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Could 2023 see Sunak’s Tories edging back in the polls? – politicalbetting.com
Could 2023 see Sunak’s Tories edging back in the polls? – politicalbetting.com
Can Sunak’s Tories reverse the trend in the polling which appears to have swung a bit back to LAB.
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First.
Vermont, Kentucky and Nevada dramatically expanded the ability to cast ballots before Election Day, and neither party gained an edge.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/02/trump-early-voting-new-data-00075611
Some 400 newly-mobilised Russian army recruits were killed by a strike on a facility in occupied eastern Ukraine over new year, the Ukrainian armed forces have claimed.
“Santa packed close to 400 corpses of pigdogs in his sack,” the strategic communications branch of Ukraine’s armed forces wrote in a Telegram post late Sunday, adding that the strike was conducted on New Year’s Eve. The missiles hit the base in Makiivka, a city of around 300,000 people, some 15km east of Donetsk.
The Russian Ministry of Defence acknowledged the attack, which it said was carried out by US Himars systems, but accused Ukraine of exaggerating the number of casualties. It claimed 63 had died so far, while a source in Russian-backed administration of the Donetsk region said “less than 100” had been killed.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/400-russian-recruits-killed-in-donetsk-missile-strike-rdlr8sdml
Unlikely, the economic pain is going to get worse.
Plus Sunak's shit, remember he lost to Liz Truss, that's like getting beaten by a cat at chess.
https://www.englandrugby.com/dxdam/e1/e1377b78-d60a-4d2c-b839-bb4c3ffc8132/MarlerHarlequinsJudgmentDec22.pdf
The spring budget will be a relatively positive affair as less spending on the energy price cap due to lower than expected prices and consumption will create a bit of room for loosening in key spending areas.
The local elections themselves will be disastrous for the government but already priced in, and not as good as expected for Labour. We’ll then see a moderate recovery in Con polling through the rest of 2023 as inflation starts to come down, but they will never take a poll lead.
With Sunak in no10 there’s less chance of the stupid unforced errors of the last 2 PMs. Conversely there’s less chance of him opportunistically taking the national war leader plaudits for some major challenge like Covid or Ukraine.
Biggest new risk for Sunak I think would be indecision and slowness to respond if we have something like major flooding or another non-economic crisis. That or one of his cabinet doing something stupid and crooked.
Tories end the year around 10-12% behind Labour.
Personally know of at least one WA State legislative seat the GOP pissed away on this basis, as well as WA CD03.
Also the Arizona races for Governor AND Attorney General. Ditto Nevada US Senate.
Trump urging his minions to NOT vote early was hardly the only factor, but it DID have impact methinks in these very close races.
Things will get better.
I don't know how much this would cost (£10bn? £20bn? £30bn?) but I'd say doing that is probably more electorally crucial for him right now than banking up for 1p off income tax, which probably won't shift the dial that much.
A lot will be down to luck- whether the economy starts to turn the corner or not, and thus help out HMT. Personally, I think it will.
Marler wouldn’t have known that but he really is a jerk. The ban is pathetic too.
If you see your country getting levelled on a regular basis you can only have anger at the people causing it.
The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople is primus inter pares of all the Eastern Orthodox Churches
I think there is antipathy towards the Tories but it doesn’t feel like 95-7 where there was a national wave of enthusiasm for Blair and New Labour.
Then of course, this rumbles on and Starmer's position does seem....curious....
A new report by Policy Exchange today exposes a letter written by North Bristol NHS Trust (NBT) that states the Trust will not guarantee same-sex intimate care for patients, putting staff preferences above the needs of patients. This is despite the trust’s biggest hospital recording up to 30 sexual assaults against females having taken place on hospital property.
https://policyexchange.org.uk/publication/gender-identity-ideology-in-the-nhs/
Only 15 months ago, fresh off the vaccine roll-out, Boris Johnson and his team were talking about another decade in power.
Politics is awfully volatile these days.
A happy new year to everyone on PB
I have maintained for a long time that mid May will be the time to assess the government in the polls as the inflation rises to the pensions, benefits, and living wage will have just been reflected in people's incomes and Hunt will have delivered his budget. Also the coronation may be a popular event
The terrible headlines on the NHS are evident not just in England, but Scotland and Wales under the devolved administrations of SNP and Labour, and while I have little interest in the CoE, Welby is correct to identify the care sector as very much an issue and it needs bringing into the NHS and possibly upwards of 50 billion to address the crisis
I have no idea why GPS work 5 day weeks nor apparently the poor use of upto date IT in administration, but until we accept the NHS needs reform, is not a religion, and needs cross party support then I fear it will not get better
I am becoming Apolitical as I reject the ERG and right of the conservative party, want to see a closer relationship with the EU which I just cannot see Labour achieving without a complete U turn, and of course indyref2 continues to be an issue, and do not get me started on AI
I did notice someone say a few days ago to watch how I react as the election nears and as long as Sunak leads the conservatives he has my support, but anything else including the resurrection of Jonson would see me move to the Lib Dems
If a fine upstanding chap such as yourself had been conscripted into the Sheffield pals during WW1 and wiped out your parents and family would have lost a son, brother, your shoe dealer would have lost its biggest customer and your friends lost their cockiest associate.
