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Polling matters – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited November 2022 in General
imagePolling matters – politicalbetting.com

Looking at the regular Smarkets next poll lead market I have to say that given the political landscape and increasing food, mortgages, and energy bills then the Tory polling is likely to remain in the toilet even though I’m expecting a modest Sunak polling boost simply because he’s not Liz Truss nor Boris Johnson.

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Comments

  • FPT
    ping said:

    Listening to Faisal Islam on the BBC’s newscast - he had this fascinating and (I think) disturbing nugget;

    “By all accounts (Sunak at the treasury during the pandemic) it was, not quite minority report, but like, big screens of all the policy options and all the other countries policy options… Germany had done this on their version of the furlough scheme, or France had done that, and he would want to make sure that he could say we’ve done the most in Europe … so you just had to look at what the G7 record was and then you could say, well, he’s going to go to 80%, because it’s higher than 77%”

    ~20mins in;

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0d98v2t

    That’s absurd policy making

    That's called benchmarking.
  • pingping Posts: 3,724
    edited October 2022

    FPT

    ping said:

    Listening to Faisal Islam on the BBC’s newscast - he had this fascinating and (I think) disturbing nugget;

    “By all accounts (Sunak at the treasury during the pandemic) it was, not quite minority report, but like, big screens of all the policy options and all the other countries policy options… Germany had done this on their version of the furlough scheme, or France had done that, and he would want to make sure that he could say we’ve done the most in Europe … so you just had to look at what the G7 record was and then you could say, well, he’s going to go to 80%, because it’s higher than 77%”

    ~20mins in;

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0d98v2t

    That’s absurd policy making

    That's called benchmarking.
    It’s bullshit benchmarking. We handed him the grandkids credit card and he maxed out the credit limit to keep up with the Joneses?

    That’s our bloody national debt that he’s ramped up, just so he can gain some stupid imaginary brexit points.

    And now the country must pay for his idiocy, with higher mortgage rates, tax increases, and spending cuts?

    I don’t buy the fiscally dry, sound money persona he’s trying to portray. It was him spaffing cash up the wall that is the primary reason we’re now in one hell of a fiscal mess.

    Why should we suffer for his sins?

    I’m amazed that the otherwise sensible, sound money PB tories are falling for his guff.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096

    Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

    Boris Johnson was begging for votes over the weekend in a “demeaning” attempt to return to Downing Street, according to Sir Iain Duncan Smith.

    He said that Johnson had returned from his Caribbean holiday expecting at least 150 MPs to back him. “Boris was completely unexpectedly having to do this. He made no plans. He had no team,” said Duncan Smith.

    He told LBC that Johnson found himself “struggling and begging people for votes. That was demeaning, really.”


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/demeaned-boris-johnson-was-begging-for-votes-says-senior-tory-7vf70jft2

    Good morning all.

    The demise of Boris Johnson through this has been wonderful.

    He has been made to look a complete fool.

    For all who care for justice, or think there's something in karma, it has been glorious to behold.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,009
    I think Sunak may be forced to spend more on defence whether he likes it or not.

    His selection of Foreign Secretary will be a very important choice.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    In positive news, Ukraine is doing well in Kherson, as the Russians there evacuate themselves. The enemy also appears to have stopped with the khamikhazi drones, having run out of them.

    Hopefully, the new PM can be a lot more unequivocal in his support, than he was over the summer.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,342
    Agree. But there is a fascinating question, only to be guessed about at this moment.

    In 1992 the Tories lost their reputation and nothing from 1992-1997 stopped them being thrown out in a landslide, despite having a fairly decent team trying to repair things.

    Do things happen faster now? It it thinkable that in two years the Tories do the impossible and prevent a Labour victory. The 1990s feel like a vanished age now.

    Rishi could, and should, construct a team, centrist and moderate, that appears more capable than Labour's. In particular the shadow CoE is not formidable in the sense that Brown or Darling were. This is a weakness.

    Results other than a Labour led government next time could become thinkable. Bet accordingly.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226
    Sandpit said:

    A sad day, for both the country and the Conservative party.

    The opportunity of the UK being a uniquely dynamic and innovative country, passed up by the MPs over the heads of the party membership, in favour of tax-rising, big-spending, globalist, authoritarian manegerialism, run by someone with no empathy for the average person.

    Indeed. Increasing personal taxation into a recession… hmmm. But I must take my own advice and give him a chance. He may yet surprise me and take a knife to spending. I and many others are also very nervous indeed he’s soft on Russia. Just the very impression that he is, changes the risk calculus for Ukraine.

  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096
    algarkirk said:



    Do things happen faster now? It it thinkable that in two years the Tories do the impossible and prevent a Labour victory. .

    No and no it isn't.

    It's fantasy pure and simple.

    The Conservatives will lose the next General Election heavily. You don't come back from a polling sea-change like this, compounded by a dire economic outlook compared to the aforementioned 1992-7.

    Anyone taking your advice and betting accordingly is throwing away their money.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 6,760
    ping said:

    FPT

    ping said:

    Listening to Faisal Islam on the BBC’s newscast - he had this fascinating and (I think) disturbing nugget;

    “By all accounts (Sunak at the treasury during the pandemic) it was, not quite minority report, but like, big screens of all the policy options and all the other countries policy options… Germany had done this on their version of the furlough scheme, or France had done that, and he would want to make sure that he could say we’ve done the most in Europe … so you just had to look at what the G7 record was and then you could say, well, he’s going to go to 80%, because it’s higher than 77%”

    ~20mins in;

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0d98v2t

    That’s absurd policy making

    That's called benchmarking.
    It’s bullshit benchmarking. We handed him the grandkids credit card and he maxed out the credit limit to keep up with the Joneses?

    That’s our bloody national debt that he’s ramped up, just so he can gain some stupid imaginary brexit points.

    And now the country must pay for his idiocy, with higher mortgage rates, tax increases, and spending cuts?

    I don’t buy the fiscally dry, sound money persona he’s trying to portray. It was him spaffing cash up the wall that is the primary reason we’re now in one hell of a fiscal mess.

    Why should we suffer for his sins?

    I’m amazed that the otherwise sensible, sound money PB tories are falling for his guff.
    Politicians were ever thus.

    Not everyone is as continent as Goderich (I think) who famously left more in the Treasury when he left than was there when he arrived.

    People were flailing around looking to deal with an unproblematic of unknown magnitude. He was being criticised for being less generous than X or Y, or for not doing something that Germany or Italy had done. So of course he benchmarked. It’s just a human reaction to incentives.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096
    It has been interesting to see the reaction from red wall Conservatives.

    I hadn't fully appreciated their love for Boris and their sense of embittered rage at what has happened. For some reason, probably partly racist, they have it in for Rishi as the architect of Boris Johnson's downfall.

    Of course, the real architect of Boris Johnson's downfall was Boris Johnson. A deeply, painfully, flawed individual who has got his comeuppance.

    But I don't see the red wall warming to Rishi I'm afraid. They won't come back to vote for him.

    So I think Labour leads in the 20%+ range to start with, perhaps possibly a 15%. And then as things start to bite through the winter, Labour will regularly be back up to 25%+

    They are going to win a landslide. Nothing now will change it.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 6,760
    algarkirk said:

    Agree. But there is a fascinating question, only to be guessed about at this moment.

    In 1992 the Tories lost their reputation and nothing from 1992-1997 stopped them being thrown out in a landslide, despite having a fairly decent team trying to repair things.

    Do things happen faster now? It it thinkable that in two years the Tories do the impossible and prevent a Labour victory. The 1990s feel like a vanished age now.

    Rishi could, and should, construct a team, centrist and moderate, that appears more capable than Labour's. In particular the shadow CoE is not formidable in the sense that Brown or Darling were. This is a weakness.

    Results other than a Labour led government next time could become thinkable. Bet accordingly.

    If I had bet on a Labour government I’d take profit at this point. It’s unlikely to get b tree for them

  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,571
    Sandpit said:

    A sad day, for both the country and the Conservative party.

    The opportunity of the UK being a uniquely dynamic and innovative country, passed up by the MPs over the heads of the party membership, in favour of tax-rising, big-spending, globalist, authoritarian manegerialism, run by someone with no empathy for the average person.

    Which of all the parade of would be, and actual Tory leaders might have led us to this imaginary nirvana ?
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096

    algarkirk said:

    Agree. But there is a fascinating question, only to be guessed about at this moment.

    In 1992 the Tories lost their reputation and nothing from 1992-1997 stopped them being thrown out in a landslide, despite having a fairly decent team trying to repair things.

    Do things happen faster now? It it thinkable that in two years the Tories do the impossible and prevent a Labour victory. The 1990s feel like a vanished age now.

    Rishi could, and should, construct a team, centrist and moderate, that appears more capable than Labour's. In particular the shadow CoE is not formidable in the sense that Brown or Darling were. This is a weakness.

    Results other than a Labour led government next time could become thinkable. Bet accordingly.

    If I had bet on a Labour government I’d take profit at this point. It’s unlikely to get b tree for them

    But you are a right-wing tory and, forgive me for saying, unable therefore to be objective.

    No party comes back from this polling debacle. Never has. Never will. Period.

    They blew it. Lost the confidence of the British people.

    If you want to bet on a Conservative Party victory of any sort you need to wait 15 years.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,009
    I've read Roadmap 2030:

    https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/india-uk-virtual-summit-may-2021-roadmap-2030-for-a-comprehensive-strategic-partnership/2030-roadmap-for-india-uk-future-relations

    Sounds good but looks like a lot of words for something that's actually quite thin on substance, and Modi seems more interested in Britain-bashing than making progress on it.

    In so far as he's interested in anything it's making migration much easier into the UK, and that's likely to be contentious, so I don't expect this deal to go very far.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096
    Nigelb said:

    Sandpit said:

    A sad day, for both the country and the Conservative party.

    The opportunity of the UK being a uniquely dynamic and innovative country, passed up by the MPs over the heads of the party membership, in favour of tax-rising, big-spending, globalist, authoritarian manegerialism, run by someone with no empathy for the average person.

    Which of all the parade of would be, and actual Tory leaders might have led us to this imaginary nirvana ?
    I don't think Conservatives supporters are capable at the moment of any rational, objective, analysis.

    They are running around in bewildered shock grasping at any wild straw they can find.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746
    Sandpit said:

    A sad day, for both the country and the Conservative party.

    The opportunity of the UK being a uniquely dynamic and innovative country, passed up by the MPs over the heads of the party membership, in favour of tax-rising, big-spending, globalist, authoritarian manegerialism, run by someone with no empathy for the average person.

    This our fate, I am not sure there was any other way. It was the inevitable reaction to the failure and incompetence of Liz Truss.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,009
    Sandpit said:

    A sad day, for both the country and the Conservative party.

    The opportunity of the UK being a uniquely dynamic and innovative country, passed up by the MPs over the heads of the party membership, in favour of tax-rising, big-spending, globalist, authoritarian manegerialism, run by someone with no empathy for the average person.

    You actually believe this?

    Have you read his speech?

    He's a traditional conservative who's thought intelligently about how best the free market can be set up to deliver prosperity in the 21st C:

    https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/chancellor-rishi-sunaks-mais-lecture-2022
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226
    Heathener said:

    It has been interesting to see the reaction from red wall Conservatives.

    I hadn't fully appreciated their love for Boris and their sense of embittered rage at what has happened. For some reason, probably partly racist, they have it in for Rishi as the architect of Boris Johnson's downfall.

    Of course, the real architect of Boris Johnson's downfall was Boris Johnson. A deeply, painfully, flawed individual who has got his comeuppance.

    But I don't see the red wall warming to Rishi I'm afraid. They won't come back to vote for him.

