I've been doing them for since before they were cool and I'm going to do a little rant about the public MrPs.
In terms of the Labour majority public MrPs vary here by about 200 seats.
One of the reasons for this is down to the distributions. The 11 MrPs (and 1 SRP) are shown below in terms of the spread of the Labour vote share across 631 constituencies.
The MoreInCommon MrP (in the bottom left) has a very wide distribution. Labour having very high and very low vote shares in lots of constituencies (an interdecile range [IDR] of 55%), while Survation (in the top left) are very narrow (an IDR of 33%), Labour getting a similar vote share in lots of constituencies.
This is important because the narrower the distributions, the fewer seats the Tories get.
One of the things that happens in a sea-change election is the time it takes for the penny to drop, and I’m not referring to the soon-to-be-ex member for Portsmouth North.
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.
I agree although leadership elections are usually interesting. I am 62. Tomorrow may be the last day of Conservative government I see. I hope that the idiots voting for Reform tomorrow are happy with that. 10-15 years of Labour government will see a lot of them out.
Most of the reform people will be dead and buried by the time Labour have gone.
The real problem with Reform isn't the sustainability of the current Farage limited company masquerading as a political party. It's whether what we're seeing is the beginning in this country of the anti-democracy myth that's been growing in the US and (till now, just the rest of) Western Europe - exemplified by the proportion of the Yoof population supporting autocracies in polls.
Simple demographics won't deal with this trend. We need positive leadership from all sides of the responsible parties (especially including the heirs to Britain's Tories) in demonstrating to every group the benefits of a politically accountable real democracy.
The issue has been the following
1) Consensus on nearly everything. Was it Alistair Campbell who commented on the difference between the parties being x percent of GDP in government spending? 2) From this comes the idea that the consensus is The Moral Choice. 3) If the consensus isn't to your advantage - SHUT! UP! 4) Problems - if they are on the OK list, see 1-3. If they are on the Forbidden List - THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS. SHUT UP.
2-4 are killing democracy - "There Is No Alternative And Shut Up" is not a sales pitch in a democracy.
One day people will learn not to write either the Tory or Labour obituary when they sit at one of their low points. I think the risk of maximum danger for the Tories (being overtaken by Reform on votes and the LibDems on seats) has passed, and something 1997 shaped which should shake them to their core will feel “ok”.
How quickly they recover is partly to do with them and how they reshape, but mostly to do with Starmer in power. He doesn’t have the freedom to act that Blair had, there’s bad news to come, and we certainly aren’t in for strong growth any time soon.
At this stage, forecasting 2029 is a mug’s game. It might be a political sea change, or we might be back to the 70s.
But for now, what matters is what the new Government does from Friday morning. There’s a lot in the in-tray. I am quite interested in a “first Tory lead” market after the election, because I suspect it will be the Autumn and I bet I’ll get good odds.
One thing Starmer has in his favour is low expectations. He's not riding in on a wave of hope like Blair, and isn't basking in Corbynesque adulation. Nobody expects him to do wonderful things from the start; it's more that people just want somebody reasonably competent at the helm. I'd therefore expect him to have a somewhat longer honeymoon period than you suggest.
I think his initial weakness is on his left. With a big majority and a lot to fix, he’d be well advised to do the hard things first; but in doing that he’s going to get called a “Tory” a lot. If the actual Tories have woken up, they might even learn from Cameron back in the day and mischievously back him, to highlight the Labour splits.
Kamala now fav for the Dem Nom. There's just too much going on. My head's throbbing.
Yes US politics has gone completely mad after last week’s debate. There’s a civil war erupted in the Democtatic Party, between pro-Biden and anti-Biden factions, the latter being furious that the former have conspired to cover up the obvious frailty of the old man, which displayed itself at the debate. Last week was the first time the general public, as opposed to political obsessives, got to see just how bad the President’s heath has become.
That said it sounds like he had severe jetlag and a heavy summer cold.
Luckily if he gets re-elected he’s not in any way going to have to travel anywhere and/or meet lots of people so no chance of being incapacitated by jet lag and colds whilst supposedly running the world’s most powerful country.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
as a remainer I agree wholeheartedly with all of your points.
The first vulture has started picking at the corpse of the Conservative Party:
“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.”
The problem is that this election may in fact be only the first episode in a longer term realignment. The Tories will get nowhere if they can only wave fictitious apocalypses in the air. The failure of the Tories cancels out any criticisms they make. That failure is not because Net Zero or "Woke" (whatever that means) or Rwanda should have been dropped, it is because every time they made these their talking points, or the basis for policies like Rwanda, then most people just heard silly extremist slogans and bankrupt policies. If the Tory answer to all of this is a move to some kind of dilute Faragism, then the Tories will never get back into power.
Whatever the result now, I see a huge opportunity to come for the Liberal Democrats. Starmer looks set to get a good two thirds of the new House of Commons on barely 40% of the vote. This discredits FPTP completely, and yet Starmer remains committed to it. Very soon his party will start to enact several very unpopular policies and each time they do, Ed Davey can beat up Labours distorted mandate.
An early example is VAT on school fees which is going to be unexpectedly unpopular not merely amongst parents of independent school kids, but amongst the aspirational, and amongst the parents of kids at good state schools which will now have to deal with higher rolls. Special schools are not exempted, and I am sure the press will find some photogenic dyslexic kids to pose for sad faced pictures. The mood music will not be pretty.
The discipline of the new government, with Sue Gray as chief Commissar will be formidable and the laser focus will be an immediate relief from the recent Tory shambles. The incoming administration is one of the best prepared in my life time, and the economy, though still fundamentally misfiring will nevertheless show clear signs of improvement. Not, however, for small businesses, which have been under the cosh since the GFC and especially Breexit. Good profits in the City, but not for SMEs. Stories of arrogant administrators and silly red tape will abound. The Mandelson love of the rich will start to make people see that Labour is not on the side of the little guys. Still the drip drip of how legitimate Labour´s democratic mandate will come in the background.
The centralising dirigiste soul of Labour will eventually get boring, and with so many idle hands, the devil will make work on the Labour back benches. Expulsions and Maoist discipline won`t altogether still the Greek chorus of back chat. The NHS will improve, but not by much, we are beyond the time where mere tinkering will solve that. Protests will grow in time.
Starmer has been a very lucky general. In the hour of his greatest victory, a triumph unlikely ever to be matched, there is a small voice that is saying... "Remember, you too must die".
It may not be the Tories that end Labour´s reign.
You forgot the bit about the 'straitjacket of the past.'
(Also, although special schools are not exempted de jure the exclusion of EHCPs means they would be exempted de facto. It's a stupid policy for all sorts of reasons but let's keep to facts.)
Slight anecdata postscript to that though. Generally the SEN (or SEN-adjacent) kids going to private schools, round here at least, aren't actually the ones with EHCPs.
It takes several years to work through the process until the kid eventually gets an EHCP. Those parents who can afford it - and obviously that isn't everyone - tend to get a couple of years into this, go "this is stupid, my child can't wait any more", and sign up for the private school with small class sizes.
So one of the unforeseen results of this is that the EHCP waiting lists are going to get a whole lot longer.
(This is just my experience in Oxfordshire - it may be completely different elsewhere and OCC has not exactly been a beacon of SEN provision over the past few years.)
How far back do you go? I last voted Cons in 2010 (can't remember 2015) but post-Brexit I switched to LD and now I am backing Labour as we seriously need the "Conservatives" out and most of their talentless loons ejected from the building.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
But it was Brexit that delivered the party into the clutches of Johnson.
True, but then you could go back further than that. Johnson was the first PM who truly prioritised optics over governing.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
For many people, there is a steady stream of inconveniences resulting from Brexit.
In the case of my missus, the latest wheeze is labels, sticky labels that are used for labelling sample vials at her NHS lab. The ones they use are robust, waterproof, have the correct information and have proved themselves over time. They imported from the Netherlands, and the latest batch has been stuck in customs for the last month or so. In desperation, the Dutch supplier has been rerouting labels intended for other labs are are already in the UK, but this can only be a stopgap measure. If they don't get those labels soon, they simply won't be able to continue cancer testing. It's a completely absurd situation.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
as a remainer I agree wholeheartedly with all of your points.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
But it was Brexit that delivered the party into the clutches of Johnson.
True, but then you could go back further than that. Johnson was the first PM who truly prioritised optics over governing.
Blair backed Iraq because it got him personally on telly with POTUS.
With a glut of final polling numbers expected over the next 12 hours, would it be possible please for TSE or perhaps a volunteer to keep a running updated summary of these as they are announced?
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
You morons really think that’s true don’t you? Many of us have zero regrets over Brexit, precisely because we follow what the EU has been up to, and which we now don’t have to copy. We aren’t diverging: they are.
It shows Labour 420 seats, Conservative 123, Liberal Democrat 57, SNP 16, Reform UK 8, Plaid Cymru 4, and Green 3, giving an overall Labour majority of 192.
The forecast uses the current UK-Elect default forecasting settings, using the actual candidate list and taking some account of constituency opinion polls, by-elections since 2019, Brexit referendum leave/remain percentages, incumbency, and tactical voting among many other factors. This forecast combines various methods, including both proportional and UNS elements. The forecast top three in every constituency can be found here: https://www.ukelect.co.uk/20240703ForecastUK/UKTop3Forecast.csv
As always in this election, small adjustments to the polling data or methodology can make surprisingly big changes to the result, although never enough to either affect the overall result (a Labour majority of around 190 to 250 seats), or to match some of the more extreme MRP seat projections.
