Suella Braverman has said that the Conservatives “deserved” their historic election defeat, in an intervention that will be seen as laying the groundwork for her leadership bid.
Writing in The Telegraph, the former home secretary accuses Rishi Sunak of pursuing an “idiotic strategy” and suggests that some of her colleagues treated voters like “mugs”.
Yeah, she's at the bottom of my list for new Conservative leaders.
I can’t believe the Tories would reward someone who attacked her own side in the media on the eve of poll, with the leadership.
I can. There's no shortage of them who both like her and concur with her views, probably in what's left of the Parliamentary party and certainly within the fruitcake party membership, whose greatest hits include IDS and Truss.
If you are subjected to defeat, and you're smarting and full of butt hurt, you're fulminating since you think you got beaten because the leadership wasn't radical enough, and you crave the comfort and certainty of the true religion, then you're liable to pick someone more radical to take over. We know all this because Corbyn. He brought conviction and welcome messages that energised the base. There's no reason at all why history can't repeat itself now.
Conservatives 150-200 7/1 LOST Conservatives most seats except Labour 3/10 WON Conservatives more seats than Reform 1/3 WON LibDems under 56.5 1/1 LOST Local constituency, Libdems 1/10 WON Reform under 11.5 seats 1/1 WON Turnout 57.5-59.99 5/1 WON (I think, but not settled yet)
On electronic voting in the US: I accept that it is possible, given current technology. I do not think that it would be possible to get the high level of trust that it needs to be successful, given the current bitter divisions in the US.
(I'll leave it to those better informed about the UK than I to judge whether that high level of trust is possible in your nation.)
Electronic voting is already used in the US, in various states and forms:
The lists of problems are expectedly long. But any machine that uses closed-source software should be nowhere near elections.
It’s not just actual security - it’s credibility.
There are so many people involved in an election and a count, including many volunteers, that a genuine coverup is basically (and visibly, except to the irredeemably dense/paranoid) impossible to falsify.
Everyone punching a number into an electronic box does not feel as secure. And tbh it probably isn’t.
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
Nothing wrong with Sunderland, I've been there by both the Tyne & Wear Metro, and direct trains to/from London.
I do hope you can come back and get on the Tanfield heritage railway. It’s ace.
Oh, is there one? I hadn't realised the Arch was back in use.
Yes, it’s ace. We took my father in law on it for Father’s Day a few weeks ago. We had fish and chips on it It stops at Causey Arch for a photo op. Deffo back in use and worth a trip.
Thanks. Their website is screwed at the moment but I will bear than in mind.
You’re right. The website is awful but we booked via a third party who ran events on the same line. If you make it do let me know what you think.
Thanks. Won't be for some time anyway (I also want to go to the Shildon place).
If you are coming after next weekend, Darlington’s railway museum (now called Hopetown) re-opens.
Depending on the day you visit you should also be able to see what the A1 trust are building (think it’s still the Prince of Wales to Sir Nigel Gresley’s 1934 original design at the moment)
England have never lost a penalty shootout under Starmer.
They’ve also never won a game under Starmer, the rugby team lost, all the Brits are out of the singles at Wimbledon and Emma Radacanu did the dirty on poor Andy Murray, all under Starmer.
Am I doing this right?
Hey, Starmer can't do everything the day after the GE. He's probably a bit tired.
Looking at the Labour target list is also very revealing - 72 more seats available to them on swings of 5% or less, the vast bulk of which are held by the Conservatives.
All of the LD seats bar two are outside of Labour's top 120 targets. We all know how damaging Reform defections were to the Conservatives, but if anything demonstrates the full extent of the anti-Tory tactical switching between Lab and LD that occurred as well, that is surely it.
Indeed but given Labour are over 400 seats now it is hard to see them gaining many more seats. Indeed in the general election after their 1997 landslide in 2001 Labour only gained 2 seats, Dorset South from the Tories and Ynys Mon from Plaid although they held almost all the seats they had won in 1997
Well we don't know, do we? Politics is becoming a more complicated, multi-cornered fight, and it only takes a small swing from either of the two right-wing parties to Labour for more Conservative defences to start to fall over. There are 24 Conservative seats available to Labour on a direct Con-Lab swing of under 2%, and more Con defections to Reform, although only half as useful to Labour, would make the situation even worse for the Tories.
