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Will we see another defection today? – politicalbetting.com
Will we see another defection today? – politicalbetting.com
Conservative MPs nervous about another potential defection tomorrow at PMQs, rightly or wrongly
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https://thehill.com/homenews/4664417-jimmy-carter-grandson-says-he-is-coming-to-the-end-hospice-care/
This is just nerves and a sign of demoralisation.
The most impactful defection now would be a Westminster SNP MP.
Rant below - sorry for length.
I’ve moaned about it a lot but I keep going back to the Today Programme because it’s a habit of 30 years but this morning has absolutely killed me. I really like Emma Barnett as a presenter and interviewer. I like Amol Rajan when he isn’t constantly dropping being a father into every conversation.
I was looking forward to it being not as good as I remember it but still a good start to the day, hoping somehow they would get a change of editor who wouldn’t have some f-ing teenage need for music segments every day to show how switched on they are on their magazine programme and instead get a new editor who would return it to a serious news programme with good longer form interviews about politics and events.
What do we get today, a five minute segment on Blinken singing a Neil Young song in Ukraine and then me thinking I had entered some time warp and was catching an older episode of Women’s Hour where Emma Barnett is reading out listeners comments on the new sex education rules.
Fuck off Today Editor. If people want pointless sections on music then they have loads of BBC stations to listen to. If they want to hear the public’s views from their tweets and texts on a relatively minor story then there is Radio 5. Why is there this absolutely pointless need to change everything and fuck up things that work perfectly well. All that is happening is Today is going to end up a mirror of R5 with more southern accents.
Farming Today had a really good interview this morning with Sunak and people involved in Food to Fork this morning that knocked any political commentary on Today into a cocked hat which says it all really.
What a great advocate for the Union that was, I suspect more Scot Nats will reject the dark heart of Scottish Nationalism and embrace the civic and joyous Unionism.
(Random thought: how many rounds of PMQs left? Say it's 30 weeks until Parliament self-destructs, quite a few of those are various recesses.)
Standing down, in a target seat, to the left side of Toryism and independent minded on some issues, can provide a platform for education policy from his select committee work. Some of these elements present with Elphicke too
It wouldn't be free of problems, but neither would it quite confound in the way last week did.
The Labour leader is keen to find a position for crossbench peer who wrote a damning report on the Metropolitan Police
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sir-keir-starmer-lining-up-baroness-casey-labour-role-qnphdg680 (£££)
Not quite a defection but...
....Anonymous (actually not, but I can't be bothered to recall his name) minister then starts reciting his line about the resources they're directing to the problem.
Also, it's now almost summer. We're entering the news deadzone.
Will Rishi double down on his "Starmer the dangerous Soviet traitor" line? It seemed to work very well on Monday.
They are incapable of thinking, “actually this has a long and loyal following so something must work, let’s make sure tape standards are high and it will continue to work well.”
Today has developed some weird music obsession especially, latest is their bee in bonnet over last few months re the COOP arena in Manchester - it’s a music venue - that’s all - but it was getting almost daily coverage and today we get to look forward to spa section later before 9 with clips of Elbow playing their song we hear a billion times a year and an interview with Guy Garvey. We have endless sections on Beyoncé and Taylor Swift when they release a new album, even one where some uni prof was talking about Beyoncé claiming back country music for black people - who knew that European folk music had no input to country.
Then there was their obsession with “Free Brittney”. How’s that campaign worked for Brittney Spears.
Arseholes.
Wonder how much of this speculation is Tory- driven. Will be less of a big story (unless someone high profile) of it does happen and a bit of a let down if it doesn't.
No public body willing to inspect it, apparently its not the job of the Health and Safety Executive and the City Council say they trust the documents from the building management. Really?
Sunak has nothing meaningful to say about that problem. He can only list menaces beyond Britain’s borders and accuse Keir Starmer of lacking the gumption to take them on. The charge has two elements. First, Labour still harbours the Nato-sceptic, pacifist impulses that shaped Jeremy Corbyn’s worldview. Second, the opposition won’t mimic Conservative pledges on defence spending.
