There's your housing crisis right there, together with your infrastructure investment crisis and your selling England by the pound crisis.
What do you think they're doing with the assets? Renting them out! It has no net effect on housing capacity & will almost certainly be better landlords than the people they're buying them from. The issue is we're millions of homes short, not the distribution of ownership.
By the way, Labour equalling their lowest 2023 polling on 40 also needs watching, if they dip into the 30s, the Tories need less to start saving seats more efficiently. There's still a great deal at play here
*I haven't even found evidence for the 9% on the doorsteps. Not close.
Whereabouts in the country have you been doorstepping?
Mark is down in Devon, and I can tell you from long experience that he has a sound reputation for accurate and honest reporting from the doorstep.
Devon is one of the least likely places to find reform voters, surely?
Its going to be red wallers and brexiteers in the cities and eastern England
The SW was pretty kippery when they were a thing.
I don’t believe this is Brexit related at all. This is all about the Tories and their failures (esp immigration and tax) and Farage just being a very good opportunist and populist
On my travels in the last election, previous UKIP VI was a pretty good map onto Brexit Party. I don’t think Farage is suddenly fishing in a different pond, an that pond has a limit lower than 20%
You can throw previous assumptions about their ceiling out of the window. This election will see a very large number of first time UKIP/Brexit/Reform voters.
*I haven't even found evidence for the 9% on the doorsteps. Not close.
Whereabouts in the country have you been doorstepping?
Mark is down in Devon, and I can tell you from long experience that he has a sound reputation for accurate and honest reporting from the doorstep.
Devon is one of the least likely places to find reform voters, surely?
Its going to be red wallers and brexiteers in the cities and eastern England
The SW was pretty kippery when they were a thing.
I don’t believe this is Brexit related at all. This is all about the Tories and their failures (esp immigration and tax) and Farage just being a very good opportunist and populist
On my travels in the last election, previous UKIP VI was a pretty good map onto Brexit Party. I don’t think Farage is suddenly fishing in a different pond, an that pond has a limit lower than 20%
Maybe. But this is a very different election to any that has gone before
The Tories really might go extinct. It is an active possibility. What’s more as it becomes evermore possible so that drives more attention to Farage and reform so it feeds off itself. A bandwagon effect
It is at least very funny, as I’m sure you will agree
Arrived in Paris in the rush hour. Heaving with cars, pedestrians and bikes. But the big change from last year (and I think others including @Leon have said the same) is the increase in the number of bikes and they are mad, really mad. I have done some dangerous things in my life, and I have cycled across Paris many times, but the cycle ride from the Gare du Nord to the Latin QTR this time is one of the scariest things I've ever done.
I apologise in advance for the inherent boringness of what is effectively me giving a lecture in an article but I do have my reasons. Let me explain...
This article was written because of the European Parliament elections, due to start tomorrow. Ladbrokes priced it up using the political groups of the European Parliament, which is stupid because they often change their name after the election. I think they should have used the political parties at the European level instead.
That spark of irritation coincided with the YouTube discussion in the header and the discussion on PB about Mussolini's beginning, in which he used a list, and - bang - the article appeared.
I want political betting to expand beyond its Anglosphere/European limits, but to do that we must familiarise ourselves with things like the party list and the one-party state. Hence this lecture.
Sorry for being an arse, I'm sure there are multiple mistakes and I look forard to you pointing them out...
You couldn't be boring if you tried, Viewpoint, and I'm sure I'm typical of many here who are grateful for the thoughtful contributions from you and our various thread header writers.
You must however excuse me for boringly drawing attention to an extraordinary day at the PO Inquiry. Alice Perkins always promised to be an intriguing witness but I would never have guessed it would be her evidence that pulled so many strands together.
She's on again tomorrow, so if you can drag yourself away from the GE I strongly recommend that you catch up on today at the Inquiry and tune in tomorrow for more revelations (mostly unwitting ones) from Mrs Jack Straw.
What the Gazette cannot say but which I can is that she and her Board were not informed because they did not wish to be informed. You can connect the rest of the dots yourself.
You can see the head in the sand / carefully not allowing 2+2 to be put together in the BBC reporting.
The inquiry was shown a handwritten note from Ms Perkins about a meeting on 27 September 2011 with Angus Grant, an auditor at Ernst & Young (EY).
'A risk for us' According to the note, Mr Grant had flagged concerns about Horizon, describing the program as "a real risk for us".
He also warned that if Horizon was not accurate, then EY would not be able to sign off Post Office company accounts.
This is where Jason Beer KC is so brilliant.
He knows perfectly well what was going on but of course he cannot and would not say it in so many words. It would just meet a blunt denial. Instead he draws them out, he cuts off their lines of escape, and when he does confront them there is nowhere for them to hide, so no reasonable person could conclude anything other than what he knows to be the truth.
He skewered Perkins today. In the end she was reduced to saying 'Nobody told me', which prompted him to ask how it could be that successive Counsels and a whole series of consultants over a long period of time and a range of explosive issues all failed to inform her and the Board of the crucial evidence that would have compelled them to confront the awful truth of Britain's worst ever miscarriage of justice.
She was reduced to saying 'I don't know.' But Jason Beer does, and now it's plain for all to see.
Imagine the scenes inside Number 10 right now. Remember Sunak absolutely didn’t have to call this vote, and he totally didn’t have to call it a week before the horrendous migration stats came out. But he did
Migration was down on those stats and he won last night's debate with Yougov which no main voteshare poll has yet caught
It was down from seventy twelve billion to just ninety thousand gazillion
Thing is, somehow the Tories had gotten away with their tremendous betrayal on migration. The issue was only slowing rising up the polls - but that was because, as the polls showed, people had no idea of the stats. They underestimated them by a factor of ten
Then along comes big nigel and says “2.4 million in 3 years” and everyone goes wtf that cannot be true, yet it is true. Kaboom
It was drowned out by all the hysteria about Tory fascism from centrist Remainers. Rory Stewart tweeted yesterday about the immigration figures as if he was completely unaware of them until now.
Poor old Rishi, YouGov really was the worst possible pollster to be first out the block post farage, consistently their best pollster by some distance. First phone poll of the campaign due tomorrow (probably, definitely this week ) - ipsos
Got to ask how does phone polling work now most people don't have landlines...
Is that technically true? I thought it was just people don’t USE landlines, as opposed to not having them
My photo for the day is the weird infrastructure of Chesterfield, via Google Earth.
Chesterfield is on 2 levels roughly, with the Hipper Valley (ah Blossom Dearie, dad's favourite*) through the middle. This 1970s pedestrian / cycle flyover on Lordsmill Road is 2m wide and 100m+ long, about 35ft high with a spiral ramp each end.
I cycled over it by mistake whilst working on a summer project - Wheeling and Cycling routes to Hardwick Hall, following the NT Active Travel resolution at their last AGM. The railings are lower than my handlebars and it is a touch frightening. The area is as horrible as the Derby ring road.
*I haven't even found evidence for the 9% on the doorsteps. Not close.
Whereabouts in the country have you been doorstepping?
Mark is down in Devon, and I can tell you from long experience that he has a sound reputation for accurate and honest reporting from the doorstep.
Devon is one of the least likely places to find reform voters, surely?
Its going to be red wallers and brexiteers in the cities and eastern England
The SW was pretty kippery when they were a thing.
I don’t believe this is Brexit related at all. This is all about the Tories and their failures (esp immigration and tax) and Farage just being a very good opportunist and populist
On my travels in the last election, previous UKIP VI was a pretty good map onto Brexit Party. I don’t think Farage is suddenly fishing in a different pond, an that pond has a limit lower than 20%
Maybe. But this is a very different election to any that has gone before
The Tories really might go extinct. It is an active possibility. What’s more as it becomes evermore possible so that drives more attention to Farage and reform so it feeds off itself. A bandwagon effect
It is at least very funny, as I’m sure you will agree
They won't go extinct. Even the Canadian Tories got 16% in 1993 even if just 2 MPs under FPTP.
However all that meant was the Canadian Tories and Reform on 18% divided the right in Canada for a decade enabling the Liberals to win 3 general elections comfortably in 1993, 1997 and 2000 until the Tories and Reform eventually merged in 2003 to form today's Conservative Party of Canada. Finally after 13 years in opposition the Canadian right then returned to power under the Conservative government of Harper in 2006.
You can afford centre right and populist right parties splitting the right under PR as they can join together again after the election to form a government, as is the case in Italy, Spain, Austria, Sweden, New Zealand, Israel etc for example.
Under FPTP however it is suicide and just puts left woke liberals of the type you hate in power with big majorities for a decade or more
By the way, Labour equalling their lowest 2023 polling on 40 also needs watching, if they dip into the 30s, the Tories need less to start saving seats more efficiently. There's still a great deal at play here
You’re grasping fairly desperately. Labour’s majority is over 300 on those figures even on 40%, which they’ve also polled as recently as 10 days ago.
At the very least, the change in YouGov’s methodology should induce some caution because what matters at the moment is being able to compare like for like.
So wait and see how other polls look post-Farage post-debate.
Imagine the scenes inside Number 10 right now. Remember Sunak absolutely didn’t have to call this vote, and he totally didn’t have to call it a week before the horrendous migration stats came out. But he did
Migration was down on those stats and he won last night's debate with Yougov which no main voteshare poll has yet caught
But he lost the debate by a bigger margin with Survation, and by a whopping 20% with JL partners.
Even the YouGov poll that was 51/49 gave Starmer +20% compared with +11% on who did well/badly, and Starmer won across a range of other measures by significant amounts.
All YouGov appear to have recorded is that Sunak was a more successful debater than they expected, but apparently people still much preferred Starmer.
A lot of people thinking “Reform *surely* can’t get around 20%” are ignoring 3 things for me.
