Peter Mandelson could well be right – LAB’s poll lead is artificial – politicalbetting.com
Peter Mandelson could well be right – LAB’s poll lead is artificial – politicalbetting.com
I happen to agree with Mandelson and I don’t believe that the election will see party vote shares in line with what the polls are currently predicting.
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The only plausible alternatives in the HoC would be Penny Mordaunt or the return of strong and stable Theresa May. May would be quite a tricky opponent for Starmer.
Interesting that the Scottish courts seem to be processing this (which didn't even get beyond a guilty plea in the Sheriff Court in the first place)*.
*Edit: so evidence not properly tested beyond advice from solicitor?
Are you refering to a polling average? The largest Labour lead? The smallest Labour lead? A particular polling firm?
In January alone we have polls with Labour shares in the range 39.5%-49% and Conservative shares in the range 20%-29%. Obviously, most of them have to be wrong, but are you saying all of them are wrong?
It would be so funny I might die laughing.
Granted there are rare occasions where the campaign changes things, but are the ingredients really there for that? How artificial can things really be?
Would ditching John Major six months before the election of '97 have produced a different result? Or would the Conservatives have selected a voter-repellent headbanger who would have led them to even greater defeat?
A long period in opposition beckons, whoever is at the helm. At this point, Sunak's job is simply to be the captain of the ship as it's going down.
In short, Dr Krieg a senior lecturer in Security Studies at King's College London comes across as an anti-Israeli polemicist. He also finds time for criticism of the US, other western countries and perhaps most interestingly, the UAE. I couldn't really find any criticism of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas or the Houthis. If there is a good guy in all of this, then according to Dr Krieg's twitter feed it would appear to be Qatar, the mediators between Israel and Hamas, the latter of who's leaders are conveniently located in Doha.
The links between King's and Qatar have grown over the years. In 2014 KCL apparently took £26m to help train officers in the Qatari army. More recently there is the Qatar Centre For Global Banking and Finance at KCL. Given our reliance on the Universities and their political influence shouldn't we be paying a bit more attention to the foreign states funding them and the reasons they might be doing so? In life you get what you pay for.
Polls at this stage are neither right nor wrong; they produce, adjust, present and analyse data, from which conclusions are drawn about future probabilities. The GE is now within the next year. Everyone will read the data in different ways. Black swans can occur at any time.
I think Mike Smithson is right. Betting wise, NOM remains value.
The pollsters accounting for some form of swingback still show a healthy Labour lead, so it would need a double dose of swingback to make it anywhere near close.
'The podcast is filled with Danny Finkelstein telling us how everything he mentions will have no impact on an Election. Can someone please answer the question?"
Deep link:
https://youtu.be/vxXelBQSPkA?t=280
Big call.
Fill your boots you'll be loaded.
It worked for Doctor Who.
However as this Tory government is the most fractured and incompetent in my lifetime and quite obviously so I don't agree with the header at all. I'd expect this Tory government to get the biggest hammering since the war
A messy leadership campaign right now will look navel gazing at best, at worst the public will get to see the entire party fighting like ferrets in a sack months before going to the polls. And, of course, they will likely to be going to the polls with a headbanger in charge, which might win them a few votes back from REFUK, but will utterly repel what's left of the centrist vote.
All Starmer has to do at this point is not look scary to Conservative voters - someone they can live with. Not someone they can vote for, but someone who doesn't scare them so much they feel they have to vote for whatever slop the Conservatives offer. With the exception of VAT on private school fees, I think Starmer has played that game very well.
Scotland's former deputy first minister has told the UK Covid inquiry that he manually deleted messages sent to Nicola Sturgeon during the pandemic.
John Swinney said the texts with the ex-first minister were "not available".
The SNP MSP said they had been removed in line with his understanding of Scottish government records policy.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-68139104
I would be very surprised if this is not keeping them awake.
I want Labour to win and will be pleased if they do enough to form a government with LD help without needing the SNP.
After all, if Peter Mandelson is saying "the polls could be wrong, Labour's lead could be artificial", isn't that a decent indication that the polls are probably right and Labour's lead is actually blooming huge?
(And yes, they could be wrong, and the final result could be interestingly tight. But that doesn't just require a Conservative revival (when they clearly long for the sweet release of death/opposition), or a huge Labour choke (which isn't Starmer's style at all), or a polling fail that would mean that no opinion pollster could show their face in polite society again... But probably all three.)
It's not over until the fat lady sings, sure, but someone has just marched past with a very big folder of vocal music.
The second piece is the thought that Labour need a large lead to get a majority, due to
boundary changes and suchlike. As much as the exact size of the lead, the 5-6% range of leads that have been touted as granting Labour a majority, from around a 6% lead to around a 13% lead, is the nub of this problem.
