Tories in despair this morning. Former cabinet minister texts: “Dying days of a corrosive party…. It’ll be tough. Lab will crank up the pressure & so they should”
“There’s no movement towards current leadership/cab & zero reason to vote for us” sees “no pathway 4 improvement”
It must be really chastening for Rishi Sunak, who by any odds has had a remarkably successful and lucrative career, to realise he just isn’t any good at this. Oxford. Fulbright Scholar. Goldman Sachs. Chancellor. First Asian-extraction British PM.
And he just can’t do it. Whatever he tries doesn’t work. How do you get up every morning and start work knowing you’re not going to succeed?
I've been harsh on Sunak in the past and I once said he was a man who had never failed at anything or had known defeat. If you go into politics there's a fair chance that will change.
It could be a positive and character building experience for him and remember he's only 43 (Blair's age in 1997). In twenty years time opinions of him could be very different and he might be the respected elder statesman.
The truth is there may be nothing as ex as an ex-MP (as someone once said) but there's really nothing as ex as an ex-PM. Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Truss, Johnson - all still with us, all still able to contribute to the national debte but do they? If they do, does anyone listen or are their past sins thrown back at them and used as an excuse to ignore them?
Blair and Brown have been fairly influential within Labour and thus eventually the country. Even in the Corbyn years when 'Blairite' was a dirty word he acted as something of a keeper of the flame who could use his bully pulpit to put arguments out there - even while personally unpopular - and had some influence on post-Brexit thinking in the party, given Corbyn and co provided a total vacuum. The Tory ones much less so, I think because for very different reasons, all are perceived as failures rather than PMs who fell to Earth after successes. Cameron can't be forgiven by his own tribe for causing Brexit - and is a somewhat pathetic figure from a Greek tragedy due to his failed ventures in the private sector. May is personally respected but her premiership descended into farce and her brand of Conservatism isn't strong or defined enough. Johnson's personal faults and irresponsibility are now known to all. Truss is, well, Liz Truss - one of the most ludicrous people in Britain. Sunak I think may have blown his chance a bit to be the guy who 'did his best and what was right but sadly it was too late' with some of the desperate stuff he's done since becoming PM. His strength was perceived reasonableness and competency - he blew that the day he reappointed Suella Braverman and now just looks like a weak man in hock to his headbangers who looks lost in the job.
The level of investment needed across the country is mind boggling to be honest.
But we don't have the money to invest because we have been living beyond our means, and our tax base, for too long. There is going to be a dangerous amount of frustration when people see how little Starmer and Reeves can do about it.
Quite, and since Starmer is not preparing the way for this he will have a tough time if he gets in to power. Too many disappointed expectations.
There will be frustration that Labour cannot speedily fix things, but I really can't see voters bothered about public services returning to the party that trashed them.
Starmer gets a decade in power IMO.
It's one outcome. The other is he falls short of a majority has a weak government which is Callaghan 2. Hes then a one term PM with a whirlwind to behind him.
He'll be 62/3 if he gets in. A second term would see him continuing in to his seventies that might fly in the States but its not us.
Out of interest, what factors do you think will see the collapse in the nationwide "get shut of the Tories" mood which has endless 20 point Labour leads and end to end 20%+ swings?
The continued degradation of public services, the stress on finances as we have low growth and the Starmer all things to all men approach which means he has no depth to his support.
Voters are in a fickle mood.
So the worse that the Tories make public services, the higher the Tory vote at the election?
The worse the public services the quicker Labour will pick up the blame.
Thats politics.
We're talking *before* the election - you said Starmer could fail to win a majority. I asked what would collapse the lead and make people vote Tory and you're saying its because *Keir Starmer* in opposition will get the blame for Tories trashing public services?
In your excitement you werent that clear.
So what could make him fall short ? Events dear boy, we werent expecting a Middle East meltdown two weeks ago. It could go anywhere atm. Swingback where voters start looking at what is of offer and change the polls. No sealing the deal - Starmer is just mush to voters. Lib Dems or SNP do better and take lots of seats forcing the need for a coalition.
Im sure you can think of others yourself, however I must now head off for a break in the West Country, the other half really chose a good one. Have a good morning.
You are moving away from the storm, so it really was a good choice!
There’s no real enthusiasm for Labour, which contrasts starkly with the spontaneous outpourings of excitement, applause and, yes, genuine affection which the Conservatives attract wherever they go.
It must be really chastening for Rishi Sunak, who by any odds has had a remarkably successful and lucrative career, to realise he just isn’t any good at this. Oxford. Fulbright Scholar. Goldman Sachs. Chancellor. First Asian-extraction British PM.
And he just can’t do it. Whatever he tries doesn’t work. How do you get up every morning and start work knowing you’re not going to succeed?
I've been harsh on Sunak in the past and I once said he was a man who had never failed at anything or had known defeat. If you go into politics there's a fair chance that will change.
It could be a positive and character building experience for him and remember he's only 43 (Blair's age in 1997). In twenty years time opinions of him could be very different and he might be the respected elder statesman.
The truth is there may be nothing as ex as an ex-MP (as someone once said) but there's really nothing as ex as an ex-PM. Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Truss, Johnson - all still with us, all still able to contribute to the national debte but do they? If they do, does anyone listen or are their past sins thrown back at them and used as an excuse to ignore them?
Thatcher was still a major figure in politics and dominated her party over ten years after being PM
Can we start to consider the kind of policies the Party of Change may now want to bring in? The people's priorities:
Bring Bang Hanging Public Floggings of anyone the community doesn't like Send benefit claimants to the Workhouse Remove the speed limit on motorways A second vote for communicant members of the church of England whose parish is in a Tory seat with less than a 25k majority
But not for Church of England clergy most of whom now vote Labour
From one communicant member to another, that must disappoint you.
Anyway, I hear your objection to the second vote for Tories. But was that tacit approval for the rest?
The Reform vote in both by-elections interests me. Is this a cohort of voters than can be squeezed with the right policies back into the Tory column, or is it, and I fear this may be true, a cohort of voters who don't want to vote for a party led by an PM of Indian heritage. We would all rightly abhor the racism, but I don't think we can discount the possibility that some of the Reform vote isn't salvagable for Con for that reason.
I did allude to this in my comment the other day:
"I live not a million miles from Tamworth and pop over there regularly. While it's regarded as more down-to-earth than snooty Lichfield (the one-time ecclesiastical capital of Mercia, next town along Watling Street) it actually surprises with the pleasantness of the castle grounds and nearby shopping streets. Nevertheless, it is very white working class and, I'd say, pretty socially conservative. It's a big hill to climb for Labour, but the combination of a non-white, remote prime minister and Chris Pincher's antics might just be enough to get them over the line."
George Osborne, first words after exit poll, election night BBC TV, 2019.
It's not a great predictive record.
We DID enter his era. It was an utter disaster. Nobody conceived that a Tory majority of 80 would be followed by a Labour majority of 80 - if the Tories are lucky.
The Tories wouldn't be losing Tamworth with him as leader.
It must be really chastening for Rishi Sunak, who by any odds has had a remarkably successful and lucrative career, to realise he just isn’t any good at this. Oxford. Fulbright Scholar. Goldman Sachs. Chancellor. First Asian-extraction British PM.
And he just can’t do it. Whatever he tries doesn’t work. How do you get up every morning and start work knowing you’re not going to succeed?
I've been harsh on Sunak in the past and I once said he was a man who had never failed at anything or had known defeat. If you go into politics there's a fair chance that will change.
It could be a positive and character building experience for him and remember he's only 43 (Blair's age in 1997). In twenty years time opinions of him could be very different and he might be the respected elder statesman.
The truth is there may be nothing as ex as an ex-MP (as someone once said) but there's really nothing as ex as an ex-PM. Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Truss, Johnson - all still with us, all still able to contribute to the national debte but do they? If they do, does anyone listen or are their past sins thrown back at them and used as an excuse to ignore them?
Thatcher was still a major figure in politics and dominated her party over ten years after being PM
Yes but she seems so far to be the exception, doesn't she?
Major was Prime Minister for six and a half years, Cameron for six and yet neither seems to have the influence or legacy Thatcher had. The likes of Brown, May and Truss are already starting to look like footnotes as well.
Contrast perhaps with William Hague who, despite never becoming PM, remains an elder statesman figure of some influence.
The level of investment needed across the country is mind boggling to be honest.
Yet government spending is still way higher than tax revenues. Who’s going to have the honest conversation about the need to tax more and spend less?
The appalling state of public sector services in the UK, from prisons, to courts, to NHS, to Universities to Councils is really grating on people. It is going to be a grim winter ahead as more and more cease to function.
Tories talking of inheritance tax cuts is chucking petrol on that fire.
It isn't for the Tories core vote and after they lost even Mid Bedfordshire the Tories first job is to win that back
Clearly bad results for the Tories in both seats with big swings to Labour. Starmer will be pleased to gain both seats which suggests he is heading for No 10.
LDs will be disappointed not to have come closer in Mid Bedfordshire. Reform will be pleased with third in Tamworth
Greg Hands pointed out the Labour vote was down in Mid Beds from the GE.
It's so desperate and disingenuous.
People aren't stupid. They know by-election turnouts are always lower (44% at that one).
Instead of scrabbling around for stupid crumbs of comfort, the Conservatives in power should start getting honest with themselves. They're heading for evisceration. And the more they double down, the worse it will be.
Meanwhile...yesterday, the prosecutor got a plea bargain for Trump's lawyer, Sidney Powell, in the Georgian election interference case. Who must now testify against Trump.
There has been a tsunami of bad news for Trump in the various cases going on against him. (Although worse for Rudy Guiliani, who is now very likely to be personally bankrupted by the cases against him.)
With the timelines of these cases, especially state cases where he can't pardon himself, I just don't see how Trump can be the candidate next year.
I think he will anyway and will just defy the states to jail him. Sadly at the moment it looks like he will win even from behind bars.
Nah. Biden is having a good "war" in Israel. His speech yesterday from the Oval Office was very measured, a reminder to America of America's strengths.
Whilst Trump has been bitching outside court that it was causing him to miss a golf tournament in Florida.
no government has ever lost so safe a seat as Tamworth — where the Tories’ majority in 2019 was 42 per cent — to its principal opponents. Hitherto that record was held by the Ashfield by-election when the Labour government at the time was unsuccessful in defending a 41 per cent majority against a challenge from the Conservatives.
