. Out of towners or those with smaller kids take the view of “I’ll come in once or twice a fortnight”.
One of the major drivers of HS2 was to allow a massive increase of seats on commuter trains from the likes of Milton Keynes, which could triple depending on pathway choices. I just don’t see the demand will be there for that ever again.
Conversely, I think demand for longer distance rail travel will be stronger than ever, as 30-50 somethings that previously grouped around London have scattered around the country for cheaper house prices and proximity to extended family.
Complex it is. But there’s no appetite in government to even start thinking about all this. Instead it’s just “let’s concrete the south east green belt and build a London commuter relief line”.
"TWT (Tues, Wed, Thu)" ?
Aren't firms starting to say you can work from home but NOT on Friday and Monday, because, I guess senior management aren't stupid as to what will happen on those days.
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.
England win a home Euro 2021 final, Boris having been Mayor for London 2012 manages to secure a home World Cup 2030, wins 2024 and 2029 and gets to have England winning a home World Cup 2030 as his pre retirement swansong. GOAT. 🏆
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
Does anyone want this bloody HS2?
Only those who are nowhere near it.
My brother had a rare office day yesterday in the Smoke. Train half full even at rush hour, and plenty of spare seats.
We may need to consider that railways will not return to the days BC, and revise plans.
I am currently on a deserted peak time train from London to Newbury.
Only one other person in the carriage.
Mind you he isn't looking as ridiculous as I do
Ascot?
I am going surfing. Owing to a premature withdrawal on my part my c & a winnings will cover about 40% of my Bude Town Council carpark ticket.
Yes Ascot. Were it not for friends organising it I would have not gone through all the (non clothes related) palaver.
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
Does anyone want this bloody HS2?
Only those who are nowhere near it.
My brother had a rare office day yesterday in the Smoke. Train half full even at rush hour, and plenty of spare seats.
We may need to consider that railways will not return to the days BC, and revise plans.
At my large firm, it is rare to hear anyone talk of wanting to return 5 days a week. TWT (Tues, Wed, Thu) seems popular with the extroverts that live in London and the surrounds. Out of towners or those with smaller kids take the view of “I’ll come in once or twice a fortnight”.
One of the major drivers of HS2 was to allow a massive increase of seats on commuter trains from the likes of Milton Keynes, which could triple depending on pathway choices. I just don’t see the demand will be there for that ever again.
Conversely, I think demand for longer distance rail travel will be stronger than ever, as 30-50 somethings that previously grouped around London have scattered around the country for cheaper house prices and proximity to extended family.
Complex it is. But there’s no appetite in government to even start thinking about all this. Instead it’s just “let’s concrete the south east green belt and build a London commuter relief line”.
"TWT (Tues, Wed, Thu)" ?
Aren't firms starting to say you can work from home but NOT on Friday and Monday, because, I guess senior management aren't stupid as to what will happen on those days.
Can’t speak for other firms. But at mine they are talking of it as an epochal shift in the conversation about work life balance and also from an environmental angle. Which if you knew the identity of the firm, might surprise you. It helps that 2020 was their best ever year and YTD performance in 2021 has been even better.
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
Does anyone want this bloody HS2?
I do.
My interest in HS2 is that it has the potential to take high speed trains off the existing local network of South Manchester. This will allow a much, much better local rail network in GM.
If this sounds an obscure side benefit, it isn't. The point of HS2 is that our existing rails are full. HS2 is about capacity, not speed. The mix of fast and slow trains on existing networks kills capacity. If we can take the fast trains off onto their own rails, we allow far more local services to run. This will be the case up and down the HS2 axis.
Now, you might argue (though personally I don't) that the costs of the scheme (both financial and otherwise) don't justify the benefits. And you might argue (and I think you'd be on firmer ground) that there are opportunity costs involved and better uses could be found for the money you are spending that could bring greater benefits. (Personally I'd prioritise a bells-and-whistles Northern Powerhouse Rail over HS2, though there is scope for both.)
But it's certainly not the case that nobody wants it. Opposition to these things is always louder than support.
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?
It is a disaster for the Tories. They have permanently lost me, and I'm a lifelong Tory public school Oxford classicist fed up with government by a fat clown and a fifth rate Clara Petacci. And I don't see any potential successor tempting me back. This is not aa one off result.
Off to join the party of NIMBYism? Why am I not surprised?
What a silly little man you are. I am actually on the same page as you on the need to build lots more houses but like other people who love what is distinctive about this country I regard it as a matter of regret. You on the contrary do not disguise your hatred of your country, the farming community or anyone you think has more money than you. Not a distinctively Tory mindset.
Here's a tip: it's only possible to do two things really successfully at one time, and doing a job and raising a family both count as things. You have a young family, and pb. Why not get a job or, if you already have one, apply yourself to it? You might find the des res of your dreams more affordable as a result.
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
Does anyone want this bloody HS2?
Only those who are nowhere near it.
My brother had a rare office day yesterday in the Smoke. Train half full even at rush hour, and plenty of spare seats.
We may need to consider that railways will not return to the days BC, and revise plans.
At my large firm, it is rare to hear anyone talk of wanting to return 5 days a week. TWT (Tues, Wed, Thu) seems popular with the extroverts that live in London and the surrounds. Out of towners or those with smaller kids take the view of “I’ll come in once or twice a fortnight”.
One of the major drivers of HS2 was to allow a massive increase of seats on commuter trains from the likes of Milton Keynes, which could triple depending on pathway choices. I just don’t see the demand will be there for that ever again.
Conversely, I think demand for longer distance rail travel will be stronger than ever, as 30-50 somethings that previously grouped around London have scattered around the country for cheaper house prices and proximity to extended family.
Complex it is. But there’s no appetite in government to even start thinking about all this. Instead it’s just “let’s concrete the south east green belt and build a London commuter relief line”.
The Government, to their credit, are building a new railway line up into Northumberland through to Blyth from Newcastle that on all accounts is fairly popular.
However the capacity of the tracks around Newcastle means that the maximum number of trains that can run will be 2 per hour.
More money for upgrades pls?
Ps can we also have the A1 dualed to the Scottish Border
I am enjoying the complete 180 of the Spectator who were absolutely sure of a Tory win.
And Hodges trying to explain how this result is different to Hartlepool because reasons
There are reasons (it would be silly to pretend governments losing by elections is as normal as them winning them) , but it is still a very good result, and the scale of it in particular encouraging for LDs and, by association, Labour.
Do any PBers actually do anything different when they have a nice win ?
