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Is the FT right about Beergate giving Starmer a boost? – politicalbetting.com
Is the FT right about Beergate giving Starmer a boost? – politicalbetting.com
Perhaps the best analysis is in the Financial Times which notes under the heading – Keir Starmer’s gamble could be the making of him.
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So that is that sorted ...
And while I remember - "First!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZifWqG2413U
It's the principle though, even though the Hate Mail are making a desperate attempt to portray it negatively.
If and when the Sue Gray report appears this will pile pressure on Johnson.
Yesterday’s Redfield & Wilton poll suggests that the FT might be wrong. In an otherwise good finding for Labour (headline VI 39%), there is a worrying detail: an appalling drop in motivation among 2019 Labour voters.
Certain to Vote (5/5) - by 2019 GE vote
SNP 65%
Con 62%
LD 57%
Lab 46%
DNV 12%
That is a big reversal in voter motivation for Labour: they are usually in a good 2nd place in these types of questions, behind the SNP.
(Redfield & Wilton Strategies; 8 May; 2,000)
(On the other hand, R&W failed to find a single respondent saying they were planning on voting SLD. Very odd, considering that Alex Cole-Hamilton’s team did very well on Thursday. Subsamples, subsamples…)
On the drop in motivation, the LibDems and Greens had a better night than Labour. This should worry Starmer because it had been predicted that Starmer's determinedly non-committal centrism risked driving voters from red to yellow and green, which does seem to be what happened on Thursday.
Boo!
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/speech/2022/may/michael-saunders-speech-at-the-resolution-foundation-event
However since Starmer’s announcement, media seem to have lost interest in beergate a bit, it’s slipped right off the sky page already. The “will you resign if found to have broken the rules Mr Starmer” question the Labour leader would have heard all day everyday is no more, it’s expired and ceased to be. It is a dead parrot of a question, as in any suggestion of hypocrisy related with it.
The Tory line of attack so far appears to be “he’s bullying the police to avoid justice.”
By that definition, insisting you won’t resign regardless what the police do is the very opposite? Refusing to resign, and instead mention your success’s and work still to do, is kindly taking all the pressure off the police - just in case they have sleepless nights that doing their job appropriately and if rather routinely in these investigations, could somehow achieve the wrong result at the end of the day?
Have the mail and Tories no inkling how muddled and patronising to the public, not just the police, that attack line is? That patronising line alone, without any other story in politics right now, will shift the polls downward for the Tories.
It’s becoming clear, guilt under the more relaxed indoor restrictions at time of beergate - compared to time of cakegate - rests on being proved you socialised and didn’t work during and after. It’s not even on the labour team to prove they worked, it’s down to the investigation team to hold evidence of guilt in order to prosecute. What did the Tories and their media think all along would be the outcome of this investigation they pushed hard for, Labour was never going to get away with faking evidence of work that never happened - time stamps and call logs can help the police establish work did happen during and after - so rather like a LBW review in cricket, you don’t go through with rest of the rigmarole if given that answer early on.
It's the Mail who are largely responsible. The story was already out there and had circulated for months. The Daily Mail decided that, no, we didn't need to know there's a war on after all. So rather than whingeing about all the nasty attacks on Dear lovable Boris when we should be watching bombs rain down on Donbass, what we really had to get vexed about was a working beer & curry 12 months ago. Starmer was Arch Hypocrite etc. etc.
It's a sign of how nasty things are going to be in the build up to the General Election. The Hate Mail is spilling poison into everything they can lay their hands on, deliberately invoking culture wars and stoking up violence and hatred across the board.
Frankly I can't wait to emigrate from this mean-spirited and angry country.
"Emmanuel Macron calls for ‘new European political community’ – and Britain could join
French president seeks drastic EU reform but faces backlash from Eastern European nations which fear being treated as second-class citizens" (£)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/05/09/emmanuel-macron-calls-new-european-political-community-britain/
https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-24-april-2022/
2% is within the margin of error.
I like the idea very much.
Brexiteers will hate it but they're yesterday's men. Old gammons who are dying out.
This gives us a way back in some form. Except we will have lost all of our wonderful opt-outs which gave us such beneficial terms before.
I think the choice is likely between serious pain now, or greater, more intractable and persistent pain later.
So we'll opt for the latter.
If France is designing it, the terms are likely to be insufficiently attractive, though.
Though the UK would currently be quite well placed to significantly influence any plan, if we had a government which might consider the idea.
Odds on he escapes a fine on account of Durham police believing in treating people equally (unlike the Met).
In which case, this row will rumble on.
And evidently the Mail were right: there was enough information for the police to reopen the investigation. Many on here apparently would be perfectly happy for it not to be investigated. Which *might* be fine in this case. But I bet they'd be saying the same about more severe cases as well.
If Labour are in trouble over this, then it's their own fault. Not the Mail's.
I would loathe this kind of bile if it came from the Left. The vile hatred which spewed from Corbyn's camp was also appalling.
The Mail though is full of the kind of culture war ranting and raging which perpetuates violence to women, trans people, gays, immigrants, Meghan ... basically anyone who isn't a rabid white xenophobe.
So nice try JJ but wrong.
It's the sort of crap that people used to spout 50 yrs ago before they left these shores.
On almost every measure in public opinion we are a deeply divided and unhappy nation, with a health service so on its knees that you'd better just pray you never get ill and a spiralling mental health crisis with, literally, millions on the waiting lists.
Anyone hear the story start to unravel?
I think Keir has played this well, it seems like he’s found some energy and insight. If he’s exonerated I think we must not dismiss a Labour landslide
No, it's the bile which is vomited across the Mail day after day. Just vile culture war rants of the most obscene reactionary and downright nasty nature.
It's a hideous paper that represents a nasty right wing old male demographic, who aren't without representation on this board.
