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What we need are Tory by-election defences – politicalbetting.com
What we need are Tory by-election defences – politicalbetting.com
I must say I cannot get at all excited about Labour by-election defences in northern seats which have been held by the party for as long as anyone can remember.
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Then again, if inspiring gets us Boris Johnson, I'm all for uninspiring ...
Ditto a Esher & Walton by election.
It gives
Labour: 543
Tories: 21
LDs: 15
SNP: 47
= SNP official opposition and the Tories destroyed forever
And we are now less than two years from the last possible GE?
I do not understand their inertia. The tactical move for them is obvious. Come out, loud and proud, as the party of Rejoin the EU immediately (after another referendum). There are enough hardcore Remoaners in southern England and the like to win them quite a few seats, indeed Remoaners tempted by Starmer might vote tactically for the LDs in the hope that they can pressure him towards Rejoin in a hung parliament
What the F are they playing at? This would also bring them much needed attention
It is amazing to me that no UK party is going out there swinging for the Rejoin vote, when the polls are clearly showing Brexit remorse
Jeremy Hunt has all but ruled out a “major new initiative” to support households with their energy bills from April.
The chancellor was speaking as ONS figures showed the UK economy narrowly dodged a recession at the end of last year, but growth is expected to remain close to zero in 2023.
The energy price guarantee, which limits the amount suppliers can charge per unit of energy used, is set to finish at the end of March.
Labour has called for it to be extended. But the chancellor, asked if he was ruling out more support, said: “We constantly keep the help we can give families under review.
“But if you’re saying ‘do I think we’re going to have the headroom to make a major new initiative to help people?’ I don’t think the situation would have changed very significantly from the autumn statement, which was just three months ago.”
While Hunt insisted he “knew just how tough it is for many people dealing with these huge spikes in their energy bills”, he said he needed to be responsible with public finances.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/uk-economy-recession-latest-news-rishi-sunak-dominic-raab-nwlbpkcmx
In Labour's 3 defences, all of very, very safe seats, during Blair's opposition, Labour achieved swings over Conservatives averaging 3.8%.
Conservatives lost second place in each election.
16/18 by elections in 92-97 due to death
8/14 by elections in 05-10 due to death
4/13 by elections in 19-present due to death
Main one is Fear of Farage; although Bremorse is a growing thing, "Brexit is in peril" would still work as a rallying cry. Maybe not enough to win in 2024, but enough to stir the political pot and make brown trousers the sensible choice on the centre left.
But also... for all that I think 2016-now has been a damnfool thing done in a damnfool way, for all I think it can, should and will be reversed, nobody is going to be thanked for saying the time has come to give up on the dream. Because bits of it (mostly the unrealistic bits) were a lovely dream. Like killing a pet that can't survive, is probably making everyone's life miserable with its howling and incontinence... it's still a sad day when the vet sends it to live on a happpy farm.
But perhaps they would get a higher swing in the marginals.
• Lee Anderson
• Currygate
• Jimmy Savile
• Scottish Trans
• Hanging
Instead of your general “25 to 30” the detail would be that over 3 months the average of polls has been closer to 25 than thirty, an average of 27 at best and 26 now. How what is happening there ties in with politics, LISTEN to Nadine Dorries in her Big Dog defence, in saying they bet the house on a Sunak bounce and didn’t get it.
In fact what is it now, what is the very latest? The worst average the Tories got last year, they are just 3.3% above last time we looked - and even HY doesn’t argue with that - and, as you say, Sunak’s ratings are dropping some weeks now and appears to be dragging his party down with them.
I have a GRAPHICAL REVELATION from the graphs on the wiki page.
If you compare the frequent election polls graph with the less frequent merp polls graph, the election polls have Labour going up thanks to Truss bad few weeks, but Labour then crashing and losing half their Liz Leap. But on the MRP graph they barely dip down just keep going up.
And looking to the end bit as we do to see what recent trends are revealed in Shape Format, the Shapes are different - the Labour smile shape is there on both graphs, but on the merp the Tories have no titties at all. 🤷♀️
I’m not quite sure what all this means. Only that it means something to do with lines on frequent poll graph with lines in infrequent poll graph.
