On the BBC quiz show "Pointless" last week there was a round where contestants had to identify politicians from their photos. The aim was to identify the MP that scored the lowest in terms of members of the public surveyed recognising them. The programme was filmed since Covid regulations came in. Keir Starmer had 46 per cent recognition with the public, Anneliese Dodds 3 and Angela Rayner 4. The opposition doesn't seem to be cutting through with members of the public.
Not the opposition, everyone but the PM. Rishi Sunak joined Keir Starmer in the 40s, for example. And Ed Davey...well...
I find those results amazing. Has all of Blackford's campaigning for smuggest, most objectionable oaf in the Commons truly been in vain? Surely he has irritated more people than that.
It depends when this was filmed but I find it remarkable after a global pandemic, when he's barely been off the screens, that two-thirds of the country can't name the Health Secretary from his picture.
But all that work. His cunning plan of making the English vote for Scottish independence by just irritating the hell out of them, its in ruins.
If you, but more importantly Labour, don't get this then there is no way they are returning to power anytime soon.
This is lazy analysis. Just because there's been some big political shifts in one area doesn't mean they cant be some in another.
If the Tories win Hartlepool by the amount suggested and IF (big if) the national polling is actually in the region of a 2% lead, rather than 10%, that suggests some big swings to Labour elsewhere...
I agree. What has made the Tories so successful over the last decade is the increased efficiency of their vote compared to the days when they got within 3% of Blair and he got a very comfortable majority. This has happened so far because the very considerable ebbing of their strength in the south of England has merely reduced their majorities whilst they have suddenly become much more competitive in the midlands, the east and now the north.
But as Labour is finding in reverse there is a tipping point in these things. The seats Labour took for granted whilst it went fishing in the suburbs and university towns of the south have bitten back and it is all too possible that southern seats which were much more remainer, much more liberal and much more dominated by professional classes will in turn get fed up being taken for granted.
Overall this is a good thing. It was not healthy that the Tories were content to get a majority with only the odd rural seat north of Birmingham and the inability of Labour to relate to our most economically successful areas outside of the actual cities meant that they had little to say in that area. A situation where both our major parties have a fair degree of representation from most of our country improves the chances of the government being aware of the needs of all of the country.
Most of the problems there arise from the voting system, which directs all the political attention to those areas considered marginal, and neglects the safer areas for any party.
Whilst that is undoubtedly true it seems to me that Labour is going through an identity crises where they will become more potent in seats that are more like them, that is middle class, professional, well educated, dominated by the public sector and frankly rather more interested in the privileges of such people than those who have very little.
Those with little have caught on. They may come to realise that Boris doesn't really give a toss about them either but at least he pretends to listen and he is amusing rather than patronising.
"pretends to listen"? He delivered them their verdict on Brexit. Labour were set against doing so.
Yes, pretends to listen. Do the people of Hartlepool want Brexit because it is Brexit, or because what they hope it will bring them? Pools is a classic post industrial left behind backwater. People want back the jobs and prosperity and pride and hope that was taken from them. Brexit was the silver bullet to cure these ills which is why they were so enthusiastic for it.
Where the Tories will struggle is that they can't deliver what was promised. I have no doubt that Hartlepool will be thrown a few scraps once it goes Tory but it won't change the fundamental problems with the town and the region. One prime example - local Tories very excited by the prospect of a free port and how it will restore industry. Except that a free port makes it easier to IMPORT, it will do nothing but harm for local industry. But as nothing but harm has been on the menu for 40 years people are desperate and will try anything.
When salvation fails to arrive? Thats when the Tories are screwed. Not to Labour's benefit you understand, we're going to see a rise of the hard right. Think UKIP/Brexit with paramilitary activists...
I guess that they aren’t going to work in the new GE factory then?
A perfect example. Can you show me where in the Mayor's remit he has had anything to do with GE coming to Teesside? Its got literally fuck all to do with him and the same would have been true if (shudder) Jessie Joe Jacobs becomes mayor. She also claims all kinds of crap that are absolutely miles outside the remit of this non-job.
That’s changing the question. You said that the Freeport would do nothing for residents. GE is opening a factory there because it. That will do something for residents.
I don’t care whether it was the mayor, the monkey or a giraffe from London Zoo that achieved it. But from what he has said - and he may be lying of course - the major has been advocating strongly for the Freeport so he had a role and deserves a share of the credit
Oh give over. GE want a tax break to set up in the free port so that they can use imported parts to assemble products to be exported. Local industry doesn't get a boost from a freeport it gets demolished by them. We know freeports don't work, we have shut them all down - specifically the *Tories* shut them down in 2012.
Mayor Houchen has presided over a net loss of jobs and despite the new GE factory the loss will only accelerate with the freeport completely sinking anything that isn't in the free zone. And what does this freeport zone do? Allow busines to function as if it was still in the EU. Yay...
"Assemble products to be exported" is another description of . . . manufacturing. It is industry.
Morning! Thought I would give this a go after about a decade of lurking. Incidentally, it started when a teacher of mine suggested that checking the betting markets is a better predicter of election results than the polls. My feeling is the assertion has taken some hammering since then and I suspect the market has moved against it (no doubt very profitably).
Off Topic, I was really interested in a comment from a previous thread yesterday that linked to a thread from Ciaran Martin on the constitutionality of the IndyRef and what all this means for the future of the Union. Essentially, there's nothing left to devolve and Federalism means either; very unequal federal system, or the clawing of powers back from Holyrood and the dissolution of England as a political entity. Martin's point about federalism and devolution not being one and the same was very shrewd. My suggestion? Enter the third chamber!
Simply add a House of Nations to Parliament, 100 seats, elected by PR and equally distributed among the Nations. Any legislation requires majorities of 2/4 delegations to pass. So, 13 Seats in England, 13 seats in Wales would see a bill go through (having passed the representatives in the Commons in a majority, indicating broad support). This would limit nationalist parties from blocking, while giving equal representation to the Nations.
Now, I don't know if constitutional fanfiction is something we do here but I'm pretty proud of the idea!
On the BBC quiz show "Pointless" last week there was a round where contestants had to identify politicians from their photos. The aim was to identify the MP that scored the lowest in terms of members of the public surveyed recognising them. The programme was filmed since Covid regulations came in. Keir Starmer had 46 per cent recognition with the public, Anneliese Dodds 3 and Angela Rayner 4. The opposition doesn't seem to be cutting through with members of the public.
Not the opposition, everyone but the PM. Rishi Sunak joined Keir Starmer in the 40s, for example. And Ed Davey...well...
I find those results amazing. Has all of Blackford's campaigning for smuggest, most objectionable oaf in the Commons truly been in vain? Surely he has irritated more people than that.
Dods doing well only 38 behind her Tory opposite number wheras SKS is 48 behind his!
Morning! Thought I would give this a go after about a decade of lurking. Incidentally, it started when a teacher of mine suggested that checking the betting markets is a better predicter of election results than the polls. My feeling is the assertion has taken some hammering since then and I suspect the market has moved against it (no doubt very profitably).
Off Topic, I was really interested in a comment from a previous thread yesterday that linked to a thread from Ciaran Martin on the constitutionality of the IndyRef and what all this means for the future of the Union. Essentially, there's nothing left to devolve and Federalism means either; very unequal federal system, or the clawing of powers back from Holyrood and the dissolution of England as a political entity. Martin's point about federalism and devolution not being one and the same was very shrewd. My suggestion? Enter the third chamber!
Simply add a House of Nations to Parliament, 100 seats, elected by PR and equally distributed among the Nations. Any legislation requires majorities of 2/4 delegations to pass. So, 13 Seats in England, 13 seats in Wales would see a bill go through (having passed the representatives in the Commons in a majority, indicating broad support). This would limit nationalist parties from blocking, while giving equal representation to the Nations.
Now, I don't know if constitutional fanfiction is something we do here but I'm pretty proud of the idea!
Welcome! Please don't let the occasionally over-robust nature of our comments put you off.
One thing Biden was good at when he won in 2020 was forgetting San Francisco and LA and New York where Hillary spent so much time fundraising in 2016 and where he knew he would win by miles anyway and focusing on the most boring bits of America in rustbelt Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin which are full of white bluecollar voters much like those Labour need to win back now and campaigning on an economic inequality message without being socialist and not being too woke. Indeed despite the fact he won the EC Biden actually won California by less than Hillary did and New York by the same margin as Hillary did, he won where it mattered.
Starmer should have been taking notes
Its a reverse Blair. Offer the rustbelt the policies that appeal to them and challenge the chattering cosmopolitans to dare vote for someone else. The problem is that I don't think the chattering classes would give up their totems like that - its support this AND this AND this remember.
The chattering classes believe they are right about everything and are never wrong. If you have that view, why would you change?
Starmers job is to lose whilst supporting the terrible things the Tories are doing and countering anything like corporation tax raises.
Obviously voters aren't going to actually support that so losing is an acceptable part of the job. If he was winning but offering left wing policy then the media and Labour MPs would be coming down on him like a ton of bricks.
If you, but more importantly Labour, don't get this then there is no way they are returning to power anytime soon.
This is lazy analysis. Just because there's been some big political shifts in one area doesn't mean they cant be some in another.
If the Tories win Hartlepool by the amount suggested and IF (big if) the national polling is actually in the region of a 2% lead, rather than 10%, that suggests some big swings to Labour elsewhere...
I agree. What has made the Tories so successful over the last decade is the increased efficiency of their vote compared to the days when they got within 3% of Blair and he got a very comfortable majority. This has happened so far because the very considerable ebbing of their strength in the south of England has merely reduced their majorities whilst they have suddenly become much more competitive in the midlands, the east and now the north.
But as Labour is finding in reverse there is a tipping point in these things. The seats Labour took for granted whilst it went fishing in the suburbs and university towns of the south have bitten back and it is all too possible that southern seats which were much more remainer, much more liberal and much more dominated by professional classes will in turn get fed up being taken for granted.
Overall this is a good thing. It was not healthy that the Tories were content to get a majority with only the odd rural seat north of Birmingham and the inability of Labour to relate to our most economically successful areas outside of the actual cities meant that they had little to say in that area. A situation where both our major parties have a fair degree of representation from most of our country improves the chances of the government being aware of the needs of all of the country.
Most of the problems there arise from the voting system, which directs all the political attention to those areas considered marginal, and neglects the safer areas for any party.
Whilst that is undoubtedly true it seems to me that Labour is going through an identity crises where they will become more potent in seats that are more like them, that is middle class, professional, well educated, dominated by the public sector and frankly rather more interested in the privileges of such people than those who have very little.
Those with little have caught on. They may come to realise that Boris doesn't really give a toss about them either but at least he pretends to listen and he is amusing rather than patronising.
"pretends to listen"? He delivered them their verdict on Brexit. Labour were set against doing so.
Yes, pretends to listen. Do the people of Hartlepool want Brexit because it is Brexit, or because what they hope it will bring them? Pools is a classic post industrial left behind backwater. People want back the jobs and prosperity and pride and hope that was taken from them. Brexit was the silver bullet to cure these ills which is why they were so enthusiastic for it.
Where the Tories will struggle is that they can't deliver what was promised. I have no doubt that Hartlepool will be thrown a few scraps once it goes Tory but it won't change the fundamental problems with the town and the region. One prime example - local Tories very excited by the prospect of a free port and how it will restore industry. Except that a free port makes it easier to IMPORT, it will do nothing but harm for local industry. But as nothing but harm has been on the menu for 40 years people are desperate and will try anything.
When salvation fails to arrive? Thats when the Tories are screwed. Not to Labour's benefit you understand, we're going to see a rise of the hard right. Think UKIP/Brexit with paramilitary activists...
I guess that they aren’t going to work in the new GE factory then?
A perfect example. Can you show me where in the Mayor's remit he has had anything to do with GE coming to Teesside? Its got literally fuck all to do with him and the same would have been true if (shudder) Jessie Joe Jacobs becomes mayor. She also claims all kinds of crap that are absolutely miles outside the remit of this non-job.
That’s changing the question. You said that the Freeport would do nothing for residents. GE is opening a factory there because it. That will do something for residents.
I don’t care whether it was the mayor, the monkey or a giraffe from London Zoo that achieved it. But from what he has said - and he may be lying of course - the major has been advocating strongly for the Freeport so he had a role and deserves a share of the credit
Oh give over. GE want a tax break to set up in the free port so that they can use imported parts to assemble products to be exported. Local industry doesn't get a boost from a freeport it gets demolished by them. We know freeports don't work, we have shut them all down - specifically the *Tories* shut them down in 2012.
Mayor Houchen has presided over a net loss of jobs and despite the new GE factory the loss will only accelerate with the freeport completely sinking anything that isn't in the free zone. And what does this freeport zone do? Allow busines to function as if it was still in the EU. Yay...
Not a huge fan of Freeports as a concept, however, special economic zones tend to have a positive overall multiplier as the jobs created spill over into the wider area and national supply chains over time. What usually happens is that local companies begin to bid for smaller supply contracts with the big assembler in the SEZ and becuase they have zero cost of shipping it can be fairly competitive for the smaller contracts.
I'm not sure it's more than a zero sum game, however, and there's a fair bit of evidence that SEZs eventually turn into a net zero unless they are wound down by which time you just have to hope the companies who have been brought in stick around.
You also miss the fact that freeports have a habit of displacing surrounding jobs into the Freeport itself (given the choice you will move just to avoid the paperwork).
Unless the gain comes from reduced friction (due to less red tape / paperwork) I suspect the success or failure of a freeport is due to outside factors. We were wandering round the last Leeds enterprise zone last week and it was clear from there that its success is 100% down to lucky timing - Sky wanted another base at just the time it was launched.
Certainly worked in Docklands. Canary Wharf says Hi
I remember in about 1989 it was fashionable for Labour types to sneer at all development in East London, especially the Wharf. ‘A Thatcherite toy-town doomed to failure’ was the common refrain
I have hopes for 2nd place. Perhaps optimistic then.
I think he's probably put himself in a good place re public & media perception by not going rabidly SNPbad but it does leave his Unionist flank vulnerable. Also some parties are a weight round their leader's neck, others are burdened by their leader, it's the former with Anas & SLab I believe.
One thing Biden was good at when he won in 2020 was forgetting San Francisco and LA and New York where Hillary spent so much time fundraising in 2016 and where he knew he would win by miles anyway and focusing on the most boring bits of America in rustbelt Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin which are full of white bluecollar voters much like those Labour need to win back now and campaigning on an economic inequality message without being socialist and not being too woke. Indeed despite the fact he won the EC Biden actually won California by less than Hillary did and New York by the same margin as Hillary did, he won where it mattered.
Starmer should have been taking notes
Its a reverse Blair. Offer the rustbelt the policies that appeal to them and challenge the chattering cosmopolitans to dare vote for someone else. The problem is that I don't think the chattering classes would give up their totems like that - its support this AND this AND this remember.
Labour could afford to lose thousands of votes in inner city London and Manchester and Bristol and East Oxford and Cambridge to the Greens and LDs and still hold all the constituencies there.
It is provincial seats like those in Stoke and West Bromwich and Milton Keynes and Burnley it needs to win back from the Tories to form a government
If you, but more importantly Labour, don't get this then there is no way they are returning to power anytime soon.
This is lazy analysis. Just because there's been some big political shifts in one area doesn't mean they cant be some in another.
If the Tories win Hartlepool by the amount suggested and IF (big if) the national polling is actually in the region of a 2% lead, rather than 10%, that suggests some big swings to Labour elsewhere...
I agree. What has made the Tories so successful over the last decade is the increased efficiency of their vote compared to the days when they got within 3% of Blair and he got a very comfortable majority. This has happened so far because the very considerable ebbing of their strength in the south of England has merely reduced their majorities whilst they have suddenly become much more competitive in the midlands, the east and now the north.
But as Labour is finding in reverse there is a tipping point in these things. The seats Labour took for granted whilst it went fishing in the suburbs and university towns of the south have bitten back and it is all too possible that southern seats which were much more remainer, much more liberal and much more dominated by professional classes will in turn get fed up being taken for granted.
Overall this is a good thing. It was not healthy that the Tories were content to get a majority with only the odd rural seat north of Birmingham and the inability of Labour to relate to our most economically successful areas outside of the actual cities meant that they had little to say in that area. A situation where both our major parties have a fair degree of representation from most of our country improves the chances of the government being aware of the needs of all of the country.
Most of the problems there arise from the voting system, which directs all the political attention to those areas considered marginal, and neglects the safer areas for any party.
Whilst that is undoubtedly true it seems to me that Labour is going through an identity crises where they will become more potent in seats that are more like them, that is middle class, professional, well educated, dominated by the public sector and frankly rather more interested in the privileges of such people than those who have very little.
Those with little have caught on. They may come to realise that Boris doesn't really give a toss about them either but at least he pretends to listen and he is amusing rather than patronising.
"pretends to listen"? He delivered them their verdict on Brexit. Labour were set against doing so.
Yes, pretends to listen. Do the people of Hartlepool want Brexit because it is Brexit, or because what they hope it will bring them? Pools is a classic post industrial left behind backwater. People want back the jobs and prosperity and pride and hope that was taken from them. Brexit was the silver bullet to cure these ills which is why they were so enthusiastic for it.
Where the Tories will struggle is that they can't deliver what was promised. I have no doubt that Hartlepool will be thrown a few scraps once it goes Tory but it won't change the fundamental problems with the town and the region. One prime example - local Tories very excited by the prospect of a free port and how it will restore industry. Except that a free port makes it easier to IMPORT, it will do nothing but harm for local industry. But as nothing but harm has been on the menu for 40 years people are desperate and will try anything.
When salvation fails to arrive? Thats when the Tories are screwed. Not to Labour's benefit you understand, we're going to see a rise of the hard right. Think UKIP/Brexit with paramilitary activists...
I guess that they aren’t going to work in the new GE factory then?
A perfect example. Can you show me where in the Mayor's remit he has had anything to do with GE coming to Teesside? Its got literally fuck all to do with him and the same would have been true if (shudder) Jessie Joe Jacobs becomes mayor. She also claims all kinds of crap that are absolutely miles outside the remit of this non-job.
That’s changing the question. You said that the Freeport would do nothing for residents. GE is opening a factory there because it. That will do something for residents.
I don’t care whether it was the mayor, the monkey or a giraffe from London Zoo that achieved it. But from what he has said - and he may be lying of course - the major has been advocating strongly for the Freeport so he had a role and deserves a share of the credit
Oh give over. GE want a tax break to set up in the free port so that they can use imported parts to assemble products to be exported. Local industry doesn't get a boost from a freeport it gets demolished by them. We know freeports don't work, we have shut them all down - specifically the *Tories* shut them down in 2012.
Mayor Houchen has presided over a net loss of jobs and despite the new GE factory the loss will only accelerate with the freeport completely sinking anything that isn't in the free zone. And what does this freeport zone do? Allow busines to function as if it was still in the EU. Yay...
"Assemble products to be exported" is another description of . . . manufacturing. It is industry.
Assembly is not the same as manufacture.
Really? So eg Nissan taking parts from across the world, putting them together to make a car, is not manufacturing? Its not industry?
Manufacturing doesn't need to rely upon raw materials alone, it can use other component parts as part of its supply chain.
On the BBC quiz show "Pointless" last week there was a round where contestants had to identify politicians from their photos. The aim was to identify the MP that scored the lowest in terms of members of the public surveyed recognising them. The programme was filmed since Covid regulations came in. Keir Starmer had 46 per cent recognition with the public, Anneliese Dodds 3 and Angela Rayner 4. The opposition doesn't seem to be cutting through with members of the public.
Not the opposition, everyone but the PM. Rishi Sunak joined Keir Starmer in the 40s, for example. And Ed Davey...well...
I find those results amazing. Has all of Blackford's campaigning for smuggest, most objectionable oaf in the Commons truly been in vain? Surely he has irritated more people than that.
It depends when this was filmed but I find it remarkable after a global pandemic, when he's barely been off the screens, that two-thirds of the country can't name the Health Secretary from his picture.
Whilst I recognise him as I'm interested in politics, I've actually watched very little news, even video segments, since this whole thing began - if I were not interested in politics and only really read about Covid news, I could imagine I'd still not be clear on what he looked like.
One thing Biden was good at when he won in 2020 was forgetting San Francisco and LA and New York where Hillary spent so much time fundraising in 2016 and where he knew he would win by miles anyway and focusing on the most boring bits of America in rustbelt Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin which are full of white bluecollar voters much like those Labour need to win back now and campaigning on an economic inequality message without being socialist and not being too woke. Indeed despite the fact he won the EC Biden actually won California by less than Hillary did and New York by the same margin as Hillary did, he won where it mattered.
Starmer should have been taking notes
Its a reverse Blair. Offer the rustbelt the policies that appeal to them and challenge the chattering cosmopolitans to dare vote for someone else. The problem is that I don't think the chattering classes would give up their totems like that - its support this AND this AND this remember.
The chattering classes believe they are right about everything and are never wrong. If you have that view, why would you change?
In fairness, show me any large group of the public who doesn't think they are right about things and generally lack introspection. It's a flaw in human nature. That's why just as 'Ivory Tower Intellectuals' are snobbish and don't respect the views of 'The Unwashed Masses', the very same 'Unwashed Masses' don't exactly go looking for the views of 'Ivory Tower Intellectuals' to challenge their assumptions in life.
Hartlepool 2015 Iain Wright Lab 14,076 35.6 -6.9 Philip Broughton UKIP11,052 28.0 21.0 Richard Royal Con 8,256 20.9 -7.2
Hartlepool 2017 Mike Hill Lab 21,969 52.5 16.9 Carl Jackson Con14,319 34.2 13.3 P Broughton UKIP4,801 11.5 -16.5
Hartlepool 2019 Mike Hill Lab 15,464 37.7 -14.8 S Houghton Con 11,869 28.9 -5.3 Richard Tice BXP 10,603 25.8 25.8
Hartlepool 2021 CON GAIN first time not Labour since 1959
SKS fans please explain how SKS has managed this
You really are stupid enough to go there? Then again why not - Corbyn won Hartlepool 9 times after his election to Parliament. You see that Peter Mandelson - they only voted for him knowing that the Beard of the Year was in parliament as their true representative. Now that Corbyn has been booted out of the Labour Party Pools is going Tory - nuff said.
If they remove IDStarmer and reinstate the Jeremy, all the people who were LLLLL across the contact sheet who said "I'm not voting for him" will vote for him.
Your really so stupid to try the its Corbyns fault despite the facts.
First Labour loss since 1959
Fairy Nuff we know your obsessed you should move on.
No no no, the loss of the red wall predates Corbyn so it isn't his fault. The dam has been eroded over time, with no maintenance done by an arrogant local Labour hierarchy who think they are born to rule because its all the Tories fault.
Labour's problem is that the dam burst thanks to Brexit. What you propose is that Labour go back to the failed Corbyn experiment, have a slate of wazzocks like Sam Tarry, Zarah Sultana and Laura Pillock as MPs and double down on policy so that Labour only talk to the bottom 5% and blame everything on the top 1% and say fuck all to everyone else.
Labour's solution is not Starmer. Labour's solution is not Corbyn. It is not either / or you tosspot. As I tweeted earlier this morning the left and right in Labour fight like ferrets in a sack and neither side understand why you're in the sack in the first place.
I voted for Nandy but thanks for calling me a tosspot.
This should be the slogan of her leadership campaign when Starmer gets hoofed out.
SKS was the "Unity" Candidate or as i said at the time the Useless Candidate
Quite right, the Labour Party didn't need "unity" with the nutjobs that you supported, it needed to expel them like Kinnock did.
Which nutjobs, that I supported?
I voted Nandy and Rayner
Those Nutjobs?
Kinnock was an unelectable useless leader much like SKS
On the BBC quiz show "Pointless" last week there was a round where contestants had to identify politicians from their photos. The aim was to identify the MP that scored the lowest in terms of members of the public surveyed recognising them. The programme was filmed since Covid regulations came in. Keir Starmer had 46 per cent recognition with the public, Anneliese Dodds 3 and Angela Rayner 4. The opposition doesn't seem to be cutting through with members of the public.
Not the opposition, everyone but the PM. Rishi Sunak joined Keir Starmer in the 40s, for example. And Ed Davey...well...
I find those results amazing. Has all of Blackford's campaigning for smuggest, most objectionable oaf in the Commons truly been in vain? Surely he has irritated more people than that.
It depends when this was filmed but I find it remarkable after a global pandemic, when he's barely been off the screens, that two-thirds of the country can't name the Health Secretary from his picture.
But all that work. His cunning plan of making the English vote for Scottish independence by just irritating the hell out of them, its in ruins.
Give him some credit, he only needs to really irritate the hell out of 326 people.
Hartlepool 2015 Iain Wright Lab 14,076 35.6 -6.9 Philip Broughton UKIP11,052 28.0 21.0 Richard Royal Con 8,256 20.9 -7.2
Hartlepool 2017 Mike Hill Lab 21,969 52.5 16.9 Carl Jackson Con14,319 34.2 13.3 P Broughton UKIP4,801 11.5 -16.5
Hartlepool 2019 Mike Hill Lab 15,464 37.7 -14.8 S Houghton Con 11,869 28.9 -5.3 Richard Tice BXP 10,603 25.8 25.8
Hartlepool 2021 CON GAIN first time not Labour since 1959
SKS fans please explain how SKS has managed this
You really are stupid enough to go there? Then again why not - Corbyn won Hartlepool 9 times after his election to Parliament. You see that Peter Mandelson - they only voted for him knowing that the Beard of the Year was in parliament as their true representative. Now that Corbyn has been booted out of the Labour Party Pools is going Tory - nuff said.
If they remove IDStarmer and reinstate the Jeremy, all the people who were LLLLL across the contact sheet who said "I'm not voting for him" will vote for him.
Your really so stupid to try the its Corbyns fault despite the facts.
First Labour loss since 1959
Fairy Nuff we know your obsessed you should move on.
No no no, the loss of the red wall predates Corbyn so it isn't his fault. The dam has been eroded over time, with no maintenance done by an arrogant local Labour hierarchy who think they are born to rule because its all the Tories fault.
Labour's problem is that the dam burst thanks to Brexit. What you propose is that Labour go back to the failed Corbyn experiment, have a slate of wazzocks like Sam Tarry, Zarah Sultana and Laura Pillock as MPs and double down on policy so that Labour only talk to the bottom 5% and blame everything on the top 1% and say fuck all to everyone else.