Of course, if Labour does badly and loses a lot of support then that could go in the other direction to the Conservatives - but it could just as easily go to other parties, which would halve its net benefit to Con.
The more viable parties there are competing under FPTP, the more complex and unpredictable the electoral outcomes get. More random candidates will win individual seats on small fractions of the vote, even if they are utterly repellent to two-thirds or more of the voters in the constituency, and more extreme and perverse national outcomes will also occur. Indeed, an extreme and perverse outcome is essentially what we've just had with this election: Labour, as the single strongest party against a split opposition, has won two thirds of the seats with a third of the popular vote. If, in future, we have one truly dominant party against a collection of smaller parties, as happened in Scotland in 2015, then we'll end up with a gigantic governing bloc and very little opposition - try Baxtering this GE result, but taking enough extra share from the second largest party to top Labour's vote up to 40%, and see what happens. Indeed, look at what's already happened to Reform and the Greens - 21% of the popular vote between them and a grand total of 9 seats to show for it.
Crap voting system plus multi-party dynamics = inequitable and extreme results. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, it's going to throw up a truly indefensible and damaging outcome. Not that the party which ends up controlling 80% of the Commons, and has no effective Parliamentary counter left, will do anything about it.
More Labour gains from the Tories is the least likely outcome next time, more LD or Reform gains from the Tories maybe but not Labour gains. Reform also has a lot of Labour seats in its target list as does the Greens
How do you know? Labour is starting from a surprisingly low share and the next election is probably at least four years away.
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
80% of the Cabinet went to a comprehensive as did 63% of MPs overall, indeed there are now a higher percentage of OEs amongst living British Oscar winners or Olympic gold medallists than in the House of Commons
Not surprising, given policies on selling off school playing fields for non-posh schools.
No OEs in tonight's England football squad though, albeit a prominent OE in the Prince of Wales in the crowd as FA President
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
80% of the Cabinet went to a comprehensive as did 63% of MPs overall, indeed there are now a higher percentage of OEs amongst living British Oscar winners or Olympic gold medallists than in the House of Commons
Not surprising, given policies on selling off school playing fields for non-posh schools.
No OEs in tonight's England football squad though
No walls on the pitch. Important detail re poshness vs oikishness, which I thought you'd have sussed by now.
England have never lost a penalty shootout under Starmer.
They’ve also never won a game under Starmer, the rugby team lost, all the Brits are out of the singles at Wimbledon and Emma Radacanu did the dirty on poor Andy Murray, all under Starmer.
Am I doing this right?
Hey, Starmer can't do everything the day after the GE. He's probably a bit tired.
Keeping England going for more than 120 minutes and a penalty shootout would exhaust anyone.
Just logged into SkyBet and Ladbrokes and Betfair and found unexpected extra large balances in the hundreds of pounds to withdraw. Presumably from late settling bets I'd half-forgotten.
There must be a long German word for this.
Ah, think it's the voteshare bets settling following the last seat being declared and thus the election officially "concluding".
Yes, I have a healthy balance as well.
I lost money betting against the LibDems, but those bets were made partly for psychological reasons. I also lost on Corbyn (to lose) and Galloway (to win). I also lost on the turnout, overestimated, and Tory seats over 140, which on the night looked like a winner for a while.
Significant wins were on the election date (I forget how heavily I had laid Jan 2025), Tories to hold Sevenoaks (which should have received my life savings, such an obvious winner yet 1/3), Tory seats over 100, Green seats over 2, Labour most seats in Scotland, Tories second most seats in UK, LibDems more seats than SNP, and various seat bets including IDS to win, LDs in Tewkesbury (following the PB herd), Harrow E, On the night itself I made money on Rishi to hold his seat, Tory seats over 100, and Labour vote share under 43%.
