Sunak to require jobseekers to look outside their chosen field after just 1 month rather than the current three. Starmer Labour will oppose.
A clear further sign a Sunak premiership would now be a move more back to austerity and to Boris' economic right. That may not go down well in the redwall seats that voted for Brown and Ed Miliband before voting for Boris in 2019. Sunak would hope it would have more appeal in the seats Cameron won in 2015 that are now Labour or LD. Only problem for him for Sunak almost all of them voted Remain like Cameron and he voted for Brexit like Boris
One of those rare points of agreement between of us, HYUFD. The punitive approach to welfare is played out - discredited academically, and, much more importantly for the government, deeply unpopular in the Red Wall seats at a time of massive strain. Sunak the posh Southerner puts the boot in.
You mean Rishi Sunak, mp for Richmond, Yorkshire
Rishi the owner of a £2 million Yorkshire mansion he occasionally visits at weekends when not at his £7 million Kensington townhouse, No 11 or his California apartment. Yes that Rishi.
You really do not like him do you as he is a real threat to your adoration of Boris
Mind you Rishi PM in the next few weeks and you will be singng his praises, having binned Boris
I would support him as I would support any Tory leader.
However as stated I have severe reservations about replacing the leader who won us our biggest majority since Thatcher with a leader who is basically Osborne plus Brexit. All other alternative leaders do worse than Boris and Sunak in the polls and Boris is still less than 10% behind Starmer Labour even now.
To win another majority the Tories either need to hold the redwall Boris won or win back Remainers who voted for Cameron but have voted Labour or LD since. Not sure Sunak does either
Any Tory leader?
Even Truss?
Now Truss has said she backs the monarchy even her.
Though I think Starmer might even win a clear majority against Truss which he would not against Boris or Sunak
On topic - Johnson is shameless and ruthlessly self-interested. He'll leave only if there's a VONC *and* he loses it. For this to be a likely outcome the Gray Report needs to be unequivocal that he lied to Parliament when claiming he had no prior knowledge of rule breaking events. I'd be surprised if it is. So it's odds against IMO that he'll be going anytime soon. Bets I recommend are (i) Him still to be PM on 1st July at 2.1 and (ii) Starmer Next PM at 11.
Let's be blunt, if it was Starmer facing exactly the same position, you - and probably around 80%+ of those criticising BJ for what he did - would be coming up with reasons as to why everyone was over-reacting to what Starmer did and it was all a Tory plot. You are not concerned about the actions, your main concern is which political party he represents.
As to the bets, I would take the first one and probably put a small nibble on the second but without much confidence.
Why do you assume everyone is like you? It's most odd.
Sunak to require jobseekers to look outside their chosen field after just 1 month rather than the current three. Starmer Labour will oppose.
A clear further sign a Sunak premiership would now be a move more back to austerity and to Boris' economic right. Boris by contrast has described himself as a Brexity Heseltine.
That may not go down well in the redwall seats that voted for Brown and Ed Miliband before voting for Boris in 2019. Sunak would hope it would have more appeal in the seats Cameron won in 2015 that are now Labour or LD. Only problem for Sunak almost all of them voted Remain like Cameron and he voted for Brexit like Boris
It's not just harsh, it's almost certainly counterproductive as it will push people into accepting lower skilled jobs at worse pay, and so it could well end up costing the Treasury more than it saves.
Surely a month is ample for executing a career switch if you have the drive. Look at the Chancellor himself. For many years a Hedge Fund Manager but when that ended did he sit around and vegetate? No he did not. He got on his bike and looked for work and kept looking until he found some as an MP in a safe Tory seat. People should stop whinging and take a leaf.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh Quite significant that Labour refusing to back new govt welfare crackdown to force ppl on Uni Credit to take any job (as opposed to job they're used to) after a month rather than 3 months. Tactic is to paint Lab as 'soft' on welfare, but they're not buying it.
Good for Starmer. Helps to keep the left on board after yesterday, and doesn't really help Sunak in what looks like his probable political error, either.
The people on UC unemployment this will piss off are the skilled and professional who know what their skills are and what is the right job for them and just need a few months to find it rather than having to go for interviews for amazon warehousing.
How many of them there are I have no idea, but I would have thought they were more likely to be Lab-Tory switchers than many others.
Contrast how we deal with unemployment is this precarious world of modern work and gig economy with say the Dutch. Starmer needs to think bold and big.
Sunak to require jobseekers to look outside their chosen field after just 1 month rather than the current three. Starmer Labour will oppose.
A clear further sign a Sunak premiership would now be a move more back to austerity and to Boris' economic right. Boris by contrast has described himself as a Brexity Heseltine.
That may not go down well in the redwall seats that voted for Brown and Ed Miliband before voting for Boris in 2019. Sunak would hope it would have more appeal in the seats Cameron won in 2015 that are now Labour or LD. Only problem for Sunak almost all of them voted Remain like Cameron and he voted for Brexit like Boris
Incredibly, I find myself for once in agreement with you.
I suspect your real fear is Rishi takes over and the whole narrative changes with the conservatives having a real chance in 24
I don't know. If that 'is' my real fear then it lies somewhere deep in my subconscious.
You may be right but I'm really, really, not sure about Rishi Sunak. I don't think a multimillionaire former hedge fund manager (banker) is going to play out well especially given the fiscal troubles we're sailing into.
Boris remains my biggest fear electorally. I think he's a liability for the tories but he is, regrettably, the only tory with the X factor and that's dangerous for Labour.
Boris isn't a fear any longer. Even if Partygate died down there are a lot of reasons why the Tories will do badly with him in charge next time round.
Remember what Boris promised you in 2019 - where is it? Will do wonders for Labour in 2023/4.
I agree but I'm unnerved by the fact that someone like my good friend 'still' believes in him.
It's performances like yesterday at PMQ's which scare me as a leftie. I know it's all flannel but if he's like that in an election campaign I can see the tabloids getting roused right behind him again ...
The Tories have twigged, much like the Republicans in the States, that they can build a coalition between clever, selfish people who only care about lower taxes and sod everyone else and the state of their country's infrastructure, services, etc, etc, etc and stupid selfish people who believe the hogwash the first group pumps out and can be cajoled into voting against the best interests of themselves and their families.
This coalition is just, just enough, a lot of the time, to scrape into power. Or get Brexit.
Oh give over. "My political opponents are all either evil or stupid". The only people who truly believe that are those living in a bubble.
Just my opinion, based on my observations. Obviously built on my prejudices and worldview. I don't expect many on here will agree.
Big difference between evil and selfish.
You're right, entirely built on prejudices.
People have good reasons for voting as they do. You'd do well to remember almost all of your opponents are neither evil nor selfish, they simply have different views to you.
I agree most people aren’t evil. I do, however, think selfishness is a defining characteristic of humanity. It is prevalent in all of us, to a greater or lesser extent. It has driven human progress. It has brought war, conquest, genocide. It is wrecking the environment. Humanity is intrinsically selfish.
It saddens me that some of our species can, now we are fortunately civilised enough in most cases to not need to kill each other for food and shelter, still can be motivated by selfishness and greed.
It saddens me that once great political parties here and in the US, that were once moral and intellectual titans, have to pander to the lowest common denominator, to the worst of us, to scrape into power because so many of their economic policies clearly, after decades of being implemented, don”t work for the majority of people.
Apologies if this has been pointed out. But in my sector, education, the timescale from application to closing date, to shortlist, interview, second interview, references, enhanced DBS to start date is longer than four weeks. Far longer last time I tried. I assume for some others it may be too. Edit. I notice it has.
Out of the curveballs to the right - Cummings revealing more and more of the Gray report (than published) being leaked are surely definites.
I half suspect the Gray report will miss something that Cummings then reveals...
It depends - I guess that one reason Dom wanted to do things by email is that it would be easier (although still not easy?) for him to hold something back. The inquiry will surely have asked him to hand over everything he has that might be relevant?
On topic - Johnson is shameless and ruthlessly self-interested. He'll leave only if there's a VONC *and* he loses it. For this to be a likely outcome the Gray Report needs to be unequivocal that he lied to Parliament when claiming he had no prior knowledge of rule breaking events. I'd be surprised if it is. So it's odds against IMO that he'll be going anytime soon. Bets I recommend are (i) Him still to be PM on 1st July at 2.1 and (ii) Starmer Next PM at 11.
Let's be blunt, if it was Starmer facing exactly the same position, you - and probably around 80%+ of those criticising BJ for what he did - would be coming up with reasons as to why everyone was over-reacting to what Starmer did and it was all a Tory plot. You are not concerned about the actions, your main concern is which political party he represents.
As to the bets, I would take the first one and probably put a small nibble on the second but without much confidence.
Do you have any real evidence for that opinion ? I'd certainly want him to be booted out in those circumstances.
You only have to look at the reaction to other events to see it's not the action that counts but who is doing it. From a 1-1 level, some of his sharpest critics I know personally I also know happily broke lockdown laws but justified it as being no big deal.
I'm glad you want Starmer out in similar circumstances. Personal view is that BJ obviously didn't follow his own rules, almost certainly lied and took the piss. However, he has not been taking brown envelopes full of cash (as far as we know) I'm much more concerned that whoever is running the country gets the big calls right and I think BJ has done that. I'd have the same view if it was Starmer.
Wallpaper gate? Holidays paid for by people he makes a Lord? £100k for playing tennis with Putin linked donors?
Is it me getting fooled by the media drift away or does Sue Gray's report feel further away than it was this time yesterday?
This time yesterday people believed the Gray report might be published in a few hours. Now they are talking about next week, so yes, it does seem further away.
Sunak to require jobseekers to look outside their chosen field after just 1 month rather than the current three. Starmer Labour will oppose.
A clear further sign a Sunak premiership would now be a move more back to austerity and to Boris' economic right. Boris by contrast has described himself as a Brexity Heseltine.
That may not go down well in the redwall seats that voted for Brown and Ed Miliband before voting for Boris in 2019. Sunak would hope it would have more appeal in the seats Cameron won in 2015 that are now Labour or LD. Only problem for Sunak almost all of them voted Remain like Cameron and he voted for Brexit like Boris
It's not just harsh, it's almost certainly counterproductive as it will push people into accepting lower skilled jobs at worse pay, and so it could well end up costing the Treasury more than it saves.
In my experience it would simply be pointless, as when I've applied for jobs outside my expertise, and at lower pay, I've been told that I've been wasting my time as people don't want to employ someone who will be out the door as soon as they have a better job. It's a waste of their time too.
So this will just be used as a way to punish people who don't play along and make the pointless job applications, just so that HMG can say they're being tough on people on the dole.
He'll leave only if there's a VONC *and* he loses it.
It's not a given that he'd gracefully depart in that situation.
Grace isn't necessary. Trump didn't depart gracefully, but he did depart.
America had a proper constitution though. If he was a British PM he'd have told Her Majesty that he should stay on pending resolution of the controversy over which was the legitimate parliament, and The Queen would have followed his recommendations to stay out of politics.
Nonsense. That's not possible in our constitution which is better frankly than America's as a lot of the flaws Trump sought to exploit don't exist in our constitution.
For one thing, there is only ever one elected Parliament, or none at all. The American system of dead duck Congresses and months between elections and inauguration doesn't apply in this country.
The prior Parliament is disbanded prior to the election and the newly elected Members of Parliament are confirmed by the returning officers not weeks or months after the election but on the very night of the election, or the next day.
We have a proper constitution, its just not written in a single document that is ossified based on assumption centuries ago and insanely difficult to amend.
Is it me getting fooled by the media drift away or does Sue Gray's report feel further away than it was this time yesterday?
This time yesterday people believed the Gray report might be published in a few hours. Now they are talking about next week, so yes, it does seem further away.
On topic - Johnson is shameless and ruthlessly self-interested. He'll leave only if there's a VONC *and* he loses it. For this to be a likely outcome the Gray Report needs to be unequivocal that he lied to Parliament when claiming he had no prior knowledge of rule breaking events. I'd be surprised if it is. So it's odds against IMO that he'll be going anytime soon. Bets I recommend are (i) Him still to be PM on 1st July at 2.1 and (ii) Starmer Next PM at 11.
Let's be blunt, if it was Starmer facing exactly the same position, you - and probably around 80%+ of those criticising BJ for what he did - would be coming up with reasons as to why everyone was over-reacting to what Starmer did and it was all a Tory plot. You are not concerned about the actions, your main concern is which political party he represents.
As to the bets, I would take the first one and probably put a small nibble on the second but without much confidence.
Do you have any real evidence for that opinion ? I'd certainly want him to be booted out in those circumstances.
