politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » New YouGov poll has the Tories back with a double digit lead

SouthamObserver said:

Fieldwork mostly done after more Sunak cash dispensing and acres of positive headlines about it, too.

So what.. its a double digit lead. Where is CHB when you need him, predicting crossover v soon.... (was it just for best PM or voting int as well?)

It is only one poll and may be influenced by Rishi but I would just comment that I am not at all sure all the 'woke' goes down well in the red wall seats

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

DavidL said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

DavidL said:

Alistair said:

rottenborough said:

Labour have a long way to go.

https://twitter.com/helenpidd/status/1281285770192531456

Ah, the working class business owner.

Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?

Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.

What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.

You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary.
I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it.
Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.

But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?

Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.

Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.

But its nonsense! So on retirement everyone stops being working class?

In this country its also perfectly possible to live off state benefits without ever doing a days work. Not fun or recommended, but do-able. So at birth we are all excluded from being working class.

On a personal level I could certainly retire early today and survive, just not at the level I would like to so will probably end up working another 15 years or so. Which level sets my class, my desired income, historic income or average income, or state sustenance?

I can answer these questions on Laura's behalf. On retirement you carry on being what you were before you retired. Being jobless on benefits does not count as living off your wealth because it is not living comfortably. Which means - let's put this out there - that your capital needs to be sufficient to generate an income of at least the average wage without any labour input from you. If you're in that boat you can only be "cultural" working class - which is the softer, subjective and imo less useful concept (albeit not irrelevant).

How do I know how long Im going to live? If its 75 Im excluded from working class on your definition, if l lived to 95 I would be eligible. This is silly.

It's silly if we get too literal about it. My point is mainly that of the 2 extremes - class is all about money or all about attitudes - I prefer the 1st one. I think that's more useful when it comes to the true economic interest of people (whether they see it or not).

But OK, since I don't like to dodge questions. We don't know how long you're going to live. But remember we've said that when you become a pensioner - at say 65 - you remain in the class you were in on the day before that event. Thus at this point we only need to ascertain if your wealth is sufficient to live comfortably on UNTIL you reach 65. If it is, you can be "Stocky" working class but not "Pidcock" working class.

Sorry to be a literal pedant and all that but it really is still nonsensical. At 64y 11m everyone is no longer working class, as they only need a months average wages. By the last day they only need one days average wages to prevent them being working class. At retirement date their class is fixed, so you have no working class retirees.

The group the Labour party has really lost are working class retirees.

Grr.

So, if you approach retirement in a position whereby your wealth alone is generating a comfortable income then whatever class status that signifies continues to the grave (barring accidents).

As for Labour, yes, our biggest problem is not about class it's about age. We are going gangbusters with the under 40s - setting records there - but it's the opposite of that with the over 65s.

If we could make 'full set of own teeth' a condition of voting we'd be in great shape.

Strange that, the ones not keen on a true left wing government are the one's who have actually experienced one. The ones most in favour are people who have never experienced one. I wonder if this tells us something?

I think we're waiting to have a bash at big interventionist state here in the modern era. I'm not counting this effort from Johnson and Sunak - I sense their heart is not in it.

Thankfully not enough are stupid enough to think a big interventionist state will work currently and I don't think you will ever convince enough

Well I sense you are wavering so I will try for a bit longer before I down tools completely. And you will be a great prize - you know what they say about the passion of the converted.

Like most teenagers I was a socialist and a big supporter of labour. Then I grew up and realised it had no answers for the same reason socialism has always failed. It relies on people behaving in the way socialists think they should behave rather than the way in which human beings really behave. It really is that simple.

You are a prime example of this with your crusade to ban private schools and hand waving away the issues people raise like the very rich will send their kids to school abroad, the moderately rich will merely buy up all the housing in good state cachement areas pushing poor kids out so all they have left is the failing state schools. Oh it won't happen you declaim despite all the evidence showing it absolutely will

I look at this exactly the opposite way. Human beings left to their own devices will create a society which is grossly unequal. Unequal to a degree that is indecent. As it is now, people with advantages of talent and wealth and looks, and particularly wealth, and of race and gender, will always by and large have better life outcomes than those not so blessed - not every person but on the whole - and so for me a very high priority of government should be to act in a way that goes against the grain of this rather than to simply let it be, or worse accentuate it. And by go against the grain I mean enact policies which lead to more equal opportunities and outcomes. That's MORE equal not equal. Nothing crazy or scary about this.

Which I would have sympathy with if you could ever point to a single instance of your philosophy ever working in the real world and not causing millions of deaths and the setting up of reeducation camps for those that don't buy into the state line. Something you (I hope jokingly) agreed with in the other thread about maybe needing to get a new electorate

FPT

CorrectHorseBattery said:

Genuinely, Labour has a really big problem on their hands and not sure how it can be resolved. Starmer is evidently the best they could have chosen but right now he's not looking like it's enough.

The Tory support is rock solid stable, until something happens to actually hit it, Labour ain't gonna be forming any governments any time soon.

There are plenty of "somethings" looming not to far down the road.

I look forward to your reaction to a YouGov poll conducted in the 24 hours immediately following a Conservative Budget that announces a £30 billion package of austerity achieved through a mixture of tax rises and public spending cuts, just at the same time as interest and mortgage rates are starting to rise again. I think we're about two years away from that.

How'd I miss mug-gate, as reported on Guido? Surprised his billionaire wife was so stingy to be honest.

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

Fieldwork mostly done after more Sunak cash dispensing and acres of positive headlines about it, too.

So what.. its a double digit lead. Where is CHB when you need him, predicting crossover v soon.... (was it just for best PM or voting int as well?)

It's MoE on the previous YouGov. The Tory leads are currently in the four to 10 point range. I'll take that right now given where things were in March, especially as there is decent progress from December (4 to 7 points, depending on the pollster).

rottenborough said:

RobD said:

rottenborough said:

Senior Swedish physician:

"That means that something else is happening – we are actually getting closer to herd immunity. I can’t really see another reason.”

https://unherd.com/thepost/swedish-doctor-t-cell-immunity-and-the-truth-about-covid-19-in-sweden/

Anecdote v. data? The data suggests they are nowhere near herd immunity.

T cells may give degree of immunity.

"New research from Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital shows that many people with mild or asymptomatic COVID-19 demonstrate so-called T-cell-mediated immunity to the new coronavirus, even if they have not tested positively for antibodies."
https://news.ki.se/immunity-to-covid-19-is-probably-higher-than-tests-have-shown

Yes, that's really quite encouraging - it means (1) there may be far more people with at least partial immunity than we thought, and (2) we might therefore be much closer to herd immunity - particularly in places like London - than we thought.

It might also, of course, be good news for President Trump, as it means that the current take off in cases in the US might slow down sooner than people expect. (Especially as less dense places have lower Rs - in that you have contact with fewer people - and therefore herd immunity is reached earlier.)

MrEd said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

It is only one poll and may be influenced by Rishi but I would just comment that I am not at all sure all the 'woke' goes down well in the red wall seats

Posted this on the previous thread Big_G but to many red wall voters, this is what the Labour Party is all about these days (and, no, not the guy being shouted at but the shouters)

https://twitter.com/prisonplanet/status/863040667869745156?s=21

Labour has a very big branding problem. This is the sort of behaviour many people believe will become commonplace if Labour gets into power. Good luck to SKS in trying to persuade people otherwise. It is like trying to persuade people the Conservatives are the party of the NHS......

ps apologies for a link to Watson......

That is just dreadful

Big_G_NorthWales said:

MrEd said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

It is only one poll and may be influenced by Rishi but I would just comment that I am not at all sure all the 'woke' goes down well in the red wall seats

Posted this on the previous thread Big_G but to many red wall voters, this is what the Labour Party is all about these days (and, no, not the guy being shouted at but the shouters)

https://twitter.com/prisonplanet/status/863040667869745156?s=21

Labour has a very big branding problem. This is the sort of behaviour many people believe will become commonplace if Labour gets into power. Good luck to SKS in trying to persuade people otherwise. It is like trying to persuade people the Conservatives are the party of the NHS......

ps apologies for a link to Watson......

That is just dreadful

wow

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

Fieldwork mostly done after more Sunak cash dispensing and acres of positive headlines about it, too.

So what.. its a double digit lead. Where is CHB when you need him, predicting crossover v soon.... (was it just for best PM or voting int as well?)

It's MoE on the previous YouGov. The Tory leads are currently in the four to 10 point range. I'll take that right now given where things were in March, especially as there is decent progress from December (4 to 7 points, depending on the pollster).

That may be true , but its TEN points, yes TEN points. If you are happy to take that, then bless you...
Starmer has had it easy as you like and its TEN points, the Tories have worked him out, it isn't going to be plain sailing for either party.....

Is it TEN points? I wasn't quite sure.

And another pollster will have a Labour lead within the month, won't they?

Theuniondivvie said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

Fieldwork mostly done after more Sunak cash dispensing and acres of positive headlines about it, too.

So what.. its a double digit lead. Where is CHB when you need him, predicting crossover v soon.... (was it just for best PM or voting int as well?)

It's MoE on the previous YouGov. The Tory leads are currently in the four to 10 point range. I'll take that right now given where things were in March, especially as there is decent progress from December (4 to 7 points, depending on the pollster).