1) A few weeks of Farage on the TV, and more potential polls showing the Tories very far behind Labour, might make a lot of voters think “Sod it, I’m voting Reform”. Farage’s stated strategy is to reverse takeover the Tory Party - on Friday he might explicitly say “Rishi Sunak won’t be PM, but in a few years, I could be”
2) The 2019 European elections are of course not the same type or election nor political climate as now, but we saw 30% of votes go to the BXP in that. Another election where people thought “Well, the Tories can’t win anyway, and what’s the point”.
3) A lot of current Tory voters may warm to the LDs once Ed Davey gets a chance to be on TV a bit more in the campaign, and if the Tories look more defeated. This could swing a lot of Tory/LD marginals.
This is not to say it *will* happen but it certainly *can*.
I think Farage is extremely Marmite. Brexit is now very unpopular, so I really can't see what is driving this supposed surge for Reform. It feels off, but let's see what the next week brings.
Imagine the scenes inside Number 10 right now. Remember Sunak absolutely didn’t have to call this vote, and he totally didn’t have to call it a week before the horrendous migration stats came out. But he did
Migration was down on those stats and he won last night's debate with Yougov which no main voteshare poll has yet caught
But he lost the debate by a bigger margin with Survation, and by a whopping 20% with JL partners.
Even the YouGov poll that was 51/49 gave Starmer +20% compared with +11% on who did well/badly, and Starmer won across a range of other measures by significant amounts.
All YouGov appear to have recorded is that Sunak was a more successful debater than they expected, but apparently people still much preferred Starmer.
Even the 39% who thought Sunak won with Survation is TWENTY percent more than the Tory share in tonight's Yougov
By the way, Labour equalling their lowest 2023 polling on 40 also needs watching, if they dip into the 30s, the Tories need less to start saving seats more efficiently. There's still a great deal at play here
You’re grasping fairly desperately. Labour’s majority is over 300 on those figures even on 40%, which they’ve also polled as recently as 10 days ago.
At the very least, the change in YouGov’s methodology should induce some caution because what matters at the moment is being able to compare like for like.
So wait and see how other polls look post-Farage post-debate.
It's not 'grasping' at all, its a factor that needs watching if you're interested in betting on the result Did I say it 'would' lead to anything? No, I did not.
By the way, Labour equalling their lowest 2023 polling on 40 also needs watching, if they dip into the 30s, the Tories need less to start saving seats more efficiently. There's still a great deal at play here
You’re grasping fairly desperately. Labour’s majority is over 300 on those figures even on 40%, which they’ve also polled as recently as 10 days ago.
At the very least, the change in YouGov’s methodology should induce some caution because what matters at the moment is being able to compare like for like.
So wait and see how other polls look post-Farage post-debate.
+1 - The Tories need to somehow or other get within 14% or so of the Labour vote AND get over 26% of all voting.
At the moment they are into the third party 2 questions a week at PMQs area...
Poor old Rishi, YouGov really was the worst possible pollster to be first out the block post farage, consistently their best pollster by some distance. First phone poll of the campaign due tomorrow (probably, definitely this week ) - ipsos
Got to ask how does phone polling work now most people don't have landlines...
Is that technically true? I thought it was just people don’t USE landlines, as opposed to not having them
I have a voip landline, the software hasn't even been on my mobile for the past 2 years....
By the way, Labour equalling their lowest 2023 polling on 40 also needs watching, if they dip into the 30s, the Tories need less to start saving seats more efficiently. There's still a great deal at play here
If we do get a ReformGasm then it is conceivable they will draw some support from Labour.
What a jolly jape a result like 15 CON / 25 REF / 35 LAB would be! Baxtered that’s a Lab majority of 232 on 35% of the vote!
A lot of people thinking “Reform *surely* can’t get around 20%” are ignoring 3 things for me.
1) A few weeks of Farage on the TV, and more potential polls showing the Tories very far behind Labour, might make a lot of voters think “Sod it, I’m voting Reform”. Farage’s stated strategy is to reverse takeover the Tory Party - on Friday he might explicitly say “Rishi Sunak won’t be PM, but in a few years, I could be”
2) The 2019 European elections are of course not the same type or election nor political climate as now, but we saw 30% of votes go to the BXP in that. Another election where people thought “Well, the Tories can’t win anyway, and what’s the point”.
3) A lot of current Tory voters may warm to the LDs once Ed Davey gets a chance to be on TV a bit more in the campaign, and if the Tories look more defeated. This could swing a lot of Tory/LD marginals.
This is not to say it *will* happen but it certainly *can*.
I think Farage is extremely Marmite. Brexit is now very unpopular, so I really can't see what is driving this supposed surge for Reform. It feels off, but let's see what the next week brings.
Reform is the None of the above / F*** the lot of them party for the have nots...
I can see why it has retained a lot of UKIP / Brexit support because Brexit was screwed up by someone who wasn't Nigel Farage...
*I haven't even found evidence for the 9% on the doorsteps. Not close.
Whereabouts in the country have you been doorstepping?
Mark is down in Devon, and I can tell you from long experience that he has a sound reputation for accurate and honest reporting from the doorstep.
Devon is one of the least likely places to find reform voters, surely?
Its going to be red wallers and brexiteers in the cities and eastern England
The SW was pretty kippery when they were a thing.
I don’t believe this is Brexit related at all. This is all about the Tories and their failures (esp immigration and tax) and Farage just being a very good opportunist and populist
On my travels in the last election, previous UKIP VI was a pretty good map onto Brexit Party. I don’t think Farage is suddenly fishing in a different pond, an that pond has a limit lower than 20%
Maybe. But this is a very different election to any that has gone before
The Tories really might go extinct. It is an active possibility. What’s more as it becomes evermore possible so that drives more attention to Farage and reform so it feeds off itself. A bandwagon effect
It is at least very funny, as I’m sure you will agree
They won't go extinct. Even the Canadian Tories got 16% in 1993 even if just 2 MPs under FPTP.
However all that meant was the Canadian Tories and Reform on 18% divided the right in Canada for a decade enabling the Liberals to win 3 general elections comfortably in 1993, 1997 and 2000 until the Tories and Reform eventually merged in 2003 to form today's Conservative Party of Canada. Finally after 13 years in opposition the Canadian right then returned to power under the Conservative government of Harper in 2006.
You can afford centre right and populist right parties splitting the right under PR as they can join together again after the election to form a government, as is the case in Italy, Spain, Austria, Sweden, New Zealand, Israel etc for example.
Under FPTP however it is suicide and just puts left woke liberals of the type you hate in power with big majorities for a decade or more
That's Canada, Hyufd. This is the UK.
What your Party needs to do is go off and have a good think about how it became the most successful political party ever in the history of Western Democracy, and what it needs to do recover to the point where the story continues. Stuff Canada. it has no relevance here.
OK, if the Tory 'Labour's tax rises' dossier was a bit iffy, Labour's counter 'Conservatives’ Interest Rate Rise' is just ridiculous...
I gave up at line 1 (by far the biggest item), where #Labour assumes that the Tories would abolish NI *completely* in the *first* year of the next parliament 🙄
*I haven't even found evidence for the 9% on the doorsteps. Not close.
Whereabouts in the country have you been doorstepping?
Mark is down in Devon, and I can tell you from long experience that he has a sound reputation for accurate and honest reporting from the doorstep.
Devon is one of the least likely places to find reform voters, surely?
Its going to be red wallers and brexiteers in the cities and eastern England
The SW was pretty kippery when they were a thing.
I don’t believe this is Brexit related at all. This is all about the Tories and their failures (esp immigration and tax) and Farage just being a very good opportunist and populist
On my travels in the last election, previous UKIP VI was a pretty good map onto Brexit Party. I don’t think Farage is suddenly fishing in a different pond, an that pond has a limit lower than 20%
Maybe. But this is a very different election to any that has gone before
The Tories really might go extinct. It is an active possibility. What’s more as it becomes evermore possible so that drives more attention to Farage and reform so it feeds off itself. A bandwagon effect
It is at least very funny, as I’m sure you will agree
The one missing piece in the Canada '93 jigsaw is 'lightweight novice PM panics and does something stupid', in her case the Chrétien attack ads.
Now Rishi isn't as novice as Kim Campbell was, but he's certainly lightweight...
Repeating what I said yesterday but anyone else think REFUK have defections up their sleeves? Friday the obvious time to reveal them for maximum impact, but OTOH there may have been more murmurings by now if it were on the cards.
*I haven't even found evidence for the 9% on the doorsteps. Not close.
Whereabouts in the country have you been doorstepping?
Mark is down in Devon, and I can tell you from long experience that he has a sound reputation for accurate and honest reporting from the doorstep.
Devon is one of the least likely places to find reform voters, surely?
Its going to be red wallers and brexiteers in the cities and eastern England
The SW was pretty kippery when they were a thing.
I don’t believe this is Brexit related at all. This is all about the Tories and their failures (esp immigration and tax) and Farage just being a very good opportunist and populist
On my travels in the last election, previous UKIP VI was a pretty good map onto Brexit Party. I don’t think Farage is suddenly fishing in a different pond, an that pond has a limit lower than 20%
You can throw previous assumptions about their ceiling out of the window. This election will see a very large number of first time UKIP/Brexit/Reform voters.
I was about to post an ‘I don’t know about that’ but actually… maybe yeah.
If the debate got anything across it was of the pox-on-both-your-houses sentiment, or at least I would guess it did to some. So I would guess that a few people at least might throw a cross by reform as a middle finger to them both.
The first Lib Dem election broadcast will be all about Ed Davey and his difficult personal life. It will be interesting to see the public reaction - shades of Major and Kinnock.
*I haven't even found evidence for the 9% on the doorsteps. Not close.
Whereabouts in the country have you been doorstepping?
Mark is down in Devon, and I can tell you from long experience that he has a sound reputation for accurate and honest reporting from the doorstep.
Devon is one of the least likely places to find reform voters, surely?
