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Why getting to Number 10 at the next election could be a tad easier for Starmer than Johnson – polit

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited February 2021 in General
imageWhy getting to Number 10 at the next election could be a tad easier for Starmer than Johnson – politicalbetting.com

A big advantage for Starmer over Johnson at the next general election is that he is in with a good chance of becoming PM if the Tories lose their majority. This would be the case even if LAB has fewer seats. The converse is that Johnson’s Tories almost certainly have to win an overall majority of Commons seats to retain power.

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Comments

  • Number 1
  • Labour winning 47 seats would leave a hamstrung Starmer in office but not in power.

    The Tories would have an absolute majority of English votes so could simply veto any English laws under EVEL.

    Even if EVEL were abolished then the SNP could simply make a principle of abstaining at any opportunities that suit them and the Tories can then vote down the English law with impunity - the SNP would simply be doing the "honorable" thing of not voting on English matters and Westminster would come to a crashing mess . . . which plays neatly into the SNPs hands. The more havoc in Westminster the better for them.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    The DUP could do a deal with either Starmer or Johnson. It's Corbyn they wouldn't entertain putting into #10 - they have no issues with Labour as a party.
    The SNP, Plaid, Green & SDLP would never prop up the Tories.
    Davey would probably support Starmer over Johnson if push and shove came.

    So Starrmer's potential allies in parliament are greater than Johnson's.
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 21,722
    SKS will not enthuse young people to vote IMO making differential turnout with golden generation even more acute.

    BJ 2nd term more likely due to this I reckon
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    edited February 2021
    What/who is BNO News? I cant find any information about where theyre based, etc.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited February 2021
    Andy_JS said:

    What/who is BNO News? I cant find any information about where theyre based, etc.

    BNO News is an international news agency headquartered in the Netherlands. They have provided excellent coverage of the COVID pandemic.
  • Pfizer vaccine found to give strong immune response to new Covid variants

    People who have received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine have been found to have strong T-cell responses against the Kent and South African variants of Covid, suggesting that the vaccine will continue to protect against serious disease in the coming months.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/11/pfizer-vaccine-strong-response-new-covid-variants
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080
    London (CNN Business): The pandemic has left more than a quarter of British adults financially vulnerable, with too much debt or not enough savings to cope with a "negative life event" such as redundancy, loss of hours, or ill health.

    That's according to the results of a survey by the Financial Conduct Authority, the country's top banking regulator. The survey also found that nearly 40% of British adults suffered financially as a consequence of the pandemic, with younger workers, Black people and the self-employed among the hardest hit.

    The number of Britons showing "characteristics of vulnerability" swelled to 27.7 million, climbing by 3.7 million — or 15% — between March and October 2020, the FCA said. The number suffering from low financial resilience climbed by 3.5 million over the same period to 14.2 million.

    "Since the start of the pandemic, the number of people experiencing low financial resilience or negative life events has grown," Nisha Arora, director of consumer and retail policy at the FCA, said in a statement.

    People aged 18 to 34, the self-employed, lower earners, Black people and groups who do not identify as White have been hit particularly hard.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,555
    A minority government would most likely be a poisoned chalice for Starmer. So would one with even a small majority. Our system hates governments without working majorities.
    We've had five such governments since 1945: 1950-1, 1964-6, 1974-9, 1992-7 and 2017-9. Governments tend to be re-elected in this country, but in only one of those did the PM lead his party to victory at the following election.

    Governments without a working majority always have the smell of death about them. Their MPs are harassed; they can't get the more difficult parts of their agenda through; foreign governments and the media despise them; and everybody knows they're only there till a better alternative comes along.

    (It was Gordon Brown's unique achievement to run such a government even with a healthy overall majority).
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,555
    (I did of course mean the PM at the start of the minority government - in the case of the 2017-9 administration that's TM not Boris)
  • Good morning, everyone.

    Mr. B2, I wonder how those stats compare with normal times. I remember reading somewhere a large number of people save little or nothing.
  • Fishing said:

    (I did of course mean the PM at the start of the minority government - in the case of the 2017-9 administration that's TM not Boris)

    If you go by PM surely it's happened twice that they have won the next election?

    1974-1974 and 2010-2015
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    A big advantage for Starmer over Johnson at the next general election is that he is in with a good chance of becoming PM if the Tories lose their majority. This would be the case even if LAB has fewer seats. The converse is that Johnson’s Tories almost certainly have to win an overall majority of Commons seats to retain power.

    It's evidently a slow news day when the statements of the bleedin' obvious need to be brought back out for discussion. This topic has already been done to death: we know that the Tories need an outright win next time, or else they'll probably be replaced by a Labour minority (and then we get into the associated topic of SNP dependency, and all things Scottish end up descending into the same circular arguments repeated ad infinitum.) Moreover, the next General Election is unlikely to take place for several years, so there's little or no point in trying to work out which party will win what, and the likely consequences thereof.

    Now, what else is going on? It looks like it might be Wales is Wonderful Day...

    1. Wales reaches the first major vaccine project goal:

    Wales will be the first UK nation to have offered the top four priority groups a Covid jab, the Welsh Government has said.

    Within hours, officials say, all over 70s including care home residents, will have been offered a first dose.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-56025773

    2. Part of Stonehenge may be a second-hand Welsh monument:

    One of Britain's biggest and oldest stone circles has been found in Wales - and could be the original building blocks of Stonehenge.

    Archaeologists uncovered the remains of the Waun Mawn site in Pembrokeshire's Preseli Hills.

    They believe the stones could have been dismantled and rebuilt 150 miles (240 km) away on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-56029203

    3. Covid genomic sequencing is very advanced in Wales:

    Meet Jess Hey, a Public Health Wales scientist who is working on hunting down new variants of Covid-19.

    She is part of a team of 16, based in Cardiff, that has been able to sequence between 15 to 20% of all positive cases in Wales since Covid arrived, one of the highest rates anywhere in the world.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-56034659
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    Pulpstar said:
    Not just yet. It's bye-bye to spectators but the tournament continues. For now, anyway.
  • Pulpstar said:
    Not just yet. It's bye-bye to spectators but the tournament continues. For now, anyway.
    So the tournament hasn't reached break point yet?
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905

    Good morning, everyone.

    Mr. B2, I wonder how those stats compare with normal times. I remember reading somewhere a large number of people save little or nothing.

    That is very true - and one would imagine that the huge amounts in additional savings that have been salted away during the pandemic have been mostly made by those who were already able to save, and actively doing so before Covid hit us.

    Shocks like this largely exacerbate existing inequalities. Some previously secure households will be in real difficulties because of unemployment, but mostly it'll be a tale of the struggling continuing to struggle and the wealthy becoming more secure.
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905

    Pulpstar said:
    Not just yet. It's bye-bye to spectators but the tournament continues. For now, anyway.
    So the tournament hasn't reached break point yet?
    I'd say this game is currently 30-15 to the virus.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,958
    Three possibilities at the next election:

    1. Tories retain their majority. 80 seats is a big cushion. But...Covid. Boris got the jab acquisition and roll-out right, so those who put him in with that majority - the older generation - may give him a thank you vote for that. But tax rises to pay for Covid may prove painful. Not a given this far out, but more likely than

    2. Labour gain an outright majority. It's going to need them to engage in Battle Royale. 15 months into this Government, no real sign of that. No Big Ideas yet. Frankly, no little ones either. A Micawber Opposition, waiting for something to come up. That something is likely to be

    3. Coalition government. Ugh. I mean, really ugh - a deeply unwelcome prospect. It is the first choice of very few. Nationalists maybe - who want to use the confusion as cover for departure from the UK. So just a means to an end, rather than a desired outcome in its own right. I'm not sure even the LibDems would go "Yippee - our 7 MPs can taste power again!"

    The English especially have an aversion to weak governments. Even weak (initially) majority Governments are hated and punished - John Major was hammered, James Callaghan before that. At regional and local level, coalitions barely make it to the next electoral test. Hell, Scotland put in place a majority SNP regime even though the system was designed to make that impossible. The default setting is a preference for strong, stable government that can implement a voter-approved manifesto.

    So if we get to the next election and the polls show we are headed for a messy coalition - with re-runs of Starmer in Sturgeon's pocket ads - I fully expect the Tories to do better from an aversion to Coalition than Labour. Just because the previous election was so much about "get Brexit done", and that has been delivered. A Labour majority is such a huge thing to deliver. The Tories post poll tax and Maggie were not in a great place, but still stayed in power when the other option was Kinnock. Many thought 1992 a shock Tory win - but I predicted the result to within an accuracy of 2 seats.

    So my take is different to Mike.

  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,571
  • Mr. Rook, it'll be more nuanced than that, though.

    A remote worker and a waitress might make similar money in normal times. One will be unaffected professionally by the current situation, the other will have been unable to work consistently at all, with only minor periods of work (if she even still has a job).