The classic demonstration of this is the two bits of news from earlier this month. The BBC UNS analysis that Labour needed a 12.7% swing (about a 13.5% lead) to gain a bare majority. Then the YouGov MRP the same week, that gave Labour a 120 majority on the same swing / lead.
That's 60 seats difference for the same vote share lead.
The truth is, it is not going to be anywhere near a pure Labour / Tory UNS election.
In Scotland, a 12.7% UNS Labour-Tory swing, is merely a 6.3% swing against a, presumed static, SNP. In fact Labour is likely to get a bigger swing against the SNP than against the Tories. Reverse those two swing numbers and you're ball park for current polling. That's a lot more Labour seats for a smaller Con-Lab swing than UNS would predict.
And we don't have to rely on the special case of Scotland either.
We expect a smaller swing in London. That's OK for Labour, there aren't too many of target seats needing huge swings there. Small swing is useful. Likewise, Wales.
But, now, that's 150 or so seats where we've said Con-Lab swing is quite a lot below average, but for which the lower swing will not damage Labour too badly.
Which means the other seats, in the English regions, have to have a point of two bigger swing to get to the overall 12.7%. And, where do Labour need most of their massive Con-Lab swings? In the shires.
Note, I have not made one mention of tactical voting.
Regional swing should mean Labour substantially outperform UNS.
British University Management Morality - "These are our values, our ethics, our principles. If you don't like them, we have others we can sell you. We'll quote you happy."
John Rentoul
@JohnRentoul
·
13h
Kellner prefers polls that estimate what don’t knows will do (YouGov MRP, Opinium, Stonehaven), suggesting Labour lead of 13-15 points
Buying individual academics is far more possible. Fly them out on nice holidays conferences/meetings/workshops and fund their research and they might be more easily able to see your good side. Subtlety required though - they'd have to genuinely start to like you rather than be directly bribed.
All that is just my experience in observing others. We academics tend to have quite well developed egos - telling us we're great and clever and important, so much so that you'd like to fund our research and have us as a speaker at your conference can go a long way.
LD might only get 15 - 20 seats but this could make all the difference.
LAB 320 + LD 20 would be sufficient for a full term.
You know that line in web businesses about how if you don't pay for something then you're the product not the customer? Something similar applies in UK HE. Brit students are there in part to provide local colour for foreigners paying through the nose to study here.
As with many of the UK's other problems, it's fixable, as long as we are prepared to pay more and get less... at least for a bit.
Have I fallen asleep and woken up in 1996?
It is difficult to imagine the scenario in which the Tory advantage on the front is increased.
There are multiple plausible regional possibilities in which it can be lessened.
Not nearly enough attention has been paid to the targeted online advertising during the 2019GE.
Spurs and City up next...
@emptywheel uncovered with her letter to the court: that Weiss didn’t obtain a search warrant for firearms offenses until THREE MONTHS after the indictment.
https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1752433818521501709
Ah, my coat. So kind.
It's a mix, in my experience. There are plenty of egotistical senior scientists. But also plenty of very humble (and brilliant) ones. I've worked with both. Some of the ones with big egos are also brilliant, which makes it tricky. But my favourites are the ones without the big egos, those who are much more interested in the study/discovery than the profile.
I'm clearly humble. And brilliant. And modest, like TSE
@davidfrum
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7h
Countdown begun to the House Republican impeachment of Taylor Swift.
OGH I see from spending 2021-22 saying the Tories must get rid of Boris and replace him with Rishi is now saying the Tories should get rid of Rishi too? Does he really think Badenoch or Braverman are going to lead to a surge in Conservative support? Mordaunt might make a fractional difference but no more than that
But more than that I understand they are terrified of repeating what their close sibling the Australian Labour Party managed in 2019 to turn a big polling lead against an unpopular liberal party into a shock general election loss. I think the Australian experience, combined with the memories of the huge swing in Tory fortunes during 2019, is driving an absolute terror of failure.
Conversely you can sense the opposite emotion among Tories. For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth you can sense an innate confidence, expectation even, in the declarations that if only they could replace their current leader they would of course retake their rightful place as the natural party of government.
Unfortunately I think the Labour paranoia may come back to bite them in the end. They need to convey at least a modicum of confidence and purpose, otherwise why bother to vote for them.
Australia 22 is interesting that Labor gained seats from the Coalition but lost a few to the Greens.
They can’t even lie properly.
Rep. Salazar is pressed on CBS Miami why she’s taking credit for cash to her district from bills she voted against, like CHIPS & Science & infrastructure.
She doesn’t recall how she voted.
“I need to ask my staff.”