You only have to look at the reaction to other events to see it's not the action that counts but who is doing it. From a 1-1 level, some of his sharpest critics I know personally I also know happily broke lockdown laws but justified it as being no big deal.
I'm glad you want Starmer out in similar circumstances. Personal view is that BJ obviously didn't follow his own rules, almost certainly lied and took the piss. However, he has not been taking brown envelopes full of cash (as far as we know) I'm much more concerned that whoever is running the country gets the big calls right and I think BJ has done that. I'd have the same view if it was Starmer.
What I simply cannot accept is a leader who blatantly lies, repeatedly, knowing that his audience knows it, and expects everyone to just suck it up. If you can't understand that's extraordinarily corrosive for public life, then we have little to discuss.
If Johnson had fessed up at the outset, it would have been damaging, but probably survivable.
Sunak to require jobseekers to look outside their chosen field after just 1 month rather than the current three. Starmer Labour will oppose.
A clear further sign a Sunak premiership would now be a move more back to austerity and to Boris' economic right. That may not go down well in the redwall seats that voted for Brown and Ed Miliband before voting for Boris in 2019. Sunak would hope it would have more appeal in the seats Cameron won in 2015 that are now Labour or LD. Only problem for him for Sunak almost all of them voted Remain like Cameron and he voted for Brexit like Boris
One of those rare points of agreement between of us, HYUFD. The punitive approach to welfare is played out - discredited academically, and, much more importantly for the government, deeply unpopular in the Red Wall seats at a time of massive strain. Sunak the posh Southerner puts the boot in.
You mean Rishi Sunak, mp for Richmond, Yorkshire
Rishi the owner of a £2 million Yorkshire mansion he occasionally visits at weekends when not at his £7 million Kensington townhouse, No 11 or his California apartment. Yes that Rishi.
You really do not like him do you as he is a real threat to your adoration of Boris
Mind you Rishi PM in the next few weeks and you will be singng his praises, having binned Boris
I would support him as I would support any Tory leader.
As a matter of interest, because before my time, but did you give support on here to Theresa May?
Yes. If Sunak is Osborne plus Brexit the best he could hope for is likely May 2017 not Major 1992, the redwall won't vote for him and austerity and Remainers will still not vote for him as a Brexiteer either.
However even the DUP would not back the Tories now unless Sunak invoked Article 16
I wish people would stop using 'redwall' as shorthand for 'constituencies gained by the Conservatives in 2019 somewhere north of the watford gap'.
Each constituency is different and there are many differences between some which are termed as 'redwall'.
I have immense respect for Breyer as a man & a jurist, but I worry this decision reeks of partisanship. If the Court becomes just another instrument of partisan politics, then we’re truly lost. What about waiting until a 2nd Trump term to prove this isn’t about Team R & Team D? https://twitter.com/IChotiner/status/1486395614455754752
On topic - Johnson is shameless and ruthlessly self-interested. He'll leave only if there's a VONC *and* he loses it. For this to be a likely outcome the Gray Report needs to be unequivocal that he lied to Parliament when claiming he had no prior knowledge of rule breaking events. I'd be surprised if it is. So it's odds against IMO that he'll be going anytime soon. Bets I recommend are (i) Him still to be PM on 1st July at 2.1 and (ii) Starmer Next PM at 11.
Let's be blunt, if it was Starmer facing exactly the same position, you - and probably around 80%+ of those criticising BJ for what he did - would be coming up with reasons as to why everyone was over-reacting to what Starmer did and it was all a Tory plot. You are not concerned about the actions, your main concern is which political party he represents.
As to the bets, I would take the first one and probably put a small nibble on the second but without much confidence.
Why do you assume everyone is like you? It's most odd.
I'm very happy to criticise "my side" if I think their actions are wrong. Anyone who pays attention to my posts - and I know you do - would realise this. Which just shows you're actually quite malicious behind the mask of reasonableness you put on.
He'll leave only if there's a VONC *and* he loses it.
It's not a given that he'd gracefully depart in that situation.
Grace isn't necessary. Trump didn't depart gracefully, but he did depart.
America had a proper constitution though. If he was a British PM he'd have told Her Majesty that he should stay on pending resolution of the controversy over which was the legitimate parliament, and The Queen would have followed his recommendations to stay out of politics.
No, that doesn't make any sense. There's only one parliament at a time (none at all, during a general election).
I think HYFUD is onto something wrt to Rishi vs Boris in terms of their potential winning ability. I think Rishi probably does top out at 330-340 MPs in terms of 2024, yet Boris as we just saw in 2019 got 365 MPs.
What he's missing is that Boris on 2024 isn't going to get 365 MPs again, in fact he's set to hand the Tories their worst defeat since 2001. So maybe Rishi has got lower potential overall winning capability, he still gives the Tories a pretty solid chance at getting a majority in 2024.
To some extent.
The problem for Sunak is as a Leaver his limit is probably now the 318 MPs May got in 2017 not even the 330 MPs Cameron got in 2015 let alone the 365 MPs Boris got in 2019.
The redwall seats which voted for Boris but are normally Labour are unlikely to vote for Sunak.
However nor are the Remain seats Cameron won in 2015 which now have Labour or LD MPs unless Sunak went for EEA or a Customs Union which would split the party and leak votes to RefUK.
Even on current polls anyway Boris would still win more MPs than Howard 2005 let alone Hague 2001
Sunak to require jobseekers to look outside their chosen field after just 1 month rather than the current three. Starmer Labour will oppose.
A clear further sign a Sunak premiership would now be a move more back to austerity and to Boris' economic right. Boris by contrast has described himself as a Brexity Heseltine.
That may not go down well in the redwall seats that voted for Brown and Ed Miliband before voting for Boris in 2019. Sunak would hope it would have more appeal in the seats Cameron won in 2015 that are now Labour or LD. Only problem for Sunak almost all of them voted Remain like Cameron and he voted for Brexit like Boris
It's not just harsh, it's almost certainly counterproductive as it will push people into accepting lower skilled jobs at worse pay, and so it could well end up costing the Treasury more than it saves.
In my experience it would simply be pointless, as when I've applied for jobs outside my expertise, and at lower pay, I've been told that I've been wasting my time as people don't want to employ someone who will be out the door as soon as they have a better job. It's a waste of their time too.
So this will just be used as a way to punish people who don't play along and make the pointless job applications, just so that HMG can say they're being tough on people on the dole.
Yes, and that was also my experience when long term unemployed in the 1980s. Employers either knew you'd be out of the door pronto, or feared you might be a trot out to disrupt the workplace.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh Quite significant that Labour refusing to back new govt welfare crackdown to force ppl on Uni Credit to take any job (as opposed to job they're used to) after a month rather than 3 months. Tactic is to paint Lab as 'soft' on welfare, but they're not buying it.
There's an easy story there though. People are looking for a skilled job they can do that pays £20k + rather than the £10k they get for any job.
My concern is that 1 month is just too short (it can take a firm a month to on board someone) but 3 months is too long. It needs to be 6 weeks to 2 months really.
To show how stupid 1 month is it's currently taking 3 weeks for the civil service to return a base line security check and the civil service won't allow you to start until that's in place.
And for a very simple example Eek twin A was offered her VOA apprenticeship on August 10th. See started on October 1st and every part of that delay was the Civil Service. The turn around time for the bits they needed was 45 seconds as I had it all to hand. And it was only on September 25th we got a confirmed start date.
And that is offer to start date, not application to start date. Given the turn around on skilled jobs, 3 months is not daft.
Does is really support the post-Brexit high skill economy we hear so much about to push qualified people directly into being Amazon drivers.
Is it me getting fooled by the media drift away or does Sue Gray's report feel further away than it was this time yesterday?
This time yesterday people believed the Gray report might be published in a few hours. Now they are talking about next week, so yes, it does seem further away.
On topic - Johnson is shameless and ruthlessly self-interested. He'll leave only if there's a VONC *and* he loses it. For this to be a likely outcome the Gray Report needs to be unequivocal that he lied to Parliament when claiming he had no prior knowledge of rule breaking events. I'd be surprised if it is. So it's odds against IMO that he'll be going anytime soon. Bets I recommend are (i) Him still to be PM on 1st July at 2.1 and (ii) Starmer Next PM at 11.
I've been topping up on Starmer, got a bit at 12. Hedged a bit with an early exit for Johnson.
I also quite liked Nick Palmer's suggested combo of backing pre-April exit and post-2022 exit, although I haven't put anything on that as it didn't really add to my position. If I didn't have any bets on I probably would have followed that strategy, though. There are risks (i) a complete meltdown in the locals might force the issue for Con MPs, but I'm not convinced on that (having failed to remove him on a matter of principle it looks pretty bad to remove him because your seat looks to be in danger - and anyway, there's still plenty of time before the next genreal election and arguably better to have a new face shortly before the election rather than too early) and (ii) Cummings (or whoever) has something truly devastating that will be revealed after March.
Sunak to require jobseekers to look outside their chosen field after just 1 month rather than the current three. Starmer Labour will oppose.
A clear further sign a Sunak premiership would now be a move more back to austerity and to Boris' economic right. That may not go down well in the redwall seats that voted for Brown and Ed Miliband before voting for Boris in 2019. Sunak would hope it would have more appeal in the seats Cameron won in 2015 that are now Labour or LD. Only problem for him for Sunak almost all of them voted Remain like Cameron and he voted for Brexit like Boris
One of those rare points of agreement between of us, HYUFD. The punitive approach to welfare is played out - discredited academically, and, much more importantly for the government, deeply unpopular in the Red Wall seats at a time of massive strain. Sunak the posh Southerner puts the boot in.
You mean Rishi Sunak, mp for Richmond, Yorkshire
Rishi the owner of a £2 million Yorkshire mansion he occasionally visits at weekends when not at his £7 million Kensington townhouse, No 11 or his California apartment. Yes that Rishi.
You really do not like him do you as he is a real threat to your adoration of Boris
Mind you Rishi PM in the next few weeks and you will be singng his praises, having binned Boris
I would support him as I would support any Tory leader.
As a matter of interest, because before my time, but did you give support on here to Theresa May?
Yes. If Sunak is Osborne plus Brexit the best he could hope for is likely May 2017 not Major 1992, the redwall won't vote for him and austerity and Remainers will still not vote for him as a Brexiteer either.
However even the DUP would not back the Tories now unless Sunak invoked Article 16
I wish people would stop using 'redwall' as shorthand for 'constituencies gained by the Conservatives in 2019 somewhere north of the watford gap'.
Each constituency is different and there are many differences between some which are termed as 'redwall'.
They may all be different but I suspect they all voted Tory on the basis that Brexit and levelling up would between them (rapidly) improve their lives. That to me is the definition of a red wall seats - traditional labour that voted for change as promised by Boris.
And I suspect that in most cases even by 2024 the Tory MP will be struggling to answer what have you actually done and given us?
Voted Tory in May 2021, encouraged by their MP to apply for a government levelling up grant but they didn't get it and the council wasted money on the application.
Out of the curveballs to the right - Cummings revealing more and more of the Gray report (than published) being leaked are surely definites.
I half suspect the Gray report will miss something that Cummings then reveals...
It depends - I guess that one reason Dom wanted to do things by email is that it would be easier (although still not easy?) for him to hold something back. The inquiry will surely have asked him to hand over everything he has that might be relevant?
It's easy to hold something back when the question is "tell us about XYZ?" rather than the "tell us everything that can be implied on verbal conversations).
Oh and I suspect any Cummings curveball won't be something that he failed to mention to Gray but it will be something that Gray doesn't cover in full gory detail...
On topic - Johnson is shameless and ruthlessly self-interested. He'll leave only if there's a VONC *and* he loses it. For this to be a likely outcome the Gray Report needs to be unequivocal that he lied to Parliament when claiming he had no prior knowledge of rule breaking events. I'd be surprised if it is. So it's odds against IMO that he'll be going anytime soon. Bets I recommend are (i) Him still to be PM on 1st July at 2.1 and (ii) Starmer Next PM at 11.
Let's be blunt, if it was Starmer facing exactly the same position, you - and probably around 80%+ of those criticising BJ for what he did - would be coming up with reasons as to why everyone was over-reacting to what Starmer did and it was all a Tory plot. You are not concerned about the actions, your main concern is which political party he represents.
As to the bets, I would take the first one and probably put a small nibble on the second but without much confidence.
Why do you assume everyone is like you? It's most odd.
I'm very happy to criticise "my side" if I think their actions are wrong. Anyone who pays attention to my posts - and I know you do - would realise this. Which just shows you're actually quite malicious behind the mask of reasonableness you put on.