That may be true , but its TEN points, yes TEN points. If you are happy to take that, then bless you...
Starmer has had it easy as you like and its TEN points, the Tories have worked him out, it isn't going to be plain sailing for either party.....

Is it TEN points? I wasn't quite sure.

Well have a look at Mr Smithson's thread then, its all there.

SouthamObserver said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

Fieldwork mostly done after more Sunak cash dispensing and acres of positive headlines about it, too.

So what.. its a double digit lead. Where is CHB when you need him, predicting crossover v soon.... (was it just for best PM or voting int as well?)

It's MoE on the previous YouGov. The Tory leads are currently in the four to 10 point range. I'll take that right now given where things were in March, especially as there is decent progress from December (4 to 7 points, depending on the pollster).

That may be true , but its TEN points yes 10 points. if you are happy to take that , then bless you... Starmer has had it easy as you like, the Tories have worked him out, it isn't going to be plain sailing for either party.....

I agree. Starmer has to be more than not Jeremy Corbyn. The Tories have a depression and a potential No Deal with the EU to steer us through. Politics is going to be very interesting.

And of course the rest of the EU face a depression and no deal to steer through

It is not going to be pretty for any government

It was good to see Mark Drakeford, Wales FM, resolutely defending the union today and this is consistent with Starmer's support for the union.

Stark contrast with Sturgeon who has been trying to use Wales to attack Westminster

People voted for the Tories barely six months ago. They're still invested in this government. There's not a whole lot of point discussing opinion polls in the next couple of years given the next election's not due for four years. I'm not too upset about the Tories having a double digit lead now, just as I wouldn't be too excited if Labour have a similar lead in a year's time.
Labour should focus on establishing Starmer as an alternative PM and in pointing out the government's failings. Ultimately, the government controls its own fate. If it can deliver on its Brexit promises and emerge from Covid intact then it will be fine. My guess is that it will fail on both, but what do I know?

Theuniondivvie said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

SouthamObserver said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

Fieldwork mostly done after more Sunak cash dispensing and acres of positive headlines about it, too.

So what.. its a double digit lead. Where is CHB when you need him, predicting crossover v soon.... (was it just for best PM or voting int as well?)

It's MoE on the previous YouGov. The Tory leads are currently in the four to 10 point range. I'll take that right now given where things were in March, especially as there is decent progress from December (4 to 7 points, depending on the pollster).

That may be true , but its TEN points yes 10 points. if you are happy to take that , then bless you... Starmer has had it easy as you like, the Tories have worked him out, it isn't going to be plain sailing for either party.....

I agree. Starmer has to be more than not Jeremy Corbyn. The Tories have a depression and a potential No Deal with the EU to steer us through. Politics is going to be very interesting.

And of course the rest of the EU face a depression and no deal to steer through

It is not going to be pretty for any government

It was good to see Mark Drakeford, Wales FM, resolutely defending the union today and this is consistent with Starmer's support for the union.

Stark contrast with Sturgeon who has been trying to use Wales to attack Westminster

Why oh why isn't the leader of the SNP resolutely defending the union? It's an absolute disgrace, so it is.

She is on her own as far as Wales is concerned

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

DavidL said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

DavidL said:

Alistair said:

rottenborough said:

Labour have a long way to go.

https://twitter.com/helenpidd/status/1281285770192531456

Ah, the working class business owner.

Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?

Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.

What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.

You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary.
I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it.
Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.

But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?

Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.

Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.

But its nonsense! So on retirement everyone stops being working class?

In this country its also perfectly possible to live off state benefits without ever doing a days work. Not fun or recommended, but do-able. So at birth we are all excluded from being working class.

On a personal level I could certainly retire early today and survive, just not at the level I would like to so will probably end up working another 15 years or so. Which level sets my class, my desired income, historic income or average income, or state sustenance?

I can answer these questions on Laura's behalf. On retirement you carry on being what you were before you retired. Being jobless on benefits does not count as living off your wealth because it is not living comfortably. Which means - let's put this out there - that your capital needs to be sufficient to generate an income of at least the average wage without any labour input from you. If you're in that boat you can only be "cultural" working class - which is the softer, subjective and imo less useful concept (albeit not irrelevant).

How do I know how long Im going to live? If its 75 Im excluded from working class on your definition, if l lived to 95 I would be eligible. This is silly.

It's silly if we get too literal about it. My point is mainly that of the 2 extremes - class is all about money or all about attitudes - I prefer the 1st one. I think that's more useful when it comes to the true economic interest of people (whether they see it or not).

But OK, since I don't like to dodge questions. We don't know how long you're going to live. But remember we've said that when you become a pensioner - at say 65 - you remain in the class you were in on the day before that event. Thus at this point we only need to ascertain if your wealth is sufficient to live comfortably on UNTIL you reach 65. If it is, you can be "Stocky" working class but not "Pidcock" working class.

Sorry to be a literal pedant and all that but it really is still nonsensical. At 64y 11m everyone is no longer working class, as they only need a months average wages. By the last day they only need one days average wages to prevent them being working class. At retirement date their class is fixed, so you have no working class retirees.

The group the Labour party has really lost are working class retirees.

Grr.

So, if you approach retirement in a position whereby your wealth alone is generating a comfortable income then whatever class status that signifies continues to the grave (barring accidents).

As for Labour, yes, our biggest problem is not about class it's about age. We are going gangbusters with the under 40s - setting records there - but it's the opposite of that with the over 65s.

If we could make 'full set of own teeth' a condition of voting we'd be in great shape.

Strange that, the ones not keen on a true left wing government are the one's who have actually experienced one. The ones most in favour are people who have never experienced one. I wonder if this tells us something?

I think we're waiting to have a bash at big interventionist state here in the modern era. I'm not counting this effort from Johnson and Sunak - I sense their heart is not in it.

Thankfully not enough are stupid enough to think a big interventionist state will work currently and I don't think you will ever convince enough

Well I sense you are wavering so I will try for a bit longer before I down tools completely. And you will be a great prize - you know what they say about the passion of the converted.

Like most teenagers I was a socialist and a big supporter of labour. Then I grew up and realised it had no answers for the same reason socialism has always failed. It relies on people behaving in the way socialists think they should behave rather than the way in which human beings really behave. It really is that simple.

You are a prime example of this with your crusade to ban private schools and hand waving away the issues people raise like the very rich will send their kids to school abroad, the moderately rich will merely buy up all the housing in good state cachement areas pushing poor kids out so all they have left is the failing state schools. Oh it won't happen you declaim despite all the evidence showing it absolutely will

I look at this exactly the opposite way. Human beings left to their own devices will create a society which is grossly unequal. Unequal to a degree that is indecent. As it is now, people with advantages of talent and wealth and looks, and particularly wealth, and of race and gender, will always by and large have better life outcomes than those not so blessed - not every person but on the whole - and so for me a very high priority of government should be to act in a way that goes against the grain of this rather than to simply let it be, or worse accentuate it. And by go against the grain I mean enact policies which lead to more equal opportunities and outcomes. That's MORE equal not equal. Nothing crazy or scary about this.

Which I would have sympathy with if you could ever point to a single instance of your philosophy ever working in the real world and not causing millions of deaths and the setting up of reeducation camps for those that don't buy into the state line. Something you (I hope jokingly) agreed with in the other thread about maybe needing to get a new electorate

You're thinking I mean totalitarian communism (!) when all I really have in mind is high tax & spend, public ownership of utilities, an egalitarian education policy, and an abdication of exceptionalist pretensions born of Empire. Result - a peaceful prosperous country with a happy and civilised ambience.

Anyway, I'm climbing out of the dock. Why don't you say what YOUR vision is. Let's run your one up the flagpole and see if it billows.

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

DavidL said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

DavidL said:

Alistair said:

rottenborough said:

Labour have a long way to go.

https://twitter.com/helenpidd/status/1281285770192531456

Ah, the working class business owner.

Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?

Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.

What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.

You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary.
I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it.
Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.

But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?

Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.

Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.

But its nonsense! So on retirement everyone stops being working class?

In this country its also perfectly possible to live off state benefits without ever doing a days work. Not fun or recommended, but do-able. So at birth we are all excluded from being working class.

On a personal level I could certainly retire early today and survive, just not at the level I would like to so will probably end up working another 15 years or so. Which level sets my class, my desired income, historic income or average income, or state sustenance?

I can answer these questions on Laura's behalf. On retirement you carry on being what you were before you retired. Being jobless on benefits does not count as living off your wealth because it is not living comfortably. Which means - let's put this out there - that your capital needs to be sufficient to generate an income of at least the average wage without any labour input from you. If you're in that boat you can only be "cultural" working class - which is the softer, subjective and imo less useful concept (albeit not irrelevant).

How do I know how long Im going to live? If its 75 Im excluded from working class on your definition, if l lived to 95 I would be eligible. This is silly.

It's silly if we get too literal about it. My point is mainly that of the 2 extremes - class is all about money or all about attitudes - I prefer the 1st one. I think that's more useful when it comes to the true economic interest of people (whether they see it or not).

