What's astonishing is that William Hill had 100/1 available on no Scottish Tory seats just a couple of weeks ago.
Of course, they only allowed me 79p, but still.
Rural scots will help the Tories.
Yep - anti-SNP tactical voting is going to help the Tories in Scotland.
Hmmm, this is possible, but I can't make the pieces fit. Given that the Scottish Conservative vote is rural, and given that the polling shows the Scottish Conservatives losing about 40% of their vote share, it looks quite dangerous for them. They won 6 seats in 2019. I think they win two or three seats this time.
As ever the Tory antipathy north of Gretna is underestimated, Unionist Tories will hold their noses, Unionist SLabbers not so much. The days of the Labour hierarchy sending coded messages about tactical voting are past, it would pretty much crap over their 'vote for us to get rid of the Tories' mantra.
Yes. I think there will still be some tactical voting in Scotland, but it'll be in the other direction: Conservatives voting Labour or Lib Dem to keep the SNP out. This is going to have an effect on central belt seats, to be sure. But it won't save rural Tories. SNP: 19 seats, SCon: (I'm going to stick my neck out slightly here) 2
I think the Tories will only lose the new Aberdeenshire North and Moray East and Gordon and Buchan seats which were largely SNP in 1997 anyway and maybe Dumfries and Galloway which went Labour in 1997.
I think they will hold Roxburgh and Berwickshire, Dumfrieshire, Clydesdale and Tweedale and Aberdeenshire W and Kincardine which were LD in 1997 given the LD voteshare is lower now than it was back then still
I think the Tories will probably hold on to Dumfries and Galloway, otherwise I agree with you.
Lots of people talking about Tom Tugendhat being the One Nation candidate for the leadership, but they seem to have forgotten that he's quite likely to lose his seat to the LDs.
No, he isn't. Tonbridge and Malling had a 26,000 Tory majority in 2019. Tunbridge Wells might go LD, Tonbridge won't
Lots of people talking about Tom Tugendhat being the One Nation candidate for the leadership, but they seem to have forgotten that he's quite likely to lose his seat to the LDs.
I think 'quite likely' is overstating it a bit, he has a 27,000 majority
Hope you're feeling better - heard you had some ill health.
Our local tory mp hasn't given up. Still paying to get leaflets delivered but suspect his time is up.
Thanks, yes - had a stroke 8 weeks ago. Pretty much back to normal now except for a need to sleep for an hour most afternoons, and occasional struggles with memory.
That's pretty much where I'm at now! Keep on keeping on..
Blimey, PBers have been through the wars on the health front.
Hope you all look after yourselves.
Just to make it absolutely clear, I increasingly like (but don't usually get) a nap of an afternoon and have an occasional memory fart! The latter is a bit more concerning as my mother's side of the family have a strong incidence of dementia, but fit can ye dae. Nevertheless thanks for kind thoughts.
https://www.iaindale.com/articles/is-starmergeddon-coming-for-the-tories ..If what I am hearing is right, CCHQ has more or less given up the ghost. I have heard of three candidates in Tory held seats with majorities of between four and six thousand, who have been ordered to shut down their campaigns and redeploy themselves to help cabinet ministers with majorities in excess of 20,000. And if they refuse, their computer logins to the party systems are cancelled and they’re told they won’t remain on the candidates list after the election...
I wonder how someone in (say) Steve Baker's position would feel about that ?
True or not, I'm not at a point in my life where I give a shit about Steve Baker's feelings
Isn't that rather the wrong attitude? You might disagree with Baker on virtually everything, but he appears to be a very decent bloke with integrity, and politics would be better for more of them on all sides. I would say the same about the late Frank Field (with whom I agreed very little), or possibly even Denis Skinner (with whom I agree even less).
I'd rather have a parliament made up of that quality of MP even if I largely disagree with them, than most of the current crop (on both sides of the house) which seems to be comprised of two faced PR men whose only thought on every issue is "what's in it for me".
He is a unhappy person. Deep down I would bet on it.
You are the Tory campaign director and I claim my £5.
Lots of people talking about Tom Tugendhat being the One Nation candidate for the leadership, but they seem to have forgotten that he's quite likely to lose his seat to the LDs.
I think 'quite likely' is overstating it a bit, he has a 27,000 majority
Yes but it has the right demographics for a big swing to the LDs with lots of Lab supporters voting tactically. RefUK won't do that well there because it's too middle-class.
What's astonishing is that William Hill had 100/1 available on no Scottish Tory seats just a couple of weeks ago.
Of course, they only allowed me 79p, but still.
Rural scots will help the Tories.
Yep - anti-SNP tactical voting is going to help the Tories in Scotland.
Hmmm, this is possible, but I can't make the pieces fit. Given that the Scottish Conservative vote is rural, and given that the polling shows the Scottish Conservatives losing about 40% of their vote share, it looks quite dangerous for them. They won 6 seats in 2019. I think they win two or three seats this time.
They could win more seats in Scotland than London.
WIl they win Havering? London cabbie country?
Labour won every seat in Havering in 1997 but the Tories won Upminster and Romford back in 2001 though Hornchurch and Dagenham stayed Labour. Rosindell at least should hold on by squeezing the Reform vote given he basically is a Reform MP in all but name anyway
Lots of people talking about Tom Tugendhat being the One Nation candidate for the leadership, but they seem to have forgotten that he's quite likely to lose his seat to the LDs.
Are you sure ?
It's a Tory hold with YG, EC and NS and a Labour gain with Ipsos.
What's astonishing is that William Hill had 100/1 available on no Scottish Tory seats just a couple of weeks ago.
Of course, they only allowed me 79p, but still.
Rural scots will help the Tories.
Yep - anti-SNP tactical voting is going to help the Tories in Scotland.
Hmmm, this is possible, but I can't make the pieces fit. Given that the Scottish Conservative vote is rural, and given that the polling shows the Scottish Conservatives losing about 40% of their vote share, it looks quite dangerous for them. They won 6 seats in 2019. I think they win two or three seats this time.
They could win more seats in Scotland than London.
WIl they win Havering? London cabbie country?
Labour won every seat in Havering in 1997 but the Tories won Upminster and Romford back in 2001 though Hornchurch and Dagenham stayed Labour
Still buzzing about JK Rowling coming out as a literal communist yesterday. We tried to tell you she was cracked and you didn't believe us.
At least it made me check the Communist Party leaflet I received last week (still the only unsolicited election literature I've received) more closely.
Women's Rights Give women full protection of the against domestic violence and misogyny. Pension justice for WASPI women. Protect women's sex-based rights. Equal pay for every type of work. Full rights to socialised child care. End sexism in society.
A bit wooly and it strikes me that Jakey is loading a whole lot of hopium on the highlighted sentence.
"Protect women's sex-based rights" and "End sexism in society" are contradictory. Sex-based rights are sexist by definition.
Not really. Maternity leave, for example, is a sex based right. You're stretching a definition to breaking point to say that is sexist. Even in the absence of paternity leave, leave for the mother at and after the time of the birth is not sexist even if there is no male equivalent.
To govern is to choose. The nature of politics is governed by the pre-political fact that not all good things are compatible with all other good things. A (small 'l') liberal society can only go so far in accommodating, for example, both toleration and equality for all cases and alleged cases of gender/sex dysphoria and at the same time privacy and safety for all women and girls (in the traditional sense of those words). Choices have to be made; all are hurtful to someone. The politics which simply denies the limits, the hurt and the reality of the choice is damaging, and there is lots of it about.
Lots of people talking about Tom Tugendhat being the One Nation candidate for the leadership, but they seem to have forgotten that he's quite likely to lose his seat to the LDs.
I think 'quite likely' is overstating it a bit, he has a 27,000 majority
Yes but it has the right demographics for a big swing to the LDs with lots of Lab supporters voting tactically. RefUK won't do that well there because it's too middle-class.
It's the 16th safest Tory seat, if it goes, they're all going. I mean, sure, it could, but 'quite likely' is overdoing it, especially as Lab were second in 2017
I'm...just... so... glad... Rishi Sunak.. called an early...eleecczzzzzzzz.....
Is this the only GE in history where everyone in the Conservative Party has given up?
Whilst the campaign has been spectacularly inept, I just have this feeling that there must have been some issue buried deep down to make him cut and run in this way.
I do think it might well be the King. If Sunak was told there was a considerable risk KCIII would die during an autumn election campaign, then we won't hear about it until after KCIII passes away, but it would probably make people think more kindly of Sunak. He went unprepared into an election campaign to ease the concerns of the Monarch.
Though the Tories should have been well-prepared for an election at any time.
Doesn't pass the smell test for me. Even Tories are not venal enough to bet on the date of an election caused by the King's health concerns and it's impossible to be that exact.
And Davey has shown repeatedly that getting wet in an election campaign is not of itself a problem, it's how you get wet.
Ed is all right. He has fun!
There's a large number of sub-posties who would love to have been having fun getting wet. Instead, they were being locked up for 23 hours a day because Ed Davey was considerably incurious.
Hope you're feeling better - heard you had some ill health.
Our local tory mp hasn't given up. Still paying to get leaflets delivered but suspect his time is up.
Thanks, yes - had a stroke 8 weeks ago. Pretty much back to normal now except for a need to sleep for an hour most afternoons, and occasional struggles with memory.
That's pretty much where I'm at now! Keep on keeping on..
Blimey, PBers have been through the wars on the health front.
Hope you all look after yourselves.
Too many of us are on the wrong side of the healthy life expectancy graph.
What's astonishing is that William Hill had 100/1 available on no Scottish Tory seats just a couple of weeks ago.
Of course, they only allowed me 79p, but still.
Rural scots will help the Tories.
Yep - anti-SNP tactical voting is going to help the Tories in Scotland.
Hmmm, this is possible, but I can't make the pieces fit. Given that the Scottish Conservative vote is rural, and given that the polling shows the Scottish Conservatives losing about 40% of their vote share, it looks quite dangerous for them. They won 6 seats in 2019. I think they win two or three seats this time.
They could win more seats in Scotland than London.
WIl they win Havering? London cabbie country?
It's likely to be tighter than comfortable in both Romford and Hornchuch/Upminster, mostly because of right wing votes peeling off to Reform.
Rosser's latest missive is getting a bit hysterical- apparently he's the only one left who can speak up for Romford and save us from Khan's Labour. (Is it a dog whistle when everyone can hear it?) But whilst a lot of the MRPs have both seats very tight, it doesn't feel like the front line of a general election out there.