One of the things that happens in a sea-change election is the time it takes for the penny to drop, and I’m not referring to the soon-to-be-ex member for Portsmouth North.
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.
I agree although leadership elections are usually interesting. I am 62. Tomorrow may be the last day of Conservative government I see. I hope that the idiots voting for Reform tomorrow are happy with that. 10-15 years of Labour government will see a lot of them out.
Most of the reform people will be dead and buried by the time Labour have gone.
The real problem with Reform isn't the sustainability of the current Farage limited company masquerading as a political party. It's whether what we're seeing is the beginning in this country of the anti-democracy myth that's been growing in the US and (till now, just the rest of) Western Europe - exemplified by the proportion of the Yoof population supporting autocracies in polls.
Simple demographics won't deal with this trend. We need positive leadership from all sides of the responsible parties (especially including the heirs to Britain's Tories) in demonstrating to every group the benefits of a politically accountable real democracy.
The issue has been the following
1) Consensus on nearly everything. Was it Alistair Campbell who commented on the difference between the parties being x percent of GDP in government spending? 2) From this comes the idea that the consensus is The Moral Choice. 3) If the consensus isn't to your advantage - SHUT! UP! 4) Problems - if they are on the OK list, see 1-3. If they are on the Forbidden List - THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS. SHUT UP.
2-4 are killing democracy - "There Is No Alternative And Shut Up" is not a sales pitch in a democracy.
People say this, but the reality is that democracy is alive and kicking - and healthy.
We are nearly a quarter of the way through this century and - rightly or wrongly - a lot has changed politically in that time.
Debating whether we should join the new Single Currency sooner or later ended in Brexit.
Arguments about Section 28, whether gay relationships were OK etc ended in equal marriage, equal adoption rights and so on and so forth.
An obsession with ever increasing house prices has wrecked much damage on the economy and people's lifestyles but now people have started to realise that and hopefully things are beginning to change.
The idea parties agree on everything is just mad, the parties of today don't even agree with their versions of themselves from 25 years ago. The thing is though as @rcs1000 regularly and rightly says, iteration is the best way to get change.
Or another way of looking at it - many small changes over time add up to large evolutions.
Another polling assessment has the Cons behind the Lib Dems on seats, something I find personally astonishing. Can only conclude it is down to the Lib Dems ruthless targeting policy where they are surrendering hundreds of deposits elsewhere.However for the Tories the Tech figures are better than other assessments and show them closing the gap from third to second. Who would ever have though such words were possible 6 weeks ago. Quite amazing. Does Ed Davey deserve to be Leader of the Opposition, bit late for that debate now. Postcards would presumably get lost in the post!!!!
At this stage, forecasting 2029 is a mug’s game. It might be a political sea change, or we might be back to the 70s.
So what is your punt on the best odds on offer next Monday for a 2029 Tory victory? And what odds would you take?
Any way of checking what the odds were on a Labour outright victory in early Jan 2020? Five to one? Something like that? Not worth locking up cash for five years.
As I posted on here yesterday, some councils are worried that postal vote returns are at historically low levels but while that could be due to the post it is more likely due to postal voters sitting it out imo.
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?
The figures quoted overnight didn't look unusually low? Nowadays a lot of people like to take their PVs to the polling station on the day.
Why would people do that? Surely the reason for choosing a postal vote is because you can't /don't want to go to the polling station?
When you set one up, it can default to going that way for all future elections. My middle daughter set one up because she was away at University during term time and wanted to continue voting here. However, she's just finished Uni and was too late in trying to cancel her postal vote, so she picked it up a couple of days ago when she was clearing out her room at Uni and has been too untrusting of Royal Mail's capability of getting it back in time if she posted it on Monday. So she's taking it down to the polling station tomorrow.
Scotland seems very sensible in not drinking the Farage Kool-Aid.
More generally, I get the impression that Farage's balloon has been slowly deflating this past couple of weeks. People are realising that one or two MPs are not going to make any difference.
We have had multiple canvas teams out for weeks. What is remarkable is the sheer number of people STILL undecided just days before polling. There is certainly the potential for significnt numbers of those to have voted Conservative by tomorrow night.
I still refuse to believe polling that shows more than half of the 2019 Conservative vote has departed. That is not consistent with my experience (at least until this week, when I have been hors de combat with Covid). A third I could believe. But not more than half.
Be wary of "everybody hates the Tories" narratives from social media. There is an army of Conservative voters who will keep their thoughts to themselves, other than to a Conservative door-knoocker.
We're finding a huge number of convincing-sounding don't knows too in Didcot and Wantage. Some are presumably Tories who don't want to admit to it, but most sound as though they're genuinely unsure how and whether to vote. The defensive Labour campaign ("We won't drop the Ming vase"), the negative LibDem campaign (essentially "vote for us because we're not Tories or Labour") and the wildly thrashing Tory campaign (I can't find a common theme at all) have left Reform as the party offering cheerful messages that they can't deliver. I suspect many people genuinely won't vote and turnout will be unusually low.
I'd describe the Tory campaign as a man trying to climb out of his own greased pitfall trap into which he had unintentionally slipped.
Which is why it is so pleasing that so many of the "suck it up" brigade are about to be defenestrated
You were the only person who repeatedly used the “suck it up” line
That really isn't true. "You lost suck it up" was a popular notion during the May Government (second referendum) era on here. By the time Johnson's Brexit began to unravel and Remainers were blamed, posters like Scott and myself often batted the idea back as "you won, suck it up".
Scotland seems very sensible in not drinking the Farage Kool-Aid.
More generally, I get the impression that Farage's balloon has been slowly deflating this past couple of weeks. People are realising that one or two MPs are not going to make any difference.
We have had multiple canvas teams out for weeks. What is remarkable is the sheer number of people STILL undecided just days before polling. There is certainly the potential for significnt numbers of those to have voted Conservative by tomorrow night.
I still refuse to believe polling that shows more than half of the 2019 Conservative vote has departed. That is not consistent with my experience (at least until this week, when I have been hors de combat with Covid). A third I could believe. But not more than half.
Be wary of "everybody hates the Tories" narratives from social media. There is an army of Conservative voters who will keep their thoughts to themselves, other than to a Conservative door-knoocker.
We're finding a huge number of convincing-sounding don't knows too in Didcot and Wantage. Some are presumably Tories who don't want to admit to it, but most sound as though they're genuinely unsure how and whether to vote. The defensive Labour campaign ("We won't drop the Ming vase"), the negative LibDem campaign (essentially "vote for us because we're not Tories or Labour") and the wildly thrashing Tory campaign (I can't find a common theme at all) have left Reform as the party offering cheerful messages that they can't deliver. I suspect many people genuinely won't vote and turnout will be unusually low.
I'd describe the Tory campaign as a man trying to climb out of his own greased pitfall trap into which he had unintentionally fallen.
The first vulture has started picking at the corpse of the Conservative Party:
“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.”
The problem is that this election may in fact be only the first episode in a longer term realignment. The Tories will get nowhere if they can only wave fictitious apocalypses in the air. The failure of the Tories cancels out any criticisms they make. That failure is not because Net Zero or "Woke" (whatever that means) or Rwanda should have been dropped, it is because every time they made these their talking points, or the basis for policies like Rwanda, then most people just heard silly extremist slogans and bankrupt policies. If the Tory answer to all of this is a move to some kind of dilute Faragism, then the Tories will never get back into power.
Whatever the result now, I see a huge opportunity to come for the Liberal Democrats. Starmer looks set to get a good two thirds of the new House of Commons on barely 40% of the vote. This discredits FPTP completely, and yet Starmer remains committed to it. Very soon his party will start to enact several very unpopular policies and each time they do, Ed Davey can beat up Labours distorted mandate.
An early example is VAT on school fees which is going to be unexpectedly unpopular not merely amongst parents of independent school kids, but amongst the aspirational, and amongst the parents of kids at good state schools which will now have to deal with higher rolls. Special schools are not exempted, and I am sure the press will find some photogenic dyslexic kids to pose for sad faced pictures. The mood music will not be pretty.
The discipline of the new government, with Sue Gray as chief Commissar will be formidable and the laser focus will be an immediate relief from the recent Tory shambles. The incoming administration is one of the best prepared in my life time, and the economy, though still fundamentally misfiring will nevertheless show clear signs of improvement. Not, however, for small businesses, which have been under the cosh since the GFC and especially Breexit. Good profits in the City, but not for SMEs. Stories of arrogant administrators and silly red tape will abound. The Mandelson love of the rich will start to make people see that Labour is not on the side of the little guys. Still the drip drip of how legitimate Labour´s democratic mandate will come in the background.
The centralising dirigiste soul of Labour will eventually get boring, and with so many idle hands, the devil will make work on the Labour back benches. Expulsions and Maoist discipline won`t altogether still the Greek chorus of back chat. The NHS will improve, but not by much, we are beyond the time where mere tinkering will solve that. Protests will grow in time.
Starmer has been a very lucky general. In the hour of his greatest victory, a triumph unlikely ever to be matched, there is a small voice that is saying... "Remember, you too must die".
It may not be the Tories that end Labour´s reign.
You forgot the bit about the 'straitjacket of the past.'