George Osborne, first words after exit poll, election night BBC TV, 2019.
It's not a great predictive record.
We DID enter his era. It was an utter disaster. Nobody conceived that a Tory majority of 80 would be followed by a Labour majority of 80 - if the Tories are lucky.
The Tories wouldn't be losing Tamworth with him as leader.
They would.
Boris Johnson's modus operandi doesn't work, I've seen the focus groups on him now.
Lest we forget this whole byelection was why Boris Johnson was ousted.
He put a known sexual predator in a position of authority then lied about it, the voters hate that.
The Reform vote in both by-elections interests me. Is this a cohort of voters than can be squeezed with the right policies back into the Tory column, or is it, and I fear this may be true, a cohort of voters who don't want to vote for a party led by an PM of Indian heritage. We would all rightly abhor the racism, but I don't think we can discount the possibility that some of the Reform vote isn't salvagable for Con for that reason.
I don't think those are the two alternatives. The most likely reason they won't be squeezed is they neither trust the Tories to do anything they say, nor believe they are in any way competant enough to do it even if they want to. It is a view shared by the majority of the country and the main defining characteristic of Reform voters as opposed to Labour or Lib Dems is they don't trust those parties either.
I think there are lots of things at work but there is something about Sunak that some right of centre voters took against immediately. If you look at the Wiki wiggly line there was an immediate 3pp rise in RefUK support at the very moment Sunak became PM. Not at the time of the Truss debacle, not at the time of Partygate, and not gradually over the course of Sunak's premiership. It's not a massive cohort of people, it's certainly not a majority of Tory-inclined voters by any means, but unfortunately I do think that an element of racism is probably at work and contributing to the Tories' current unpopularity (maybe they just object to his wealth? Possibly, I doubt it).
Clearly bad results for the Tories in both seats with big swings to Labour. Starmer will be pleased to gain both seats which suggests he is heading for No 10.
LDs will be disappointed not to have come closer in Mid Bedfordshire. Reform will be pleased with third in Tamworth
it's not a bad result for the LDs, Hyufd, it just shows that when they and Labour are both going hard for it, Labour is as likely as not to prevail. It doesn't diminish the LD capacity to nick seats where they start in a clear second place. I'm not altering my prediction that they will take between 25-40 seats at the GE. Their chances of doing so may actually be improved by tempering their wilder expectations.
i won't patronise you by offering my sympathy, but if I say 'chin up and keep going' I hope you will know what I mean.
Let’s all spare a thought for @bigjohnowls on this terrible morning
As far as BJO fans are concerned last night's results were two Tory holds.
The big news of the night of course comes from Worcester, where my Party made 2 gains on huge swings. In one of those Councils Greens are within touching distance of largest Party.
As for the 2 Parliamentary elections sad to see the myriad of right-wing Tory Parties occupy not just the first 2 places (as some were predicting I would say) but in Tamworth the first 5. Enoch Powell from beyond the grave must be having a wank!
All those voters enabling genocide...
Yes
Of course many were put off by this.
Hence both the main 2 Tory Parties votes are way down on what May and Corbyn got in 2017.
SKS is barely two thirds as popular as Corbyn on these results with his pathetic 11k and 13k compared to Jezzas magnificent 16k and 17k.!!
Enjoy¡!
I am on my first holiday since Mrs BJ became Paraplegic 7 years ago and enjoying it thoroughly despite the trauma of the airport transfers for her .
How big do you think the victories would have been had Corbyn still been leader?
I think 1997 redux is coming. I don’t think it will be worse (albeit from a worse start point for Labour and better for the Tories. I think a lot of people attribute too much to swings in bye elections with pitiful turnouts. If I were an ambitious young Tory right now I’d be thinking about how to change what the party is offering the nation. The old reputation for economic competence, if it was ever deserved or real, is gone. So what then is the point of a conservative government?
The voters are well ahead of them in answering that question.
Well done, Labour: two excellent wins in very different seats. The people have decided, ('the bastards'), and there'll be a Labour government after the next election. The only question will be how much of a majority they get. I expect more playing it safe from Starmer - don't scare the horses.
A qualified well done to the LibDems: no one expected anything in Tamworth, so it means nothing, despite the best efforts of some to label it a poor showing, and in Mid Beds they didn't win or come second, but they got a significant vote increase, almost as much in percentage terms as Labour, despite both of them fighting it hard. Reinforces my belief that there is a significant pool of disaffected Tories who won't go Labour under any circumstances. Some constituencies will have any more of those, plus where Labour don't fight a big chunk of the vote that went Labour here will go LibDem. It's going to be a good election for the LibDems.
Disastrous for the Cons: Labour majorities in both seats were smaller than the RefUk vote, That doesn't mean they'd have got all those votes if RefUK didn't stand, but it doesn't bode well that they could do that well. as mentoned above, they're going to be fighting a GE on two fronts, requiring completely different campaign messaging. Even a locally prominent and apparently favoured candidate didn't save the, in Mid Beds. Do they have people with the skills to walk that fine line? Do they have people with skills? For any Con supporters look for straws to clutch at - don't bother, they've all gone.
So Greg Hands says he 'doesn't see any great enthusiasm for Labour' - in which case, Greg, how much do people hate the Tories?
The level of investment needed across the country is mind boggling to be honest.
Yet government spending is still way higher than tax revenues. Who’s going to have the honest conversation about the need to tax more and spend less?
The appalling state of public sector services in the UK, from prisons, to courts, to NHS, to Universities to Councils is really grating on people. It is going to be a grim winter ahead as more and more cease to function.
Tories talking of inheritance tax cuts is chucking petrol on that fire.
It isn't for the Tories core vote and after they lost even Mid Bedfordshire the Tories first job is to win that back
Clearly you haven't seen the condition of the roads in any areas outside your enclave.
Equally tax cuts aren't going to win votes from people who have had friends/relatives waiting 18 hours in A&E....
6. Bllx. I lost my bet on the Tories in Mid Beds. Congratulations to those on the other side of the wager who took my money. Kudos to @Heathener and @Casino_Royale for backing the double.
6. Bllx. I lost my bet on the Tories in Mid Beds. Congratulations to those on the other side of the wager who took my money. Kudos to @Heathener and @Casino_Royale for backing the double.
And a split Tory/Reform vote let Labour through the middle. (nudge @david_herdson )
George Osborne, first words after exit poll, election night BBC TV, 2019.
It's not a great predictive record.
My prediction even before the 2019 election was that Bozo would be the last ever Tory Prime Minister.
Now technically I'm wrong on that prediction because Bozo has left and we are on the second post Bozo PM but the argument still stands - having won and implemented Brexit the consequences of doing so will destroy the party once and for all.
Gregg Carlstrom @glcarlstrom Israel is going to evacuate the city of Kiryat Shmona on its northern border with Lebanon, which is home to more than 20,000 people.
The Reform vote in both by-elections interests me. Is this a cohort of voters than can be squeezed with the right policies back into the Tory column, or is it, and I fear this may be true, a cohort of voters who don't want to vote for a party led by an PM of Indian heritage. We would all rightly abhor the racism, but I don't think we can discount the possibility that some of the Reform vote isn't salvagable for Con for that reason.
I don't think those are the two alternatives. The most likely reason they won't be squeezed is they neither trust the Tories to do anything they say, nor believe they are in any way competant enough to do it even if they want to. It is a view shared by the majority of the country and the main defining characteristic of Reform voters as opposed to Labour or Lib Dems is they don't trust those parties either.
I think there are lots of things at work but there is something about Sunak that some right of centre voters took against immediately. If you look at the Wiki wiggly line there was an immediate 3pp rise in RefUK support at the very moment Sunak became PM. Not at the time of the Truss debacle, not at the time of Partygate, and not gradually over the course of Sunak's premiership. It's not a massive cohort of people, it's certainly not a majority of Tory-inclined voters by any means, but unfortunately I do think that an element of racism is probably at work and contributing to the Tories' current unpopularity (maybe they just object to his wealth? Possibly, I doubt it).
The 3 per cent is probably a mix of loyal Trussites and racists (not much overlap for the the avoidance of doubt). There is definitely a strain of Tory support that still strongly believes in Truss and blames the blob (inc Rishi) for sabotaging her and the aims they have spent a decade or more calling for.
George Osborne, first words after exit poll, election night BBC TV, 2019.
It's not a great predictive record.
We DID enter his era. It was an utter disaster. Nobody conceived that a Tory majority of 80 would be followed by a Labour majority of 80 - if the Tories are lucky.
The Tories wouldn't be losing Tamworth with him as leader.
They would.
Boris Johnson's modus operandi doesn't work, I've seen the focus groups on him now.
Lest we forget this whole byelection was why Boris Johnson was ousted.
He put a known sexual predator in a position of authority then lied about it, the voters hate that.
I'm not so sure. Tamworth is very much white van man territory, and the defining characteristic of a politician they'd vote for is someone they'd like to have a couple of pints with. Johnson always projected that air of bonhomie that they found attractive to the extent that they'd overlook his sexual peccadilloes, laziness and lying. After all, none of us are perfect are we? But they won't vote for someone as alien to them as Sunak.
no government has ever lost so safe a seat as Tamworth — where the Tories’ majority in 2019 was 42 per cent — to its principal opponents. Hitherto that record was held by the Ashfield by-election when the Labour government at the time was unsuccessful in defending a 41 per cent majority against a challenge from the Conservatives.
Tamworth was Labour in 1997
But it's the kind of seat that's trended away from Labour significantly since then, while other seats have gone the other way.
George Osborne, first words after exit poll, election night BBC TV, 2019.
It's not a great predictive record.
We DID enter his era. It was an utter disaster. Nobody conceived that a Tory majority of 80 would be followed by a Labour majority of 80 - if the Tories are lucky.
The Tories wouldn't be losing Tamworth with him as leader.
They would.
Boris Johnson's modus operandi doesn't work, I've seen the focus groups on him now.
Lest we forget this whole byelection was why Boris Johnson was ousted.
He put a known sexual predator in a position of authority then lied about it, the voters hate that.
I'm not so sure. Tamworth is very much white van man territory, and the defining characteristic of a politician they'd vote for is someone they'd like to have a couple of pints with. Johnson always projected that air of bonhomie that they found attractive to the extent that they'd overlook his sexual peccadilloes, laziness and lying. After all, none of us are perfect are we? But they won't vote for someone as alien to them as Sunak.
