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Hartlepool: Labour still feels value in the Hartlepool betting – politicalbetting.com
Hartlepool: Labour still feels value in the Hartlepool betting – politicalbetting.com
Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer were both campaigning in Hartlepool yesterday. That may be because they both believe the by-election there to be very close or it may be that they wish to give that impression.
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Also, Starmer isn't Corbyn but he is Starmer and has his own issues - insincere triangulating north London left-liberal being chief amongst them - and I don't think Westminster bubble issues on Boris will resonate here.
Not inclined to bet on this, to be honest. Can see it going either way.
If the Tories win it will be in spite of and not because of her. I can only assume she got it because she has friends in high places.
I'm not naive or delusional. I think Labour are making progress but in the Mets, university towns and southern places like Worthing, Wycombe, and Milton Keynes where young middle-class graduates are clustering and modestly in Scotland and Wales too.
They aren't here.
Labour's problem in the post industrial areas of the old coalfields is that they have no real plan to revive them either socially or economically. I am not convinced that the Tories do either, apart from pork barrelling them.
https://twitter.com/SophyRidgeSky/status/1385711372126855172
https://www.countbinface.com/london-2021-manifesto
4.5 to beat Fox with Shadsy.
For very regular punters, such value bets at not long odds are perhaps more interesting than to those of us who dabble ?
Problem, for them is that so might Boris.
I think that the better paid jobs in the green technology and pharma sector are in the research and design sector, rather than manufacturing. The key to getting those jobs to places like Teeside is making them attractive to university graduates as places to live. Celebrating cultural reaction is unlikely to do that.
The headlines are not good for the PM or the Conservatives at the moment. I don't think that, as the Post Office scandal opens up further that initially that will be good for the Conservatives, although our PM ought to be able to turn the situation to his advantage.
On the other hand, Cummings revelations, while coming from a somewhat tainted source but touch a nerve.
And Good Morning everyone. Sunny again and Mrs C and I had en excellent lunch in a very pleasant pub garden yesterday. With a goldfinch singing his little heart out on a nearby tree, so high that I couldn't get a decent picture on my phone.
America could use this sort of humour in its politics, quite frankly.
Which puts us in the position where the PM personally decided to get his hands dirty phoning the press to spread what he knew were a pack of lies. Presumably to deflect attention away from one of Carrie’s friends.
The solid oxide fuel cells from Ceres power, which generate heat and electricity (approx half and half) from natural gas have a combined efficiency of around 90%. They only really work on a fairly large scale, though (200kW plus) - but for large developments they are much more efficient than mains electricity.
And the heat can also be used for powering cooling systems via adsorptive refrigeration, so is usable year round.
It’s a great interim fix for reducing carbon footprint in the short/medium term, since it’s economically very attractive for a lot of projects.
For some reason this turns into a formal briefing to three newspapers...why?
https://twitter.com/aljwhite/status/1385834770165293056
Total Westminster bubble story. The journalists are too close to the action and getting overexcited and the opposition too desperate to believe they have a chance to take the Government down.
Surely this is an easy orginisational for a quick "Binface for London" Facebook group? Organise 20k London residents to slap 100 quid on the result and vote for him?
20,000 votes for him is achievable.
I'm already on record saying that, given Hartlepool held for Labour in 2019, and the extreme rarity of Government victories in Parliamentary by-elections, Labour should hold again this time. However, if I'm mistaken and the Tories get in, there's an excellent chance that Labour will never win the seat back, because in much of the country support for them is reflexive and habitual, and once the habit is broken and they become the losers much of that support simply melts away. In all of the five Red Wall seats that Theresa May somehow managed to win in 2017, slender Tory victories were converted into five figure thumpings two years later. Come the next election, we'll likely see a LOT of that sort of thing happening.
Somehow don’t think you would be saying this if the leaks had come from Blair or Brown’s Downing St.
This is clearly serious and more than a bubble story. It contains preferential treatment for donors , Tories ‘using Covid’ , accusations of madness and toxicity at the heart of government.
I appreciate you want it to go away, not least because it questions why on Earth anyone can support this.
Also Hartlepudilians are fiercely devoted to the essentially eugenicist philosophy that underpins Brexit.
But, that's not going to dent Government support because their policies and values are simply far more in tune with the electorate. It will only do so once the opposition have already got to an electable position first.
And then you have Boris saves football from some nasty billionaires, and even better some Italian nutter says he did so, the naughty man (as did UEFA)! The Tories would pay Super League money to get advertising like that, and on the back pages too, which people actually read.
One other factor is that the lunatic fringe of Labour are going to be voting Green or even Tory in a desperate attempt to get rid of Keir.
I was thinking the Tories are going to do much better than expected everywhere, including Hartlepool.
