Why LAB continues to be flattered by the polls – politicalbetting.com
Comments
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The polls can be flattering Labour and Labour could still win a landslide. The Labour poll leads are so large that these are not mutually exclusive.
Electoral Calculus gives a Labour majority of 92 with vote shares of 42-30.
That's not a prediction, by the way, but it does illustrate the scale of the hole that the Tories are in. Losing by only 12pp wouldn't be a terrible result for the Tories compared to polls regularly putting them 22 points behind, but they'd still lose 170 seats.1 -
Australia processed claims for asylum in Australia. We are proposing no such thing - claims processed in Rwanda would be for Rwanda.BartholomewRoberts said:
No we don't. Their claims can be processed in Rwanda if the plan is implemented, that's how Australia did it. Anyone detained is immediately extradited, no questions asked, at which point nobody crosses by that method since nobody wants that fate.RochdalePioneers said:
But we can't even try. Work the plan backwards - we need to catch them, detain them, legally process them, issue an expulsion order, find an airline. Only then do they get to go to Rwanda.Leon said:
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRYFoxy said:
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.Leon said:
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?OnlyLivingBoy said:
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
But we can't intern them. We can't process their claims. So we can't declare them illegal and deport them. Can't you see that?
In any case, let's say we switched your bypass scheme on today - deport them all direct to Rwanda. What do we do with all the ones we already have? Abandon their claims and deport them? To where - Rwanda can't take the numbers we would be sending.
This is the problem with the Rwanda thing - it is a dream sketched with crayons. Australia came up with a workable version of this because they are actually competent. We are not.2 -
Sure! It's a great headline! But in practice there are no solutions for the problems I listed. I would have more time for "send them to Rwanda" if there was a workable detailed plan. But there isn't - just "send them to Rwanda". A non-plan slogan.Leon said:V
Germany seems quite keen, nonethelessRochdalePioneers said:
But we can't even try. Work the plan backwards - we need to catch them, detain them, legally process them, issue an expulsion order, find an airline. Only then do they get to go to Rwanda.Leon said:
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRYFoxy said:
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.Leon said:
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?OnlyLivingBoy said:
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
But we can't intern them. We can't process their claims. So we can't declare them illegal and deport them. Can't you see that?
“Germany 'wants EU to adopt 'Rwanda-style' migrant system with asylum seekers deported - similar to Britain's proposed scheme'”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12176903/Germany-wants-EU-adopt-Rwanda-style-migrant-system.html1 -
This is a really weird narrative. Don't knows regress a bit to their old parties sure, but they also are waiting for answers to the following:
Are my household finances improving?
Is the general economy improving?
Are the government meeting their/my main objectives?
As well as who has the better campaign and vision for the future.
On the first three the govt will need enormous luck to get anywhere significantly helpful. It is quite possible they run a better campaign, and reduce the lead by 5% or so in the final month or two, but even that is far from given.1 -
If the debate is around stopping illegal immigration then, even if the Tories are failing on that issue, it's much better political ground for them to debate on than falling living standards, NHS waiting lists, etc.Foxy said:An argument for a May 24 GE is that next summers migrant arrival figures are very unlikely to be Sunaks advantage.
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Might need to reconquer Tanganyika first.Leon said:V
Germany seems quite keen, nonethelessRochdalePioneers said:
But we can't even try. Work the plan backwards - we need to catch them, detain them, legally process them, issue an expulsion order, find an airline. Only then do they get to go to Rwanda.Leon said:
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRYFoxy said:
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.Leon said:
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?OnlyLivingBoy said:
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
But we can't intern them. We can't process their claims. So we can't declare them illegal and deport them. Can't you see that?
“Germany 'wants EU to adopt 'Rwanda-style' migrant system with asylum seekers deported - similar to Britain's proposed scheme'”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12176903/Germany-wants-EU-adopt-Rwanda-style-migrant-system.html
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Re-animating dead spiders !!!!Carnyx said:Oh good, the Ig Nobel Prizes are out now:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/sep/14/reanimated-spiders-and-smart-toilets-triumph-at-ig-nobel-prizes
'Focusing on the other end of the digestive system, this year’s Ig Nobel prize for public health was awarded to researchers for the development of a smart toilet that uses various technologies to monitor human waste for signs of disease and an anal-print sensor as part of its system to identify the user.
The award for medicine went to researchers who used cadavers to explore whether each of an individual’s nostrils contains an equal number of hairs, while the communication prize was scooped by scientists who have conducted investigations, including neuroimaging analyses, into people who are expert at speaking backwards.
Elsewhere, the literature prize went to researchers exploring the peculiar feeling that can arise when the same word is repeatedly written – a phenomenon they say is an example of “jamais vu”, whereby people find the familiar to be unfamiliar – while the prize for physics went to researchers who discovered that the sexual activity of anchovies, which gather at night off the Galician coast to spawn, can create small whirls that mix different layers of water in the oceans.'
Some interesting stuff - and deeper than the uninformed viewer might think: for instance, those anchovies could be bringing up nutrient-rich deep water to the photosynthetic zone at the surface. Which has interesting implications as they'd be laying their planktonic eggs into that same water, I should think.
Still, it has made them all Trillionaires.0 -
The people arriving in the small boats are largely not 100% asylum seekers - they want to work.Foxy said:
The asylum seekers that I know via my church do not work, not least because it breaks the terms of their application.Malmesbury said:
As usual, there is one policy that has been identified that would work. Cut off the demand for super cheap, undocumented labour.Alanbrooke said:
Always good fun, but hardly the basis of a national policyFarooq said:
Well it would annoy you for starters, so there's that.Alanbrooke said:
Ah more little Englanderism from people who cant look beyond these shores.Foxy said:
In the last 7 days about 1400 small boat arrivals have been recorded. Three Bibby Stockholms needed for these alone.Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Meanwhile both the Tories prison hulk and Rwanda plans have completely failed.
Banging on about their own failures isn't likely to help Sunak.
Try looking at the total mess the EU is in re migration and then explain to me why we would want to jump in to it.
Actually processing applications in reasonable time may help reduce the number undocumented.
They do not want to register as asylum seekers, precisely because they want to work.
A big flaw in the discussions of immigrants and asylum seeking is that a mix of motives for immigration is typical. Consider
1) An Indian friend. A Christian. His church gets burned down whenever the RSS have a bad week, or need a day off from attacking Muslims. This doesn't happen every year. But he came to the UK to work. At least a part of his reason was being able to go to church without a fire extinguisher.
2) My wife. She came here from Peru, to join family, find education & work and to escape the Joy Joy Maoist terrorist situation there. What percentage of each? - *she* is hard pressed to say.1 -
Usual guffFarooq said:
You don't really care about policy; you're just an angry partisan.Alanbrooke said:
Always good fun, but hardly the basis of a national policyFarooq said:
Well it would annoy you for starters, so there's that.Alanbrooke said:
Ah more little Englanderism from people who cant look beyond these shores.Foxy said:
In the last 7 days about 1400 small boat arrivals have been recorded. Three Bibby Stockholms needed for these alone.Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Meanwhile both the Tories prison hulk and Rwanda plans have completely failed.
Banging on about their own failures isn't likely to help Sunak.
Try looking at the total mess the EU is in re migration and then explain to me why we would want to jump in to it.0 -
Good morning, everyone.
Mr. Farooq, my understanding is that Portugal is attempting to raise/create islands further west, for the legal rights these would present.0 -
The problem is Europe-wide, and so will only be solved or, more realistically, managed, at the European level. An example: we say 'they're safe in France and should stay there'. France says 'we take more than you already'. To resolve that we need to agree something with them. And for UK and France, read France and Italy, the same debate all over Europe. Now it may be that there is no solution that can be agreed on, but surely we should try?williamglenn said:
So your rhetoric about a 'European solution' is really just a tactic to oppose the UK (or any other individual government) doing anything other than accepting more people.OnlyLivingBoy said:
No. We need a solution at the European level but that doesn't mean we go along with something that's not right. There may be no solution that can be agreed by countries working together, but there will certainly be no solution if we don't even try.Leon said:
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?OnlyLivingBoy said:
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
I don't want to be unkind, because you are such a fascinating poster, but it strikes me that the one engaging in rhetoric here is you not me.0 -
I think Q2 2024 looks a good call for the GE. Anything later could be seen as a bit desperate.
Preceded by a voter friendly budget. Firstly an increase in the personal allowance to £15,000pa to help (nearly) everyone together with 2% reduction in employees NI to help the workers.0 -
One of the worst possible ways of dealing with asylum seekers is to process them over two to three years during which they cannot work or therefore integrate properly into the wider community. It really is bonkers.Foxy said:
The asylum seekers that I know via my church do not work, not least because it breaks the terms of their application.Malmesbury said:
As usual, there is one policy that has been identified that would work. Cut off the demand for super cheap, undocumented labour.Alanbrooke said:
Always good fun, but hardly the basis of a national policyFarooq said:
Well it would annoy you for starters, so there's that.Alanbrooke said:
Ah more little Englanderism from people who cant look beyond these shores.Foxy said:
In the last 7 days about 1400 small boat arrivals have been recorded. Three Bibby Stockholms needed for these alone.Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Meanwhile both the Tories prison hulk and Rwanda plans have completely failed.
Banging on about their own failures isn't likely to help Sunak.
Try looking at the total mess the EU is in re migration and then explain to me why we would want to jump in to it.
Actually processing applications in reasonable time may help reduce the number undocumented.
