Why the Tories have LESS than a 90% chance of winning the Chesham and Amersham by-election – politic
We have not got a date yet but the Chesham and Amersham by-election looks set to be the next big political betting event and the Smarkets chart above shows the latest trend in the betting which has the Tories with a 91.7% chance.
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The slight crumbling of the old blue wall is interesting.
Albeit it is on par for incumbent governments.
The intriguing thing is can the current Tory coalition of Henley and Hartlepool hold?
F1: only a rumour but Turkey may be off:
https://twitter.com/FormulaNerds/status/1391734359544188931
In tragic news, Monaco is still going ahead.
I do see OGH's point though about 90% being an extremely certain market.
I think that's pushing it a bit.
I don't see why for the nations in the union why they don't just take it completely out of party hands. Each holyrood election just add to the end of the ballot a yes no question . I want a referendum in this parliament. Then scottish parties can concentrate on doing their day job and a referendum is only held when the people of scotland agree they want one
Mr. Gate, Ladbrokes should have a market on how many wheels he has on his car at the end.
The latest approval ratings from Opinium have leavers giving Johnson a net plus of 26% but a net minus of 40% amongst remainers.
That's surely primarily because most Remainers are Labour, SNP, Greens or Lib Dems etc.
Does any pollster give an approval rating breakdown for the segment of the electorate that are Tory Remainers?
To use Woke terminology surely the intersectionality of those who are both Tory and Remainers are surely the relevant to this constituency.
As a well known sextoy knapper I was given a hotel tour by the manager and he showed me the suite that George Lucas hires for every Grand Prix. Right over a notorious bend
I asked the manager how much the suite costs, for that weekend, and he said ‘$15,000 a night. Plus breakfast’
He wasn’t joking, either. They added breakfast to Lucas’ bill
They come in a little copper pot and you spoon them, luxuriously, onto your just baked sourdough toast.
Oh god, I miss travel
*quietly sobbing in NW1*
https://twitter.com/gabyhinsliff/status/1391743940915777537
No doubt the Lib Dems will throw the kitchen sink at the seat so that they can wilfully mislead themselves in the belief that one decent by-election means that their party isn't in near-terminal decline and does have something to say to the country.
But what exactly is the LD message?
- That the government is crap and useless? But the vaccine roll-out / re-opening of society - especially cf Europe.
- That Boris is a bit dodgy? Tell us something we didn't know in 2019.
- Rejoin the EU? Give us a break. Please.
- It's a two-horse race? So it was in 2019.
There is no positive message *at all* about what the Lib Dems stand for and not being the others isn't enough, especially when there are other others who do have something to say.
That said, at this stage Mike's probably right in his bet, no so much because of what we know but because of the chances of Events upscuttling the government's apple cart before the election is held.
*quietly sobbing in NE13*
The last 4 opinion polls in Spain since the Madrid elections show the government party PSOE of Sanchez falling behind the PP for the first time. I doubt all the new proposed taxes helped either!
But yes I too can't wait to get travelling again. Even the Eurostar has attained eminently desirable and coveted travel status in my mind.
All with one hand tied behind their backs because of intrusive government and restrictions.
The plane hits cruising altitude. Seat belt signs go off. You hear the happy tinkle of the drinks trolley. It finallly reaches you in seat 54C, just behind the Stag Party from Sunderland
You ask for two gins and two tonics. Or maybe 3. Enough to last the flight. You suck the swizzle stick, contentedly. You’re going somewhere new and warm and sunny. Life is good
I've only flown business once and first-class never (the business was an upgrade) but free champagne is just tacky.
My favourite is Eva Air Royal Laurel class london-Bangkok. 12 hour flight? Very luxurious. And you do it in winter so you leave freezing london at 9pm, and you arrive in sultry, delicious, tropical-evening Bangkok at about 4pm. By the time you reach the hotel the sun is dipping in the gear haze and the skyscrapers glitter and it’s time for g&t
Edit: I was going to correct ‘gear haze’ to what I meant - ‘heat haze’. But as an autocorrect‘gear haze’ is superb. I spent months viewing Bangkok, as a young man, through a ‘gear haze’
The great Robuchon may have personally potted my eggs. Who knows. Allow an ageing man his dreams
Cons 50%
LD 42%
Other 8%
A decent swing (like Witney), but a Conservative hold.