The Reform vote in both by-elections interests me. Is this a cohort of voters than can be squeezed with the right policies back into the Tory column, or is it, and I fear this may be true, a cohort of voters who don't want to vote for a party led by an PM of Indian heritage. We would all rightly abhor the racism, but I don't think we can discount the possibility that some of the Reform vote isn't salvagable for Con for that reason.
I don't think those are the two alternatives. The most likely reason they won't be squeezed is they neither trust the Tories to do anything they say, nor believe they are in any way competant enough to do it even if they want to. It is a view shared by the majority of the country and the main defining characteristic of Reform voters as opposed to Labour or Lib Dems is they don't trust those parties either.
I think there are lots of things at work but there is something about Sunak that some right of centre voters took against immediately. If you look at the Wiki wiggly line there was an immediate 3pp rise in RefUK support at the very moment Sunak became PM. Not at the time of the Truss debacle, not at the time of Partygate, and not gradually over the course of Sunak's premiership. It's not a massive cohort of people, it's certainly not a majority of Tory-inclined voters by any means, but unfortunately I do think that an element of racism is probably at work and contributing to the Tories' current unpopularity (maybe they just object to his wealth? Possibly, I doubt it).
Nah. That change to Reform was a reaction to the ousting of Truss by someone who had, only a few weeks before, lost to her in the members vote. As someone who wouldn't have voted for either of them I did find it remarkable just how poor Sunak was in the campaign for leadership. At the time I pointed out how patronising and sneering he was of his opponent. Never a good look. If it had been Patel or Braverman rather than Sunak I am pretty siure you would not have seen that shift to Reform. Though you may well have seen a shift on the other wing towards Labour or the Lib Dems.
The level of investment needed across the country is mind boggling to be honest.
Yet government spending is still way higher than tax revenues. Who’s going to have the honest conversation about the need to tax more and spend less?
The appalling state of public sector services in the UK, from prisons, to courts, to NHS, to Universities to Councils is really grating on people. It is going to be a grim winter ahead as more and more cease to function.
Tories talking of inheritance tax cuts is chucking petrol on that fire.
It isn't for the Tories core vote and after they lost even Mid Bedfordshire the Tories first job is to win that back
Clearly you haven't seen the condition of the roads in any areas outside your enclave.
Equally tax cuts aren't going to win votes from people who have had friends/relatives waiting 18 hours in A&E....
Given that the UK has a massive backlog of infrastructure spending that it has been putting off for decades, a huge amount of ongoing government borrowing and no quick wins on operational spending left, the idea that there can be tax cuts is simply for the birds.
The way that the Conservative right are pushing for them and the Conservative centre aren't really pushing back, is a sign of what a mess they're in.
Meanwhile...yesterday, the prosecutor got a plea bargain for Trump's lawyer, Sidney Powell, in the Georgian election interference case. Who must now testify against Trump.
There has been a tsunami of bad news for Trump in the various cases going on against him. (Although worse for Rudy Guiliani, who is now very likely to be personally bankrupted by the cases against him.)
With the timelines of these cases, especially state cases where he can't pardon himself, I just don't see how Trump can be the candidate next year.
I think he will anyway and will just defy the states to jail him. Sadly at the moment it looks like he will win even from behind bars.
Nah. Biden is having a good "war" in Israel. His speech yesterday from the Oval Office was very measured, a reminder to America of America's strengths.
Whilst Trump has been bitching outside court that it was causing him to miss a golf tournament in Florida.
I do hope you are right but the polls don't currently agree.
Reading the Informed Sources email this morning there is more trouble brewing in the world of Transport.
On one hand we have train builders with no orders. On the other hand we have trains full and standing. The Tories sit resolute in the middle telling everyone how they're definitely the good guys spending money.
Alstom Derby only has a few months of orders left. The design studio has work but nothing to build from early 2024 - so likely closure and job losses unless something is done to bridge the gap.
Hitachi has an extra year of orders but even they are stuck beyond that. Meanwhile the government refuses to do anything to replace failing old trains or building new trains to add capacity.
Northern has announced a tender for new trains but not until 2027 at the earliest with a spec that keeps being changed by the government. And despite LNER and Lumo being full and standing, and expensive capacity upgrade work having been carried out to provide power for more trains, LNER have been ordered to bin much of their old fleet.
So although @Alanbrooke is insistent that events will swing votes back to the Tories, I have to scratch my head and wonder why it won't be to swing even more votes away.
George Osborne, first words after exit poll, election night BBC TV, 2019.
It's not a great predictive record.
We DID enter his era. It was an utter disaster. Nobody conceived that a Tory majority of 80 would be followed by a Labour majority of 80 - if the Tories are lucky.
The Tories wouldn't be losing Tamworth with him as leader.
They would.
Boris Johnson's modus operandi doesn't work, I've seen the focus groups on him now.
Lest we forget this whole byelection was why Boris Johnson was ousted.
He put a known sexual predator in a position of authority then lied about it, the voters hate that.
I'm not so sure. Tamworth is very much white van man territory, and the defining characteristic of a politician they'd vote for is someone they'd like to have a couple of pints with. Johnson always projected that air of bonhomie that they found attractive to the extent that they'd overlook his sexual peccadilloes, laziness and lying. After all, none of us are perfect are we? But they won't vote for someone as alien to them as Sunak.
Or Starmer?
Starmer is white, not a billionaire and went to a grammar school. He's like the local boy who done good.
George Osborne, first words after exit poll, election night BBC TV, 2019.
It's not a great predictive record.
My prediction even before the 2019 election was that Bozo would be the last ever Tory Prime Minister.
Now technically I'm wrong on that prediction because Bozo has left and we are on the second post Bozo PM but the argument still stands - having won and implemented Brexit the consequences of doing so will destroy the party once and for all.
If that were to occur please could we have a radical centre right party that believed in investment, meritocracy and hard work, embracing technology, good relations with our neighbours and broadly neutral on the woke stuff?
Two numbers to focus on if you think a landslide is on.
271
and
202.
271 was the number of seats Labour won in 1992
202 was the number of seats Labour won in 2019.
Labour start much further behind now than they did in 1997.
Indeed. But as some have pointed out, this current government is worse than Major's one was in 1997. And whilst Starmer is nowhere near approaching Blair's '97 likeability, Sunak is nowhere near having Major's down-to-earth image.
Why should anyone vote Tory in the next GE? What do they offer?
The level of investment needed across the country is mind boggling to be honest.
But we don't have the money to invest because we have been living beyond our means, and our tax base, for too long. There is going to be a dangerous amount of frustration when people see how little Starmer and Reeves can do about it.
Quite, and since Starmer is not preparing the way for this he will have a tough time if he gets in to power. Too many disappointed expectations.
There will be frustration that Labour cannot speedily fix things, but I really can't see voters bothered about public services returning to the party that trashed them.
Starmer gets a decade in power IMO.
It's one outcome. The other is he falls short of a majority has a weak government which is Callaghan 2. Hes then a one term PM with a whirlwind to behind him.
He'll be 62/3 if he gets in. A second term would see him continuing in to his seventies that might fly in the States but its not us.
Given the Boomer Ascendancy, an age of 67/68 in 2029ish will not hurt Starmer. If Trump wins in 2024 Trump will be 83 in 2029.
Completely off thread - but my wife and I have been discussing Blue Peter viewing figures, which when we were kids were about 6 million and are now about 30,000; indeed there was an episode a few years back which got no viewers at all (though I have my doubts about the accuracy of these figures). Anyway, we were interrupted by our 8 year old daughter: "what even is Blue Peter?". Which kind of illustrates the point. Kids don't watch live telly any more. (This has come about quite suddenly; my older two, 13 and 12, don't watch live telly either, but do at least remember doing so; my youngest never really has).
The level of investment needed across the country is mind boggling to be honest.
Yet government spending is still way higher than tax revenues. Who’s going to have the honest conversation about the need to tax more and spend less?
The appalling state of public sector services in the UK, from prisons, to courts, to NHS, to Universities to Councils is really grating on people. It is going to be a grim winter ahead as more and more cease to function.
Tories talking of inheritance tax cuts is chucking petrol on that fire.
It isn't for the Tories core vote and after they lost even Mid Bedfordshire the Tories first job is to win that back
Anyone who thinks Tamworth and Mid Beds will not be (maybe only) 2 Blue Tory Gains when there is a proper GE turnout are in for a shock Selby too probably.
Well done, Labour: two excellent wins in very different seats. The people have decided, ('the bastards'), and there'll be a Labour government after the next election. The only question will be how much of a majority they get. I expect more playing it safe from Starmer - don't scare the horses.
A qualified well done to the LibDems: no one expected anything in Tamworth, so it means nothing, despite the best efforts of some to label it a poor showing, and in Mid Beds they didn't win or come second, but they got a significant vote increase, almost as much in percentage terms as Labour, despite both of them fighting it hard. Reinforces my belief that there is a significant pool of disaffected Tories who won't go Labour under any circumstances. Some constituencies will have any more of those, plus where Labour don't fight a big chunk of the vote that went Labour here will go LibDem. It's going to be a good election for the LibDems.
Disastrous for the Cons: Labour majorities in both seats were smaller than the RefUk vote, That doesn't mean they'd have got all those votes if RefUK didn't stand, but it doesn't bode well that they could do that well. as mentoned above, they're going to be fighting a GE on two fronts, requiring completely different campaign messaging. Even a locally prominent and apparently favoured candidate didn't save the, in Mid Beds. Do they have people with the skills to walk that fine line? Do they have people with skills? For any Con supporters look for straws to clutch at - don't bother, they've all gone.
So Greg Hands says he 'doesn't see any great enthusiasm for Labour' - in which case, Greg, how much do people hate the Tories?
Well done the LDs? ".... my belief that there is a significant pool of disaffected Tories who won't go Labour under any circumstances....."?? Get a grip on reality.
The fall in the Conservative vote share was much the same in both constituencies, 28% in Mid Beds and 25% in Tamworth. Your idea that the LDs somehow aided Labour in mid Beds by causing a collapse in the Conservative vote that otherwise wouldn't have happened doesn't hold water.
What the LDs did do was to badly split the anti-Conservative vote by spending much of the campaign trying to talk down Labour's chances, with blatantly false claims about being set to win and the usual false bar charts even in the face of polling that pointed to the opposite, and highly personal attacks on the Labour candidate. They were desperate to come out ahead of Labour. Some people fell for it but overall the LDs still failed badly. The idea that the LDs somehow helped Labour to win is risible. Labour won in spite of their best efforts.