Nope, sorry, you are an egregious example of moral sleaze trying to insinuate by sleight of hand that you are in the top moral 20%. Stop it.
Sunak to require jobseekers to look outside their chosen field after just 1 month rather than the current three. Starmer Labour will oppose.
A clear further sign a Sunak premiership would now be a move more back to austerity and to Boris' economic right. Boris by contrast has described himself as a Brexity Heseltine.
That may not go down well in the redwall seats that voted for Brown and Ed Miliband before voting for Boris in 2019. Sunak would hope it would have more appeal in the seats Cameron won in 2015 that are now Labour or LD. Only problem for Sunak almost all of them voted Remain like Cameron and he voted for Brexit like Boris
Incredibly, I find myself for once in agreement with you.
I suspect your real fear is Rishi takes over and the whole narrative changes with the conservatives having a real chance in 24
I don't know. If that 'is' my real fear then it lies somewhere deep in my subconscious.
You may be right but I'm really, really, not sure about Rishi Sunak. I don't think a multimillionaire former hedge fund manager (banker) is going to play out well especially given the fiscal troubles we're sailing into.
Boris remains my biggest fear electorally. I think he's a liability for the tories but he is, regrettably, the only tory with the X factor and that's dangerous for Labour.
Boris isn't a fear any longer. Even if Partygate died down there are a lot of reasons why the Tories will do badly with him in charge next time round.
Remember what Boris promised you in 2019 - where is it? Will do wonders for Labour in 2023/4.
I agree but I'm unnerved by the fact that someone like my good friend 'still' believes in him.
It's performances like yesterday at PMQ's which scare me as a leftie. I know it's all flannel but if he's like that in an election campaign I can see the tabloids getting roused right behind him again ...
The Tories have twigged, much like the Republicans in the States, that they can build a coalition between clever, selfish people who only care about lower taxes and sod everyone else and the state of their country's infrastructure, services, etc, etc, etc and stupid selfish people who believe the hogwash the first group pumps out and can be cajoled into voting against the best interests of themselves and their families.
This coalition is just, just enough, a lot of the time, to scrape into power. Or get Brexit.
Oh give over. "My political opponents are all either evil or stupid". The only people who truly believe that are those living in a bubble.
Just my opinion, based on my observations. Obviously built on my prejudices and worldview. I don't expect many on here will agree.
Big difference between evil and selfish.
You're right, entirely built on prejudices.
People have good reasons for voting as they do. You'd do well to remember almost all of your opponents are neither evil nor selfish, they simply have different views to you.
I agree most people aren’t evil. I do, however, think selfishness is a defining characteristic of humanity. It is prevalent in all of us, to a greater or lesser extent. It has driven human progress. It has brought war, conquest, genocide. It is wrecking the environment. Humanity is intrinsically selfish.
It saddens me that some of our species can, now we are fortunately civilised enough in most cases to not need to kill each other for food and shelter, still can be motivated by selfishness and greed.
It saddens me that once great political parties here and in the US, that were once moral and intellectual titans, have to pander to the lowest common denominator, to the worst of us, to scrape into power because so many of their economic policies clearly, after decades of being implemented, don”t work for the majority of people.
But they don't. The parties here don't do that and people on the centre-right have the views they do not because of selfishness but because they believe its the best thing to do.
I believe in low taxes not out of any selfish desire, but because I believe hard working people are better able to provide for themselves and their families, and to elevate their lives and livelihoods if taxes are low.
I believe in not running up major deficits, over the economic cycle, not because of any selfish desire but because I believe burdening our children and [in my case hypothetical future] grandchildren is the wrong thing to do.
I believe in a small state, not because of any selfish desire, but because I believe the state is inefficient and less able to determine what is best for people than people can choose for themselves.
Finally I think high taxes on earned incomes don't burden the wealthy who are living off unearned or inherited money. They burden those working for a living. I have long argued against and view as a disgrace the real 70% tax rate that those on UC have to pay while working and have long railed against that, not because it affects me, but because it traps people in poverty and squanders human potential and I view that as unethical and wrong.
You may not like my politics, but is any of that "selfish"?
On topic - Johnson is shameless and ruthlessly self-interested. He'll leave only if there's a VONC *and* he loses it. For this to be a likely outcome the Gray Report needs to be unequivocal that he lied to Parliament when claiming he had no prior knowledge of rule breaking events. I'd be surprised if it is. So it's odds against IMO that he'll be going anytime soon. Bets I recommend are (i) Him still to be PM on 1st July at 2.1 and (ii) Starmer Next PM at 11.
Let's be blunt, if it was Starmer facing exactly the same position, you - and probably around 80%+ of those criticising BJ for what he did - would be coming up with reasons as to why everyone was over-reacting to what Starmer did and it was all a Tory plot. You are not concerned about the actions, your main concern is which political party he represents.
As to the bets, I would take the first one and probably put a small nibble on the second but without much confidence.
Why do you assume everyone is like you? It's most odd.
I'm very happy to criticise "my side" if I think their actions are wrong. Anyone who pays attention to my posts - and I know you do - would realise this. Which just shows you're actually quite malicious behind the mask of reasonableness you put on.
Nope, sorry, you are an egregious example of moral sleaze trying to insinuate by sleight of hand that you are in the top moral 20%. Stop it.
Says the Peppa Pig. Like to give an example of both the moral sleaze bit and where I claim to be in the top moral 20% but or you going to talk out of your arse as usual?
He'll leave only if there's a VONC *and* he loses it.
It's not a given that he'd gracefully depart in that situation.
Grace isn't necessary. Trump didn't depart gracefully, but he did depart.
America had a proper constitution though. If he was a British PM he'd have told Her Majesty that he should stay on pending resolution of the controversy over which was the legitimate parliament, and The Queen would have followed his recommendations to stay out of politics.
Surely even with a written constitution the Queen would not just take the word of the PM. She would take the advice of her wider Privy Council given that the PM is personally implicated in the controversy
Sunak to require jobseekers to look outside their chosen field after just 1 month rather than the current three. Starmer Labour will oppose.
A clear further sign a Sunak premiership would now be a move more back to austerity and to Boris' economic right. That may not go down well in the redwall seats that voted for Brown and Ed Miliband before voting for Boris in 2019. Sunak would hope it would have more appeal in the seats Cameron won in 2015 that are now Labour or LD. Only problem for him for Sunak almost all of them voted Remain like Cameron and he voted for Brexit like Boris
One of those rare points of agreement between of us, HYUFD. The punitive approach to welfare is played out - discredited academically, and, much more importantly for the government, deeply unpopular in the Red Wall seats at a time of massive strain. Sunak the posh Southerner puts the boot in.
You mean Rishi Sunak, mp for Richmond, Yorkshire
Rishi the owner of a £2 million Yorkshire mansion he occasionally visits at weekends when not at his £7 million Kensington townhouse, No 11 or his California apartment. Yes that Rishi.
You really do not like him do you as he is a real threat to your adoration of Boris
Mind you Rishi PM in the next few weeks and you will be singng his praises, having binned Boris
I would support him as I would support any Tory leader.
As a matter of interest, because before my time, but did you give support on here to Theresa May?
Yes. If Sunak is Osborne plus Brexit the best he could hope for is likely May 2017 not Major 1992, the redwall won't vote for him and austerity and Remainers will still not vote for him as a Brexiteer either.
However even the DUP would not back the Tories now unless Sunak invoked Article 16
I wish people would stop using 'redwall' as shorthand for 'constituencies gained by the Conservatives in 2019 somewhere north of the watford gap'.
Each constituency is different and there are many differences between some which are termed as 'redwall'.
Just caught a Jordan Peterson interview. Incredibly precise little beard plus a bow tie. Oh dear oh dear.
What should what he is wearing matter? Seems strange to launch into an ad hominem attack in that way in lieu of any comment on his actual interview.
Also site rules require any such attack to be accompanied by a passport style photograph of the poster in their usual TV interview dress, for triangulation purposes
I think HYFUD is onto something wrt to Rishi vs Boris in terms of their potential winning ability. I think Rishi probably does top out at 330-340 MPs in terms of 2024, yet Boris as we just saw in 2019 got 365 MPs.
What he's missing is that Boris on 2024 isn't going to get 365 MPs again, in fact he's set to hand the Tories their worst defeat since 2001. So maybe Rishi has got lower potential overall winning capability, he still gives the Tories a pretty solid chance at getting a majority in 2024.
To some extent.
The problem for Sunak is as a Leaver his limit is probably now the 318 MPs May got in 2017 not even the 330 MPs Cameron got in 2015 let alone the 365 MPs Boris got in 2019.
The redwall seats which voted for Boris but are normally Labour are unlikely to vote for Sunak.
However nor are the Remain seats Cameron won in 2015 which now have Labour or LD MPs unless Sunak went for EEA or a Customs Union which would split the party and leak votes to RefUK.
Even on current polls anyway Boris would still win more MPs than Howard 2005 let alone Hague 2001
I think it is too early to say that BJ will certainly not get 365 seats again. We have seen in the past 6 months how the pendulum shifts when it comes to votes and perceptions. Labour also has structural issues in terms of its voter profile in many seats that are still Labour but where the trends have been clear.
I think HYFUD is onto something wrt to Rishi vs Boris in terms of their potential winning ability. I think Rishi probably does top out at 330-340 MPs in terms of 2024, yet Boris as we just saw in 2019 got 365 MPs.
What he's missing is that Boris on 2024 isn't going to get 365 MPs again, in fact he's set to hand the Tories their worst defeat since 2001. So maybe Rishi has got lower potential overall winning capability, he still gives the Tories a pretty solid chance at getting a majority in 2024.
To some extent.
The problem for Sunak is as a Leaver his limit is probably now the 318 MPs May got in 2017 not even the 330 MPs Cameron got in 2015 let alone the 365 MPs Boris got in 2019.
The redwall seats which voted for Boris but are normally Labour are unlikely to vote for Sunak.
However nor are the Remain seats Cameron won in 2015 which now have Labour or LD MPs unless Sunak went for EEA or a Customs Union which would split the party and leak votes to RefUK.
Even on current polls anyway Boris would still win more MPs than Howard 2005 let alone Hague 2001
I think it is too early to say that BJ will certainly not get 365 seats again. We have seen in the past 6 months how the pendulum shifts when it comes to votes and perceptions. Labour also has structural issues in terms of its voter profile in many seats that are still Labour but where the trends have been clear.
I think thats true
Chesterfield nailed on Tory Gain if SKS is still leader methinks
We bought our main car - a 4 year old small hatchback - second hand 18 months ago at inflated main dealer price with 0% finance. We've now paid off the loan. I just did a 'we buy any car' valuation, and found we could sell it for £1k more than we paid for it.
If I was looking to buy a car now, I wouldn't bother - I would lease one instead. Works out at about £220 per month and has a full warranty, EV's start at £270 per month.
Mrs DA just got an i4 M50 and it wasn't available for outright purchase at any price. BMW Leasing or fuck off were the options. It will drift like a bastard with DSC and TC off.
Is that really ugly, or is that just me?
Two massive buck teeth
Edit: GF agrees with me. She has a 2012 Corsa with dodgy brakes.
On topic - Johnson is shameless and ruthlessly self-interested. He'll leave only if there's a VONC *and* he loses it. For this to be a likely outcome the Gray Report needs to be unequivocal that he lied to Parliament when claiming he had no prior knowledge of rule breaking events. I'd be surprised if it is. So it's odds against IMO that he'll be going anytime soon. Bets I recommend are (i) Him still to be PM on 1st July at 2.1 and (ii) Starmer Next PM at 11.
Let's be blunt, if it was Starmer facing exactly the same position, you - and probably around 80%+ of those criticising BJ for what he did - would be coming up with reasons as to why everyone was over-reacting to what Starmer did and it was all a Tory plot. You are not concerned about the actions, your main concern is which political party he represents.
As to the bets, I would take the first one and probably put a small nibble on the second but without much confidence.
Do you have any real evidence for that opinion ? I'd certainly want him to be booted out in those circumstances.
You only have to look at the reaction to other events to see it's not the action that counts but who is doing it. From a 1-1 level, some of his sharpest critics I know personally I also know happily broke lockdown laws but justified it as being no big deal.
I'm glad you want Starmer out in similar circumstances. Personal view is that BJ obviously didn't follow his own rules, almost certainly lied and took the piss. However, he has not been taking brown envelopes full of cash (as far as we know) I'm much more concerned that whoever is running the country gets the big calls right and I think BJ has done that. I'd have the same view if it was Starmer.