And I intend to do so.
I just get vexed by the hatred which is being spread. This was a decent country once. It certainly isn't now.
The chumocracy / clique of right wing outrider journalists and proprietors blurring with the Johnson administration is also eye opening. Favours for favours. You want channel4 and a weaker BBC, no problem!
That's now reached the ripe madness of The Mail carping about hypocrisy in a fairly hypocritical way.
For all its many faults, Britain remains a good place to live. It's not just kin that keeps me here.
They look pretty convincing to me, I am sure they will be leaking soon.
Did Starmer really stay in the spirit of the law ? Exactly like tax avoiders don't. Did parliament including him really frame the law wanting 30 plus people having a beer and curry? Nah ! He is the equivalent of a legal but not in the spirit of the law tax avoider by doing what he did
I have said in my view there is nothing to this, I still think that, although labour have handled it poorly. Given the police here are unlikely to issue an FPN even if he is found to have breached the laws at the time starmer is on pretty safe ground.
The local councillor who complained to the Police about this is nothing to do with Breitbart or the Far Right.
The problem here is the law, which was poorly framed and incompetently defined. What is 'work' ? I'd argue people getting pi**ed is not 'work' - or at least it should not be.
IMV your view on the Mail says ore about you than it does the Mail.
“Outrage at TV nudity, pictures on page 4, 6 & 8.” delivers for the prude, the prurient and everyone in between.
Wordle 325 3/6
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It's virtually impossible to discern how this will end up. You *hope* the Tories are in trouble over this.
Potential outcomes range from Boris and Rishi out of No. 10; a new GE; no-one out; Starmer out; Rayner and Starmer out, etc, etc. Or any combination of the above, along with stuff I haven't mentioned.
I've got no idea which it'll be, and I won't lose any sleep over any of them.
Meanwhile if the law was bad or draconian, the fault lies with the government.
And the law has to apply equally to all sides. If one sides gets 'done' by the law, it's fine to say : "What about this thing you did?"
In fact, I’d argue we are maybe a bit too complacent, especially in the face of a government that very clearly has no regard for our established Parliamentary democracy or the rule of law. We are the country of “mustn’t grumble” and “it could be worse”. That gives chancers and rogues like the current PM all the scope they need to do their worst.
It would be nice to think that Starmer and Rayner doing what they’ve done might shine more of a contrasting light on Downing Street, but I doubt it.
I can ask my family friend but I don’t think they’ll be willing to share the documents themselves. If they even have them, I haven’t asked.
What I will say is that Starmer would not have made this decision without having evidence prior (and that was already turned over to the Police), without being very confident.
I probably shouldn’t say too much more - will keep you in the loop
But the hate for the Mail from leftists is hilarious. Especially people who call it the 'Heil'.
(It'd be interesting to write a spider to crawl over PB's archive and see which newspapers or sites are most linked to, and how it changes over time. I guess Twitter might be first, then YouTube. Perhaps the Guardian as the 'top' newspaper?)
Weird how Johnson never got one
I am no Starmer fan, and won't be voting Labour next GE. If I were in a winnable marginal then maybe. There is a sizeable LD and Green vote, and probably half will not be squeezable, and the other half willing to tactically vote.
But your attempt to suggest that Starmer has no 'responsibility' for a law he voted for is laughable. Particularly as LOTO, he has the ability to whip his side *not* to vote for the law, or to get amendments put into it.
And to be fair to both Starmer and the government, we were in a crisis. Things had to be done in a hurry. An interesting question is whether this law was actually needed. Was it an unnecessary stick?
Take a look at today's front page and justify it.
As for the allegation itself, Labour's statement about the evidence they'll submit would seem to have shot that down, too.
This is an actual headline from today’s Mail, accompanied of course by nine photographs of a naked woman barely covering her modesty.
A bit tongue in cheek, but it is categorically not a defence to ask 'What about this thing you did?' The two investigations are separate and should have nothing to do with each other. Durham police have received new information and Labour have submitted a dossier in rebuttal. Durham Police will decide if they think this gathering broke the law. If they do, then Starmer will resign.
Assuming Starmer can satisfy Durham police, who, after Cummings, seem to take a fairly relaxed view of these things, then the pressure will be on older Tory members in the shires.
And, IMHO anyway, they in danger of making themselves ridiculous by saying that Starmer is making life difficult for the police.
If we celebrated the good bits a little more, we would all be better off. Sadly it doesn’t sell, because the darker aspects of human nature that rags like the Mail tap into are potent.
“Police told to investigate Labour lies”
Followed by this opening paragraph:
“Cabinet ministers last night joined calls for a new probe into the ‘Beergate’ scandal engulfing Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner.”
The Mail believes its readers are easily manipulated, not very bright and devoid of short-term memory. It seems to be a winning formula!
I’m going to take a guess that it was a few rebellious students, a few weddings that just added the fine to the cost, a handful of high-profile cases such as Kay Burley and the singer who had birthday parties - and the rest are the politically-motivated complaints in the news at the moment.
Yes, with hindsight the law as written was probably not brilliant, but I have a lot of sympathy with those working in the legislature and government departments during the pandemic, who were genuinely trying to do the right thing.
I know Vladimir Putin hates Britain with a passion now because of our ardent support of Ukraine, but what reason would you have to despise Britain so much that you'd think there are a hundred better countries to live in?
Politics. Sigh….
https://uk.trem.media/politics/2022/may/09/revealed-student-ivo-delingpole-james-breitbart-beergate-video-that-threatens-to-sink-starmer
If the Opposition are voting for the Governments measures without amendment then either they're abdicating their own responsibility or they're endorsing what the Government is doing.
It isn't just hindsight, many were criticising Starmer at the time for not scrutinising the Government over this legislation.
The latter was also April 2021.