But OK, since I don't like to dodge questions. We don't know how long you're going to live. But remember we've said that when you become a pensioner - at say 65 - you remain in the class you were in on the day before that event. Thus at this point we only need to ascertain if your wealth is sufficient to live comfortably on UNTIL you reach 65. If it is, you can be "Stocky" working class but not "Pidcock" working class.

Sorry to be a literal pedant and all that but it really is still nonsensical. At 64y 11m everyone is no longer working class, as they only need a months average wages. By the last day they only need one days average wages to prevent them being working class. At retirement date their class is fixed, so you have no working class retirees.

The group the Labour party has really lost are working class retirees.

Grr.

So, if you approach retirement in a position whereby your wealth alone is generating a comfortable income then whatever class status that signifies continues to the grave (barring accidents).

As for Labour, yes, our biggest problem is not about class it's about age. We are going gangbusters with the under 40s - setting records there - but it's the opposite of that with the over 65s.

If we could make 'full set of own teeth' a condition of voting we'd be in great shape.

Strange that, the ones not keen on a true left wing government are the one's who have actually experienced one. The ones most in favour are people who have never experienced one. I wonder if this tells us something?

I think we're waiting to have a bash at big interventionist state here in the modern era. I'm not counting this effort from Johnson and Sunak - I sense their heart is not in it.

Thankfully not enough are stupid enough to think a big interventionist state will work currently and I don't think you will ever convince enough

Well I sense you are wavering so I will try for a bit longer before I down tools completely. And you will be a great prize - you know what they say about the passion of the converted.

Like most teenagers I was a socialist and a big supporter of labour. Then I grew up and realised it had no answers for the same reason socialism has always failed. It relies on people behaving in the way socialists think they should behave rather than the way in which human beings really behave. It really is that simple.

You are a prime example of this with your crusade to ban private schools and hand waving away the issues people raise like the very rich will send their kids to school abroad, the moderately rich will merely buy up all the housing in good state cachement areas pushing poor kids out so all they have left is the failing state schools. Oh it won't happen you declaim despite all the evidence showing it absolutely will

I look at this exactly the opposite way. Human beings left to their own devices will create a society which is grossly unequal. Unequal to a degree that is indecent. As it is now, people with advantages of talent and wealth and looks, and particularly wealth, and of race and gender, will always by and large have better life outcomes than those not so blessed - not every person but on the whole - and so for me a very high priority of government should be to act in a way that goes against the grain of this rather than to simply let it be, or worse accentuate it. And by go against the grain I mean enact policies which lead to more equal opportunities and outcomes. That's MORE equal not equal. Nothing crazy or scary about this.

Which I would have sympathy with if you could ever point to a single instance of your philosophy ever working in the real world and not causing millions of deaths and the setting up of reeducation camps for those that don't buy into the state line. Something you (I hope jokingly) agreed with in the other thread about maybe needing to get a new electorate

You're thinking I mean totalitarian communism (!) when all I really have in mind is high tax & spend, public ownership of utilities, an egalitarian education policy, and an abdication of exceptionalist pretensions born of Empire. Result - a peaceful prosperous country with a happy and civilised ambience.

Anyway, I'm climbing out of the dock. Why don't you say what YOUR vision is. Let's run your one up the flagpole and see if it billows.

Yes and your high tax and spend is going to push a lot of the just managing under water. Nationalised industries were crap before why do you think they would be better now. Some of the highest hikes in utility prices happened while they were nationalised BT was a total disgrace, BR had falling passenger numbers because they were such dross even compared against the current franchise. Why is it going to be any different if you renationalise them? Do you want to have to wait 3 months to get a phone line put in and then only be able to use equipment that has to be rented from BT?

Nationalised utilites were a steaming pile of horse manure back then and they would be again.

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

DavidL said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

DavidL said:

Alistair said:

rottenborough said:

Labour have a long way to go.

https://twitter.com/helenpidd/status/1281285770192531456

Ah, the working class business owner.

Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?

Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.

What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.

You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary.
I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it.
Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.

But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?

Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.

Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.

But its nonsense! So on retirement everyone stops being working class?

In this country its also perfectly possible to live off state benefits without ever doing a days work. Not fun or recommended, but do-able. So at birth we are all excluded from being working class.

On a personal level I could certainly retire early today and survive, just not at the level I would like to so will probably end up working another 15 years or so. Which level sets my class, my desired income, historic income or average income, or state sustenance?

I can answer these questions on Laura's behalf. On retirement you carry on being what you were before you retired. Being jobless on benefits does not count as living off your wealth because it is not living comfortably. Which means - let's put this out there - that your capital needs to be sufficient to generate an income of at least the average wage without any labour input from you. If you're in that boat you can only be "cultural" working class - which is the softer, subjective and imo less useful concept (albeit not irrelevant).

How do I know how long Im going to live? If its 75 Im excluded from working class on your definition, if l lived to 95 I would be eligible. This is silly.

It's silly if we get too literal about it. My point is mainly that of the 2 extremes - class is all about money or all about attitudes - I prefer the 1st one. I think that's more useful when it comes to the true economic interest of people (whether they see it or not).

But OK, since I don't like to dodge questions. We don't know how long you're going to live. But remember we've said that when you become a pensioner - at say 65 - you remain in the class you were in on the day before that event. Thus at this point we only need to ascertain if your wealth is sufficient to live comfortably on UNTIL you reach 65. If it is, you can be "Stocky" working class but not "Pidcock" working class.

Sorry to be a literal pedant and all that but it really is still nonsensical. At 64y 11m everyone is no longer working class, as they only need a months average wages. By the last day they only need one days average wages to prevent them being working class. At retirement date their class is fixed, so you have no working class retirees.

The group the Labour party has really lost are working class retirees.

Grr.

So, if you approach retirement in a position whereby your wealth alone is generating a comfortable income then whatever class status that signifies continues to the grave (barring accidents).

As for Labour, yes, our biggest problem is not about class it's about age. We are going gangbusters with the under 40s - setting records there - but it's the opposite of that with the over 65s.

If we could make 'full set of own teeth' a condition of voting we'd be in great shape.

Strange that, the ones not keen on a true left wing government are the one's who have actually experienced one. The ones most in favour are people who have never experienced one. I wonder if this tells us something?

I think we're waiting to have a bash at big interventionist state here in the modern era. I'm not counting this effort from Johnson and Sunak - I sense their heart is not in it.

Thankfully not enough are stupid enough to think a big interventionist state will work currently and I don't think you will ever convince enough

Well I sense you are wavering so I will try for a bit longer before I down tools completely. And you will be a great prize - you know what they say about the passion of the converted.

Like most teenagers I was a socialist and a big supporter of labour. Then I grew up and realised it had no answers for the same reason socialism has always failed. It relies on people behaving in the way socialists think they should behave rather than the way in which human beings really behave. It really is that simple.

You are a prime example of this with your crusade to ban private schools and hand waving away the issues people raise like the very rich will send their kids to school abroad, the moderately rich will merely buy up all the housing in good state cachement areas pushing poor kids out so all they have left is the failing state schools. Oh it won't happen you declaim despite all the evidence showing it absolutely will

I look at this exactly the opposite way. Human beings left to their own devices will create a society which is grossly unequal. Unequal to a degree that is indecent. As it is now, people with advantages of talent and wealth and looks, and particularly wealth, and of race and gender, will always by and large have better life outcomes than those not so blessed - not every person but on the whole - and so for me a very high priority of government should be to act in a way that goes against the grain of this rather than to simply let it be, or worse accentuate it. And by go against the grain I mean enact policies which lead to more equal opportunities and outcomes. That's MORE equal not equal. Nothing crazy or scary about this.

Which I would have sympathy with if you could ever point to a single instance of your philosophy ever working in the real world and not causing millions of deaths and the setting up of reeducation camps for those that don't buy into the state line. Something you (I hope jokingly) agreed with in the other thread about maybe needing to get a new electorate

The quote about a new electorate is, IIRC, attributed to the East German CP after the wall came down.

As for socialism and splurging money, we already have that sort of govt. thanks to Cummings and Johnson

MrEd said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

It is only one poll and may be influenced by Rishi but I would just comment that I am not at all sure all the 'woke' goes down well in the red wall seats

Posted this on the previous thread Big_G but to many red wall voters, this is what the Labour Party is all about these days (and, no, not the guy being shouted at but the shouters)

https://twitter.com/prisonplanet/status/863040667869745156?s=21

Labour has a very big branding problem. This is the sort of behaviour many people believe will become commonplace if Labour gets into power. Good luck to SKS in trying to persuade people otherwise. It is like trying to persuade people the Conservatives are the party of the NHS......

ps apologies for a link to Watson......

But surely that ranting mob of loony lefties intimidating a peaceful man with a sign on the streets of Britain doesn't actually exist? That's what the gaslighters have told us, so it must be true...

Today's Rasmussen poll on Trump's approval is a slight improvement on some other recent polls. 45% approve and 53% disapprove.

I haven't found the crosstabs for the main Rasmussen poll yesterday which put Biden 10 points in front (50-40).

https://twitter.com/NatashaC/status/1281633642041577473

Benpointer said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Benpointer said:

Theuniondivvie said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

Fieldwork mostly done after more Sunak cash dispensing and acres of positive headlines about it, too.