(Also, although special schools are not exempted de jure the exclusion of EHCPs means they would be exempted de facto. It's a stupid policy for all sorts of reasons but let's keep to facts.)
Slight anecdata postscript to that though. Generally the SEN (or SEN-adjacent) kids going to private schools, round here at least, aren't actually the ones with EHCPs.
It takes several years to work through the process until the kid eventually gets an EHCP. Those parents who can afford it - and obviously that isn't everyone - tend to get a couple of years into this, go "this is stupid, my child can't wait any more", and sign up for the private school with small class sizes.
So one of the unforeseen results of this is that the EHCP waiting lists are going to get a whole lot longer.
(This is just my experience in Oxfordshire - it may be completely different elsewhere and OCC has not exactly been a beacon of SEN provision over the past few years.)
No council has been a beacon of SEN provision - councils don't have the money to provide a proper service and demand is such that many of the staff who run the waiting lists are seriously overworked ...
The first vulture has started picking at the corpse of the Conservative Party:
“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.”
The problem is that this election may in fact be only the first episode in a longer term realignment. The Tories will get nowhere if they can only wave fictitious apocalypses in the air. The failure of the Tories cancels out any criticisms they make. That failure is not because Net Zero or "Woke" (whatever that means) or Rwanda should have been dropped, it is because every time they made these their talking points, or the basis for policies like Rwanda, then most people just heard silly extremist slogans and bankrupt policies. If the Tory answer to all of this is a move to some kind of dilute Faragism, then the Tories will never get back into power.
Whatever the result now, I see a huge opportunity to come for the Liberal Democrats. Starmer looks set to get a good two thirds of the new House of Commons on barely 40% of the vote. This discredits FPTP completely, and yet Starmer remains committed to it. Very soon his party will start to enact several very unpopular policies and each time they do, Ed Davey can beat up Labours distorted mandate.
An early example is VAT on school fees which is going to be unexpectedly unpopular not merely amongst parents of independent school kids, but amongst the aspirational, and amongst the parents of kids at good state schools which will now have to deal with higher rolls. Special schools are not exempted, and I am sure the press will find some photogenic dyslexic kids to pose for sad faced pictures. The mood music will not be pretty.
The discipline of the new government, with Sue Gray as chief Commissar will be formidable and the laser focus will be an immediate relief from the recent Tory shambles. The incoming administration is one of the best prepared in my life time, and the economy, though still fundamentally misfiring will nevertheless show clear signs of improvement. Not, however, for small businesses, which have been under the cosh since the GFC and especially Breexit. Good profits in the City, but not for SMEs. Stories of arrogant administrators and silly red tape will abound. The Mandelson love of the rich will start to make people see that Labour is not on the side of the little guys. Still the drip drip of how legitimate Labour´s democratic mandate will come in the background.
The centralising dirigiste soul of Labour will eventually get boring, and with so many idle hands, the devil will make work on the Labour back benches. Expulsions and Maoist discipline won`t altogether still the Greek chorus of back chat. The NHS will improve, but not by much, we are beyond the time where mere tinkering will solve that. Protests will grow in time.
Starmer has been a very lucky general. In the hour of his greatest victory, a triumph unlikely ever to be matched, there is a small voice that is saying... "Remember, you too must die".
It may not be the Tories that end Labour´s reign.
You forgot the bit about the 'straitjacket of the past.'
(Also, although special schools are not exempted de jure the exclusion of EHCPs means they would be exempted de facto. It's a stupid policy for all sorts of reasons but let's keep to facts.)
Slight anecdata postscript to that though. Generally the SEN (or SEN-adjacent) kids going to private schools, round here at least, aren't actually the ones with EHCPs.
It takes several years to work through the process until the kid eventually gets an EHCP. Those parents who can afford it - and obviously that isn't everyone - tend to get a couple of years into this, go "this is stupid, my child can't wait any more", and sign up for the private school with small class sizes.
So one of the unforeseen results of this is that the EHCP waiting lists are going to get a whole lot longer.
(This is just my experience in Oxfordshire - it may be completely different elsewhere and OCC has not exactly been a beacon of SEN provision over the past few years.)
Yes, I agree with that (and if you think Oxon is bad you should try Staffs who are in open and flagrant breach of their obligations) but that's not what @Cicero said. He said 'special schools will not be exempt' which is rather different (and let it be noted to his credit, he admitted wasn't very accurate).
Another polling assessment has the Cons behind the Lib Dems on seats, something I find personally astonishing. Can only conclude it is down to the Lib Dems ruthless targeting policy where they are surrendering hundreds of deposits elsewhere.However for the Tories the Tech figures are better than other assessments and show them closing the gap from third to second. Who would ever have though such words were possible 6 weeks ago. Quite amazing. Does Ed Davey deserve to be Leader of the Opposition, bit late for that debate now. Postcards would presumably get lost in the post!!!!
I honestly think it's down to dodgy model rules including very heroic assumptions on proportional swing, combined with a massive overstatement of Reform votes. I'm expecting the Tories to end up with comfortably more than double the Lib Dem total, probably triple. If you feed current polling into UNS models it's giving them over 150 seats even before swingback and Reform collapse, and giving the Lib Dems something much more reasonable though potentially still ahead of the SNP.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
You morons really think that’s true don’t you? Many of us have zero regrets over Brexit, precisely because we follow what the EU has been up to, and which we now don’t have to copy. We aren’t diverging: they are.
Yes! We are the centre. Everyone else is diverging from us... "Fog in Channel, Continent cut off" still lives
Scotland seems very sensible in not drinking the Farage Kool-Aid.
More generally, I get the impression that Farage's balloon has been slowly deflating this past couple of weeks. People are realising that one or two MPs are not going to make any difference.
We have had multiple canvas teams out for weeks. What is remarkable is the sheer number of people STILL undecided just days before polling. There is certainly the potential for significnt numbers of those to have voted Conservative by tomorrow night.
I still refuse to believe polling that shows more than half of the 2019 Conservative vote has departed. That is not consistent with my experience (at least until this week, when I have been hors de combat with Covid). A third I could believe. But not more than half.
Be wary of "everybody hates the Tories" narratives from social media. There is an army of Conservative voters who will keep their thoughts to themselves, other than to a Conservative door-knoocker.
We're finding a huge number of convincing-sounding don't knows too in Didcot and Wantage. Some are presumably Tories who don't want to admit to it, but most sound as though they're genuinely unsure how and whether to vote. The defensive Labour campaign ("We won't drop the Ming vase"), the negative LibDem campaign (essentially "vote for us because we're not Tories or Labour") and the wildly thrashing Tory campaign (I can't find a common theme at all) have left Reform as the party offering cheerful messages that they can't deliver. I suspect many people genuinely won't vote and turnout will be unusually low.
I'd describe the Tory campaign as a man trying to climb out of his own greased pitfall trap into which he had unintentionally fallen.
...and the Bear will fall in tomorrow...
Are pitfall traps for bears a thing?
I was thinking of Children of the New Forest, where I first read about one.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
That latter group being the authors of the fiendishly cunning argument that the benefit of Brexit is Brexit. It's a success by dint of it happening.
I mean, c'mon. Lots of things happen in this world. Eg the zip went on my Blue Harbour chinos this morning.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
Isn't it amusing how all the people saying this is an excellent summary ae the fucked off, bitter Remainers who haven't gotten over losing?
Speaking as a "sovereignty fetishist" I am happy with Brexit. We have taken back control and if our government doesn't do what we want it to do, we can kick it out.
What I'm not happy with is the government. It hasn't done what I want it to do so I'm going to vote to kick it out.
The fact I want a change of government doesn't mean I want to hand control back to unelected Eurocrats whom we can't kick out at our national elections though.
Which is why it is so pleasing that so many of the "suck it up" brigade are about to be defenestrated
You were the only person who repeatedly used the “suck it up” line
That really isn't true. "You lost suck it up" was a popular notion during the May Government (second referendum) era on here. By the time Johnson's Brexit began to unravel and Remainers were blamed, posters like Scott and myself often batted the idea back as "you won, suck it up".
I had it said to me on here. One prominent poster (still here) called me a traitor for voting Remain.
Another polling assessment has the Cons behind the Lib Dems on seats, something I find personally astonishing. Can only conclude it is down to the Lib Dems ruthless targeting policy where they are surrendering hundreds of deposits elsewhere.However for the Tories the Tech figures are better than other assessments and show them closing the gap from third to second. Who would ever have though such words were possible 6 weeks ago. Quite amazing. Does Ed Davey deserve to be Leader of the Opposition, bit late for that debate now. Postcards would presumably get lost in the post!!!!
I honestly think it's down to dodgy model rules including very heroic assumptions on proportional swing, combined with a massive overstatement of Reform votes. I'm expecting the Tories to end up with comfortably more than double the Lib Dem total, probably triple. If you feed current polling into UNS models it's giving them over 150 seats even before swingback and Reform collapse, and giving the Lib Dems something much more reasonable though potentially still ahead of the SNP.
Well bet on that then. You will get great odds. 31% for the tories in 1997 only got them 165 seats.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
But it was Brexit that delivered the party into the clutches of Johnson.
Only because of Labour's opposition to Theresa May's deal.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
You morons really think that’s true don’t you? Many of us have zero regrets over Brexit, precisely because we follow what the EU has been up to, and which we now don’t have to copy. We aren’t diverging: they are.
