The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
The least worst of the current gang are Nandy and Reeves. Cooper would be my choice. Taking that into fully into account and the self destructive tendency it will probably be Burgon.
I did note yesterday that the Labour vote looked to have gone to LD wholesale, which was a necessary (but not sufficient) precondition of a win.
Never dreamed of a win of this scale. I don’t even think C&A is the perfect LD seat. This is an ill omen for Johnson personally (he is indistinguishable from Toryism now).
It’s been clear since the beginning of this Parliament that a Tory defeat means:
1. Lab/LD cooperation and vote switching 2. Some kind of Lab recovery in Scotland 3. An electable Lab leader.
Hopefully we can tick off 1. No sign of 2 yet. Jury is still out on 3.
Is this Lab/LD vote switching?
Or is this just typical by election politics combined with Lab unpopularity.
Will Labour next time be squeezing LD votes, or not?
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
Didn't Owen spend a long time saying Corbyn should be replaced before deciding he was great and getting right behind him in time for the 2019 electoral disaster?
I backed the Conservatives for a tenner yesterday and promptly told the board because my "outside of Scotland" betting has a shocking record to give people a chance to flee.
Who are you backing in Batley
Based on what Labour activists are saying, don't write off Galloway. Eugh, did I really have to type his name again?
I am deeply disappointed that the people of #CheshamAndAmersham have, under the extraordinary circumstances of a by-election, voted for someone else to represent them in Parliament. Our work to regain the trust of local people begins today. @caca_tories https://twitter.com/pdfleet/status/1405706248956358657
?
It’s BS but I don’t see how it’s particular dickish?
> candidate selection pro & con (including personal vote of late Dame Cheryl Gillan MP)
> HS2 and housing pros and esp. cons
> by-election blast OR political transformation?
Except for HS2, all of the above were also apply to Hartlepool AND Batley & Spen. Just in different ways & degrees.
I’d expect it to revert to the Conservatives at the GE, unless the new MP can build up a very big personal vote.
A realignment on the basis of Brexit/anti-Brexit benefits the Tories because the Brexit vote is more efficiently distributed than the anti-Brexit vote.
Hurrah. Love the way that the usual suspects on the left and right are uniting to spin this terrific result for the LDs as bad for Labour.
This is all about showing there is life in the yellow dog yet. If it is about anything else, it is about providing evidence that the Tory blue underbelly is soft.
Nicely done.
Well, objectively, it is a bad result for Labour. Their voters have clearly switched en masse to the Lib Dems. That might help them in a general election if it cost the Tories Esher and Walton, Henley, Maidenhead, Cheltenham etc but then again, it might not.
But it is a much worse result for the Tories, who clearly also lost votes to the Lib Dems and to the NOTA party. They do not want that result to be replicated across the Home Counties at the next election.
If Lib/Lab tactical voting is now a thing again, that is nothing but a good news for Labour and the Lib Dems.
For the Lib Dems it may be good news.
Where will Labour find a Lib Dem vote for reciprocal squeezing?
There are plenty of southern towns and cities in particular where reciprocity would work for Labour. I'm thinking of places like Exeter, Bristol, Portsmouth and along the southern coast. And then there's London which could really benefit from both parties getting their heads together.
The problem is, and always has been, that labour will not countenance a pre-election pact and they certainly will not give one with the likely LD and possibly green precondition of non-referendum electoral reform. Labour have, psychologically, a lot to lose by conceding that government is a two party game as that dissuades anti tories voting for an alternative.
No explicit deal is required. There wasn't in 1997, just a tacit concentration of votes on whoever was best positioned to oust the Blue Meanies.
Incidentally, I cannot see an early election now. 2024 it is.
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
Morning all. No doubt the PB Europhiles and LibDems wil be hailing the end of the Conservative Government. This result is a good mid-term win for the LibDems but was fairly common in Margaret Thatchers mid-terms. Remember Shirley Williams and Crosby overturning something like a 19,000 majority. She lost the seat back to the Tories. Incidentally how does this seat do in the boundary changes?
I hope all the happy remainers who voted LibDem yesterday ask their shiny new LibDem MP what good she is doing as the HS2 bulldozers go straight through their villages. No doubt Ed Davey will follow the road of his predecessors and be gone the day after the next General Election.
Ed Davey having a slightly tricky time on HS2 on R4….
The trouble with leaving work early is that when you and Phillip arrive back in the morning you end up rushing rushing around like blue arsed flies feeding off scraps
I did note yesterday that the Labour vote looked to have gone to LD wholesale, which was a necessary (but not sufficient) precondition of a win.
Never dreamed of a win of this scale. I don’t even think C&A is the perfect LD seat. This is an ill omen for Johnson personally (he is indistinguishable from Toryism now).
It’s been clear since the beginning of this Parliament that a Tory defeat means:
1. Lab/LD cooperation and vote switching 2. Some kind of Lab recovery in Scotland 3. An electable Lab leader.
Hopefully we can tick off 1. No sign of 2 yet. Jury is still out on 3.
Is this Lab/LD vote switching?
Or is this just typical by election politics combined with Lab unpopularity.
Will Labour next time be squeezing LD votes, or not?
I wonder if the Lib Dems might be able to displace the Tories long term in the Home counties. Raab, Redwood and a few others must be nervous. Winchester looks gone next GE now
I think an orange-book type Lib Dem party could, that's more like the FDP in Germany.
It would be concentrated along the M3 and M4 commuter belts though - it wouldn't conquer all.
O/t, I realise, but is it expected that there will be an election in Northern Ireland. The DUP seem to be in 'ferrets in a sack' mode. Could surely lead to an SF led Administration.
Yes. The DUP really have turned into Gozer the Destructor if you are a Unionist. Sweeping aside the UUP their grand old man managed to set aside decades of NO! and make peace with the IRA. Look what his successors have done with that amazing political settlement!
The reality check is that the DUP deserve to be swept away. Electing a psychotic creationist as leader, being anti-women's rights, anti-21st Century societal progress and apparently pro-separation from GB.
Lets have an election (again). A few will vote for the ultra-hard line alternative, the rest (hopefully) vote for the Alliance and softer UUP. If Sinn Fein top the poll, well...
I wonder if the Lib Dems might be able to displace the Tories long term in the Home counties. Raab, Redwood and a few others must be nervous. Winchester looks gone next GE now
Seems to be an intrinsic contradiction between the nimbys who don't want any houses built and the young who need them to be.
I wonder if there's a tipping point for when too much of the local capital is in property values and it effectively crowds out productive capital.
Hurrah. Love the way that the usual suspects on the left and right are uniting to spin this terrific result for the LDs as bad for Labour.
This is all about showing there is life in the yellow dog yet. If it is about anything else, it is about providing evidence that the Tory blue underbelly is soft.
Nicely done.
Well, objectively, it is a bad result for Labour. Their voters have clearly switched en masse to the Lib Dems. That might help them in a general election if it cost the Tories Esher and Walton, Henley, Maidenhead, Cheltenham etc but then again, it might not.
But it is a much worse result for the Tories, who clearly also lost votes to the Lib Dems and to the NOTA party. They do not want that result to be replicated across the Home Counties at the next election.
If Lib/Lab tactical voting is now a thing again, that is nothing but a good news for Labour and the Lib Dems.