    I agree with the general tenor of your post but we should be aware of differences like that.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,958

    A big advantage for Starmer over Johnson at the next general election is that he is in with a good chance of becoming PM if the Tories lose their majority. This would be the case even if LAB has fewer seats. The converse is that Johnson’s Tories almost certainly have to win an overall majority of Commons seats to retain power.

    It's evidently a slow news day when the statements of the bleedin' obvious need to be brought back out for discussion. This topic has already been done to death: we know that the Tories need an outright win next time, or else they'll probably be replaced by a Labour minority (and then we get into the associated topic of SNP dependency, and all things Scottish end up descending into the same circular arguments repeated ad infinitum.) Moreover, the next General Election is unlikely to take place for several years, so there's little or no point in trying to work out which party will win what, and the likely consequences thereof.

    Now, what else is going on? It looks like it might be Wales is Wonderful Day...

    1. Wales reaches the first major vaccine project goal:

    Wales will be the first UK nation to have offered the top four priority groups a Covid jab, the Welsh Government has said.

    Within hours, officials say, all over 70s including care home residents, will have been offered a first dose.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-56025773

    2. Part of Stonehenge may be a second-hand Welsh monument:

    One of Britain's biggest and oldest stone circles has been found in Wales - and could be the original building blocks of Stonehenge.

    Archaeologists uncovered the remains of the Waun Mawn site in Pembrokeshire's Preseli Hills.

    They believe the stones could have been dismantled and rebuilt 150 miles (240 km) away on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-56029203

    3. Covid genomic sequencing is very advanced in Wales:

    Meet Jess Hey, a Public Health Wales scientist who is working on hunting down new variants of Covid-19.

    She is part of a team of 16, based in Cardiff, that has been able to sequence between 15 to 20% of all positive cases in Wales since Covid arrived, one of the highest rates anywhere in the world.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-56034659

    So are the Welsh going to go all "Elgin Marbles" on us and demand the return of their Stonehenge?

    (No, probably not.)
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,958

    Good morning, everyone.

    Mr. B2, I wonder how those stats compare with normal times. I remember reading somewhere a large number of people save little or nothing.

    I thought that pre-Covid, a quarter of the UK population had less than £100 in savings.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124

    Pulpstar said:
    Not just yet. It's bye-bye to spectators but the tournament continues. For now, anyway.
    So the tournament hasn't reached break point yet?
    No it's still all set.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,741
    Couple of caveats:

    1) It’s a *net* loss of 47 seats that would be needed to deprive the Tories of their majority. This may be harder than it seems. Quite a number of seats in the North and Wales have been trending Tory over time and may still fall even if the national trend flows against them.

    2) Brown has very foolishly set a precedent that the PM is the PM is the PM. That was not (contrary to the inept advice of O’Donnell) the case previously, where it was accepted and had been accepted since 1929 that an incumbent government that came a clear second in the seat count should resign office. This precedent makes a minority government taking power much harder. It means that Johnson can squat like a Gordon gargoyle in Number 10 and to remove him there needs to be a positive vote in the House for an alternative.

    So if Starmer is second in terms of seats he needs a deal for positive support, which will be much harder than if he tops the chart in terms of seats and just needs to ask everyone to abstain.

    That increases the calculation to around 80 net gains for Labour.

    Possible? Yes. Easy? Ummm...
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124

    Good morning, everyone.

    Mr. B2, I wonder how those stats compare with normal times. I remember reading somewhere a large number of people save little or nothing.

    I thought that pre-Covid, a quarter of the UK population had less than £100 in savings.
    I wonder what percentage of folk are like me - awash with monies usually spent in the past 18 months on 2/3 holidays countless meals out, a ton more petrol, a ton more purchases on a whole load of stuff.....Apart for a small amount of extra groceries & a little more heating costs I have very little in the minus section compared to a normal year. I cannot be alone in this.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,741
    edited February 2021

    A big advantage for Starmer over Johnson at the next general election is that he is in with a good chance of becoming PM if the Tories lose their majority. This would be the case even if LAB has fewer seats. The converse is that Johnson’s Tories almost certainly have to win an overall majority of Commons seats to retain power.

    It's evidently a slow news day when the statements of the bleedin' obvious need to be brought back out for discussion. This topic has already been done to death: we know that the Tories need an outright win next time, or else they'll probably be replaced by a Labour minority (and then we get into the associated topic of SNP dependency, and all things Scottish end up descending into the same circular arguments repeated ad infinitum.) Moreover, the next General Election is unlikely to take place for several years, so there's little or no point in trying to work out which party will win what, and the likely consequences thereof.

    Now, what else is going on? It looks like it might be Wales is Wonderful Day...

    1. Wales reaches the first major vaccine project goal:

    Wales will be the first UK nation to have offered the top four priority groups a Covid jab, the Welsh Government has said.

    Within hours, officials say, all over 70s including care home residents, will have been offered a first dose.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-56025773

    ...

    3. Covid genomic sequencing is very advanced in Wales:

    Meet Jess Hey, a Public Health Wales scientist who is working on hunting down new variants of Covid-19.

    She is part of a team of 16, based in Cardiff, that has been able to sequence between 15 to 20% of all positive cases in Wales since Covid arrived, one of the highest rates anywhere in the world.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-56034659

    It’s pretty embarrassing for Johnson and Sturgeon to be shown up by a weak minority government in Britain’s* poorest country led by a failed university professor.

    But how much more embarrassing for the EU is it that this stuff is so simple even Drakeford can get it right?

    * I believe Northern Ireland is poorer on average, but is not technically in Britain.
  • ydoethur said:

    Couple of caveats:

    1) It’s a *net* loss of 47 seats that would be needed to deprive the Tories of their majority. This may be harder than it seems. Quite a number of seats in the North and Wales have been trending Tory over time and may still fall even if the national trend flows against them.

    2) Brown has very foolishly set a precedent that the PM is the PM is the PM. That was not (contrary to the inept advice of O’Donnell) the case previously, where it was accepted and had been accepted since 1929 that an incumbent government that came a clear second in the seat count should resign office. This precedent makes a minority government taking power much harder. It means that Johnson can squat like a Gordon gargoyle in Number 10 and to remove him there needs to be a positive vote in the House for an alternative.

    So if Starmer is second in terms of seats he needs a deal for positive support, which will be much harder than if he tops the chart in terms of seats and just needs to ask everyone to abstain.

    That increases the calculation to around 80 net gains for Labour.

    Possible? Yes. Easy? Ummm...

    The SNP will be waiting to be bought off for their positive support.

    Their price is obvious.
  • ydoethur said:

    A big advantage for Starmer over Johnson at the next general election is that he is in with a good chance of becoming PM if the Tories lose their majority. This would be the case even if LAB has fewer seats. The converse is that Johnson’s Tories almost certainly have to win an overall majority of Commons seats to retain power.

    It's evidently a slow news day when the statements of the bleedin' obvious need to be brought back out for discussion. This topic has already been done to death: we know that the Tories need an outright win next time, or else they'll probably be replaced by a Labour minority (and then we get into the associated topic of SNP dependency, and all things Scottish end up descending into the same circular arguments repeated ad infinitum.) Moreover, the next General Election is unlikely to take place for several years, so there's little or no point in trying to work out which party will win what, and the likely consequences thereof.

    Now, what else is going on? It looks like it might be Wales is Wonderful Day...

    1. Wales reaches the first major vaccine project goal:

    Wales will be the first UK nation to have offered the top four priority groups a Covid jab, the Welsh Government has said.

    Within hours, officials say, all over 70s including care home residents, will have been offered a first dose.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-56025773

    ...

    3. Covid genomic sequencing is very advanced in Wales:

    Meet Jess Hey, a Public Health Wales scientist who is working on hunting down new variants of Covid-19.

    She is part of a team of 16, based in Cardiff, that has been able to sequence between 15 to 20% of all positive cases in Wales since Covid arrived, one of the highest rates anywhere in the world.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-56034659

    It’s pretty embarrassing for Johnson and Sturgeon to be shown up by a weak minority government in Britain’s* poorest country led by a failed university professor.

    But how much more embarrassing for the EU is it that this stuff is so simple even Drakeford can get it right?

    * I believe Northern Ireland is poorer on average, but is not technically in Britain.
    NI is in the northern part of one of the British Isles - I'd say that makes it in 'Britain'.
    It isn't in Great Britain which is the easterly of the British Isles.
    It is of course in the United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland),
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,741
    edited February 2021
    OK, so a voodoo poll to start the morning.

    TES ran an online poll to get the views of teachers on the performance of the DfE. They had eight thousand responses, which is as near as bugger it 1% of the education workforce. Probably a majority of them were teachers, although many other school staff read the TES as well (as it’s about the only reliable resource for finding out what’s happening in education - and that includes DfE announcements).