Yes! We are the centre. Everyone else is diverging from us... "Fog in Channel, Continent cut off" still lives
Its nothing to do with the centre, its to do with evolution.
We left on the same standards as them. But every law they pass (and there's been many) which we don't is them diverging further and further away from that common starting point.
While each law we pass that they don't is us diverging in a different way.
That's, again, how evolution works. Many small changes adding up and ending up as quite significant differences.
My plan for analysing the early results tomorrow is to have my lappy and 2 tablets on the go with extreme end mrps open plus the 2019 results/target seats in my boxers like a sad old crack addict
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
For many people, there is a steady stream of inconveniences resulting from Brexit.
In the case of my missus, the latest wheeze is labels, sticky labels that are used for labelling sample vials at her NHS lab. The ones they use are robust, waterproof, have the correct information and have proved themselves over time. They imported from the Netherlands, and the latest batch has been stuck in customs for the last month or so. In desperation, the Dutch supplier has been rerouting labels intended for other labs are are already in the UK, but this can only be a stopgap measure. If they don't get those labels soon, they simply won't be able to continue cancer testing. It's a completely absurd situation.
Does that not just pose the question of who ever thought it was sensible to buy labels from overseas? If that ever made economic sense then there’s something fundamentally wrong. Hence Brexit to force the issue. Or is label making a specialist art only found in the Netherlands?
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
For many people, there is a steady stream of inconveniences resulting from Brexit.
In the case of my missus, the latest wheeze is labels, sticky labels that are used for labelling sample vials at her NHS lab. The ones they use are robust, waterproof, have the correct information and have proved themselves over time. They imported from the Netherlands, and the latest batch has been stuck in customs for the last month or so. In desperation, the Dutch supplier has been rerouting labels intended for other labs are are already in the UK, but this can only be a stopgap measure. If they don't get those labels soon, they simply won't be able to continue cancer testing. It's a completely absurd situation.
Does that not just pose the question of who ever thought it was sensible to buy labels from overseas? If that ever made economic sense then there’s something fundamentally wrong. Hence Brexit to force the issue. Or is label making a specialist art only found in the Netherlands?
Scotland seems very sensible in not drinking the Farage Kool-Aid.
More generally, I get the impression that Farage's balloon has been slowly deflating this past couple of weeks. People are realising that one or two MPs are not going to make any difference.
We have had multiple canvas teams out for weeks. What is remarkable is the sheer number of people STILL undecided just days before polling. There is certainly the potential for significnt numbers of those to have voted Conservative by tomorrow night.
I still refuse to believe polling that shows more than half of the 2019 Conservative vote has departed. That is not consistent with my experience (at least until this week, when I have been hors de combat with Covid). A third I could believe. But not more than half.
Be wary of "everybody hates the Tories" narratives from social media. There is an army of Conservative voters who will keep their thoughts to themselves, other than to a Conservative door-knoocker.
We're finding a huge number of convincing-sounding don't knows too in Didcot and Wantage. Some are presumably Tories who don't want to admit to it, but most sound as though they're genuinely unsure how and whether to vote. The defensive Labour campaign ("We won't drop the Ming vase"), the negative LibDem campaign (essentially "vote for us because we're not Tories or Labour") and the wildly thrashing Tory campaign (I can't find a common theme at all) have left Reform as the party offering cheerful messages that they can't deliver. I suspect many people genuinely won't vote and turnout will be unusually low.
I'd describe the Tory campaign as a man trying to climb out of his own greased pitfall trap into which he had unintentionally slipped.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
You morons really think that’s true don’t you? Many of us have zero regrets over Brexit, precisely because we follow what the EU has been up to, and which we now don’t have to copy. We aren’t diverging: they are.
Most of my friends and family , unlike me, voted to leave. They are very pleased we are no more part of the EU which is what they wanted. Aside from sovereignty issues, one obvious benefit is that we are not sending money (it matters not what the actual sum is) to the EU. I was a pragmatic only Remainer and continue to be bewildered as to the extent of some Remainers' emotional attachment to the EU and wonder what is behind this.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
You morons really think that’s true don’t you? Many of us have zero regrets over Brexit, precisely because we follow what the EU has been up to, and which we now don’t have to copy. We aren’t diverging: they are.
Most of my friends and family , unlike me, voted to leave. They are very pleased we are no more part of the EU which is what they wanted. Aside from sovereignty issues, one obvious benefit is that we are not sending money (it matters not what the actual sum is) to the EU. I was a pragmatic only Remainer and continue to be bewildered as to the extent of some Remainers' emotional attachment to the EU and wonder what is behind this.
They (and their opinions) were scorned. They were rejected - and they can't accept it.
Hell hath no fury like a lover Remainer scorned.
But while they're sitting plotting their revenge, searching their ex's social media keeping tabs on them, the rest of the world has calmly and quietly moved on.
One day people will learn not to write either the Tory or Labour obituary when they sit at one of their low points. I think the risk of maximum danger for the Tories (being overtaken by Reform on votes and the LibDems on seats) has passed, and something 1997 shaped which should shake them to their core will feel “ok”.
How quickly they recover is partly to do with them and how they reshape, but mostly to do with Starmer in power. He doesn’t have the freedom to act that Blair had, there’s bad news to come, and we certainly aren’t in for strong growth any time soon.
At this stage, forecasting 2029 is a mug’s game. It might be a political sea change, or we might be back to the 70s.
But for now, what matters is what the new Government does from Friday morning. There’s a lot in the in-tray. I am quite interested in a “first Tory lead” market after the election, because I suspect it will be the Autumn and I bet I’ll get good odds.
One thing Starmer has in his favour is low expectations. He's not riding in on a wave of hope like Blair, and isn't basking in Corbynesque adulation. Nobody expects him to do wonderful things from the start; it's more that people just want somebody reasonably competent at the helm. I'd therefore expect him to have a somewhat longer honeymoon period than you suggest.
Yep. It's a bad economic legacy he inherits but a very good political one.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
Isn't it amusing how all the people saying this is an excellent summary ae the fucked off, bitter Remainers who haven't gotten over losing?
Speaking as a "sovereignty fetishist" I am happy with Brexit. We have taken back control and if our government doesn't do what we want it to do, we can kick it out.
What I'm not happy with is the government. It hasn't done what I want it to do so I'm going to vote to kick it out.
The fact I want a change of government doesn't mean I want to hand control back to unelected Eurocrats whom we can't kick out at our national elections though.
I am, however, open-mouthed in bewilderment over people who were massive Brexiteers deciding to vote this time for the party whose slogan was literally 'Bollocks to Brexit' or the party whose leader was agitating for a second referendum and actively hampering our exit negotiations with the EU.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
You morons really think that’s true don’t you? Many of us have zero regrets over Brexit, precisely because we follow what the EU has been up to, and which we now don’t have to copy. We aren’t diverging: they are.
Yes! We are the centre. Everyone else is diverging from us... "Fog in Channel, Continent cut off" still lives
Its nothing to do with the centre, its to do with evolution.
We left on the same standards as them. But every law they pass (and there's been many) which we don't is them diverging further and further away from that common starting point.
While each law we pass that they don't is us diverging in a different way.
That's, again, how evolution works. Many small changes adding up and ending up as quite significant differences.
Except that we still accept their standards because our exporters dare not do otherwise. And that will include any new rules they dream up.
We now have zero input to the process, we just have to take what they give us.
Tim S Are you taking into account the "ruthless" targeting" and concentration of money and resources in what 60 seats. They have been concentrating on only two or three seats in the entire Midlands, and leaving the rest. If they win two of those they will think it was worth it but of course for the future it leaves a total field of neglect elsewhere, and there will be severe consequences resulting from that in the next year or so.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
You morons really think that’s true don’t you? Many of us have zero regrets over Brexit, precisely because we follow what the EU has been up to, and which we now don’t have to copy. We aren’t diverging: they are.
Yes! We are the centre. Everyone else is diverging from us... "Fog in Channel, Continent cut off" still lives
Eh? Oh ok. You want to call me a little englander. Carry on. Those arguments don’t really matter any more. We have left and are never going back.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
Isn't it amusing how all the people saying this is an excellent summary ae the fucked off, bitter Remainers who haven't gotten over losing?
Speaking as a "sovereignty fetishist" I am happy with Brexit. We have taken back control and if our government doesn't do what we want it to do, we can kick it out.
What I'm not happy with is the government. It hasn't done what I want it to do so I'm going to vote to kick it out.
The fact I want a change of government doesn't mean I want to hand control back to unelected Eurocrats whom we can't kick out at our national elections though.
I am, however, open-mouthed in bewilderment over people who were massive Brexiteers deciding to vote this time for the party whose slogan was literally 'Bollocks to Brexit' or the party whose leader was agitating for a second referendum and actively hampering our exit negotiations with the EU.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
For many people, there is a steady stream of inconveniences resulting from Brexit.
In the case of my missus, the latest wheeze is labels, sticky labels that are used for labelling sample vials at her NHS lab. The ones they use are robust, waterproof, have the correct information and have proved themselves over time. They imported from the Netherlands, and the latest batch has been stuck in customs for the last month or so. In desperation, the Dutch supplier has been rerouting labels intended for other labs are are already in the UK, but this can only be a stopgap measure. If they don't get those labels soon, they simply won't be able to continue cancer testing. It's a completely absurd situation.
