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Why are the Tories leading in the polls? – politicalbetting.com
Why are the Tories leading in the polls? – politicalbetting.com
The Tories have been ahead in the polls for months now and by significant margins. Sure, they lost Chesham & Amersham and failed by a tiny number of votes to win back Batley & Spen, both disappointments and, in the case of the former, a possible warning sign. But even so the polls are stuck with the Tories hovering around the 40% mark, sometimes up to 43% and Labour around 30%. Why might this be?
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Starmer isn’t very good, and that’s why the Tories are ahead in the polls.
* I don’t think this one is, though the big test is approaching.
🏠PM’s chief of staff Dan Rosenfield self-isolating after ping
🏠 Health minister Ed Agar (brief includes Covid) self-isolating
🏠 Health minister Lord Bethell working from home
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/07/19/boris-johnsons-chief-staff-ministers-self-isolate-government/
Scores of health dep officials are also isolating after Sajid Javid’s positive. One source in the department told me some are avoiding going into the office for fear of getting Covid / getting pinged.
I can see all sorts of ways a chunk of that could splinter off to a new right in years to come, though, with some swing voters moving to LD and Labour as well.
2019 provides an abject lesson in how quickly that can come about.
'Unpopular'. With Tory party members. Who will be voting for Ersatz Johnson (as the Kriegsmarine used to put such things) in a year or two.
It's being deliberately trailed.
Labour needs to find a new leader ASAP who the public trusts on Brexit, cultural issues and the economy. Labour are behind on all three areas by a huge distance IMO and won't win until all three areas are addressed. Waiting for Boris to fall doesn't help because Rishi is even more ruthless and politically savvy.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jul/19/ministers-mull-national-insurance-rise-to-fund-social-care
But, I essentially think Theresa May's proposal was basically right - albeit she sold it shitly, because she was shit.
If you have masses of asset wealth it should be expected you might need to use some of them to fund your care in your old age.
Vide Mrs May and the dementia tax.
I don't know of anything published on AZ, but extrapolation from hospitalization numbers suggests 95-98% reduction in mortality. It might end up 98-99% if we're really lucky. There are at least two separate pieces of published literature on mortality reduction of Pfizer, both of which found 96-97%.
96-98% would be great, let's hope it's more towards the top of that range. 99.9% is a fantasy.
(And this is the overall unconditional reduction. You have to knock of a factor of 5-10 for the conditional risk of death given infection. It's probably something like a 50-85% reduction in mortality, once infected.)
--AS
The supreme selfishness of some of them, and whinging at the merest hint of paying a bean for anything, beggars belief.
Anyway, disagreement with this policy without putting forward alternative policy is not acceptable - the financial black hole extent of this problem going forward, quirks and unfairness in current arrangement has to be addressed. So no nitpicking of what Boris government supported in key votes by Labour are going to push through, the status quo has to improve, you can only object presenting an alternative.
Having said that, I think something is being missed here - the Sun focussing on the election busting tax hike, but what I want to know, in the plan has to be a basement figure, dimnot had it at 50K May at 100, this whole thing won’t be funded by tax alone, so what is the basement figure?
The Torys are ahead because Boris is having a brilliant week. The lefty’s in this room loved his levelling up speech; he used Freedom Day to reveal his Covid passport plan, polls will show huge majority for extending the passport for entering all pubs and indoor social spaces this winter; and Boris is on the verge of getting something very similar to May’s plan for sorting out social care funding through the commons, after the next queens speech.
Which is an opportunity for a competent and moderate Labour Party, and quite literally it can leverage the main word in its title there to ram the message home.
I am genuinely struggling to see how Boris does not win the next election. It would require the wheels to come off in an almost biblical way. And for SKS to start sounding like an alternative instead of an echo chamber.
"Boris's amorality is to me a strength, not a weakness"
To UKIP/Tories he ticks all the boxes. The bigger the shit the more they like him and shits don't come much bigger.
I got 30 yrs teaching in and barely breach the personal allowance.
When I get my state pension it will be barely be halfway to the 40% zone!
Politics is not about whether you are any good, it's about whether you are better than the other lot. There is nothing at all affirmatively to vote Labour for. I think this lack of policy and direction, usually described as waiting until nearer the election, is a mistake.