Labour's solution is not Starmer. Labour's solution is not Corbyn. It is not either / or you tosspot. As I tweeted earlier this morning the left and right in Labour fight like ferrets in a sack and neither side understand why you're in the sack in the first place.
Labour reject who jumped in the sack to fight like a ferret in 2015 against Corbyn and fought like a ferret every day for 3 years criticises sack fighting.
Said ex Labour hypocrite after quitting sack fighting applies to rejoin Labour in order to fight like a ferret against people like "Laura Pillock"
Rejected for being a divisive nasty name calling piece of work so sad ex sack fighting poster is now politically homeless
Sad tale really
As I said shortly after the event, my abrupt about-face to try and rejoin the Labour Party was done in the middle of a mental health crisis. As that was the stupidest action my illness generated I remain grateful!
Then it cleared, and like Dr Zimsky at the end of The Core dictating notes for his book whilst pinned underneath a nuclear bomb that was about to destroy him and his notes, I looked at myself, asked "what the fuck am I doing" and roared with laughter.
Glad that my mental heath disaster makes you roar with laughter as well.
If you, but more importantly Labour, don't get this then there is no way they are returning to power anytime soon.
This is lazy analysis. Just because there's been some big political shifts in one area doesn't mean they cant be some in another.
If the Tories win Hartlepool by the amount suggested and IF (big if) the national polling is actually in the region of a 2% lead, rather than 10%, that suggests some big swings to Labour elsewhere...
I agree. What has made the Tories so successful over the last decade is the increased efficiency of their vote compared to the days when they got within 3% of Blair and he got a very comfortable majority. This has happened so far because the very considerable ebbing of their strength in the south of England has merely reduced their majorities whilst they have suddenly become much more competitive in the midlands, the east and now the north.
But as Labour is finding in reverse there is a tipping point in these things. The seats Labour took for granted whilst it went fishing in the suburbs and university towns of the south have bitten back and it is all too possible that southern seats which were much more remainer, much more liberal and much more dominated by professional classes will in turn get fed up being taken for granted.
Overall this is a good thing. It was not healthy that the Tories were content to get a majority with only the odd rural seat north of Birmingham and the inability of Labour to relate to our most economically successful areas outside of the actual cities meant that they had little to say in that area. A situation where both our major parties have a fair degree of representation from most of our country improves the chances of the government being aware of the needs of all of the country.
Most of the problems there arise from the voting system, which directs all the political attention to those areas considered marginal, and neglects the safer areas for any party.
Whilst that is undoubtedly true it seems to me that Labour is going through an identity crises where they will become more potent in seats that are more like them, that is middle class, professional, well educated, dominated by the public sector and frankly rather more interested in the privileges of such people than those who have very little.
Those with little have caught on. They may come to realise that Boris doesn't really give a toss about them either but at least he pretends to listen and he is amusing rather than patronising.
"pretends to listen"? He delivered them their verdict on Brexit. Labour were set against doing so.
Yes, pretends to listen. Do the people of Hartlepool want Brexit because it is Brexit, or because what they hope it will bring them? Pools is a classic post industrial left behind backwater. People want back the jobs and prosperity and pride and hope that was taken from them. Brexit was the silver bullet to cure these ills which is why they were so enthusiastic for it.
Where the Tories will struggle is that they can't deliver what was promised. I have no doubt that Hartlepool will be thrown a few scraps once it goes Tory but it won't change the fundamental problems with the town and the region. One prime example - local Tories very excited by the prospect of a free port and how it will restore industry. Except that a free port makes it easier to IMPORT, it will do nothing but harm for local industry. But as nothing but harm has been on the menu for 40 years people are desperate and will try anything.
When salvation fails to arrive? Thats when the Tories are screwed. Not to Labour's benefit you understand, we're going to see a rise of the hard right. Think UKIP/Brexit with paramilitary activists...
I guess that they aren’t going to work in the new GE factory then?
A perfect example. Can you show me where in the Mayor's remit he has had anything to do with GE coming to Teesside? Its got literally fuck all to do with him and the same would have been true if (shudder) Jessie Joe Jacobs becomes mayor. She also claims all kinds of crap that are absolutely miles outside the remit of this non-job.
That’s changing the question. You said that the Freeport would do nothing for residents. GE is opening a factory there because it. That will do something for residents.
I don’t care whether it was the mayor, the monkey or a giraffe from London Zoo that achieved it. But from what he has said - and he may be lying of course - the major has been advocating strongly for the Freeport so he had a role and deserves a share of the credit
Oh give over. GE want a tax break to set up in the free port so that they can use imported parts to assemble products to be exported. Local industry doesn't get a boost from a freeport it gets demolished by them. We know freeports don't work, we have shut them all down - specifically the *Tories* shut them down in 2012.
Mayor Houchen has presided over a net loss of jobs and despite the new GE factory the loss will only accelerate with the freeport completely sinking anything that isn't in the free zone. And what does this freeport zone do? Allow busines to function as if it was still in the EU. Yay...
"Assemble products to be exported" is another description of . . . manufacturing. It is industry.
Assembly is not the same as manufacture.
What matters is the value added - which for a lot of things may not be much beyond easy of transportation. Which is definitely the case for Hitachi Rail as the easy value added comes from Japan although the amount of wiring required does mean that more work is done in the UK than you may expect.
Hartlepool 2015 Iain Wright Lab 14,076 35.6 -6.9 Philip Broughton UKIP11,052 28.0 21.0 Richard Royal Con 8,256 20.9 -7.2
Hartlepool 2017 Mike Hill Lab 21,969 52.5 16.9 Carl Jackson Con14,319 34.2 13.3 P Broughton UKIP4,801 11.5 -16.5
Hartlepool 2019 Mike Hill Lab 15,464 37.7 -14.8 S Houghton Con 11,869 28.9 -5.3 Richard Tice BXP 10,603 25.8 25.8
Hartlepool 2021 CON GAIN first time not Labour since 1959
SKS fans please explain how SKS has managed this
You really are stupid enough to go there? Then again why not - Corbyn won Hartlepool 9 times after his election to Parliament. You see that Peter Mandelson - they only voted for him knowing that the Beard of the Year was in parliament as their true representative. Now that Corbyn has been booted out of the Labour Party Pools is going Tory - nuff said.
If they remove IDStarmer and reinstate the Jeremy, all the people who were LLLLL across the contact sheet who said "I'm not voting for him" will vote for him.
Your really so stupid to try the its Corbyns fault despite the facts.
First Labour loss since 1959
Fairy Nuff we know your obsessed you should move on.
No no no, the loss of the red wall predates Corbyn so it isn't his fault. The dam has been eroded over time, with no maintenance done by an arrogant local Labour hierarchy who think they are born to rule because its all the Tories fault.
Labour's problem is that the dam burst thanks to Brexit. What you propose is that Labour go back to the failed Corbyn experiment, have a slate of wazzocks like Sam Tarry, Zarah Sultana and Laura Pillock as MPs and double down on policy so that Labour only talk to the bottom 5% and blame everything on the top 1% and say fuck all to everyone else.
Labour's solution is not Starmer. Labour's solution is not Corbyn. It is not either / or you tosspot. As I tweeted earlier this morning the left and right in Labour fight like ferrets in a sack and neither side understand why you're in the sack in the first place.
Labour reject who jumped in the sack to fight like a ferret in 2015 against Corbyn and fought like a ferret every day for 3 years criticises sack fighting.
Said ex Labour hypocrite after quitting sack fighting applies to rejoin Labour in order to fight like a ferret against people like "Laura Pillock"
Rejected for being a divisive nasty name calling piece of work so sad ex sack fighting poster is now politically homeless
Sad tale really
As I said shortly after the event, my abrupt about-face to try and rejoin the Labour Party was done in the middle of a mental health crisis. As that was the stupidest action my illness generated I remain grateful!
Then it cleared, and like Dr Zimsky at the end of The Core dictating notes for his book whilst pinned underneath a nuclear bomb that was about to destroy him and his notes, I looked at myself, asked "what the fuck am I doing" and roared with laughter.
Glad that my mental heath disaster makes you roar with laughter as well.
You called me a toss pot is that part of your condition or are you just a nasty piece of work?
On the BBC quiz show "Pointless" last week there was a round where contestants had to identify politicians from their photos. The aim was to identify the MP that scored the lowest in terms of members of the public surveyed recognising them. The programme was filmed since Covid regulations came in. Keir Starmer had 46 per cent recognition with the public, Anneliese Dodds 3 and Angela Rayner 4. The opposition doesn't seem to be cutting through with members of the public.
Not the opposition, everyone but the PM. Rishi Sunak joined Keir Starmer in the 40s, for example. And Ed Davey...well...
I find those results amazing. Has all of Blackford's campaigning for smuggest, most objectionable oaf in the Commons truly been in vain? Surely he has irritated more people than that.
It depends when this was filmed but I find it remarkable after a global pandemic, when he's barely been off the screens, that two-thirds of the country can't name the Health Secretary from his picture.
Yes. I thought that was remarkable, but then he does have the sort of nondescript appearance which makes you wonder whether his mother would be able to pick him out of an identity parade.
Labour aren't going to get anywhere because Starmer is utterly shit. It doesn't matter if you're shit and the incumbent because well better the devil you know and all that. The Tories are talking jobs, Labour is banging on about some wallpaper or other. Burnham is going to smash G Manchester because he does actually have a bit about him unlike the frankly dire Starmer. Greater Manchester was once not that much more Labour than the West Midsor North East. It probably still isn't but they'll do well there because Burnham is believed in.
Labour made a huge mistake picking Corbyn over Burnham in 2017, had they chosen Burnham they would probably have won most seats ahead of May's Tories in 2017. Starmer ironically backed Burnham for leader then
Yeah there are structural changes going on but Labour should really have won stuff like Northfield in 2019. If Labour can't more or less sweep major city seats they'll never, ever win.
I think one thing that fools Labour is the political changes within their social and professional circles.
There's been a huge change in graduate and upper-middle class support since the noughties, particularly amongst educated graduate women. I can think of three friends who supported the Tories even during the Blair years and went for Cameron in GE2010 who are now solidly centre-left. Educated graduate males have also slipped to Lib Dem, or Green, or "alternative" - usually not Labour, funnily enough - as they've sensed the Conservatives no longer speak to their values.
I occupy a lonely place politically within my friendship group, now, and largely don't mention politics - except to a handful on a 1:1 basis who I know are sympathetic (male professionals who keep it under the radar).
I struggle to understand anyone supporting the Conservatives from 1997-2010, now supporting left wing parties, but you are right, it is a real phenomenon. Brexit is obviously part of the story, but only part of it.
It is class politics played out in a different way. I live in Highgate. In 2019, the bigger the house, the greater chance they would show a Labour poster. The terraces (the Muswell Hill side obviously) tended to have Lib Dem ones.
But even if every single owner of every huge house in Highgate had voted Labour in 2019 it would not have been close to enough for Labour to win the majority it did in Holborn and St Pancras. Like it or not, in London Labour wins because it gets the votes of ordinary Londoners on average or below average wages living in rented private or council accommodation. Labour's problem is that most of the rest of England is not like London.
Inner city working class people are the wrong kind of working class.
Very droll. Still doesn't sort out Labour's (and the left's) main issue. Most people view the party as irrelevant and the only people who vote for Labour are (1) smug urban professionals who think everyone is on Twitter or watching GoT when actually they are in front of the TV watching Corrie and (2) most (but not all) of the ethnic minority vote who will be off if Galloway, or a similar figure, gets their act together
Hmmm - just a touch of projection there, I suspect! Essentially, it seems, people you do not like vote Labour. Fancy hating 10 million people so much!
Oh the irony, poster accusing someone else of projection does exactly the same thing themselves.
And actually not true. I could do the usual "some of my best friends are leftists etc etc" but let's take this site for example. @NickPalmer Palmer is someone I could vote for. Why? Even though I disagree with a lot of his politics but not all, he is courteous, willing to engage, willing to admit he is wrong when appropriate and takes an interested view in the other side of the argument. @kinabalu is another one with whom I disagree with on a lot of topics but is also someone who one feels you can have a discussion with and have opposing views.
The problem with today's Labour party is that there are too few like Nick and Kinablu and far more of the type on here who think they know everything, including what other people think.....
Corbyn lost Bishop Auckland, Blyth Valley, Darlington, North West Durham, Redcar, Sedgefield and Stockton South.
Nope - Boris won them because Labour had been found out after 47 years of not delivering.
Granted Ben Houchen hadn't actually delivered anything but he has successfully made it look like he had - which was more than enough to persuade people to give the Tories chance around here.
Redcar is however the perfect example of what will happen if the Tories don't delivery - these seats will vote for someone who promises them a better future.
I don't know if anybody else heard the Starmer interview on R4 Today this morning, but it was quite interesting. He wasn't very good, actually (see, I am objective). But he did take the opportunity to set out briefly the 5 current top priorities for Labour at the next GE, whenever that is.
His 5 priorities had echoes of Blair's 1997 pledge card. Interestingly, the fifth priority was about bringing an end to the divisions caused by the 'culture war' (although he didn't use that expression, of course). Anyway, signs of an emerging Labour policy platform to fill the current policy vacuum.
What does it mean. According to this article it means "Insiders suggested that levelling up could include four aspects — a regional economic policy; spreading opportunity across the country; improving the outputs and outcomes from public services; and non-economic outcomes of improving “quality of life” and “pride in place”."
Sounds like empty vacuous slogans to me. In Copeland, one issue that lots of the locals mention is the state of the roads. They are awful. As for public services, the local councils are appalling at emptying their recycling centres. One centre - located next to a children's play area and SSI on the beach - is so bad that rubbish is blown about all over the place. The local waste authority is responsible for a statutory nuisance and this in an area dependant on tourism for its living.
I have raised this with the local council, the Tory Mayor and the local Tory councillor. Neither of the latter two even bothered to reply.
"Quality of life" and "pride in place" my arse!
You seem disappointed that reality is different to the political promises of all parties. To be truly cynical, wait to you are 60ish...
Husband told me the local Tory councillor is utterly useless. So my expectations were pretty low and were entirely met.
The council officials have promised to do something but they are based in Whitehaven, live in Carlisle and have never even been to the area. It is a forgotten part of the country. Trudi Harrison comes from here - Bootle - a few miles away. She is local, quite friendly. But she has over the last year been a sad disappointment by comparison with Tim Farron. Being cynical, pork barrel politics has something to be said for it if you get some of the pork. But when you don't even get that, what is the point of any of it?
I tell this story to show the reality of what life is like here and to show up the vacuous nature of this levelling up slogan. We will see whether it amounts to anything substantive in reality. So far the main people who have been levelled up by the Tory party have been the rich who already have rather than the have nots.
I nonetheless expect the Tories to stay in power for a while because Labour are proving to be so bloody useless.
Morning! Thought I would give this a go after about a decade of lurking. Incidentally, it started when a teacher of mine suggested that checking the betting markets is a better predicter of election results than the polls. My feeling is the assertion has taken some hammering since then and I suspect the market has moved against it (no doubt very profitably).
Off Topic, I was really interested in a comment from a previous thread yesterday that linked to a thread from Ciaran Martin on the constitutionality of the IndyRef and what all this means for the future of the Union. Essentially, there's nothing left to devolve and Federalism means either; very unequal federal system, or the clawing of powers back from Holyrood and the dissolution of England as a political entity. Martin's point about federalism and devolution not being one and the same was very shrewd. My suggestion? Enter the third chamber!
Simply add a House of Nations to Parliament, 100 seats, elected by PR and equally distributed among the Nations. Any legislation requires majorities of 2/4 delegations to pass. So, 13 Seats in England, 13 seats in Wales would see a bill go through (having passed the representatives in the Commons in a majority, indicating broad support). This would limit nationalist parties from blocking, while giving equal representation to the Nations.
Now, I don't know if constitutional fanfiction is something we do here but I'm pretty proud of the idea!
Welcome!
Fucking terrible idea
Ha! Well, I did select my username after going though different versions of 'PoliticallyUnpopularIdeas' 'Obsessed with Constitutional Naval Gazing' etc. I mean, no politician has ever won political office by appealing to me (having backed the wrong horse nationally, and at the constituency level, in 2010, 2015, 2017, 2019 and in the Brexit referendum).
Morning! Thought I would give this a go after about a decade of lurking. Incidentally, it started when a teacher of mine suggested that checking the betting markets is a better predicter of election results than the polls. My feeling is the assertion has taken some hammering since then and I suspect the market has moved against it (no doubt very profitably).
Off Topic, I was really interested in a comment from a previous thread yesterday that linked to a thread from Ciaran Martin on the constitutionality of the IndyRef and what all this means for the future of the Union. Essentially, there's nothing left to devolve and Federalism means either; very unequal federal system, or the clawing of powers back from Holyrood and the dissolution of England as a political entity. Martin's point about federalism and devolution not being one and the same was very shrewd. My suggestion? Enter the third chamber!
Simply add a House of Nations to Parliament, 100 seats, elected by PR and equally distributed among the Nations. Any legislation requires majorities of 2/4 delegations to pass. So, 13 Seats in England, 13 seats in Wales would see a bill go through (having passed the representatives in the Commons in a majority, indicating broad support). This would limit nationalist parties from blocking, while giving equal representation to the Nations.
Now, I don't know if constitutional fanfiction is something we do here but I'm pretty proud of the idea!
Welcome! Please don't let the occasionally over-robust nature of our comments put you off.
On the contrary, I feel honoured my first reply was from Dr Who himself!
One thing Biden was good at when he won in 2020 was forgetting San Francisco and LA and New York where Hillary spent so much time fundraising in 2016 and where he knew he would win by miles anyway and focusing on the most boring bits of America in rustbelt Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin which are full of white bluecollar voters much like those Labour need to win back now and campaigning on an economic inequality message without being socialist and not being too woke. Indeed despite the fact he won the EC Biden actually won California by less than Hillary did and New York by the same margin as Hillary did, he won where it mattered.
Starmer should have been taking notes
Its a reverse Blair. Offer the rustbelt the policies that appeal to them and challenge the chattering cosmopolitans to dare vote for someone else. The problem is that I don't think the chattering classes would give up their totems like that - its support this AND this AND this remember.
The chattering classes believe they are right about everything and are never wrong. If you have that view, why would you change?
In fairness, show me any large group of the public who doesn't think they are right about things and generally lack introspection. It's a flaw in human nature. That's why just as 'Ivory Tower Intellectuals' are snobbish and don't respect the views of 'The Unwashed Masses', the very same 'Unwashed Masses' don't exactly go looking for the views of 'Ivory Tower Intellectuals' to challenge their assumptions in life.
That is very true and the unwashed masses have the same prejudices. I guess that Unherd article got it right though re Labour that both sides despise one another but only one will admit it.
If you, but more importantly Labour, don't get this then there is no way they are returning to power anytime soon.
This is lazy analysis. Just because there's been some big political shifts in one area doesn't mean they cant be some in another.
If the Tories win Hartlepool by the amount suggested and IF (big if) the national polling is actually in the region of a 2% lead, rather than 10%, that suggests some big swings to Labour elsewhere...
I agree. What has made the Tories so successful over the last decade is the increased efficiency of their vote compared to the days when they got within 3% of Blair and he got a very comfortable majority. This has happened so far because the very considerable ebbing of their strength in the south of England has merely reduced their majorities whilst they have suddenly become much more competitive in the midlands, the east and now the north.
But as Labour is finding in reverse there is a tipping point in these things. The seats Labour took for granted whilst it went fishing in the suburbs and university towns of the south have bitten back and it is all too possible that southern seats which were much more remainer, much more liberal and much more dominated by professional classes will in turn get fed up being taken for granted.
Overall this is a good thing. It was not healthy that the Tories were content to get a majority with only the odd rural seat north of Birmingham and the inability of Labour to relate to our most economically successful areas outside of the actual cities meant that they had little to say in that area. A situation where both our major parties have a fair degree of representation from most of our country improves the chances of the government being aware of the needs of all of the country.
Most of the problems there arise from the voting system, which directs all the political attention to those areas considered marginal, and neglects the safer areas for any party.
Whilst that is undoubtedly true it seems to me that Labour is going through an identity crises where they will become more potent in seats that are more like them, that is middle class, professional, well educated, dominated by the public sector and frankly rather more interested in the privileges of such people than those who have very little.
Those with little have caught on. They may come to realise that Boris doesn't really give a toss about them either but at least he pretends to listen and he is amusing rather than patronising.
"pretends to listen"? He delivered them their verdict on Brexit. Labour were set against doing so.
Yes, pretends to listen. Do the people of Hartlepool want Brexit because it is Brexit, or because what they hope it will bring them? Pools is a classic post industrial left behind backwater. People want back the jobs and prosperity and pride and hope that was taken from them. Brexit was the silver bullet to cure these ills which is why they were so enthusiastic for it.
Where the Tories will struggle is that they can't deliver what was promised. I have no doubt that Hartlepool will be thrown a few scraps once it goes Tory but it won't change the fundamental problems with the town and the region. One prime example - local Tories very excited by the prospect of a free port and how it will restore industry. Except that a free port makes it easier to IMPORT, it will do nothing but harm for local industry. But as nothing but harm has been on the menu for 40 years people are desperate and will try anything.
When salvation fails to arrive? Thats when the Tories are screwed. Not to Labour's benefit you understand, we're going to see a rise of the hard right. Think UKIP/Brexit with paramilitary activists...
I guess that they aren’t going to work in the new GE factory then?
A perfect example. Can you show me where in the Mayor's remit he has had anything to do with GE coming to Teesside? Its got literally fuck all to do with him and the same would have been true if (shudder) Jessie Joe Jacobs becomes mayor. She also claims all kinds of crap that are absolutely miles outside the remit of this non-job.
That’s changing the question. You said that the Freeport would do nothing for residents. GE is opening a factory there because it. That will do something for residents.
I don’t care whether it was the mayor, the monkey or a giraffe from London Zoo that achieved it. But from what he has said - and he may be lying of course - the major has been advocating strongly for the Freeport so he had a role and deserves a share of the credit
Oh give over. GE want a tax break to set up in the free port so that they can use imported parts to assemble products to be exported. Local industry doesn't get a boost from a freeport it gets demolished by them. We know freeports don't work, we have shut them all down - specifically the *Tories* shut them down in 2012.
Mayor Houchen has presided over a net loss of jobs and despite the new GE factory the loss will only accelerate with the freeport completely sinking anything that isn't in the free zone. And what does this freeport zone do? Allow busines to function as if it was still in the EU. Yay...
"Assemble products to be exported" is another description of . . . manufacturing. It is industry.
There is a major difference between a factory - where you make stuff - and an assembly plant - where you screw stuff together made in factories. Far easier to shut down an assembly shed and direct the parts to a different assembly shed than it is to shut the actual factories who make them.
The other big "factory" on Teesside(ish) that is a big risk is Hitachi. It makes literally nothing there that can't be done in its other factories and unlike either Kasado or even Ansaldo it can only make for the UK market.
I don't know if anybody else heard the Starmer interview on R4 Today this morning, but it was quite interesting. He wasn't very good, actually (see, I am objective). But he did take the opportunity to set out briefly the 5 current top priorities for Labour at the next GE, whenever that is.
His 5 priorities had echoes of Blair's 1997 pledge card. Interestingly, the fifth priority was about bringing an end to the divisions caused by the 'culture war' (although he didn't use that expression, of course). Anyway, signs of an emerging Labour policy platform to fill the current policy vacuum.
What does it mean. According to this article it means "Insiders suggested that levelling up could include four aspects — a regional economic policy; spreading opportunity across the country; improving the outputs and outcomes from public services; and non-economic outcomes of improving “quality of life” and “pride in place”."
Sounds like empty vacuous slogans to me. In Copeland, one issue that lots of the locals mention is the state of the roads. They are awful. As for public services, the local councils are appalling at emptying their recycling centres. One centre - located next to a children's play area and SSI on the beach - is so bad that rubbish is blown about all over the place. The local waste authority is responsible for a statutory nuisance and this in an area dependant on tourism for its living.
I have raised this with the local council, the Tory Mayor and the local Tory councillor. Neither of the latter two even bothered to reply.
"Quality of life" and "pride in place" my arse!
You seem disappointed that reality is different to the political promises of all parties. To be truly cynical, wait to you are 60ish...
Husband told me the local Tory councillor is utterly useless. So my expectations were pretty low and were entirely met.
The council officials have promised to do something but they are based in Whitehaven, live in Carlisle and have never even been to the area. It is a forgotten part of the country. Trudi Harrison comes from here - Bootle - a few miles away. She is local, quite friendly. But she has over the last year been a sad disappointment by comparison with Tim Farron. Being cynical, pork barrel politics has something to be said for it if you get some of the pork. But when you don't even get that, what is the point of any of it?
I tell this story to show the reality of what life is like here and to show up the vacuous nature of this levelling up slogan. We will see whether it amounts to anything substantive in reality. So far the main people who have been levelled up by the Tory party have been the rich who already have rather than the have nots.
I nonetheless expect the Tories to stay in power for a while because Labour are proving to be so bloody useless.
I’m confused. One minute you’re based in Cumbria the next you’re in your garden in West Hampstead
Nothing wrong with multiple houses (or identities) but it does mean you can’t pose as a hard pressed daughter of the provinces if you ALSO have a desirable bolt-hole in the capital
Tactical voting is good as long as you vote tactically for my party, part 217
"Scottish election 2021: Alistair Darling letter urges Tories to vote for Anas Sarwar on list The former Labour chancellor made a rare intervention in politics make to say that voting Conservative 'will not stop the SNP'."
I don't know if anybody else heard the Starmer interview on R4 Today this morning, but it was quite interesting. He wasn't very good, actually (see, I am objective). But he did take the opportunity to set out briefly the 5 current top priorities for Labour at the next GE, whenever that is.
His 5 priorities had echoes of Blair's 1997 pledge card. Interestingly, the fifth priority was about bringing an end to the divisions caused by the 'culture war' (although he didn't use that expression, of course). Anyway, signs of an emerging Labour policy platform to fill the current policy vacuum.
