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This week’s most important polling analysis on the White House race – politicalbetting.com

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Comments

  • IanB2 said:

    alex_ said:

    IanB2 said:

    4422 new cases....

    Worldometer says 3899

    Germany 362
    The whole things absolute nonsense, if trying to use as a basis for comparison. Everyone does it differently, is testing different numbers and counting in different ways. I'm not even sure that Germany reports a national figure - its numbers change throughout the day. Case numbers are even worse than hospitalisations or deaths, and they are misleading enough.

    Astonishing that the Government ever thought that using figures like this were a basis for judgements on international travel.
    All the way through this the German numbers are updated incrementally during the day, in the same way as the American ones, due to reporting of the different States/Lander - but people have taken the German figures as complete national figures and the US figures not. Another example of the general lack of interest in the European continent compared to the American.
    You think there are still Lander to report, as of 6pm on a Sunday evening?

    I doubt it. But, anyhow, they are not going to turn three hundred into three thousand, are they?
    I've seen German figures updated late into the evening. They reported 752 cases last Sunday. It's certainly possible they'll rustle up some more before the day is done.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771

    DavidL said:

    Just read PJ O’Rourke’s piece in the ST. Not quite as funny as he used to be. But he makes some good points. Firstly, Biden has no idea why Trump was elected in the first place.
    Trump, inevitably, is on to this: “If things were so great in 2016 I wouldn’t be here.”
    He concludes with: “So how’”, I asked, “did sending a lunatic to Washington fix this?”
    He laughed. “It’s what they’ve got coming.”
    “And maybe, alas , it still is.”
    As he describes it America is torn between those that think government is the solution and those who think that it’s the problem.
    Biden is clearly in the first camp. Trump supporters are in the second. Maybe they don’t blame him for administrative chaos because they never expect anything else. And they have a point.

    The example he gives - of the gas station guy who can't dig up and replace tanks because he can't get permits from 8 levels of the system - is an example of one of the biggest problems in the US. A mad system of regulation that fights itself interspersed with no regulation at all.....

    A friend was involved in a FinTech that wanted to move into the US market - debit only cards, no fees, no lending, online banking. A VISA card for the poorest, just as much as the richest. Blocked - not by the existing banks, but by various interests at the "Community Organiser" level.

    Another example - in LA, a dry cleaner sold his business to Elon Musk's Boring Company, to build an entrance to a tunnel. Months later, he hadn't been able to start his business at the new location - it was a dry cleaners. Why? Well, the city council hadn't given him the permit to open a dry cleaners there yet - despite it being zoned as light industrial....

    In many ways, the UK is far less obsessed with pointless must-have-a-permit-to-open-a-hair-dressers nonsense.
    As a business owner operator in the US, I broadly agree. (And in the fintech space too: Just Auto Insurance.)

    But it's not universally true. Take California. Car insurance regulation is a ridiculous mess. But that's not so much the fault of the politicians, but on a ballot proposition (103) that voters approved about 20 years ago. This means that auto insurers are only allowed to use: vehicle type, years since licensed, miles driven per year, zip code, and accident/violation history in setting rates.

    The consequence of this is that what my business does - i.e. using telematics pricing to set rates based on how people actually drive - isn't possible in California. And it also means that zip codes play an extraordinarily large role in setting rates. The ballot proposition was couched as a way to make insurance less disriminatory. It has, of course, done exactly the opposite, while stifling innovation.

    On the other hand, California is an 'employment at will' state. Essentially, you can let anyone go at any time without notice.

    So, ridiculously regulated insurance market, but pretty unregulated labour market.

    There also doesn't seem to be a particular correlation between level of regulation and 'hue' of the states. Arizona has - to date - been reliably Republican, but employment regulation is worse than than in California. Insurance regulation, on the other hand, is better.

    And then you come to Cities. Mayors have lots of powers. In Santa Monica, for example, the minimum salaried wage is something like $60,000/year. This means that anyone in lower paid jobs is - by and large - contracted.

    It's a bit of a mess.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,066

    Foxy said:

    Welcome back @Foxy

    Had I been away? 🤔
    I hadn't said hello if you were, hope all well
    Yeah, just busy with bits and pieces...
  • tlg86 said:

    alex_ said:

    Pulpstar said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/20/trumps-flaws-many-better-britain-biden/

    Daniel "ABSOLUTELY NOBODY IS THREATENING OUR PLACE IN THE SINGLE MARKET" Hannan

    If Biden wins, the free world may find itself longing for a stronger Anglo-American alliance

    Ye Gods what an absolubtely parochial crock of shite take.
    Just checking, does Hannan include countries in the EU as forming part of the "Free World"?
    Probably not. In All Out War it's said that he had an epiphany when the president of Latvia (I think) visited Britain shortly after independence. Apparently he told our politicians that his country was more free than we were (referencing our EU membership).
    And yet Latvia went on to join not only the EU but the Euro, so they couldn't have found the prospect of enslavement by Brussels that appalling.
    Latvia is far more worried about enslavement by Moscow.
  • rcs1000 said:

    DavidL said:

    Just read PJ O’Rourke’s piece in the ST. Not quite as funny as he used to be. But he makes some good points. Firstly, Biden has no idea why Trump was elected in the first place.
    Trump, inevitably, is on to this: “If things were so great in 2016 I wouldn’t be here.”
    He concludes with: “So how’”, I asked, “did sending a lunatic to Washington fix this?”
    He laughed. “It’s what they’ve got coming.”
    “And maybe, alas , it still is.”
    As he describes it America is torn between those that think government is the solution and those who think that it’s the problem.
    Biden is clearly in the first camp. Trump supporters are in the second. Maybe they don’t blame him for administrative chaos because they never expect anything else. And they have a point.

    The example he gives - of the gas station guy who can't dig up and replace tanks because he can't get permits from 8 levels of the system - is an example of one of the biggest problems in the US. A mad system of regulation that fights itself interspersed with no regulation at all.....

    A friend was involved in a FinTech that wanted to move into the US market - debit only cards, no fees, no lending, online banking. A VISA card for the poorest, just as much as the richest. Blocked - not by the existing banks, but by various interests at the "Community Organiser" level.

    Another example - in LA, a dry cleaner sold his business to Elon Musk's Boring Company, to build an entrance to a tunnel. Months later, he hadn't been able to start his business at the new location - it was a dry cleaners. Why? Well, the city council hadn't given him the permit to open a dry cleaners there yet - despite it being zoned as light industrial....

    In many ways, the UK is far less obsessed with pointless must-have-a-permit-to-open-a-hair-dressers nonsense.
    As a business owner operator in the US, I broadly agree. (And in the fintech space too: Just Auto Insurance.)

    But it's not universally true. Take California. Car insurance regulation is a ridiculous mess. But that's not so much the fault of the politicians, but on a ballot proposition (103) that voters approved about 20 years ago. This means that auto insurers are only allowed to use: vehicle type, years since licensed, miles driven per year, zip code, and accident/violation history in setting rates.

    The consequence of this is that what my business does - i.e. using telematics pricing to set rates based on how people actually drive - isn't possible in California. And it also means that zip codes play an extraordinarily large role in setting rates. The ballot proposition was couched as a way to make insurance less disriminatory. It has, of course, done exactly the opposite, while stifling innovation.

    On the other hand, California is an 'employment at will' state. Essentially, you can let anyone go at any time without notice.

    So, ridiculously regulated insurance market, but pretty unregulated labour market.

    There also doesn't seem to be a particular correlation between level of regulation and 'hue' of the states. Arizona has - to date - been reliably Republican, but employment regulation is worse than than in California. Insurance regulation, on the other hand, is better.

    And then you come to Cities. Mayors have lots of powers. In Santa Monica, for example, the minimum salaried wage is something like $60,000/year. This means that anyone in lower paid jobs is - by and large - contracted.

    It's a bit of a mess.
    Sounds a bit like "ban the box" initiative that stopped employers asking if a candidate had been to prison, because it was claimed that it was discriminative against POC.

    The problem is because employers can't ask, the result is far more discrimination, because makes much more difficult to properly assess a potential employee so people from high crime areas all get tarred with the same brush.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,083

    Starmer wants to be PM. Starmer wants that on his own terms. That means Starmer is fighting for an outright victory (Labour clear of 325+ seats) in one go.

    He knows he will only, at best, scrape a handful in Scotland. So, he's going to have to match a Blair 1997 or 2001 result (preferably the former) in England to do this.

    Flag, forces, family is the kind of line he's going to have to take to do it.

    It won't be called this, of course, but it will in effect be New New Labour (it will have to be) and it will differ in at least two important aspects: one, it won't be as pro-market and, two, it will not be as liberal on migration.

    As it happens, I suspect Starmer *does* belief in all the usual North London soft-left tropes: Brexiters are racist, loves the EU, loves migration and migrant rights, and veganism is the way, but he's smart enough to bury it.

    Such is his ambition.

    Such a modest and relatively harmless set of compromises, compared to the pact with the devil the incumbent has made to gain the same prize. You are almost selling him.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,083
    nichomar said:

    The autonomous communities with the highest cumulative incidence of COVID-19 in Spain are: Madrid, with 322 positives per 100,000 inhabitants; Navarra, with 300, and La Rioja, with 252. The other side is the Valencian Community, which has an accumulated incidence of 44. If we analyze the trend in the last two weeks, Melilla is the territory that has improved the most, since it has reduced this indicator by 88 points.