Its going to be red wallers and brexiteers in the cities and eastern England
The SW was pretty kippery when they were a thing.
I don’t believe this is Brexit related at all. This is all about the Tories and their failures (esp immigration and tax) and Farage just being a very good opportunist and populist
On my travels in the last election, previous UKIP VI was a pretty good map onto Brexit Party. I don’t think Farage is suddenly fishing in a different pond, an that pond has a limit lower than 20%
Maybe. But this is a very different election to any that has gone before
The Tories really might go extinct. It is an active possibility. What’s more as it becomes evermore possible so that drives more attention to Farage and reform so it feeds off itself. A bandwagon effect
It is at least very funny, as I’m sure you will agree
They won't go extinct. Even the Canadian Tories got 16% in 1993 even if just 2 MPs under FPTP.
However all that meant was the Canadian Tories and Reform on 18% divided the right in Canada for a decade enabling the Liberals to win 3 general elections comfortably in 1993, 1997 and 2000 until the Tories and Reform eventually merged in 2003 to form today's Conservative Party of Canada. Finally after 13 years in opposition the Canadian right then returned to power under the Conservative government of Harper in 2006.
You can afford centre right and populist right parties splitting the right under PR as they can join together again after the election to form a government, as is the case in Italy, Spain, Austria, Sweden, New Zealand, Israel etc for example.
Under FPTP however it is suicide and just puts left woke liberals of the type you hate in power with big majorities for a decade or more
That's Canada, Hyufd. This is the UK.
What your Party needs to do is go off and have a good think about how it became the most successful political party ever in the history of Western Democracy, and what it needs to do recover to the point where the story continues. Stuff Canada. it has no relevance here.
Good luck.
We both use FPTP so the end result is near identical.
It doesn't matter if you were the most successful party in the entire universe if another party on the right takes half your votes, the fact the Conservatives have largely had the right to themselves is what has made them so successful under FPTP.
If that no longer applies the Tories may as well even back PR
I'm sure in 2015 there was analysis that above a certain level UKIP was taking at least as many if not more votes from Labour.
ie Up to say 12%, UKIP took vast majority of its votes from Conservative.
But as it then moved up further - say from 12% to 16% - then of that further 4%, at least as many if not more were coming from Labour.
Indeed I remember analysis on here saying UKIP had been directly responsible for Con actually winning some seats - maybe in North Wales but not not certain.
Worth keeping in mind re possibility of something similar this time if Reform really do keep moving up - which of course they may not.
Repeating what I said yesterday but anyone else think REFUK have defections up their sleeves? Friday the obvious time to reveal them for maximum impact, but OTOH there may have been more murmurings by now if it were on the cards.
There have been rumours of 'up to 6', one of which is a former/outgoing MP Tom Hunt has today denied he is one (over the Holden farrago), similarly Marco Longhi has publicly called for a deal but isn't jumping
Imagine the scenes inside Number 10 right now. Remember Sunak absolutely didn’t have to call this vote, and he totally didn’t have to call it a week before the horrendous migration stats came out. But he did
Migration was down on those stats and he won last night's debate with Yougov which no main voteshare poll has yet caught
But he lost the debate by a bigger margin with Survation, and by a whopping 20% with JL partners.
Even the YouGov poll that was 51/49 gave Starmer +20% compared with +11% on who did well/badly, and Starmer won across a range of other measures by significant amounts.
All YouGov appear to have recorded is that Sunak was a more successful debater than they expected, but apparently people still much preferred Starmer.
Even the 39% who thought Sunak won with Survation is TWENTY percent more than the Tory share in tonight's Yougov
True.
Farage was rubbish in last night's debate - practically invisible
Repeating what I said yesterday but anyone else think REFUK have defections up their sleeves? Friday the obvious time to reveal them for maximum impact, but OTOH there may have been more murmurings by now if it were on the cards.
Farage is bright enough to know that you would keep such things secret - I suspect you need to look for seats where there is no Reform candidate...
OK, if the Tory 'Labour's tax rises' dossier was a bit iffy, Labour's counter 'Conservatives’ Interest Rate Rise' is just ridiculous...
I gave up at line 1 (by far the biggest item), where #Labour assumes that the Tories would abolish NI *completely* in the *first* year of the next parliament 🙄
*I haven't even found evidence for the 9% on the doorsteps. Not close.
Yeah something is going on. I just can’t see Reform doing that well. I suspect that some level of systemic poll error is occurring but who knows. I could get them to 7-9% but 17 is a stretch and outpolling the Tories I can’t see at all. Unfortunately from here on in it’s going to be impossible for the issues to get a look in as all the journalists orgasm over a potentially dodgy narrative.
The other possibility is that right wing voters worried about immigration and other ReFUK staples a) know Labour's won this election already and b) know the Conservatives have been in power 14 years and brought about most of the current situation.
In that circumstance, do you vote Conservative, for more of the last 14 years, or go, well, at least if I vote for Nige and his lot, I've expressed my views that the Conservative party have stuffed up royally on immigration etc, and the rump Con party that remains post GE will lurch rightwards?
TL;DR, what's the point in voting Conservative if you're vaguely right wing? Might as well cast a protest vote with ReFUK to cause the remaining Cons to lurch to the right post GE.
See also Leon's posts for a glimpse into this kind of voter.
Also, if you’re just REALLY angry at the Tories and you want to punish them and horrify them - you don’t vote Starmer, you vote for Farage. That’s much scarier for Tories
No - it is much scarier for the country to support a Trump supporting, anti vax and net zero, right wing party
Well, if Trump wins and Farage is PM at least that’s good for the spesh relaysh
Do you really want a long term and enthusiastic rimmer of POTUS as UK pm? I mean that has often been the actualité but to have it formalised..
On topic, sort of: James Sterling Young's "The Washington Community 1800-1828" describes, among other things, how American political parties evolved in DC. Perhaps the most surprising thing, for me, was the importance of "boardinghouse fraternities which almost all legislators joined when they came to Washington-- the members who took their meals together, who lived together in the same lodginghouse, and who spent most of their leisure time together." (p. 98)
Not suprisingly, the members of these fraternities tended to vote together, too.
Imagine the scenes inside Number 10 right now. Remember Sunak absolutely didn’t have to call this vote, and he totally didn’t have to call it a week before the horrendous migration stats came out. But he did
Migration was down on those stats and he won last night's debate with Yougov which no main voteshare poll has yet caught
But he lost the debate by a bigger margin with Survation, and by a whopping 20% with JL partners.
Even the YouGov poll that was 51/49 gave Starmer +20% compared with +11% on who did well/badly, and Starmer won across a range of other measures by significant amounts.
All YouGov appear to have recorded is that Sunak was a more successful debater than they expected, but apparently people still much preferred Starmer.
Even the 39% who thought Sunak won with Survation is TWENTY percent more than the Tory share in tonight's Yougov
True.
Farage was rubbish in last night's debate - practically invisible
Sunak should thank his lucky stars Starmer has agreed to exclude Farage from all their debates otherwise he really would be in the deepest trouble.
Instead Reform confined to the 7 dwarfs debate where Tice not Farage will join the other minor party leaders and Rayner and Mordaunt
A lot of people thinking “Reform *surely* can’t get around 20%” are ignoring 3 things for me.
1) A few weeks of Farage on the TV, and more potential polls showing the Tories very far behind Labour, might make a lot of voters think “Sod it, I’m voting Reform”. Farage’s stated strategy is to reverse takeover the Tory Party - on Friday he might explicitly say “Rishi Sunak won’t be PM, but in a few years, I could be”
2) The 2019 European elections are of course not the same type or election nor political climate as now, but we saw 30% of votes go to the BXP in that. Another election where people thought “Well, the Tories can’t win anyway, and what’s the point”.
3) A lot of current Tory voters may warm to the LDs once Ed Davey gets a chance to be on TV a bit more in the campaign, and if the Tories look more defeated. This could swing a lot of Tory/LD marginals.
This is not to say it *will* happen but it certainly *can*.
I think Farage is extremely Marmite. Brexit is now very unpopular, so I really can't see what is driving this supposed surge for Reform. It feels off, but let's see what the next week brings.
I think you're conflating brexit with immigration, there.
Brexit was winnable because it was a broad coalition - ranging from Bennite lefties who think the EU is a neoliberal plot to drive down the wages of the working class (Corbyn was arguably one of them, which is why he stayed so silent) to Singapore-on-Thames style deregulatory hyper-capitalists, to people worried about democratic accountability (Lisbon treaty etc), and yes, a substantial chunk whose main concern was freedom of movement, or simply, immigration. That got Brexit to the famous 52%.
Immigration alone probably gets ReFUK to 20%. As a socially conservative leaning anti-immigration party, you're not going to vote Labour - and given the Tories have presided over the largest immigration figures in recent history, despite Brexit, you're not going to vote for them either. So where do you turn? Good old Nige, and good old UKIP, err, ReFUK.
If immigration is your #1 issue, which it clearly is for a lot of voters - Nige is your man. I could believe crossover at some point, if only for a poll or two.
Imagine the scenes inside Number 10 right now. Remember Sunak absolutely didn’t have to call this vote, and he totally didn’t have to call it a week before the horrendous migration stats came out. But he did
Migration was down on those stats and he won last night's debate with Yougov which no main voteshare poll has yet caught
But he lost the debate by a bigger margin with Survation, and by a whopping 20% with JL partners.
Even the YouGov poll that was 51/49 gave Starmer +20% compared with +11% on who did well/badly, and Starmer won across a range of other measures by significant amounts.
All YouGov appear to have recorded is that Sunak was a more successful debater than they expected, but apparently people still much preferred Starmer.
Even the 39% who thought Sunak won with Survation is TWENTY percent more than the Tory share in tonight's Yougov
True.
Farage was rubbish in last night's debate - practically invisible
Sunak should thank his lucky stars Starmer has agreed to exclude Farage from all their debates otherwise he really would be in the deepest trouble.
