This is bad for Badenoch – politicalbetting.com

Kemi Badenoch may be unable to stand in a future Conservative leadership contest because of delays in sending out postal votes in her constituency ??https://t.co/uj93BKLkyb
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That the Tories would elect a new leader before the by-election, or that Badenoch wouldn't win a by-election?
Typically a black swan event leads to a recession, mass unemployment and then countercyclical spending continuing after the recession. But we haven't had that this time, we're at full employment.
But despite being at full employment, with unemployment today lower than it was in 2010, we are spending more on welfare than we did in 2010 as a proportion of GDP.
Why is that? Its not because of unemployment, unemployment is low.
The Tories have ceased to be a party that wants to cut taxes, they've been taken over by people who want to ratchet up welfare but they call that welfare "the triple lock plus".
In the medium-long term, our taxes will only continue to rise under the Conservatives, until the Conservatives say enough is enough and we can not continue with the triple lock plus and ever higher, unfunded spending.
By when no.1 in the chart will be the Chairman of Royal Mail singing "Tomorrow Belongs to Me"
Jokes apart, this could be a grade 1 scandal. My relative in Somerset still hasn't got their postal ballot.
Most of it only gets taxed at a marginal rate of 22% (instead of 28% now or 32% previously).
20% income tax. Plus 2% National Insurance, because that is done monthly (or weekly if weekly paid) not yearly, so virtually all the bonus is above the higher rate threshold for that month so gets taxed at 2%.
Additional pension voluntary contributions ensure I'm not in the 40% tax band, which in your 50s amount to a savings plan that is tax exempt going both in and out.
The special election court for Oldham East & Saddleworth made their decision six months after the 2010 election, Phil Woolas went down the appellate route which delayed things and the by election took place eight months after the general election.
In 48 hours the Conservatives will cease to be relevant in British politics.
It may interest some on here who next leads them but it will have no relevance for this country. For whoever is chosen by the party faithful will lead them to another crushing defeat.
Look to the leader after the leader after the next leader. That’s the one who ‘may’ be relevant again for this country and not before.
The country is voting for Change. Bye-Bye tories for a generation.
Of course, we could get rid of election night counts. But waiting three weeks for Royal Mail to get its finger out seems excessive.
And those by-elections will be fun to watch...
I assume every council will be logging the number of requests they are getting for 'my postal vote hasn't arrived'; there are ways and means of dealing with most of those. What can never be know AFAIK is how many got lost in the post back to the council.
Since returns are more likely to be delayed than lost, what is to stop the council keeping all the late returns and checking to see if they would have affected the outcome... and only having a re-run if the winner would have bee changed had all the postal votes arrived back in time?
Starmer, Cameron, Blair . . . for the past half a century every new PM who has brought their party back into Downing Street was not yet an MP when the party lost office.
Last time, Badenoch's majority was 27000. If it's close enough for Kemi B to be in any sort of doubt, there won't be much of a Conservative party to lead.
Imagine not voting for the Lib Dems because Sir Ed Davey was Post Office Minister a decade ago but happy to vote Tory after they gave Paula Vennells a gong.
We don’t often see eye-to-eye but you’re spot on.
https://x.com/AdamBienkov/status/1808262231735321027
Although if I read the header aright the local council are the ones who've messed up here.
LABOUR 399 (38%)
CONSERVATIVE 134 (26%)
LD 38 (11%)
SNP 20 (3%)
SF 6
DUP 6
REFORM 5 (13%)
PC 3
GREEN 3 (5%)
INDEPENDENTS 3 (corbyn, yakoob, iqbal in Dewsbury)
ALLIANCE 2
SDLP 2
UUP 2
WORKERS GB 2 (more than 225,000 total votes)
LABOUR MAJORITY 148
SDP will get over 75,000 votes, 0 seats
Postal votes have to be recieved (not postmarked) by the end of the day on July 4th.
It is wrong to change the rules mid election.
“Thursday’s vote is now all about forming a strong enough opposition,” she writes.
“One needs to read the writing on the wall: it’s over, and we need to prepare for the reality and frustration of opposition.”
Braverman blames the situation on a fracture within the Conservative Party resulting from a rise in Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
It is notable that Labour’s vote share has not markedly increased in recent weeks, but our vote is evaporating from both Left and Right.
The critics will cite Boris (Johnson), Liz (Truss), Rwanda, and, I can immodestly predict, even me as all being fatal to our ‘centrist’ vote.