Excellent thread on why Labour must win back atleast some of the red wall voters.
There is a prospect Batley and Spen could go Tory but Chesham and Amersham goes LD in the forthcoming by elections, which would emphasise the realignments Brexit has brought and the trends we saw in the local elections. Even if the Tories and Labour hold onto the seats their majorities will likely be down
Much cheaper.
Does that mean those who want to hug should frisk one another first?
(The Green Belt may not be in danger. But since when has that had anything to do with by-election campaigns?)
https://www.politico.eu/coronavirus-in-europe/
“Free” (and decent, and endless) champagne is a bare minimum. For the prices they charge - or charged - they should really throw in a naked Circassian slave girl
I wonder where they want people who moved there to live? 🤔
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9561561/Macron-sent-chilling-warning-soldiers-earlier-letter-calling-military-action.html
Wait, I have it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV_BPDi8Ems
I believe 'quickie' is how you pronounce this Johnny Foreigner word.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiche
https://twitter.com/RobDotHutton/status/1391696698251034629
I wonder if the person who didn't pay for the holiday is the same one who didn't pay for the flat?
Don't adulterate the eggs with anything. Just cook them until they are perfectly done.
Eat.
Enjoy.
On day old sourdough toast...
However, things that could play to LD favour:
- The LD brand at the moment is a bit nondescript, but I think we've managed to lose the single issue mania image we picked up before the 2019 election. We should be scoring highly on "those nice Lib Dems with their educated accents and concerns about local issues in our area".
- An opportunity to let the Tories know we're not 100% comfortable with this new somewhat vulgar national patriotic schtick and would rather they stuck to keeping taxes down and preserving the green belt. Quite possibly manifested in low turnout rather than active voting against.
- Labour being so obviously in a bad way after Hartlepool that tactical voting becomes a bit easier
- Daisy Cooper being in her seat not so far away round the M25, helping the party look relevant.
- The as-yet unquantified lockdown effect of working age Londoners retreating to the home counties bringing their metropolitan voting habits with them (though that may help Labour and Greens more).
There's a gap in the market for a pro-business, "Southern", liberal / libertarian party that could never win a national election but could carve out a niche in the stockbroker belt and other more rural parts of the Southern blue wall by focusing on being awfully nice and sensible.
I’m here all week
And as @Topping points out, too much butter is the foundation of gastronomy.
Just before we took off, she pushed down the screen and said "I'm terrified and need to get off this plane". I called an air hostess and they were out of the pills they normally carry for such things (who knew?). So I said there's only one thing for it - we need to drink. And drink we did and hence we cleared Air France out of champagne. Air France - ponder that.
And we chatted throughout and I like to think bonded to a great and profound degree and I then gave her my number, having helped her through what was evidently a traumatic time in her life.
And, dear reader, I never heard from her again.
‘The Scottish Parliament is, truly, one of the ugliest buildings ever built.’
https://twitter.com/lvcivs_mcmxci/status/1391096874543685632?s=21
They’re not wrong. It’s shockingly bad. An obscene insult to one of the most serenely beautiful cities in the world. How did it happen? How did it cost so much???
The amazing thing is that, despite costing £400m, it manages to look cheap. Like a po-mo Premier Inn on the outskirts of Basingstoke
The worst public building erected in the UK - ever??
(Happened once, ever, SQ First Class with Lord & Lady Lawson only other pax).
Whether the whole policy platform hangs together is pretty much irrelevant. Most party manifestoes don't; at best they're held together with sticky tape and wishful thinking.
The question was- what message might resonate enough in C+A to get a by-election bandwagon going. And nicely-dressed NIMBYism will do the job well. Especially with a planning bill in the works, which can be linked back to Cummings and algorithms if needed.
How do you hold Chesham and Cleethorpes, eh? Not by telling you're old core vote how wrong they are about everything...
[In the past, I've had a teeny role in holding back Lib Dems on the South Coast. Trust me, I have a fair idea how this works.]
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1391753700096491521?s=20
We listen to @theJeremyVine @JeremyVineOn5 to kick off the day (7am here). Jeremy Corbyn telling us how to win today put me right off my corn flakes. He delivered the best result since 1935 - FOR THE TORIES. More of that would be madness. We won’t be heard til we break with it.
https://twitter.com/DMiliband/status/1391752199286439939