Instead Reform confined to the 7 dwarfs debate where Tice not Farage will join the other minor party leaders and Rayner and Mordaunt
Which 4 parties are in BBC's 4 way debate?
Edit that's on June 20th the same day postal votes will be arriving through letter boxes.
By the way, Labour equalling their lowest 2023 polling on 40 also needs watching, if they dip into the 30s, the Tories need less to start saving seats more efficiently. There's still a great deal at play here
You’re grasping fairly desperately. Labour’s majority is over 300 on those figures even on 40%, which they’ve also polled as recently as 10 days ago.
At the very least, the change in YouGov’s methodology should induce some caution because what matters at the moment is being able to compare like for like.
So wait and see how other polls look post-Farage post-debate.
+1 - The Tories need to somehow or other get within 14% or so of the Labour vote AND get over 26% of all voting.
At the moment they are into the third party 2 questions a week at PMQs area...
I agree, however last nights Savanta also shows precisely what you describe, as did MiCs MRPand YouGovs MRP was close to that. Sure if this YouGov is 'right' they're fucked, utterly, but the polling g in the round does not show third party status (yet)
*I haven't even found evidence for the 9% on the doorsteps. Not close.
Whereabouts in the country have you been doorstepping?
Mark is down in Devon, and I can tell you from long experience that he has a sound reputation for accurate and honest reporting from the doorstep.
Devon is one of the least likely places to find reform voters, surely?
Its going to be red wallers and brexiteers in the cities and eastern England
The SW was pretty kippery when they were a thing.
I don’t believe this is Brexit related at all. This is all about the Tories and their failures (esp immigration and tax) and Farage just being a very good opportunist and populist
On my travels in the last election, previous UKIP VI was a pretty good map onto Brexit Party. I don’t think Farage is suddenly fishing in a different pond, an that pond has a limit lower than 20%
Maybe. But this is a very different election to any that has gone before
The Tories really might go extinct. It is an active possibility. What’s more as it becomes evermore possible so that drives more attention to Farage and reform so it feeds off itself. A bandwagon effect
It is at least very funny, as I’m sure you will agree
They won't go extinct. Even the Canadian Tories got 16% in 1993 even if just 2 MPs under FPTP.
However all that meant was the Canadian Tories and Reform on 18% divided the right in Canada for a decade enabling the Liberals to win 3 general elections comfortably in 1993, 1997 and 2000 until the Tories and Reform eventually merged in 2003 to form today's Conservative Party of Canada. Finally after 13 years in opposition the Canadian right then returned to power under the Conservative government of Harper in 2006.
You can afford centre right and populist right parties splitting the right under PR as they can join together again after the election to form a government, as is the case in Italy, Spain, Austria, Sweden, New Zealand, Israel etc for example.
Under FPTP however it is suicide and just puts left woke liberals of the type you hate in power with big majorities for a decade or more
That's Canada, Hyufd. This is the UK.
What your Party needs to do is go off and have a good think about how it became the most successful political party ever in the history of Western Democracy, and what it needs to do recover to the point where the story continues. Stuff Canada. it has no relevance here.
Good luck.
We both use FPTP so the end result is near identical.
It doesn't matter if you were the most successful party in the entire universe if another party on the right takes half your votes, the fact the Conservatives have largely had the right to themselves is what has made them so successful under FPTP.
If that no longer applies the Tories may as well even back PR
Except it probably isn't.
Reform-Canada were able to nab a decent block of seats (and seats is what matters) because their vote was geographically concentrated.
If Reform-UK and the Conservatives fight themselves to a standstill, the first thing that happens is that Labour ease past them in lots of places and end up with an absurd number of seats, while both right parties end up with a handful each.
Farage has already won the election, even if he doesn't win one seat. Labour is held back by caution, and the Tories ( and possibly the LD's ) by their relatively recent record. Perhaps we'll see a couple of Green and Reform seats to go with the big Starner majority, and a fair bit of anti-systemic voting on both the left and right.
Imagine the scenes inside Number 10 right now. Remember Sunak absolutely didn’t have to call this vote, and he totally didn’t have to call it a week before the horrendous migration stats came out. But he did
Migration was down on those stats and he won last night's debate with Yougov which no main voteshare poll has yet caught
But he lost the debate by a bigger margin with Survation, and by a whopping 20% with JL partners.
Even the YouGov poll that was 51/49 gave Starmer +20% compared with +11% on who did well/badly, and Starmer won across a range of other measures by significant amounts.
All YouGov appear to have recorded is that Sunak was a more successful debater than they expected, but apparently people still much preferred Starmer.
Even the 39% who thought Sunak won with Survation is TWENTY percent more than the Tory share in tonight's Yougov
True.
Farage was rubbish in last night's debate - practically invisible
Sunak should thank his lucky stars Starmer has agreed to exclude Farage from all their debates otherwise he really would be in the deepest trouble.
Instead Reform confined to the 7 dwarfs debate where Tice not Farage will join the other minor party leaders and Rayner and Mordaunt
7 dwarfs !! - what an expression and Farage is taking part, not Tice
Do we think the efficiency of tactical voting is being sufficiently accounted for?
Feels like people will be much more aware of it this time round and it might help Labour / the LDs greatly
Good point.
Calculations based on UNS are notoriously unsound precisely because they fail to take account of things like Swingback and Tactical Voting. You would expect these two factors to cancel out to a large extent this time....except I'm not that sure about Swingback, especially now we have some pollsters adjusting to take it into account.
Imagine the scenes inside Number 10 right now. Remember Sunak absolutely didn’t have to call this vote, and he totally didn’t have to call it a week before the horrendous migration stats came out. But he did
Migration was down on those stats and he won last night's debate with Yougov which no main voteshare poll has yet caught
But he lost the debate by a bigger margin with Survation, and by a whopping 20% with JL partners.
Even the YouGov poll that was 51/49 gave Starmer +20% compared with +11% on who did well/badly, and Starmer won across a range of other measures by significant amounts.
All YouGov appear to have recorded is that Sunak was a more successful debater than they expected, but apparently people still much preferred Starmer.
Even the 39% who thought Sunak won with Survation is TWENTY percent more than the Tory share in tonight's Yougov
True.
Farage was rubbish in last night's debate - practically invisible
Sunak should thank his lucky stars Starmer has agreed to exclude Farage from all their debates otherwise he really would be in the deepest trouble.
Instead Reform confined to the 7 dwarfs debate where Tice not Farage will join the other minor party leaders and Rayner and Mordaunt
7 dwarfs !! - what an expression and Farage is taking part, not Tice
*I haven't even found evidence for the 9% on the doorsteps. Not close.
Whereabouts in the country have you been doorstepping?
Mark is down in Devon, and I can tell you from long experience that he has a sound reputation for accurate and honest reporting from the doorstep.
Devon is one of the least likely places to find reform voters, surely?
Its going to be red wallers and brexiteers in the cities and eastern England
The SW was pretty kippery when they were a thing.
I don’t believe this is Brexit related at all. This is all about the Tories and their failures (esp immigration and tax) and Farage just being a very good opportunist and populist
On my travels in the last election, previous UKIP VI was a pretty good map onto Brexit Party. I don’t think Farage is suddenly fishing in a different pond, an that pond has a limit lower than 20%
Maybe. But this is a very different election to any that has gone before
The Tories really might go extinct. It is an active possibility. What’s more as it becomes evermore possible so that drives more attention to Farage and reform so it feeds off itself. A bandwagon effect
It is at least very funny, as I’m sure you will agree
Under FPTP however it is suicide and just puts left woke liberals of the type you hate in power with big majorities for a decade or more
The pejorative and repeated use of the adjective woke by you and a few others on here like @Leon reflects poorly on your political judgement.
One of the reasons why you will now experience a Labour Government for at least 10 years is the Right’s psychotic obsession with issues which are best peripheral to the voting majority.
Imagine the scenes inside Number 10 right now. Remember Sunak absolutely didn’t have to call this vote, and he totally didn’t have to call it a week before the horrendous migration stats came out. But he did
I reckon he's been told he had to keep the second half of the year clear for 2 x Statty Fyoonz.
*I haven't even found evidence for the 9% on the doorsteps. Not close.
Yeah something is going on. I just can’t see Reform doing that well. I suspect that some level of systemic poll error is occurring but who knows. I could get them to 7-9% but 17 is a stretch and outpolling the Tories I can’t see at all. Unfortunately from here on in it’s going to be impossible for the issues to get a look in as all the journalists orgasm over a potentially dodgy narrative.
The other possibility is that right wing voters worried about immigration and other ReFUK staples a) know Labour's won this election already and b) know the Conservatives have been in power 14 years and brought about most of the current situation.
In that circumstance, do you vote Conservative, for more of the last 14 years, or go, well, at least if I vote for Nige and his lot, I've expressed my views that the Conservative party have stuffed up royally on immigration etc, and the rump Con party that remains post GE will lurch rightwards?
TL;DR, what's the point in voting Conservative if you're vaguely right wing? Might as well cast a protest vote with ReFUK to cause the remaining Cons to lurch to the right post GE.
See also Leon's posts for a glimpse into this kind of voter.
Also, if you’re just REALLY angry at the Tories and you want to punish them and horrify them - you don’t vote Starmer, you vote for Farage. That’s much scarier for Tories
No - it is much scarier for the country to support a Trump supporting, anti vax and net zero, right wing party
Well, if Trump wins and Farage is PM at least that’s good for the spesh relaysh
It wouldn't, because does Trump show loyalty or generosity to people who fawn over him? No, he does not. He expects it as his due, and the second his or, if president, the country's interests, outweighed the nice feeling he gets from praise, it would cease to matter.
Obsequiousness would work for small things, but for big stuff? Nah.
Do we think the efficiency of tactical voting is being sufficiently accounted for?
