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It has been an inauspicious start to the campaign for the Tories – politicalbetting.com
It has been an inauspicious start to the campaign for the Tories – politicalbetting.com
CCHQ recalls message which accused politicians refusing to knock on doors. In some areas dwindling funds are a worry ?? https://t.co/fYxqdcFHqS
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People will have booked holidays months ago for this week.
I'd call him a muppet, but I think that's derogatory to much loved children's TV characters.
It's one of the vibesy differences to 1997. Then I suspect that most Conservatives knew the game was up and took their punishment like men.
(A not unpersuasive claim.)
Campaigning is something you have to want to do. It takes effort to put differences aside and campaign for a common position that you might not 100% support. If you don't think you're going to win, you don't try. If you no longer like the people in charge enough to make it worth the effort, you don't try. If you have grown disillusioned with the slog, you don't try.
That's what's going on here.
How much impact this will have on the result - who knows? And indeed we'll never know because we won't have a counterfactual.
It may depend on exactly who, and how many, survive.
In one future, BoZo, Brexit and all his works gets the blame for destroying the party and the Conservative and Unionist Party rises from the ashes.
In another, deposing BoZo becomes the original sin, and the swivel eyed loons take the Tory brand even further away from voters.
This tweet is a good summary of the National Service Plan. A sample:
"So why are the Tories doing this?
One unlikely-but-theoretically-possible answer is that they know full well the GE is lost, and have decided that they want to lose it on an issue that can't be tied back in any way to their 14-year reign of error.
That way, the slate is wiped clean for a spell in opposition.
After all, nobody's talking about Rwanda. Nobody's talking about the carer billing crisis. Nobody's talking about a thousand other issues. Everyone's talking about national service. So from that narrow POV, the plan is working.
But another hint can be found in comments made by an anonymous Tory insider to the FT: "For a long time people just weren't listening to anything we said. By announcing the election, we are forcing people to engage in a conversation." In other words, the notion that all-news-is-good-news. The counter to that, of course, is that's it's easy to be in the news for all the wrong reasons - just ask a serial killer.
From a political POV they seem to be trying to chip votes away from Reform. There's polling to suggest that many of those who support Reform would look on a National Service policy kindly. But what isn't clear (but will be soon) is the impact it will have on the majority in other parts of the political spectrum who hate the idea."
Hahaha. Fucking idiots.
How? Why do you think that? 1992 was 32 years ago and the polling was very different.
I really don't understand why you would say that.
It's competing favourably with Hirohito's
I think we first need to have the 'is this a tragedy or farce' debate before we look fur another narrative.
Backing Reform in Telford will just let Labour win the seat
"Yahidne, Ukraine – Aged between 90 days and 91 years, almost everyone in this northern Ukrainian village was forced into a subterranean hell – and some did not come out alive.
Drunk on stolen booze and impunity, Russian soldiers humiliated, beat, raped, tortured and murdered the villagers, according to survivors – casually, for the slightest objection, a criticising glance or just on a sadistic whim."
"In March 2022, Russian soldiers herded 368 villagers, including six dozen children, into the basement of their elementary school. The villagers spent 27 days in the damp, rancid and noisy darkness with no electricity and heat, with little food and so little fresh air that most were hypoxic to the point of catatonia.
They stayed there right next to the dead – 17 people, including 10 elderly villagers who died there – but Russian soldiers allowed other captives to bring them out and bury them only days later."
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/5/27/putins-worldview-inside-a-ukrainian-village-turned-death-camp
This is the reality of what Ukrainians will face.
@joerichlaw
CCHQ has been frantically calling up some strange people to fill ‘shortlists’ for these seats. A friend of mine, who is already selected as a LibDem Parliamentary candidate, got a call. Really odd - especially when they are blocking so many @Conservatives from standing.
It's certainly memorable enough not to forget.
Redfield appear not to have bothered this week.