What I simply cannot accept is a leader who blatantly lies, repeatedly, knowing that his audience knows it, and expects everyone to just suck it up. If you can't understand that's extraordinarily corrosive for public life, then we have little to discuss.
If Johnson had fessed up at the outset, it would have been damaging, but probably survivable.
Yet other examples of corrosiveness of public life get praised. We had some of the fiercest critics of BJ defending 'Jenny the nurse' for telling a grieving and desperate husband that he had to stay in the car park and not see his dying wife because of the Covid restrictions, and how right she was to think about the 'common good'. Quite frankly, I am far more disgusted by that human being than I am about BJ. But, hey, she works in the NHS so she must be an angel on earth.
There seems to be a repeating trend in politics among the most self-confident leaders which I think we are witnessing here. Call it the Assad doctrine: if an unpopular leader, even when seemingly facing humiliation and on their way out, simply brazens it out for long enough and keeps upping the stakes and challenging the narrative, eventually they come to seem immovable and their multiple sins are fully amortised and normalised. The bar for them staying in power gets lower and lower, and the bar for any challenger to cross to take over gets higher and higher.
Boris is doing it. Trump gave it a pretty good go after the last election. Logan Roy does it repeatedly in Succession. Gadaffi would have done it were it not for Western airstrikes. Others, with more self-awareness, humility and/or cowardice, crumble and leave the scene when they see the writing on the wall: Thatcher, Blair, Cameron, Mubarak, seemingly the Labour left this week.
Sunak to require jobseekers to look outside their chosen field after just 1 month rather than the current three. Starmer Labour will oppose.
A clear further sign a Sunak premiership would now be a move more back to austerity and to Boris' economic right. Boris by contrast has described himself as a Brexity Heseltine.
That may not go down well in the redwall seats that voted for Brown and Ed Miliband before voting for Boris in 2019. Sunak would hope it would have more appeal in the seats Cameron won in 2015 that are now Labour or LD. Only problem for Sunak almost all of them voted Remain like Cameron and he voted for Brexit like Boris
It's not just harsh, it's almost certainly counterproductive as it will push people into accepting lower skilled jobs at worse pay, and so it could well end up costing the Treasury more than it saves.
In my experience it would simply be pointless, as when I've applied for jobs outside my expertise, and at lower pay, I've been told that I've been wasting my time as people don't want to employ someone who will be out the door as soon as they have a better job. It's a waste of their time too.
So this will just be used as a way to punish people who don't play along and make the pointless job applications, just so that HMG can say they're being tough on people on the dole.
Very much my experience too. Although I confess the sheer shortage of workers right now may have altered that somewhat tedious attitude. When I left teaching, I quite fancied shop work. I'd done it before, both as a student, and as a volunteer. I saw it as an opportunity to decompress, and do something completely different which I knew I quite enjoyed, and knew I could do well. And had references to evidence it. Couldn't get an interview.
Sunak to require jobseekers to look outside their chosen field after just 1 month rather than the current three. Starmer Labour will oppose.
A clear further sign a Sunak premiership would now be a move more back to austerity and to Boris' economic right. That may not go down well in the redwall seats that voted for Brown and Ed Miliband before voting for Boris in 2019. Sunak would hope it would have more appeal in the seats Cameron won in 2015 that are now Labour or LD. Only problem for him for Sunak almost all of them voted Remain like Cameron and he voted for Brexit like Boris
One of those rare points of agreement between of us, HYUFD. The punitive approach to welfare is played out - discredited academically, and, much more importantly for the government, deeply unpopular in the Red Wall seats at a time of massive strain. Sunak the posh Southerner puts the boot in.
You mean Rishi Sunak, mp for Richmond, Yorkshire
Rishi the owner of a £2 million Yorkshire mansion he occasionally visits at weekends when not at his £7 million Kensington townhouse, No 11 or his California apartment. Yes that Rishi.
You really do not like him do you as he is a real threat to your adoration of Boris
Mind you Rishi PM in the next few weeks and you will be singng his praises, having binned Boris
I would support him as I would support any Tory leader.
As a matter of interest, because before my time, but did you give support on here to Theresa May?
Yes. If Sunak is Osborne plus Brexit the best he could hope for is likely May 2017 not Major 1992, the redwall won't vote for him and austerity and Remainers will still not vote for him as a Brexiteer either.
However even the DUP would not back the Tories now unless Sunak invoked Article 16
I wish people would stop using 'redwall' as shorthand for 'constituencies gained by the Conservatives in 2019 somewhere north of the watford gap'.
Each constituency is different and there are many differences between some which are termed as 'redwall'.
They may all be different but I suspect they all voted Tory on the basis that Brexit and levelling up would between them (rapidly) improve their lives. That to me is the definition of a red wall seats - traditional labour that voted for change as promised by Boris.
And I suspect that in most cases even by 2024 the Tory MP will be struggling to answer what have you actually done and given us?
Voted Tory in May 2021, encouraged by their MP to apply for a government levelling up grant but they didn't get it and the council wasted money on the application.
The likes of Bury South are often referred to as 'redwall' even though it has little in common with the likes of Bassetlaw, Bolsover or Bishop Auckland.
On topic - Johnson is shameless and ruthlessly self-interested. He'll leave only if there's a VONC *and* he loses it. For this to be a likely outcome the Gray Report needs to be unequivocal that he lied to Parliament when claiming he had no prior knowledge of rule breaking events. I'd be surprised if it is. So it's odds against IMO that he'll be going anytime soon. Bets I recommend are (i) Him still to be PM on 1st July at 2.1 and (ii) Starmer Next PM at 11.
Let's be blunt, if it was Starmer facing exactly the same position, you - and probably around 80%+ of those criticising BJ for what he did - would be coming up with reasons as to why everyone was over-reacting to what Starmer did and it was all a Tory plot. You are not concerned about the actions, your main concern is which political party he represents.
As to the bets, I would take the first one and probably put a small nibble on the second but without much confidence.
Why do you assume everyone is like you? It's most odd.
I'm very happy to criticise "my side" if I think their actions are wrong. Anyone who pays attention to my posts - and I know you do - would realise this. Which just shows you're actually quite malicious behind the mask of reasonableness you put on.
Nope, sorry, you are an egregious example of moral sleaze trying to insinuate by sleight of hand that you are in the top moral 20%. Stop it.
Says the Peppa Pig. Like to give an example of both the moral sleaze bit and where I claim to be in the top moral 20% but or you going to talk out of your arse as usual?
You claim that 80%+ are morally fungible but that you yourself are not but are happy to criticise "my side". Can you genuinely not see the implicit claim there? Genuinely?
The moral sleaze consists in trying to neutralise moral criticism of your side by insisting that 80%+ of it can be dismissed as partisan. Again, this is not difficult stuff.
Trump and Johnson, what a package. People with genuine moral agency are able to stand aside from "their side" and assess these people on their merits.
Another thought on the daft 3 month to 1 month DWP change.
I very much doubt that DWP have the staff to manage this change. There was talk of extra jobs coaches and so on. Plus someone needs to decide whether a person has made an effort in that 3 months to find any job.
There seems to be a repeating trend in politics among the most self-confident leaders which I think we are witnessing here. Call it the Assad doctrine: if an unpopular leader, even when seemingly facing humiliation and on their way out, simply brazens it out for long enough and keeps upping the stakes and challenging the narrative, eventually they come to seem immovable and their multiple sins are fully amortised and normalised. The bar for them staying in power gets lower and lower, and the bar for any challenger to cross to take over gets higher and higher.
Boris is doing it. Trump gave it a pretty good go after the last election. Logan Roy does it repeatedly in Succession. Gadaffi would have done it were it not for Western airstrikes. Others, with more self-awareness, humility and/or cowardice, crumble and leave the scene when they see the writing on the wall: Thatcher, Blair, Cameron, Mubarak, seemingly the Labour left this week.
Sunak to require jobseekers to look outside their chosen field after just 1 month rather than the current three. Starmer Labour will oppose.
A clear further sign a Sunak premiership would now be a move more back to austerity and to Boris' economic right. That may not go down well in the redwall seats that voted for Brown and Ed Miliband before voting for Boris in 2019. Sunak would hope it would have more appeal in the seats Cameron won in 2015 that are now Labour or LD. Only problem for him for Sunak almost all of them voted Remain like Cameron and he voted for Brexit like Boris
One of those rare points of agreement between of us, HYUFD. The punitive approach to welfare is played out - discredited academically, and, much more importantly for the government, deeply unpopular in the Red Wall seats at a time of massive strain. Sunak the posh Southerner puts the boot in.
You mean Rishi Sunak, mp for Richmond, Yorkshire
Rishi the owner of a £2 million Yorkshire mansion he occasionally visits at weekends when not at his £7 million Kensington townhouse, No 11 or his California apartment. Yes that Rishi.
You really do not like him do you as he is a real threat to your adoration of Boris
Mind you Rishi PM in the next few weeks and you will be singng his praises, having binned Boris
I would support him as I would support any Tory leader.
As a matter of interest, because before my time, but did you give support on here to Theresa May?
Yes. If Sunak is Osborne plus Brexit the best he could hope for is likely May 2017 not Major 1992, the redwall won't vote for him and austerity and Remainers will still not vote for him as a Brexiteer either.
However even the DUP would not back the Tories now unless Sunak invoked Article 16
I wish people would stop using 'redwall' as shorthand for 'constituencies gained by the Conservatives in 2019 somewhere north of the watford gap'.
Each constituency is different and there are many differences between some which are termed as 'redwall'.
I think HYFUD is onto something wrt to Rishi vs Boris in terms of their potential winning ability. I think Rishi probably does top out at 330-340 MPs in terms of 2024, yet Boris as we just saw in 2019 got 365 MPs.
What he's missing is that Boris on 2024 isn't going to get 365 MPs again, in fact he's set to hand the Tories their worst defeat since 2001. So maybe Rishi has got lower potential overall winning capability, he still gives the Tories a pretty solid chance at getting a majority in 2024.
To some extent.
The problem for Sunak is as a Leaver his limit is probably now the 318 MPs May got in 2017 not even the 330 MPs Cameron got in 2015 let alone the 365 MPs Boris got in 2019.
The redwall seats which voted for Boris but are normally Labour are unlikely to vote for Sunak.
However nor are the Remain seats Cameron won in 2015 which now have Labour or LD MPs unless Sunak went for EEA or a Customs Union which would split the party and leak votes to RefUK.
Even on current polls anyway Boris would still win more MPs than Howard 2005 let alone Hague 2001
The difference between May and Rishi in terms of personality is what will get Rishi over the majority line, though maybe not by a big number of MPs. I'd expect Rishi to end up with something like 335 for a working majority of 20. He's very, very slick and I think in a world where presentation and media skills matter more than policy that will make a big difference. Theresa May was a disaster, not just because of policy but also because she wasn't media friendly.
For one thing, Rishi is a first name politician across the country already, and even though it might not seem like a lot it speaks volumes about how slick his media operation is. Moving beyond being a politician to being a person, only a few become first name politicians, Boris did it.
Against zero personality Starmer there is a good shot at a majority with Rishi, I don't see it with Boris. He's tainted by the partying and in the COVID inquiry the late lockdown 3 call will work against him.
Just caught a Jordan Peterson interview. Incredibly precise little beard plus a bow tie. Oh dear oh dear.
What should what he is wearing matter? Seems strange to launch into an ad hominem attack in that way in lieu of any comment on his actual interview.
He's a funny chappy, Jordan Peterson. Hero-worshipped by some young men on the right, some of what he says is perfectly reasonable, although not particularly earth-shattering - tidy your room and take responsibility, beware fashionable dogmas in the area of language - and others are just downright bizarre, such as apparently thinking that men are losing out from the ability of women to chose multiple partners, and that this should somehow be altered by policy.
SKS fans please explain As i forecast SKS peaked at 11.59 am on 19.1.22
Kaboom, Boris now slashes the Labour lead to under 5%!!
Well back into hung parliament territory again now
A no change poll is a "Kaboom" and a slashing? 🤦♂️
I thought you pretended to know polling and understand how it works, do you even know what the "(-)" after the poll shares means?
With all due respect, I don't think you're a polling expert at all, I just think you have a log of polls that suit your agenda and that you can cherrypick and pull out to your hearts content when it suits your interests to do so.
Another thought on the daft 3 month to 1 month DWP change.
I very much doubt that DWP have the staff to manage this change. There was talk of extra jobs coaches and so on. Plus someone needs to decide whether a person has made an effort in that 3 months to find any job.
Thoughts? Resources? You have this policy analysis all wrong. Consider headlines (in the next news cycle only, of course) and will it make the other lot look bad to our voters, nothing more please.