Feels like people will be much more aware of it this time round and it might help Labour / the LDs greatly
Good point.
Calculations based on UNS are notoriously unsound precisely because they fail to take account of things like Swingback and Tactical Voting. You would expect these two factors to cancel out to a large extent this time....except I'm not that sure about Swingback, especially now we have some pollsters adjusting to take it into account.
TV on the other hand ought to be a real factor.
Sorry, but this is not good news for Rishi.
The forecast pollsters were using swingback but it's worth noting that JLP's swingback seems to have disappeared this week and it's forecast was closer to the Nowcasters than previous weeks.
I think that confirms my theory that there won't be much swingback for the Tories in this election unless something really changes.
There's your housing crisis right there, together with your infrastructure investment crisis and your selling England by the pound crisis.
What do you think they're doing with the assets? Renting them out! It has no net effect on housing capacity & will almost certainly be better landlords than the people they're buying them from. The issue is we're millions of homes short, not the distribution of ownership.
What they are doing is taking the rent money (often paid by HMG) out of this country and into America. That's the problem. It makes us poorer, and America richer.
Imagine the scenes inside Number 10 right now. Remember Sunak absolutely didn’t have to call this vote, and he totally didn’t have to call it a week before the horrendous migration stats came out. But he did
Migration was down on those stats and he won last night's debate with Yougov which no main voteshare poll has yet caught
But he lost the debate by a bigger margin with Survation, and by a whopping 20% with JL partners.
Even the YouGov poll that was 51/49 gave Starmer +20% compared with +11% on who did well/badly, and Starmer won across a range of other measures by significant amounts.
All YouGov appear to have recorded is that Sunak was a more successful debater than they expected, but apparently people still much preferred Starmer.
Even the 39% who thought Sunak won with Survation is TWENTY percent more than the Tory share in tonight's Yougov
True.
Farage was rubbish in last night's debate - practically invisible
Sunak should thank his lucky stars Starmer has agreed to exclude Farage from all their debates otherwise he really would be in the deepest trouble.
Instead Reform confined to the 7 dwarfs debate where Tice not Farage will join the other minor party leaders and Rayner and Mordaunt
Which 4 parties are in BBC's 4 way debate?
Edit that's on June 20th the same day postal votes will be arriving through letter boxes.
Con, Lab, SNP, LD but it's not a 4 way debate, it's 4 individual 30 minute Question Times with Fiona Bruce and a studio audience with each leader in turn.
Imagine the scenes inside Number 10 right now. Remember Sunak absolutely didn’t have to call this vote, and he totally didn’t have to call it a week before the horrendous migration stats came out. But he did
I reckon he's been told he had to keep the second half of the year clear for 2 x Statty Fyoonz.
Imagine the scenes inside Number 10 right now. Remember Sunak absolutely didn’t have to call this vote, and he totally didn’t have to call it a week before the horrendous migration stats came out. But he did
Migration was down on those stats and he won last night's debate with Yougov which no main voteshare poll has yet caught
But he lost the debate by a bigger margin with Survation, and by a whopping 20% with JL partners.
Even the YouGov poll that was 51/49 gave Starmer +20% compared with +11% on who did well/badly, and Starmer won across a range of other measures by significant amounts.
All YouGov appear to have recorded is that Sunak was a more successful debater than they expected, but apparently people still much preferred Starmer.
Even the 39% who thought Sunak won with Survation is TWENTY percent more than the Tory share in tonight's Yougov
True.
Farage was rubbish in last night's debate - practically invisible
Sunak should thank his lucky stars Starmer has agreed to exclude Farage from all their debates otherwise he really would be in the deepest trouble.
Instead Reform confined to the 7 dwarfs debate where Tice not Farage will join the other minor party leaders and Rayner and Mordaunt
Which 4 parties are in BBC's 4 way debate?
Edit that's on June 20th the same day postal votes will be arriving through letter boxes.
Con, Lab, LD, SNP.
Note it's not a debate - it's 30 mins for each candidate on their own in Question Time format - ie audience asks questions and follows up with Fiona Bruce chipping in.
No Reform in this also sends subliminal message that they aren't a major party and cannot win.
Farage has already won the election, even if he doesn't win one seat. Labour is held back by caution, and the Tories ( and possibly the LD's ) by their relatively recent record. Perhaps we'll see a couple of Green and Reform seats to go with the big Starner majority, and a fair bit of anti-systemic voting on both the left and right.
The most important aspect of this election is whether the Tories can survive it as a significant force in British politics. If they go below about 130 seats they may not do so.
A lot of people thinking “Reform *surely* can’t get around 20%” are ignoring 3 things for me.
1) A few weeks of Farage on the TV, and more potential polls showing the Tories very far behind Labour, might make a lot of voters think “Sod it, I’m voting Reform”. Farage’s stated strategy is to reverse takeover the Tory Party - on Friday he might explicitly say “Rishi Sunak won’t be PM, but in a few years, I could be”
2) The 2019 European elections are of course not the same type or election nor political climate as now, but we saw 30% of votes go to the BXP in that. Another election where people thought “Well, the Tories can’t win anyway, and what’s the point”.
3) A lot of current Tory voters may warm to the LDs once Ed Davey gets a chance to be on TV a bit more in the campaign, and if the Tories look more defeated. This could swing a lot of Tory/LD marginals.
This is not to say it *will* happen but it certainly *can*.
I think Farage is extremely Marmite. Brexit is now very unpopular, so I really can't see what is driving this supposed surge for Reform. It feels off, but let's see what the next week brings.
I think you're conflating brexit with immigration, there.
Brexit was winnable because it was a broad coalition - ranging from Bennite lefties who think the EU is a neoliberal plot to drive down the wages of the working class (Corbyn was arguably one of them, which is why he stayed so silent) to Singapore-on-Thames style deregulatory hyper-capitalists, to people worried about democratic accountability (Lisbon treaty etc), and yes, a substantial chunk whose main concern was freedom of movement, or simply, immigration. That got Brexit to the famous 52%.
Immigration alone probably gets ReFUK to 20%. As a socially conservative leaning anti-immigration party, you're not going to vote Labour - and given the Tories have presided over the largest immigration figures in recent history, despite Brexit, you're not going to vote for them either. So where do you turn? Good old Nige, and good old UKIP, err, ReFUK.
If immigration is your #1 issue, which it clearly is for a lot of voters - Nige is your man. I could believe crossover at some point, if only for a poll or two.
The Tories have presided over the largest numbers of immigrants in ALL history, not “recent history”
Indeed the influx is so huge it is hard to find a precedent in the modern world in peacetime, tho Trudeau is having a bash in Canada
There's your housing crisis right there, together with your infrastructure investment crisis and your selling England by the pound crisis.
What do you think they're doing with the assets? Renting them out! It has no net effect on housing capacity & will almost certainly be better landlords than the people they're buying them from. The issue is we're millions of homes short, not the distribution of ownership.
What they are doing is taking the rent money (often paid by HMG) out of this country and into America. That's the problem. It makes us poorer, and America richer.
It's trading £x00m now for $0m every year going forward...
*I haven't even found evidence for the 9% on the doorsteps. Not close.
Whereabouts in the country have you been doorstepping?
Mark is down in Devon, and I can tell you from long experience that he has a sound reputation for accurate and honest reporting from the doorstep.
Devon is one of the least likely places to find reform voters, surely?
Its going to be red wallers and brexiteers in the cities and eastern England
The SW was pretty kippery when they were a thing.
I don’t believe this is Brexit related at all. This is all about the Tories and their failures (esp immigration and tax) and Farage just being a very good opportunist and populist
On my travels in the last election, previous UKIP VI was a pretty good map onto Brexit Party. I don’t think Farage is suddenly fishing in a different pond, an that pond has a limit lower than 20%
Maybe. But this is a very different election to any that has gone before
The Tories really might go extinct. It is an active possibility. What’s more as it becomes evermore possible so that drives more attention to Farage and reform so it feeds off itself. A bandwagon effect
It is at least very funny, as I’m sure you will agree
I suppose one point is that it is a subtly different 20-25% pool they are fishing in that is a lot more destructive to the Tories. The old UKIP hit Labour support as well as the Tories because it in effect had a single issue that appealed to a tranche of Labour voters too and was easily explainable - and importantly, achievable.
But those voters having gone Labour - UKIP - Tory - have now gone back to Labour having felt cheated by the blue team and wanting to punish them. Because they actually remained quite left-wing on stuff like the NHS and tax and spend. Just wanted out of the EU and didn't like Corbyn in 2019. Some will be, slightly grudgingly, back to Labour having got burnt.
Reform is more obviously right-wing populist and targeted at past Tory voters' dream prospectus. It's got immigration as its broader issue, but that's not as easily concentrated into a demand like the EU Referendum.
So Reform damages the Tories in a way UKIP didn't as it takes advantage of the Tories' unpopularity while peeling off previously rock solid voters while leaving Labour relatively untouched.
A lot of people thinking “Reform *surely* can’t get around 20%” are ignoring 3 things for me.
1) A few weeks of Farage on the TV, and more potential polls showing the Tories very far behind Labour, might make a lot of voters think “Sod it, I’m voting Reform”. Farage’s stated strategy is to reverse takeover the Tory Party - on Friday he might explicitly say “Rishi Sunak won’t be PM, but in a few years, I could be”
2) The 2019 European elections are of course not the same type or election nor political climate as now, but we saw 30% of votes go to the BXP in that. Another election where people thought “Well, the Tories can’t win anyway, and what’s the point”.
3) A lot of current Tory voters may warm to the LDs once Ed Davey gets a chance to be on TV a bit more in the campaign, and if the Tories look more defeated. This could swing a lot of Tory/LD marginals.
This is not to say it *will* happen but it certainly *can*.
I think Farage is extremely Marmite. Brexit is now very unpopular, so I really can't see what is driving this supposed surge for Reform. It feels off, but let's see what the next week brings.
