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Sunak’s still getting better ratings than his boss – politicalbetting.com

The French election rather overshadowed the latest Political Pulse from Ipsos (now without the MORI tag) and above are its latest favourability ratings. This is how Sunak’s have moved over the past year.
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(Because I think its good etic to say something funny at the start of a trend)
A clear boost for the Health Secretary at the Chancellor's expense
I'm still laying Marine Le Pen like I would lay Marion Maréchal-Le Pen.
Russia's Lavrov says Belarus should become security guarantor for Ukraine
Someone really tenuous. Doesn't matter who.
Just get them.
FPT, it's important to remind ourselves that most Mélenchon voters are tactical supporters of established left parties who don't like Macron liberalism but are allergic to conservative nationalism. In most elections his party's vote is 6-10%, same as it was in the presidentials until February. So narratives about a falling asunder, Yeats poems etc. are overblown. Same goes for Le Pen with a lot of left-behind worker and conservative support, too, but in her case, I imagine her supporters would give her a parliamentary majority (unlike Mélenchon whose supporters have half a dozen other parties to pick).
Discussing the figures with City A.M. today. Michelle Dale, a senior manager at accountancy firm UHY Hacker Young, pointed out the fall is due to the extra red tape UK businesses must now comply with when exporting to the EU.
https://www.cityam.com/brexit-onslaught-deepens-as-a-third-of-all-uk-firms-exporting-to-eu-simply-vanish-due-to-red-tape-knockout/
"to appoint one Chancellor with suspect tax affairs is sloppy, to appoint two is a habit"
https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1513506829434818561
People discount Starmer at their peril. He is the ultimate anti-Tory in the current climate
41% unfavorable; net -11%
His Remoanerism haunts him
Starmer will fall flat on May 5th and fail to gain any London councils and then Labour poll ratings will slump again.
Whether he has a winning front bench team yet is open to question, and as yet there is no sign of a plan to deal with the manisfest problems facing the country. That's reasonable at the moment, as this is what all oppositions do, but they need to be ready for the scrutiny that comes with a general election. Not being Tories might keep the loyal members onside, but Labour need to reclaim the floating voters in the key seats. Correctly identify the problems, set out what the solutions are and work out fully costed ways to pay for it.
There's plenty of time for all that to happen, but that time will run out fast.
https://twitter.com/andersostlund/status/1513507515488776193
You won;t be able to see this
https://twitter.com/Dellboy29670181/status/1513467357410349060/photo/1
(And what have you got against the place? You seem to categorise it in the same way you do Wick.)
Or indeed Salmond - who has suffered an even more imposing collapse.
https://twitter.com/IngridaSimonyte/status/1513494605844647938
Today, my visit in Ukraine started in Borodyanka.
No words could possibly describe what I saw and felt here.
54% unfavourable net -29%
I’m just struggling to see how they can assume good faith on the part of the Russians after what has happened.
Which means no peace deal can be viable that doesn’t involve handing over several Russians for criminal trial and the odds of that are zero.
Which means we will be seeing more of these vile crimes against them.
https://twitter.com/BFMTV/status/1513503407918792710
A couple of decades later, he was running the council.
Zelenskyy is presumably smart enough to know the West aren't going to stay interested and sending vast amounts of expensive weapons forever. We're already getting a bit bored of it and it'll soon be time for Eurovision and Wimbledon.
Data without abstentions:
https://twitter.com/DanielYya/status/1513253491111776259
This won’t hurt him at all and being abused on the campaign trail can actually help sometimes as long as you handle it well .
It's why lying (blatantly) to the HoC was always the real issue for me.
I take it you haven't exported anything?
We kept up the NFZs in Iraq for over a decade without it being much in the news. *If* (and it is a big if) the Ukraine conflict becomes a bogged-down stalemate in the east of the country, it is perfectly feasible for it to continue for years. Sadly.
Also remember there will be pressures on Putin as well, esp. over the economy, and if the western consensus against him does not crumble.
Created by Dall-E2 - "A stunning photograph of a Pikachu wearing a cape, 8K HD, incredibly detailed"
https://twitter.com/Cybertroniss/status/1513473945550348295?s=20&t=uyjYyuVaeK-fRkIZx2zb4g
Only 35% of those registered voted though. Over 1.4 million are registered and just over 500,000 voted .
So there’s plenty of votes still to be had in that group .
