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Unite the right – politicalbetting.com
Unite the right – politicalbetting.com
The Tories are unlikely to attract many Reform UK voters given… – Only 36% would vote Tory if a Reform UK candidate wasn't standing – 61% are voting Reform despite thinking they won't win in their seat – 75% say the Tories and Labour are as bad as each other – 74-76%… pic.twitter.com/P7UpQvMAfJ
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Has everybody given up campaigning? What is going on?
I'd like to thank everyone who got me where I am today.
Wonderful cinematography and direction, and the country in 1966 and 1967 visible through the period setting.
It's eleven men behind the ball for Labour.
For the Tories. Everything they say or do is ridiculed. So they may as well shut up.
We need Davey to bungy jump naked off Tower Bridge or something.
The spotlight will return as the day approaches - I guess kicked off by the BBC’s head-to-head the week before.
They're the only Tory MPs who don't have a Reform or Reform-endorsed SDP (there are some local deals where Reform endorsed SDP candidates) candidate running against them.
If Farage were to drop a bombshell that one of those four had defected to Reform during the campaign and they'd deliberately not run a candidate in that constituency so they could endorse him, which one do you think it would be and can anyone find a market for defections?
I remember my first film too.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13533265/trooping-colour-rishi-sunak-wife-akshata-murty-soaked-rain.html
Inside ‘zombie party’ Tory HQ, where blame game has already begun
‘People don’t quite appreciate how dire things are,’ one insider says as the Conservatives reel from D-Day fiasco and a poll showing Reform has overtaken them
On Thursday afternoon Akshata Murty, the prime minister’s wife, paid a visit to Conservative campaign headquarters in an attempt to lift spirits. Accompanied by the Sunaks’ dog, Nova, she handed out cookies to staffers, telling them that 3pm was usually when her husband needed a sugar hit.
By all accounts, they need it. The atmosphere in CCHQ is bleak. Ever since Sunak’s “spectacular” own goal over D-Day the energy levels have dropped, with the atmosphere described by one staffer as one of “quiet desperation”.
The source said: “The first ten days were manic chaos, which is often the way during the early stages of the campaign. There was a decent amount of energy. But since the D-Day fiasco it’s become a mood of just quiet desperation.”
The trouble is that for the Tories it appears to be getting worse. On Tuesday, Sunak launched his manifesto at Silverstone, an event that went off — unusually for this particular Tory campaign — without a hitch.
The prime minister pledged to introduce £17 billion worth of tax cuts, funded with a crackdown on tax avoidance and evasion and an overhaul of the welfare system. But for all the fanfare and fiscal firepower, there has so far been no evidence that it is cutting through.
On Thursday night, half an hour before the latest seven-way televised leadership debate, The Times published a poll from YouGov. It showed that, for the first time, Reform was polling above the Tories.
Although Reform’s lead over the Tories, by one point at 19 per cent, is well within the margin of error, it hit morale hard. The fear inside CCHQ is that the Tories could be on the cusp of a generational pummelling.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/inside-zombie-party-tory-hq-where-blame-game-has-already-begun-cltc5rjsk
Seem to remember something about it going up to 80k in the 2019 campaign.
Also has Sunak ruled out lowering the capital gains allowance by a further 75%?
That's already costing a couple selling a second property over £5000 in extra tax
Seem to remember that not being mentioned in 2019
Keep voting for the people who actually raise taxes and they'll keep actually raising taxes.
Since I seem to be preoccupied with the Yellows today, I may as well mention that Sporting have tweaked the spread on their seat numbers up to 53-57. I wouldn't buy or sell at that level, but I do think it is inconsistent with the Betfair market on Most Seats Without Labour, where the LDs are available at 4.5 (7/2 in old money.)
That looks like a back to me, but I may be talking my own book a bit.
Thoughts anyone?
Lab lead up as it was 18 a week ago
Could be Lab and Tory down I suppose as they were 42/24 last time
I am writing a thread about the spreads as we speak.
You had the spending now you have to pay the tax.
Just give everyone a week off before anything starts - the Irish system of making the count take forever works for them; all but a few candidates know their personal outcome and can just have a rest. Can't start any coalition negotiations until you have final numbers for the parties, so everyone holes up at home and catches up on sleep.
They are part of the reason casinos now use continuous shuffle
Not in the Red Wall as repeatedly asserted.
Or the tax we didn't pay for decades because a large number of workers were paying for a small number of pensioners.
Some of that is true across the West- especially the worker/pensioner thing. But some of it is because, for decades now, we have voted for spuriously low taxes. The 1st Earl of Stockton had something to say about that.
@JohnRentoul
Spectacular photo of John Curtice from 1992
What was yours then?
More than a third of many Canadian journalists’ salaries are now effectively being paid by Justin Trudeau’s government—an arrangement that’s created an obvious conflict of interest.
Jonathan Kay"
https://quillette.com/2024/06/14/governments-shouldnt-be-paying-journalists-salaries/
https://x.com/Football__Tweet/status/1801722411085402353
With money running short, the source said, there was a trickier conversation — where to spend it. The definition of a marginal is changing. The original plan, and expenditure on the back of it, was to pursue an “80-20” strategy — defending the 80 most marginal constituencies and attempting to pick up 20 gains.