    Doesn’t sound as if wine drinking is going to help fend off the virus, then?
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,019
    edited September 2020
    IanB2 said:

    Starmer wants to be PM. Starmer wants that on his own terms. That means Starmer is fighting for an outright victory (Labour clear of 325+ seats) in one go.

    He knows he will only, at best, scrape a handful in Scotland. So, he's going to have to match a Blair 1997 or 2001 result (preferably the former) in England to do this.

    Flag, forces, family is the kind of line he's going to have to take to do it.

    It won't be called this, of course, but it will in effect be New New Labour (it will have to be) and it will differ in at least two important aspects: one, it won't be as pro-market and, two, it will not be as liberal on migration.

    As it happens, I suspect Starmer *does* belief in all the usual North London soft-left tropes: Brexiters are racist, loves the EU, loves migration and migrant rights, and veganism is the way, but he's smart enough to bury it.

    Such is his ambition.

    Such a modest and relatively harmless set of compromises, compared to the pact with the devil the incumbent has made to gain the same prize. You are almost selling him.
    I'm not trying to sell him (I'm a Conservative, after all) I'm simply dowsing his strategy.

    I'm first and foremost a political gambler - well, mostly.

    EDIT: I should add, there's a warning for him there too: he might end up not being seen as sincere, and therefore not trusted with office - this was never a problem with Blair, since most people didn't really think him a socialist anyway. It's an even *bigger* risk for Labour, since if he loses they will lurch to the Left and obscurity again.
  • Starmer wants to be PM. Starmer wants that on his own terms. That means Starmer is fighting for an outright victory (Labour clear of 325+ seats) in one go.

    He knows he will only, at best, scrape a handful in Scotland. So, he's going to have to match a Blair 1997 or 2001 result (preferably the former) in England to do this.

    Flag, forces, family is the kind of line he's going to have to take to do it.

    It won't be called this, of course, but it will in effect be New New Labour (it will have to be) and it will differ in at least two important aspects: one, it won't be as pro-market and, two, it will not be as liberal on migration.

    As it happens, I suspect Starmer *does* belief in all the usual North London soft-left tropes: Brexiters are racist, loves the EU, loves migration and migrant rights, and veganism is the way, but he's smart enough to bury it.

    Such is his ambition.

    100% agree.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,585

    Starmer wants to be PM. Starmer wants that on his own terms. That means Starmer is fighting for an outright victory (Labour clear of 325+ seats) in one go.

    He knows he will only, at best, scrape a handful in Scotland. So, he's going to have to match a Blair 1997 or 2001 result (preferably the former) in England to do this.

    Flag, forces, family is the kind of line he's going to have to take to do it.

    It won't be called this, of course, but it will in effect be New New Labour (it will have to be) and it will differ in at least two important aspects: one, it won't be as pro-market and, two, it will not be as liberal on migration.

    As it happens, I suspect Starmer *does* belief in all the usual North London soft-left tropes: Brexiters are racist, loves the EU, loves migration and migrant rights, and veganism is the way, but he's smart enough to bury it.

    Such is his ambition.

    B******! Thank goodness Boris was never like that!
  • I am of the view now that Labour supports the deal Johnson won on in 2019 and would accept whatever deal with the EU could be negotiated.

    That to me means ending FOM still, even though I do not support that approach.
  • IanB2 said:

    Starmer wants to be PM. Starmer wants that on his own terms. That means Starmer is fighting for an outright victory (Labour clear of 325+ seats) in one go.

    He knows he will only, at best, scrape a handful in Scotland. So, he's going to have to match a Blair 1997 or 2001 result (preferably the former) in England to do this.

    Flag, forces, family is the kind of line he's going to have to take to do it.

    It won't be called this, of course, but it will in effect be New New Labour (it will have to be) and it will differ in at least two important aspects: one, it won't be as pro-market and, two, it will not be as liberal on migration.

    As it happens, I suspect Starmer *does* belief in all the usual North London soft-left tropes: Brexiters are racist, loves the EU, loves migration and migrant rights, and veganism is the way, but he's smart enough to bury it.

    Such is his ambition.

    Such a modest and relatively harmless set of compromises, compared to the pact with the devil the incumbent has made to gain the same prize. You are almost selling him.
    I'm not trying to sell him (I'm a Conservative, after all) I'm simply dowsing his strategy.

    I'm first and foremost a political gambler - well, mostly.
    You're by far and away the one of the Tories I really have time for on here.
  • kamskikamski Posts: 4,199

    IanB2 said:

    alex_ said:

    IanB2 said:

    4422 new cases....

    Worldometer says 3899

    Germany 362
    The whole things absolute nonsense, if trying to use as a basis for comparison. Everyone does it differently, is testing different numbers and counting in different ways. I'm not even sure that Germany reports a national figure - its numbers change throughout the day. Case numbers are even worse than hospitalisations or deaths, and they are misleading enough.

    Astonishing that the Government ever thought that using figures like this were a basis for judgements on international travel.
    All the way through this the German numbers are updated incrementally during the day, in the same way as the American ones, due to reporting of the different States/Lander - but people have taken the German figures as complete national figures and the US figures not. Another example of the general lack of interest in the European continent compared to the American.
    You think there are still Lander to report, as of 6pm on a Sunday evening?

    I doubt it. But, anyhow, they are not going to turn three hundred into three thousand, are they?
    While I am not current on the reporting structure in Germany, it appears from the data I have seen that they have a weekend effect. Just as nearly every country I have looked at on this topic has.
    There is a weekend effect in Germany.

    I would only go with the official RKI figures;
    https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Fallzahlen.html

    That's yesterday's figures (1345).

    I don't know where Worldometer get their figures from but they are usually different to RKI.
  • IanB2 said:

    Starmer wants to be PM. Starmer wants that on his own terms. That means Starmer is fighting for an outright victory (Labour clear of 325+ seats) in one go.

    He knows he will only, at best, scrape a handful in Scotland. So, he's going to have to match a Blair 1997 or 2001 result (preferably the former) in England to do this.

    Flag, forces, family is the kind of line he's going to have to take to do it.

    It won't be called this, of course, but it will in effect be New New Labour (it will have to be) and it will differ in at least two important aspects: one, it won't be as pro-market and, two, it will not be as liberal on migration.

    As it happens, I suspect Starmer *does* belief in all the usual North London soft-left tropes: Brexiters are racist, loves the EU, loves migration and migrant rights, and veganism is the way, but he's smart enough to bury it.

    Such is his ambition.

    Such a modest and relatively harmless set of compromises, compared to the pact with the devil the incumbent has made to gain the same prize. You are almost selling him.
    I'm not trying to sell him (I'm a Conservative, after all) I'm simply dowsing his strategy.

    I'm first and foremost a political gambler - well, mostly.
    You're by far and away the one of the Tories I really have time for on here.
    I accept chocolates and flowers in the post x
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,083
    Pulpstar said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Fantasic trolling by Boris....
    True, but err...I think he just trolled himself though!
    Whoever decides the readings has top trolled Bojo.
    Indeed. After all, he isn’t going to put in the work himself, is he? Violins.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,620

    rcs1000 said:

    DavidL said:

    Just read PJ O’Rourke’s piece in the ST. Not quite as funny as he used to be. But he makes some good points. Firstly, Biden has no idea why Trump was elected in the first place.
    Trump, inevitably, is on to this: “If things were so great in 2016 I wouldn’t be here.”
    He concludes with: “So how’”, I asked, “did sending a lunatic to Washington fix this?”
    He laughed. “It’s what they’ve got coming.”
    “And maybe, alas , it still is.”
    As he describes it America is torn between those that think government is the solution and those who think that it’s the problem.
    Biden is clearly in the first camp. Trump supporters are in the second. Maybe they don’t blame him for administrative chaos because they never expect anything else. And they have a point.

    The example he gives - of the gas station guy who can't dig up and replace tanks because he can't get permits from 8 levels of the system - is an example of one of the biggest problems in the US. A mad system of regulation that fights itself interspersed with no regulation at all.....

    A friend was involved in a FinTech that wanted to move into the US market - debit only cards, no fees, no lending, online banking. A VISA card for the poorest, just as much as the richest. Blocked - not by the existing banks, but by various interests at the "Community Organiser" level.

    Another example - in LA, a dry cleaner sold his business to Elon Musk's Boring Company, to build an entrance to a tunnel. Months later, he hadn't been able to start his business at the new location - it was a dry cleaners. Why? Well, the city council hadn't given him the permit to open a dry cleaners there yet - despite it being zoned as light industrial....

    In many ways, the UK is far less obsessed with pointless must-have-a-permit-to-open-a-hair-dressers nonsense.
    As a business owner operator in the US, I broadly agree. (And in the fintech space too: Just Auto Insurance.)

    But it's not universally true. Take California. Car insurance regulation is a ridiculous mess. But that's not so much the fault of the politicians, but on a ballot proposition (103) that voters approved about 20 years ago. This means that auto insurers are only allowed to use: vehicle type, years since licensed, miles driven per year, zip code, and accident/violation history in setting rates.