What does it mean. According to this article it means "Insiders suggested that levelling up could include four aspects — a regional economic policy; spreading opportunity across the country; improving the outputs and outcomes from public services; and non-economic outcomes of improving “quality of life” and “pride in place”."
Sounds like empty vacuous slogans to me. In Copeland, one issue that lots of the locals mention is the state of the roads. They are awful. As for public services, the local councils are appalling at emptying their recycling centres. One centre - located next to a children's play area and SSI on the beach - is so bad that rubbish is blown about all over the place. The local waste authority is responsible for a statutory nuisance and this in an area dependant on tourism for its living.
I have raised this with the local council, the Tory Mayor and the local Tory councillor. Neither of the latter two even bothered to reply.
"Quality of life" and "pride in place" my arse!
You seem disappointed that reality is different to the political promises of all parties. To be truly cynical, wait to you are 60ish...
Husband told me the local Tory councillor is utterly useless. So my expectations were pretty low and were entirely met.
The council officials have promised to do something but they are based in Whitehaven, live in Carlisle and have never even been to the area. It is a forgotten part of the country. Trudi Harrison comes from here - Bootle - a few miles away. She is local, quite friendly. But she has over the last year been a sad disappointment by comparison with Tim Farron. Being cynical, pork barrel politics has something to be said for it if you get some of the pork. But when you don't even get that, what is the point of any of it?
I tell this story to show the reality of what life is like here and to show up the vacuous nature of this levelling up slogan. We will see whether it amounts to anything substantive in reality. So far the main people who have been levelled up by the Tory party have been the rich who already have rather than the have nots.
I nonetheless expect the Tories to stay in power for a while because Labour are proving to be so bloody useless.
What you are discovering is that our County Councils are just too big which mean large areas are just ignored or they vote through ideas without any care to the circumstances.
The complete destruction of Bishop Auckland Town Centre (outside of the area surrounding the Bishop's palace) by the opening of St Helens is a prime example. Councillors elsewhere voted for it as it seemed a great idea...
If you, but more importantly Labour, don't get this then there is no way they are returning to power anytime soon.
This is lazy analysis. Just because there's been some big political shifts in one area doesn't mean they cant be some in another.
If the Tories win Hartlepool by the amount suggested and IF (big if) the national polling is actually in the region of a 2% lead, rather than 10%, that suggests some big swings to Labour elsewhere...
I agree. What has made the Tories so successful over the last decade is the increased efficiency of their vote compared to the days when they got within 3% of Blair and he got a very comfortable majority. This has happened so far because the very considerable ebbing of their strength in the south of England has merely reduced their majorities whilst they have suddenly become much more competitive in the midlands, the east and now the north.
But as Labour is finding in reverse there is a tipping point in these things. The seats Labour took for granted whilst it went fishing in the suburbs and university towns of the south have bitten back and it is all too possible that southern seats which were much more remainer, much more liberal and much more dominated by professional classes will in turn get fed up being taken for granted.
Overall this is a good thing. It was not healthy that the Tories were content to get a majority with only the odd rural seat north of Birmingham and the inability of Labour to relate to our most economically successful areas outside of the actual cities meant that they had little to say in that area. A situation where both our major parties have a fair degree of representation from most of our country improves the chances of the government being aware of the needs of all of the country.
Most of the problems there arise from the voting system, which directs all the political attention to those areas considered marginal, and neglects the safer areas for any party.
Whilst that is undoubtedly true it seems to me that Labour is going through an identity crises where they will become more potent in seats that are more like them, that is middle class, professional, well educated, dominated by the public sector and frankly rather more interested in the privileges of such people than those who have very little.
Those with little have caught on. They may come to realise that Boris doesn't really give a toss about them either but at least he pretends to listen and he is amusing rather than patronising.
"pretends to listen"? He delivered them their verdict on Brexit. Labour were set against doing so.
Yes, pretends to listen. Do the people of Hartlepool want Brexit because it is Brexit, or because what they hope it will bring them? Pools is a classic post industrial left behind backwater. People want back the jobs and prosperity and pride and hope that was taken from them. Brexit was the silver bullet to cure these ills which is why they were so enthusiastic for it.
Where the Tories will struggle is that they can't deliver what was promised. I have no doubt that Hartlepool will be thrown a few scraps once it goes Tory but it won't change the fundamental problems with the town and the region. One prime example - local Tories very excited by the prospect of a free port and how it will restore industry. Except that a free port makes it easier to IMPORT, it will do nothing but harm for local industry. But as nothing but harm has been on the menu for 40 years people are desperate and will try anything.
When salvation fails to arrive? Thats when the Tories are screwed. Not to Labour's benefit you understand, we're going to see a rise of the hard right. Think UKIP/Brexit with paramilitary activists...
I guess that they aren’t going to work in the new GE factory then?
A perfect example. Can you show me where in the Mayor's remit he has had anything to do with GE coming to Teesside? Its got literally fuck all to do with him and the same would have been true if (shudder) Jessie Joe Jacobs becomes mayor. She also claims all kinds of crap that are absolutely miles outside the remit of this non-job.
That’s changing the question. You said that the Freeport would do nothing for residents. GE is opening a factory there because it. That will do something for residents.
I don’t care whether it was the mayor, the monkey or a giraffe from London Zoo that achieved it. But from what he has said - and he may be lying of course - the major has been advocating strongly for the Freeport so he had a role and deserves a share of the credit
Oh give over. GE want a tax break to set up in the free port so that they can use imported parts to assemble products to be exported. Local industry doesn't get a boost from a freeport it gets demolished by them. We know freeports don't work, we have shut them all down - specifically the *Tories* shut them down in 2012.
Mayor Houchen has presided over a net loss of jobs and despite the new GE factory the loss will only accelerate with the freeport completely sinking anything that isn't in the free zone. And what does this freeport zone do? Allow busines to function as if it was still in the EU. Yay...
"Assemble products to be exported" is another description of . . . manufacturing. It is industry.
Assembly is not the same as manufacture.
Really? So eg Nissan taking parts from across the world, putting them together to make a car, is not manufacturing? Its not industry?
Manufacturing doesn't need to rely upon raw materials alone, it can use other component parts as part of its supply chain.
Of course. Nissan manufactures cars. It sounded as if you were talking about assembly meaning putting stuff which has already been made into boxes to be shipped. I do not consider that to be manufacture.
If not, then we have been talking at cross purposes.
I don't know if anybody else heard the Starmer interview on R4 Today this morning, but it was quite interesting. He wasn't very good, actually (see, I am objective). But he did take the opportunity to set out briefly the 5 current top priorities for Labour at the next GE, whenever that is.
His 5 priorities had echoes of Blair's 1997 pledge card. Interestingly, the fifth priority was about bringing an end to the divisions caused by the 'culture war' (although he didn't use that expression, of course). Anyway, signs of an emerging Labour policy platform to fill the current policy vacuum.
What does it mean. According to this article it means "Insiders suggested that levelling up could include four aspects — a regional economic policy; spreading opportunity across the country; improving the outputs and outcomes from public services; and non-economic outcomes of improving “quality of life” and “pride in place”."
Sounds like empty vacuous slogans to me. In Copeland, one issue that lots of the locals mention is the state of the roads. They are awful. As for public services, the local councils are appalling at emptying their recycling centres. One centre - located next to a children's play area and SSI on the beach - is so bad that rubbish is blown about all over the place. The local waste authority is responsible for a statutory nuisance and this in an area dependant on tourism for its living.
I have raised this with the local council, the Tory Mayor and the local Tory councillor. Neither of the latter two even bothered to reply.
"Quality of life" and "pride in place" my arse!
You seem disappointed that reality is different to the political promises of all parties. To be truly cynical, wait to you are 60ish...
Husband told me the local Tory councillor is utterly useless. So my expectations were pretty low and were entirely met.
The council officials have promised to do something but they are based in Whitehaven, live in Carlisle and have never even been to the area. It is a forgotten part of the country. Trudi Harrison comes from here - Bootle - a few miles away. She is local, quite friendly. But she has over the last year been a sad disappointment by comparison with Tim Farron. Being cynical, pork barrel politics has something to be said for it if you get some of the pork. But when you don't even get that, what is the point of any of it?
I tell this story to show the reality of what life is like here and to show up the vacuous nature of this levelling up slogan. We will see whether it amounts to anything substantive in reality. So far the main people who have been levelled up by the Tory party have been the rich who already have rather than the have nots.
I nonetheless expect the Tories to stay in power for a while because Labour are proving to be so bloody useless.
Before the "revolution" you would have been saying that the Tory opposition was so useless and that Labour would be in power for a long while as a result....
Needed more time. I dont suppose the SNP and others would consent to a doover in a year? Everything else on hold until then.
I think we have to wait for at least a generation.
For SLAB leadership changes, that's about 18-24 months....
I think Sarwar might be there a bit longer. He has more potential than any other since Wendy Alexander.
Having a solid electoral base and decent name recognition after the election will help. He really needs to be the reasonble face of opposition to Indyref2 to shore that up - and also to soften the impact of the Hate Crime Bill and GRA when the latter is (inevitably) passed.
If you, but more importantly Labour, don't get this then there is no way they are returning to power anytime soon.
This is lazy analysis. Just because there's been some big political shifts in one area doesn't mean they cant be some in another.
If the Tories win Hartlepool by the amount suggested and IF (big if) the national polling is actually in the region of a 2% lead, rather than 10%, that suggests some big swings to Labour elsewhere...
I agree. What has made the Tories so successful over the last decade is the increased efficiency of their vote compared to the days when they got within 3% of Blair and he got a very comfortable majority. This has happened so far because the very considerable ebbing of their strength in the south of England has merely reduced their majorities whilst they have suddenly become much more competitive in the midlands, the east and now the north.
But as Labour is finding in reverse there is a tipping point in these things. The seats Labour took for granted whilst it went fishing in the suburbs and university towns of the south have bitten back and it is all too possible that southern seats which were much more remainer, much more liberal and much more dominated by professional classes will in turn get fed up being taken for granted.
Overall this is a good thing. It was not healthy that the Tories were content to get a majority with only the odd rural seat north of Birmingham and the inability of Labour to relate to our most economically successful areas outside of the actual cities meant that they had little to say in that area. A situation where both our major parties have a fair degree of representation from most of our country improves the chances of the government being aware of the needs of all of the country.
Most of the problems there arise from the voting system, which directs all the political attention to those areas considered marginal, and neglects the safer areas for any party.
Whilst that is undoubtedly true it seems to me that Labour is going through an identity crises where they will become more potent in seats that are more like them, that is middle class, professional, well educated, dominated by the public sector and frankly rather more interested in the privileges of such people than those who have very little.
Those with little have caught on. They may come to realise that Boris doesn't really give a toss about them either but at least he pretends to listen and he is amusing rather than patronising.
"pretends to listen"? He delivered them their verdict on Brexit. Labour were set against doing so.
Yes, pretends to listen. Do the people of Hartlepool want Brexit because it is Brexit, or because what they hope it will bring them? Pools is a classic post industrial left behind backwater. People want back the jobs and prosperity and pride and hope that was taken from them. Brexit was the silver bullet to cure these ills which is why they were so enthusiastic for it.
Where the Tories will struggle is that they can't deliver what was promised. I have no doubt that Hartlepool will be thrown a few scraps once it goes Tory but it won't change the fundamental problems with the town and the region. One prime example - local Tories very excited by the prospect of a free port and how it will restore industry. Except that a free port makes it easier to IMPORT, it will do nothing but harm for local industry. But as nothing but harm has been on the menu for 40 years people are desperate and will try anything.
When salvation fails to arrive? Thats when the Tories are screwed. Not to Labour's benefit you understand, we're going to see a rise of the hard right. Think UKIP/Brexit with paramilitary activists...
I guess that they aren’t going to work in the new GE factory then?
A perfect example. Can you show me where in the Mayor's remit he has had anything to do with GE coming to Teesside? Its got literally fuck all to do with him and the same would have been true if (shudder) Jessie Joe Jacobs becomes mayor. She also claims all kinds of crap that are absolutely miles outside the remit of this non-job.
That’s changing the question. You said that the Freeport would do nothing for residents. GE is opening a factory there because it. That will do something for residents.
I don’t care whether it was the mayor, the monkey or a giraffe from London Zoo that achieved it. But from what he has said - and he may be lying of course - the major has been advocating strongly for the Freeport so he had a role and deserves a share of the credit
Oh give over. GE want a tax break to set up in the free port so that they can use imported parts to assemble products to be exported. Local industry doesn't get a boost from a freeport it gets demolished by them. We know freeports don't work, we have shut them all down - specifically the *Tories* shut them down in 2012.
Mayor Houchen has presided over a net loss of jobs and despite the new GE factory the loss will only accelerate with the freeport completely sinking anything that isn't in the free zone. And what does this freeport zone do? Allow busines to function as if it was still in the EU. Yay...
"Assemble products to be exported" is another description of . . . manufacturing. It is industry.
There is a major difference between a factory - where you make stuff - and an assembly plant - where you screw stuff together made in factories. Far easier to shut down an assembly shed and direct the parts to a different assembly shed than it is to shut the actual factories who make them.
The other big "factory" on Teesside(ish) that is a big risk is Hitachi. It makes literally nothing there that can't be done in its other factories and unlike either Kasado or even Ansaldo it can only make for the UK market.
My real annoyance with Hitachi Rail was them stealing Hitachi Consulting's London office which had the nicest view of the Thames (HMS Belfast, the Tower and Tower Bridge) possible.
Hartlepool 2015 Iain Wright Lab 14,076 35.6 -6.9 Philip Broughton UKIP11,052 28.0 21.0 Richard Royal Con 8,256 20.9 -7.2
Hartlepool 2017 Mike Hill Lab 21,969 52.5 16.9 Carl Jackson Con14,319 34.2 13.3 P Broughton UKIP4,801 11.5 -16.5
Hartlepool 2019 Mike Hill Lab 15,464 37.7 -14.8 S Houghton Con 11,869 28.9 -5.3 Richard Tice BXP 10,603 25.8 25.8
Hartlepool 2021 CON GAIN first time not Labour since 1959
SKS fans please explain how SKS has managed this
In regards to the poll...
Inject that beautiful potential result straight into my damn veins.
Corbyn held that easily over Con + UKIP in 2017, Starmer can't because he is an unelectable posh centrist, simple.
The Labour right won't care, their only goal is to rule the Labour party as they sink it into irrelevance.
The left had done their best to reduce Labour to irrelevance .. and its working!
Sorry I think you missed the above results and the recent poll?
Voters aren't voting for left wing Labour than centrist Labour in greater numbers because they hate the left.
Voters are voting less for centrist than left wing Labour than centrist Labour because the latter doesn't represent them (or more accurately represents them less)
The only blame that can be attached to the left here is for not voting for Labour, but with Labours current strategy of fuck the left why should they?
The Labour leadership prefers the purity of centrism over winning the votes of people who disagree with it.
How can Labour be 2% behind nationally but 17% behind in Hartlepool? Either one poll is wrong, the other poll is wrong, or the Tories are losing ground much quicker in other areas than people realise.
Thanks. Yes, shades of that tension between state and national polling we saw with WH20.
Usually I favour the national but here - with Hartlepool - I think we have a genuine special case. The "true" GE19 result (adjusted for BXP) was a Con win. I'm assessing against that and factoring in (i) we are coming early out of the pandemic due to a vaccine success associated with the government, (ii) a government which also delivered the promised Good Hard Leave so desired by the denizens of this seat, (iii) people have had little time for Labour and Starmer with Covid being such a blanket story, and (iv) Johnson has particular appeal to the WWC demographic being as he's a "bit of a character" and "not like normal politicians".
They are the tea leaves and the resulting brew tastes bitter and of only one thing. Cons win this by-election.
On the BBC quiz show "Pointless" last week there was a round where contestants had to identify politicians from their photos. The aim was to identify the MP that scored the lowest in terms of members of the public surveyed recognising them. The programme was filmed since Covid regulations came in. Keir Starmer had 46 per cent recognition with the public, Anneliese Dodds 3 and Angela Rayner 4. The opposition doesn't seem to be cutting through with members of the public.
Not the opposition, everyone but the PM. Rishi Sunak joined Keir Starmer in the 40s, for example. And Ed Davey...well...
I find those results amazing. Has all of Blackford's campaigning for smuggest, most objectionable oaf in the Commons truly been in vain? Surely he has irritated more people than that.
I was surprised David Lammy was so low, given he does loads of LBC and other media stuff.
Being on the radio does little for photo recognition shocker....
If you, but more importantly Labour, don't get this then there is no way they are returning to power anytime soon.
This is lazy analysis. Just because there's been some big political shifts in one area doesn't mean they cant be some in another.
If the Tories win Hartlepool by the amount suggested and IF (big if) the national polling is actually in the region of a 2% lead, rather than 10%, that suggests some big swings to Labour elsewhere...
I agree. What has made the Tories so successful over the last decade is the increased efficiency of their vote compared to the days when they got within 3% of Blair and he got a very comfortable majority. This has happened so far because the very considerable ebbing of their strength in the south of England has merely reduced their majorities whilst they have suddenly become much more competitive in the midlands, the east and now the north.
But as Labour is finding in reverse there is a tipping point in these things. The seats Labour took for granted whilst it went fishing in the suburbs and university towns of the south have bitten back and it is all too possible that southern seats which were much more remainer, much more liberal and much more dominated by professional classes will in turn get fed up being taken for granted.
Overall this is a good thing. It was not healthy that the Tories were content to get a majority with only the odd rural seat north of Birmingham and the inability of Labour to relate to our most economically successful areas outside of the actual cities meant that they had little to say in that area. A situation where both our major parties have a fair degree of representation from most of our country improves the chances of the government being aware of the needs of all of the country.
Most of the problems there arise from the voting system, which directs all the political attention to those areas considered marginal, and neglects the safer areas for any party.
Whilst that is undoubtedly true it seems to me that Labour is going through an identity crises where they will become more potent in seats that are more like them, that is middle class, professional, well educated, dominated by the public sector and frankly rather more interested in the privileges of such people than those who have very little.
Those with little have caught on. They may come to realise that Boris doesn't really give a toss about them either but at least he pretends to listen and he is amusing rather than patronising.
"pretends to listen"? He delivered them their verdict on Brexit. Labour were set against doing so.
Yes, pretends to listen. Do the people of Hartlepool want Brexit because it is Brexit, or because what they hope it will bring them? Pools is a classic post industrial left behind backwater. People want back the jobs and prosperity and pride and hope that was taken from them. Brexit was the silver bullet to cure these ills which is why they were so enthusiastic for it.
Where the Tories will struggle is that they can't deliver what was promised. I have no doubt that Hartlepool will be thrown a few scraps once it goes Tory but it won't change the fundamental problems with the town and the region. One prime example - local Tories very excited by the prospect of a free port and how it will restore industry. Except that a free port makes it easier to IMPORT, it will do nothing but harm for local industry. But as nothing but harm has been on the menu for 40 years people are desperate and will try anything.
When salvation fails to arrive? Thats when the Tories are screwed. Not to Labour's benefit you understand, we're going to see a rise of the hard right. Think UKIP/Brexit with paramilitary activists...
I guess that they aren’t going to work in the new GE factory then?
A perfect example. Can you show me where in the Mayor's remit he has had anything to do with GE coming to Teesside? Its got literally fuck all to do with him and the same would have been true if (shudder) Jessie Joe Jacobs becomes mayor. She also claims all kinds of crap that are absolutely miles outside the remit of this non-job.
That’s changing the question. You said that the Freeport would do nothing for residents. GE is opening a factory there because it. That will do something for residents.
I don’t care whether it was the mayor, the monkey or a giraffe from London Zoo that achieved it. But from what he has said - and he may be lying of course - the major has been advocating strongly for the Freeport so he had a role and deserves a share of the credit
Oh give over. GE want a tax break to set up in the free port so that they can use imported parts to assemble products to be exported. Local industry doesn't get a boost from a freeport it gets demolished by them. We know freeports don't work, we have shut them all down - specifically the *Tories* shut them down in 2012.
Mayor Houchen has presided over a net loss of jobs and despite the new GE factory the loss will only accelerate with the freeport completely sinking anything that isn't in the free zone. And what does this freeport zone do? Allow busines to function as if it was still in the EU. Yay...
"Assemble products to be exported" is another description of . . . manufacturing. It is industry.
There is a major difference between a factory - where you make stuff - and an assembly plant - where you screw stuff together made in factories. Far easier to shut down an assembly shed and direct the parts to a different assembly shed than it is to shut the actual factories who make them.
The other big "factory" on Teesside(ish) that is a big risk is Hitachi. It makes literally nothing there that can't be done in its other factories and unlike either Kasado or even Ansaldo it can only make for the UK market.
What utter bollocks. A factory is where you ‘make something on a large scale using machinery’.
Unless you know of ‘factories’ which have their own iron mines from which they smelt their own steel, like mao’s iron working peasants in the early 60s, then anything any factory does can quite easily be moved elsewhere. This is the essential lesson of modernity
If you, but more importantly Labour, don't get this then there is no way they are returning to power anytime soon.
This is lazy analysis. Just because there's been some big political shifts in one area doesn't mean they cant be some in another.
If the Tories win Hartlepool by the amount suggested and IF (big if) the national polling is actually in the region of a 2% lead, rather than 10%, that suggests some big swings to Labour elsewhere...
I agree. What has made the Tories so successful over the last decade is the increased efficiency of their vote compared to the days when they got within 3% of Blair and he got a very comfortable majority. This has happened so far because the very considerable ebbing of their strength in the south of England has merely reduced their majorities whilst they have suddenly become much more competitive in the midlands, the east and now the north.
But as Labour is finding in reverse there is a tipping point in these things. The seats Labour took for granted whilst it went fishing in the suburbs and university towns of the south have bitten back and it is all too possible that southern seats which were much more remainer, much more liberal and much more dominated by professional classes will in turn get fed up being taken for granted.
Overall this is a good thing. It was not healthy that the Tories were content to get a majority with only the odd rural seat north of Birmingham and the inability of Labour to relate to our most economically successful areas outside of the actual cities meant that they had little to say in that area. A situation where both our major parties have a fair degree of representation from most of our country improves the chances of the government being aware of the needs of all of the country.
Most of the problems there arise from the voting system, which directs all the political attention to those areas considered marginal, and neglects the safer areas for any party.
Whilst that is undoubtedly true it seems to me that Labour is going through an identity crises where they will become more potent in seats that are more like them, that is middle class, professional, well educated, dominated by the public sector and frankly rather more interested in the privileges of such people than those who have very little.
Those with little have caught on. They may come to realise that Boris doesn't really give a toss about them either but at least he pretends to listen and he is amusing rather than patronising.
"pretends to listen"? He delivered them their verdict on Brexit. Labour were set against doing so.
Yes, pretends to listen. Do the people of Hartlepool want Brexit because it is Brexit, or because what they hope it will bring them? Pools is a classic post industrial left behind backwater. People want back the jobs and prosperity and pride and hope that was taken from them. Brexit was the silver bullet to cure these ills which is why they were so enthusiastic for it.
Where the Tories will struggle is that they can't deliver what was promised. I have no doubt that Hartlepool will be thrown a few scraps once it goes Tory but it won't change the fundamental problems with the town and the region. One prime example - local Tories very excited by the prospect of a free port and how it will restore industry. Except that a free port makes it easier to IMPORT, it will do nothing but harm for local industry. But as nothing but harm has been on the menu for 40 years people are desperate and will try anything.
When salvation fails to arrive? Thats when the Tories are screwed. Not to Labour's benefit you understand, we're going to see a rise of the hard right. Think UKIP/Brexit with paramilitary activists...
I guess that they aren’t going to work in the new GE factory then?
A perfect example. Can you show me where in the Mayor's remit he has had anything to do with GE coming to Teesside? Its got literally fuck all to do with him and the same would have been true if (shudder) Jessie Joe Jacobs becomes mayor. She also claims all kinds of crap that are absolutely miles outside the remit of this non-job.
That’s changing the question. You said that the Freeport would do nothing for residents. GE is opening a factory there because it. That will do something for residents.
I don’t care whether it was the mayor, the monkey or a giraffe from London Zoo that achieved it. But from what he has said - and he may be lying of course - the major has been advocating strongly for the Freeport so he had a role and deserves a share of the credit
Oh give over. GE want a tax break to set up in the free port so that they can use imported parts to assemble products to be exported. Local industry doesn't get a boost from a freeport it gets demolished by them. We know freeports don't work, we have shut them all down - specifically the *Tories* shut them down in 2012.
Mayor Houchen has presided over a net loss of jobs and despite the new GE factory the loss will only accelerate with the freeport completely sinking anything that isn't in the free zone. And what does this freeport zone do? Allow busines to function as if it was still in the EU. Yay...
"Assemble products to be exported" is another description of . . . manufacturing. It is industry.
Assembly is not the same as manufacture.
Really? So eg Nissan taking parts from across the world, putting them together to make a car, is not manufacturing? Its not industry?
Manufacturing doesn't need to rely upon raw materials alone, it can use other component parts as part of its supply chain.
Of course. Nissan manufactures cars. It sounded as if you were talking about assembly meaning putting stuff which has already been made into boxes to be shipped. I do not consider that to be manufacture.
If not, then we have been talking at cross purposes.
No that's not what I meant, sorry if I wasn't clear and glad we can agree.
I don't know if anybody else heard the Starmer interview on R4 Today this morning, but it was quite interesting. He wasn't very good, actually (see, I am objective). But he did take the opportunity to set out briefly the 5 current top priorities for Labour at the next GE, whenever that is.
His 5 priorities had echoes of Blair's 1997 pledge card. Interestingly, the fifth priority was about bringing an end to the divisions caused by the 'culture war' (although he didn't use that expression, of course). Anyway, signs of an emerging Labour policy platform to fill the current policy vacuum.
What does it mean. According to this article it means "Insiders suggested that levelling up could include four aspects — a regional economic policy; spreading opportunity across the country; improving the outputs and outcomes from public services; and non-economic outcomes of improving “quality of life” and “pride in place”."
Sounds like empty vacuous slogans to me. In Copeland, one issue that lots of the locals mention is the state of the roads. They are awful. As for public services, the local councils are appalling at emptying their recycling centres. One centre - located next to a children's play area and SSI on the beach - is so bad that rubbish is blown about all over the place. The local waste authority is responsible for a statutory nuisance and this in an area dependant on tourism for its living.