Its just more money in a pot to me.
Interesting question. Milton Friedman's permanent income theory argues that the windfall increases your capital and that you would increase your consumption spending by the income derived from it, say ~ five percent, in all future years. So your bigger pot should diminish gradually over time.
For me this was the ultimate NIMBY by-election. HS2 was the overriding factor. You just need to drive through the constituency to see protests everywhere. Tories are delivering HS2 and they were going to get punished.
The LDs did their normal approach of saying completely different things in different parts of the country to win. Candidate was massively against HS2 in C&A but her party is massively for it.
The Tory agenda of levelling up places in the North, one part of which is building HS2, has a downside. The loss of C&A was the embodiment of that.
For Labour the result is worse than the Tories. They are still losing votes in the North but their supporters in the South are prepared to vote LD instead to stop the Tories. Where do they get their votes from now?
The big question for me is what would happen in a GE? As we all know, by-elections are very different. In the South will Labour voters and previous Tory voters be prepared to vote LD then? At the last GE there were many voters in the South who would have voted LD but they were so terrified of Corbyn getting in that they couldn't risk it. For all SKS faults he isn't seen as a threat in the Home Counties quite like Corbyn was. My mother is in Wokingham and really dislikes Redwood but wasn't going to risk Corbyn in 2019. At the next GE she might be tempted to go LD. So SKS's de-toxification of Labour just helps the LDs in the South.
B&S will be very interesting to get some more details of what is happening in the North. Right now the Tories are in danger at the next GE of losing a host of Remainerland seats to the LDs. If the Tories continue to make progress in the North then it would probably equal-out. In that scenario, Labour will be the only losers.
Since the Brexit vote the political landscape in this country has been massively changing. I think we are only half-way through it and the next 5 years will be very interesting, particularly the next GE.
A shift of Conservative votes from South to North doesn't just equal-out it makes the Conservative vote more efficient.
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.
'The Kiss Me Quick suite where Margaret and Dennis........' Welcome to the whacky world of advertising!
Good and reassuring Lib Dem news this morning. After the debacle of 2019 I've learned to scale back my LD ambitions and the result is a much happier political life. We should stick to what we do best: winning by-elections, gaining and holding parliamentary and council seats in pleasant leafy areas and being a think tank for policy innovations that can then be stolen by the Tories and Labour.
Is Britain now evolving into 4 distinct political constituencies?
- Diverse, young, Labour-inclined inner city and university seats - the English NYC or Seattle - Relatively well to do, culturally conservative car driving heartlands - the English Flyover states - stretching from the SW to the NE - Leafy commuter belt remainia with a NIMBY edge - the English Connecticut - Left behind coastal and former industrial towns which remain a Labour-Tory battleground
For me this was the ultimate NIMBY by-election. HS2 was the overriding factor. You just need to drive through the constituency to see protests everywhere. Tories are delivering HS2 and they were going to get punished.
The LDs did their normal approach of saying completely different things in different parts of the country to win. Candidate was massively against HS2 in C&A but her party is massively for it.
The Tory agenda of levelling up places in the North, one part of which is building HS2, has a downside. The loss of C&A was the embodiment of that.
For Labour the result is worse than the Tories. They are still losing votes in the North but their supporters in the South are prepared to vote LD instead to stop the Tories. Where do they get their votes from now?
The big question for me is what would happen in a GE? As we all know, by-elections are very different. In the South will Labour voters and previous Tory voters be prepared to vote LD then? At the last GE there were many voters in the South who would have voted LD but they were so terrified of Corbyn getting in that they couldn't risk it. For all SKS faults he isn't seen as a threat in the Home Counties quite like Corbyn was. My mother is in Wokingham and really dislikes Redwood but wasn't going to risk Corbyn in 2019. At the next GE she might be tempted to go LD. So SKS's de-toxification of Labour just helps the LDs in the South.
B&S will be very interesting to get some more details of what is happening in the North. Right now the Tories are in danger at the next GE of losing a host of Remainerland seats to the LDs. If the Tories continue to make progress in the North then it would probably equal-out. In that scenario, Labour will be the only losers.
Since the Brexit vote the political landscape in this country has been massively changing. I think we are only half-way through it and the next 5 years will be very interesting, particularly the next GE.
A shift of Conservative votes from South to North doesn't just equal-out it makes the Conservative vote more efficient.
Until it isn’t of course. Lab’s vote was very efficient for a while.
I see the americans are banning anyone with AZ jab from attending concerts now. They can do this is they like i suppose but I do worry that each country is going so insular with restrictions for others (just in case) - We are doing it as well with travel etc and I worry about the level of support this petty Little Englander approach is getting even on here with posters . If every country did this (and they have as much right to as we do ) then the world will be a little miserable place
Do any PBers actually do anything different when they have a nice win ?
Its just more money in a pot to me.
Interesting question. Milton Friedman's permanent income theory argues that the windfall increases your capital and that you would increase your consumption spending by the income derived from it, say ~ five percent, in all future years. So your bigger pot should diminish gradually over time.
You've kind of sucked all the joy out of it with that.
I think the only party that can be in any way happy with that result is the Lib Dems. For them, it’s perfect. A landslide in a remainery seat with a campaign on local issues is the Grimond strategy successfully modernised. Lots of lovely publicity. A new MP increasing their parliamentary strength by 8%. Ed Davey’s recent strategy vindicated. Plenty of similar seats to target for next time.
But the Tories - lost the seat (nuff said) Greens - nowhere at all, so much for being a repository for ex-Labour votes Labour - did worse than the Greens in a seat where they were second less than five years ago. RefUK - did worse than Labour. That is surely the end of them as a party.
Not often you get such a binary result. Usually one party tries to spin some positive out of a defeat. Even ridiculously (Hazel Blears springs to mind). Nobody can do that here.
What's happening in the south is that non-Tory voters are largely unpartisan these days, spurred on by the lack of noticable policy by any of the non-Tory parties. The visceral Labour anti-LD vote post-coalition has almost disappeared, as rcs1000 points out, and conversely non-Tories are willing to vote Labour (which at a micro-level is why I'm a councillor in a ward that hasn't been Labour for 20 years). Davey and SKS both seem neither scary nor ridiculous, and if there are important policy differences between them they aren't telling us about them.
In the north, there is a degree of anti-Labour voting from people fed up with Labour after decades of party complacency. Being unobjectionable like SKS isn't enough there. That will remain a problem in B&S (plus the surprising pro-Palestinian revolt which Owen Jones reported the other day - a case where the Corbyn->SKS switch has caused problems) - Labour needs to mean something concrete again to recover there. If we succeed in that, then clearly the Tories have a strategic problem, especially if there is an understanding between Labour and LDs on where to fight hard.