It’s just fucking sad anyone is dying for this Ukraine situation but revelling from the safety of the UK is a bit grim.
But this does make sense as a propaganda exercise if Ukr thinks Russia is about to up its enlistment game.
I just hope it doesn't come back to haunt them as a tool for the
drunken neo-NazisPutin's little helpersthe Republican Party and the hard left in this country to up their campaign for western aid to be withdrawn.Sadly, as you say, it probably wasn't them.
🔎 Big Read by @janemerrick23: https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-tories-may-still-ask-back-prime-minister-2029015?ito=social_itw_theipaper&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1672676510
I suspect most people won't easily forget what has happened and while you are so quick to dismiss the 95-97 analogy, let's not forget the British economy was in a very good shape in May 1997 (thanks in no small way to Ken Clarke) and it didn't stop large numbers of Conservative voters switching to Labour.
Sometimes, if things are going well, people argue they can afford to make the switch - the counter argument to 1992 when the feeling was it was too much of a risk to change to Kinnock's Labour.
Starmer knows (well, if I know it, I'm sure he does) none of these poll leads matter. It's only actual votes in actual ballot boxes in actual elections which matter and he won't take anything for granted and neither will or should the Labour Party. They will fight for every vote.
Ordinary Ukrainians and Russians are both victims of Putin's aggrandisement, and the former don't have much of a choice but to strike the latter until the Kremlin is forced to the table.
I don't believe any of them have been within striking distance of the front line at all.
That's probably not going to look too good for them when the dust settles even if they're still in power.
The contrast with Zelensky who has been very visibly close to his soldiers throughout is both marked and profoundly embarrassing for a Russian leadership that pretends to military prowess.
Tory MPs have no desire to have a government led by Boris back, at most only to use his record as an election winner to save a few of their seats as a last resort
What would they learn about the SMO?
All I am saying is that history doesn't repeat itself and, whilst the 95-97 period remains a clear point of reference for all of us, event are very unlikely to play out in the same way.
For one thing, this time, we don't have large number of Conservative voters switching to Labour this time - we have a very modest movement and a huge movement to WNV/DNK and Reform. We also don't have Starmer's Labour enthusing the wider electorate in anything like the same manner that Blair did.
As political betters what we must do is to anticipate how things could play out this time, and the broad range of error within that - and, yes, I fully accept it could be even worse for the Tories in 2024/2025 - but I also think the gap could close.
Which will happen?
At this stage we simply don't know.
Because pay rises are likely to come through *after* inflation has fallen (they will lag), and this means that people will feel incrementally richer as they see their incomes rise faster than pices.
It took 10 years and that sort of spending to get the waiting lists down from the numbers we see today to the level of service that we had in 2010.
The limiting step is personnel (many of whom are quitting) and facilities more than cash. It takes time to train new people and build modern new facilities, as well as concentrated and disciplined management from the top. As ever, staff retention is the place to start.
Perhaps Sunak simply has it down in the "too hard" column of problems, and impossible to make headway before the next election. He may well be right, and simply accept the festering NHS crisis has to continue.
There is no evidence of fraud. Indeed, there is no real possibility that there was a giant, US-wide plot to tamper with votes to put Biden in power.
People will believe what is most convenient to them. And it is easier to believe that there is a giant conspiracy, and that political opponents are not just wrong, but are evil too, than to admit that you lost an election.
It is incredibly corrosive to civil society, and it is incredibly corrosive to democracy.
Now imagine you've got 3 kids, as well as your own mobile, you're looking at an extra £30 a month on mobiles.
Depending on your BB package, you're looking at another £10 a month there.
When people are struggling with a choice of heating or eating, this is another kicker.
BTW (also FYI) note that Putinism a la the Sage of Mar-a-Lardo is NOT the first sinister cult that she's embraced, as per her wiki bio:
"I was once in a group that used mind control techniques" . . . "pretty scary people".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginni_Thomas
There is a mess of units that do not co-operate between military districts, and the Chechens, Wagers, Rsguardia and regular military do not have unified command, with even the regular army split between military districts. This results in ineffective piecemeal attacks at ground level with high casualties because of failure to co-ordinate.
