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Labour have their first opinion poll lead since January – politicalbetting.com
Labour have their first opinion poll lead since January – politicalbetting.com
Six in 10 voters do not think Boris Johnson or Tories care about keeping taxes low in wake of 1.25% national insurance hike announcementOnly a third of voters think Johnson or Tories care about improving NHS despite cash injection from levy
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Well done CHB.
Problem now is Rishi is the architect of not only an unpopular rise, but even worse its a whole tax, where we all know its only ever going to go up and up and up. And The Saj is involved too.
2% behind for a governing party that has been in power for 11 years is par for the course. No tax rise will ever be popular, this was the least worst. Better to get the difficult financial decisions out of the way now midterm to give the NHS and social care the top up it needs and balance the books and then can go for tax cuts again before the next general election
The biggest concern is that in Boros's rush to get the tax increase through he didn't provide time for the general public to have to time react to the plan after thinking. The initial polling was only good because people didn't see how unfair it was. Once they discovered the impact it had on them the end result was obvious
Incidentally, it's over.
I can't believe it took so long
Even the French are laughing at us
If you had really read this thread with an open mind over the last few days you would have seen this unfolding
I do expect a general drop in other polls and this looks like the dementia tax repeating itself
I thought his only chance was in LAB conference week
Apparently not
And its all entirely unnecessary. Debt interest payments are at record lows, not surging highs. The country had no structural deficit going into this recession. And most importantly the expectations of the market have been set by the USA doing Trillions in fiscal stimulus and that's no doubt going to be paid for by QE. The economy is heating up and looking set for a boom.
We didn't need to engage in trillions of fiscal stimulus but could have just let the market do its thing, let a boom occur and let HMRC get the taxes that a growing economy produces.
Instead they've chosen to fuck the economy with higher taxes. Entirely economically illiterate Rishi and entirely unnecessary. The Tories deserve to lose the next election with that attitude.
I’m disappointed in the NI increase, but not nearly as angry as you are about it. Sadly this has been mostly true of the Tories since 2010. I actually thought May’s proposal was reasonable enough.
I wish Johnson and Sunak had had the balls to do things differently, but ultimately, the OAPs will duly vote Tory at the next election. Quite when growing old stops being correlated with becoming a Tory, I don’t know, but I suspect it will be sometime after the current incumbent of Number 10 has left office.
I do think people are overreacting a tad.
The only tax that would be popular is a CGT rise or financial investments tax but of course that only raises a limited amount and tax on dividends was raised anyway. After Covid the NHS needs extra funds as does social care and it has to be paid for somehow as does all the extra spending we had as a result of Covid. Balance the books now and then go for tax cuts before the next election.
Thatcher was often far further behind after a decade in power, Labour was often behind by 2008, the equivalent year in terms of their time in power.
Better to get the hard decisions taken now midterm, Thatcher sensibly did not bother too much what midterm polls showed about her government's popularity and nor should Boris.
Remember even Ed Miliband often had a midterm lead over Cameron
Assuming it's not just a blip, of course.
In a different political world, this plan would have been strangled at birth; certainly before seeing the light of day. A combination of "Boris is always right, or you will lose your job" and the insane speed that this has been pushed through before it had been properly road-tested. Even if the government wanted to climb down, they've barely left themselves time to.
Second thought is the story of when John Major was a junior minister at Social Security. He was trying to unlock extra welfare money for heating, and was able to go to the PM and say (something along the lines of) "it must be awfully hard keeping a room warm with a one bar heater..." And Maggie released the money for the cold weather payments. Both of them had life stories that meant they understood the right thing to do.
It's harder now, because few of us have that sort of life experience. But Boris and Rishi emphatically don't, which is another part of why blunders like this happen. And the UC thing looks like being the next one.
As I said on my prior thread header the effective real tax rate for a lowly paid graduate now is 49.8% and its ridiculously higher for many other classes of people too.
Labour should bang on about how high taxes are making life unaffordable and discouraging work and I can suggest a way for Labour to pay for it if they do this too . . . the Laffer Curve. Cutting taxes on working, will encourage more working to go ahead, to be registered on the books properly and will get the economy growing and ultimately more taxes for HMRC. Win, win.
Come on Labour, seize the opportunity and live up to your name. Cut the taxes on working people. Let those who work for a living be on the same footing as those who don't.
COVID related decisions which have dominated the news, the government has got a pass on lots of poor choices, because everybody seems all these other countries struggling and the most important decision on vaccines was done well.
Even the supply issues, the supermarkets aren't out of food. You still go there and can fill up your trolley. And you get the stupid hyperbolic headline, such and such doesn't have diet coke today...and then people go in a couple of days and find there is diet coke.
The one COVID story that cut through was obviously Big Dom, because all our lives were effected and he decided it didn't really apply to him...and the media put absolutely massive rocket boosters under it.
It is the unfairness and hitting the low earners and with a deaf ear stopping the £20UC continuing which I have criticised consistently
It is wrong and Boris may well pay the price
Remember 44 conservative mps were unhappy yesterday, enough to put letters into the 1922
Labour short by 43
Labour have kept quiet about how they would tackle the gordian knot of social care, as Starmer thinks that it is to be better to be thought a fool etc.