Which is a shit situation, but what is the explanation? What is he exact hold-up? Its not food, so no vet check. What is causing the delay?
@Andy_JS - you asked in the last thread if there would be any Tories left in Oxfordshire.
Other than the prospect of them holding on through the middle in Bicester & Woodstock or in Didcot & Wantage, their best prospect is Witney.
Although until the votes are counted, they could hold on everywhere out of a fortunate distribution of votes of course, or a late softening towards them (I will never count the chickens before they're hatched and Lib Dems have scars on their backs from hope in the past).
I understand that Labour have been concerned in Banbury that it's proving to have a resilient Tory share (and the campaign visits from both Starmer and Sunak recently indicate that both think it's still in the fight), but I think Labour have got it there - albeit from a bit of a distance and with minimal direct knowledge of that constituency.
Witney, though, always looked the hardest nut to crack and at the start of the campaign, I assumed it'd stay blue but with a decent Lib Dem advance. However, virtually everything seems to have broken ideally for Charlie Maynard and it seems to be genuinely in the balance (as per the campaign visits by Sunak and Davey - they both seem to think it's gettable by either).
Labour are 2/7 in Banbury. However conservatives are favourites in Witney
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
But it was Brexit that delivered the party into the clutches of Johnson.
Not sure about that. I think Boris was just catnip to Tory party members. They were always going to turn to him at some point. If remain had won, he'd have found some other wedge issue.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
Isn't it amusing how all the people saying this is an excellent summary ae the fucked off, bitter Remainers who haven't gotten over losing?
Speaking as a "sovereignty fetishist" I am happy with Brexit. We have taken back control and if our government doesn't do what we want it to do, we can kick it out.
What I'm not happy with is the government. It hasn't done what I want it to do so I'm going to vote to kick it out.
The fact I want a change of government doesn't mean I want to hand control back to unelected Eurocrats whom we can't kick out at our national elections though.
Boris Johnson said last night that you need to vote Conservative because"Putinista" Starmer is an EU traitor to Johnson's Brexit legacy and a traitor to Johnson's Ukraine legacy.
You once exclaimed Boris Johnson is the "greatest Prime Minister". Why are you disregarding his (self-proclaimed last evening) astonishingly brilliant legacy?
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
You morons really think that’s true don’t you? Many of us have zero regrets over Brexit, precisely because we follow what the EU has been up to, and which we now don’t have to copy. We aren’t diverging: they are.
Yes! We are the centre. Everyone else is diverging from us... "Fog in Channel, Continent cut off" still lives
Its nothing to do with the centre, its to do with evolution.
We left on the same standards as them. But every law they pass (and there's been many) which we don't is them diverging further and further away from that common starting point.
While each law we pass that they don't is us diverging in a different way.
That's, again, how evolution works. Many small changes adding up and ending up as quite significant differences.
Except that we still accept their standards because our exporters dare not do otherwise. And that will include any new rules they dream up.
We now have zero input to the process, we just have to take what they give us.
I have no problems accepting their standards and recognising them as equivalent.
I have no problems accepting Australian standards and recognising them as equivalent.
I have no problems accepting Canadian, Japanese, Korean, or any other developed first world standards and recognising them as equivalent.
That can be and is our choice. We're not bound to only accept their standards while being bound to reject perfectly acceptable equivalents.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
You morons really think that’s true don’t you? Many of us have zero regrets over Brexit, precisely because we follow what the EU has been up to, and which we now don’t have to copy. We aren’t diverging: they are.
Most of my friends and family , unlike me, voted to leave. They are very pleased we are no more part of the EU which is what they wanted. Aside from sovereignty issues, one obvious benefit is that we are not sending money (it matters not what the actual sum is) to the EU. I was a pragmatic only Remainer and continue to be bewildered as to the extent of some Remainers' emotional attachment to the EU and wonder what is behind this.
They (and their opinions) were scorned. They were rejected - and they can't accept it.
Hell hath no fury like a lover Remainer scorned.
But while they're sitting plotting their revenge, searching their ex's social media keeping tabs on them, the rest of the world has calmly and quietly moved on.
They've also been proved right (well, some of them). The country is worse off due to Brexit. It need not have been, but it is.
It's quite funny really: some Brexiteers refuse to see any of the damage Brexit has caused, whilst others don't give a damn about the damage.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
You morons really think that’s true don’t you? Many of us have zero regrets over Brexit, precisely because we follow what the EU has been up to, and which we now don’t have to copy. We aren’t diverging: they are.
Most of my friends and family , unlike me, voted to leave. They are very pleased we are no more part of the EU which is what they wanted. Aside from sovereignty issues, one obvious benefit is that we are not sending money (it matters not what the actual sum is) to the EU. I was a pragmatic only Remainer and continue to be bewildered as to the extent of some Remainers' emotional attachment to the EU and wonder what is behind this.
They (and their opinions) were scorned. They were rejected - and they can't accept it.
Hell hath no fury like a lover Remainer scorned.
But while they're sitting plotting their revenge, searching their ex's social media keeping tabs on them, the rest of the world has calmly and quietly moved on.
I honestly don't think it's that. I think it's a deep down dislike for their own country and they (perhaps unconsciously) support any way of diluting it. I think it's a disapproval of the nation state system over some sort of global utopia.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
But it was Brexit that delivered the party into the clutches of Johnson.
Only because of Labour's opposition to Theresa May's deal.
Not just labour - also the Tory Europhiles. Basically anyone who didn't like the outcome of the referendum and sought to overturn it.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
For many people, there is a steady stream of inconveniences resulting from Brexit.
In the case of my missus, the latest wheeze is labels, sticky labels that are used for labelling sample vials at her NHS lab. The ones they use are robust, waterproof, have the correct information and have proved themselves over time. They imported from the Netherlands, and the latest batch has been stuck in customs for the last month or so. In desperation, the Dutch supplier has been rerouting labels intended for other labs are are already in the UK, but this can only be a stopgap measure. If they don't get those labels soon, they simply won't be able to continue cancer testing. It's a completely absurd situation.
Does that not just pose the question of who ever thought it was sensible to buy labels from overseas? If that ever made economic sense then there’s something fundamentally wrong. Hence Brexit to force the issue. Or is label making a specialist art only found in the Netherlands?
It's got to be one hell of a specialist label if "simply won't be able to continue cancer testing" is anything other than the worst hyperbole I've seen since 2016.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
Isn't it amusing how all the people saying this is an excellent summary ae the fucked off, bitter Remainers who haven't gotten over losing?
Speaking as a "sovereignty fetishist" I am happy with Brexit. We have taken back control and if our government doesn't do what we want it to do, we can kick it out.
What I'm not happy with is the government. It hasn't done what I want it to do so I'm going to vote to kick it out.
The fact I want a change of government doesn't mean I want to hand control back to unelected Eurocrats whom we can't kick out at our national elections though.
I am, however, open-mouthed in bewilderment over people who were massive Brexiteers deciding to vote this time for the party whose slogan was literally 'Bollocks to Brexit' or the party whose leader was agitating for a second referendum and actively hampering our exit negotiations with the EU.
@Dura_Ace's point. No-one likes to admit they have been made fools of. So what was massive before now becomes unimportant - just don't talk about it please.
The field work for that Survation poll is 26 June to 2nd July . So 7 days of fieldwork which won’t capture a last minute move .
That’s a poor effort in all honesty . Taken at face value a few crumbs for Sunak in that 28% put him as best PM well above the Tory vote share . On the other hand Reform at 17% even with a phone poll which would be more likely to include shy Reform voters .
The field work for that Survation poll is 26 June to 2nd July . So 7 days of fieldwork which won’t capture a last minute move .
That’s a poor effort in all honesty . Taken at face value a few crumbs for Sunak in that 28% put him as best PM well above the Tory vote share . On the other hand Reform at 17% even with a phone poll which would be more likely to include shy Reform voters .
They are running a final call after 9pm which will be a blend of phone/online
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
Isn't it amusing how all the people saying this is an excellent summary ae the fucked off, bitter Remainers who haven't gotten over losing?
Speaking as a "sovereignty fetishist" I am happy with Brexit. We have taken back control and if our government doesn't do what we want it to do, we can kick it out.
What I'm not happy with is the government. It hasn't done what I want it to do so I'm going to vote to kick it out.
The fact I want a change of government doesn't mean I want to hand control back to unelected Eurocrats whom we can't kick out at our national elections though.
Boris Johnson said last night that you need to vote Conservative because"Putinista" Starmer is an EU traitor to Johnson's Brexit legacy and a traitor to Johnson's Ukraine legacy.
You once exclaimed Boris Johnson is the "greatest Prime Minister". Why are you disregarding his (self-proclaimed last evening) astonishingly brilliant legacy?
I never said that, I said at the time (pre-partygate) he was one of the better Prime Ministers of my lifetime, but that it was a low bar, which he was.
I also said it was time for him to go well before he did. I also stopped supporting him and his party well before he left.
I make my own opinions, I am happy to reject anyone else's thoughts, including my own of the past as I am quite prepared to change my mind if the facts change.
Barclay is more likely next Tory leader than Badenoch in my view, with Tory MPs putting Tugendhat with him to members. On Badenoch's seat, if a postal vote is postmarked as sent before polling day it should be included
You know that PVs have to arrive before close of polls to be counted.
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.