Great post.
If there is any sort of "understanding" between Labour and LDs the LDs will lose my vote.
Good and reassuring Lib Dem news this morning. After the debacle of 2019 I've learned to scale back my LD ambitions and the result is a much happier political life. We should stick to what we do best: winning by-elections, gaining and holding parliamentary and council seats in pleasant leafy areas and being a think tank for policy innovations that can then be stolen by the Tories and Labour.
Is Britain now evolving into 4 distinct political constituencies?
- Diverse, young, Labour-inclined inner city and university seats - the English NYC or Seattle - Relatively well to do, culturally conservative car driving heartlands - the English Flyover states - stretching from the SW to the NE - Leafy commuter belt remainia with a NIMBY edge - the English Connecticut - Left behind coastal and former industrial towns which remain a Labour-Tory battleground
Er, perhaps only up to a point. But interesting analysis of England.
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.
I think it could be sellable done right.
The issue is that pensioners were among the poorest in society so they needed to catch up, hence the triple lock.
Now just shift it to “your pension will be [65%] of median wages”. It will rise annually at the same rate of wages (and if there is still a catch up - don’t know what the stats are) - then you can plan now to close that gap over, say, 10 years.
Anecdotes and insight into the C&A voter psychology from a colleague who lives there:
"Proud to say I was one of the 21,517 who went out in the pissing rain last night to deliver an emphatic victory and strong message to both Conservative and Labour parties!
The local Tory campaign was dreadful / non-existent
the candidate was a former Ford middle manager (or similar) and we received a letter from Rishi Sunak telling us to vote for him
the Labour candidate didn't even have an official Labour email account ... she'd set up Labour4Amersham@gmail.com (or similar)
Lib Dems were out knocking on doors virtually every day for the last month, and engaging in sensible conversation about local issues that matter: (1) HS2 destroying our countryside, and (2) Tory planning policies to build on green belt (and destroy our countryside)"
He's very much the classic voter for a constituency like this: highly educated, senior role in the city (economist), commuting into London but WFH since the pandemic, would traditionally have been a pro-EU Tory I expect.
It does reinforce the fact that planning and HS2 were big things here.
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.
I'd agree with that though possibly for different reasons.
Amidst all the shouts of "NIMBY", Chesham & Amersham is an objectively lousy place to build houses. It's in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, of which we don't have many. It's at the end of a crap "tube" line to London which is actually slower than getting the train from somewhere like Oxford.
Building in C&A just reinforces London's dominance and creates more rubbish dormitory housing. We should be building up regional capitals in Bristol and Manchester and the like, not exacerbating sprawl in the M25 belt.
If you live in Amersham you catch the Chiltern / Marylebone service, only if you live in Chesham do you have to suffer the Met service.
The Met line is usually busier on the return leg as return speed isn't that important and it's more convenient to catch a through train back.
Only people I know who catch the Met line on a morning are those who work in the City or need the Jubilee line for the second part of the journey.
Why cant pensioners have a generous but means tested element to Universal Credit? If you’re rich, great — enjoy it. If you’re not, we’ll look after you.
Why cant pensioners have a generous but means tested element to Universal Credit? If you’re rich, great — enjoy it. If you’re not, we’ll look after you.
I am enjoying the complete 180 of the Spectator who were absolutely sure of a Tory win.
And Hodges trying to explain how this result is different to Hartlepool because reasons
It is different, however, if Labour were to hold a similar number of seats as in 2019, maybe pick up some southern seats and lose a few more red wall seats and the LDs have a 2010 result in the South it becomes very tight for Johnson, and as I believe Starmer, though weak is far less toxic than Corbyn, picking up a handful of Northern seats lost in 2019 is not beyond the imagination.
OK there are local issues re: HS2 but don't forget we are at peak Johnson, so it shouldn't have happened.
And let's face it the "charisma" theory nonsense that only charismatic figures can win elections goes out of the window here as Davey is more of a wallflower than Starmer.
The moment it becomes 'tight' for the Tories the SNP difficulty rears its head. On current polling trends (ignore all by elections) there is no way to a centre left government which by passes the SNP. This is both difficult in itself - where does such a centre left agreement stand? and difficult electorally. The NIMBYs of C&A might vote for LDs who are both for and against HS2, for and against house building etc but will the former Tory south vote for government by the SNP?
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.
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.
One of the many reasons that I don't follow F1. Constantly the rules are changed in a sport for technical lawyers.
FFS, why not just let teams do whatever they like to go faster? Instead we get to see who goes fastest while handicapped. Pointless.
Mostly, it’s because they all got fed up with going to a funeral every few months.
Why cant pensioners have a generous but means tested element to Universal Credit? If you’re rich, great — enjoy it. If you’re not, we’ll look after you.
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?
It is a disaster for the Tories. They have permanently lost me, and I'm a lifelong Tory public school Oxford classicist fed up with government by a fat clown and a fifth rate Clara Petacci. And I don't see any potential successor tempting me back. This is not aa one off result.
Off to join the party of NIMBYism? Why am I not surprised?
What a silly little man you are. I am actually on the same page as you on the need to build lots more houses but like other people who love what is distinctive about this country I regard it as a matter of regret. You on the contrary do not disguise your hatred of your country, the farming community or anyone you think has more money than you. Not a distinctively Tory mindset.
Here's a tip: it's only possible to do two things really successfully at one time, and doing a job and raising a family both count as things. You have a young family, and pb. Why not get a job or, if you already have one, apply yourself to it? You might find the des res of your dreams more affordable as a result.
I am not joining any party BTW.
I do not dislike either the country or the farming community, that is complete codswallop.
I wish the farming community well - but I want it to compete on its own merits. Lose subsidies, lose tariffs and sink or swim. I say the same for manufacturing, services, tourism etc etc too so why should agriculture be any different? That doesn't mean I want it to sink. I want it to swim. New Zealand did this and it was a great success for their agriculture and I have faith in our farming community that they could do well too. Don't you?
That I think housing in the country could maybe go from 5% of land to 6% or 7%, and that agriculture in this country could maybe go from 70% of land to 68% or so, does not mean I want to see the eradication of the countryside.
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
Does anyone want this bloody HS2?
Only those who are nowhere near it.
My brother had a rare office day yesterday in the Smoke. Train half full even at rush hour, and plenty of spare seats.