So what.. its a double digit lead. Where is CHB when you need him, predicting crossover v soon.... (was it just for best PM or voting int as well?)

It's MoE on the previous YouGov. The Tory leads are currently in the four to 10 point range. I'll take that right now given where things were in March, especially as there is decent progress from December (4 to 7 points, depending on the pollster).

That may be true , but its TEN points, yes TEN points. If you are happy to take that, then bless you...
Starmer has had it easy as you like and its TEN points, the Tories have worked him out, it isn't going to be plain sailing for either party.....

Is it TEN points? I wasn't quite sure.

Just checked, and yes it's TEN points.

Hi Ben.

Have you seen the FCO have outlawed cruises indefinitely today

Yes BigG, I have seen that news, although if you'll forgive me you have put it in a rather dramatic way.

"FCO have outlawed cruises indefinitely" is probably strictly true but then you could equally say "Government outlaws pubs indefinitely" back in March.

I suspect it will be like the travel quarantine rules and be reined back in rapidly in the coming weeks.

Having said all that, much of the cruise industry target audience is likely to be reluctant to cruise until a vaccine is widely available imo. Maybe the cruise industry will never recover.

I certainly don't intend to cruise again any time soon

squareroot2 said:

Wulfrun_Phil said:

FPT

CorrectHorseBattery said:

Genuinely, Labour has a really big problem on their hands and not sure how it can be resolved. Starmer is evidently the best they could have chosen but right now he's not looking like it's enough.

The Tory support is rock solid stable, until something happens to actually hit it, Labour ain't gonna be forming any governments any time soon.

There are plenty of "somethings" looming not to far down the road.

I look forward to your reaction to a YouGov poll conducted in the 24 hours immediately following a Conservative Budget that announces a £30 billion package of austerity achieved through a mixture of tax rises and public spending cuts, just at the same time as interest and mortgage rates are starting to rise again. I think we're about two years away from that.

Naah, they will just print a couple of hundred billion... There is prior history. ,... Anthony Barber, printed it as if there was no tomorrow.

Amusing that Barber was unwilling to cut.

In case anyone has been wondering where I have been BT Openreach being more useless, incompetent and arrogant than Dominic Cummings, they decided on their own initiative (my ISP did not ask for it) to upgrade my internet on Monday and naturally damaged it beyond repair. They are blithely saying it will be back on at some point and that I will get five pounds a day for every day it’s off. Meanwhile, I am hoarding data like a miser in a desperate attempt to keep my online teaching going, with I might add limited success.

So I may not be around for the next fortnight. Very frustrating but there is nothing I can do. BT Openreach don’t care about their customers and I have no redress for their gross incompetence.

Beibheirli_C said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

SouthamObserver said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

Fieldwork mostly done after more Sunak cash dispensing and acres of positive headlines about it, too.

So what.. its a double digit lead. Where is CHB when you need him, predicting crossover v soon.... (was it just for best PM or voting int as well?)

It's MoE on the previous YouGov. The Tory leads are currently in the four to 10 point range. I'll take that right now given where things were in March, especially as there is decent progress from December (4 to 7 points, depending on the pollster).

That may be true , but its TEN points yes 10 points. if you are happy to take that , then bless you... Starmer has had it easy as you like, the Tories have worked him out, it isn't going to be plain sailing for either party.....

I agree. Starmer has to be more than not Jeremy Corbyn. The Tories have a depression and a potential No Deal with the EU to steer us through. Politics is going to be very interesting.

And of course the rest of the EU face a depression and no deal to steer through

It is not going to be pretty for any government

It was good to see Mark Drakeford, Wales FM, resolutely defending the union today and this is consistent with Starmer's support for the union.

Stark contrast with Sturgeon who has been trying to use Wales to attack Westminster

Why oh why isn't the leader of the SNP resolutely defending the union? It's an absolute disgrace, so it is.

She is on her own as far as Wales is concerned

Perhaps because the Scots remember a time where they were not joined at the hip to England? The Welsh have had a few hundred years more to get used to the experience...

There is no real appetite for an Independent Wales. That will change when unfortunately Scotland leave the Union.

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1281639684691636224?s=21

ydoethur said:

Mexicanpete said:

Beibheirli_C said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

SouthamObserver said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

Fieldwork mostly done after more Sunak cash dispensing and acres of positive headlines about it, too.

So what.. its a double digit lead. Where is CHB when you need him, predicting crossover v soon.... (was it just for best PM or voting int as well?)

It's MoE on the previous YouGov. The Tory leads are currently in the four to 10 point range. I'll take that right now given where things were in March, especially as there is decent progress from December (4 to 7 points, depending on the pollster).

That may be true , but its TEN points yes 10 points. if you are happy to take that , then bless you... Starmer has had it easy as you like, the Tories have worked him out, it isn't going to be plain sailing for either party.....

I agree. Starmer has to be more than not Jeremy Corbyn. The Tories have a depression and a potential No Deal with the EU to steer us through. Politics is going to be very interesting.

And of course the rest of the EU face a depression and no deal to steer through

It is not going to be pretty for any government

It was good to see Mark Drakeford, Wales FM, resolutely defending the union today and this is consistent with Starmer's support for the union.

Stark contrast with Sturgeon who has been trying to use Wales to attack Westminster

Why oh why isn't the leader of the SNP resolutely defending the union? It's an absolute disgrace, so it is.

She is on her own as far as Wales is concerned

Perhaps because the Scots remember a time where they were not joined at the hip to England? The Welsh have had a few hundred years more to get used to the experience...

There is no real appetite for an Independent Wales. That will change when unfortunately Scotland leave the Union.

Not necessarily. Remember all those confident predictions that Brexit would lead many other countries to leave the EU.

We haven't left yet....

kinabalu said:

Anyway, I'm climbing out of the dock. Why don't you say what YOUR vision is. Let's run your one up the flagpole and see if it billows.

Ok here is my vision then for what its worth. Wipe the slate clean. The commons goes, house of lords goes. We then calculate how much we are currently spending and adjust tax to cover it. We then take the view tax take has to cover all normal expenditure going forward. (Excepting emergencies)

A directly elected executive with defined roles such as education, social care, police, justice etc

Instead of choosing between a conservative or labour or libdem whole manifesto I get to vote precisely on the policies I think good.

Each candidate standing for each role has outlined what they plan to do, they have it costed by the civil service.

Each policy position is then expressed as a tax rise or tax fall and people know how much what they are voting for will cost.

For example if someone has a policy of free school meals for all students that policy will cost x million. That means on a salary of 20k it will add x pounds in tax per year, at 40k this much,60k this much.

Each policy should also have to be measurable. So for example free school meals for all will I believe add 0.5 grades to average gradings. If its not measurable as to improvement it can't be a policy.

The civil service will then publish yearly reports on how the policies enacted are performing against goal

That takes care of the executive.

I would then have a scrutiny body. Its goal is not to oppose but to raise issues with policy as drafted in legislation so they can be addressed. I would suggest a sortition method 1 from each constituency. Selected yearly. They can ask for amendments and vote down a policy a certain number of times. They can also ask for a panel of experts to study the proposal to inform them.

Infrastructure spending like HS2 I suggest should be approved by national plebiscite and proposals for how it will be paid off should be included.

The chancellor role would be outlining which taxes he will target to raise whatever value required by the overall policies voted in. ie lower tax band x%, higher taxband y% vat z% etc/ Then when the policies are implemented x y and z are calculated

That is for a start.

Big_G_NorthWales said:

SouthamObserver said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

Fieldwork mostly done after more Sunak cash dispensing and acres of positive headlines about it, too.

So what.. its a double digit lead. Where is CHB when you need him, predicting crossover v soon.... (was it just for best PM or voting int as well?)

It's MoE on the previous YouGov. The Tory leads are currently in the four to 10 point range. I'll take that right now given where things were in March, especially as there is decent progress from December (4 to 7 points, depending on the pollster).

That may be true , but its TEN points yes 10 points. if you are happy to take that , then bless you... Starmer has had it easy as you like, the Tories have worked him out, it isn't going to be plain sailing for either party.....

I agree. Starmer has to be more than not Jeremy Corbyn. The Tories have a depression and a potential No Deal with the EU to steer us through. Politics is going to be very interesting.

And of course the rest of the EU face a depression and no deal to steer through

It is not going to be pretty for any government

It was good to see Mark Drakeford, Wales FM, resolutely defending the union today and this is consistent with Starmer's support for the union.

Stark contrast with Sturgeon who has been trying to use Wales to attack Westminster

I saw Drakeford on the press conference at lunchtime. He was uncharacteristically grumpy. Whenever a stupid question was asked of him, and there were many, Drakeford called out the questioner. The guy from ITV
Wales (the first questioner) looked quite disheartened after he was shot down in flames.

It is a tactic Johnson should adopt. Whenever a ridiculous and banal question is asked, rather than following the "what an excellent question" with inane waffle, Johnson should simply say "that's a stupid question, I am not going to answer it".

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

DavidL said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

DavidL said:

Alistair said:

rottenborough said:

Labour have a long way to go.

https://twitter.com/helenpidd/status/1281285770192531456

Ah, the working class business owner.

Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?

Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.

What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.

You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary.
I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it.
Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.

But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?

Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.

Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.

But its nonsense! So on retirement everyone stops being working class?