The fact is the extra spending Covid cost has to be paid for as does the extra funds the NHS and social care needs.
A rise in income tax would have been just as unpopular, a rise in inheritance tax or a dementia tax even more unpopular.
Governments sometimes have to take tough decisions, governments normally go behind midterm, it is par for the course.
Only pathetic wet blankets lose any sleep over that and a mere 2% behind after 11 years in power
... there's a John Major story about them, as well. It involves a rude word.
The dangerzone is Labour behind the Tories but ahead on SNP votes. If they can be ahead with SNP abstentions that's much better for Labour.
@TheScreamingEagles - is this something that could be raised with the polling council? If I only released half my stats at 09:30 on the dot I’d be getting a bollocking.
Politics has just got very interesting with many unknowns
https://www.britishpollingcouncil.org/objects-and-rules/
This is in relation to the public not liking a tax rise even to fund the NHS, simple as that
Starmer hasn't hoovered up the votes, but then its unusual to get an immediate Con -> Lab swing, just as the Tories didn't gain in past years necessarily from an immediately Lab -> Con swing. He's got the potential to hoover up votes in the future if they remain floating though.
Con falling is much worse news for Boris than it is from Starmer. And its entirely unnecessary and self-inflicted.
Because polls have a lot of questions in them it isn't possible for the client to include them in their articles.
We've been spoiled by the likes of Opinium, Survation, and Deltapoll, plus YouGov occasionally published the tables the same time as the client publishes the article.
I would prefer it if the BPC ensured all the VI figures were published as a tweet by them the moment the article is published.
The reality is that YouGov will have published the tables by lunchtime tomorrow.
What a shame this has already been voted on. Were it voted on tomorrow, I wonder how many rebels there would have been?
And threatening a re-shuffle has diminishing returns. Can't imagine even the dimmest back bencher will fall for it next time.
Been saying for a while that I don't think the public, or the media, or much of the political class has processed what a truly seismic event the pandemic was.
The costs were horrendous, and a decade of retrenchment is inevitable. The public hasn't been groomed for that. Boris' knee jerk fallback into boosterism prevented it. The idea that we'd get vaccinated, and everything would be back to normal has been allowed to take hold.
It won't.
That’s pretty terrible really and also bollocks. A more accurate description would be within two days of some part of a poll result being published.
We could and should have had a roaring twenties as well but it seems the Tories want to strangle it at birth.
As we're coming out of lockdown and furlough is winding up the story a week ago was one of full employment and an abundance of job offers. Optimism was extremely high and the only 'problems' were that there were too many jobs available. That's a great problem to have.
Now its a story of tax rises and people looking at their wallets and thinking what they have to lose. Insanity. Absolute insanity. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Lab Gain??
Doubt it but volatility this week might make it possible
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1436086743720251394?s=20
(I know its NI, but still)
When we publish official stats we have to pre-announce the date of publication four weeks in advance (ideally more). Let’s just say explaining the importance of this to some non-stattos can be, err, challenging.
Sorry, but there it is.
I don't think we realise how lucky we are on that front and the power of the head of the UK Statistics Authority publicly calling out the Prime Minister downwards for using misleading stats.
This is an entirely self-inflicted error that Johnson had no need to make.
However in hindsight it looks like you're right because of Johnson's hubris in rushing this through.
@GoodwinMJ
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9m
Ladies & Gentlemen. The series has come to an end. After 149 straight Conservative leads Labour take a lead. No doubt alarm bells are winning in No 10 ...
Me. I'm a Keynesian. Now isn't the time to be worrying about a deficit, or scaling back spending, or raising taxes. But the Tories are the Party you can trust with the economy aren't they?
Labour's score isn't that good: the opportunity comes in the declining score for the Tories.
And Williamson not recognising Marcus Rashford a national treasure
My membership of the conservative party has lapsed and I genuinely feel homeless tonight
While I do not agree with everything you have said on taxation I could genuinely be tempted to vote for another party if they had a fairer offer but not one that soaks the rich
We have to encourage entrepreneurs and investments
James Morris
@jamesdmorris
Replying to
@jamesdmorris
I think the main thing is that polls create the appearance of attitudes people don’t actually have.
Most people have never thought about whether NI should fund social care. So their instinctive response is v open to change based on framing and information.
The bottom line is that several of Johnson's ministers (no names, Private Pike) just aren't very good at their jobs, and some of them are trying to do things that probably wouldn't work even with competent ministers. And each little failure costs the Conservatives some votes. In that sense, Hartlepool (or just afterwards) was the triumphant peak.
But this week has been something special to behold.
I'm a physicist not a classicist, unlike the PM. But I'm pretty sure that hubris wasn't followed by whatever the Greek is for "massive ongoing success for a decade".
May 2021 result Lab 1575 C 746
Nonetheless, let's not get too carried away by one outlier.
Which is close to tonight's VI.
Obviously Scotland alone means that won't happen again but amused me.
Can the last PB Tory please turn off the light.
Britain Elects
@BritainElects
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30s
Camperdown (North Tyneside) by-election result:
LAB: 66.7% (+7.2)
CON: 24.5% (+6.5)
GRN: 5.4% (+5.4)
LDEM: 3.3% (+3.3)
Labour HOLD.
Good night!