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Divide and conquer? Betting on the October 19th by-elections – politicalbetting.com
Divide and conquer? Betting on the October 19th by-elections – politicalbetting.com
October 19th sees two by-elections, both in similarly safe Tory seats. The bookies (and presumably punters) rate the Tory chances as fairly different in the two seats. I’m not sure that’s right.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_freedom_of_movement#Gaza_air_and_seaports
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Gaza
Kill them all??
Clearly they cannot do that, so it is possible this “invasion” might fail
One real issue is that Israel already offered them the best two state deal they were ever going to get, and the settling since then now makes even that deal impossible. So those of us who grew up hoping for a two state solution now have to accept that possibility has gone. In it’s absence the answer has to be obscene amounts of cash.
Tamworth: Labour to win. 8k majority
Lying Tories are done.
https://x.com/WarMonitors/status/1711385433341370483?s=20
Is this even possible? Are they still literally finding bodies?
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
I have considerable sympathy with that.
But that doesn't include full scale genocide.
I have no more idea than you how this ends - but it's noteworthy that the two sides still appear to be talking, even if via proxies.
(Guardian) Qatar’s foreign ministry confirmed to Reuters that it is involved in mediation talks with Hamas and Israel, including over a possible prisoner swap.
“We are in constant contact with all sides at the moment. Our priorities are to end the bloodshed, release the prisoners and make sure the conflict is contained with no regional spillover,” foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari told Reuters...
Note also that much of their senior leadership don't live in Gaza. Future 'Munich' style responses are also possible.
Mega cash fixes all those things.
“And as you might have seen, there was some sort of rave or desert party where they were having a great time, until the resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters” [crowd cheers and whoops]
Speeches held at the ‘All Out For Palestine’ protest outside the Israeli Consulate in New York"
https://x.com/BGOnTheScene/status/1711145162657673347?s=20
There may be collateral damage when there is fighting, as there is anywhere, but the Israelis unlike the Russians or Chinese are not going for war crimes and mass casualties.
Your logic is the logic of the Montagues and Capulets, and the Prince of Cats himself - "peace; I hate the word".
And there isn't enough money from amy source to give a couple of million people £1m - setting aside the fact that any country, Egypt included, is going to require a great deal of (costly) persuasion to contemplate the idea.
In any event, who is likely to offer such largesse as a reward for terrorism ?
An economic solution might have been feasible a decade or so back (I think we discussed it here before sometime, in the aftermath of Iraq), but right now ?
I perfectly well understand the reasons for their actions. I assume also they will have anticipated potential responses and we shall see which one of them Israel decides upon.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-africa/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/report-israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/
Basically, I wouldn’t start from here….
"We have a saying, you can tell the German where to find the Jew, but you never tell him where to find the truffle"
Talking of which, more Conference Splat news,
Labour 43% (–)
Conservative 27% (-2)
Liberal Democrat 13% (+1)
Reform UK 8% (+1)
Green 6% (+2)
Scottish National Party 1% (-2)
Other 2% (+1)
Changes +/- 1 October
https://x.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1711411197898346637
I await Lord Osborne in the Lord Mandelson role for the analogy to be complete.
I'm not sure that is the case for the current incarnation of the Conservatives.
Also, the LibDems had a much higher base from 2005.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
One is that Labour have enjoyed a substantial and sustained polling lead as they did in 1997 - polling was less intensive in the early 1970s and varied quite a bit, but in general Labour had a slim lead in the months leading up to the campaign and the Tories led most polls in the campaign.
Another is that the Tories had been in for a long period by 1997, whereas Heath had been in for less than four years.
I agree the economic backdrop is more 1974 than 1997, but polls and sentiment about the incumbent party do matter quite a lot.
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4564114#Comment_4564114
Edit: and I noted your first comment of the day on the whole thing was to point out that Israel had better not misbehave.
Sinn Fein do a 180 degree turn, clearly dont want to upset the yanks
https://www.irishtimes.com/world/middle-east/2023/10/09/sinn-fein-leader-mary-lou-mcdonald-condemns-hamas-attack-on-israel-as-truly-horrific/
Expect Stars of David at he next Celtic match.