Before I disappear back into the garden again I'd just like to draw everyone's attention to tomorrow's big event in the Post Office Inquiry.
Gareth Jenkins begins four days of testimony. The sheer length of the inquisition says everything about his significance. He designed the infamous Horizon system and appeared as an Expert Witness for the Post Office. His failure to mention to the Courts the fallibility of the software contributed to numerous unfair convictions. He was,in short, a tainted witness.
How is he going to play it?
He is one of the few to have been questioned already by the Police in respect of possible charges of perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. The evidence against him appears overwhelming and it is almost certain he would have been charged by now but for the CPS's policy of waiting for the Inquiry to report.
He is over 70 years old. He faces a long stretch if convicted. Will he turn King's Evidence? You might think that would be his best chance. He is not a PO man, so he owes little to the likes of Vennells and Perkins. On the other hand, he is doubtless being supported by his former employer, Fujitsu, if only through the payment of his legal fees. They presumably pay his pension too, so one expects him to be restrained in any criticism of them. How far that helps the PO is difficult to judge. There has been a bit of a blame game going on between F & the PO, but it hasn't broken out into open warfare - yet.
We'll probably know within the first twenty minutes which way his evidence is going to go. Starts 9.45 am. Should be worth getting the popcorn in.
Did you see the evidence last week from the subpostmasters "Union" man?
It was utterly unbelievable. He took the 10 year old official line from the Post Office at every turn and clearly didn't give one hoot about any of his members.
Something very odd there.
It’s been made clear in the Private Eye stories and in the ITV film that the Union was, in the old phrase, about as much use as a chocolate teapot. There was one Union official, to be fair, who did some digging, but he didn’t follow through, and in any event was pretty smartly sidelined.
Indeed, although seeing it in person so to speak was still shocking.
Even after all this time he was still spouting the line that were "millions of transactions every day and therefore there could have been no systemic problem with Horizon".
There was a funny moment when the microphones/network stopped working and Sir Wyn quipped that the odd technical problem was normal but apparently this might be a surprise to Mr Thomson.
I don't have much time for Union bully-boys but to see one fighting for the employer was just bizarre.
Lots of people talking about Tom Tugendhat being the One Nation candidate for the leadership, but they seem to have forgotten that he's quite likely to lose his seat to the LDs.
I think 'quite likely' is overstating it a bit, he has a 27,000 majority
Yes but it has the right demographics for a big swing to the LDs with lots of Lab supporters voting tactically. RefUK won't do that well there because it's too middle-class.
It's the 16th safest Tory seat, if it goes, they're all going. I mean, sure, it could, but 'quite likely' is overdoing it, especially as Lab were second in 2017
The biggish cheese who survives about the greatest possible tsunami is Barclay. He gets in even if there are only 10-20 Tories. I don't think any other magnitude cheese does. He could start a one man campaign to bore Britain into submission to a renewed Toryism.
“These tax locks are a mistake. They will constrain policy if a future government decides that it does in fact want to raise more money to fund public services."
Hope you're feeling better - heard you had some ill health.
Our local tory mp hasn't given up. Still paying to get leaflets delivered but suspect his time is up.
Thanks, yes - had a stroke 8 weeks ago. Pretty much back to normal now except for a need to sleep for an hour most afternoons, and occasional struggles with memory.
That's pretty much where I'm at now! Keep on keeping on..
Blimey, PBers have been through the wars on the health front.
Hope you all look after yourselves.
Too many of us are on the wrong side of the healthy life expectancy graph.
At least I am still losing weight. Now -24kg this year. It has significantly slowed to a sustainable rate. Another 6kg to go, and if that takes the rest of the year that will be absolutely fine.
Before I disappear back into the garden again I'd just like to draw everyone's attention to tomorrow's big event in the Post Office Inquiry.
Gareth Jenkins begins four days of testimony. The sheer length of the inquisition says everything about his significance. He designed the infamous Horizon system and appeared as an Expert Witness for the Post Office. His failure to mention to the Courts the fallibility of the software contributed to numerous unfair convictions. He was,in short, a tainted witness.
How is he going to play it?
He is one of the few to have been questioned already by the Police in respect of possible charges of perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. The evidence against him appears overwhelming and it is almost certain he would have been charged by now but for the CPS's policy of waiting for the Inquiry to report.
He is over 70 years old. He faces a long stretch if convicted. Will he turn King's Evidence? You might think that would be his best chance. He is not a PO man, so he owes little to the likes of Vennells and Perkins. On the other hand, he is doubtless being supported by his former employer, Fujitsu, if only through the payment of his legal fees. They presumably pay his pension too, so one expects him to be restrained in any criticism of them. How far that helps the PO is difficult to judge. There has been a bit of a blame game going on between F & the PO, but it hasn't broken out into open warfare - yet.
We'll probably know within the first twenty minutes which way his evidence is going to go. Starts 9.45 am. Should be worth getting the popcorn in.
Did you see the evidence last week from the subpostmasters "Union" man?
It was utterly unbelievable. He took the 10 year old official line from the Post Office at every turn and clearly didn't give one hoot about any of his members.
Something very odd there.
I checked in briefly, Flat, but everyone who has been following the Scandal will have known what to expect. His organisation has always been in the PO's pocket, and he was widely known as a mouthpiece for them, so his performance was no surprise.
Still buzzing about JK Rowling coming out as a literal communist yesterday. We tried to tell you she was cracked and you didn't believe us.
At least it made me check the Communist Party leaflet I received last week (still the only unsolicited election literature I've received) more closely.
Women's Rights Give women full protection of the against domestic violence and misogyny. Pension justice for WASPI women. Protect women's sex-based rights. Equal pay for every type of work. Full rights to socialised child care. End sexism in society.
A bit wooly and it strikes me that Jakey is loading a whole lot of hopium on the highlighted sentence.
"Protect women's sex-based rights" and "End sexism in society" are contradictory. Sex-based rights are sexist by definition.
Not really. Maternity leave, for example, is a sex based right. You're stretching a definition to breaking point to say that is sexist. Even in the absence of paternity leave, leave for the mother at and after the time of the birth is not sexist even if there is no male equivalent.
To govern is to choose. The nature of politics is governed by the pre-political fact that not all good things are compatible with all other good things. A (small 'l') liberal society can only go so far in accommodating, for example, both toleration and equality for all cases and alleged cases of gender/sex dysphoria and at the same time privacy and safety for all women and girls (in the traditional sense of those words). Choices have to be made; all are hurtful to someone. The politics which simply denies the limits, the hurt and the reality of the choice is damaging, and there is lots of it about.
Isn't the issue (and wow I find myself going here) to protect citizens from criminals. The debate too often and easily elides the simple fact of being a trans man/woman with being a predatory criminal.
Yes absolutely I can see that a predatory criminal can use this as a subterfuge, and yes the opportunity might increase (or might not) but first, this is a pretty rare occurrence (although occupies plenty of media attention), and secondly crime prevention doesn't cease just because someone is pretending to be trans.
Still buzzing about JK Rowling coming out as a literal communist yesterday. We tried to tell you she was cracked and you didn't believe us.
At least it made me check the Communist Party leaflet I received last week (still the only unsolicited election literature I've received) more closely.
Women's Rights Give women full protection of the against domestic violence and misogyny. Pension justice for WASPI women. Protect women's sex-based rights. Equal pay for every type of work. Full rights to socialised child care. End sexism in society.
A bit wooly and it strikes me that Jakey is loading a whole lot of hopium on the highlighted sentence.
"Protect women's sex-based rights" and "End sexism in society" are contradictory. Sex-based rights are sexist by definition.
Not really. Maternity leave, for example, is a sex based right. You're stretching a definition to breaking point to say that is sexist. Even in the absence of paternity leave, leave for the mother at and after the time of the birth is not sexist even if there is no male equivalent.
Maternity leave is a birth-based right, not a sex-based one. It is not given to women who have not had a child.
R4 Today is today abandoning daily racing tips. One of those things, like the Shipping Forecast you pay no attention to but is part of life's harmless routine.
Also WRT R4 Today, Heaton-Harris sounded terrible, just as if he had been up all night and wasn't sure where he was.
Why are they abandoning it?
I thought it was a joke. The Today program surely didn't used to have racing tips?
They certainly did, I used to listen to it every day even though I'm not particularly interested in horseracing. It usually only lasted for about 15 seconds, just before 8:30.
And it drives me nuts.
What is the point of giving a tip if you don't give the odds? The most likely winner of each race is normally the favorite, so if you want to tip lots of winners just tip the fav. On the other hand if you want to make money you have to tip at decent odds which means you have to state what those odds are.
Just saying what you think will win is pointless. You may as well say what side a coin will fall if you toss it in the air.
My instant reaction is that for a lot of people horse racing will simply stop existing because the only time they think about it was through Today's racing tips.
The BBC's racing coverage used to be brilliant. It had some outstanding presenters, and not just Sir Peter O'Sullivan. It barely mentions the sport now.
I am told this is largely because the Sport has no supporters at a senior level within the organisation. Cost is undoubtedly a factor too, as is antipathy to a sport in which animals die from time to time.
There was a theory that both BBC and Channel 4 Racing were killed off by the same bloke who moved between those organisations, although probably these were multifaceted decisions with responsibility smeared over committees.
First I have heard of it,John.
I always thought The Morning Line [Ch4] was killed off by an incompetent and over-zealous producer who came in when ownership of the production company changed hands.
Still buzzing about JK Rowling coming out as a literal communist yesterday. We tried to tell you she was cracked and you didn't believe us.
At least it made me check the Communist Party leaflet I received last week (still the only unsolicited election literature I've received) more closely.
Women's Rights Give women full protection of the against domestic violence and misogyny. Pension justice for WASPI women. Protect women's sex-based rights. Equal pay for every type of work. Full rights to socialised child care. End sexism in society.
A bit wooly and it strikes me that Jakey is loading a whole lot of hopium on the highlighted sentence.
"Protect women's sex-based rights" and "End sexism in society" are contradictory. Sex-based rights are sexist by definition.
Not really. Maternity leave, for example, is a sex based right. You're stretching a definition to breaking point to say that is sexist. Even in the absence of paternity leave, leave for the mother at and after the time of the birth is not sexist even if there is no male equivalent.
Maternity leave is a birth-based right, not a sex-based one. It is not given to women who have not had a child.
Hope you're feeling better - heard you had some ill health.
Our local tory mp hasn't given up. Still paying to get leaflets delivered but suspect his time is up.
Thanks, yes - had a stroke 8 weeks ago. Pretty much back to normal now except for a need to sleep for an hour most afternoons, and occasional struggles with memory.
