There’s no need for a LAB-LD pact or progressive alliance – politicalbetting.com

For all the talk of some sort of arrangement between LAB and the LDs the electoral reality is that both parties will broadly be targeting very different sorts of seats at the next election with very little overlap.
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As someone pointed out the other day there are many more people who think they are part of the farming community, than there are farmers, and many more in the hunting community than there are who ever went hunting. Some are going to sit on their hands next GE, some will vote LD, none Labour. Bloodbath for the tories.
But for another example look at Buckinghamshire. The Lib Dems attack the richer seats while High Wycombe and Aylesbury (being poorer and more urban) tend towards Labour.
The Tory party have a serious problem going forward as both opposition parties now know who to target, why and how...
I'm not sure any party gets into government by being 'not another'.
I had another thought recently (they come occaisionally) Should Labour get very close to a majority, but need SNP support I'm pretty sure that the Tories would choose to bail them out rather than see the break-up of the Union.
@DPJHodges
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2h
When many people say "we have to follow this science" they don't mean it. What they actually mean is "we have to follow the science that points us towards further restrictions, because that's the science that makes us feel safer". Which is fine. But at least be honest.
So all that is needed is a clear understanding of where the realistic target seats are. Labour are carrying baggage both from Jezbollah and before where some activists think that they and only they are the path to righteousness. And the LibDems engaged in ludicrous and terribly organised flights of fancy during Swinson's lunacy.
So I think that the two parties under the current leadership could reach the kind of arrangements we saw in Bexley and Shropshire. But the risk remains of arguments where beating the other becomes the higher priority.
However the more seats the LDs then took from the Tories in the South, the more Starmer would only need Davey for a majority in the Commons as Cameron relied on Clegg from 2010, if Labour had not won outright. The more too he could then ignore Sturgeon and Blackford's demands for an indyref2
One of my biggest ever winners, selling the Lib Dems when they hit something like 101 seats.
Lib Dems were targeting Witney, LOL.
The suburbs and commuter belt and ex industrial redwall is the battleground.
The only rural battleground is in Scottish Tory seats the SNP are targeting on the Borders or in the Northeast
One thing Boris Johnson did well at GE2019 was to unite the right, that unwinds....
If the public wants rid of the Tories they'll vote accordingly as they did in 1997, "alliance" or no alliance. If they don't, they won't.
Instead of trying to find funny ways to try and win, Labour and the Lib Dems need to decide what they stand for and convince the public they're a better receptacle for their votes than the Tories are.
Currently it seems Starmer and Davey are hoping that if they say and do nothing then Boris and the Conservatives will piss off the public so much that the public will vote for the Opposition instead. That's definitely possible, but its a very risky strategy.
It's highly unlikely that a lot of Tory rural seats will be lost in the next election but I can see the Lib Dems becoming a rural nimby party over the next few years and that will cause the Tories both a problem at the next election and at subsequent ones.
When you believe the public are saying I will always love you, its easy to get led astray but then where do broken hearts go?
Every change of government in this country in the last 70 years has been down to the government losing it.
1964 - Profumo affair and other related issues
1970 - Devaluation crisis
1974 - 3 day week
1979 - Winter of Discontent
1997 - Black Friday, party splits, and sleaze
2010 - Great Financial Crisis
Any shift in this, even from heavily to even mostly blue, could flip a number of seats.
I guess the same must be true elsewhere, but, in general, the majorities are bigger there, yes.
"One for @Sunil_Prasannan so he doesn’t miss a piece of track https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/london-overground-trains-to-call-at-battersea-park-station-on-new-years-eve-48837/ "
Thanks @eek , but I already have done this, both in its original guise as part of the South London Line way back in the mid-90s, and also in its current guise as "rare track" in 2018.
Boris will most likely lose now entirely because he's made foolish and unimportant mistakes. The government is ok, and there's the odd real achievement.
There's always events happening, so you can always assign some event that caused the government to lose the election. You could rewrite history by imagining a government defeat at any of the elections they weren't defeated at and then assign a reason why they were:
2017/19 - Brexit divisions
2015 - Austerity
2005 - Iraq
2001 - Fuel crisis/Dotcom crash
1992 - Recession
1983 - Unemployment
[I'm struggling for 87 but I was only 4 years old then, I'm sure someone could think of something]
Con 40
Lab 33
LD 27
then Lab is going to say "we're reasonably close 2nd, give us a clear run", and the LDs are going to say "only we can win over Tory voters, give us a clear run". It would be helpful if a little quiet discussion went on over these seats.
You also have seats like
Con 60
LD 20
Lab 15
Oth 5
where tactical voting is just pointless - the Conservatives win anyway so people may as well vote for who they like best.