On the night I was very worried as I noted the pile of votes for me building up, in the end I lost but by under 100, I did have a few moments that night wondering what I would do If I won? could I try to be a canceler while working in another country? or do I resign what was a dream job or resign form a council I had just been voted for.
few people have been as relived at loosing!! I think that the area had been written off by the party some time back and even as it changed, there was no campaign in the area, sometimes not even a 'paper candidate' I think I'm pretty shore it was properly companied in the next election and won by the conservatives.
Global productivity has declined in the West.
What growth has been delivered has been captured by the 1%.
This is even more the case in the UK, which since 2010 has fallen increasingly behind the growth vanguard, albeit masked by house price inflation which has kept a certain demographic happy.
In theory we should therefore have lots of fun “catch-up” to do, but that would require a serious re-examination of taboo topics around demography, planning and housing, regional development, infrastructure, consumption versus investment, brexit etc.
There are no easy answers, not least because inflation has now entered the mix.
Trans conversion therapy, channel 4 privatisation, walkabouts in kiev and even the chancellor’s tax status have nothing to do with the above.
In all seriousness, if the Brexit hassle continues, I wonder if Starmer will put "some form of Single Market membership" in his manifesto
It might be highly popular, but he'd have to get round the FoM problem
After that, though, you need to look at how FOM interacts with the UK’s welfare system (ie, badly - at least from an optics perspective).
I haven’t seen much think tank work on this, though perhaps I’m not looking in the right place.
Until Russia abandons their offensive, there is nothing to talk about.
"Today will probably be the last battle, as the ammunition is running out," an account belonging to the 36th marine brigade said on Facebook.
"It's death for some of us and captivity for the rest," it said.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said that tens of thousands of people had likely been killed in Mariupol.
The BBC has not verified the figure, but reports from the region and the refugees fleeing the city spoke of bodies lying in the streets and most buildings damaged or destroyed.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61068650
They really need to occupy some Russian territory for bargaining power, though.
Although I suspect in many cases, that is going to require the skills of the Reanimator.
Re your Starmer comment yes he should. I have posted before we should seek the closest relationship he can get without rejoining as that is not an option.
We'd better pray it is Putin.
Yes, can I have a monitor please? Sure, please allow 2 weeks so we can spend €lots to ship it to arrive #broken.
Or - radical idea - we stick to the agreed plan of local markets buy and configure kit locally with agreed standards on things like security software. What use is a mobile handset bought in Romania to the UK - we still need a UK contract. And laptops configured there? The whole point in local operation is so that we're not issued low power ThinkPads which throw a processor meltdown when trying to open a large spreadsheet taht some dickhead wants hosted on a server in Bucharest.
Fuxsake. Is the pub open yet?
Are the British still so anti-FoM? Immigration has dropped down the list of concerns.... We just don't know
There is no credible growth path for the UK outside the single market, absent perhaps joining NAFTA 2.0.
I suspect that Starmer will be cautious, and talk about a Trade and Cooperation Agreement with actual trade and cooperation in it. But if a coalition partner were to force the pace a bit more, I doubt he would object.
Could the humanitarian situation reach breaking point? Perhaps but outside of Mariupol I'm not sure that's where things are.
The Ukrainians don't seem keen to negotiate on much, certainly not territory, at this time. They are determined to win.
We'll see how this new offensive in the Donbass goes. That will determine much I guess.
Has the EU changed its stance? No.
Secondly, 'some form of SM membership' does not exist. If it did we would not be where we are. It is binary. There are members of SM and third countries. That's it.
Yes, the UK spent years helping to create something which in the end we didn't want to be in, and couldn't possibly be out.
Next question?
I reckon he would win it easily. He'd get all the Remainers plus quite a few softer Leavers. The problem is that the policy might screw his electoral chances in the Red Wall? But it would, on the other hand, be popular in Scotland and southern England
I'm not seeing what your "at some point", or @Dura_Ace 's "there is going have to be a negotiated settlement" actually means, other than that you want the war to stop.
Short of Ukraine surrendering, which would be national (and for a large number of individuals actual) suicide, that is entirely in Putin's hands.
Political parties are prone to that mistake- see both sides of the trans row, or onshore wind farms, or housebuilding...
Membership in a way but taking the boggymen away ( eg we control our budget contribution and immigration).
Of course these are quite radical ideas, but what else is an opposition for? Let's see some wild new proposals. Blue sky stuff. So far all I've seen from Labour is "more neighbourhood policing" FFS
They are pathetically timid. They have the Tory government on the ropes, befuddled by sleaze.
Time to swing some big punches