That's pretty much where I'm at now! Keep on keeping on..
Blimey, PBers have been through the wars on the health front.
Hope you all look after yourselves.
Too many of us are on the wrong side of the healthy life expectancy graph.
At least I am still losing weight. Now -24kg this year. It has significantly slowed to a sustainable rate. Another 6kg to go, and if that takes the rest of the year that will be absolutely fine.
Doing your 10,000 steps every day pounding the mean streets of ANME must help.
https://www.iaindale.com/articles/is-starmergeddon-coming-for-the-tories ..If what I am hearing is right, CCHQ has more or less given up the ghost. I have heard of three candidates in Tory held seats with majorities of between four and six thousand, who have been ordered to shut down their campaigns and redeploy themselves to help cabinet ministers with majorities in excess of 20,000. And if they refuse, their computer logins to the party systems are cancelled and they’re told they won’t remain on the candidates list after the election...
I wonder how someone in (say) Steve Baker's position would feel about that ?
True or not, I'm not at a point in my life where I give a shit about Steve Baker's feelings
He's not going to experience a Charles Kennedy moment after losing his seat but I do worry for him.
Obviously, one has to feel some human sympathy for people in these sorts of circumstances - the nature of elections is that some people win and some lose, but it obviously affects people in different ways.
However, I do wonder whether it will all be a bit of a relief for some of those MPs who lose. Westminster isn't necessarily great for people's mental health, and the mood among Tories who remain after 4th July is unlikely to be that great. A bit of time with family, taking a holiday and so on may not be the worst outcome.
Kennedy was a different case, of course. Being an MP was his whole life from a very young age, he'd been having issues over a period of time, his marriage had ended and so on. It remains extremely sad.
In 2010, I expected to lose, and had ramped up my spare-time involvement in translation in anticipation, as well as putting out feelers for other jobs - I assume many Tory MPs have done something similar. To my astonishment I nearly won, which would have been fun (Broxtowe started as a very safe Tory seat when I won it in 1997), but also would have made it much harder to find another job in 2015 after another 5 years. I think it'd be unusual, though, not to have any job options at all after a stretch in Parliament.
I wonder if anyone has compiled a database of what the outgoing cohort of MPs did for a living before Parliament?
I suspect that many were political animals of some sort (SpAd, party worker, Union organiser etc), and that lawyers are over-represented in Parliament compared to the general population, as are public-sector workers. We do all know one who was a bookmaker!
43% of new Conservative MPs elected in 2019 were councillors, 25% were in business/commerce, 9% political/social/policy researchers and 8% lawyers.
52% of new Labour MPs elected in 2019 were councillors, 12% trade union officials, 9.5% political/social/policy researchers and 8% lawyers.
52% of new SNP MPs were councillors, 62% political/social/policy researchers, 16% in business/commerce and 6% party officials.
36% of new LD MPs were councillors, 18% in business/commerce, 18% political/social/policy researchers and 9% lawyers and 9% teachers or academics.
Still buzzing about JK Rowling coming out as a literal communist yesterday. We tried to tell you she was cracked and you didn't believe us.
At least it made me check the Communist Party leaflet I received last week (still the only unsolicited election literature I've received) more closely.
Women's Rights Give women full protection of the against domestic violence and misogyny. Pension justice for WASPI women. Protect women's sex-based rights. Equal pay for every type of work. Full rights to socialised child care. End sexism in society.
A bit wooly and it strikes me that Jakey is loading a whole lot of hopium on the highlighted sentence.
"Protect women's sex-based rights" and "End sexism in society" are contradictory. Sex-based rights are sexist by definition.
Not really. Maternity leave, for example, is a sex based right. You're stretching a definition to breaking point to say that is sexist. Even in the absence of paternity leave, leave for the mother at and after the time of the birth is not sexist even if there is no male equivalent.
Maternity leave is a birth-based right, not a sex-based one. It is not given to women who have not had a child.
Birth and sex are rather related though.
But not coterminous. See "England" and "The UK". I feel a Venn diagram approaching...
R4 Today is today abandoning daily racing tips. One of those things, like the Shipping Forecast you pay no attention to but is part of life's harmless routine.
Also WRT R4 Today, Heaton-Harris sounded terrible, just as if he had been up all night and wasn't sure where he was.
Why are they abandoning it?
I thought it was a joke. The Today program surely didn't used to have racing tips?
They certainly did, I used to listen to it every day even though I'm not particularly interested in horseracing. It usually only lasted for about 15 seconds, just before 8:30.
And it drives me nuts.
What is the point of giving a tip if you don't give the odds? The most likely winner of each race is normally the favorite, so if you want to tip lots of winners just tip the fav. On the other hand if you want to make money you have to tip at decent odds which means you have to state what those odds are.
Just saying what you think will win is pointless. You may as well say what side a coin will fall if you toss it in the air.
My instant reaction is that for a lot of people horse racing will simply stop existing because the only time they think about it was through Today's racing tips.
The BBC's racing coverage used to be brilliant. It had some outstanding presenters, and not just Sir Peter O'Sullivan. It barely mentions the sport now.
I am told this is largely because the Sport has no supporters at a senior level within the organisation. Cost is undoubtedly a factor too, as is antipathy to a sport in which animals die from time to time.
There is a huge internal debate ongoing within the sport atm (witness the furore over the whip use rule change and the flak that the BHA gets). No one particularly expects it to last 20 years with jump racing going first and then, inevitably, flat racing. Then I suppose we are looking at eventing and show jumping.
Presumably this all ends with the thoroughbred racehorse surviving only in zoos and as pets for very rich people.
For the record, in the unlikely event that I am allowed the opportunity to return in my next life as any animal I wish, I would want to be a racehorse, although not in a zoo.
“These tax locks are a mistake. They will constrain policy if a future government decides that it does in fact want to raise more money to fund public services."
IFS.
A fact obvious to every thinking person who does not hope to win a seat in a GE in which both the informed and the uninformed get to vote. Curiously every candidate of every party who wants to win is universally blind to this truth. There is little point in blaming them. Voters have decided that this will be so.
The only way out is a main party agreed formula for a tax truce: 'We all agree that expenditure must be met by taxes, any of which may rise in accordance with the implementation of our manifesto'. No other elaboration allowed.
Before I disappear back into the garden again I'd just like to draw everyone's attention to tomorrow's big event in the Post Office Inquiry.
Gareth Jenkins begins four days of testimony. The sheer length of the inquisition says everything about his significance. He designed the infamous Horizon system and appeared as an Expert Witness for the Post Office. His failure to mention to the Courts the fallibility of the software contributed to numerous unfair convictions. He was,in short, a tainted witness.
How is he going to play it?
He is one of the few to have been questioned already by the Police in respect of possible charges of perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. The evidence against him appears overwhelming and it is almost certain he would have been charged by now but for the CPS's policy of waiting for the Inquiry to report.
He is over 70 years old. He faces a long stretch if convicted. Will he turn King's Evidence? You might think that would be his best chance. He is not a PO man, so he owes little to the likes of Vennells and Perkins. On the other hand, he is doubtless being supported by his former employer, Fujitsu, if only through the payment of his legal fees. They presumably pay his pension too, so one expects him to be restrained in any criticism of them. How far that helps the PO is difficult to judge. There has been a bit of a blame game going on between F & the PO, but it hasn't broken out into open warfare - yet.
We'll probably know within the first twenty minutes which way his evidence is going to go. Starts 9.45 am. Should be worth getting the popcorn in.
Did you see the evidence last week from the subpostmasters "Union" man?
It was utterly unbelievable. He took the 10 year old official line from the Post Office at every turn and clearly didn't give one hoot about any of his members.
Something very odd there.
He was extraordinary. However, I see his point.
His brief, as he stated many times, was to protect the value of the PO SPMR franchise. He works on behalf of the SPMRs in order to provide maximum value for their businesses. To him, any BED in Horizon could and would devalue the value of a SPMR franchise. Hence it is in his, and arguably his members' interests to play down such BEDs because that would diminish the brand value.
Acknowledging the fact that Horizon was not fit for purpose would be to the detriment of all current and future SPMRs.
Lots of people talking about Tom Tugendhat being the One Nation candidate for the leadership, but they seem to have forgotten that he's quite likely to lose his seat to the LDs.
I think 'quite likely' is overstating it a bit, he has a 27,000 majority
Yes but it has the right demographics for a big swing to the LDs with lots of Lab supporters voting tactically. RefUK won't do that well there because it's too middle-class.
It's the 16th safest Tory seat, if it goes, they're all going. I mean, sure, it could, but 'quite likely' is overdoing it, especially as Lab were second in 2017
The biggish cheese who survives about the greatest possible tsunami is Barclay. He gets in even if there are only 10-20 Tories. I don't think any other magnitude cheese does. He could start a one man campaign to bore Britain into submission to a renewed Toryism.
As I have said before, I think MPs will put Barclay and Tugendhat in the last 2 and Barclay will win the members vote and become Leader of the Opposition (or Tory leader at least if absolute meltdown and the LDs and/or Reform win more MPs than the Tories)
We talk about trust in politics eroding. But trust in the great British institutions like the Post Office must be rock bottom too. A low trust society is a very sad state of affairs. I'm not sure who has the will or ability to put it back together again.
R4 Today is today abandoning daily racing tips. One of those things, like the Shipping Forecast you pay no attention to but is part of life's harmless routine.
Also WRT R4 Today, Heaton-Harris sounded terrible, just as if he had been up all night and wasn't sure where he was.
Why are they abandoning it?
I thought it was a joke. The Today program surely didn't used to have racing tips?
They certainly did, I used to listen to it every day even though I'm not particularly interested in horseracing. It usually only lasted for about 15 seconds, just before 8:30.
And it drives me nuts.
What is the point of giving a tip if you don't give the odds? The most likely winner of each race is normally the favorite, so if you want to tip lots of winners just tip the fav. On the other hand if you want to make money you have to tip at decent odds which means you have to state what those odds are.
Just saying what you think will win is pointless. You may as well say what side a coin will fall if you toss it in the air.
My instant reaction is that for a lot of people horse racing will simply stop existing because the only time they think about it was through Today's racing tips.
The BBC's racing coverage used to be brilliant. It had some outstanding presenters, and not just Sir Peter O'Sullivan. It barely mentions the sport now.
I am told this is largely because the Sport has no supporters at a senior level within the organisation. Cost is undoubtedly a factor too, as is antipathy to a sport in which animals die from time to time.