I also made money on LibDems to win Newton Abbot and Didcot…I couldn’t resist betting on those two
Time to start digging up footage of her trying to work out which key opened the front door of the house she claimed she lived in (and claimed expenses for) even though the neighbours had never set eyes on her.
Suella Braverman has said that the Conservatives “deserved” their historic election defeat, in an intervention that will be seen as laying the groundwork for her leadership bid.
Writing in The Telegraph, the former home secretary accuses Rishi Sunak of pursuing an “idiotic strategy” and suggests that some of her colleagues treated voters like “mugs”.
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
I did an ad with a very nice man- Martin Kemp- in Sunderland. It reminded me of the ironic slogan of its near neighbour "Make Grimsby Great Again!"
Grimsby is nowhere near Sunderland.
You aren't one of these people whose mental map of everywhere North of Oxford is simply a massive blank marked "Here Be Dragons", are you?
As a lad from S. Essex I had several very happy years at what is now Sunderland University. If things had worked out a bit differently I might have stayed up there.
"I mean how am I meant to draw a cock and balls on an electronic vote? Until somebody explains to me how I can do that, then I will continue to oppose electronic voting"
Advanced cryptographic designs such as MACI call for a user-defined field called a salt which can encode up to 32 bytes of genitalia. You may also be able to use the nonce.
Looking at the Labour target list is also very revealing - 72 more seats available to them on swings of 5% or less, the vast bulk of which are held by the Conservatives.
All of the LD seats bar two are outside of Labour's top 120 targets. We all know how damaging Reform defections were to the Conservatives, but if anything demonstrates the full extent of the anti-Tory tactical switching between Lab and LD that occurred as well, that is surely it.
Indeed but given Labour are over 400 seats now it is hard to see them gaining many more seats. Indeed in the general election after their 1997 landslide in 2001 Labour only gained 2 seats, Dorset South from the Tories and Ynys Mon from Plaid although they held almost all the seats they had won in 1997
Well we don't know, do we? Politics is becoming a more complicated, multi-cornered fight, and it only takes a small swing from either of the two right-wing parties to Labour for more Conservative defences to start to fall over. There are 24 Conservative seats available to Labour on a direct Con-Lab swing of under 2%, and more Con defections to Reform, although only half as useful to Labour, would make the situation even worse for the Tories.
Of course, if Labour does badly and loses a lot of support then that could go in the other direction to the Conservatives - but it could just as easily go to other parties, which would halve its net benefit to Con.
The more viable parties there are competing under FPTP, the more complex and unpredictable the electoral outcomes get. More random candidates will win individual seats on small fractions of the vote, even if they are utterly repellent to two-thirds or more of the voters in the constituency, and more extreme and perverse national outcomes will also occur. Indeed, an extreme and perverse outcome is essentially what we've just had with this election: Labour, as the single strongest party against a split opposition, has won two thirds of the seats with a third of the popular vote. If, in future, we have one truly dominant party against a collection of smaller parties, as happened in Scotland in 2015, then we'll end up with a gigantic governing bloc and very little opposition - try Baxtering this GE result, but taking enough extra share from the second largest party to top Labour's vote up to 40%, and see what happens. Indeed, look at what's already happened to Reform and the Greens - 21% of the popular vote between them and a grand total of 9 seats to show for it.
Crap voting system plus multi-party dynamics = inequitable and extreme results. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, it's going to throw up a truly indefensible and damaging outcome. Not that the party which ends up controlling 80% of the Commons, and has no effective Parliamentary counter left, will do anything about it.
More Labour gains from the Tories is the least likely outcome next time, more LD or Reform gains from the Tories maybe but not Labour gains. Reform also has a lot of Labour seats in its target list as does the Greens
How do you know? Labour is starting from a surprisingly low share and the next election is probably at least four years away.
Labour is starting from 10% ahead of the Tories on voteshare, a lead over the Conservatives it has managed to match or exceed only twice in the last 100 years, 1945 and 1997. Labour is also now in government having to deal with the economy and the need to control immigration in a world where almost every incumbent government in the western world is behind or no more than level pegging in the polls
Suella Braverman has said that the Conservatives “deserved” their historic election defeat, in an intervention that will be seen as laying the groundwork for her leadership bid.