I have raised this with the local council, the Tory Mayor and the local Tory councillor. Neither of the latter two even bothered to reply.
"Quality of life" and "pride in place" my arse!
You seem disappointed that reality is different to the political promises of all parties. To be truly cynical, wait to you are 60ish...
Ironically there is likely to be a certain amount of levelling up. Not due to the Tories but to Covid. That will be people like me taking my job and more importantly my salary out of the south east and to more economically deprived areas. How much we don't know yet but it is probably not going to be a bad way to do it. In addition as more jobs are advertised as 100% homeworking people in deprived area's can apply for them without the cost of moving to the south east.
If you, but more importantly Labour, don't get this then there is no way they are returning to power anytime soon.
This is lazy analysis. Just because there's been some big political shifts in one area doesn't mean they cant be some in another.
If the Tories win Hartlepool by the amount suggested and IF (big if) the national polling is actually in the region of a 2% lead, rather than 10%, that suggests some big swings to Labour elsewhere...
I agree. What has made the Tories so successful over the last decade is the increased efficiency of their vote compared to the days when they got within 3% of Blair and he got a very comfortable majority. This has happened so far because the very considerable ebbing of their strength in the south of England has merely reduced their majorities whilst they have suddenly become much more competitive in the midlands, the east and now the north.
But as Labour is finding in reverse there is a tipping point in these things. The seats Labour took for granted whilst it went fishing in the suburbs and university towns of the south have bitten back and it is all too possible that southern seats which were much more remainer, much more liberal and much more dominated by professional classes will in turn get fed up being taken for granted.
Overall this is a good thing. It was not healthy that the Tories were content to get a majority with only the odd rural seat north of Birmingham and the inability of Labour to relate to our most economically successful areas outside of the actual cities meant that they had little to say in that area. A situation where both our major parties have a fair degree of representation from most of our country improves the chances of the government being aware of the needs of all of the country.
Most of the problems there arise from the voting system, which directs all the political attention to those areas considered marginal, and neglects the safer areas for any party.
Whilst that is undoubtedly true it seems to me that Labour is going through an identity crises where they will become more potent in seats that are more like them, that is middle class, professional, well educated, dominated by the public sector and frankly rather more interested in the privileges of such people than those who have very little.
Those with little have caught on. They may come to realise that Boris doesn't really give a toss about them either but at least he pretends to listen and he is amusing rather than patronising.
"pretends to listen"? He delivered them their verdict on Brexit. Labour were set against doing so.
Yes, pretends to listen. Do the people of Hartlepool want Brexit because it is Brexit, or because what they hope it will bring them? Pools is a classic post industrial left behind backwater. People want back the jobs and prosperity and pride and hope that was taken from them. Brexit was the silver bullet to cure these ills which is why they were so enthusiastic for it.
Where the Tories will struggle is that they can't deliver what was promised. I have no doubt that Hartlepool will be thrown a few scraps once it goes Tory but it won't change the fundamental problems with the town and the region. One prime example - local Tories very excited by the prospect of a free port and how it will restore industry. Except that a free port makes it easier to IMPORT, it will do nothing but harm for local industry. But as nothing but harm has been on the menu for 40 years people are desperate and will try anything.
When salvation fails to arrive? Thats when the Tories are screwed. Not to Labour's benefit you understand, we're going to see a rise of the hard right. Think UKIP/Brexit with paramilitary activists...
I guess that they aren’t going to work in the new GE factory then?
A perfect example. Can you show me where in the Mayor's remit he has had anything to do with GE coming to Teesside? Its got literally fuck all to do with him and the same would have been true if (shudder) Jessie Joe Jacobs becomes mayor. She also claims all kinds of crap that are absolutely miles outside the remit of this non-job.
That’s changing the question. You said that the Freeport would do nothing for residents. GE is opening a factory there because it. That will do something for residents.
I don’t care whether it was the mayor, the monkey or a giraffe from London Zoo that achieved it. But from what he has said - and he may be lying of course - the major has been advocating strongly for the Freeport so he had a role and deserves a share of the credit
Oh give over. GE want a tax break to set up in the free port so that they can use imported parts to assemble products to be exported. Local industry doesn't get a boost from a freeport it gets demolished by them. We know freeports don't work, we have shut them all down - specifically the *Tories* shut them down in 2012.
Mayor Houchen has presided over a net loss of jobs and despite the new GE factory the loss will only accelerate with the freeport completely sinking anything that isn't in the free zone. And what does this freeport zone do? Allow busines to function as if it was still in the EU. Yay...
"Assemble products to be exported" is another description of . . . manufacturing. It is industry.
Assembly is not the same as manufacture.
Really? So eg Nissan taking parts from across the world, putting them together to make a car, is not manufacturing? Its not industry?
Manufacturing doesn't need to rely upon raw materials alone, it can use other component parts as part of its supply chain.
Nissan Sunderland is a car factory. It builds the cars - body shells, engines, batteries. To shut it and transfer production to a different factory means you need to have sufficient capacity to build shells, engines etc in other factories.
Whereas Hitachi at Newton Aycliffe is an assembly plant. You can screw the imported components together in a different assembly shed elsewhere by diverting your factory output of parts. As already has happened with Hitachi Pistoia making identical trains to Aycliffe for import into the UK. As soon as the tariffs make Aycliffe more expensive that Italy they can simply switch production and switch the lights off.
Hartlepool 2015 Iain Wright Lab 14,076 35.6 -6.9 Philip Broughton UKIP11,052 28.0 21.0 Richard Royal Con 8,256 20.9 -7.2
Hartlepool 2017 Mike Hill Lab 21,969 52.5 16.9 Carl Jackson Con14,319 34.2 13.3 P Broughton UKIP4,801 11.5 -16.5
Hartlepool 2019 Mike Hill Lab 15,464 37.7 -14.8 S Houghton Con 11,869 28.9 -5.3 Richard Tice BXP 10,603 25.8 25.8
Hartlepool 2021 CON GAIN first time not Labour since 1959
SKS fans please explain how SKS has managed this
You really are stupid enough to go there? Then again why not - Corbyn won Hartlepool 9 times after his election to Parliament. You see that Peter Mandelson - they only voted for him knowing that the Beard of the Year was in parliament as their true representative. Now that Corbyn has been booted out of the Labour Party Pools is going Tory - nuff said.
If they remove IDStarmer and reinstate the Jeremy, all the people who were LLLLL across the contact sheet who said "I'm not voting for him" will vote for him.
Your really so stupid to try the its Corbyns fault despite the facts.
First Labour loss since 1959
Fairy Nuff we know your obsessed you should move on.
No no no, the loss of the red wall predates Corbyn so it isn't his fault. The dam has been eroded over time, with no maintenance done by an arrogant local Labour hierarchy who think they are born to rule because its all the Tories fault.
Labour's problem is that the dam burst thanks to Brexit. What you propose is that Labour go back to the failed Corbyn experiment, have a slate of wazzocks like Sam Tarry, Zarah Sultana and Laura Pillock as MPs and double down on policy so that Labour only talk to the bottom 5% and blame everything on the top 1% and say fuck all to everyone else.
Labour's solution is not Starmer. Labour's solution is not Corbyn. It is not either / or you tosspot. As I tweeted earlier this morning the left and right in Labour fight like ferrets in a sack and neither side understand why you're in the sack in the first place.
Labour reject who jumped in the sack to fight like a ferret in 2015 against Corbyn and fought like a ferret every day for 3 years criticises sack fighting.
Said ex Labour hypocrite after quitting sack fighting applies to rejoin Labour in order to fight like a ferret against people like "Laura Pillock"
Rejected for being a divisive nasty name calling piece of work so sad ex sack fighting poster is now politically homeless
Sad tale really
As I said shortly after the event, my abrupt about-face to try and rejoin the Labour Party was done in the middle of a mental health crisis. As that was the stupidest action my illness generated I remain grateful!
Then it cleared, and like Dr Zimsky at the end of The Core dictating notes for his book whilst pinned underneath a nuclear bomb that was about to destroy him and his notes, I looked at myself, asked "what the fuck am I doing" and roared with laughter.
Glad that my mental heath disaster makes you roar with laughter as well.
You called me a toss pot is that part of your condition or are you just a nasty piece of work?
No I called you a tosspot because you are kind of person who takes the piss out of the mentally ill.
Tactical voting is good as long as you vote tactically for my party, part 217
"Scottish election 2021: Alistair Darling letter urges Tories to vote for Anas Sarwar on list The former Labour chancellor made a rare intervention in politics make to say that voting Conservative 'will not stop the SNP'."
About as well judged as most of his Chancellorship. If I lived in Southside I would be more than happy to vote for Sarwar against Sturgeon but on the list?
If you, but more importantly Labour, don't get this then there is no way they are returning to power anytime soon.
This is lazy analysis. Just because there's been some big political shifts in one area doesn't mean they cant be some in another.
If the Tories win Hartlepool by the amount suggested and IF (big if) the national polling is actually in the region of a 2% lead, rather than 10%, that suggests some big swings to Labour elsewhere...
I agree. What has made the Tories so successful over the last decade is the increased efficiency of their vote compared to the days when they got within 3% of Blair and he got a very comfortable majority. This has happened so far because the very considerable ebbing of their strength in the south of England has merely reduced their majorities whilst they have suddenly become much more competitive in the midlands, the east and now the north.
But as Labour is finding in reverse there is a tipping point in these things. The seats Labour took for granted whilst it went fishing in the suburbs and university towns of the south have bitten back and it is all too possible that southern seats which were much more remainer, much more liberal and much more dominated by professional classes will in turn get fed up being taken for granted.
Overall this is a good thing. It was not healthy that the Tories were content to get a majority with only the odd rural seat north of Birmingham and the inability of Labour to relate to our most economically successful areas outside of the actual cities meant that they had little to say in that area. A situation where both our major parties have a fair degree of representation from most of our country improves the chances of the government being aware of the needs of all of the country.
Most of the problems there arise from the voting system, which directs all the political attention to those areas considered marginal, and neglects the safer areas for any party.
Whilst that is undoubtedly true it seems to me that Labour is going through an identity crises where they will become more potent in seats that are more like them, that is middle class, professional, well educated, dominated by the public sector and frankly rather more interested in the privileges of such people than those who have very little.
Those with little have caught on. They may come to realise that Boris doesn't really give a toss about them either but at least he pretends to listen and he is amusing rather than patronising.
"pretends to listen"? He delivered them their verdict on Brexit. Labour were set against doing so.
Yes, pretends to listen. Do the people of Hartlepool want Brexit because it is Brexit, or because what they hope it will bring them? Pools is a classic post industrial left behind backwater. People want back the jobs and prosperity and pride and hope that was taken from them. Brexit was the silver bullet to cure these ills which is why they were so enthusiastic for it.
Where the Tories will struggle is that they can't deliver what was promised. I have no doubt that Hartlepool will be thrown a few scraps once it goes Tory but it won't change the fundamental problems with the town and the region. One prime example - local Tories very excited by the prospect of a free port and how it will restore industry. Except that a free port makes it easier to IMPORT, it will do nothing but harm for local industry. But as nothing but harm has been on the menu for 40 years people are desperate and will try anything.
When salvation fails to arrive? Thats when the Tories are screwed. Not to Labour's benefit you understand, we're going to see a rise of the hard right. Think UKIP/Brexit with paramilitary activists...
I guess that they aren’t going to work in the new GE factory then?
A perfect example. Can you show me where in the Mayor's remit he has had anything to do with GE coming to Teesside? Its got literally fuck all to do with him and the same would have been true if (shudder) Jessie Joe Jacobs becomes mayor. She also claims all kinds of crap that are absolutely miles outside the remit of this non-job.
That’s changing the question. You said that the Freeport would do nothing for residents. GE is opening a factory there because it. That will do something for residents.
I don’t care whether it was the mayor, the monkey or a giraffe from London Zoo that achieved it. But from what he has said - and he may be lying of course - the major has been advocating strongly for the Freeport so he had a role and deserves a share of the credit
Oh give over. GE want a tax break to set up in the free port so that they can use imported parts to assemble products to be exported. Local industry doesn't get a boost from a freeport it gets demolished by them. We know freeports don't work, we have shut them all down - specifically the *Tories* shut them down in 2012.
Mayor Houchen has presided over a net loss of jobs and despite the new GE factory the loss will only accelerate with the freeport completely sinking anything that isn't in the free zone. And what does this freeport zone do? Allow busines to function as if it was still in the EU. Yay...
"Assemble products to be exported" is another description of . . . manufacturing. It is industry.
Assembly is not the same as manufacture.
Really? So eg Nissan taking parts from across the world, putting them together to make a car, is not manufacturing? Its not industry?
Manufacturing doesn't need to rely upon raw materials alone, it can use other component parts as part of its supply chain.
Nissan Sunderland is a car factory. It builds the cars - body shells, engines, batteries. To shut it and transfer production to a different factory means you need to have sufficient capacity to build shells, engines etc in other factories.
Whereas Hitachi at Newton Aycliffe is an assembly plant. You can screw the imported components together in a different assembly shed elsewhere by diverting your factory output of parts. As already has happened with Hitachi Pistoia making identical trains to Aycliffe for import into the UK. As soon as the tariffs make Aycliffe more expensive that Italy they can simply switch production and switch the lights off.
If you, but more importantly Labour, don't get this then there is no way they are returning to power anytime soon.
This is lazy analysis. Just because there's been some big political shifts in one area doesn't mean they cant be some in another.
If the Tories win Hartlepool by the amount suggested and IF (big if) the national polling is actually in the region of a 2% lead, rather than 10%, that suggests some big swings to Labour elsewhere...
I agree. What has made the Tories so successful over the last decade is the increased efficiency of their vote compared to the days when they got within 3% of Blair and he got a very comfortable majority. This has happened so far because the very considerable ebbing of their strength in the south of England has merely reduced their majorities whilst they have suddenly become much more competitive in the midlands, the east and now the north.
But as Labour is finding in reverse there is a tipping point in these things. The seats Labour took for granted whilst it went fishing in the suburbs and university towns of the south have bitten back and it is all too possible that southern seats which were much more remainer, much more liberal and much more dominated by professional classes will in turn get fed up being taken for granted.
Overall this is a good thing. It was not healthy that the Tories were content to get a majority with only the odd rural seat north of Birmingham and the inability of Labour to relate to our most economically successful areas outside of the actual cities meant that they had little to say in that area. A situation where both our major parties have a fair degree of representation from most of our country improves the chances of the government being aware of the needs of all of the country.
Most of the problems there arise from the voting system, which directs all the political attention to those areas considered marginal, and neglects the safer areas for any party.
Whilst that is undoubtedly true it seems to me that Labour is going through an identity crises where they will become more potent in seats that are more like them, that is middle class, professional, well educated, dominated by the public sector and frankly rather more interested in the privileges of such people than those who have very little.
Those with little have caught on. They may come to realise that Boris doesn't really give a toss about them either but at least he pretends to listen and he is amusing rather than patronising.
"pretends to listen"? He delivered them their verdict on Brexit. Labour were set against doing so.
Yes, pretends to listen. Do the people of Hartlepool want Brexit because it is Brexit, or because what they hope it will bring them? Pools is a classic post industrial left behind backwater. People want back the jobs and prosperity and pride and hope that was taken from them. Brexit was the silver bullet to cure these ills which is why they were so enthusiastic for it.
Where the Tories will struggle is that they can't deliver what was promised. I have no doubt that Hartlepool will be thrown a few scraps once it goes Tory but it won't change the fundamental problems with the town and the region. One prime example - local Tories very excited by the prospect of a free port and how it will restore industry. Except that a free port makes it easier to IMPORT, it will do nothing but harm for local industry. But as nothing but harm has been on the menu for 40 years people are desperate and will try anything.
When salvation fails to arrive? Thats when the Tories are screwed. Not to Labour's benefit you understand, we're going to see a rise of the hard right. Think UKIP/Brexit with paramilitary activists...
I guess that they aren’t going to work in the new GE factory then?
A perfect example. Can you show me where in the Mayor's remit he has had anything to do with GE coming to Teesside? Its got literally fuck all to do with him and the same would have been true if (shudder) Jessie Joe Jacobs becomes mayor. She also claims all kinds of crap that are absolutely miles outside the remit of this non-job.
That’s changing the question. You said that the Freeport would do nothing for residents. GE is opening a factory there because it. That will do something for residents.
I don’t care whether it was the mayor, the monkey or a giraffe from London Zoo that achieved it. But from what he has said - and he may be lying of course - the major has been advocating strongly for the Freeport so he had a role and deserves a share of the credit
Oh give over. GE want a tax break to set up in the free port so that they can use imported parts to assemble products to be exported. Local industry doesn't get a boost from a freeport it gets demolished by them. We know freeports don't work, we have shut them all down - specifically the *Tories* shut them down in 2012.
Mayor Houchen has presided over a net loss of jobs and despite the new GE factory the loss will only accelerate with the freeport completely sinking anything that isn't in the free zone. And what does this freeport zone do? Allow busines to function as if it was still in the EU. Yay...
"Assemble products to be exported" is another description of . . . manufacturing. It is industry.
There is a major difference between a factory - where you make stuff - and an assembly plant - where you screw stuff together made in factories. Far easier to shut down an assembly shed and direct the parts to a different assembly shed than it is to shut the actual factories who make them.
The other big "factory" on Teesside(ish) that is a big risk is Hitachi. It makes literally nothing there that can't be done in its other factories and unlike either Kasado or even Ansaldo it can only make for the UK market.
What utter bollocks. A factory is where you ‘make something on a large scale using machinery’.
Unless you know of ‘factories’ which have their own iron mines from which they smelt their own steel, like mao’s iron working peasants in the early 60s, then anything any factory does can quite easily be moved elsewhere. This is the essential lesson of modernity
It's a matter of value added - how much work is actually done locally and how many people are employed there...
Nissan - manufacturing - the assembly plant is in the middle with a lot of the parts made by other suppliers locally.
Hitach Rail - assembly - the plant doesn't add much from other local suppliers, everything is shipped in boxes from Japan and then assembled here.
Nissan can threaten to move but it would be a long term project taking 10 years due to the billions that have been invested in the plant.
Hitachi could move next year and will at some point once the last UK train order has been built.
Needed more time. I dont suppose the SNP and others would consent to a doover in a year? Everything else on hold until then.
I think we have to wait for at least a generation.
For SLAB leadership changes, that's about 18-24 months....
I think Sarwar might be there a bit longer. He has more potential than any other since Wendy Alexander.
Having a solid electoral base and decent name recognition after the election will help. He really needs to be the reasonble face of opposition to Indyref2 to shore that up - and also to soften the impact of the Hate Crime Bill and GRA when the latter is (inevitably) passed.
With the Tories under Ross and Ruth Davidson no longer on the scene being the reasonable face of opposition looks...doable.
I don't know if anybody else heard the Starmer interview on R4 Today this morning, but it was quite interesting. He wasn't very good, actually (see, I am objective). But he did take the opportunity to set out briefly the 5 current top priorities for Labour at the next GE, whenever that is.
His 5 priorities had echoes of Blair's 1997 pledge card. Interestingly, the fifth priority was about bringing an end to the divisions caused by the 'culture war' (although he didn't use that expression, of course). Anyway, signs of an emerging Labour policy platform to fill the current policy vacuum.
What does it mean. According to this article it means "Insiders suggested that levelling up could include four aspects — a regional economic policy; spreading opportunity across the country; improving the outputs and outcomes from public services; and non-economic outcomes of improving “quality of life” and “pride in place”."
Sounds like empty vacuous slogans to me. In Copeland, one issue that lots of the locals mention is the state of the roads. They are awful. As for public services, the local councils are appalling at emptying their recycling centres. One centre - located next to a children's play area and SSI on the beach - is so bad that rubbish is blown about all over the place. The local waste authority is responsible for a statutory nuisance and this in an area dependant on tourism for its living.
I have raised this with the local council, the Tory Mayor and the local Tory councillor. Neither of the latter two even bothered to reply.
"Quality of life" and "pride in place" my arse!
You seem disappointed that reality is different to the political promises of all parties. To be truly cynical, wait to you are 60ish...
Husband told me the local Tory councillor is utterly useless. So my expectations were pretty low and were entirely met.
The council officials have promised to do something but they are based in Whitehaven, live in Carlisle and have never even been to the area. It is a forgotten part of the country. Trudi Harrison comes from here - Bootle - a few miles away. She is local, quite friendly. But she has over the last year been a sad disappointment by comparison with Tim Farron. Being cynical, pork barrel politics has something to be said for it if you get some of the pork. But when you don't even get that, what is the point of any of it?
I tell this story to show the reality of what life is like here and to show up the vacuous nature of this levelling up slogan. We will see whether it amounts to anything substantive in reality. So far the main people who have been levelled up by the Tory party have been the rich who already have rather than the have nots.
I nonetheless expect the Tories to stay in power for a while because Labour are proving to be so bloody useless.
I’m confused. One minute you’re based in Cumbria the next you’re in your garden in West Hampstead
Nothing wrong with multiple houses (or identities) but it does mean you can’t pose as a hard pressed daughter of the provinces if you ALSO have a desirable bolt-hole in the capital
Second home owners certainly aren’t seen as locals
Morning! Thought I would give this a go after about a decade of lurking. Incidentally, it started when a teacher of mine suggested that checking the betting markets is a better predicter of election results than the polls. My feeling is the assertion has taken some hammering since then and I suspect the market has moved against it (no doubt very profitably).
Off Topic, I was really interested in a comment from a previous thread yesterday that linked to a thread from Ciaran Martin on the constitutionality of the IndyRef and what all this means for the future of the Union. Essentially, there's nothing left to devolve and Federalism means either; very unequal federal system, or the clawing of powers back from Holyrood and the dissolution of England as a political entity. Martin's point about federalism and devolution not being one and the same was very shrewd. My suggestion? Enter the third chamber!
Simply add a House of Nations to Parliament, 100 seats, elected by PR and equally distributed among the Nations. Any legislation requires majorities of 2/4 delegations to pass. So, 13 Seats in England, 13 seats in Wales would see a bill go through (having passed the representatives in the Commons in a majority, indicating broad support). This would limit nationalist parties from blocking, while giving equal representation to the Nations.
Now, I don't know if constitutional fanfiction is something we do here but I'm pretty proud of the idea!
Welcome to the site!
First piece of advice - grow a thick skin.
Second, have facts/figures/real examples to back up your argument unless you're doing it for the LOLs
If you, but more importantly Labour, don't get this then there is no way they are returning to power anytime soon.
This is lazy analysis. Just because there's been some big political shifts in one area doesn't mean they cant be some in another.
If the Tories win Hartlepool by the amount suggested and IF (big if) the national polling is actually in the region of a 2% lead, rather than 10%, that suggests some big swings to Labour elsewhere...
I agree. What has made the Tories so successful over the last decade is the increased efficiency of their vote compared to the days when they got within 3% of Blair and he got a very comfortable majority. This has happened so far because the very considerable ebbing of their strength in the south of England has merely reduced their majorities whilst they have suddenly become much more competitive in the midlands, the east and now the north.
But as Labour is finding in reverse there is a tipping point in these things. The seats Labour took for granted whilst it went fishing in the suburbs and university towns of the south have bitten back and it is all too possible that southern seats which were much more remainer, much more liberal and much more dominated by professional classes will in turn get fed up being taken for granted.
Overall this is a good thing. It was not healthy that the Tories were content to get a majority with only the odd rural seat north of Birmingham and the inability of Labour to relate to our most economically successful areas outside of the actual cities meant that they had little to say in that area. A situation where both our major parties have a fair degree of representation from most of our country improves the chances of the government being aware of the needs of all of the country.
Most of the problems there arise from the voting system, which directs all the political attention to those areas considered marginal, and neglects the safer areas for any party.
Whilst that is undoubtedly true it seems to me that Labour is going through an identity crises where they will become more potent in seats that are more like them, that is middle class, professional, well educated, dominated by the public sector and frankly rather more interested in the privileges of such people than those who have very little.
Those with little have caught on. They may come to realise that Boris doesn't really give a toss about them either but at least he pretends to listen and he is amusing rather than patronising.
"pretends to listen"? He delivered them their verdict on Brexit. Labour were set against doing so.
Yes, pretends to listen. Do the people of Hartlepool want Brexit because it is Brexit, or because what they hope it will bring them? Pools is a classic post industrial left behind backwater. People want back the jobs and prosperity and pride and hope that was taken from them. Brexit was the silver bullet to cure these ills which is why they were so enthusiastic for it.
Where the Tories will struggle is that they can't deliver what was promised. I have no doubt that Hartlepool will be thrown a few scraps once it goes Tory but it won't change the fundamental problems with the town and the region. One prime example - local Tories very excited by the prospect of a free port and how it will restore industry. Except that a free port makes it easier to IMPORT, it will do nothing but harm for local industry. But as nothing but harm has been on the menu for 40 years people are desperate and will try anything.
When salvation fails to arrive? Thats when the Tories are screwed. Not to Labour's benefit you understand, we're going to see a rise of the hard right. Think UKIP/Brexit with paramilitary activists...
I guess that they aren’t going to work in the new GE factory then?
A perfect example. Can you show me where in the Mayor's remit he has had anything to do with GE coming to Teesside? Its got literally fuck all to do with him and the same would have been true if (shudder) Jessie Joe Jacobs becomes mayor. She also claims all kinds of crap that are absolutely miles outside the remit of this non-job.
That’s changing the question. You said that the Freeport would do nothing for residents. GE is opening a factory there because it. That will do something for residents.
I don’t care whether it was the mayor, the monkey or a giraffe from London Zoo that achieved it. But from what he has said - and he may be lying of course - the major has been advocating strongly for the Freeport so he had a role and deserves a share of the credit
Oh give over. GE want a tax break to set up in the free port so that they can use imported parts to assemble products to be exported. Local industry doesn't get a boost from a freeport it gets demolished by them. We know freeports don't work, we have shut them all down - specifically the *Tories* shut them down in 2012.
Mayor Houchen has presided over a net loss of jobs and despite the new GE factory the loss will only accelerate with the freeport completely sinking anything that isn't in the free zone. And what does this freeport zone do? Allow busines to function as if it was still in the EU. Yay...
"Assemble products to be exported" is another description of . . . manufacturing. It is industry.