We may need to consider that railways will not return to the days BC, and revise plans.
At my large firm, it is rare to hear anyone talk of wanting to return 5 days a week. TWT (Tues, Wed, Thu) seems popular with the extroverts that live in London and the surrounds. Out of towners or those with smaller kids take the view of “I’ll come in once or twice a fortnight”.
One of the major drivers of HS2 was to allow a massive increase of seats on commuter trains from the likes of Milton Keynes, which could triple depending on pathway choices. I just don’t see the demand will be there for that ever again.
Conversely, I think demand for longer distance rail travel will be stronger than ever, as 30-50 somethings that previously grouped around London have scattered around the country for cheaper house prices and proximity to extended family.
Complex it is. But there’s no appetite in government to even start thinking about all this. Instead it’s just “let’s concrete the south east green belt and build a London commuter relief line”.
"TWT (Tues, Wed, Thu)" ?
Aren't firms starting to say you can work from home but NOT on Friday and Monday, because, I guess senior management aren't stupid as to what will happen on those days.
The thing about working from home is you can make the time up when you want. So if you have a long boozy Friday lunch you can log on Saturday morning while your other half takes the kids to football. Of course doesn't work for everyone, but works for some. I have been taking Russian lessons in work time with just that agreement.
Good and reassuring Lib Dem news this morning. After the debacle of 2019 I've learned to scale back my LD ambitions and the result is a much happier political life. We should stick to what we do best: winning by-elections, gaining and holding parliamentary and council seats in pleasant leafy areas and being a think tank for policy innovations that can then be stolen by the Tories and Labour.
Is Britain now evolving into 4 distinct political constituencies?
- Diverse, young, Labour-inclined inner city and university seats - the English NYC or Seattle - Relatively well to do, culturally conservative car driving heartlands - the English Flyover states - stretching from the SW to the NE - Leafy commuter belt remainia with a NIMBY edge - the English Connecticut - Left behind coastal and former industrial towns which remain a Labour-Tory battleground
Er, perhaps only up to a point. But interesting analysis of England.
Yes I thought about including a 5th being areas where the dominant argument is nationalism vs unionism but decided not to go there. But then forgot to change "Britain" to "England" at the top therefore ensuring a Scottish response in any case.
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.
Given I believe in the rights of the individual rather than the state sponsored, state decided and state controlled 'greater good' I am afraid I find your continual sneering at people wanting to make their lives better to be, at best, rather offensive. Your whole attitude to the non urban parts of the country is one based purely on a combination of ignorance and envy. And of course an unrestrained worship of Mammon.
As I have said about you in the past, you are someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Why cant pensioners have a generous but means tested element to Universal Credit? If you’re rich, great — enjoy it. If you’re not, we’ll look after you.
They already do - Pension Credit.
I mean instead of the state pension
Good grief. Mess with the state pension at your peril.
Assuming your aim is to raise more from the over 65s, I'd go with different (higher) income tax rates for the over 65s and possibly remove NI contribution exemption too.
I think the only party that can be in any way happy with that result is the Lib Dems. For them, it’s perfect. A landslide in a remainery seat with a campaign on local issues is the Grimond strategy successfully modernised. Lots of lovely publicity. A new MP increasing their parliamentary strength by 8%. Ed Davey’s recent strategy vindicated. Plenty of similar seats to target for next time.
But the Tories - lost the seat (nuff said) Greens - nowhere at all, so much for being a repository for ex-Labour votes Labour - did worse than the Greens in a seat where they were second less than five years ago. RefUK - did worse than Labour. That is surely the end of them as a party.
Not often you get such a binary result. Usually one party tries to spin some positive out of a defeat. Even ridiculously (Hazel Blears springs to mind). Nobody can do that here.
What's happening in the south is that non-Tory voters are largely unpartisan these days, spurred on by the lack of noticable policy by any of the non-Tory parties. The visceral Labour anti-LD vote post-coalition has almost disappeared, as rcs1000 points out, and conversely non-Tories are willing to vote Labour (which at a micro-level is why I'm a councillor in a ward that hasn't been Labour for 20 years). Davey and SKS both seem neither scary nor ridiculous, and if there are important policy differences between them they aren't telling us about them.
In the north, there is a degree of anti-Labour voting from people fed up with Labour after decades of party complacency. Being unobjectionable like SKS isn't enough there. That will remain a problem in B&S (plus the surprising pro-Palestinian revolt which Owen Jones reported the other day - a case where the Corbyn->SKS switch has caused problems) - Labour needs to mean something concrete again to recover there. If we succeed in that, then clearly the Tories have a strategic problem, especially if there is an understanding between Labour and LDs on where to fight hard.
Thanks good post.
I think an indication of how and whether Lab are getting there is for you, or anyone, to write such a sober analysis on Lab's current electoral prospects without using the word "Palestinian".
It is an issue for some. Palestine car flags are not unusual in parts of Leicester.
Though when I went down to London last Saturday there were a bunch of youngsters waving Israel flags from a bridge over the M1 in North London.
I am not sure we need either.
I have seen Swiss and Portuguese flags in windows around and about and take a good look at an Old Firm game for evidence of the ones you mention. I couldn't care less. But only one party endlessly obsesses about one particular flag and cause.
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?
It is a disaster for the Tories. They have permanently lost me, and I'm a lifelong Tory public school Oxford classicist fed up with government by a fat clown and a fifth rate Clara Petacci. And I don't see any potential successor tempting me back. This is not aa one off result.
They have lost me too, but then I'm a lifelong tory voting comprehensive boy and Cambridge educated Thatcherite.
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.
I'd agree with that though possibly for different reasons.
Amidst all the shouts of "NIMBY", Chesham & Amersham is an objectively lousy place to build houses. It's in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, of which we don't have many. It's at the end of a crap "tube" line to London which is actually slower than getting the train from somewhere like Oxford.
Building in C&A just reinforces London's dominance and creates more rubbish dormitory housing. We should be building up regional capitals in Bristol and Manchester and the like, not exacerbating sprawl in the M25 belt.
If you live in Amersham you catch the Chiltern / Marylebone service, only if you live in Chesham do you have to suffer the Met service.
The Met line is usually busier on the return leg as return speed isn't that important and it's more convenient to catch a through train back.
Only people I know who catch the Met line on a morning are those who work in the City or need the Jubilee line for the second part of the journey.
Good observation. I'm just a little exasperated by all the people this morning shouting "look at the NIMBYs campaigning against development on a tube line". It's a really crap tube line. (Strictly speaking the Met isn't even "tube" but there you go.)