    So I think Labour leads in the 20%+ range to start with, perhaps possibly a 15%. And then as things start to bite through the winter, Labour will regularly be back up to 25%+

    They are going to win a landslide. Nothing now will change it.

    Perhaps you clever folks can piece it together for me. But as far as I see, Rishi largely shores up the blue wall in the south and midlands, from both labour and the Lib Dems, with perhaps the loss of a handful of seats to the yellows in their traditional hunting grounds and the reds on the coast.

    Scotland stays SNP.

    And before we start, the boundary review tips what was a majority of 80 to 100-110.

    Now don’t get me wrong, it’s increasingly hard to see how Sunak wins a majority or is even largest party. But do we really think the map is set up for Starmer to win “a landslide”? How? I don’t think many of believe Labour will carry a 25 point poll lead on the day.

  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746

    I think Sunak may be forced to spend more on defence whether he likes it or not.

    His selection of Foreign Secretary will be a very important choice.

    The reality is that if he abandons Ukraine then that is his authority in the party completely gone. Boris will also try and cast himself as Winston Churchill, waiting in the wings about to ride to the rescue. It will be one of the constraints that Sunak is operating under, and he will be well aware of that.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096
    moonshine said:

    Heathener said:

    It has been interesting to see the reaction from red wall Conservatives.

    I hadn't fully appreciated their love for Boris and their sense of embittered rage at what has happened. For some reason, probably partly racist, they have it in for Rishi as the architect of Boris Johnson's downfall.

    Of course, the real architect of Boris Johnson's downfall was Boris Johnson. A deeply, painfully, flawed individual who has got his comeuppance.

    But I don't see the red wall warming to Rishi I'm afraid. They won't come back to vote for him.

    So I think Labour leads in the 20%+ range to start with, perhaps possibly a 15%. And then as things start to bite through the winter, Labour will regularly be back up to 25%+

    They are going to win a landslide. Nothing now will change it.

    Perhaps you clever folks can piece it together for me. But as far as I see, Rishi largely shores up the blue wall in the south and midlands, from both labour and the Lib Dems, with perhaps the loss of a handful of seats to the yellows in their traditional hunting grounds and the reds on the coast.

    Scotland stays SNP.

    And before we start, the boundary review tips what was a majority of 80 to 100-110.

    Now don’t get me wrong, it’s increasingly hard to see how Sunak wins a majority or is even largest party. But do we really think the map is set up for Starmer to win “a landslide”? How? I don’t think many of believe Labour will carry a 25 point poll lead on the day.

    For a start I'm not convinced how much of the blue wall Rishi will be able to win back now. The tide turned. Keir Starmer did a very good job in detoxifying Labour and making them appealing again to middle classes. But as someone also pointed out on here yesterday, there is a serious financial squeeze down south. I mean REALLY serious. There is simply no way that Rishi fixes that in 2 years and much of the blame, whether consciously or subconsciously will be put on the Conservatives.

    As for the red wall, it won't come back to Rishi. In fact it could be even worse for him than Liz Truss.

    Labour will do relatively well in Scotland.

    Labour victory is nailed on. Landslide probable.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096
    darkage said:

    I think Sunak may be forced to spend more on defence whether he likes it or not.

    His selection of Foreign Secretary will be a very important choice.

    The reality is that if he abandons Ukraine then that is his authority in the party completely gone.
    Unless Putin nukes then Ukraine will have virtually nil impact on voting in the next General Election.

    You may lament it but it's a fact.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096
    edited October 2022
    Personally I'm relaxed and happy to let Rishi get on with stabilising things for now.

    However, I strongly suspect the Right are soon going to begin agitating. I wouldn't be surprised to see the return of Nigel Farage to the political fray and others of his type garnering significant support, especially in the red wall seats.

    It's just another factor about the Conservative Party problems for the next GE. Sunak's cabinet may look inclusive after today but the discontent from the right is only going to grow. They bet on Liz Truss, who was useless, and they have lost big time through all of this. But they're not going away.

    Heck, it's taken less than 12 hours for right-wingers on here to start venting: taxes, Ukraine, spending, authoritarianism, managerialism etc etc.

    There is fury on the right and, disappointingly, it's already breaking out.
  • philiphphiliph Posts: 4,704
    Heathener said:

    darkage said:

    I think Sunak may be forced to spend more on defence whether he likes it or not.

    His selection of Foreign Secretary will be a very important choice.

    The reality is that if he abandons Ukraine then that is his authority in the party completely gone.
    Unless Putin nukes then Ukraine will have virtually nil impact on voting in the next General Election.

    You may lament it but it's a fact.
    Unless or until?
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    darkage said:

    I think Sunak may be forced to spend more on defence whether he likes it or not.

    His selection of Foreign Secretary will be a very important choice.

    The reality is that if he abandons Ukraine then that is his authority in the party completely gone.
    It's Biden's war. He is he one that is pouring $2bn/month into it. Anything Sunak does or doesn't do about it is of marginal moment.

    Does Ukraine policy move votes much one war or the other? Dunno.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    Heathener said:

    darkage said:

    I think Sunak may be forced to spend more on defence whether he likes it or not.

    His selection of Foreign Secretary will be a very important choice.

    The reality is that if he abandons Ukraine then that is his authority in the party completely gone.
    Unless Putin nukes then Ukraine will have virtually nil impact on voting in the next General Election.

    You may lament it but it's a fact.
    Only because, at the moment, Labour under Starmer looks as though it is as pro-Ukraine as the government. If that was to change by either party, or the country's sentiment change to be more anti-Ukraine, then Ukraine may well have more of an impact at a GE.

    It is why, despite people like Putin'sGuy and Dura_Ace, we should continue to highlight the evils that Russia is doing - and the threats a state that can do such things poses to us and the world. Ukraine is fighting this war for us - instead of NATO protecting them, they are protecting NATO.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096

    Heathener said:

    algarkirk said:

    Agree. But there is a fascinating question, only to be guessed about at this moment.

    In 1992 the Tories lost their reputation and nothing from 1992-1997 stopped them being thrown out in a landslide, despite having a fairly decent team trying to repair things.

    Do things happen faster now? It it thinkable that in two years the Tories do the impossible and prevent a Labour victory. The 1990s feel like a vanished age now.

    Rishi could, and should, construct a team, centrist and moderate, that appears more capable than Labour's. In particular the shadow CoE is not formidable in the sense that Brown or Darling were. This is a weakness.

    Results other than a Labour led government next time could become thinkable. Bet accordingly.

    If I had bet on a Labour government I’d take profit at this point. It’s unlikely to get b tree for them

    But you are a right-wing tory and, forgive me for saying, unable therefore to be objective.

    No party comes back from this polling debacle. Never has. Never will. Period.

    They blew it. Lost the confidence of the British people.


    If you want to bet on a Conservative Party victory of any sort you need to wait 15 years.
    The polling move was so fast and violent that it strikes me as shallow.


    Black Wednesday. 1992-7. It happens. Fast, violent, visceral, palpable, real, and long-lasting.

    The tories are in for a shellacking next time and will then be out of power for at least a decade.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 6,760
    darkage said:

    I think Sunak may be forced to spend more on defence whether he likes it or not.

    His selection of Foreign Secretary will be a very important choice.

    The reality is that if he abandons Ukraine then that is his authority in the party completely gone. Boris will also try and cast himself as Winston Churchill, waiting in the wings about to ride to the rescue. It will be one of the constraints that Sunak is operating under, and he will be well aware of that.
    All this Sunak anti-Ukraine nonsense is simply because he asked Wallace to justify his proposed increase run the defence budget allocation in 2030

  • Sandpit said:

    A sad day, for both the country and the Conservative party.

    The opportunity of the UK being a uniquely dynamic and innovative country, passed up by the MPs over the heads of the party membership, in favour of tax-rising, big-spending, globalist, authoritarian manegerialism, run by someone with no empathy for the average person.

    So how should the UK have gone on selling its debt, when the people buying its debt said "you're nuts" and refused to buy?

    You're calling the world's bankers, financiers, investors "globalist" - you missed off the inevitable word "elite". Its classic pig-headed English exceptionalism. Essentially, "don't you know who we are?"

    They do know who we are. And that's why Truss lasted 50 days in office. "Over the heads of the party membership" - yes, we should have gone back to the market and the IMF and said "look here, you need to do what we say because the Tory Party membership demand it."

    One of your more bonkers posts, unless it was hugely high sarcasm which flew over my head...
  • JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,901
    edited October 2022
    Two years is a long time. Anything can happen IMO.

    On the plus side for the Tories they have a big seat advantage from 2019. Labour needs an enormous swing to get to a minority position.

    On the negative side, the Tories have done (and have been seen to have done) unprecedented damage, remain seriously split and a confident, effective opposition have been successfully setting the agenda since the pandemic.

    It will be interesting too see what happens.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746
    Dura_Ace said:

    darkage said:

    I think Sunak may be forced to spend more on defence whether he likes it or not.

    His selection of Foreign Secretary will be a very important choice.

    The reality is that if he abandons Ukraine then that is his authority in the party completely gone.
    It's Biden's war. He is he one that is pouring $2bn/month into it. Anything Sunak does or doesn't do about it is of marginal moment.

    Does Ukraine policy move votes much one war or the other? Dunno.
    It is a Conservative party issue. He would have a massive rebellion. Johnson, Wallace, all the military types. Straight back in to chaos and letters going in to Brady etc.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746

    darkage said:

    I think Sunak may be forced to spend more on defence whether he likes it or not.

    His selection of Foreign Secretary will be a very important choice.

    The reality is that if he abandons Ukraine then that is his authority in the party completely gone. Boris will also try and cast himself as Winston Churchill, waiting in the wings about to ride to the rescue. It will be one of the constraints that Sunak is operating under, and he will be well aware of that.
    All this Sunak anti-Ukraine nonsense is simply because he asked Wallace to justify his proposed increase run the defence budget allocation in 2030

    Yeah thats the other way of looking at it. He was chancellor, doing his job.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 6,760
    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    algarkirk said:

    Agree. But there is a fascinating question, only to be guessed about at this moment.

    In 1992 the Tories lost their reputation and nothing from 1992-1997 stopped them being thrown out in a landslide, despite having a fairly decent team trying to repair things.

    Do things happen faster now? It it thinkable that in two years the Tories do the impossible and prevent a Labour victory. The 1990s feel like a vanished age now.

    Rishi could, and should, construct a team, centrist and moderate, that appears more capable than Labour's. In particular the shadow CoE is not formidable in the sense that Brown or Darling were. This is a weakness.

    Results other than a Labour led government next time could become thinkable. Bet accordingly.

    If I had bet on a Labour government I’d take profit at this point. It’s unlikely to get b tree for them

    But you are a right-wing tory and, forgive me for saying, unable therefore to be objective.

    No party comes back from this polling debacle. Never has. Never will. Period.

    They blew it. Lost the confidence of the British people.


    If you want to bet on a Conservative Party victory of any sort you need to wait 15 years.
    The polling move was so fast and violent that it strikes me as shallow.


    Black Wednesday. 1992-7. It happens. Fast, violent, visceral, palpable, real, and long-lasting.

    The tories are in for a shellacking next time and will then be out of power for at least a decade.
    Black Wednesday was a failure of the centre piece of the government’s economic policy.

    Liz Truss’s budget was cackhanded political management of some relatively minor tax changes (rolling back to pre Sunak’s round of increases) plus the iconic 45p rate.

    Far more serious for the Tories is the fact that the interest rate moves - which were happening anyway - have been successfully pinned on them. Unfair, but them’s the breaks. If they govern sensibly then they will win some voters back. But probably not enough.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    edited October 2022
    I don't know if this has already been covered, but Bellingcat claims to have found the Russian team responsible for programming targets for Russia's missiles.