There is a major difference between a factory - where you make stuff - and an assembly plant - where you screw stuff together made in factories. Far easier to shut down an assembly shed and direct the parts to a different assembly shed than it is to shut the actual factories who make them.
The other big "factory" on Teesside(ish) that is a big risk is Hitachi. It makes literally nothing there that can't be done in its other factories and unlike either Kasado or even Ansaldo it can only make for the UK market.
What utter bollocks. A factory is where you ‘make something on a large scale using machinery’.
Unless you know of ‘factories’ which have their own iron mines from which they smelt their own steel, like mao’s iron working peasants in the early 60s, then anything any factory does can quite easily be moved elsewhere. This is the essential lesson of modernity
It's a matter of value added - how much work is actually done locally and how many people are employed there...
Nissan - manufacturing - the assembly plant is in the middle with a lot of the parts made by other suppliers locally.
Hitach Rail - assembly - the plant doesn't add much from other local suppliers, everything is shipped in boxes from Japan and then assembled here.
A factory is, by definition, a place where you ‘make something on a large scale using machinery’. Everything else is tedious medieval theology, and equally meaningless. Indeed, increasingly meaningless, in an era of 3D printing and AI. Soon you will be able to manufacture anywhere
On that note, this is remarkable
‘Merging DNA with quantum computing - really amazing and lethal’
Its seriously cool but it still seems to work on the almost certainly flawed premise that warfare is still going to be about putting people into battle situations rather than remotely controlled (or even autonomous) machines.
Hartlepool 2015 Iain Wright Lab 14,076 35.6 -6.9 Philip Broughton UKIP11,052 28.0 21.0 Richard Royal Con 8,256 20.9 -7.2
Hartlepool 2017 Mike Hill Lab 21,969 52.5 16.9 Carl Jackson Con14,319 34.2 13.3 P Broughton UKIP4,801 11.5 -16.5
Hartlepool 2019 Mike Hill Lab 15,464 37.7 -14.8 S Houghton Con 11,869 28.9 -5.3 Richard Tice BXP 10,603 25.8 25.8
Hartlepool 2021 CON GAIN first time not Labour since 1959
SKS fans please explain how SKS has managed this
You really are stupid enough to go there? Then again why not - Corbyn won Hartlepool 9 times after his election to Parliament. You see that Peter Mandelson - they only voted for him knowing that the Beard of the Year was in parliament as their true representative. Now that Corbyn has been booted out of the Labour Party Pools is going Tory - nuff said.
If they remove IDStarmer and reinstate the Jeremy, all the people who were LLLLL across the contact sheet who said "I'm not voting for him" will vote for him.
Your really so stupid to try the its Corbyns fault despite the facts.
First Labour loss since 1959
Fairy Nuff we know your obsessed you should move on.
No no no, the loss of the red wall predates Corbyn so it isn't his fault. The dam has been eroded over time, with no maintenance done by an arrogant local Labour hierarchy who think they are born to rule because its all the Tories fault.
Labour's problem is that the dam burst thanks to Brexit. What you propose is that Labour go back to the failed Corbyn experiment, have a slate of wazzocks like Sam Tarry, Zarah Sultana and Laura Pillock as MPs and double down on policy so that Labour only talk to the bottom 5% and blame everything on the top 1% and say fuck all to everyone else.
Labour's solution is not Starmer. Labour's solution is not Corbyn. It is not either / or you tosspot. As I tweeted earlier this morning the left and right in Labour fight like ferrets in a sack and neither side understand why you're in the sack in the first place.
Labour reject who jumped in the sack to fight like a ferret in 2015 against Corbyn and fought like a ferret every day for 3 years criticises sack fighting.
Said ex Labour hypocrite after quitting sack fighting applies to rejoin Labour in order to fight like a ferret against people like "Laura Pillock"
Rejected for being a divisive nasty name calling piece of work so sad ex sack fighting poster is now politically homeless
Sad tale really
As I said shortly after the event, my abrupt about-face to try and rejoin the Labour Party was done in the middle of a mental health crisis. As that was the stupidest action my illness generated I remain grateful!
Then it cleared, and like Dr Zimsky at the end of The Core dictating notes for his book whilst pinned underneath a nuclear bomb that was about to destroy him and his notes, I looked at myself, asked "what the fuck am I doing" and roared with laughter.
Glad that my mental heath disaster makes you roar with laughter as well.
You called me a toss pot is that part of your condition or are you just a nasty piece of work?
No I called you a tosspot because you are kind of person who takes the piss out of the mentally ill.
Source?
I take the piss out of you because you are a hypocrite who lacks humility and a name calling nasty piece of work.
How can Labour be 2% behind nationally but 17% behind in Hartlepool? Either one poll is wrong, the other poll is wrong, or the Tories are losing ground much quicker in other areas than people realise.
Thanks. Yes, shades of that tension between state and national polling we saw with WH20.
Usually I favour the national but here - with Hartlepool - I think we have a genuine special case. The "true" GE19 result (adjusted for BXP) was a Con win. I'm assessing against that and factoring in (i) we are coming early out of the pandemic due to a vaccine success associated with the government, (ii) a government which also delivered the promised Good Hard Leave so desired by the denizens of this seat, (iii) people have had little time for Labour and Starmer with Covid being such a blanket story, and (iv) Johnson has particular appeal to the WWC demographic being as he's a "bit of a character" and "not like normal politicians".
They are the tea leaves and the resulting brew tastes bitter and of only one thing. Cons win this by-election.
In GE2015 under Milliband
Lab = 14,076 Cons + UKIP 8,256 + 11,052 = 19,308
Under your logic (and that of other centrists) the true GE15 result was a Con win.
Ge2017 under Corbyn
Lab = 21,969 Cons + UKIP 14,319 + 4,801 = 19,120
Unelectable Corbyn smashed the Tories + right of Tory party combined in his first election in Hartlepool, surely electable Starmer can do even better than that?
Or is it that is impossible for Starmer to match Corbyn because Corbyn is an electoral savant (ONLY by the standards of comparing to other recent Labour leaders) and Starmer is actually the unelectable one?
Makes you think about all those idiots claiming any other Labour leader would be 20 points ahead
Hartlepool 2015 Iain Wright Lab 14,076 35.6 -6.9 Philip Broughton UKIP11,052 28.0 21.0 Richard Royal Con 8,256 20.9 -7.2
Hartlepool 2017 Mike Hill Lab 21,969 52.5 16.9 Carl Jackson Con14,319 34.2 13.3 P Broughton UKIP4,801 11.5 -16.5
Hartlepool 2019 Mike Hill Lab 15,464 37.7 -14.8 S Houghton Con 11,869 28.9 -5.3 Richard Tice BXP 10,603 25.8 25.8
Hartlepool 2021 CON GAIN first time not Labour since 1959
SKS fans please explain how SKS has managed this
You really are stupid enough to go there? Then again why not - Corbyn won Hartlepool 9 times after his election to Parliament. You see that Peter Mandelson - they only voted for him knowing that the Beard of the Year was in parliament as their true representative. Now that Corbyn has been booted out of the Labour Party Pools is going Tory - nuff said.
If they remove IDStarmer and reinstate the Jeremy, all the people who were LLLLL across the contact sheet who said "I'm not voting for him" will vote for him.
Your really so stupid to try the its Corbyns fault despite the facts.
First Labour loss since 1959
Fairy Nuff we know your obsessed you should move on.
No no no, the loss of the red wall predates Corbyn so it isn't his fault. The dam has been eroded over time, with no maintenance done by an arrogant local Labour hierarchy who think they are born to rule because its all the Tories fault.
Labour's problem is that the dam burst thanks to Brexit. What you propose is that Labour go back to the failed Corbyn experiment, have a slate of wazzocks like Sam Tarry, Zarah Sultana and Laura Pillock as MPs and double down on policy so that Labour only talk to the bottom 5% and blame everything on the top 1% and say fuck all to everyone else.
Labour's solution is not Starmer. Labour's solution is not Corbyn. It is not either / or you tosspot. As I tweeted earlier this morning the left and right in Labour fight like ferrets in a sack and neither side understand why you're in the sack in the first place.
Labour reject who jumped in the sack to fight like a ferret in 2015 against Corbyn and fought like a ferret every day for 3 years criticises sack fighting.
Said ex Labour hypocrite after quitting sack fighting applies to rejoin Labour in order to fight like a ferret against people like "Laura Pillock"
Rejected for being a divisive nasty name calling piece of work so sad ex sack fighting poster is now politically homeless
Sad tale really
As I said shortly after the event, my abrupt about-face to try and rejoin the Labour Party was done in the middle of a mental health crisis. As that was the stupidest action my illness generated I remain grateful!
Then it cleared, and like Dr Zimsky at the end of The Core dictating notes for his book whilst pinned underneath a nuclear bomb that was about to destroy him and his notes, I looked at myself, asked "what the fuck am I doing" and roared with laughter.
Glad that my mental heath disaster makes you roar with laughter as well.
You called me a toss pot is that part of your condition or are you just a nasty piece of work?
No I called you a tosspot because you are kind of person who takes the piss out of the mentally ill.
Source?
I take the piss out of you because you are a hypocrite who lacks humility and a name calling nasty piece of work.
Usual Blairite strategy hit out at others and then play the victim, he hasn't got a good political argument left so this is the only avenue left available to him.
If you, but more importantly Labour, don't get this then there is no way they are returning to power anytime soon.
This is lazy analysis. Just because there's been some big political shifts in one area doesn't mean they cant be some in another.
If the Tories win Hartlepool by the amount suggested and IF (big if) the national polling is actually in the region of a 2% lead, rather than 10%, that suggests some big swings to Labour elsewhere...
I agree. What has made the Tories so successful over the last decade is the increased efficiency of their vote compared to the days when they got within 3% of Blair and he got a very comfortable majority. This has happened so far because the very considerable ebbing of their strength in the south of England has merely reduced their majorities whilst they have suddenly become much more competitive in the midlands, the east and now the north.
But as Labour is finding in reverse there is a tipping point in these things. The seats Labour took for granted whilst it went fishing in the suburbs and university towns of the south have bitten back and it is all too possible that southern seats which were much more remainer, much more liberal and much more dominated by professional classes will in turn get fed up being taken for granted.
Overall this is a good thing. It was not healthy that the Tories were content to get a majority with only the odd rural seat north of Birmingham and the inability of Labour to relate to our most economically successful areas outside of the actual cities meant that they had little to say in that area. A situation where both our major parties have a fair degree of representation from most of our country improves the chances of the government being aware of the needs of all of the country.
Most of the problems there arise from the voting system, which directs all the political attention to those areas considered marginal, and neglects the safer areas for any party.
Whilst that is undoubtedly true it seems to me that Labour is going through an identity crises where they will become more potent in seats that are more like them, that is middle class, professional, well educated, dominated by the public sector and frankly rather more interested in the privileges of such people than those who have very little.
Those with little have caught on. They may come to realise that Boris doesn't really give a toss about them either but at least he pretends to listen and he is amusing rather than patronising.
"pretends to listen"? He delivered them their verdict on Brexit. Labour were set against doing so.
Yes, pretends to listen. Do the people of Hartlepool want Brexit because it is Brexit, or because what they hope it will bring them? Pools is a classic post industrial left behind backwater. People want back the jobs and prosperity and pride and hope that was taken from them. Brexit was the silver bullet to cure these ills which is why they were so enthusiastic for it.
Where the Tories will struggle is that they can't deliver what was promised. I have no doubt that Hartlepool will be thrown a few scraps once it goes Tory but it won't change the fundamental problems with the town and the region. One prime example - local Tories very excited by the prospect of a free port and how it will restore industry. Except that a free port makes it easier to IMPORT, it will do nothing but harm for local industry. But as nothing but harm has been on the menu for 40 years people are desperate and will try anything.
When salvation fails to arrive? Thats when the Tories are screwed. Not to Labour's benefit you understand, we're going to see a rise of the hard right. Think UKIP/Brexit with paramilitary activists...
I guess that they aren’t going to work in the new GE factory then?
A perfect example. Can you show me where in the Mayor's remit he has had anything to do with GE coming to Teesside? Its got literally fuck all to do with him and the same would have been true if (shudder) Jessie Joe Jacobs becomes mayor. She also claims all kinds of crap that are absolutely miles outside the remit of this non-job.
That’s changing the question. You said that the Freeport would do nothing for residents. GE is opening a factory there because it. That will do something for residents.
I don’t care whether it was the mayor, the monkey or a giraffe from London Zoo that achieved it. But from what he has said - and he may be lying of course - the major has been advocating strongly for the Freeport so he had a role and deserves a share of the credit
Oh give over. GE want a tax break to set up in the free port so that they can use imported parts to assemble products to be exported. Local industry doesn't get a boost from a freeport it gets demolished by them. We know freeports don't work, we have shut them all down - specifically the *Tories* shut them down in 2012.
Mayor Houchen has presided over a net loss of jobs and despite the new GE factory the loss will only accelerate with the freeport completely sinking anything that isn't in the free zone. And what does this freeport zone do? Allow busines to function as if it was still in the EU. Yay...
"Assemble products to be exported" is another description of . . . manufacturing. It is industry.
There is a major difference between a factory - where you make stuff - and an assembly plant - where you screw stuff together made in factories. Far easier to shut down an assembly shed and direct the parts to a different assembly shed than it is to shut the actual factories who make them.
The other big "factory" on Teesside(ish) that is a big risk is Hitachi. It makes literally nothing there that can't be done in its other factories and unlike either Kasado or even Ansaldo it can only make for the UK market.
What utter bollocks. A factory is where you ‘make something on a large scale using machinery’.
Unless you know of ‘factories’ which have their own iron mines from which they smelt their own steel, like mao’s iron working peasants in the early 60s, then anything any factory does can quite easily be moved elsewhere. This is the essential lesson of modernity
It's a matter of value added - how much work is actually done locally and how many people are employed there...
Nissan - manufacturing - the assembly plant is in the middle with a lot of the parts made by other suppliers locally.
Hitach Rail - assembly - the plant doesn't add much from other local suppliers, everything is shipped in boxes from Japan and then assembled here.
Exactly. Easy to open an assembly plant. Its a big empty shed that you fill with workstations where parts get added. As you don't make any of the parts there the shed can be places wherever it is optimal to be placed. And so often that is for tax break reasons and once the subsidy runs out there is another place offering dollah to put up an assembly shed there.
To go back to Leon's "A factory is where you ‘make something on a large scale using machinery’ - what machinery are they using at Hitachi to make anything? Even the photos from inside the plant are telling - I don't describe it as a big empty box for no reason. Compare and contrast with an actual train factory like Alstom Derby.
Labour in real trouble in the north if the Hartlepool poll is anywhere near reality. Stuff like Barnsley East, one of the Hull seats and Miliband's seat would go lol
All 3 Sunderland seats could be in play. However, I'm still sceptical.
Labour have been a woeful opposition, even under Starmer.
But there is, dare I say it, a touch of hubris in the air this morning. Remember May won Copeland - a Labour seat since forever. Stunning victory etc etc. Trudi Harrison, my MP now, is now Boris's PPS. She has been conspicuously silent on the problems facing farmers and hospitality in the constituency. It is Tim Farron in the neighbouring constituency who has made all the running on this and the plight of outdoor centres. The one big jobs development in the area - the mine - has been put on hold.
Husband takes the cynical view that better to have a Tory MP as there is a chance that an area which has largely been neglected might get something. Daughter sees an MP who has said and done little and has yet to have the meeting with her to discuss the issues around hospitality and small businesses she was promised since before Xmas.
Anyway, a few months after Copeland the Tories lost their majority. Now of course the PM is a better campaigner than May, he won't call a GE etc etc. But still - a touch of humility might not go amiss. The Tories are in danger of taking their new voters just as much for granted as Labour have done, unless there are real and visible improvements.
Improving the roads would be something - round where I live the potholes are something that would disgrace a poor African village.
If there were a by-election in Chingford or Kensington, or Wycombe, Labour would probably win it by a country mile. That article on the Blue Wall was interesting.
And, in a way, that's the key thing that some commentators have forgotten here this morning.
If today's poll is even half-right, Hartlepool is a goner. Well, duh. Without Tice's intervention, it would have fallen easily in December 2019.
But if yesterday's polls are right, the national picture is that the government, despite all its triumphs, is barely ahead of this terrible Labour party led by terrible old Starmer.
Both things can be true at once.
And the Scotland poll just out has the Tories up a bit with SNP and Labour down a bit. Not sure what to believe anymore.
No 10 has admitted it has no idea what its flagship "levelling up" policy means so has appointed @NeilDotObrien to provide some substance. Fine piece in FT by @SebastianEPayne. Suspect @MichaelBarber9 on reaching No 10 to provide his delivery expertise found no policy to deliver.
If you, but more importantly Labour, don't get this then there is no way they are returning to power anytime soon.
This is lazy analysis. Just because there's been some big political shifts in one area doesn't mean they cant be some in another.
If the Tories win Hartlepool by the amount suggested and IF (big if) the national polling is actually in the region of a 2% lead, rather than 10%, that suggests some big swings to Labour elsewhere...
I agree. What has made the Tories so successful over the last decade is the increased efficiency of their vote compared to the days when they got within 3% of Blair and he got a very comfortable majority. This has happened so far because the very considerable ebbing of their strength in the south of England has merely reduced their majorities whilst they have suddenly become much more competitive in the midlands, the east and now the north.
But as Labour is finding in reverse there is a tipping point in these things. The seats Labour took for granted whilst it went fishing in the suburbs and university towns of the south have bitten back and it is all too possible that southern seats which were much more remainer, much more liberal and much more dominated by professional classes will in turn get fed up being taken for granted.
Overall this is a good thing. It was not healthy that the Tories were content to get a majority with only the odd rural seat north of Birmingham and the inability of Labour to relate to our most economically successful areas outside of the actual cities meant that they had little to say in that area. A situation where both our major parties have a fair degree of representation from most of our country improves the chances of the government being aware of the needs of all of the country.
Most of the problems there arise from the voting system, which directs all the political attention to those areas considered marginal, and neglects the safer areas for any party.
Whilst that is undoubtedly true it seems to me that Labour is going through an identity crises where they will become more potent in seats that are more like them, that is middle class, professional, well educated, dominated by the public sector and frankly rather more interested in the privileges of such people than those who have very little.
Those with little have caught on. They may come to realise that Boris doesn't really give a toss about them either but at least he pretends to listen and he is amusing rather than patronising.
"pretends to listen"? He delivered them their verdict on Brexit. Labour were set against doing so.
Yes, pretends to listen. Do the people of Hartlepool want Brexit because it is Brexit, or because what they hope it will bring them? Pools is a classic post industrial left behind backwater. People want back the jobs and prosperity and pride and hope that was taken from them. Brexit was the silver bullet to cure these ills which is why they were so enthusiastic for it.
Where the Tories will struggle is that they can't deliver what was promised. I have no doubt that Hartlepool will be thrown a few scraps once it goes Tory but it won't change the fundamental problems with the town and the region. One prime example - local Tories very excited by the prospect of a free port and how it will restore industry. Except that a free port makes it easier to IMPORT, it will do nothing but harm for local industry. But as nothing but harm has been on the menu for 40 years people are desperate and will try anything.
When salvation fails to arrive? Thats when the Tories are screwed. Not to Labour's benefit you understand, we're going to see a rise of the hard right. Think UKIP/Brexit with paramilitary activists...
I guess that they aren’t going to work in the new GE factory then?
A perfect example. Can you show me where in the Mayor's remit he has had anything to do with GE coming to Teesside? Its got literally fuck all to do with him and the same would have been true if (shudder) Jessie Joe Jacobs becomes mayor. She also claims all kinds of crap that are absolutely miles outside the remit of this non-job.
That’s changing the question. You said that the Freeport would do nothing for residents. GE is opening a factory there because it. That will do something for residents.
I don’t care whether it was the mayor, the monkey or a giraffe from London Zoo that achieved it. But from what he has said - and he may be lying of course - the major has been advocating strongly for the Freeport so he had a role and deserves a share of the credit
Oh give over. GE want a tax break to set up in the free port so that they can use imported parts to assemble products to be exported. Local industry doesn't get a boost from a freeport it gets demolished by them. We know freeports don't work, we have shut them all down - specifically the *Tories* shut them down in 2012.
Mayor Houchen has presided over a net loss of jobs and despite the new GE factory the loss will only accelerate with the freeport completely sinking anything that isn't in the free zone. And what does this freeport zone do? Allow busines to function as if it was still in the EU. Yay...
Not a huge fan of Freeports as a concept, however, special economic zones tend to have a positive overall multiplier as the jobs created spill over into the wider area and national supply chains over time. What usually happens is that local companies begin to bid for smaller supply contracts with the big assembler in the SEZ and becuase they have zero cost of shipping it can be fairly competitive for the smaller contracts.
I'm not sure it's more than a zero sum game, however, and there's a fair bit of evidence that SEZs eventually turn into a net zero unless they are wound down by which time you just have to hope the companies who have been brought in stick around.
You also miss the fact that freeports have a habit of displacing surrounding jobs into the Freeport itself (given the choice you will move just to avoid the paperwork).
Unless the gain comes from reduced friction (due to less red tape / paperwork) I suspect the success or failure of a freeport is due to outside factors. We were wandering round the last Leeds enterprise zone last week and it was clear from there that its success is 100% down to lucky timing - Sky wanted another base at just the time it was launched.
That's the zero sum aspect of SEZs and then just hoping that once the favourable terms are unwound the companies who have moved into it are too entrenched to move out of the area/country and there have been enough related gains elsewhere in domestic supply chains for there to be an overall net positive result.
As I said, I'm not convinced that Freeports are specifically a good idea, I'm willing to be proved wrong about that though. People like Rochdale are simply ideologically opposed and have made up their mind about them before the evidence has been looked at, some work, some don't.
Hartlepool 2015 Iain Wright Lab 14,076 35.6 -6.9 Philip Broughton UKIP11,052 28.0 21.0 Richard Royal Con 8,256 20.9 -7.2
Hartlepool 2017 Mike Hill Lab 21,969 52.5 16.9 Carl Jackson Con14,319 34.2 13.3 P Broughton UKIP4,801 11.5 -16.5
Hartlepool 2019 Mike Hill Lab 15,464 37.7 -14.8 S Houghton Con 11,869 28.9 -5.3 Richard Tice BXP 10,603 25.8 25.8
Hartlepool 2021 CON GAIN first time not Labour since 1959
SKS fans please explain how SKS has managed this
You really are stupid enough to go there? Then again why not - Corbyn won Hartlepool 9 times after his election to Parliament. You see that Peter Mandelson - they only voted for him knowing that the Beard of the Year was in parliament as their true representative. Now that Corbyn has been booted out of the Labour Party Pools is going Tory - nuff said.
If they remove IDStarmer and reinstate the Jeremy, all the people who were LLLLL across the contact sheet who said "I'm not voting for him" will vote for him.
Your really so stupid to try the its Corbyns fault despite the facts.
First Labour loss since 1959
Fairy Nuff we know your obsessed you should move on.
No no no, the loss of the red wall predates Corbyn so it isn't his fault. The dam has been eroded over time, with no maintenance done by an arrogant local Labour hierarchy who think they are born to rule because its all the Tories fault.
Labour's problem is that the dam burst thanks to Brexit. What you propose is that Labour go back to the failed Corbyn experiment, have a slate of wazzocks like Sam Tarry, Zarah Sultana and Laura Pillock as MPs and double down on policy so that Labour only talk to the bottom 5% and blame everything on the top 1% and say fuck all to everyone else.
Labour's solution is not Starmer. Labour's solution is not Corbyn. It is not either / or you tosspot. As I tweeted earlier this morning the left and right in Labour fight like ferrets in a sack and neither side understand why you're in the sack in the first place.
Labour reject who jumped in the sack to fight like a ferret in 2015 against Corbyn and fought like a ferret every day for 3 years criticises sack fighting.
Said ex Labour hypocrite after quitting sack fighting applies to rejoin Labour in order to fight like a ferret against people like "Laura Pillock"
Rejected for being a divisive nasty name calling piece of work so sad ex sack fighting poster is now politically homeless
Sad tale really
As I said shortly after the event, my abrupt about-face to try and rejoin the Labour Party was done in the middle of a mental health crisis. As that was the stupidest action my illness generated I remain grateful!
Then it cleared, and like Dr Zimsky at the end of The Core dictating notes for his book whilst pinned underneath a nuclear bomb that was about to destroy him and his notes, I looked at myself, asked "what the fuck am I doing" and roared with laughter.
Glad that my mental heath disaster makes you roar with laughter as well.
You called me a toss pot is that part of your condition or are you just a nasty piece of work?
No I called you a tosspot because you are kind of person who takes the piss out of the mentally ill.
Source?
I take the piss out of you because you are a hypocrite who lacks humility and a name calling nasty piece of work.
Source? You taking the piss out of my mental health crisis last year during which I tried to rejoin the Labour Party.
Have no problem you calling me a hypocrite - as always I take the opinions of people I have no respect for under advisement. But taking the piss out of people for having an openly confessed breakdown is what makes you a tosspot.
You are a massive asset to the Labour Party! You and Tarry and Sultana and Pillock and the rest of them.
If Tories win Hartlepool then it is an absolute cert that Johnson will lead them into the next GE unless he chooses to walk away for more money elsewhere.
Who else in the party can win seats like this? Even the most grumpy backbencher will know he's a winner with people none of the rest can come close to.
If you, but more importantly Labour, don't get this then there is no way they are returning to power anytime soon.
This is lazy analysis. Just because there's been some big political shifts in one area doesn't mean they cant be some in another.
If the Tories win Hartlepool by the amount suggested and IF (big if) the national polling is actually in the region of a 2% lead, rather than 10%, that suggests some big swings to Labour elsewhere...
I agree. What has made the Tories so successful over the last decade is the increased efficiency of their vote compared to the days when they got within 3% of Blair and he got a very comfortable majority. This has happened so far because the very considerable ebbing of their strength in the south of England has merely reduced their majorities whilst they have suddenly become much more competitive in the midlands, the east and now the north.
But as Labour is finding in reverse there is a tipping point in these things. The seats Labour took for granted whilst it went fishing in the suburbs and university towns of the south have bitten back and it is all too possible that southern seats which were much more remainer, much more liberal and much more dominated by professional classes will in turn get fed up being taken for granted.