Writing in The Telegraph, the former home secretary accuses Rishi Sunak of pursuing an “idiotic strategy” and suggests that some of her colleagues treated voters like “mugs”.
Prisoners should get the vote before 16 and 17 year olds.
Our treatment of prisoners is a disgrace. We neither deter nor reform. If MPs actually had to pay attention to what goes on inside prisons we might get better policies.
England have never lost a penalty shootout under Starmer.
They’ve also never won a game under Starmer, the rugby team lost, all the Brits are out of the singles at Wimbledon and Emma Radacanu did the dirty on poor Andy Murray, all under Starmer.
Am I doing this right?
I was looking at the athletics squad for the Olympics today, the depth of British Athletics isn't in the greatest of shapes, lots of events nobody made the qualifying time / distance or only one did.
GB has relatively overperformed at the last two Games, especially Rio where we bucked the host nation trend and actually increased the medal count after London.
I’ve not really been close to pretty well any of the sports we’re usually good at, but I enjoy watching the Olympics as a sport fan more than a patriot (tbh that goes for football these days too; obviously I want England to succeed but I don’t get hugely exercised either way).
Looking at the Labour target list is also very revealing - 72 more seats available to them on swings of 5% or less, the vast bulk of which are held by the Conservatives.
All of the LD seats bar two are outside of Labour's top 120 targets. We all know how damaging Reform defections were to the Conservatives, but if anything demonstrates the full extent of the anti-Tory tactical switching between Lab and LD that occurred as well, that is surely it.
Indeed but given Labour are over 400 seats now it is hard to see them gaining many more seats. Indeed in the general election after their 1997 landslide in 2001 Labour only gained 2 seats, Dorset South from the Tories and Ynys Mon from Plaid although they held almost all the seats they had won in 1997
Well we don't know, do we? Politics is becoming a more complicated, multi-cornered fight, and it only takes a small swing from either of the two right-wing parties to Labour for more Conservative defences to start to fall over. There are 24 Conservative seats available to Labour on a direct Con-Lab swing of under 2%, and more Con defections to Reform, although only half as useful to Labour, would make the situation even worse for the Tories.
Of course, if Labour does badly and loses a lot of support then that could go in the other direction to the Conservatives - but it could just as easily go to other parties, which would halve its net benefit to Con.
The more viable parties there are competing under FPTP, the more complex and unpredictable the electoral outcomes get. More random candidates will win individual seats on small fractions of the vote, even if they are utterly repellent to two-thirds or more of the voters in the constituency, and more extreme and perverse national outcomes will also occur. Indeed, an extreme and perverse outcome is essentially what we've just had with this election: Labour, as the single strongest party against a split opposition, has won two thirds of the seats with a third of the popular vote. If, in future, we have one truly dominant party against a collection of smaller parties, as happened in Scotland in 2015, then we'll end up with a gigantic governing bloc and very little opposition - try Baxtering this GE result, but taking enough extra share from the second largest party to top Labour's vote up to 40%, and see what happens. Indeed, look at what's already happened to Reform and the Greens - 21% of the popular vote between them and a grand total of 9 seats to show for it.
Crap voting system plus multi-party dynamics = inequitable and extreme results. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, it's going to throw up a truly indefensible and damaging outcome. Not that the party which ends up controlling 80% of the Commons, and has no effective Parliamentary counter left, will do anything about it.
More Labour gains from the Tories is the least likely outcome next time, more LD or Reform gains from the Tories maybe but not Labour gains. Reform also has a lot of Labour seats in its target list as does the Greens
How do you know? Labour is starting from a surprisingly low share and the next election is probably at least four years away.
Labour is starting from 10% ahead of the Tories on voteshare, a lead over the Conservatives it has managed to match or exceed only twice in the last 100 years, 1945 and 1997. Labour is also now in government having to deal with the economy and the need to control immigration in a world where almost every incumbent government in the western world is behind or no more than level pegging in the polls
It is not impossible for well ordered Governments to maintain or increase their support in office, so we shall see.