    It isn't exactly a militarily responsive system, which might explain why the targets are mostly civilian and fixed infrastructure.

    "Due to the complexity of interactions between the various inputs for the flight path and course adjustment, each missile’s flight path requires customised, individual planning. According to one of the members of the GVC team who agreed to answer questions on condition of anonymity, the pre-flight planning requires simulation of the complete flight path from launch site to target. The resulting flight path plan as well as the algorithm for course adjustments based on various inputs is loaded by the programmers onto a ruggedized memory stick, which is then passed on to the launch location and inserted into the missile."

    https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2022/10/24/the-remote-control-killers-behind-russias-cruise-missile-strikes-on-ukraine/

    I wonder how this compares to our (or the US's) planning and control system for cruise and ballistic missiles?
  • Heathener said:

    It has been interesting to see the reaction from red wall Conservatives.

    I hadn't fully appreciated their love for Boris and their sense of embittered rage at what has happened. For some reason, probably partly racist, they have it in for Rishi as the architect of Boris Johnson's downfall.

    Of course, the real architect of Boris Johnson's downfall was Boris Johnson. A deeply, painfully, flawed individual who has got his comeuppance.

    But I don't see the red wall warming to Rishi I'm afraid. They won't come back to vote for him.

    So I think Labour leads in the 20%+ range to start with, perhaps possibly a 15%. And then as things start to bite through the winter, Labour will regularly be back up to 25%+

    They are going to win a landslide. Nothing now will change it.

    We can likely split 2019 Red Wall Tories into 3 groups:
    1. The "where's our money" voters. They voted for Brexit and then Boris because they live in a shit town with no opportunities. They believed the guff about money for the NHS and then levelling up and have been increasingly appalled to find they were sold a ticket to El Dorado. Heading back to Labour at high speed
    2. The "Boris or Bust" voters. 6 years of Stockholm Syndrome have them genuinely believing that only Boris and Brexit will bring the things they want. Will vote for REFUK.
    3. The "Waste of Time" voters who never vote usually. They voted for the first time in ages/ever for Brexit, skipped 2017 and then voted Tory in 2019 to Get Brexit Done. They are gone, back into the do not vote tally.

    Any way you look at it, almost all the 2019 Tory surge vote is gone. I believed that Sunak honestly did want to level up. But there is not only no money for that now, he will be forced to level these areas down...
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226

    darkage said:

    I think Sunak may be forced to spend more on defence whether he likes it or not.

    His selection of Foreign Secretary will be a very important choice.

    The reality is that if he abandons Ukraine then that is his authority in the party completely gone. Boris will also try and cast himself as Winston Churchill, waiting in the wings about to ride to the rescue. It will be one of the constraints that Sunak is operating under, and he will be well aware of that.
    All this Sunak anti-Ukraine nonsense is simply because he asked Wallace to justify his proposed increase run the defence budget allocation in 2030

    I imagine Sunak could do much to unite his MPs by flying to Ukraine to announce a new military aid package. Not just tweaking sanctions, things that go bang in order to kill Russians and keep Ukrainians alive.

    Up-thread it was commented that Biden is the only one who matters. This is not so. Biden does not operate in a vacuum. In a European war it’s of paramount importance that the European powers continue to strongly push an interventionist narrative, if they want the US president to have the political space to continue with direct or indirect interventionism.

    Should the West blink now we invite far more risk, economic damage and death in the future.

  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,274
    edited October 2022
    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    algarkirk said:

    Agree. But there is a fascinating question, only to be guessed about at this moment.

    In 1992 the Tories lost their reputation and nothing from 1992-1997 stopped them being thrown out in a landslide, despite having a fairly decent team trying to repair things.

    Do things happen faster now? It it thinkable that in two years the Tories do the impossible and prevent a Labour victory. The 1990s feel like a vanished age now.

    Rishi could, and should, construct a team, centrist and moderate, that appears more capable than Labour's. In particular the shadow CoE is not formidable in the sense that Brown or Darling were. This is a weakness.

    Results other than a Labour led government next time could become thinkable. Bet accordingly.

    If I had bet on a Labour government I’d take profit at this point. It’s unlikely to get b tree for them

    But you are a right-wing tory and, forgive me for saying, unable therefore to be objective.

    No party comes back from this polling debacle. Never has. Never will. Period.

    They blew it. Lost the confidence of the British people.


    If you want to bet on a Conservative Party victory of any sort you need to wait 15 years.
    The polling move was so fast and violent that it strikes me as shallow.


    Black Wednesday. 1992-7. It happens. Fast, violent, visceral, palpable, real, and long-lasting.

    The tories are in for a shellacking next time and will then be out of power for at least a decade.
    We can but hope. But @StillWaters has a point. In many ways the current polling swing is very different from and much more dramatic than 1992-7:

    image

    image
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,001
    edited October 2022
    Heathener said:

    moonshine said:

    Heathener said:

    It has been interesting to see the reaction from red wall Conservatives.

    I hadn't fully appreciated their love for Boris and their sense of embittered rage at what has happened. For some reason, probably partly racist, they have it in for Rishi as the architect of Boris Johnson's downfall.

    Of course, the real architect of Boris Johnson's downfall was Boris Johnson. A deeply, painfully, flawed individual who has got his comeuppance.

    But I don't see the red wall warming to Rishi I'm afraid. They won't come back to vote for him.

    So I think Labour leads in the 20%+ range to start with, perhaps possibly a 15%. And then as things start to bite through the winter, Labour will regularly be back up to 25%+

    They are going to win a landslide. Nothing now will change it.

    Perhaps you clever folks can piece it together for me. But as far as I see, Rishi largely shores up the blue wall in the south and midlands, from both labour and the Lib Dems, with perhaps the loss of a handful of seats to the yellows in their traditional hunting grounds and the reds on the coast.

    Scotland stays SNP.

    And before we start, the boundary review tips what was a majority of 80 to 100-110.

    Now don’t get me wrong, it’s increasingly hard to see how Sunak wins a majority or is even largest party. But do we really think the map is set up for Starmer to win “a landslide”? How? I don’t think many of believe Labour will carry a 25 point poll lead on the day.

    For a start I'm not convinced how much of the blue wall Rishi will be able to win back now. The tide turned. Keir Starmer did a very good job in detoxifying Labour and making them appealing again to middle classes. But as someone also pointed out on here yesterday, there is a serious financial squeeze down south. I mean REALLY serious. There is simply no way that Rishi fixes that in 2 years and much of the blame, whether consciously or subconsciously will be put on the Conservatives.

    As for the red wall, it won't come back to Rishi. In fact it could be even worse for him than Liz Truss.

    Labour will do relatively well in Scotland.

    Labour victory is nailed on. Landslide probable.
    Good morning

    I respectively disagree with your certainty about a labour victory, even landslide, in 24 not least because it is a long time away and while the conservatives have trashed their brand Starmer has not as yet sealed a deal and of course the consequences of these last few weeks is that he will be restricted in his ability to spend and will need the OBR on side

    I am not saying you are wrong but nothing in politics is as certain as you are suggesting and as an aside the 5 live business news this morning confirmed Rishi has been welcomed by the markets, interest rates are dropping to pre the Truss period and UK building societies are reducing their mortgages rates

    Time will tell but for me the end of the Johnson era is a joy and in Rishi we have a decent and honest PM and from an Asian heritage is just wonderful

    I am not the only conservative who is encouraged by these events and as Johnson is over can now freely support the party going forward for better or worse and at least Starmer has a whole new opponent to deal with

  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,274
    edited October 2022
    So it's a Tuesday. Quiet day. No leadership elections, just a new Cabinet to be announced.

    Can anyone remember when a minor Cabinet re-shuffle was the event of the year?
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746

    I don't know if this has already been covered, but Bellingcat claims to have found the Russian team responsible for programming targets for Russia's missiles.

    It isn't exactly a militarily responsive system, which might explain why the targets are mostly civilian and fixed infrastructure.

    "Due to the complexity of interactions between the various inputs for the flight path and course adjustment, each missile’s flight path requires customised, individual planning. According to one of the members of the GVC team who agreed to answer questions on condition of anonymity, the pre-flight planning requires simulation of the complete flight path from launch site to target. The resulting flight path plan as well as the algorithm for course adjustments based on various inputs is loaded by the programmers onto a ruggedized memory stick, which is then passed on to the launch location and inserted into the missile."

    https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2022/10/24/the-remote-control-killers-behind-russias-cruise-missile-strikes-on-ukraine/

    I wonder how this compares to our (or the US's) planning and control system for cruise and ballistic missiles?

    The thing about that article is that there is no way of knowing if it is true, vaguely true, or just completely made up.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,741

    ping said:

    FPT

    ping said:

    Listening to Faisal Islam on the BBC’s newscast - he had this fascinating and (I think) disturbing nugget;

    “By all accounts (Sunak at the treasury during the pandemic) it was, not quite minority report, but like, big screens of all the policy options and all the other countries policy options… Germany had done this on their version of the furlough scheme, or France had done that, and he would want to make sure that he could say we’ve done the most in Europe … so you just had to look at what the G7 record was and then you could say, well, he’s going to go to 80%, because it’s higher than 77%”

    ~20mins in;

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0d98v2t

    That’s absurd policy making

    That's called benchmarking.
    It’s bullshit benchmarking. We handed him the grandkids credit card and he maxed out the credit limit to keep up with the Joneses?

    That’s our bloody national debt that he’s ramped up, just so he can gain some stupid imaginary brexit points.

    And now the country must pay for his idiocy, with higher mortgage rates, tax increases, and spending cuts?

    I don’t buy the fiscally dry, sound money persona he’s trying to portray. It was him spaffing cash up the wall that is the primary reason we’re now in one hell of a fiscal mess.

    Why should we suffer for his sins?

    I’m amazed that the otherwise sensible, sound money PB tories are falling for his guff.
    Politicians were ever thus.

    Not everyone is as continent as Goderich (I think) who famously left more in the Treasury when he left than was there when he arrived..
    That was the Earl of Bath with the 47-hour ‘short lived’ ministry:

    ‘He ran the wisest and most honest of administrations, having never transacted one rash thing: and what is more marvellous, having left as much money in the Treasury as he found in it.’
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080
    edited October 2022
    Heathener said:

    Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

    Boris Johnson was begging for votes over the weekend in a “demeaning” attempt to return to Downing Street, according to Sir Iain Duncan Smith.

    He said that Johnson had returned from his Caribbean holiday expecting at least 150 MPs to back him. “Boris was completely unexpectedly having to do this. He made no plans. He had no team,” said Duncan Smith.

    He told LBC that Johnson found himself “struggling and begging people for votes. That was demeaning, really.”


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/demeaned-boris-johnson-was-begging-for-votes-says-senior-tory-7vf70jft2

    Good morning all.

    The demise of Boris Johnson through this has been wonderful.

    He has been made to look a complete fool.

    For all who care for justice, or think there's something in karma, it has been glorious to behold.
    We ain’t seen nothing yet!

    Censure by the Privileges Committee, a massive recall petition, and then either he slinks away, or goes down in a historic by-election defeat and is expunged from our politics for ever more.

    I actually think this scenario is in the Conservatives’ best interests, as well as catharsis for our long-suffering country, since having Johnson so brutally dispatched from our politics will help Sunak pull off their usual trick of projecting his administration as “new” and blaming our ills on the disreputable scoundrels who governed before….
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,741

    So it's a Tuesday. Quiet day. No leadership elections, just a new Cabinet to be announced.

    Can anyone remember when a minor Cabinet re-shuffle was the event of the year?

