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It’s a 73% betting chance that Johnson will survive the year – politicalbetting.com
It’s a 73% betting chance that Johnson will survive the year – politicalbetting.com
I’d like this betting orchid because it is pretty straightforward and simply asked who will be Prime Minister on New Year’s Day 2023. As can be seen Johnson has made quite a recovery since earlier in the year when his position looked more doubtful.
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I make an election 10%. With at least a 40% chance of him coming out of it in Downing Street. Assuming he's still around.
T+H by one vote would be a dismal showing. And Boris is supposed to have a unique connection with the Red Wall. Doesn't he?
Evening all.
Champagne / prosecco stopper report.
I bought one of these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/AdHoc-FV35-Stopper-Champagne-Silicone/dp/B00C5SYN6W/
... because it adds less height to the bottle wrt fridge door space.
Seems to work well over 2-3 days - the bottle 'pops' when reopened. But un/re-corking only works a couple of times, and seems better done just the once. And no sharp edges.
The Labour leader has told allies he wants plans in place to ensure that his work rebuilding the party will not be at risk if he is suddenly forced to resign. He has promised to quit if Durham police find he broke lockdown rules when he had beer and curry with staff after a day campaigning in the local elections on April 30 last year.
He told friends: “I will not let this party become a basket case again. I will not let our hard-won gains be squandered so we will need to be ready in the unlikely event that the worst comes to the worst.”
It is understood he has since met a number of members of his shadow cabinet with leadership ambitions and has urged them to put campaign teams in place.
Wes Streeting and Lisa Nandy have made no secret of their ambitions and are believed to be among the candidates to have received Starmer’s endorsement.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/keir-starmer-prepares-for-the-worst-as-challengers-eye-up-his-job-36fqdzbhm
Blair and Brown available here. Well worth a watch.
It strikes me that Brown had the ideas but was unable or incapable of implementing them himself. Without a Blair I remain sceptical Labour would have ever won again.
What this documentary does pose is the idea that Labour cannot exist in the past, it must and only can win if it embodies the future.
Trying to install his mistress as his chief of staff? Massive ethical conflict of interest? Naah - who needs morals and ethics if you are the FLSOJ?
https://twitter.com/soniapurnell/status/1538155978075553792
No sign whatsoever that Starmer's Labour is talking the kind of language that wins power.
Smith of course, never got a try. But Starmer might.
I'm not sure.
Not saying we’ve time travelled to the 1970s but inflation is going through the roof, there’s a heatwave, Russia and the West are at loggerheads and *Kate Bush* is top of the charts
Add to this a probable tidal wave of public sector strike action, an energy crisis and ABBA playing to sell out crowds in London, and I think he may be on to something.
What other Seventies stuff are we hoping will make a comeback?
Now on my Amazon List!
Nicola Sturgeon is prepared to hold an ‘advisory referendum’ on Scottish independence in Autumn 2023 if the UK government refuses to grant an S30 order for an official referendum.
This will be.. fascinating
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10928491/ANDREW-NEIL-Julian-Assange-reckless-stupid-narcissist-not-extradited.html
Andrew Neil comes out in support of Assange.
Unionists boycotted it, resulting in 92% in favour of independence on a 43% turnout.
The consequence of this was... nothing. There was no UDI. Catalonia is still a part of Spain. And this despite the Spanish government behaving rather stupidly.
To me any leads that gets Labour to around 43% is basically hitting the ceiling. It is then the Tory vote that does the work. In a sense, Smith, Blair and Starmer have/would all do that (well maybe)
With the country preparing for rail strikes on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday which will see half the network shut down, the biggest teaching union, the National Education Union (NEU), told the Observer that unless it receives a pay offer much closer to inflation by Wednesday, it will be informing education secretary Nadhim Zahawi of its plan to ballot its 450,000 members. The move could lead to strikes in schools in England in the autumn, the union said.
Another flashpoint could come this week when millions of NHS workers up to senior nurse level receive their annual pay offer, which is expected to fall substantially short of inflation, currently running at 9.2%.