Why cant pensioners have a generous but means tested element to Universal Credit? If you’re rich, great — enjoy it. If you’re not, we’ll look after you.
They already do - Pension Credit.
I mean instead of the state pension
Good grief. Mess with the state pension at your peril.
Assuming your aim is to raise more from the over 65s, I'd go with different (higher) income tax rates for the over 65s and possibly remove NI contribution exemption too.
I just don’t see why someone with a million pound private pension needs, or should have, the state pension
I am going to take the unsurprising approach of arguing that the by-election shows that voters all agree with me. This by-election loss could have been avoided had the politicians not spent the last year and a bit trying to terrify the country into submission; not abolished parliamentary scrutiny, freedom of association and all the rest, and/or understood and pushed back against the mendacious figures they were being presented with by sage and others and opened up on time as promised.
More radically, I might even concede that there were other factors at play. I rank them as follows:
1) A credible opposition candidate who - despite party policy - reflected the concerns of the seat (cf Paul Williams, Hartlepool). 2) HS2 and development (see above). 3) General perception of chaos and incompetence (which could have been avoided by opening up as scheduled, which has been made more difficult by a failure to treat the electorate as grown ups over the past year). 4, 5 and 6, various other things - voters are varied and capricious and can't all be lumped together as I am doing above.
None of 1, 2 or 3 really applied in Hartlepool. 3 will certainly apply in B&S. 1 will apply to some extent - Jo Leadbetter is far better in this regard than Paul Williams. But the concerns of B&S seem a lot more disparate and mutually antagonistic (e.g. there are sections of the potential Labour vote whose #1 priority is Palestine, and other sections of the potential Labour vote whose #1 concern is not allowing mob rule at Batley Grammar.).
My view in B&S is still Labour hold. But I'm less confident in that than I was in the Lib Dems winning C&A.
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?
It is a disaster for the Tories. They have permanently lost me, and I'm a lifelong Tory public school Oxford classicist fed up with government by a fat clown and a fifth rate Clara Petacci. And I don't see any potential successor tempting me back. This is not aa one off result.
They have lost me too, but then I'm a lifelong tory voting comprehensive boy and Cambridge educated Thatcherite.
Has there ever been a by-election with such a concoction of issues, many locally driven contributing to the result?
HS2, planning reform, the nationalist and culture war rhetoric turning off many liberal Tories, the death rattle of Brexit, the villification of graduates and educated professionals by the Torieszm, the leveling up agenda which rightly or wrongly is seen by many in the South as taking their taxes to bribe the North.
In retrospect, completely unsurprising that what I suspect was a motley coalition of anti-government voters decided to give a bloody nose in a fairly inconsequential by-election.
Yes there is some realignment clearly going on in the South, but I wouldn't be panicking if I was a Tory. It is a timely reminder that they can't completely ignore their Southern core vote as they woo the Northern post industrial towns and The Midlands.
All credit to OGH and others who backed this. I think there are some material considerations around this which make it less than a disaster out with a pretty horrendous 25% swing
- would lib Dems be able to resource appropriately across South to make significant gains at an election - this is more business as usual for by elections - still not great news for labour, except that Tories may be spread more thinly at next election - there is still a growing support for the greens which most threatens Libdem votes
Do any PBers actually do anything different when they have a nice win ?
Its just more money in a pot to me.
Interesting question. Milton Friedman's permanent income theory argues that the windfall increases your capital and that you would increase your consumption spending by the income derived from it, say ~ five percent, in all future years. So your bigger pot should diminish gradually over time.
Every time I win over £50 I put half of my winnings into my SIPP alongside my regular monthly contributions. The other half and remaining stake money are used for future betting. Yesterday I won £70 at Royal Ascot so last night £35 went towards making my retirement more comfortable. Keeping stakes small today, pouring rain forecast to last all day so loads of non-runners everywhere not just at the Royal meeting.
Is this what they meant by Singapore-on-the-Thames?
A British man was arrested and now faces up to six months in prison in Singapore after he was filmed on a train without a mask.
Father-of-two Benjamin Glynn, 39, claims his passport has been confiscated and he has unable to return to the UK with his family whilst he awaits trial.
Mr Glynn, who says he believes masks are pointless and fail to protect people from contracting Covid, wasn't wearing a face-covering he took a train home from work in the South East Asian citystate last month, where they are mandatory.
Unbeknown to him, he was secretly filmed by a fellow commuter who then put the clip on social media.
That led to officers arresting him just hours later.
After 28 hours in a cell, Benjamin, from Helmsley, North Yorkshire, was charged with a public nuisance offence.
Benjamin's passport was confiscated, meaning he couldn't return to the UK as planned with his partner and two children - aged five and two.
He also lost a new job he was due to start in the UK and fears he could have to spend as much as 12 months on bail before his trial.
Of course, applying that wonderful 20:20 hindsight that I was completely lacking up front this form of vulnerability in the Home Counties is what the 2019 election result was built on. The Tory vote became more efficient because they no longer piled up wasted votes in the likes of C&&A but won them in more useful places instead such as the red wall seats.
You can have too much of a good thing, of course, as this result shows, but as a strategy that seems to me to still be a winner and the Tories would be silly to change it. I also think it would be a very good thing for our democracy if the number of safe seats were reduced in this way. All of the country deserves to be listened to, not just the benighted and neglected north that Labour took for granted for too long (like Scotland).
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
Does anyone want this bloody HS2?
Only those who are nowhere near it.
My brother had a rare office day yesterday in the Smoke. Train half full even at rush hour, and plenty of spare seats.
We may need to consider that railways will not return to the days BC, and revise plans.
At my large firm, it is rare to hear anyone talk of wanting to return 5 days a week. TWT (Tues, Wed, Thu) seems popular with the extroverts that live in London and the surrounds. Out of towners or those with smaller kids take the view of “I’ll come in once or twice a fortnight”.
One of the major drivers of HS2 was to allow a massive increase of seats on commuter trains from the likes of Milton Keynes, which could triple depending on pathway choices. I just don’t see the demand will be there for that ever again.
Conversely, I think demand for longer distance rail travel will be stronger than ever, as 30-50 somethings that previously grouped around London have scattered around the country for cheaper house prices and proximity to extended family.
Complex it is. But there’s no appetite in government to even start thinking about all this. Instead it’s just “let’s concrete the south east green belt and build a London commuter relief line”.
The Government, to their credit, are building a new railway line up into Northumberland through to Blyth from Newcastle that on all accounts is fairly popular.