For the Lib Dems it may be good news.
Where will Labour find a Lib Dem vote for reciprocal squeezing?
There are plenty of southern towns and cities in particular where reciprocity would work for Labour. I'm thinking of places like Exeter, Bristol, Portsmouth and along the southern coast. And then there's London which could really benefit from both parties getting their heads together.
The problem is, and always has been, that labour will not countenance a pre-election pact and they certainly will not give one with the likely LD and possibly green precondition of non-referendum electoral reform. Labour have, psychologically, a lot to lose by conceding that government is a two party game as that dissuades anti tories voting for an alternative.
No explicit deal is required. There wasn't in 1997, just a tacit concentration of votes on whoever was best positioned to oust the Blue Meanies.
Incidentally, I cannot see an early election now. 2024 it is.
This result all but ensures the boundary changes too I think
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
Good post RP.
It would be great if the LibDems blasted Batley and Spen like they did C&A. I realise they have no support there but what the hell. Find some local issues, send Ed Davey up, make a concerted effort to be the second party in this country. What have they got to lose?
Hurrah. Love the way that the usual suspects on the left and right are uniting to spin this terrific result for the LDs as bad for Labour.
This is all about showing there is life in the yellow dog yet. If it is about anything else, it is about providing evidence that the Tory blue underbelly is soft.
Nicely done.
SKS 100% record intact.
Worst result in Hartlepool ever.
Worst result in C&A ever.
Worst result in terms of fewest votes in any Parliamentary election since Glasgow in 1935?
Triumph
Don't worry! Angela Rayner is on the march. As Deputy Leader of the Labour Party she has already been posing with that non-Labour MP Corbyn to virtue signal to the election winners that she is on their side.
Replace serkir with someone more suitable to the Unite leadership and you're bound to win back all the lost votes...
As you know the 12.8m of 2017 was the final highpoint before a terminal probably irreversible decline.
Labour should give it one final go with AB as leader in 2024.
Although how he even gets into Parliament is clearly problematic.
I wonder if the Lib Dems might be able to displace the Tories long term in the Home counties. Raab, Redwood and a few others must be nervous. Winchester looks gone next GE now
I think an orange-book type Lib Dem party could, that's more like the FDP in Germany.
It would be concentrated along the M3 and M4 commuter belts though - it wouldn't conquer all.
It would not make any headway in Essex, Kent, Bedfordshire or Eastern Hertfordshire. Berkshire and Surrey would be promising.
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The Labour Leader has no power to sack the Labour Deputy Leader.
Starmer can't sack Rayner, just as Corbyn couldn't sack Watson.
The LD win in Chesham and Amersham is clearly a great result for them and Davey and also a triumph for Nimbyism. Tory MPs across the Home Counties will now be panicked into opposing new planning measures and any threat to the greenbelt for fear of losing their seats to the Liberal Democrats. The 25% swing the LDs got in the by election if repeated at the next general election would see 240 Tory MPs lose their seats (though the scale of the protest vote last night is unlikely to be repeated at a general election). http://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/liberal-democrat
The result in this 55% Remain seat also shows how Brexit has realigned UK politics and confirms the pattern seen in the local elections and Hartlepool by election. The Tories are making gains in the strong Leave voting Midlands and North but losing votes to the LDs and Greens in the softer Leave and Remain South with Labour getting squeezed outside Wales and London.
In an alternative part of the multi-verse the Tories have just held on in Amersham as Prime Minister Jeremy Hunt is considered to have had a competent and effective anti-Covid war – his long experience as Health Secretary having proved invaluable
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
Mandelson.
Wouldn't that be interesting! I despised him back in the day but quite like him now. Same with Alastair Campbell. What's going on?
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
That is why Rayner is in pole position. Labour rules make defenestration very difficult, as we saw with Corbyn, so a leadership contest is most likely following a resignation by SKS. Rayner wants it, and would be acting leader at the time, and is clearly not anathema to the left in the way Starmer is. I rate Rayner, and think her a much more subtle politician than she is often given credit for.
If he still badly underperforms this weekend, the chatter about his seat will intensify.
And Pirelli confirm the tyre failures were as a result of Red Bull and Aston Martin running them at too low a pressure. The rule tightening will almost certainly affect their performance.
The latest suggestion was that RB were using hot and humid ‘air’ to fill the tyres, just before the pressure measurement was taken. This air then cools off and the pressure drops. From next year, they will have to run a standard pressure monitoring system feeding back to the FIA.
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
Excellent news re the by election . Johnson deserved this for his pathetic leadership over not gettting rid of the covid restrictions when he said he would
This is such a brilliant result for the LibDems and for everyone who hates this nasty and ghastly Alf Garnett leaning tory agenda. Well, everyone who knows that Boris Johnson is a schmuck.
What has been forgotten in the tories' recent fleg strewn auto da fé is that there are still millions of people and therefore voters who fucking hate Brexit. Not even so much the actuality of it but the reactionary, intellectually impoverished and essentially eugenicist worldview it typifies.
Let me disavow you of something straight away: this by-election isn't about Brexit.
See my post on confirmation bias.
Yes and no. Not dissatisfaction with Brexit specifically, but Brexit is part of the Tories’ shift away from the educated middle classes in search of its new constituency, and that new constituency isn’t C & A.
I'd say if Brexit was your chief concern you'd have been amongst the 25k that voted for Labour, LD or the Greens at the 2019 election, no? And I note the LDs got only 15k of that.
Sarah Greens grand vote total is less than that at 21k.
It looks to me like all progressives rallied around her, and turned out, whilst Conservatives sat at home. If they'd all turned out at GE levels it would have been (by my reckoning) very marginal.
The key point is this: if you were virulently anti-Brexit (and there's definitely c.25% of the population like that) you were already voting Lib Dem.
That linked Times article, from which I copied some extracts above, says it very clearly
Yes, it's a good article.
Some core cost of living stuff there. Basically, the Tories need to end the triple lock now (don't care about the manifesto: blame it on Covid.. whatever; they've had a great 10 years) and flip the funding to housing, childcare, and infrastructure improvements.
By the time of the next election the oldies will have got over it, and maybe a few more of working age (particularly in their 30s) will consider Tory.
My issue is that every spending pledge for the North, Scotland, Midlands and everywhere else in the country just adds up to higher taxes for people in London and the South East. I don't think I'm alone in that and the voters of C&A have shown this. This government is bribing voters in the North with our tax.
Add in the lockdown delay and the resultant loss of the vaccine bounce and we can expect this kind of result to become normal in the pissed off English South.
have to say I am pleased with the result overnight. Seeing Johnson get a bloody nose has certainly brightened my morning.
Lots of people on here with strident, overly confident views on what the causes were and what the implications are - Brexit, HS2, arrogant centralised decision making, the political cycle, NIMBYism, never-ending Lockdown and Tory socialism being just a few I have seen mentioned so far.
I have my own views on what I would like for it to have ben about and what that might mean going forward but I would suggest that no one really knows and all everyone is doing is projecting their own bias on to this result.
Given that OGH was (almost) the only person even considering this was a likely result (I would love to dig out a few of the quotes from as recently as yesterday about how there was no way the Tories would lose) then it might be worth reflecting how poorly the PB mind set reflects the views of the real voters on the ground. I aim this particularly at those on here who have quite rightly attacked the Government (both Labour and Tory) in the past for sneering at the electorate. A fair few comments on here this morning are doing exactly that.