    I’m old enough to remember when the big question in politics was whether Vat should be charged on pasties only when they were hot or when they were cold as well.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    darkage said:

    I don't know if this has already been covered, but Bellingcat claims to have found the Russian team responsible for programming targets for Russia's missiles.

    It isn't exactly a militarily responsive system, which might explain why the targets are mostly civilian and fixed infrastructure.

    "Due to the complexity of interactions between the various inputs for the flight path and course adjustment, each missile’s flight path requires customised, individual planning. According to one of the members of the GVC team who agreed to answer questions on condition of anonymity, the pre-flight planning requires simulation of the complete flight path from launch site to target. The resulting flight path plan as well as the algorithm for course adjustments based on various inputs is loaded by the programmers onto a ruggedized memory stick, which is then passed on to the launch location and inserted into the missile."

    https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2022/10/24/the-remote-control-killers-behind-russias-cruise-missile-strikes-on-ukraine/

    I wonder how this compares to our (or the US's) planning and control system for cruise and ballistic missiles?

    The thing about that article is that there is no way of knowing if it is true, vaguely true, or just completely made up.
    That's the same for a lot of this stuff. But Bellingcat have got it very right several times in the past - including the MH17 shootdown and chemical weapons in Syria. I can recommend their book "We are Bellingcat" for any doubters.

    OSINT is becoming very powerful.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226
    LNG prices are still very high. This isn’t a problem that’s gone away, it’s only napping.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,009

    Heathener said:

    algarkirk said:

    Agree. But there is a fascinating question, only to be guessed about at this moment.

    In 1992 the Tories lost their reputation and nothing from 1992-1997 stopped them being thrown out in a landslide, despite having a fairly decent team trying to repair things.

    Do things happen faster now? It it thinkable that in two years the Tories do the impossible and prevent a Labour victory. The 1990s feel like a vanished age now.

    Rishi could, and should, construct a team, centrist and moderate, that appears more capable than Labour's. In particular the shadow CoE is not formidable in the sense that Brown or Darling were. This is a weakness.

    Results other than a Labour led government next time could become thinkable. Bet accordingly.

    If I had bet on a Labour government I’d take profit at this point. It’s unlikely to get b tree for them

    But you are a right-wing tory and, forgive me for saying, unable therefore to be objective.

    No party comes back from this polling debacle. Never has. Never will. Period.

    They blew it. Lost the confidence of the British people.


    If you want to bet on a Conservative Party victory of any sort you need to wait 15 years.
    I’m centre right but not a Tory. I engage with politicians in my own terms. (Although even if I was it doesn’t make me unable to be objective - as @Casino_Royale has proved time and again).

    I disagree with your assessment. The polling move was so fast and violent that it strikes me as shallow. A lot of it was Tories moving to don’t know although there was an unusual level of direct Tory to Labour switching which I would interpret as a desire to kick the Tories where it hurts.

    My guess is as things stabilise then politics will normalise and people will return to the Tories. That doesn’t mean the Tories will win - I think that’s unlikely - but in my view the polls are more likely to return to a sustainable 10-15% Labour lead and then close further as the election sharpens the focus. Overall result between Labour largest party and small majority, but most likely a Labour government from mid 2024 onwards.

    Of course this assumes that the Tories manage to deliver a drama free couple of years of vaguely competent government



    Excellent post.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080
    algarkirk said:

    Agree. But there is a fascinating question, only to be guessed about at this moment.

    In 1992 the Tories lost their reputation and nothing from 1992-1997 stopped them being thrown out in a landslide, despite having a fairly decent team trying to repair things.

    Do things happen faster now? It it thinkable that in two years the Tories do the impossible and prevent a Labour victory. The 1990s feel like a vanished age now.

    Rishi could, and should, construct a team, centrist and moderate, that appears more capable than Labour's. In particular the shadow CoE is not formidable in the sense that Brown or Darling were. This is a weakness.

    Results other than a Labour led government next time could become thinkable. Bet accordingly.

    Certainly it could be a close run thing, unlikely as it seems right now.

    This is the point I have been making about Labour - Starmer is no Blair, the prospective Labour front bench is critically weak compared to the 1990s, and they haven’t done anything like the leg work in terms of policies, promises, media presentation or organisation that Labour put in during the runup to 1997.

    We can all see that the country faces some huge issues - health, education, social care - and that our national finances are desperately in need of significant reconstructing. Yet from Labour (so far), answers come there none….
  • ping said:

    FPT

    ping said:

    Listening to Faisal Islam on the BBC’s newscast - he had this fascinating and (I think) disturbing nugget;

    “By all accounts (Sunak at the treasury during the pandemic) it was, not quite minority report, but like, big screens of all the policy options and all the other countries policy options… Germany had done this on their version of the furlough scheme, or France had done that, and he would want to make sure that he could say we’ve done the most in Europe … so you just had to look at what the G7 record was and then you could say, well, he’s going to go to 80%, because it’s higher than 77%”

    ~20mins in;

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0d98v2t

    That’s absurd policy making

    That's called benchmarking.
    It’s bullshit benchmarking. We handed him the grandkids credit card and he maxed out the credit limit to keep up with the Joneses?

    That’s our bloody national debt that he’s ramped up, just so he can gain some stupid imaginary brexit points.

    And now the country must pay for his idiocy, with higher mortgage rates, tax increases, and spending cuts?

    I don’t buy the fiscally dry, sound money persona he’s trying to portray. It was him spaffing cash up the wall that is the primary reason we’re now in one hell of a fiscal mess.

    Why should we suffer for his sins?

    I’m amazed that the otherwise sensible, sound money PB tories are falling for his guff.
    Politicians were ever thus.

    Not everyone is as continent as Goderich (I think) who famously left more in the Treasury when he left than was there when he arrived.

    People were flailing around looking to deal with an unproblematic of unknown magnitude. He was being criticised for being less generous than X or Y, or for not doing something that Germany or Italy had done. So of course he benchmarked. It’s just a human reaction to incentives.
    Benchmarking would be seeing what best practice is elsewhere and doing that.

    Benchmarking is NOT seeing what others are doing and being "more generous".
  • mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,089
    edited October 2022
    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    algarkirk said:

    Agree. But there is a fascinating question, only to be guessed about at this moment.

    In 1992 the Tories lost their reputation and nothing from 1992-1997 stopped them being thrown out in a landslide, despite having a fairly decent team trying to repair things.

    Do things happen faster now? It it thinkable that in two years the Tories do the impossible and prevent a Labour victory. The 1990s feel like a vanished age now.

    Rishi could, and should, construct a team, centrist and moderate, that appears more capable than Labour's. In particular the shadow CoE is not formidable in the sense that Brown or Darling were. This is a weakness.

    Results other than a Labour led government next time could become thinkable. Bet accordingly.

    If I had bet on a Labour government I’d take profit at this point. It’s unlikely to get b tree for them

    But you are a right-wing tory and, forgive me for saying, unable therefore to be objective.

    No party comes back from this polling debacle. Never has. Never will. Period.

    They blew it. Lost the confidence of the British people.


    If you want to bet on a Conservative Party victory of any sort you need to wait 15 years.
    The polling move was so fast and violent that it strikes me as shallow.


    Black Wednesday. 1992-7. It happens. Fast, violent, visceral, palpable, real, and long-lasting.

    The tories are in for a shellacking next time and will then be out of power for at least a decade.
    People would be well advised to look at the polling chart for the 1997 GE. The Tories have a sharp polling decline almost immediately, from the mid forties, which stabilisers in the mid twenties, and steadily build back. Labour do not have great support - the LDs are the immediate beneficiaries. Over the next 4 years, Labour erodes the LDs and the Tories gradually make a modest recovery.

    In next GE polling, the Tory polling average is steadily eroded to the mid 30s, and *then* has its catastrophic snap, to the low twenties. Labour is the direct beneficiary throughout. That's very different.

    But maybe it is more like 1992? Well, no. Notwithstanding the polling failings, Margaret Thatcher's administration claws back 20%+ Labour polling leads to 10-15%, and John Major achieved crossover more or less immediately. There is a drift back to the conservatives over time, the polling lead changing hands many times, and the key factor of the LDs rising from their single digit nadir to 18% on election day, with Labour failing to convince.

    Again, this is a very different situation.

    Boundary changes help the Tories, and starting positions differ - but this looks more like a 1997 with far less runway for recovery from the catastrophe, than a 1992-style change the leader, get a bounce, split the left.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746
    FPT
    DJ41 said:

    darkage said:

    DJ41 said:

    darkage said:

    The reality of the situation in Ukraine is that it probably isn't currently in the US/western interest to make any deal with Russia. The aim should be to just keep on inflicting maximum damage to Russian military capability, so it just gets harder and harder for Russia to pursue the conflict. Psychologically the war is working well. Gradually the 'myths' about the greatness of Russia and the justice of the conflict will be revealed as a sham. Particularly given the fate of the conscripts. The trouble is that if you have a 'peace deal', then you will have to start again in a few years time and you will be back to square one. Russia has to be faced with a resolve greater than its own, and that is what it is encountering in Ukraine.

    You believe that ideas about the greatness of Russia and the just nature of the war are being eroded in Russia's military and civilian populations, and that Russia is on its way to being defeated in a war of attrition - am I right?

    Making the enemy stop fighting is the aim of all war.
    Clearly there is a proportion of the population who are sceptical about Putin's myths about Russian greatness otherwise why would people be fleeing the country. Others are accepting that they need to go as their duty but they are then being grossly let down by the Russian state on every level. The incompetence is clear to see, the video evidence is damning. I don't see how this could not have a psychological impact on a population that diminishes enthusiasm for the war.
    Thank you for posting your reasoning. Note that the notion of Russian "greatness" is much older than Putin, as is the usually justified belief in Russia that state officials tend to be corrupt lying slobs. (But people in Ukraine expect the same.) I'm sure the western and Ukrainian psywar efforts have had some effects in Russia, and it's in the nature of a psywar campaign that the effects are often unknown, or only dimly known, even to those who are running it. The base level of the population viewing the armed forces as "our boys", though, is much higher than in say Britain, as is the resilience of the population to hardship, which is connected with Russian Orthodoxy as well as with cultural memory of WW2, or the Great Patriotic War as it's called in Russia, and famines and horrendous levels of destruction and slaughter in parts of Russia and Ukraine and Belarus that are still in "living" memory in the sense of "my grandmother lived through that and told me about it". And you have to compare all of this speculation about Russia with how things are on the Ukrainian side. Ukraine has had martial law now for a long time, and it has banned service-age males from leaving the country, and many have fled. How is enthusiasm for the war going in Lvov, Kiev, or Dnipro? How many consider it worth continuing to make sacrifices so that the lost territory can be regained? I don't know, but wouldn't rely on Youtube etc. to form an opinion. As for Zelensky's popularity rating, it's unlikely to be sky-high, to put it mildly.

    Some interesting insights there, from the last thread.
    The situation would be very different if Russia was under attack in some way. But the reality is that it is actually attacking another country and lots of its men are fleeing rather than fighting. It is reasonable to assume from the circumstantial evidence available that many more would do the same thing if they had the resources to do so.
    So maybe this great reserve of patriotism and willingness to undergo hardship is not quite as deep as we thought it was and no doubt this factors in to western calculations about the pursuit of this war.
    In terms of Ukraine, I am aware as anyone that its government is peddling propoganda but it does seem to be quite effective and Russia is not able to counter the accusations that it's soldiers are raping and torturing women, murdering civilians, abducting children, and bombing childrens playgrounds and other civilian infrastructure with cruise missiles. Enthusiasm to pursue a war of defence and survival will inevitably be higher than enthusiasm to pursue a war of aggression against another state.
    It seems like Russia has an uphill struggle to persuade its population of the merits of this war, Ukrainians are not carrying out terrorist attacks in the way that the Chechens perhaps once were. Russia is going to need to do better on the propoganda front, along with other fronts.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,056
    Mild autumn and gas stores across Europe are nearly 100% full. Gas availibility may become a problem in a few weeks, but not yet.