Todays cut of our favourite graph
The merp graph today
My main take out is the trend on last 3 merps with different firms involved in them from a period of some time between are all under 100 seats and not good for the Tories.
Forget the morality of hanging Stefan Kishko, the Birmingham 6, the Guildford 4, the Bridgewater 4, the Cardiff 3 and Judith Ward. Lee knows only the traitorous wokerati would disagree with hanging Ian Huntley.
What Lee hasn't twigged he is just a useful idiot, a thick peasant populist clown that patrician Conservative MPs quietly revulsed by his attitudes, are laughing at behind his back. I am not laughing, I believe him to be very dangerous.
They're coming out to vote for the billionaire banker, really? No, this will be a reversion to 2015 where Labour held those seats. The Tories had one chance and they've blown it.
By Freddie Sayers"
https://unherd.com/2023/02/scotland-turns-on-gender-ideology/
“Thousands of families wiped out in a few minutes”
22,000 dead so far. It is an atom bomb
Running wise I am up to three times a week, only a few minutes of running each time but I am building it up. I am hoping fingers crossed I will be able to run my first 5K after many, many months, next month.
How are you?
Levelling up = no
Sunak = no
Corbyn = no
Johnson = no
What reason do these people have to vote Tory? They voted for Ed M and Brown, they will vote for Starmer.
Surely Life without parole, especially for a younger person, is a far greater punishment than the death penalty anyway.
Let these people rot in prison. I am not a Christian but a life can never be worth another.
Own a house, work in the private sector, earn very well and I am a hard worker.
Yet the Tories continue to drift away from me. One day this will cause them a lot of problems, that day will yet come.
It’s what they believe, they are facing an electoral nightmare, why not come out and say it? Rejoin?
The secret is out 🚨. Our new #fusionenergy advanced prototype with power plant-relevant magnet tech will be built at @UKAEAofficial Culham Campus #Oxford. ST80-HTS will demonstrate multiple technologies required for clean, sustainable fusion energy ⚡️
https://mobile.twitter.com/TokamakEnergy/status/1623940588478529537
Non-existent concerns like wokeness taking over and the Human Rights Act, yes let's go full throttle on those!
These people have got to go.
The Brexit referendum should be a warning to the Conservatives of playing fast and loose for short term political gain.
Which is probably why its proponents wanted "No Debate".
You can be forgiven your moodswings. But this is arrant nonsense and an outright lie
“Non existent” my cis gender Cornish arse
I avoid analogies as a rule, they're overdone in punditry and can easily slide into a silliness that helps no-one (eg Brexit is like changing a nappy), but a good way to illustrate what I mean here is to imagine your dog has shat on the carpet.
In which case you can (i) sit there looking at it, grumbling at the mess, castigating the dog and yourself for failing to train it properly; or (ii) you can screw that for a game of soldiers and go, "right, let's get this cleared up!" and then think about getting a goldfish.
Option (i) is Remoaning. Option (ii) is the can-do spirit of Rejoin.
I'm a Remoaner btw. I'm still slumped in my chair gazing at the steaming pile of doo doo, chuntering how it shouldn't have happened, "why oh why oh why", unable (yet) to get up and do anything about it. But one day (and I'll let everyone know when this happens) I'll snap out of this and then I'll be a Remoaner no more. I'll be a Rejoiner.
Always feel good when the weather is on the turn and the nights brighten 😀
We are also filling in our diary and got a few nice weekends booked.
I am hoping to do the local 5K to me in March. I only got into running thanks to my wife and Jo Wiley on Couch to 5K
They have a long history of men wearing skirts in Scotland.
Raised by two Conservative Party members in a part of the world the handful of votes for Labour is marked down as spoilt ballots, but in nearly 9 years have yet to vote Tory. I think Because I take a very keen interest in these things and I have my idea what the Conservative Party should be, and this current mob are not it, not by a long way.
The Party always stood for opening up markets, helping business, sound finance and growth - not hostile to a public sector, but through sound finance and growth and no debt repayments, actually providing the best foundation for providing the best funding to public services.
Classic Conservativism always had a liberal - in the old fashioned, tolerant sense which believes in freedom, rights and responsibility - so Being liberal too is at the heart of being a true Conservative, and makes the difference between them and ideologies what exist to the right of them.