I backed the Conservatives for a tenner yesterday and promptly told the board because my "outside of Scotland" betting has a shocking record to give people a chance to flee.
Who are you backing in Batley
Based on what Labour activists are saying, don't write off Galloway. Eugh, did I really have to type his name again?
Very interesting...
OK my contacts are now denying Galloway is anywhere. So perhaps he is just the spoiler candidate who dislodges enough Labour voters to stay at home. Hopefully. Dear God we do not need that prannock winning an election.
Turning to the footy tonight, I mentioned yesterday that Scotland are overpriced IMO to win 1-0 at 26. I now see the price is 29. I've topped up. If I were pricing that I'd go about 12's I think. 14 tops.
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
That is why Rayner is in pole position. Labour rules make defenestration very difficult, as we saw with Corbyn, so a leadership contest is most likely following a resignation by SKS. Rayner wants it, and would be acting leader at the time, and is clearly not anathema to the left in the way Starmer is. I rate Rayner, and think her a much more subtle politician than she is often given credit for.
O/t, I realise, but is it expected that there will be an election in Northern Ireland. The DUP seem to be in 'ferrets in a sack' mode. Could surely lead to an SF led Administration.
If SF pull out of the executive because the new DUP leader opposes their Irish language plans unlike Poots and the DUP refuse to return to government over the Irish Sea border there won't be any administration, the Northern Ireland Executive will collapse and the UK government will have to restore rule by the NI office and the NI civil service until they agree.
The latest NI poll is SF 25%, DUP 16%, Alliance 16%, UUP 14%, SDLP 12% and Alliance 11%.
So SF is actually down on the 28% it got at the 2017 Assembly elections just the DUP is even further down through losses to the hardline Traditional Unionist Voice (who got just 3% last time).
The main gainers on 2017 as well as TUV are the Alliance who are up 7% and the UUP who are up 2% under their new moderate leader Doug Beattie
If he still badly underperforms this weekend, the chatter about his seat will intensify.
And Pirelli confirm the tyre failures were as a result of Red Bull and Aston Martin running them at too low a pressure. The rule tightening will almost certainly affect their performance.
The latest suggestion was that RB were using hot and humid ‘air’ to fill the tyres, just before the pressure measurement was taken. This air then cools off and the pressure drops. From next year, they will have to run a standard pressure monitoring system feeding back to the FIA.
One of the many reasons that I don't follow F1. Constantly the rules are changed in a sport for technical lawyers.
FFS, why not just let teams do whatever they like to go faster? Instead we get to see who goes fastest while handicapped. Pointless.
have to say I am pleased with the result overnight. Seeing Johnson get a bloody nose has certainly brightened my morning.
Lots of people on here with strident, overly confident views on what the causes were and what the implications are - Brexit, HS2, arrogant centralised decision making, the political cycle, NIMBYism, never-ending Lockdown and Tory socialism being just a few I have seen mentioned so far.
I have my own views on what I would like for it to have ben about and what that might mean going forward but I would suggest that no one really knows and all everyone is doing is projecting their own bias on to this result.
Given that OGH was (almost) the only person even considering this was a likely result (I would love to dig out a few of the quotes from as recently as yesterday about how there was no way the Tories would lose) then it might be worth reflecting how poorly the PB mind set reflects the views of the real voters on the ground. I aim this particularly at those on here who have quite rightly attacked the Government (both Labour and Tory) in the past for sneering at the electorate. A fair few comments on here this morning are doing exactly that.
Good post but OGH, and others, were not saying this was a likely result; rather that the probability of a LD win was considerably higher than the odds implied.
have to say I am pleased with the result overnight. Seeing Johnson get a bloody nose has certainly brightened my morning.
Lots of people on here with strident, overly confident views on what the causes were and what the implications are - Brexit, HS2, arrogant centralised decision making, the political cycle, NIMBYism, never-ending Lockdown and Tory socialism being just a few I have seen mentioned so far.
I have my own views on what I would like for it to have ben about and what that might mean going forward but I would suggest that no one really knows and all everyone is doing is projecting their own bias on to this result.
Given that OGH was (almost) the only person even considering this was a likely result (I would love to dig out a few of the quotes from as recently as yesterday about how there was no way the Tories would lose) then it might be worth reflecting how poorly the PB mind set reflects the views of the real voters on the ground. I aim this particularly at those on here who have quite rightly attacked the Government (both Labour and Tory) in the past for sneering at the electorate. A fair few comments on here this morning are doing exactly that.
That's a fallacy. There isn't a mindset of voters on the ground, there are multiple mindsets, one per voter. To adopt one of those at the expense of others is not sneering at anyone.
Not sure C&A tells us anything about Batley. Pretty different worlds frankly.
Indeed.
But it's amusing if in a Con/LD seat the LD can take it, while in a Lab/Con seat, Lab not only were to lose it but come third.
Labour are getting squeezed, outside London and Wales and the biggest cities in the South Remainers are going LD (and a few to the Greens) and in the North and Midlands Leavers are going Tory
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
Good post RP.
It would be great if the LibDems blasted Batley and Spen like they did C&A. I realise they have no support there but what the hell. Find some local issues, send Ed Davey up, make a concerted effort to be the second party in this country. What have they got to lose?
No no, we aren't even on the park in Batley. A paper candidate only. My point is that in seats where they should be competitive people aren't voting Labour because the left is dragging them away into the pit. Punters in places like Batley don't want the hard left, they could vote Labour but who are Labour these days and what do they stand for?
If people vote Tory they can see what bribes get thrown at northern seats (see this Front Page lead from the Northern Echo for the reality: https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/19376642.new-rail-timetables-a-disaster-durham-darlington/). This is not Good for the Tories. All headlines is great, but sooner or later you have to deliver. Sunak coming up on to Darlo on a train his government are about to cut saying the Treasury move not affected as people shouldn't travel to / from London was tone deaf at best.
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
The least worst of the current gang are Nandy and Reeves. Cooper would be my choice. Taking that into fully into account and the self destructive tendency it will probably be Burgon.
Cooper is obviously the best choice, but would never get past the membership. Labour's problem is that there is no sitting MP who can win a leadership contest who would put the party in a better position. There are plenty who would make the situation far worse.
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
That is why Rayner is in pole position. Labour rules make defenestration very difficult, as we saw with Corbyn, so a leadership contest is most likely following a resignation by SKS. Rayner wants it, and would be acting leader at the time, and is clearly not anathema to the left in the way Starmer is. I rate Rayner, and think her a much more subtle politician than she is often given credit for.
Rayner would be a disaster, Remain Tories would fear her in a way they don't fear Starmer so the LD gains last night would end overnight for as with Corbyn Southern Remain Tories would have to vote Tory not LD to keep out Rayner.
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
That is why Rayner is in pole position. Labour rules make defenestration very difficult, as we saw with Corbyn, so a leadership contest is most likely following a resignation by SKS. Rayner wants it, and would be acting leader at the time, and is clearly not anathema to the left in the way Starmer is. I rate Rayner, and think her a much more subtle politician than she is often given credit for.
