politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Opinium’s Tory lead down from 26% at the start of Starmer’s LA

In the first poll by Opinium after Starmer became LAB leader the Tories were on 55% and LAB on 29%. Tonight’s weekly poll from the firm for the Observer has CON 41: LAB 38: LD 6%.
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23 May, 2019: Conservatives achieve 8.8% under Theresa May
12 December, 2019: Conservatives achieve 43.6% under Boris Johnson.
An increase of 34.8%.
That's the bar.
His personal popularity remains high but he is not yet converting that entirely into Labour votes. To do that he must prove that Labour has really changed - the EHRC investigation will give him the ability to do that.
If Corbyn and co are implicated in that - as I suspect they are - then they should lose the Whip.
I posted this on the previous thread, a gov.scot official calculator of your age equivalent to check your covid risk. Worth a look, I think.
https://bit.ly/3gmCLw1
Edit - oh blimey, Mr Beautiful 30 and Dozy Way to Get Out now at the crease.
If infection rates are rising, we would see a rise in the hospitalisation rate a couple of weeks later and in the death rate three weeks later. So far there is no sign of either, even in Leicester.
Hurricane Isaias is heading for Palm Beach tomorrow, site of Donald Trump's property Mar-a-Lago.
Trump is phobic about the sea. I mean he is really phobic about the sea. He wants all sharks to die, he got terrified when he was on his own yacht and it weighed anchor (he thought it was about to sink) (try to find a single photo of him on a boat - even slopes make him think of gangways), and he has repeatedly asked whether storms can be fought using nuclear weapons.
So if a freakout by the Chief leading sober Mike to invoke the 25th Amendment is coming, it may well all be over before the convention.
Ask yourself one question - who would fund them?
But you could just declare you are a woman and leave it at that. Apparently that’s all that’s needed.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/01/why-johnsons-tories-fell-for-a-tiny-sect-of-libertarian-provocateurs-rcp
The fascinating thing is how many of these have maintained a continuity of view since the late 1980's. It's not just a typical tale of leftwingers moving to the right with age, but in fact of how some of the very specific issues linked to this confident, often largely unchanged group have influenced the right. The fusion of anti-elite and vanguardist rhetoric, for instance, rooted in Marxism, with classical liberalism from far elsewhere, is there right as we speak in Cumming's and Johnson's populist vocabulary.
Some have asked of examples of links to specific policies ; but in politics, as many will know, rhetoric, emphasis and direction can be as important as individual policies.
I just meant that he much higher number of posts he generates gives him a greater chance of spouting rubbish.
Looks like a very young age profile...
I just saw a picture of an anti lock down demo in Berlin. These things can be deceptive I suppose but its did look as though there were tens of thousands on it.
Will we get that here at some point? its been very tame so far.
C. 92,000 out of 500,000, so slightly higher than I thought.
I see opportunists being opportunistic and no change from the usual form for modern power seekers. Enjoy the show.
Which appears to leave us well placed in that respect. I admit I am surprised given the rhetoric.
https://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/our-research/data-bytes/the-average-age-of-teachers-in-secondary-schools/
Winter looks awful for the tories.
I appreciate that's very abstract, but it's probably best understood in terms of justification rather than end result ; RCP members linked to the Tories have repeatedly used this line to push an anti-environmental agenda, while the vanguardist working-class rhetoric has been key in supporting Brexit.
You could even argue that the kind of consciously, provocatively libertarian face of the early Johnson/Cummings approach to the virus also bears a link to this, and there we're getting nearer to the specifics of end results.
https://neu.org.uk/advice/older-teachers
But the point still stands whether it’s 15% or 18%. No way can we accommodate that level of absence given how crammed the state sector is already. You could see class sizes powering past forty, and even if the remaining teachers could cope with that, few rooms in schools can accommodate that number.
The summary of the book appears to suggest a thesis that Labour councillors won when they were loony left but lost when they came to their senses. From which I had jumped to the conclusion that the writer was a lefty councillor who had overlooked the rather obvious fact that locals voted in Labour councillors when the Tories were in government but were rather less keen once Labour was in power and helping George Bush to reduce parts of the Middle East to rubble.
But it appears that the author is a former Tory councillor who later defected to UKIP and, indeed, is one of that surprisingly large group of people who once briefly led that party.
Which throws up the question how much can he really know about the goings on inside a long-time Labour run council? In my local government experience councils are awash with rumour and gossip, but you only really know what is going on when you are in administration.
The question is, Arya sure they can handle it?
And Vince misses a straight one again. Honestly, he’s more unconvincing than Dominic Cummings.
Apart from the Stalin to Mr Bean jibe, what did Vince ever achieve?
One of the more interesting periods in Camden for me is 1975 ish to the early 1980s when the housing was being heavily infuenced by Mr Kendrick ... Livingstone that is, who was the local Housing Panjandrum, and they had been doing a lot of Compulsory Purchase.