Boris extermination of the life long liberal conservatives MPs over one vote, after all his own and friends rebelling, was disgusting and never necessary in my opinion. If you need to go to those lengths to get a policy through then you need to think about what you are doing.
Behind their constant attacks on the integrity of the civil service is very real financial incompetence, corruption and sleaze being carried out by the Conservative Party.
In the fifties and sixties an era of collectivism and community, the Conservative Party and her leaders and their governments very much agreed with this. But in the 60’s was sown the seed of a new era - individualism. And the party that done so well in the 20th century is now get screwed by abandoning collectivism and community.
They are now the we will have our cake and eat it party, which is fantasy in all its policy positions.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/9/23593099/elon-musk-twitter-fires-engineer-declining-reach-ftc-concerns
For me there are a couple of options that are workable. Transwomen can only use women-only spaces if they no longer have male genitalia. Transwomen have to take part in sports competitions in an "open" category which replaces the "mens" category.
Bangkok in Jan-Feb is, verily, a kind of earthly paradise
And now I get to watch “The Boys” with a nice bottle of 19 crimes. This, here, is mmmmmmmBOP
More than 11 years after the party first promised to fully upgrade the A9 between Perth and Inverness, Jenny Gilruth admitted that the 2025 deadline was “simply unachievable”.
She said she was unable to provide a new date as she attributed the open-ended delay to a series of outside factors harming the £3 billion project.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/minister-blames-delays-to-a9-upgrade-on-putin-hrbqc36zz
And the worst of it? It's getting to the point where we probably could phone up Battersea Dog's Home and ask them to take Nigel the Bulldog away. But we'd feel like utter scumbags for doing that. At least today we would...
Not really evidence as to how it might be effecting him.
Parkrun is fantastic, I do miss it.
They considered themselves righteous champions of fairness and equality, and denounced their critics as bigoted and out of touch.
Now, those same politicians dance on the heads of pins, squirming and avoiding questions about this most controversial of issues.….
When Sarwar should have been challenging the Scottish Government over reforms which were legally unworkable, he meekly fell into line. This political cowardice was helpful neither to transgender people nor to those who felt the legislation went too far.
In purely political terms, Sarwar has blown it. Never in her long and successful career has Nicola Sturgeon appeared more vulnerable. Her obsession with reforming the GRA has likely set her at odds with fellow nationalists and the majority of Scottish voters.
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/opinion/columnists/5377924/anas-sarwar-political-shield-snp-euan-mccolm-opinion/
=
‘These people never wanted to be parents in the first place”
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-brexit-is-just-like-having-a-baby/
Brexit = Baby remains the greatest analogy in the history of PB - maybe in the history of humanity. We can only hope that one day the immortal @SeanT might one day *Rejoin* pb
I assume Portillo would be the PB rail enthusiasts' (of which there seem quite a few) choice for PM, even now?
https://twitter.com/InvCourier/status/1623961783630196736
I know people think Johnson's party was more "in touch" but their obsession with trans people, the EU and immigrants just doesn't resonate with my/our folk. They're losing them by going on about this nonsense. And they've now shredded their economic credentials too.
The Tory Party will rediscover Cameron/Blair at some point. But they are going to have to lose and lose big - and long term that is what is needed. It saved Labour.
The anti-Trumpite satire is occasionally overdone and the sizzling script can lapse into over-writing, and the hero Brit is obviously an Aussie (ie an Aussie doing cockney) but it’s also great fun. Hideously violent but in a cartoon way. Well worth a watch
Recall Starmer was investigated twice, the second time clearly because of political interference. They could not find anything either time. He is clean.
Laid Verstappen at evens, which I think is way too short before we've seen any of the cars turn a wheel.
Anyone agree ?
I am struck by the total spaghetti ball of railways that Britain used to be. Which surely means that releasing capacity on the WCML (if it is an issue of such national import that it's worth rinsing the nation for) could have been achieved more easily by reviving some of the other lines that criss-crossed the country. We know which lines worked and were busy, we know why, the ground work is mostly still there and not much has been built over the top since.