Except my daughter's school are still requiring them, outdoors, when collecting them and dropping them off. How ridiculous.
Spoke to the Head Mistress to ask why and she said that cases amongst the students are still at the highest level ever and since kids who test positive have to miss school for a week they don't want to drop any precautions yet.
I respect her intentions, even if I doubt that masks outdoors will prevent any cases but this is the same garbage we saw last month. People making silly decisions not because they fear people getting sick, but because they fear the consequences of isolation.
We need to urgently ASAP drop the ridiculous forced isolation of people who are perfectly healthy who happen to be testing positive for the virus. Let people who are actually sick recuperate at home, as they require, but anyone healthy but positive shouldn't be compelled to isolate anymore for a virus everyone vulnerable has had three vaccine doses for (and if they've not, it's their choice).
Especially children. Disrupting healthy children's education due to a line on a test is absurd.
I think this is probably right – certainly for schoolchildren, for whom the isolation and the subsequent absence from school is usually an order of magnitude worse than the virus itself.
If they are unwell, then sure, they should stay at home and be supported to do that. But the endless incarceration of healthy schoolchildren is not sustainable. And causes the unintended consequences your daughter's headmistress has seemingly eloquently conveyed.
Is it me getting fooled by the media drift away or does Sue Gray's report feel further away than it was this time yesterday?
This time yesterday people believed the Gray report might be published in a few hours. Now they are talking about next week, so yes, it does seem further away.
Because it is further away, perhaps?
They are busy watering it all down with legalise mince arguments etc, that will continue till there is little left and whitewash is complete.
SKS fans please explain As i forecast SKS peaked at 11.59 am on 19.1.22
Kaboom, Boris now slashes the Labour lead to under 5%!!
Well back into hung parliament territory again now
A no change poll is a "Kaboom" and a slashing? 🤦♂️
I thought you pretended to know polling and understand how it works, do you even know what the "(-)" after the poll shares means?
With all due respect, I don't think you're a polling expert at all, I just think you have a log of polls that suit your agenda and that you can cherrypick and pull out to your hearts content when it suits your interests to do so.
You think? Everyone else knows HYUFD only focusses on polls that match his world view, all others need to be attacked as irrelevant.
On topic - Johnson is shameless and ruthlessly self-interested. He'll leave only if there's a VONC *and* he loses it. For this to be a likely outcome the Gray Report needs to be unequivocal that he lied to Parliament when claiming he had no prior knowledge of rule breaking events. I'd be surprised if it is. So it's odds against IMO that he'll be going anytime soon. Bets I recommend are (i) Him still to be PM on 1st July at 2.1 and (ii) Starmer Next PM at 11.
Let's be blunt, if it was Starmer facing exactly the same position, you - and probably around 80%+ of those criticising BJ for what he did - would be coming up with reasons as to why everyone was over-reacting to what Starmer did and it was all a Tory plot. You are not concerned about the actions, your main concern is which political party he represents.
As to the bets, I would take the first one and probably put a small nibble on the second but without much confidence.
Do you have any real evidence for that opinion ? I'd certainly want him to be booted out in those circumstances.
You only have to look at the reaction to other events to see it's not the action that counts but who is doing it. From a 1-1 level, some of his sharpest critics I know personally I also know happily broke lockdown laws but justified it as being no big deal.
I'm glad you want Starmer out in similar circumstances. Personal view is that BJ obviously didn't follow his own rules, almost certainly lied and took the piss. However, he has not been taking brown envelopes full of cash (as far as we know) I'm much more concerned that whoever is running the country gets the big calls right and I think BJ has done that. I'd have the same view if it was Starmer.
What I simply cannot accept is a leader who blatantly lies, repeatedly, knowing that his audience knows it, and expects everyone to just suck it up. If you can't understand that's extraordinarily corrosive for public life, then we have little to discuss.
If Johnson had fessed up at the outset, it would have been damaging, but probably survivable.
Yet other examples of corrosiveness of public life get praised. We had some of the fiercest critics of BJ defending 'Jenny the nurse' for telling a grieving and desperate husband that he had to stay in the car park and not see his dying wife because of the Covid restrictions, and how right she was to think about the 'common good'. Quite frankly, I am far more disgusted by that human being than I am about BJ. But, hey, she works in the NHS so she must be an angel on earth.
Don't lie. Nobody defended her. Criticism of that Labour ad was pretty much universal both here and on twitter.
On topic - Johnson is shameless and ruthlessly self-interested. He'll leave only if there's a VONC *and* he loses it. For this to be a likely outcome the Gray Report needs to be unequivocal that he lied to Parliament when claiming he had no prior knowledge of rule breaking events. I'd be surprised if it is. So it's odds against IMO that he'll be going anytime soon. Bets I recommend are (i) Him still to be PM on 1st July at 2.1 and (ii) Starmer Next PM at 11.
Let's be blunt, if it was Starmer facing exactly the same position, you - and probably around 80%+ of those criticising BJ for what he did - would be coming up with reasons as to why everyone was over-reacting to what Starmer did and it was all a Tory plot. You are not concerned about the actions, your main concern is which political party he represents.
As to the bets, I would take the first one and probably put a small nibble on the second but without much confidence.
Why do you assume everyone is like you? It's most odd.
I'm very happy to criticise "my side" if I think their actions are wrong. Anyone who pays attention to my posts - and I know you do - would realise this. Which just shows you're actually quite malicious behind the mask of reasonableness you put on.
Nope, sorry, you are an egregious example of moral sleaze trying to insinuate by sleight of hand that you are in the top moral 20%. Stop it.
Says the Peppa Pig. Like to give an example of both the moral sleaze bit and where I claim to be in the top moral 20% but or you going to talk out of your arse as usual?
You claim that 80%+ are morally fungible but that you yourself are not but are happy to criticise "my side". Can you genuinely not see the implicit claim there? Genuinely?
The moral sleaze consists in trying to neutralise moral criticism of your side by insisting that 80%+ of it can be dismissed as partisan. Again, this is not difficult stuff.
Trump and Johnson, what a package. People with genuine moral agency are able to stand aside from "their side" and assess these people on their merits.
I actually answered this post below but, for the sake of you not having to use your trotters to scroll down, let me copy them here:
"Personal view is that BJ obviously didn't follow his own rules, almost certainly lied and took the piss. However, he has not been taking brown envelopes full of cash (as far as we know) I'm much more concerned that whoever is running the country gets the big calls right and I think BJ has done that. I'd have the same view if it was Starmer."
"We had some of the fiercest critics of BJ defending 'Jenny the nurse' for telling a grieving and desperate husband that he had to stay in the car park and not see his dying wife because of the Covid restrictions, and how right she was to think about the 'common good'. Quite frankly, I am far more disgusted by that human being than I am about BJ. But, hey, she works in the NHS so she must be an angel on earth."
Not sure where you get the idea I am claiming the moral high ground from that.
SKS fans please explain As i forecast SKS peaked at 11.59 am on 19.1.22
Kaboom, Boris now slashes the Labour lead to under 5%!!
Well back into hung parliament territory again now
19.5 with Smarkets that CP has a poll lead before 1 Feb...
Only 4 days left, I have money on that market but I think I've lost it.
Backed Yes at odds of 5 when the market was still new, prior to this years news breaking about the PM attending one of the parties. That was the gamechanger that means there's no chance of a rogue Tory lead poll now.
On topic - Johnson is shameless and ruthlessly self-interested. He'll leave only if there's a VONC *and* he loses it. For this to be a likely outcome the Gray Report needs to be unequivocal that he lied to Parliament when claiming he had no prior knowledge of rule breaking events. I'd be surprised if it is. So it's odds against IMO that he'll be going anytime soon. Bets I recommend are (i) Him still to be PM on 1st July at 2.1 and (ii) Starmer Next PM at 11.
Let's be blunt, if it was Starmer facing exactly the same position, you - and probably around 80%+ of those criticising BJ for what he did - would be coming up with reasons as to why everyone was over-reacting to what Starmer did and it was all a Tory plot. You are not concerned about the actions, your main concern is which political party he represents.
As to the bets, I would take the first one and probably put a small nibble on the second but without much confidence.
Do you have any real evidence for that opinion ? I'd certainly want him to be booted out in those circumstances.
You only have to look at the reaction to other events to see it's not the action that counts but who is doing it. From a 1-1 level, some of his sharpest critics I know personally I also know happily broke lockdown laws but justified it as being no big deal.
I'm glad you want Starmer out in similar circumstances. Personal view is that BJ obviously didn't follow his own rules, almost certainly lied and took the piss. However, he has not been taking brown envelopes full of cash (as far as we know) I'm much more concerned that whoever is running the country gets the big calls right and I think BJ has done that. I'd have the same view if it was Starmer.
What I simply cannot accept is a leader who blatantly lies, repeatedly, knowing that his audience knows it, and expects everyone to just suck it up. If you can't understand that's extraordinarily corrosive for public life, then we have little to discuss.
If Johnson had fessed up at the outset, it would have been damaging, but probably survivable.
Yet other examples of corrosiveness of public life get praised. We had some of the fiercest critics of BJ defending 'Jenny the nurse' for telling a grieving and desperate husband that he had to stay in the car park and not see his dying wife because of the Covid restrictions, and how right she was to think about the 'common good'. Quite frankly, I am far more disgusted by that human being than I am about BJ. But, hey, she works in the NHS so she must be an angel on earth.
Don't lie. Nobody defended her. Criticism of that Labour ad was pretty much universal both here and on twitter.
Government are going to spend 3-5 days trying to remove anything and everything from it while not understanding that anything removed will be leaked 30 seconds later.
According to Nick Watts on Newsnight it is the civil service union who are trying to keep the names of junior civil servants out of the report and to protect future employment prospects of those who are to be named
It is a theme that HMG is trying to redact the report when it is unions who apparently are very worried at how bad the civil service is painted in the report and not just at No 10 but across Whitehall
At the one event that might fairly described as a party, there were no reports of any politicians being there at all, only the advisors and civil servants.
The ‘party’ with the birthday cake, was clearly not done with the involvement of Mr Johnson either.
Many people naively assumed, that the only people that might be mentioned in Ms Gray’s report would be politicians.
In reality dozens of Civil Servants could lose their jobs if they have willingly broken Covid regulaltions in the way described.
Doubt it very much. If junior X, a plain attendee, says yes to the polis, it's a parking fine misdemeanour. You get a bollocking but not the sack for that.It's like parking on the double yellows outside the office. They were instructed, effectively, to attend. By senior management. If the senior management don't get the sack completely (as opposed to being given a job elsewhere) there'd be a hell of a series of industrial tribunals [edit] if anyone lower was sacked for just attending.
On topic - Johnson is shameless and ruthlessly self-interested. He'll leave only if there's a VONC *and* he loses it. For this to be a likely outcome the Gray Report needs to be unequivocal that he lied to Parliament when claiming he had no prior knowledge of rule breaking events. I'd be surprised if it is. So it's odds against IMO that he'll be going anytime soon. Bets I recommend are (i) Him still to be PM on 1st July at 2.1 and (ii) Starmer Next PM at 11.
Let's be blunt, if it was Starmer facing exactly the same position, you - and probably around 80%+ of those criticising BJ for what he did - would be coming up with reasons as to why everyone was over-reacting to what Starmer did and it was all a Tory plot. You are not concerned about the actions, your main concern is which political party he represents.
As to the bets, I would take the first one and probably put a small nibble on the second but without much confidence.
Why do you assume everyone is like you? It's most odd.
I'm very happy to criticise "my side" if I think their actions are wrong. Anyone who pays attention to my posts - and I know you do - would realise this. Which just shows you're actually quite malicious behind the mask of reasonableness you put on.
Nope, sorry, you are an egregious example of moral sleaze trying to insinuate by sleight of hand that you are in the top moral 20%. Stop it.
Says the Peppa Pig. Like to give an example of both the moral sleaze bit and where I claim to be in the top moral 20% but or you going to talk out of your arse as usual?
You claim that 80%+ are morally fungible but that you yourself are not but are happy to criticise "my side". Can you genuinely not see the implicit claim there? Genuinely?
The moral sleaze consists in trying to neutralise moral criticism of your side by insisting that 80%+ of it can be dismissed as partisan. Again, this is not difficult stuff.
Trump and Johnson, what a package. People with genuine moral agency are able to stand aside from "their side" and assess these people on their merits.
"Personal view is that BJ obviously didn't follow his own rules, almost certainly lied and took the piss. However, he has not been taking brown envelopes full of cash (as far as we know) I'm much more concerned that whoever is running the country gets the big calls right and I think BJ has done that. I'd have the same view if it was Starmer."
