i think this poll could be the final nail in Goodwin`s rather thin credibility,
That poll is going to reflect the composition of their panel, most of whom will have learned of PeoplePolling thanks to the prominence that company is given while they are watching Farage-ramping GB News, because Goodwin's company gets precious little publicity elsewhere. Weighting can filter out some of that panel bias, but not all of it. That also assumes that Goodwin is a dispassionate polling professional, that is that he is inclined to seek out the most effective weighting scheme to remove as much bias as possible.
I’ve bet £50 on the Conservatives winning 100-149, at 9/4. £50 on the Conservatives winning 150-199, at 11/2. £25 on Bob Blackman retaining Harrow East at 3/1.
To add to Kinabalu's hall of infamy, I've got old bets on Con most seats and against Lab majority But traded those out, helped by a depths of Truss -> limited peaks of Sunak trade, so those are only costing me ~£25.
Otherwise I've got bets of Con 100-149 and 150-199, for Sunak to keep his seat (Binface splits the anti-Con vote ), against Corbyn winning (part traded out, so green either way but more so if he loses), on Lab for Rochdale (small profit available there at present but I'm keeping the bet I think) and Bristol C (with an eye to a trade, but odds haven't moved - likely a reasonable value loser so I may well trade if there's a chance to).
Con 100-199 I'm well up overall, even with the -£25 from the old bets. Outwith 100-199 I need Corbyn to lose, Rishi to win and one of Rochdale and Bristol C to come in to be about even (or other combinations of that).
Rishi Sunak's just told This Morning that his favourite meal is 'sandwiches'. Er, are sandwiches even a meal?
Of course sandwiches are a meal. If you have sandwiches for lunch then your lunchtime meal was sandwiches.
Now they could be shitty sandwiches with a couple of slices of white bread and a slice of cheese or they could be a few rounds of freshly made Reuben sandwiches but a meal all the same.
It's sort of slightly endearing, unless he was just scrabbling around in his brain for the last thing he could remember eating that wasn't posh, and alighted on sarnies.
lol, Yes, he was yearning to scream “Lobster Thermidor” and his team are miming desperately behind the questioner the act of eating a sandwich. Luckily none mimed eating a baguette as he could have interpreted that in a very unfortunate way.
Lobster Thermidor isn't posh, it's weird, archaic and naff
Yes, mixing a delicate, beautiful flavour of lobster with – er – cheese is a culinary nonsense.
The dish deserves to be resigned to the annals of history.
Quite so. It's one of the weird cul de sacs of French cuisine, and it should stay there, ignored and broken down at the end of a gastronomic side road
The polls pretty much agree on the Labour and LD shares. Where they don't agree is the Con and Ref shares.
Not surprising. It must be fiendishly difficult.
Especially as anyone working in a lot of places (eg public sector) will have in the back of their mind that if they say Reform and get doxxed, they will be in hot water.
Not saying it is remotely likely that pollsters will dox them. But once you get in the habit of not telling strangers (or untrusted aquaintences) you are planning to vote Fargle, you won't switch out of that mode if a pollster cold calls you or emails you.
Probably one reason Reform are a bit higher with Yougov. If you have taken the positive step to register you are probably less likely (but not wholly unlikely) to be reticent.
Remember the couple that had foster children removed frpm their care because they were UKIP members?
In my experience Reform voters are anything but shy about expressing their opinions..
I have bet on low Reform vote share. A lot are blowhard who won't actually vote, and many of the rest will actually vote Con.
A lot of excitement among some at the thought of Ed Davey becoming leader of the opposition. I don't think people have thought this through at all. The polls suggest the Lib Dems will come comfortably 4th in vote share, they don't disagree that much with Labour and between them they will have maybe just over 50% of the vote share. It will be rocket fuel for the populist right and those who think the whole system needs to be shaken up. I would argue that there are increasingly influential voices on the younger 'right' who might even consider it the ideal scenario from which to launch another people's revolt.
That is, though, a classic argument of the right. Left of centre parties mustn't dare be politically successful: that will provoke the far right. And if the left somehow has the temerity to assume power, they'd better do all the things the far right want because otherwise they'll really provoke the far right. And then they'll be sorry.
I was seeing some of that here last night about Trump too. "Maybe the best result would be a Trump landslide because that way there's risk of unrest".
It's the same attitude many have about Putin. Give him everything he wants or he might get cross.
Sorry that's a complete misunderstanding. The point is that in a democracy you ideally want a parliament that is broadly reflective of the country as a whole. Now we all know that FPTP is imperfect in that regard. But there comes a point at which credibility starts to be lost. I think a government and opposition with barely half the vote and in broad agreement in outlook would start to test that.
I'm not saying Davey should turn the opportunity down. He could point out that the Lib Dems still favour PR. But it won't be even close to representative of the country and there ought to be a little unease about that.
The Lib Dems would almost certainly be under-represented in seats vs their vote share. But it's funny how the right are now loudly worrying about FPTP when it never remotely bothered them before. "Strong government"!
For the last decade the SNP have been getting 2 automatic questions in PMQs and all the short money involved in being the third largest party on roughly 4% of the national vote.
If Con survive this election, eventually FPTP will see them come back and Labour collapse. What FPTP gives it takes away and Labour would do well to remember that when they take office (but of course they won't because governments with large majorities never do - Look at the Conservatives after winning 80 seat majority)
Of course that's a big if because there comes a point with FPTP where the damage probably isn't survivable and that point would probably be Lib-Dems becoming the official Opposition.
If they were clever they should put through STV in local elections, harmonising with Scotland and NI, and helping to stem the inevitable councillors losses which they’ll experience in the midterm locals, win a second term, and then sort out our voting system before they get thrown out.
But of course Labour won't because they're as wedded to FPTP as the Tories (perhaps more so) SKS will be just sit on his majority and defend it with his life (until FPTP takes it away)
Posh food now would likely be something Nordic or East European, with the all important "twist"
Borscht with artisanal Borough sourdough and skyr
Nah that's hipster food. Posh food is something else.
Hipster is basically posh these days, cf Glastonbury. Only ancient people revere naff haute cuisine like "lobster thermidor"
For old fashioned posh that is STILL posh I'd go for grouse or snipe or woodcock or venison you yourself shot dead, or wild salmon, or native oysters
It would have been fun if Sunak had said "my favourite meal is a dozen Helford natives on the half shell, and then partridge with game chips, I try to eat it every day"
He should answer as the family doctor prescribes in Buddenbrooks: a little roast pigeon, a little French bread.
Since reading that years ago I've occasionally made it for myself when the family are away. Pigeon breasts with plenty of black pepper on some baguette with a bit of butter, letting the blood soak into the bread. I recommend it.
Weirdly, on my last but one visit to France I bought a couple of pigeon in Leclerc and cooked them in my Airbnb
They were absolutely delicious - and easy to cook. First time I've ever cooked them, went perfectly
We should sell them in Britain, it's absurd we don't eat pigeon, there's not exactly a lack
i think this poll could be the final nail in Goodwin`s rather thin credibility,
I think its a calculated gamble from him. If the poll is wrong people forget about it. If hes right though he becomes the oracle of the campaign and his influence massively increases.
If.
TBH, it is pretty clear that he is not fishing in the same water as any other pollster. As the in house RefUk pollster, he should now simply be dismissed as letting his bias give his results. Perhaps the BPC might take an interest?
The pollsters have not herded and come Friday, some will have explaining to do.
But could it be there is a rational explanation - that their polling panels have been infiltrated to the extent they give a skewed result? If a bunch of signed up "Conservatives" were actually Reform all along, that would give a narrative that there was a big swing to Reform, when in fact it was a limited number of social media savvy Reformers giving an unrepresentative result.
And then there is the possible malign influence of Putin's mischief-makers. Are polling firms smart enough to spot if their panels have been manipulated by an external algorithm? I dunno, but most of those abusing computer systems are smarter than the people who devised the systems in the first place.
Best value Lib Dem constituencies if you are bullish on Lib Dem 55+ seats?
Stratford-on-Avon, West Dorset, North Dorset, Harpenden, Melksham. Just a few.
I don't think any Lib Dem wins are good value. The odds already imply an extremely good night.
I suspect the value is in backing the Tories in some constituencies, at this stage.
The Tories had better win my childhood seat of Sevenoaks, since I have a lot on at 1/3. Although not nearly as much as I should have; bets like that don’t come along very often.
Best value Lib Dem constituencies if you are bullish on Lib Dem 55+ seats?
Stratford-on-Avon, West Dorset, North Dorset, Harpenden, Melksham. Just a few.
I don't think any Lib Dem wins are good value. The odds already imply an extremely good night.
I agree. Except most elections, at least pre-coalition, they managed to pull off a surprise win - like Redcar. And I expect that to be true this time. But guessing where it might be is a mugs game, without some inside info.
Incidentally, I believe Sunak on sandwiches. He isnt just short, he is skinny with it. He just doesn't care much about food, fasts once a week, breakfasts on a few nuts, and lives off full fat Coke. So a sandwich probably does seem a meal to him.
Posh food now would likely be something Nordic or East European, with the all important "twist"
Borscht with artisanal Borough sourdough and skyr
Nah that's hipster food. Posh food is something else.
Hipster is basically posh these days, cf Glastonbury. Only ancient people revere naff haute cuisine like "lobster thermidor"
For old fashioned posh that is STILL posh I'd go for grouse or snipe or woodcock or venison you yourself shot dead, or wild salmon, or native oysters
It would have been fun if Sunak had said "my favourite meal is a dozen Helford natives on the half shell, and then partridge with game chips, I try to eat it every day"
He should answer as the family doctor prescribes in Buddenbrooks: a little roast pigeon, a little French bread.
Since reading that years ago I've occasionally made it for myself when the family are away. Pigeon breasts with plenty of black pepper on some baguette with a bit of butter, letting the blood soak into the bread. I recommend it.
Weirdly, on my last but one visit to France I bought a couple of pigeon in Leclerc and cooked them in my Airbnb
They were absolutely delicious - and easy to cook. First time I've ever cooked them, went perfectly
We should sell them in Britain, it's absurd we don't eat pigeon, there's not exactly a lack
Some of us do. But we shoot our own for eating.
I do, though other folk do it for me.
My mother had a schoolfriend who was married to a local gamekeeper, so we had grouse on occasion, too.
How do you place a low risk bet on tomorrow's G.E. just for a bit of fun.
My suggestion on one way would be to back the Tories over two x 50 seat bands, i.e. to win 50 - 99 seats or 100 - 149 seats. Based on staking say £20 in total (your call of course) and based on the current odds available, these two bets would be placed as follows:
On the basis of just about all recent polling, one or other of these two x 50 seat band bets will prove successful, thereby providing a virtually identical profit in either case of £5.53/£5.59. That's a return in 24 hours of 27.8%, which has to beat working for a living!