Times are volatile, and Yougov give Farage a favourabilty rating in the thirties.
Imagine the scenes inside Number 10 right now. Remember Sunak absolutely didn’t have to call this vote, and he totally didn’t have to call it a week before the horrendous migration stats came out. But he did
I reckon he's been told he had to keep the second half of the year clear for 2 x Statty Fyoonz.
A lot of people thinking “Reform *surely* can’t get around 20%” are ignoring 3 things for me.
1) A few weeks of Farage on the TV, and more potential polls showing the Tories very far behind Labour, might make a lot of voters think “Sod it, I’m voting Reform”. Farage’s stated strategy is to reverse takeover the Tory Party - on Friday he might explicitly say “Rishi Sunak won’t be PM, but in a few years, I could be”
2) The 2019 European elections are of course not the same type or election nor political climate as now, but we saw 30% of votes go to the BXP in that. Another election where people thought “Well, the Tories can’t win anyway, and what’s the point”.
3) A lot of current Tory voters may warm to the LDs once Ed Davey gets a chance to be on TV a bit more in the campaign, and if the Tories look more defeated. This could swing a lot of Tory/LD marginals.
This is not to say it *will* happen but it certainly *can*.
I think Farage is extremely Marmite. Brexit is now very unpopular, so I really can't see what is driving this supposed surge for Reform. It feels off, but let's see what the next week brings.
Well, it's not the Fukkers' fault that Brexit is so shit, that's on the tories.
Imagine the scenes inside Number 10 right now. Remember Sunak absolutely didn’t have to call this vote, and he totally didn’t have to call it a week before the horrendous migration stats came out. But he did
Migration was down on those stats and he won last night's debate with Yougov which no main voteshare poll has yet caught
But he lost the debate by a bigger margin with Survation, and by a whopping 20% with JL partners.
Even the YouGov poll that was 51/49 gave Starmer +20% compared with +11% on who did well/badly, and Starmer won across a range of other measures by significant amounts.
All YouGov appear to have recorded is that Sunak was a more successful debater than they expected, but apparently people still much preferred Starmer.
Even the 39% who thought Sunak won with Survation is TWENTY percent more than the Tory share in tonight's Yougov
True.
Farage was rubbish in last night's debate - practically invisible
Sunak should thank his lucky stars Starmer has agreed to exclude Farage from all their debates otherwise he really would be in the deepest trouble.
Instead Reform confined to the 7 dwarfs debate where Tice not Farage will join the other minor party leaders and Rayner and Mordaunt
Which 4 parties are in BBC's 4 way debate?
Edit that's on June 20th the same day postal votes will be arriving through letter boxes.
Con, Lab, LD, SNP.
Note it's not a debate - it's 30 mins for each candidate on their own in Question Time format - ie audience asks questions and follows up with Fiona Bruce chipping in.
No Reform in this also sends subliminal message that they aren't a major party and cannot win.
As a strange stranger from an even stranger land, seems to me that the beleaguered has NOT committed a hanging offense. At least not personally, unless evidence to contrary.
Re; the questionable contributor, is this a case of poor vetting by whomever in VG's WLAB leadership campaign had the job of vetting donors & donations (campaign treasurer?) OR something worse?
If the former, my uniformed (but not inexperienced) guess, is that he survives. If otherwise, depends on degree. With little wiggle room or tolerance in that direction, from media, opponents AND supporters.
Most haven't changed their mind internally. The scenario in front of them now, in their eyes, is an innocent man, wrongly convicted by a corrupt and illegitimate President, not a typical convicted felon.
A lot of people thinking “Reform *surely* can’t get around 20%” are ignoring 3 things for me.
1) A few weeks of Farage on the TV, and more potential polls showing the Tories very far behind Labour, might make a lot of voters think “Sod it, I’m voting Reform”. Farage’s stated strategy is to reverse takeover the Tory Party - on Friday he might explicitly say “Rishi Sunak won’t be PM, but in a few years, I could be”
2) The 2019 European elections are of course not the same type or election nor political climate as now, but we saw 30% of votes go to the BXP in that. Another election where people thought “Well, the Tories can’t win anyway, and what’s the point”.
3) A lot of current Tory voters may warm to the LDs once Ed Davey gets a chance to be on TV a bit more in the campaign, and if the Tories look more defeated. This could swing a lot of Tory/LD marginals.
This is not to say it *will* happen but it certainly *can*.
I think Farage is extremely Marmite. Brexit is now very unpopular, so I really can't see what is driving this supposed surge for Reform. It feels off, but let's see what the next week brings.
I apologise in advance for the inherent boringness of what is effectively me giving a lecture in an article but I do have my reasons. Let me explain...
This article was written because of the European Parliament elections, due to start tomorrow. Ladbrokes priced it up using the political groups of the European Parliament, which is stupid because they often change their name after the election. I think they should have used the political parties at the European level instead.
That spark of irritation coincided with the YouTube discussion in the header and the discussion on PB about Mussolini's beginning, in which he used a list, and - bang - the article appeared.
I want political betting to expand beyond its Anglosphere/European limits, but to do that we must familiarise ourselves with things like the party list and the one-party state. Hence this lecture.
Sorry for being an arse, I'm sure there are multiple mistakes and I look forard to you pointing them out...
Forard?
FORARD?
I am absolutely disgusted at this spelling in your post. This entire thread, excellent as it is, should be taken down and consigned to a dustbin because of this below-the-line hideousness. Apologies, sir!
Tut. Viewcode is being metaphorical, using hunting or nautical terminology. Perfectly acceptable.
I feel compelled to state that I was joking with my post. I thought it was so obvious I was joking (because it was over-the-top) I did not even bother with a smiley...
Most haven't changed their mind internally. The scenario in front of them now, in their eyes, is an innocent man, wrongly convicted by a corrupt and illegitimate President, not a typical convicted felon.
It's the difference between the indefinite and the definite article. A convicted felon vs the convicted felon.
Imagine the scenes inside Number 10 right now. Remember Sunak absolutely didn’t have to call this vote, and he totally didn’t have to call it a week before the horrendous migration stats came out. But he did
Migration was down on those stats and he won last night's debate with Yougov which no main voteshare poll has yet caught
But he lost the debate by a bigger margin with Survation, and by a whopping 20% with JL partners.
Even the YouGov poll that was 51/49 gave Starmer +20% compared with +11% on who did well/badly, and Starmer won across a range of other measures by significant amounts.
All YouGov appear to have recorded is that Sunak was a more successful debater than they expected, but apparently people still much preferred Starmer.
Even the 39% who thought Sunak won with Survation is TWENTY percent more than the Tory share in tonight's Yougov
True.
Farage was rubbish in last night's debate - practically invisible
Sunak should thank his lucky stars Starmer has agreed to exclude Farage from all their debates otherwise he really would be in the deepest trouble.
Instead Reform confined to the 7 dwarfs debate where Tice not Farage will join the other minor party leaders and Rayner and Mordaunt
Which 4 parties are in BBC's 4 way debate?
Edit that's on June 20th the same day postal votes will be arriving through letter boxes.
Con, Lab, LD, SNP.
Note it's not a debate - it's 30 mins for each candidate on their own in Question Time format - ie audience asks questions and follows up with Fiona Bruce chipping in.
No Reform in this also sends subliminal message that they aren't a major party and cannot win.
Question Time Leaders’ Special Fiona Bruce will present a special two-hour programme in which leaders from the Conservative Party; the Labour Party; the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party will answer questions from the studio audience for thirty minutes each.
A lot of people thinking “Reform *surely* can’t get around 20%” are ignoring 3 things for me.
1) A few weeks of Farage on the TV, and more potential polls showing the Tories very far behind Labour, might make a lot of voters think “Sod it, I’m voting Reform”. Farage’s stated strategy is to reverse takeover the Tory Party - on Friday he might explicitly say “Rishi Sunak won’t be PM, but in a few years, I could be”
2) The 2019 European elections are of course not the same type or election nor political climate as now, but we saw 30% of votes go to the BXP in that. Another election where people thought “Well, the Tories can’t win anyway, and what’s the point”.
3) A lot of current Tory voters may warm to the LDs once Ed Davey gets a chance to be on TV a bit more in the campaign, and if the Tories look more defeated. This could swing a lot of Tory/LD marginals.
This is not to say it *will* happen but it certainly *can*.
I think Farage is extremely Marmite. Brexit is now very unpopular, so I really can't see what is driving this supposed surge for Reform. It feels off, but let's see what the next week brings.
I think you're conflating brexit with immigration, there.
Brexit was winnable because it was a broad coalition - ranging from Bennite lefties who think the EU is a neoliberal plot to drive down the wages of the working class (Corbyn was arguably one of them, which is why he stayed so silent) to Singapore-on-Thames style deregulatory hyper-capitalists, to people worried about democratic accountability (Lisbon treaty etc), and yes, a substantial chunk whose main concern was freedom of movement, or simply, immigration. That got Brexit to the famous 52%.
Immigration alone probably gets ReFUK to 20%. As a socially conservative leaning anti-immigration party, you're not going to vote Labour - and given the Tories have presided over the largest immigration figures in recent history, despite Brexit, you're not going to vote for them either. So where do you turn? Good old Nige, and good old UKIP, err, ReFUK.
If immigration is your #1 issue, which it clearly is for a lot of voters - Nige is your man. I could believe crossover at some point, if only for a poll or two.
The Tories have presided over the largest numbers of immigrants in ALL history, not “recent history”
Indeed the influx is so huge it is hard to find a precedent in the modern world in peacetime, tho Trudeau is having a bash in Canada
..which was ofcourse predicted by large numbers of people on the centre-left when so many European workers left over five years.
Brexit is part of the *cause* of this big increase, just as predicted, but mainly of non-European migrants that Brexit voters like even less. So, very comvincingly, one could say that Brexit is a key part of that very betrayal of one particular group of voters, itself.