Well, it might be, given that the elderly are disproportionately more likely to use a postal vote and are (these days, marginally) more likely to vote for the Tories. Mind you if Kemi B had a majority of under 1000, I think her political capital as leader would be pretty dramatically lowered anyway.
The elderly, students, ethnic minorities, and holidaymakers.
LAB 38% (-3) CON 18% (-) REF 17% (+3) LD 11% (-1) GRE 7% (+2) SNP 3% (+1) OTH 6% (-1)
F/w 26th June - 2nd July. Changes vs. 26th June 2024.
If thats the result it would likely be tories less than 59 seats. But generally if you look back to 1997 the tories final poll is 3 to 4% above their lowest share.
Does that not just pose the question of who ever thought it was sensible to buy labels from overseas? If that ever made economic sense then there’s something fundamentally wrong. Hence Brexit to force the issue. Or is label making a specialist art only found in the Netherlands?
The vast majority of businesses, including the NHS, rely on inputs from overseas. It's called trade. We are not (yet) North Korea.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
You morons really think that’s true don’t you? Many of us have zero regrets over Brexit, precisely because we follow what the EU has been up to, and which we now don’t have to copy. We aren’t diverging: they are.
Most of my friends and family , unlike me, voted to leave. They are very pleased we are no more part of the EU which is what they wanted. Aside from sovereignty issues, one obvious benefit is that we are not sending money (it matters not what the actual sum is) to the EU. I was a pragmatic only Remainer and continue to be bewildered as to the extent of some Remainers' emotional attachment to the EU and wonder what is behind this.
They (and their opinions) were scorned. They were rejected - and they can't accept it.
Hell hath no fury like a lover Remainer scorned.
But while they're sitting plotting their revenge, searching their ex's social media keeping tabs on them, the rest of the world has calmly and quietly moved on.
They've also been proved right (well, some of them). The country is worse off due to Brexit. It need not have been, but it is.
It's quite funny really: some Brexiteers refuse to see any of the damage Brexit has caused, whilst others don't give a damn about the damage.
One day people will learn not to write either the Tory or Labour obituary when they sit at one of their low points. I think the risk of maximum danger for the Tories (being overtaken by Reform on votes and the LibDems on seats) has passed, and something 1997 shaped which should shake them to their core will feel “ok”.
How quickly they recover is partly to do with them and how they reshape, but mostly to do with Starmer in power. He doesn’t have the freedom to act that Blair had, there’s bad news to come, and we certainly aren’t in for strong growth any time soon.
At this stage, forecasting 2029 is a mug’s game. It might be a political sea change, or we might be back to the 70s.
But for now, what matters is what the new Government does from Friday morning. There’s a lot in the in-tray. I am quite interested in a “first Tory lead” market after the election, because I suspect it will be the Autumn and I bet I’ll get good odds.
One thing Starmer has in his favour is low expectations. He's not riding in on a wave of hope like Blair, and isn't basking in Corbynesque adulation. Nobody expects him to do wonderful things from the start; it's more that people just want somebody reasonably competent at the helm. I'd therefore expect him to have a somewhat longer honeymoon period than you suggest.
'what he is, what he has always been, and what he will be as your next Prime Minister, is Not Rishi Sunak.'
The field work for that Survation poll is 26 June to 2nd July . So 7 days of fieldwork which won’t capture a last minute move .
That’s a poor effort in all honesty . Taken at face value a few crumbs for Sunak in that 28% put him as best PM well above the Tory vote share . On the other hand Reform at 17% even with a phone poll which would be more likely to include shy Reform voters .
They are running a final call after 9pm which will be a blend of phone/online
Thanks for letting me know . Certainly at this point you don’t want fieldwork dating back a week . I like the blend of phone and online.
My plan for analysing the early results tomorrow is to have my lappy and 2 tablets on the go with extreme end mrps open plus the 2019 results/target seats in my boxers like a sad old crack addict
Nobody should need crack when Tory rule is collapsing. It's a once a generation trip.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
You morons really think that’s true don’t you? Many of us have zero regrets over Brexit, precisely because we follow what the EU has been up to, and which we now don’t have to copy. We aren’t diverging: they are.
Most of my friends and family , unlike me, voted to leave. They are very pleased we are no more part of the EU which is what they wanted. Aside from sovereignty issues, one obvious benefit is that we are not sending money (it matters not what the actual sum is) to the EU. I was a pragmatic only Remainer and continue to be bewildered as to the extent of some Remainers' emotional attachment to the EU and wonder what is behind this.
They (and their opinions) were scorned. They were rejected - and they can't accept it.
Hell hath no fury like a lover Remainer scorned.
But while they're sitting plotting their revenge, searching their ex's social media keeping tabs on them, the rest of the world has calmly and quietly moved on.
I honestly don't think it's that. I think it's a deep down dislike for their own country and they (perhaps unconsciously) support any way of diluting it. I think it's a disapproval of the nation state system over some sort of global utopia.
In intention, at any rate, the English intelligentsia are Europeanized. They take their cookery from Paris and their opinions from Moscow. In the general patriotism of the country they form a sort of island of dissident thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during ‘God Save the King’ than of stealing from a poor box.
The field work for that Survation poll is 26 June to 2nd July . So 7 days of fieldwork which won’t capture a last minute move .
That’s a poor effort in all honesty . Taken at face value a few crumbs for Sunak in that 28% put him as best PM well above the Tory vote share . On the other hand Reform at 17% even with a phone poll which would be more likely to include shy Reform voters .
They are running a final call after 9pm which will be a blend of phone/online
Thanks for letting us know . Certainly at this point you don’t want fieldwork dating back a week .
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
Isn't it amusing how all the people saying this is an excellent summary ae the fucked off, bitter Remainers who haven't gotten over losing?
Speaking as a "sovereignty fetishist" I am happy with Brexit. We have taken back control and if our government doesn't do what we want it to do, we can kick it out.
What I'm not happy with is the government. It hasn't done what I want it to do so I'm going to vote to kick it out.
The fact I want a change of government doesn't mean I want to hand control back to unelected Eurocrats whom we can't kick out at our national elections though.
I am, however, open-mouthed in bewilderment over people who were massive Brexiteers deciding to vote this time for the party whose slogan was literally 'Bollocks to Brexit' or the party whose leader was agitating for a second referendum and actively hampering our exit negotiations with the EU.
Why?
Its done, we've moved on. They've moved on too.
I don't think they have moved on.
The referendum should have put a line under the thorny issue of whether we should be part of the EU project or sit it out. It has put a line for me but obviously not for others.
It's conveniently forgotten that Con policy was to stay in the EU and if there is blame it should be towards the MPs who voted for the referendum in the first place - which the vast majority did across party (with the notable exception of the SNP).
The tories lowest share during the campaign has been 18%. They virtually never in the end get a result as bad as their worst share. Its normally 3 to 4% above.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
But it was Brexit that delivered the party into the clutches of Johnson.
Only because of Labour's opposition to Theresa May's deal.
Theresa May's deal at the time looked awful. With the benefit of hindsight over Johnson's "oven ready for the microwave" dog's breakfast, it was an error not to support it.
I don't believe the previously Euro Federalist William Glenn was an overwhelming advocate at the time.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
But it was Brexit that delivered the party into the clutches of Johnson.
Only because of Labour's opposition to Theresa May's deal.
Which would have been irrelevant if her own party had backed it.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
You morons really think that’s true don’t you? Many of us have zero regrets over Brexit, precisely because we follow what the EU has been up to, and which we now don’t have to copy. We aren’t diverging: they are.
Most of my friends and family , unlike me, voted to leave. They are very pleased we are no more part of the EU which is what they wanted. Aside from sovereignty issues, one obvious benefit is that we are not sending money (it matters not what the actual sum is) to the EU. I was a pragmatic only Remainer and continue to be bewildered as to the extent of some Remainers' emotional attachment to the EU and wonder what is behind this.
They (and their opinions) were scorned. They were rejected - and they can't accept it.
Hell hath no fury like a lover Remainer scorned.
But while they're sitting plotting their revenge, searching their ex's social media keeping tabs on them, the rest of the world has calmly and quietly moved on.
They've also been proved right (well, some of them). The country is worse off due to Brexit. It need not have been, but it is.
It's quite funny really: some Brexiteers refuse to see any of the damage Brexit has caused, whilst others don't give a damn about the damage.
What damage?
In my missus's lab, the damage is a significant decrease in productivity due to the extra administrative hassles in obtaining supplies. This means that clinicians have to wait longer for results and so cancer diagnoses take longer.
One of the things that happens in a sea-change election is the time it takes for the penny to drop, and I’m not referring to the soon-to-be-ex member for Portsmouth North.
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.
I agree although leadership elections are usually interesting. I am 62. Tomorrow may be the last day of Conservative government I see. I hope that the idiots voting for Reform tomorrow are happy with that. 10-15 years of Labour government will see a lot of them out.
Most of the reform people will be dead and buried by the time Labour have gone.
The real problem with Reform isn't the sustainability of the current Farage limited company masquerading as a political party. It's whether what we're seeing is the beginning in this country of the anti-democracy myth that's been growing in the US and (till now, just the rest of) Western Europe - exemplified by the proportion of the Yoof population supporting autocracies in polls.
Simple demographics won't deal with this trend. We need positive leadership from all sides of the responsible parties (especially including the heirs to Britain's Tories) in demonstrating to every group the benefits of a politically accountable real democracy.