There is a huge internal debate ongoing within the sport atm (witness the furore over the whip use rule change and the flak that the BHA gets). No one particularly expects it to last 20 years with jump racing going first and then, inevitably, flat racing. Then I suppose we are looking at eventing and show jumping.
Presumably this all ends with the thoroughbred racehorse surviving only in zoos and as pets for very rich people.
For the record, in the unlikely event that I am allowed the opportunity to return in my next life as any animal I wish, I would want to be a racehorse, although not in a zoo.
Well indeed but it is a direction of travel that those in the industry are keenly aware of. Hence the whip rule changes but these are fought tooth and nail by many.
R4 Today is today abandoning daily racing tips. One of those things, like the Shipping Forecast you pay no attention to but is part of life's harmless routine.
Also WRT R4 Today, Heaton-Harris sounded terrible, just as if he had been up all night and wasn't sure where he was.
Why are they abandoning it?
I thought it was a joke. The Today program surely didn't used to have racing tips?
They certainly did, I used to listen to it every day even though I'm not particularly interested in horseracing. It usually only lasted for about 15 seconds, just before 8:30.
And it drives me nuts.
What is the point of giving a tip if you don't give the odds? The most likely winner of each race is normally the favorite, so if you want to tip lots of winners just tip the fav. On the other hand if you want to make money you have to tip at decent odds which means you have to state what those odds are.
Just saying what you think will win is pointless. You may as well say what side a coin will fall if you toss it in the air.
My instant reaction is that for a lot of people horse racing will simply stop existing because the only time they think about it was through Today's racing tips.
The BBC's racing coverage used to be brilliant. It had some outstanding presenters, and not just Sir Peter O'Sullivan. It barely mentions the sport now.
I am told this is largely because the Sport has no supporters at a senior level within the organisation. Cost is undoubtedly a factor too, as is antipathy to a sport in which animals die from time to time.
There is a huge internal debate ongoing within the sport atm (witness the furore over the whip use rule change and the flak that the BHA gets). No one particularly expects it to last 20 years with jump racing going first and then, inevitably, flat racing. Then I suppose we are looking at eventing and show jumping.
Presumably this all ends with the thoroughbred racehorse surviving only in zoos and as pets for very rich people.
For the record, in the unlikely event that I am allowed the opportunity to return in my next life as any animal I wish, I would want to be a racehorse, although not in a zoo.
I'm...just... so... glad... Rishi Sunak.. called an early...eleecczzzzzzzz.....
Is this the only GE in history where everyone in the Conservative Party has given up?
Whilst the campaign has been spectacularly inept, I just have this feeling that there must have been some issue buried deep down to make him cut and run in this way.
I do think it might well be the King. If Sunak was told there was a considerable risk KCIII would die during an autumn election campaign, then we won't hear about it until after KCIII passes away, but it would probably make people think more kindly of Sunak. He went unprepared into an election campaign to ease the concerns of the Monarch.
Though the Tories should have been well-prepared for an election at any time.
Doesn't pass the smell test for me. Even Tories are not venal enough to bet on the date of an election caused by the King's health concerns and it's impossible to be that exact.
And Davey has shown repeatedly that getting wet in an election campaign is not of itself a problem, it's how you get wet.
Ed is all right. He has fun!
There's a large number of sub-posties who would love to have been having fun getting wet. Instead, they were being locked up for 23 hours a day because Ed Davey was considerably incurious.
god you sound so bitter. Is your man going to lose?
What's astonishing is that William Hill had 100/1 available on no Scottish Tory seats just a couple of weeks ago.
Of course, they only allowed me 79p, but still.
Rural scots will help the Tories.
Yep - anti-SNP tactical voting is going to help the Tories in Scotland.
Hmmm, this is possible, but I can't make the pieces fit. Given that the Scottish Conservative vote is rural, and given that the polling shows the Scottish Conservatives losing about 40% of their vote share, it looks quite dangerous for them. They won 6 seats in 2019. I think they win two or three seats this time.
They could win more seats in Scotland than London.
WIl they win Havering? London cabbie country?
Labour won every seat in Havering in 1997 but the Tories won Upminster and Romford back in 2001 though Hornchurch and Dagenham stayed Labour. Rosindell at least should hold on by squeezing the Reform vote given he basically is a Reform MP in all but name anyway
Also, not much of an effort being made by Labour in Romford, as far as I can tell. If they win it will be by accident. One generic Labour window poster up in my road, and I haven't seen any others anywhere else.
Rosindell is pushing the 'Vote Reform get Labour' line in his leaflet complete with barchart from one of the MRPs. Only one leaflet from him so far, which is unusually few.
No leaflet or evidence of campaigning from Reform, or indeed anyone else. So I assume everyone thinks Rosindell has it in the bag.
What's astonishing is that William Hill had 100/1 available on no Scottish Tory seats just a couple of weeks ago.
Of course, they only allowed me 79p, but still.
Rural scots will help the Tories.
Yep - anti-SNP tactical voting is going to help the Tories in Scotland.
Hmmm, this is possible, but I can't make the pieces fit. Given that the Scottish Conservative vote is rural, and given that the polling shows the Scottish Conservatives losing about 40% of their vote share, it looks quite dangerous for them. They won 6 seats in 2019. I think they win two or three seats this time.
They could win more seats in Scotland than London.
WIl they win Havering? London cabbie country?
Labour won every seat in Havering in 1997 but the Tories won Upminster and Romford back in 2001 though Hornchurch and Dagenham stayed Labour. Rosindell at least should hold on by squeezing the Reform vote given he basically is a Reform MP in all but name anyway
Also, not much of an effort being made by Labour in Romford, as far as I can tell. If they win it will be by accident. One generic Labour window poster up in my road, and I haven't seen any others anywhere else.
Rosindell is pushing the 'Vote Reform get Labour' line in his leaflet complete with barchart from one of the MRPs. Only one leaflet from him so far, which is unusually few.
No leaflet or evidence of campaigning from Reform, or indeed anyone else. So I assume everyone thinks Rosindell has it in the bag.
Can't comment on Upminster.
It would be very surprising if he lost, same with Upminster, Old Bexley, Orpington and3 or 4 others in London. London has already made the anti Tory move, the swing won't be anywhere near as big there. I can see them holding Finchley and Uxbridge for example if they have a better end night, I expect the 4 mentioned, Bromley and Biggin Hill, Ruislip at minimum to stay blue
“These tax locks are a mistake. They will constrain policy if a future government decides that it does in fact want to raise more money to fund public services."
IFS.
A fact obvious to every thinking person who does not hope to win a seat in a GE in which both the informed and the uninformed get to vote. Curiously every candidate of every party who wants to win is universally blind to this truth. There is little point in blaming them. Voters have decided that this will be so.
The only way out is a main party agreed formula for a tax truce: 'We all agree that expenditure must be met by taxes, any of which may rise in accordance with the implementation of our manifesto'. No other elaboration allowed.
No, this won't happen either.
But, for example, take our dear friend Barty. He has a very strong view that the balance of taxation should be moved from employment income and towards unearned income or immobile assets, such as land.
How would he be able to choose between the candidates asking for his vote, if they refused to say which taxes they would prefer to reduce, and which they would prefer to increase?
R4 Today is today abandoning daily racing tips. One of those things, like the Shipping Forecast you pay no attention to but is part of life's harmless routine.
Also WRT R4 Today, Heaton-Harris sounded terrible, just as if he had been up all night and wasn't sure where he was.
Why are they abandoning it?
I thought it was a joke. The Today program surely didn't used to have racing tips?
They certainly did, I used to listen to it every day even though I'm not particularly interested in horseracing. It usually only lasted for about 15 seconds, just before 8:30.
And it drives me nuts.
What is the point of giving a tip if you don't give the odds? The most likely winner of each race is normally the favorite, so if you want to tip lots of winners just tip the fav. On the other hand if you want to make money you have to tip at decent odds which means you have to state what those odds are.
Just saying what you think will win is pointless. You may as well say what side a coin will fall if you toss it in the air.
My instant reaction is that for a lot of people horse racing will simply stop existing because the only time they think about it was through Today's racing tips.
The BBC's racing coverage used to be brilliant. It had some outstanding presenters, and not just Sir Peter O'Sullivan. It barely mentions the sport now.
I am told this is largely because the Sport has no supporters at a senior level within the organisation. Cost is undoubtedly a factor too, as is antipathy to a sport in which animals die from time to time.
There is a huge internal debate ongoing within the sport atm (witness the furore over the whip use rule change and the flak that the BHA gets). No one particularly expects it to last 20 years with jump racing going first and then, inevitably, flat racing. Then I suppose we are looking at eventing and show jumping.
Presumably this all ends with the thoroughbred racehorse surviving only in zoos and as pets for very rich people.
For the record, in the unlikely event that I am allowed the opportunity to return in my next life as any animal I wish, I would want to be a racehorse, although not in a zoo.
Well indeed but it is a direction of travel that those in the industry are keenly aware of. Hence the whip rule changes but these are fought tooth and nail by many.
Sure, you have to swing and sway with the mood and mores of the time. It's all a bit silly and hypocritical though.
Have you ever seen a modern racing whip? Unless you used it in a perverse manner, you'd be hard put to inflict an injury on a human with it, never mind half a ton of racehorse.
https://www.iaindale.com/articles/is-starmergeddon-coming-for-the-tories ..If what I am hearing is right, CCHQ has more or less given up the ghost. I have heard of three candidates in Tory held seats with majorities of between four and six thousand, who have been ordered to shut down their campaigns and redeploy themselves to help cabinet ministers with majorities in excess of 20,000. And if they refuse, their computer logins to the party systems are cancelled and they’re told they won’t remain on the candidates list after the election...
I wonder how someone in (say) Steve Baker's position would feel about that ?
True or not, I'm not at a point in my life where I give a shit about Steve Baker's feelings
He's not going to experience a Charles Kennedy moment after losing his seat but I do worry for him.
Obviously, one has to feel some human sympathy for people in these sorts of circumstances - the nature of elections is that some people win and some lose, but it obviously affects people in different ways.
However, I do wonder whether it will all be a bit of a relief for some of those MPs who lose. Westminster isn't necessarily great for people's mental health, and the mood among Tories who remain after 4th July is unlikely to be that great. A bit of time with family, taking a holiday and so on may not be the worst outcome.
Kennedy was a different case, of course. Being an MP was his whole life from a very young age, he'd been having issues over a period of time, his marriage had ended and so on. It remains extremely sad.
