We also find a statistical tie in the race to be the new Mayor of the North East. Labour’s Kim McGuinness leads Independent Jamie Driscoll by 2. The poll indicates higher propensity to vote by Driscoll supporters is what is keeping this race close and a squeeze of Tory voters. pic.twitter.com/HxNZTBoKLT
Comments
The curve is interesting
https://nitter.poast.org/SMTuffy/status/1783781813950845313#m
Trump keeps crying that the NY trial is keeping him from campaigning. What did he do last Sun? Nothing. Wed’s day off? Nothing. Last night? Signed hats and shirts at MAL. This guy does nothing but whine, play golf, and hang out with adoring cultists at his country club.
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1784565026424021129?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^tweet
I think as much as Trump likes his adoring rallies even he might be getting bored of the same old speech over and over that he gives, so whilst he hates having to sit in a cold court room all day with nothing to do but read articles praising him that he has printed out for him, perhaps he is seeing the positives in not having to campaign whilst (he hopes) getting the benefit of complaining about the state stopping him from campaigning.
Trump: “Which is incapable of solvin’ even the sollest problem. We are an institute in a powerful death penalty. We will put this on.”
Trump is not well.
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1784568384115429380
Some attempt to portmanteau the glories of Maggie, or a cross between Sunak and the Childcatcher?
Either works.
But whilst the spin in May 1990 (Ken Baker?) was a work of genius, Maggie was still out of office six months later.
Yes - this is what I have been thinking about too. The Tories got walloped - they lost nearly 300 seats - but Wandsworth, Wandsworth, Wandsworth was what was all over the rightwing media, i.e. most of the media. Wandsworth had a very low poll tax, and if memory serves it was actually reduced to zero in early 1991 when £140 was taken off everywhere and Wandsworth was the only place it had been under £140 to start with.
Of course Thatcher herself was out of office by then, the results in the locals having triggered a "Thatcher should go" feeling among some Tories which hadn't been heard for more than a decade. But the Tories won the general election of 1992 and Major was nowhere near as charismatic as Mordaunt.
For the avoidance of any doubt on a Sunday afternoon Rishi Sunak *will not* be calling a general election tomorrow
The plan is still to hold an election in the Autumn - most likely November 14 - although after the locals it could all become much less predictable
Because we ask people their 2019 General Election vote (relying on recall) we can get an idea of where each candidate is drawing voters from. As you can see McGuinness's lead is driven by holding 2019 Labour voters, Driscoll runs close by taking a good chunk of 2019 Conservatives.
https://twitter.com/LukeTryl/status/1784519299836653827
Some sort of Stick It To The Man dynamic?
I have the solution. A massive government investment in pubs and discounted booze, and the internet to be switched off between 7pm and 5am.
If his appearance on TV this morning is anything to go by, having him front an election campaign is going to cost them even more seats...
If you’ve spent any time at all on the left of politics, you’re familiar with the progressive male class warrior, usually middle-class himself, whose interest in women’s issues begins and ends with sex work, stripping and abortions. He might claim to be a feminist ally and mutter vaguely about ‘equality’ if the need arises, but when a genuine assault on women’s rights erupted under his nose, he cut left wing women adrift without a second thought. He expected us to be so blindly tribal that we’d surrender single sex spaces, jettison the very language we use to describe ourselves, give up fair sport, agree rapists should be locked up in women’s prisons and that lesbians are bigots for not wanting to sleep with the penis-ed, because (horrors!) some people on the right thought these things were wrong, too.....
The truth is that the left has fucked up monumentally on gender identity ideology and until it owns the mistake, it will continue to hand the right valid talking points. As more and more PMCWs realise this, they’ll take shameless refuge in accusations that we, the women criticising the injustice and insanity of gender identity ideology, were enabling the far-right. The fact is that they’ve done exactly that, by refusing to accept that there was anything wrong with a movement that was causing serious harm to troubled young people, trampling all over women’s rights and seeking to remove single-sex services for the most vulnerable.
https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1784586797525184794
https://twitter.com/aneercs/status/1784535464059232359
So, in summary Conservatives either have a personal vote not linked to being Conservative, or are - so to speak - SUNaKed.
I wonder what will happen with Police & Crime Commissioners, who are the only group being re-elected across the whole of England / Wales?
At the moment about 80% of them are Conservative.