I must say the subtlety has been lost on me
She doesn't accumulate enemies within the party, and that is a very useful skill indeed. She is a loyalist to the leadership, standing by Corbyn when few others in the PLP would, and even not directly criticising Starmer when he was trying to sack her after Hartlepool.
She was a successful union negotiator, and that shows. Called in for a sacking by SKS, but leaving the room with a better portfolio.
Never confuse a lack of formal education with a lack of intelligence.
Not sure C&A tells us anything about Batley. Pretty different worlds frankly.
Indeed.
But it's amusing if in a Con/LD seat the LD can take it, while in a Lab/Con seat, Lab not only were to lose it but come third.
Labour are getting squeezed, outside London and Wales and the biggest cities in the South Remainers are going LD (and a few to the Greens) and in the North and Midlands Leavers are going Tory
Can you remind me who you said could get 10-15% in this election as to be honest I had ot heard of them and it looks as if no one else had
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The Labour Leader has no power to sack the Labour Deputy Leader.
Starmer can't sack Rayner, just as Corbyn couldn't sack Watson.
He can't sack the Deputy Leader. He can sack the Chair of the Party and the National Campaign Co-ordinator. Or in his case he can't even do that - he tried to and ended up promoting her!
have to say I am pleased with the result overnight. Seeing Johnson get a bloody nose has certainly brightened my morning.
Lots of people on here with strident, overly confident views on what the causes were and what the implications are - Brexit, HS2, arrogant centralised decision making, the political cycle, NIMBYism, never-ending Lockdown and Tory socialism being just a few I have seen mentioned so far.
I have my own views on what I would like for it to have ben about and what that might mean going forward but I would suggest that no one really knows and all everyone is doing is projecting their own bias on to this result.
Given that OGH was (almost) the only person even considering this was a likely result (I would love to dig out a few of the quotes from as recently as yesterday about how there was no way the Tories would lose) then it might be worth reflecting how poorly the PB mind set reflects the views of the real voters on the ground. I aim this particularly at those on here who have quite rightly attacked the Government (both Labour and Tory) in the past for sneering at the electorate. A fair few comments on here this morning are doing exactly that.
Good post but OGH, and others, were not saying this was a likely result; rather that the probability of a LD win was considerably higher than the odds implied.
If he still badly underperforms this weekend, the chatter about his seat will intensify.
And Pirelli confirm the tyre failures were as a result of Red Bull and Aston Martin running them at too low a pressure. The rule tightening will almost certainly affect their performance.
The latest suggestion was that RB were using hot and humid ‘air’ to fill the tyres, just before the pressure measurement was taken. This air then cools off and the pressure drops. From next year, they will have to run a standard pressure monitoring system feeding back to the FIA.
One of the many reasons that I don't follow F1. Constantly the rules are changed in a sport for technical lawyers.
FFS, why not just let teams do whatever they like to go faster? Instead we get to see who goes fastest while handicapped. Pointless.
Because there’s almost no limit to how fast the cars could go. And as a result you’d get people dying every other week.
The fact that rules are in place doesn’t put limits on innovation. The aim is still to go faster. But it’s a highly dangerous sport and there inevitably have to be rules to prevent teams pushing speed too far at the expense of safety.
It’s also the case that some of the rules are in place to try and provide something of a level playing field and improve the quality of racing (not always successfully of course). And the phrase “level playing field” means different things to different people (the old equality of opportunity vs outcome argument.
The one thing that I picked up from my brief period of political activism is the hatred of labour towards the LDs is absolutely visceral, but this is not necessarily shared by their voters. Labour will not concede any of their strongholds to the LDs. The progressive parties won't seriously unite, they will fight each other to mutual destruction, but the voters are less bothered. Until someone finds a way around this, the tories will largely stay in power; it could almost be a one party state for an entire generation.
If not, the technology will al least trickle down to Porsche in due course.
Porsche already own 25% of Rimac and have a '911e' on their internal product roadmap.
Yes, that was my point. Who would have predicted a couple of decades back that Porsche's future would be at least partially tied to Croatian engineering ?
I actually heard the result live, and just have to say many congratulations to the lib dems on their spectacular success and warn my fellow conservatives that is far from a given it will be won back in 2024
have to say I am pleased with the result overnight. Seeing Johnson get a bloody nose has certainly brightened my morning.
Lots of people on here with strident, overly confident views on what the causes were and what the implications are - Brexit, HS2, arrogant centralised decision making, the political cycle, NIMBYism, never-ending Lockdown and Tory socialism being just a few I have seen mentioned so far.
I have my own views on what I would like for it to have ben about and what that might mean going forward but I would suggest that no one really knows and all everyone is doing is projecting their own bias on to this result.
Given that OGH was (almost) the only person even considering this was a likely result (I would love to dig out a few of the quotes from as recently as yesterday about how there was no way the Tories would lose) then it might be worth reflecting how poorly the PB mind set reflects the views of the real voters on the ground. I aim this particularly at those on here who have quite rightly attacked the Government (both Labour and Tory) in the past for sneering at the electorate. A fair few comments on here this morning are doing exactly that.
Good post but OGH, and others, were not saying this was a likely result; rather that the probability of a LD win was considerably higher than the odds implied.
True but there was at least an acceptance that it was both possible and more likely than the PB talking heads were implying.
The one thing that I picked up from my brief period of political activism is the hatred of labour towards the LDs is absolutely visceral, but this is not necessarily shared by their voters. Labour will not concede any of their strongholds to the LDs. The progressive parties won't seriously unite, they will fight each other to mutual destruction, but the voters are less bothered. Until someone finds a way around this, the tories will largely stay in power; it could almost be a one party state for an entire generation.
On the swing last night over 200 Tory seats, mainly in the South, would go LD.
This is not a morning for Tory complacency at all, indeed for southern Home Counties Tories it is a morning for panic
Brain imaging before and after COVID-19 in UK Biobank https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690v1 There is strong evidence for brain-related pathologies in COVID-19, some of which could be a consequence of viral neurotropism. The vast majority of brain imaging studies so far have focused on qualitative, gross pathology of moderate to severe cases, often carried out on hospitalised patients. It remains unknown however whether the impact of COVID-19 can be detected in milder cases, in a quantitative and automated manner, and whether this can reveal a possible mechanism for the spread of the disease. UK Biobank scanned over 40,000 participants before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, making it possible to invite back in 2021 hundreds of previously-imaged participants for a second imaging visit. Here, we studied the effects of the disease in the brain using multimodal data from 782 participants from the UK Biobank COVID-19 re-imaging study, with 394 participants having tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection between their two scans. We used structural and functional brain scans from before and after infection, to compare longitudinal brain changes between these 394 COVID-19 patients and 388 controls who were matched for age, sex, ethnicity and interval between scans. We identified significant effects of COVID-19 in the brain with a loss of grey matter in the left parahippocampal gyrus, the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex and the left insula. When looking over the entire cortical surface, these results extended to the anterior cingulate cortex, supramarginal gyrus and temporal pole. We further compared COVID-19 patients who had been hospitalised (n=15) with those who had not (n=379), and while results were not significant, we found comparatively similar findings to the COVID-19 vs control group comparison, with, in addition, a greater loss of grey matter in the cingulate cortex, central nucleus of the amygdala and hippocampal cornu ammonis (all |Z| > 3). Our findings thus consistently relate to loss of grey matter in limbic cortical areas directly linked to the primary olfactory and gustatory system. Unlike in post hoc disease studies, the availability of pre-infection imaging data helps avoid the danger of pre-existing risk factors or clinical conditions being mis-interpreted as disease effects. Since a possible entry point of the virus to the central nervous system might be via the olfactory mucosa and the olfactory bulb, these brain imaging results might be the in vivo hallmark of the spread of the disease (or the virus itself) via olfactory and gustatory pathways.