I mean: you can't extrapolate from such a tiny sample of Scottish voters within the wider poll, it will be horribly inaccurate
But it is funny
Expect the narrative to shift again, especially as this is just the begining, and it will only get worse when the ground invasion begins
BLEAK
Pretty meaningless, of course - the numbers are trivial (about one person per percentage point in Scotland) and there's no attempt to balance for demographics within each region. I mean, it hasn't been a good few days for the SNP, but they won't realistically be fighting the Lib Dems for 3rd/4th place at the General Election in Scotland.
“Looking at scenes where a lot of young people were out, enjoying themselves and, to me it was such a violent and traumatic death, it is just truly horrific, and I understand perfectly the sense of trauma that’s been expressed”.
This obviously doesn’t apply in Brum.
a) thank god my chance to get rid of the Tories they have truly fucked the country and Lab is the party to save us; or
b) where is the vision of a Lab govt and why will they be different from what I have today? I prefer nursey and the Cons flavour of boring technocrat if I am going to have a boring technocrat.
Neither do I buy the voxpops from eg WatO from Lab activists saying that previous Cons voters won't vote rather than vote for today's Cons. I think they may well vote Cons again.
Take me (go on, take me). As a previous Cons voter I can't see myself voting Lab, because I don't want to vote for a party that actively dislikes me, so might well end up voting Cons, especially as the Brexit nutjobs are largely gone.
Plus how much of Reform's 8% will (revert) to the Cons in the ballot box. Quite a lot I imagine.
https://twitter.com/GerryAdamsSF/status/1711081616133525843
Please say where in Amnesty's page rather than your own hallucinations or raging antisemitism that it says that the Israelis are building towards killing everyone.
After Rutherglen I am less confident of a Tory victory. But I remember 1992. Best not to keep one's hopes up.
Listening to the Hamas bloke on WATO he spent most of the interview lying it was like Comical Ali in a grim sense.
Why give them airtime
C 17
L 43
LD 16
SNP 16
G 7
Ha, Ha, Ha....
Lab 43%
Con 17%
Lib Dem 16%
SNP 16%
It often happens after a by-election that the winning party does well, and the losing party does badly, in subsequent opinion polls. People like to back the winner.
What we do not know is whether there is going to be another Labour commissioned poll this week "leaked" to the Guardian. My gut feeling is that if there is not then Labour are slipping.
Remember that?
He'd have probably got his majority if he'd stuck to a referendum on Lisbon. He didn't want to, though, nor pander to the sorts of voters who might be interested in that, and so he didn't win.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
How can anyone go out onto the streets to cheer what happened at the weekend? Yet that is what we have seen, even in 'civilised' countries.
Hate is the problem; it is the hate we need to address. IMO it is extremely naive to think money alone can eradicate hate; the answer is education, education, education ...
He says no civilians dead while at the same time Hamas publish on their website people they have murdered.
That said, it isn’t impossible. They have won in seats where the demographics are all wrong before, and lasted for a year or two.
The Scottish Greens have been unhinged for a while. Now we know some of their number are lacking in all moral sense. Gerry Adams has never had any problem with the murder of young people out enjoying themselves.
Listening to Hamas's (who are Gaza's elected representatives) spokesman with Evan Davies on PM just now, it was painful to hear how terribly badly their chap made their case.
Most of us are middling liberals aware there are several sides to difficult questions. Do they have no-one who can speak to us intelligently about the events of the weekend?
Can I ask these people: why didn't you speak out against the UK's policy in favour of a rules-based International order and against war crimes? If war crimes don't exist or they're fine in some circumstances, shouldn't we have said that decades ago?
After all, the head of Hamas has been saying since at least 2019 that every Jew in the world must be killed. These people are utter scum.
So Cameron could make overtures to the 5% by droning on about the Lisbon Treaty, or make overtures to the 23% by droning on about the Big Society.
I'm not sure he made the wrong call there.
Besides, 2010-15 were, with hindsight, his golden era as he had a very decent majority with a broadly like-minded Lib Dem leadership and no need to pander to the hard right. His Premiership survived five years of coalition with great ease... and was over barely a year after he had won his majority.
You have to go out and seek the balance for yourself
Weirdly, I think the narrative will be better for Israel once their soldiers go in. Because then it will become soldier v soldier, army v army, and it will feel "fair". The Israelis might even appear heroic
Right now we are getting the usual appalling scenes of Israeli bombing, and shattered Gaza and shattered Gazan bodies. Ugh
Then New Labour gave us Iraq, all HMGs lost their credibility at that point