    Now normally I would of course dismiss such polls as bollocks, as when exploitative business owner with links to UNITE unemployed carer and ordinary person Rachael from Swindon runs a similar poll and finds 92% of people still think the Jezaster is awesome.

    But here is one thing that did strike me.

    Of those 8,000 respondents not a single one based in England has complete confidence in the DfE. Not ONE.

    Only 4% have even *reasonable* confidence.

    Now, such polling being self selecting, to put too much weight on it would be as foolish and dishonest a use of statistics as Nick Gibb trying to justify his hamfisted bullying to keep open schools.

    But how the actual fuck did the DfE manage to mess things up so badly that in a large sample size of education professionals of all grades not a single person believes they know what they’re doing?

    That tells me that the DfE is in for a very nasty ride. It might even have to close over this.

    Good riddance, admittedly, as long as the inept fools working in it are sacked and not redeployed to ruin other departments.

    Edit - article (complete with undue weight on stats) is here:
    https://www.tes.com/news/exclusive-school-staff-trust-dfe-covid-plummets
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    Economy contracted by 9.9% in 2020...

    Hardly surprising..
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    ydoethur said:

    Couple of caveats:

    1) It’s a *net* loss of 47 seats that would be needed to deprive the Tories of their majority. This may be harder than it seems. Quite a number of seats in the North and Wales have been trending Tory over time and may still fall even if the national trend flows against them.

    2) Brown has very foolishly set a precedent that the PM is the PM is the PM. That was not (contrary to the inept advice of O’Donnell) the case previously, where it was accepted and had been accepted since 1929 that an incumbent government that came a clear second in the seat count should resign office. This precedent makes a minority government taking power much harder. It means that Johnson can squat like a Gordon gargoyle in Number 10 and to remove him there needs to be a positive vote in the House for an alternative.

    So if Starmer is second in terms of seats he needs a deal for positive support, which will be much harder than if he tops the chart in terms of seats and just needs to ask everyone to abstain.

    That increases the calculation to around 80 net gains for Labour.

    Possible? Yes. Easy? Ummm...

    The SNP will be waiting to be bought off for their positive support.

    Their price is obvious.
    And that price is fine - if you can control when the referendum is and the terms of the question.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,741
    edited February 2021

    ydoethur said:

    A big advantage for Starmer over Johnson at the next general election is that he is in with a good chance of becoming PM if the Tories lose their majority. This would be the case even if LAB has fewer seats. The converse is that Johnson’s Tories almost certainly have to win an overall majority of Commons seats to retain power.

    It's evidently a slow news day when the statements of the bleedin' obvious need to be brought back out for discussion. This topic has already been done to death: we know that the Tories need an outright win next time, or else they'll probably be replaced by a Labour minority (and then we get into the associated topic of SNP dependency, and all things Scottish end up descending into the same circular arguments repeated ad infinitum.) Moreover, the next General Election is unlikely to take place for several years, so there's little or no point in trying to work out which party will win what, and the likely consequences thereof.

    Now, what else is going on? It looks like it might be Wales is Wonderful Day...

    1. Wales reaches the first major vaccine project goal:

    Wales will be the first UK nation to have offered the top four priority groups a Covid jab, the Welsh Government has said.

    Within hours, officials say, all over 70s including care home residents, will have been offered a first dose.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-56025773

    ...

    3. Covid genomic sequencing is very advanced in Wales:

    Meet Jess Hey, a Public Health Wales scientist who is working on hunting down new variants of Covid-19.

    She is part of a team of 16, based in Cardiff, that has been able to sequence between 15 to 20% of all positive cases in Wales since Covid arrived, one of the highest rates anywhere in the world.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-56034659

    It’s pretty embarrassing for Johnson and Sturgeon to be shown up by a weak minority government in Britain’s* poorest country led by a failed university professor.

    But how much more embarrassing for the EU is it that this stuff is so simple even Drakeford can get it right?

    * I believe Northern Ireland is poorer on average, but is not technically in Britain.
    NI is in the northern part of one of the British Isles - I'd say that makes it in 'Britain'.
    It isn't in Great Britain which is the easterly of the British Isles.
    It is of course in the United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland),
    You can argue it both ways.

    If I’m entirely honest, my decision to say it’s not in Britain was largely because I wanted a better punchline.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,741
    eek said:

    Economy contracted by 9.9% in 2020...

    Hardly surprising..

    Well, I’m slightly surprised it isn’t worse.
  • ydoethur said:

    eek said:

    Economy contracted by 9.9% in 2020...

    Hardly surprising..

    Well, I’m slightly surprised it isn’t worse.
    Indeed.

    Wasn't the initial Covid economic prediction for 14% decline in 2020, 15% growth in 2021? Which works out as being net 1% down?

    The decline in 2020 seems a lot less than initially expected.
  • JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,901
    eek said:

    Economy contracted by 9.9% in 2020...

    Hardly surprising..

    If you consider that’s with billions of public money pumping thing up, that’s pretty scary.
  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 7,979
    ydoethur said:

    Couple of caveats:

    1) It’s a *net* loss of 47 seats that would be needed to deprive the Tories of their majority. This may be harder than it seems. Quite a number of seats in the North and Wales have been trending Tory over time and may still fall even if the national trend flows against them.

    2) Brown has very foolishly set a precedent that the PM is the PM is the PM. That was not (contrary to the inept advice of O’Donnell) the case previously, where it was accepted and had been accepted since 1929 that an incumbent government that came a clear second in the seat count should resign office. This precedent makes a minority government taking power much harder. It means that Johnson can squat like a Gordon gargoyle in Number 10 and to remove him there needs to be a positive vote in the House for an alternative.

    So if Starmer is second in terms of seats he needs a deal for positive support, which will be much harder than if he tops the chart in terms of seats and just needs to ask everyone to abstain.

    That increases the calculation to around 80 net gains for Labour.

    Possible? Yes. Easy? Ummm...

    The deal he would need is simply a vote of confidence in a government led by him - confidence and supply. Similar to the DUP arrangement with the Tories.

    I doubt that there will be a formal coalition but plenty of horsetrading including a referendum on Scotland and PR.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772
    edited February 2021
    While it is true that, if we end up in a hung Parliament Labour will find it easier to form a government, the precedent of the 2015 GE campaign is that this is politically an albatross around Labour's neck.

    The voters will be told that the choice at the election is not between a majority Tory government or a majority Labour government, but between a strong and stable Tory majority government or Labour's coalition of chaos led from Holyrood.

    This is why a resurgence in Scotland is so crucial to Labour's hopes at Westminster. It's not because, numerically, they need Scottish seats. They can win enough English seats. It's because it kills off the political argument of a Labour government propped up by the SNP.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    ydoethur said:

    eek said:

    Economy contracted by 9.9% in 2020...

    Hardly surprising..

    Well, I’m slightly surprised it isn’t worse.
    Don't forget that is missing x% of the population being on furlough and being paid by the Government.

    Without that it would be rather more than 10%.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited February 2021

    A big advantage for Starmer over Johnson at the next general election is that he is in with a good chance of becoming PM if the Tories lose their majority. This would be the case even if LAB has fewer seats. The converse is that Johnson’s Tories almost certainly have to win an overall majority of Commons seats to retain power.

    It's evidently a slow news day when the statements of the bleedin' obvious need to be brought back out for discussion. This topic has already been done to death: we know that the Tories need an outright win next time, or else they'll probably be replaced by a Labour minority (and then we get into the associated topic of SNP dependency, and all things Scottish end up descending into the same circular arguments repeated ad infinitum.) Moreover, the next General Election is unlikely to take place for several years, so there's little or no point in trying to work out which party will win what, and the likely consequences thereof.

    Now, what else is going on? It looks like it might be Wales is Wonderful Day...

    1. Wales reaches the first major vaccine project goal:

    Wales will be the first UK nation to have offered the top four priority groups a Covid jab, the Welsh Government has said.

    Within hours, officials say, all over 70s including care home residents, will have been offered a first dose.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-56025773

    2. Part of Stonehenge may be a second-hand Welsh monument:

    One of Britain's biggest and oldest stone circles has been found in Wales - and could be the original building blocks of Stonehenge.

    Archaeologists uncovered the remains of the Waun Mawn site in Pembrokeshire's Preseli Hills.

    They believe the stones could have been dismantled and rebuilt 150 miles (240 km) away on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-56029203

    3. Covid genomic sequencing is very advanced in Wales:

    Meet Jess Hey, a Public Health Wales scientist who is working on hunting down new variants of Covid-19.

    She is part of a team of 16, based in Cardiff, that has been able to sequence between 15 to 20% of all positive cases in Wales since Covid arrived, one of the highest rates anywhere in the world.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-56034659

    So are the Welsh going to go all "Elgin Marbles" on us and demand the return of their Stonehenge?