The issue has been the following
1) Consensus on nearly everything. Was it Alistair Campbell who commented on the difference between the parties being x percent of GDP in government spending? 2) From this comes the idea that the consensus is The Moral Choice. 3) If the consensus isn't to your advantage - SHUT! UP! 4) Problems - if they are on the OK list, see 1-3. If they are on the Forbidden List - THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS. SHUT UP.
2-4 are killing democracy - "There Is No Alternative And Shut Up" is not a sales pitch in a democracy.
People say this, but the reality is that democracy is alive and kicking - and healthy.
We are nearly a quarter of the way through this century and - rightly or wrongly - a lot has changed politically in that time.
Debating whether we should join the new Single Currency sooner or later ended in Brexit.
Arguments about Section 28, whether gay relationships were OK etc ended in equal marriage, equal adoption rights and so on and so forth.
An obsession with ever increasing house prices has wrecked much damage on the economy and people's lifestyles but now people have started to realise that and hopefully things are beginning to change.
The idea parties agree on everything is just mad, the parties of today don't even agree with their versions of themselves from 25 years ago. The thing is though as @rcs1000 regularly and rightly says, iteration is the best way to get change.
Or another way of looking at it - many small changes over time add up to large evolutions.
There is little evidence that meaningful change will happen in a number of areas.
Housing, the reworking/merging of university and "technical" qualifications, infrastructure etc will all end up in the Process of The Process State. A long and complicated way of saying no.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
Isn't it amusing how all the people saying this is an excellent summary ae the fucked off, bitter Remainers who haven't gotten over losing?
Speaking as a "sovereignty fetishist" I am happy with Brexit. We have taken back control and if our government doesn't do what we want it to do, we can kick it out.
What I'm not happy with is the government. It hasn't done what I want it to do so I'm going to vote to kick it out.
The fact I want a change of government doesn't mean I want to hand control back to unelected Eurocrats whom we can't kick out at our national elections though.
I am, however, open-mouthed in bewilderment over people who were massive Brexiteers deciding to vote this time for the party whose slogan was literally 'Bollocks to Brexit' or the party whose leader was agitating for a second referendum and actively hampering our exit negotiations with the EU.
Why?
Its done, we've moved on. They've moved on too.
I don't think they have moved on.
The referendum should have put a line under the thorny issue of whether we should be part of the EU project or sit it out. It has put a line for me but obviously not for others.
It's conveniently forgotten that Con policy was to stay in the EU and if there is blame it should be towards the MPs who voted for the referendum in the first place - which the vast majority did across party (with the notable exception of the SNP).
It has put a line under it. We're out.
Neither Starmer, nor Davey, nor anyone else is proposing to reverse it.
ScottP, Beiberley and others may be banging on about it like Hiroo Onoda still fighting the war decades later, but the rest of the world has moved on.
Starmer will have other priorities to deal with, using our sovereignty, than taking us back into Europe.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
You morons really think that’s true don’t you? Many of us have zero regrets over Brexit, precisely because we follow what the EU has been up to, and which we now don’t have to copy. We aren’t diverging: they are.
Most of my friends and family , unlike me, voted to leave. They are very pleased we are no more part of the EU which is what they wanted. Aside from sovereignty issues, one obvious benefit is that we are not sending money (it matters not what the actual sum is) to the EU. I was a pragmatic only Remainer and continue to be bewildered as to the extent of some Remainers' emotional attachment to the EU and wonder what is behind this.
They (and their opinions) were scorned. They were rejected - and they can't accept it.
Hell hath no fury like a lover Remainer scorned.
But while they're sitting plotting their revenge, searching their ex's social media keeping tabs on them, the rest of the world has calmly and quietly moved on.
They've also been proved right (well, some of them). The country is worse off due to Brexit. It need not have been, but it is.
It's quite funny really: some Brexiteers refuse to see any of the damage Brexit has caused, whilst others don't give a damn about the damage.
What I like about some US polling is that they highlight movements between the fieldwork days . If you’re going to run a long fieldwork timeframe you really should include whether there was any more significant changes in poll respondent answers.
So in this case the last few days closer to Election Day .
One day people will learn not to write either the Tory or Labour obituary when they sit at one of their low points. I think the risk of maximum danger for the Tories (being overtaken by Reform on votes and the LibDems on seats) has passed, and something 1997 shaped which should shake them to their core will feel “ok”.
How quickly they recover is partly to do with them and how they reshape, but mostly to do with Starmer in power. He doesn’t have the freedom to act that Blair had, there’s bad news to come, and we certainly aren’t in for strong growth any time soon.
At this stage, forecasting 2029 is a mug’s game. It might be a political sea change, or we might be back to the 70s.
But for now, what matters is what the new Government does from Friday morning. There’s a lot in the in-tray. I am quite interested in a “first Tory lead” market after the election, because I suspect it will be the Autumn and I bet I’ll get good odds.
One thing Starmer has in his favour is low expectations. He's not riding in on a wave of hope like Blair, and isn't basking in Corbynesque adulation. Nobody expects him to do wonderful things from the start; it's more that people just want somebody reasonably competent at the helm. I'd therefore expect him to have a somewhat longer honeymoon period than you suggest.
I think his initial weakness is on his left. With a big majority and a lot to fix, he’d be well advised to do the hard things first; but in doing that he’s going to get called a “Tory” a lot. If the actual Tories have woken up, they might even learn from Cameron back in the day and mischievously back him, to highlight the Labour splits.
Starmer's problem in a year or so might be party management. A lot of the new candidates are used to running things in the real world, and/or are experts in their domain, and may grow restive at being lobby fodder for ill-informed ministers passing legislation drafted by American management consultants. There are not enough junior ministerial and committee chair slots to go round, and what is worse are rumours that some people have been promised peerages with ministerial jobs attached.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
Isn't it amusing how all the people saying this is an excellent summary ae the fucked off, bitter Remainers who haven't gotten over losing?
Speaking as a "sovereignty fetishist" I am happy with Brexit. We have taken back control and if our government doesn't do what we want it to do, we can kick it out.
What I'm not happy with is the government. It hasn't done what I want it to do so I'm going to vote to kick it out.
The fact I want a change of government doesn't mean I want to hand control back to unelected Eurocrats whom we can't kick out at our national elections though.
I am, however, open-mouthed in bewilderment over people who were massive Brexiteers deciding to vote this time for the party whose slogan was literally 'Bollocks to Brexit' or the party whose leader was agitating for a second referendum and actively hampering our exit negotiations with the EU.
Why? Brexit is done. Many of those who voted for it are traditional Labour voters. Why on earth would they not return to Labour once the referendum issue is closed?
People are voting based on the perceived competence, honesty and trustworthiness of the current candidates, either at local of national level. Brexit is yesterday's story.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
But it was Brexit that delivered the party into the clutches of Johnson.
Not sure about that. I think Boris was just catnip to Tory party members. They were always going to turn to him at some point. If remain had won, he'd have found some other wedge issue.
After winning twice in London Boris was regarded as an electoral winner.
The Conservatives were always going to turn to him when in political difficulties.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
For many people, there is a steady stream of inconveniences resulting from Brexit.
In the case of my missus, the latest wheeze is labels, sticky labels that are used for labelling sample vials at her NHS lab. The ones they use are robust, waterproof, have the correct information and have proved themselves over time. They imported from the Netherlands, and the latest batch has been stuck in customs for the last month or so. In desperation, the Dutch supplier has been rerouting labels intended for other labs are are already in the UK, but this can only be a stopgap measure. If they don't get those labels soon, they simply won't be able to continue cancer testing. It's a completely absurd situation.
Does that not just pose the question of who ever thought it was sensible to buy labels from overseas? If that ever made economic sense then there’s something fundamentally wrong. Hence Brexit to force the issue. Or is label making a specialist art only found in the Netherlands?
It's got to be one hell of a specialist label if "simply won't be able to continue cancer testing" is anything other than the worst hyperbole I've seen since 2016.
In 1940 or so, a deputation from Bletchley went to see Churchill. Among the shortages, was a shortage of coloured pens. For marking the special charts used for mapping out patterns in Enigma.
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.
Brexit
It started with Boris. Boris’s consistently terrible behaviour led to Truss. I agree that the Trussterfuck budget cemented the shift long term.
Honestly I don’t think it’s Brexit.
Hardly anybody got what they wanted out of Brexit.
Cameron did the referendum as an internal party management measure and to shore up his right flank against UKIP. That worked out just splendidly.
The Remainers are fucked off, bitter and will never forgive or forget.
The chavs didn't get less immigration but got more from less culturally adjacent sources. This was very predictable but just not by them.
The Singapore-on-Thames wankers didn't get their free market paradise.
The sovereignty fetishists are the only tiny group that are claiming to be happy with it and they are lying for reasons of vanity and pride.
Isn't it amusing how all the people saying this is an excellent summary ae the fucked off, bitter Remainers who haven't gotten over losing?
Speaking as a "sovereignty fetishist" I am happy with Brexit. We have taken back control and if our government doesn't do what we want it to do, we can kick it out.
What I'm not happy with is the government. It hasn't done what I want it to do so I'm going to vote to kick it out.
The fact I want a change of government doesn't mean I want to hand control back to unelected Eurocrats whom we can't kick out at our national elections though.