Overall this is a good thing. It was not healthy that the Tories were content to get a majority with only the odd rural seat north of Birmingham and the inability of Labour to relate to our most economically successful areas outside of the actual cities meant that they had little to say in that area. A situation where both our major parties have a fair degree of representation from most of our country improves the chances of the government being aware of the needs of all of the country.
Most of the problems there arise from the voting system, which directs all the political attention to those areas considered marginal, and neglects the safer areas for any party.
Whilst that is undoubtedly true it seems to me that Labour is going through an identity crises where they will become more potent in seats that are more like them, that is middle class, professional, well educated, dominated by the public sector and frankly rather more interested in the privileges of such people than those who have very little.
Those with little have caught on. They may come to realise that Boris doesn't really give a toss about them either but at least he pretends to listen and he is amusing rather than patronising.
"pretends to listen"? He delivered them their verdict on Brexit. Labour were set against doing so.
Yes, pretends to listen. Do the people of Hartlepool want Brexit because it is Brexit, or because what they hope it will bring them? Pools is a classic post industrial left behind backwater. People want back the jobs and prosperity and pride and hope that was taken from them. Brexit was the silver bullet to cure these ills which is why they were so enthusiastic for it.
Where the Tories will struggle is that they can't deliver what was promised. I have no doubt that Hartlepool will be thrown a few scraps once it goes Tory but it won't change the fundamental problems with the town and the region. One prime example - local Tories very excited by the prospect of a free port and how it will restore industry. Except that a free port makes it easier to IMPORT, it will do nothing but harm for local industry. But as nothing but harm has been on the menu for 40 years people are desperate and will try anything.
When salvation fails to arrive? Thats when the Tories are screwed. Not to Labour's benefit you understand, we're going to see a rise of the hard right. Think UKIP/Brexit with paramilitary activists...
I guess that they aren’t going to work in the new GE factory then?
A perfect example. Can you show me where in the Mayor's remit he has had anything to do with GE coming to Teesside? Its got literally fuck all to do with him and the same would have been true if (shudder) Jessie Joe Jacobs becomes mayor. She also claims all kinds of crap that are absolutely miles outside the remit of this non-job.
That’s changing the question. You said that the Freeport would do nothing for residents. GE is opening a factory there because it. That will do something for residents.
I don’t care whether it was the mayor, the monkey or a giraffe from London Zoo that achieved it. But from what he has said - and he may be lying of course - the major has been advocating strongly for the Freeport so he had a role and deserves a share of the credit
Oh give over. GE want a tax break to set up in the free port so that they can use imported parts to assemble products to be exported. Local industry doesn't get a boost from a freeport it gets demolished by them. We know freeports don't work, we have shut them all down - specifically the *Tories* shut them down in 2012.
Mayor Houchen has presided over a net loss of jobs and despite the new GE factory the loss will only accelerate with the freeport completely sinking anything that isn't in the free zone. And what does this freeport zone do? Allow busines to function as if it was still in the EU. Yay...
"Assemble products to be exported" is another description of . . . manufacturing. It is industry.
There is a major difference between a factory - where you make stuff - and an assembly plant - where you screw stuff together made in factories. Far easier to shut down an assembly shed and direct the parts to a different assembly shed than it is to shut the actual factories who make them.
The other big "factory" on Teesside(ish) that is a big risk is Hitachi. It makes literally nothing there that can't be done in its other factories and unlike either Kasado or even Ansaldo it can only make for the UK market.
What utter bollocks. A factory is where you ‘make something on a large scale using machinery’.
Unless you know of ‘factories’ which have their own iron mines from which they smelt their own steel, like mao’s iron working peasants in the early 60s, then anything any factory does can quite easily be moved elsewhere. This is the essential lesson of modernity
It's a matter of value added - how much work is actually done locally and how many people are employed there...
Nissan - manufacturing - the assembly plant is in the middle with a lot of the parts made by other suppliers locally.
Hitach Rail - assembly - the plant doesn't add much from other local suppliers, everything is shipped in boxes from Japan and then assembled here.
A factory is, by definition, a place where you ‘make something on a large scale using machinery’. Everything else is tedious medieval theology, and equally meaningless. Indeed, increasingly meaningless, in an era of 3D printing and AI. Soon you will be able to manufacture anywhere
On that note, this is remarkable
‘Merging DNA with quantum computing - really amazing and lethal’
2 minutes. Watch it. The world is on the brink of exceptional changes. I’m not sure many have grasped this
you are asking someone whose two favourite books are Out of Control (from 1992 and covers stuff that video) and the Inevitable - both by Kevin Kelly.
The future is already here it's just unevenly distributed - Hitachi is old school, Nissan mid range Mercedes, Mclaren and Red Bull cutting edge with 3d printing doing everything.
As for AI that's literally the software I'm launching this week - AI and Open Banking providing a real time solution that is otherwise done at best quarterly and very labour intensive.
Hartlepool 2015 Iain Wright Lab 14,076 35.6 -6.9 Philip Broughton UKIP11,052 28.0 21.0 Richard Royal Con 8,256 20.9 -7.2
Hartlepool 2017 Mike Hill Lab 21,969 52.5 16.9 Carl Jackson Con14,319 34.2 13.3 P Broughton UKIP4,801 11.5 -16.5
Hartlepool 2019 Mike Hill Lab 15,464 37.7 -14.8 S Houghton Con 11,869 28.9 -5.3 Richard Tice BXP 10,603 25.8 25.8
Hartlepool 2021 CON GAIN first time not Labour since 1959
SKS fans please explain how SKS has managed this
In regards to the poll...
Inject that beautiful potential result straight into my damn veins.
Corbyn held that easily over Con + UKIP in 2017, Starmer can't because he is an unelectable posh centrist, simple.
The Labour right won't care, their only goal is to rule the Labour party as they sink it into irrelevance.
The left had done their best to reduce Labour to irrelevance .. and its working!
Sorry I think you missed the above results and the recent poll?
Voters aren't voting for left wing Labour than centrist Labour in greater numbers because they hate the left.
Voters are voting less for centrist than left wing Labour than centrist Labour because the latter doesn't represent them (or more accurately represents them less)
The only blame that can be attached to the left here is for not voting for Labour, but with Labours current strategy of fuck the left why should they?
The Labour leadership prefers the purity of centrism over winning the votes of people who disagree with it.
I don't really buy the 'SKS doesn't represent people like me, so I won't vote for him' argument. He feels a lot more in touch with 'the people' than Jeremy Corbyn did, who had a range of unpopular views not shared with 'the people'. My feeling (and hope) is that Starmer has suffered as a result of the pandemic. On Breakfast this morning, he seemed positively delighted to be speaking in a studio face-to-face. My hope is, once restrictions are lifted he can get out there more and build some real recognition for himself. I think Starmer has made the calculation that going after 'centrist' voters (small c centrists, ie where the middle of the country is) is more likely to yield results than by trying to appeal to Corbyn's base. The lack of policies is a concern but, again, Starmer is facing difficult circumstances in that his opponent is Boris Johnson, who will nick anything with a whiff of popularity. The fundamentals don't look good, imo, but the real test (as it was in 17 and 19) will be during the GE campaign.
I don't know if anybody else heard the Starmer interview on R4 Today this morning, but it was quite interesting. He wasn't very good, actually (see, I am objective). But he did take the opportunity to set out briefly the 5 current top priorities for Labour at the next GE, whenever that is.
His 5 priorities had echoes of Blair's 1997 pledge card. Interestingly, the fifth priority was about bringing an end to the divisions caused by the 'culture war' (although he didn't use that expression, of course). Anyway, signs of an emerging Labour policy platform to fill the current policy vacuum.
What does it mean. According to this article it means "Insiders suggested that levelling up could include four aspects — a regional economic policy; spreading opportunity across the country; improving the outputs and outcomes from public services; and non-economic outcomes of improving “quality of life” and “pride in place”."
Sounds like empty vacuous slogans to me. In Copeland, one issue that lots of the locals mention is the state of the roads. They are awful. As for public services, the local councils are appalling at emptying their recycling centres. One centre - located next to a children's play area and SSI on the beach - is so bad that rubbish is blown about all over the place. The local waste authority is responsible for a statutory nuisance and this in an area dependant on tourism for its living.
I have raised this with the local council, the Tory Mayor and the local Tory councillor. Neither of the latter two even bothered to reply.
"Quality of life" and "pride in place" my arse!
You seem disappointed that reality is different to the political promises of all parties. To be truly cynical, wait to you are 60ish...
Husband told me the local Tory councillor is utterly useless. So my expectations were pretty low and were entirely met.
The council officials have promised to do something but they are based in Whitehaven, live in Carlisle and have never even been to the area. It is a forgotten part of the country. Trudi Harrison comes from here - Bootle - a few miles away. She is local, quite friendly. But she has over the last year been a sad disappointment by comparison with Tim Farron. Being cynical, pork barrel politics has something to be said for it if you get some of the pork. But when you don't even get that, what is the point of any of it?
I tell this story to show the reality of what life is like here and to show up the vacuous nature of this levelling up slogan. We will see whether it amounts to anything substantive in reality. So far the main people who have been levelled up by the Tory party have been the rich who already have rather than the have nots.
I nonetheless expect the Tories to stay in power for a while because Labour are proving to be so bloody useless.
I’m confused. One minute you’re based in Cumbria the next you’re in your garden in West Hampstead
Nothing wrong with multiple houses (or identities) but it does mean you can’t pose as a hard pressed daughter of the provinces if you ALSO have a desirable bolt-hole in the capital
I'm not posing as anything. I have owned my home in West Hampstead for 31 years. I went up to Cumbria to look after my daughter, who was ill, and got caught by lockdown so have been in a barn on a hillside for the last year. The long-term plan when I stopped working full-time was to move to Cumbria where we have been rebuilding a home. That is now ca. 95% finished and that is where I shall be living most of the time as Covid has accelerated my plans and, incidentally, destroyed a large part of my freelance business.
So that too will need to be rethought. My husband has been living in Cumbria for some time now (the details of why do not concern you) and my daughter has lived there for ca. 5 years.
I am currently in West Hampstead dealing with my son who has an ongoing illness which requires support / intervention. That is why my husband was here from November last year to March of this and why he caught Covid from one of masons who was working. That is why there is what you call a bolt hole but which is in fact a family home for my two sons until long-term arrangements can be made, something which has been made harder by Covid because it has made the job and career prospects for the young very much harder, something which tends to be ignored by the comfortably off on this forum.
I am luckier than most I realise. But my financial situation has been made much worse this last year because I had planned on continuing to earn and that is now much harder. Also anecdotally, I am hearing from former colleagues that day rates and salaries are falling and opportunities are harder to find.
No 10 has admitted it has no idea what its flagship "levelling up" policy means so has appointed @NeilDotObrien to provide some substance. Fine piece in FT by @SebastianEPayne. Suspect @MichaelBarber9 on reaching No 10 to provide his delivery expertise found no policy to deliver.
This is why I was suggesting that Street would be ideal for the role. He seems to have plenty of ideas with a cross party appeal.
Hartlepool 2015 Iain Wright Lab 14,076 35.6 -6.9 Philip Broughton UKIP11,052 28.0 21.0 Richard Royal Con 8,256 20.9 -7.2
Hartlepool 2017 Mike Hill Lab 21,969 52.5 16.9 Carl Jackson Con14,319 34.2 13.3 P Broughton UKIP4,801 11.5 -16.5
Hartlepool 2019 Mike Hill Lab 15,464 37.7 -14.8 S Houghton Con 11,869 28.9 -5.3 Richard Tice BXP 10,603 25.8 25.8
Hartlepool 2021 CON GAIN first time not Labour since 1959
SKS fans please explain how SKS has managed this
You really are stupid enough to go there? Then again why not - Corbyn won Hartlepool 9 times after his election to Parliament. You see that Peter Mandelson - they only voted for him knowing that the Beard of the Year was in parliament as their true representative. Now that Corbyn has been booted out of the Labour Party Pools is going Tory - nuff said.
If they remove IDStarmer and reinstate the Jeremy, all the people who were LLLLL across the contact sheet who said "I'm not voting for him" will vote for him.
Your really so stupid to try the its Corbyns fault despite the facts.
First Labour loss since 1959
Fairy Nuff we know your obsessed you should move on.
No no no, the loss of the red wall predates Corbyn so it isn't his fault. The dam has been eroded over time, with no maintenance done by an arrogant local Labour hierarchy who think they are born to rule because its all the Tories fault.
Labour's problem is that the dam burst thanks to Brexit. What you propose is that Labour go back to the failed Corbyn experiment, have a slate of wazzocks like Sam Tarry, Zarah Sultana and Laura Pillock as MPs and double down on policy so that Labour only talk to the bottom 5% and blame everything on the top 1% and say fuck all to everyone else.
Labour's solution is not Starmer. Labour's solution is not Corbyn. It is not either / or you tosspot. As I tweeted earlier this morning the left and right in Labour fight like ferrets in a sack and neither side understand why you're in the sack in the first place.
Labour reject who jumped in the sack to fight like a ferret in 2015 against Corbyn and fought like a ferret every day for 3 years criticises sack fighting.
Said ex Labour hypocrite after quitting sack fighting applies to rejoin Labour in order to fight like a ferret against people like "Laura Pillock"
Rejected for being a divisive nasty name calling piece of work so sad ex sack fighting poster is now politically homeless
Sad tale really
As I said shortly after the event, my abrupt about-face to try and rejoin the Labour Party was done in the middle of a mental health crisis. As that was the stupidest action my illness generated I remain grateful!
Then it cleared, and like Dr Zimsky at the end of The Core dictating notes for his book whilst pinned underneath a nuclear bomb that was about to destroy him and his notes, I looked at myself, asked "what the fuck am I doing" and roared with laughter.
Glad that my mental heath disaster makes you roar with laughter as well.
You called me a toss pot is that part of your condition or are you just a nasty piece of work?
No I called you a tosspot because you are kind of person who takes the piss out of the mentally ill.
Source?
I take the piss out of you because you are a hypocrite who lacks humility and a name calling nasty piece of work.
Source? You taking the piss out of my mental health crisis last year during which I tried to rejoin the Labour Party.
Have no problem you calling me a hypocrite - as always I take the opinions of people I have no respect for under advisement. But taking the piss out of people for having an openly confessed breakdown is what makes you a tosspot.
You are a massive asset to the Labour Party! You and Tarry and Sultana and Pillock and the rest of them.
Labour got the kind of racist centrist leader you wanted over the type of leader BJO liked and Labour are tanking in the polls, clearly it is the Blairite faction you are part of which is the problem in Labour.
If you, but more importantly Labour, don't get this then there is no way they are returning to power anytime soon.
This is lazy analysis. Just because there's been some big political shifts in one area doesn't mean they cant be some in another.
If the Tories win Hartlepool by the amount suggested and IF (big if) the national polling is actually in the region of a 2% lead, rather than 10%, that suggests some big swings to Labour elsewhere...
I agree. What has made the Tories so successful over the last decade is the increased efficiency of their vote compared to the days when they got within 3% of Blair and he got a very comfortable majority. This has happened so far because the very considerable ebbing of their strength in the south of England has merely reduced their majorities whilst they have suddenly become much more competitive in the midlands, the east and now the north.
But as Labour is finding in reverse there is a tipping point in these things. The seats Labour took for granted whilst it went fishing in the suburbs and university towns of the south have bitten back and it is all too possible that southern seats which were much more remainer, much more liberal and much more dominated by professional classes will in turn get fed up being taken for granted.
Overall this is a good thing. It was not healthy that the Tories were content to get a majority with only the odd rural seat north of Birmingham and the inability of Labour to relate to our most economically successful areas outside of the actual cities meant that they had little to say in that area. A situation where both our major parties have a fair degree of representation from most of our country improves the chances of the government being aware of the needs of all of the country.
Most of the problems there arise from the voting system, which directs all the political attention to those areas considered marginal, and neglects the safer areas for any party.
Whilst that is undoubtedly true it seems to me that Labour is going through an identity crises where they will become more potent in seats that are more like them, that is middle class, professional, well educated, dominated by the public sector and frankly rather more interested in the privileges of such people than those who have very little.
Those with little have caught on. They may come to realise that Boris doesn't really give a toss about them either but at least he pretends to listen and he is amusing rather than patronising.
"pretends to listen"? He delivered them their verdict on Brexit. Labour were set against doing so.
Yes, pretends to listen. Do the people of Hartlepool want Brexit because it is Brexit, or because what they hope it will bring them? Pools is a classic post industrial left behind backwater. People want back the jobs and prosperity and pride and hope that was taken from them. Brexit was the silver bullet to cure these ills which is why they were so enthusiastic for it.
Where the Tories will struggle is that they can't deliver what was promised. I have no doubt that Hartlepool will be thrown a few scraps once it goes Tory but it won't change the fundamental problems with the town and the region. One prime example - local Tories very excited by the prospect of a free port and how it will restore industry. Except that a free port makes it easier to IMPORT, it will do nothing but harm for local industry. But as nothing but harm has been on the menu for 40 years people are desperate and will try anything.
When salvation fails to arrive? Thats when the Tories are screwed. Not to Labour's benefit you understand, we're going to see a rise of the hard right. Think UKIP/Brexit with paramilitary activists...
I guess that they aren’t going to work in the new GE factory then?
A perfect example. Can you show me where in the Mayor's remit he has had anything to do with GE coming to Teesside? Its got literally fuck all to do with him and the same would have been true if (shudder) Jessie Joe Jacobs becomes mayor. She also claims all kinds of crap that are absolutely miles outside the remit of this non-job.
That’s changing the question. You said that the Freeport would do nothing for residents. GE is opening a factory there because it. That will do something for residents.
I don’t care whether it was the mayor, the monkey or a giraffe from London Zoo that achieved it. But from what he has said - and he may be lying of course - the major has been advocating strongly for the Freeport so he had a role and deserves a share of the credit
Oh give over. GE want a tax break to set up in the free port so that they can use imported parts to assemble products to be exported. Local industry doesn't get a boost from a freeport it gets demolished by them. We know freeports don't work, we have shut them all down - specifically the *Tories* shut them down in 2012.
Mayor Houchen has presided over a net loss of jobs and despite the new GE factory the loss will only accelerate with the freeport completely sinking anything that isn't in the free zone. And what does this freeport zone do? Allow busines to function as if it was still in the EU. Yay...
"Assemble products to be exported" is another description of . . . manufacturing. It is industry.
There is a major difference between a factory - where you make stuff - and an assembly plant - where you screw stuff together made in factories. Far easier to shut down an assembly shed and direct the parts to a different assembly shed than it is to shut the actual factories who make them.
The other big "factory" on Teesside(ish) that is a big risk is Hitachi. It makes literally nothing there that can't be done in its other factories and unlike either Kasado or even Ansaldo it can only make for the UK market.
What utter bollocks. A factory is where you ‘make something on a large scale using machinery’.
Unless you know of ‘factories’ which have their own iron mines from which they smelt their own steel, like mao’s iron working peasants in the early 60s, then anything any factory does can quite easily be moved elsewhere. This is the essential lesson of modernity
It's a matter of value added - how much work is actually done locally and how many people are employed there...
Nissan - manufacturing - the assembly plant is in the middle with a lot of the parts made by other suppliers locally.
Hitach Rail - assembly - the plant doesn't add much from other local suppliers, everything is shipped in boxes from Japan and then assembled here.
Exactly. Easy to open an assembly plant. Its a big empty shed that you fill with workstations where parts get added. As you don't make any of the parts there the shed can be places wherever it is optimal to be placed. And so often that is for tax break reasons and once the subsidy runs out there is another place offering dollah to put up an assembly shed there.
To go back to Leon's "A factory is where you ‘make something on a large scale using machinery’ - what machinery are they using at Hitachi to make anything? Even the photos from inside the plant are telling - I don't describe it as a big empty box for no reason. Compare and contrast with an actual train factory like Alstom Derby.
‘An actual factory’
You sound like a Quaker industrialist in the 1830s.
One of the reasons the industrial Revolution started in England was a serendipitous concatenation of geo-mineral circs. The factories were near the coal mines which were near the watermills which were near the iron mines, which were close to a large reservoir of rural workers to urbanise.
Over time each of these elements has become inessential. We’re down to the workers. With AI and robots, the workers will soon be entirely gone and a ‘factory’ can exist anywhere, and it will
If Tories win Hartlepool then it is an absolute cert that Johnson will lead them into the next GE unless he chooses to walk away for more money elsewhere.
Who else in the party can win seats like this? Even the most grumpy backbencher will know he's a winner with people none of the rest can come close to.
Indeed, I cannot see a Sunak or Patel or Gove or Raab or Hunt led Tory Party winning Hartlepool and certainly not with anything like the majority the Boris led Tory Party it seems will get on Thursday.
Just as Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate to win white working class rustbelt Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin since Reagan in 2016, so Boris is the first Tory leader to win large numbers of Northern and Midlands white working class seats since Thatcher and indeed to do even better than she did there
I don't know if anybody else heard the Starmer interview on R4 Today this morning, but it was quite interesting. He wasn't very good, actually (see, I am objective). But he did take the opportunity to set out briefly the 5 current top priorities for Labour at the next GE, whenever that is.
His 5 priorities had echoes of Blair's 1997 pledge card. Interestingly, the fifth priority was about bringing an end to the divisions caused by the 'culture war' (although he didn't use that expression, of course). Anyway, signs of an emerging Labour policy platform to fill the current policy vacuum.
What does it mean. According to this article it means "Insiders suggested that levelling up could include four aspects — a regional economic policy; spreading opportunity across the country; improving the outputs and outcomes from public services; and non-economic outcomes of improving “quality of life” and “pride in place”."
Sounds like empty vacuous slogans to me. In Copeland, one issue that lots of the locals mention is the state of the roads. They are awful. As for public services, the local councils are appalling at emptying their recycling centres. One centre - located next to a children's play area and SSI on the beach - is so bad that rubbish is blown about all over the place. The local waste authority is responsible for a statutory nuisance and this in an area dependant on tourism for its living.
I have raised this with the local council, the Tory Mayor and the local Tory councillor. Neither of the latter two even bothered to reply.
"Quality of life" and "pride in place" my arse!
You seem disappointed that reality is different to the political promises of all parties. To be truly cynical, wait to you are 60ish...
Husband told me the local Tory councillor is utterly useless. So my expectations were pretty low and were entirely met.
The council officials have promised to do something but they are based in Whitehaven, live in Carlisle and have never even been to the area. It is a forgotten part of the country. Trudi Harrison comes from here - Bootle - a few miles away. She is local, quite friendly. But she has over the last year been a sad disappointment by comparison with Tim Farron. Being cynical, pork barrel politics has something to be said for it if you get some of the pork. But when you don't even get that, what is the point of any of it?
I tell this story to show the reality of what life is like here and to show up the vacuous nature of this levelling up slogan. We will see whether it amounts to anything substantive in reality. So far the main people who have been levelled up by the Tory party have been the rich who already have rather than the have nots.
I nonetheless expect the Tories to stay in power for a while because Labour are proving to be so bloody useless.
I’m confused. One minute you’re based in Cumbria the next you’re in your garden in West Hampstead
Nothing wrong with multiple houses (or identities) but it does mean you can’t pose as a hard pressed daughter of the provinces if you ALSO have a desirable bolt-hole in the capital
I'm not posing as anything. I have owned my home in West Hampstead for 31 years. I went up to Cumbria to look after my daughter, who was ill, and got caught by lockdown so have been in a barn on a hillside for the last year. The long-term plan when I stopped working full-time was to move to Cumbria where we have been rebuilding a home. That is now ca. 95% finished and that is where I shall be living most of the time as Covid has accelerated my plans and, incidentally, destroyed a large part of my freelance business.
So that too will need to be rethought. My husband has been living in Cumbria for some time now (the details of why do not concern you) and my daughter has lived there for ca. 5 years.
I am currently in West Hampstead dealing with my son who has an ongoing illness which requires support / intervention. That is why my husband was here from November last year to March of this and why he caught Covid from one of masons who was working. That is why there is what you call a bolt hole but which is in fact a family home for my two sons until long-term arrangements can be made, something which has been made harder by Covid because it has made the job and career prospects for the young very much harder, something which tends to be ignored by the comfortably off on this forum.
I am luckier than most I realise. But my financial situation has been made much worse this last year because I had planned on continuing to earn and that is now much harder. Also anecdotally, I am hearing from former colleagues that day rates and salaries are falling and opportunities are harder to find.
People shouldnt have to justify and life the curtain on their lives. Was just in Kendal a few hours ago.
Tactical voting is good as long as you vote tactically for my party, part 217
"Scottish election 2021: Alistair Darling letter urges Tories to vote for Anas Sarwar on list The former Labour chancellor made a rare intervention in politics make to say that voting Conservative 'will not stop the SNP'."
How can Labour be 2% behind nationally but 17% behind in Hartlepool? Either one poll is wrong, the other poll is wrong, or the Tories are losing ground much quicker in other areas than people realise.
Thanks. Yes, shades of that tension between state and national polling we saw with WH20.
Usually I favour the national but here - with Hartlepool - I think we have a genuine special case. The "true" GE19 result (adjusted for BXP) was a Con win. I'm assessing against that and factoring in (i) we are coming early out of the pandemic due to a vaccine success associated with the government, (ii) a government which also delivered the promised Good Hard Leave so desired by the denizens of this seat, (iii) people have had little time for Labour and Starmer with Covid being such a blanket story, and (iv) Johnson has particular appeal to the WWC demographic being as he's a "bit of a character" and "not like normal politicians".
They are the tea leaves and the resulting brew tastes bitter and of only one thing. Cons win this by-election.
In GE2015 under Milliband
Lab = 14,076 Cons + UKIP 8,256 + 11,052 = 19,308
Under your logic (and that of other centrists) the true GE15 result was a Con win.
Ge2017 under Corbyn
Lab = 21,969 Cons + UKIP 14,319 + 4,801 = 19,120
Unelectable Corbyn smashed the Tories + right of Tory party combined in his first election in Hartlepool, surely electable Starmer can do even better than that?
Or is it that is impossible for Starmer to match Corbyn because Corbyn is an electoral savant (ONLY by the standards of comparing to other recent Labour leaders) and Starmer is actually the unelectable one?