A really interesting study, and quite alarming in its long term implications.
Get vaccinated guys...
One crucial question raised by this research is whether brain damage is also seen in mild cases and does this mean we need to start vaccinating children?
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
That is why Rayner is in pole position. Labour rules make defenestration very difficult, as we saw with Corbyn, so a leadership contest is most likely following a resignation by SKS. Rayner wants it, and would be acting leader at the time, and is clearly not anathema to the left in the way Starmer is. I rate Rayner, and think her a much more subtle politician than she is often given credit for.
Rayner would be a disaster, Remain Tories would fear her in a way they don't fear Starmer so the LD gains last night would end overnight for as with Corbyn Southern Remain Tories would have to vote Tory not LD to keep out Rayner.
have to say I am pleased with the result overnight. Seeing Johnson get a bloody nose has certainly brightened my morning.
Lots of people on here with strident, overly confident views on what the causes were and what the implications are - Brexit, HS2, arrogant centralised decision making, the political cycle, NIMBYism, never-ending Lockdown and Tory socialism being just a few I have seen mentioned so far.
I have my own views on what I would like for it to have ben about and what that might mean going forward but I would suggest that no one really knows and all everyone is doing is projecting their own bias on to this result.
Given that OGH was (almost) the only person even considering this was a likely result (I would love to dig out a few of the quotes from as recently as yesterday about how there was no way the Tories would lose) then it might be worth reflecting how poorly the PB mind set reflects the views of the real voters on the ground. I aim this particularly at those on here who have quite rightly attacked the Government (both Labour and Tory) in the past for sneering at the electorate. A fair few comments on here this morning are doing exactly that.
Cost me a couple of hundred pounds, and kicking myself because I was all green with a good fair result in the LDs until late last night when I rashly switched my position. Well done to the LDs though. Really very surprised. My thinking was that the LDs really are pretty invisible nationally and that there would never be the numbers with the enthusiasm to vote for them. How wrong I was! (I imagine there's a good bit of anti Tory vote in the mix too)
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
That is why Rayner is in pole position. Labour rules make defenestration very difficult, as we saw with Corbyn, so a leadership contest is most likely following a resignation by SKS. Rayner wants it, and would be acting leader at the time, and is clearly not anathema to the left in the way Starmer is. I rate Rayner, and think her a much more subtle politician than she is often given credit for.
Rayner would be a disaster, Remain Tories would fear her in a way they don't fear Starmer so the LD gains last night would end overnight for as with Corbyn Southern Remain Tories would have to vote Tory not LD to keep out Rayner.
SE England Remain constituencies great targets for LDs and "perfect circumstances" for LDs and they "badly needed to do well in" - need to come up with message which appeals beyond local circumstances for C&A and get national polling up to GE levels.
C&A plus Hartlepool shows changing support of Conservatives from SE Middle Class University educated to Northern working class - and Johnson's appeal does not extend to these voters.
This is such a brilliant result for the LibDems and for everyone who hates this nasty and ghastly Alf Garnett leaning tory agenda. Well, everyone who knows that Boris Johnson is a schmuck.
What has been forgotten in the tories' recent fleg strewn auto da fé is that there are still millions of people and therefore voters who fucking hate Brexit. Not even so much the actuality of it but the reactionary, intellectually impoverished and essentially eugenicist worldview it typifies.
Let me disavow you of something straight away: this by-election isn't about Brexit.
See my post on confirmation bias.
Yes and no. Not dissatisfaction with Brexit specifically, but Brexit is part of the Tories’ shift away from the educated middle classes in search of its new constituency, and that new constituency isn’t C & A.
I'd say if Brexit was your chief concern you'd have been amongst the 25k that voted for Labour, LD or the Greens at the 2019 election, no? And I note the LDs got only 15k of that.
Sarah Greens grand vote total is less than that at 21k.
It looks to me like all progressives rallied around her, and turned out, whilst Conservatives sat at home. If they'd all turned out at GE levels it would have been (by my reckoning) very marginal.
The key point is this: if you were virulently anti-Brexit (and there's definitely c.25% of the population like that) you were already voting Lib Dem.
That linked Times article, from which I copied some extracts above, says it very clearly
Yes, it's a good article.
Some core cost of living stuff there. Basically, the Tories need to end the triple lock now (don't care about the manifesto: blame it on Covid.. whatever; they've had a great 10 years) and flip the funding to housing, childcare, and infrastructure improvements.
By the time of the next election the oldies will have got over it, and maybe a few more of working age (particularly in their 30s) will consider Tory.
My issue is that every spending pledge for the North, Scotland, Midlands and everywhere else in the country just adds up to higher taxes for people in London and the South East. I don't think I'm alone in that and the voters of C&A have shown this. This government is bribing voters in the North with our tax.
Add in the lockdown delay and the resultant loss of the vaccine bounce and we can expect this kind of result to become normal in the pissed off English South.
Its high profile announcements about spending money outside L&SE but how much do they add up to ?
Meanwhile many outside L&SE think that government spending is concentrated in L&SE - HS2, Heathrow, crossrails, new tube lines.
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
That is why Rayner is in pole position. Labour rules make defenestration very difficult, as we saw with Corbyn, so a leadership contest is most likely following a resignation by SKS. Rayner wants it, and would be acting leader at the time, and is clearly not anathema to the left in the way Starmer is. I rate Rayner, and think her a much more subtle politician than she is often given credit for.
I must say the subtlety has been lost on me
Never confuse a lack of formal education with a lack of intelligence.
Not sure C&A tells us anything about Batley. Pretty different worlds frankly.
Indeed.
But it's amusing if in a Con/LD seat the LD can take it, while in a Lab/Con seat, Lab not only were to lose it but come third.
Labour are getting squeezed, outside London and Wales and the biggest cities in the South Remainers are going LD (and a few to the Greens) and in the North and Midlands Leavers are going Tory
Can you remind me who you said could get 10-15% in this election as to be honest I had ot heard of them and it looks as if no one else had
For now they have not made an impact, if Freedom Day continues to be postponed they might start to
have to say I am pleased with the result overnight. Seeing Johnson get a bloody nose has certainly brightened my morning.
Lots of people on here with strident, overly confident views on what the causes were and what the implications are - Brexit, HS2, arrogant centralised decision making, the political cycle, NIMBYism, never-ending Lockdown and Tory socialism being just a few I have seen mentioned so far.
I have my own views on what I would like for it to have ben about and what that might mean going forward but I would suggest that no one really knows and all everyone is doing is projecting their own bias on to this result.
Given that OGH was (almost) the only person even considering this was a likely result (I would love to dig out a few of the quotes from as recently as yesterday about how there was no way the Tories would lose) then it might be worth reflecting how poorly the PB mind set reflects the views of the real voters on the ground. I aim this particularly at those on here who have quite rightly attacked the Government (both Labour and Tory) in the past for sneering at the electorate. A fair few comments on here this morning are doing exactly that.