Putting in a word for that lord's great exhibition plan, in return for having his expensive decoration paid for, comes pretty close. And that's before you start looking at where the PPE contracts went...
Somebody posted a "six stages of a project" thing the other day and said we have reached the "Disillusionment" stage.
That seems about right to me. I am looking forward to Stage 3 next - "Panic"
DK Brown's "Stages of a Project"
- Enthusiasm - Disillusionment - Panic - The Search for the Guilty - The punishment of the Innocent - Praise and Honour for the Non-Participants
I suspect we will see 3-5 in a single hour as the Gray report comes out.
Boris's panicking will result in anyone no matter how junior being punished as he tries to protect himself.
It sounds like the watering down of the Gray report is underway. I have little expectation of it having any effect except to identity the sheep to be culled to save the Big Dog.
Gray will only tell us what we already know, at best. It will probably tell us less than we already know.
I think HYFUD is onto something wrt to Rishi vs Boris in terms of their potential winning ability. I think Rishi probably does top out at 330-340 MPs in terms of 2024, yet Boris as we just saw in 2019 got 365 MPs.
What he's missing is that Boris on 2024 isn't going to get 365 MPs again, in fact he's set to hand the Tories their worst defeat since 2001. So maybe Rishi has got lower potential overall winning capability, he still gives the Tories a pretty solid chance at getting a majority in 2024.
To some extent.
The problem for Sunak is as a Leaver his limit is probably now the 318 MPs May got in 2017 not even the 330 MPs Cameron got in 2015 let alone the 365 MPs Boris got in 2019.
The redwall seats which voted for Boris but are normally Labour are unlikely to vote for Sunak.
However nor are the Remain seats Cameron won in 2015 which now have Labour or LD MPs unless Sunak went for EEA or a Customs Union which would split the party and leak votes to RefUK.
Even on current polls anyway Boris would still win more MPs than Howard 2005 let alone Hague 2001
The difference between May and Rishi in terms of personality is what will get Rishi over the majority line, though maybe not by a big number of MPs. I'd expect Rishi to end up with something like 335 for a working majority of 20. He's very, very slick and I think in a world where presentation and media skills matter more than policy that will make a big difference. Theresa May was a disaster, not just because of policy but also because she wasn't media friendly.
For one thing, Rishi is a first name politician across the country already, and even though it might not seem like a lot it speaks volumes about how slick his media operation is. Moving beyond being a politician to being a person, only a few become first name politicians, Boris did it.
Against zero personality Starmer there is a good shot at a majority with Rishi, I don't see it with Boris. He's tainted by the partying and in the COVID inquiry the late lockdown 3 call will work against him.
My other point is timing. Rishi arriving now and there is a chance (with a couple of £bn) to reverse what would be my default attack point
What have the Tories done for you? is currently an answer where a lot of people will say nothing. Kick off a few more levelling up improvements and that argument disappears.
Now you can do that today but you can't do it in 2023 and expect things to be started / delivered so the leadership does need to change ASAP for the Tory party to have a greater chance.
Somebody posted a "six stages of a project" thing the other day and said we have reached the "Disillusionment" stage.
That seems about right to me. I am looking forward to Stage 3 next - "Panic"
DK Brown's "Stages of a Project"
- Enthusiasm - Disillusionment - Panic - The Search for the Guilty - The punishment of the Innocent - Praise and Honour for the Non-Participants
I suspect we will see 3-5 in a single hour as the Gray report comes out.
Boris's panicking will result in anyone no matter how junior being punished as he tries to protect himself.
It sounds like the watering down of the Gray report is underway. I have little expectation of it having any effect except to identity the sheep to be culled to save the Big Dog.
Gray will only tell us what we already know, at best. It will probably tell us less than we already know.
Because we all know he's a consummate liar, but Gray can only say so with absolutely conclusive proof
Sunak to require jobseekers to look outside their chosen field after just 1 month rather than the current three. Starmer Labour will oppose.
A clear further sign a Sunak premiership would now be a move more back to austerity and to Boris' economic right. That may not go down well in the redwall seats that voted for Brown and Ed Miliband before voting for Boris in 2019. Sunak would hope it would have more appeal in the seats Cameron won in 2015 that are now Labour or LD. Only problem for him for Sunak almost all of them voted Remain like Cameron and he voted for Brexit like Boris
One of those rare points of agreement between of us, HYUFD. The punitive approach to welfare is played out - discredited academically, and, much more importantly for the government, deeply unpopular in the Red Wall seats at a time of massive strain. Sunak the posh Southerner puts the boot in.
You mean Rishi Sunak, mp for Richmond, Yorkshire
Rishi the owner of a £2 million Yorkshire mansion he occasionally visits at weekends when not at his £7 million Kensington townhouse, No 11 or his California apartment. Yes that Rishi.
You really do not like him do you as he is a real threat to your adoration of Boris
Mind you Rishi PM in the next few weeks and you will be singng his praises, having binned Boris
I would support him as I would support any Tory leader.
As a matter of interest, because before my time, but did you give support on here to Theresa May?
Yes. If Sunak is Osborne plus Brexit the best he could hope for is likely May 2017 not Major 1992, the redwall won't vote for him and austerity and Remainers will still not vote for him as a Brexiteer either.
However even the DUP would not back the Tories now unless Sunak invoked Article 16
I wish people would stop using 'redwall' as shorthand for 'constituencies gained by the Conservatives in 2019 somewhere north of the watford gap'.
Each constituency is different and there are many differences between some which are termed as 'redwall'.
They may all be different but I suspect they all voted Tory on the basis that Brexit and levelling up would between them (rapidly) improve their lives. That to me is the definition of a red wall seats - traditional labour that voted for change as promised by Boris.
And I suspect that in most cases even by 2024 the Tory MP will be struggling to answer what have you actually done and given us?
Voted Tory in May 2021, encouraged by their MP to apply for a government levelling up grant but they didn't get it and the council wasted money on the application.
What have they got to show. The govt rolled back on levelling up and have simply reneged on their promises to the so called red wall.
Their useful idiots were happy to go on the local news, like Holden, and portray it as a triumph.
SKS fans please explain As i forecast SKS peaked at 11.59 am on 19.1.22
Kaboom, Boris now slashes the Labour lead to under 5%!!
Well back into hung parliament territory again now
A no change poll is a "Kaboom" and a slashing? 🤦♂️
I thought you pretended to know polling and understand how it works, do you even know what the "(-)" after the poll shares means?
With all due respect, I don't think you're a polling expert at all, I just think you have a log of polls that suit your agenda and that you can cherrypick and pull out to your hearts content when it suits your interests to do so.
2 weeks ago Labour were 10 points ahead or more, now all the polls show Boris has slashed the Labour lead to under 10% and now even under 5%.
Indeed on the Kantar poll today it would now be neck and neck after the new boundaries, Labour 284, Tories 273.
SKS fans please explain As i forecast SKS peaked at 11.59 am on 19.1.22
Kaboom, Boris now slashes the Labour lead to under 5%!!
Well back into hung parliament territory again now
A no change poll is a "Kaboom" and a slashing? 🤦♂️
I thought you pretended to know polling and understand how it works, do you even know what the "(-)" after the poll shares means?
With all due respect, I don't think you're a polling expert at all, I just think you have a log of polls that suit your agenda and that you can cherrypick and pull out to your hearts content when it suits your interests to do so.
You think? Everyone else knows HYUFD only focusses on polls that match his world view, all others need to be attacked as irrelevant.
On topic - Johnson is shameless and ruthlessly self-interested. He'll leave only if there's a VONC *and* he loses it. For this to be a likely outcome the Gray Report needs to be unequivocal that he lied to Parliament when claiming he had no prior knowledge of rule breaking events. I'd be surprised if it is. So it's odds against IMO that he'll be going anytime soon. Bets I recommend are (i) Him still to be PM on 1st July at 2.1 and (ii) Starmer Next PM at 11.
Let's be blunt, if it was Starmer facing exactly the same position, you - and probably around 80%+ of those criticising BJ for what he did - would be coming up with reasons as to why everyone was over-reacting to what Starmer did and it was all a Tory plot. You are not concerned about the actions, your main concern is which political party he represents.
As to the bets, I would take the first one and probably put a small nibble on the second but without much confidence.
Why do you assume everyone is like you? It's most odd.
I'm very happy to criticise "my side" if I think their actions are wrong. Anyone who pays attention to my posts - and I know you do - would realise this. Which just shows you're actually quite malicious behind the mask of reasonableness you put on.
Nope, sorry, you are an egregious example of moral sleaze trying to insinuate by sleight of hand that you are in the top moral 20%. Stop it.
Says the Peppa Pig. Like to give an example of both the moral sleaze bit and where I claim to be in the top moral 20% but or you going to talk out of your arse as usual?
You claim that 80%+ are morally fungible but that you yourself are not but are happy to criticise "my side". Can you genuinely not see the implicit claim there? Genuinely?
The moral sleaze consists in trying to neutralise moral criticism of your side by insisting that 80%+ of it can be dismissed as partisan. Again, this is not difficult stuff.
Trump and Johnson, what a package. People with genuine moral agency are able to stand aside from "their side" and assess these people on their merits.
"Personal view is that BJ obviously didn't follow his own rules, almost certainly lied and took the piss. However, he has not been taking brown envelopes full of cash (as far as we know) I'm much more concerned that whoever is running the country gets the big calls right and I think BJ has done that. I'd have the same view if it was Starmer."
Putting in a word for that lord's great exhibition plan, in return for having his expensive decoration paid for, comes pretty close. And that's before you start looking at where the PPE contracts went...
That is true re the wallpaper and the PPE contracts. TBJH, he should have resigned for the simple fact of considering Dido Harding as the next NHS Head.
But on the drinks things, I truly find it hard to get that outraged about it. As I said, I know a fair few people round this neck of the woods who are screeching about BJ having to go because of this and yet who broke the rules themselves.
Somebody posted a "six stages of a project" thing the other day and said we have reached the "Disillusionment" stage.
That seems about right to me. I am looking forward to Stage 3 next - "Panic"
DK Brown's "Stages of a Project"
- Enthusiasm - Disillusionment - Panic - The Search for the Guilty - The punishment of the Innocent - Praise and Honour for the Non-Participants
I suspect we will see 3-5 in a single hour as the Gray report comes out.
Boris's panicking will result in anyone no matter how junior being punished as he tries to protect himself.
It sounds like the watering down of the Gray report is underway. I have little expectation of it having any effect except to identity the sheep to be culled to save the Big Dog.
If it is watered down it is the civil service unions work trying to protect their staff from being named, and not no10
It is suggested that it will be very bad for the civil servants in no 10 and Whitehall
I am sure it will be bad for them, but I am also sure that any political wiggleroom will be exploited to the maximum. If the wiggleroom can be increased by the correct sort of watering down then...
Sunak to require jobseekers to look outside their chosen field after just 1 month rather than the current three. Starmer Labour will oppose.
A clear further sign a Sunak premiership would now be a move more back to austerity and to Boris' economic right. Boris by contrast has described himself as a Brexity Heseltine.
That may not go down well in the redwall seats that voted for Brown and Ed Miliband before voting for Boris in 2019. Sunak would hope it would have more appeal in the seats Cameron won in 2015 that are now Labour or LD. Only problem for Sunak almost all of them voted Remain like Cameron and he voted for Brexit like Boris
It's not just harsh, it's almost certainly counterproductive as it will push people into accepting lower skilled jobs at worse pay, and so it could well end up costing the Treasury more than it saves.
In my experience it would simply be pointless, as when I've applied for jobs outside my expertise, and at lower pay, I've been told that I've been wasting my time as people don't want to employ someone who will be out the door as soon as they have a better job. It's a waste of their time too.
So this will just be used as a way to punish people who don't play along and make the pointless job applications, just so that HMG can say they're being tough on people on the dole.
Very much my experience too. Although I confess the sheer shortage of workers right now may have altered that somewhat tedious attitude. When I left teaching, I quite fancied shop work. I'd done it before, both as a student, and as a volunteer. I saw it as an opportunity to decompress, and do something completely different which I knew I quite enjoyed, and knew I could do well. And had references to evidence it. Couldn't get an interview.
It's a long time since I employed people as shop workers, but as I recall, I would probably have turned you down as well, because, in the absence of any 'more suitable' applicants, I'd have expected you get bored and want something more challenging before too long. As others have suggested upthread.