The cost of extra border force and court officials will more than be made up by the tax revenue from having people able to work for an extra couple of years and maintain and develop skills rather than becoming dependent on the state. And that is just the fiscal benefit, social integration and social acceptance would be a lot higher if asylum seekers were working and supporting themselves.2 -
Are there no mirrors in your house?Alanbrooke said:
Usual guffFarooq said:
You don't really care about policy; you're just an angry partisan.Alanbrooke said:
Always good fun, but hardly the basis of a national policyFarooq said:
Well it would annoy you for starters, so there's that.Alanbrooke said:
Ah more little Englanderism from people who cant look beyond these shores.Foxy said:
In the last 7 days about 1400 small boat arrivals have been recorded. Three Bibby Stockholms needed for these alone.Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Meanwhile both the Tories prison hulk and Rwanda plans have completely failed.
Banging on about their own failures isn't likely to help Sunak.
Try looking at the total mess the EU is in re migration and then explain to me why we would want to jump in to it.0 -
23% of 2019 Tory voters is 10% of the electorate. Say the vast majority vote Tory, as Mike suggests - that's maybe 7 points. There are also a few Lab/LD voters who say they're not sure, to whom much the same applies, so knock a point off to make it 6 points. That reduces the Labour lead from 20 to 14. Still comfortable.LostPassword said:The polls can be flattering Labour and Labour could still win a landslide. The Labour poll leads are so large that these are not mutually exclusive.
Electoral Calculus gives a Labour majority of 92 with vote shares of 42-30.
That's not a prediction, by the way, but it does illustrate the scale of the hole that the Tories are in. Losing by only 12pp wouldn't be a terrible result for the Tories compared to polls regularly putting them 22 points behind, but they'd still lose 170 seats.
Personally I expect the majority of the uncertain Tories to sit the next election out - they can see the Government is exhausted, but actually voting for another party goes against the grain for them, so just let it happen. That was the decisive move in 1997, not a sudden revival of Tory fortunes on the day.2 -
LOLFarooq said:
The current EU asylum systems focus on things like qualifying rules, and the humane treatment of refugees. The EU wouldn't and couldn't decide that you must export your refugees to Rwanda. No member state could be obliged to do so.Alanbrooke said:
"We need a solution at the European level but that doesn't mean we go along with something that's not right."OnlyLivingBoy said:
No. We need a solution at the European level but that doesn't mean we go along with something that's not right. There may be no solution that can be agreed by countries working together, but there will certainly be no solution if we don't even try.Leon said:
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?OnlyLivingBoy said:
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
You clearly havent understood how the EU works
It is you who does not understand how the EU works.
Yes, yes yes.
All we need is for a UK PM to join a scheme he cant control and then to be told his refusing to take whatever the commission decide is anti communautaire. Well create another crisis with Europe within months of signing up.
I wonder how the rejoin polls will look like then ?0 -
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”Farooq said:
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.Leon said:V
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…Foxy said:
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.Leon said:
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRYFoxy said:
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.Leon said:
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?OnlyLivingBoy said:
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
https://news.sunwebgroup.com/the-azores-islands-a-tropical-paradise-in-europe0 -
I know nothing about these things but whilst any progress is good it does seem like if this village of 74 people in the 2001 census, is a significant gain, then surely a stalemate for another year or more is very likely.Nigelb said:Ukrainian forces have recaptured the village of Andriivka in the eastern Donetsk region, marking one of the most significant battlefield gains in the area since nearby Bakhmut fell under Moscow’s control in May.
https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1702589462226628701
...Ukraine's 3rd Separate Assault Brigade claimed that it had "eliminated" the intelligence chief of Russia's 72nd brigade, three battalion commanders "and almost all the infantry of the 72nd brigade, together with officers and a significant amount of equipment."..2 -
The mindset is simple - zero asylum seekers. The only people we allow to come here are people we want.OnlyLivingBoy said:
The problem is Europe-wide, and so will only be solved or, more realistically, managed, at the European level. An example: we say 'they're safe in France and should stay there'. France says 'we take more than you already'. To resolve that we need to agree something with them. And for UK and France, read France and Italy, the same debate all over Europe. Now it may be that there is no solution that can be agreed on, but surely we should try?williamglenn said:
So your rhetoric about a 'European solution' is really just a tactic to oppose the UK (or any other individual government) doing anything other than accepting more people.OnlyLivingBoy said:
No. We need a solution at the European level but that doesn't mean we go along with something that's not right. There may be no solution that can be agreed by countries working together, but there will certainly be no solution if we don't even try.Leon said:
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?OnlyLivingBoy said:
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
I don't want to be unkind, because you are such a fascinating poster, but it strikes me that the one engaging in rhetoric here is you not me.
I understand the rationale for the latter point, but have to ask why after all these years post Brexit we are no further forward?
On refugees, there is a cold-heartedness amongst some Tories which truly is unBritish. We cannot set a zero target which despite their denials is clearly what they want - just as after Brexit the target was negative as they wanted (and achieved) the goal of making foreigners go home.
The UK - especially of we want to be "global Britain" - cannot pretend the rest of the world isn't there. We can't build walls and shut out a global problem. So any solution to refugees and migration will be global. But the right of the Tory party don't understand why these foreigners simply do as they are told.1 -
It was the regular ones which were the problem. And migrants per se arent really the issue weve always been a mongrel nation. Its the fact that we are expanding the population at a rate our infrastructure cant support. There is no benefit to us in taking in 500000 people a year when we havent got the means to support them.bondegezou said:
We deported far more people who had arrived through irregular channels when we were in the EU than now.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.0 -
SOMEONE has been reading PB again. Shameless
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/french-food-is-the-most-disappointing-in-the-world/1 -
I dont have your narcissistic tendencies.RochdalePioneers said:
Are there no mirrors in your house?Alanbrooke said:
Usual guffFarooq said:
You don't really care about policy; you're just an angry partisan.Alanbrooke said:
Always good fun, but hardly the basis of a national policyFarooq said:
Well it would annoy you for starters, so there's that.Alanbrooke said:
Ah more little Englanderism from people who cant look beyond these shores.Foxy said:
In the last 7 days about 1400 small boat arrivals have been recorded. Three Bibby Stockholms needed for these alone.Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Meanwhile both the Tories prison hulk and Rwanda plans have completely failed.
Banging on about their own failures isn't likely to help Sunak.
Try looking at the total mess the EU is in re migration and then explain to me why we would want to jump in to it.
0 -
So how do you keep your moustache neatly trimmed?Alanbrooke said:
I dont have your narcissistic tendencies.RochdalePioneers said:
Are there no mirrors in your house?Alanbrooke said:
Usual guffFarooq said:
You don't really care about policy; you're just an angry partisan.Alanbrooke said:
Always good fun, but hardly the basis of a national policyFarooq said:
Well it would annoy you for starters, so there's that.Alanbrooke said:
Ah more little Englanderism from people who cant look beyond these shores.Foxy said:
In the last 7 days about 1400 small boat arrivals have been recorded. Three Bibby Stockholms needed for these alone.Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Meanwhile both the Tories prison hulk and Rwanda plans have completely failed.
Banging on about their own failures isn't likely to help Sunak.
Try looking at the total mess the EU is in re migration and then explain to me why we would want to jump in to it.0 -
Morning all.0
-
Good morning, Mr. W.0
-
The European migrant issue has been a problem since 2015 and they havent solved it. And they have no prospect of doing so. So quite how signing up to someone elses problem will solve ours remains a mystery.OnlyLivingBoy said:
The problem is Europe-wide, and so will only be solved or, more realistically, managed, at the European level. An example: we say 'they're safe in France and should stay there'. France says 'we take more than you already'. To resolve that we need to agree something with them. And for UK and France, read France and Italy, the same debate all over Europe. Now it may be that there is no solution that can be agreed on, but surely we should try?williamglenn said:
So your rhetoric about a 'European solution' is really just a tactic to oppose the UK (or any other individual government) doing anything other than accepting more people.OnlyLivingBoy said:
No. We need a solution at the European level but that doesn't mean we go along with something that's not right. There may be no solution that can be agreed by countries working together, but there will certainly be no solution if we don't even try.Leon said:
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?OnlyLivingBoy said:
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
I don't want to be unkind, because you are such a fascinating poster, but it strikes me that the one engaging in rhetoric here is you not me.2 -
Amazingly, I haven’t actually gone into detailed plans for each individual AzoreFarooq said:
So we have apparently 8 uninhabited Azores islands... I still can't find them. This is a serious question, I don't know the Azores. Where are they? Are we talking about tiny little rocks? I've found something called Ilhéu do Monchique, which is about 50 metres long. Is that your planned destination for these refugees?Leon said:
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”Farooq said:
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.Leon said:V
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…Foxy said:
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.Leon said:
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRYFoxy said:
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.Leon said:
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?OnlyLivingBoy said:
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
https://news.sunwebgroup.com/the-azores-islands-a-tropical-paradise-in-europe
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind0 -
Yes the Tories will hope to squeeze DKs and RefUK voters0
-
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.2 -
There is detail, and then there is being able to actually name a place or find it on a map rather than in a quote from a random website.....Leon said:
Amazingly, I haven’t actually gone into detailed plans for each individual AzoreFarooq said:
So we have apparently 8 uninhabited Azores islands... I still can't find them. This is a serious question, I don't know the Azores. Where are they? Are we talking about tiny little rocks? I've found something called Ilhéu do Monchique, which is about 50 metres long. Is that your planned destination for these refugees?Leon said:
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”Farooq said:
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.Leon said:V
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…Foxy said:
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.Leon said:
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRYFoxy said:
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.Leon said:
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?OnlyLivingBoy said:
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
https://news.sunwebgroup.com/the-azores-islands-a-tropical-paradise-in-europe
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind0 -
The simple fact is that this government is crap at everything and everywhere. The voters can see it, but this government cannot.bondegezou said:
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.2 -
Spot onLeon said:SOMEONE has been reading PB again. Shameless
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/french-food-is-the-most-disappointing-in-the-world/
5 years working in France left me wondering why the french think their food is so good, I actually enjoyed Germany more.0 -
The 1997 voteshares were Labour 43% Conservatives 30%. So for Labour to only get a majority of 92 compared to the 179 majority Blair got on an almost identical voteshare in 1997 shows the electoral system does not work as well for Labour as back then.LostPassword said:The polls can be flattering Labour and Labour could still win a landslide. The Labour poll leads are so large that these are not mutually exclusive.