Whereas ironically had Boris been allowed to lead the party to defeat it might have been centrists, maybe even Rishi himself, who could have taken back the party in opposition
@lucyallen is suspended from Conservative party as she backs Reform candidate in the election. I remember Telford well - this was the seat from where Johnson launched his Tory manifesto in 2019 > More bad news and fire fighting for Sunak as he tries to get back on front foot
Starmer: Gives meaty keynote speech, takes dozens of Qs from press.
Sunak: Needed a day off four days into the campaign, does a 3-min pool clip in which he looks exhausted & repeats "we have a plan to take bold action" eight times.
CCHQ: Starmer doesn't have the stamina.
It’s the Tories’ fault for being incompetent but it’s also worth being sceptical despite how much you will be loving it.
Exclusive: Investigation will dig into potential perjury offences and perverting the course of justice by senior leaders and Fujitsu
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/27/post-office-scandal-police-to-deploy-80-detectives-for-criminal-inquiry
Today's teens drink less, smoke less, take fewer drugs, commit fewer crimes and get pregnant less than their parents or grandparents. What problem are the Tories trying to solve?
@BradfemlyWalsh
The lazy little shits.
"Of course this is my responsibility"
https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1795127252897706063
Oh Rishi, I do feel sorry for you.
@Steven_Swinford
Rishi Sunak tells @Peston he is committed to staying in the UK for 'years to come' after Lord Goldsmith claims that he will 'disappear off to California' if Tories lose election
'It's just simply not true. This is my home. My team just got promoted back in the Premiership and I hope to be watching them for years to come in the Premier League'
We shall be treated to a barrage of stuff about him being a friend to terrorists shortly.
I do get the impression that journalists are completely failing to establish any professional detachment when reporting on the election. They need to get out there and talk to some real people, rather than sharing memes with each other on twitter.
"Theresa May, the former PM, has said she is is concerned that it “has become almost the done thing if you’re not getting something through as a politician to blame the civil service, and I think that is wrong.”
Speaking at the Hay festival in Powys, the former prime minister described the existence of a politically neutral civil service as “a huge benefit here in the UK”, and that “if ministers aren’t getting what they want through”, as she experienced when her Brexit bill was blocked, then “it’s down to them and it’s not down to the civil service”.
May seemed to be referring in particular to Liz Truss, another former PM who recently published a book accusing the civil service, and other establishment forces, of obstructing radical things she wanted to achieve as a minister.
May also said that she hoped, if it had been raining when she called an election outside No 10 in 2017, that those around her “might have provided [her] with an umbrella”."
This morning @SteveBakerFRSA published a blog post entitled “Where I Am”.
Curiously he failed to mention that “where he is” is ON A BEACH IN GREECE.
But only because it was never ultimately sent in the first place.
Google gives you an option to unsend an email for a couple of seconds after you send it, which effectively means it waits a few seconds giving you an option to unsend it in which case it doesn't actually send it.
If you've got external recipients, all that happens is that they get a plaintive "This message has been recalled" as a followup - usually it only serves to draw attention to the original gaffe!
Deltapoll break down their polls by generation. This was today's Q on "would you vote to rejoin the EU"
Gen Z: 89% Yes / 9% No
Millennials: 67% Yes / 33% No
Gen X: 57% Yes / 43% No
Boomers: 47% Yes / 53% No
@GavinBarwell
After the election, the Conservative Party is going to have to face this reality
I know it will be both painful and difficult - most current Conservative voters don't want to rejoin - but it is very clear how public opinion is going to evolve given this demographic skew
https://x.com/thhamilton/status/1795128965754966048
Me: “Lord Goldsmith is just the latest of your colleagues who say that if you lose, you're going to pack everything up and go to California with your family. Do you want to address that?”
Rishi Sunak: “It’s simply not true. I mean, it's just simply not true. I'm committed to staying in the UK for years to come. Of course, of course I am. Of course, and this is my home.”
@gavinesler
From the responses to this it seems not everyone entirely believes this clear commitment to stop the boats. Sorry. I mean stop in the UK. Committed, however.
18 months later, when the lad came home from Singapore………
Of course, if the chap was being posted to Germany he might get a long weekend to get married.