    (No, probably not.)
    The Preseli hills where the stones originate from, possibly authentically also being Elvis Presley's ancestral home too, ofcourse.
  • Interesting article on the development of offshore wind electrolysis: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55763356

    I strongly suspect this is the future of our energy in this country and the best way to combine wind with the water around our island. This allows on-demand energy, unlike nuclear or tidal etc, and allows the replacement of gas boilers etc

    We need some form of storage method to reliably and on-demand produce energy when there's no wind, this seems like a smart choice.
  • eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    eek said:

    Economy contracted by 9.9% in 2020...

    Hardly surprising..

    Well, I’m slightly surprised it isn’t worse.
    Don't forget that is missing x% of the population being on furlough and being paid by the Government.

    Without that it would be rather more than 10%.
    yes furlough is just enhanced JSA
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124

    While it is true that, if we end up in a hung Parliament Labour will find it easier to form a government, the precedent of the 2015 GE campaign is that this is politically an albatross around Labour's neck.

    The voters will be told that the choice at the election is not between a majority Tory government or a majority Labour government, but between a strong and stable Tory majority government or Labour's coalition of chaos led from Holyrood.

    This is why a resurgence in Scotland is so crucial to Labour's hopes at Westminster. It's not because, numerically, they need Scottish seats. They can win enough English seats. It's because it kills off the political argument of a Labour government propped up by the SNP.

    Yesterday's poll is not encouraging for Labour:

    Scottish parliament voting intention(s): Savanta Com Res.

    Constituency:
    SNP: 54% (+1)
    CON: 23% (+4)
    LAB: 16% (-2)
    LDEM: 5% (-1)

    List:
    SNP: 43% (-1)
    CON: 21% (+5)
    LAB: 18% (-)
    GRN: 10% (-1)
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124

    A big advantage for Starmer over Johnson at the next general election is that he is in with a good chance of becoming PM if the Tories lose their majority. This would be the case even if LAB has fewer seats. The converse is that Johnson’s Tories almost certainly have to win an overall majority of Commons seats to retain power.

    It's evidently a slow news day when the statements of the bleedin' obvious need to be brought back out for discussion. This topic has already been done to death: we know that the Tories need an outright win next time, or else they'll probably be replaced by a Labour minority (and then we get into the associated topic of SNP dependency, and all things Scottish end up descending into the same circular arguments repeated ad infinitum.) Moreover, the next General Election is unlikely to take place for several years, so there's little or no point in trying to work out which party will win what, and the likely consequences thereof.

    Now, what else is going on? It looks like it might be Wales is Wonderful Day...

    1. Wales reaches the first major vaccine project goal:

    Wales will be the first UK nation to have offered the top four priority groups a Covid jab, the Welsh Government has said.

    Within hours, officials say, all over 70s including care home residents, will have been offered a first dose.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-56025773

    2. Part of Stonehenge may be a second-hand Welsh monument:

    One of Britain's biggest and oldest stone circles has been found in Wales - and could be the original building blocks of Stonehenge.

    Archaeologists uncovered the remains of the Waun Mawn site in Pembrokeshire's Preseli Hills.

    They believe the stones could have been dismantled and rebuilt 150 miles (240 km) away on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-56029203

    3. Covid genomic sequencing is very advanced in Wales:

    Meet Jess Hey, a Public Health Wales scientist who is working on hunting down new variants of Covid-19.

    She is part of a team of 16, based in Cardiff, that has been able to sequence between 15 to 20% of all positive cases in Wales since Covid arrived, one of the highest rates anywhere in the world.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-56034659

    So are the Welsh going to go all "Elgin Marbles" on us and demand the return of their Stonehenge?

    (No, probably not.)
    The Preseli hills where the stones originate from, possibly authentically also being Elvis Presley's ancestral home too, ofcourse.
    You mean the last of the true Welsh Kings and the true origin of 'Rock & Roll' .... all the way to Salisbury?

    They'll be claiming the Rolling Stones next.
  • From R4 sounds like the UK has been talking to Australia about hotel quarantine and is repeating in the same mistakes.....
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,741
    Jonathan said:

    eek said:

    Economy contracted by 9.9% in 2020...

    Hardly surprising..

    If you consider that’s with billions of public money pumping thing up, that’s pretty scary.
    Even allowing for that, I thought it would be worse.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,741
    felix said:

    A big advantage for Starmer over Johnson at the next general election is that he is in with a good chance of becoming PM if the Tories lose their majority. This would be the case even if LAB has fewer seats. The converse is that Johnson’s Tories almost certainly have to win an overall majority of Commons seats to retain power.

    It's evidently a slow news day when the statements of the bleedin' obvious need to be brought back out for discussion. This topic has already been done to death: we know that the Tories need an outright win next time, or else they'll probably be replaced by a Labour minority (and then we get into the associated topic of SNP dependency, and all things Scottish end up descending into the same circular arguments repeated ad infinitum.) Moreover, the next General Election is unlikely to take place for several years, so there's little or no point in trying to work out which party will win what, and the likely consequences thereof.

    Now, what else is going on? It looks like it might be Wales is Wonderful Day...

    1. Wales reaches the first major vaccine project goal:

    Wales will be the first UK nation to have offered the top four priority groups a Covid jab, the Welsh Government has said.

    Within hours, officials say, all over 70s including care home residents, will have been offered a first dose.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-56025773

    2. Part of Stonehenge may be a second-hand Welsh monument:

    One of Britain's biggest and oldest stone circles has been found in Wales - and could be the original building blocks of Stonehenge.

    Archaeologists uncovered the remains of the Waun Mawn site in Pembrokeshire's Preseli Hills.

    They believe the stones could have been dismantled and rebuilt 150 miles (240 km) away on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-56029203

    3. Covid genomic sequencing is very advanced in Wales:

    Meet Jess Hey, a Public Health Wales scientist who is working on hunting down new variants of Covid-19.

    She is part of a team of 16, based in Cardiff, that has been able to sequence between 15 to 20% of all positive cases in Wales since Covid arrived, one of the highest rates anywhere in the world.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-56034659

    So are the Welsh going to go all "Elgin Marbles" on us and demand the return of their Stonehenge?

    (No, probably not.)
    The Preseli hills where the stones originate from, possibly authentically also being Elvis Presley's ancestral home too, ofcourse.
    You mean the last of the true Welsh Kings and the true origin of 'Rock & Roll' .... all the way to Salisbury?

    They'll be claiming the Rolling Stones next.
    Watts ort of suggestion is that?
  • Drakeford (deservedly) getting bragging rights for Wales on R4 for completing Groups 1-4 and pointing out that vaccinations will decline over next few weeks because of supply constraints but confident Wales will get its fair share of U.K. supply. Didn’t have to make any comparisons with other parts of the U.K. either...
  • Morning all,

    Good header. It shows that despite LibDems only being on 6 or 7% in national polls what really matters is what their support is like in their key Con "winnable" seats.
  • Drakeford (deservedly) getting bragging rights for Wales on R4 for completing Groups 1-4 and pointing out that vaccinations will decline over next few weeks because of supply constraints but confident Wales will get its fair share of U.K. supply. Didn’t have to make any comparisons with other parts of the U.K. either...

    Credit where credit is due: He's done well. 👍🏻

    It was right to criticise his initial decision to keep so many doses in the freezer but he's listened to the criticism and mocking, changed course and done the right thing eventually. U-turns like that should be applauded so well done.
  • Victoria Australia thinks it can suppress B117 in 5 days. From a complete lockdown within 12 hours from its initial case three weeks later Guernsey would suggest not (still ~300 cases).
  • Hong Kong has stopped broadcasting BBC World Service ending decades of service.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124
    ydoethur said:

    felix said:

    A big advantage for Starmer over Johnson at the next general election is that he is in with a good chance of becoming PM if the Tories lose their majority. This would be the case even if LAB has fewer seats. The converse is that Johnson’s Tories almost certainly have to win an overall majority of Commons seats to retain power.

    It's evidently a slow news day when the statements of the bleedin' obvious need to be brought back out for discussion. This topic has already been done to death: we know that the Tories need an outright win next time, or else they'll probably be replaced by a Labour minority (and then we get into the associated topic of SNP dependency, and all things Scottish end up descending into the same circular arguments repeated ad infinitum.) Moreover, the next General Election is unlikely to take place for several years, so there's little or no point in trying to work out which party will win what, and the likely consequences thereof.

    Now, what else is going on? It looks like it might be Wales is Wonderful Day...

    1. Wales reaches the first major vaccine project goal:

    Wales will be the first UK nation to have offered the top four priority groups a Covid jab, the Welsh Government has said.

    Within hours, officials say, all over 70s including care home residents, will have been offered a first dose.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-56025773

    2. Part of Stonehenge may be a second-hand Welsh monument:

    One of Britain's biggest and oldest stone circles has been found in Wales - and could be the original building blocks of Stonehenge.