  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    IanB2 said:

    We ain’t seen nothing yet!

    Censure by the Privileges Committee, a massive recall petition, and then either he slinks away, or goes down in a historic by-election defeat and is expunged from our politics for ever more.

    There is a myth developing among the grassroots that Rishi deposed BoZo to seize the crown for himself.

    BoZo has done nothing to dispel it thus far.

    Bit like Trump and Pence.
  • Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    algarkirk said:

    Agree. But there is a fascinating question, only to be guessed about at this moment.

    In 1992 the Tories lost their reputation and nothing from 1992-1997 stopped them being thrown out in a landslide, despite having a fairly decent team trying to repair things.

    Do things happen faster now? It it thinkable that in two years the Tories do the impossible and prevent a Labour victory. The 1990s feel like a vanished age now.

    Rishi could, and should, construct a team, centrist and moderate, that appears more capable than Labour's. In particular the shadow CoE is not formidable in the sense that Brown or Darling were. This is a weakness.

    Results other than a Labour led government next time could become thinkable. Bet accordingly.

    If I had bet on a Labour government I’d take profit at this point. It’s unlikely to get b tree for them

    But you are a right-wing tory and, forgive me for saying, unable therefore to be objective.

    No party comes back from this polling debacle. Never has. Never will. Period.

    They blew it. Lost the confidence of the British people.


    If you want to bet on a Conservative Party victory of any sort you need to wait 15 years.
    The polling move was so fast and violent that it strikes me as shallow.


    Black Wednesday. 1992-7. It happens. Fast, violent, visceral, palpable, real, and long-lasting.

    The tories are in for a shellacking next time and will then be out of power for at least a decade.
    We can but hope. But @StillWaters has a point. In many ways the current polling swing is very different from and much more dramatic than 1992-7:

    image

    image
    "Look at the share not the lead"

    Looking at Tory share, 2019 look much more comparable.

    image

    Not saying there'll be a recovery for the Tories like that, I doubt there will be personally, but it's absolutely possible and has happened before.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    Local Tory association chief Tamara Wood tells @BBCr4today that @RishiSunak lacks "the integrity or the competence to lead" cos his resignation letter said "I didn't agree with you Boris but I did what you wanted anyway". Claims he had website Rishi4PM 6 months back resignation. https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1584671268842123264

    *before* resignation, not *back* resignation. (Predictive text)
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,762
    Foxy said:

    Mild autumn and gas stores across Europe are nearly 100% full. Gas availibility may become a problem in a few weeks, but not yet.

    It's a bit weird. The BBC still has a price of 334p/therm for gas futures, massively more than 183 If the price were to remain at 183p/therm I am not sure that the gas price guarantee from the government would cost anything.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,741
    DavidL said:

    Sandpit said:

    A sad day, for both the country and the Conservative party.

    The opportunity of the UK being a uniquely dynamic and innovative country, passed up by the MPs over the heads of the party membership, in favour of tax-rising, big-spending, globalist, authoritarian manegerialism, run by someone with no empathy for the average person.

    I think that you are being pessimistic @Sandpit. Look again at the Mais Lecture Sunak gave this year: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/chancellor-rishi-sunaks-mais-lecture-2022

    It received little attention at the time because of Ukraine but it is as clear headed, coherent and intelligent analysis of both the weaknesses of the UK economy and the way to fix them as I have read from any politician ever. Capital, people, ideas. The need to save and invest, the need for governments to be facilitative rather than leading the way, the importance of research and taking advantage of our great Universities.

    If these are his targets as PM and if he does not get blown off course by the costs of the gas subsidy program I think that is as good a policy for government as we have seen for a long, long time.
    That’s an interesting speech. Not least, because of his criticism of tax cuts paid for by borrowing. That seems oddly precise in terms of what happened next.

    I wonder if Truss had been arguing for those in cabinet and he had been resisting even while she was FS?

  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    darkage said:


    The situation would be very different if Russia was under attack in some way.

    That is a very Western European way of looking at it.

    As far as the Russian Federation is concerned Russia is under attack and has been for decades. The perception is that Ukraine is part of Russia and it's being pulled away and dismembered by the US/NATO/EU/Strictly Come Dancing judges.

    You can argue that's all paranoid delusion and anti-democratic revanchism. And you might be right but that's reality of how things are viewed in Russian politics and society.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,056

    darkage said:

    I think Sunak may be forced to spend more on defence whether he likes it or not.

    His selection of Foreign Secretary will be a very important choice.

    The reality is that if he abandons Ukraine then that is his authority in the party completely gone. Boris will also try and cast himself as Winston Churchill, waiting in the wings about to ride to the rescue. It will be one of the constraints that Sunak is operating under, and he will be well aware of that.
    All this Sunak anti-Ukraine nonsense is simply because he asked Wallace to justify his proposed increase run the defence budget allocation in 2030

    Exactly the sort of scrutiny that a CoE should do.

    If we need to expand the Defence budget (not that I am convinced that we do) there needs to be a careful review of what capabilities that we need. What has worked well in Ukraine, and what hasn't? What naval and air capability is needed? Where will our next war be?
  • Scott_xP said:

    Local Tory association chief Tamara Wood tells @BBCr4today that @RishiSunak lacks "the integrity or the competence to lead" cos his resignation letter said "I didn't agree with you Boris but I did what you wanted anyway". Claims he had website Rishi4PM 6 months back resignation. https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1584671268842123264

    *before* resignation, not *back* resignation. (Predictive text)

    The reaction to the members will be instructive. @Heathener has already commented on the negative reactions yesterday and there will be so many more to come.

    There is a disconnect between reality and the hardcore Tory membership. They won't be happy under Rishi, the headbanger wing of Tory MPs won't be happy, and like the lunatics who were photographed behind John Redwood at his leadership bid launch, these crazies will sit there reminding voters why the Tories need to be removed from office.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Scott_xP said:

    IanB2 said:

    We ain’t seen nothing yet!

    Censure by the Privileges Committee, a massive recall petition, and then either he slinks away, or goes down in a historic by-election defeat and is expunged from our politics for ever more.

    There is a myth developing among the grassroots that Rishi deposed BoZo to seize the crown for himself.

    BoZo has done nothing to dispel it thus far.

    Bit like Trump and Pence.
    It’s worse than that, in that he did the same to Liz Truss.

    Some of us speculated over the summer, that the hyperbolic language coming from the Sunak camp gave the suggestion that they would not want to work with Truss, and so it came to pass. What we didn’t expect, was the speed at which the Sunak supporters, in the Parliamentary party and the media, sabotaged the Truss government, in order to steal that crown for themselves. The average member will be furious today, at the way these events played out.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,762

    ping said:

    FPT

    ping said:

    Listening to Faisal Islam on the BBC’s newscast - he had this fascinating and (I think) disturbing nugget;

    “By all accounts (Sunak at the treasury during the pandemic) it was, not quite minority report, but like, big screens of all the policy options and all the other countries policy options… Germany had done this on their version of the furlough scheme, or France had done that, and he would want to make sure that he could say we’ve done the most in Europe … so you just had to look at what the G7 record was and then you could say, well, he’s going to go to 80%, because it’s higher than 77%”

    ~20mins in;

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0d98v2t

    That’s absurd policy making

    That's called benchmarking.
    It’s bullshit benchmarking. We handed him the grandkids credit card and he maxed out the credit limit to keep up with the Joneses?

    That’s our bloody national debt that he’s ramped up, just so he can gain some stupid imaginary brexit points.

    And now the country must pay for his idiocy, with higher mortgage rates, tax increases, and spending cuts?

    I don’t buy the fiscally dry, sound money persona he’s trying to portray. It was him spaffing cash up the wall that is the primary reason we’re now in one hell of a fiscal mess.

    Why should we suffer for his sins?

    I’m amazed that the otherwise sensible, sound money PB tories are falling for his guff.
    Politicians were ever thus.

    Not everyone is as continent as Goderich (I think) who famously left more in the Treasury when he left than was there when he arrived.

    People were flailing around looking to deal with an unproblematic of unknown magnitude. He was being criticised for being less generous than X or Y, or for not doing something that Germany or Italy had done. So of course he benchmarked. It’s just a human reaction to incentives.
    Benchmarking would be seeing what best practice is elsewhere and doing that.

    Benchmarking is NOT seeing what others are doing and being "more generous".
    I think that the fact he was looking so closely at what everyone else was doing to see what could be learned from it is a very good thing. I would be suspicious of the spin that it was so he could do more. At the time Boris was trying to suggest that the furlough and other schemes were some brilliant new British invention which no one had ever thought of. That was nonsense, as usual, and boosterism. There was lots to learn from other countries, from the German Kurzarbeit scheme above all, and Sunak had no problem learning it.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,274

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    algarkirk said:

    Agree. But there is a fascinating question, only to be guessed about at this moment.

    In 1992 the Tories lost their reputation and nothing from 1992-1997 stopped them being thrown out in a landslide, despite having a fairly decent team trying to repair things.

    Do things happen faster now? It it thinkable that in two years the Tories do the impossible and prevent a Labour victory. The 1990s feel like a vanished age now.

    Rishi could, and should, construct a team, centrist and moderate, that appears more capable than Labour's. In particular the shadow CoE is not formidable in the sense that Brown or Darling were. This is a weakness.

    Results other than a Labour led government next time could become thinkable. Bet accordingly.

    If I had bet on a Labour government I’d take profit at this point. It’s unlikely to get b tree for them

    But you are a right-wing tory and, forgive me for saying, unable therefore to be objective.

    No party comes back from this polling debacle. Never has. Never will. Period.

    They blew it. Lost the confidence of the British people.


    If you want to bet on a Conservative Party victory of any sort you need to wait 15 years.
    The polling move was so fast and violent that it strikes me as shallow.


    Black Wednesday. 1992-7. It happens. Fast, violent, visceral, palpable, real, and long-lasting.

    The tories are in for a shellacking next time and will then be out of power for at least a decade.
    We can but hope. But @StillWaters has a point. In many ways the current polling swing is very different from and much more dramatic than 1992-7:

    image

    image
    "Look at the share not the lead"

    Looking at Tory share, 2019 look much more comparable.

    image

    Not saying there'll be a recovery for the Tories like that, I doubt there will be personally, but it's absolutely possible and has happened before.
    Uh, no. Not in anyway comparable imho.

    Parliament was deadlocked, Leavers and Remainers were sick and tired of Brexit jamming everything. Nothing comparable about today's situation. In that sense 1992 (Tory economic incompetence) is much more similar.

    Never underestimate the way that the electorate will punish perceived economic mismanagement. Each of 1970, 1974, 1979, 1997 and 2010 is an example of that.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080
    edited October 2022
    DavidL said:

    Sandpit said:

    A sad day, for both the country and the Conservative party.

    The opportunity of the UK being a uniquely dynamic and innovative country, passed up by the MPs over the heads of the party membership, in favour of tax-rising, big-spending, globalist, authoritarian manegerialism, run by someone with no empathy for the average person.

    I think that you are being pessimistic @Sandpit. Look again at the Mais Lecture Sunak gave this year: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/chancellor-rishi-sunaks-mais-lecture-2022

    It received little attention at the time because of Ukraine but it is as clear headed, coherent and intelligent analysis of both the weaknesses of the UK economy and the way to fix them as I have read from any politician ever. Capital, people, ideas. The need to save and invest, the need for governments to be facilitative rather than leading the way, the importance of research and taking advantage of our great Universities.