What impact would a lot more Labour PCCs have on that policy - say if more than half of PCCs were Labour figures?
I'm generally pretty sceptical about PCCs, and supportive of Regional Mayors.
NS interview with Tim Shipman, insightful and well worth a look. Not paywalled.
There is a Guardian interview with Billy Bragg today which teeters on the edge of calling him a fecking wanker (he is) because of the trans issue. Sly references to his really big house in Dorset and his “late night tweets”
My extremely valid and scientific method involved looking at my relatives, who seem overly fond of tattoos and wire-brush beards.
That increased in 2016 to coincide with some locals, but the turnout was still only around 1/4 it seems. It seems to have been up to around 1/3 in 2021, but apparently there were Senedd elections on top of some locals.
In Wiltshire in 2021 there were 2 PCC elections, due to having to do a rerun. The one at the time of the locals had 207k votes, the rerun 91k, 17%. That is probably a good indication of the general level of interest in the role itself, which is not good despite 9 years of operation at that point.
I imagine they are here to stay, but they've never worked as advertised, since it's just another party based vote 90% of the time, never mind performance.
If he is found in criminal contempt of the Court in the NY case - likely this week - that places him in violation of his pre-trial release conditions in all of the cases, which include not to commit any State or Federal crimes. That's been bubbling around in the last wee; here is some specific commentary. 10 minute vid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7qD_BnQOhw
I do like the arm-lock of Mr Trump being behind bars until his trials are done as an incentive for him to stop dragging his feet like Just William exposed to a bathtub.
It’s the internet, specifically dating apps - plus access to infinite porn and the distractions of social media and video games
The apps make it very hard for beta males (and lower) to get laid. The alphas get all the girls. This stuff has been analysed and it’s a known phenomenon. The porn and the distractions make this incel status less onerous (tho some still go mad, as we see from mass shootings in the USA)
Add in to this a lowering of testosterone, smaller penises, lower IQ - men have been feminised and slightly infantilised. Again all known phenomena. Then there’s the lack of places to have sex for a generation stuck with their parents who can’t afford a house, and who earn lower incomes so they can’t even afford to take women out
It’s a toxic mix for society as a whole not just men. The result is much less sex and far fewer babies
As to whether the remnants of the Conservative Party will want or need him to be their leader I'm less certain. He could do a Major and quit on the Friday morning or stagger on to the Monday and then walk. The shattered survivors will be already looking to Badenoch, Braverman and Barclay to start the rebuilding process but no one will be interested as we await Starmer's Cabinet choices.
This comment by @billybragg perfectly sums up what left wing women have taken from left wing men over the last few years. The problem isn’t whether Julie Bindel and I are correct on the issues, but that certain right-wingers agree with us.
After reading the Cass review, Rowling tweeted this:
Even if you don't feel ashamed of cheerleading for what now looks like severe medical malpractice, even if you don't want to accept that you might have been wrong, where's your sense of self-preservation? The bandwagon you hopped on so gladly is hurtling towards a cliff. .....
The consequences of this scandal will play out for decades. You cheered it on. You did all you could to impede and misrepresent research. You tried to bully people out of their jobs for opposing you. Young people have been experimented on, left infertile and in pain.
https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1778105810725322906
Bragg appears to be finally working out that just possibly he wasn't on the right side of history.
More than being an anti-vaxxer, more than talking about the national debt, RFK Jr must think being anti-Ukraine is the best way to appeal to Trump voters, given it is the top complaint he has with the man.
ETA:
Come to think of it, if most boat people are virile young men, sounds like just the ticket.
I don’t believe I am positing a theory, it’s all pretty much accepted
That's the problem.
That's why they should ditch him.
Today, if not sooner...
You'd simply then move on to the next leader.
For you this is just a way you get your kicks.
It does go against the cliche that women try to fix up and improve their mating partners though.
But hey, you are free to ride him all the way down...
The harder question is- when did the Conservatives last have a realistic choice to avoid the zugzwang they are now in?
Clearly BoJo never coming to prominence would have helped, but that was probably unavoidable. And once he does, he purges all the tall poppies, because of who he is. So his successors are weaklings and pinheads. Or possibly both.
But it's not because the women don't want them or they're holding out. Many of these men aren't interested.
In the west (i.e. the west of the north) it's following what's been happening in the Far East and especially Japan for some time.