In this country its also perfectly possible to live off state benefits without ever doing a days work. Not fun or recommended, but do-able. So at birth we are all excluded from being working class.

On a personal level I could certainly retire early today and survive, just not at the level I would like to so will probably end up working another 15 years or so. Which level sets my class, my desired income, historic income or average income, or state sustenance?

I can answer these questions on Laura's behalf. On retirement you carry on being what you were before you retired. Being jobless on benefits does not count as living off your wealth because it is not living comfortably. Which means - let's put this out there - that your capital needs to be sufficient to generate an income of at least the average wage without any labour input from you. If you're in that boat you can only be "cultural" working class - which is the softer, subjective and imo less useful concept (albeit not irrelevant).

How do I know how long Im going to live? If its 75 Im excluded from working class on your definition, if l lived to 95 I would be eligible. This is silly.

It's silly if we get too literal about it. My point is mainly that of the 2 extremes - class is all about money or all about attitudes - I prefer the 1st one. I think that's more useful when it comes to the true economic interest of people (whether they see it or not).

But OK, since I don't like to dodge questions. We don't know how long you're going to live. But remember we've said that when you become a pensioner - at say 65 - you remain in the class you were in on the day before that event. Thus at this point we only need to ascertain if your wealth is sufficient to live comfortably on UNTIL you reach 65. If it is, you can be "Stocky" working class but not "Pidcock" working class.

Sorry to be a literal pedant and all that but it really is still nonsensical. At 64y 11m everyone is no longer working class, as they only need a months average wages. By the last day they only need one days average wages to prevent them being working class. At retirement date their class is fixed, so you have no working class retirees.

The group the Labour party has really lost are working class retirees.

Grr.

So, if you approach retirement in a position whereby your wealth alone is generating a comfortable income then whatever class status that signifies continues to the grave (barring accidents).

As for Labour, yes, our biggest problem is not about class it's about age. We are going gangbusters with the under 40s - setting records there - but it's the opposite of that with the over 65s.

If we could make 'full set of own teeth' a condition of voting we'd be in great shape.

Strange that, the ones not keen on a true left wing government are the one's who have actually experienced one. The ones most in favour are people who have never experienced one. I wonder if this tells us something?

I think we're waiting to have a bash at big interventionist state here in the modern era. I'm not counting this effort from Johnson and Sunak - I sense their heart is not in it.

Thankfully not enough are stupid enough to think a big interventionist state will work currently and I don't think you will ever convince enough

Well I sense you are wavering so I will try for a bit longer before I down tools completely. And you will be a great prize - you know what they say about the passion of the converted.

Like most teenagers I was a socialist and a big supporter of labour. Then I grew up and realised it had no answers for the same reason socialism has always failed. It relies on people behaving in the way socialists think they should behave rather than the way in which human beings really behave. It really is that simple.

You are a prime example of this with your crusade to ban private schools and hand waving away the issues people raise like the very rich will send their kids to school abroad, the moderately rich will merely buy up all the housing in good state cachement areas pushing poor kids out so all they have left is the failing state schools. Oh it won't happen you declaim despite all the evidence showing it absolutely will

I look at this exactly the opposite way. Human beings left to their own devices will create a society which is grossly unequal. Unequal to a degree that is indecent. As it is now, people with advantages of talent and wealth and looks, and particularly wealth, and of race and gender, will always by and large have better life outcomes than those not so blessed - not every person but on the whole - and so for me a very high priority of government should be to act in a way that goes against the grain of this rather than to simply let it be, or worse accentuate it. And by go against the grain I mean enact policies which lead to more equal opportunities and outcomes. That's MORE equal not equal. Nothing crazy or scary about this.

Which I would have sympathy with if you could ever point to a single instance of your philosophy ever working in the real world and not causing millions of deaths and the setting up of reeducation camps for those that don't buy into the state line. Something you (I hope jokingly) agreed with in the other thread about maybe needing to get a new electorate

You're thinking I mean totalitarian communism (!) when all I really have in mind is high tax & spend, public ownership of utilities, an egalitarian education policy, and an abdication of exceptionalist pretensions born of Empire. Result - a peaceful prosperous country with a happy and civilised ambience.

Anyway, I'm climbing out of the dock. Why don't you say what YOUR vision is. Let's run your one up the flagpole and see if it billows.

Yes and your high tax and spend is going to push a lot of the just managing under water. Nationalised industries were crap before why do you think they would be better now. Some of the highest hikes in utility prices happened while they were nationalised BT was a total disgrace, BR had falling passenger numbers because they were such dross even compared against the current franchise. Why is it going to be any different if you renationalise them? Do you want to have to wait 3 months to get a phone line put in and then only be able to use equipment that has to be rented from BT?

Nationalised utilites were a steaming pile of horse manure back then and they would be again.

You're as stuck in the 70s as Jeremy Corbyn!

But look - that is not your vision. That's still you bridling at MY one.

BluestBlue said:

MrEd said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

It is only one poll and may be influenced by Rishi but I would just comment that I am not at all sure all the 'woke' goes down well in the red wall seats

Posted this on the previous thread Big_G but to many red wall voters, this is what the Labour Party is all about these days (and, no, not the guy being shouted at but the shouters)

https://twitter.com/prisonplanet/status/863040667869745156?s=21

Labour has a very big branding problem. This is the sort of behaviour many people believe will become commonplace if Labour gets into power. Good luck to SKS in trying to persuade people otherwise. It is like trying to persuade people the Conservatives are the party of the NHS......

ps apologies for a link to Watson......

But surely that ranting mob of loony lefties intimidating a peaceful man with a sign on the streets of Britain doesn't actually exist? That's what the gaslighters have told us, so it must be true...

I think it being from 2017 is telling. The behaviour we're seeing from that quarter of the polity these last few weels has been left to fester unchecked for many years.

"Chinese officials have warned of a fatal 'unknown pneumonia' with a death rate far higher than that of coronavirus in Kazakhstan."

Daily Mail

2020 just gets better and better.

ydoethur said:

Mexicanpete said:

Beibheirli_C said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

SouthamObserver said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

Fieldwork mostly done after more Sunak cash dispensing and acres of positive headlines about it, too.

So what.. its a double digit lead. Where is CHB when you need him, predicting crossover v soon.... (was it just for best PM or voting int as well?)

It's MoE on the previous YouGov. The Tory leads are currently in the four to 10 point range. I'll take that right now given where things were in March, especially as there is decent progress from December (4 to 7 points, depending on the pollster).

That may be true , but its TEN points yes 10 points. if you are happy to take that , then bless you... Starmer has had it easy as you like, the Tories have worked him out, it isn't going to be plain sailing for either party.....

I agree. Starmer has to be more than not Jeremy Corbyn. The Tories have a depression and a potential No Deal with the EU to steer us through. Politics is going to be very interesting.

And of course the rest of the EU face a depression and no deal to steer through

It is not going to be pretty for any government

It was good to see Mark Drakeford, Wales FM, resolutely defending the union today and this is consistent with Starmer's support for the union.

Stark contrast with Sturgeon who has been trying to use Wales to attack Westminster

Why oh why isn't the leader of the SNP resolutely defending the union? It's an absolute disgrace, so it is.

She is on her own as far as Wales is concerned

Perhaps because the Scots remember a time where they were not joined at the hip to England? The Welsh have had a few hundred years more to get used to the experience...

There is no real appetite for an Independent Wales. That will change when unfortunately Scotland leave the Union.

Not necessarily. Remember all those confident predictions that Brexit would lead many other countries to leave the EU.

Scottish secession leaves Northern Ireland geographically isolated and very vulnerable to a combination of nationalist agitation and the likely lack of determination (to put it mildly) in London to keep hold of the province once the UK is dissolved.

The likelihood of the British state being pared down to England and Wales within 5-10 years is quite strong.

This is in response to the YouGov poll.

https://twitter.com/AaronBastani/status/1281604216725704708

Tres said:

SouthamObserver said:

Mexicanpete said:

SouthamObserver said:

Fieldwork mostly done after more Sunak cash dispensing and acres of positive headlines about it, too.

I am looking forward to all the over exciteable Conservatives again forgetting what happens in the next 12 months and onward. I recommend they make hay while Sunak's cash rains down on us.

Tory hubris is all part of the game. They can't help themselves.

May had a 21 point lead once.

And what happened after that lead? Did the LOTO become PM?

stodge said:

Evening all

So is Boris Johnson preparing to take on the REAL Covid-19 revolutionaries? Not of course those who dislike statues or the "woke" (whoever they are), but those who have discovered the real joys of home working.

In a typically muddled and confusing response which will no doubt require some poor Cabinet member to go out and issue a "clarification", we are told we "should go back to work if we can".

There's also some nonsense about "normality" - doesn't he realise the world has changed? Many people have tried home working and they like it - many businesses have found home working works so why do companies and councils spend millions on office accommodation that is no longer required?

Why get up at the crack of the dawn, dress up and then slog down to the station or bus stop or through the traffic just to get to work? A 100-minute commute can be a 100-second commute and it can be far more relaxing and less stressful.

If the Government wanted to do something useful, it should recognise what has happened - encourage house builders to put home officers rather than extra bedrooms in properties.Perhaps that will happen with the redundant city and town centre office blocks which can be converted to residential accommodation.