Also, if the new National Service is going to apply to girls as well as boys things could get quite complicated.
He’s probably right, but it will take decades for that feeling to filter down the generations. Probably fifty years or more.
"The weirdest things about English
RobWords"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lhxxiqqlQY
Now Johnny Mercer twice refuses to rule out punishing parents if their teenage children refuse to take part in national service.
He tells @JPonpolitics that the details of the policy will be decided by an "apolitical" royal commission. @TimesRadio
In search of signs of election activity, I've wandered around pretty much every shopping area and main street in the both the eastern (yesterday) and western (this afternoon) legs of the Islington North constituency and can report... nothing.
No leaflets, no posters, no presence on the streets, no sign of any canvassing activity.
I realise that the campaign hasn't officially started yet, but I would have thought that Corbyn would have wanted to take advantage of the bank holiday - getting a load of volunteers in to make their presence felt, offering social proof that "everyone's going to vote Corbyn", and cementing expectations of a win right from the start.
My expectation for this seat was that Corbyn would run a noisy by-election style campaign, and that the big question was whether Labour would be able to do anything to match it. But what if that doesn't happen, and things remain muted on both sides? Well, in that case, I think it would likely result in a narrow Labour win.
I don't suppose it'll turn out like that, though - Corbyn has always been an effective campaigner, so I still expect things to get off the ground sooner rather than later....
gabyhinsliff
@gabyhinsliff
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30m
As for the ‘sleepy Keir is too old to be PM’ line, I probably wouldn’t be calling 61yos clapped out if my core vote was itself mostly over 60
https://x.com/gabyhinsliff
I do recall an Arthur C Clarke short story where some British astronaughts on a base contrive to delay their return in order to get a tax break when they return.
She was a New Yorker nutty as a fruitcake and gave me the job on the spot. If this bonkers Tory plan had been around then instead of shooting for Vogue I'd probably be bombing Gaza
Swinney last week
Last week, he boasted: ‘I’m the most popular political party leader in Scotland. That’s a huge advantage to the SNP, and we’re going to use it.’
His approval rating is minus three. That he is displaying Nicola Sturgeon hubris on the strength of Angus Robertson numbers does not bode well for the SNP. They might wish to avoid reality but reality is coming for them.
Swinney this week
The SNP leader John Swinney has conceded his party “has a lot of ground to cover” to catch up with Labour in the polls before the general election.
Swinney, who took over as SNP leader from Humza Yousaf three weeks ago, said the party was already united behind him and “very focused on the election campaign”.
Asked whether that meant the SNP was now fighting this election as the “underdog”, the first minister said: “That’s an interesting way to put it.
“Actually it is quite a good way to fight an election campaign"
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/07/31/the-referendums-of-1975-and-2016-illustrate-the-continuity-and-change-in-british-euroscepticism/
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/07/31/the-referendums-of-1975-and-2016-illustrate-the-continuity-and-change-in-british-euroscepticism/
62% In in the BES panel survey against 72% overall.
I'm more positive of SNP chances than many others, but this is a particularly stupid line, since I'm pretty sure the best way to fight an election campaign is to be 20 points ahead.
They'll have to have a system of exemptions - including for pregnancy, and for people with caring responsibilities.
But what about illness and disability? Will there be a system of assessments, reviews, and appeals like there is for PIP?
If you're an adult you will do national service. But you are a child still so we'll publish your parents if you don't.
I get they are getting lots of questions and need to answer somehow, but since the policy is for a review to figure out most details, stop speculating terrible details!
In time he'll get round that - as there's a whole infrastructure of organisations outside Labour on the far left, including his own 'P&J Project'. But it might take a bit of time to work things out, decide who's doing what, sign off and print literature. Work out who's prepared to jump ship and back you, who is to be trusted with important roles. And so on.
Sunak calling the election as a surprise one may have caught them a bit on the hop as may have thought they had plenty of time to plan all this over the summer if was held in autumn.
My dad voted out in 1975 and is very proud of this fact.