There is now a discussion about whether the money would be better spent on seats that were previously considered safe, with majorities of between 10,000 and 20,000. A decision is expected next week.
OK, pretty rational, try to build a firebreak. A 10k majority is about a ten percent swing to overturn. (Sorry- just noticed that. Probably obvious to everyone else. I suppose with a total vote of 50k it would have to be.) Places like Macclesfield. It bakes in 120 losses or so before the election even starts, takes the Conservatives down to 250 at best, which I'm sure they would be massively relived by.
Defending a twenty percent swing is around about 275 losses, 100 Conservative MPs left. Places like Chichester and Romford are falling. Is that the right band to try and fight the last stand?
And how, in the name of all that is good and right-wing, is the Conservative "most sucessful electoral machine in the world" Party thinking about this now, with a decision next Trussing week?
https://x.com/JonnyValleyBoy/status/1801398996457394420
My main memory was my fascination with Jill St. John's bra, and amusement at the Russian baddies. One of the louchest and most offbeat of Bond films, as I remember; ;goofy humour, slow and languid scenes, and leopardprint sofas ; 1970's Las Vegas.
Fpt my story is fairly simple, I used to be on a high income, paying 40% on that and investing about half my net PAYE pay. Over the last decade I've accumulated seven figures in unrealised gains.
Let's assume 1,000,000 exactly for a quick calculation. At current rates that's 200k tax. Which is doable. At 40% that becomes 400k in tax. Which to avoid, you have to leave the UK for 5 years after making the disposal (preferably in a 0% jurisdiction such as Dubai.)
So the choice is to pay HMRC 400k, or spend, say, 200k on a nice 5 year holiday backpacking round the far east, and still being up 200k more than if remaining in the UK. From a personal perspective it really is a no brainer and I imagine most would be exploring the same options I currently am.
Capital is mobile, and tbh I'd rather pay a reasonable amount. Cgt at 40%+ would be one of the most punitive tax regimes in the world and a lot of people with more than a million or two in gains - think successful entrepreneurs cashing out of their businesses - will be making the same calculation.
Also while you can up sticks it’s a lot harder for other people
However I am still earning nicely and can expect to do so for a few years yet. So I want to protect my income. I’m done with giving 40-50% of that income to a country which spunks it on rubbish public services, endless woke nonsense, a declining civic realm, asylum seekers in hotels, a migrant incoming every minute, and then coolly regards me as a toxic cis-het white male who should be at the back of every queue
I’ve paid a lot of tax to HMRC. They’ve got more out of me than I ever got from them
But I’m not paying any more to UK PLC, and certainly not under Labour
My guess is most would not be in the "making an immediate one off seven figure capital gain in a single year" boat.
It's all over bar a bit of shouting, isn't it?
The thing that gets me is a 40% cgt hits people like me who already paid 40% on our work incomes, invested the rest, and did well on the markets.
When what you really want to be going for is the "born with millions and living off the family trust fund" crowd who are far wealthier than I will ever be.
I worked 12+ hours days at my corporate drone job for years, spent little and invested my money wisely. A 1%'er I am most certainly not.
As I said in the previous thread, it's the ladder curve in action. Tax my investments at 20% and you get a few hundred thousand for UK plc's coffers, tax them at 40% and it's in my best interest to get out entirely.
And at the end of the day, we are all governed by rational self interest.
Someone today posted this question to reddit:-
Does anyone know why so many planes were flying in different formations over London/stratford? We saw a British airways plane with two small ones accompanying it, then another big passenger plane with two small ones, then three little green planes, then 5 red planes flying in an arrow shape? Just curious what is going on?
https://www.reddit.com/r/london/comments/1dggk6s/whats_up_with_the_planes_flying_over_stratford/
In the article it states that Opinium has Labour on 40 (-2) and Lib Dems on 12. No other figures
The top 1% of earners have more than 30% of total income
It’s 15C, cloudy, with a raw wind. Like late March but it’s mid June
What rich person with mobility is gonna stick around for that PLUS hefty Labour taxes and 1m migrants every 2 months?
It is really, really tough to forecast Reform seats on that basis, beyond what I will say are the “easiest three” - Clacton, Ashfield and Boston and Skegness.
We really are in a pickle
I have considered my options re my own portfolio and "derisking the lot into old-man dividend stocks asap" is the right answer for me.
Ultimately the potential switch from 20% to 40% tax isn't just a tax rise, it's a huge shock that will have a major impact on people's behaviour. If (when) the government suddenly implements a tax change that makes it cheaper for me to take a five year holiday than carry on working and paying tax in the UK, the laffer curve is well and truly in effect here and tax take will be down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_political_jokes
There are a few that I hadn’t heard before. And, for some reason, it doesn’t include one of my favorites:
A Russian gets drunk and begins marching around Red Square, shouting, “Putin is a madman, Putin is a madman.”
Naturally he is arrested, given a quick trial, and sentenced to eleven years in the Gulag.
Why eleven years? One year for insulting Russia’s leader, ten years for revealing a state secret.
Many years ago, I heard a slightly different version of the joke (fool instead of madman) told about Khrushchev.
(Cross posted at Patterico's.)
When push comes to shove, only one part of that alliance can win.