Electoral Calculus gives a Labour majority of 92 with vote shares of 42-30.
That's not a prediction, by the way, but it does illustrate the scale of the hole that the Tories are in. Losing by only 12pp wouldn't be a terrible result for the Tories compared to polls regularly putting them 22 points behind, but they'd still lose 170 seats.
Adding the Labour seats lost to the SNP in Scotland too0 -
If Biden was re elected of course he would pardon HunterNigelb said:
Is it ?Dura_Ace said:
No, because there are no methods other than death, impeachment and the 25th to remove him if he doesn't want to stand down. Which he doesn't. At least part of his thinking is that he's going to have to be POTUS to pardon that shitstain Hunter.Sandpit said:Is it time to lay Joe Biden?
I seriously doubt he'd do any such thing.0 -
But we didn’t legally Brexit until 2020. So that mild decline from 2016 can’t be blamed on Brexit. More likely it was a byproduct of a drop in EU citizens coming here, psychologically deterred by Brexitbondegezou said:
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
Overall it looks more like a failure of governance across the board - on that I agree with you. This govt has been crap on migration; almost as bad as the one before it0 -
I can certainly pinpoint Kerguelen. It’s a large archipelago in the sub Antarctic. It has about 3 scientists living there. It is grim but it is habitable (Matthew Paris spent several months there, famously)noneoftheabove said:
There is detail, and then there is being able to actually name a place or find it on a map rather than in a quote from a random website.....Leon said:
Amazingly, I haven’t actually gone into detailed plans for each individual AzoreFarooq said:
So we have apparently 8 uninhabited Azores islands... I still can't find them. This is a serious question, I don't know the Azores. Where are they? Are we talking about tiny little rocks? I've found something called Ilhéu do Monchique, which is about 50 metres long. Is that your planned destination for these refugees?Leon said:
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”Farooq said:
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.Leon said:V
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…Foxy said:
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.Leon said:
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRYFoxy said:
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.Leon said:
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?OnlyLivingBoy said:
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
https://news.sunwebgroup.com/the-azores-islands-a-tropical-paradise-in-europe
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
Kerguelen would certainly be a deterrent and could house hundreds of thousands0 -
On current polls Labour should gain Rutherglen but the Tories would hold Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth. Although on the Selby swing they wouldn'tCasino_Royale said:
He won't be in deep shit, any more than he was after failing to gain Uxbridge. FWIW - I think he should win Tamworth, might just miss out in Mid-Beds and will probably lose Rutherglen to the SNP.TheScreamingEagles said:I had a top up on the SNP to hold the by election.
Starmer could be in deep shit if he fails to win any of the three by elections.
None of that would mean he's not on course to win. It will just reinforce his caution.0 -
Immigration was 1.2 million in 2022, for a net figure of 606,000. This is a record high. That's after Brexit, after we've taken back control, under this Government. If you think that figure is too high, can I ask, who are you planning to vote for? Presumably you will not be voting for the party in charge when this figure happened...?Alanbrooke said:
It was the regular ones which were the problem. And migrants per se arent really the issue weve always been a mongrel nation. Its the fact that we are expanding the population at a rate our infrastructure cant support. There is no benefit to us in taking in 500000 people a year when we havent got the means to support them.bondegezou said:
We deported far more people who had arrived through irregular channels when we were in the EU than now.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
Immigration was lower under the last Labour government. It was lower under the coalition government.0 -
There's no such thing as our problem and their problem - it is the same problem.Alanbrooke said:
The European migrant issue has been a problem since 2015 and they havent solved it. And they have no prospect of doing so. So quite how signing up to someone elses problem will solve ours remains a mystery.OnlyLivingBoy said:
The problem is Europe-wide, and so will only be solved or, more realistically, managed, at the European level. An example: we say 'they're safe in France and should stay there'. France says 'we take more than you already'. To resolve that we need to agree something with them. And for UK and France, read France and Italy, the same debate all over Europe. Now it may be that there is no solution that can be agreed on, but surely we should try?williamglenn said:
So your rhetoric about a 'European solution' is really just a tactic to oppose the UK (or any other individual government) doing anything other than accepting more people.OnlyLivingBoy said:
No. We need a solution at the European level but that doesn't mean we go along with something that's not right. There may be no solution that can be agreed by countries working together, but there will certainly be no solution if we don't even try.Leon said:
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?OnlyLivingBoy said:
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
I don't want to be unkind, because you are such a fascinating poster, but it strikes me that the one engaging in rhetoric here is you not me.
This is a problem that is only going to get worse, BTW, and will change our societies massively whether we let people in or not.0 -
Very good. Isn't confit de canard and/or a steak frites a staple everywhere still which takes some beating or is that one of the things done to death.Leon said:SOMEONE has been reading PB again. Shameless
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/french-food-is-the-most-disappointing-in-the-world/0 -
Im planning to spoil my vote or vote for the maddest bastard on the list. Mick Lynch on a Sinn Fein ticket sounds about right. Starmer and Sunak are simply different shades of the same colour, The electorate isnt really being offered a choice.bondegezou said:
Immigration was 1.2 million in 2022, for a net figure of 606,000. This is a record high. That's after Brexit, after we've taken back control, under this Government. If you think that figure is too high, can I ask, who are you planning to vote for? Presumably you will not be voting for the party in charge when this figure happened...?Alanbrooke said:
It was the regular ones which were the problem. And migrants per se arent really the issue weve always been a mongrel nation. Its the fact that we are expanding the population at a rate our infrastructure cant support. There is no benefit to us in taking in 500000 people a year when we havent got the means to support them.bondegezou said:
We deported far more people who had arrived through irregular channels when we were in the EU than now.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
Immigration was lower under the last Labour government. It was lower under the coalition government.1 -
I can't recall the detail from analyses, however these things are usually topology (high / low ground), landscape features (rivers, forests) or communication lines (roads, railways).noneoftheabove said:
I know nothing about these things but whilst any progress is good it does seem like if this village of 74 people in the 2001 census, is a significant gain, then surely a stalemate for another year or more is very likely.Nigelb said:Ukrainian forces have recaptured the village of Andriivka in the eastern Donetsk region, marking one of the most significant battlefield gains in the area since nearby Bakhmut fell under Moscow’s control in May.
https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1702589462226628701
...Ukraine's 3rd Separate Assault Brigade claimed that it had "eliminated" the intelligence chief of Russia's 72nd brigade, three battalion commanders "and almost all the infantry of the 72nd brigade, together with officers and a significant amount of equipment."..
(That's a statement of the obvious to most people - sorry).
0 -
I think Labour will gain Rutherglen, lose Tamworth, and mid-Beds will be interesting, based on no real information other than encouraging feedback from Labour people in Scotland when I spoke to them at a wedding in late August.HYUFD said:
On current polls Labour should gain Rutherglen but the Tories would hold Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth. Although on the Selby swing they wouldn'tCasino_Royale said:
He won't be in deep shit, any more than he was after failing to gain Uxbridge. FWIW - I think he should win Tamworth, might just miss out in Mid-Beds and will probably lose Rutherglen to the SNP.TheScreamingEagles said:I had a top up on the SNP to hold the by election.
Starmer could be in deep shit if he fails to win any of the three by elections.