*I haven't even found evidence for the 9% on the doorsteps. Not close.
Whereabouts in the country have you been doorstepping?
Mark is down in Devon, and I can tell you from long experience that he has a sound reputation for accurate and honest reporting from the doorstep.
Devon is one of the least likely places to find reform voters, surely?
Its going to be red wallers and brexiteers in the cities and eastern England
The SW was pretty kippery when they were a thing.
I don’t believe this is Brexit related at all. This is all about the Tories and their failures (esp immigration and tax) and Farage just being a very good opportunist and populist
On my travels in the last election, previous UKIP VI was a pretty good map onto Brexit Party. I don’t think Farage is suddenly fishing in a different pond, an that pond has a limit lower than 20%
Maybe. But this is a very different election to any that has gone before
The Tories really might go extinct. It is an active possibility. What’s more as it becomes evermore possible so that drives more attention to Farage and reform so it feeds off itself. A bandwagon effect
It is at least very funny, as I’m sure you will agree
They won't go extinct. Even the Canadian Tories got 16% in 1993 even if just 2 MPs under FPTP.
However all that meant was the Canadian Tories and Reform on 18% divided the right in Canada for a decade enabling the Liberals to win 3 general elections comfortably in 1993, 1997 and 2000 until the Tories and Reform eventually merged in 2003 to form today's Conservative Party of Canada. Finally after 13 years in opposition the Canadian right then returned to power under the Conservative government of Harper in 2006.
You can afford centre right and populist right parties splitting the right under PR as they can join together again after the election to form a government, as is the case in Italy, Spain, Austria, Sweden, New Zealand, Israel etc for example.
Under FPTP however it is suicide and just puts left woke liberals of the type you hate in power with big majorities for a decade or more
That's Canada, Hyufd. This is the UK.
What your Party needs to do is go off and have a good think about how it became the most successful political party ever in the history of Western Democracy, and what it needs to do recover to the point where the story continues. Stuff Canada. it has no relevance here.
Good luck.
Or maybe this a turning point, like 1924 for the Liberals.
Arrived in Paris in the rush hour. Heaving with cars, pedestrians and bikes. But the big change from last year (and I think others including @Leon have said the same) is the increase in the number of bikes and they are mad, really mad. I have done some dangerous things in my life, and I have cycled across Paris many times, but the cycle ride from the Gare du Nord to the Latin QTR this time is one of the scariest things I've ever done.
Nice to know I wasn't talking nonsense on this subject. I've been going on about it for a few months.
A lot of people thinking “Reform *surely* can’t get around 20%” are ignoring 3 things for me.
1) A few weeks of Farage on the TV, and more potential polls showing the Tories very far behind Labour, might make a lot of voters think “Sod it, I’m voting Reform”. Farage’s stated strategy is to reverse takeover the Tory Party - on Friday he might explicitly say “Rishi Sunak won’t be PM, but in a few years, I could be”
2) The 2019 European elections are of course not the same type or election nor political climate as now, but we saw 30% of votes go to the BXP in that. Another election where people thought “Well, the Tories can’t win anyway, and what’s the point”.
3) A lot of current Tory voters may warm to the LDs once Ed Davey gets a chance to be on TV a bit more in the campaign, and if the Tories look more defeated. This could swing a lot of Tory/LD marginals.
This is not to say it *will* happen but it certainly *can*.
I think Farage is extremely Marmite. Brexit is now very unpopular, so I really can't see what is driving this supposed surge for Reform. It feels off, but let's see what the next week brings.
I think you're conflating brexit with immigration, there.
Brexit was winnable because it was a broad coalition - ranging from Bennite lefties who think the EU is a neoliberal plot to drive down the wages of the working class (Corbyn was arguably one of them, which is why he stayed so silent) to Singapore-on-Thames style deregulatory hyper-capitalists, to people worried about democratic accountability (Lisbon treaty etc), and yes, a substantial chunk whose main concern was freedom of movement, or simply, immigration. That got Brexit to the famous 52%.
Immigration alone probably gets ReFUK to 20%. As a socially conservative leaning anti-immigration party, you're not going to vote Labour - and given the Tories have presided over the largest immigration figures in recent history, despite Brexit, you're not going to vote for them either. So where do you turn? Good old Nige, and good old UKIP, err, ReFUK.
If immigration is your #1 issue, which it clearly is for a lot of voters - Nige is your man. I could believe crossover at some point, if only for a poll or two.
The Tories have presided over the largest numbers of immigrants in ALL history, not “recent history”
Indeed the influx is so huge it is hard to find a precedent in the modern world in peacetime, tho Trudeau is having a bash in Canada
..which was ofcourse predicted by large numbers of people on the centre-left when so many European workers left over five years.
Brexit is part of the *cause* of this big increase, just as predicted, but mainly of non-European migrants that Brexit voters like even less ; so, very comvincingly, one could say that Brexit is a key part of that betrayal of one particular group of voters, itself.
There's your housing crisis right there, together with your infrastructure investment crisis and your selling England by the pound crisis.
What do you think they're doing with the assets? Renting them out! It has no net effect on housing capacity & will almost certainly be better landlords than the people they're buying them from. The issue is we're millions of homes short, not the distribution of ownership.
What they are doing is taking the rent money (often paid by HMG) out of this country and into America. That's the problem. It makes us poorer, and America richer.
But that's a problem we can fix.
Increase supply and those houses could be empty and no money going out.
In a healthy economy typically 10% of homes are empty, for good reasons, which means run down dumps are empty and renters have a choice.
That we're running over 99% capacity is a failure caused by our planning system meaning every landlord is pretty much guaranteed a tenant regardless how expensive they are or how slummy their home is.
Farage has already won the election, even if he doesn't win one seat. Labour is held back by caution, and the Tories ( and possibly the LD's ) by their relatively recent record. Perhaps we'll see a couple of Green and Reform seats to go with the big Starner majority, and a fair bit of anti-systemic voting on both the left and right.
The most important aspect of this election is whether the Tories can survive it as a significant force in British politics. If they go below about 130 seats they may not do so.
They will survive, but probably in Faragist form. Indeed, he may already be the key winner after Starmer.
Arrived in Paris in the rush hour. Heaving with cars, pedestrians and bikes. But the big change from last year (and I think others including @Leon have said the same) is the increase in the number of bikes and they are mad, really mad. I have done some dangerous things in my life, and I have cycled across Paris many times, but the cycle ride from the Gare du Nord to the Latin QTR this time is one of the scariest things I've ever done.
Nice to know I wasn't talking nonsense on this subject. I've been going on about it for a few months.
I'm unsure what the issue is in Paris, but perhaps my cynicism about cyclists (and I did a 15-mile fun ride earlier) is based on my experience in Cambridge. When I worked in the city many moons ago, I noticed a pattern. For much of the year, cyclists were sane. Then the summer language schools came in, and cyclists would be all over the place; often literally. Then the new students arrived in September, and it got worse. Then, over the course of the year, cycling standards improved, only to worsen again in early September. I always wondered if the really bad cyclists were just improving their cycling skills, or were Darwin Award participants...
Imagine the scenes inside Number 10 right now. Remember Sunak absolutely didn’t have to call this vote, and he totally didn’t have to call it a week before the horrendous migration stats came out. But he did
Migration was down on those stats and he won last night's debate with Yougov which no main voteshare poll has yet caught
But he lost the debate by a bigger margin with Survation, and by a whopping 20% with JL partners.
Even the YouGov poll that was 51/49 gave Starmer +20% compared with +11% on who did well/badly, and Starmer won across a range of other measures by significant amounts.
All YouGov appear to have recorded is that Sunak was a more successful debater than they expected, but apparently people still much preferred Starmer.
Even the 39% who thought Sunak won with Survation is TWENTY percent more than the Tory share in tonight's Yougov
True.
Farage was rubbish in last night's debate - practically invisible
Sunak should thank his lucky stars Starmer has agreed to exclude Farage from all their debates otherwise he really would be in the deepest trouble.
Instead Reform confined to the 7 dwarfs debate where Tice not Farage will join the other minor party leaders and Rayner and Mordaunt
Which 4 parties are in BBC's 4 way debate?
Edit that's on June 20th the same day postal votes will be arriving through letter boxes.
Con, Lab, LD, SNP.
Note it's not a debate - it's 30 mins for each candidate on their own in Question Time format - ie audience asks questions and follows up with Fiona Bruce chipping in.
No Reform in this also sends subliminal message that they aren't a major party and cannot win.
Most haven't changed their mind internally. The scenario in front of them now, in their eyes, is an innocent man, wrongly convicted by a corrupt and illegitimate President, not a typical convicted felon.
I assumed that's why the answer is not around 75% supportive, in that 58% accept the premise of the question (knowing the reason its been asked is about Trump) at least enough to answer it, the rest refuse to engage at all with it.
Comments
The Tories really might go extinct. It is an active possibility. What’s more as it becomes evermore possible so that drives more attention to Farage and reform so it feeds off itself. A bandwagon effect
It is at least very funny, as I’m sure you will agree
He knows perfectly well what was going on but of course he cannot and would not say it in so many words. It would just meet a blunt denial. Instead he draws them out, he cuts off their lines of escape, and when he does confront them there is nowhere for them to hide, so no reasonable person could conclude anything other than what he knows to be the truth.
He skewered Perkins today. In the end she was reduced to saying 'Nobody told me', which prompted him to ask how it could be that successive Counsels and a whole series of consultants over a long period of time and a range of explosive issues all failed to inform her and the Board of the crucial evidence that would have compelled them to confront the awful truth of Britain's worst ever miscarriage of justice.