...The Supreme Court’s decision, however, does not come decontextualized in a casebook. And it is not, however much the justices of the majority may pretend otherwise, about the presidency in the abstract. Of course, it also affects the presidency in the abstract—and all future presidents who wield its powers. But this is a case about a particular man in interaction with the presidency. And those actions are not all in the past tense.
It is a case in which the Supreme Court was asked whether it wanted to enable Trump’s avowed authoritarianism in a future presidency by disabling his prosecution for crimes committed in his prior presidency.
It is, in other words, about some very immediate—and very non-hypothetical—dangers.
And it comes at a very specific political moment: Trump is currently leading in most polls. According to Nate Silver’s forecast, Trump has a 71 percent chance of winning the election in November. That chance is only 51 percent if you prefer the 538 forecast. But he’s the current front-runner by any reasonable measure. His opponent’s campaign is in no small turmoil following Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in last week’s debate. Trump is, in short, the single most likely person in the world to wield the powers of the American presidency come Jan. 20, 2025.
He is also a convicted criminal—no small matter when one is writing a “rule for the ages” about prospective presidential impunity, as Justice Neil Gorsuch put it during oral arguments. The court majority may flatter itself that it’s staying out of politics. But this is a fairy tale the justices are telling themselves—if they are, in fact, telling themselves this pleasant little tale. In fact, they are handing a powerful immunity to an adjudged felon who may be about to assume “the executive power” of the United States, and they are doing it by corroding—and perhaps rendering impossible—accountability for his past crimes.
There’s another sense in which the Supreme Court has failed here: It has articulated a set of standards for presidential immunity that are utterly opaque. The most fundamental job of an appellate court, even when it’s articulating an objectionable principle, is to give actionable guidance to lower courts. The Court in this case has not done this. Reading the opinion alongside the indictment, it is completely unclear how to apply it to the instant case along a number of different axes and with respect to a number of different allegations...
Read the whole article if you are in any doubt about the court's judgment. It is an excellent step by step examination of just how bad it is.
The SC justices were appointed by Trump to give him this untrammelled power. And he will use it.
This is the point at which I may begin placing shortish constituency bets 'because that looks interesting', so probably time to shut down for 24 hours.
A lot of excitement among some at the thought of Ed Davey becoming leader of the opposition. I don't think people have thought this through at all. The polls suggest the Lib Dems will come comfortably 4th in vote share, they don't disagree that much with Labour and between them they will have maybe just over 50% of the vote share. It will be rocket fuel for the populist right and those who think the whole system needs to be shaken up. I would argue that there are increasingly influential voices on the younger 'right' who might even consider it the ideal scenario from which to launch another people's revolt.
That is, though, a classic argument of the right. Left of centre parties mustn't dare be politically successful: that will provoke the far right. And if the left somehow has the temerity to assume power, they'd better do all the things the far right want because otherwise they'll really provoke the far right. And then they'll be sorry.
I was seeing some of that here last night about Trump too. "Maybe the best result would be a Trump landslide because that way there's risk of unrest".
It's the same attitude many have about Putin. Give him everything he wants or he might get cross.
Sorry that's a complete misunderstanding. The point is that in a democracy you ideally want a parliament that is broadly reflective of the country as a whole. Now we all know that FPTP is imperfect in that regard. But there comes a point at which credibility starts to be lost. I think a government and opposition with barely half the vote and in broad agreement in outlook would start to test that.
I'm not saying Davey should turn the opportunity down. He could point out that the Lib Dems still favour PR. But it won't be even close to representative of the country and there ought to be a little unease about that.
The Lib Dems would almost certainly be under-represented in seats vs their vote share. But it's funny how the right are now loudly worrying about FPTP when it never remotely bothered them before. "Strong government"!
For the last decade the SNP have been getting 2 automatic questions in PMQs and all the short money involved in being the third largest party on roughly 4% of the national vote.
If Con survive this election, eventually FPTP will see them come back and Labour collapse. What FPTP gives it can take away just as easily and Labour would do well to remember that when they take office (but of course they won't because governments with large majorities never do - Look at the Conservatives after winning 80 seat majority)
Of course that's a big if because there comes a point with FPTP where the damage probably isn't survivable and that point would probably be Lib-Dems becoming the official Opposition.
I think that’s right and I do think that if we do get a weird result tomorrow (let’s say LDs second in seats on 10% of the vote - perhaps 4th on vote share), then I wouldn’t be surprised if that becomes the moment the country turns more widely against FPTP (nothing against the Lib Dems there, just stating a fact that the optics will be odd).
I also wouldn’t be surprised to see a bit of constitutional invention at things like PMQs. The 6 LOTO questions might be shared out among each of the opposition parties for instance. It’s the speakers call at the end of the day but I’m not sure we would just expect a parliament of say 480 Labour MPs and say 70 LDs, 60 Tories and 40 others to operate in the same way as we have been used to it operating before.
Posh food now would likely be something Nordic or East European, with the all important "twist"
Borscht with artisanal Borough sourdough and skyr
Nah that's hipster food. Posh food is something else.
Hipster is basically posh these days, cf Glastonbury. Only ancient people revere naff haute cuisine like "lobster thermidor"
For old fashioned posh that is STILL posh I'd go for grouse or snipe or woodcock or venison you yourself shot dead, or wild salmon, or native oysters
It would have been fun if Sunak had said "my favourite meal is a dozen Helford natives on the half shell, and then partridge with game chips, I try to eat it every day"
He should answer as the family doctor prescribes in Buddenbrooks: a little roast pigeon, a little French bread.
Since reading that years ago I've occasionally made it for myself when the family are away. Pigeon breasts with plenty of black pepper on some baguette with a bit of butter, letting the blood soak into the bread. I recommend it.
Weirdly, on my last but one visit to France I bought a couple of pigeon in Leclerc and cooked them in my Airbnb
They were absolutely delicious - and easy to cook. First time I've ever cooked them, went perfectly
We should sell them in Britain, it's absurd we don't eat pigeon, there's not exactly a lack
Some of us do. But we shoot our own for eating.
There should be a huge mass market for game, which would obviate the need for some of the practices that occur at some shoots but until they solve the shot problem you can't have Mrs Smith breaking her teeth on her Sunday Dinner.
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.
The more I see that kind of sentiment the less sincere it seems.
It’s like they’re trying to convince themselves that it is true. Leon is the worst culprit but not alone.
I suspect therefore that you / they know that at some point this is a conversation which the country will once more be having.
It's only a matter of time. Politicians cannot ignore the polling on this forever. If they want to be elected that is.
The polling says this is a non-issue. Not even on the radar.
Keir Starmer and Ed Davey and everyone who wants to be elected are concentrating on actual issues, not your hobbyhorse.
What you are of course failing to engage with is that several of those categories, and especially the economy, have been irreparably damaged by our withdrawal from the largest trading bloc.
The economic arguments, which were never properly aired during the 2016 campaign, will become persuasive once more.
It’s only a matter of time whether you like or not, or indeed whether you try to convince yourself or not.
Money talks.
Largest trading bloc?
The EU isn't even close to the world's largest trading bloc.
Indeed once the UK finishing accession to the CPTPP, we'll be in an even larger bloc than the EU and there's other, larger blocs out there too.
It's the closest large trading block to the UK.
If the EU had stuck to being a trading block like CPTPP instead of attempting to become an Empiric State, extending its tentacles into virtually every aspect of government, we would not have had a problem in the first place,
So how can the die-hard remainers be so emotionally attached to a trading block? It must be those tentacles.
Emotionally attached to the sort of Britain that wants to be constructive and influential in its own continent.
Posh food now would likely be something Nordic or East European, with the all important "twist"
Borscht with artisanal Borough sourdough and skyr
Nah that's hipster food. Posh food is something else.
Hipster is basically posh these days, cf Glastonbury. Only ancient people revere naff haute cuisine like "lobster thermidor"
For old fashioned posh that is STILL posh I'd go for grouse or snipe or woodcock or venison you yourself shot dead, or wild salmon, or native oysters
It would have been fun if Sunak had said "my favourite meal is a dozen Helford natives on the half shell, and then partridge with game chips, I try to eat it every day"
He should answer as the family doctor prescribes in Buddenbrooks: a little roast pigeon, a little French bread.
Since reading that years ago I've occasionally made it for myself when the family are away. Pigeon breasts with plenty of black pepper on some baguette with a bit of butter, letting the blood soak into the bread. I recommend it.
Weirdly, on my last but one visit to France I bought a couple of pigeon in Leclerc and cooked them in my Airbnb
They were absolutely delicious - and easy to cook. First time I've ever cooked them, went perfectly
We should sell them in Britain, it's absurd we don't eat pigeon, there's not exactly a lack
i think this poll could be the final nail in Goodwin`s rather thin credibility,
That poll is going to reflect the composition of their panel, most of whom will have learned of PeoplePolling thanks to the prominence that company is given while they are watching Farage-ramping GB News, because Goodwin's company gets precious little publicity elsewhere. Weighting can filter out some of that panel bias, but not all of it. That also assumes that Goodwin is a dispassionate polling professional, that is that he is inclined to seek out the most effective weighting scheme to remove as much bias as possible.
If the applicants are biased towards current support of RefUK through self-selection that is going to be quite difficult to filter out by other means. And if not filtered out, it will result in an overestimate of switching to RefUK both from previous Tory voters and from previous Labour voters. Which would be consistent with the differences in those figures above from the figures of most other pollsters.
Wow, if that verifies then Reform are well placed to overtake the Tories, comprehensively, in 2028, and possibly win the next election
If labour are only on 36% now as a new government and reform truly are on 20% with the public finances in the state they are labour will quickly become more unpopular once they unleash tax rises and wokeness upon us - then the rise of reform will only continue to ascend and yes I agree they could indeed win the next election . Anecdotally my daughter and her boyfriend (young twenties) are both non political and unprovoked are talking about voting reform tomorrow so they aren’t just appealing to “oldies”
Posh food now would likely be something Nordic or East European, with the all important "twist"
Borscht with artisanal Borough sourdough and skyr
Nah that's hipster food. Posh food is something else.
Hipster is basically posh these days, cf Glastonbury. Only ancient people revere naff haute cuisine like "lobster thermidor"
For old fashioned posh that is STILL posh I'd go for grouse or snipe or woodcock or venison you yourself shot dead, or wild salmon, or native oysters
It would have been fun if Sunak had said "my favourite meal is a dozen Helford natives on the half shell, and then partridge with game chips, I try to eat it every day"
He should answer as the family doctor prescribes in Buddenbrooks: a little roast pigeon, a little French bread.
Since reading that years ago I've occasionally made it for myself when the family are away. Pigeon breasts with plenty of black pepper on some baguette with a bit of butter, letting the blood soak into the bread. I recommend it.