Meanwhile...yesterday, the prosecutor got a plea bargain for Trump's lawyer, Sidney Powell, in the Georgian election interference case. Who must now testify against Trump.
There has been a tsunami of bad news for Trump in the various cases going on against him. (Although worse for Rudy Guiliani, who is now very likely to be personally bankrupted by the cases against him.)
With the timelines of these cases, especially state cases where he can't pardon himself, I just don't see how Trump can be the candidate next year.
I think people are getting slightly ahead of themselves on Powell testifying against Trump.
Strictly, her plea deal only directly implicates another co-defendant, Misty Hampton, with whom she admits to conspiring to unlawfully access voting machines in Coffee County. She'd certainly be called to give evidence against Hampton because, by definition with conspiracy, at least one other person is involved and Hampton is named. That's if Hampton doesn't also flip, which I strongly suspect she will as this pulls the rug from under her and she's a minor player who'd get a good deal.
But it may be Powell's position that Trump was not involved and this was her acting on his behalf but without his knowledge, so prosecutors will be careful about how to play this as her testimony could, but may not, implicate Trump.
What it does do is move the jeopardy closer to Trump. The man who will really be sweating initiially (with all the hair dye implications that involves) is Rudy Guliani as I understand there are emails indicating he was involved in the Coffee County breach. Although he's not named in the plea deal documents, I think it'd be really hard for Powell to not implicate Giuliani in testimony.
George Osborne, first words after exit poll, election night BBC TV, 2019.
It's not a great predictive record.
My prediction even before the 2019 election was that Bozo would be the last ever Tory Prime Minister.
Now technically I'm wrong on that prediction because Bozo has left and we are on the second post Bozo PM but the argument still stands - having won and implemented Brexit the consequences of doing so will destroy the party once and for all.
If that were to occur please could we have a radical centre right party that believed in investment, meritocracy and hard work, embracing technology, good relations with our neighbours and broadly neutral on the woke stuff?
The Reform vote in both by-elections interests me. Is this a cohort of voters than can be squeezed with the right policies back into the Tory column, or is it, and I fear this may be true, a cohort of voters who don't want to vote for a party led by an PM of Indian heritage. We would all rightly abhor the racism, but I don't think we can discount the possibility that some of the Reform vote isn't salvagable for Con for that reason.
I don't think those are the two alternatives. The most likely reason they won't be squeezed is they neither trust the Tories to do anything they say, nor believe they are in any way competant enough to do it even if they want to. It is a view shared by the majority of the country and the main defining characteristic of Reform voters as opposed to Labour or Lib Dems is they don't trust those parties either.
I think there are lots of things at work but there is something about Sunak that some right of centre voters took against immediately. If you look at the Wiki wiggly line there was an immediate 3pp rise in RefUK support at the very moment Sunak became PM. Not at the time of the Truss debacle, not at the time of Partygate, and not gradually over the course of Sunak's premiership. It's not a massive cohort of people, it's certainly not a majority of Tory-inclined voters by any means, but unfortunately I do think that an element of racism is probably at work and contributing to the Tories' current unpopularity (maybe they just object to his wealth? Possibly, I doubt it).
The 3 per cent is probably a mix of loyal Trussites and racists (not much overlap for the the avoidance of doubt). There is definitely a strain of Tory support that still strongly believes in Truss and blames the blob (inc Rishi) for sabotaging her and the aims they have spent a decade or more calling for.
Maybe but I don't think RefUK support went down when she became PM and it's not like Johnson was a small state tax cuts guy. You're probably right, though, there was likely an element of that in the mix too.
Meanwhile...yesterday, the prosecutor got a plea bargain for Trump's lawyer, Sidney Powell, in the Georgian election interference case. Who must now testify against Trump.
There has been a tsunami of bad news for Trump in the various cases going on against him. (Although worse for Rudy Guiliani, who is now very likely to be personally bankrupted by the cases against him.)
With the timelines of these cases, especially state cases where he can't pardon himself, I just don't see how Trump can be the candidate next year.
I think he will anyway and will just defy the states to jail him. Sadly at the moment it looks like he will win even from behind bars.
Nah. Biden is having a good "war" in Israel. His speech yesterday from the Oval Office was very measured, a reminder to America of America's strengths.
Whilst Trump has been bitching outside court that it was causing him to miss a golf tournament in Florida.
I do hope you are right but the polls don't currently agree.
Small samples but the polls do support Mark's assertion that the Israel Palestine war is helping Biden. Latest poll has his approval at 49% vs trend average of 40%. Latest national Presidential poll has Biden +1 vs Trump after Trump being in the lead pre war.
6. Bllx. I lost my bet on the Tories in Mid Beds. Congratulations to those on the other side of the wager who took my money. Kudos to @Heathener and @Casino_Royale for backing the double.
George Osborne, first words after exit poll, election night BBC TV, 2019.
It's not a great predictive record.
I will go to my dying day that he was right. If COVID had not happened we would be looking at a second Conservative victory in May 2024. It did and Boris has gone, but if it hadn't...
George Osborne, first words after exit poll, election night BBC TV, 2019.
It's not a great predictive record.
We DID enter his era. It was an utter disaster. Nobody conceived that a Tory majority of 80 would be followed by a Labour majority of 80 - if the Tories are lucky.
The Tories wouldn't be losing Tamworth with him as leader.
They would.
Boris Johnson's modus operandi doesn't work, I've seen the focus groups on him now.
Lest we forget this whole byelection was why Boris Johnson was ousted.
He put a known sexual predator in a position of authority then lied about it, the voters hate that.
You underestimate how much his enforced resignation was a breach of trust with the people who elected him.
It turned mid-term bad polling for the Conservatives into a potential wipe out.
George Osborne, first words after exit poll, election night BBC TV, 2019.
It's not a great predictive record.
My prediction even before the 2019 election was that Bozo would be the last ever Tory Prime Minister.
Now technically I'm wrong on that prediction because Bozo has left and we are on the second post Bozo PM but the argument still stands - having won and implemented Brexit the consequences of doing so will destroy the party once and for all.
If that were to occur please could we have a radical centre right party that believed in investment, meritocracy and hard work, embracing technology, good relations with our neighbours and broadly neutral on the woke stuff?
Step forward Lib Dems, your time is now?
They are the party I am probably closest to currently but not convinced they are committed to/radical enough on investment and embracing technology. And on the woke stuff they are woke rather than neutral, which is fine for me personally but severely limits the size of their potential voter base.
Completely off thread - but my wife and I have been discussing Blue Peter viewing figures, which when we were kids were about 6 million and are now about 30,000; indeed there was an episode a few years back which got no viewers at all (though I have my doubts about the accuracy of these figures). Anyway, we were interrupted by our 8 year old daughter: "what even is Blue Peter?". Which kind of illustrates the point. Kids don't watch live telly any more. (This has come about quite suddenly; my older two, 13 and 12, don't watch live telly either, but do at least remember doing so; my youngest never really has).
I think a big part of this is the disintegration of telly into myriad different channels. It is not just Blue Peter but kids TV as a whole which has been relegated to specialist channels. And even they are going as the BBC is shutting CBBC in less than 2 years time
Completely off thread - but my wife and I have been discussing Blue Peter viewing figures, which when we were kids were about 6 million and are now about 30,000; indeed there was an episode a few years back which got no viewers at all (though I have my doubts about the accuracy of these figures). Anyway, we were interrupted by our 8 year old daughter: "what even is Blue Peter?". Which kind of illustrates the point. Kids don't watch live telly any more. (This has come about quite suddenly; my older two, 13 and 12, don't watch live telly either, but do at least remember doing so; my youngest never really has).
This makes me very sad. My kids don't watch it either. I do think my kids are much less well informed about the world than I was at their age - I picked a lot of stuff up without trying just by watching whatever was on TV. It's hard to have a vibrant well informed democracy when people know SFA about the world around them and get their information from sources that are vulnerable to disinformation campaigns.
Two numbers to focus on if you think a landslide is on.
271
and
202.
271 was the number of seats Labour won in 1992
202 was the number of seats Labour won in 2019.
Labour start much further behind now than they did in 1997.
#CorbynsToxicLegacy
For the cautious who think the Tories need a bit of time to go away and read Edmund Burke, but think we may be at Peak Starmer this morning, two more figures:
41: The number of seats the Tories need to lose to lose absolute control over the formation of the next government
51 (give or take one or two): The number of seats the Tories need to lose to lose actual control over the formation of the next government.
This is so much fewer than the 123 seats Labour need to win to have a majority that these numbers could well come into play. It also puts into play an infinity of permutations and possibilities to keep us entertained for the next year.
Labour are I'm sure celebrating their success, but I can't help but feel that much like Johnson winning in 2019 Labour are going to find governing after the general election dominated by events outside of their control, and whatever they planned to do will be pushed to one side.
Meanwhile...yesterday, the prosecutor got a plea bargain for Trump's lawyer, Sidney Powell, in the Georgian election interference case. Who must now testify against Trump.
There has been a tsunami of bad news for Trump in the various cases going on against him. (Although worse for Rudy Guiliani, who is now very likely to be personally bankrupted by the cases against him.)
With the timelines of these cases, especially state cases where he can't pardon himself, I just don't see how Trump can be the candidate next year.
I think people are getting slightly ahead of themselves on Powell testifying against Trump.
Strictly, her plea deal only directly implicates another co-defendant, Misty Hampton, with whom she admits to conspiring to unlawfully access voting machines in Coffee County. She'd certainly be called to give evidence against Hampton because, by definition with conspiracy, at least one other person is involved and Hampton is named. That's if Hampton doesn't also flip, which I strongly suspect she will as this pulls the rug from under her and she's a minor player who'd get a good deal.
But it may be Powell's position that Trump was not involved and this was her acting on his behalf but without his knowledge, so prosecutors will be careful about how to play this as her testimony could, but may not, implicate Trump.
What it does do is move the jeopardy closer to Trump. The man who will really be sweating initiially (with all the hair dye implications that involves) is Rudy Guliani as I understand there are emails indicating he was involved in the Coffee County breach. Although he's not named in the plea deal documents, I think it'd be really hard for Powell to not implicate Giuliani in testimony.
Powell will have been quizzed for up to ten hours on what she will say regarding Trump.
If it wasn't worth it, Powell wouldn't have got this deal.