“I cannot really remember right now.”
https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1752130654152573236
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/nicola-sturgeon-jeane-freeman-purchased-32005597
On Thursday, March 19, 2020, Ms Sturgeon purchased a Nokia mobile phone from Amazon for £18.16. Devices available for a similar price are 2G only, although texts, WhatsApps and emails should still go through without any large attachments. The then first minister also purchased £18 worth of SIM card top-ups.
"This is going to be a pattern.. Without any accomplishments of their own, Republicans in the House & Senate will try to take credit for jobs & investments they opposed in Congress."
https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1752447454354575375
I really do not know what people see in him. I dealt with him when he was Investor Relations at Carlton TV and he was totally useless and thick as pig sh1t. He was a laughing stock amongst the financial community for just how clueless he was.
Mind you, I guess since his best mate Georgie-O is best mates with the UAE and helping them with the Telegraph bid so maybe some favours are being called in....
https://x.com/YouGov/status/1752281508037918993?s=20
Sack every police officer and start all over again.
Police officers made "sickening" comments about an assault victim while watching body-worn video showing her groin, the BBC has learned.
The woman's body was exposed when she was filmed suffering from a seizure. Three Thames Valley Police PCs later watched the footage without reason.
None of the officers faced a misconduct hearing but a student officer who reported them was later dismissed.
The force says the remarks were "unacceptable" and PCs were sanctioned.
The policing regulator says Thames Valley Police should have reported the case for independent scrutiny. The force has now done so, following our investigation.
Last year the BBC revealed that police forces have misused body-worn video, with officers switching off cameras, deleting footage and sharing videos on WhatsApp.
In our latest investigation we found:
The vulnerable woman was arrested and placed in leg restraints before being recorded on body-worn video while vomiting and losing consciousness
Officers watching the footage insulted her looks, used derogatory language about her genitals and discussed what they would need to be paid to sleep with her
The 22-year-old woman told the BBC she feels "betrayed" and believes officers should have been arrested
The student officer who reported his colleagues says the force covered up the incident, failing to inform the woman or the policing regulator about what happened
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67958136
Ukraine to receive first GLSDB rocket-propelled bombs with 150 km range on Jan. 31
Ukraine will receive the first ground-launched small-diameter bombs with 150 km range on 31 January, per Politico sources. The US announced GLSDB supplies early last year, but the new weapon’s testing lasted months.
https://euromaidanpress.com/2024/01/30/politico-ukraine-to-receive-first-glsdb-rocket-propelled-bombs-with-150-km-range-on-jan-31/
I guess I will have to supply your email address to George Osborne’s lawyers this time.
Maybe that nice Mr Musk has a point.
https://www.andreaskrieg.com/
Labour outperformed its pre-election polling both times - almost certainly because it had a leader who was unpopular with lots of people who when faced with a choice, ultimately wanted Labour or a party that might try and ditch/soften Brexit.
In 2017 May was getting 90s Blair-like poll leads, but come the election, people ultimately returned to their tribes and cancelled each other out. In 2019, Boris corralled the leavers, but remainers were split over Corbyn - so only about half came back.
So projecting forward. If the Tories have a reasonable 6 months we might see something similar happen and the polls narrow a bit as people pick a team. Like Corbyn in 2017 maybe Rishi's personal ratings improve and miffed Tories return a bit as ultimately, they prefer him to Starmer.
But it's far from certain. A decent 6 months for Labour and some more Tory infighting and scandal (at this stage the party's default setting), and it could still be catastrophic.
One question is whether the Tories still have a self-righting mechanism (as Labour did in the Corbyn years) whereby when it looks really bad, everyone stops tearing each other to shreds long enough and acknowledge problems and quick fixes long enough to pull a result out of the bag.
At the moment they look to delusional to do so. And the worst thing for them will be if a shellacking really sneaks up on them as are telling themselves 'the polls will close/are wrong'.
Even so, Opinium thinks Labour will win by 14 points.
I don't see it.
(No, seriously. Being in power to keep the socialists out of power has been the guiding light of the Conervative party forever. It's about the only thing that unites, say, Ted Heath and Iain Duncan Smith. Until quite recently, it kind of worked and the party shuffled around following its leader of the moment.
What's unusual, and a bit scary, is that Conservatives have started believing in things and getting crosser with each other than they are with the opposition. That being so, flip knows what a 2024-9 Conservative government would look like. Except it would be an utter fiasco as they had to deal with the minefield they had laid over the last few years, without the cover story of "we didn't lay this minefield".)
But your secrecy problems have just started.
People talk of a honeymoon period. No-one bothers asking you about your honeymoon when you're on wedding #4.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_the_State_of_Palestine
Don't forget the triple lock.
Excellent advise for all those Tuesday morning food bankers out there.