None of that would mean he's not on course to win. It will just reinforce his caution.1 -
One of the more arresting sites in Quimper is the bus heading to Kerguelen - the Brittany village that gave its name to the admiral who gave his name to the island.Leon said:
I can certainly pinpoint Kerguelen. It’s a large archipelago in the sub Antarctic. It has about 3 scientists living there. It is grim but it is habitable (Matthew Paris spent several months there, famously)noneoftheabove said:
There is detail, and then there is being able to actually name a place or find it on a map rather than in a quote from a random website.....Leon said:
Amazingly, I haven’t actually gone into detailed plans for each individual AzoreFarooq said:
So we have apparently 8 uninhabited Azores islands... I still can't find them. This is a serious question, I don't know the Azores. Where are they? Are we talking about tiny little rocks? I've found something called Ilhéu do Monchique, which is about 50 metres long. Is that your planned destination for these refugees?Leon said:
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”Farooq said:
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.Leon said:V
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…Foxy said:
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.Leon said:
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRYFoxy said:
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.Leon said:
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?OnlyLivingBoy said:
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
https://news.sunwebgroup.com/the-azores-islands-a-tropical-paradise-in-europe
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
Kerguelen would certainly be a deterrent and could house hundreds of thousands1 -
A
My experience is that French food is simply stuck, with everyone else moving forward. Prices and quality have moved the wrong ways as well.TOPPING said:
Very good. Isn't confit de canard and/or a steak frites a staple everywhere still which takes some beating or is that one of the things done to death.Leon said:SOMEONE has been reading PB again. Shameless
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/french-food-is-the-most-disappointing-in-the-world/
Rather like the lower end French wine production, in many ways.1 -
If Blair had put transitionbondegezou said:
Immigration was 1.2 million in 2022, for a net figure of 606,000. This is a record high. That's after Brexit, after we've taken back control, under this Government. If you think that figure is too high, can I ask, who are you planning to vote for? Presumably you will not be voting for the party in charge when this figure happened...?Alanbrooke said:
It was the regular ones which were the problem. And migrants per se arent really the issue weve always been a mongrel nation. Its the fact that we are expanding the population at a rate our infrastructure cant support. There is no benefit to us in taking in 500000 people a year when we havent got the means to support them.bondegezou said:
We deported far more people who had arrived through irregular channels when we were in the EU than now.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
Immigration was lower under
the last Labour government. It
was lower under the coalition
government.
controls on free movement
from the new accession
nations for 7 years like
Germany in 2004 Brexit may
never have happened. The
2016 EU referendum would likely have seen a narrow
Leave win.
As it is we just now have the same points system for EU as non EU migrants. If that isn't tough enough for you then you likely vote Reform UK0 -
a pedant writesLostPassword said:The polls can be flattering Labour and Labour could still win a landslide. The Labour poll leads are so large that these are not mutually exclusive.
Electoral Calculus gives a Labour majority of 92 with vote shares of 42-30.
That's not a prediction, by the way, but it does illustrate the scale of the hole that the Tories are in. Losing by only 12pp wouldn't be a terrible result for the Tories compared to polls regularly putting them 22 points behind, but they'd still lose 170 seats.
grumblegrumble
itsnotalandslideifitisntthreefigures
grumblegrumble0 -
The islands and skerries of the Sound of Harris would do.Leon said:
I can certainly pinpoint Kerguelen. It’s a large archipelago in the sub Antarctic. It has about 3 scientists living there. It is grim but it is habitable (Matthew Paris spent several months there, famously)noneoftheabove said:
There is detail, and then there is being able to actually name a place or find it on a map rather than in a quote from a random website.....Leon said:
Amazingly, I haven’t actually gone into detailed plans for each individual AzoreFarooq said:
So we have apparently 8 uninhabited Azores islands... I still can't find them. This is a serious question, I don't know the Azores. Where are they? Are we talking about tiny little rocks? I've found something called Ilhéu do Monchique, which is about 50 metres long. Is that your planned destination for these refugees?Leon said:
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”Farooq said:
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.Leon said:V
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…Foxy said:
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.Leon said:
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRYFoxy said:
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.Leon said:
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?OnlyLivingBoy said:
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
https://news.sunwebgroup.com/the-azores-islands-a-tropical-paradise-in-europe
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
Kerguelen would certainly be a deterrent and could house hundreds of thousands
Could even have a new settlement: Leonburgh.0 -
One of the main reasons is the massive slowdown in processing applications and thus huge increase in the waiting list, paralleling the massive waits in the NHS, the courts system and everything else the Government is in charge of.Farooq said:
That doesn't really track... the main driver in the change seems to be the non-EU enforced returns. No idea what the reasons are but I can't see how it would be due to deterred EU citizens, since it's the wrong category and the wrong mechanism.Leon said:
But we didn’t legally Brexit until 2020. So that mild decline from 2016 can’t be blamed on Brexit. More likely it was a byproduct of a drop in EU citizens coming here, psychologically deterred by Brexitbondegezou said:
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
Overall it looks more like a failure of governance across the board - on that I agree with you. This govt has been crap on migration; almost as bad as the one before it
3 -
Sorry would likely have seen a narrow Remain winHYUFD said:
If Blair had put transitionbondegezou said:
Immigration was 1.2 million in 2022, for a net figure of 606,000. This is a record high. That's after Brexit, after we've taken back control, under this Government. If you think that figure is too high, can I ask, who are you planning to vote for? Presumably you will not be voting for the party in charge when this figure happened...?Alanbrooke said:
It was the regular ones which were the problem. And migrants per se arent really the issue weve always been a mongrel nation. Its the fact that we are expanding the population at a rate our infrastructure cant support. There is no benefit to us in taking in 500000 people a year when we havent got the means to support them.bondegezou said:
We deported far more people who had arrived through irregular channels when we were in the EU than now.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
Immigration was lower under
the last Labour government. It
was lower under the coalition
government.
controls on free movement
from the new accession
nations for 7 years like
Germany in 2004 Brexit may
never have happened. The
2016 EU referendum would likely have seen a narrow
Leave win.
As it is we just now have the same points system for EU as non EU migrants. If that isn't tough enough for you then you likely vote Reform UK0 -
This Sean Thomas guy has missed something. There is another good French food other than the croissant - the traditional French baguette. So much better than the crap British knock-offs. I think there must be something different about the flour. French one tastes delicious but goes off in hours but the taste when fresh is just fantastic. Particularly with some Normandy salted butter and either confiture or jambon/fromage.Leon said:SOMEONE has been reading PB again. Shameless
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/french-food-is-the-most-disappointing-in-the-world/0 -
Morning all
I don't wholly agree with OGH on this - it's an idea he has floated consistently for months.
Redfield & Wilton have 19% of 2019 Conservative voters saying Don't Know (allowing for likelihood to vote) and 53% of Conservative 2019 voters staying loyal. Stripping out the DKs puts the latter figure up to 65% so perhaps the pollsters are to a degree anticipating the return of the 2019 Tory voters - I believe Opinium does that as part of its methodology.
If YouGov doesn't that might explain why its Conservative ratings are 3-4% below those of other pollsters such as R&W.
R&W have 15% of the 2019 Conservative vote going to Labour - that's nearly 7% of the electorate but that doesn't wholly explain the high Labour ratings. According to R&W, Labour's 2023 vote consists of 90% of its 2019 vote, 15% of the 2019 Conservative vote, 20% of the 2019 LD vote, 15% of the 2019 Green vote and 56% of those who Didn't Vote last time (presumably mainly new voters).
Expecting 2019 Conservative voters who have gone either DK or to Reform to return en masse to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder isn't so far backed by any polling evidence. The likelihood is most will abstain - some will return but not in the numbers Sunak needs.1 -
Quite, but while all the talk of of the improbability of a large Labour Majority you have to acknowledge that there is no compelling reason why the polls should not move even further in Labour's direction as the GE nears. I'm not saying that will happen, but I would say that the likelihood of an increasing poll lead for Labour is no more nor less great than a decline.viewcode said:
a pedant writesLostPassword said:The polls can be flattering Labour and Labour could still win a landslide. The Labour poll leads are so large that these are not mutually exclusive.
Electoral Calculus gives a Labour majority of 92 with vote shares of 42-30.
That's not a prediction, by the way, but it does illustrate the scale of the hole that the Tories are in. Losing by only 12pp wouldn't be a terrible result for the Tories compared to polls regularly putting them 22 points behind, but they'd still lose 170 seats.
grumblegrumble
itsnotalandslideifitisntthreefigures
grumblegrumble
Where would that put the Conservatives in terms of seats? Any advance on a dozen?2 -
Not sure how easy it is to build cities on a glacier in the most remote islands on earth, but assuming that is possible, that gives a solution for a couple of months worth of immigrants to the EU. Next?Leon said:
I can certainly pinpoint Kerguelen. It’s a large archipelago in the sub Antarctic. It has about 3 scientists living there. It is grim but it is habitable (Matthew Paris spent several months there, famously)noneoftheabove said:
There is detail, and then there is being able to actually name a place or find it on a map rather than in a quote from a random website.....Leon said:
Amazingly, I haven’t actually gone into detailed plans for each individual AzoreFarooq said:
So we have apparently 8 uninhabited Azores islands... I still can't find them. This is a serious question, I don't know the Azores. Where are they? Are we talking about tiny little rocks? I've found something called Ilhéu do Monchique, which is about 50 metres long. Is that your planned destination for these refugees?Leon said:
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”Farooq said:
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.Leon said:V
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…Foxy said:
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.Leon said:
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRYFoxy said:
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.Leon said:
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?OnlyLivingBoy said:
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
https://news.sunwebgroup.com/the-azores-islands-a-tropical-paradise-in-europe
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
Kerguelen would certainly be a deterrent and could house hundreds of thousands0 -
Careful now.noneoftheabove said:
I know nothing about these things but whilst any progress is good it does seem like if this village of 74 people in the 2001 census, is a significant gain, then surely a stalemate for another year or more is very likely.Nigelb said:Ukrainian forces have recaptured the village of Andriivka in the eastern Donetsk region, marking one of the most significant battlefield gains in the area since nearby Bakhmut fell under Moscow’s control in May.
https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1702589462226628701
...Ukraine's 3rd Separate Assault Brigade claimed that it had "eliminated" the intelligence chief of Russia's 72nd brigade, three battalion commanders "and almost all the infantry of the 72nd brigade, together with officers and a significant amount of equipment."..0 -
LAB will be very disappointed if they don't win Rutherglen comfortably.HYUFD said:
On current polls Labour should gain Rutherglen but the Tories would hold Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth. Although on the Selby swing they wouldn'tCasino_Royale said:
He won't be in deep shit, any more than he was after failing to gain Uxbridge. FWIW - I think he should win Tamworth, might just miss out in Mid-Beds and will probably lose Rutherglen to the SNP.TheScreamingEagles said:I had a top up on the SNP to hold the by election.