Completely off thread - but my wife and I have been discussing Blue Peter viewing figures, which when we were kids were about 6 million and are now about 30,000; indeed there was an episode a few years back which got no viewers at all (though I have my doubts about the accuracy of these figures). Anyway, we were interrupted by our 8 year old daughter: "what even is Blue Peter?". Which kind of illustrates the point. Kids don't watch live telly any more. (This has come about quite suddenly; my older two, 13 and 12, don't watch live telly either, but do at least remember doing so; my youngest never really has).
This makes me very sad. My kids don't watch it either. I do think my kids are much less well informed about the world than I was at their age - I picked a lot of stuff up without trying just by watching whatever was on TV. It's hard to have a vibrant well informed democracy when people know SFA about the world around them and get their information from sources that are vulnerable to disinformation campaigns.
And yet a 5 year old Octonaut fan probably already knows more than our generation ever did about marine life. Swings and roundabouts.
George Osborne, first words after exit poll, election night BBC TV, 2019.
It's not a great predictive record.
We DID enter his era. It was an utter disaster. Nobody conceived that a Tory majority of 80 would be followed by a Labour majority of 80 - if the Tories are lucky.
The Tories wouldn't be losing Tamworth with him as leader.
They would.
Boris Johnson's modus operandi doesn't work, I've seen the focus groups on him now.
Lest we forget this whole byelection was why Boris Johnson was ousted.
He put a known sexual predator in a position of authority then lied about it, the voters hate that.
I'm not so sure. Tamworth is very much white van man territory, and the defining characteristic of a politician they'd vote for is someone they'd like to have a couple of pints with. Johnson always projected that air of bonhomie that they found attractive to the extent that they'd overlook his sexual peccadilloes, laziness and lying. After all, none of us are perfect are we? But they won't vote for someone as alien to them as Sunak.
Or Starmer?
Starmer is white, not a billionaire and went to a grammar school. He's like the local boy who done good.
I do think that because he's a bit dull, people underestimate Starmer's 'normality' and its relative appeal. On the 'have a pint with' scale, one wouldn't imagine he'd be sparkling company, but he could talk a bit about the footy and wouldn't annoy you or be weird - which is probably an asset for a politician in 2023. Dullness is a bit infuriating to political nerds and commentators, who constantly want drama or inspiration, but less so to voters I think.
I hope the Liberals will learn their lesson from this. Don’t run at seats where you are third. I think they should target 30-40 seats at the GE, no more.
I hope the Liberals will learn their lesson from this. Don’t run at seats where you are third. I think they should target 30-40 seats at the GE, no more.
Like Tiverton & Honiton and Shropshire North, you mean?
Completely off thread - but my wife and I have been discussing Blue Peter viewing figures, which when we were kids were about 6 million and are now about 30,000; indeed there was an episode a few years back which got no viewers at all (though I have my doubts about the accuracy of these figures). Anyway, we were interrupted by our 8 year old daughter: "what even is Blue Peter?". Which kind of illustrates the point. Kids don't watch live telly any more. (This has come about quite suddenly; my older two, 13 and 12, don't watch live telly either, but do at least remember doing so; my youngest never really has).
This makes me very sad. My kids don't watch it either. I do think my kids are much less well informed about the world than I was at their age - I picked a lot of stuff up without trying just by watching whatever was on TV. It's hard to have a vibrant well informed democracy when people know SFA about the world around them and get their information from sources that are vulnerable to disinformation campaigns.
There's good stuff still being made- both by the BBC and others. That includes online- it was good to see Map Men get a plug in the Sunday Times this weekend.
What's been lost has been the shared institutions that everyone knew about and most people watched. That atomisation isn't great for society or shared conversations, but somehow it's worse for children. The loss of general interest programmes as the only kids thing on means that some improve themselves a lot and others watch utter trash and nothing else.
In education, it's the Matthew Principle- to he who has shall be given more but to get who has not, what they have shall be taken away.
Some thoughts: 1. The landslide is on. As @Heathener has been tipping 2. The election will be late - why go early to massive defeat? Use the shitty weather as advantage on the premise that your remaining meddlesome old ratbag voters use postal votes 3. In both seats the ReFUK / UKIP / Fox / Fascist vote was bigger than the Labour majority. The hardcore of scum really will vote to the right of the Tories. Cost Boris a stack of seats in 2019, will cost the Cons far more in 2025 4. LDs won’t be too disappointed with MidBeds. Doubling the vote as the Tory switch vote where Labour is a bridge too far means picking up a stack of southern seats come the GE 5. Whither the Tories? Brexit is not only done, it’s now a negative, culture wars not working, fuck your lungs not working. They are getting destroyed because the country isn’t working. You can’t hide that, you can’t lie about lived reality, you can’t blame someone else.
Barring some miraculous turnaround in the country feeling less broken or a black swan, the Tories are heading for a demolition at best, or ELE.
A new dawn has broken, has it not?
Fuck! How the hell did the Tories break that?
Asian Dawn? I read about them in Time magazine
If Sunak bans them, will that make people vote Tory again?
Could be worse. The GOP are literally shouting and swearing at each other. A majority in Congress but unable to agree on just how mentalist they should be.
After yesterday we will see the Tories shouting and swearing at each other. The Lee Anderson Fuck Off wing will want Boris back or at least the pretence that Tories care about the north. The John Redwood wing will want a tax on foreigners living abroad. The Braverman - Patel wing will want asylum-seekers torn apart by specially trained Bully XL dogs in the town square
A “tax on foreigners living abroad” offers a potentially huge tax base; I’ve travelled widely and there are tons of them wherever you go….
There’s like 8,000,000,000 of them!
Although how you get them to actually pay the tax, is another question.
The British East India Company has entered the chat and started taxing it.
George Osborne, first words after exit poll, election night BBC TV, 2019.
It's not a great predictive record.
I will go to my dying day that he was right. If COVID had not happened we would be looking at a second Conservative victory in May 2024. It did and Boris has gone, but if it hadn't...
Not convinced, though Boris undoubtedly was touched with genius and at the time looked good for 10 years. Without Covid he would still have fallen because of his astonishing lack of personal self control and inability to surround himself with the right long term advisers, and his total failure, having led us to Brexit, to envision what it might be about.
In so many other ways he was a centrist Tory with a compassionate politics.
Meanwhile...yesterday, the prosecutor got a plea bargain for Trump's lawyer, Sidney Powell, in the Georgian election interference case. Who must now testify against Trump.
There has been a tsunami of bad news for Trump in the various cases going on against him. (Although worse for Rudy Guiliani, who is now very likely to be personally bankrupted by the cases against him.)
With the timelines of these cases, especially state cases where he can't pardon himself, I just don't see how Trump can be the candidate next year.
I think people are getting slightly ahead of themselves on Powell testifying against Trump.
Strictly, her plea deal only directly implicates another co-defendant, Misty Hampton, with whom she admits to conspiring to unlawfully access voting machines in Coffee County. She'd certainly be called to give evidence against Hampton because, by definition with conspiracy, at least one other person is involved and Hampton is named. That's if Hampton doesn't also flip, which I strongly suspect she will as this pulls the rug from under her and she's a minor player who'd get a good deal.
But it may be Powell's position that Trump was not involved and this was her acting on his behalf but without his knowledge, so prosecutors will be careful about how to play this as her testimony could, but may not, implicate Trump.
What it does do is move the jeopardy closer to Trump. The man who will really be sweating initiially (with all the hair dye implications that involves) is Rudy Guliani as I understand there are emails indicating he was involved in the Coffee County breach. Although he's not named in the plea deal documents, I think it'd be really hard for Powell to not implicate Giuliani in testimony.
In which case may I propose a pardon for Giuliani? I may abhor the attempted coup and his part in it, but I really, really do not want to see more of him sweating.
6. Bllx. I lost my bet on the Tories in Mid Beds. Congratulations to those on the other side of the wager who took my money. Kudos to @Heathener and @Casino_Royale for backing the double.
The level of investment needed across the country is mind boggling to be honest.
Yet government spending is still way higher than tax revenues. Who’s going to have the honest conversation about the need to tax more and spend less?
The appalling state of public sector services in the UK, from prisons, to courts, to NHS, to Universities to Councils is really grating on people. It is going to be a grim winter ahead as more and more cease to function.
Tories talking of inheritance tax cuts is chucking petrol on that fire.
It isn't for the Tories core vote and after they lost even Mid Bedfordshire the Tories first job is to win that back
Clearly you haven't seen the condition of the roads in any areas outside your enclave.
Equally tax cuts aren't going to win votes from people who have had friends/relatives waiting 18 hours in A&E....
Given that the UK has a massive backlog of infrastructure spending that it has been putting off for decades, a huge amount of ongoing government borrowing and no quick wins on operational spending left, the idea that there can be tax cuts is simply for the birds.
The way that the Conservative right are pushing for them and the Conservative centre aren't really pushing back, is a sign of what a mess they're in.
What Tory Centre - Bozo removed the vocal bit that cared in Summer / Autumn 19...
What's left is a set of quiet nobodies enjoying their time at Westminster until they retire after the next election...
I hope the Liberals will learn their lesson from this. Don’t run at seats where you are third. I think they should target 30-40 seats at the GE, no more.
Confucius say, political party unlikely to take advice from man who can't even be bothered to get their name right.
Well done, Labour: two excellent wins in very different seats. The people have decided, ('the bastards'), and there'll be a Labour government after the next election. The only question will be how much of a majority they get. I expect more playing it safe from Starmer - don't scare the horses.
A qualified well done to the LibDems: no one expected anything in Tamworth, so it means nothing, despite the best efforts of some to label it a poor showing, and in Mid Beds they didn't win or come second, but they got a significant vote increase, almost as much in percentage terms as Labour, despite both of them fighting it hard. Reinforces my belief that there is a significant pool of disaffected Tories who won't go Labour under any circumstances. Some constituencies will have any more of those, plus where Labour don't fight a big chunk of the vote that went Labour here will go LibDem. It's going to be a good election for the LibDems.
Disastrous for the Cons: Labour majorities in both seats were smaller than the RefUk vote, That doesn't mean they'd have got all those votes if RefUK didn't stand, but it doesn't bode well that they could do that well. as mentoned above, they're going to be fighting a GE on two fronts, requiring completely different campaign messaging. Even a locally prominent and apparently favoured candidate didn't save the, in Mid Beds. Do they have people with the skills to walk that fine line? Do they have people with skills? For any Con supporters look for straws to clutch at - don't bother, they've all gone.