The country’s biggest union, Unison, representing NHS staff, said the government now faced a choice between offering a deal close to inflation or triggering a mass exodus of staff coupled with possible industrial action in hospitals, at a time when they are already hugely overburdened.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jun/18/strike-chaoes-teachers-nhs-staff-action-pay-rail-unions
In short: they're mad as Hell, and they're not going to take this anymore. Probably.
It's no wonder the Government is so desperate to talk down the rail strike. If the RMT successfully extracts a decent deal, the risk for ministers is that the entire state workforce will insist on being treated likewise (and be prepared to dig in until they get what they want.) That, amongst other things, will mean furious parents having to eat up their annual leave to do kiddie care, and the end of any immediate prospect of getting to grip with the vast NHS backlog.
A quick Google brings up an IFS report claiming that the public sector wage bill in 2018-19, inclusive of pension contributions, was £190bn. Increasing public sector pay by 10% across the board would therefore cost somewhere in the region of £20bn per annum, or about half the defence budget.
It's the reason for being of the SNP.
Who would Johnson appoint to this position if this happens in 2022?
(* as I write it is pissing down in the boondocks of the midlands)
Anyway, someone who knows stuff.
He was the difference between Labour getting 340-350 seats in 1997 and 410-420.
I'm still utterly amazed he managed to win that many. Extraordinary.
We must always aspire to more. We, can be more.
Possibility One: The Conservatives think they can win then.
Since they're behind now, and the economy will look even more shot by the autumn, they can only think that if they are at Berlin Bunker 1945 levels of delusion.
Possibility Two: The Conservatives know they will lose then.
Crazy, but hear me out. It means that a Coalition of Chaos has to do all the really painful stuff. The Conservatives would have a decent shot at winning in 2027. And a defeat in 2022 would be smaller than in 2024. And it might get rid of Boris. (Though Churchill didn't let defeats in 1945 and 1950 stop him.)
Possibility Three: It's noise to protect Big Dog.
Of course it's that.
In lots of ways I preferred John Smith to Tony Blair.
I know, I know. Anthony 'call me Tony' Blair had all that schmooooooze and coooool Britannia and he was telegenic and handsome and well spoken and smarmy and charmy and ... well you get where I'm coming from. Personally I always thought he was more style than substance. If you listen to his mellifluous speeches there's really no deep content behind them.
However, I do think he had a mostly fairly genuine Christian social democratic ethos and that ran through most of his policies, at least up until he went to war.
He was a great prime minister because he put Britain at ease ... and he could afford to largely thanks to inheriting the most fantastic economic conditions imaginable.
I'm waffling but I was never fond of Blair but I didn't hate him. Not like I hate Boris Johnson. What I particularly hate about Johnson is his shameless, grotesque, lack of principles. He cares about only one thing: himself. And he will sacrifice anyone or anything for his own end.
'SNP ministers forced to release Indyref2 legal advice'
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20193481.snp-ministers-forced-release-indyref2-legal-advice/
Aileen McHarg, professor of public law and human rights at Durham University, said that the UK government could legally block a referendum and that the Scottish government did not have the power to achieve independence unilaterally.
Now that is why Tony Blair is more of a man than Boris Johnson.
New Labour, new Britain, the party renewed, the country reborn. New Labour. New Britain.
http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=201
But it conspicuously does not cover whether government lawyers thought it would be legal to introduce Indyref2 legislation at Holyrood or hold a vote without Wesminster’s consent.
The Scottish Government has published legal advice related to a second independence referendum after being compelled under freedom of information law.
It shows that in 2020 ministers were told it would be legal to undertake policy development work on independence and ask the Electoral Commission to test the question on the ballot.
But it conspicuously does not cover whether government lawyers thought it would be legal to introduce Indyref2 legislation at Holyrood or hold a vote without Westminster’s consent.
“But it conspicuously does not cover whether government lawyers thought it would be legal to introduce Indyref2 legislation at Holyrood or hold a vote without Wesminster’s consent”
..which is exactly what we’d all want to know. Though I think a section 30 should be granted, in truth.