Starmer could be in deep shit if he fails to win any of the three by elections.
None of that would mean he's not on course to win. It will just reinforce his caution.0 -
If they win Rutherglen by 1 vote, they will be delighted. A win is a win.londonpubman said:
LAB will be very disappointed if they don't win Rutherglen comfortably.HYUFD said:
On current polls Labour should gain Rutherglen but the Tories would hold Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth. Although on the Selby swing they wouldn'tCasino_Royale said:
He won't be in deep shit, any more than he was after failing to gain Uxbridge. FWIW - I think he should win Tamworth, might just miss out in Mid-Beds and will probably lose Rutherglen to the SNP.TheScreamingEagles said:I had a top up on the SNP to hold the by election.
Starmer could be in deep shit if he fails to win any of the three by elections.
None of that would mean he's not on course to win. It will just reinforce his caution.1 -
Also, given the state of the Merchant Navy, how many British-registered prison ships are there to take them to Kerguelen? No airport, remember. It would be like the First Fleet and Botany Bay. Only, without the First Fleet.noneoftheabove said:
Not sure how easy it is to build cities on a glacier in the most remote islands on earth, but assuming that is possible, that gives a solution for a couple of months worth of immigrants to the EU. Next?Leon said:
I can certainly pinpoint Kerguelen. It’s a large archipelago in the sub Antarctic. It has about 3 scientists living there. It is grim but it is habitable (Matthew Paris spent several months there, famously)noneoftheabove said:
There is detail, and then there is being able to actually name a place or find it on a map rather than in a quote from a random website.....Leon said:
Amazingly, I haven’t actually gone into detailed plans for each individual AzoreFarooq said:
So we have apparently 8 uninhabited Azores islands... I still can't find them. This is a serious question, I don't know the Azores. Where are they? Are we talking about tiny little rocks? I've found something called Ilhéu do Monchique, which is about 50 metres long. Is that your planned destination for these refugees?Leon said:
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”Farooq said:
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.Leon said:V
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…Foxy said:
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.Leon said:
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRYFoxy said:
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.Leon said:
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?OnlyLivingBoy said:
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
https://news.sunwebgroup.com/the-azores-islands-a-tropical-paradise-in-europe
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
Kerguelen would certainly be a deterrent and could house hundreds of thousands0 -
The waiting list of voters desperate to kick them out seems to be growing proportionately to the other lists too....bondegezou said:
One of the main reasons is the massive slowdown in processing applications and thus huge increase in the waiting list, paralleling the massive waits in the NHS, the courts system and everything else the Government is in charge of.Farooq said:
That doesn't really track... the main driver in the change seems to be the non-EU enforced returns. No idea what the reasons are but I can't see how it would be due to deterred EU citizens, since it's the wrong category and the wrong mechanism.Leon said:
But we didn’t legally Brexit until 2020. So that mild decline from 2016 can’t be blamed on Brexit. More likely it was a byproduct of a drop in EU citizens coming here, psychologically deterred by Brexitbondegezou said:
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
Overall it looks more like a failure of governance across the board - on that I agree with you. This govt has been crap on migration; almost as bad as the one before it2 -
Standing shoulder to shoulder with you, Stodgy, on this one.stodge said:Morning all
I don't wholly agree with OGH on this - it's an idea he has floated consistently for months.
Redfield & Wilton have 19% of 2019 Conservative voters saying Don't Know (allowing for likelihood to vote) and 53% of Conservative 2019 voters staying loyal. Stripping out the DKs puts the latter figure up to 65% so perhaps the pollsters are to a degree anticipating the return of the 2019 Tory voters - I believe Opinium does that as part of its methodology.
If YouGov doesn't that might explain why its Conservative ratings are 3-4% below those of other pollsters such as R&W.
R&W have 15% of the 2019 Conservative vote going to Labour - that's nearly 7% of the electorate but that doesn't wholly explain the high Labour ratings. According to R&W, Labour's 2023 vote consists of 90% of its 2019 vote, 15% of the 2019 Conservative vote, 20% of the 2019 LD vote, 15% of the 2019 Green vote and 56% of those who Didn't Vote last time (presumably mainly new voters).
Expecting 2019 Conservative voters who have gone either DK or to Reform to return en masse to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder isn't so far backed by any polling evidence. The likelihood is most will abstain - some will return but not in the numbers Sunak needs.
One hesitates to disagree with Our Venerable Host, but I think he may just be calling it wrong for once.0 -
WTF does Sean Thomas know.AlistairM said:
This Sean Thomas guy has missed something. There is another good French food other than the croissant - the traditional French baguette. So much better than the crap British knock-offs. I think there must be something different about the flour. French one tastes delicious but goes off in hours but the taste when fresh is just fantastic. Particularly with some Normandy salted butter and either confiture or jambon/fromage.Leon said:SOMEONE has been reading PB again. Shameless
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/french-food-is-the-most-disappointing-in-the-world/
Our resident expert on such matters is Leon who thinks the opposite!2 -
I find it mindblowing that the French queue up at that whatever that steak place is called where they give you those pink slabs of steak off a serving plate.Malmesbury said:A
My experience is that French food is simply stuck, with everyone else moving forward. Prices and quality have moved the wrong ways as well.TOPPING said:
Very good. Isn't confit de canard and/or a steak frites a staple everywhere still which takes some beating or is that one of the things done to death.Leon said:SOMEONE has been reading PB again. Shameless
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/french-food-is-the-most-disappointing-in-the-world/
Rather like the lower end French wine production, in many ways.0 -
If you find a suspiciously good value confit de canard I am reliably told it will be a mix of tinned and frozen. Most oftenTOPPING said:
Very good. Isn't confit de canard and/or a steak frites a staple everywhere still which takes some beating or is that one of the things done to death.Leon said:SOMEONE has been reading PB again. Shameless
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/french-food-is-the-most-disappointing-in-the-world/
Steak frites is reliable. I had a lovely one yesterday. But if French food is reduced to steak frites as the reliable dish that’s like Britain in about 19740 -
This is a threadbare fantasy. There is no airstrip on Kerguelen.Leon said:
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
Do tow backs (at gunpoint) or live with the arrivals. Those are the options.0 -
"there are more McDonalds in France, per head, than anywhere in Europe"Leon said:SOMEONE has been reading PB again. Shameless
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/french-food-is-the-most-disappointing-in-the-world/
Is this right?0 -
Add this one to the list.noneoftheabove said:
The waiting list of voters desperate to kick them out seems to be growing proportionately to the other lists too....bondegezou said:
One of the main reasons is the massive slowdown in processing applications and thus huge increase in the waiting list, paralleling the massive waits in the NHS, the courts system and everything else the Government is in charge of.Farooq said:
That doesn't really track... the main driver in the change seems to be the non-EU enforced returns. No idea what the reasons are but I can't see how it would be due to deterred EU citizens, since it's the wrong category and the wrong mechanism.Leon said:
But we didn’t legally Brexit until 2020. So that mild decline from 2016 can’t be blamed on Brexit. More likely it was a byproduct of a drop in EU citizens coming here, psychologically deterred by Brexitbondegezou said:
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
Overall it looks more like a failure of governance across the board - on that I agree with you. This govt has been crap on migration; almost as bad as the one before it
Mrs PtP has just booked her driving test. Earliest she could get is 18th Jan 2024, in Norfolk.
We live in Gloucestershire. London and the Home Counties would have been acceptable for her, had they not been booked solid.1 -
Well, to torture the French should eat breakfast three times a day quip, a "full English", which Englishmen should as you allude to eat three times a day, is after all only sausage, egg, XXX, XXX, etc*Leon said:
If you find a suspiciously good value confit de canard I am reliably told it will be a mix of tinned and frozen. Most oftenTOPPING said:
Very good. Isn't confit de canard and/or a steak frites a staple everywhere still which takes some beating or is that one of the things done to death.Leon said:SOMEONE has been reading PB again. Shameless
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/french-food-is-the-most-disappointing-in-the-world/
Steak frites is reliable. I had a lovely one yesterday. But if French food is reduced to steak frites as the reliable dish that’s like Britain in about 1974
*redacted so as not to start a flame war0 -
Territorial gains are a lagging indicator. They're the most visible indicator of the balance of forces, but they don't tell us what is happening in terms of the attrition of each sides combat power. So you can't extrapolate from them to say that a stalemate is likely for another year.noneoftheabove said:
I know nothing about these things but whilst any progress is good it does seem like if this village of 74 people in the 2001 census, is a significant gain, then surely a stalemate for another year or more is very likely.Nigelb said:Ukrainian forces have recaptured the village of Andriivka in the eastern Donetsk region, marking one of the most significant battlefield gains in the area since nearby Bakhmut fell under Moscow’s control in May.
https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1702589462226628701
...Ukraine's 3rd Separate Assault Brigade claimed that it had "eliminated" the intelligence chief of Russia's 72nd brigade, three battalion commanders "and almost all the infantry of the 72nd brigade, together with officers and a significant amount of equipment."..
When the Russian army reaches a breaking point, and is no longer able to defend the full length of the current front line, then territorial gains for Ukraine will happen very suddenly.
