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Most former PMs and govts would love midterm polling like this – politicalbetting.com
Most former PMs and govts would love midterm polling like this – politicalbetting.com
?? The latest from our poll tracker:CON: 40.8% (-0.4)LAB: 33.8% (+0.2)LDEM: 10.3% (+0.8)GRN: 5.6% (+0.1)via @BritainElects, 24 AugChgs. w/ 23 JulAll quiet on the polling front…More:https://t.co/C2F3jpmwxI pic.twitter.com/Ua9JEKucEp
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Apart from a couple of comments about current educational difficulties for the younger people, and the effect of the transport problems on the work of one of the older ones.
Knew I shouldn’t have said how dry it’s been…
Other candidates who might have come forward had circumstances been different were Thornberry, Pidcock and Lavery.
So yes, they could easily have made a worse choice.
Indeed, there were about 200 worse choices.
The problem is that - while Starmer is obviously a bit rubbish - all the alternatives were worse.
Of course something extraordinary could happen, but that’s the risk you take, and I think both bets are great value.
Whether punters will continue giving the government the benefit of the doubt remains to be seen. The 60+ demographic ain’t daft and they want their boosters ASAP.
The problem isn't Starmer, its the party. Yes serkeir pledged various things he appears not to believe (perhaps all his pledges...). But its wider than him. Part of the party years for the exciting days of ditching dogma for pragmatism. The bulk seems pretty wedded to ideals that the target voters they are supposed to be appealing to long ago ditched. A minority are batshit crazy.
The gap in British politics is that nobody is talking about the future. Even PM Worzel only talks the future based on its relation to the brexit he promised - enough at least to have people prepared to wait for the benefits of the Brexit to arrive.
What is Labour's vision for this decade? Unless they get one, they are fucked. Note the pockets of popularity they have - the King in the North is busy building the Manchester of the future (as the city council have since the IRA helpfully kicked the regeneration off). Similar in Liverpool - pride in the city/region, faith in the future, lets go. Its the same card Ben Houchen and his airport are playing.
The basic problem is that so much of Labour whines about the past and about the unfairness of the present. Which is not going to appeal vs a "the future is now" Tory party even if what they are selling is an illusion. Blair got it - sell hope. Where is Labour's hope?
So I don’t see how she would be better.
Equally, they only used Pfizer while a very large part of our vulnerable population had AZ.
Campaigner Greta Thunberg says she doesn't regard Scotland as a world leader on climate change......
On the Scottish Greens' deal to enter government, she said some politicians were "less worse" than others.
But she said tackling climate change was not as easy as voting for a green party....
The Scottish government has previously described its climate change legislation as "world leading."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-58387017
When you look at the New Labour project, it really was a quite extraordinary political achievement. Very hard to replicate (as Cameron found out). Starmer, who has to work more or less on his own and has a hostile left who still think (as we’ve seen from the likes of TheJezziah) that it was only Brexit and some press stories about anti-Semitism that cost them in 2019, has no chance of replicating it.
If PMQs herald a new dawn then all is not lost. To conference! But even with new, improved Keir, what is to be Labour's retail offer. Like Drakeford and Sturgeon and Macron and Merkel, Labour would have had vaccines and lockdowns but better than Boris's. Support for the economy too. But no-one will be converted to Labour on this sort of managerialist nit-picking. What is Labour for?
Structurally Brexit has perhaps made it difficult for Remain parties to win seats. Corbyn did no worse than Brown or Miliband in terms of voteshare, but far worse in seats - maybe that is a guide for the next election too.
They've already completely remodelled the wide high street. Landscaping, a fountain, bus gate, redundant buildings removed. Now they've bought the hideous 1970s shopping centre and will bulldoze it and replace it with a park. This will open the high street up to the river (with a riverside dual carriageway put into a tunnel) - shops congregate into the other 90s shopping development now also owned by the council.
It should win them plaudits. But as they are Labour, and that brand is pretty toxic on Teesside, I suspect they may be swept away by a Tory group who have opposed every penny spent.
Labour’s vote is becoming horribly inefficient. Ok, that’s partly because they lost Scotland and have fallen back in Wales. But they are still winning plenty of votes - just in their safe seats where they are no use.
Here’s a couple of shocking stats. The 17 safest seats in the country and 19 of the top 20 are all held by Labour. They hold 58 seats with over 60% of the vote (by contrast the Tories have 36 despite having far more seats).
Corbyn really did preach not so much to the choir as to the clergy. Starmer needs to find a way to reach out, even at the cost of losing a biggish chunk of his existing vote. An intelligent campaign where Labour stood still in terms of voteshare could still see them pick up many seats if those votes were in the right places.