Also, I would have suspected that you might find it difficult to fit in with your colleagues. Having worked, a long time ago now, as a locum pharmacist in all sorts of small to medium pharmacies, I can assure everyone that working in a place where the off-work conversation varies between hairstyles and Coronation Street rapidly becomes dissatisfying.
SKS fans please explain As i forecast SKS peaked at 11.59 am on 19.1.22
Kaboom, Boris now slashes the Labour lead to under 5%!!
Well back into hung parliament territory again now
A no change poll is a "Kaboom" and a slashing? 🤦♂️
I thought you pretended to know polling and understand how it works, do you even know what the "(-)" after the poll shares means?
With all due respect, I don't think you're a polling expert at all, I just think you have a log of polls that suit your agenda and that you can cherrypick and pull out to your hearts content when it suits your interests to do so.
The Lab lead was 13 before last weeks PMQs the 3 polls since have the lead as 7,8,4 an average of 6.33 so basically halved
I think HYFUD is onto something wrt to Rishi vs Boris in terms of their potential winning ability. I think Rishi probably does top out at 330-340 MPs in terms of 2024, yet Boris as we just saw in 2019 got 365 MPs.
What he's missing is that Boris on 2024 isn't going to get 365 MPs again, in fact he's set to hand the Tories their worst defeat since 2001. So maybe Rishi has got lower potential overall winning capability, he still gives the Tories a pretty solid chance at getting a majority in 2024.
To some extent.
The problem for Sunak is as a Leaver his limit is probably now the 318 MPs May got in 2017 not even the 330 MPs Cameron got in 2015 let alone the 365 MPs Boris got in 2019.
The redwall seats which voted for Boris but are normally Labour are unlikely to vote for Sunak.
However nor are the Remain seats Cameron won in 2015 which now have Labour or LD MPs unless Sunak went for EEA or a Customs Union which would split the party and leak votes to RefUK.
Even on current polls anyway Boris would still win more MPs than Howard 2005 let alone Hague 2001
The difference between May and Rishi in terms of personality is what will get Rishi over the majority line, though maybe not by a big number of MPs. I'd expect Rishi to end up with something like 335 for a working majority of 20. He's very, very slick and I think in a world where presentation and media skills matter more than policy that will make a big difference. Theresa May was a disaster, not just because of policy but also because she wasn't media friendly.
For one thing, Rishi is a first name politician across the country already, and even though it might not seem like a lot it speaks volumes about how slick his media operation is. Moving beyond being a politician to being a person, only a few become first name politicians, Boris did it.
Against zero personality Starmer there is a good shot at a majority with Rishi, I don't see it with Boris. He's tainted by the partying and in the COVID inquiry the late lockdown 3 call will work against him.
Sunak can be as slick as he wants but if he is now pursuing austerity he will not hold the redwall Boris won and if he does not shift to a soft Brexit (splitting the Tory vote) he is not winning the Remain seats that voted for Cameron back either.
Hence no majority a la May 2017 but not even a premiership unlike May 2017 unless he invokes Article 16 to appease the DUP (the LDs would go for Starmer over Sunak post Brexit)
Somebody posted a "six stages of a project" thing the other day and said we have reached the "Disillusionment" stage.
That seems about right to me. I am looking forward to Stage 3 next - "Panic"
DK Brown's "Stages of a Project"
- Enthusiasm - Disillusionment - Panic - The Search for the Guilty - The punishment of the Innocent - Praise and Honour for the Non-Participants
I suspect we will see 3-5 in a single hour as the Gray report comes out.
Boris's panicking will result in anyone no matter how junior being punished as he tries to protect himself.
It sounds like the watering down of the Gray report is underway. I have little expectation of it having any effect except to identity the sheep to be culled to save the Big Dog.
I am laying off a little on Sunak this morning.
Time and tide and all that. His moment may well be passing.
Personally, I have never rated him. He was an anonymous MP until elevated to Chancellor after which all he has done is to spend money at levels that would make a Corbynite blanche!
SKS fans please explain As i forecast SKS peaked at 11.59 am on 19.1.22
Kaboom, Boris now slashes the Labour lead to under 5%!!
Well back into hung parliament territory again now
A no change poll is a "Kaboom" and a slashing? 🤦♂️
I thought you pretended to know polling and understand how it works, do you even know what the "(-)" after the poll shares means?
With all due respect, I don't think you're a polling expert at all, I just think you have a log of polls that suit your agenda and that you can cherrypick and pull out to your hearts content when it suits your interests to do so.
The Lab lead was 13 before last weeks PMQs the 3 polls since have the lead as 7,8,4 an average of 6.33 so basically halved
On topic - Johnson is shameless and ruthlessly self-interested. He'll leave only if there's a VONC *and* he loses it. For this to be a likely outcome the Gray Report needs to be unequivocal that he lied to Parliament when claiming he had no prior knowledge of rule breaking events. I'd be surprised if it is. So it's odds against IMO that he'll be going anytime soon. Bets I recommend are (i) Him still to be PM on 1st July at 2.1 and (ii) Starmer Next PM at 11.
Let's be blunt, if it was Starmer facing exactly the same position, you - and probably around 80%+ of those criticising BJ for what he did - would be coming up with reasons as to why everyone was over-reacting to what Starmer did and it was all a Tory plot. You are not concerned about the actions, your main concern is which political party he represents.
As to the bets, I would take the first one and probably put a small nibble on the second but without much confidence.
Why do you assume everyone is like you? It's most odd.
I'm very happy to criticise "my side" if I think their actions are wrong. Anyone who pays attention to my posts - and I know you do - would realise this. Which just shows you're actually quite malicious behind the mask of reasonableness you put on.
Nope, sorry, you are an egregious example of moral sleaze trying to insinuate by sleight of hand that you are in the top moral 20%. Stop it.
Says the Peppa Pig. Like to give an example of both the moral sleaze bit and where I claim to be in the top moral 20% but or you going to talk out of your arse as usual?
You claim that 80%+ are morally fungible but that you yourself are not but are happy to criticise "my side". Can you genuinely not see the implicit claim there? Genuinely?
The moral sleaze consists in trying to neutralise moral criticism of your side by insisting that 80%+ of it can be dismissed as partisan. Again, this is not difficult stuff.
Trump and Johnson, what a package. People with genuine moral agency are able to stand aside from "their side" and assess these people on their merits.
"Personal view is that BJ obviously didn't follow his own rules, almost certainly lied and took the piss. However, he has not been taking brown envelopes full of cash (as far as we know) I'm much more concerned that whoever is running the country gets the big calls right and I think BJ has done that. I'd have the same view if it was Starmer."
Putting in a word for that lord's great exhibition plan, in return for having his expensive decoration paid for, comes pretty close. And that's before you start looking at where the PPE contracts went...
That is true re the wallpaper and the PPE contracts. TBJH, he should have resigned for the simple fact of considering Dido Harding as the next NHS Head.
But on the drinks things, I truly find it hard to get that outraged about it. As I said, I know a fair few people round this neck of the woods who are screeching about BJ having to go because of this and yet who broke the rules themselves.
Maybe they thought that some of the rules were petty and stupid?
But that can't be the view of the person who decided to introduce them, leaving only much worse character judgements as available explanations.
SKS fans please explain As i forecast SKS peaked at 11.59 am on 19.1.22
Kaboom, Boris now slashes the Labour lead to under 5%!!
Well back into hung parliament territory again now
A no change poll is a "Kaboom" and a slashing? 🤦♂️
I thought you pretended to know polling and understand how it works, do you even know what the "(-)" after the poll shares means?
With all due respect, I don't think you're a polling expert at all, I just think you have a log of polls that suit your agenda and that you can cherrypick and pull out to your hearts content when it suits your interests to do so.
The Lab lead was 13 before last weeks PMQs the 3 polls since have the lead as 7,8,4 an average of 6.33 so basically halved
SKS fans please explain As i forecast SKS peaked at 11.59 am on 19.1.22
Kaboom, Boris now slashes the Labour lead to under 5%!!
Well back into hung parliament territory again now
A no change poll is a "Kaboom" and a slashing? 🤦♂️
I thought you pretended to know polling and understand how it works, do you even know what the "(-)" after the poll shares means?
With all due respect, I don't think you're a polling expert at all, I just think you have a log of polls that suit your agenda and that you can cherrypick and pull out to your hearts content when it suits your interests to do so.
The Lab lead was 13 before last weeks PMQs the 3 polls since have the lead as 7,8,4 an average of 6.33 so basically halved
Is that with the same pollster?
No 2 separate pollsters had Lab 13 points ahead
3 separate ones have reported post last weeks PMQs average lead 6.33
Never mind the mood music, @AlastairMeeks has 128 mps in the hostile-icy-cool camp 94 friendly 137 neutral or unknown. Even if only 128 vote against that is pretty much as bad as the 117 against T May adjusting for more MPs overall. Assuming Gray is bad for Boris and assuming there are more dissemblers secretly anti Boris than secretly pro, both reasonable assumptions, it doesn’t look good for him.
Another thought on the daft 3 month to 1 month DWP change.
I very much doubt that DWP have the staff to manage this change. There was talk of extra jobs coaches and so on. Plus someone needs to decide whether a person has made an effort in that 3 months to find any job.
Maybe they could all be employed as job coaches investigating each other?
SKS fans please explain As i forecast SKS peaked at 11.59 am on 19.1.22
Kaboom, Boris now slashes the Labour lead to under 5%!!
Well back into hung parliament territory again now
A no change poll is a "Kaboom" and a slashing? 🤦♂️
I thought you pretended to know polling and understand how it works, do you even know what the "(-)" after the poll shares means?
With all due respect, I don't think you're a polling expert at all, I just think you have a log of polls that suit your agenda and that you can cherrypick and pull out to your hearts content when it suits your interests to do so.
2 weeks ago Labour were 10 points ahead or more, now all the polls show Boris has slashed the Labour lead to under 5%.
Indeed on the Kantar poll today it would now be neck and neck after the new boundaries, Labour 284, Tories 273.
The most recent polls by pollster, for the regular pollsters, from Wikipedia:
Redfield & Wilton 7% Lab lead Kantar 4% Lab lead Survation 10% Lab lead Savanta ComRes 8% Lab lead Deltapoll 9% Lab lead YouGov 8% Lab lead Opinium 10% Lab lead
So far from all the polls showing the lead has been slashed to under 5%, the reality is that only Kantar shows that. All other pollsters show higher.
Incidentally Kantar's 4% Lab lead is the joint highest Lab lead they have ever had. So even that one's not slashed.
So your claim that the lead has been slashed to under 5% is 100% false and untrue - the only regular pollster showing the lead under 5% never had the lead higher than it in the first place, and all other pollsters leads are higher.
Never mind the mood music, @AlastairMeeks has 128 mps in the hostile-icy-cool camp 94 friendly 137 neutral or unknown. Even if only 128 vote against that is pretty much as bad as the 117 against T May adjusting for more MPs overall. Assuming Gray is bad for Boris and assuming there are more dissemblers secretly anti Boris than secretly pro, both reasonable assumptions, it doesn’t look good for him.
What are you expecting Gray to say (if it ever arrives!)?
My guess is it will be a lot of bureaucratese saying exactly what we already know, or less.
He'll leave only if there's a VONC *and* he loses it.
It's not a given that he'd gracefully depart in that situation.
Grace isn't necessary. Trump didn't depart gracefully, but he did depart.
America had a proper constitution though. If he was a British PM he'd have told Her Majesty that he should stay on pending resolution of the controversy over which was the legitimate parliament, and The Queen would have followed his recommendations to stay out of politics.
Surely even with a written constitution the Queen would not just take the word of the PM. She would take the advice of her wider Privy Council given that the PM is personally implicated in the controversy
Jacob Rees-Mogg obviously says that the outcome of the election is unclear and the Prime Minister Trump should stay on pending investigation of the allegations of vote-rigging in Stockton South and Bolsover, so the Privy Council is at best undecided.
SKS fans please explain As i forecast SKS peaked at 11.59 am on 19.1.22
Kaboom, Boris now slashes the Labour lead to under 5%!!
Well back into hung parliament territory again now
A no change poll is a "Kaboom" and a slashing? 🤦♂️
I thought you pretended to know polling and understand how it works, do you even know what the "(-)" after the poll shares means?
With all due respect, I don't think you're a polling expert at all, I just think you have a log of polls that suit your agenda and that you can cherrypick and pull out to your hearts content when it suits your interests to do so.
The Lab lead was 13 before last weeks PMQs the 3 polls since have the lead as 7,8,4 an average of 6.33 so basically halved
Is that with the same pollster?
No.