There are open goals in this penalty shoot out.
Labour need to do better than the Tories on: social care, the medium and long term plan for the Brexit future, Covid - obviously-, tax, the United Kingdom, integrity and moderation, civil liberties, crime, housing, and so on. They don't need to do well, they just need to do better than the other lot. This is the bread and butter of politics. It's the LOTO's one big job.
When the Tories actually on DAY ONE of the 'no Covid laws' announce they are introducing Covid laws and Labour can't make mincemeat of it, both parties have a problem but Labour have the bigger one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG78zsdgB7U
Both the Corbynites and the Johnsonian Tories are happy with such an outcome, as Labour become even more hopelessly unelectable and remain is perpetual opposition.
Alpha Delta Beta. A veritable sorority of Covid variants.
Because SKS is shit?😊
SKS fans please explain todays poll.
Why is he 33% behind what was promised with "any other leader"
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1417058300961689600
I've thought for a while, that for all of the above reasons the prospect of a labour government being elected in the near future is much higher than the odds suggest.
However, on item 5 (Levelling up Promises) I'm rather ambivalent. The discourse that associates "levelling up" with the current government is powerful. But I don't believe levelling up is anything new. All my political life governments of all persuasions have said "we have to tackle the north-south divide", even Thatcher's. All have failed. Remember, for example, Regional development Agencies, and then Learning and Skills Councils? It will be interesting to see if, this time, the reality matches the rhetoric. But levelling up isn't anything new.
Meanwhile the Remain vote is split between Labour, the LDs, the Greens and the SNP.
So under FPTP the Tories have it all set up nicely for them
The scheme my mother is in was funded entirely by employer contributions and is currently in surplus.
2. I'm not sure it really works but kudos for use of mephistophelean. I'd be less irritated by the 'Boris is not perfect' stuff or about voters not caring about the same things as wonks, were it not for the quite unnecessary stuff. Just because people don't care about standards doesn't mean we have to give them low standards.
3. Yes, a win. I don't think voters do gratitude, but in the immediate term it is a reminder of a success.
4. How much the Tories have gone right is disputed, but I think it is correct that there is no significant bleedage in that direction for the Tories. United, they are hard to beat.
5. I honestly have no idea if this really connects with people. A town near me has had funds earmarked and went further LD in May. But perhaps the right talk does keep on those who made a jump to support and are inclined to respond well to such promises.
6. Eh, maybe. I don't think anyone among normal people ever really cared about inconsistencies. The expulsions were definitely ruthless, but doing whatever seems to have support just seems flexible.
7. I think lots of people vote for parties which, policy wise, don't really align to what they say they support, though I'm wary of accusing people of having false consciousness. But it seems clear some in the right places were trending Tory for some time, and enough made the plunge a once. There's some movement among others in the opposite direction, but it needs to be a lot and in the right places, so for the medium term the Tories benefit.
8. Starmer's doing what he can, I'm very surprised he has not restored the whip to Corbyn, but fundamentally it's a serious problem when some still love the Corbyn project and others want to forget it ever happened. I guess time is all that can resolve that?
9. I've never really been sure how to make a non-invisible shadow cabinet. They do get out there, as does here. How to grab attention? How to make the team appear strong? (being strong would be a bonus). He's clearly trying, so is he just inadequate? He's not bombastic, but some argue that will be what people want next, but I'm not sure if that's so - I think for now people do still want big personalities.
10. No it hasn't. Some have made the optimism vs pessimism argument, but that seems a bit simplistic and surely oppositions have to be able to be very critical without being 'pessimistic'. But why everyone argues where the line is, perhaps there is a line - when things seem, well, OK, constant bemoaning of things being especially bad strikes a dissnonant note. It's not that people dislike pessimism, perhaps, but they do look around and just think that things are not as claimed, in which case the sunnier vision is technically closer.
1) Scrap triple lock and up-rate pensions by inflation only going forward. Will save a large amount this year (and therefore every year thereafter) with earnings growth likely to outstrip inflation by so much.
2) Merge NI and income tax to apply to all income equally, i.e. pensioners pay their fair share.