    The consequence of this is that what my business does - i.e. using telematics pricing to set rates based on how people actually drive - isn't possible in California. And it also means that zip codes play an extraordinarily large role in setting rates. The ballot proposition was couched as a way to make insurance less disriminatory. It has, of course, done exactly the opposite, while stifling innovation.

    On the other hand, California is an 'employment at will' state. Essentially, you can let anyone go at any time without notice.

    So, ridiculously regulated insurance market, but pretty unregulated labour market.

    There also doesn't seem to be a particular correlation between level of regulation and 'hue' of the states. Arizona has - to date - been reliably Republican, but employment regulation is worse than than in California. Insurance regulation, on the other hand, is better.

    And then you come to Cities. Mayors have lots of powers. In Santa Monica, for example, the minimum salaried wage is something like $60,000/year. This means that anyone in lower paid jobs is - by and large - contracted.

    It's a bit of a mess.
    Sounds a bit like "ban the box" initiative that stopped employers asking if a candidate had been to prison, because it was claimed that it was discriminative against POC.

    The problem is because employers can't ask, the result is far more discrimination, because makes much more difficult to properly assess a potential employee so people from high crime areas all get tarred with the same brush.
    The US problem is that various interests compete for regulatory capture - and often win. So you end up with a bizarre mish-mash of laws and regulations designed to please completing interests.

    So, you get a ridiculously over budget and under performing project to build a heavy lift rocket for NASA which is kept going, in part by race relations. As part of attempts to improve things for minority communities, minority owned businesses get priority in government contracts. So a piece of the pie is given to them...

    This means that every issue in US politics is tangled with every other. With a patch work of fixes, revisions, reversions and revulsions at every level....
  • IanB2 said:

    Starmer wants to be PM. Starmer wants that on his own terms. That means Starmer is fighting for an outright victory (Labour clear of 325+ seats) in one go.

    He knows he will only, at best, scrape a handful in Scotland. So, he's going to have to match a Blair 1997 or 2001 result (preferably the former) in England to do this.

    Flag, forces, family is the kind of line he's going to have to take to do it.

    It won't be called this, of course, but it will in effect be New New Labour (it will have to be) and it will differ in at least two important aspects: one, it won't be as pro-market and, two, it will not be as liberal on migration.

    As it happens, I suspect Starmer *does* belief in all the usual North London soft-left tropes: Brexiters are racist, loves the EU, loves migration and migrant rights, and veganism is the way, but he's smart enough to bury it.

    Such is his ambition.

    Such a modest and relatively harmless set of compromises, compared to the pact with the devil the incumbent has made to gain the same prize. You are almost selling him.
    I'm not trying to sell him (I'm a Conservative, after all) I'm simply dowsing his strategy.

    I'm first and foremost a political gambler - well, mostly.
    You're by far and away the one of the Tories I really have time for on here.
    I accept chocolates and flowers in the post x
    I hope you also appreciate my posts :)
  • Starmer wants to be PM. Starmer wants that on his own terms. That means Starmer is fighting for an outright victory (Labour clear of 325+ seats) in one go.

    He knows he will only, at best, scrape a handful in Scotland. So, he's going to have to match a Blair 1997 or 2001 result (preferably the former) in England to do this.

    Flag, forces, family is the kind of line he's going to have to take to do it.

    It won't be called this, of course, but it will in effect be New New Labour (it will have to be) and it will differ in at least two important aspects: one, it won't be as pro-market and, two, it will not be as liberal on migration.

    As it happens, I suspect Starmer *does* belief in all the usual North London soft-left tropes: Brexiters are racist, loves the EU, loves migration and migrant rights, and veganism is the way, but he's smart enough to bury it.

    Such is his ambition.

    B******! Thank goodness Boris was never like that!
    If you disagree, would you care to put your counter-argument?
  • IanB2 said:

    Starmer wants to be PM. Starmer wants that on his own terms. That means Starmer is fighting for an outright victory (Labour clear of 325+ seats) in one go.

    He knows he will only, at best, scrape a handful in Scotland. So, he's going to have to match a Blair 1997 or 2001 result (preferably the former) in England to do this.

    Flag, forces, family is the kind of line he's going to have to take to do it.

    It won't be called this, of course, but it will in effect be New New Labour (it will have to be) and it will differ in at least two important aspects: one, it won't be as pro-market and, two, it will not be as liberal on migration.

    As it happens, I suspect Starmer *does* belief in all the usual North London soft-left tropes: Brexiters are racist, loves the EU, loves migration and migrant rights, and veganism is the way, but he's smart enough to bury it.

    Such is his ambition.

    Such a modest and relatively harmless set of compromises, compared to the pact with the devil the incumbent has made to gain the same prize. You are almost selling him.
    I'm not trying to sell him (I'm a Conservative, after all) I'm simply dowsing his strategy.

    I'm first and foremost a political gambler - well, mostly.
    You're by far and away the one of the Tories I really have time for on here.
    I accept chocolates and flowers in the post x
    I hope you also appreciate my posts :)
    Yes.
  • IanB2 said:

    Starmer wants to be PM. Starmer wants that on his own terms. That means Starmer is fighting for an outright victory (Labour clear of 325+ seats) in one go.

    He knows he will only, at best, scrape a handful in Scotland. So, he's going to have to match a Blair 1997 or 2001 result (preferably the former) in England to do this.

    Flag, forces, family is the kind of line he's going to have to take to do it.

    It won't be called this, of course, but it will in effect be New New Labour (it will have to be) and it will differ in at least two important aspects: one, it won't be as pro-market and, two, it will not be as liberal on migration.

    As it happens, I suspect Starmer *does* belief in all the usual North London soft-left tropes: Brexiters are racist, loves the EU, loves migration and migrant rights, and veganism is the way, but he's smart enough to bury it.

    Such is his ambition.

    Such a modest and relatively harmless set of compromises, compared to the pact with the devil the incumbent has made to gain the same prize. You are almost selling him.
    I'm not trying to sell him (I'm a Conservative, after all) I'm simply dowsing his strategy.

    I'm first and foremost a political gambler - well, mostly.
    You're by far and away the one of the Tories I really have time for on here.
    I accept chocolates and flowers in the post x
    I hope you also appreciate my posts :)
    Yes.
    You've made my day! :)
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,083

    IanB2 said:

    Starmer wants to be PM. Starmer wants that on his own terms. That means Starmer is fighting for an outright victory (Labour clear of 325+ seats) in one go.

    He knows he will only, at best, scrape a handful in Scotland. So, he's going to have to match a Blair 1997 or 2001 result (preferably the former) in England to do this.

    Flag, forces, family is the kind of line he's going to have to take to do it.

    It won't be called this, of course, but it will in effect be New New Labour (it will have to be) and it will differ in at least two important aspects: one, it won't be as pro-market and, two, it will not be as liberal on migration.

    As it happens, I suspect Starmer *does* belief in all the usual North London soft-left tropes: Brexiters are racist, loves the EU, loves migration and migrant rights, and veganism is the way, but he's smart enough to bury it.

    Such is his ambition.

    Such a modest and relatively harmless set of compromises, compared to the pact with the devil the incumbent has made to gain the same prize. You are almost selling him.
    I'm not trying to sell him (I'm a Conservative, after all) I'm simply dowsing his strategy.

    I'm first and foremost a political gambler - well, mostly.

    EDIT: I should add, there's a warning for him there too: he might end up not being seen as sincere, and therefore not trusted with office - this was never a problem with Blair, since most people didn't really think him a socialist anyway. It's an even *bigger* risk for Labour, since if he loses they will lurch to the Left and obscurity again.
    If only lack of sincerity were such an obstacle, how much better off we would be.
  • So, I think if Starmer won around 320 seats, he could probably Govern with the LDs providing confidence and supply, completely sidestepping the SNP.

    They therefore need to win 118+ seats, preferably more like 124.

    The 124th target seat is Glasgow North West, held by the SNP. Majority 8359, swing required: 10.52%.

    Of course as I have said before, if the Lib Dems would become relevant again, the challenge becomes easier.

  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,083

    IanB2 said:

    Starmer wants to be PM. Starmer wants that on his own terms. That means Starmer is fighting for an outright victory (Labour clear of 325+ seats) in one go.

    He knows he will only, at best, scrape a handful in Scotland. So, he's going to have to match a Blair 1997 or 2001 result (preferably the former) in England to do this.

    Flag, forces, family is the kind of line he's going to have to take to do it.

    It won't be called this, of course, but it will in effect be New New Labour (it will have to be) and it will differ in at least two important aspects: one, it won't be as pro-market and, two, it will not be as liberal on migration.

    As it happens, I suspect Starmer *does* belief in all the usual North London soft-left tropes: Brexiters are racist, loves the EU, loves migration and migrant rights, and veganism is the way, but he's smart enough to bury it.

    Such is his ambition.

    Such a modest and relatively harmless set of compromises, compared to the pact with the devil the incumbent has made to gain the same prize. You are almost selling him.
    I'm not trying to sell him (I'm a Conservative, after all) I'm simply dowsing his strategy.