The cause was the launch of GB News. Got to be. Look at how close these two events were.
If not, the technology will al least trickle down to Porsche in due course.
Porsche already own 25% of Rimac and have a '911e' on their internal product roadmap.
Yes, that was my point. Who would have predicted a couple of decades back that Porsche's future would be at least partially tied to Croatian engineering ?
Well, Porsche's first ever car (the P1 in 1898) was electric so the heritage is there.
They have always said they won't do an electric 911 until it's better than a petrol 911 so I don't think we'll see the 911e until after Euro 7 emissions standards come in 2025. The 992.2 midlife upgrade of the current generation will almost certainly be hybrid as there is already an extra input shaft on the transmission which otherwise makes no sense.
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
That is why Rayner is in pole position. Labour rules make defenestration very difficult, as we saw with Corbyn, so a leadership contest is most likely following a resignation by SKS. Rayner wants it, and would be acting leader at the time, and is clearly not anathema to the left in the way Starmer is. I rate Rayner, and think her a much more subtle politician than she is often given credit for.
Rayner would be a disaster, Remain Tories would fear her in a way they don't fear Starmer so the LD gains last night would end overnight for as with Corbyn Southern Remain Tories would have to vote Tory not LD to keep out Rayner.
> candidate selection pro & con (including personal vote of late Dame Cheryl Gillan MP)
> HS2 and housing pros and esp. cons
> by-election blast OR political transformation?
Except for HS2, all of the above were also apply to Hartlepool AND Batley & Spen. Just in different ways & degrees.
I’d expect it to revert to the Conservatives at the GE, unless the new MP can build up a very big personal vote.
A realignment on the basis of Brexit/anti-Brexit benefits the Tories because the Brexit vote is more efficiently distributed than the anti-Brexit vote.
I really hope this kind of complacency is typical of the Tory party as a whole, but I don’t know if it is.
have to say I am pleased with the result overnight. Seeing Johnson get a bloody nose has certainly brightened my morning.
Lots of people on here with strident, overly confident views on what the causes were and what the implications are - Brexit, HS2, arrogant centralised decision making, the political cycle, NIMBYism, never-ending Lockdown and Tory socialism being just a few I have seen mentioned so far.
I have my own views on what I would like for it to have ben about and what that might mean going forward but I would suggest that no one really knows and all everyone is doing is projecting their own bias on to this result.
Given that OGH was (almost) the only person even considering this was a likely result (I would love to dig out a few of the quotes from as recently as yesterday about how there was no way the Tories would lose) then it might be worth reflecting how poorly the PB mind set reflects the views of the real voters on the ground. I aim this particularly at those on here who have quite rightly attacked the Government (both Labour and Tory) in the past for sneering at the electorate. A fair few comments on here this morning are doing exactly that.
That's a fallacy. There isn't a mindset of voters on the ground, there are multiple mindsets, one per voter. To adopt one of those at the expense of others is not sneering at anyone.
You misread my post (being generous). It is the sneerers who are projecting their views of the result onto the electorate and then using that as the basis for attacking the voters. Look at the NIMBY comments on here this morning already (as just one example).
It is all part of the process of trivialising the many and varied concerns of the local voters as a precursor to ignoring them. Rationalise that the voters are the ones being unreasonable and use that as an excuse to carry on regardless with no serious analysis or reflection. We saw Labour do it time and time again when they were in power and Corbynistas do it in the aftermath of 2019. Now it is Tories (and others) on here.
The one thing that I picked up from my brief period of political activism is the hatred of labour towards the LDs is absolutely visceral, but this is not necessarily shared by their voters. Labour will not concede any of their strongholds to the LDs. The progressive parties won't seriously unite, they will fight each other to mutual destruction, but the voters are less bothered. Until someone finds a way around this, the tories will largely stay in power; it could almost be a one party state for an entire generation.
On the swing last night over 200 Tory seats, mainly in the South, would go LD.
This is not a morning for Tory complacency at all, indeed for southern Home Counties Tories it is a morning for panic
This is such a brilliant result for the LibDems and for everyone who hates this nasty and ghastly Alf Garnett leaning tory agenda. Well, everyone who knows that Boris Johnson is a schmuck.
What has been forgotten in the tories' recent fleg strewn auto da fé is that there are still millions of people and therefore voters who fucking hate Brexit. Not even so much the actuality of it but the reactionary, intellectually impoverished and essentially eugenicist worldview it typifies.
Let me disavow you of something straight away: this by-election isn't about Brexit.
See my post on confirmation bias.
Yes and no. Not dissatisfaction with Brexit specifically, but Brexit is part of the Tories’ shift away from the educated middle classes in search of its new constituency, and that new constituency isn’t C & A.
I'd say if Brexit was your chief concern you'd have been amongst the 25k that voted for Labour, LD or the Greens at the 2019 election, no? And I note the LDs got only 15k of that.
Sarah Greens grand vote total is less than that at 21k.
It looks to me like all progressives rallied around her, and turned out, whilst Conservatives sat at home. If they'd all turned out at GE levels it would have been (by my reckoning) very marginal.
The key point is this: if you were virulently anti-Brexit (and there's definitely c.25% of the population like that) you were already voting Lib Dem.
That linked Times article, from which I copied some extracts above, says it very clearly
Yes, it's a good article.
Some core cost of living stuff there. Basically, the Tories need to end the triple lock now (don't care about the manifesto: blame it on Covid.. whatever; they've had a great 10 years) and flip the funding to housing, childcare, and infrastructure improvements.
By the time of the next election the oldies will have got over it, and maybe a few more of working age (particularly in their 30s) will consider Tory.
My issue is that every spending pledge for the North, Scotland, Midlands and everywhere else in the country just adds up to higher taxes for people in London and the South East. I don't think I'm alone in that and the voters of C&A have shown this. This government is bribing voters in the North with our tax.
Add in the lockdown delay and the resultant loss of the vaccine bounce and we can expect this kind of result to become normal in the pissed off English South.
The obvious way to square the circle is to keep the tax burden the same but strip the welfare off the retired and "solve" social care, and then use those savings to level up the north.
The Tories can then keep a modest tax and fiscally dry prospectus nationwide. The oldies will still vote for them in 2-3 years time.
Oh to be a fly on the wall in No 10 this morning. It's a long time since Boris has been on the losing side. I'd stay out of the way if I were you, Dilyn.
The one thing that I picked up from my brief period of political activism is the hatred of labour towards the LDs is absolutely visceral, but this is not necessarily shared by their voters. Labour will not concede any of their strongholds to the LDs. The progressive parties won't seriously unite, they will fight each other to mutual destruction, but the voters are less bothered. Until someone finds a way around this, the tories will largely stay in power; it could almost be a one party state for an entire generation.
On the swing last night over 200 Tory seats, mainly in the South, would go LD.
This is not a morning for Tory complacency at all, indeed for southern Home Counties Tories it is a morning for panic
Yes - but it can't be worse than the panic amongst labour in the red wall. The red wall is falling because voters have shifted en masse to a conservative party with a coherent agenda that they support - conservative on social values, to the left on economic issues. By contrast a tory loss to a LD campaign based on regressive local issues (NIMBY, anti HS2) but has no real coherence is best seen as frustrating and annoying, but not existential. It probably justifies a review of campaigning tactics next time around.