    If these are his targets as PM and if he does not get blown off course by the costs of the gas subsidy program I think that is as good a policy for government as we have seen for a long, long time.
    A good speech. I think this is the key extract:

    The only way we can make a difference to the most stubborn and difficult problems is to focus; to decide where our efforts can have the biggest impact and relentlessly pursue those few chosen goals with all the energy and resources at our disposal. By trying to deliver everything we achieve nothing.

    So in accelerating growth, I have three priorities. Priorities that I believe will foster a new culture of enterprise and deliver a higher growth rate. The first is to encourage greater levels of capital investment by our businesses. Second, we need to improve the technical skills of the tens of millions of people already in work. And third, we want to make this the most innovative economy in the world by driving up business investment in research and development.


    The biggest problem for him is what he can do, with any sort of positive outcome, in current circumstances and with just two years.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,342

    So it's a Tuesday. Quiet day. No leadership elections, just a new Cabinet to be announced.

    Can anyone remember when a minor Cabinet re-shuffle was the event of the year?

    It was when the headlines were about how warm a pasty had to be to attract VAT. Happy days.

  • Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    algarkirk said:

    Agree. But there is a fascinating question, only to be guessed about at this moment.

    In 1992 the Tories lost their reputation and nothing from 1992-1997 stopped them being thrown out in a landslide, despite having a fairly decent team trying to repair things.

    Do things happen faster now? It it thinkable that in two years the Tories do the impossible and prevent a Labour victory. The 1990s feel like a vanished age now.

    Rishi could, and should, construct a team, centrist and moderate, that appears more capable than Labour's. In particular the shadow CoE is not formidable in the sense that Brown or Darling were. This is a weakness.

    Results other than a Labour led government next time could become thinkable. Bet accordingly.

    If I had bet on a Labour government I’d take profit at this point. It’s unlikely to get b tree for them

    But you are a right-wing tory and, forgive me for saying, unable therefore to be objective.

    No party comes back from this polling debacle. Never has. Never will. Period.

    They blew it. Lost the confidence of the British people.


    If you want to bet on a Conservative Party victory of any sort you need to wait 15 years.
    The polling move was so fast and violent that it strikes me as shallow.


    Black Wednesday. 1992-7. It happens. Fast, violent, visceral, palpable, real, and long-lasting.

    The tories are in for a shellacking next time and will then be out of power for at least a decade.
    We can but hope. But @StillWaters has a point. In many ways the current polling swing is very different from and much more dramatic than 1992-7:

    image

    image
    "Look at the share not the lead"

    Looking at Tory share, 2019 look much more comparable.

    image

    Not saying there'll be a recovery for the Tories like that, I doubt there will be personally, but it's absolutely possible and has happened before.
    True, but 2019 was a pretty unique set of circumstances. In particular, there was one thing wrong for the Conservatives - a lack of Brexit. That made it obvious where the missing Conservative voters were (Brexit Party) and how to win them back (Get Brexit Done).

    That's not really the case now. Having a leader who is both honest and sane will help. But the big thing wrong for the government is that lots of voters are objectively broke and many more feel broke. And there's not a lot that can be done to win them back.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,762
    IanB2 said:

    DavidL said:

    Sandpit said:

    A sad day, for both the country and the Conservative party.

    The opportunity of the UK being a uniquely dynamic and innovative country, passed up by the MPs over the heads of the party membership, in favour of tax-rising, big-spending, globalist, authoritarian manegerialism, run by someone with no empathy for the average person.

    I think that you are being pessimistic @Sandpit. Look again at the Mais Lecture Sunak gave this year: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/chancellor-rishi-sunaks-mais-lecture-2022

    It received little attention at the time because of Ukraine but it is as clear headed, coherent and intelligent analysis of both the weaknesses of the UK economy and the way to fix them as I have read from any politician ever. Capital, people, ideas. The need to save and invest, the need for governments to be facilitative rather than leading the way, the importance of research and taking advantage of our great Universities.

    If these are his targets as PM and if he does not get blown off course by the costs of the gas subsidy program I think that is as good a policy for government as we have seen for a long, long time.
    A good speech. I think this is the key extract:

    The only way we can make a difference to the most stubborn and difficult problems is to focus; to decide where our efforts can have the biggest impact and relentlessly pursue those few chosen goals with all the energy and resources at our disposal. By trying to deliver everything we achieve nothing.

    So in accelerating growth, I have three priorities. Priorities that I believe will foster a new culture of enterprise and deliver a higher growth rate. The first is to encourage greater levels of capital investment by our businesses. Second, we need to improve the technical skills of the tens of millions of people already in work. And third, we want to make this the most innovative economy in the world by driving up business investment in research and development.
    Yes, I think that is spot on. Investment, training and innovation. Address our productivity problem head on in the hope and expectation that it improves competitiveness and reduces our balance of payments deficit. I am hopeful that he and Hunt can do some good work on this in the next 2 years, even if I am sanguine about the prospects of them remaining in office thereafter.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,056
    IanB2 said:

    DavidL said:

    Sandpit said:

    A sad day, for both the country and the Conservative party.

    The opportunity of the UK being a uniquely dynamic and innovative country, passed up by the MPs over the heads of the party membership, in favour of tax-rising, big-spending, globalist, authoritarian manegerialism, run by someone with no empathy for the average person.

    I think that you are being pessimistic @Sandpit. Look again at the Mais Lecture Sunak gave this year: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/chancellor-rishi-sunaks-mais-lecture-2022

    It received little attention at the time because of Ukraine but it is as clear headed, coherent and intelligent analysis of both the weaknesses of the UK economy and the way to fix them as I have read from any politician ever. Capital, people, ideas. The need to save and invest, the need for governments to be facilitative rather than leading the way, the importance of research and taking advantage of our great Universities.

    If these are his targets as PM and if he does not get blown off course by the costs of the gas subsidy program I think that is as good a policy for government as we have seen for a long, long time.
    A good speech. I think this is the key extract:

    The only way we can make a difference to the most stubborn and difficult problems is to focus; to decide where our efforts can have the biggest impact and relentlessly pursue those few chosen goals with all the energy and resources at our disposal. By trying to deliver everything we achieve nothing.

    So in accelerating growth, I have three priorities. Priorities that I believe will foster a new culture of enterprise and deliver a higher growth rate. The first is to encourage greater levels of capital investment by our businesses. Second, we need to improve the technical skills of the tens of millions of people already in work. And third, we want to make this the most innovative economy in the world by driving up business investment in research and development.


    The biggest problem for him is what he can do, with any sort of positive outcome, in current circumstances and with just two years.
    A far more realistic approach than Truss, but who hasn't got one of those!

    I expect a modest Sunak bounce and for the Tories to poll 30% or so by the end of November.
  • Sandpit said:

    Scott_xP said:

    IanB2 said:

    We ain’t seen nothing yet!

    Censure by the Privileges Committee, a massive recall petition, and then either he slinks away, or goes down in a historic by-election defeat and is expunged from our politics for ever more.

    There is a myth developing among the grassroots that Rishi deposed BoZo to seize the crown for himself.

    BoZo has done nothing to dispel it thus far.

    Bit like Trump and Pence.
    It’s worse than that, in that he did the same to Liz Truss.

    Some of us speculated over the summer, that the hyperbolic language coming from the Sunak camp gave the suggestion that they would not want to work with Truss, and so it came to pass. What we didn’t expect, was the speed at which the Sunak supporters, in the Parliamentary party and the media, sabotaged the Truss government, in order to steal that crown for themselves. The average member will be furious today, at the way these events played out.
    This is nonsense. Truss collapsed because the markets took fright. They proposed selling a shit ton of debt to pay for inflationary tax cuts and the markets refused to buy. What you are saying is that the global money markets should have respected Tory party members and just bought our debt because This Is England.

    Its laughable. You and I both know the correct price of any item is what someone is willing to pay for it. We can't just say "you will buy our debt at the price we say" and they go "yes sir".
    But we voted to Take Back Control, remember? Democratic Will Of The People and all that.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,762
    ydoethur said:

    DavidL said:

    Sandpit said:

    A sad day, for both the country and the Conservative party.

    The opportunity of the UK being a uniquely dynamic and innovative country, passed up by the MPs over the heads of the party membership, in favour of tax-rising, big-spending, globalist, authoritarian manegerialism, run by someone with no empathy for the average person.

    I think that you are being pessimistic @Sandpit. Look again at the Mais Lecture Sunak gave this year: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/chancellor-rishi-sunaks-mais-lecture-2022

    It received little attention at the time because of Ukraine but it is as clear headed, coherent and intelligent analysis of both the weaknesses of the UK economy and the way to fix them as I have read from any politician ever. Capital, people, ideas. The need to save and invest, the need for governments to be facilitative rather than leading the way, the importance of research and taking advantage of our great Universities.

    If these are his targets as PM and if he does not get blown off course by the costs of the gas subsidy program I think that is as good a policy for government as we have seen for a long, long time.
    That’s an interesting speech. Not least, because of his criticism of tax cuts paid for by borrowing. That seems oddly precise in terms of what happened next.

    I wonder if Truss had been arguing for those in cabinet and he had been resisting even while she was FS?

    Quite possibly. I have little doubt that both Truss and KK were genuine and sincere in their analysis that more growth was the only way to square the circle between ever higher demand for public services and the level of taxation. This was his answer to that and it is a much, much better one than Truss and KK came up with.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891

    Sandpit said:

    A sad day, for both the country and the Conservative party.

    The opportunity of the UK being a uniquely dynamic and innovative country, passed up by the MPs over the heads of the party membership, in favour of tax-rising, big-spending, globalist, authoritarian manegerialism, run by someone with no empathy for the average person.

    So how should the UK have gone on selling its debt, when the people buying its debt said "you're nuts" and refused to buy?

    You're calling the world's bankers, financiers, investors "globalist" - you missed off the inevitable word "elite". Its classic pig-headed English exceptionalism. Essentially, "don't you know who we are?"

    They do know who we are. And that's why Truss lasted 50 days in office. "Over the heads of the party membership" - yes, we should have gone back to the market and the IMF and said "look here, you need to do what we say because the Tory Party membership demand it."

    One of your more bonkers posts, unless it was hugely high sarcasm which flew over my head...
    I fear he's not being sarcastic. I did a job in Dubai which kept me there three weeks and if you are not part of the slave labour there and are part of a large ex pat community I can understand why you could be impressed. For those who don't live there as part of the wealthy elite it is quite a different place.
  • Ishmael_ZIshmael_Z Posts: 8,981
    Sandpit said:

    Scott_xP said:

    IanB2 said:

    We ain’t seen nothing yet!

    Censure by the Privileges Committee, a massive recall petition, and then either he slinks away, or goes down in a historic by-election defeat and is expunged from our politics for ever more.

    There is a myth developing among the grassroots that Rishi deposed BoZo to seize the crown for himself.

    BoZo has done nothing to dispel it thus far.

    Bit like Trump and Pence.
    It’s worse than that, in that he did the same to Liz Truss.

    Some of us speculated over the summer, that the hyperbolic language coming from the Sunak camp gave the suggestion that they would not want to work with Truss, and so it came to pass. What we didn’t expect, was the speed at which the Sunak supporters, in the Parliamentary party and the media, sabotaged the Truss government, in order to steal that crown for themselves. The average member will be furious today, at the way these events played out.
    Sunak stuck with Johnson till it became impossible. Truss was unworkable with. The hyperbolic language wasn't sneaky anonymous briefing from his "camp" it was him live at hustings. There is nothing in this.
  • MikeLMikeL Posts: 7,281
    Sandpit said:

    Scott_xP said:

    IanB2 said:

    We ain’t seen nothing yet!