Makes you think about all those idiots claiming any other Labour leader would be 20 points ahead
As I said to the tosspot, it isn't either / or. The answer to Labour's problems is not Starmer nor is it Corbyn. Nor is it any single individual unless there is another Blair hiding in the PLP.
You need to square the circle that your burning issues are not the burning issues of the ex Labour voters who voted in their first ever Tory MPs under your mate and look set to keep doing so under Starmer.
You need to change your philosophy and outlook, not just your leader. I think Labour should both expel entryists and deaffiliate from the unions AND speak to the working man and woman in the streets of Hartlepool. They have heard both the left and the right of Labour speak and have rejected both.
So the answer isn't to stay in you sack fighting each other for sack supremacy, its to ask why places that have been Labour since the Danelaw and have actively suffered from Tory policies are now voting Tory.
Hartlepool 2015 Iain Wright Lab 14,076 35.6 -6.9 Philip Broughton UKIP11,052 28.0 21.0 Richard Royal Con 8,256 20.9 -7.2
Hartlepool 2017 Mike Hill Lab 21,969 52.5 16.9 Carl Jackson Con14,319 34.2 13.3 P Broughton UKIP4,801 11.5 -16.5
Hartlepool 2019 Mike Hill Lab 15,464 37.7 -14.8 S Houghton Con 11,869 28.9 -5.3 Richard Tice BXP 10,603 25.8 25.8
Hartlepool 2021 CON GAIN first time not Labour since 1959
SKS fans please explain how SKS has managed this
You really are stupid enough to go there? Then again why not - Corbyn won Hartlepool 9 times after his election to Parliament. You see that Peter Mandelson - they only voted for him knowing that the Beard of the Year was in parliament as their true representative. Now that Corbyn has been booted out of the Labour Party Pools is going Tory - nuff said.
If they remove IDStarmer and reinstate the Jeremy, all the people who were LLLLL across the contact sheet who said "I'm not voting for him" will vote for him.
Your really so stupid to try the its Corbyns fault despite the facts.
First Labour loss since 1959
Fairy Nuff we know your obsessed you should move on.
No no no, the loss of the red wall predates Corbyn so it isn't his fault. The dam has been eroded over time, with no maintenance done by an arrogant local Labour hierarchy who think they are born to rule because its all the Tories fault.
Labour's problem is that the dam burst thanks to Brexit. What you propose is that Labour go back to the failed Corbyn experiment, have a slate of wazzocks like Sam Tarry, Zarah Sultana and Laura Pillock as MPs and double down on policy so that Labour only talk to the bottom 5% and blame everything on the top 1% and say fuck all to everyone else.
Labour's solution is not Starmer. Labour's solution is not Corbyn. It is not either / or you tosspot. As I tweeted earlier this morning the left and right in Labour fight like ferrets in a sack and neither side understand why you're in the sack in the first place.
Labour reject who jumped in the sack to fight like a ferret in 2015 against Corbyn and fought like a ferret every day for 3 years criticises sack fighting.
Said ex Labour hypocrite after quitting sack fighting applies to rejoin Labour in order to fight like a ferret against people like "Laura Pillock"
Rejected for being a divisive nasty name calling piece of work so sad ex sack fighting poster is now politically homeless
Sad tale really
As I said shortly after the event, my abrupt about-face to try and rejoin the Labour Party was done in the middle of a mental health crisis. As that was the stupidest action my illness generated I remain grateful!
Then it cleared, and like Dr Zimsky at the end of The Core dictating notes for his book whilst pinned underneath a nuclear bomb that was about to destroy him and his notes, I looked at myself, asked "what the fuck am I doing" and roared with laughter.
Glad that my mental heath disaster makes you roar with laughter as well.
You called me a toss pot is that part of your condition or are you just a nasty piece of work?
No I called you a tosspot because you are kind of person who takes the piss out of the mentally ill.
Source?
I take the piss out of you because you are a hypocrite who lacks humility and a name calling nasty piece of work.
Source? You taking the piss out of my mental health crisis last year during which I tried to rejoin the Labour Party.
Have no problem you calling me a hypocrite - as always I take the opinions of people I have no respect for under advisement. But taking the piss out of people for having an openly confessed breakdown is what makes you a tosspot.
You are a massive asset to the Labour Party! You and Tarry and Sultana and Pillock and the rest of them.
Labour got the kind of racist centrist leader you wanted over the type of leader BJO liked and Labour are tanking in the polls, clearly it is the Blairite faction you are part of which is the problem in Labour.
Maybe the problem is having so many activists keener to see the opposing faction within their own ranks fail than in winning round voters with some thought through ideas and taking the fight to the Tories?
I don't know if anybody else heard the Starmer interview on R4 Today this morning, but it was quite interesting. He wasn't very good, actually (see, I am objective). But he did take the opportunity to set out briefly the 5 current top priorities for Labour at the next GE, whenever that is.
His 5 priorities had echoes of Blair's 1997 pledge card. Interestingly, the fifth priority was about bringing an end to the divisions caused by the 'culture war' (although he didn't use that expression, of course). Anyway, signs of an emerging Labour policy platform to fill the current policy vacuum.
What does it mean. According to this article it means "Insiders suggested that levelling up could include four aspects — a regional economic policy; spreading opportunity across the country; improving the outputs and outcomes from public services; and non-economic outcomes of improving “quality of life” and “pride in place”."
Sounds like empty vacuous slogans to me. In Copeland, one issue that lots of the locals mention is the state of the roads. They are awful. As for public services, the local councils are appalling at emptying their recycling centres. One centre - located next to a children's play area and SSI on the beach - is so bad that rubbish is blown about all over the place. The local waste authority is responsible for a statutory nuisance and this in an area dependant on tourism for its living.
I have raised this with the local council, the Tory Mayor and the local Tory councillor. Neither of the latter two even bothered to reply.
"Quality of life" and "pride in place" my arse!
You seem disappointed that reality is different to the political promises of all parties. To be truly cynical, wait to you are 60ish...
Husband told me the local Tory councillor is utterly useless. So my expectations were pretty low and were entirely met.
The council officials have promised to do something but they are based in Whitehaven, live in Carlisle and have never even been to the area. It is a forgotten part of the country. Trudi Harrison comes from here - Bootle - a few miles away. She is local, quite friendly. But she has over the last year been a sad disappointment by comparison with Tim Farron. Being cynical, pork barrel politics has something to be said for it if you get some of the pork. But when you don't even get that, what is the point of any of it?
I tell this story to show the reality of what life is like here and to show up the vacuous nature of this levelling up slogan. We will see whether it amounts to anything substantive in reality. So far the main people who have been levelled up by the Tory party have been the rich who already have rather than the have nots.
I nonetheless expect the Tories to stay in power for a while because Labour are proving to be so bloody useless.
I’m confused. One minute you’re based in Cumbria the next you’re in your garden in West Hampstead
Nothing wrong with multiple houses (or identities) but it does mean you can’t pose as a hard pressed daughter of the provinces if you ALSO have a desirable bolt-hole in the capital
I'm not posing as anything. I have owned my home in West Hampstead for 31 years. I went up to Cumbria to look after my daughter, who was ill, and got caught by lockdown so have been in a barn on a hillside for the last year. The long-term plan when I stopped working full-time was to move to Cumbria where we have been rebuilding a home. That is now ca. 95% finished and that is where I shall be living most of the time as Covid has accelerated my plans and, incidentally, destroyed a large part of my freelance business.
So that too will need to be rethought. My husband has been living in Cumbria for some time now (the details of why do not concern you) and my daughter has lived there for ca. 5 years.
I am currently in West Hampstead dealing with my son who has an ongoing illness which requires support / intervention. That is why my husband was here from November last year to March of this and why he caught Covid from one of masons who was working. That is why there is what you call a bolt hole but which is in fact a family home for my two sons until long-term arrangements can be made, something which has been made harder by Covid because it has made the job and career prospects for the young very much harder, something which tends to be ignored by the comfortably off on this forum.
I am luckier than most I realise. But my financial situation has been made much worse this last year because I had planned on continuing to earn and that is now much harder. Also anecdotally, I am hearing from former colleagues that day rates and salaries are falling and opportunities are harder to find.
Sincere sympathies for your troubles. I have some similar difficulties. But I think my point abides.
No 10 has admitted it has no idea what its flagship "levelling up" policy means so has appointed @NeilDotObrien to provide some substance. Fine piece in FT by @SebastianEPayne. Suspect @MichaelBarber9 on reaching No 10 to provide his delivery expertise found no policy to deliver.
This is why I was suggesting that Street would be ideal for the role. He seems to have plenty of ideas with a cross party appeal.
"No 10 has admitted it has no idea what its flagship "levelling up" policy means"
No idea why they don't know what it means to be honest. It is clear what it means. Sprinkle small, but press worthy amounts of money around the North and Red Wall seats so that it looks like Johnson gives a flying f*ck. Build a bridge here, do up some shopping streets there and so on.
Which partly explains the time and abuse expended on demonising him and his ilk.
The National gets its front page plastered by BBC twitter people every night - and features on the paper review on BBC News occasionally despite the circulation being laughable.
There are 10+ English regional newspapers which have a far higher circulation yet never get shown.
Hartlepool 2015 Iain Wright Lab 14,076 35.6 -6.9 Philip Broughton UKIP11,052 28.0 21.0 Richard Royal Con 8,256 20.9 -7.2
Hartlepool 2017 Mike Hill Lab 21,969 52.5 16.9 Carl Jackson Con14,319 34.2 13.3 P Broughton UKIP4,801 11.5 -16.5
Hartlepool 2019 Mike Hill Lab 15,464 37.7 -14.8 S Houghton Con 11,869 28.9 -5.3 Richard Tice BXP 10,603 25.8 25.8
Hartlepool 2021 CON GAIN first time not Labour since 1959
SKS fans please explain how SKS has managed this
You really are stupid enough to go there? Then again why not - Corbyn won Hartlepool 9 times after his election to Parliament. You see that Peter Mandelson - they only voted for him knowing that the Beard of the Year was in parliament as their true representative. Now that Corbyn has been booted out of the Labour Party Pools is going Tory - nuff said.
If they remove IDStarmer and reinstate the Jeremy, all the people who were LLLLL across the contact sheet who said "I'm not voting for him" will vote for him.
Your really so stupid to try the its Corbyns fault despite the facts.
First Labour loss since 1959
Fairy Nuff we know your obsessed you should move on.
No no no, the loss of the red wall predates Corbyn so it isn't his fault. The dam has been eroded over time, with no maintenance done by an arrogant local Labour hierarchy who think they are born to rule because its all the Tories fault.
Labour's problem is that the dam burst thanks to Brexit. What you propose is that Labour go back to the failed Corbyn experiment, have a slate of wazzocks like Sam Tarry, Zarah Sultana and Laura Pillock as MPs and double down on policy so that Labour only talk to the bottom 5% and blame everything on the top 1% and say fuck all to everyone else.
Labour's solution is not Starmer. Labour's solution is not Corbyn. It is not either / or you tosspot. As I tweeted earlier this morning the left and right in Labour fight like ferrets in a sack and neither side understand why you're in the sack in the first place.
Labour reject who jumped in the sack to fight like a ferret in 2015 against Corbyn and fought like a ferret every day for 3 years criticises sack fighting.
Said ex Labour hypocrite after quitting sack fighting applies to rejoin Labour in order to fight like a ferret against people like "Laura Pillock"
Rejected for being a divisive nasty name calling piece of work so sad ex sack fighting poster is now politically homeless
Sad tale really
As I said shortly after the event, my abrupt about-face to try and rejoin the Labour Party was done in the middle of a mental health crisis. As that was the stupidest action my illness generated I remain grateful!
Then it cleared, and like Dr Zimsky at the end of The Core dictating notes for his book whilst pinned underneath a nuclear bomb that was about to destroy him and his notes, I looked at myself, asked "what the fuck am I doing" and roared with laughter.
Glad that my mental heath disaster makes you roar with laughter as well.
You called me a toss pot is that part of your condition or are you just a nasty piece of work?
No I called you a tosspot because you are kind of person who takes the piss out of the mentally ill.
Source?
I take the piss out of you because you are a hypocrite who lacks humility and a name calling nasty piece of work.
Source? You taking the piss out of my mental health crisis last year during which I tried to rejoin the Labour Party.
Have no problem you calling me a hypocrite - as always I take the opinions of people I have no respect for under advisement. But taking the piss out of people for having an openly confessed breakdown is what makes you a tosspot.
You are a massive asset to the Labour Party! You and Tarry and Sultana and Pillock and the rest of them.
Labour got the kind of racist centrist leader you wanted over the type of leader BJO liked and Labour are tanking in the polls, clearly it is the Blairite faction you are part of which is the problem in Labour.
But you were tanking in the polls before under Corbyn. Both left and right factions are unpopular...
Hartlepool 2015 Iain Wright Lab 14,076 35.6 -6.9 Philip Broughton UKIP11,052 28.0 21.0 Richard Royal Con 8,256 20.9 -7.2
Hartlepool 2017 Mike Hill Lab 21,969 52.5 16.9 Carl Jackson Con14,319 34.2 13.3 P Broughton UKIP4,801 11.5 -16.5
Hartlepool 2019 Mike Hill Lab 15,464 37.7 -14.8 S Houghton Con 11,869 28.9 -5.3 Richard Tice BXP 10,603 25.8 25.8
Hartlepool 2021 CON GAIN first time not Labour since 1959
SKS fans please explain how SKS has managed this
You really are stupid enough to go there? Then again why not - Corbyn won Hartlepool 9 times after his election to Parliament. You see that Peter Mandelson - they only voted for him knowing that the Beard of the Year was in parliament as their true representative. Now that Corbyn has been booted out of the Labour Party Pools is going Tory - nuff said.
If they remove IDStarmer and reinstate the Jeremy, all the people who were LLLLL across the contact sheet who said "I'm not voting for him" will vote for him.
Your really so stupid to try the its Corbyns fault despite the facts.
First Labour loss since 1959
Fairy Nuff we know your obsessed you should move on.
No no no, the loss of the red wall predates Corbyn so it isn't his fault. The dam has been eroded over time, with no maintenance done by an arrogant local Labour hierarchy who think they are born to rule because its all the Tories fault.
Labour's problem is that the dam burst thanks to Brexit. What you propose is that Labour go back to the failed Corbyn experiment, have a slate of wazzocks like Sam Tarry, Zarah Sultana and Laura Pillock as MPs and double down on policy so that Labour only talk to the bottom 5% and blame everything on the top 1% and say fuck all to everyone else.
Labour's solution is not Starmer. Labour's solution is not Corbyn. It is not either / or you tosspot. As I tweeted earlier this morning the left and right in Labour fight like ferrets in a sack and neither side understand why you're in the sack in the first place.
Labour reject who jumped in the sack to fight like a ferret in 2015 against Corbyn and fought like a ferret every day for 3 years criticises sack fighting.
Said ex Labour hypocrite after quitting sack fighting applies to rejoin Labour in order to fight like a ferret against people like "Laura Pillock"
Rejected for being a divisive nasty name calling piece of work so sad ex sack fighting poster is now politically homeless
Sad tale really
As I said shortly after the event, my abrupt about-face to try and rejoin the Labour Party was done in the middle of a mental health crisis. As that was the stupidest action my illness generated I remain grateful!
Then it cleared, and like Dr Zimsky at the end of The Core dictating notes for his book whilst pinned underneath a nuclear bomb that was about to destroy him and his notes, I looked at myself, asked "what the fuck am I doing" and roared with laughter.
Glad that my mental heath disaster makes you roar with laughter as well.
You called me a toss pot is that part of your condition or are you just a nasty piece of work?
No I called you a tosspot because you are kind of person who takes the piss out of the mentally ill.
Source?
I take the piss out of you because you are a hypocrite who lacks humility and a name calling nasty piece of work.
Usual Blairite strategy hit out at others and then play the victim, he hasn't got a good political argument left so this is the only avenue left available to him.
"he hasn't got a good political argument left ", so says someone who was (probably still is) a devotee of Jeremy Corbyn. Guffaw, guffaw!
Hartlepool 2015 Iain Wright Lab 14,076 35.6 -6.9 Philip Broughton UKIP11,052 28.0 21.0 Richard Royal Con 8,256 20.9 -7.2
Hartlepool 2017 Mike Hill Lab 21,969 52.5 16.9 Carl Jackson Con14,319 34.2 13.3 P Broughton UKIP4,801 11.5 -16.5
Hartlepool 2019 Mike Hill Lab 15,464 37.7 -14.8 S Houghton Con 11,869 28.9 -5.3 Richard Tice BXP 10,603 25.8 25.8
Hartlepool 2021 CON GAIN first time not Labour since 1959
SKS fans please explain how SKS has managed this
You really are stupid enough to go there? Then again why not - Corbyn won Hartlepool 9 times after his election to Parliament. You see that Peter Mandelson - they only voted for him knowing that the Beard of the Year was in parliament as their true representative. Now that Corbyn has been booted out of the Labour Party Pools is going Tory - nuff said.
If they remove IDStarmer and reinstate the Jeremy, all the people who were LLLLL across the contact sheet who said "I'm not voting for him" will vote for him.
Your really so stupid to try the its Corbyns fault despite the facts.
First Labour loss since 1959
Fairy Nuff we know your obsessed you should move on.
No no no, the loss of the red wall predates Corbyn so it isn't his fault. The dam has been eroded over time, with no maintenance done by an arrogant local Labour hierarchy who think they are born to rule because its all the Tories fault.
Labour's problem is that the dam burst thanks to Brexit. What you propose is that Labour go back to the failed Corbyn experiment, have a slate of wazzocks like Sam Tarry, Zarah Sultana and Laura Pillock as MPs and double down on policy so that Labour only talk to the bottom 5% and blame everything on the top 1% and say fuck all to everyone else.
Labour's solution is not Starmer. Labour's solution is not Corbyn. It is not either / or you tosspot. As I tweeted earlier this morning the left and right in Labour fight like ferrets in a sack and neither side understand why you're in the sack in the first place.
Labour reject who jumped in the sack to fight like a ferret in 2015 against Corbyn and fought like a ferret every day for 3 years criticises sack fighting.
Said ex Labour hypocrite after quitting sack fighting applies to rejoin Labour in order to fight like a ferret against people like "Laura Pillock"
Rejected for being a divisive nasty name calling piece of work so sad ex sack fighting poster is now politically homeless
Sad tale really
As I said shortly after the event, my abrupt about-face to try and rejoin the Labour Party was done in the middle of a mental health crisis. As that was the stupidest action my illness generated I remain grateful!
Then it cleared, and like Dr Zimsky at the end of The Core dictating notes for his book whilst pinned underneath a nuclear bomb that was about to destroy him and his notes, I looked at myself, asked "what the fuck am I doing" and roared with laughter.
Glad that my mental heath disaster makes you roar with laughter as well.
You called me a toss pot is that part of your condition or are you just a nasty piece of work?
No I called you a tosspot because you are kind of person who takes the piss out of the mentally ill.
Source?
I take the piss out of you because you are a hypocrite who lacks humility and a name calling nasty piece of work.
Source? You taking the piss out of my mental health crisis last year during which I tried to rejoin the Labour Party.
Have no problem you calling me a hypocrite - as always I take the opinions of people I have no respect for under advisement. But taking the piss out of people for having an openly confessed breakdown is what makes you a tosspot.
You are a massive asset to the Labour Party! You and Tarry and Sultana and Pillock and the rest of them.
Glad we can agree you are a hypocrite
As for the rest of that guff, completely untrue.
Take a good look at the sequence of events this morning.
If Tories win Hartlepool then it is an absolute cert that Johnson will lead them into the next GE unless he chooses to walk away for more money elsewhere.
Who else in the party can win seats like this? Even the most grumpy backbencher will know he's a winner with people none of the rest can come close to.
Indeed, I cannot see a Sunak or Patel or Gove or Raab or Hunt led Tory Party winning Hartlepool and certainly not with anything like the majority the Boris led Tory Party it seems will get on Thursday.
Just as Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate to win white working class rustbelt Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin since Reagan in 2016, so Boris is the first Tory leader to win large numbers of Northern and Midlands white working class seats since Thatcher and indeed to do even better than she did there
In which case I take it you don't know Sunak. Although Patel, Gove and Raab would all have problems..
Hartlepool 2015 Iain Wright Lab 14,076 35.6 -6.9 Philip Broughton UKIP11,052 28.0 21.0 Richard Royal Con 8,256 20.9 -7.2
Hartlepool 2017 Mike Hill Lab 21,969 52.5 16.9 Carl Jackson Con14,319 34.2 13.3 P Broughton UKIP4,801 11.5 -16.5
Hartlepool 2019 Mike Hill Lab 15,464 37.7 -14.8 S Houghton Con 11,869 28.9 -5.3 Richard Tice BXP 10,603 25.8 25.8
Hartlepool 2021 CON GAIN first time not Labour since 1959
SKS fans please explain how SKS has managed this
You really are stupid enough to go there? Then again why not - Corbyn won Hartlepool 9 times after his election to Parliament. You see that Peter Mandelson - they only voted for him knowing that the Beard of the Year was in parliament as their true representative. Now that Corbyn has been booted out of the Labour Party Pools is going Tory - nuff said.
If they remove IDStarmer and reinstate the Jeremy, all the people who were LLLLL across the contact sheet who said "I'm not voting for him" will vote for him.
Your really so stupid to try the its Corbyns fault despite the facts.
First Labour loss since 1959
Fairy Nuff we know your obsessed you should move on.
No no no, the loss of the red wall predates Corbyn so it isn't his fault. The dam has been eroded over time, with no maintenance done by an arrogant local Labour hierarchy who think they are born to rule because its all the Tories fault.
Labour's problem is that the dam burst thanks to Brexit. What you propose is that Labour go back to the failed Corbyn experiment, have a slate of wazzocks like Sam Tarry, Zarah Sultana and Laura Pillock as MPs and double down on policy so that Labour only talk to the bottom 5% and blame everything on the top 1% and say fuck all to everyone else.
Labour's solution is not Starmer. Labour's solution is not Corbyn. It is not either / or you tosspot. As I tweeted earlier this morning the left and right in Labour fight like ferrets in a sack and neither side understand why you're in the sack in the first place.
Labour reject who jumped in the sack to fight like a ferret in 2015 against Corbyn and fought like a ferret every day for 3 years criticises sack fighting.
Said ex Labour hypocrite after quitting sack fighting applies to rejoin Labour in order to fight like a ferret against people like "Laura Pillock"
Rejected for being a divisive nasty name calling piece of work so sad ex sack fighting poster is now politically homeless
Sad tale really
As I said shortly after the event, my abrupt about-face to try and rejoin the Labour Party was done in the middle of a mental health crisis. As that was the stupidest action my illness generated I remain grateful!
Then it cleared, and like Dr Zimsky at the end of The Core dictating notes for his book whilst pinned underneath a nuclear bomb that was about to destroy him and his notes, I looked at myself, asked "what the fuck am I doing" and roared with laughter.
Glad that my mental heath disaster makes you roar with laughter as well.
You called me a toss pot is that part of your condition or are you just a nasty piece of work?
No I called you a tosspot because you are kind of person who takes the piss out of the mentally ill.
Source?
I take the piss out of you because you are a hypocrite who lacks humility and a name calling nasty piece of work.
Source? You taking the piss out of my mental health crisis last year during which I tried to rejoin the Labour Party.
Have no problem you calling me a hypocrite - as always I take the opinions of people I have no respect for under advisement. But taking the piss out of people for having an openly confessed breakdown is what makes you a tosspot.
You are a massive asset to the Labour Party! You and Tarry and Sultana and Pillock and the rest of them.
Labour got the kind of racist centrist leader you wanted over the type of leader BJO liked and Labour are tanking in the polls, clearly it is the Blairite faction you are part of which is the problem in Labour.
Maybe the problem is having so many activists keener to see the opposing faction within their own ranks fail than in winning round voters with some thought through ideas and taking the fight to the Tories?
I joined Labour a few years ago full of enthusiasm and verve excited and hoping to get a Labour government.
Prior to ever joining Labour they weren't worth voting for in an election but I preferred them to the Tories and hoped (a little) that they beat them.
My current attitude of delighting in seeing the evil people running the Labour party fail is my experience of what absolutely awful vile people they are.
Boris Johnson is a far lesser evil than the right of the Labour party, I could never vote Conservative but I would never ever ever vote for those lot on pain of death.
I don't know if anybody else heard the Starmer interview on R4 Today this morning, but it was quite interesting. He wasn't very good, actually (see, I am objective). But he did take the opportunity to set out briefly the 5 current top priorities for Labour at the next GE, whenever that is.
His 5 priorities had echoes of Blair's 1997 pledge card. Interestingly, the fifth priority was about bringing an end to the divisions caused by the 'culture war' (although he didn't use that expression, of course). Anyway, signs of an emerging Labour policy platform to fill the current policy vacuum.
What does it mean. According to this article it means "Insiders suggested that levelling up could include four aspects — a regional economic policy; spreading opportunity across the country; improving the outputs and outcomes from public services; and non-economic outcomes of improving “quality of life” and “pride in place”."
Sounds like empty vacuous slogans to me. In Copeland, one issue that lots of the locals mention is the state of the roads. They are awful. As for public services, the local councils are appalling at emptying their recycling centres. One centre - located next to a children's play area and SSI on the beach - is so bad that rubbish is blown about all over the place. The local waste authority is responsible for a statutory nuisance and this in an area dependant on tourism for its living.
I have raised this with the local council, the Tory Mayor and the local Tory councillor. Neither of the latter two even bothered to reply.
"Quality of life" and "pride in place" my arse!
You seem disappointed that reality is different to the political promises of all parties. To be truly cynical, wait to you are 60ish...
Husband told me the local Tory councillor is utterly useless. So my expectations were pretty low and were entirely met.
The council officials have promised to do something but they are based in Whitehaven, live in Carlisle and have never even been to the area. It is a forgotten part of the country. Trudi Harrison comes from here - Bootle - a few miles away. She is local, quite friendly. But she has over the last year been a sad disappointment by comparison with Tim Farron. Being cynical, pork barrel politics has something to be said for it if you get some of the pork. But when you don't even get that, what is the point of any of it?