Unfortunately, Boris is so far behind the curve as to be out of sight and it's disappointing there is no Minister in charge of leading the revolution but perhaps it's also an example most people don't need Government to get things done.

Yes. I'm surprised this hasn't been picked up here. He seemed to be calling for a return to the status quo ante...which is of course impossible.
It would be highly convenient for government if everything was magically the same.
But WFH us here to stay. And businesses which require large numbers of office workers to gather together to survive are going to have to adapt or die.
I wonder if the real issue is the commercial property market? It has been a one way bet for decades and sustains a large number of Tory donors? Makes no sense at all otherwise.

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

DavidL said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

DavidL said:

Alistair said:

rottenborough said:

Labour have a long way to go.

https://twitter.com/helenpidd/status/1281285770192531456

Ah, the working class business owner.

Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?

Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.

What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.

You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary.
I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it.
Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.

But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?

Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.

Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.

But its nonsense! So on retirement everyone stops being working class?

In this country its also perfectly possible to live off state benefits without ever doing a days work. Not fun or recommended, but do-able. So at birth we are all excluded from being working class.

On a personal level I could certainly retire early today and survive, just not at the level I would like to so will probably end up working another 15 years or so. Which level sets my class, my desired income, historic income or average income, or state sustenance?

I can answer these questions on Laura's behalf. On retirement you carry on being what you were before you retired. Being jobless on benefits does not count as living off your wealth because it is not living comfortably. Which means - let's put this out there - that your capital needs to be sufficient to generate an income of at least the average wage without any labour input from you. If you're in that boat you can only be "cultural" working class - which is the softer, subjective and imo less useful concept (albeit not irrelevant).

How do I know how long Im going to live? If its 75 Im excluded from working class on your definition, if l lived to 95 I would be eligible. This is silly.

It's silly if we get too literal about it. My point is mainly that of the 2 extremes - class is all about money or all about attitudes - I prefer the 1st one. I think that's more useful when it comes to the true economic interest of people (whether they see it or not).

But OK, since I don't like to dodge questions. We don't know how long you're going to live. But remember we've said that when you become a pensioner - at say 65 - you remain in the class you were in on the day before that event. Thus at this point we only need to ascertain if your wealth is sufficient to live comfortably on UNTIL you reach 65. If it is, you can be "Stocky" working class but not "Pidcock" working class.

Sorry to be a literal pedant and all that but it really is still nonsensical. At 64y 11m everyone is no longer working class, as they only need a months average wages. By the last day they only need one days average wages to prevent them being working class. At retirement date their class is fixed, so you have no working class retirees.

The group the Labour party has really lost are working class retirees.

Grr.

So, if you approach retirement in a position whereby your wealth alone is generating a comfortable income then whatever class status that signifies continues to the grave (barring accidents).

As for Labour, yes, our biggest problem is not about class it's about age. We are going gangbusters with the under 40s - setting records there - but it's the opposite of that with the over 65s.

If we could make 'full set of own teeth' a condition of voting we'd be in great shape.

Strange that, the ones not keen on a true left wing government are the one's who have actually experienced one. The ones most in favour are people who have never experienced one. I wonder if this tells us something?

I think we're waiting to have a bash at big interventionist state here in the modern era. I'm not counting this effort from Johnson and Sunak - I sense their heart is not in it.

Thankfully not enough are stupid enough to think a big interventionist state will work currently and I don't think you will ever convince enough

Well I sense you are wavering so I will try for a bit longer before I down tools completely. And you will be a great prize - you know what they say about the passion of the converted.

Like most teenagers I was a socialist and a big supporter of labour. Then I grew up and realised it had no answers for the same reason socialism has always failed. It relies on people behaving in the way socialists think they should behave rather than the way in which human beings really behave. It really is that simple.

You are a prime example of this with your crusade to ban private schools and hand waving away the issues people raise like the very rich will send their kids to school abroad, the moderately rich will merely buy up all the housing in good state cachement areas pushing poor kids out so all they have left is the failing state schools. Oh it won't happen you declaim despite all the evidence showing it absolutely will

I look at this exactly the opposite way. Human beings left to their own devices will create a society which is grossly unequal. Unequal to a degree that is indecent. As it is now, people with advantages of talent and wealth and looks, and particularly wealth, and of race and gender, will always by and large have better life outcomes than those not so blessed - not every person but on the whole - and so for me a very high priority of government should be to act in a way that goes against the grain of this rather than to simply let it be, or worse accentuate it. And by go against the grain I mean enact policies which lead to more equal opportunities and outcomes. That's MORE equal not equal. Nothing crazy or scary about this.

Which I would have sympathy with if you could ever point to a single instance of your philosophy ever working in the real world and not causing millions of deaths and the setting up of reeducation camps for those that don't buy into the state line. Something you (I hope jokingly) agreed with in the other thread about maybe needing to get a new electorate

You're thinking I mean totalitarian communism (!) when all I really have in mind is high tax & spend, public ownership of utilities, an egalitarian education policy, and an abdication of exceptionalist pretensions born of Empire. Result - a peaceful prosperous country with a happy and civilised ambience.

Anyway, I'm climbing out of the dock. Why don't you say what YOUR vision is. Let's run your one up the flagpole and see if it billows.

Yes and your high tax and spend is going to push a lot of the just managing under water. Nationalised industries were crap before why do you think they would be better now. Some of the highest hikes in utility prices happened while they were nationalised BT was a total disgrace, BR had falling passenger numbers because they were such dross even compared against the current franchise. Why is it going to be any different if you renationalise them? Do you want to have to wait 3 months to get a phone line put in and then only be able to use equipment that has to be rented from BT?

Nationalised utilites were a steaming pile of horse manure back then and they would be again.

You're as stuck in the 70s as Jeremy Corbyn!

But look - that is not your vision. That's still you bridling at MY one.

Because that is how things were in the 70's. You have provided 0% evidence as to why it would be different now apart from you hope it will be and I gave you my vision at 6:41
It took me time to type up so made it a separate reply

Seen it now. Very interesting and radical and quite a bit more than I bargained for.

My 1st question. How do you prevent people being elected at the same time with contradictory plans?

Thats why each executive role would be clearly defined. IE education would cover curriculum, school infrastructure, what happens on school premises.

There would still be a cabinet, where there are clashes they can either be hashed out in the cabinet and agreed or deferred to the sortition congress

Andy_JS said:

This is in response to the YouGov poll.

https://twitter.com/AaronBastani/status/1281604216725704708

Rebecca Long Bailey? Or quick let's find Pidcock a safe Labour seat. Oh wait...she had one!

dixiedean said:

Yes. I'm surprised this hasn't been picked up here. He seemed to be calling for a return to the status quo ante...which is of course impossible.
It would be highly convenient for government if everything was magically the same.
But WFH us here to stay. And businesses which require large numbers of office workers to gather together to survive are going to have to adapt or die.
I wonder if the real issue is the commercial property market? It has been a one way bet for decades and sustains a large number of Tory donors? Makes no sense at all otherwise.

I wouldn't be surprised but he threw his property owning and property developing friends a significant bone earlier in the week when saying empty commercial property could be reclassified for residential use without having to go through the planning process.

It's not the worst idea I've ever heard but I don't trust property developers.

Theuniondivvie said:

kinabalu said:

MrEd said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

It is only one poll and may be influenced by Rishi but I would just comment that I am not at all sure all the 'woke' goes down well in the red wall seats

Posted this on the previous thread Big_G but to many red wall voters, this is what the Labour Party is all about these days (and, no, not the guy being shouted at but the shouters)

https://twitter.com/prisonplanet/status/863040667869745156?s=21

Labour has a very big branding problem. This is the sort of behaviour many people believe will become commonplace if Labour gets into power. Good luck to SKS in trying to persuade people otherwise. It is like trying to persuade people the Conservatives are the party of the NHS......

ps apologies for a link to Watson......

Who is the guy? What's the context?

The context is 2017.
The 'contextualisers' are 2020 Tories prolapsing over the imminent collapse of Western civilisation and missing having Jezza to frighten the horses with.

Spot on. 2017 - old news.

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

DavidL said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

DavidL said:

Alistair said:

rottenborough said:

Labour have a long way to go.

https://twitter.com/helenpidd/status/1281285770192531456

Ah, the working class business owner.

Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?

Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.

What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.

You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary.
I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it.
Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.

But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?

Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.

Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.

But its nonsense! So on retirement everyone stops being working class?

In this country its also perfectly possible to live off state benefits without ever doing a days work. Not fun or recommended, but do-able. So at birth we are all excluded from being working class.

On a personal level I could certainly retire early today and survive, just not at the level I would like to so will probably end up working another 15 years or so. Which level sets my class, my desired income, historic income or average income, or state sustenance?

I can answer these questions on Laura's behalf. On retirement you carry on being what you were before you retired. Being jobless on benefits does not count as living off your wealth because it is not living comfortably. Which means - let's put this out there - that your capital needs to be sufficient to generate an income of at least the average wage without any labour input from you. If you're in that boat you can only be "cultural" working class - which is the softer, subjective and imo less useful concept (albeit not irrelevant).