The reality is that Starmer has purged the Corbynite left from Labour with a ruthlessness that Sunak has failed to deploy against cranks and maniacs on the right. Naming former leaders who should never have been allowed near Downing Street is hardly comfortable territory for the party of Liz Truss.
As for defence spending, the real difference between Labour and the Tories is that the latter are relaxed about making up big numbers because they don’t expect to have to find the money after an election.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/15/rishi-sunak-world-dangerous-election-tories-labour
A very poor show.
So if you're going to jump, do it soon. Or, as I suspect, will there be multiple at the same time?
She was dreadful on Newsnight. She is dreadful on Today.
Was Labour, then Tory, then...
And we can switch back to Tories complaining about him being on the apprentice as political bias as they were back in the day, instead of Labour complaining about him being on the apprentice as political bias.
There are four hundred Radio 1 channels, Radio 2, Radio 6, hundreds of BBC music podcasts where they can talk about music and music fans in an excited way to fill time until they get excited and talk non-stop about Glastonbury. They don’t need to change every station into a pop culture station.
The gift that keeps on giving
Heck, he might not even needed to have picked a good VP. He might still live to November (doubt it)!
Please stick to the authorised PB sources, the Daily Mail, Guido and GBNews.
swing voters Starmer has to win.
Essex is also traditionally a swing county full of marginal seats, albeit it has become less so and more Conservative since Brexit
Thank you @Variety for breaking the story and thank you everyone for your support. 💋
Steve Marriott’s Children and Bandmates Fight to Stop AI-Generated Recordings of Small Faces/ Humble Pie Singer’s Vocals
Read here>>
https://x.com/molliemarriott/status/1788818900081119403?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
David Lammy voted against Trident in 2016, and now wants to be a pro-nuclear, pro-Nato foreign sec independent.co.uk/voices/labour-…
https://x.com/johnrentoul/status/1790648817655689626?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
The quality of BBC reporting has objectively been falling for sometime and Today. like Newsnight on TV, is failing to compete. The BBC seems to think that being serious is being boring, and that details do not matter to the story. They are no longer a go-to media source, and that is potentially dangerous, as well as being sad.
https://x.com/Mij_Europe/status/1790639066519675266
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/14/rishi-speech-changes-nothing-tories-are-still-doomed/
It's a good question. Is there anything? Surely there must be something.
The covid vaccines were down to the researchers, and HMG blotted its copybook there by shutting down the much-touted emergency vaccine place (a bit like selling off a Royal Ordnance Factory in 1938).
We have no more doubts that effectively we are already at war with Russia. Might be a cold war technically but it is warming quickly.
Is it the great defining achievement of this political generation, that will set the UK up for a golden century? Or is it an awkward bit of flatulence that only persists now out of embarrassment?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/may/15/call-waiting-times-at-hmrc-rise-350-in-five-years-says-nao-report
'The annual total amount of time taxpayers spent on the phone waiting to speak to a HM Revenue and Customs adviser has more than doubled to the equivalent of almost 800 years, according to a report by Whitehall’s spending watchdog.
The National Audit Office (NAO) found that average call waiting times at HMRC have soared by more than 350% in five years, with increasing numbers of people not getting through in the first place or having their calls terminated, according to an official report that says the public is being “let down”.'
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/06/china-russia-republican-party-relations/678271/?utm_medium=cr&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=05_10_2024_writers_note_anne_applebaum_june_cover_actives_large_subject_line_10_10_80_winner&utm_content=Final&utm_term=ALL+Active+Subscribers+(Stripe+CDS+iTunes)
Really quite a troubling piece.
Good in depth analysis but also a global slant rather than Today’s “now, whats happening in the US followed by a quick local section covering the UK”.
In fact; I think you should really look at the government in two phases - 2010-2016 and 2016-2024. The former was, I think, a fundamentally competent government even if you disagreed on policy aims and objectives. It’s been an absolute shambles since.
TMay really tried, I think, but she had an impossible task with the Brexit debacle and the rot started to set in. Then everything fell apart once Boris took over.