However the capacity of the tracks around Newcastle means that the maximum number of trains that can run will be 2 per hour.
More money for upgrades pls?
Ps can we also have the A1 dualed to the Scottish Border
The 2 trains an hour aren't due to capacity issues round Newcastle it's due to capacity issues on the line itself. which will be single track in a number of places so needs passing loops.
I have to double check but I don't think the proposed route touches the ECML at all which is now definitely a problem as the new First Group Edinburgh services have screwed everything else up as everywhere North of York will be at capacity even after a whole set of changes.
Why cant pensioners have a generous but means tested element to Universal Credit? If you’re rich, great — enjoy it. If you’re not, we’ll look after you.
They already do - Pension Credit.
I mean instead of the state pension
Good grief. Mess with the state pension at your peril.
Assuming your aim is to raise more from the over 65s, I'd go with different (higher) income tax rates for the over 65s and possibly remove NI contribution exemption too.
I just don’t see why someone with a million pound private pension needs, or should have, the state pension
I disagree because I in general support universal benefits rather than means tested benefits. So we won't agree on this.
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
Does anyone want this bloody HS2?
Only those who are nowhere near it.
My brother had a rare office day yesterday in the Smoke. Train half full even at rush hour, and plenty of spare seats.
We may need to consider that railways will not return to the days BC, and revise plans.
At my large firm, it is rare to hear anyone talk of wanting to return 5 days a week. TWT (Tues, Wed, Thu) seems popular with the extroverts that live in London and the surrounds. Out of towners or those with smaller kids take the view of “I’ll come in once or twice a fortnight”.
One of the major drivers of HS2 was to allow a massive increase of seats on commuter trains from the likes of Milton Keynes, which could triple depending on pathway choices. I just don’t see the demand will be there for that ever again.
Conversely, I think demand for longer distance rail travel will be stronger than ever, as 30-50 somethings that previously grouped around London have scattered around the country for cheaper house prices and proximity to extended family.
Complex it is. But there’s no appetite in government to even start thinking about all this. Instead it’s just “let’s concrete the south east green belt and build a London commuter relief line”.
"TWT (Tues, Wed, Thu)" ?
Aren't firms starting to say you can work from home but NOT on Friday and Monday, because, I guess senior management aren't stupid as to what will happen on those days.
The thing about working from home is you can make the time up when you want. So if you have a long boozy Friday lunch you can log on Saturday morning while your other half takes the kids to football. Of course doesn't work for everyone, but works for some. I have been taking Russian lessons in work time with just that agreement.
I've been wfh for two decades. We're not going back to the old order; the introverts have won. Turns out people with balanced, fulfilled lives who aren't forced to waste hours travelling to and sitting with people they have no desire to spend time with just so some manager with a trust problem can feel big about themselves are more productive.. Who knew?
Firms insisting on presenteeism will struggle to recruit. This is already the case. The clever ones realise the corollary is opening up a much larger recruitment market to themselves if they don't insist on physical presence daily.
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.
Given I believe in the rights of the individual rather than the state sponsored, state decided and state controlled 'greater good' I am afraid I find your continual sneering at people wanting to make their lives better to be, at best, rather offensive. Your whole attitude to the non urban parts of the country is one based purely on a combination of ignorance and envy. And of course an unrestrained worship of Mammon.
As I have said about you in the past, you are someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Who have I ever sneered at?
If you mean agriculture or the countryside I have never, ever mocked agriculture or the countryside. I have said it should be able to freely compete on a level playing field just as the Kiwis did - how is that sneering?
If you mean those who want to protect Areas of Natural Beauty - I have agreed with that and said they should be protected - how is that sneering?
If you mean people who want a nice view of undeveloped land from their homes, I have said they should be able to buy that land and refuse to develop it if they want to do so. How is that sneering?
The only people I am against are those who want to refuse others the right to get a home, because they're worried it will reduce the value of their own home. That's not sneering, that's supporting competition which I do even-handedly in every sector. If Waitrose or Tesco's were worried that an Aldi might eat into their profits I wouldn't think that is good reason to refuse permission to allow an Aldi to open, would you?
What exactly do you find sneering about any of that?
I thought that the tips for the lib dems were wishful thinking on the part of Mike Smithson, however I was proved completely wrong by this result. Kudos to him.
I think it is a bit early to write off the tories on the basis of this result, if they win in B and S then the balance is in favour of making further encroachments in the red wall rather than trying to placate 'difficult' southern voters elected a libdem on what looks to be a NIMBY local agenda.
Plus, the voters in C & A will now have an MP who finds it hard to work with the chancellor, we will have to see what the consequences of that are!
If I were the government I'd announce 20k houses were now to be built in C&A - that'd teach the nimbys.
That would deliver lots more seats to the LDs...
No it wouldn't. Have all the planned surrounding house building move to this one constituency
Do any PBers actually do anything different when they have a nice win ?
Its just more money in a pot to me.
Interesting question. Milton Friedman's permanent income theory argues that the windfall increases your capital and that you would increase your consumption spending by the income derived from it, say ~ five percent, in all future years. So your bigger pot should diminish gradually over time.
Every time I win over £50 I put half of my winnings into my SIPP alongside my regular monthly contributions. The other half and remaining stake money are used for future betting. Yesterday I won £70 at Royal Ascot so last night £35 went towards making my retirement more comfortable. Keeping stakes small today, pouring rain forecast to last all day so loads of non-runners everywhere not just at the Royal meeting.
Nice one. And of course each £50 you put into your pension is grossed up to £62.50 or more depending on your marginal income tax rate, so you are winning twice!
Comments
In the north, there is a degree of anti-Labour voting from people fed up with Labour after decades of party complacency. Being unobjectionable like SKS isn't enough there. That will remain a problem in B&S (plus the surprising pro-Palestinian revolt which Owen Jones reported the other day - a case where the Corbyn->SKS switch has caused problems) - Labour needs to mean something concrete again to recover there. If we succeed in that, then clearly the Tories have a strategic problem, especially if there is an understanding between Labour and LDs on where to fight hard.
More importantly Ive been up since 6am worrying about tonight's match. 7 pints minimum before heading to Wembley, though I'd happily fast forward to 10pm and 3 points right now.
OK there are local issues re: HS2 but don't forget we are at peak Johnson, so it shouldn't have happened.
And let's face it the "charisma" theory nonsense that only charismatic figures can win elections goes out of the window here as Davey is more of a wallflower than Starmer.