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
That is why Rayner is in pole position. Labour rules make defenestration very difficult, as we saw with Corbyn, so a leadership contest is most likely following a resignation by SKS. Rayner wants it, and would be acting leader at the time, and is clearly not anathema to the left in the way Starmer is. I rate Rayner, and think her a much more subtle politician than she is often given credit for.
Rayner would be a disaster, Remain Tories would fear her in a way they don't fear Starmer so the LD gains last night would end overnight for as with Corbyn Southern Remain Tories would have to vote Tory not LD to keep out Rayner.
The Lib Dems thrashing the Tories in a massively safe Tory seat completely destroys Keir Starmer’s excuse that Labour are only struggling because of a vaccine boost.
If Labour lose the Batley and Spen by election, Starmer will have to resign.
And replace him with whom? Punters - with the exception of a few dozen very urban raah raah seats - do not want hard left policies and politics. Starmer had one opportunity to expel Jezbollah and thus the cult and he fluffed it. Then he caught Rayner moving against him after Pools, should have sacked her and he fluffed it.
The reason why Labour are in such a mess is that on one hand they have the hard left monster dragging them into the abyss and on the other hand the centre are pussies unable to detach the monster. Keir is frit so I agree will have to go, but to be replaced with whom?
That is why Rayner is in pole position. Labour rules make defenestration very difficult, as we saw with Corbyn, so a leadership contest is most likely following a resignation by SKS. Rayner wants it, and would be acting leader at the time, and is clearly not anathema to the left in the way Starmer is. I rate Rayner, and think her a much more subtle politician than she is often given credit for.
Rayner would be a disaster, Remain Tories would fear her in a way they don't fear Starmer so the LD gains last night would end overnight for as with Corbyn Southern Remain Tories would have to vote Tory not LD to keep out Rayner.
Whether she would win a GE is down the road a bit, the question is whether she would win the Labour selectorate. I think she would.
She is a subtle politician, for example over Brexit she was not associated with efforts to stifle it, so has fairly clean hands.
She might and if she did she might finally kill off the Labour Party too.
Following the Tory win in Hartlepool and last night's LD win in Chesham and Amersham and the pattern of the local elections the Tories would become the party of the non big city North and the Midlands, the Liberal Democrats would become the party of the South and Labour would become a rump minor party confined to the poorer parts of London and inner city Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham and south Wales.
Turning to the footy tonight, I mentioned yesterday that Scotland are overpriced IMO to win 1-0 at 26. I now see the price is 29. I've topped up. If I were pricing that I'd go about 12's I think. 14 tops.
I know the LDs have won an unlikely by-election, but don't get too carried away..
> candidate selection pro & con (including personal vote of late Dame Cheryl Gillan MP)
> HS2 and housing pros and esp. cons
> by-election blast OR political transformation?
Except for HS2, all of the above were also apply to Hartlepool AND Batley & Spen. Just in different ways & degrees.
I’d expect it to revert to the Conservatives at the GE, unless the new MP can build up a very big personal vote.
A realignment on the basis of Brexit/anti-Brexit benefits the Tories because the Brexit vote is more efficiently distributed than the anti-Brexit vote.
I really hope this kind of complacency is typical of the Tory party as a whole, but I don’t know if it is.
The challenge, as ever, for the LDs is how they scale (a brilliant) by-election result into a GE - they can't. Ed Davey can't visit 600+ constituencies eleven times as he did here. By-elections and general elections are different beasts.
Brain imaging before and after COVID-19 in UK Biobank https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690v1 There is strong evidence for brain-related pathologies in COVID-19, some of which could be a consequence of viral neurotropism. The vast majority of brain imaging studies so far have focused on qualitative, gross pathology of moderate to severe cases, often carried out on hospitalised patients. It remains unknown however whether the impact of COVID-19 can be detected in milder cases, in a quantitative and automated manner, and whether this can reveal a possible mechanism for the spread of the disease. UK Biobank scanned over 40,000 participants before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, making it possible to invite back in 2021 hundreds of previously-imaged participants for a second imaging visit. Here, we studied the effects of the disease in the brain using multimodal data from 782 participants from the UK Biobank COVID-19 re-imaging study, with 394 participants having tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection between their two scans. We used structural and functional brain scans from before and after infection, to compare longitudinal brain changes between these 394 COVID-19 patients and 388 controls who were matched for age, sex, ethnicity and interval between scans. We identified significant effects of COVID-19 in the brain with a loss of grey matter in the left parahippocampal gyrus, the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex and the left insula. When looking over the entire cortical surface, these results extended to the anterior cingulate cortex, supramarginal gyrus and temporal pole. We further compared COVID-19 patients who had been hospitalised (n=15) with those who had not (n=379), and while results were not significant, we found comparatively similar findings to the COVID-19 vs control group comparison, with, in addition, a greater loss of grey matter in the cingulate cortex, central nucleus of the amygdala and hippocampal cornu ammonis (all |Z| > 3). Our findings thus consistently relate to loss of grey matter in limbic cortical areas directly linked to the primary olfactory and gustatory system. Unlike in post hoc disease studies, the availability of pre-infection imaging data helps avoid the danger of pre-existing risk factors or clinical conditions being mis-interpreted as disease effects. Since a possible entry point of the virus to the central nervous system might be via the olfactory mucosa and the olfactory bulb, these brain imaging results might be the in vivo hallmark of the spread of the disease (or the virus itself) via olfactory and gustatory pathways.
A really interesting study, and quite alarming in its long term implications.
Get vaccinated guys...
One crucial question raised by this research is whether brain damage is also seen in mild cases and does this mean we need to start vaccinating children?
The results were broadly the same in those hospitalised and those much less ill.
The limbic system is most affected, presumably due to direct viral infection of the olfactory nerves. The limbic system isn't just involved in smell though, it is important in formation of memory, attention span, facial recognition and emotional responsiveness. Long term damage here is quite worrying, and perhaps is part of "long covid".
Comments
Or is this just typical by election politics combined with Lab unpopularity.
Will Labour next time be squeezing LD votes, or not?
Fraud that is not that Hancock is f ing hopeless.
It’s BS but I don’t see how it’s particular dickish?
A realignment on the basis of Brexit/anti-Brexit benefits the Tories because the Brexit vote is more efficiently distributed than the anti-Brexit vote.
Incidentally, I cannot see an early election now. 2024 it is.
Looking like a good day.
It would be concentrated along the M3 and M4 commuter belts though - it wouldn't conquer all.
The reality check is that the DUP deserve to be swept away. Electing a psychotic creationist as leader, being anti-women's rights, anti-21st Century societal progress and apparently pro-separation from GB.
Lets have an election (again). A few will vote for the ultra-hard line alternative, the rest (hopefully) vote for the Alliance and softer UUP. If Sinn Fein top the poll, well...
I wonder if there's a tipping point for when too much of the local capital is in property values and it effectively crowds out productive capital.
It would be great if the LibDems blasted Batley and Spen like they did C&A. I realise they have no support there but what the hell. Find some local issues, send Ed Davey up, make a concerted effort to be the second party in this country. What have they got to lose?