Weirdly, on my last but one visit to France I bought a couple of pigeon in Leclerc and cooked them in my Airbnb
They were absolutely delicious - and easy to cook. First time I've ever cooked them, went perfectly
We should sell them in Britain, it's absurd we don't eat pigeon, there's not exactly a lack
Some of us do. But we shoot our own for eating.
There should be a huge mass market for game, which would obviate the need for some of the practices that occur at some shoots but until they solve the shot problem you can't have Mrs Smith breaking her teeth on her Sunday Dinner.
It's actually not that nice is the problem. Reared pheasant invariably has globs of yellow fat under the skin. Roast chicken is greatly preferable.
The polls pretty much agree on the Labour and LD shares. Where they don't agree is the Con and Ref shares.
Not surprising. It must be fiendishly difficult.
Especially as anyone working in a lot of places (eg public sector) will have in the back of their mind that if they say Reform and get doxxed, they will be in hot water.
Not saying it is remotely likely that pollsters will dox them. But once you get in the habit of not telling strangers (or untrusted aquaintences) you are planning to vote Fargle, you won't switch out of that mode if a pollster cold calls you or emails you.
Probably one reason Reform are a bit higher with Yougov. If you have taken the positive step to register you are probably less likely (but not wholly unlikely) to be reticent.
Remember the couple that had foster children removed frpm their care because they were UKIP members?
In my experience Reform voters are anything but shy about expressing their opinions..
I have bet on low Reform vote share. A lot are blowhard who won't actually vote, and many of the rest will actually vote Con.
This rings true to me. My friends that have spoken up in favour of reform are very unlikely to vote. It is a bit “pox on all their houses” type stuff. I suspect that is also true of the people I used to go to school with who are talking up Farage’s crew on Facebook. Although clearly this is just anecdote.
Wow, if that verifies then Reform are well placed to overtake the Tories, comprehensively, in 2028, and possibly win the next election
If labour are only on 36% now as a new government and reform truly are on 20% with the public finances in the state they are labour will quickly become more unpopular once they unleash tax rises and wokeness upon us - then the rise of reform will only continue to ascend and yes I agree they could indeed win the next election . Anecdotally my daughter and her boyfriend (young twenties) are both non political and unprovoked are talking about voting reform tomorrow so they aren’t just appealing to “oldies”
Rishi Sunak's just told This Morning that his favourite meal is 'sandwiches'. Er, are sandwiches even a meal?
Of course sandwiches are a meal. If you have sandwiches for lunch then your lunchtime meal was sandwiches.
Now they could be shitty sandwiches with a couple of slices of white bread and a slice of cheese or they could be a few rounds of freshly made Reuben sandwiches but a meal all the same.
It's sort of slightly endearing, unless he was just scrabbling around in his brain for the last thing he could remember eating that wasn't posh, and alighted on sarnies.
lol, Yes, he was yearning to scream “Lobster Thermidor” and his team are miming desperately behind the questioner the act of eating a sandwich. Luckily none mimed eating a baguette as he could have interpreted that in a very unfortunate way.
Lobster Thermidor isn't posh, it's weird, archaic and naff
Yes, mixing a delicate, beautiful flavour of lobster with – er – cheese is a culinary nonsense.
The dish deserves to be resigned to the annals of history.
Quite so. It's one of the weird cul de sacs of French cuisine, and it should stay there, ignored and broken down at the end of a gastronomic side road
Weirdly sans culotte name for a posh dish too. I just looked it up on Wikipedia and sadly it dates from 1890s not 1790s, I liked to imagine Robespierre tucking in to it
What a surprise that the Tories are FOUR POINTS below Reform in his final poll. Goodwin is an absolute clown. Does he really think that people don't see through him?
Goodwin: Britain Bowtie Bob
Same absurd polling results too.
Goodwin is either reaching a set of people other pollsters aren't reaching or his methodology is wrong. I suspect it's the latter but in this election I haven't got a clue, I think a lot of people aren't bothered.
He's using someone else's online panel, so he can't be reaching a different sample than all the other pollsters, unless he's using a pollster who isn't producing their own voting intention polls.
So it's something in the methodology. Either the weighting, or the questions. I've looked briefly and nothing in the data tables particularly jumped out at me.
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.
The more I see that kind of sentiment the less sincere it seems.
It’s like they’re trying to convince themselves that it is true. Leon is the worst culprit but not alone.
I suspect therefore that you / they know that at some point this is a conversation which the country will once more be having.
It's only a matter of time. Politicians cannot ignore the polling on this forever. If they want to be elected that is.
The polling says this is a non-issue. Not even on the radar.
Keir Starmer and Ed Davey and everyone who wants to be elected are concentrating on actual issues, not your hobbyhorse.
What you are of course failing to engage with is that several of those categories, and especially the economy, have been irreparably damaged by our withdrawal from the largest trading bloc.
The economic arguments, which were never properly aired during the 2016 campaign, will become persuasive once more.
It’s only a matter of time whether you like or not, or indeed whether you try to convince yourself or not.
Money talks.
Largest trading bloc?
The EU isn't even close to the world's largest trading bloc.
Indeed once the UK finishing accession to the CPTPP, we'll be in an even larger bloc than the EU and there's other, larger blocs out there too.
It's the closest large trading block to the UK.
If the EU had stuck to being a trading block like CPTPP instead of attempting to become an Empiric State, extending its tentacles into virtually every aspect of government, we would not have had a problem in the first place,
So how can the die-hard remainers be so emotionally attached to a trading block? It must be those tentacles.
Emotionally attached to the sort of Britain that wants to be constructive and influential in its own continent.
As opposed to the sort of Britain that wants to be constructive and influential across the entire planet?
Many pro-EU people like to mock Brexit supporters as "little Englanders" but there's quite a few erstwhile Remainers who remain "little Europeaners". There's a big wide world out there beyond our own little continent.
Wow, if that verifies then Reform are well placed to overtake the Tories, comprehensively, in 2028, and possibly win the next election
If labour are only on 36% now as a new government and reform truly are on 20% with the public finances in the state they are labour will quickly become more unpopular once they unleash tax rises and wokeness upon us - then the rise of reform will only continue to ascend and yes I agree they could indeed win the next election . Anecdotally my daughter and her boyfriend (young twenties) are both non political and unprovoked are talking about voting reform tomorrow so they aren’t just appealing to “oldies”
I do agree Labour/SKS will very quickly become unpopular but when the votes go when Labour's coalition of voters disintegrates remains to be seen.
I would think Reform is the least likely place for is to go, with Lib-Dems and possibly the Conservatives (depending on whats left of Con in the smoldering ruins on Friday morning) more likely to benefit when Labours inevitable collapse takes place.
Never thought I'd see the day when a RN vessel was named for a Marxist boffin. Even Mr Churchill couldn't get a dreadnought named for O. Cromwell.
TBF PMB was a major contributor to winning WW2 in developing operational research.
I hadn't heard of him. I love the fact that Oppenheimer tried to poison him with an apple. Shades of another Cambridge graduate and genius who did die by eating a poisoned apple?
Posh food now would likely be something Nordic or East European, with the all important "twist"
Borscht with artisanal Borough sourdough and skyr
Nah that's hipster food. Posh food is something else.
Hipster is basically posh these days, cf Glastonbury. Only ancient people revere naff haute cuisine like "lobster thermidor"
For old fashioned posh that is STILL posh I'd go for grouse or snipe or woodcock or venison you yourself shot dead, or wild salmon, or native oysters
It would have been fun if Sunak had said "my favourite meal is a dozen Helford natives on the half shell, and then partridge with game chips, I try to eat it every day"
He should answer as the family doctor prescribes in Buddenbrooks: a little roast pigeon, a little French bread.
Since reading that years ago I've occasionally made it for myself when the family are away. Pigeon breasts with plenty of black pepper on some baguette with a bit of butter, letting the blood soak into the bread. I recommend it.
Weirdly, on my last but one visit to France I bought a couple of pigeon in Leclerc and cooked them in my Airbnb
They were absolutely delicious - and easy to cook. First time I've ever cooked them, went perfectly
We should sell them in Britain, it's absurd we don't eat pigeon, there's not exactly a lack
Some of us do. But we shoot our own for eating.
There should be a huge mass market for game, which would obviate the need for some of the practices that occur at some shoots but until they solve the shot problem you can't have Mrs Smith breaking her teeth on her Sunday Dinner.
It's actually not that nice is the problem. Reared pheasant invariably has globs of yellow fat under the skin. Roast chicken is greatly preferable.
What do you mean by "reared pheasant". Pheasants that run around "free range" at will until they are blasted out of the sky, you mean? They are fantastic and the fat gives flavour.
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.
The more I see that kind of sentiment the less sincere it seems.
It’s like they’re trying to convince themselves that it is true. Leon is the worst culprit but not alone.
I suspect therefore that you / they know that at some point this is a conversation which the country will once more be having.
It's only a matter of time. Politicians cannot ignore the polling on this forever. If they want to be elected that is.
The polling says this is a non-issue. Not even on the radar.
Keir Starmer and Ed Davey and everyone who wants to be elected are concentrating on actual issues, not your hobbyhorse.
What you are of course failing to engage with is that several of those categories, and especially the economy, have been irreparably damaged by our withdrawal from the largest trading bloc.
The economic arguments, which were never properly aired during the 2016 campaign, will become persuasive once more.
It’s only a matter of time whether you like or not, or indeed whether you try to convince yourself or not.
Money talks.
Largest trading bloc?
The EU isn't even close to the world's largest trading bloc.
Indeed once the UK finishing accession to the CPTPP, we'll be in an even larger bloc than the EU and there's other, larger blocs out there too.
It's the closest large trading block to the UK.
If the EU had stuck to being a trading block like CPTPP instead of attempting to become an Empiric State, extending its tentacles into virtually every aspect of government, we would not have had a problem in the first place,
So how can the die-hard remainers be so emotionally attached to a trading block? It must be those tentacles.
Emotionally attached to the sort of Britain that wants to be constructive and influential in its own continent.
If the EU had wanted us to be part of that, they could have worked constructively with Cameron. Instead...
Immediately off topic there's a bfx market on month Sunak ceases to lead Tory party. I lost too much money on Johnson's departure to risk any on this but my guess is there's so much hatred of him in the party that he may jump on Friday, possibly not even staying as caretaker
I suppose it’s just worth a wait to see who the survivors are - if they are all Suellaites then he’s doomed on day 2 but if they are all Dowdenites then they might keep him in situ for a while whilst they have a proper debate/horse trading session before any final leadership election.
If, as looks likely, CCHQ parachuted a lot of Rishi friendly candidates in and they all somehow manage to win then the party will have a very different complexion from what some fear and might not go down the loony rabbit hole as others hope they do.
Having a looksee, I have put a fun money £3 on "2025 or later", at odds of 36.
Purely on the possibility that he will be a Michael Howard, not a David Cameron. That's assuming he keeps his seat.