I believed this under Brown, I believed it under Ed, I believed it under Corbyn.
We must embrace and celebrate those years, the UK was good then. One day soon, we will get back to that.
A brilliant mind and a fine politician who posed the West Lothian question and held Margaret Thatcher to account over the sinking of the Belgrano.
As for the sinking of The General Belgrano, let us listen to the views of the head of the Argentinian Navy.
La Nación published a reader's letter from Admiral Enrique Molina Pico [es] (head of the Argentine Navy in the 1990s) in 2005 in which Molina Pico wrote that General Belgrano was part of an operation that posed a real threat to the British task force, but was holding off for tactical reasons.
Molina Pico added that "To leave the exclusion zone was not to leave the combat zone to enter a protected area". Molina Pico explicitly stated that the sinking was not a war crime, but a combat action
Blair was okay. A winner, certainly though as you yourself pointed out, John Smith would have won in 1997 anyway.
He won but like a lot of politicians without principle, he became waylaid. Lost in a Metropolitan self-belief which directly contributed to the most disastrous decision ever taken in this county's modern history: Brexit. And a man so consumed by his own hubris that he led us into an illegal war.
I marched against the war in Iraq and I'm proud that I did. It's called having principles. Something Blair lacked.
The United States will split. (yet again)
There will be a general election this year. (yet again)
Neither are going to happen.
When will the PB Bedwetters ever learn?
The public will respond "Not You".
Never trust someone who displays that little integrity in their private life as being fit for high office because those values carry over.
Rayner said explicitly in a recent radio interview that she would not run for either post if she had to resign. Because that would be taking the piss like Boris (I paraphrase slightly, but that was the gist).
At any cost.
I will remain cynical of politicians in power even if and when Labour are in government.
Probably a different one, but we would have had it all the same.
Sturgeon made all the right points at her presser. Her government has a direct mandate for this referendum. So go on campaign mode to secure it. The Tories attacking democracy. Your vote is worthless. Go at it in England. Make the Tories look like the duplicitous shits they are.
Because unless there is a Westminster-mandated referendum its all a waste of time. So make it politically a ball-ache to deny the will of the people.
Step forward Wes
We need a female leader. Anyway what's this ominous thing about team Starmer?
Mr Dalyell made the remarks in an interview with Vanity Fair magazine, identifying Lord Levy, Tony Blair's Middle East envoy, Peter Mandelson, whose father is Jewish, and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who has Jewish ancestry, the Daily Telegraph reported....
...Mr Dalyell told the newspaper said he believed the prime minister was also indirectly influenced by Jewish people in the Bush administration, including Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Ari Fleischer, the President's press secretary.
Mr Blair was "very sympathetic" to them, he said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2999219.stm
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/26/tam-dalyell-obituary
(Yes. He's still alive).
We should choose the best leader for the job, clearly that is Wes.
I’m a Reeves man, but wonder if Phillipson sneaks in in an open contest?
Am I to gather that despite thinking that the SG has a democratic mandate to hold a referendum that you would still boycott it?
He will go down in history as the man who saved this great party from extinction. Something nobody thought possible in 2019, he did it in three years.
And it doesn't really justify the adjective 'notorious' which is hyperbole.
But as I've called both Jeremy Corbyn and Ken Livingstone anti-Semites it's not a line I'd want to push.
I liked Tam's scrutiny of the Belgrano sinking, on which I'm sure he was largely correct. And the West Lothian question which was super pertinent and which has never been answered to this day.
A man of steadfastness and principle.
He was very bright and was once a great parliamentarian. Something we have lost.
It's the same bollocks the Trumpers and some extreme Brexiteers use when it comes demonising George Soros.
I'll put you down as someone who condones antisemitism.
Slightly sad pic
If you're coming out with stuff like this can you please at least give us a link? I'm assuming it's on twitter or instagram or Only Fans or Love island or some chap you bumped into the other day called Bernard.