Slowly, but surely all this added up to enough to unseat him. By the time of the election he still delighted his cult like following, blind to the fact that a coalition had rallied around the imperfect Biden.
. . .
But here’s the strangest thing: none of it is making any difference to the Prime Minister’s standing in the eyes of the general public.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/teflon-boris-is-causing-starmer-to-come-unstuck
The pinprick efforts of Starmer, Cummings and Peter Brookes will come to nought.
Environment Minister Koizumi asked why Japan’ new emissions reduction target set at 46%:
“It's not as though I have a clear vision in sight, but rather a silhouette emerged. What came to mind then was the number 46."
https://twitter.com/MarikaKatanuma/status/1385800948157542400
X gives Y £100k
Y refunds X £100k
What is to stop X then giving Y the £100k back after its refunded, if they were able to give it under the radar in the first place.
It's interesting that Boris took time out to campaign there. I doubt he would have done that if he wasn't getting told that it was a possible win. But Labour, surely, aren't going backwards from the disaster of 2019, are they?
Labour is clogging up the plumbing of our democratic system now. Simultaneously too weak to win and too well dug in to its strongholds to be displaced. Very well. Until Labour either reforms itself fundamentally or is finally ground down and replaced then we shall just have to have Tories, Tories and more Tories. Very much the lesser of two evils.
His biggest worry is what the hell incentivises the Labour vote to get off its arse on polling day? Which is a wider issue for the Party.
Dominic Cummings launches attack on Boris Johnson's integrity
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56863547
Since when did Johnson have any integrity to attack?
Starmer has tried to disassociate himself with this but it's insincere - both because of his own past utterances, because many of his MPs, activists and members come out with this nonsense almost daily and his councils keep pushing it forward. It would require phenomenonal leadership to turn this around (from the centre-left) within a unity narrative that would require drawing on skills Starmer simply doesn't have.
Voters don't like snouts in the trough, but they're not going to vote for a party that hates them and threatens them because of it - instead they'll tolerate it.
Downing Street decorators.
*Labour is much weaker than the Democrats
*Biden didn't have to cope with having one leg chewed off by the California National Party
Bede would be a much better patron saint for England (if you've got to have one). From the red wall, never went any further than Ripon in his life and would 100% have voted leave.
Johnson is not Trump.
Boris has delivered the near perfect vaccine programme.
"He has history" - yes, as a winner.
Boris is as bent as a two bob note.
But I agree with both those who say this latest twist will have no short-term effect AND with those who claim this supports the longer-term chipping away of Boris’s general electability.
Redfield and Wilton had Khan down 4%, from 51% to 47%, from 6-8 March to 15-16 April.
Opinium had Khan down 2%, from 53% to 51%, from 17-20 March to 7-10 April.
It's possible there is a late swing away from Khan, or simply that the Comres methodology is superior, and 16/1 are fairly long odds. But I won't be taking this bet. Not a single poll has shown Khan under 40% and only 1 poll ,which had Niko Omilana on 5%, has shown him under 45%.
Johnson is a shit but he's vastly superior to the despicable creature that Labour tried to foist upon us in 2019. Some of us also haven't forgotten that the last Labour Government was responsible for the effective destruction of the United Kingdom. We don't want the same thing happening to England, thank you very much.
You could have made the same point after 2015 - when Labour scored 36% with UKIP on 28% and the Tories on 21%. Yet in 2017 with the UKIP vote falling 17%, the Labour vote went up by significantly more than the Tories - a net Con/Lab swing to Labour of 1.8%, compared to the national swing of 2.0%. So the collapse of the UKIP vote made little difference to the two-party swing.
Fortunately fashions change. Boris’ bell bottoms whilst all the rage are starting to wear a little thin. And whilst you’re still wearing them, it’s evident that you’re not entirely comfortable.
It's a GOTV classic. Very low turn out and so on.
Presumably, that's because the questions are simply far too difficult.
Anyway, I must go for painkillers and rest. Ex-tooth is grim and giving me grief.
https://twitter.com/campbellclaret/status/1385828992138285063?s=20
Interesting change of style in Cummings' latest blog. From long, rambling and incontinent, to rather tight and focused, as though he had the help of an experienced journalist who knew how to land more blows with fewer words. Anyone seen @michaelgove? And re the flat refurb
Paul Waugh
@paulwaugh
This is extraordinary and risks getting lost.
@SamCoatesSky
says
@BorisJohnson
personally phoned newspaper editors to brief that Cummings had leaked his messages.
The point is I’ve heard all of this before, just uttered from Labour mouths in about 2006-2007.
And the Tories might reinvent themselves again (and change their leader) before that takes effect, of course.
Who handed over money to the PM to decorate his home is a question of legitimate public interest.