    Censure by the Privileges Committee, a massive recall petition, and then either he slinks away, or goes down in a historic by-election defeat and is expunged from our politics for ever more.

    There is a myth developing among the grassroots that Rishi deposed BoZo to seize the crown for himself.

    BoZo has done nothing to dispel it thus far.

    Bit like Trump and Pence.
    It’s worse than that, in that he did the same to Liz Truss.

    Some of us speculated over the summer, that the hyperbolic language coming from the Sunak camp gave the suggestion that they would not want to work with Truss, and so it came to pass. What we didn’t expect, was the speed at which the Sunak supporters, in the Parliamentary party and the media, sabotaged the Truss government, in order to steal that crown for themselves. The average member will be furious today, at the way these events played out.
    If the average member is furious, why did a membership poll a few days ago show that in a vote now members would have voted overwhelmingly for Sunak rather than Truss.

    The reason is simple - contrary to what many people think, most Con members aren't actually that ideological.
  • Dura_Ace said:

    darkage said:

    I think Sunak may be forced to spend more on defence whether he likes it or not.

    His selection of Foreign Secretary will be a very important choice.

    The reality is that if he abandons Ukraine then that is his authority in the party completely gone.
    It's Biden's war. He is he one that is pouring $2bn/month into it. Anything Sunak does or doesn't do about it is of marginal moment.

    Does Ukraine policy move votes much one war or the other? Dunno.
    Despite the best efforts of @Ukraine, it didn’t seem to help Big Dog much, not with Tory mps anyway.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,958
    IanB2 said:

    algarkirk said:

    Agree. But there is a fascinating question, only to be guessed about at this moment.

    In 1992 the Tories lost their reputation and nothing from 1992-1997 stopped them being thrown out in a landslide, despite having a fairly decent team trying to repair things.

    Do things happen faster now? It it thinkable that in two years the Tories do the impossible and prevent a Labour victory. The 1990s feel like a vanished age now.

    Rishi could, and should, construct a team, centrist and moderate, that appears more capable than Labour's. In particular the shadow CoE is not formidable in the sense that Brown or Darling were. This is a weakness.

    Results other than a Labour led government next time could become thinkable. Bet accordingly.

    Certainly it could be a close run thing, unlikely as it seems right now.

    This is the point I have been making about Labour - Starmer is no Blair, the prospective Labour front bench is critically weak compared to the 1990s, and they haven’t done anything like the leg work in terms of policies, promises, media presentation or organisation that Labour put in during the runup to 1997.

    We can all see that the country faces some huge issues - health, education, social care - and that our national finances are desperately in need of significant reconstructing. Yet from Labour (so far), answers come there none….
    You also need to factor in just how broke Labour is.

    https://skwawkbox.org/2022/08/22/labour-party-bankrupt-within-2-years-on-current-financial-course/
  • numbertwelvenumbertwelve Posts: 5,414
    edited October 2022
    I don’t believe Sunak is at all likely to win the next election for the Tories but there is a narrow, plausible route there, essentially:

    1. Ukraine crisis/COL over, giving him ability to say he fixed it (rightly or wrongly); coupled with
    2. His narrative from this leadership contest essentially being “I told you so” will net him kudos;
    3. Starmer fails to seal the deal/runs a bad campaign;
    4. The Tories run a tight ship and there’s no further resignations, cabinet dramas or significant revolts (this is the one that seems very difficult to imagine).

    The key difference between now and 1997 is that I and I’m sure many others see Labour as our only alternative because they seem decent and competent and ready to lead a stable government that will make fairer decisions - but there is not a groundswell of enthusiasm for a Labour government. They lead partly by default because the Tory government has been so shockingly bad. Now it may continue to be bad and hand them the keys to Number 10 easily, but it is at least plausible that they get some of their act together, events help them, and they present more of a challenge. The question then is where those voters eventually fall.

  • DavidL said:

    ping said:

    FPT

    ping said:

    Listening to Faisal Islam on the BBC’s newscast - he had this fascinating and (I think) disturbing nugget;

    “By all accounts (Sunak at the treasury during the pandemic) it was, not quite minority report, but like, big screens of all the policy options and all the other countries policy options… Germany had done this on their version of the furlough scheme, or France had done that, and he would want to make sure that he could say we’ve done the most in Europe … so you just had to look at what the G7 record was and then you could say, well, he’s going to go to 80%, because it’s higher than 77%”

    ~20mins in;

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0d98v2t

    That’s absurd policy making

    That's called benchmarking.
    It’s bullshit benchmarking. We handed him the grandkids credit card and he maxed out the credit limit to keep up with the Joneses?

    That’s our bloody national debt that he’s ramped up, just so he can gain some stupid imaginary brexit points.

    And now the country must pay for his idiocy, with higher mortgage rates, tax increases, and spending cuts?

    I don’t buy the fiscally dry, sound money persona he’s trying to portray. It was him spaffing cash up the wall that is the primary reason we’re now in one hell of a fiscal mess.

    Why should we suffer for his sins?

    I’m amazed that the otherwise sensible, sound money PB tories are falling for his guff.
    Politicians were ever thus.

    Not everyone is as continent as Goderich (I think) who famously left more in the Treasury when he left than was there when he arrived.

    People were flailing around looking to deal with an unproblematic of unknown magnitude. He was being criticised for being less generous than X or Y, or for not doing something that Germany or Italy had done. So of course he benchmarked. It’s just a human reaction to incentives.
    Benchmarking would be seeing what best practice is elsewhere and doing that.

    Benchmarking is NOT seeing what others are doing and being "more generous".
    I think that the fact he was looking so closely at what everyone else was doing to see what could be learned from it is a very good thing. I would be suspicious of the spin that it was so he could do more. At the time Boris was trying to suggest that the furlough and other schemes were some brilliant new British invention which no one had ever thought of. That was nonsense, as usual, and boosterism. There was lots to learn from other countries, from the German Kurzarbeit scheme above all, and Sunak had no problem learning it.
    Learning from other countries - A good thing.

    Learning from other countries, with a view to saying "I spent more than them, aren't I great" - is not.

    We'll have to see what happens in the future now, but we shouldn't say that just because something is British it is better, or because something cost us more it is better either.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,342
    Heathener said:

    algarkirk said:



    Do things happen faster now? It it thinkable that in two years the Tories do the impossible and prevent a Labour victory. .

    No and no it isn't.

    It's fantasy pure and simple.

    The Conservatives will lose the next General Election heavily. You don't come back from a polling sea-change like this, compounded by a dire economic outlook compared to the aforementioned 1992-7.

    Anyone taking your advice and betting accordingly is throwing away their money.
    Thanks. You may well be right. However, according to money on Smarkets the chance of a Lab majority is below 50% at this moment, and the chance of a non-Labour led government next time is above 28%. I think that latter figure is high, but even if the real figure should be 20% that is far from fantasy.

    If RS can form an old fashioned looking cabinet of moderate competents attention will turn to weaknesses in the Labour front bench. They are OK but not stellar. Compared with Tories recently Labour look like Mandela, Obama and Roy Jenkins. but from today they might not.

    Labour will probably lead the next government, but the markets currently say it probably won't be with a clear majority. Don't bet the farm. It isn't free money.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    Foxy said:

    darkage said:

    I think Sunak may be forced to spend more on defence whether he likes it or not.

    His selection of Foreign Secretary will be a very important choice.

    The reality is that if he abandons Ukraine then that is his authority in the party completely gone. Boris will also try and cast himself as Winston Churchill, waiting in the wings about to ride to the rescue. It will be one of the constraints that Sunak is operating under, and he will be well aware of that.
    All this Sunak anti-Ukraine nonsense is simply because he asked Wallace to justify his proposed increase run the defence budget allocation in 2030

    Exactly the sort of scrutiny that a CoE should do.

    If we need to expand the Defence budget (not that I am convinced that we do) there needs to be a careful review of what capabilities that we need. What has worked well in Ukraine, and what hasn't? What naval and air capability is needed? Where will our next war be?
    Baldy Ben should be moved on and replaced with somebody that can do pivot tables in Excel. There are several highly expensive programs that are drifting into disaster and consuming shitloads of money while their incipient failure is seriously degrading important defence capabilities. MFTS, Ajax and MRSS for starters.

    The MoD needs flint eyed and decisive management not a chubby, thick as fuck, ex-Jock Guard who has gone native.
  • theProletheProle Posts: 948

    I don't know if this has already been covered, but Bellingcat claims to have found the Russian team responsible for programming targets for Russia's missiles.

    It isn't exactly a militarily responsive system, which might explain why the targets are mostly civilian and fixed infrastructure.

    "Due to the complexity of interactions between the various inputs for the flight path and course adjustment, each missile’s flight path requires customised, individual planning. According to one of the members of the GVC team who agreed to answer questions on condition of anonymity, the pre-flight planning requires simulation of the complete flight path from launch site to target. The resulting flight path plan as well as the algorithm for course adjustments based on various inputs is loaded by the programmers onto a ruggedized memory stick, which is then passed on to the launch location and inserted into the missile."

    https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2022/10/24/the-remote-control-killers-behind-russias-cruise-missile-strikes-on-ukraine/

    I wonder how this compares to our (or the US's) planning and control system for cruise and ballistic missiles?

    That sounds like the sort of system where an agency like Mossad* could quite enjoy writing some mallware to "adjust" the output onto those USB sticks... I suspect if one was to be subtle, it wouldn't be that hard to completely wreck the precision targeting without it being particularly obvious why things were going wrong.

    *Mossad having form in this area - see also the Iranian centrifuges
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,043
    Heathener said:

    Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

    Boris Johnson was begging for votes over the weekend in a “demeaning” attempt to return to Downing Street, according to Sir Iain Duncan Smith.

    He said that Johnson had returned from his Caribbean holiday expecting at least 150 MPs to back him. “Boris was completely unexpectedly having to do this. He made no plans. He had no team,” said Duncan Smith.

    He told LBC that Johnson found himself “struggling and begging people for votes. That was demeaning, really.”


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/demeaned-boris-johnson-was-begging-for-votes-says-senior-tory-7vf70jft2

    Good morning all.

    The demise of Boris Johnson through this has been wonderful.

    He has been made to look a complete fool.

    For all who care for justice, or think there's something in karma, it has been glorious to behold.
    Yet he did have the votes, bizarrely.

    I think Penny has been the bigger fool - yes she'll get a good job, but she could have got 'the' job, by co-opting Boris and giving him something.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,571
    Dura_Ace said:

    darkage said:

    I think Sunak may be forced to spend more on defence whether he likes it or not.

    His selection of Foreign Secretary will be a very important choice.

    The reality is that if he abandons Ukraine then that is his authority in the party completely gone.
    It's Biden's war. He is he one that is pouring $2bn/month into it. Anything Sunak does or doesn't do about it is of marginal moment.

    Does Ukraine policy move votes much one war or the other? Dunno.
    No, it's Putin's war.

    It is of course obvious that the US aid effort is much greater than that of any other country (unless you look at it in relative terms, in which case that would Poland and the Baltic states), but to cast it as "Biden's war" is pitiful stuff.
  • Roger said:

    Sandpit said:

    A sad day, for both the country and the Conservative party.

    The opportunity of the UK being a uniquely dynamic and innovative country, passed up by the MPs over the heads of the party membership, in favour of tax-rising, big-spending, globalist, authoritarian manegerialism, run by someone with no empathy for the average person.

    So how should the UK have gone on selling its debt, when the people buying its debt said "you're nuts" and refused to buy?