    I'm first and foremost a political gambler - well, mostly.
    You're by far and away the one of the Tories I really have time for on here.
    I accept chocolates and flowers in the post x
    I hope you also appreciate my posts :)
    Yuk. Time to take the dog for an evening constitutional.
  • BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556

    Starmer wants to be PM. Starmer wants that on his own terms. That means Starmer is fighting for an outright victory (Labour clear of 325+ seats) in one go.

    He knows he will only, at best, scrape a handful in Scotland. So, he's going to have to match a Blair 1997 or 2001 result (preferably the former) in England to do this.

    Flag, forces, family is the kind of line he's going to have to take to do it.

    It won't be called this, of course, but it will in effect be New New Labour (it will have to be) and it will differ in at least two important aspects: one, it won't be as pro-market and, two, it will not be as liberal on migration.

    As it happens, I suspect Starmer *does* belief in all the usual North London soft-left tropes: Brexiters are racist, loves the EU, loves migration and migrant rights, and veganism is the way, but he's smart enough to bury it.

    Such is his ambition.

    Yep. He's diagnosed (correctly) that the only way for Labour to win outright is to be ... not Labour. If he sticks to his actual principles, he'll be lucky to get a Miliband-style 230 seats, so bye-bye to those. EU? Never heard of it. Tax rises? What are they? Migrants? Best have some tough controls.

    And people call Boris a liar :wink:
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,620
    edited September 2020
    kamski said:

    IanB2 said:

    alex_ said:

    IanB2 said:

    4422 new cases....

    Worldometer says 3899

    Germany 362
    The whole things absolute nonsense, if trying to use as a basis for comparison. Everyone does it differently, is testing different numbers and counting in different ways. I'm not even sure that Germany reports a national figure - its numbers change throughout the day. Case numbers are even worse than hospitalisations or deaths, and they are misleading enough.

    Astonishing that the Government ever thought that using figures like this were a basis for judgements on international travel.
    All the way through this the German numbers are updated incrementally during the day, in the same way as the American ones, due to reporting of the different States/Lander - but people have taken the German figures as complete national figures and the US figures not. Another example of the general lack of interest in the European continent compared to the American.
    You think there are still Lander to report, as of 6pm on a Sunday evening?

    I doubt it. But, anyhow, they are not going to turn three hundred into three thousand, are they?
    While I am not current on the reporting structure in Germany, it appears from the data I have seen that they have a weekend effect. Just as nearly every country I have looked at on this topic has.
    There is a weekend effect in Germany.

    I would only go with the official RKI figures;
    https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Fallzahlen.html

    That's yesterday's figures (1345).

    I don't know where Worldometer get their figures from but they are usually different to RKI.
    Worldometer numbers never seem to match anything publish by any country I have looked at.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,585

    Starmer wants to be PM. Starmer wants that on his own terms. That means Starmer is fighting for an outright victory (Labour clear of 325+ seats) in one go.

    He knows he will only, at best, scrape a handful in Scotland. So, he's going to have to match a Blair 1997 or 2001 result (preferably the former) in England to do this.

    Flag, forces, family is the kind of line he's going to have to take to do it.

    It won't be called this, of course, but it will in effect be New New Labour (it will have to be) and it will differ in at least two important aspects: one, it won't be as pro-market and, two, it will not be as liberal on migration.

    As it happens, I suspect Starmer *does* belief in all the usual North London soft-left tropes: Brexiters are racist, loves the EU, loves migration and migrant rights, and veganism is the way, but he's smart enough to bury it.

    Such is his ambition.

    B******! Thank goodness Boris was never like that!
    If you disagree, would you care to put your counter-argument?
    No I can't. By the nature of the beast, to succeed they all need to be ruthlessly ambitious (Mrs May aside) and not necessarily in a bad way.

    I do have issues with the methods Johnson adopted to climb the greasy pole.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,620

    Starmer wants to be PM. Starmer wants that on his own terms. That means Starmer is fighting for an outright victory (Labour clear of 325+ seats) in one go.

    He knows he will only, at best, scrape a handful in Scotland. So, he's going to have to match a Blair 1997 or 2001 result (preferably the former) in England to do this.

    Flag, forces, family is the kind of line he's going to have to take to do it.

    It won't be called this, of course, but it will in effect be New New Labour (it will have to be) and it will differ in at least two important aspects: one, it won't be as pro-market and, two, it will not be as liberal on migration.

    As it happens, I suspect Starmer *does* belief in all the usual North London soft-left tropes: Brexiters are racist, loves the EU, loves migration and migrant rights, and veganism is the way, but he's smart enough to bury it.

    Such is his ambition.

    Yep. He's diagnosed (correctly) that the only way for Labour to win outright is to be ... not Labour. If he sticks to his actual principles, he'll be lucky to get a Miliband-style 230 seats, so bye-bye to those. EU? Never heard of it. Tax rises? What are they? Migrants? Best have some tough controls.

    And people call Boris a liar :wink:
    Major Attlee and Co. would have ridiculed the suggestion that Labour is the party of Negative Nationalism. Which is what the Corybnites are.
  • Labour can absolutely become the party of patriotism again, perhaps a new logo might be a good starting point.
  • rcs1000 said:

    DavidL said:

    Just read PJ O’Rourke’s piece in the ST. Not quite as funny as he used to be. But he makes some good points. Firstly, Biden has no idea why Trump was elected in the first place.
    Trump, inevitably, is on to this: “If things were so great in 2016 I wouldn’t be here.”
    He concludes with: “So how’”, I asked, “did sending a lunatic to Washington fix this?”
    He laughed. “It’s what they’ve got coming.”
    “And maybe, alas , it still is.”
    As he describes it America is torn between those that think government is the solution and those who think that it’s the problem.
    Biden is clearly in the first camp. Trump supporters are in the second. Maybe they don’t blame him for administrative chaos because they never expect anything else. And they have a point.

    The example he gives - of the gas station guy who can't dig up and replace tanks because he can't get permits from 8 levels of the system - is an example of one of the biggest problems in the US. A mad system of regulation that fights itself interspersed with no regulation at all.....

    A friend was involved in a FinTech that wanted to move into the US market - debit only cards, no fees, no lending, online banking. A VISA card for the poorest, just as much as the richest. Blocked - not by the existing banks, but by various interests at the "Community Organiser" level.

    Another example - in LA, a dry cleaner sold his business to Elon Musk's Boring Company, to build an entrance to a tunnel. Months later, he hadn't been able to start his business at the new location - it was a dry cleaners. Why? Well, the city council hadn't given him the permit to open a dry cleaners there yet - despite it being zoned as light industrial....

    In many ways, the UK is far less obsessed with pointless must-have-a-permit-to-open-a-hair-dressers nonsense.
    As a business owner operator in the US, I broadly agree. (And in the fintech space too: Just Auto Insurance.)

    But it's not universally true. Take California. Car insurance regulation is a ridiculous mess. But that's not so much the fault of the politicians, but on a ballot proposition (103) that voters approved about 20 years ago. This means that auto insurers are only allowed to use: vehicle type, years since licensed, miles driven per year, zip code, and accident/violation history in setting rates.

    The consequence of this is that what my business does - i.e. using telematics pricing to set rates based on how people actually drive - isn't possible in California. And it also means that zip codes play an extraordinarily large role in setting rates. The ballot proposition was couched as a way to make insurance less disriminatory. It has, of course, done exactly the opposite, while stifling innovation.

    On the other hand, California is an 'employment at will' state. Essentially, you can let anyone go at any time without notice.

    So, ridiculously regulated insurance market, but pretty unregulated labour market.

    There also doesn't seem to be a particular correlation between level of regulation and 'hue' of the states. Arizona has - to date - been reliably Republican, but employment regulation is worse than than in California. Insurance regulation, on the other hand, is better.

    And then you come to Cities. Mayors have lots of powers. In Santa Monica, for example, the minimum salaried wage is something like $60,000/year. This means that anyone in lower paid jobs is - by and large - contracted.

    It's a bit of a mess.
    So how does Tesla insurance work? I understand that Tesla offers that in California.
    They can tell exactly how people drive and can tweak the cost appropriately.
  • Asked on Times Radio whether he would remain true to the pledges he made during the leadership election to continue Corbynite economic policy, Sir Keir appeared to equivocate. “Well, of course, I made those pledges,” he said. “But I do think that, in a sense, Covid-19 has made the challenges of the future even greater than they were in 2019, or even when they were discussing the leadership.

    Good. 2019 should go into a dumpster fire.
  • Obviously the best position for Labour would be that a deal comes back, they vote for it.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,585

    Starmer wants to be PM. Starmer wants that on his own terms. That means Starmer is fighting for an outright victory (Labour clear of 325+ seats) in one go.

    He knows he will only, at best, scrape a handful in Scotland. So, he's going to have to match a Blair 1997 or 2001 result (preferably the former) in England to do this.

    Flag, forces, family is the kind of line he's going to have to take to do it.

    It won't be called this, of course, but it will in effect be New New Labour (it will have to be) and it will differ in at least two important aspects: one, it won't be as pro-market and, two, it will not be as liberal on migration.