Nostalgics for the Flying Scotsman and Mallard.
That doesn't help if being noticed cases people to notice that you're not very competent and actually more than a bit nasty.
I don't hold with stuffing Nimbies' mouths with gold, however.
My brother had a rare office day yesterday in the Smoke. Train half full even at rush hour, and plenty of spare seats.
We may need to consider that railways will not return to the days BC, and revise plans.
I suspect not.
I think an indication of how and whether Lab are getting there is for you, or anyone, to write such a sober analysis on Lab's current electoral prospects without using the word "Palestinian".
Pfizer FIRST DOSE vaccinations at [redacted] for 18 & over. No appt needed, just walk-in
Interestingly now of course 18+ is the rule nationwide so I'm curious if others are getting these texts now too or if it's just me?
If there is any sort of "understanding" between Labour and LDs the LDs will lose my vote.
HS2, planning reform, the nationalist and culture war rhetoric turning off many liberal Tories, the death rattle of Brexit, the villification of graduates and educated professionals by the Torieszm, the leveling up agenda which rightly or wrongly is seen by many in the South as taking their taxes to bribe the North.
In retrospect, completely unsurprising that what I suspect was a motley coalition of anti-government voters decided to give a bloody nose in a fairly inconsequential by-election.
Yes there is some realignment clearly going on in the South, but I wouldn't be panicking if I was a Tory. It is a timely reminder that they can't completely ignore their Southern core vote as they woo the Northern post industrial towns and The Midlands.
Only one other person in the carriage.
Mind you he isn't looking as ridiculous as I do
Amidst all the shouts of "NIMBY", Chesham & Amersham is an objectively lousy place to build houses. It's in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, of which we don't have many. It's at the end of a crap "tube" line to London which is actually slower than getting the train from somewhere like Oxford.
Building in C&A just reinforces London's dominance and creates more rubbish dormitory housing. We should be building up regional capitals in Bristol and Manchester and the like, not exacerbating sprawl in the M25 belt.
Though when I went down to London last Saturday there were a bunch of youngsters waving Israel flags from a bridge over the M1 in North London.
I am not sure we need either.
19C maybe.
The LDs did their normal approach of saying completely different things in different parts of the country to win. Candidate was massively against HS2 in C&A but her party is massively for it.
The Tory agenda of levelling up places in the North, one part of which is building HS2, has a downside. The loss of C&A was the embodiment of that.
For Labour the result is worse than the Tories. They are still losing votes in the North but their supporters in the South are prepared to vote LD instead to stop the Tories. Where do they get their votes from now?
The big question for me is what would happen in a GE? As we all know, by-elections are very different. In the South will Labour voters and previous Tory voters be prepared to vote LD then? At the last GE there were many voters in the South who would have voted LD but they were so terrified of Corbyn getting in that they couldn't risk it. For all SKS faults he isn't seen as a threat in the Home Counties quite like Corbyn was. My mother is in Wokingham and really dislikes Redwood but wasn't going to risk Corbyn in 2019. At the next GE she might be tempted to go LD. So SKS's de-toxification of Labour just helps the LDs in the South.
B&S will be very interesting to get some more details of what is happening in the North. Right now the Tories are in danger at the next GE of losing a host of Remainerland seats to the LDs. If the Tories continue to make progress in the North then it would probably equal-out. In that scenario, Labour will be the only losers.
Since the Brexit vote the political landscape in this country has been massively changing. I think we are only half-way through it and the next 5 years will be very interesting, particularly the next GE.
I am going surfing. Owing to a premature withdrawal on my part my c & a winnings will cover about 40% of my Bude Town Council carpark ticket.
One of the major drivers of HS2 was to allow a massive increase of seats on commuter trains from the likes of Milton Keynes, which could triple depending on pathway choices. I just don’t see the demand will be there for that ever again.
Conversely, I think demand for longer distance rail travel will be stronger than ever, as 30-50 somethings that previously grouped around London have scattered around the country for cheaper house prices and proximity to extended family.
Complex it is. But there’s no appetite in government to even start thinking about all this. Instead it’s just “let’s concrete the south east green belt and build a London commuter relief line”.
@AaronBastani
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4m
Of course Labour’s vote in Chesham and Amersham collapsed because of tactical voting. However, 1.6% is the lowest it has EVER polled in a by-election. What is more this is *exactly* the sort of seat Starmer is meant to appeal to.
The excuses need to stop.
But it has veered significantly to the right side is run by incompetents and led by a solipsistic twat wholly unsuited to any leadership role least of all leader of the country.
Aren't firms starting to say you can work from home but NOT on Friday and Monday, because, I guess senior management aren't stupid as to what will happen on those days.
England win a home Euro 2021 final, Boris having been Mayor for London 2012 manages to secure a home World Cup 2030, wins 2024 and 2029 and gets to have England winning a home World Cup 2030 as his pre retirement swansong. GOAT. 🏆
Enjoy Bude.
My interest in HS2 is that it has the potential to take high speed trains off the existing local network of South Manchester. This will allow a much, much better local rail network in GM.
If this sounds an obscure side benefit, it isn't. The point of HS2 is that our existing rails are full. HS2 is about capacity, not speed. The mix of fast and slow trains on existing networks kills capacity. If we can take the fast trains off onto their own rails, we allow far more local services to run. This will be the case up and down the HS2 axis.
Now, you might argue (though personally I don't) that the costs of the scheme (both financial and otherwise) don't justify the benefits. And you might argue (and I think you'd be on firmer ground) that there are opportunity costs involved and better uses could be found for the money you are spending that could bring greater benefits. (Personally I'd prioritise a bells-and-whistles Northern Powerhouse Rail over HS2, though there is scope for both.)
But it's certainly not the case that nobody wants it. Opposition to these things is always louder than support.
The pre Budget photo-ops would have been splendid.
Here's a tip: it's only possible to do two things really successfully at one time, and doing a job and raising a family both count as things. You have a young family, and pb. Why not get a job or, if you already have one, apply yourself to it? You might find the des res of your dreams more affordable as a result.
I am not joining any party BTW.
However the capacity of the tracks around Newcastle means that the maximum number of trains that can run will be 2 per hour.
More money for upgrades pls?
Ps can we also have the A1 dualed to the Scottish Border
Is Britain now evolving into 4 distinct political constituencies?
- Diverse, young, Labour-inclined inner city and university seats - the English NYC or Seattle
- Relatively well to do, culturally conservative car driving heartlands - the English Flyover states - stretching from the SW to the NE
- Leafy commuter belt remainia with a NIMBY edge - the English Connecticut
- Left behind coastal and former industrial towns which remain a Labour-Tory battleground
(Does PB do +1 ?)