In 2010, I expected to lose, and had ramped up my spare-time involvement in translation in anticipation, as well as putting out feelers for other jobs - I assume many Tory MPs have done something similar. To my astonishment I nearly won, which would have been fun (Broxtowe started as a very safe Tory seat when I won it in 1997), but also would have made it much harder to find another job in 2015 after another 5 years. I think it'd be unusual, though, not to have any job options at all after a stretch in Parliament.
I wonder if anyone has compiled a database of what the outgoing cohort of MPs did for a living before Parliament?
I suspect that many were political animals of some sort (SpAd, party worker, Union organiser etc), and that lawyers are over-represented in Parliament compared to the general population, as are public-sector workers. We do all know one who was a bookmaker!
43% of new Conservative MPs elected in 2019 were councillors, 25% were in business/commerce, 9% political/social/policy researchers and 8% lawyers.
52% of new Labour MPs elected in 2019 were councillors, 12% trade union officials, 9.5% political/social/policy researchers and 8% lawyers.
52% of new SNP MPs were councillors, 62% political/social/policy researchers, 16% in business/commerce and 6% party officials.
36% of new LD MPs were councillors, 18% in business/commerce, 18% political/social/policy researchers and 9% lawyers and 9% teachers or academics.
What's astonishing is that William Hill had 100/1 available on no Scottish Tory seats just a couple of weeks ago.
Of course, they only allowed me 79p, but still.
Rural scots will help the Tories.
Yep - anti-SNP tactical voting is going to help the Tories in Scotland.
Hmmm, this is possible, but I can't make the pieces fit. Given that the Scottish Conservative vote is rural, and given that the polling shows the Scottish Conservatives losing about 40% of their vote share, it looks quite dangerous for them. They won 6 seats in 2019. I think they win two or three seats this time.
They could win more seats in Scotland than London.
WIl they win Havering? London cabbie country?
Labour won every seat in Havering in 1997 but the Tories won Upminster and Romford back in 2001 though Hornchurch and Dagenham stayed Labour. Rosindell at least should hold on by squeezing the Reform vote given he basically is a Reform MP in all but name anyway
Around that time there were gentrification shifts of WWC from areas such as that around Myddleton Square (essentially City / South End of Islington / Hackney). AIUI when I visited in 1991 some of it was 90% old London (conversations with a couple of local vicars about demographic change).
When I was living in EC2 a decade later a lot of change had happened. Did they all go to places like Havering?
One of the nicer squares in that area was where I think Lord Mandelbrot had an early flat in London when he landed in Islington from another planet. (which might have been Lambeth but I have not audited the history.)
Unlike most on here, I would pin the Tories' woes almost entirely on Sunak, rather than Johnson and Truss. Here's why. Johnson and Truss both departed under a cloud. When he took over, Sunak had the chance to be a breath of fresh air - remember, at that time he was pretty popular with the public (Dishy Rishi) following his Covid largesse and his seeming intelligence and rationality. He really did have a chance to blow away the cobwebs deposited by Johnson and Truss and revitalise the Tory Party's sense of purpose.
But Sunak blew it. Why? Because rather than being a fresh start, he attempted to follow Johnson's playbook, which regarded governing as being a never-ending state of campaigning. Don't do what's best - do what is (perceived to be) popular. The quality of governance didn't improve under Sunak - it possibly even got worse. Pragmatic policy-making was neglected by campaigning rhetoric about small boats, Rwanda, ULEZ/war on motorists, trans stuff, and many other poor decisions like HS2 took the place of coherent decision and policy-making.
In summary - it's Sunak fault. He never got anywhere near establishing a coherent narrative for the future of the country under the Tories that he could sell on the doorstep.
Yes I liked Sunak the Chancellor and had he steered clearly to the centre would have been open to voting for him. If he had steered Faragist some of those would have been open to voting for him.
Instead he has tried to overtriangulate, given indications of both moving centrist and populist, executed and communicated terribly, failed to deliver for any of centrists, populists or party loyalists and annoyed us all. He is lucky to be on 20% still.
This, in spades. He's a classic case of falling between two stools*. He could have tackled right, headed towards - smaller state/less regulation/cut back on the expensive bits of net zero and retained his right flank. He could have gone centrist and held his left flank. Instead he appears to systematically gone out to annoy both flanks.
We talk about trust in politics eroding. But trust in the great British institutions like the Post Office must be rock bottom too. A low trust society is a very sad state of affairs. I'm not sure who has the will or ability to put it back together again.
Good question.
Following the PO Scandal has taught me much about the way large, powerful institutions operate generally. I have been able to apply this knowledge to good effect in dealing with British Gas and a couple of Water Companies. (For example, it helps to understand that their customer service lines are there to help the company, not you.)
Yes, it can be depressing, but at least we occasionally get to see how things really work and the PO Horizon Inquiry has done an excellent job in that respect.
Unlike most on here, I would pin the Tories' woes almost entirely on Sunak, rather than Johnson and Truss. Here's why. Johnson and Truss both departed under a cloud. When he took over, Sunak had the chance to be a breath of fresh air - remember, at that time he was pretty popular with the public (Dishy Rishi) following his Covid largesse and his seeming intelligence and rationality. He really did have a chance to blow away the cobwebs deposited by Johnson and Truss and revitalise the Tory Party's sense of purpose.
But Sunak blew it. Why? Because rather than being a fresh start, he attempted to follow Johnson's playbook, which regarded governing as being a never-ending state of campaigning. Don't do what's best - do what is (perceived to be) popular. The quality of governance didn't improve under Sunak - it possibly even got worse. Pragmatic policy-making was neglected by campaigning rhetoric about small boats, Rwanda, ULEZ/war on motorists, trans stuff, and many other poor decisions like HS2 took the place of coherent decision and policy-making.
In summary - it's Sunak fault. He never got anywhere near establishing a coherent narrative for the future of the country under the Tories that he could sell on the doorstep.
Yes I liked Sunak the Chancellor and had he steered clearly to the centre would have been open to voting for him. If he had steered Faragist some of those would have been open to voting for him.
Instead he has tried to overtriangulate, given indications of both moving centrist and populist, executed and communicated terribly, failed to deliver for any of centrists, populists or party loyalists and annoyed us all. He is lucky to be on 20% still.
This, in spades. He's a classic case of falling between two stools*. He could have tackled right, headed towards - smaller state/less regulation/cut back on the expensive bits of net zero and retained his right flank. He could have gone centrist and held his left flank. Instead he appears to systematically gone out to annoy both flanks.
*inserts bad joke about toolmakers here.
I suppose he was just copying what worked for Johnson.
But Johnson started with goodwill from half the country over Brexit, better public finances and top notch bullshitting skills. Rishi had badwill from Bozo and especially Truss, already knackered public finances and his bullshit was just annoying rather than "funny". It was never going to work and should have been obvious to him and especially advisers around him.
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
https://www.iaindale.com/articles/is-starmergeddon-coming-for-the-tories ..If what I am hearing is right, CCHQ has more or less given up the ghost. I have heard of three candidates in Tory held seats with majorities of between four and six thousand, who have been ordered to shut down their campaigns and redeploy themselves to help cabinet ministers with majorities in excess of 20,000. And if they refuse, their computer logins to the party systems are cancelled and they’re told they won’t remain on the candidates list after the election...
I wonder how someone in (say) Steve Baker's position would feel about that ?
True or not, I'm not at a point in my life where I give a shit about Steve Baker's feelings
He's not going to experience a Charles Kennedy moment after losing his seat but I do worry for him.
Obviously, one has to feel some human sympathy for people in these sorts of circumstances - the nature of elections is that some people win and some lose, but it obviously affects people in different ways.
However, I do wonder whether it will all be a bit of a relief for some of those MPs who lose. Westminster isn't necessarily great for people's mental health, and the mood among Tories who remain after 4th July is unlikely to be that great. A bit of time with family, taking a holiday and so on may not be the worst outcome.
Kennedy was a different case, of course. Being an MP was his whole life from a very young age, he'd been having issues over a period of time, his marriage had ended and so on. It remains extremely sad.
In 2010, I expected to lose, and had ramped up my spare-time involvement in translation in anticipation, as well as putting out feelers for other jobs - I assume many Tory MPs have done something similar. To my astonishment I nearly won, which would have been fun (Broxtowe started as a very safe Tory seat when I won it in 1997), but also would have made it much harder to find another job in 2015 after another 5 years. I think it'd be unusual, though, not to have any job options at all after a stretch in Parliament.
I wonder if anyone has compiled a database of what the outgoing cohort of MPs did for a living before Parliament?
I suspect that many were political animals of some sort (SpAd, party worker, Union organiser etc), and that lawyers are over-represented in Parliament compared to the general population, as are public-sector workers. We do all know one who was a bookmaker!
43% of new Conservative MPs elected in 2019 were councillors, 25% were in business/commerce, 9% political/social/policy researchers and 8% lawyers.
52% of new Labour MPs elected in 2019 were councillors, 12% trade union officials, 9.5% political/social/policy researchers and 8% lawyers.
52% of new SNP MPs were councillors, 62% political/social/policy researchers, 16% in business/commerce and 6% party officials.
36% of new LD MPs were councillors, 18% in business/commerce, 18% political/social/policy researchers and 9% lawyers and 9% teachers or academics.
Interesting but I don't quite get it. Councillors are not paid right? So were those who were previously councillors (43% Con, 52% Lab) also doing other jobs?
Also, the numbers in that table on page 26 of that paper don't add up.
The thing that has done for the Tories is the complete lack of talent. At all levels. Their social media game is absolutely rotten for example. If you decide to narrow your appeal to a small client voter base, in this specific case one of a generation not perhaps naturally at home with social media, you’re catastrophically narrowing your talent pool. That extends all the way up to Rishi.
They turned themselves into the nasty party then the VERY nasty party when Rishi took over at a moment they could have steadied the ship. Even if their polls told them immigration was a topic that exercised their potential voters Rwanda and Braverman repulsed far more than it attracted. Read Saatchi's essay on why voters main concerns are not necessarily what the the party should be seen to be obsessing about
And if you're going to be nasty, you do need to be competent. Yet the number of different flavours of incompetence on display from the Tories' five PMs has been the remarkable thing.
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
Even funnier if they both vote Lab given the reason the Cons insisted on the split in the first place!
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
Even funnier if they both vote Lab given the reason the Cons insisted on the split in the first place!
My contact on the island told me six months ago that hell would freeze over before the tories lose the island.
What's astonishing is that William Hill had 100/1 available on no Scottish Tory seats just a couple of weeks ago.