Following US channels on the Trump case, US advertising lacks at least firewalls.
1 - Unevidenced medical claims made for non-medical products.
Types of products I have noticed include weirdness such as silveri-infused bedsheets, "flavoured air" products to replace vaping, manuka honey, various sorts of product to replace cocoa at bedtime, and so on. They are mainly subscriptions and mainly cost several hundred dollars per annum or more.
Here medical claims are regulated. They are often bent - eg I once had a Herbalife franchisee try to sell me the benefits of his range as very beneficial to treating Type I diabetes.
The closest we have in the UK is probably "Dettol kills 99% of germs dead".
2 - Editorial / advertising divide.
Product advertisers and Youtube podcast sponsors reading out adverts for sponsors, including vowing
that they make extensive use of each and every product personally.
Probably the closest UK equivalent to this one is influencers promoting products without admitting they are being paid, about which we have had scandals.
Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament is immoral, anyway.
But an enjoyable rant.
On Mr Trump, a comparison between senior Elected Republican Congressmen turning out to help interfere with the Criminal Justice system (one admitting he is Trump's 'surrogate', and the three Senior Republican politicians who went to the White House in 1974 to tell Richard Nixon he faced impeachment.
Nixon resigned the next day.
https://youtu.be/y6yPkzS1fuM?t=45
(Glenn Kirchner - 7 minutes) A review of the article linked below.
https://www.voanews.com/a/usa_gop-unlikely-reprise-role-it-played-nixons-1974-exit/6177114.html
Agree that 2016 is the flip point for competency regardless of preferred direction.
Emma Barnett needs to be given a chance, but this morning some of her questions were long speeches. The art of the interview is in the quality and incisiveness of the questions.
Ask a simple question: When last did this 3 hour daily programme give a serious update from informed experts/expert journalists on the military situation in Sudan and this war is developing?
Dangerous cyclists should face driving ban under new law, says Mr Loophole
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/cars/news/dangerous-cyclists-should-face-driving-ban-under-new-law-says-mr-loophole/ar-BB1mo0E1?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=2dbce053cb284cd398a1fbd4ae33e789&ei=19
Remember Cameron had almost as big a poll lead over Brown as Starmer has over Sunak now six months before election day. Though I suspect Labour gains from the SNP in Scotland would give it enough seats for an overall majority in the UK even if in England alone Labour does not have a majority without LD seats too
If your dreams were to come true and the electorate saw the Labour house of cards for what it is and brought it crashing down, then the upshot would be a Tory government.
This Tory government have changed their mind on just about every serious policy topic going, from tax and spend to Brexit to net zero to the importance of infrastructure spending. That’s your alternative choice. That’s FPTP.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/28/tax-hotline-allows-mps-and-vips-to-skip-the-queues-at-hmrc
'MPs, some civil servants and other high-profile figures are having their calls to HM Revenue and Customs answered up to 12 times faster than the general public because they are able to access a “VIP” hotline.'
We don't even police basic driving standards anymore.
@Josh_Self_
NEW: Jacob Rees-Mogg's multi-point plan for Conservative election victory
— Election pact with Reform
— Nigel Farage to be appointed as minister
— Richard Tice and Ben Habib to be candidates
— Boris Johnson to return as foreign secretary
https://twitter.com/Josh_Self_/status/1790647957756301347
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/15/brexit-border-it-outages-delay-import-of-perishable-items-to-uk-by-up-to-20-hours
'Lorries carrying perishable food and plants from the EU are being held for up to 20 hours at the UK’s busiest Brexit border post as failures with the government’s IT systems delay imports entering Britain.
Businesses have described the government’s new border control checks as a “disaster” after IT outages led to lorries carrying meat, cheese and cut flowers being held for long periods, reducing the shelf life of their goods and prompting retailers to reject some orders.'
This is *almost seven years after the vote*.
So its hardly electoral disaster for Lammy to have changed his mind, or even claim that he has, because he is now representing the shadow cabinet viewpoint, ahead of the the Lammy personal viewpoint.