    As it happens, I suspect Starmer *does* belief in all the usual North London soft-left tropes: Brexiters are racist, loves the EU, loves migration and migrant rights, and veganism is the way, but he's smart enough to bury it.

    Such is his ambition.

    Yep. He's diagnosed (correctly) that the only way for Labour to win outright is to be ... not Labour. If he sticks to his actual principles, he'll be lucky to get a Miliband-style 230 seats, so bye-bye to those. EU? Never heard of it. Tax rises? What are they? Migrants? Best have some tough controls.

    And people call Boris a liar :wink:
    That is because he has a history of being caught out by for example Max Hastings and Michael Howard. I am hoping to the Great British public join that list.

    What Johnson has been guilty of is wholly different to what you are accusing Starmer.

    Starmer is cutting his cloth in the same way Johnson has and is, and Cameron, Blair and Thatcher all did before him to win elections.
  • "It is strange and concerning, that the Government is still relying on mathematical modellers who have a 20-year track record of getting things wrong and have been particularly wrong in the past six months."

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8751389/Oxford-scientists-circuit-break-need-cycle-bad-data-bad-science.html
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629
    But will labour listen, somehow I doubt it
  • DavidL said:

    Just read PJ O’Rourke’s piece in the ST. Not quite as funny as he used to be. But he makes some good points. Firstly, Biden has no idea why Trump was elected in the first place.
    Trump, inevitably, is on to this: “If things were so great in 2016 I wouldn’t be here.”
    He concludes with: “So how’”, I asked, “did sending a lunatic to Washington fix this?”
    He laughed. “It’s what they’ve got coming.”
    “And maybe, alas , it still is.”
    As he describes it America is torn between those that think government is the solution and those who think that it’s the problem.
    Biden is clearly in the first camp. Trump supporters are in the second. Maybe they don’t blame him for administrative chaos because they never expect anything else. And they have a point.

    Surely the point is that Trump always does the wrong thing rather than doing nothing.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,555

    Starmer wants to be PM. Starmer wants that on his own terms. That means Starmer is fighting for an outright victory (Labour clear of 325+ seats) in one go.

    He knows he will only, at best, scrape a handful in Scotland. So, he's going to have to match a Blair 1997 or 2001 result (preferably the former) in England to do this.

    Flag, forces, family is the kind of line he's going to have to take to do it.

    It won't be called this, of course, but it will in effect be New New Labour (it will have to be) and it will differ in at least two important aspects: one, it won't be as pro-market and, two, it will not be as liberal on migration.

    As it happens, I suspect Starmer *does* belief in all the usual North London soft-left tropes: Brexiters are racist, loves the EU, loves migration and migrant rights, and veganism is the way, but he's smart enough to bury it.

    Such is his ambition.

    Yep. He's diagnosed (correctly) that the only way for Labour to win outright is to be ... not Labour. If he sticks to his actual principles, he'll be lucky to get a Miliband-style 230 seats, so bye-bye to those. EU? Never heard of it. Tax rises? What are they? Migrants? Best have some tough controls.

    And people call Boris a liar :wink:
    That is because he has a history of being caught out by for example Max Hastings and Michael Howard. I am hoping to the Great British public join that list.

    What Johnson has been guilty of is wholly different to what you are accusing Starmer.

    Starmer is cutting his cloth in the same way Johnson has and is, and Cameron, Blair and Thatcher all did before him to win elections.
    Cameron and Blair certainly did. Not sure about Mrs Thatcher though, at least for those elections I'm old enough to remember.
  • Pagan2 said:

    But will labour listen, somehow I doubt it
    At least Keir can read.
  • BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556
    edited September 2020

    Starmer wants to be PM. Starmer wants that on his own terms. That means Starmer is fighting for an outright victory (Labour clear of 325+ seats) in one go.

    He knows he will only, at best, scrape a handful in Scotland. So, he's going to have to match a Blair 1997 or 2001 result (preferably the former) in England to do this.

    Flag, forces, family is the kind of line he's going to have to take to do it.

    It won't be called this, of course, but it will in effect be New New Labour (it will have to be) and it will differ in at least two important aspects: one, it won't be as pro-market and, two, it will not be as liberal on migration.

    As it happens, I suspect Starmer *does* belief in all the usual North London soft-left tropes: Brexiters are racist, loves the EU, loves migration and migrant rights, and veganism is the way, but he's smart enough to bury it.

    Such is his ambition.

    Yep. He's diagnosed (correctly) that the only way for Labour to win outright is to be ... not Labour. If he sticks to his actual principles, he'll be lucky to get a Miliband-style 230 seats, so bye-bye to those. EU? Never heard of it. Tax rises? What are they? Migrants? Best have some tough controls.

    And people call Boris a liar :wink:
    Major Attlee and Co. would have ridiculed the suggestion that Labour is the party of Negative Nationalism. Which is what the Corybnites are.
    Under Attlee it wasn't, and that's why he won. But people like Attlee and Wilson and Blair are the rare exceptions in a party instinctively committed to negative nationalism, which is why in the last hundred years Boris' Oxford college has produced as many majority-winning Prime Ministers as the Labour Party has.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    Labour can absolutely become the party of patriotism again, perhaps a new logo might be a good starting point.

    I think the old one is just fine, the rose represents social democracy worldwide.
  • CorrectHorseBatteryCorrectHorseBattery Posts: 21,436
    edited September 2020
    Starmer needs to be the next Cameron.

    96 seats gained in one election.
  • nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483

    Starmer wants to be PM. Starmer wants that on his own terms. That means Starmer is fighting for an outright victory (Labour clear of 325+ seats) in one go.

    He knows he will only, at best, scrape a handful in Scotland. So, he's going to have to match a Blair 1997 or 2001 result (preferably the former) in England to do this.

    Flag, forces, family is the kind of line he's going to have to take to do it.

    It won't be called this, of course, but it will in effect be New New Labour (it will have to be) and it will differ in at least two important aspects: one, it won't be as pro-market and, two, it will not be as liberal on migration.

    As it happens, I suspect Starmer *does* belief in all the usual North London soft-left tropes: Brexiters are racist, loves the EU, loves migration and migrant rights, and veganism is the way, but he's smart enough to bury it.

    Such is his ambition.

    Yep. He's diagnosed (correctly) that the only way for Labour to win outright is to be ... not Labour. If he sticks to his actual principles, he'll be lucky to get a Miliband-style 230 seats, so bye-bye to those. EU? Never heard of it. Tax rises? What are they? Migrants? Best have some tough controls.

    And people call Boris a liar :wink:
    Major Attlee and Co. would have ridiculed the suggestion that Labour is the party of Negative Nationalism. Which is what the Corybnites are.
    Under Attlee it wasn't, and that's why he won. But people like Attlee and Wilson and Blair are the rare exceptions in a party instinctively committed to negative nationalism, which is why in the last hundred years Boris' Oxford college has produced as many majority-winning Prime Ministers as the Labour Party has.
    So what
  • Starmer needs to be the next Cameron.

    96 seats gained in one election.

    Johnson is Brown if he had held the election that never was.
  • Starmer needs to be the next Cameron.

    96 seats gained in one election.

    My boy Dave (pbuh) gained the Tories 108 seats in on election, he took the party from 198 MPs in 2005 to 306 MPs in 2010.
  • Starmer needs to be the next Cameron.

    96 seats gained in one election.

    My boy Dave (pbuh) gained the Tories 108 seats in on election, he took the party from 198 MPs in 2005 to 306 MPs in 2010.
    Quite correct, my mistake
  • DavidL said:

    tlg86 said:

    I think this is the last time Kepa plays for Chelsea.

    I don't want to pile onto him but when Karius had his meltdown at least he had the excuse of concussion.
    This seems to happen when teams are playing Liverpool
    I thought Man U had a very valid point about it being too soon to start the EPL season and they stood up for their principles yesterday.
    Very good. :grin:

    Starmer needs to be the next Cameron.

    96 seats gained in one election.

    My boy Dave (pbuh) gained the Tories 108 seats in on election, he took the party from 198 MPs in 2005 to 306 MPs in 2010.
    210 in 2005 on Notional Boundaries.

    There should be new boundaries by next time too.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    edited September 2020
    Pagan2 said:

    But will labour listen, somehow I doubt it
    The headbangers and frothers do not matter. The membership as a whole wants power again, in my opinion.
  • Pagan2 said:

    But will labour listen, somehow I doubt it
    The headbangers and frothers do not matter. The membership wants power again.
    We absolutely do.

    Keir remains popular with Labour members.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165

    Starmer needs to be the next Cameron.

    96 seats gained in one election.

    My boy Dave (pbuh) gained the Tories 108 seats in on election, he took the party from 198 MPs in 2005 to 306 MPs in 2010.
    But it's a much harder task facing Starmer than what was facing Cameron. Although the Tories didn't make all that many gains in 2005, a lot of seats were brought into play.

    Obviously everyone starts with 0 votes in all seats, but we all know that past results do matter.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072

    Pagan2 said:

    But will labour listen, somehow I doubt it
    The headbangers and frothers do not matter. The membership wants power again.
    We absolutely do.