I tell this story to show the reality of what life is like here and to show up the vacuous nature of this levelling up slogan. We will see whether it amounts to anything substantive in reality. So far the main people who have been levelled up by the Tory party have been the rich who already have rather than the have nots.
I nonetheless expect the Tories to stay in power for a while because Labour are proving to be so bloody useless.
I’m confused. One minute you’re based in Cumbria the next you’re in your garden in West Hampstead
Nothing wrong with multiple houses (or identities) but it does mean you can’t pose as a hard pressed daughter of the provinces if you ALSO have a desirable bolt-hole in the capital
Second home owners certainly aren’t seen as locals
I seem to remember pressing Cyclefree on this at GE2019, with regard to electoral law. She is only allowed to vote at her main residence.
Cyclefree asserted she did not have a second home, as she lived in Cumbria and her husband lived in West Hampstead. So, the claim is that the Cyclefree family did not own a second home, but they owned two 'first homes'
My understanding is that there are tax implications of 'second homes' so it is not just a matter of picking and choosing yourself that your 'second home' is another 'first home'.
But, I don't mind Cyclefree's little ... shall we say ... sleight of hand. Really, I don't.
What is certainly true is that if an MP was doing what Cyclefree was doing -- defining what is a 'second home' as a 'first home' -- we'd never here the end of it in one of her famous homilies against corruption.
If Tories win Hartlepool then it is an absolute cert that Johnson will lead them into the next GE unless he chooses to walk away for more money elsewhere.
Who else in the party can win seats like this? Even the most grumpy backbencher will know he's a winner with people none of the rest can come close to.
We are in strange times. People may be more gullible and susceptible to Boris Johnson than in usual times. John Major was massively popular once (Gulf War 1), and look what happened to him.
No 10 has admitted it has no idea what its flagship "levelling up" policy means so has appointed @NeilDotObrien to provide some substance. Fine piece in FT by @SebastianEPayne. Suspect @MichaelBarber9 on reaching No 10 to provide his delivery expertise found no policy to deliver.
This is why I was suggesting that Street would be ideal for the role. He seems to have plenty of ideas with a cross party appeal.
"No 10 has admitted it has no idea what its flagship "levelling up" policy means"
No idea why they don't know what it means to be honest. It is clear what it means. Sprinkle small, but press worthy amounts of money around the North and Red Wall seats so that it looks like Johnson gives a flying f*ck. Build a bridge here, do up some shopping streets there and so on.
Or alternatively, you could look at why these areas are being drained of capital and investment by London, look at what the inhibiting factors of growth are whether that is infrastructure, transport, specialist education, whatever, and think seriously about how you make these places that are attractive to invest and live in again (ie tidy up the mess and detritus of the past, make sure that that there is decent housing available, better schools etc).
If Tories win Hartlepool then it is an absolute cert that Johnson will lead them into the next GE unless he chooses to walk away for more money elsewhere.
Who else in the party can win seats like this? Even the most grumpy backbencher will know he's a winner with people none of the rest can come close to.
Indeed, I cannot see a Sunak or Patel or Gove or Raab or Hunt led Tory Party winning Hartlepool and certainly not with anything like the majority the Boris led Tory Party it seems will get on Thursday.
Just as Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate to win white working class rustbelt Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin since Reagan in 2016, so Boris is the first Tory leader to win large numbers of Northern and Midlands white working class seats since Thatcher and indeed to do even better than she did there
And that's both the opportunity and the problem for the Conservatives. Like Trump, Johnson is able to appeal to voters that others simply cannot reach. No question about that.
The question is whether, like Trump, Johnson is too tawdry for high office, and whether he fails against someone whose main attribute is "harmless". And whether, when the time comes, the Conservatives are able to de-Johnson themselves with less pain than the de-Trumpification of the Republicans.
No 10 has admitted it has no idea what its flagship "levelling up" policy means so has appointed @NeilDotObrien to provide some substance. Fine piece in FT by @SebastianEPayne. Suspect @MichaelBarber9 on reaching No 10 to provide his delivery expertise found no policy to deliver.
The phrase "levelling up" just about squeezed onto the back of a fag packet, even with Johnson's fat fingers holding his favourite fountain pen.
this is a very serious electoral offence. I thought from Guido it was just some home made brownies handed out. This is the very literal definition of 'treating'. People can go to jail for this..
I don't know if anybody else heard the Starmer interview on R4 Today this morning, but it was quite interesting. He wasn't very good, actually (see, I am objective). But he did take the opportunity to set out briefly the 5 current top priorities for Labour at the next GE, whenever that is.
His 5 priorities had echoes of Blair's 1997 pledge card. Interestingly, the fifth priority was about bringing an end to the divisions caused by the 'culture war' (although he didn't use that expression, of course). Anyway, signs of an emerging Labour policy platform to fill the current policy vacuum.
What does it mean. According to this article it means "Insiders suggested that levelling up could include four aspects — a regional economic policy; spreading opportunity across the country; improving the outputs and outcomes from public services; and non-economic outcomes of improving “quality of life” and “pride in place”."
Sounds like empty vacuous slogans to me. In Copeland, one issue that lots of the locals mention is the state of the roads. They are awful. As for public services, the local councils are appalling at emptying their recycling centres. One centre - located next to a children's play area and SSI on the beach - is so bad that rubbish is blown about all over the place. The local waste authority is responsible for a statutory nuisance and this in an area dependant on tourism for its living.
I have raised this with the local council, the Tory Mayor and the local Tory councillor. Neither of the latter two even bothered to reply.
"Quality of life" and "pride in place" my arse!
You seem disappointed that reality is different to the political promises of all parties. To be truly cynical, wait to you are 60ish...
Husband told me the local Tory councillor is utterly useless. So my expectations were pretty low and were entirely met.
The council officials have promised to do something but they are based in Whitehaven, live in Carlisle and have never even been to the area. It is a forgotten part of the country. Trudi Harrison comes from here - Bootle - a few miles away. She is local, quite friendly. But she has over the last year been a sad disappointment by comparison with Tim Farron. Being cynical, pork barrel politics has something to be said for it if you get some of the pork. But when you don't even get that, what is the point of any of it?
I tell this story to show the reality of what life is like here and to show up the vacuous nature of this levelling up slogan. We will see whether it amounts to anything substantive in reality. So far the main people who have been levelled up by the Tory party have been the rich who already have rather than the have nots.
I nonetheless expect the Tories to stay in power for a while because Labour are proving to be so bloody useless.
I’m confused. One minute you’re based in Cumbria the next you’re in your garden in West Hampstead
Nothing wrong with multiple houses (or identities) but it does mean you can’t pose as a hard pressed daughter of the provinces if you ALSO have a desirable bolt-hole in the capital
Second home owners certainly aren’t seen as locals
Husband and his family: brother, sister and parents and nephews have been living in the area since the 1950's. I am certainly an incomer but am now registered to vote there and with a GP there. But there are very few second home owners round here - unlike in some of the more chi-chi Lake District villages. Quite a few of the people who move here tend to work in Sellafield and BaE or are people with family connections to the area who leave and then come back. And there are some who work from home and or commute to London on a weekly basis. It will be interesting to see if the rise in home working increases that.
I have certainly not felt any hostility from anyone but then my face has been familiar here for years as we took holidays in a caravan here when the children were small. Being the local landlady's mum also helps!
If you, but more importantly Labour, don't get this then there is no way they are returning to power anytime soon.
This is lazy analysis. Just because there's been some big political shifts in one area doesn't mean they cant be some in another.
If the Tories win Hartlepool by the amount suggested and IF (big if) the national polling is actually in the region of a 2% lead, rather than 10%, that suggests some big swings to Labour elsewhere...
I agree. What has made the Tories so successful over the last decade is the increased efficiency of their vote compared to the days when they got within 3% of Blair and he got a very comfortable majority. This has happened so far because the very considerable ebbing of their strength in the south of England has merely reduced their majorities whilst they have suddenly become much more competitive in the midlands, the east and now the north.
But as Labour is finding in reverse there is a tipping point in these things. The seats Labour took for granted whilst it went fishing in the suburbs and university towns of the south have bitten back and it is all too possible that southern seats which were much more remainer, much more liberal and much more dominated by professional classes will in turn get fed up being taken for granted.
Overall this is a good thing. It was not healthy that the Tories were content to get a majority with only the odd rural seat north of Birmingham and the inability of Labour to relate to our most economically successful areas outside of the actual cities meant that they had little to say in that area. A situation where both our major parties have a fair degree of representation from most of our country improves the chances of the government being aware of the needs of all of the country.
Most of the problems there arise from the voting system, which directs all the political attention to those areas considered marginal, and neglects the safer areas for any party.
Whilst that is undoubtedly true it seems to me that Labour is going through an identity crises where they will become more potent in seats that are more like them, that is middle class, professional, well educated, dominated by the public sector and frankly rather more interested in the privileges of such people than those who have very little.
Those with little have caught on. They may come to realise that Boris doesn't really give a toss about them either but at least he pretends to listen and he is amusing rather than patronising.
"pretends to listen"? He delivered them their verdict on Brexit. Labour were set against doing so.
Yes, pretends to listen. Do the people of Hartlepool want Brexit because it is Brexit, or because what they hope it will bring them? Pools is a classic post industrial left behind backwater. People want back the jobs and prosperity and pride and hope that was taken from them. Brexit was the silver bullet to cure these ills which is why they were so enthusiastic for it.
Where the Tories will struggle is that they can't deliver what was promised. I have no doubt that Hartlepool will be thrown a few scraps once it goes Tory but it won't change the fundamental problems with the town and the region. One prime example - local Tories very excited by the prospect of a free port and how it will restore industry. Except that a free port makes it easier to IMPORT, it will do nothing but harm for local industry. But as nothing but harm has been on the menu for 40 years people are desperate and will try anything.
When salvation fails to arrive? Thats when the Tories are screwed. Not to Labour's benefit you understand, we're going to see a rise of the hard right. Think UKIP/Brexit with paramilitary activists...
I guess that they aren’t going to work in the new GE factory then?
A perfect example. Can you show me where in the Mayor's remit he has had anything to do with GE coming to Teesside? Its got literally fuck all to do with him and the same would have been true if (shudder) Jessie Joe Jacobs becomes mayor. She also claims all kinds of crap that are absolutely miles outside the remit of this non-job.
That’s changing the question. You said that the Freeport would do nothing for residents. GE is opening a factory there because it. That will do something for residents.
I don’t care whether it was the mayor, the monkey or a giraffe from London Zoo that achieved it. But from what he has said - and he may be lying of course - the major has been advocating strongly for the Freeport so he had a role and deserves a share of the credit
Oh give over. GE want a tax break to set up in the free port so that they can use imported parts to assemble products to be exported. Local industry doesn't get a boost from a freeport it gets demolished by them. We know freeports don't work, we have shut them all down - specifically the *Tories* shut them down in 2012.
Mayor Houchen has presided over a net loss of jobs and despite the new GE factory the loss will only accelerate with the freeport completely sinking anything that isn't in the free zone. And what does this freeport zone do? Allow busines to function as if it was still in the EU. Yay...
"Assemble products to be exported" is another description of . . . manufacturing. It is industry.
There is a major difference between a factory - where you make stuff - and an assembly plant - where you screw stuff together made in factories. Far easier to shut down an assembly shed and direct the parts to a different assembly shed than it is to shut the actual factories who make them.
The other big "factory" on Teesside(ish) that is a big risk is Hitachi. It makes literally nothing there that can't be done in its other factories and unlike either Kasado or even Ansaldo it can only make for the UK market.
What utter bollocks. A factory is where you ‘make something on a large scale using machinery’.
Unless you know of ‘factories’ which have their own iron mines from which they smelt their own steel, like mao’s iron working peasants in the early 60s, then anything any factory does can quite easily be moved elsewhere. This is the essential lesson of modernity
It's a matter of value added - how much work is actually done locally and how many people are employed there...
Nissan - manufacturing - the assembly plant is in the middle with a lot of the parts made by other suppliers locally.
Hitach Rail - assembly - the plant doesn't add much from other local suppliers, everything is shipped in boxes from Japan and then assembled here.
A factory is, by definition, a place where you ‘make something on a large scale using machinery’. Everything else is tedious medieval theology, and equally meaningless. Indeed, increasingly meaningless, in an era of 3D printing and AI. Soon you will be able to manufacture anywhere
On that note, this is remarkable
‘Merging DNA with quantum computing - really amazing and lethal’
2 minutes. Watch it. The world is on the brink of exceptional changes. I’m not sure many have grasped this
you are asking someone whose two favourite books are Out of Control (from 1992 and covers stuff that video) and the Inevitable - both by Kevin Kelly.
The future is already here it's just unevenly distributed - Hitachi is old school, Nissan mid range Mercedes, Mclaren and Red Bull cutting edge with 3d printing doing everything.
As for AI that's literally the software I'm launching this week - AI and Open Banking providing a real time solution that is otherwise done at best quarterly and very labour intensive.
I firmly believe we are approaching a singularity of technology on a par with, or even greatly exceeding, the advent of industrialised electricity in the early 20th century. Possibly greater than the Industrial Revolution itself
It is all colliding at once, Covid has accelerated things
this is a very serious electoral offence. I thought from Guido it was just some home made brownies handed out. This is the very literal definition of 'treating'. People can go to jail for this..
This rather ignores that this seat (or its predecessor) last returned a Tory in 1959. The Red Wall seems to be continuing to crumble.
Yet, what about elsewhere in the country? In my rather leafy Bucks village I have yet to see a single Tory banner. A few Labour but many Green signs. Locally the Greens have done quite well before and I would expect that to continue. Locally they don't have to worry about some of their more bonkers national policies. As a traditional Tory I am tempted to give them my vote in the locals which I would never do in a general election.
Speaking as a Tory, I'd vote for Labour before I voted Green.
They are utter luddite reductionist communitarian fundamentalists.
this is a very serious electoral offence. I thought from Guido it was just some home made brownies handed out. This is the very literal definition of 'treating'. People can go to jail for this..
Giving them to children too. Quite inappropriate.
Guido has updated to say another activist has seen them on the streets with these boxes of brownies. If that is true, people are going to be interviewed under caution. They better hope the whole thing is a misunderstanding.
Comments
Fucking terrible idea
Obviously voters aren't going to actually support that so losing is an acceptable part of the job. If he was winning but offering left wing policy then the media and Labour MPs would be coming down on him like a ton of bricks.
Unless the gain comes from reduced friction (due to less red tape / paperwork) I suspect the success or failure of a freeport is due to outside factors. We were wandering round the last Leeds enterprise zone last week and it was clear from there that its success is 100% down to lucky timing - Sky wanted another base at just the time it was launched.
Scottish papers are crocked. Proud organs reduced to flaccidity. Debate stifled. One party ennui
This really isn’t Ireland in 1916
It is provincial seats like those in Stoke and West Bromwich and Milton Keynes and Burnley it needs to win back from the Tories to form a government
Manufacturing doesn't need to rely upon raw materials alone, it can use other component parts as part of its supply chain.
I voted Nandy and Rayner
Those Nutjobs?
Kinnock was an unelectable useless leader much like SKS
Then it cleared, and like Dr Zimsky at the end of The Core dictating notes for his book whilst pinned underneath a nuclear bomb that was about to destroy him and his notes, I looked at myself, asked "what the fuck am I doing" and roared with laughter.
Glad that my mental heath disaster makes you roar with laughter as well.
And actually not true. I could do the usual "some of my best friends are leftists etc etc" but let's take this site for example. @NickPalmer Palmer is someone I could vote for. Why? Even though I disagree with a lot of his politics but not all, he is courteous, willing to engage, willing to admit he is wrong when appropriate and takes an interested view in the other side of the argument. @kinabalu is another one with whom I disagree with on a lot of topics but is also someone who one feels you can have a discussion with and have opposing views.
The problem with today's Labour party is that there are too few like Nick and Kinablu and far more of the type on here who think they know everything, including what other people think.....
Granted Ben Houchen hadn't actually delivered anything but he has successfully made it look like he had - which was more than enough to persuade people to give the Tories chance around here.
Redcar is however the perfect example of what will happen if the Tories don't delivery - these seats will vote for someone who promises them a better future.
The council officials have promised to do something but they are based in Whitehaven, live in Carlisle and have never even been to the area. It is a forgotten part of the country. Trudi Harrison comes from here - Bootle - a few miles away. She is local, quite friendly. But she has over the last year been a sad disappointment by comparison with Tim Farron. Being cynical, pork barrel politics has something to be said for it if you get some of the pork. But when you don't even get that, what is the point of any of it?
I tell this story to show the reality of what life is like here and to show up the vacuous nature of this levelling up slogan. We will see whether it amounts to anything substantive in reality. So far the main people who have been levelled up by the Tory party have been the rich who already have rather than the have nots.
I nonetheless expect the Tories to stay in power for a while because Labour are proving to be so bloody useless.
The other big "factory" on Teesside(ish) that is a big risk is Hitachi. It makes literally nothing there that can't be done in its other factories and unlike either Kasado or even Ansaldo it can only make for the UK market.
Nothing wrong with multiple houses (or identities) but it does mean you can’t pose as a hard pressed daughter of the provinces if you ALSO have a desirable bolt-hole in the capital
"Scottish election 2021: Alistair Darling letter urges Tories to vote for Anas Sarwar on list
The former Labour chancellor made a rare intervention in politics make to say that voting Conservative 'will not stop the SNP'."
https://tinyurl.com/n3sh39tc
The complete destruction of Bishop Auckland Town Centre (outside of the area surrounding the Bishop's palace) by the opening of St Helens is a prime example. Councillors elsewhere voted for it as it seemed a great idea...
If not, then we have been talking at cross purposes.
Voters aren't voting for left wing Labour than centrist Labour in greater numbers because they hate the left.
Voters are voting less for centrist than left wing Labour than centrist Labour because the latter doesn't represent them (or more accurately represents them less)
The only blame that can be attached to the left here is for not voting for Labour, but with Labours current strategy of fuck the left why should they?
The Labour leadership prefers the purity of centrism over winning the votes of people who disagree with it.
Usually I favour the national but here - with Hartlepool - I think we have a genuine special case. The "true" GE19 result (adjusted for BXP) was a Con win. I'm assessing against that and factoring in (i) we are coming early out of the pandemic due to a vaccine success associated with the government, (ii) a government which also delivered the promised Good Hard Leave so desired by the denizens of this seat, (iii) people have had little time for Labour and Starmer with Covid being such a blanket story, and (iv) Johnson has particular appeal to the WWC demographic being as he's a "bit of a character" and "not like normal politicians".
They are the tea leaves and the resulting brew tastes bitter and of only one thing. Cons win this by-election.
Unless you know of ‘factories’ which have their own iron mines from which they smelt their own steel, like mao’s iron working peasants in the early 60s, then anything any factory does can quite easily be moved elsewhere. This is the essential lesson of modernity
Whereas Hitachi at Newton Aycliffe is an assembly plant. You can screw the imported components together in a different assembly shed elsewhere by diverting your factory output of parts. As already has happened with Hitachi Pistoia making identical trains to Aycliffe for import into the UK. As soon as the tariffs make Aycliffe more expensive that Italy they can simply switch production and switch the lights off.
Nissan - manufacturing - the assembly plant is in the middle with a lot of the parts made by other suppliers locally.
Hitach Rail - assembly - the plant doesn't add much from other local suppliers, everything is shipped in boxes from Japan and then assembled here.
Nissan can threaten to move but it would be a long term project taking 10 years due to the billions that have been invested in the plant.
Hitachi could move next year and will at some point once the last UK train order has been built.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-56979994
First piece of advice - grow a thick skin.
Second, have facts/figures/real examples to back up your argument unless you're doing it for the LOLs
Fifty Billion. The majority of which has been transferred to them in the last few months.
Tether is the most outstanding work of fiction of our times.
On that note, this is remarkable
‘Merging DNA with quantum computing - really amazing and lethal’
https://youtu.be/stAIp7NiFyk
2 minutes. Watch it. The world is on the brink of exceptional changes. I’m not sure many have grasped this
I take the piss out of you because you are a hypocrite who lacks humility and a name calling nasty piece of work.
Lab = 14,076
Cons + UKIP 8,256 + 11,052 = 19,308
Under your logic (and that of other centrists) the true GE15 result was a Con win.
Ge2017 under Corbyn
Lab = 21,969
Cons + UKIP 14,319 + 4,801 = 19,120
Unelectable Corbyn smashed the Tories + right of Tory party combined in his first election in Hartlepool, surely electable Starmer can do even better than that?
Or is it that is impossible for Starmer to match Corbyn because Corbyn is an electoral savant (ONLY by the standards of comparing to other recent Labour leaders) and Starmer is actually the unelectable one?
Makes you think about all those idiots claiming any other Labour leader would be 20 points ahead
https://wingsoverscotland.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/B37F26C8-A6D1-416B-A947-AE7E0F1C819D.jpeg
Which partly explains the time and abuse expended on demonising him and his ilk.
To go back to Leon's "A factory is where you ‘make something on a large scale using machinery’ - what machinery are they using at Hitachi to make anything? Even the photos from inside the plant are telling - I don't describe it as a big empty box for no reason. Compare and contrast with an actual train factory like Alstom Derby.
No 10 has admitted it has no idea what its flagship "levelling up" policy means so has appointed @NeilDotObrien to provide some substance. Fine piece in FT by @SebastianEPayne. Suspect @MichaelBarber9 on reaching No 10 to provide his delivery expertise found no policy to deliver.
As I said, I'm not convinced that Freeports are specifically a good idea, I'm willing to be proved wrong about that though. People like Rochdale are simply ideologically opposed and have made up their mind about them before the evidence has been looked at, some work, some don't.
Have no problem you calling me a hypocrite - as always I take the opinions of people I have no respect for under advisement. But taking the piss out of people for having an openly confessed breakdown is what makes you a tosspot.
You are a massive asset to the Labour Party! You and Tarry and Sultana and Pillock and the rest of them.
Who else in the party can win seats like this? Even the most grumpy backbencher will know he's a winner with people none of the rest can come close to.
The future is already here it's just unevenly distributed - Hitachi is old school, Nissan mid range Mercedes, Mclaren and Red Bull cutting edge with 3d printing doing everything.
As for AI that's literally the software I'm launching this week - AI and Open Banking providing a real time solution that is otherwise done at best quarterly and very labour intensive.
So that too will need to be rethought. My husband has been living in Cumbria for some time now (the details of why do not concern you) and my daughter has lived there for ca. 5 years.
I am currently in West Hampstead dealing with my son who has an ongoing illness which requires support / intervention. That is why my husband was here from November last year to March of this and why he caught Covid from one of masons who was working. That is why there is what you call a bolt hole but which is in fact a family home for my two sons until long-term arrangements can be made, something which has been made harder by Covid because it has made the job and career prospects for the young very much harder, something which tends to be ignored by the comfortably off on this forum.
I am luckier than most I realise. But my financial situation has been made much worse this last year because I had planned on continuing to earn and that is now much harder. Also anecdotally, I am hearing from former colleagues that day rates and salaries are falling and opportunities are harder to find.
You sound like a Quaker industrialist in the 1830s.
One of the reasons the industrial Revolution started in England was a serendipitous concatenation of geo-mineral circs. The factories were near the coal mines which were near the watermills which were near the iron mines, which were close to a large reservoir of rural workers to urbanise.
Over time each of these elements has become inessential. We’re down to the workers. With AI and robots, the workers will soon be entirely gone and a ‘factory’ can exist anywhere, and it will
Just as Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate to win white working class rustbelt Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin since Reagan in 2016, so Boris is the first Tory leader to win large numbers of Northern and Midlands white working class seats since Thatcher and indeed to do even better than she did there
You need to square the circle that your burning issues are not the burning issues of the ex Labour voters who voted in their first ever Tory MPs under your mate and look set to keep doing so under Starmer.
You need to change your philosophy and outlook, not just your leader. I think Labour should both expel entryists and deaffiliate from the unions AND speak to the working man and woman in the streets of Hartlepool. They have heard both the left and the right of Labour speak and have rejected both.
So the answer isn't to stay in you sack fighting each other for sack supremacy, its to ask why places that have been Labour since the Danelaw and have actively suffered from Tory policies are now voting Tory.
No idea why they don't know what it means to be honest. It is clear what it means. Sprinkle small, but press worthy amounts of money around the North and Red Wall seats so that it looks like Johnson gives a flying f*ck. Build a bridge here, do up some shopping streets there and so on.
There are 10+ English regional newspapers which have a far higher circulation yet never get shown.
As for the rest of that guff, completely untrue.
Take a good look at the sequence of events this morning.
You are the aggressive name caller.
Stop playing the victim.
Prior to ever joining Labour they weren't worth voting for in an election but I preferred them to the Tories and hoped (a little) that they beat them.
My current attitude of delighting in seeing the evil people running the Labour party fail is my experience of what absolutely awful vile people they are.
Boris Johnson is a far lesser evil than the right of the Labour party, I could never vote Conservative but I would never ever ever vote for those lot on pain of death.
Cyclefree asserted she did not have a second home, as she lived in Cumbria and her husband lived in West Hampstead. So, the claim is that the Cyclefree family did not own a second home, but they owned two 'first homes'
My understanding is that there are tax implications of 'second homes' so it is not just a matter of picking and choosing yourself that your 'second home' is another 'first home'.
But, I don't mind Cyclefree's little ... shall we say ... sleight of hand. Really, I don't.
What is certainly true is that if an MP was doing what Cyclefree was doing -- defining what is a 'second home' as a 'first home' -- we'd never here the end of it in one of her famous homilies against corruption.
I shall retract my talons now.
I was out exploring Clerkenwell over the weekend and my guide pointed out the pub that Lenin and Joe Stalin used to drink in after work…
The question is whether, like Trump, Johnson is too tawdry for high office, and whether he fails against someone whose main attribute is "harmless". And whether, when the time comes, the Conservatives are able to de-Johnson themselves with less pain than the de-Trumpification of the Republicans.
this is a very serious electoral offence. I thought from Guido it was just some home made brownies handed out. This is the very literal definition of 'treating'. People can go to jail for this..
I have certainly not felt any hostility from anyone but then my face has been familiar here for years as we took holidays in a caravan here when the children were small. Being the local landlady's mum also helps!
It is all colliding at once, Covid has accelerated things
They are utter luddite reductionist communitarian fundamentalists.