The voters have made up their minds: "Next...."
Covid has utterly derailed everything. Both Starmer and Johnson have a great opportunity to unveil a positive vision for the future of the country post-Covid and post-Brexit. The next few months are key (assuming the Covid crisis is declining, that is).
I don't think either will do it. Johnson because he will bluster; he will unveil big-project ideas that are inconsequential to the problems facing the country. Starmer because I don't think he has the imagination.
For me, a key thing is literacy and numeracy. Far too many people are functionally illiterate and/or innumerate, and this is an individual and national tragedy. I'd give a lot of time for any leader who makes this a key point in their plans. This sort of thing, rather than bridges, is key to future prosperity.
We have now had 3 weeks of exponential growth in Covid cases since the restrictions came off and the schools went back. Lanarkshire and Glasgow Health Board now have the highest number of cases in Europe. The hospitals are coming under increasing strain. I am not sure how much longer we can continue up here on the basis that everything is going to be fine.
There is a real risk that England is going to be 3 weeks behind Scotland in this respect because of the different dates for the schools. If they start to take the same path, and there is little evidence of it so far, then there will come a point when restrictions have to come back to protect the NHS. My guess is that that would severely knock government approval ratings.
"It is easier to be critical than correct."
Sadly Starmer is frit. "Labour doesn't need a civil war" I have been told. Its got one - here and now. And the hard left are planning to go all out at conference. They'll not stop until they are purged, and normals won't vote Labour until they are gone.
1) Labour is electorally destroyed and replace*
2) Labour wins an election and properly ruins the country [yes, Boris Johnson is alarmingly incompetent and doesn't deserve to be PM but he's neither a fascist nor a communist]
Edited extra bit: *+d
And could labour make a worse choice? Yes and they did; Corbyn.
They don't care. They have "educated" a generation not to care about their own education - teachers are woke lefties, exams are too easy, schools are crap - and now people won't vote for the huge investment in ideas, facilities and capabilities to lift us out of this pit.
All we ever hear about any project is "how much will it cost", not "what will it generate". Which for a supposedly capitalist economy is stupid.
The idea of having an independent Covid approach for each constituent country of the UK always looked a bad move. It only made any political sense if your outcome was better than that of England. It doesn't look that way in Scotland.
And, even in the summer when we are mainly outside, this bloody virus is just not going away.
Easy.
He says the good thing about Brexit is that it is leading to wage rises for the low paid.
It will enrage much of the urban middle class but gets working class support elsewhere.
She had been leading in the opinion polls taken just before the Falklands War, with Labour third behind the Alliance.
Labour were still hopelessly split and fighting all their policy battles very publicly.
There was very little hope of Labour winning in 1983 - Falklands or no Falklands.
The SDP split probably did make a difference, but it wasn’t enough of a difference to cost Labour a win. It might well have been the difference between another majority of 40-50 and a majority of 144 though.
Whether political or religious, drink too deep of an ideology and people get drunk on it.
It's simply not talked about - especially by those of you on the left. And it needs to be talked about - however intractable it may be to solve.
https://i.imgur.com/HeF09B3.png - shows local R
The problem was that they didn’t work.
The "Falklands won in for Fatcher" meme is persistent, but wrong.
But if that were the case Labour would have run the Tories close in 1987 and won in 1992. Labour’s problems were deep seated and needed radical surgery that with the passage of time looks less and less attractive.
The non-duffel coat attack was typical of the attacks he left himself open to. It didn't matter that it wasn't a duffel coat, the similarity allowed the attacks because of the perception of Foot that he allowed by not looking like a prime minister in waiting which was exploited ruthlessly by his opponents.
I remember as a child watching in the mid 80s as a speaker at the Labour Party conference was applauded for her suggestion that not only should the UK leave NATO and the EEC, but the UK should apply to join COMECON... I was very young but I recall asking my father why anyone would want that....
EDIT.. "Drunk"? Murderous fascists, yes. But were they drunks as well?
Remember, Blair was quite happy to have Corbyn, McDonnell and many others on the backbenches, as long as they didn't have any real power. Same for Starmer.
"as the season turns and the shadows lengthen, I have precious little faith in the quality of the UK’s post-lockdown leadership."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/30/beware-boris-britain-hurtling-towards-winter-discontent/
I guess everyone will read the figures in their own way, but to me, there's nothing really screaming that schools are solely to blame for where we're at right now.
If anything I'd be more likely to blame colleges / universities, but they're still shut for the summer...
https://twitter.com/TravellingTabby/status/1432420675495632898?s=20
I'm not sure swing voters today have that same view of Starmer.