This doesn't last forever. There will be a youth revolt within a decade. But it won't be anything like the revolt of 1965-75. It won't have the articulacy. But it will have the force and probably greater vision.
No idea where this one will go, but because of the CTA it is an obvious wheeze for an asylum seeker to travel to RoI, rely on the logic that if the UK can't return people to France then RoI can't return people to the UK, claim and get asylum in RoI and (?) then rely on the CTA to get back to the UK if they want.
I think we may hear more of this one.
You also learn from role models and getting hints and tips from the more successful in being self-confident and recognising that to some extent it's a numbers game.
You will never learn much through official channels because they'll always feel the need to moralise and lecture, to cover their own risk if nothing else.
It's less marked in Britain, but in America there is a major difference between young men and young women over politics, and the divide is increasing:
https://changeresearch.com/post/young-women-are-more-liberal-than-young-men/
Party politics is not everything, but increasingly it is about cultural and social issues rather than economic ones. These matter, so why would a young woman want to date a gun-toting anti-abortion climate change denier?. Their interests and aspirations are just too far apart, particularly for the College educated
So, it's not just a matter of brushing up on grooming, but also a brushing up of attitudes that's needed. This is an international phenomenon, with South Korea the most extreme example.
Somewhere in this photo is a UNESCO World Heritage Site
The SNP have a similar problem. Yousless needs to be defenestrated, but it seems like they at least have the wit and skill to do the deed, unlike their Southern counterparts.
The modern Tory party, worse than the SNP...
Rishi Sunak getting very ratty with Trevor Phillips on Sky News when asked when he'll call a general election and why he's so badly tanked in all the polls
@hugorifkind
It's weird how accustomed to this sort of thing we are. Sunak's exasperation here comes from a flat presumption that other people have simply no right to know when there's going to be an election or a tax rise and it's inherently petty and annoying of them to want to find out.
He's a dud. Get rid.
Le Havre?
There are some hikikomori who aren't into videogames. Many are quite brave although they don't know it. Fascinating scene.
There will be a revolt. It won't be especially political or campaigny or have charismatic spokesmen. Doubtless it will have a sexual side but it will be much more profound than a Freudian return of the repressed. Its epicentre will be in Asia.
Are we going to see a tale of two sets of Tories on Thursday next? Those who can successfully play on their local record as councillors or Mayors and can disassociate themselves from the national party may insulate themselves to an extent from the national mood. This is perhaps why we are seeing so many Council candidates standing as "Local Conservatives".
Those who can;t may well be on the wrong end of a bad night - it could well be a very mixed bag for the governing party with some high-profile mayoral candidates doing quite well but other candidates and councillors and PCC candidates taking a beating. The issue then is whether incumbency for a local Conservative Mayor can in any way be translated as incumbency for a local MP.
Why don’t the stupid left wing women veer right, to get the men?
Or have you considered the possibility that the politics ARISE from the way western society seems to favour women, hugely - and it does. And I speak as the father of two daughters. They massively benefit from structural sexism
Specially for @dixiedean . School heads increasingly shifting the shite, not just metaphorically.
Can you tell me the rest of the artistic history of the poet’s ruined manor, and Andre Breton, and the megaliths of Cornouaille?
I mean, I am now able to google the rest of it, but you’d save me 30 minutes searching
https://sites-vauban.org/en/sites-majeurs/camaret-sur-mer
Any perceived failings of young people (never our own, our kids are perfect) is all our fault. The kids are the ones having to deal with our screw ups. We voted the previous governments in. We spent all the money from our housing bubble. We're knackering the environent, we're the ones feeding them crap that makes them obese and mentally ill. We're the ones dumping hormones into the food chain. We're the ones inventing technology that makes what few skills we've passed on obsolete.
We should be the ones apologising, not blaming the poor feckers!
One rebel Tory MP said: “My concern is that we don’t have a significant response to Reform. We have a leader who is ill-suited to appealing to voters in the Red Wall. He is seen as an out of touch multi-millionaire who doesn’t share their instincts. If we lose Tees Valley it will be beyond diabolical.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tory-rebels-plan-save-britain-dan-poulter-labour-kgwq7vwm3
As for Street, it's very close - 54/46 in 2021 so you'd think Labour should be in with a big chance. The fact it's so close speaks volumes as to Street's performance as mayor.
The house building cartel is a bigger villain than immigration.
Any odds available?
https://twitter.com/LeftieStats/status/1784509596532404419