I'm confident that Ukraine has the upper hand in terms of inflicting greater losses on Russia then they are suffering, but I can't tell you how quickly the Russian army is approaching its breaking point, and how far it is from that point.
There are definite signs of the Russian defence being under severe strain. I disagree that a stalemate is very likely for at least another year. There's a good chance of the Russian defence failing long before then. It could happen next week and we wouldn't have any particular sign that it was about to happen.3 -
CalMac ferries would work.Carnyx said:
Also, given the state of the Merchant Navy, how many British-registered prison ships are there to take them to Kerguelen? No airport, remember. It would be like the First Fleet and Botany Bay. Only, without the First Fleet.noneoftheabove said:
Not sure how easy it is to build cities on a glacier in the most remote islands on earth, but assuming that is possible, that gives a solution for a couple of months worth of immigrants to the EU. Next?Leon said:
I can certainly pinpoint Kerguelen. It’s a large archipelago in the sub Antarctic. It has about 3 scientists living there. It is grim but it is habitable (Matthew Paris spent several months there, famously)noneoftheabove said:
There is detail, and then there is being able to actually name a place or find it on a map rather than in a quote from a random website.....Leon said:
Amazingly, I haven’t actually gone into detailed plans for each individual AzoreFarooq said:
So we have apparently 8 uninhabited Azores islands... I still can't find them. This is a serious question, I don't know the Azores. Where are they? Are we talking about tiny little rocks? I've found something called Ilhéu do Monchique, which is about 50 metres long. Is that your planned destination for these refugees?Leon said:
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”Farooq said:
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.Leon said:V
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…Foxy said:
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.Leon said:
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRYFoxy said:
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.Leon said:
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?OnlyLivingBoy said:
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
https://news.sunwebgroup.com/the-azores-islands-a-tropical-paradise-in-europe
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
Kerguelen would certainly be a deterrent and could house hundreds of thousands0 -
Have to agree. In 2019 there were two, perhaps three, big reasons to vote ToryHeathener said:For the umpteenth time, the 2019 Get Brexit Done election was atypical. An anomaly. Boris Johnson unblocked the remainer parliament's procrastination with a one-off single issue election held on a dark December day. That he reached parts no other politician has reached is testament to the powers of his persuasion (aka lying).
There is NO guarantee that those apparent missing Boris Brexit voters have any party allegiance whatsoever, nor that they will even vote next year.
If you really want to pursue missing voters go back to the last proper General Election in this country: June 2017
@MikeSmithson
Get Brexit done
Stop any chance of PM Corbyn happening
You liked Boris
The first two are done, and the third is gone. The Conservative remainers, the Cameroons, seem to dislike the post referendum party, so they’re not coming back - they probably have more in common with Sir Keir’s Labour. The first time Tories who voted for Boris to get Brexit done were only lending their votes, & have been duped, landed with Truss then Sunak, who they’d probably never heard of.
Heathener’s bit in bold hits the nail on the head, in my opinion - I was one of those first time Tories and wouldn’t even consider voting for them next time.
4 -
Apparently they are bought in bulk and resold like tickets for a popular event.Peter_the_Punter said:
Add this one to the list.noneoftheabove said:
The waiting list of voters desperate to kick them out seems to be growing proportionately to the other lists too....bondegezou said:
One of the main reasons is the massive slowdown in processing applications and thus huge increase in the waiting list, paralleling the massive waits in the NHS, the courts system and everything else the Government is in charge of.Farooq said:
That doesn't really track... the main driver in the change seems to be the non-EU enforced returns. No idea what the reasons are but I can't see how it would be due to deterred EU citizens, since it's the wrong category and the wrong mechanism.Leon said:
But we didn’t legally Brexit until 2020. So that mild decline from 2016 can’t be blamed on Brexit. More likely it was a byproduct of a drop in EU citizens coming here, psychologically deterred by Brexitbondegezou said:
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
Overall it looks more like a failure of governance across the board - on that I agree with you. This govt has been crap on migration; almost as bad as the one before it
Mrs PtP has just booked her driving test. Earliest she could get is 18th Jan 2024, in Norfolk.
We live in Gloucestershire. London and the Home Counties would have been acceptable for her, had they not been booked solid.0 -
You need to go to a ticket tout not the DVLA these days!Peter_the_Punter said:
Add this one to the list.noneoftheabove said:
The waiting list of voters desperate to kick them out seems to be growing proportionately to the other lists too....bondegezou said:
One of the main reasons is the massive slowdown in processing applications and thus huge increase in the waiting list, paralleling the massive waits in the NHS, the courts system and everything else the Government is in charge of.Farooq said:
That doesn't really track... the main driver in the change seems to be the non-EU enforced returns. No idea what the reasons are but I can't see how it would be due to deterred EU citizens, since it's the wrong category and the wrong mechanism.Leon said:
But we didn’t legally Brexit until 2020. So that mild decline from 2016 can’t be blamed on Brexit. More likely it was a byproduct of a drop in EU citizens coming here, psychologically deterred by Brexitbondegezou said:
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
Overall it looks more like a failure of governance across the board - on that I agree with you. This govt has been crap on migration; almost as bad as the one before it
Mrs PtP has just booked her driving test. Earliest she could get is 18th Jan 2024, in Norfolk.
We live in Gloucestershire. London and the Home Counties would have been acceptable for her, had they not been booked solid.0 -
Being associated with immigrants, anti-McDonalds protests in France attract a certain element. McDonalds success is related to the usual pushing match between globalisation and attempts to keep local culture.Stocky said:
"there are more McDonalds in France, per head, than anywhere in Europe"Leon said:SOMEONE has been reading PB again. Shameless
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/french-food-is-the-most-disappointing-in-the-world/
Is this right?
A chap I knew moved there, and thought that joining such a demo was about anti-megacorp stuff. He was horrified to discover that a serious proportion of the crowd were blood & soil types.0 -
Yes, it's akin to his disingenuous "I hate tree-huggers" line.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.0 -
Down with this sort of thing?Dura_Ace said:
Careful now.noneoftheabove said:
I know nothing about these things but whilst any progress is good it does seem like if this village of 74 people in the 2001 census, is a significant gain, then surely a stalemate for another year or more is very likely.Nigelb said:Ukrainian forces have recaptured the village of Andriivka in the eastern Donetsk region, marking one of the most significant battlefield gains in the area since nearby Bakhmut fell under Moscow’s control in May.
https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1702589462226628701
...Ukraine's 3rd Separate Assault Brigade claimed that it had "eliminated" the intelligence chief of Russia's 72nd brigade, three battalion commanders "and almost all the infantry of the 72nd brigade, together with officers and a significant amount of equipment."..0 -
On the bright side, it will probably be snowed off.Peter_the_Punter said:
Add this one to the list.noneoftheabove said:
The waiting list of voters desperate to kick them out seems to be growing proportionately to the other lists too....bondegezou said:
One of the main reasons is the massive slowdown in processing applications and thus huge increase in the waiting list, paralleling the massive waits in the NHS, the courts system and everything else the Government is in charge of.Farooq said:
That doesn't really track... the main driver in the change seems to be the non-EU enforced returns. No idea what the reasons are but I can't see how it would be due to deterred EU citizens, since it's the wrong category and the wrong mechanism.Leon said:
But we didn’t legally Brexit until 2020. So that mild decline from 2016 can’t be blamed on Brexit. More likely it was a byproduct of a drop in EU citizens coming here, psychologically deterred by Brexitbondegezou said:
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
Overall it looks more like a failure of governance across the board - on that I agree with you. This govt has been crap on migration; almost as bad as the one before it
Mrs PtP has just booked her driving test. Earliest she could get is 18th Jan 2024, in Norfolk.
We live in Gloucestershire. London and the Home Counties would have been acceptable for her, had they not been booked solid.1 -
Mr isamisam said:
Have to agree. In 2019 there were two, perhaps three, big reasons to vote ToryHeathener said:For the umpteenth time, the 2019 Get Brexit Done election was atypical. An anomaly. Boris Johnson unblocked the remainer parliament's procrastination with a one-off single issue election held on a dark December day. That he reached parts no other politician has reached is testament to the powers of his persuasion (aka lying).
There is NO guarantee that those apparent missing Boris Brexit voters have any party allegiance whatsoever, nor that they will even vote next year.
If you really want to pursue missing voters go back to the last proper General Election in this country: June 2017
@MikeSmithson
Get Brexit done
Stop any chance of PM Corbyn happening
You liked Boris
The first two are done, and the third is gone. The Conservative remainers, the Cameroons, seem to dislike the post referendum party, so they’re not coming back - they probably have more in common with Sir Keir’s Labour. The first time Tories who voted for Boris to get Brexit done were only lending their votes, & have been duped, landed with Truss then Sunak, who they’d probably never heard of.
Heathener’s bit in bold hits the nail on the head, in my opinion - I was one of those first time Tories and wouldn’t even consider voting for them next time.
good to see you back6 -
They just blame lefty lawyers and activist judges and people lap it up when it is their own incompetence.Leon said:
But we didn’t legally Brexit until 2020. So that mild decline from 2016 can’t be blamed on Brexit. More likely it was a byproduct of a drop in EU citizens coming here, psychologically deterred by Brexitbondegezou said:
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
Overall it looks more like a failure of governance across the board - on that I agree with you. This govt has been crap on migration; almost as bad as the one before it0 -
Eh. I could have fine-tuned the result to give Labour a three figure majority with very similar vote shares, but why bother? 92 is close enough that it makes the point.viewcode said:
a pedant writesLostPassword said:The polls can be flattering Labour and Labour could still win a landslide. The Labour poll leads are so large that these are not mutually exclusive.