The issue is that pensioners were among the poorest in society so they needed to catch up, hence the triple lock.
Now just shift it to “your pension will be [65%] of median wages”. It will rise annually at the same rate of wages (and if there is still a catch up - don’t know what the stats are) - then you can plan now to close that gap over, say, 10 years.
Sell that as a fair and positive decision
"Proud to say I was one of the 21,517 who went out in the pissing rain last night to deliver an emphatic victory and strong message to both Conservative and Labour parties!
The local Tory campaign was dreadful / non-existent
the candidate was a former Ford middle manager (or similar) and we received a letter from Rishi Sunak telling us to vote for him
the Labour candidate didn't even have an official Labour email account ... she'd set up Labour4Amersham@gmail.com (or similar)
Lib Dems were out knocking on doors virtually every day for the last month, and engaging in sensible conversation about local issues that matter: (1) HS2 destroying our countryside, and (2) Tory planning policies to build on green belt (and destroy our countryside)"
He's very much the classic voter for a constituency like this: highly educated, senior role in the city (economist), commuting into London but WFH since the pandemic, would traditionally have been a pro-EU Tory I expect.
It does reinforce the fact that planning and HS2 were big things here.
The Met line is usually busier on the return leg as return speed isn't that important and it's more convenient to catch a through train back.
Only people I know who catch the Met line on a morning are those who work in the City or need the Jubilee line for the second part of the journey.
If they do it is "waaaaaaaahhhh it's different for ViPs".
if they don't it is "waaaaaaaahhhhhh you ruined out final".
Why do Uefa / Fifa need 2500 ViPs to run a bloody football match?
Leave 2450 of them at home.
I wish the farming community well - but I want it to compete on its own merits. Lose subsidies, lose tariffs and sink or swim. I say the same for manufacturing, services, tourism etc etc too so why should agriculture be any different? That doesn't mean I want it to sink. I want it to swim. New Zealand did this and it was a great success for their agriculture and I have faith in our farming community that they could do well too. Don't you?
That I think housing in the country could maybe go from 5% of land to 6% or 7%, and that agriculture in this country could maybe go from 70% of land to 68% or so, does not mean I want to see the eradication of the countryside.
As I have said about you in the past, you are someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Assuming your aim is to raise more from the over 65s, I'd go with different (higher) income tax rates for the over 65s and possibly remove NI contribution exemption too.
Looks pretty good. Certainly a far cry from the very ugly, sanctimonious zerocovid pile on on here yesterday afternoon.
Funny old world.
More radically, I might even concede that there were other factors at play. I rank them as follows:
1) A credible opposition candidate who - despite party policy - reflected the concerns of the seat (cf Paul Williams, Hartlepool).
2) HS2 and development (see above).
3) General perception of chaos and incompetence (which could have been avoided by opening up as scheduled, which has been made more difficult by a failure to treat the electorate as grown ups over the past year).
4, 5 and 6, various other things - voters are varied and capricious and can't all be lumped together as I am doing above.
None of 1, 2 or 3 really applied in Hartlepool. 3 will certainly apply in B&S. 1 will apply to some extent - Jo Leadbetter is far better in this regard than Paul Williams. But the concerns of B&S seem a lot more disparate and mutually antagonistic (e.g. there are sections of the potential Labour vote whose #1 priority is Palestine, and other sections of the potential Labour vote whose #1 concern is not allowing mob rule at Batley Grammar.).
My view in B&S is still Labour hold. But I'm less confident in that than I was in the Lib Dems winning C&A.
- would lib Dems be able to resource appropriately across South to make significant gains at an election
- this is more business as usual for by elections
- still not great news for labour, except that Tories may be spread more thinly at next election
- there is still a growing support for the greens which most threatens Libdem votes
The other half and remaining stake money are used for future betting. Yesterday I won £70 at Royal Ascot so last night £35 went towards making my retirement more comfortable.
Keeping stakes small today, pouring rain forecast to last all day so loads of non-runners everywhere not just at the Royal meeting.
A British man was arrested and now faces up to six months in prison in Singapore after he was filmed on a train without a mask.
Father-of-two Benjamin Glynn, 39, claims his passport has been confiscated and he has unable to return to the UK with his family whilst he awaits trial.
Mr Glynn, who says he believes masks are pointless and fail to protect people from contracting Covid, wasn't wearing a face-covering he took a train home from work in the South East Asian citystate last month, where they are mandatory.
Unbeknown to him, he was secretly filmed by a fellow commuter who then put the clip on social media.
That led to officers arresting him just hours later.
After 28 hours in a cell, Benjamin, from Helmsley, North Yorkshire, was charged with a public nuisance offence.
Benjamin's passport was confiscated, meaning he couldn't return to the UK as planned with his partner and two children - aged five and two.
He also lost a new job he was due to start in the UK and fears he could have to spend as much as 12 months on bail before his trial.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/dad-detained-singapore-after-video-20845645
You can have too much of a good thing, of course, as this result shows, but as a strategy that seems to me to still be a winner and the Tories would be silly to change it. I also think it would be a very good thing for our democracy if the number of safe seats were reduced in this way. All of the country deserves to be listened to, not just the benighted and neglected north that Labour took for granted for too long (like Scotland).
I have to double check but I don't think the proposed route touches the ECML at all which is now definitely a problem as the new First Group Edinburgh services have screwed everything else up as everywhere North of York will be at capacity even after a whole set of changes.
Firms insisting on presenteeism will struggle to recruit. This is already the case. The clever ones realise the corollary is opening up a much larger recruitment market to themselves if they don't insist on physical presence daily.
If you mean agriculture or the countryside I have never, ever mocked agriculture or the countryside. I have said it should be able to freely compete on a level playing field just as the Kiwis did - how is that sneering?
If you mean those who want to protect Areas of Natural Beauty - I have agreed with that and said they should be protected - how is that sneering?
If you mean people who want a nice view of undeveloped land from their homes, I have said they should be able to buy that land and refuse to develop it if they want to do so. How is that sneering?
The only people I am against are those who want to refuse others the right to get a home, because they're worried it will reduce the value of their own home. That's not sneering, that's supporting competition which I do even-handedly in every sector. If Waitrose or Tesco's were worried that an Aldi might eat into their profits I wouldn't think that is good reason to refuse permission to allow an Aldi to open, would you?
What exactly do you find sneering about any of that?