I am, however, open-mouthed in bewilderment over people who were massive Brexiteers deciding to vote this time for the party whose slogan was literally 'Bollocks to Brexit' or the party whose leader was agitating for a second referendum and actively hampering our exit negotiations with the EU.
Why?
Its done, we've moved on. They've moved on too.
I don't think they have moved on.
The referendum should have put a line under the thorny issue of whether we should be part of the EU project or sit it out. It has put a line for me but obviously not for others.
It's conveniently forgotten that Con policy was to stay in the EU and if there is blame it should be towards the MPs who voted for the referendum in the first place - which the vast majority did across party (with the notable exception of the SNP).
It has put a line under it. We're out.
Neither Starmer, nor Davey, nor anyone else is proposing to reverse it.
ScottP, Beiberley and others may be banging on about it like Hiroo Onoda still fighting the war decades later, but the rest of the world has moved on.
Starmer will have other priorities to deal with, using our sovereignty, than taking us back into Europe.
Except that it simply becomes more and more apparent that Brexit was sold on a lie. That many of the promises were bogus.
It destroyed trust and the legacy of that betrayed trust is still poisoning our politics. Tomorrow may be the start of the redress but it has been a long time coming.
Comments
I've been doing them for since before they were cool and I'm going to do a little rant about the public MrPs.
In terms of the Labour majority public MrPs vary here by about 200 seats.
One of the reasons for this is down to the distributions. The 11 MrPs (and 1 SRP) are shown below in terms of the spread of the Labour vote share across 631 constituencies.
The MoreInCommon MrP (in the bottom left) has a very wide distribution. Labour having very high and very low vote shares in lots of constituencies (an interdecile range [IDR] of 55%), while Survation (in the top left) are very narrow (an IDR of 33%), Labour getting a similar vote share in lots of constituencies.
This is important because the narrower the distributions, the fewer seats the Tories get.
https://x.com/kevcunningham/status/1808354000988787156
1) Consensus on nearly everything. Was it Alistair Campbell who commented on the difference between the parties being x percent of GDP in government spending?
2) From this comes the idea that the consensus is The Moral Choice.
3) If the consensus isn't to your advantage - SHUT! UP!
4) Problems - if they are on the OK list, see 1-3. If they are on the Forbidden List - THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS. SHUT UP.
2-4 are killing democracy - "There Is No Alternative And Shut Up" is not a sales pitch in a democracy.
It takes several years to work through the process until the kid eventually gets an EHCP. Those parents who can afford it - and obviously that isn't everyone - tend to get a couple of years into this, go "this is stupid, my child can't wait any more", and sign up for the private school with small class sizes.
So one of the unforeseen results of this is that the EHCP waiting lists are going to get a whole lot longer.
(This is just my experience in Oxfordshire - it may be completely different elsewhere and OCC has not exactly been a beacon of SEN provision over the past few years.)
https://x.com/kevcunningham/status/1808354000988787156
TLDR there are some methodological issues with them so don't take them too seriously.
Only themselves. (does this seem likely?)
Politics like science advances one death at a time. The utter trashing coming tomorrow will help the Conservative rebirth.
So that’s something to look forward to.
In the case of my missus, the latest wheeze is labels, sticky labels that are used for labelling sample vials at her NHS lab. The ones they use are robust, waterproof, have the correct information and have proved themselves over time. They imported from the Netherlands, and the latest batch has been stuck in customs for the last month or so. In desperation, the Dutch supplier has been rerouting labels intended for other labs are are already in the UK, but this can only be a stopgap measure. If they don't get those labels soon, they simply won't be able to continue cancer testing. It's a completely absurd situation.
They are only favourite to win in one seat (Clacton).
We are nearly a quarter of the way through this century and - rightly or wrongly - a lot has changed politically in that time.
Debating whether we should join the new Single Currency sooner or later ended in Brexit.
Arguments about Section 28, whether gay relationships were OK etc ended in equal marriage, equal adoption rights and so on and so forth.
An obsession with ever increasing house prices has wrecked much damage on the economy and people's lifestyles but now people have started to realise that and hopefully things are beginning to change.
The idea parties agree on everything is just mad, the parties of today don't even agree with their versions of themselves from 25 years ago. The thing is though as @rcs1000 regularly and rightly says, iteration is the best way to get change.
Or another way of looking at it - many small changes over time add up to large evolutions.
Postcards would presumably get lost in the post!!!!
My middle daughter set one up because she was away at University during term time and wanted to continue voting here. However, she's just finished Uni and was too late in trying to cancel her postal vote, so she picked it up a couple of days ago when she was clearing out her room at Uni and has been too untrusting of Royal Mail's capability of getting it back in time if she posted it on Monday. So she's taking it down to the polling station tomorrow.
I was thinking of Children of the New Forest, where I first read about one.
I mean, c'mon. Lots of things happen in this world. Eg the zip went on my Blue Harbour chinos this morning.
Speaking as a "sovereignty fetishist" I am happy with Brexit. We have taken back control and if our government doesn't do what we want it to do, we can kick it out.
What I'm not happy with is the government. It hasn't done what I want it to do so I'm going to vote to kick it out.
The fact I want a change of government doesn't mean I want to hand control back to unelected Eurocrats whom we can't kick out at our national elections though.
LAB 38% (-3)
CON 18% (-)
REF 17% (+3)
LD 11% (-1)
GRE 7% (+2)
SNP 3% (+1)
OTH 6% (-1)
F/w 26th June - 2nd July. Changes vs. 26th June 2024.
https://x.com/Survation/status/1808427141400330357
I am now more confident Labour will not exceed 40%.
We left on the same standards as them. But every law they pass (and there's been many) which we don't is them diverging further and further away from that common starting point.
While each law we pass that they don't is us diverging in a different way.
That's, again, how evolution works. Many small changes adding up and ending up as quite significant differences.
Survation Telephone Tracker for @GMB
LAB 38% (-3)
CON 18% (-)
REF 17% (+3)
LD 11% (-1)
GRE 7% (+2)
SNP 3% (+1)
OTH 6% (-1)
F/w 26th June - 2nd July. Changes vs. 26th June 2024.
(Sidenote: Agile as a development process seems to be singularly unsucessful)
Phone poll movement first to last - 1% swing Con to Lab
Hell hath no fury like a lover Remainer scorned.
But while they're sitting plotting their revenge, searching their ex's social media keeping tabs on them, the rest of the world has calmly and quietly moved on.
CON 18% (-)
REF 17% (+3)
LD 11% (-1)
GRE 7% (+2)
SNP 3% (+1)
OTH 6% (-1)
We now have zero input to the process, we just have to take what they give us.
Are you taking into account the "ruthless" targeting" and concentration of money and resources in what 60 seats. They have been concentrating on only two or three seats in the entire Midlands, and leaving the rest. If they win two of those they will think it was worth it but of course for the future it leaves a total field of neglect elsewhere, and there will be severe consequences resulting from that in the next year or so.
Its done, we've moved on. They've moved on too.
You once exclaimed Boris Johnson is the "greatest Prime Minister". Why are you disregarding his (self-proclaimed last evening) astonishingly brilliant legacy?
I have no problems accepting Australian standards and recognising them as equivalent.
I have no problems accepting Canadian, Japanese, Korean, or any other developed first world standards and recognising them as equivalent.
That can be and is our choice. We're not bound to only accept their standards while being bound to reject perfectly acceptable equivalents.
It's quite funny really: some Brexiteers refuse to see any of the damage Brexit has caused, whilst others don't give a damn about the damage.
That’s a poor effort in all honesty . Taken at face value a few crumbs for Sunak in that 28% put him as best PM well above the Tory vote share . On the other hand Reform at 17% even with a phone poll which would be more likely to include shy Reform voters .
I also said it was time for him to go well before he did. I also stopped supporting him and his party well before he left.
I make my own opinions, I am happy to reject anyone else's thoughts, including my own of the past as I am quite prepared to change my mind if the facts change.
He's also Not Liz Truss, and Not Boris Johnson.
The referendum should have put a line under the thorny issue of whether we should be part of the EU project or sit it out. It has put a line for me but obviously not for others.
It's conveniently forgotten that Con policy was to stay in the EU and if there is blame it should be towards the MPs who voted for the referendum in the first place - which the vast majority did across party (with the notable exception of the SNP).
I don't believe the previously Euro Federalist William Glenn was an overwhelming advocate at the time.
Housing, the reworking/merging of university and "technical" qualifications, infrastructure etc will all end up in the Process of The Process State. A long and complicated way of saying no.
We get a few 250K footbridges, but not more. Until some actually serious, real, reform takes place. https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/02/04/the-state-of-process-the-process-state/
Neither Starmer, nor Davey, nor anyone else is proposing to reverse it.
ScottP, Beiberley and others may be banging on about it like Hiroo Onoda still fighting the war decades later, but the rest of the world has moved on.
Starmer will have other priorities to deal with, using our sovereignty, than taking us back into Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_Brexit
(Yes, I know it's wiki...)
So in this case the last few days closer to Election Day .
People are voting based on the perceived competence, honesty and trustworthiness of the current candidates, either at local of national level. Brexit is yesterday's story.
The Conservatives were always going to turn to him when in political difficulties.
It destroyed trust and the legacy of that betrayed trust is still poisoning our politics. Tomorrow may be the start of the redress but it has been a long time coming.