    Keir remains popular with Labour members.
    I’m still a Labour member, but only because the student sub is like £1 a year or something ridiculous, and I want to keep the moderates in charge.
  • On the topic of Brexit negotiations did Barnier & Frost make statements this week after the negotiations? If they did I missed them.

    We normally each week seem to get the same vanilla "we need [the other side] to compromise" statement like clockwork but if it happened this week I missed it. Or were there no talks this week?
  • Keir is New Labour, with leftie elements, as the country has moved to the left economically. Works for me
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,574
    rcs1000 said:

    DavidL said:

    Just read PJ O’Rourke’s piece in the ST. Not quite as funny as he used to be. But he makes some good points. Firstly, Biden has no idea why Trump was elected in the first place.
    Trump, inevitably, is on to this: “If things were so great in 2016 I wouldn’t be here.”
    He concludes with: “So how’”, I asked, “did sending a lunatic to Washington fix this?”
    He laughed. “It’s what they’ve got coming.”
    “And maybe, alas , it still is.”
    As he describes it America is torn between those that think government is the solution and those who think that it’s the problem.
    Biden is clearly in the first camp. Trump supporters are in the second. Maybe they don’t blame him for administrative chaos because they never expect anything else. And they have a point.

    The example he gives - of the gas station guy who can't dig up and replace tanks because he can't get permits from 8 levels of the system - is an example of one of the biggest problems in the US. A mad system of regulation that fights itself interspersed with no regulation at all.....

    A friend was involved in a FinTech that wanted to move into the US market - debit only cards, no fees, no lending, online banking. A VISA card for the poorest, just as much as the richest. Blocked - not by the existing banks, but by various interests at the "Community Organiser" level.

    Another example - in LA, a dry cleaner sold his business to Elon Musk's Boring Company, to build an entrance to a tunnel. Months later, he hadn't been able to start his business at the new location - it was a dry cleaners. Why? Well, the city council hadn't given him the permit to open a dry cleaners there yet - despite it being zoned as light industrial....

    In many ways, the UK is far less obsessed with pointless must-have-a-permit-to-open-a-hair-dressers nonsense.
    As a business owner operator in the US, I broadly agree. (And in the fintech space too: Just Auto Insurance.)

    But it's not universally true. Take California. Car insurance regulation is a ridiculous mess. But that's not so much the fault of the politicians, but on a ballot proposition (103) that voters approved about 20 years ago. This means that auto insurers are only allowed to use: vehicle type, years since licensed, miles driven per year, zip code, and accident/violation history in setting rates.

    The consequence of this is that what my business does - i.e. using telematics pricing to set rates based on how people actually drive - isn't possible in California. And it also means that zip codes play an extraordinarily large role in setting rates. The ballot proposition was couched as a way to make insurance less disriminatory. It has, of course, done exactly the opposite, while stifling innovation.

    On the other hand, California is an 'employment at will' state. Essentially, you can let anyone go at any time without notice.

    So, ridiculously regulated insurance market, but pretty unregulated labour market.

    There also doesn't seem to be a particular correlation between level of regulation and 'hue' of the states. Arizona has - to date - been reliably Republican, but employment regulation is worse than than in California. Insurance regulation, on the other hand, is better.

    And then you come to Cities. Mayors have lots of powers. In Santa Monica, for example, the minimum salaried wage is something like $60,000/year. This means that anyone in lower paid jobs is - by and large - contracted.

    It's a bit of a mess.
    And how much of that is a federal issue ?
    Which is where the conversation started.
  • tlg86 said:

    Starmer needs to be the next Cameron.

    96 seats gained in one election.

    My boy Dave (pbuh) gained the Tories 108 seats in on election, he took the party from 198 MPs in 2005 to 306 MPs in 2010.
    But it's a much harder task facing Starmer than what was facing Cameron. Although the Tories didn't make all that many gains in 2005, a lot of seats were brought into play.

    Obviously everyone starts with 0 votes in all seats, but we all know that past results do matter.
    One thread I always keep on planning to right is a what if thread.

    Just imagine if William Hague had managed to make say thirty net gains in 2001 instead of just one net gain, and Howard and Cameron made the same number of net gains that they did then in 2010 Dave wins a majority of 20.

    So we'd have had no coalition, what would politics be like this day? What would have been the outcome of the 2015 GE?
  • CorrectHorseBatteryCorrectHorseBattery Posts: 21,436
    edited September 2020
    Can I just point out, that a Labour majority likely means Boris Johnson loses his seat.

    That would be quite comical
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771

    rcs1000 said:

    DavidL said:

    Just read PJ O’Rourke’s piece in the ST. Not quite as funny as he used to be. But he makes some good points. Firstly, Biden has no idea why Trump was elected in the first place.
    Trump, inevitably, is on to this: “If things were so great in 2016 I wouldn’t be here.”
    He concludes with: “So how’”, I asked, “did sending a lunatic to Washington fix this?”
    He laughed. “It’s what they’ve got coming.”
    “And maybe, alas , it still is.”
    As he describes it America is torn between those that think government is the solution and those who think that it’s the problem.
    Biden is clearly in the first camp. Trump supporters are in the second. Maybe they don’t blame him for administrative chaos because they never expect anything else. And they have a point.

    The example he gives - of the gas station guy who can't dig up and replace tanks because he can't get permits from 8 levels of the system - is an example of one of the biggest problems in the US. A mad system of regulation that fights itself interspersed with no regulation at all.....

    A friend was involved in a FinTech that wanted to move into the US market - debit only cards, no fees, no lending, online banking. A VISA card for the poorest, just as much as the richest. Blocked - not by the existing banks, but by various interests at the "Community Organiser" level.

    Another example - in LA, a dry cleaner sold his business to Elon Musk's Boring Company, to build an entrance to a tunnel. Months later, he hadn't been able to start his business at the new location - it was a dry cleaners. Why? Well, the city council hadn't given him the permit to open a dry cleaners there yet - despite it being zoned as light industrial....

    In many ways, the UK is far less obsessed with pointless must-have-a-permit-to-open-a-hair-dressers nonsense.
    As a business owner operator in the US, I broadly agree. (And in the fintech space too: Just Auto Insurance.)

    But it's not universally true. Take California. Car insurance regulation is a ridiculous mess. But that's not so much the fault of the politicians, but on a ballot proposition (103) that voters approved about 20 years ago. This means that auto insurers are only allowed to use: vehicle type, years since licensed, miles driven per year, zip code, and accident/violation history in setting rates.

    The consequence of this is that what my business does - i.e. using telematics pricing to set rates based on how people actually drive - isn't possible in California. And it also means that zip codes play an extraordinarily large role in setting rates. The ballot proposition was couched as a way to make insurance less disriminatory. It has, of course, done exactly the opposite, while stifling innovation.

    On the other hand, California is an 'employment at will' state. Essentially, you can let anyone go at any time without notice.

    So, ridiculously regulated insurance market, but pretty unregulated labour market.

    There also doesn't seem to be a particular correlation between level of regulation and 'hue' of the states. Arizona has - to date - been reliably Republican, but employment regulation is worse than than in California. Insurance regulation, on the other hand, is better.

    And then you come to Cities. Mayors have lots of powers. In Santa Monica, for example, the minimum salaried wage is something like $60,000/year. This means that anyone in lower paid jobs is - by and large - contracted.

    It's a bit of a mess.
    So how does Tesla insurance work? I understand that Tesla offers that in California.
    They can tell exactly how people drive and can tweak the cost appropriately.
    They don't.

    I just went to SERFF (which is the system for looking at insurance company filings - https://filingaccess.serff.com/sfa/home/CA) and Tesla's insurance offering was rejected in California.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629

    Pagan2 said:

    But will labour listen, somehow I doubt it
    At least Keir can read.
    Ah once again dont engage with the message attack the messenger you are so dim if you think it helps
  • An 8.3% swing is absolutely massive. I wonder how often that has occurred

    In context 2010 was a 5% swing, 1997 was a 10% swng, so you're looking for a swing extremely close to 1997 levels to achieve that.
  • Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    But will labour listen, somehow I doubt it
    At least Keir can read.
    Ah once again dont engage with the message attack the messenger you are so dim if you think it helps
    Go back to Primary School babykins
  • I find it interesting on here that all the experts, bar one maybe, on what Starmer should to gain power are, erm, Tory voters. And what a surprise, those same Tories think that Starmer will have to cast aside what he really believes in if he is to succeed. If I were Starmer or one of his advisors, I reckon I'd say thanks for the advice, and then ignore it.
    He'll triangulate in his own way no doubt, but I actually don't think he's the kind of chap who will set aside all his principles in the pursuit of power. And don't forget, he has to take the party with him. Even once the far left have buggered off, which they largely will, or have already.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,280

    tlg86 said:

    Starmer needs to be the next Cameron.

    96 seats gained in one election.

    My boy Dave (pbuh) gained the Tories 108 seats in on election, he took the party from 198 MPs in 2005 to 306 MPs in 2010.
    But it's a much harder task facing Starmer than what was facing Cameron. Although the Tories didn't make all that many gains in 2005, a lot of seats were brought into play.

    Obviously everyone starts with 0 votes in all seats, but we all know that past results do matter.
    One thread I always keep on planning to right is a what if thread.