Of course, they only allowed me 79p, but still.
Rural scots will help the Tories.
Yep - anti-SNP tactical voting is going to help the Tories in Scotland.
Hmmm, this is possible, but I can't make the pieces fit. Given that the Scottish Conservative vote is rural, and given that the polling shows the Scottish Conservatives losing about 40% of their vote share, it looks quite dangerous for them. They won 6 seats in 2019. I think they win two or three seats this time.
They could win more seats in Scotland than London.
WIl they win Havering? London cabbie country?
Labour won every seat in Havering in 1997 but the Tories won Upminster and Romford back in 2001 though Hornchurch and Dagenham stayed Labour. Rosindell at least should hold on by squeezing the Reform vote given he basically is a Reform MP in all but name anyway
Also, not much of an effort being made by Labour in Romford, as far as I can tell. If they win it will be by accident. One generic Labour window poster up in my road, and I haven't seen any others anywhere else.
Rosindell is pushing the 'Vote Reform get Labour' line in his leaflet complete with barchart from one of the MRPs. Only one leaflet from him so far, which is unusually few.
No leaflet or evidence of campaigning from Reform, or indeed anyone else. So I assume everyone thinks Rosindell has it in the bag.
Can't comment on Upminster.
Have to wonder if the big effect of Chargesnotpressedgate has been on the internal dynamics of Romford Conservatives (who presumably know more of the gossip than the rest of us). Lots of councillors drifting away and a Rolls Royce campaign machine making strange clunking noises.
But yeah. Not much sign of anyone else thinking they can win. One Labour poster in my road (which would have been unheard of a decade ago), and no directly Vote Rosser posters either. (Though there are some from the cheeky scamp's Save Our Library campaign.)
R4 Today is today abandoning daily racing tips. One of those things, like the Shipping Forecast you pay no attention to but is part of life's harmless routine.
Also WRT R4 Today, Heaton-Harris sounded terrible, just as if he had been up all night and wasn't sure where he was.
Why are they abandoning it?
I thought it was a joke. The Today program surely didn't used to have racing tips?
They certainly did, I used to listen to it every day even though I'm not particularly interested in horseracing. It usually only lasted for about 15 seconds, just before 8:30.
And it drives me nuts.
What is the point of giving a tip if you don't give the odds? The most likely winner of each race is normally the favorite, so if you want to tip lots of winners just tip the fav. On the other hand if you want to make money you have to tip at decent odds which means you have to state what those odds are.
Just saying what you think will win is pointless. You may as well say what side a coin will fall if you toss it in the air.
My instant reaction is that for a lot of people horse racing will simply stop existing because the only time they think about it was through Today's racing tips.
The BBC's racing coverage used to be brilliant. It had some outstanding presenters, and not just Sir Peter O'Sullivan. It barely mentions the sport now.
I am told this is largely because the Sport has no supporters at a senior level within the organisation. Cost is undoubtedly a factor too, as is antipathy to a sport in which animals die from time to time.
There is a huge internal debate ongoing within the sport atm (witness the furore over the whip use rule change and the flak that the BHA gets). No one particularly expects it to last 20 years with jump racing going first and then, inevitably, flat racing. Then I suppose we are looking at eventing and show jumping.
Presumably this all ends with the thoroughbred racehorse surviving only in zoos and as pets for very rich people.
For the record, in the unlikely event that I am allowed the opportunity to return in my next life as any animal I wish, I would want to be a racehorse, although not in a zoo.
Well indeed but it is a direction of travel that those in the industry are keenly aware of. Hence the whip rule changes but these are fought tooth and nail by many.
Sure, you have to swing and sway with the mood and mores of the time. It's all a bit silly and hypocritical though.
Have you ever seen a modern racing whip? Unless you used it in a perverse manner, you'd be hard put to inflict an injury on a human with it, never mind half a ton of racehorse.
I have and I have also seen pictures on TV of the jockeys (legitimately) smacking the horses which I can tell you is problematic for the BHA.
Your problem is that you are trying to apply logic to it all.
Was thinking about my comment last night re Sade’s ex-boyfriend. In the mid/late 90s I got in with a crowd of Royal College of Art graduates born in the late 50s/early 60s who moved to and bought up most of Hoxton and Shoreditch in the late Thatcher/early Major years. They’d started a deeply ironic post-modern rugby club (it still exists) I joined. One of them was the bloke I mentioned last night who went out with Sade. They are all, without exception, absolutely loaded. Fine Art and Fashion graduates. It was only then I realised I had first hand experience of how lucky that generation got it. For all their anti-establishment credentials I wonder how many of them will vote Tory this time out?
I missed that exchange - who is her ex-boyfriend.
A guy I played rugby with in the 90s when I was in my mid 20s and he his late 30s/early 40s. He and Sade were at the Royal College of Art together IIRC.
Obviously a smooth operator!
He was although had gone to seed a bit by the time I met him. I think he and @Leon may have moved in similar circles back in the day. Similar age, location and...erm...recreational habits anyway.
He's going for sub-100 seats for the Conservatives. Hard to imagine to be honest. But the seat count is so highly sensitive to small changes in Tory vote share (much more so than Labour vote share), that it could end up like that or they could end up close to 200.
"According to a recent MRP poll produced by YouGov, Labour are on course to win 425 seats out of a total of 650. Yet in 134 of them, Labour’s vote share is lower than the combined total for the Conservatives and Reform. If the Tories manage to squeeze the Reform vote – something they have struggled to do so far – YouGov suggests they could double the number of seats they win."
Hope you're feeling better - heard you had some ill health.
Our local tory mp hasn't given up. Still paying to get leaflets delivered but suspect his time is up.
Thanks, yes - had a stroke 8 weeks ago. Pretty much back to normal now except for a need to sleep for an hour most afternoons, and occasional struggles with memory.
That's pretty much where I'm at now! Keep on keeping on..
Blimey, PBers have been through the wars on the health front.
Hope you all look after yourselves.
Just to make it absolutely clear, I increasingly like (but don't usually get) a nap of an afternoon and have an occasional memory fart! The latter is a bit more concerning as my mother's side of the family have a strong incidence of dementia, but fit can ye dae. Nevertheless thanks for kind thoughts.
Jeez, TUD, I had no idea you'd been so poorly. I'm also having to massively readjust my idea of how old you are - I'd guessed you were late 40s. Best wishes for a continued recovery. All sorts of advice out there about staving off dementia but I'd be lying if I said I knew which ones worked best! But staying mentally (and physically) active and good oral hygiene strikes me as good advice whether it works or not.
I'm...just... so... glad... Rishi Sunak.. called an early...eleecczzzzzzzz.....
Is this the only GE in history where everyone in the Conservative Party has given up?
Whilst the campaign has been spectacularly inept, I just have this feeling that there must have been some issue buried deep down to make him cut and run in this way.
I do think it might well be the King. If Sunak was told there was a considerable risk KCIII would die during an autumn election campaign, then we won't hear about it until after KCIII passes away, but it would probably make people think more kindly of Sunak. He went unprepared into an election campaign to ease the concerns of the Monarch.
Though the Tories should have been well-prepared for an election at any time.
Doesn't pass the smell test for me. Even Tories are not venal enough to bet on the date of an election caused by the King's health concerns and it's impossible to be that exact.
And Davey has shown repeatedly that getting wet in an election campaign is not of itself a problem, it's how you get wet.
Ed is all right. He has fun!
There's a large number of sub-posties who would love to have been having fun getting wet. Instead, they were being locked up for 23 hours a day because Ed Davey was considerably incurious.
The same could be said of every Minister responsible for the PO, from Peter Mandelson onwards, with the exception of Norman Lamb, who genuinely tried to help but was moved on before he could achieve much.
Davey was demonised in the wake of the TV series. This was unfair, but it's politics and I have no issue with that. On a sophisticated Site like this however, I would expect a more balanced view to prevail, especially in the light of the contributions on the subject by such experts on the matter as Ms Cyclefree.
Davey did at least have a meeting with Sir Alan Bates, even if nothing came of it,
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
https://www.iaindale.com/articles/is-starmergeddon-coming-for-the-tories ..If what I am hearing is right, CCHQ has more or less given up the ghost. I have heard of three candidates in Tory held seats with majorities of between four and six thousand, who have been ordered to shut down their campaigns and redeploy themselves to help cabinet ministers with majorities in excess of 20,000. And if they refuse, their computer logins to the party systems are cancelled and they’re told they won’t remain on the candidates list after the election...
I wonder how someone in (say) Steve Baker's position would feel about that ?
I doubt the folk currently running CCHQ will have much influence after the election on Con candidate lists or indeed anything else. P45s all round if the new leader has any sense and a one-way ticket back to Australia for the hapless tidy-beard Levido.
I'm...just... so... glad... Rishi Sunak.. called an early...eleecczzzzzzzz.....
Is this the only GE in history where everyone in the Conservative Party has given up?
Whilst the campaign has been spectacularly inept, I just have this feeling that there must have been some issue buried deep down to make him cut and run in this way.
I do think it might well be the King. If Sunak was told there was a considerable risk KCIII would die during an autumn election campaign, then we won't hear about it until after KCIII passes away, but it would probably make people think more kindly of Sunak. He went unprepared into an election campaign to ease the concerns of the Monarch.
Though the Tories should have been well-prepared for an election at any time.
Doesn't pass the smell test for me. Even Tories are not venal enough to bet on the date of an election caused by the King's health concerns and it's impossible to be that exact.
And Davey has shown repeatedly that getting wet in an election campaign is not of itself a problem, it's how you get wet.
Ed is all right. He has fun!
There's a large number of sub-posties who would love to have been having fun getting wet. Instead, they were being locked up for 23 hours a day because Ed Davey was considerably incurious.
god you sound so bitter. Is your man going to lose?
Not as bitter as the sub-posties, eh?
Whether we lose or not, the national Conservative Party has done its best to set its candidates' feet in concrete and throw them off the pier...
https://www.iaindale.com/articles/is-starmergeddon-coming-for-the-tories ..If what I am hearing is right, CCHQ has more or less given up the ghost. I have heard of three candidates in Tory held seats with majorities of between four and six thousand, who have been ordered to shut down their campaigns and redeploy themselves to help cabinet ministers with majorities in excess of 20,000. And if they refuse, their computer logins to the party systems are cancelled and they’re told they won’t remain on the candidates list after the election...
I wonder how someone in (say) Steve Baker's position would feel about that ?
Given CCHQ has recently lost (to suspension) its heads of data and campaigning, who knows what the party's chief cook and bottle washer and acting campaign manager has decided.