I'd guess conference in October is when they'd want to crown their new leader. That was the plan when David Cameron resigned but withdrawals by Boris and Andrea Leadsom meant Theresa May was in place, and Cameron out, weeks earlier.
ETA speaking of Dowden, then subject to the good voters of Hertsmere, he will be taking on Angela Rayner in the first PMQs as the Prime Minister will be at a Nato summit.
2025 or later at 36 feels like a value loser to me. I think I'll try to join you at 40.
Wow, if that verifies then Reform are well placed to overtake the Tories, comprehensively, in 2028, and possibly win the next election
If labour are only on 36% now as a new government and reform truly are on 20% with the public finances in the state they are labour will quickly become more unpopular once they unleash tax rises and wokeness upon us - then the rise of reform will only continue to ascend and yes I agree they could indeed win the next election . Anecdotally my daughter and her boyfriend (young twenties) are both non political and unprovoked are talking about voting reform tomorrow so they aren’t just appealing to “oldies”
I do agree Labour/SKS will very quickly become unpopular but when the votes go when Labour's coalition of voters disintegrates remains to be seen.
I would think Reform is the least likely place for is to go, with Lib-Dems and possibly the Conservatives (depending on whats left of Con in the smoldering ruins on Friday morning) more likely to benefit with Labours inevitable collapse takes place.
I think the idea that Labour are going to be rapidly unpopular is as foolish as the idea that Cameron's Tories would be rapidly unpopular and then out of power for a generation.
Labour will have a honeymoon and for a few years any hard choices/bad news the public are likely to blame on the Tories for "leaving a mess" rather than blame Labour.
Posh food now would likely be something Nordic or East European, with the all important "twist"
Borscht with artisanal Borough sourdough and skyr
Nah that's hipster food. Posh food is something else.
Hipster is basically posh these days, cf Glastonbury. Only ancient people revere naff haute cuisine like "lobster thermidor"
For old fashioned posh that is STILL posh I'd go for grouse or snipe or woodcock or venison you yourself shot dead, or wild salmon, or native oysters
It would have been fun if Sunak had said "my favourite meal is a dozen Helford natives on the half shell, and then partridge with game chips, I try to eat it every day"
He should answer as the family doctor prescribes in Buddenbrooks: a little roast pigeon, a little French bread.
Since reading that years ago I've occasionally made it for myself when the family are away. Pigeon breasts with plenty of black pepper on some baguette with a bit of butter, letting the blood soak into the bread. I recommend it.
Weirdly, on my last but one visit to France I bought a couple of pigeon in Leclerc and cooked them in my Airbnb
They were absolutely delicious - and easy to cook. First time I've ever cooked them, went perfectly
We should sell them in Britain, it's absurd we don't eat pigeon, there's not exactly a lack
Some of us do. But we shoot our own for eating.
There should be a huge mass market for game, which would obviate the need for some of the practices that occur at some shoots but until they solve the shot problem you can't have Mrs Smith breaking her teeth on her Sunday Dinner.
It's actually not that nice is the problem. Reared pheasant invariably has globs of yellow fat under the skin. Roast chicken is greatly preferable.
What do you mean by "reared pheasant". Pheasants that run around "free range" at will until they are blasted out of the sky, you mean? They are fantastic and the fat gives flavour.
Well they run around free range at will for about a week or so after being released from the henhouses they were raised and fattened in.
...The Supreme Court’s decision, however, does not come decontextualized in a casebook. And it is not, however much the justices of the majority may pretend otherwise, about the presidency in the abstract. Of course, it also affects the presidency in the abstract—and all future presidents who wield its powers. But this is a case about a particular man in interaction with the presidency. And those actions are not all in the past tense.
It is a case in which the Supreme Court was asked whether it wanted to enable Trump’s avowed authoritarianism in a future presidency by disabling his prosecution for crimes committed in his prior presidency.
It is, in other words, about some very immediate—and very non-hypothetical—dangers.
And it comes at a very specific political moment: Trump is currently leading in most polls. According to Nate Silver’s forecast, Trump has a 71 percent chance of winning the election in November. That chance is only 51 percent if you prefer the 538 forecast. But he’s the current front-runner by any reasonable measure. His opponent’s campaign is in no small turmoil following Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in last week’s debate. Trump is, in short, the single most likely person in the world to wield the powers of the American presidency come Jan. 20, 2025.
He is also a convicted criminal—no small matter when one is writing a “rule for the ages” about prospective presidential impunity, as Justice Neil Gorsuch put it during oral arguments. The court majority may flatter itself that it’s staying out of politics. But this is a fairy tale the justices are telling themselves—if they are, in fact, telling themselves this pleasant little tale. In fact, they are handing a powerful immunity to an adjudged felon who may be about to assume “the executive power” of the United States, and they are doing it by corroding—and perhaps rendering impossible—accountability for his past crimes.
There’s another sense in which the Supreme Court has failed here: It has articulated a set of standards for presidential immunity that are utterly opaque. The most fundamental job of an appellate court, even when it’s articulating an objectionable principle, is to give actionable guidance to lower courts. The Court in this case has not done this. Reading the opinion alongside the indictment, it is completely unclear how to apply it to the instant case along a number of different axes and with respect to a number of different allegations...
Read the whole article if you are in any doubt about the court's judgment. It is an excellent step by step examination of just how bad it is.
The SC justices were appointed by Trump to give him this untrammelled power. And he will use it.
"Don Corleone, we come to you because you have the judges, like so many nickels, in your coat pocket."
Posh food now would likely be something Nordic or East European, with the all important "twist"
Borscht with artisanal Borough sourdough and skyr
Nah that's hipster food. Posh food is something else.
Hipster is basically posh these days, cf Glastonbury. Only ancient people revere naff haute cuisine like "lobster thermidor"
For old fashioned posh that is STILL posh I'd go for grouse or snipe or woodcock or venison you yourself shot dead, or wild salmon, or native oysters
It would have been fun if Sunak had said "my favourite meal is a dozen Helford natives on the half shell, and then partridge with game chips, I try to eat it every day"
He should answer as the family doctor prescribes in Buddenbrooks: a little roast pigeon, a little French bread.
Since reading that years ago I've occasionally made it for myself when the family are away. Pigeon breasts with plenty of black pepper on some baguette with a bit of butter, letting the blood soak into the bread. I recommend it.
Weirdly, on my last but one visit to France I bought a couple of pigeon in Leclerc and cooked them in my Airbnb
They were absolutely delicious - and easy to cook. First time I've ever cooked them, went perfectly
We should sell them in Britain, it's absurd we don't eat pigeon, there's not exactly a lack
Some of us do. But we shoot our own for eating.
There should be a huge mass market for game, which would obviate the need for some of the practices that occur at some shoots but until they solve the shot problem you can't have Mrs Smith breaking her teeth on her Sunday Dinner.
It's actually not that nice is the problem. Reared pheasant invariably has globs of yellow fat under the skin. Roast chicken is greatly preferable.
What do you mean by "reared pheasant". Pheasants that run around "free range" at will until they are blasted out of the sky, you mean? They are fantastic and the fat gives flavour.
Well they run around free range at will for about a week or so after being released from the henhouses they were raised and fattened in.
Never thought I'd see the day when a RN vessel was named for a Marxist boffin. Even Mr Churchill couldn't get a dreadnought named for O. Cromwell.
TBF PMB was a major contributor to winning WW2 in developing operational research.
I hadn't heard of him. I love the fact that Oppenheimer tried to poison him with an apple. Shades of another Cambridge graduate and genius who did die by eating a poisoned apple?
Also important (well his unit was, I forget who did what) in optimising antisubmarine tactics and the like: basic stuff such as the depth setting for depth-charges was tweaked with remarkable effect.
Posh food now would likely be something Nordic or East European, with the all important "twist"
Borscht with artisanal Borough sourdough and skyr
Nah that's hipster food. Posh food is something else.
Hipster is basically posh these days, cf Glastonbury. Only ancient people revere naff haute cuisine like "lobster thermidor"
For old fashioned posh that is STILL posh I'd go for grouse or snipe or woodcock or venison you yourself shot dead, or wild salmon, or native oysters
It would have been fun if Sunak had said "my favourite meal is a dozen Helford natives on the half shell, and then partridge with game chips, I try to eat it every day"
He should answer as the family doctor prescribes in Buddenbrooks: a little roast pigeon, a little French bread.
Since reading that years ago I've occasionally made it for myself when the family are away. Pigeon breasts with plenty of black pepper on some baguette with a bit of butter, letting the blood soak into the bread. I recommend it.
Weirdly, on my last but one visit to France I bought a couple of pigeon in Leclerc and cooked them in my Airbnb
They were absolutely delicious - and easy to cook. First time I've ever cooked them, went perfectly
We should sell them in Britain, it's absurd we don't eat pigeon, there's not exactly a lack
Some of us do. But we shoot our own for eating.
There should be a huge mass market for game, which would obviate the need for some of the practices that occur at some shoots but until they solve the shot problem you can't have Mrs Smith breaking her teeth on her Sunday Dinner.
It's actually not that nice is the problem. Reared pheasant invariably has globs of yellow fat under the skin. Roast chicken is greatly preferable.
What do you mean by "reared pheasant". Pheasants that run around "free range" at will until they are blasted out of the sky, you mean? They are fantastic and the fat gives flavour.
For about 4 months they do. I eat pheasant both from commercial shoots and wild bird only family setups (which is how they have done it at Sandringham for decades). The difference is like farmed Vs rod caught salmon.
Posh food now would likely be something Nordic or East European, with the all important "twist"
Borscht with artisanal Borough sourdough and skyr
Nah that's hipster food. Posh food is something else.
Hipster is basically posh these days, cf Glastonbury. Only ancient people revere naff haute cuisine like "lobster thermidor"
For old fashioned posh that is STILL posh I'd go for grouse or snipe or woodcock or venison you yourself shot dead, or wild salmon, or native oysters
It would have been fun if Sunak had said "my favourite meal is a dozen Helford natives on the half shell, and then partridge with game chips, I try to eat it every day"
He should answer as the family doctor prescribes in Buddenbrooks: a little roast pigeon, a little French bread.
Since reading that years ago I've occasionally made it for myself when the family are away. Pigeon breasts with plenty of black pepper on some baguette with a bit of butter, letting the blood soak into the bread. I recommend it.
Weirdly, on my last but one visit to France I bought a couple of pigeon in Leclerc and cooked them in my Airbnb
They were absolutely delicious - and easy to cook. First time I've ever cooked them, went perfectly
We should sell them in Britain, it's absurd we don't eat pigeon, there's not exactly a lack
Some of us do. But we shoot our own for eating.
There should be a huge mass market for game, which would obviate the need for some of the practices that occur at some shoots but until they solve the shot problem you can't have Mrs Smith breaking her teeth on her Sunday Dinner.