I am not sure that the Ukranians have a vastly better command structure, but it does seem to function at operational and strategic level, no doubt helped by Western Intelligence.
FWIW, I think Sunak is motivated by doing the right thing for Britain long-term as much as he is improving the Tories electoral prospects. He knows re-election in 2 years is a very tall order.
It's why I like him.
Chortle.
Ultimately though this is how wars are fought. Ordinary folk kill each other while the guilty leadership lives the high life away from the sharp end.
After 2000, Democrats moaned that *if* there'd been a proper recount, then they would have won. But they didn't suggest that their opponents had rigged the vote.
Even after 2016, they suggested (probably correctly fwiw) that Russian campaigns on Facebook/Twitter/etc had boosted Trump.
But neither of those things suggest that their opponents deliberately lied and cheated and conspired to steal an election.
One is bitching and moaning. One is holding your political opponents to be intrinsically evil. (And that there was *no-one* on the opposing side willing to blow the whistle...)
There is a tendency to say "oh well, they're all as bad as each other", and normally I'd have a lot of sympathy with that view.
But in this case, it's simply not true.
Liverpool trail to an own goal.
I was in the UK last month and got a PAYG SIM for £15, inc 10GB data and a pile of calls, from a petrol station!
Over the last few years most of the MNOs and MVNOs have put in a clause in the contracts that put in mid contract price increases of 3.9% plus March CPI.
Now inflation has exploded, these mid contract price contracts are a ticking timebomb.
If the government wanted an easy win they'd ban in contract price increases.
Most of the broadband providers have followed similar patterns, which isn't surprising since there's a bit of cross ownership.
So most of these contracts were taken out before the cost of living crisis started.
Politico.com - Meet the House GOP’s newly crowned comedy king
From the borderline to the unpredictable to the absolutely random, everyone in the House GOP has a story about Tim Burchett.
Every class has its clown, and in the House GOP no one has earned that reputation quite like Rep. Tim Burchett.
When the Tennessee Republican first met the wife of Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) in 2018, he simultaneously complimented her appearance while jokingly digging at her husband’s — taking off his glasses, handing them to her and saying: “Ma’am, you need these more than me.”
Another time, after visiting then-President Donald Trump at the White House with other members, Burchett was the last to run onto the bus — yelling they needed to peel out because he’d just stolen the baby Jesus from the Nativity scene (he had not actually done so). . . .
“I don’t take myself seriously. I take the job seriously,” Burchett said in an interview, one day before Christmas Eve.
Others agreed. GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy could tick off multiple funny moments courtesy of Burchett, but also praised him as a constituent-focused member. He said Burchett “uses that ‘aw shucks,’ but he’s very smart.”
“He has the ability to take a serious situation, lighten the room, but also make his point,” McCarthy said.
This month, Burchett invited media, colleagues and staff to a holiday party set to last 15 minutes, and said there would “possibly” be refreshments. The party, which did in fact last 15 minutes, featured a PB&J sandwich stand, a “charcuterie” board that was just Burchett spraying cheese whiz on Ritz crackers . . . .
There are plenty of incidents that back up Green’s claim. Rep. David Kustoff (R-Tenn.) said Burchett calls him his “favorite Jew after Jesus.” . . .
And while his voting record resembles those of members in the House Freedom Caucus, his relationships across the aisle are starkly different. He and Speaker Nancy Pelosi publicly embraced after Burchett told her that he was praying for her husband after the violent assault at Pelosi’s San Francisco home, as the Tennessean recalled. He is also known to fist-bump with Democrats like progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), an association that his GOP colleagues say would destroy other members among base voters.
But he doesn’t want his interactions with Democrats to end there. He has three goals he remembers listing off to now-former Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.):
“I want to run down South Beach hand-in-hand with [former Rep.] Donna Shalala. I want to go to the Bronx and party with AOC. I don’t know if she lives in the Bronx or not … I’ve never been to New York,” Burchett said. “And I said I want to party in the Kennedy compound.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/02/tim-burchett-tennessee-republican-00075874
Surely the service increases apply only to the service part of the contract, rather than the device repayment part - the cost of which would be fixed by the supplier at the time of purchase?
Again, people on the breadline with kids aren’t buying them new phones on £45 a month contracts - if they are, then that’s a bloody good reason why they’re struggling in the first place!!
Out of the MVNOs only Sky and Tesco split out the cost, so most people in the country.
The point is they weren't on the breadline when they took out the contracts.
Good enough for multiple British governments...
I don't see any real understanding of how to mend the countries downward spiral, and his choice of cabinet does not inspire confidence. He seems a pleasant enough chap on a personal level, just completely over-promoted.