They had somebody in charge of campaigns?
They should surely never run a campaign again, they’ve managed to beat Theresa May.
Surely Isaac Levido is off too, he’s clearly clueless.
I'm looking forward to reading the books that describe the horror of the campaign in all its glory.
I am keen to hear the reasoning that sent Sunak out to make his election-announcing speech in the pouring rain, without an umbrella, and with Steve Bray making Sunak barely audible
Looking back that was probably the high point of the campaign. All downhill since
I think it was a rapid decision (possibly encouraged by people wanting to make a few quid betting) by people who didn't realise that there were very limited places where a political (none Government) announcement could be made.
Hence no backup venue booked so Rishi ended up standing in the rain ruining a suit...
And no one in Number Ten owns an umbrella???
This was in Downing Street. Surrounded by tacky souvenir shops. It would have taken them 2 minutes to nip out and buy a Union Jack umbrella - providing a patriotic and jaunty image
Instead they sent him out to get drenched and look insane and sad
Perhaps they feared 'wally with the brolly' comments.
Did they even need to make a personal announcement at all ?
Cult of macho bullshit inside No 10 if I were to guess. "Oh he'd look like a wimp if he had an umbrella".
Some twat saw that episode of West Wing where Bartlett announces re-election.
No Tory is truly safe. This is as the Americans call it a wave election. Which torys will be left when the tide is out? Well see
The Gillingham and St Pancreas polls back that up - Labour will get massive swings in Tory safe seats, losing ground in Labour safe seats.
If that pattern's repeated across the country it's going to make the first declarations interesting - Labour doing worse than expected maybe in those early seats?
R4 Today is today abandoning daily racing tips. One of those things, like the Shipping Forecast you pay no attention to but is part of life's harmless routine.
Also WRT R4 Today, Heaton-Harris sounded terrible, just as if he had been up all night and wasn't sure where he was.
Why are they abandoning it?
I thought it was a joke. The Today program surely didn't used to have racing tips?
They certainly did, I used to listen to it every day even though I'm not particularly interested in horseracing. It usually only lasted for about 15 seconds, just before 8:30.
At the end of the sports bulletins at 0730 and 0830. They had talked about axing them for at least a couple of years due to hardening attitudes against gambling. Axing their full-time horse racing correspondents may have had rather more to do with it. Back in the day you could find out on R5 (not R5L) which one had given the tip and the variation in success rates was quite notable!
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
Actually surprisingly few. There's also Tierra del Fuego, and I think somewhere in the Baltic, but I think that's all.
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
Still buzzing about JK Rowling coming out as a literal communist yesterday. We tried to tell you she was cracked and you didn't believe us.
At least it made me check the Communist Party leaflet I received last week (still the only unsolicited election literature I've received) more closely.
Women's Rights Give women full protection of the against domestic violence and misogyny. Pension justice for WASPI women. Protect women's sex-based rights. Equal pay for every type of work. Full rights to socialised child care. End sexism in society.
A bit wooly and it strikes me that Jakey is loading a whole lot of hopium on the highlighted sentence.
"Protect women's sex-based rights" and "End sexism in society" are contradictory. Sex-based rights are sexist by definition.
Not really. Maternity leave, for example, is a sex based right. You're stretching a definition to breaking point to say that is sexist. Even in the absence of paternity leave, leave for the mother at and after the time of the birth is not sexist even if there is no male equivalent.
Arguably the better one to take issue with is the Justice for WASPI women vs end sexism in society. The WAPSI women want money because they are being forced to have the same retirement age as men.*
*I know the claim is actually about lack of notice, but that's also bollocks.
I'm...just... so... glad... Rishi Sunak.. called an early...eleecczzzzzzzz.....
Is this the only GE in history where everyone in the Conservative Party has given up?
Whilst the campaign has been spectacularly inept, I just have this feeling that there must have been some issue buried deep down to make him cut and run in this way.
I do think it might well be the King. If Sunak was told there was a considerable risk KCIII would die during an autumn election campaign, then we won't hear about it until after KCIII passes away, but it would probably make people think more kindly of Sunak. He went unprepared into an election campaign to ease the concerns of the Monarch.
Though the Tories should have been well-prepared for an election at any time.
Doesn't pass the smell test for me. Even Tories are not venal enough to bet on the date of an election caused by the King's health concerns and it's impossible to be that exact.
And Davey has shown repeatedly that getting wet in an election campaign is not of itself a problem, it's how you get wet.
Ed is all right. He has fun!
There's a large number of sub-posties who would love to have been having fun getting wet. Instead, they were being locked up for 23 hours a day because Ed Davey was considerably incurious.
The same could be said of every Minister responsible for the PO, from Peter Mandelson onwards, with the exception of Norman Lamb, who genuinely tried to help but was moved on before he could achieve much.
Davey was demonised in the wake of the TV series. This was unfair, but it's politics and I have no issue with that. On a sophisticated Site like this however, I would expect a more balanced view to prevail, especially in the light of the contributions on the subject by such experts on the matter as Ms Cyclefree.
Davey did at least have a meeting with Sir Alan Bates, even if nothing came of it,
Let's see how he fares before the Committee next month.
https://www.iaindale.com/articles/is-starmergeddon-coming-for-the-tories ..If what I am hearing is right, CCHQ has more or less given up the ghost. I have heard of three candidates in Tory held seats with majorities of between four and six thousand, who have been ordered to shut down their campaigns and redeploy themselves to help cabinet ministers with majorities in excess of 20,000. And if they refuse, their computer logins to the party systems are cancelled and they’re told they won’t remain on the candidates list after the election...
I wonder how someone in (say) Steve Baker's position would feel about that ?
True or not, I'm not at a point in my life where I give a shit about Steve Baker's feelings
Isn't that rather the wrong attitude? You might disagree with Baker on virtually everything, but he appears to be a very decent bloke with integrity, and politics would be better for more of them on all sides. I would say the same about the late Frank Field (with whom I agreed very little), or possibly even Denis Skinner (with whom I agree even less).
I'd rather have a parliament made up of that quality of MP even if I largely disagree with them, than most of the current crop (on both sides of the house) which seems to be comprised of two faced PR men whose only thought on every issue is "what's in it for me".
He is a unhappy person. Deep down I would bet on it.
Not exactly a revelation that a man who has talked extensively about his battles with depression has been unhappy.
FWIW it seems like he's a decent man, and while there's plenty I disagree with him on, at least he has his vision of how to improve the country, unlike a lot of the benches, who see their job as that of a social worker, or are there for the cheap booze.
I have sympathy for anyone with that. We are all human after all.
I'm...just... so... glad... Rishi Sunak.. called an early...eleecczzzzzzzz.....
Is this the only GE in history where everyone in the Conservative Party has given up?
Whilst the campaign has been spectacularly inept, I just have this feeling that there must have been some issue buried deep down to make him cut and run in this way.
I do think it might well be the King. If Sunak was told there was a considerable risk KCIII would die during an autumn election campaign, then we won't hear about it until after KCIII passes away, but it would probably make people think more kindly of Sunak. He went unprepared into an election campaign to ease the concerns of the Monarch.
Though the Tories should have been well-prepared for an election at any time.
Doesn't pass the smell test for me. Even Tories are not venal enough to bet on the date of an election caused by the King's health concerns and it's impossible to be that exact.
And Davey has shown repeatedly that getting wet in an election campaign is not of itself a problem, it's how you get wet.
Ed is all right. He has fun!
There's a large number of sub-posties who would love to have been having fun getting wet. Instead, they were being locked up for 23 hours a day because Ed Davey was considerably incurious.
The same could be said of every Minister responsible for the PO, from Peter Mandelson onwards, with the exception of Norman Lamb, who genuinely tried to help but was moved on before he could achieve much.
Davey was demonised in the wake of the TV series. This was unfair, but it's politics and I have no issue with that. On a sophisticated Site like this however, I would expect a more balanced view to prevail, especially in the light of the contributions on the subject by such experts on the matter as Ms Cyclefree.
Davey did at least have a meeting with Sir Alan Bates, even if nothing came of it,
Let's see how he fares before the Committee next month.
Thanking his lucky stars it's two weeks after the GE.
That's a very different pattern from the rest of the country given it's movement since April. Reform not up at all, barely any movement in Conservative. It does suggest the Tories will do relatively much better in London than elsewhere.
I'm...just... so... glad... Rishi Sunak.. called an early...eleecczzzzzzzz.....
Is this the only GE in history where everyone in the Conservative Party has given up?
Whilst the campaign has been spectacularly inept, I just have this feeling that there must have been some issue buried deep down to make him cut and run in this way.
I do think it might well be the King. If Sunak was told there was a considerable risk KCIII would die during an autumn election campaign, then we won't hear about it until after KCIII passes away, but it would probably make people think more kindly of Sunak. He went unprepared into an election campaign to ease the concerns of the Monarch.
Though the Tories should have been well-prepared for an election at any time.
Doesn't pass the smell test for me. Even Tories are not venal enough to bet on the date of an election caused by the King's health concerns and it's impossible to be that exact.
And Davey has shown repeatedly that getting wet in an election campaign is not of itself a problem, it's how you get wet.
Ed is all right. He has fun!
There's a large number of sub-posties who would love to have been having fun getting wet. Instead, they were being locked up for 23 hours a day because Ed Davey was considerably incurious.
The same could be said of every Minister responsible for the PO, from Peter Mandelson onwards, with the exception of Norman Lamb, who genuinely tried to help but was moved on before he could achieve much.
Davey was demonised in the wake of the TV series. This was unfair, but it's politics and I have no issue with that. On a sophisticated Site like this however, I would expect a more balanced view to prevail, especially in the light of the contributions on the subject by such experts on the matter as Ms Cyclefree.
Davey did at least have a meeting with Sir Alan Bates, even if nothing came of it,
Let's see how he fares before the Committee next month.
I suspect he will be fine - some civil servants and the Post Office board on the other hand will be thrown to the lions...
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
Even funnier if they both vote Lab given the reason the Cons insisted on the split in the first place!
My contact on the island told me six months ago that hell would freeze over before the tories lose the island.
What effect will hell freezing over have on global warming?
We do. He was very eloquent. He gave me the word “penelopising” which is now my daughter’s favourite word
Also the reason for his departure - incendiary anger at Brexit causing him to lose his rag with PBers to an alarming extent - has surely subsided. Indeed he could be on here enjoyably gloating at the Brexiteers’ downfall
A very well-reasoned piece, though I would quibble with several points.