How do I know how long Im going to live? If its 75 Im excluded from working class on your definition, if l lived to 95 I would be eligible. This is silly.

It's silly if we get too literal about it. My point is mainly that of the 2 extremes - class is all about money or all about attitudes - I prefer the 1st one. I think that's more useful when it comes to the true economic interest of people (whether they see it or not).

But OK, since I don't like to dodge questions. We don't know how long you're going to live. But remember we've said that when you become a pensioner - at say 65 - you remain in the class you were in on the day before that event. Thus at this point we only need to ascertain if your wealth is sufficient to live comfortably on UNTIL you reach 65. If it is, you can be "Stocky" working class but not "Pidcock" working class.

Sorry to be a literal pedant and all that but it really is still nonsensical. At 64y 11m everyone is no longer working class, as they only need a months average wages. By the last day they only need one days average wages to prevent them being working class. At retirement date their class is fixed, so you have no working class retirees.

The group the Labour party has really lost are working class retirees.

Grr.

So, if you approach retirement in a position whereby your wealth alone is generating a comfortable income then whatever class status that signifies continues to the grave (barring accidents).

As for Labour, yes, our biggest problem is not about class it's about age. We are going gangbusters with the under 40s - setting records there - but it's the opposite of that with the over 65s.

If we could make 'full set of own teeth' a condition of voting we'd be in great shape.

Strange that, the ones not keen on a true left wing government are the one's who have actually experienced one. The ones most in favour are people who have never experienced one. I wonder if this tells us something?

I think we're waiting to have a bash at big interventionist state here in the modern era. I'm not counting this effort from Johnson and Sunak - I sense their heart is not in it.

Thankfully not enough are stupid enough to think a big interventionist state will work currently and I don't think you will ever convince enough

Well I sense you are wavering so I will try for a bit longer before I down tools completely. And you will be a great prize - you know what they say about the passion of the converted.

Like most teenagers I was a socialist and a big supporter of labour. Then I grew up and realised it had no answers for the same reason socialism has always failed. It relies on people behaving in the way socialists think they should behave rather than the way in which human beings really behave. It really is that simple.

You are a prime example of this with your crusade to ban private schools and hand waving away the issues people raise like the very rich will send their kids to school abroad, the moderately rich will merely buy up all the housing in good state cachement areas pushing poor kids out so all they have left is the failing state schools. Oh it won't happen you declaim despite all the evidence showing it absolutely will

I look at this exactly the opposite way. Human beings left to their own devices will create a society which is grossly unequal. Unequal to a degree that is indecent. As it is now, people with advantages of talent and wealth and looks, and particularly wealth, and of race and gender, will always by and large have better life outcomes than those not so blessed - not every person but on the whole - and so for me a very high priority of government should be to act in a way that goes against the grain of this rather than to simply let it be, or worse accentuate it. And by go against the grain I mean enact policies which lead to more equal opportunities and outcomes. That's MORE equal not equal. Nothing crazy or scary about this.

Which I would have sympathy with if you could ever point to a single instance of your philosophy ever working in the real world and not causing millions of deaths and the setting up of reeducation camps for those that don't buy into the state line. Something you (I hope jokingly) agreed with in the other thread about maybe needing to get a new electorate

We can not make people more beautiful by taking away beauty from people that have it. We cannot make people more talented by taking away talent from those who have it. It is also unlikely, on the final scoresheet, that we can really make people richer by seeking to make others poorer.

To make that sound less like a glib aphorism, here's how I think we can really give people more of the above. Health:
1. Make our staples better. Imagine if our daily milk and bread - things that virtually everyone eats, were doing our bodies more good. They easily could be, to the benefit of all, with cleverer processing of food.
2. Stop demonising saturated fat, and put polyunsaturated fats where they belong - in your car.
3. Incentivise remineralisation of the soil, and rotation farming, like ye olde days, as opposed to nitrogen fertilisers, creating robust, nutrient dense, vegetables, cereals, and cattle. Nothing pricey about this - the nitrogen fertiliser race is actually the expensive bit.

Beauty: is a symptom of health. Not just good skin, bodies and hair - bone structure and teeth also come from nutrition. It only takes a generation or so for Cindy Crawford's offspring to become people of Walmart, and vice versa.

Talent: innate intelliegnce is also a symptom of health.

You get the secrets behind wealth when you subscribe to my reasonably 6 month course.

Tres said:

ydoethur said:

Mexicanpete said:

Beibheirli_C said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

SouthamObserver said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

Fieldwork mostly done after more Sunak cash dispensing and acres of positive headlines about it, too.

So what.. its a double digit lead. Where is CHB when you need him, predicting crossover v soon.... (was it just for best PM or voting int as well?)

It's MoE on the previous YouGov. The Tory leads are currently in the four to 10 point range. I'll take that right now given where things were in March, especially as there is decent progress from December (4 to 7 points, depending on the pollster).

That may be true , but its TEN points yes 10 points. if you are happy to take that , then bless you... Starmer has had it easy as you like, the Tories have worked him out, it isn't going to be plain sailing for either party.....

I agree. Starmer has to be more than not Jeremy Corbyn. The Tories have a depression and a potential No Deal with the EU to steer us through. Politics is going to be very interesting.

And of course the rest of the EU face a depression and no deal to steer through

It is not going to be pretty for any government

It was good to see Mark Drakeford, Wales FM, resolutely defending the union today and this is consistent with Starmer's support for the union.

Stark contrast with Sturgeon who has been trying to use Wales to attack Westminster

Why oh why isn't the leader of the SNP resolutely defending the union? It's an absolute disgrace, so it is.

She is on her own as far as Wales is concerned

Perhaps because the Scots remember a time where they were not joined at the hip to England? The Welsh have had a few hundred years more to get used to the experience...

There is no real appetite for an Independent Wales. That will change when unfortunately Scotland leave the Union.

Not necessarily. Remember all those confident predictions that Brexit would lead many other countries to leave the EU.

We haven't left yet....

Er... did you miss 31st January?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2020/jan/31/brexit-day-britain-prepares-leave-eu-live-news-updates

The Yougov poll would still be a swing of 1% to Labour since the last general election but looks like fewer LDs are switching to Labour than previous polls and the Tories are now picking up more Labour voters than they are losing to Starmer

Luckyguy1983 said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

kinabalu said:

noneoftheabove said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

DavidL said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

DavidL said:

Alistair said:

rottenborough said:

Labour have a long way to go.

https://twitter.com/helenpidd/status/1281285770192531456

Ah, the working class business owner.

Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?

Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.

What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.

You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary.
I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it.
Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.

But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?

Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.

Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.

But its nonsense! So on retirement everyone stops being working class?

In this country its also perfectly possible to live off state benefits without ever doing a days work. Not fun or recommended, but do-able. So at birth we are all excluded from being working class.

On a personal level I could certainly retire early today and survive, just not at the level I would like to so will probably end up working another 15 years or so. Which level sets my class, my desired income, historic income or average income, or state sustenance?

I can answer these questions on Laura's behalf. On retirement you carry on being what you were before you retired. Being jobless on benefits does not count as living off your wealth because it is not living comfortably. Which means - let's put this out there - that your capital needs to be sufficient to generate an income of at least the average wage without any labour input from you. If you're in that boat you can only be "cultural" working class - which is the softer, subjective and imo less useful concept (albeit not irrelevant).

How do I know how long Im going to live? If its 75 Im excluded from working class on your definition, if l lived to 95 I would be eligible. This is silly.

It's silly if we get too literal about it. My point is mainly that of the 2 extremes - class is all about money or all about attitudes - I prefer the 1st one. I think that's more useful when it comes to the true economic interest of people (whether they see it or not).

But OK, since I don't like to dodge questions. We don't know how long you're going to live. But remember we've said that when you become a pensioner - at say 65 - you remain in the class you were in on the day before that event. Thus at this point we only need to ascertain if your wealth is sufficient to live comfortably on UNTIL you reach 65. If it is, you can be "Stocky" working class but not "Pidcock" working class.

Sorry to be a literal pedant and all that but it really is still nonsensical. At 64y 11m everyone is no longer working class, as they only need a months average wages. By the last day they only need one days average wages to prevent them being working class. At retirement date their class is fixed, so you have no working class retirees.

The group the Labour party has really lost are working class retirees.

Grr.

So, if you approach retirement in a position whereby your wealth alone is generating a comfortable income then whatever class status that signifies continues to the grave (barring accidents).

As for Labour, yes, our biggest problem is not about class it's about age. We are going gangbusters with the under 40s - setting records there - but it's the opposite of that with the over 65s.

If we could make 'full set of own teeth' a condition of voting we'd be in great shape.

Strange that, the ones not keen on a true left wing government are the one's who have actually experienced one. The ones most in favour are people who have never experienced one. I wonder if this tells us something?

I think we're waiting to have a bash at big interventionist state here in the modern era. I'm not counting this effort from Johnson and Sunak - I sense their heart is not in it.

Thankfully not enough are stupid enough to think a big interventionist state will work currently and I don't think you will ever convince enough

Well I sense you are wavering so I will try for a bit longer before I down tools completely. And you will be a great prize - you know what they say about the passion of the converted.