It's actually not that nice is the problem. Reared pheasant invariably has globs of yellow fat under the skin. Roast chicken is greatly preferable.
What do you mean by "reared pheasant". Pheasants that run around "free range" at will until they are blasted out of the sky, you mean? They are fantastic and the fat gives flavour.
Well they run around free range at will for about a week or so after being released from the henhouses they were raised and fattened in.
Heritage Foundation president celebrates Supreme Court presidential immunity ruling: "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be" https://x.com/mmfa/status/1808306913291260118
Basically like a giant version of what happened in Fiji.
Not really. Fiji has quite the history of coups. The US right are openly talking of rewriting a constitution which has endured centuries, even through a bloody civil war, by force.
The Fiji Coup I am talking about is the 1987 one that happened after the Party representing ethnic Indians won the election and the native Fijians basically said tolerance for ethnics is one thing, letting them decide how the country is run is another matter.
That makes even less sense to me. I literally have no idea of the point you are making.
The fiji coup came after the ethnic Indian community reached 49% and the ethnic Fijian was 46%.
The result was discriminatory election rules that kept ethnic Fijians in power.
They were chucked out of the commonwealth but allowed back some years later when the discriminatory laws went (which they were happy to do when enough ethnic Indians emigrated).
Ethnic indians are now only 37.5 of the population. Ethnic Fijians are now 56.8%.
The root of the US culture wars is that, similar to Fiji, demographic change is seeing the ethnic Northern European majority getting smaller and smaller and heading towards being a minority.
The polls pretty much agree on the Labour and LD shares. Where they don't agree is the Con and Ref shares.
Not surprising. It must be fiendishly difficult.
Especially as anyone working in a lot of places (eg public sector) will have in the back of their mind that if they say Reform and get doxxed, they will be in hot water.
Not saying it is remotely likely that pollsters will dox them. But once you get in the habit of not telling strangers (or untrusted aquaintences) you are planning to vote Fargle, you won't switch out of that mode if a pollster cold calls you or emails you.
Probably one reason Reform are a bit higher with Yougov. If you have taken the positive step to register you are probably less likely (but not wholly unlikely) to be reticent.
Remember the couple that had foster children removed frpm their care because they were UKIP members?
In my experience Reform voters are anything but shy about expressing their opinions..
I have bet on low Reform vote share. A lot are blowhard who won't actually vote, and many of the rest will actually vote Con.
Based on Ukip/BP performance over the last decade or so, that sounds sensible. There remains the option that this election will be different. Agree with your punt, but not so much that I'd put money on it myself.
This is the point at which I may begin placing shortish constituency bets 'because that looks interesting', so probably time to shut down for 24 hours.
Not at all. Surely now is the time when shortish bets are most likely to come off, when there is hardly any time left to change voters' minds.
Posh food now would likely be something Nordic or East European, with the all important "twist"
Borscht with artisanal Borough sourdough and skyr
Nah that's hipster food. Posh food is something else.
Hipster is basically posh these days, cf Glastonbury. Only ancient people revere naff haute cuisine like "lobster thermidor"
For old fashioned posh that is STILL posh I'd go for grouse or snipe or woodcock or venison you yourself shot dead, or wild salmon, or native oysters
It would have been fun if Sunak had said "my favourite meal is a dozen Helford natives on the half shell, and then partridge with game chips, I try to eat it every day"
He should answer as the family doctor prescribes in Buddenbrooks: a little roast pigeon, a little French bread.
Since reading that years ago I've occasionally made it for myself when the family are away. Pigeon breasts with plenty of black pepper on some baguette with a bit of butter, letting the blood soak into the bread. I recommend it.
Weirdly, on my last but one visit to France I bought a couple of pigeon in Leclerc and cooked them in my Airbnb
They were absolutely delicious - and easy to cook. First time I've ever cooked them, went perfectly
We should sell them in Britain, it's absurd we don't eat pigeon, there's not exactly a lack
Some of us do. But we shoot our own for eating.
There should be a huge mass market for game, which would obviate the need for some of the practices that occur at some shoots but until they solve the shot problem you can't have Mrs Smith breaking her teeth on her Sunday Dinner.
It's actually not that nice is the problem. Reared pheasant invariably has globs of yellow fat under the skin. Roast chicken is greatly preferable.
What do you mean by "reared pheasant". Pheasants that run around "free range" at will until they are blasted out of the sky, you mean? They are fantastic and the fat gives flavour.
For about 4 months they do. I eat pheasant both from commercial shoots and wild bird only family setups (which is how they have done it at Sandringham for decades). The difference is like farmed Vs rod caught salmon.
Yes around four months. Them's the breaks. Not a week or two. And a huge number avoid getting shot and live out the rest of the lives before succumbing one way or another to predators or Volkswagen Golfs. I'm not sure what a "wild bird only" family set up is but the way pheasants are traditionally reared on shoots satisfies my requirements for free range.
Posh food now would likely be something Nordic or East European, with the all important "twist"
Borscht with artisanal Borough sourdough and skyr
Nah that's hipster food. Posh food is something else.
Hipster is basically posh these days, cf Glastonbury. Only ancient people revere naff haute cuisine like "lobster thermidor"
For old fashioned posh that is STILL posh I'd go for grouse or snipe or woodcock or venison you yourself shot dead, or wild salmon, or native oysters
It would have been fun if Sunak had said "my favourite meal is a dozen Helford natives on the half shell, and then partridge with game chips, I try to eat it every day"
He should answer as the family doctor prescribes in Buddenbrooks: a little roast pigeon, a little French bread.
Since reading that years ago I've occasionally made it for myself when the family are away. Pigeon breasts with plenty of black pepper on some baguette with a bit of butter, letting the blood soak into the bread. I recommend it.
Weirdly, on my last but one visit to France I bought a couple of pigeon in Leclerc and cooked them in my Airbnb
They were absolutely delicious - and easy to cook. First time I've ever cooked them, went perfectly
We should sell them in Britain, it's absurd we don't eat pigeon, there's not exactly a lack
Some of us do. But we shoot our own for eating.
There should be a huge mass market for game, which would obviate the need for some of the practices that occur at some shoots but until they solve the shot problem you can't have Mrs Smith breaking her teeth on her Sunday Dinner.
It's actually not that nice is the problem. Reared pheasant invariably has globs of yellow fat under the skin. Roast chicken is greatly preferable.
What do you mean by "reared pheasant". Pheasants that run around "free range" at will until they are blasted out of the sky, you mean? They are fantastic and the fat gives flavour.
For about 4 months they do. I eat pheasant both from commercial shoots and wild bird only family setups (which is how they have done it at Sandringham for decades). The difference is like farmed Vs rod caught salmon.
What a surprise that the Tories are FOUR POINTS below Reform in his final poll. Goodwin is an absolute clown. Does he really think that people don't see through him?
Goodwin: Britain Bowtie Bob
LLG 55 to RefCon 36 is actually fairly bang on the rest of the pollsters! It's just a bit more fashed up (and greened up for good measure).
But why are you rolling up separate parties into one?
Because the PB Tories have been highlighting, for a considerable time, the combined Ref/Con vote as the potential Con vote in the election. Ha Ha!
There is genuine interest in combination party votes for all sorts of reasons. It all depends of course what you want to know or achieve. A problem with LLG v C/Ref is that like is not being compared with like. LLG excludes the extreme left, while C/Ref includes the extreme right.
Politically a useful but perhaps unattainable figure is Social and liberal democrats v Various extremists and authoritarians.
That is, most Lab, most usually Tory voters, all LDs, most SNP and PC and some Greens v Jezza style Labour, Reform, Braverman Tory, George, extreme Greens, SWP etc and assorted loonies.
Wow, if that verifies then Reform are well placed to overtake the Tories, comprehensively, in 2028, and possibly win the next election
If labour are only on 36% now as a new government and reform truly are on 20% with the public finances in the state they are labour will quickly become more unpopular once they unleash tax rises and wokeness upon us - then the rise of reform will only continue to ascend and yes I agree they could indeed win the next election . Anecdotally my daughter and her boyfriend (young twenties) are both non political and unprovoked are talking about voting reform tomorrow so they aren’t just appealing to “oldies”
I do agree Labour/SKS will very quickly become unpopular but when the votes go when Labour's coalition of voters disintegrates remains to be seen.
I would think Reform is the least likely place for is to go, with Lib-Dems and possibly the Conservatives (depending on whats left of Con in the smoldering ruins on Friday morning) more likely to benefit with Labours inevitable collapse takes place.
I think the idea that Labour are going to be rapidly unpopular is as foolish as the idea that Cameron's Tories would be rapidly unpopular and then out of power for a generation.
Labour will have a honeymoon and for a few years any hard choices/bad news the public are likely to blame on the Tories for "leaving a mess" rather than blame Labour.
There's a couple of reasons I think Labour will very quickly fall into unpopularity.
1. Cameron was much more popular than SKS. People forget now, but David Cameron's personal ratings were often very good during his time as LOTO. He was far more popular than his party and actually came to power with quite a strong personal vote. The reverse is true for Labour/SKS.
2. I think there has been a deliberate connivance between Labour and the voters to not think very much about what happens when Labour takes office. At the moment everyone who just wants the Conservatives gone are putting whatever hopes, dreams and expectations they have on Labour but as the saying goes, to govern is to choose and there are going to be a lot of people who are unhappy with Labour's choices in a couple of years, IMO.
I could be wrong of course. It will certainly be interesting to see how long Labour can keep their coalition of voters together.
Wow, if that verifies then Reform are well placed to overtake the Tories, comprehensively, in 2028, and possibly win the next election
If labour are only on 36% now as a new government and reform truly are on 20% with the public finances in the state they are labour will quickly become more unpopular once they unleash tax rises and wokeness upon us - then the rise of reform will only continue to ascend and yes I agree they could indeed win the next election . Anecdotally my daughter and her boyfriend (young twenties) are both non political and unprovoked are talking about voting reform tomorrow so they aren’t just appealing to “oldies”
I do agree Labour/SKS will very quickly become unpopular but when the votes go when Labour's coalition of voters disintegrates remains to be seen.
I would think Reform is the least likely place for is to go, with Lib-Dems and possibly the Conservatives (depending on whats left of Con in the smoldering ruins on Friday morning) more likely to benefit with Labours inevitable collapse takes place.
I think the idea that Labour are going to be rapidly unpopular is as foolish as the idea that Cameron's Tories would be rapidly unpopular and then out of power for a generation.
Labour will have a honeymoon and for a few years any hard choices/bad news the public are likely to blame on the Tories for "leaving a mess" rather than blame Labour.
I disagree, voters are much more volatile and polarised now, and also easy to radicalise online - in different directions
We see this pattern across the western world, and Britain is not exceptional
Labour WILL get a honeymoon, but I reckon it will be 12-18 months, and then anger will return
Posh food now would likely be something Nordic or East European, with the all important "twist"
Borscht with artisanal Borough sourdough and skyr
Nah that's hipster food. Posh food is something else.