He doesn't say much about the process of converting vote shares into seats, but if you compare his prediction with Electoral Calculus for the same vote shares, then he's quite bullish on Labour seats (+12), mainly at the expense of the Lib Dems (-8).
On the basis of targeting campaign resources, I'd expect Labour to underperform somewhat, as I'd expect the Tories to be putting more resources into the close seats than Labour, who will be wary of the risks of hubris, and have their own challenge from Galloway to contend with. Notably Alastair expects zero seats for Galloway and fellow travellers.
That's a very different pattern from the rest of the country given it's movement since April. Reform not up at all, barely any movement in Conservative. It does suggest the Tories will do relatively much better in London than elsewhere.
It's also hard to see Tories on 19% nationally if on 22% in London imo, 22% London would be more in line with 25% nationally would be the assumption I worked from. They'd hold 8 to 12 on that polling in London
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
Actually surprisingly few. There's also Tierra del Fuego, and I think somewhere in the Baltic, but I think that's all.
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
Actually surprisingly few. There's also Tierra del Fuego, and I think somewhere in the Baltic, but I think that's all.
That's a very different pattern from the rest of the country given it's movement since April. Reform not up at all, barely any movement in Conservative. It does suggest the Tories will do relatively much better in London than elsewhere.
Khan (rightly or wrongly) gives them something to unite on in London.
That's a very different pattern from the rest of the country given it's movement since April. Reform not up at all, barely any movement in Conservative. It does suggest the Tories will do relatively much better in London than elsewhere.
It's also hard to see Tories on 19% nationally if on 22% in London imo, 22% London would be more in line with 25% nationally would be the assumption I worked from. They'd hold 8 to 12 on that polling in London
That's also roughly what they were polling around the Mayoral election. Hence the list seats and votes might give a hint as to intra London regional strength
“These tax locks are a mistake. They will constrain policy if a future government decides that it does in fact want to raise more money to fund public services."
IFS.
A fact obvious to every thinking person who does not hope to win a seat in a GE in which both the informed and the uninformed get to vote. Curiously every candidate of every party who wants to win is universally blind to this truth. There is little point in blaming them. Voters have decided that this will be so.
The only way out is a main party agreed formula for a tax truce: 'We all agree that expenditure must be met by taxes, any of which may rise in accordance with the implementation of our manifesto'. No other elaboration allowed.
No, this won't happen either.
But, for example, take our dear friend Barty. He has a very strong view that the balance of taxation should be moved from employment income and towards unearned income or immobile assets, such as land.
How would he be able to choose between the candidates asking for his vote, if they refused to say which taxes they would prefer to reduce, and which they would prefer to increase?
Thank you, yes.
I couldn't disagree more with the IFS or algarkirk that the tax locks are a mistake, we are taxed enough already on employment-based income.
If you want to increase taxation then getting rid of loopholes, opt outs and ensuring everyone pays the same rate of taxation regardless of their age or how they earn their income would be quite a significant increase in taxation - but not an increase on those actually working for a living.
Comments
The latter is a bit more concerning as my mother's side of the family have a strong incidence of dementia, but fit can ye dae.
Nevertheless thanks for kind thoughts.
It's a Tory hold with YG, EC and NS and a Labour gain with Ipsos.
for being a Scots Nat.
Rosser's latest missive is getting a bit hysterical- apparently he's the only one left who can speak up for Romford and save us from Khan's Labour. (Is it a dog whistle when everyone can hear it?) But whilst a lot of the MRPs have both seats very tight, it doesn't feel like the front line of a general election out there.
Even after all this time he was still spouting the line that were "millions of transactions every day and therefore there could have been no systemic problem with Horizon".
There was a funny moment when the microphones/network stopped working and Sir Wyn quipped that the odd technical problem was normal but apparently this might be a surprise to Mr Thomson.
I don't have much time for Union bully-boys but to see one fighting for the employer was just bizarre.
IFS.
Yes absolutely I can see that a predatory criminal can use this as a subterfuge, and yes the opportunity might increase (or might not) but first, this is a pretty rare occurrence (although occupies plenty of media attention), and secondly crime prevention doesn't cease just because someone is pretending to be trans.
One pain is lessened by another's anguish
https://ifs.org.uk/events/general-election-2024-ifs-manifesto-analysis
I always thought The Morning Line [Ch4] was killed off by an incompetent and over-zealous producer who came in when ownership of the production company changed hands.
52% of new Labour MPs elected in 2019 were councillors, 12% trade union officials, 9.5% political/social/policy researchers and 8% lawyers.
52% of new SNP MPs were councillors, 62% political/social/policy researchers, 16% in business/commerce and 6% party officials.
36% of new LD MPs were councillors, 18% in business/commerce, 18% political/social/policy researchers and 9% lawyers and 9% teachers or academics.
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7483/CBP-7483.pdf
For the record, in the unlikely event that I am allowed the opportunity to return in my next life as any animal I wish, I would want to be a racehorse, although not in a zoo.
The only way out is a main party agreed formula for a tax truce: 'We all agree that expenditure must be met by taxes, any of which may rise in accordance with the implementation of our manifesto'. No other elaboration allowed.
No, this won't happen either.
His brief, as he stated many times, was to protect the value of the PO SPMR franchise. He works on behalf of the SPMRs in order to provide maximum value for their businesses. To him, any BED in Horizon could and would devalue the value of a SPMR franchise. Hence it is in his, and arguably his members' interests to play down such BEDs because that would diminish the brand value.
Acknowledging the fact that Horizon was not fit for purpose would be to the detriment of all current and future SPMRs.
That is his job, as he saw it.
Con 60.1%, LD 18.5%, Lab 16.9%, Green 4.6%.
https://electionresults.parliament.uk/elections/2240
Rosindell is pushing the 'Vote Reform get Labour' line in his leaflet complete with barchart from one of the MRPs. Only one leaflet from him so far, which is unusually few.
No leaflet or evidence of campaigning from Reform, or indeed anyone else. So I assume everyone thinks Rosindell has it in the bag.
Can't comment on Upminster.
How would he be able to choose between the candidates asking for his vote, if they refused to say which taxes they would prefer to reduce, and which they would prefer to increase?
Have you ever seen a modern racing whip? Unless you used it in a perverse manner, you'd be hard put to inflict an injury on a human with it, never mind half a ton of racehorse.
https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/not-a-prediction-bea8d1b7ae11
When I was living in EC2 a decade later a lot of change had happened. Did they all go to places like Havering?
One of the nicer squares in that area was where I think Lord Mandelbrot had an early flat in London when he landed in Islington from another planet. (which might have been Lambeth but I have not audited the history.)
*inserts bad joke about toolmakers here.
Following the PO Scandal has taught me much about the way large, powerful institutions operate generally. I have been able to apply this knowledge to good effect in dealing with British Gas and a couple of Water Companies. (For example, it helps to understand that their customer service lines are there to help the company, not you.)
Yes, it can be depressing, but at least we occasionally get to see how things really work and the PO Horizon Inquiry has done an excellent job in that respect.
https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/not-a-prediction-bea8d1b7ae11
Labour 475
Conservatives 75
Lib Dems 50
SNP 20
Reform 5
Plaid Cymru 4
Greens 2
Speaker 1
Northern Ireland 18
I think the Reform and SNP figures there are a bit on the high side
But Johnson started with goodwill from half the country over Brexit, better public finances and top notch bullshitting skills. Rishi had badwill from Bozo and especially Truss, already knackered public finances and his bullshit was just annoying rather than "funny". It was never going to work and should have been obvious to him and especially advisers around him.
Also, the numbers in that table on page 26 of that paper don't add up.
But yeah. Not much sign of anyone else thinking they can win. One Labour poster in my road (which would have been unheard of a decade ago), and no directly Vote Rosser posters either. (Though there are some from the cheeky scamp's Save Our Library campaign.)
Your problem is that you are trying to apply logic to it all.
And he goes (he calls it Not A Prediction and a Guess):
Labour 475
Conservatives 75
Lib Dems 50
SNP 20
Reform 5
Plaid Cymru 4
Greens 2
Speaker 1
NI 18
I see this is a repeat of above, but I'll leave it there. He is always worth paying close attention to.
Davey was demonised in the wake of the TV series. This was unfair, but it's politics and I have no issue with that. On a sophisticated Site like this however, I would expect a more balanced view to prevail, especially in the light of the contributions on the subject by such experts on the matter as Ms Cyclefree.
Davey did at least have a meeting with Sir Alan Bates, even if nothing came of it,
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
Whether we lose or not, the national Conservative Party has done its best to set its candidates' feet in concrete and throw them off the pier...
🚨NEW London Westminster voting intention for
@QMUL
📈33 point Labour lead
🌹Lab 55 (+2)
🌳Con 22 (-1)
🔶LD 13 (-3)
➡️Reform 8 (=)
🌍Green 5 (+1)
1,022 Londoners, 10-18 June
(change vs 26-30 April)
https://x.com/Savanta_UK/status/1805182351233679861
Exc: Will Tanner, Sunak’s deputy chief of staff, tells activists he is in danger of losing Bury St Edmunds
In a text, he says poll out today shows Cons on 32.5%, Labour on 32.7%, and Reform on 20.5%
He adds "please protect this, as sent to me privately"
https://x.com/estwebber/status/1805182708517077102
Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross - “can I start with the big news of the day… it was a penalty”.
*I know the claim is actually about lack of notice, but that's also bollocks.
Also the reason for his departure - incendiary anger at Brexit causing him to lose his rag with PBers to an alarming extent - has surely subsided. Indeed he could be on here enjoyably gloating at the Brexiteers’ downfall
He doesn't say much about the process of converting vote shares into seats, but if you compare his prediction with Electoral Calculus for the same vote shares, then he's quite bullish on Labour seats (+12), mainly at the expense of the Lib Dems (-8).
On the basis of targeting campaign resources, I'd expect Labour to underperform somewhat, as I'd expect the Tories to be putting more resources into the close seats than Labour, who will be wary of the risks of hubris, and have their own challenge from Galloway to contend with. Notably Alastair expects zero seats for Galloway and fellow travellers.
They'd hold 8 to 12 on that polling in London
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/islands-that-are-shared-by-more-than-one-country.html
I couldn't disagree more with the IFS or algarkirk that the tax locks are a mistake, we are taxed enough already on employment-based income.
If you want to increase taxation then getting rid of loopholes, opt outs and ensuring everyone pays the same rate of taxation regardless of their age or how they earn their income would be quite a significant increase in taxation - but not an increase on those actually working for a living.