Electoral Calculus gives a Labour majority of 92 with vote shares of 42-30.
That's not a prediction, by the way, but it does illustrate the scale of the hole that the Tories are in. Losing by only 12pp wouldn't be a terrible result for the Tories compared to polls regularly putting them 22 points behind, but they'd still lose 170 seats.
grumblegrumble
itsnotalandslideifitisntthreefigures
grumblegrumble
I wasn't saying that 92 itself was a landslide.0 -
… or the criminalsCarnyx said:
Also, given the state of the Merchant Navy, how many British-registered prison ships are there to take them to Kerguelen? No airport, remember. It would be like the First Fleet and Botany Bay. Only, without the First Fleet.noneoftheabove said:
Not sure how easy it is to build cities on a glacier in the most remote islands on earth, but assuming that is possible, that gives a solution for a couple of months worth of immigrants to the EU. Next?Leon said:
I can certainly pinpoint Kerguelen. It’s a large archipelago in the sub Antarctic. It has about 3 scientists living there. It is grim but it is habitable (Matthew Paris spent several months there, famously)noneoftheabove said:
There is detail, and then there is being able to actually name a place or find it on a map rather than in a quote from a random website.....Leon said:
Amazingly, I haven’t actually gone into detailed plans for each individual AzoreFarooq said:
So we have apparently 8 uninhabited Azores islands... I still can't find them. This is a serious question, I don't know the Azores. Where are they? Are we talking about tiny little rocks? I've found something called Ilhéu do Monchique, which is about 50 metres long. Is that your planned destination for these refugees?Leon said:
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”Farooq said:
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.Leon said:V
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…Foxy said:
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.Leon said:
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRYFoxy said:
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.Leon said:
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?OnlyLivingBoy said:
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.Alanbrooke said:
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,Leon said:
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majorityNigelb said:
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.StillWaters said:
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the MailNigelb said:This is daft.
Not even convinced it's effective politics:
...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him.
Not clever at all.
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
https://news.sunwebgroup.com/the-azores-islands-a-tropical-paradise-in-europe
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
Kerguelen would certainly be a deterrent and could house hundreds of thousands0 -
2nd - France is the second biggest market for McDonald's per head of population after the United States.Stocky said:
"there are more McDonalds in France, per head, than anywhere in Europe"Leon said:SOMEONE has been reading PB again. Shameless
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/french-food-is-the-most-disappointing-in-the-world/
Is this right?
https://www.thelocal.fr/20190917/mcdonalds-celebrates-40-years-of-big-macs-in-franc1 -
Good news for Everton.
Premier League Everton have new owners after Farhad Moshiri sold his 94% stake in the club to American investment fund 777 Partners.
The takeover brings to an end the tumultuous tenure of British-Iranian Moshiri, who first invested in 2016.
The sale is expected to be completed by the end of 2023, subject to Premier League, Football Association and Financial Conduct Authority approval.
777's acquisition means half of the 20 top-flight clubs are American-owned.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/66804033
1 -
On topic, I strongly disagree.
1. A lot of 2019 Tories voted for them for the first time and have either been badly let down or the purpose of the tactical vote - get Brexit done, keep Corbyn out - is expired. They won't be going back to what was never a natural home in the first place.
2. If Labour is sufficiently unthreatening - and that appears to be Starmer's central strategy - then many of the 2019 Tories are likely to just sit it out. That's exactly what happened in 1997, when the Labour vote only went up by 2m but the Tory one plummeted by 5m. With the Tory and Sunak approval ratings so low, there's every chance that Don't Know will translate to Won't Vote.8 -
Lol, it's usually the new manager bounce that does for us at Goodison. This time it'll be a (prospective) new owner bounce.TheScreamingEagles said:Good news for Everton.
Premier League Everton have new owners after Farhad Moshiri sold his 94% stake in the club to American investment fund 777 Partners.
The takeover brings to an end the tumultuous tenure of British-Iranian Moshiri, who first invested in 2016.
The sale is expected to be completed by the end of 2023, subject to Premier League, Football Association and Financial Conduct Authority approval.
777's acquisition means half of the 20 top-flight clubs are American-owned.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/668040331 -
Du pain, du vin, du Boursin. And that's another thing? When did baguettes become baguettes and not French loaves or French sticks? Jumpers for goalposts...AlistairM said:
This Sean Thomas guy has missed something. There is another good French food other than the croissant - the traditional French baguette. So much better than the crap British knock-offs. I think there must be something different about the flour. French one tastes delicious but goes off in hours but the taste when fresh is just fantastic. Particularly with some Normandy salted butter and either confiture or jambon/fromage.Leon said:SOMEONE has been reading PB again. Shameless
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/french-food-is-the-most-disappointing-in-the-world/1 -
If that is Election Day I will give you a bright shiny penny.Peter_the_Punter said:
Add this one to the list.noneoftheabove said:
The waiting list of voters desperate to kick them out seems to be growing proportionately to the other lists too....bondegezou said:
One of the main reasons is the massive slowdown in processing applications and thus huge increase in the waiting list, paralleling the massive waits in the NHS, the courts system and everything else the Government is in charge of.Farooq said:
That doesn't really track... the main driver in the change seems to be the non-EU enforced returns. No idea what the reasons are but I can't see how it would be due to deterred EU citizens, since it's the wrong category and the wrong mechanism.Leon said:
But we didn’t legally Brexit until 2020. So that mild decline from 2016 can’t be blamed on Brexit. More likely it was a byproduct of a drop in EU citizens coming here, psychologically deterred by Brexitbondegezou said:
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
Overall it looks more like a failure of governance across the board - on that I agree with you. This govt has been crap on migration; almost as bad as the one before it
Mrs PtP has just booked her driving test. Earliest she could get is 18th Jan 2024, in Norfolk.
We live in Gloucestershire. London and the Home Counties would have been acceptable for her, had they not been booked solid.
1 -
What about corporation tax - increased recently from 19% to 25%?londonpubman said:I think Q2 2024 looks a good call for the GE. Anything later could be seen as a bit desperate.
Preceded by a voter friendly budget. Firstly an increase in the personal allowance to £15,000pa to help (nearly) everyone together with 2% reduction in employees NI to help the workers.
When Sunak proposed this, in his chancellor days, was this increase intended to be temporary to claw back the pandemic financial black hole? I can't recall.
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If those are the choices you have to live with the arrivals.Dura_Ace said:
This is a threadbare fantasy. There is no airstrip on Kerguelen.Leon said:
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
Do tow backs (at gunpoint) or live with the arrivals. Those are the options.
We cannot, in all conscience, risk fellow human beings lives by trying to tow them back.
This is why I don’t get the hate to the RNLI for helping these people at sea. What are they supposed to do. Let them drown ?0 -
And in general, American owners are in it for their love of money, not their love of football. Mind you, too often British owners are in it for status, unwilling or unable to invest for success.TheScreamingEagles said:Good news for Everton.
Premier League Everton have new owners after Farhad Moshiri sold his 94% stake in the club to American investment fund 777 Partners.
The takeover brings to an end the tumultuous tenure of British-Iranian Moshiri, who first invested in 2016.
The sale is expected to be completed by the end of 2023, subject to Premier League, Football Association and Financial Conduct Authority approval.
777's acquisition means half of the 20 top-flight clubs are American-owned.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/668040330 -
Which party then? I lot feel like you but I can't see them voting LD or Labour.isam said:
Have to agree. In 2019 there were two, perhaps three, big reasons to vote ToryHeathener said:For the umpteenth time, the 2019 Get Brexit Done election was atypical. An anomaly. Boris Johnson unblocked the remainer parliament's procrastination with a one-off single issue election held on a dark December day. That he reached parts no other politician has reached is testament to the powers of his persuasion (aka lying).
There is NO guarantee that those apparent missing Boris Brexit voters have any party allegiance whatsoever, nor that they will even vote next year.
If you really want to pursue missing voters go back to the last proper General Election in this country: June 2017
@MikeSmithson
Get Brexit done
Stop any chance of PM Corbyn happening
You liked Boris
The first two are done, and the third is gone. The Conservative remainers, the Cameroons, seem to dislike the post referendum party, so they’re not coming back - they probably have more in common with Sir Keir’s Labour. The first time Tories who voted for Boris to get Brexit done were only lending their votes, & have been duped, landed with Truss then Sunak, who they’d probably never heard of.
Heathener’s bit in bold hits the nail on the head, in my opinion - I was one of those first time Tories and wouldn’t even consider voting for them next time.0 -
By 'invest', you mean 'spend'? It's the American model which is actually investment.DecrepiterJohnL said:
And in general, American owners are in it for their love of money, not their love of football. Mind you, too often British owners are in it for status, unwilling or unable to invest for success.TheScreamingEagles said:Good news for Everton.
Premier League Everton have new owners after Farhad Moshiri sold his 94% stake in the club to American investment fund 777 Partners.
The takeover brings to an end the tumultuous tenure of British-Iranian Moshiri, who first invested in 2016.
The sale is expected to be completed by the end of 2023, subject to Premier League, Football Association and Financial Conduct Authority approval.