    Archaeologists uncovered the remains of the Waun Mawn site in Pembrokeshire's Preseli Hills.

    They believe the stones could have been dismantled and rebuilt 150 miles (240 km) away on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-56029203

    3. Covid genomic sequencing is very advanced in Wales:

    Meet Jess Hey, a Public Health Wales scientist who is working on hunting down new variants of Covid-19.

    She is part of a team of 16, based in Cardiff, that has been able to sequence between 15 to 20% of all positive cases in Wales since Covid arrived, one of the highest rates anywhere in the world.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-56034659

    So are the Welsh going to go all "Elgin Marbles" on us and demand the return of their Stonehenge?

    (No, probably not.)
    The Preseli hills where the stones originate from, possibly authentically also being Elvis Presley's ancestral home too, ofcourse.
    You mean the last of the true Welsh Kings and the true origin of 'Rock & Roll' .... all the way to Salisbury?

    They'll be claiming the Rolling Stones next.
    Watts ort of suggestion is that?
    A bit underpowered for you - too early?
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124

    Hong Kong has stopped broadcasting BBC World Service ending decades of service.

    HK's very near the end of days as in any sense free or democratic now.
  • Victoria Australia thinks it can suppress B117 in 5 days. From a complete lockdown within 12 hours from its initial case three weeks later Guernsey would suggest not (still ~300 cases).

    Australia have screwed up not prioritising the vaccine, resting on their laurels of having contained the virus.

    Australia should have invested in domestic manufacturing of the vaccine - potentially to supply themselves and New Zealand - and initiated rollout ASAP while social lockdowns and mixing weren't required. These sorts of stop-start lockdowns are going to be inevitable for them until the vaccine rollout occurs.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,741
    felix said:

    ydoethur said:

    felix said:

    A big advantage for Starmer over Johnson at the next general election is that he is in with a good chance of becoming PM if the Tories lose their majority. This would be the case even if LAB has fewer seats. The converse is that Johnson’s Tories almost certainly have to win an overall majority of Commons seats to retain power.

    It's evidently a slow news day when the statements of the bleedin' obvious need to be brought back out for discussion. This topic has already been done to death: we know that the Tories need an outright win next time, or else they'll probably be replaced by a Labour minority (and then we get into the associated topic of SNP dependency, and all things Scottish end up descending into the same circular arguments repeated ad infinitum.) Moreover, the next General Election is unlikely to take place for several years, so there's little or no point in trying to work out which party will win what, and the likely consequences thereof.

    Now, what else is going on? It looks like it might be Wales is Wonderful Day...

    1. Wales reaches the first major vaccine project goal:

    Wales will be the first UK nation to have offered the top four priority groups a Covid jab, the Welsh Government has said.

    Within hours, officials say, all over 70s including care home residents, will have been offered a first dose.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-56025773

    2. Part of Stonehenge may be a second-hand Welsh monument:

    One of Britain's biggest and oldest stone circles has been found in Wales - and could be the original building blocks of Stonehenge.

    Archaeologists uncovered the remains of the Waun Mawn site in Pembrokeshire's Preseli Hills.

    They believe the stones could have been dismantled and rebuilt 150 miles (240 km) away on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-56029203

    3. Covid genomic sequencing is very advanced in Wales:

    Meet Jess Hey, a Public Health Wales scientist who is working on hunting down new variants of Covid-19.

    She is part of a team of 16, based in Cardiff, that has been able to sequence between 15 to 20% of all positive cases in Wales since Covid arrived, one of the highest rates anywhere in the world.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-56034659

    So are the Welsh going to go all "Elgin Marbles" on us and demand the return of their Stonehenge?

    (No, probably not.)
    The Preseli hills where the stones originate from, possibly authentically also being Elvis Presley's ancestral home too, ofcourse.
    You mean the last of the true Welsh Kings and the true origin of 'Rock & Roll' .... all the way to Salisbury?

    They'll be claiming the Rolling Stones next.
    Watts ort of suggestion is that?
    A bit underpowered for you - too early?
    Just trying to provide some light relief.

    Have a good morning,
  • R4 8 am slot leading on U.K. hotel quarantine weak protocols......
  • felix said:

    Hong Kong has stopped broadcasting BBC World Service ending decades of service.

    HK's very near the end of days as in any sense free or democratic now.

    Those days ended long ago, sadly.

  • felix said:

    Hong Kong has stopped broadcasting BBC World Service ending decades of service.

    HK's very near the end of days as in any sense free or democratic now.
    Its an absolute tragedy. Lovely city, lovely people. Been there a couple of times before, doubt I'll be going back any time again soon.
  • While it is true that, if we end up in a hung Parliament Labour will find it easier to form a government, the precedent of the 2015 GE campaign is that this is politically an albatross around Labour's neck.

    The voters will be told that the choice at the election is not between a majority Tory government or a majority Labour government, but between a strong and stable Tory majority government or Labour's coalition of chaos led from Holyrood.

    This is why a resurgence in Scotland is so crucial to Labour's hopes at Westminster. It's not because, numerically, they need Scottish seats. They can win enough English seats. It's because it kills off the political argument of a Labour government propped up by the SNP.

    A difference between then and now, though, could be that perceptions of Nicola Sturgeon in England have been changed by the pandemic. The bigger question is whether the SNP actually would prop up a Labour minority government. If it does and the government is successful, the SNP loses a significant calling card for independence.

  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715

    ydoethur said:

    A big advantage for Starmer over Johnson at the next general election is that he is in with a good chance of becoming PM if the Tories lose their majority. This would be the case even if LAB has fewer seats. The converse is that Johnson’s Tories almost certainly have to win an overall majority of Commons seats to retain power.

    It's evidently a slow news day when the statements of the bleedin' obvious need to be brought back out for discussion. This topic has already been done to death: we know that the Tories need an outright win next time, or else they'll probably be replaced by a Labour minority (and then we get into the associated topic of SNP dependency, and all things Scottish end up descending into the same circular arguments repeated ad infinitum.) Moreover, the next General Election is unlikely to take place for several years, so there's little or no point in trying to work out which party will win what, and the likely consequences thereof.

    Now, what else is going on? It looks like it might be Wales is Wonderful Day...

    1. Wales reaches the first major vaccine project goal:

    Wales will be the first UK nation to have offered the top four priority groups a Covid jab, the Welsh Government has said.

    Within hours, officials say, all over 70s including care home residents, will have been offered a first dose.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-56025773

    ...

    3. Covid genomic sequencing is very advanced in Wales:

    Meet Jess Hey, a Public Health Wales scientist who is working on hunting down new variants of Covid-19.

    She is part of a team of 16, based in Cardiff, that has been able to sequence between 15 to 20% of all positive cases in Wales since Covid arrived, one of the highest rates anywhere in the world.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-56034659

    It’s pretty embarrassing for Johnson and Sturgeon to be shown up by a weak minority government in Britain’s* poorest country led by a failed university professor.

    But how much more embarrassing for the EU is it that this stuff is so simple even Drakeford can get it right?

    * I believe Northern Ireland is poorer on average, but is not technically in Britain.
    It is always so very sweet when a perennial loser gets something right & wins big time.

    We all thought Mark was in for a bashing from Boris, Arlene & Nicola. We all thought he'd end up busted and on the floor, with the Tories kicking in his sorry ass & with Nicola on top as usual ;)

    Instead, it's the greatest moment in Mark's life.

    After all, how many great moments does a shabbily-dressed, bumbling university professor ever get?

    It is a beautiful, heart-warming story to start off pb.com's day. We can't be angry or rude to each other now.

    Every loser wins ... once the dream begins
    Reminds me, slightly anyway, of Attlee's poem:

    Few thought he was even a starter.
    There were many in life who were smarter.
    But he finished PM,
    A CH, an OM,
    An earl and a Knight of the Garter.

    Ands while I don't in any way expect the last two lines to come true, and I doubt very much whether Drakeford has (m)any Westminster ambitions .........
  • Victoria Australia thinks it can suppress B117 in 5 days. From a complete lockdown within 12 hours from its initial case three weeks later Guernsey would suggest not (still ~300 cases).

    Australia have screwed up not prioritising the vaccine, resting on their laurels of having contained the virus.

    Australia should have invested in domestic manufacturing of the vaccine - potentially to supply themselves and New Zealand - and initiated rollout ASAP while social lockdowns and mixing weren't required. These sorts of stop-start lockdowns are going to be inevitable for them until the vaccine rollout occurs.
    The “good news” in the Guernsey B117 outbreak is that although it’s got into Care Homes they’d all been jabbed 3 weeks previously and most residents are uninflected and only two have mild illness.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    96% of 75-79 year olds have had the jab according to this article. Impressive.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9251771/Britain-brink-hitting-15m-vaccine-target-Morph-shot.html
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Digesting the GDP figures. Shocked that there's growth in Q4 and the YoY figure of -7.8% is a lot better than we could have expected in May-August when the numbers were really terrible.