Hipster is basically posh these days, cf Glastonbury. Only ancient people revere naff haute cuisine like "lobster thermidor"
For old fashioned posh that is STILL posh I'd go for grouse or snipe or woodcock or venison you yourself shot dead, or wild salmon, or native oysters
It would have been fun if Sunak had said "my favourite meal is a dozen Helford natives on the half shell, and then partridge with game chips, I try to eat it every day"
He should answer as the family doctor prescribes in Buddenbrooks: a little roast pigeon, a little French bread.
Since reading that years ago I've occasionally made it for myself when the family are away. Pigeon breasts with plenty of black pepper on some baguette with a bit of butter, letting the blood soak into the bread. I recommend it.
Weirdly, on my last but one visit to France I bought a couple of pigeon in Leclerc and cooked them in my Airbnb
They were absolutely delicious - and easy to cook. First time I've ever cooked them, went perfectly
We should sell them in Britain, it's absurd we don't eat pigeon, there's not exactly a lack
Some of us do. But we shoot our own for eating.
There should be a huge mass market for game, which would obviate the need for some of the practices that occur at some shoots but until they solve the shot problem you can't have Mrs Smith breaking her teeth on her Sunday Dinner.
It's actually not that nice is the problem. Reared pheasant invariably has globs of yellow fat under the skin. Roast chicken is greatly preferable.
What do you mean by "reared pheasant". Pheasants that run around "free range" at will until they are blasted out of the sky, you mean? They are fantastic and the fat gives flavour.
For about 4 months they do. I eat pheasant both from commercial shoots and wild bird only family setups (which is how they have done it at Sandringham for decades). The difference is like farmed Vs rod caught salmon.
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.
The more I see that kind of sentiment the less sincere it seems.
It’s like they’re trying to convince themselves that it is true. Leon is the worst culprit but not alone.
I suspect therefore that you / they know that at some point this is a conversation which the country will once more be having.
It's only a matter of time. Politicians cannot ignore the polling on this forever. If they want to be elected that is.
The polling says this is a non-issue. Not even on the radar.
Keir Starmer and Ed Davey and everyone who wants to be elected are concentrating on actual issues, not your hobbyhorse.
What you are of course failing to engage with is that several of those categories, and especially the economy, have been irreparably damaged by our withdrawal from the largest trading bloc.
The economic arguments, which were never properly aired during the 2016 campaign, will become persuasive once more.
It’s only a matter of time whether you like or not, or indeed whether you try to convince yourself or not.
Money talks.
Largest trading bloc?
The EU isn't even close to the world's largest trading bloc.
Indeed once the UK finishing accession to the CPTPP, we'll be in an even larger bloc than the EU and there's other, larger blocs out there too.
It's the closest large trading block to the UK.
If the EU had stuck to being a trading block like CPTPP instead of attempting to become an Empiric State, extending its tentacles into virtually every aspect of government, we would not have had a problem in the first place,
So how can the die-hard remainers be so emotionally attached to a trading block? It must be those tentacles.
Emotionally attached to the sort of Britain that wants to be constructive and influential in its own continent.
If the EU had wanted us to be part of that, they could have worked constructively with Cameron. Instead...
Perhaps, but remember David Cameron wasted a lot of time being told repeatedly by Angela Merkel that she did not run the EU and he should negotiate directly with Brussels or work through the European Parliament.
Labour Wolverhampton West £200 @ 1-7 Reform Barnsley South £15 @ 8-1
Neutral
Reform Washington & Gateshead South £5 @ 14-1 Con seats 150 - 199 + £80.36 200 - 249 +£66.64 Anything else -£12.00
Slightly underwater
Con Over 140 seats +£29.40 Con under -£10
My book:
+ve Con 100-149 LDem Tewkesbury x 2 Green Herefordshire N Lab Basildon LDem Epsom & Ewell LDem Exmouth and Exeter East (star performer - thanks for the tip!)
neutral Con 150-199 (2nd) Alliance Lagan Valley Con Clacton - for the LOLs SNP in ANME (sorry, RP) Lab Alloa & Grangemouth SNP most seats in Scotland (only last night)
-ve Con 150-199 (1st) Con IoW West
Current net cash out +£75
Plaudits to Bet 365 who let you have 100% cashout if no significant odds movement, even 2-3 weeks after laying a bet. I've done that a couple of times.
Posh food now would likely be something Nordic or East European, with the all important "twist"
Borscht with artisanal Borough sourdough and skyr
Nah that's hipster food. Posh food is something else.
Hipster is basically posh these days, cf Glastonbury. Only ancient people revere naff haute cuisine like "lobster thermidor"
For old fashioned posh that is STILL posh I'd go for grouse or snipe or woodcock or venison you yourself shot dead, or wild salmon, or native oysters
It would have been fun if Sunak had said "my favourite meal is a dozen Helford natives on the half shell, and then partridge with game chips, I try to eat it every day"
He should answer as the family doctor prescribes in Buddenbrooks: a little roast pigeon, a little French bread.
Since reading that years ago I've occasionally made it for myself when the family are away. Pigeon breasts with plenty of black pepper on some baguette with a bit of butter, letting the blood soak into the bread. I recommend it.
Weirdly, on my last but one visit to France I bought a couple of pigeon in Leclerc and cooked them in my Airbnb
They were absolutely delicious - and easy to cook. First time I've ever cooked them, went perfectly
We should sell them in Britain, it's absurd we don't eat pigeon, there's not exactly a lack
Some of us do. But we shoot our own for eating.
There should be a huge mass market for game, which would obviate the need for some of the practices that occur at some shoots but until they solve the shot problem you can't have Mrs Smith breaking her teeth on her Sunday Dinner.
It's actually not that nice is the problem. Reared pheasant invariably has globs of yellow fat under the skin. Roast chicken is greatly preferable.
What do you mean by "reared pheasant". Pheasants that run around "free range" at will until they are blasted out of the sky, you mean? They are fantastic and the fat gives flavour.
For about 4 months they do. I eat pheasant both from commercial shoots and wild bird only family setups (which is how they have done it at Sandringham for decades). The difference is like farmed Vs rod caught salmon.
Yes around four months. Them's the breaks. Not a week or two. And a huge number avoid getting shot and live out the rest of the lives before succumbing one way or another to predators or Volkswagen Golfs. I'm not sure what a "wild bird only" family set up is but the way pheasants are traditionally reared on shoots satisfies my requirements for free range.
My mistake. I just notice them all suddenly surging into the fields and woods during the growing season and lots of them end up on my vineyard where they develop a penchant for ripe grapes. Last season they ate every single one of the grape bunches (but it wasn't a commercial cropping year fortunately).
Reform 3 more than they deserve but it could be right. Hopefully its higher than they get.
I think Labour might get a few more, Lib Dems a few less. Tories sounds about right.
What a 6 weeks it has been. I started out as a classic but obviously seriously pissed off One Nation Tory, thinking I'd have waited until October but nevertheless looking forward to seeing the party rebuild in opposition for 5 years whilst Labour effs it up instead, and thinking 150 seats was absolute nightmare scenario, 200 would be amazing. Now I'm looking at 98 as almost 'bite your hand off' territory. I think it will be lower.
It's almost heartbreaking to see what's about to unfold and how unutterbly stupid it is that two right of centre parties could well get close to 40% here yet Labour will get slightly less and have a 250/300 majority possibly.
Madness.
It's also rather galling that even though I vote Tory (party) tomorrow with a bigger peg on nose than usual, my fear remains that henceforth I could be completely disenfranchised with no peg big enough for future polls. Over my dead body will I ever vote for a Farage led rabble.
Immediately off topic there's a bfx market on month Sunak ceases to lead Tory party. I lost too much money on Johnson's departure to risk any on this but my guess is there's so much hatred of him in the party that he may jump on Friday, possibly not even staying as caretaker
I suppose it’s just worth a wait to see who the survivors are - if they are all Suellaites then he’s doomed on day 2 but if they are all Dowdenites then they might keep him in situ for a while whilst they have a proper debate/horse trading session before any final leadership election.
If, as looks likely, CCHQ parachuted a lot of Rishi friendly candidates in and they all somehow manage to win then the party will have a very different complexion from what some fear and might not go down the loony rabbit hole as others hope they do.
Having a looksee, I have put a fun money £3 on "2025 or later", at odds of 36.
Purely on the possibility that he will be a Michael Howard, not a David Cameron. That's assuming he keeps his seat.
I'd guess conference in October is when they'd want to crown their new leader. That was the plan when David Cameron resigned but withdrawals by Boris and Andrea Leadsom meant Theresa May was in place, and Cameron out, weeks earlier.
ETA speaking of Dowden, then subject to the good voters of Hertsmere, he will be taking on Angela Rayner in the first PMQs as the Prime Minister will be at a Nato summit.
2025 or later at 36 feels like a value loser to me. I think I'll try to join you at 40.
There's another strange market about Angela Rayner being Labour Deputy Leader at the next General Election. I'm not sure how that works, really; Betfair games going on, I think, which are beyond my ken.
Reform 3 more than they deserve but it could be right. Hopefully its higher than they get.
I think Labour might get a few more, Lib Dems a few less. Tories sounds about right.
What a 6 weeks it has been. I started out as a classic but obviously seriously pissed off One Nation Tory, thinking I'd have waited until October but nevertheless looking forward to seeing the party rebuild in opposition for 5 years whilst Labour effs it up instead, and thinking 150 seats was absolute nightmare scenario, 200 would be amazing. Now I'm looking at 98 as almost 'bite your hand off' territory. I think it will be lower.
It's almost heartbreaking to see what's about to unfold and how unutterbly stupid it is that two right of centre parties could well get close to 40% here yet Labour will get slightly less and have a 250/300 majority possibly.
Madness.
It's also rather galling that even though I vote Tory (party) tomorrow with a bigger peg on nose than usual, my fear remains that henceforth I could be completely disenfranchised with no peg big enough for future polls. Over my dead body will I ever vote for a Farage led rabble.
Except the Tory party aren't going to be near 40% - if lucky they will get 25% but many polls have them at 20% or worse.
And we really won't know whether it's 25% or 19% until tomorrow night.
Reform 3 more than they deserve but it could be right. Hopefully its higher than they get.
I think Labour might get a few more, Lib Dems a few less. Tories sounds about right.
What a 6 weeks it has been. I started out as a classic but obviously seriously pissed off One Nation Tory, thinking I'd have waited until October but nevertheless looking forward to seeing the party rebuild in opposition for 5 years whilst Labour effs it up instead, and thinking 150 seats was absolute nightmare scenario, 200 would be amazing. Now I'm looking at 98 as almost 'bite your hand off' territory. I think it will be lower.