3) Replace council tax with an annual property tax that is collected nationally with much higher rates for more expensive properties and the option of deferment on the sale/transfer of the estate for cash poor owners.
...rather than the workers with little or no wealth shouldering all the burden.
Prior generations of politicians screwed the pooch. People have made retirement decisions based on the funding scheme as was.
I think the current generation needs to be paying into a fund (how about calling it a National Insurance Fund) to find their social care. And the catch up should be through general taxation
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world
Vaccine passport is a digital id in all but name, the uses of which will widened every year whilst every senior politician tell us they have no plan to do x or y with it.
Beggars belief that is Johnson of all people, the old libertarian lounge lizard himself, who will go down in history as the guy who introduced them.
I intend to resist.
Unions demand 12-15% pay rise for NHS.
Labour demanded 2.1%.
Tory government just awarded 3% NHS pay rise.
Labour spokesman doesnt know whether to have a shit shave or a haircut
No wonder they are on target for the worst defeat since 1935
Though I must say I have noticed in general a lot more people making a 'This is wrong because duty of care/environment/etc' kind of argument when insisting that something must be done, in recent years. I don't know if it is in recognition that the laws are not on their side so appeal to a higher authority for a moral cause, or laziness to find out what the rules are so declare they don't matter (apart from the one you think means they must do X)
I don't know how the studies I mentioned counted deaths, but it's unlikely to be simply the dashboard numbers (actually they were overseas). The 96% reduction rate was also seen in the 45-64 cohort, who were unlikely to be at death's door.
--AS
A bit radical for SKS though
Tories are scoring well with both groups, Labour much less well.
The Tories have one more ge win in them, under someone other than Boris, because they will as you say listen to the electorate and change accordingly and because sks and the alternative Labour leaders to sks are so unbelievably hopeless. 2028 Labour landslide under someone not currently in the frame at all.
--AS
However at the same time I have been looking in to an FF43 mask for the first time, simply because I don't want to get the virus when out and about: being double jabbed I am not too worried about getting ill; I just want to avoid having to go in to self isolation as I have too much to do. I have also never downloaded the app for this reason, I am running a business which has involved managing a dangerous building during lockdown, any requirement to self isolate would have been potentially catastrophic.
I think that the requirement to self isolate needs to go as a priority. The fact that it is a legal requirement to self isolate when told to do so under the threat of a £10,000 penalty is absolutely insane. The only logical response is to not put yourself in a position where you are asked to self isolate; and to this you never take a test, never download the app, never leave details anywhere. The government must surely realise that this is exactly the conclusion that tens of millions of people have come to, even though they would never admit it. It really hampers any prospect of controlling the virus.
What we need is a competent leader with an actual personality like Andy Burnham
What we need is a competent leader with some actual policies like Andy Burnham
What we need is not to be to the right of the Tories on NHS pay. Funding Social Care etc as Andy Burnham isnt
What we need now is a unifying figure as leader like Andy Burnham
SKS fails on every single count.
If you cant see he is shit now Pete what will it take?
My view is it is primarily down to the remarkable.private short-term wealth that has been accrued through the pandemic, through free government money, or reduction of work related expenditure from WFH and an inability, until recently to spend it.
Now, one can't buy a home without being gazumped, or get a builder for significant home improvements they are all booked up. There is a significant shortage of nearly new used prestige cars, because we are cheering ourselves up post-Covid.with a "spend,spend,spend" philosophy. We have never had it so good.
But will all this last once the furlough money stops? Maybe it will, but I really doubt that
On (1) Perhaps the abject failure of parliament over Brexit has made it more irrelevant in the public mind than strong government. This is not, at the moment good for Labour if true. Strong government is not what they look like.
On (9) How to make a non invisible shadow cabinet: Top quality good ideas and Blair quality presentation of them. The media always has time for the best. There is always room at the top.
--AS
So-called "1% on National Insurance" is really 1% on Employee National Insurance and 1% on Employer National Insurance. So its really 2% on Income Tax, being masked as 1%.
Any "Employer National Insurance" comes from a companies labour budget so is a tax on wages every bit as much as a tax on incomes - because it is a tax on incomes, its just a pervertedly hidden one.