    January is going to be really awful, so is Feb with so much of the economy simply closed. I don't expect any big bounce back in March either.

    These numbers do underline the necessity of ending lockdowns. Anyone in the government that thinks it's acceptable to continue them until September needs booting out.
  • While it is true that, if we end up in a hung Parliament Labour will find it easier to form a government, the precedent of the 2015 GE campaign is that this is politically an albatross around Labour's neck.

    The voters will be told that the choice at the election is not between a majority Tory government or a majority Labour government, but between a strong and stable Tory majority government or Labour's coalition of chaos led from Holyrood.

    This is why a resurgence in Scotland is so crucial to Labour's hopes at Westminster. It's not because, numerically, they need Scottish seats. They can win enough English seats. It's because it kills off the political argument of a Labour government propped up by the SNP.

    A difference between then and now, though, could be that perceptions of Nicola Sturgeon in England have been changed by the pandemic. The bigger question is whether the SNP actually would prop up a Labour minority government. If it does and the government is successful, the SNP loses a significant calling card for independence.

    So you expect the SNP to voluntarily play nice, and to voluntarily give away their calling card? You don't see the problem in that plan?

    The SNP as the scorpion 🦂 has no reason to make a success of a minority Labour frog 🐸 government.

    The SNP has every incentive to allow a Labour PM to be in office but for Westminster to be a catastrophe. They are agents of chaos, they have no incentive or desire to make your Westminster government work.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,056
    Fishing said:

    A minority government would most likely be a poisoned chalice for Starmer. So would one with even a small majority. Our system hates governments without working majorities.
    We've had five such governments since 1945: 1950-1, 1964-6, 1974-9, 1992-7 and 2017-9. Governments tend to be re-elected in this country, but in only one of those did the PM lead his party to victory at the following election.

    Governments without a working majority always have the smell of death about them. Their MPs are harassed; they can't get the more difficult parts of their agenda through; foreign governments and the media despise them; and everybody knows they're only there till a better alternative comes along.

    (It was Gordon Brown's unique achievement to run such a government even with a healthy overall majority).

    I suspect that a Labour led minority government or coalition, probably the former, would go for some low hanging fruit to prove popular. A year or so later, going for a second GE, much as Wilson did in 66.l
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715

    Victoria Australia thinks it can suppress B117 in 5 days. From a complete lockdown within 12 hours from its initial case three weeks later Guernsey would suggest not (still ~300 cases).

    Australia have screwed up not prioritising the vaccine, resting on their laurels of having contained the virus.

    Australia should have invested in domestic manufacturing of the vaccine - potentially to supply themselves and New Zealand - and initiated rollout ASAP while social lockdowns and mixing weren't required. These sorts of stop-start lockdowns are going to be inevitable for them until the vaccine rollout occurs.
    The “good news” in the Guernsey B117 outbreak is that although it’s got into Care Homes they’d all been jabbed 3 weeks previously and most residents are uninflected and only two have mild illness.
    They're very, very strict about it, apparently. Even difficult to travel between Guernsey and Alderney. Which has, I understand, had an outbreak.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    edited February 2021

    Victoria Australia thinks it can suppress B117 in 5 days. From a complete lockdown within 12 hours from its initial case three weeks later Guernsey would suggest not (still ~300 cases).

    Australia have screwed up not prioritising the vaccine, resting on their laurels of having contained the virus.

    Australia should have invested in domestic manufacturing of the vaccine - potentially to supply themselves and New Zealand - and initiated rollout ASAP while social lockdowns and mixing weren't required. These sorts of stop-start lockdowns are going to be inevitable for them until the vaccine rollout occurs.
    Indeed. Their strategy is fine as long as you don’t want normal life to be able to return. The number of Australian jobs that depend on tourism must be enormous.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited February 2021
    It looks like Stonehenge and Elvis really do have the same ancestry.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/774228.stm

    "A Cardiff academic has published new evidence that Elvis's ancestors came from the Preseli hills in west Wales.

    Mr Breverton claims the family could well have had links with a nearby chapel dedicated to St Elvis - the only one known in Britain."
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715
    Foxy said:

    Fishing said:

    A minority government would most likely be a poisoned chalice for Starmer. So would one with even a small majority. Our system hates governments without working majorities.
    We've had five such governments since 1945: 1950-1, 1964-6, 1974-9, 1992-7 and 2017-9. Governments tend to be re-elected in this country, but in only one of those did the PM lead his party to victory at the following election.

    Governments without a working majority always have the smell of death about them. Their MPs are harassed; they can't get the more difficult parts of their agenda through; foreign governments and the media despise them; and everybody knows they're only there till a better alternative comes along.

    (It was Gordon Brown's unique achievement to run such a government even with a healthy overall majority).

    I suspect that a Labour led minority government or coalition, probably the former, would go for some low hanging fruit to prove popular. A year or so later, going for a second GE, much as Wilson did in 66.l
    I wonder who'd take the Patrick Gordon Walker role!
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080

    From R4 sounds like the UK has been talking to Australia about hotel quarantine and is repeating in the same mistakes.....

    Indeed. 'Quarantine where you can go out' - from the "don't book a holiday" Health Secretary who has already booked his.
  • YBarddCwscYBarddCwsc Posts: 7,172

    I actually think the header is quite wrong & SKS does not want to deprive the Tories of a majority in 2024.

    For the Labour Party, the very best thing is to win an absolute majority, of course. But, barring a huge improvement in their performance in Scotland, that is very, very unlikely, IMO.

    Given that the options for SKS are

    1. Deprive the Tories of a majority, and lead a minority Govt backed by an unstable hodge-podge of a coalition. This will lead to squabbling chaos and probable collapse in short order.

    2. Leave the Tories in power with a majority of ~ 5 to deal with the mess, with the likelihood that within a year, it is the Tory Govt that will have collapsed in squabbling chaos. A second election in quick succession is much more likely to deliver what SKS wants, which is a Labour majority.

    Surely, SKS needs option 2.
  • Getting into Downing Street with SNP votes and only able to pass laws with SNP votes will be about as successful as if the European Commission President was elected with Nigel Farage's votes pre Brexit, and only capable of passing laws with UKIP support.

    It doesn't work.

    If you expect Ian Blackford to be playing nice marching through the lobbies every day in order to make Westminster succeed then you have another thing coming.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,056

    While it is true that, if we end up in a hung Parliament Labour will find it easier to form a government, the precedent of the 2015 GE campaign is that this is politically an albatross around Labour's neck.

    The voters will be told that the choice at the election is not between a majority Tory government or a majority Labour government, but between a strong and stable Tory majority government or Labour's coalition of chaos led from Holyrood.

    This is why a resurgence in Scotland is so crucial to Labour's hopes at Westminster. It's not because, numerically, they need Scottish seats. They can win enough English seats. It's because it kills off the political argument of a Labour government propped up by the SNP.

    A difference between then and now, though, could be that perceptions of Nicola Sturgeon in England have been changed by the pandemic. The bigger question is whether the SNP actually would prop up a Labour minority government. If it does and the government is successful, the SNP loses a significant calling card for independence.

    I think that the price would clearly be a referendum, but the interesting thing would be the negotiations around that.

    In particular a year or two negotiating what an Independence deal would look like, in advance of a referendum, so as to learn the Brexit lesson. Not only would such a deal inform the plebiscite, it would bind both governments into making the negotiations constructive.
  • ydoethur said:

    Couple of caveats:

    1) It’s a *net* loss of 47 seats that would be needed to deprive the Tories of their majority. This may be harder than it seems. Quite a number of seats in the North and Wales have been trending Tory over time and may still fall even if the national trend flows against them.

    2) Brown has very foolishly set a precedent that the PM is the PM is the PM. That was not (contrary to the inept advice of O’Donnell) the case previously, where it was accepted and had been accepted since 1929 that an incumbent government that came a clear second in the seat count should resign office. This precedent makes a minority government taking power much harder. It means that Johnson can squat like a Gordon gargoyle in Number 10 and to remove him there needs to be a positive vote in the House for an alternative.

    So if Starmer is second in terms of seats he needs a deal for positive support, which will be much harder than if he tops the chart in terms of seats and just needs to ask everyone to abstain.

    That increases the calculation to around 80 net gains for Labour.

    Possible? Yes. Easy? Ummm...

    Very carefully worded to swerve round the precedent of Ted Heath, who resigned the Monday following polling day (whereas it was Tuesday for Brown).
  • YBarddCwscYBarddCwsc Posts: 7,172
    Foxy said:

    Fishing said:

    A minority government would most likely be a poisoned chalice for Starmer. So would one with even a small majority. Our system hates governments without working majorities.
    We've had five such governments since 1945: 1950-1, 1964-6, 1974-9, 1992-7 and 2017-9. Governments tend to be re-elected in this country, but in only one of those did the PM lead his party to victory at the following election.