It's almost heartbreaking to see what's about to unfold and how unutterbly stupid it is that two right of centre parties could well get close to 40% here yet Labour will get slightly less and have a 250/300 majority possibly.
Madness.
It's also rather galling that even though I vote Tory (party) tomorrow with a bigger peg on nose than usual, my fear remains that henceforth I could be completely disenfranchised with no peg big enough for future polls. Over my dead body will I ever vote for a Farage led rabble.
Farage/Reform might be about to ensure the government is led by a staunch remainer and a party that wanted to cancel Brexit becomes it's main Opposition.
Reform 3 more than they deserve but it could be right. Hopefully its higher than they get.
I think Labour might get a few more, Lib Dems a few less. Tories sounds about right.
What a 6 weeks it has been. I started out as a classic but obviously seriously pissed off One Nation Tory, thinking I'd have waited until October but nevertheless looking forward to seeing the party rebuild in opposition for 5 years whilst Labour effs it up instead, and thinking 150 seats was absolute nightmare scenario, 200 would be amazing. Now I'm looking at 98 as almost 'bite your hand off' territory. I think it will be lower.
It's almost heartbreaking to see what's about to unfold and how unutterbly stupid it is that two right of centre parties could well get close to 40% here yet Labour will get slightly less and have a 250/300 majority possibly.
Madness.
It's also rather galling that even though I vote Tory (party) tomorrow with a bigger peg on nose than usual, my fear remains that henceforth I could be completely disenfranchised with no peg big enough for future polls. Over my dead body will I ever vote for a Farage led rabble.
Except the Tory party aren't going to be near 40% - if lucky they will get 25% but many polls have them at 20% or worse.
And we really won't know whether it's 25% or 19% until tomorrow night.
That reminds me. A quick check suggests that the Walt WAr has ended in stalemate (and it was pretty dodgy Mr M commenting on a services veteran given he's still Minister for Veterans, whatever the other rights and wrongs).
Posh food now would likely be something Nordic or East European, with the all important "twist"
Borscht with artisanal Borough sourdough and skyr
Nah that's hipster food. Posh food is something else.
Hipster is basically posh these days, cf Glastonbury. Only ancient people revere naff haute cuisine like "lobster thermidor"
For old fashioned posh that is STILL posh I'd go for grouse or snipe or woodcock or venison you yourself shot dead, or wild salmon, or native oysters
It would have been fun if Sunak had said "my favourite meal is a dozen Helford natives on the half shell, and then partridge with game chips, I try to eat it every day"
He should answer as the family doctor prescribes in Buddenbrooks: a little roast pigeon, a little French bread.
Since reading that years ago I've occasionally made it for myself when the family are away. Pigeon breasts with plenty of black pepper on some baguette with a bit of butter, letting the blood soak into the bread. I recommend it.
Weirdly, on my last but one visit to France I bought a couple of pigeon in Leclerc and cooked them in my Airbnb
They were absolutely delicious - and easy to cook. First time I've ever cooked them, went perfectly
We should sell them in Britain, it's absurd we don't eat pigeon, there's not exactly a lack
Some of us do. But we shoot our own for eating.
There should be a huge mass market for game, which would obviate the need for some of the practices that occur at some shoots but until they solve the shot problem you can't have Mrs Smith breaking her teeth on her Sunday Dinner.
It's actually not that nice is the problem. Reared pheasant invariably has globs of yellow fat under the skin. Roast chicken is greatly preferable.
What do you mean by "reared pheasant". Pheasants that run around "free range" at will until they are blasted out of the sky, you mean? They are fantastic and the fat gives flavour.
For about 4 months they do. I eat pheasant both from commercial shoots and wild bird only family setups (which is how they have done it at Sandringham for decades). The difference is like farmed Vs rod caught salmon.
Mad that we have four pheasant experts on here
I have eaten game all my life, and sorry to disagree but the idea that there is a difference between reared and "wild pheasant" is for the birds (pun intended). There are very few genuine wild pheasants, except in parts of the fens. These tend to be smaller. The "reared" birds are left to acclimatise for considerable periods and forage and fly around for considerable time from when they are released as poults. Some may overseason from one to the next. These will have long spurs and maybe best to put in a game pie. They all are, whatever the antis/detractors say, essentially wild. The yellow fat is a function of what the birds eat. I have seen this on fenland wild birds. If they have access to maize either through feeders or finding it in farmed fields, this will be the outcome.
That's pretty much identical to my OFFICIAL LEONDAMUS PREDICTION of two days ago
The big variable is Reform, no one knows if they will get 8% or 18%
Is that the same Leodamis who predicted that half the population was going to die from Covid, that aliens were going to reveal themselves to us all imminently and that Putin was certain to push the nuclear button? Or maybe a different one?
...The Supreme Court’s decision, however, does not come decontextualized in a casebook. And it is not, however much the justices of the majority may pretend otherwise, about the presidency in the abstract. Of course, it also affects the presidency in the abstract—and all future presidents who wield its powers. But this is a case about a particular man in interaction with the presidency. And those actions are not all in the past tense.
It is a case in which the Supreme Court was asked whether it wanted to enable Trump’s avowed authoritarianism in a future presidency by disabling his prosecution for crimes committed in his prior presidency.
It is, in other words, about some very immediate—and very non-hypothetical—dangers.
And it comes at a very specific political moment: Trump is currently leading in most polls. According to Nate Silver’s forecast, Trump has a 71 percent chance of winning the election in November. That chance is only 51 percent if you prefer the 538 forecast. But he’s the current front-runner by any reasonable measure. His opponent’s campaign is in no small turmoil following Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in last week’s debate. Trump is, in short, the single most likely person in the world to wield the powers of the American presidency come Jan. 20, 2025.
He is also a convicted criminal—no small matter when one is writing a “rule for the ages” about prospective presidential impunity, as Justice Neil Gorsuch put it during oral arguments. The court majority may flatter itself that it’s staying out of politics. But this is a fairy tale the justices are telling themselves—if they are, in fact, telling themselves this pleasant little tale. In fact, they are handing a powerful immunity to an adjudged felon who may be about to assume “the executive power” of the United States, and they are doing it by corroding—and perhaps rendering impossible—accountability for his past crimes.
There’s another sense in which the Supreme Court has failed here: It has articulated a set of standards for presidential immunity that are utterly opaque. The most fundamental job of an appellate court, even when it’s articulating an objectionable principle, is to give actionable guidance to lower courts. The Court in this case has not done this. Reading the opinion alongside the indictment, it is completely unclear how to apply it to the instant case along a number of different axes and with respect to a number of different allegations...
Read the whole article if you are in any doubt about the court's judgment. It is an excellent step by step examination of just how bad it is.
The SC justices were appointed by Trump to give him this untrammelled power. And he will use it.
If he's re-elected, he'll (at the very leat) appoint Alito and Thomas's replacements. So a majority of the Court.
Wow, if that verifies then Reform are well placed to overtake the Tories, comprehensively, in 2028, and possibly win the next election
If labour are only on 36% now as a new government and reform truly are on 20% with the public finances in the state they are labour will quickly become more unpopular once they unleash tax rises and wokeness upon us - then the rise of reform will only continue to ascend and yes I agree they could indeed win the next election . Anecdotally my daughter and her boyfriend (young twenties) are both non political and unprovoked are talking about voting reform tomorrow so they aren’t just appealing to “oldies”
I do agree Labour/SKS will very quickly become unpopular but when the votes go when Labour's coalition of voters disintegrates remains to be seen.
I would think Reform is the least likely place for is to go, with Lib-Dems and possibly the Conservatives (depending on whats left of Con in the smoldering ruins on Friday morning) more likely to benefit with Labours inevitable collapse takes place.
I think the idea that Labour are going to be rapidly unpopular is as foolish as the idea that Cameron's Tories would be rapidly unpopular and then out of power for a generation.
Labour will have a honeymoon and for a few years any hard choices/bad news the public are likely to blame on the Tories for "leaving a mess" rather than blame Labour.
I don’t think the Labour honeymoon will last too long especially if they are seen to fail / surrender on immigration and combined with public spending constraints / higher taxes and woke policies they will soon going from having currently unenthusiastic support to becoming a voting public that has serious buyers remorse . The electorate are only focussed on getting rid of the tories at present , I don’t think they have great enthusiasm or love for Sir Kier .
Posh food now would likely be something Nordic or East European, with the all important "twist"
Borscht with artisanal Borough sourdough and skyr
Nah that's hipster food. Posh food is something else.
Hipster is basically posh these days, cf Glastonbury. Only ancient people revere naff haute cuisine like "lobster thermidor"
For old fashioned posh that is STILL posh I'd go for grouse or snipe or woodcock or venison you yourself shot dead, or wild salmon, or native oysters
It would have been fun if Sunak had said "my favourite meal is a dozen Helford natives on the half shell, and then partridge with game chips, I try to eat it every day"
He should answer as the family doctor prescribes in Buddenbrooks: a little roast pigeon, a little French bread.
Since reading that years ago I've occasionally made it for myself when the family are away. Pigeon breasts with plenty of black pepper on some baguette with a bit of butter, letting the blood soak into the bread. I recommend it.
Weirdly, on my last but one visit to France I bought a couple of pigeon in Leclerc and cooked them in my Airbnb
They were absolutely delicious - and easy to cook. First time I've ever cooked them, went perfectly
We should sell them in Britain, it's absurd we don't eat pigeon, there's not exactly a lack
Some of us do. But we shoot our own for eating.
There should be a huge mass market for game, which would obviate the need for some of the practices that occur at some shoots but until they solve the shot problem you can't have Mrs Smith breaking her teeth on her Sunday Dinner.
True I suppose. We don't do mass shooting. In this area it is local farmers and friends doing 'walking up' and nothing gets shot that won't be eaten. Game - pigeon, pheasant, partridge and duck for the most part - is probably our most common meal for most winters. Pies and casseroles are my favourite.
What a surprise that the Tories are FOUR POINTS below Reform in his final poll. Goodwin is an absolute clown. Does he really think that people don't see through him?
Goodwin: Britain Bowtie Bob
Sorry, are you claming he deliberately creates fake polls? That's quite the libellous accusation, and you should be careful, for the sake of PB's legal fees
He's been accused of that (politely: it was a Lib who did the accusing and I was in the room at the time) and in fairness he rejects the accusation: he doesn't do the polls, one of his colleagues does, and given that so much of polling is subjective (eg weights) he's not really faking. I don't know if he's actually correct: we will find out in (checks clock) 31 hours and 32 minutes...
Never thought I'd see the day when a RN vessel was named for a Marxist boffin. Even Mr Churchill couldn't get a dreadnought named for O. Cromwell.
TBF PMB was a major contributor to winning WW2 in developing operational research.
I hadn't heard of him. I love the fact that Oppenheimer tried to poison him with an apple. Shades of another Cambridge graduate and genius who did die by eating a poisoned apple?