They were also doing some interesting stuff with design of Council Flats but by the early 1980s were building Council flats with build costs per flat of well over £80k - to the extent that it gets a mention in Pevsner as extortionate.
When I lived there around 2000 for a few years it had all gone a bit bonkers and they had sealed up thousands of parking spaces under Council flat schemes, rather than use them to create eg Park and Ride to ease traffic congestion, and were loopy with crazed parking enforcement. But at that time it seemed to be full of bits and pieces of road where the Council had no writ to enforce for bizarre reasons, so you could leave your car for weeks.
The headlines from his campaign events earlier in the week made him look more self assured than he has been over the previous weeks.Then again the 'hands, face, space' press conference later in the week wasn't so good.
It’s my own fault, really. My younger self would have realised in an instant that someone called Piers writing from his chambers in the Temple would be a Tory, and probably a right wing Tory at that. It is a sign of how things have changed that the said Piers being a radical lefty is now a credible possibility.
To which he got the retort, ‘Given his own position, he might not be too wise to be speculating about leadership elections.’
Golf has a political connotations for American presidents best AVOIDED. These can be summed up as:
> playing instead of working; and
> upper-class (rather upper-middle-class) snobbery.
IIRC Woodrow Wilson was first golfing president, followed by Harding who was a typical duffer-golfer fanatic. Harding's reputation for spending large amounts of time on the links enhanced neither his reputation nor that of the golf. One reason why Coolidge & Hoover avoided the game, as of course did FDR for other reasons.
Harry Truman liked to play golf, but he was NOT in same league as Dwight Eisenhower. Indeed, Ike's passion for the game and time he spend on the links because political arguments against him. Of course he was re-elected anyway, but did NOT enhance his image.
Kennedy, LBJ & Nixon lacked Ike's golf mania. Gerry Ford was fairly avid golfer, but kept it under wraps until AFTER he lost 1976 election.
Wasn't until Bill Clinton that presidential golf again because a thing, as it was with Obama. By their time, sport had democratized somewhat, but still retained some tinge & taint of classes versus masses (as in "Caddyshack"). Which is why Trumpsky made such a deal about Obama's golfing.
Golf - best avoided IF you are President of United States. Hardly bar sinister - but NOT helpful politically.
His problems will really start if other countries begin to pull out of this.
On the other hand, given Taft once publicly carded 27 on a single hole, maybe it’s a bit generous to call him a golfer.
And now Banton joins the procession. If Bairstow gets out, England are buggered.
Sweden are struggling. They have the worst viral rates of all of Europe still, despite all their natural advantages.
So of course was Teddy, but HE hid it better, or rather made it just one facet of his very variegated personality. AND he avoided golfing publicity, in favor of big game hunting, wrestling, etc.
Boris will be repeating those very same reasons from his bunker in January.
But also Britain is doing better than Sweden despite Sweden's advantages. I suspect since we have eliminated the virus better than Sweden we will start in future quarters growing faster than Sweden.
Barrister Francis Hoar explains why the lockdown may have been unlawful."
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/07/31/the-lockdown-has-caused-a-humanitarian-tragedy/
I would say Ireland are slight favourites here.
Edit - nothing slight about it now!
What’s the increase when you compare the 2017 and 2019 General Elections?
Incendiary documentary evidence has emerged in a British court in which allegations are made about a “rogue” SAS unit accused of executing civilians in Afghanistan.
The evidence had been withheld from earlier proceedings of the legal case, prompting a judge to demand a full explanation from Ben Wallace, the defence secretary.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rogue-sas-afghanistan-execution-squad-exposed-by-email-trail-7pg3dkdww
I think I shall rest my case, while enjoying your use of 'sort of', 'apparently', 'somehow' (I want to know which how), 'could' and 'kind of'. Also let me note that the only point at which you come to detail is over the issue of the virus in which events have swept a 'provocatively libertarian' Johnson/Cummings approach into the dustbin and have fashioned the genius Cummings into an apologetic loser.
The results are very clear, for instance, in the way Brexit has been promoted as a class rather than solely cultural revolt against elites, which is new language for the Tories. Every previous wave of Tory populism since Disraeli, including Thatcher's, has linked the working-class to the upper-class ; in her case, to the authoritarians rather than wets of the establishment, who were "one of us".
He was very clear that he would be unhappy of there were any shenanigans with rules changes. I'm not suprised by this.
Honestly, there are days when I think my family would be better off were I to die. My children would have an inheritance at least to see them through the next few years. What is the point of a half-life at best staring at sheep, hiding from everyone, with all your interests - artistic, cultural, creative - closed down or too risky and watching your children have their hopes and futures destroyed? Are other countries in Europe closing down restaurants to open schools?
Covid is just something we're going to have live with, I think.
"The Roots Of Wokeness
It's time we looked more closely at the philosophy behind the movement.
Andrew Sullivan"
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-roots-of-wokeness
Not sure how much it will help my waist-line but it is so much better than giving up and getting Deliveroo to take the strain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INxGbTHybvc