    Governments without a working majority always have the smell of death about them. Their MPs are harassed; they can't get the more difficult parts of their agenda through; foreign governments and the media despise them; and everybody knows they're only there till a better alternative comes along.

    (It was Gordon Brown's unique achievement to run such a government even with a healthy overall majority).

    I suspect that a Labour led minority government or coalition, probably the former, would go for some low hanging fruit to prove popular. A year or so later, going for a second GE, much as Wilson did in 66.l
    Given the likely constitutional & economic mess, I'd be very surprised if there is any low-hanging fruit, ripe for quick harvest.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,001
    edited February 2021

    While it is true that, if we end up in a hung Parliament Labour will find it easier to form a government, the precedent of the 2015 GE campaign is that this is politically an albatross around Labour's neck.

    The voters will be told that the choice at the election is not between a majority Tory government or a majority Labour government, but between a strong and stable Tory majority government or Labour's coalition of chaos led from Holyrood.

    This is why a resurgence in Scotland is so crucial to Labour's hopes at Westminster. It's not because, numerically, they need Scottish seats. They can win enough English seats. It's because it kills off the political argument of a Labour government propped up by the SNP.

    A difference between then and now, though, could be that perceptions of Nicola Sturgeon in England have been changed by the pandemic. The bigger question is whether the SNP actually would prop up a Labour minority government. If it does and the government is successful, the SNP loses a significant calling card for independence.

    So you expect the SNP to voluntarily play nice, and to voluntarily give away their calling card? You don't see the problem in that plan?

    The SNP as the scorpion 🦂 has no reason to make a success of a minority Labour frog 🐸 government.

    The SNP has every incentive to allow a Labour PM to be in office but for Westminster to be a catastrophe. They are agents of chaos, they have no incentive or desire to make your Westminster government work.
    It was interesting on Euro news this morning that the forthcoming Catalonia election is seeing a collapse in support for parties seeking independence, with those interviewed saying covid has relegated independence as an issue and the result is likely to be welcomed in Madrid
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715
    There's one thing for sure. No-one, after the experiences of the LD's and DUP, is going to prop up the Tories, except perhaps on a case by case basis. Not even Confidence and Supply.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880

    felix said:

    Hong Kong has stopped broadcasting BBC World Service ending decades of service.

    HK's very near the end of days as in any sense free or democratic now.

    Those days ended long ago, sadly.

    HK cops have always been complete fuckers in my experience. A fellow officer and I were having a good natured fist fight over who had the right to steal an old lady's Flying Pigeon in order to cheat in a running race to the top of Victoria Peak. A pair of HK cops arrived, knocked multiple hues of shite out of us with hardwood batons then wordlessly departed.
  • Andy_JS said:

    Victoria Australia thinks it can suppress B117 in 5 days. From a complete lockdown within 12 hours from its initial case three weeks later Guernsey would suggest not (still ~300 cases).

    Australia have screwed up not prioritising the vaccine, resting on their laurels of having contained the virus.

    Australia should have invested in domestic manufacturing of the vaccine - potentially to supply themselves and New Zealand - and initiated rollout ASAP while social lockdowns and mixing weren't required. These sorts of stop-start lockdowns are going to be inevitable for them until the vaccine rollout occurs.
    Indeed. Their strategy is fine as long as you don’t want normal life to be able to return. The number of Australian jobs that depend on tourism must be enormous.
    That goes back to the paradox that the US and UK, who are doing really well at vaccination, did really badly at managing the pandemic. So they needed to do lots of jabs quickly.
  • Foxy said:

    While it is true that, if we end up in a hung Parliament Labour will find it easier to form a government, the precedent of the 2015 GE campaign is that this is politically an albatross around Labour's neck.

    The voters will be told that the choice at the election is not between a majority Tory government or a majority Labour government, but between a strong and stable Tory majority government or Labour's coalition of chaos led from Holyrood.

    This is why a resurgence in Scotland is so crucial to Labour's hopes at Westminster. It's not because, numerically, they need Scottish seats. They can win enough English seats. It's because it kills off the political argument of a Labour government propped up by the SNP.

    A difference between then and now, though, could be that perceptions of Nicola Sturgeon in England have been changed by the pandemic. The bigger question is whether the SNP actually would prop up a Labour minority government. If it does and the government is successful, the SNP loses a significant calling card for independence.

    I think that the price would clearly be a referendum, but the interesting thing would be the negotiations around that.

    In particular a year or two negotiating what an Independence deal would look like, in advance of a referendum, so as to learn the Brexit lesson. Not only would such a deal inform the plebiscite, it would bind both governments into making the negotiations constructive.
    You expect that Sturgeon and Starmer (or their successors) could successfully negotiate that without the talks breaking down?
  • felix said:

    Hong Kong has stopped broadcasting BBC World Service ending decades of service.

    HK's very near the end of days as in any sense free or democratic now.

    Those days ended long ago, sadly.

    Those days did not start much earlier. Remember that Hong Kong was not a democracy when we ran the show.
  • Victoria Australia thinks it can suppress B117 in 5 days. From a complete lockdown within 12 hours from its initial case three weeks later Guernsey would suggest not (still ~300 cases).

    Australia have screwed up not prioritising the vaccine, resting on their laurels of having contained the virus.

    Australia should have invested in domestic manufacturing of the vaccine - potentially to supply themselves and New Zealand - and initiated rollout ASAP while social lockdowns and mixing weren't required. These sorts of stop-start lockdowns are going to be inevitable for them until the vaccine rollout occurs.
    The “good news” in the Guernsey B117 outbreak is that although it’s got into Care Homes they’d all been jabbed 3 weeks previously and most residents are uninflected and only two have mild illness.
    They're very, very strict about it, apparently. Even difficult to travel between Guernsey and Alderney. Which has, I understand, had an outbreak.
    The Alderney outbreak was in someone who was identified via contact tracing and was in home quarantine at the time - so they’re hopeful it has got no further. Alderney & Sark may start winding back lockdown before Guernsey. Cases of unidentified community transmission in Guernsey have been declining for several days now - but then if you’re doing the U.K. equivalent of over a million tests a day you’ll be finding nearly as many cases as there are out there.
  • GaussianGaussian Posts: 793

    Victoria Australia thinks it can suppress B117 in 5 days. From a complete lockdown within 12 hours from its initial case three weeks later Guernsey would suggest not (still ~300 cases).

    Oh dear, it's being sold as a circuit breaker. Either the Victoria government is completely incompetent or they're trying to salami slice the bad news, using the 5 days to establish just how bad the problem is and then regretfully announcing further measures.
  • felix said:

    Hong Kong has stopped broadcasting BBC World Service ending decades of service.

    HK's very near the end of days as in any sense free or democratic now.

    Those days ended long ago, sadly.

    Those days did not start much earlier. Remember that Hong Kong was not a democracy when we ran the show.

    Very fair point!

  • There's one thing for sure. No-one, after the experiences of the LD's and DUP, is going to prop up the Tories, except perhaps on a case by case basis. Not even Confidence and Supply.

    And Cameron and May were, frankly, less divisive figures than Johnson or any likely successor.

    In the 2024 scenario sketched out here, Nicky S either topples the Conservative government or permits them to continue.

    She doesn't really have a choice, does she?
  • Boris may well get a Covid bonus at the next election but if he does then surely so will Labour in Wales and the SNP in Scotland, with Northern Ireland being slightly more messy for reasons Karen Bradley can probably explain after a fashion. It is possible the 2024 Parliament may look horribly familiar.
  • While it is true that, if we end up in a hung Parliament Labour will find it easier to form a government, the precedent of the 2015 GE campaign is that this is politically an albatross around Labour's neck.

    The voters will be told that the choice at the election is not between a majority Tory government or a majority Labour government, but between a strong and stable Tory majority government or Labour's coalition of chaos led from Holyrood.

    This is why a resurgence in Scotland is so crucial to Labour's hopes at Westminster. It's not because, numerically, they need Scottish seats. They can win enough English seats. It's because it kills off the political argument of a Labour government propped up by the SNP.

    A difference between then and now, though, could be that perceptions of Nicola Sturgeon in England have been changed by the pandemic. The bigger question is whether the SNP actually would prop up a Labour minority government. If it does and the government is successful, the SNP loses a significant calling card for independence.

    So you expect the SNP to voluntarily play nice, and to voluntarily give away their calling card? You don't see the problem in that plan?

    The SNP as the scorpion 🦂 has no reason to make a success of a minority Labour frog 🐸 government.

    The SNP has every incentive to allow a Labour PM to be in office but for Westminster to be a catastrophe. They are agents of chaos, they have no incentive or desire to make your Westminster government work.