777's acquisition means half of the 20 top-flight clubs are American-owned.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/668040331 -
If you have a look at the detailed tables from the polls taken at the start of the year and now, there is not much change in how the 2019 voters are now voting.Peter_the_Punter said:
Standing shoulder to shoulder with you, Stodgy, on this one.stodge said:Morning all
I don't wholly agree with OGH on this - it's an idea he has floated consistently for months.
Redfield & Wilton have 19% of 2019 Conservative voters saying Don't Know (allowing for likelihood to vote) and 53% of Conservative 2019 voters staying loyal. Stripping out the DKs puts the latter figure up to 65% so perhaps the pollsters are to a degree anticipating the return of the 2019 Tory voters - I believe Opinium does that as part of its methodology.
If YouGov doesn't that might explain why its Conservative ratings are 3-4% below those of other pollsters such as R&W.
R&W have 15% of the 2019 Conservative vote going to Labour - that's nearly 7% of the electorate but that doesn't wholly explain the high Labour ratings. According to R&W, Labour's 2023 vote consists of 90% of its 2019 vote, 15% of the 2019 Conservative vote, 20% of the 2019 LD vote, 15% of the 2019 Green vote and 56% of those who Didn't Vote last time (presumably mainly new voters).
Expecting 2019 Conservative voters who have gone either DK or to Reform to return en masse to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder isn't so far backed by any polling evidence. The likelihood is most will abstain - some will return but not in the numbers Sunak needs.
One hesitates to disagree with Our Venerable Host, but I think he may just be calling it wrong for once.
We are in a holding pattern.
What is going to be the big event which changes this position?
Improvement in the economy?0 -
No PM will call an election before he or she needs to if they're going to get trounced.londonpubman said:I think Q2 2024 looks a good call for the GE. Anything later could be seen as a bit desperate.
Preceded by a voter friendly budget. Firstly an increase in the personal allowance to £15,000pa to help (nearly) everyone together with 2% reduction in employees NI to help the workers.
It'll be November 21 (or possibly 14), called off the back of the Tory conference.
Yes, Sunak *can* go later but only marginally and only at the risk of giving Labour back the momentum, as there'll be stuff all to do in parliament and the public will hate a campaign going over Xmas (when neither side is likely to be able to turn things round anyway for lack of attention).1 -
Good morning from an overcast southern Spain.
Catching up with the news, I see that the Manchester leg of HS2 is now looking doubtful. So there we have it. Levelling up was a total charade, and the truth that the project is all about extra capacity for Home Counties commuters is now plain to see.1 -
It would cost about £3 to tarmac an airstrip on Kerguelen. No one is going to complain to planning authoritiesDura_Ace said:
This is a threadbare fantasy. There is no airstrip on Kerguelen.Leon said:
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
Do tow backs (at gunpoint) or live with the arrivals. Those are the options.
My point is larger. The EU is big enough and possessed of enough empty or unpleasant territories - near and far - that if it decided to really get serious about an Australian solution, they could do it. In purely practical terms
Whether they will ever unite around this solution is a different matter. But this crisis is only growing and drastic solutions will hove into view, soon enough0 -
My guess is they won’t vote at all. Personally I doubt I will.Stocky said:
Which party then? I lot feel like you but I can't see them voting LD or Labour.isam said:
Have to agree. In 2019 there were two, perhaps three, big reasons to vote ToryHeathener said:For the umpteenth time, the 2019 Get Brexit Done election was atypical. An anomaly. Boris Johnson unblocked the remainer parliament's procrastination with a one-off single issue election held on a dark December day. That he reached parts no other politician has reached is testament to the powers of his persuasion (aka lying).
There is NO guarantee that those apparent missing Boris Brexit voters have any party allegiance whatsoever, nor that they will even vote next year.
If you really want to pursue missing voters go back to the last proper General Election in this country: June 2017
@MikeSmithson
Get Brexit done
Stop any chance of PM Corbyn happening
You liked Boris
The first two are done, and the third is gone. The Conservative remainers, the Cameroons, seem to dislike the post referendum party, so they’re not coming back - they probably have more in common with Sir Keir’s Labour. The first time Tories who voted for Boris to get Brexit done were only lending their votes, & have been duped, landed with Truss then Sunak, who they’d probably never heard of.
Heathener’s bit in bold hits the nail on the head, in my opinion - I was one of those first time Tories and wouldn’t even consider voting for them next time.1 -
I like Boris - friendly, self-deprecating, funny. Doesn't mean I want him in Parliament! Much as I feel about Leon, really.Farooq said:
I find it hard to swallow that some people actually liked Boris. Nevertheless you're quite right.isam said:
Have to agree. In 2019 there were two, perhaps three, big reasons to vote ToryHeathener said:For the umpteenth time, the 2019 Get Brexit Done election was atypical. An anomaly. Boris Johnson unblocked the remainer parliament's procrastination with a one-off single issue election held on a dark December day. That he reached parts no other politician has reached is testament to the powers of his persuasion (aka lying).
There is NO guarantee that those apparent missing Boris Brexit voters have any party allegiance whatsoever, nor that they will even vote next year.
If you really want to pursue missing voters go back to the last proper General Election in this country: June 2017
@MikeSmithson
Get Brexit done
Stop any chance of PM Corbyn happening
You liked Boris
The first two are done, and the third is gone. The Conservative remainers, the Cameroons, seem to dislike the post referendum party, so they’re not coming back - they probably have more in common with Sir Keir’s Labour. The first time Tories who voted for Boris to get Brexit done were only lending their votes, & have been duped, landed with Truss then Sunak, who they’d probably never heard of.
Heathener’s bit in bold hits the nail on the head, in my opinion - I was one of those first time Tories and wouldn’t even consider voting for them next time.2 -
Everton’s problem is they spent too much money (on utter dross).DecrepiterJohnL said:
And in general, American owners are in it for their love of money, not their love of football. Mind you, too often British owners are in it for status, unwilling or unable to invest for success.TheScreamingEagles said:Good news for Everton.
Premier League Everton have new owners after Farhad Moshiri sold his 94% stake in the club to American investment fund 777 Partners.
The takeover brings to an end the tumultuous tenure of British-Iranian Moshiri, who first invested in 2016.
The sale is expected to be completed by the end of 2023, subject to Premier League, Football Association and Financial Conduct Authority approval.
777's acquisition means half of the 20 top-flight clubs are American-owned.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/66804033
The Moshiri era coincided with the Klopp era at Liverpool, Everton had a bigger net spend than Liverpool in that era.2 -
@Heathener is right. 2019 was sui generis. The 2019 Tory tsunami were habitual non-voters who came out of the woodwork to put their X on Boris and Brexit. The key, of course, is they were voting for their lives and prospects to improve. In short, they were voting for levelling up, which Boris championed but did not deliver, to which Hunt is indifferent and which Rishi actively resents.RochdalePioneers said:
Good morning all - I think this is a neat summation of what I am thinking.Peter_the_Punter said:'Those that don't know, don't vote.'
In 2019 I witnessed a phenomenon. Low voting Labour areas where suddenly there was a huge turnout. Records smashed according to staff at these polling stations. Then I watched these boxes tipped and tallied them - a Tory landslide.
Never mind a majority of 80, it could have been a majority of 100 had the ultra right not run a spoiler campaign in seats like Stockton North to let Labour cling on.
My hypothesis is that most of these non voters who turned Tory in 2019 won't vote. In key seats this will be a significant number of the DKs. If the Tory vote sinks heavily and the Labour vote rises a little, it will be a Labour gain.
Elsewhere we know a lot of Tories are both sick of and sickened by this government. As we saw in 1997, several million Tory voters are likely to sit on their hands. The commentary on polling posted above said that most DKs would break Tory "if forced". But they won't be forced. Starmer is not Jezbollah, there is no panic issue to force a reluctant Tory vote.
So we could probably go back to late 96 and look at the polls and the DKs and say the same about the Tory deficit then. Don't worry. Tory DKs will vote Tory. No, they won't.
These voters will not turn out for Rishi, nor for Labour if Starmer can't find them a single ray of hope in his warmed-over Blairism. They will not vote and their lives will stagnate or decline.1 -
Stay at home, probably. Like many did in 1997.Stocky said:
Which party then? I lot feel like you but I can't see them voting LD or Labour.isam said:
Have to agree. In 2019 there were two, perhaps three, big reasons to vote ToryHeathener said:For the umpteenth time, the 2019 Get Brexit Done election was atypical. An anomaly. Boris Johnson unblocked the remainer parliament's procrastination with a one-off single issue election held on a dark December day. That he reached parts no other politician has reached is testament to the powers of his persuasion (aka lying).
There is NO guarantee that those apparent missing Boris Brexit voters have any party allegiance whatsoever, nor that they will even vote next year.
If you really want to pursue missing voters go back to the last proper General Election in this country: June 2017
@MikeSmithson
Get Brexit done
Stop any chance of PM Corbyn happening
You liked Boris
The first two are done, and the third is gone. The Conservative remainers, the Cameroons, seem to dislike the post referendum party, so they’re not coming back - they probably have more in common with Sir Keir’s Labour. The first time Tories who voted for Boris to get Brexit done were only lending their votes, & have been duped, landed with Truss then Sunak, who they’d probably never heard of.
Heathener’s bit in bold hits the nail on the head, in my opinion - I was one of those first time Tories and wouldn’t even consider voting for them next time.
(Remember, Major got more votes in '92 than Blair did in '97.) Talking of which, the Mail's front page from 1/v/97 is relevant here;
1