The reality is rather different: we are haemorrhaging votes largely to Reform. Why? Because we failed to cut immigration or tax or deal with the net zero and woke policies we have presided over for 14 years.
We may lose hundreds of excellent MPs because of our abject inability to have foreseen this inevitability months ago: that our failure to unite the Right would destroy us.”
Braverman says the Tories need “a searingly honest post-match analysis”, “because the fight for the soul of the Conservative Party will determine whether we allow Starmer a clear run at destroying our country for good or having a chance to redeem it in due course.
“Indeed, it will decide whether our party continues to exist at all.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/jul/03/uk-general-election-2024-live-updates-tories-labour-polls-boris-johnson?filterKeyEvents=false&page=with:block-6684f3658f08b8c654ee3a51#block-6684f3658f08b8c654ee3a51
I doubt it will be a big issue, unless the result there really is on a knifeedge. The balance of PVs won't be hugely different from the on-the-day votes.
Braverman is, er, not...
With a few polls added so far this morning, we are at: Con 20.6, Lab 39.9, LD 11.2, Ref 16.3, Grn 6.1
Maybe 39-21 by close of business tonight? I don't expect much more than that.
If you vote LibDem, Starmer will eat your cute puppy or cuter kitten.
https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1808385238655025546
He will! CR sez so!
How late? Are there rules about when they need to be sent out?
(As an aside, this is another argument for FTPA.)
https://x.com/Jo_Reggelt/status/1808062152374141052
Cease to be relevant in 48 hours? Once this is over and this election becomes something that people study in the decades to come, the question will be at which point did the Tories cease to be relevant.
I'm going with the Truss budget.
A lot of fiery talk at present, it will be interesting to see how big a problem there actually proves to have been. Hopefully not as much as the worst predictions.
Councils should be ready for an election at all times.
I do place *some* of the blame for the Conservative's travails on Covid. Just some, and far from all. It just has not been a pleasant five years, and I do wonder how many incumbents of democracies have suffered, and are suffering, because of its political effects.
However, as of right now they are still the Government, still have the Prime Minister, other ministers in position, and they still hold a significant part of the media narrative - at least with the old school MSM.
Ontologically it takes time for people to shift. We’ve been used to a Conservative Gov’t in one form or other for 14 years. Now we are about to enter an equally long, or longer, Labour one (sorry @turbotubbs ). The shift from blue to red is about to happen but we’re not quite there yet.
That’s all I meant.
You’re right of course too. It’s just a question of time.
Your party called a snap election it wasn't ready for. Is running scare adverts that Starmer will eat your kitten. And is going to be taken down by the inability of your client vote (75+) being unable to have their postal votes counted because the country you govern is so broken that we can't even organise those properly.
There is a reason so many people want to grind the Tories into the dirt...
Even if these missing postal votes are small in number it’s disgraceful that some voters will be disenfranchised.
I have always bought a copy of the "who's voted" list for every election I've stood in - it only costs about £15 or so. It's very useful information, allowing you to calibrate what people say to you on the doorstep and identifying those people who always vote and those who never bother. You'd be surprised how many people when canvassed insist they always vote a certain way, when I can see that they never vote at all, or conversely claim to be completely disinterested in politics and determined non-voters, when I can see that they voted last time. Or people who come to you wanting casework done and introduce themselves by saying "I voted for you last time!" when I can see that they didn't vote at all!
If there's a concern about the PVs after this election, in a close result, getting the list will be the first thing the party agent does.
..more than 2,600 postal ballots were not sent out in time because of a “human error”. The head of the local council said he is “mortified” by the mistake and will consider his position...
Oh dear, how sad, never mind.
How long did it take the Canadian Tories to recover from wipeout in 1993? It took over a decade and a merger, but that's not that unusual a period out of office for us, and the Tories probably won't drop to single figures.
That's a political generation by some arguments, but Tories returning in 2-3 cycles could also just be, well, normal.
No, day after day they will report on the psychodrama of the Conservatives turning inwards on themselves as if it means something. And then it becomes self-fulfilling. If you keep talking about the Conservatives as if they're relevant, then people will, one day, vote Conservative again. It's more than they deserve, but BBC News is too addicted to the soap opera of it all to know any better.
I'm going for Partygate.
Some people are seriously underestimating the visceral loathing of the current Conservatives. I’ve also fallen into the trap these past few weeks, probably by spending too long on here rather than out and about.
They trashed their reputation for economic competence (or any competence) and that won’t return for a generation.