    Just imagine if William Hague had managed to make say thirty net gains in 2001 instead of just one net gain, and Howard and Cameron made the same number of net gains that they did then in 2010 Dave wins a majority of 20.

    So we'd have had no coalition, what would politics be like this day? What would have been the outcome of the 2015 GE?
    If Hague has made 30 net gains Howard wouldn't have become leader.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    But will labour listen, somehow I doubt it
    At least Keir can read.
    Ah once again dont engage with the message attack the messenger you are so dim if you think it helps
    Go back to Primary School babykins
    pffft if you cant debate but have to resort to ad hominems and childish insults perhaps do everyone a favour and don't bother
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165

    tlg86 said:

    Starmer needs to be the next Cameron.

    96 seats gained in one election.

    My boy Dave (pbuh) gained the Tories 108 seats in on election, he took the party from 198 MPs in 2005 to 306 MPs in 2010.
    But it's a much harder task facing Starmer than what was facing Cameron. Although the Tories didn't make all that many gains in 2005, a lot of seats were brought into play.

    Obviously everyone starts with 0 votes in all seats, but we all know that past results do matter.
    One thread I always keep on planning to right is a what if thread.

    Just imagine if William Hague had managed to make say thirty net gains in 2001 instead of just one net gain, and Howard and Cameron made the same number of net gains that they did then in 2010 Dave wins a majority of 20.

    So we'd have had no coalition, what would politics be like this day? What would have been the outcome of the 2015 GE?
    If Hague has made 30 net gains Howard wouldn't have become leader.
    That's what I was thinking. And anyway, there's nothing to say that the 2010 election was winnable for the Tories. That sort of result was perhaps inevitable irrespective of what happened in 2001 and 2005.
  • Can I just point out, that a Labour majority likely means Boris Johnson loses his seat.

    That would be quite comical

    The way things are going he'll have been editing the Telegraph for three years by the time of next GE.
  • tlg86 said:

    Starmer needs to be the next Cameron.

    96 seats gained in one election.

    My boy Dave (pbuh) gained the Tories 108 seats in on election, he took the party from 198 MPs in 2005 to 306 MPs in 2010.
    But it's a much harder task facing Starmer than what was facing Cameron. Although the Tories didn't make all that many gains in 2005, a lot of seats were brought into play.

    Obviously everyone starts with 0 votes in all seats, but we all know that past results do matter.
    One thread I always keep on planning to right is a what if thread.

    Just imagine if William Hague had managed to make say thirty net gains in 2001 instead of just one net gain, and Howard and Cameron made the same number of net gains that they did then in 2010 Dave wins a majority of 20.

    So we'd have had no coalition, what would politics be like this day? What would have been the outcome of the 2015 GE?
    If Hague has made 30 net gains Howard wouldn't have become leader.
    Didn't Hague say he had set himself a target of 250 seats or he'd resign.

    IIRC in 1999/2000 the Telegraph ran a report with a member of the shadow cabinet privately saying they had at least 100 gains in the bag for the 2001 election.
  • Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    But will labour listen, somehow I doubt it
    At least Keir can read.
    Ah once again dont engage with the message attack the messenger you are so dim if you think it helps
    Go back to Primary School babykins
    pffft if you cant debate but have to resort to ad hominems and childish insults perhaps do everyone a favour and don't bother
    I find the childish squabbles between you two on here a real turn-off, and I suspect I'm not alone.
  • Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    But will labour listen, somehow I doubt it
    At least Keir can read.
    Ah once again dont engage with the message attack the messenger you are so dim if you think it helps
    Go back to Primary School babykins
    pffft if you cant debate but have to resort to ad hominems and childish insults perhaps do everyone a favour and don't bother
    Awh, did I touch a nerve? Maybe it's time for your nap
  • tlg86 said:

    Starmer needs to be the next Cameron.

    96 seats gained in one election.

    My boy Dave (pbuh) gained the Tories 108 seats in on election, he took the party from 198 MPs in 2005 to 306 MPs in 2010.
    But it's a much harder task facing Starmer than what was facing Cameron. Although the Tories didn't make all that many gains in 2005, a lot of seats were brought into play.

    Obviously everyone starts with 0 votes in all seats, but we all know that past results do matter.
    One thread I always keep on planning to right is a what if thread.

    Just imagine if William Hague had managed to make say thirty net gains in 2001 instead of just one net gain, and Howard and Cameron made the same number of net gains that they did then in 2010 Dave wins a majority of 20.

    So we'd have had no coalition, what would politics be like this day? What would have been the outcome of the 2015 GE?
    If Hague has made 30 net gains Howard wouldn't have become leader.
    Didn't Hague say he had set himself a target of 250 seats or he'd resign.

    IIRC in 1999/2000 the Telegraph ran a report with a member of the shadow cabinet privately saying they had at least 100 gains in the bag for the 2001 election.
    The Tories were delusional at the time in thinking that 1997 was an abberation and could patiently wait for the public to go back to the natural party of government. They were very, very mistaken.
  • Can I just point out, that a Labour majority likely means Boris Johnson loses his seat.

    That would be quite comical

    The way things are going he'll have been editing the Telegraph for three years by the time of next GE.
    Well he needs the money, £100K a year doesn't buy much these days
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    But will labour listen, somehow I doubt it
    At least Keir can read.
    Ah once again dont engage with the message attack the messenger you are so dim if you think it helps
    Go back to Primary School babykins
    pffft if you cant debate but have to resort to ad hominems and childish insults perhaps do everyone a favour and don't bother
    Awh, did I touch a nerve? Maybe it's time for your nap
    Not at all just realised you cant argue with stupid so in future will just ignore your ignorance unless you actually respond to the point. I am sure everyone else is bored of our arguing
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,280

    tlg86 said:

    Starmer needs to be the next Cameron.

    96 seats gained in one election.

    My boy Dave (pbuh) gained the Tories 108 seats in on election, he took the party from 198 MPs in 2005 to 306 MPs in 2010.
    But it's a much harder task facing Starmer than what was facing Cameron. Although the Tories didn't make all that many gains in 2005, a lot of seats were brought into play.

    Obviously everyone starts with 0 votes in all seats, but we all know that past results do matter.
    One thread I always keep on planning to right is a what if thread.

    Just imagine if William Hague had managed to make say thirty net gains in 2001 instead of just one net gain, and Howard and Cameron made the same number of net gains that they did then in 2010 Dave wins a majority of 20.

    So we'd have had no coalition, what would politics be like this day? What would have been the outcome of the 2015 GE?
    If Hague has made 30 net gains Howard wouldn't have become leader.
    Didn't Hague say he had set himself a target of 250 seats or he'd resign.

    IIRC in 1999/2000 the Telegraph ran a report with a member of the shadow cabinet privately saying they had at least 100 gains in the bag for the 2001 election.
    In any event, how would the net result have been much different? Cameron PM in 2010,

    If you're going to do alt-history there are far better options. Halifax rather than Chirchill in 1940?
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578
    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Just read PJ O’Rourke’s piece in the ST. Not quite as funny as he used to be. But he makes some good points. Firstly, Biden has no idea why Trump was elected in the first place.
    Trump, inevitably, is on to this: “If things were so great in 2016 I wouldn’t be here.”
    He concludes with: “So how’”, I asked, “did sending a lunatic to Washington fix this?”
    He laughed. “It’s what they’ve got coming.”
    “And maybe, alas , it still is.”
    As he describes it America is torn between those that think government is the solution and those who think that it’s the problem.
    Biden is clearly in the first camp. Trump supporters are in the second. Maybe they don’t blame him for administrative chaos because they never expect anything else. And they have a point.

    The example he gives - of the gas station guy who can't dig up and replace tanks because he can't get permits from 8 levels of the system - is an example of one of the biggest problems in the US. A mad system of regulation that fights itself interspersed with no regulation at all.....

    A friend was involved in a FinTech that wanted to move into the US market - debit only cards, no fees, no lending, online banking. A VISA card for the poorest, just as much as the richest. Blocked - not by the existing banks, but by various interests at the "Community Organiser" level.

    Another example - in LA, a dry cleaner sold his business to Elon Musk's Boring Company, to build an entrance to a tunnel. Months later, he hadn't been able to start his business at the new location - it was a dry cleaners. Why? Well, the city council hadn't given him the permit to open a dry cleaners there yet - despite it being zoned as light industrial....

    In many ways, the UK is far less obsessed with pointless must-have-a-permit-to-open-a-hair-dressers nonsense.
    I also liked the bit about Russian involvement in the 2016 election...”I‘ve driven Russian cars.”
    That was a funny article. It also suggested anyone banking on dissatisfaction with Trump being a core driver of Biden being elected might be disappointed. It seems like plenty of Trump's voters are aware of his faults but that doesn't count in the scheme of things.
  • Is Jose Mourinho a closet Arsenal fan trying to destroy Spurs?

    I mean what other explanation is there for trying to sell Dele Alli and buy Jesse Lingard as his replacement?
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165

    tlg86 said:

    Starmer needs to be the next Cameron.

    96 seats gained in one election.

    My boy Dave (pbuh) gained the Tories 108 seats in on election, he took the party from 198 MPs in 2005 to 306 MPs in 2010.
    But it's a much harder task facing Starmer than what was facing Cameron. Although the Tories didn't make all that many gains in 2005, a lot of seats were brought into play.