Like most teenagers I was a socialist and a big supporter of labour. Then I grew up and realised it had no answers for the same reason socialism has always failed. It relies on people behaving in the way socialists think they should behave rather than the way in which human beings really behave. It really is that simple.

You are a prime example of this with your crusade to ban private schools and hand waving away the issues people raise like the very rich will send their kids to school abroad, the moderately rich will merely buy up all the housing in good state cachement areas pushing poor kids out so all they have left is the failing state schools. Oh it won't happen you declaim despite all the evidence showing it absolutely will

I look at this exactly the opposite way. Human beings left to their own devices will create a society which is grossly unequal. Unequal to a degree that is indecent. As it is now, people with advantages of talent and wealth and looks, and particularly wealth, and of race and gender, will always by and large have better life outcomes than those not so blessed - not every person but on the whole - and so for me a very high priority of government should be to act in a way that goes against the grain of this rather than to simply let it be, or worse accentuate it. And by go against the grain I mean enact policies which lead to more equal opportunities and outcomes. That's MORE equal not equal. Nothing crazy or scary about this.

Which I would have sympathy with if you could ever point to a single instance of your philosophy ever working in the real world and not causing millions of deaths and the setting up of reeducation camps for those that don't buy into the state line. Something you (I hope jokingly) agreed with in the other thread about maybe needing to get a new electorate

We can not make people more beautiful by taking away beauty from people that have it. We cannot make people more talented by taking away talent from those who have it. It is also unlikely, on the final scoresheet, that we can really make people richer by seeking to make others poorer.

To make that sound less like a glib aphorism, here's how I think we can really give people more of the above. Health:
1. Make our staples better. Imagine if our daily milk and bread - things that virtually everyone eats, were doing our bodies more good. They easily could be, to the benefit of all, with cleverer processing of food.
2. Stop demonising saturated fat, and put polyunsaturated fats where they belong - in your car.
3. Incentivise remineralisation of the soil, and rotation farming, like ye olde days, as opposed to nitrogen fertilisers, creating robust, nutrient dense, vegetables, cereals, and cattle. Nothing pricey about this - the nitrogen fertiliser race is actually the expensive bit.

Beauty: is a symptom of health. Not just good skin, bodies and hair - bone structure and teeth also come from nutrition. It only takes a generation or so for Cindy Crawford's offspring to become people of Walmart, and vice versa.

Talent: innate intelliegnce is also a symptom of health.

You get the secrets behind wealth when you subscribe to my reasonably 6 month course.

Erm while I am sure that is all very interesting I have to ask what any of it has to do with me asking him to point to a single instance of socialism ever working?

On top of which I have to say considering you are someone that thinks dripping hydrogen peroxide in their ears is good for colds I will take anything you say about health with a very large pinch of salt if you don't mind

Big_G_NorthWales said:

malcolmg said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

SouthamObserver said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

Fieldwork mostly done after more Sunak cash dispensing and acres of positive headlines about it, too.

So what.. its a double digit lead. Where is CHB when you need him, predicting crossover v soon.... (was it just for best PM or voting int as well?)

It's MoE on the previous YouGov. The Tory leads are currently in the four to 10 point range. I'll take that right now given where things were in March, especially as there is decent progress from December (4 to 7 points, depending on the pollster).

That may be true , but its TEN points yes 10 points. if you are happy to take that , then bless you... Starmer has had it easy as you like, the Tories have worked him out, it isn't going to be plain sailing for either party.....

I agree. Starmer has to be more than not Jeremy Corbyn. The Tories have a depression and a potential No Deal with the EU to steer us through. Politics is going to be very interesting.

And of course the rest of the EU face a depression and no deal to steer through

It is not going to be pretty for any government

It was good to see Mark Drakeford, Wales FM, resolutely defending the union today and this is consistent with Starmer's support for the union.

Stark contrast with Sturgeon who has been trying to use Wales to attack Westminster

Why oh why isn't the leader of the SNP resolutely defending the union? It's an absolute disgrace, so it is.

She is on her own as far as Wales is concerned

Sure she will be crying at that G

She keeps levering Drakeford into her narrative

Unfortunately for her he is a very strong unionist

One of the most entertaining things in the run up to the 2014 referendum was Tory Yoons lauding folk that they despised at any other time (G.Brown, Galloway, Barrosso etc). Looking forward to the rerun!

Benpointer said:

Theuniondivvie said:

kinabalu said:

MrEd said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

It is only one poll and may be influenced by Rishi but I would just comment that I am not at all sure all the 'woke' goes down well in the red wall seats

Posted this on the previous thread Big_G but to many red wall voters, this is what the Labour Party is all about these days (and, no, not the guy being shouted at but the shouters)

https://twitter.com/prisonplanet/status/863040667869745156?s=21

Labour has a very big branding problem. This is the sort of behaviour many people believe will become commonplace if Labour gets into power. Good luck to SKS in trying to persuade people otherwise. It is like trying to persuade people the Conservatives are the party of the NHS......

ps apologies for a link to Watson......

Who is the guy? What's the context?

The context is 2017.
The 'contextualisers' are 2020 Tories prolapsing over the imminent collapse of Western civilisation and missing having Jezza to frighten the horses with.

Spot on. 2017 - old news.

Because the left is so much more open to freedom of speech now than it was in 2017, right?

Even Noam Chomsky - Noam Chomsky! - has been moved to condemn the left's headlong rush to unthinking censorship:

https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/

'The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.'

Mexicanpete said:

ydoethur said:

Mexicanpete said:

Beibheirli_C said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

SouthamObserver said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

squareroot2 said:

SouthamObserver said:

Fieldwork mostly done after more Sunak cash dispensing and acres of positive headlines about it, too.

So what.. its a double digit lead. Where is CHB when you need him, predicting crossover v soon.... (was it just for best PM or voting int as well?)

It's MoE on the previous YouGov. The Tory leads are currently in the four to 10 point range. I'll take that right now given where things were in March, especially as there is decent progress from December (4 to 7 points, depending on the pollster).

That may be true , but its TEN points yes 10 points. if you are happy to take that , then bless you... Starmer has had it easy as you like, the Tories have worked him out, it isn't going to be plain sailing for either party.....

I agree. Starmer has to be more than not Jeremy Corbyn. The Tories have a depression and a potential No Deal with the EU to steer us through. Politics is going to be very interesting.

And of course the rest of the EU face a depression and no deal to steer through

It is not going to be pretty for any government

It was good to see Mark Drakeford, Wales FM, resolutely defending the union today and this is consistent with Starmer's support for the union.

Stark contrast with Sturgeon who has been trying to use Wales to attack Westminster

Why oh why isn't the leader of the SNP resolutely defending the union? It's an absolute disgrace, so it is.

She is on her own as far as Wales is concerned

Perhaps because the Scots remember a time where they were not joined at the hip to England? The Welsh have had a few hundred years more to get used to the experience...

There is no real appetite for an Independent Wales. That will change when unfortunately Scotland leave the Union.

Not necessarily. Remember all those confident predictions that Brexit would lead many other countries to leave the EU.

I speak as very much currently pro-Union, and it will change my mind.

Wales will not change its mind.

fox327 said:

I have just watched Johnson on Youtube/Facebook talking about face masks. It struck me that he seemed to be scared/very nervous of the virus. This contrasts with Sunak a day or two ago who seemed to be completely relaxed when he was handing out plates of food (apparently he used to work as a waiter). I am not sure that it is wise for a head of government to appear to be visibly scared by something, as this is not really compatible with holding such a high position of leadership. I have to wonder, does Johnson really want to go on as PM for much longer? I have thought this since he returned from the hospital.

Makes a change. I thought he was a bumbling buffoon who doesn't take anything seriously.

stodge said:

dixiedean said:

Yes. I'm surprised this hasn't been picked up here. He seemed to be calling for a return to the status quo ante...which is of course impossible.
It would be highly convenient for government if everything was magically the same.
But WFH us here to stay. And businesses which require large numbers of office workers to gather together to survive are going to have to adapt or die.
I wonder if the real issue is the commercial property market? It has been a one way bet for decades and sustains a large number of Tory donors? Makes no sense at all otherwise.

I wouldn't be surprised but he threw his property owning and property developing friends a significant bone earlier in the week when saying empty commercial property could be reclassified for residential use without having to go through the planning process.

It's not the worst idea I've ever heard but I don't trust property developers.

Yes. However the tentative evidence thus far is that what people are craving is a garden and some countryside near their residence. Huge City centre office developments can only ever be converted into flats...
And the advantages of living in a City centre are lessened if you don't have to work there. And if there are no arts, entertainment, restaurants and bars around cos they've gone bust. And falling prices mean no overseas "investors" to leave them empty.

rcs1000 said:

You clearly don't have children or animals. A two hour commute to avoid them seems like a small price to pay.

Yes, home working isn't for everyone but that doesn't mean it has to be for no-one.

The other point is while during lockdown it's been difficult balancing work and keeping children entertained at home, IF we get all the children back in September, I suspect working at home will get a new lease of life - once the children are at school, the home will be quiet, there will be no childcare costs.

MY concern is the Government will try to use subtle compulsion to get people back onto the trains and tubes. As we've seen in Leicester, some organisations don't seem to care about the health concerns of their employees - I hope we won't see middle class home workers forced back to offices.