    Yes, I totally understand that, Phil. The issue is whether they could sell that in Scotland to the entirety of their current voting coalition, a large part of which has been taken from Labour. If you say that Scottish independence is necessary to protect Scotland from Tory governments in Westminster, working with the Tories at Westminster to bring down a Labour government may not be the smartest thing to do.

  • Barnesian said:

    ydoethur said:

    Couple of caveats:

    1) It’s a *net* loss of 47 seats that would be needed to deprive the Tories of their majority. This may be harder than it seems. Quite a number of seats in the North and Wales have been trending Tory over time and may still fall even if the national trend flows against them.

    2) Brown has very foolishly set a precedent that the PM is the PM is the PM. That was not (contrary to the inept advice of O’Donnell) the case previously, where it was accepted and had been accepted since 1929 that an incumbent government that came a clear second in the seat count should resign office. This precedent makes a minority government taking power much harder. It means that Johnson can squat like a Gordon gargoyle in Number 10 and to remove him there needs to be a positive vote in the House for an alternative.

    So if Starmer is second in terms of seats he needs a deal for positive support, which will be much harder than if he tops the chart in terms of seats and just needs to ask everyone to abstain.

    That increases the calculation to around 80 net gains for Labour.

    Possible? Yes. Easy? Ummm...

    The deal he would need is simply a vote of confidence in a government led by him - confidence and supply. Similar to the DUP arrangement with the Tories.

    I doubt that there will be a formal coalition but plenty of horsetrading including a referendum on Scotland and PR.
    Whats actually in it for Starmer to agree to this? In the very short term he becomes PM but at a cost of losing Scotland both baking in more and more Tory rule across rUK, and letting the Tories switch the public perception of blame on Scotland leaving from Brexit/Boris to Labour being weak.

    What would his government look like? Perhaps lasting two years, takes over a huge govt debt, unable to do anything bar deal with Scottish independence and a PR referendum for rUK that they probably lose. As soon as Scotland vote for indy his majority vanishes.

    The last few years have shown plenty of global politicians take very stupid decisions with only short term upside so I could see it happening, but equally Starmer and Labour may prefer another election straight after or even to leave the mess to the Tories.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715

    There's one thing for sure. No-one, after the experiences of the LD's and DUP, is going to prop up the Tories, except perhaps on a case by case basis. Not even Confidence and Supply.

    And Cameron and May were, frankly, less divisive figures than Johnson or any likely successor.

    In the 2024 scenario sketched out here, Nicky S either topples the Conservative government or permits them to continue.

    She doesn't really have a choice, does she?
    While Johnson is unlikely to be trying form a Government after a defeat, surely his 'honesty and trustworthiness' is going to run off onto anyone from his Cabinet who succeeds him.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,056

    Foxy said:

    While it is true that, if we end up in a hung Parliament Labour will find it easier to form a government, the precedent of the 2015 GE campaign is that this is politically an albatross around Labour's neck.

    The voters will be told that the choice at the election is not between a majority Tory government or a majority Labour government, but between a strong and stable Tory majority government or Labour's coalition of chaos led from Holyrood.

    This is why a resurgence in Scotland is so crucial to Labour's hopes at Westminster. It's not because, numerically, they need Scottish seats. They can win enough English seats. It's because it kills off the political argument of a Labour government propped up by the SNP.

    A difference between then and now, though, could be that perceptions of Nicola Sturgeon in England have been changed by the pandemic. The bigger question is whether the SNP actually would prop up a Labour minority government. If it does and the government is successful, the SNP loses a significant calling card for independence.

    I think that the price would clearly be a referendum, but the interesting thing would be the negotiations around that.

    In particular a year or two negotiating what an Independence deal would look like, in advance of a referendum, so as to learn the Brexit lesson. Not only would such a deal inform the plebiscite, it would bind both governments into making the negotiations constructive.
    You expect that Sturgeon and Starmer (or their successors) could successfully negotiate that without the talks breaking down?
    A deal (or explicit No Deal) in advance of the vote would be much better for the voters. It would also mean that Starmer could not be to punitive.
  • Foxy said:

    While it is true that, if we end up in a hung Parliament Labour will find it easier to form a government, the precedent of the 2015 GE campaign is that this is politically an albatross around Labour's neck.

    The voters will be told that the choice at the election is not between a majority Tory government or a majority Labour government, but between a strong and stable Tory majority government or Labour's coalition of chaos led from Holyrood.

    This is why a resurgence in Scotland is so crucial to Labour's hopes at Westminster. It's not because, numerically, they need Scottish seats. They can win enough English seats. It's because it kills off the political argument of a Labour government propped up by the SNP.

    A difference between then and now, though, could be that perceptions of Nicola Sturgeon in England have been changed by the pandemic. The bigger question is whether the SNP actually would prop up a Labour minority government. If it does and the government is successful, the SNP loses a significant calling card for independence.

    I think that the price would clearly be a referendum, but the interesting thing would be the negotiations around that.

    In particular a year or two negotiating what an Independence deal would look like, in advance of a referendum, so as to learn the Brexit lesson. Not only would such a deal inform the plebiscite, it would bind both governments into making the negotiations constructive.

    My guess is that Labour will not seek any kind of formal agreement. The emphasis will be on the SNP to decide whether or not they want to work with the Tories to bring down a Labour minority government. If they do, so be it. The SNP will then need to sell that in Scotland at the subsequent general election.

  • While it is true that, if we end up in a hung Parliament Labour will find it easier to form a government, the precedent of the 2015 GE campaign is that this is politically an albatross around Labour's neck.

    The voters will be told that the choice at the election is not between a majority Tory government or a majority Labour government, but between a strong and stable Tory majority government or Labour's coalition of chaos led from Holyrood.

    This is why a resurgence in Scotland is so crucial to Labour's hopes at Westminster. It's not because, numerically, they need Scottish seats. They can win enough English seats. It's because it kills off the political argument of a Labour government propped up by the SNP.

    A difference between then and now, though, could be that perceptions of Nicola Sturgeon in England have been changed by the pandemic. The bigger question is whether the SNP actually would prop up a Labour minority government. If it does and the government is successful, the SNP loses a significant calling card for independence.

    So you expect the SNP to voluntarily play nice, and to voluntarily give away their calling card? You don't see the problem in that plan?

    The SNP as the scorpion 🦂 has no reason to make a success of a minority Labour frog 🐸 government.

    The SNP has every incentive to allow a Labour PM to be in office but for Westminster to be a catastrophe. They are agents of chaos, they have no incentive or desire to make your Westminster government work.

    Yes, I totally understand that, Phil. The issue is whether they could sell that in Scotland to the entirety of their current voting coalition, a large part of which has been taken from Labour. If you say that Scottish independence is necessary to protect Scotland from Tory governments in Westminster, working with the Tories at Westminster to bring down a Labour government may not be the smartest thing to do.

    The paradox here is that Labour need to prevent independence far more so than the conservatives
  • Barnesian said:

    ydoethur said:

    Couple of caveats:

    1) It’s a *net* loss of 47 seats that would be needed to deprive the Tories of their majority. This may be harder than it seems. Quite a number of seats in the North and Wales have been trending Tory over time and may still fall even if the national trend flows against them.

    2) Brown has very foolishly set a precedent that the PM is the PM is the PM. That was not (contrary to the inept advice of O’Donnell) the case previously, where it was accepted and had been accepted since 1929 that an incumbent government that came a clear second in the seat count should resign office. This precedent makes a minority government taking power much harder. It means that Johnson can squat like a Gordon gargoyle in Number 10 and to remove him there needs to be a positive vote in the House for an alternative.

    So if Starmer is second in terms of seats he needs a deal for positive support, which will be much harder than if he tops the chart in terms of seats and just needs to ask everyone to abstain.

    That increases the calculation to around 80 net gains for Labour.

    Possible? Yes. Easy? Ummm...

    The deal he would need is simply a vote of confidence in a government led by him - confidence and supply. Similar to the DUP arrangement with the Tories.

    I doubt that there will be a formal coalition but plenty of horsetrading including a referendum on Scotland and PR.
    Whats actually in it for Starmer to agree to this? In the very short term he becomes PM but at a cost of losing Scotland both baking in more and more Tory rule across rUK, and letting the Tories switch the public perception of blame on Scotland leaving from Brexit/Boris to Labour being weak.

    What would his government look like? Perhaps lasting two years, takes over a huge govt debt, unable to do anything bar deal with Scottish independence and a PR referendum for rUK that they probably lose. As soon as Scotland vote for indy his majority vanishes.

    The last few years have shown plenty of global politicians take very stupid decisions with only short term upside so I could see it happening, but equally Starmer and Labour may prefer another election straight after or even to leave the mess to the Tories.

    Exactly - and for the SNP to defend their decision to work with the Tories to bring down a Labour government at the general election that follows.

This discussion has been closed.