What is especially important, though, is that we see no more stuff like Uxbridge. The 2017 position was Con (Johnson) 51, Lab 40, LD 4, but the LDs still put out "winning here" leaflets and got up to.. 6.3. Conversely we shouldn't see Labour doing it as happened in North Shropshire, where we could all see it was nonsense. Both examples were I think driiven by enthusiastic candidates and local parties, but that's why a steer is needed from HQ.
And no-one is willing to fix our benefits system and spend the time educating people as to what Freedom of Movement meant outside of the insanity we managed to create in Britain.
According to my calculations (which are SOMETIMES correct!), the "Progressive Alliance" easily, er, "won" GE 2019!
"What is you on about, Sunil?" I hear you cry!
Well, the Progressive Parties won 52.20% of the popular vote, the Right-wing Reactionaries won only 46.83%, and others and independents won 0.97%.
"Show your workings".
OK:
Labour 32.08
LDs 11.55
SNP 3.88
Greens (all UK sections) 2.70
SF 0.57
PC 0.48
APNI 0.42
SDLP 0.37
Yorks 0.09 (yes, they are down as centre-left)
TIGs 0.03
PBP 0.02
Northeast 0.01(yes, they are down as centre-left)
Mebyon Kernow 0.01
TOTAL 52.20%
Conservative 43.63
Brexit 2.01
DUP 0.76
UUP 0.29
UKIP 0.07
Aontu 0.03 (Republicans, but socially conservative)
CPA 0.02
EDP 0.01
Libertarian 0.01
TOTAL 46.83%
OTHERS 0.97%
We want the science which supports our feelings?
Hence Sweden and Great Barrington Declaration.
Also they have a higher vax rate and a much more stringent vaxport regime (we don't really have one), yet still their numbers soar over ours
I hope Boris shows some vertebrae and continues with the relaxed British - or English - approach. We just have to weather the storm and let omicron become endemic. Though we should be making the unvaxxed suffer, financially
I am not going to be surprised if the official case number for a single day hits 200k.
"PARIS, Dec 29 (Reuters) - France is seeing a "tsunami" of COVID-19 infections, with 208,000 cases reported over the past 24 hours, a new national and European record, Health Minister Olivier Veran told lawmakers on Wednesday."
208.000
https://twitter.com/Crof/status/1476220023685271555?s=20
I had a very terse couple of messages from a good friend of mine who is very active in Labour who was seriously upset with the "claim" of the seat being a LD target. I pointed out never won even in 97 or 01 landslides, recent LD local election successes and the demographic of the seat and he calmed down - and then was "ok you were right" afterwards.
Similar have to be done and that includes repelling silly LD advances into seats like Kensington and Chelsea during Swinson's "leadership". We don't remove the Tories and the damage they are doing without people being given clear choices.
...he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
Not sure what the basis for that was, but the shorter stays on hospital for Omi would help a bit.
Very quiet in the world of work so I've been allowed out early. East Ham High Street busy today and queues outside banks and post offices. Certainly in my locality no shortage of people wanting or needing the full High Street retail experience though one of our local kebab shops has been closed - the landlord went in on Christmas Day.
Clearly, no rest for some.
On topic, this has been done to death over the years - there'll be no pacts or alliances between Labour and Liberal Democrat - there may be some between Liberal Democrat and Green.
In terms of the tactical voting conundrum, the LDs start from a position of having many fewer "possible" gains - if we're being honest 20-25 maximum. Squeezing down the Labour vote in seats like Cheltenham, St Ives, Cheadle and a few others will help.
In the vast majority of seats, Labour start in second (as they were in North Shropshire) and I suspect the LD organisation in many of those areas is moribund so the question is whether there are enough LD or Green supporters willing to vote Labour tactically to make a difference.
In 1997, the Labour vote was so powerful it stopped the LDs making further gains as the Conservative vote collapsed - it's not inconceivable that could happen again but a more modest objective for the two parties would be 100 Conservative losses - 75 to Labour and 25 to the LDs/Greens.
The virus is endemic globally now. There's probably going to be billions of cases globally in years to come and a variant can spread around the globe.
So in the context of billions of cases globally, what does a few tens or hundreds of thousands of cases daily matter domestically? Its like pissing into the ocean and thinking that will affect the sea level.
It would be interesting to see any data on how omicron infections progress in the immune compromised.
The more you post, the more it shows that you know little.
The points system we now have is better
and
If what you say is true, why locally are the Poles far more aware of what they can and can't claim compared to a lot of locals.
(Hmm. OK - I see it is one of those added-together days when everyone has been at home, like some of the EU country stats after a weekend)
Being in a position to tickle Keating with 250k in a day would be fun, mind. Today he's been rebuking other people for 'misleading charts', of exactly the sort he's been circulating all year.
If you still think we can eradicate this virus globally with a zero Covid strategy, then you're utterly delusional.