So Greg Hands says he 'doesn't see any great enthusiasm for Labour' - in which case, Greg, how much do people hate the Tories?
Well done the LDs? ".... my belief that there is a significant pool of disaffected Tories who won't go Labour under any circumstances....."?? Get a grip on reality.
The fall in the Conservative vote share was much the same in both constituencies, 28% in Mid Beds and 25% in Tamworth. Your idea that the LDs somehow aided Labour in mid Beds by causing a collapse in the Conservative vote that otherwise wouldn't have happened doesn't hold water.
What the LDs did do was to badly split the anti-Conservative vote by spending much of the campaign trying to talk down Labour's chances, with blatantly false claims about being set to win and the usual false bar charts even in the face of polling that pointed to the opposite, and highly personal attacks on the Labour candidate. They were desperate to come out ahead of Labour. Some people fell for it but overall the LDs still failed badly. The idea that the LDs somehow helped Labour to win is risible. Labour won in spite of their best efforts.
Breathe! We have stress-tested the theory that Lab & LD vying for votes delivers a Tory victory. Lets assume for a minute that some of the LD votes added may have been winnable for Labour - that is almost certainly true. At the same time some - and likely many more - of the LD votes added were not winnable by Labour.
Labour have 2 tasks - convert people to directly switch Con > Lab. Or if they won't do that to switch Con > not Con. The former is a 2 vote swing to Labour, the latter a 1 vote swing.
Lets say that 60% of the new LD voters weren't winnable by Labour. The safest path is have them vote for someone not Con. Riskier is hope that they don't vote at all - might they change their mind? Riskiest is just not bother with Con voters because Never Kissed A Tory.
Tamworth is nor Mid Beds. Your form of Labour absolutism is a risk to your majority. There are scores of seats where you Cannot Win - even in a landslide. Do you want the Con tally reduced by 1 or not?
The level of investment needed across the country is mind boggling to be honest.
Yet government spending is still way higher than tax revenues. Who’s going to have the honest conversation about the need to tax more and spend less?
The appalling state of public sector services in the UK, from prisons, to courts, to NHS, to Universities to Councils is really grating on people. It is going to be a grim winter ahead as more and more cease to function.
Tories talking of inheritance tax cuts is chucking petrol on that fire.
It isn't for the Tories core vote and after they lost even Mid Bedfordshire the Tories first job is to win that back
Clearly you haven't seen the condition of the roads in any areas outside your enclave.
Equally tax cuts aren't going to win votes from people who have had friends/relatives waiting 18 hours in A&E....
So what, those voters want higher spending and high tax and will be voting Labour anyway.
The Conservatives need to focus on getting the right back united behind them first and that means getting the deficit and inflation down further so there is room for a manifesto commitment for tax cuts
George Osborne, first words after exit poll, election night BBC TV, 2019.
It's not a great predictive record.
We DID enter his era. It was an utter disaster. Nobody conceived that a Tory majority of 80 would be followed by a Labour majority of 80 - if the Tories are lucky.
The Tories wouldn't be losing Tamworth with him as leader.
They would.
Boris Johnson's modus operandi doesn't work, I've seen the focus groups on him now.
Lest we forget this whole byelection was why Boris Johnson was ousted.
He put a known sexual predator in a position of authority then lied about it, the voters hate that.
I'm not so sure. Tamworth is very much white van man territory, and the defining characteristic of a politician they'd vote for is someone they'd like to have a couple of pints with. Johnson always projected that air of bonhomie that they found attractive to the extent that they'd overlook his sexual peccadilloes, laziness and lying. After all, none of us are perfect are we? But they won't vote for someone as alien to them as Sunak.
Or Starmer?
Starmer is white, not a billionaire and went to a grammar school. He's like the local boy who done good.
I do think that because he's a bit dull, people underestimate Starmer's 'normality' and its relative appeal. On the 'have a pint with' scale, one wouldn't imagine he'd be sparkling company, but he could talk a bit about the footy and wouldn't annoy you or be weird - which is probably an asset for a politician in 2023. Dullness is a bit infuriating to political nerds and commentators, who constantly want drama or inspiration, but less so to voters I think.
From what I have seen, very few politicians are the same in private and in public. Of those I have met, only Cameron was the same one-to-one.
It is very likely that Starmer is completely different in private - the public, bland visage thing strikes me as a learned style for legal stuff.
Reading the Informed Sources email this morning there is more trouble brewing in the world of Transport.
On one hand we have train builders with no orders. On the other hand we have trains full and standing. The Tories sit resolute in the middle telling everyone how they're definitely the good guys spending money.
Alstom Derby only has a few months of orders left. The design studio has work but nothing to build from early 2024 - so likely closure and job losses unless something is done to bridge the gap.
Hitachi has an extra year of orders but even they are stuck beyond that. Meanwhile the government refuses to do anything to replace failing old trains or building new trains to add capacity.
Northern has announced a tender for new trains but not until 2027 at the earliest with a spec that keeps being changed by the government. And despite LNER and Lumo being full and standing, and expensive capacity upgrade work having been carried out to provide power for more trains, LNER have been ordered to bin much of their old fleet.
So although @Alanbrooke is insistent that events will swing votes back to the Tories, I have to scratch my head and wonder why it won't be to swing even more votes away.
The other crisis brewing is in local government. Watch more councils go effectively bankrupt…
Meanwhile...yesterday, the prosecutor got a plea bargain for Trump's lawyer, Sidney Powell, in the Georgian election interference case. Who must now testify against Trump.
There has been a tsunami of bad news for Trump in the various cases going on against him. (Although worse for Rudy Guiliani, who is now very likely to be personally bankrupted by the cases against him.)
With the timelines of these cases, especially state cases where he can't pardon himself, I just don't see how Trump can be the candidate next year.
I think people are getting slightly ahead of themselves on Powell testifying against Trump.
Strictly, her plea deal only directly implicates another co-defendant, Misty Hampton, with whom she admits to conspiring to unlawfully access voting machines in Coffee County. She'd certainly be called to give evidence against Hampton because, by definition with conspiracy, at least one other person is involved and Hampton is named. That's if Hampton doesn't also flip, which I strongly suspect she will as this pulls the rug from under her and she's a minor player who'd get a good deal.
But it may be Powell's position that Trump was not involved and this was her acting on his behalf but without his knowledge, so prosecutors will be careful about how to play this as her testimony could, but may not, implicate Trump.
What it does do is move the jeopardy closer to Trump. The man who will really be sweating initiially (with all the hair dye implications that involves) is Rudy Guliani as I understand there are emails indicating he was involved in the Coffee County breach. Although he's not named in the plea deal documents, I think it'd be really hard for Powell to not implicate Giuliani in testimony.
It will be really hard for Giuliani to escape the fact that he's already testified under oath to stuff that's clearly not true. The question is rather whether he too ends up flipping.
Completely off thread - but my wife and I have been discussing Blue Peter viewing figures, which when we were kids were about 6 million and are now about 30,000; indeed there was an episode a few years back which got no viewers at all (though I have my doubts about the accuracy of these figures). Anyway, we were interrupted by our 8 year old daughter: "what even is Blue Peter?". Which kind of illustrates the point. Kids don't watch live telly any more. (This has come about quite suddenly; my older two, 13 and 12, don't watch live telly either, but do at least remember doing so; my youngest never really has).
This makes me very sad. My kids don't watch it either. I do think my kids are much less well informed about the world than I was at their age - I picked a lot of stuff up without trying just by watching whatever was on TV. It's hard to have a vibrant well informed democracy when people know SFA about the world around them and get their information from sources that are vulnerable to disinformation campaigns.
And yet a 5 year old Octonaut fan probably already knows more than our generation ever did about marine life. Swings and roundabouts.
That is true, we are all big Octonauts fans in our house!
George Osborne, first words after exit poll, election night BBC TV, 2019.
It's not a great predictive record.
I will go to my dying day that he was right. If COVID had not happened we would be looking at a second Conservative victory in May 2024. It did and Boris has gone, but if it hadn't...
Not convinced, though Boris undoubtedly was touched with genius and at the time looked good for 10 years. Without Covid he would still have fallen because of his astonishing lack of personal self control and inability to surround himself with the right long term advisers, and his total failure, having led us to Brexit, to envision what it might be about.
In so many other ways he was a centrist Tory with a compassionate politics.
Was he? He told centrist Tories he was a centrist Tory. He told the ERG he was a loyal right wing ERG-er. I think he found policy dull and solely tactical for ladder climbing but was very good at making people think he was with them.
Meanwhile...yesterday, the prosecutor got a plea bargain for Trump's lawyer, Sidney Powell, in the Georgian election interference case. Who must now testify against Trump.
There has been a tsunami of bad news for Trump in the various cases going on against him. (Although worse for Rudy Guiliani, who is now very likely to be personally bankrupted by the cases against him.)
With the timelines of these cases, especially state cases where he can't pardon himself, I just don't see how Trump can be the candidate next year.
I think people are getting slightly ahead of themselves on Powell testifying against Trump.
Strictly, her plea deal only directly implicates another co-defendant, Misty Hampton, with whom she admits to conspiring to unlawfully access voting machines in Coffee County. She'd certainly be called to give evidence against Hampton because, by definition with conspiracy, at least one other person is involved and Hampton is named. That's if Hampton doesn't also flip, which I strongly suspect she will as this pulls the rug from under her and she's a minor player who'd get a good deal.
But it may be Powell's position that Trump was not involved and this was her acting on his behalf but without his knowledge, so prosecutors will be careful about how to play this as her testimony could, but may not, implicate Trump.
What it does do is move the jeopardy closer to Trump. The man who will really be sweating initiially (with all the hair dye implications that involves) is Rudy Guliani as I understand there are emails indicating he was involved in the Coffee County breach. Although he's not named in the plea deal documents, I think it'd be really hard for Powell to not implicate Giuliani in testimony.
Powell will have been quizzed for up to ten hours on what she will say regarding Trump.
If it wasn't worth it, Powell wouldn't have got this deal.
There are two reasons it could be worth it for prosecutors without Powell directly implicating Trump.
Firstly, it moves the jeopardy closer to Trump, because it is quite likely Giuliani is implicated - Powell was part of Giuliani's team, but Guliani was the team leader with direct access to Trump.