Labour should give it one final go with AB as leader in 2024.
Although how he even gets into Parliament is clearly problematic.
Starmer can't sack Rayner, just as Corbyn couldn't sack Watson.
http://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/liberal-democrat
The result in this 55% Remain seat also shows how Brexit has realigned UK politics and confirms the pattern seen in the local elections and Hartlepool by election. The Tories are making gains in the strong Leave voting Midlands and North but losing votes to the LDs and Greens in the softer Leave and Remain South with Labour getting squeezed outside Wales and London.
The much better half will be pleased to help me spend it.
To lose one byelection may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
To come second in Batley may be a misfortune; to come third looks like carelessness.
Not if they read PB!!!
I translated "within 4" to "deffo at least 8 behind" in my head.
Add in the lockdown delay and the resultant loss of the vaccine bounce and we can expect this kind of result to become normal in the pissed off English South.
Side note, but the number of MPs who, like Kit Malthouse, can say "I was Housing Minister for a year" explains a LOT about Britain's housing problems.
https://twitter.com/RobDotHutton/status/1405782068521472001?s=20
have to say I am pleased with the result overnight. Seeing Johnson get a bloody nose has certainly brightened my morning.
Lots of people on here with strident, overly confident views on what the causes were and what the implications are - Brexit, HS2, arrogant centralised decision making, the political cycle, NIMBYism, never-ending Lockdown and Tory socialism being just a few I have seen mentioned so far.
I have my own views on what I would like for it to have ben about and what that might mean going forward but I would suggest that no one really knows and all everyone is doing is projecting their own bias on to this result.
Given that OGH was (almost) the only person even considering this was a likely result (I would love to dig out a few of the quotes from as recently as yesterday about how there was no way the Tories would lose) then it might be worth reflecting how poorly the PB mind set reflects the views of the real voters on the ground. I aim this particularly at those on here who have quite rightly attacked the Government (both Labour and Tory) in the past for sneering at the electorate. A fair few comments on here this morning are doing exactly that.
But it's amusing if in a Con/LD seat the LD can take it, while in a Lab/Con seat, Lab not only were to lose it but come third.
The latest NI poll is SF 25%, DUP 16%, Alliance 16%, UUP 14%, SDLP 12% and Alliance 11%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Northern_Ireland_Assembly_election
So SF is actually down on the 28% it got at the 2017 Assembly elections just the DUP is even further down through losses to the hardline Traditional Unionist Voice (who got just 3% last time).
The main gainers on 2017 as well as TUV are the Alliance who are up 7% and the UUP who are up 2% under their new moderate leader Doug Beattie
FFS, why not just let teams do whatever they like to go faster? Instead we get to see who goes fastest while handicapped. Pointless.
COVID Case Rate
Scotland: 116
London: 71
Just as well Nicola & Useless have told supporters not to travel.....oh...
If people vote Tory they can see what bribes get thrown at northern seats (see this Front Page lead from the Northern Echo for the reality: https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/19376642.new-rail-timetables-a-disaster-durham-darlington/). This is not Good for the Tories. All headlines is great, but sooner or later you have to deliver. Sunak coming up on to Darlo on a train his government are about to cut saying the Treasury move not affected as people shouldn't travel to / from London was tone deaf at best.
Rayner also polls abysmally, just 25% of voters think Rayner would make a good Labour leader to 47% who think Burnham would
https://twitter.com/ElectsWorld/status/1393652075771400194?s=20
She was a successful union negotiator, and that shows. Called in for a sacking by SKS, but leaving the room with a better portfolio.
Never confuse a lack of formal education with a lack of intelligence.
Frit and Shit. A deadly combination.
The fact that rules are in place doesn’t put limits on innovation. The aim is still to go faster. But it’s a highly dangerous sport and there inevitably have to be rules to prevent teams pushing speed too far at the expense of safety.
It’s also the case that some of the rules are in place to try and provide something of a level playing field and improve the quality of racing (not always successfully of course). And the phrase “level playing field” means different things to different people (the old equality of opportunity vs outcome argument.
The one thing that I picked up from my brief period of political activism is the hatred of labour towards the LDs is absolutely visceral, but this is not necessarily shared by their voters. Labour will not concede any of their strongholds to the LDs. The progressive parties won't seriously unite, they will fight each other to mutual destruction, but the voters are less bothered. Until someone finds a way around this, the tories will largely stay in power; it could almost be a one party state for an entire generation.
Who would have predicted a couple of decades back that Porsche's future would be at least partially tied to Croatian engineering ?
I actually heard the result live, and just have to say many congratulations to the lib dems on their spectacular success and warn my fellow conservatives that is far from a given it will be won back in 2024
This is not a morning for Tory complacency at all, indeed for southern Home Counties Tories it is a morning for panic
She is a subtle politician, for example over Brexit she was not associated with efforts to stifle it, so has fairly clean hands.
Interesting how low Labour's figure was.
SE England Remain constituencies great targets for LDs and "perfect circumstances" for LDs and they "badly needed to do well in" - need to come up with message which appeals beyond local circumstances for C&A and get national polling up to GE levels.
C&A plus Hartlepool shows changing support of Conservatives from SE Middle Class University educated to Northern working class - and Johnson's appeal does not extend to these voters.
Worst Labour performance in any bye-election
Meanwhile many outside L&SE think that government spending is concentrated in L&SE - HS2, Heathrow, crossrails, new tube lines.
They have always said they won't do an electric 911 until it's better than a petrol 911 so I don't think we'll see the 911e until after Euro 7 emissions standards come in 2025. The 992.2 midlife upgrade of the current generation will almost certainly be hybrid as there is already an extra input shaft on the transmission which otherwise makes no sense.
Rayner would finally kill of the Labour Party as the main party of opposition and for that we should be thankful
Do any PBers actually do anything different when they have a nice win ?
Its just more money in a pot to me.
You may be confusing my comments on vaccination rates, where the NIMS & ONS numbers vary widely, particularly in mobile population cities.
It is all part of the process of trivialising the many and varied concerns of the local voters as a precursor to ignoring them. Rationalise that the voters are the ones being unreasonable and use that as an excuse to carry on regardless with no serious analysis or reflection. We saw Labour do it time and time again when they were in power and Corbynistas do it in the aftermath of 2019. Now it is Tories (and others) on here.
It's a by election.
The Tories can then keep a modest tax and fiscally dry prospectus nationwide. The oldies will still vote for them in 2-3 years time.
It's a long time since Boris has been on the losing side.
I'd stay out of the way if I were you, Dilyn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesham_and_Amersham_(UK_Parliament_constituency)
Following the Tory win in Hartlepool and last night's LD win in Chesham and Amersham and the pattern of the local elections the Tories would become the party of the non big city North and the Midlands, the Liberal Democrats would become the party of the South and Labour would become a rump minor party confined to the poorer parts of London and inner city Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham and south Wales.
We would be back to the pre 1920s
However, had I been at the count I'd have put hundreds on around midnight and then told everyone here.
Can @bunnco not go to every by-election?
The limbic system is most affected, presumably due to direct viral infection of the olfactory nerves. The limbic system isn't just involved in smell though, it is important in formation of memory, attention span, facial recognition and emotional responsiveness. Long term damage here is quite worrying, and perhaps is part of "long covid".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbic_system