    Obviously everyone starts with 0 votes in all seats, but we all know that past results do matter.
    One thread I always keep on planning to right is a what if thread.

    Just imagine if William Hague had managed to make say thirty net gains in 2001 instead of just one net gain, and Howard and Cameron made the same number of net gains that they did then in 2010 Dave wins a majority of 20.

    So we'd have had no coalition, what would politics be like this day? What would have been the outcome of the 2015 GE?
    If Hague has made 30 net gains Howard wouldn't have become leader.
    Didn't Hague say he had set himself a target of 250 seats or he'd resign.

    IIRC in 1999/2000 the Telegraph ran a report with a member of the shadow cabinet privately saying they had at least 100 gains in the bag for the 2001 election.
    In any event, how would the net result have been much different? Cameron PM in 2010,

    If you're going to do alt-history there are far better options. Halifax rather than Chirchill in 1940?
    I can see why TSE is intrigued by it. The Lib Dems not in government 2010-2015 completely changes the landscape.
  • That's a bigger swing than Tony Blair achieved in 1997 (!)

    And still Labour 5 seats short. Just goes to show the scale of the problem. Though ironically if Scotland were independent Labour would have a majority in that scenario.
  • Is Jose Mourinho a closet Arsenal fan trying to destroy Spurs?

    I mean what other explanation is there for trying to sell Dele Alli and buy Jesse Lingard as his replacement?

    He's a Chelsea fan trying to destroy Spurs?
  • tlg86 said:

    Starmer needs to be the next Cameron.

    96 seats gained in one election.

    My boy Dave (pbuh) gained the Tories 108 seats in on election, he took the party from 198 MPs in 2005 to 306 MPs in 2010.
    But it's a much harder task facing Starmer than what was facing Cameron. Although the Tories didn't make all that many gains in 2005, a lot of seats were brought into play.

    Obviously everyone starts with 0 votes in all seats, but we all know that past results do matter.
    One thread I always keep on planning to right is a what if thread.

    Just imagine if William Hague had managed to make say thirty net gains in 2001 instead of just one net gain, and Howard and Cameron made the same number of net gains that they did then in 2010 Dave wins a majority of 20.

    So we'd have had no coalition, what would politics be like this day? What would have been the outcome of the 2015 GE?
    If Hague has made 30 net gains Howard wouldn't have become leader.
    Didn't Hague say he had set himself a target of 250 seats or he'd resign.

    IIRC in 1999/2000 the Telegraph ran a report with a member of the shadow cabinet privately saying they had at least 100 gains in the bag for the 2001 election.
    In any event, how would the net result have been much different? Cameron PM in 2010,

    If you're going to do alt-history there are far better options. Halifax rather than Chirchill in 1940?
    See TLG86’s post at 7.46
  • So apparently October lockdown might be announced this week
  • So apparently October lockdown might be announced this week

    Doesn't seem necessary or right to me. If there is to be one though then it should have a good lead time to allow people to manage stock accordingly.

    I like Prof Carl Heneghan's (sp?) suggestion that if there were to be a lockdown like that it'd be better timed as an extended Christmas/New Year break. That's not a bad idea if there has to be one.
  • So apparently October lockdown might be announced this week

    Doesn't seem necessary or right to me. If there is to be one though then it should have a good lead time to allow people to manage stock accordingly.

    I like Prof Carl Heneghan's (sp?) suggestion that if there were to be a lockdown like that it'd be better timed as an extended Christmas/New Year break. That's not a bad idea if there has to be one.
    That would just mean that Christmas is even more tedious than normal
  • tlg86 said:

    Starmer needs to be the next Cameron.

    96 seats gained in one election.

    My boy Dave (pbuh) gained the Tories 108 seats in on election, he took the party from 198 MPs in 2005 to 306 MPs in 2010.
    But it's a much harder task facing Starmer than what was facing Cameron. Although the Tories didn't make all that many gains in 2005, a lot of seats were brought into play.

    Obviously everyone starts with 0 votes in all seats, but we all know that past results do matter.
    One thread I always keep on planning to right is a what if thread.

    Just imagine if William Hague had managed to make say thirty net gains in 2001 instead of just one net gain, and Howard and Cameron made the same number of net gains that they did then in 2010 Dave wins a majority of 20.

    So we'd have had no coalition, what would politics be like this day? What would have been the outcome of the 2015 GE?
    Cameron would have won GE2015.

    He'd have had bigger problems with his backbenches, and the fight over Europe would have come earlier, and he'd also have done things like a British Bill of Rights, IHT cuts and attempted to licence fox-hunting (which would have narrowly failed) but he'd have governed ok.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739

    So apparently October lockdown might be announced this week

    https://twitter.com/iainjwatson/status/1307728571625091082
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165

    tlg86 said:

    Starmer needs to be the next Cameron.

    96 seats gained in one election.

    My boy Dave (pbuh) gained the Tories 108 seats in on election, he took the party from 198 MPs in 2005 to 306 MPs in 2010.
    But it's a much harder task facing Starmer than what was facing Cameron. Although the Tories didn't make all that many gains in 2005, a lot of seats were brought into play.

    Obviously everyone starts with 0 votes in all seats, but we all know that past results do matter.
    One thread I always keep on planning to right is a what if thread.

    Just imagine if William Hague had managed to make say thirty net gains in 2001 instead of just one net gain, and Howard and Cameron made the same number of net gains that they did then in 2010 Dave wins a majority of 20.

    So we'd have had no coalition, what would politics be like this day? What would have been the outcome of the 2015 GE?
    Cameron would have won GE2015.

    He'd have had bigger problems with his backbenches, and the fight over Europe would have come earlier, and he'd also have done things like a British Bill of Rights, IHT cuts and attempted to licence fox-hunting (which would have narrowly failed) but he'd have governed ok.
    I think there were two key factors behind the Tory win in 2015. Firstly, Scotland. I think that would have played out more or less the same with the Lib Dems in opposition. The Tories would have been seen as the safe option in England. And secondly the fall in the price of oil. That was a godsend for the Tories and would obviously have been a factor irrespective of who was governing.
  • Scott_xP said:

    So apparently October lockdown might be announced this week

    https://twitter.com/iainjwatson/status/1307728571625091082
    No Valance?
  • Starmer needs to be the next Cameron.

    96 seats gained in one election.

    Johnson is Brown if he had held the election that never was.
    He might have been more like May with a GE2017 result: Brown would almost certainly have lost his majority had he held that election in 2007 and his weaknesses would have become apparent during the campaign.

    The zeitgeist was simply moving away from Labour by then (and the signs were clearly visible in England in GE2005).

    Bottling it gave him an extra 2 1/2 years in office he wouldn't have otherwise had.
  • The country’s death toll rose by 311 to 31,585 – the highest number of deaths in months. The death toll increased by 25 on Saturday, following a jump of 154 on Friday.

    Thats some leap. Some issues with the stats?
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,585

    Obviously the best position for Labour would be that a deal comes back, they vote for it.

    If you are talking about a Johnson/ Cummings/Frost EU deal, I would very much doubt it is something Labour could vote for.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    "Hammersmith and Fulham council bans all staff from smoking at their desks while working from home"

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8752965/Hammersmith-Fulham-council-BANS-staff-smoking-desks-working-home.html
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165

    Starmer needs to be the next Cameron.

    96 seats gained in one election.

    Johnson is Brown if he had held the election that never was.
    He might have been more like May with a GE2017 result: Brown would almost certainly have lost his majority had he held that election in 2007 and his weaknesses would have become apparent during the campaign.

    The zeitgeist was simply moving away from Labour by then (and the signs were clearly visible in England in GE2005).

    Bottling it gave him an extra 2 1/2 years in office he wouldn't have otherwise had.
    He might have lost his majority, but I doubt he'd have lost power (without being ousted by Labour). Would Cameron have survived?
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    Obviously the best position for Labour would be that a deal comes back, they vote for it.

    If you are talking about a Johnson/ Cummings/Frost EU deal, I would very much doubt it is something Labour could vote for.
    So they'll never vote for any deal the government comes back with?
  • nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483

    The country’s death toll rose by 311 to 31,585 – the highest number of deaths in months. The death toll increased by 25 on Saturday, following a jump of 154 on Friday.

    Thats some leap. Some issues with the stats?
    Francia: 12 personas han fallecido con coronavirus en las últimas 24 horas. La estadística total de fallecidos, no obstante, ha aumentado hoy en más de 300 muertes, correspondientes a días anteriores.
  • Andy_JS said:

    "Hammersmith and Fulham council bans all staff from smoking at their desks while working from home"

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8752965/Hammersmith-Fulham-council-BANS-staff-smoking-desks-working-home.html

    And they say there are no room for further cuts in local authorities when somebody had time to come up with genius policy.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629
    Andy_JS said:

    "Hammersmith and Fulham council bans all staff from smoking at their desks while working from home"

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8752965/Hammersmith-Fulham-council-BANS-staff-smoking-desks-working-home.html

    And how exactly do they plan to enforce that....its the kind of shit that gets local government a bad name
This discussion has been closed.