Secondly, Powell was due to go on trial imminently (jury selection today I think) along with Ken Chesebro, as they had exercised right to expedited trial. Prosecutors are somewhat keen to avoid this tactically as it provides a useful preview for Trump's team. Chesebro has reportedly turned down a deal on his alleged fake electors scam, but Powell no longer going to trial limits scope.
Labour are I'm sure celebrating their success, but I can't help but feel that much like Johnson winning in 2019 Labour are going to find governing after the general election dominated by events outside of their control, and whatever they planned to do will be pushed to one side.
I think the voters' expectations will be low - though the rather dim passionate leftish supporter/public sector payroll vote crowd won't get this and will be a problem once elected.
Sir K is working on a few retail cheap changes, deeper slow incremental progress, a renewal of hope (currently at Zero levels), a bit of growth, luck, and greater competence in delivery of the £trillion state managed expenditure
I think 1997 redux is coming. I don’t think it will be worse (albeit from a worse start point for Labour and better for the Tories. I think a lot of people attribute too much to swings in bye elections with pitiful turnouts. If I were an ambitious young Tory right now I’d be thinking about how to change what the party is offering the nation. The old reputation for economic competence, if it was ever deserved or real, is gone. So what then is the point of a conservative government?
I hope there are also ambitious young Tories who are willing to honestly reflect on their failures in government.
Take housing, for example. Osborne introduced Help to Buy in 2013. It was billed as the largest intervention in the housing market since Right to Buy. So why is there still a housing crisis? What went wrong?
The level of investment needed across the country is mind boggling to be honest.
Yet government spending is still way higher than tax revenues. Who’s going to have the honest conversation about the need to tax more and spend less?
The appalling state of public sector services in the UK, from prisons, to courts, to NHS, to Universities to Councils is really grating on people. It is going to be a grim winter ahead as more and more cease to function.
Tories talking of inheritance tax cuts is chucking petrol on that fire.
It isn't for the Tories core vote and after they lost even Mid Bedfordshire the Tories first job is to win that back
Actually the proportion of voters, even ex Tory voters, who are affected by Inheritance Tax is utterly miniscule.
The proportion of voters affected by taxes like National Insurance, Income Tax, VAT, the state of our roads, education, NHS, courts, Police, crime and criminals being released back on the streets as prisons are full and much more is far higher.
If the Tories want to be a party that pander only to those who don't work for a living and want to live off handouts and inheritance instead then so be it. They deserve to be on 5% in the polls if so.
Well done, Labour: two excellent wins in very different seats. The people have decided, ('the bastards'), and there'll be a Labour government after the next election. The only question will be how much of a majority they get. I expect more playing it safe from Starmer - don't scare the horses.
A qualified well done to the LibDems: no one expected anything in Tamworth, so it means nothing, despite the best efforts of some to label it a poor showing, and in Mid Beds they didn't win or come second, but they got a significant vote increase, almost as much in percentage terms as Labour, despite both of them fighting it hard. Reinforces my belief that there is a significant pool of disaffected Tories who won't go Labour under any circumstances. Some constituencies will have any more of those, plus where Labour don't fight a big chunk of the vote that went Labour here will go LibDem. It's going to be a good election for the LibDems.
Disastrous for the Cons: Labour majorities in both seats were smaller than the RefUk vote, That doesn't mean they'd have got all those votes if RefUK didn't stand, but it doesn't bode well that they could do that well. as mentoned above, they're going to be fighting a GE on two fronts, requiring completely different campaign messaging. Even a locally prominent and apparently favoured candidate didn't save the, in Mid Beds. Do they have people with the skills to walk that fine line? Do they have people with skills? For any Con supporters look for straws to clutch at - don't bother, they've all gone.
So Greg Hands says he 'doesn't see any great enthusiasm for Labour' - in which case, Greg, how much do people hate the Tories?
Well done the LDs? ".... my belief that there is a significant pool of disaffected Tories who won't go Labour under any circumstances....."?? Get a grip on reality.
The fall in the Conservative vote share was much the same in both constituencies, 28% in Mid Beds and 25% in Tamworth. Your idea that the LDs somehow aided Labour in mid Beds by causing a collapse in the Conservative vote that otherwise wouldn't have happened doesn't hold water.
What the LDs did do was to badly split the anti-Conservative vote by spending much of the campaign trying to talk down Labour's chances, with blatantly false claims about being set to win and the usual false bar charts even in the face of polling that pointed to the opposite, and highly personal attacks on the Labour candidate. They were desperate to come out ahead of Labour. Some people fell for it but overall the LDs still failed badly. The idea that the LDs somehow helped Labour to win is risible. Labour won in spite of their best efforts.
Did I say that the LibDems helped Labour? No I didn't although it's an interesting argument. My view is that for the LibDems, the result is qualified good ones. You're a Labour partisan, and you've got every right to be delighted with your results. But you've been repeating the same stuff over and over all night. That's fine, but it gets a bit stale. The Tories got beaten badly, and I'm very happy about that. Going to enjoy the GE.
Reading the Informed Sources email this morning there is more trouble brewing in the world of Transport.
On one hand we have train builders with no orders. On the other hand we have trains full and standing. The Tories sit resolute in the middle telling everyone how they're definitely the good guys spending money.
Alstom Derby only has a few months of orders left. The design studio has work but nothing to build from early 2024 - so likely closure and job losses unless something is done to bridge the gap.
Hitachi has an extra year of orders but even they are stuck beyond that. Meanwhile the government refuses to do anything to replace failing old trains or building new trains to add capacity.
Northern has announced a tender for new trains but not until 2027 at the earliest with a spec that keeps being changed by the government. And despite LNER and Lumo being full and standing, and expensive capacity upgrade work having been carried out to provide power for more trains, LNER have been ordered to bin much of their old fleet.
So although @Alanbrooke is insistent that events will swing votes back to the Tories, I have to scratch my head and wonder why it won't be to swing even more votes away.
The other crisis brewing is in local government. Watch more councils go effectively bankrupt…
With quite a few more to be Tory councils it will be odd to see the Tories try - as they did in Birmingham - to suggest this is a Labour problem...
I think 1997 redux is coming. I don’t think it will be worse (albeit from a worse start point for Labour and better for the Tories. I think a lot of people attribute too much to swings in bye elections with pitiful turnouts. If I were an ambitious young Tory right now I’d be thinking about how to change what the party is offering the nation. The old reputation for economic competence, if it was ever deserved or real, is gone. So what then is the point of a conservative government?
I hope there are also ambitious young Tories who are willing to honestly reflect on their failures in government.
Take housing, for example. Osborne introduced Help to Buy in 2013. It was billed as the largest intervention in the housing market since Right to Buy. So why is there still a housing crisis? What went wrong?
Help to Buy worked as intended. It drove up the house prices of home owning Tory voters whilst providing a plausible shield to pretend they were helping the young.
George Osborne, first words after exit poll, election night BBC TV, 2019.
It's not a great predictive record.
I will go to my dying day that he was right. If COVID had not happened we would be looking at a second Conservative victory in May 2024. It did and Boris has gone, but if it hadn't...
Not convinced, though Boris undoubtedly was touched with genius and at the time looked good for 10 years. Without Covid he would still have fallen because of his astonishing lack of personal self control and inability to surround himself with the right long term advisers, and his total failure, having led us to Brexit, to envision what it might be about.
In so many other ways he was a centrist Tory with a compassionate politics.
Was he? He told centrist Tories he was a centrist Tory. He told the ERG he was a loyal right wing ERG-er. I think he found policy dull and solely tactical for ladder climbing but was very good at making people think he was with them.
Very fair qualifications. IMHO, Brexit apart, which was a career move and fatally unthought out, he was closer to Heseltine than Lee Anderson in such convictions as he was capable of sustaining.
The level of investment needed across the country is mind boggling to be honest.
Yet government spending is still way higher than tax revenues. Who’s going to have the honest conversation about the need to tax more and spend less?
The appalling state of public sector services in the UK, from prisons, to courts, to NHS, to Universities to Councils is really grating on people. It is going to be a grim winter ahead as more and more cease to function.
Tories talking of inheritance tax cuts is chucking petrol on that fire.
It isn't for the Tories core vote and after they lost even Mid Bedfordshire the Tories first job is to win that back
Actually the proportion of voters, even ex Tory voters, who are affected by Inheritance Tax is utterly miniscule.
The proportion of voters affected by taxes like National Insurance, Income Tax, VAT, the state of our roads, education, NHS, courts, Police, crime and criminals being released back on the streets as prisons are full and much more is far higher.
If the Tories want to be a party that pander only to those who don't work for a living and want to live off handouts and inheritance instead then so be it. They deserve to be on 5% in the polls if so.
In Mid Bedfordshire even the average house is now over the inheritance tax threshold
A valid question to ask - do some Labour people understand that a great many voters Will Not Vote Labour under any circumstances?
They want to pick up any seat they can - get that. But if you can't win a seat and still need to have more seats than the Tories, its better if someone else takes it off the blues than leaving it with them.
Comments
Tories in despair this morning. Former cabinet minister texts: “Dying
days of a corrosive party…. It’ll be tough. Lab will crank up the pressure & so they should”
“There’s no movement towards current leadership/cab & zero reason to vote for us” sees “no pathway 4 improvement”
Seems like a great predictive record.
There’s no real enthusiasm for Labour, which contrasts starkly with the spontaneous outpourings of excitement, applause and, yes, genuine affection which the Conservatives attract wherever they go.
https://x.com/PoliticsJOE_UK/status/1715251166441775197?s=20
Anyway, I hear your objection to the second vote for Tories. But was that tacit approval for the rest?
"I live not a million miles from Tamworth and pop over there regularly. While it's regarded as more down-to-earth than snooty Lichfield (the one-time ecclesiastical capital of Mercia, next town along Watling Street) it actually surprises with the pleasantness of the castle grounds and nearby shopping streets. Nevertheless, it is very white working class and, I'd say, pretty socially conservative. It's a big hill to climb for Labour, but the combination of a non-white, remote prime minister and Chris Pincher's antics might just be enough to get them over the line."
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4574195#Comment_4574195
The good performance of the far-right parties in Tamworth was, sadly, not a great surprise to me.
Major was Prime Minister for six and a half years, Cameron for six and yet neither seems to have the influence or legacy Thatcher had. The likes of Brown, May and Truss are already starting to look like footnotes as well.
Contrast perhaps with William Hague who, despite never becoming PM, remains an elder statesman figure of some influence.