    You're calling the world's bankers, financiers, investors "globalist" - you missed off the inevitable word "elite". Its classic pig-headed English exceptionalism. Essentially, "don't you know who we are?"

    They do know who we are. And that's why Truss lasted 50 days in office. "Over the heads of the party membership" - yes, we should have gone back to the market and the IMF and said "look here, you need to do what we say because the Tory Party membership demand it."

    One of your more bonkers posts, unless it was hugely high sarcasm which flew over my head...
    I fear he's not being sarcastic. I did a job in Dubai which kept me there three weeks and if you are not part of the slave labour there and are part of a large ex pat community I can understand why you could be impressed. For those who don't live there as part of the wealthy elite it is quite a different place.
    The markets set prices. We embarked on a high risk strategy which pretty much everyone else was crazy and they both priced our debt accordingly and showed strong reluctance to buy at all.

    *That* is why we now have incoming PM Sunak. Because the markets do not see a "uniquely dynamic and innovative" UK. When you put money into something you do basic due diligence. And the UK is heavily indebted, with poor public services and higher inequality than many of its rivals, with trade barriers to much of the world and an economy growing the slowest of our competitor nations.

    Pretending that none of this is true, that the markets are wrong and 85 year-old Tory members are right is a flight of fantasy. Literal exceptionalism where the forrin should know their place and do what the English tell them like in the good old days. "Buy our debt when we tell you at the price we set" FFS
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,762
    Sandpit said:

    Scott_xP said:

    IanB2 said:

    We ain’t seen nothing yet!

    Censure by the Privileges Committee, a massive recall petition, and then either he slinks away, or goes down in a historic by-election defeat and is expunged from our politics for ever more.

    There is a myth developing among the grassroots that Rishi deposed BoZo to seize the crown for himself.

    BoZo has done nothing to dispel it thus far.

    Bit like Trump and Pence.
    It’s worse than that, in that he did the same to Liz Truss.

    Some of us speculated over the summer, that the hyperbolic language coming from the Sunak camp gave the suggestion that they would not want to work with Truss, and so it came to pass. What we didn’t expect, was the speed at which the Sunak supporters, in the Parliamentary party and the media, sabotaged the Truss government, in order to steal that crown for themselves. The average member will be furious today, at the way these events played out.
    The "sabotage" of Truss was self-inflicted in the mini budget. Sunak had predicted repeatedly in their debates what would happen to such policies, as he had in the Mais lecture. Saying "I told you so" is not sabotage.
  • Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    algarkirk said:

    Agree. But there is a fascinating question, only to be guessed about at this moment.

    In 1992 the Tories lost their reputation and nothing from 1992-1997 stopped them being thrown out in a landslide, despite having a fairly decent team trying to repair things.

    Do things happen faster now? It it thinkable that in two years the Tories do the impossible and prevent a Labour victory. The 1990s feel like a vanished age now.

    Rishi could, and should, construct a team, centrist and moderate, that appears more capable than Labour's. In particular the shadow CoE is not formidable in the sense that Brown or Darling were. This is a weakness.

    Results other than a Labour led government next time could become thinkable. Bet accordingly.

    If I had bet on a Labour government I’d take profit at this point. It’s unlikely to get b tree for them

    But you are a right-wing tory and, forgive me for saying, unable therefore to be objective.

    No party comes back from this polling debacle. Never has. Never will. Period.

    They blew it. Lost the confidence of the British people.


    If you want to bet on a Conservative Party victory of any sort you need to wait 15 years.
    The polling move was so fast and violent that it strikes me as shallow.


    Black Wednesday. 1992-7. It happens. Fast, violent, visceral, palpable, real, and long-lasting.

    The tories are in for a shellacking next time and will then be out of power for at least a decade.
    We can but hope. But @StillWaters has a point. In many ways the current polling swing is very different from and much more dramatic than 1992-7:

    image

    image
    "Look at the share not the lead"

    Looking at Tory share, 2019 look much more comparable.

    image

    Not saying there'll be a recovery for the Tories like that, I doubt there will be personally, but it's absolutely possible and has happened before.
    True, but 2019 was a pretty unique set of circumstances. In particular, there was one thing wrong for the Conservatives - a lack of Brexit. That made it obvious where the missing Conservative voters were (Brexit Party) and how to win them back (Get Brexit Done).

    That's not really the case now. Having a leader who is both honest and sane will help. But the big thing wrong for the government is that lots of voters are objectively broke and many more feel broke. And there's not a lot that can be done to win them back.
    Circumstances are always unique, which is why we should learn from history but not assume it will repeat. But the premise was that No party comes back from this polling debacle. Never has. Never will. Period.

    Well that Period. is wrong. Looking at share not lead as is advisable, 2019 was a comparable polling debacle and the Tories came back from that to increase their majority.

    Will that happen again? No, probably not. Is there precedent though? Yes, there is.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,342

    I don’t believe Sunak is at all likely to win the next election for the Tories but there is a narrow, plausible route there, essentially:

    1. Ukraine crisis/COL over, giving him ability to say he fixed it (rightly or wrongly); coupled with
    2. His narrative from this leadership contest essentially being “I told you so” will net him kudos;
    3. Starmer fails to seal the deal/runs a bad campaign;
    4. The Tories run a tight ship and there’s no further resignations, cabinet dramas or significant revolts (this is the one that seems very difficult to imagine).

    The key difference between now and 1997 is that I and I’m sure many others see Labour as our only alternative because they seem decent and competent and ready to lead a stable government that will make fairer decisions - but there is not a groundswell of enthusiasm for a Labour government. They lead partly by default because the Tory government has been so shockingly bad. Now it may continue to be bad and hand them the keys to Number 10 easily, but it is at least plausible that they get some of their act together, events help them, and they present more of a challenge. The question then is where those voters eventually fall.

    Agree. he would also need:
    Luck
    Energy price falls
    Resolve the mortgage interest rate crisis fairly quickly.

  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,056
    DavidL said:

    Foxy said:

    Mild autumn and gas stores across Europe are nearly 100% full. Gas availibility may become a problem in a few weeks, but not yet.

    It's a bit weird. The BBC still has a price of 334p/therm for gas futures, massively more than 183 If the price were to remain at 183p/therm I am not sure that the gas price guarantee from the government would cost anything.
    The calm before the storm I fear, but in part of Texas gas prices may go negative soon.

    https://twitter.com/business/status/1584701296724115456?t=32m5nKXu4W5e8ExFvw08Kw&s=19

    Not that global warming is a good thing, but this is an unseasonably mild autumn.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,762

    Heathener said:

    Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

    Boris Johnson was begging for votes over the weekend in a “demeaning” attempt to return to Downing Street, according to Sir Iain Duncan Smith.

    He said that Johnson had returned from his Caribbean holiday expecting at least 150 MPs to back him. “Boris was completely unexpectedly having to do this. He made no plans. He had no team,” said Duncan Smith.

    He told LBC that Johnson found himself “struggling and begging people for votes. That was demeaning, really.”


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/demeaned-boris-johnson-was-begging-for-votes-says-senior-tory-7vf70jft2

    Good morning all.

    The demise of Boris Johnson through this has been wonderful.

    He has been made to look a complete fool.

    For all who care for justice, or think there's something in karma, it has been glorious to behold.
    Yet he did have the votes, bizarrely.

    I think Penny has been the bigger fool - yes she'll get a good job, but she could have got 'the' job, by co-opting Boris and giving him something.
    I think it was Boris who was looking to do the co-opting but her judgment was, once again, poor and somewhat delusional. She has talent on her feet, no question, but she needs to get a department, buckle down with it for an extended haul and learn a lot more about how government actually works.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,274
    edited October 2022
    Roger said:

    Sandpit said:

    A sad day, for both the country and the Conservative party.

    The opportunity of the UK being a uniquely dynamic and innovative country, passed up by the MPs over the heads of the party membership, in favour of tax-rising, big-spending, globalist, authoritarian manegerialism, run by someone with no empathy for the average person.

    So how should the UK have gone on selling its debt, when the people buying its debt said "you're nuts" and refused to buy?

    You're calling the world's bankers, financiers, investors "globalist" - you missed off the inevitable word "elite". Its classic pig-headed English exceptionalism. Essentially, "don't you know who we are?"

    They do know who we are. And that's why Truss lasted 50 days in office. "Over the heads of the party membership" - yes, we should have gone back to the market and the IMF and said "look here, you need to do what we say because the Tory Party membership demand it."

    One of your more bonkers posts, unless it was hugely high sarcasm which flew over my head...
    I fear he's not being sarcastic. I did a job in Dubai which kept me there three weeks and if you are not part of the slave labour there and are part of a large ex pat community I can understand why you could be impressed. For those who don't live there as part of the wealthy elite it is quite a different place.
    @Sandpit is beyond satire imo. Railing against globalism whilst enjoying a tax-free lifestyle in the Gulf. Telling us all how the Government shouldn't be spending the taxes he's not paying.
  • Beibheirli_CBeibheirli_C Posts: 7,981
    Sandpit said:

    Scott_xP said:

    IanB2 said:

    We ain’t seen nothing yet!

    Censure by the Privileges Committee, a massive recall petition, and then either he slinks away, or goes down in a historic by-election defeat and is expunged from our politics for ever more.

    There is a myth developing among the grassroots that Rishi deposed BoZo to seize the crown for himself.

    BoZo has done nothing to dispel it thus far.

    Bit like Trump and Pence.
    It’s worse than that, in that he did the same to Liz Truss.

    Some of us speculated over the summer, that the hyperbolic language coming from the Sunak camp gave the suggestion that they would not want to work with Truss, and so it came to pass. What we didn’t expect, was the speed at which the Sunak supporters, in the Parliamentary party and the media, sabotaged the Truss government, in order to steal that crown for themselves. The average member will be furious today, at the way these events played out.
    Truss & Co were ejected from office because they were incompetent. Nobody had to do anything except wait because every time she was required to perform it was like watching a rabbit in the headlights of an oncoming truck.

    As for the "membership" and their rumours - a large proportion of them are either greedy or suffering from age-related problems or they would have realised that Truss was incapable of doing the job. She never should been made PM
  • Sandpit said:

    Scott_xP said:

    IanB2 said:

    We ain’t seen nothing yet!

    Censure by the Privileges Committee, a massive recall petition, and then either he slinks away, or goes down in a historic by-election defeat and is expunged from our politics for ever more.

    There is a myth developing among the grassroots that Rishi deposed BoZo to seize the crown for himself.

    BoZo has done nothing to dispel it thus far.

    Bit like Trump and Pence.
    It’s worse than that, in that he did the same to Liz Truss.

    Some of us speculated over the summer, that the hyperbolic language coming from the Sunak camp gave the suggestion that they would not want to work with Truss, and so it came to pass. What we didn’t expect, was the speed at which the Sunak supporters, in the Parliamentary party and the media, sabotaged the Truss government, in order to steal that crown for themselves. The average member will be furious today, at the way these events played out.
    This is nonsense. Truss collapsed because the markets took fright. They proposed selling a shit ton of debt to pay for inflationary tax cuts and the markets refused to buy. What you are saying is that the global money markets should have respected Tory party members and just bought our debt because This Is England.

    Its laughable. You and I both know the correct price of any item is what someone is willing to pay for it. We can't just say "you will buy our debt at the price we say" and they go "yes sir".
    You can't if the markets are expected to pay for the policies.

    They didn't during Furlough and the GFC, we had the Bank printing money to pay for it instead. This time, while the Treasury was announcing money for energy bills, the Bank decided now was a good time to not just stop but actively reverse the money printing.

    The Bank has helped facilitate a mentality in the past 15 years that its the "lender of last resort" for fixing whatever problem has hit the UK in general. That was never meant to be its responsibility.
This discussion has been closed.