She was reduced to saying 'I don't know.' But Jason Beer does, and now it's plain for all to see.
https://x.com/rorystewartuk/status/1798075418714743008
Chesterfield is on 2 levels roughly, with the Hipper Valley (ah Blossom Dearie, dad's favourite*) through the middle. This 1970s pedestrian / cycle flyover on Lordsmill Road is 2m wide and 100m+ long, about 35ft high with a spiral ramp each end.
I cycled over it by mistake whilst working on a summer project - Wheeling and Cycling routes to Hardwick Hall, following the NT Active Travel resolution at their last AGM. The railings are lower than my handlebars and it is a touch frightening. The area is as horrible as the Derby ring road.
In April someone fell off it and was killed. Maybe drunk, I don't know. Now there is a better one built down the street.
https://www.google.com/maps/search/lordsmill+lane/@53.2309427,-1.4203722,60a,35y,290.25h,71.23t/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu
* https://youtu.be/EMB5CzzWXMQ?t=18
However all that meant was the Canadian Tories and Reform on 18% divided the right in Canada for a decade enabling the Liberals to win 3 general elections comfortably in 1993, 1997 and 2000 until the Tories and Reform eventually merged in 2003 to form today's Conservative Party of Canada. Finally after 13 years in opposition the Canadian right then returned to power under the Conservative government of Harper in 2006.
You can afford centre right and populist right parties splitting the right under PR as they can join together again after the election to form a government, as is the case in Italy, Spain, Austria, Sweden, New Zealand, Israel etc for example.
Under FPTP however it is suicide and just puts left woke liberals of the type you hate in power with big majorities for a decade or more
At the very least, the change in YouGov’s methodology should induce some caution because what matters at the moment is being able to compare like for like.
So wait and see how other polls look post-Farage post-debate.
Even the YouGov poll that was 51/49 gave Starmer +20% compared with +11% on who did well/badly, and Starmer won across a range of other measures by significant amounts.
All YouGov appear to have recorded is that Sunak was a more successful debater than they expected, but apparently people still much preferred Starmer.
Did I say it 'would' lead to anything? No, I did not.
At the moment they are into the third party 2 questions a week at PMQs area...
What a jolly jape a result like 15 CON / 25 REF / 35 LAB would be! Baxtered that’s a Lab majority of 232 on 35% of the vote!
Feels like people will be much more aware of it this time round and it might help Labour / the LDs greatly
I can see why it has retained a lot of UKIP / Brexit support because Brexit was screwed up by someone who wasn't Nigel Farage...
What your Party needs to do is go off and have a good think about how it became the most successful political party ever in the history of Western Democracy, and what it needs to do recover to the point where the story continues. Stuff Canada. it has no relevance here.
Good luck.
I gave up at line 1 (by far the biggest item), where #Labour assumes that the Tories would abolish NI *completely* in the *first* year of the next parliament 🙄
#generalelection
source: labour.org.uk/wp-content/upl…
https://x.com/julianhjessop/status/1798403853966029069?
Now Rishi isn't as novice as Kim Campbell was, but he's certainly lightweight...
If the debate got anything across it was of the pox-on-both-your-houses sentiment, or at least I would guess it did to some. So I would guess that a few people at least might throw a cross by reform as a middle finger to them both.
It doesn't matter if you were the most successful party in the entire universe if another party on the right takes half your votes, the fact the Conservatives have largely had the right to themselves is what has made them so successful under FPTP.
If that no longer applies the Tories may as well even back PR
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media/GPUKjuoWYAAQNEx.jpg
ie Up to say 12%, UKIP took vast majority of its votes from Conservative.
But as it then moved up further - say from 12% to 16% - then of that further 4%, at least as many if not more were coming from Labour.
Indeed I remember analysis on here saying UKIP had been directly responsible for Con actually winning some seats - maybe in North Wales but not not certain.
Worth keeping in mind re possibility of something similar this time if Reform really do keep moving up - which of course they may not.
Tom Hunt has today denied he is one (over the Holden farrago), similarly Marco Longhi has publicly called for a deal but isn't jumping
Farage was rubbish in last night's debate - practically invisible
Not suprisingly, the members of these fraternities tended to vote together, too.
Instead Reform confined to the 7 dwarfs debate where Tice not Farage will join the other minor party leaders and Rayner and Mordaunt
Brexit was winnable because it was a broad coalition - ranging from Bennite lefties who think the EU is a neoliberal plot to drive down the wages of the working class (Corbyn was arguably one of them, which is why he stayed so silent) to Singapore-on-Thames style deregulatory hyper-capitalists, to people worried about democratic accountability (Lisbon treaty etc), and yes, a substantial chunk whose main concern was freedom of movement, or simply, immigration. That got Brexit to the famous 52%.
Immigration alone probably gets ReFUK to 20%. As a socially conservative leaning anti-immigration party, you're not going to vote Labour - and given the Tories have presided over the largest immigration figures in recent history, despite Brexit, you're not going to vote for them either. So where do you turn? Good old Nige, and good old UKIP, err, ReFUK.
If immigration is your #1 issue, which it clearly is for a lot of voters - Nige is your man. I could believe crossover at some point, if only for a poll or two.
Edit that's on June 20th the same day postal votes will be arriving through letter boxes.
Reform-Canada were able to nab a decent block of seats (and seats is what matters) because their vote was geographically concentrated.
If Reform-UK and the Conservatives fight themselves to a standstill, the first thing that happens is that Labour ease past them in lots of places and end up with an absurd number of seats, while both right parties end up with a handful each.
Labour is held back by caution, and the Tories ( and possibly the LD's ) by their relatively recent record.
Perhaps we'll see a couple of Green and Reform seats to go with the big Starner majority, and a fair bit of anti-systemic voting on both the left and right.
Calculations based on UNS are notoriously unsound precisely because they fail to take account of things like Swingback and Tactical Voting. You would expect these two factors to cancel out to a large extent this time....except I'm not that sure about Swingback, especially now we have some pollsters adjusting to take it into account.
TV on the other hand ought to be a real factor.
Sorry, but this is not good news for Rishi.
But which is which?
One of the reasons why you will now experience a Labour Government for at least 10 years is the Right’s psychotic obsession with issues which are best peripheral to the voting majority.
Reform planning and have their investments become loss making ones as supply increases so price falls.
Problem solved.
That would explain much.
Obsequiousness would work for small things, but for big stuff? Nah.
I think that confirms my theory that there won't be much swingback for the Tories in this election unless something really changes.
Tories 0 seats
Labour 0 seats
The People's Front of Judea 0 seats
Front of Judea People's Party 0 seats
Lib Dems 0 seats
SNP 0 seats
Note it's not a debate - it's 30 mins for each candidate on their own in Question Time format - ie audience asks questions and follows up with Fiona Bruce chipping in.
No Reform in this also sends subliminal message that they aren't a major party and cannot win.
I guess they sort of answer it, to pick up tactical voting and reallocate don’t knows… but I agree that it’s not very clear.
Indeed the influx is so huge it is hard to find a precedent in the modern world in peacetime, tho Trudeau is having a bash in Canada
But those voters having gone Labour - UKIP - Tory - have now gone back to Labour having felt cheated by the blue team and wanting to punish them. Because they actually remained quite left-wing on stuff like the NHS and tax and spend. Just wanted out of the EU and didn't like Corbyn in 2019. Some will be, slightly grudgingly, back to Labour having got burnt.
Reform is more obviously right-wing populist and targeted at past Tory voters' dream prospectus. It's got immigration as its broader issue, but that's not as easily concentrated into a demand like the EU Referendum.
So Reform damages the Tories in a way UKIP didn't as it takes advantage of the Tories' unpopularity while peeling off previously rock solid voters while leaving Labour relatively untouched.
Going to be strange having the SNP leader answering questions from an audience in York...
As a strange stranger from an even stranger land, seems to me that the beleaguered has NOT committed a hanging offense. At least not personally, unless evidence to contrary.
Re; the questionable contributor, is this a case of poor vetting by whomever in VG's WLAB leadership campaign had the job of vetting donors & donations (campaign treasurer?) OR something worse?
If the former, my uniformed (but not inexperienced) guess, is that he survives. If otherwise, depends on degree. With little wiggle room or tolerance in that direction, from media, opponents AND supporters.
I'm guessing. Or rather soothsaying.
Party - Share - Seats
CON - 18.0% - 19
LAB - 45.0% - 546
LIB - 8.0% - 47
Reform - 18.0% - 0
Green - 6.0% - 2
SNP - 3.1% - 14
PlaidC - 0.7% - 4
https://x.com/EdConwaySky/status/1798005491672678768
Fiona Bruce will present a special two-hour programme in which leaders from the Conservative Party; the Labour Party; the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party will answer questions from the studio audience for thirty minutes each.
Brexit is part of the *cause* of this big increase, just as predicted, but mainly of non-European migrants that Brexit voters like even less. So, very comvincingly, one could say that Brexit is a key part of that very betrayal of one particular group of voters, itself.
Tories 0 seats
Labour 0 seats
The People's Front of Judea 0 seats
Front of Judea People's Party 0 seats
Lib Dems 0 seats
SNP 0 seats
That’s the whole PURPOSE of Robertsian Reallocation
Increase supply and those houses could be empty and no money going out.
In a healthy economy typically 10% of homes are empty, for good reasons, which means run down dumps are empty and renters have a choice.
That we're running over 99% capacity is a failure caused by our planning system meaning every landlord is pretty much guaranteed a tenant regardless how expensive they are or how slummy their home is.
Indeed, he may already be the key winner after Starmer.
As I said, dividing the right under FPTP is suicide, unless Reform and the Tories merge they may as well both back PR
Would do absolutely nothing to solve the housing shortage.
Labour 0 seats
Tories 0 seats
The People's Front of Judea 0 seats
Front of Judea People's Party 0 seats
Lib Dems 0 seats
SNP 0 seats
You'll see a very consistent picture. With only Labour and the Tories swapping places.
I wouldn't be surprised if they bring some people down from Scotland to be in the audience.