People aren't stupid. They know by-election turnouts are always lower (44% at that one).
Instead of scrabbling around for stupid crumbs of comfort, the Conservatives in power should start getting honest with themselves. They're heading for evisceration. And the more they double down, the worse it will be.
Whilst Trump has been bitching outside court that it was causing him to miss a golf tournament in Florida.
Boris Johnson's modus operandi doesn't work, I've seen the focus groups on him now.
Lest we forget this whole byelection was why Boris Johnson was ousted.
He put a known sexual predator in a position of authority then lied about it, the voters hate that.
i won't patronise you by offering my sympathy, but if I say 'chin up and keep going' I hope you will know what I mean.
I went Lab 31 Con 29 LD 20 Others 20
Result was 34/31/23/12
Was Cookie closest?
A qualified well done to the LibDems: no one expected anything in Tamworth, so it means nothing, despite the best efforts of some to label it a poor showing, and in Mid Beds they didn't win or come second, but they got a significant vote increase, almost as much in percentage terms as Labour, despite both of them fighting it hard. Reinforces my belief that there is a significant pool of disaffected Tories who won't go Labour under any circumstances. Some constituencies will have any more of those, plus where Labour don't fight a big chunk of the vote that went Labour here will go LibDem. It's going to be a good election for the LibDems.
Disastrous for the Cons: Labour majorities in both seats were smaller than the RefUk vote, That doesn't mean they'd have got all those votes if RefUK didn't stand, but it doesn't bode well that they could do that well. as mentoned above, they're going to be fighting a GE on two fronts, requiring completely different campaign messaging. Even a locally prominent and apparently favoured candidate didn't save the, in Mid Beds. Do they have people with the skills to walk that fine line? Do they have people with skills? For any Con supporters look for straws to clutch at - don't bother, they've all gone.
So Greg Hands says he 'doesn't see any great enthusiasm for Labour' - in which case, Greg, how much do people hate the Tories?
Equally tax cuts aren't going to win votes from people who have had friends/relatives waiting 18 hours in A&E....
1. LOL.
2. LOL
3. SKS fans please explain.
4. @theakes LOL
5. @bigjohnowls LOL
6. Bllx. I lost my bet on the Tories in Mid Beds. Congratulations to those on the other side of the wager who took my money. Kudos to @Heathener and @Casino_Royale for backing the double.
Sort of what you were banging on about Anabob?
Now technically I'm wrong on that prediction because Bozo has left and we are on the second post Bozo PM but the argument still stands - having won and implemented Brexit the consequences of doing so will destroy the party once and for all.
Gregg Carlstrom
@glcarlstrom
Israel is going to evacuate the city of Kiryat Shmona on its northern border with Lebanon, which is home to more than 20,000 people.
271
and
202.
271 was the number of seats Labour won in 1992
202 was the number of seats Labour won in 2019.
Labour start much further behind now than they did in 1997.
#CorbynsToxicLegacy
NOM 5.1
The way that the Conservative right are pushing for them and the Conservative centre aren't really pushing back, is a sign of what a mess they're in.
On one hand we have train builders with no orders. On the other hand we have trains full and standing. The Tories sit resolute in the middle telling everyone how they're definitely the good guys spending money.
Alstom Derby only has a few months of orders left. The design studio has work but nothing to build from early 2024 - so likely closure and job losses unless something is done to bridge the gap.
Hitachi has an extra year of orders but even they are stuck beyond that. Meanwhile the government refuses to do anything to replace failing old trains or building new trains to add capacity.
Northern has announced a tender for new trains but not until 2027 at the earliest with a spec that keeps being changed by the government. And despite LNER and Lumo being full and standing, and expensive capacity upgrade work having been carried out to provide power for more trains, LNER have been ordered to bin much of their old fleet.
So although @Alanbrooke is insistent that events will swing votes back to the Tories, I have to scratch my head and wonder why it won't be to swing even more votes away.
Why should anyone vote Tory in the next GE? What do they offer?
"This is a fantastic deal for the club," said Newcastle owner, Mohammed bin Salman.
"I totally agree," said Saudi Airlines owner Mohammed bin Salman.
https://twitter.com/paddypower/status/1715252341786530094
The fall in the Conservative vote share was much the same in both constituencies, 28% in Mid Beds and 25% in Tamworth. Your idea that the LDs somehow aided Labour in mid Beds by causing a collapse in the Conservative vote that otherwise wouldn't have happened doesn't hold water.
What the LDs did do was to badly split the anti-Conservative vote by spending much of the campaign trying to talk down Labour's chances, with blatantly false claims about being set to win and the usual false bar charts even in the face of polling that pointed to the opposite, and highly personal attacks on the Labour candidate. They were desperate to come out ahead of Labour. Some people fell for it but overall the LDs still failed badly. The idea that the LDs somehow helped Labour to win is risible. Labour won in spite of their best efforts.
Strictly, her plea deal only directly implicates another co-defendant, Misty Hampton, with whom she admits to conspiring to unlawfully access voting machines in Coffee County. She'd certainly be called to give evidence against Hampton because, by definition with conspiracy, at least one other person is involved and Hampton is named. That's if Hampton doesn't also flip, which I strongly suspect she will as this pulls the rug from under her and she's a minor player who'd get a good deal.
But it may be Powell's position that Trump was not involved and this was her acting on his behalf but without his knowledge, so prosecutors will be careful about how to play this as her testimony could, but may not, implicate Trump.
What it does do is move the jeopardy closer to Trump. The man who will really be sweating initiially (with all the hair dye implications that involves) is Rudy Guliani as I understand there are emails indicating he was involved in the Coffee County breach. Although he's not named in the plea deal documents, I think it'd be really hard for Powell to not implicate Giuliani in testimony.
The good decision, early on, was to back the Tories in Mid-Beds at 3.5.
The bad decision, yesterday, was not to lay off the bet at below Evens.
It turned mid-term bad polling for the Conservatives into a potential wipe out.
I do think my kids are much less well informed about the world than I was at their age - I picked a lot of stuff up without trying just by watching whatever was on TV. It's hard to have a vibrant well informed democracy when people know SFA about the world around them and get their information from sources that are vulnerable to disinformation campaigns.
41: The number of seats the Tories need to lose to lose absolute control over the formation of the next government
51 (give or take one or two): The number of seats the Tories need to lose to lose actual control over the formation of the next government.
This is so much fewer than the 123 seats Labour need to win to have a majority that these numbers could well come into play. It also puts into play an infinity of permutations and possibilities to keep us entertained for the next year.
If it wasn't worth it, Powell wouldn't have got this deal.
Hopefully Ukraine's burgeoning drone capability will help them to destroy more Russian equipment before it reaches the front line.
I agree with you on the broad numbers, though.
What's been lost has been the shared institutions that everyone knew about and most people watched. That atomisation isn't great for society or shared conversations, but somehow it's worse for children. The loss of general interest programmes as the only kids thing on means that some improve themselves a lot and others watch utter trash and nothing else.
In education, it's the Matthew Principle- to he who has shall be given more but to get who has not, what they have shall be taken away.
In so many other ways he was a centrist Tory with a compassionate politics.
What's left is a set of quiet nobodies enjoying their time at Westminster until they retire after the next election...
Labour have 2 tasks - convert people to directly switch Con > Lab. Or if they won't do that to switch Con > not Con. The former is a 2 vote swing to Labour, the latter a 1 vote swing.
Lets say that 60% of the new LD voters weren't winnable by Labour. The safest path is have them vote for someone not Con. Riskier is hope that they don't vote at all - might they change their mind? Riskiest is just not bother with Con voters because Never Kissed A Tory.
Tamworth is nor Mid Beds. Your form of Labour absolutism is a risk to your majority. There are scores of seats where you Cannot Win - even in a landslide. Do you want the Con tally reduced by 1 or not?
The Conservatives need to focus on getting the right back united behind them first and that means getting the deficit and inflation down further so there is room for a manifesto commitment for tax cuts
It is very likely that Starmer is completely different in private - the public, bland visage thing strikes me as a learned style for legal stuff.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what-the-heck-happened-in-coffee-county-georgia
It will be really hard for Giuliani to escape the fact that he's already testified under oath to stuff that's clearly not true. The question is rather whether he too ends up flipping.
Firstly, it moves the jeopardy closer to Trump, because it is quite likely Giuliani is implicated - Powell was part of Giuliani's team, but Guliani was the team leader with direct access to Trump.
Secondly, Powell was due to go on trial imminently (jury selection today I think) along with Ken Chesebro, as they had exercised right to expedited trial. Prosecutors are somewhat keen to avoid this tactically as it provides a useful preview for Trump's team. Chesebro has reportedly turned down a deal on his alleged fake electors scam, but Powell no longer going to trial limits scope.
Sir K is working on a few retail cheap changes, deeper slow incremental progress, a renewal of hope (currently at Zero levels), a bit of growth, luck, and greater competence in delivery of the £trillion state managed expenditure
Take housing, for example. Osborne introduced Help to Buy in 2013. It was billed as the largest intervention in the housing market since Right to Buy. So why is there still a housing crisis? What went wrong?
The proportion of voters affected by taxes like National Insurance, Income Tax, VAT, the state of our roads, education, NHS, courts, Police, crime and criminals being released back on the streets as prisons are full and much more is far higher.
If the Tories want to be a party that pander only to those who don't work for a living and want to live off handouts and inheritance instead then so be it. They deserve to be on 5% in the polls if so.
You're a Labour partisan, and you've got every right to be delighted with your results. But you've been repeating the same stuff over and over all night. That's fine, but it gets a bit stale.
The Tories got beaten badly, and I'm very happy about that. Going to enjoy the GE.
Officials have warned cabinet ministers that holding a general election while the US also went to the polls would come with “huge” security risks
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/url-uk-general-election-us-presidential-security-risks-2024-7q8zstbth
They want to pick up any seat they can - get that. But if you can't win a seat and still need to have more seats than the Tories, its better if someone else takes it off the blues than leaving it with them.
Its just adding!
we’re still ahead in the polls!!!
nobody cares about Barnard Castle
nobody cares about Partygate
we won’t lose that many seats at the local elections
we’ll hold on to Tiverton
bojo will win bigly in 2024! 5 more years
We’ll get a boost in the polls when Liz is appointed leader
we’ll hang on to Tamworth and Mid Beds
All these voters will come back at the GE when inflation comes down, mark my words!
(Yes, yes, I know, shortest flounce in history)