2 of the 3 showed a decrease in lead compared to last week the 3rd pollster had no poll since a month ago and reported no change since then
SKS fans please explain As i forecast SKS peaked at 11.59 am on 19.1.22
Kaboom, Boris now slashes the Labour lead to under 5%!!
Well back into hung parliament territory again now
A no change poll is a "Kaboom" and a slashing? 🤦♂️
I thought you pretended to know polling and understand how it works, do you even know what the "(-)" after the poll shares means?
With all due respect, I don't think you're a polling expert at all, I just think you have a log of polls that suit your agenda and that you can cherrypick and pull out to your hearts content when it suits your interests to do so.
The Lab lead was 13 before last weeks PMQs the 3 polls since have the lead as 7,8,4 an average of 6.33 so basically halved
The average Lab lead was not 13, that is a lie. One pollster had a 13 and that could have been an outlier.
The 4 is showing no change from previously while the 8 was a reduction in the lead from 9 before last weeks PMQs so basically a margin of error swing of 0.5%
SKS fans please explain As i forecast SKS peaked at 11.59 am on 19.1.22
Kaboom, Boris now slashes the Labour lead to under 5%!!
Well back into hung parliament territory again now
A no change poll is a "Kaboom" and a slashing? 🤦♂️
I thought you pretended to know polling and understand how it works, do you even know what the "(-)" after the poll shares means?
With all due respect, I don't think you're a polling expert at all, I just think you have a log of polls that suit your agenda and that you can cherrypick and pull out to your hearts content when it suits your interests to do so.
The Lab lead was 13 before last weeks PMQs the 3 polls since have the lead as 7,8,4 an average of 6.33 so basically halved
Is that with the same pollster?
No.
2 of the 3 showed a decrease in lead compared to last week the 3rd pollster had no poll since a month ago and reported no change since then
Yes, but as Bartholomew mentions below, there's no halving of leads with the same pollsters.
Comments
Though I think Starmer might even win a clear majority against Truss which he would not against Boris or Sunak
How many of them there are I have no idea, but I would have thought they were more likely to be Lab-Tory switchers than many others.
Contrast how we deal with unemployment is this precarious world of modern work and gig economy with say the Dutch. Starmer needs to think bold and big.
It saddens me that some of our species can, now we are fortunately civilised enough in most cases to not need to kill each other for food and shelter, still can be motivated by selfishness and greed.
It saddens me that once great political parties here and in the US, that were once moral and intellectual titans, have to pander to the lowest common denominator, to the worst of us, to scrape into power because so many of their economic policies clearly, after decades of being implemented, don”t work for the majority of people.
But in my sector, education, the timescale from application to closing date, to shortlist, interview, second interview, references, enhanced DBS to start date is longer than four weeks. Far longer last time I tried.
I assume for some others it may be too.
Edit.
I notice it has.
So this will just be used as a way to punish people who don't play along and make the pointless job applications, just so that HMG can say they're being tough on people on the dole.
For one thing, there is only ever one elected Parliament, or none at all. The American system of dead duck Congresses and months between elections and inauguration doesn't apply in this country.
The prior Parliament is disbanded prior to the election and the newly elected Members of Parliament are confirmed by the returning officers not weeks or months after the election but on the very night of the election, or the next day.
We have a proper constitution, its just not written in a single document that is ossified based on assumption centuries ago and insanely difficult to amend.
If you can't understand that's extraordinarily corrosive for public life, then we have little to discuss.
If Johnson had fessed up at the outset, it would have been damaging, but probably survivable.
Each constituency is different and there are many differences between some which are termed as 'redwall'.
I have immense respect for Breyer as a man & a jurist, but I worry this decision reeks of partisanship. If the Court becomes just another instrument of partisan politics, then we’re truly lost. What about waiting until a 2nd Trump term to prove this isn’t about Team R & Team D?
https://twitter.com/IChotiner/status/1486395614455754752
The problem for Sunak is as a Leaver his limit is probably now the 318 MPs May got in 2017 not even the 330 MPs Cameron got in 2015 let alone the 365 MPs Boris got in 2019.
The redwall seats which voted for Boris but are normally Labour are unlikely to vote for Sunak.
However nor are the Remain seats Cameron won in 2015 which now have Labour or LD MPs unless Sunak went for EEA or a Customs Union which would split the party and leak votes to RefUK.
Even on current polls anyway Boris would still win more MPs than Howard 2005 let alone Hague 2001
Does is really support the post-Brexit high skill economy we hear so much about to push qualified people directly into being Amazon drivers.
I also quite liked Nick Palmer's suggested combo of backing pre-April exit and post-2022 exit, although I haven't put anything on that as it didn't really add to my position. If I didn't have any bets on I probably would have followed that strategy, though. There are risks (i) a complete meltdown in the locals might force the issue for Con MPs, but I'm not convinced on that (having failed to remove him on a matter of principle it looks pretty bad to remove him because your seat looks to be in danger - and anyway, there's still plenty of time before the next genreal election and arguably better to have a new face shortly before the election rather than too early) and (ii) Cummings (or whoever) has something truly devastating that will be revealed after March.
And I suspect that in most cases even by 2024 the Tory MP will be struggling to answer what have you actually done and given us?
Here's just 1 example https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/19876013.hartlepool-waiting-levelling-cash-boris-johnson/
Voted Tory in May 2021, encouraged by their MP to apply for a government levelling up grant but they didn't get it and the council wasted money on the application.
Oh and I suspect any Cummings curveball won't be something that he failed to mention to Gray but it will be something that Gray doesn't cover in full gory detail...
I believe in low taxes not out of any selfish desire, but because I believe hard working people are better able to provide for themselves and their families, and to elevate their lives and livelihoods if taxes are low.
I believe in not running up major deficits, over the economic cycle, not because of any selfish desire but because I believe burdening our children and [in my case hypothetical future] grandchildren is the wrong thing to do.
I believe in a small state, not because of any selfish desire, but because I believe the state is inefficient and less able to determine what is best for people than people can choose for themselves.
Finally I think high taxes on earned incomes don't burden the wealthy who are living off unearned or inherited money. They burden those working for a living. I have long argued against and view as a disgrace the real 70% tax rate that those on UC have to pay while working and have long railed against that, not because it affects me, but because it traps people in poverty and squanders human potential and I view that as unethical and wrong.
You may not like my politics, but is any of that "selfish"?
I'm not sure it will work when Boris says "I only went to all those parties because my Civil Servants told me it would be fine".
@BritainElects
·
13m
Westminster voting intention:
LAB: 38% (-)
CON: 34% (-)
LDEM: 11% (-)
GRN: 7% (-)
via
@KantarPublic
, 20 - 24 Jan
Chgs. w/ Dec
SKS fans please explain
As i forecast SKS peaked at 11.59 am on 19.1.22
Chesterfield nailed on Tory Gain if SKS is still leader methinks
Well back into hung parliament territory again now
Boris is doing it. Trump gave it a pretty good go after the last election. Logan Roy does it repeatedly in Succession. Gadaffi would have done it were it not for Western airstrikes. Others, with more self-awareness, humility and/or cowardice, crumble and leave the scene when they see the writing on the wall: Thatcher, Blair, Cameron, Mubarak, seemingly the Labour left this week.
When I left teaching, I quite fancied shop work. I'd done it before, both as a student, and as a volunteer.
I saw it as an opportunity to decompress, and do something completely different which I knew I quite enjoyed, and knew I could do well. And had references to evidence it.
Couldn't get an interview.
The moral sleaze consists in trying to neutralise moral criticism of your side by insisting that 80%+ of it can be dismissed as partisan. Again, this is not difficult stuff.
Trump and Johnson, what a package. People with genuine moral agency are able to stand aside from "their side" and assess these people on their merits.
I very much doubt that DWP have the staff to manage this change. There was talk of extra jobs coaches and so on. Plus someone needs to decide whether a person has made an effort in that 3 months to find any job.
For one thing, Rishi is a first name politician across the country already, and even though it might not seem like a lot it speaks volumes about how slick his media operation is. Moving beyond being a politician to being a person, only a few become first name politicians, Boris did it.
Against zero personality Starmer there is a good shot at a majority with Rishi, I don't see it with Boris. He's tainted by the partying and in the COVID inquiry the late lockdown 3 call will work against him.
I thought you pretended to know polling and understand how it works, do you even know what the "(-)" after the poll shares means?
With all due respect, I don't think you're a polling expert at all, I just think you have a log of polls that suit your agenda and that you can cherrypick and pull out to your hearts content when it suits your interests to do so.
If they are unwell, then sure, they should stay at home and be supported to do that. But the endless incarceration of healthy schoolchildren is not sustainable. And causes the unintended consequences your daughter's headmistress has seemingly eloquently conveyed.
"Personal view is that BJ obviously didn't follow his own rules, almost certainly lied and took the piss. However, he has not been taking brown envelopes full of cash (as far as we know) I'm much more concerned that whoever is running the country gets the big calls right and I think BJ has done that. I'd have the same view if it was Starmer."
"We had some of the fiercest critics of BJ defending 'Jenny the nurse' for telling a grieving and desperate husband that he had to stay in the car park and not see his dying wife because of the Covid restrictions, and how right she was to think about the 'common good'. Quite frankly, I am far more disgusted by that human being than I am about BJ. But, hey, she works in the NHS so she must be an angel on earth."
Not sure where you get the idea I am claiming the moral high ground from that.
Backed Yes at odds of 5 when the market was still new, prior to this years news breaking about the PM attending one of the parties. That was the gamechanger that means there's no chance of a rogue Tory lead poll now.
The organisers are, however, far more vulnerable.
11.59 am on 19.1.22 was the time before SKS PMQ performance last week
This weeks decision to use all 6 questions on Parties will bring more bad news for SKS IMO
What have the Tories done for you? is currently an answer where a lot of people will say nothing. Kick off a few more levelling up improvements and that argument disappears.
Now you can do that today but you can't do it in 2023 and expect things to be started / delivered so the leadership does need to change ASAP for the Tory party to have a greater chance.
Their useful idiots were happy to go on the local news, like Holden, and portray it as a triumph.
Indeed on the Kantar poll today it would now be neck and neck after the new boundaries, Labour 284, Tories 273.
As long as that holds Boris stays, tough
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=Y&CON=34&LAB=38&LIB=11&Reform=2&Green=7&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=18.3&SCOTLAB=20.2&SCOTLIB=6.6&SCOTReform=0.9&SCOTGreen=3&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=48&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2019nbbase
But on the drinks things, I truly find it hard to get that outraged about it. As I said, I know a fair few people round this neck of the woods who are screeching about BJ having to go because of this and yet who broke the rules themselves.
You mean no change !!!!!!!!
As others have suggested upthread.
Also, I would have suspected that you might find it difficult to fit in with your colleagues. Having worked, a long time ago now, as a locum pharmacist in all sorts of small to medium pharmacies, I can assure everyone that working in a place where the off-work conversation varies between hairstyles and Coronation Street rapidly becomes dissatisfying.
Hence no majority a la May 2017 but not even a premiership unlike May 2017 unless he invokes Article 16 to appease the DUP (the LDs would go for Starmer over Sunak post Brexit)
But that can't be the view of the person who decided to introduce them, leaving only much worse character judgements as available explanations.
3 separate ones have reported post last weeks PMQs average lead 6.33
First rule of politics: learn to count
Never mind the mood music, @AlastairMeeks has 128 mps in the hostile-icy-cool camp 94 friendly 137 neutral or unknown. Even if only 128 vote against that is pretty much as bad as the 117 against T May adjusting for more MPs overall. Assuming Gray is bad for Boris and assuming there are more dissemblers secretly anti Boris than secretly pro, both reasonable assumptions, it doesn’t look good for him.
The most recent polls by pollster, for the regular pollsters, from Wikipedia:
Redfield & Wilton 7% Lab lead
Kantar 4% Lab lead
Survation 10% Lab lead
Savanta ComRes 8% Lab lead
Deltapoll 9% Lab lead
YouGov 8% Lab lead
Opinium 10% Lab lead
So far from all the polls showing the lead has been slashed to under 5%, the reality is that only Kantar shows that. All other pollsters show higher.
Incidentally Kantar's 4% Lab lead is the joint highest Lab lead they have ever had. So even that one's not slashed.
So your claim that the lead has been slashed to under 5% is 100% false and untrue - the only regular pollster showing the lead under 5% never had the lead higher than it in the first place, and all other pollsters leads are higher.
My guess is it will be a lot of bureaucratese saying exactly what we already know, or less.
The 4 is showing no change from previously while the 8 was a reduction in the lead from 9 before last weeks PMQs so basically a margin of error swing of 0.5%