This was excellent: ..On his first night at Magdalene College, Cambridge, he met Kingsley Martin and Geoffrey Webb, later recalling that he had never before, in his naval training, heard intellectual conversation. Blackett was impressed by the prestigious Cavendish Laboratory, and left the Navy to study mathematics and physics at Cambridge...
Had his proposal to devote 1% of national income to overseas development found acceptance, the last half century might have been quite different. Would probably have benefited our economy in the long run, too.
Heritage Foundation president celebrates Supreme Court presidential immunity ruling: "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be" https://x.com/mmfa/status/1808306913291260118
Basically like a giant version of what happened in Fiji.
Not really. Fiji has quite the history of coups. The US right are openly talking of rewriting a constitution which has endured centuries, even through a bloody civil war, by force.
The Fiji Coup I am talking about is the 1987 one that happened after the Party representing ethnic Indians won the election and the native Fijians basically said tolerance for ethnics is one thing, letting them decide how the country is run is another matter.
That makes even less sense to me. I literally have no idea of the point you are making.
The fiji coup came after the ethnic Indian community reached 49% and the ethnic Fijian was 46%.
The result was discriminatory election rules that kept ethnic Fijians in power.
They were chucked out of the commonwealth but allowed back some years later when the discriminatory laws went (which they were happy to do when enough ethnic Indians emigrated).
Ethnic indians are now only 37.5 of the population. Ethnic Fijians are now 56.8%.
The root of the US culture wars is that, similar to Fiji, demographic change is seeing the ethnic Northern European majority getting smaller and smaller and heading towards being a minority.
I was afraid you'd come up with some such nonsense.
Posh food now would likely be something Nordic or East European, with the all important "twist"
Borscht with artisanal Borough sourdough and skyr
Nah that's hipster food. Posh food is something else.
Hipster is basically posh these days, cf Glastonbury. Only ancient people revere naff haute cuisine like "lobster thermidor"
For old fashioned posh that is STILL posh I'd go for grouse or snipe or woodcock or venison you yourself shot dead, or wild salmon, or native oysters
It would have been fun if Sunak had said "my favourite meal is a dozen Helford natives on the half shell, and then partridge with game chips, I try to eat it every day"
He should answer as the family doctor prescribes in Buddenbrooks: a little roast pigeon, a little French bread.
Since reading that years ago I've occasionally made it for myself when the family are away. Pigeon breasts with plenty of black pepper on some baguette with a bit of butter, letting the blood soak into the bread. I recommend it.
Weirdly, on my last but one visit to France I bought a couple of pigeon in Leclerc and cooked them in my Airbnb
They were absolutely delicious - and easy to cook. First time I've ever cooked them, went perfectly
We should sell them in Britain, it's absurd we don't eat pigeon, there's not exactly a lack
Some of us do. But we shoot our own for eating.
There should be a huge mass market for game, which would obviate the need for some of the practices that occur at some shoots but until they solve the shot problem you can't have Mrs Smith breaking her teeth on her Sunday Dinner.
It's actually not that nice is the problem. Reared pheasant invariably has globs of yellow fat under the skin. Roast chicken is greatly preferable.
What do you mean by "reared pheasant". Pheasants that run around "free range" at will until they are blasted out of the sky, you mean? They are fantastic and the fat gives flavour.
For about 4 months they do. I eat pheasant both from commercial shoots and wild bird only family setups (which is how they have done it at Sandringham for decades). The difference is like farmed Vs rod caught salmon.
Yes around four months. Them's the breaks. Not a week or two. And a huge number avoid getting shot and live out the rest of the lives before succumbing one way or another to predators or Volkswagen Golfs. I'm not sure what a "wild bird only" family set up is but the way pheasants are traditionally reared on shoots satisfies my requirements for free range.
I see the Charity Commission has acted against Captain Tom Moore’s daughter. Apart from partygate this must be the most notorious case of Covid related wrongdoing.
Comments
Otherwise I've got bets of Con 100-149 and 150-199, for Sunak to keep his seat (Binface splits the anti-Con vote
Con 100-199 I'm well up overall, even with the -£25 from the old bets. Outwith 100-199 I need Corbyn to lose, Rishi to win and one of Rochdale and Bristol C to come in to be about even (or other combinations of that).
https://x.com/NavyLookout/status/1805547829068239205
I have bet on low Reform vote share. A lot are blowhard who won't actually vote, and many of the rest will actually vote Con.
Carla Denyer channelling Mel Stride's super majority strategy.
But could it be there is a rational explanation - that their polling panels have been infiltrated to the extent they give a skewed result? If a bunch of signed up "Conservatives" were actually Reform all along, that would give a narrative that there was a big swing to Reform, when in fact it was a limited number of social media savvy Reformers giving an unrepresentative result.
And then there is the possible malign influence of Putin's mischief-makers. Are polling firms smart enough to spot if their panels have been manipulated by an external algorithm? I dunno, but most of those abusing computer systems are smarter than the people who devised the systems in the first place.
I just throw it out there as a possibility.
But I think you can say that certain places attract posh people ergo the food there is posh.
My mother had a schoolfriend who was married to a local gamekeeper, so we had grouse on occasion, too.
I also wouldn’t be surprised to see a bit of constitutional invention at things like PMQs. The 6 LOTO questions might be shared out among each of the opposition parties for instance. It’s the speakers call at the end of the day but I’m not sure we would just expect a parliament of say 480 Labour MPs and say 70 LDs, 60 Tories and 40 others to operate in the same way as we have been used to it operating before.
Jugged hare!
THAT's what Sunak should have said. "Favourite meal- jugged hare. No question. But it needs to be cooked in its own blood"
TBF PMB was a major contributor to winning WW2 in developing operational research.
It's done
I've finished previewing every seat in the country.
All 650 in this post, with my final predictions.
It's 77,000 words long.
I need a lie down.
(£/free trial)
https://x.com/Samfr/status/1808481527765844290
So it's something in the methodology. Either the weighting, or the questions. I've looked briefly and nothing in the data tables particularly jumped out at me.
Many pro-EU people like to mock Brexit supporters as "little Englanders" but there's quite a few erstwhile Remainers who remain "little Europeaners". There's a big wide world out there beyond our own little continent.
Labour: 445 (+247)
Conservative: 98 (-276)
Liberal Democrat: 62 (+54)
SNP 16 (-32)
Sinn Fein 7 (=)
DUP 6 (-2)
Green 3 (+2)
Reform 3 (+3)
Plaid Cymru 3 (+1)
Alliance 2 (+1)
SDLP 2 (=)
UUP 1 (+1)
Independent 1 (+1)
Speaker 1 (=)
I have seen one Reform poster this week in Upminster.
I would think Reform is the least likely place for is to go, with Lib-Dems and possibly the Conservatives (depending on whats left of Con in the smoldering ruins on Friday morning) more likely to benefit when Labours inevitable collapse takes place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Blackett
https://jonskeet.uk/election2024
By clicking the individual seat links on the right, you can get back to a little bit of extra commentary, again avoiding having to sign up
Labour will have a honeymoon and for a few years any hard choices/bad news the public are likely to blame on the Tories for "leaving a mess" rather than blame Labour.
https://x.com/Otto_English/status/1808459820497838276
Reform 3 more than they deserve but it could be right. Hopefully its higher than they get.
I think Labour might get a few more, Lib Dems a few less. Tories sounds about right.
The big variable is Reform, no one knows if they will get 8% or 18%
The result was discriminatory election rules that kept ethnic Fijians in power.
They were chucked out of the commonwealth but allowed back some years later when the discriminatory laws went (which they were happy to do when enough ethnic Indians emigrated).
Ethnic indians are now only 37.5 of the population. Ethnic Fijians are now 56.8%.
The root of the US culture wars is that, similar to Fiji, demographic change is seeing the ethnic Northern European majority getting smaller and smaller and heading towards being a minority.
Politically a useful but perhaps unattainable figure is Social and liberal democrats v Various extremists and authoritarians.
That is, most Lab, most usually Tory voters, all LDs, most SNP and PC and some Greens v Jezza style Labour, Reform, Braverman Tory, George, extreme Greens, SWP etc and assorted loonies.
NEW THREAD
1. Cameron was much more popular than SKS. People forget now, but David Cameron's personal ratings were often very good during his time as LOTO. He was far more popular than his party and actually came to power with quite a strong personal vote. The reverse is true for Labour/SKS.
2. I think there has been a deliberate connivance between Labour and the voters to not think very much about what happens when Labour takes office. At the moment everyone who just wants the Conservatives gone are putting whatever hopes, dreams and expectations they have on Labour but as the saying goes, to govern is to choose and there are going to be a lot of people who are unhappy with Labour's choices in a couple of years, IMO.
I could be wrong of course. It will certainly be interesting to see how long Labour can keep their coalition of voters together.
We see this pattern across the western world, and Britain is not exceptional
Labour WILL get a honeymoon, but I reckon it will be 12-18 months, and then anger will return
Labour 451
Con 94
LD 57
SNP 23
Reform 3
Green 2
+ve
Con 100-149
LDem Tewkesbury x 2
Green Herefordshire N
Lab Basildon
LDem Epsom & Ewell
LDem Exmouth and Exeter East (star performer - thanks for the tip!)
neutral
Con 150-199 (2nd)
Alliance Lagan Valley
Con Clacton - for the LOLs
SNP in ANME (sorry, RP)
Lab Alloa & Grangemouth
SNP most seats in Scotland (only last night)
-ve
Con 150-199 (1st)
Con IoW West
Current net cash out +£75
Plaudits to Bet 365 who let you have 100% cashout if no significant odds movement, even 2-3 weeks after laying a bet. I've done that a couple of times.
It's almost heartbreaking to see what's about to unfold and how unutterbly stupid it is that two right of centre parties could well get close to 40% here yet Labour will get slightly less and have a 250/300 majority possibly.
Madness.
It's also rather galling that even though I vote Tory (party) tomorrow with a bigger peg on nose than usual, my fear remains that henceforth I could be completely disenfranchised with no peg big enough for future polls. Over my dead body will I ever vote for a Farage led rabble.
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.227695405
And we really won't know whether it's 25% or 19% until tomorrow night.
It's a funny old world, lol!
So a majority of the Court.
What odds on Eileen Cannon ?
..On his first night at Magdalene College, Cambridge, he met Kingsley Martin and Geoffrey Webb, later recalling that he had never before, in his naval training, heard intellectual conversation. Blackett was impressed by the prestigious Cavendish Laboratory, and left the Navy to study mathematics and physics at Cambridge...
Had his proposal to devote 1% of national income to overseas development found acceptance, the last half century might have been quite different.
Would probably have benefited our economy in the long run, too.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy79q7ej49yo
You are now closer to 10pm Thursday than you were to 4pm yesterday.