Prisoners should get the vote before 16 and 17 year olds.
Our treatment of prisoners is a disgrace. We neither deter nor reform. If MPs actually had to pay attention to what goes on inside prisons we might get better policies.
Pleased to see the appointment of James Timpson.
I've 'liked' this, and you're right, but we could get tarred and feathered by the Daily Mail!
Suella Braverman has said that the Conservatives “deserved” their historic election defeat, in an intervention that will be seen as laying the groundwork for her leadership bid.
Writing in The Telegraph, the former home secretary accuses Rishi Sunak of pursuing an “idiotic strategy” and suggests that some of her colleagues treated voters like “mugs”.
Totting up my bets, it looks a fair success for me, winning about a grand on about 500 as stake money.
I did well on turnout, mostly after the first results which showed low turnout.
I did well on Con % share and seats, date of election (Q3 rather than July) and Ref share. Both of these were Green already but I boosted them a fair bit after the first results.
Constituency bets a bit more patchy, winning on LDs in the South, and Con in Leicester East, Harborough and IoW East, Greens in Herefordshire, but losing on Clacton and a number of others.
I lost on Lab share and Lab seats and Con seats lost. Also too bearish on LD seats.
Overall a good night, about half the profit made after the Exit poll. My estimates of turnout and voteshares were adjusted quite a bit at that point.
Looking at the Labour target list is also very revealing - 72 more seats available to them on swings of 5% or less, the vast bulk of which are held by the Conservatives.
All of the LD seats bar two are outside of Labour's top 120 targets. We all know how damaging Reform defections were to the Conservatives, but if anything demonstrates the full extent of the anti-Tory tactical switching between Lab and LD that occurred as well, that is surely it.
Indeed but given Labour are over 400 seats now it is hard to see them gaining many more seats. Indeed in the general election after their 1997 landslide in 2001 Labour only gained 2 seats, Dorset South from the Tories and Ynys Mon from Plaid although they held almost all the seats they had won in 1997
Well we don't know, do we? Politics is becoming a more complicated, multi-cornered fight, and it only takes a small swing from either of the two right-wing parties to Labour for more Conservative defences to start to fall over. There are 24 Conservative seats available to Labour on a direct Con-Lab swing of under 2%, and more Con defections to Reform, although only half as useful to Labour, would make the situation even worse for the Tories.
Of course, if Labour does badly and loses a lot of support then that could go in the other direction to the Conservatives - but it could just as easily go to other parties, which would halve its net benefit to Con.
The more viable parties there are competing under FPTP, the more complex and unpredictable the electoral outcomes get. More random candidates will win individual seats on small fractions of the vote, even if they are utterly repellent to two-thirds or more of the voters in the constituency, and more extreme and perverse national outcomes will also occur. Indeed, an extreme and perverse outcome is essentially what we've just had with this election: Labour, as the single strongest party against a split opposition, has won two thirds of the seats with a third of the popular vote. If, in future, we have one truly dominant party against a collection of smaller parties, as happened in Scotland in 2015, then we'll end up with a gigantic governing bloc and very little opposition - try Baxtering this GE result, but taking enough extra share from the second largest party to top Labour's vote up to 40%, and see what happens. Indeed, look at what's already happened to Reform and the Greens - 21% of the popular vote between them and a grand total of 9 seats to show for it.
Crap voting system plus multi-party dynamics = inequitable and extreme results. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, it's going to throw up a truly indefensible and damaging outcome. Not that the party which ends up controlling 80% of the Commons, and has no effective Parliamentary counter left, will do anything about it.
More Labour gains from the Tories is the least likely outcome next time, more LD or Reform gains from the Tories maybe but not Labour gains. Reform also has a lot of Labour seats in its target list as does the Greens
If I had to predict right now, I’d imagine a few dozen or so Tory recoveries (a lot from Lib Dems but also a fair few Labour ones too), maybe another six or seven Reform wins - probably from Labour - and maybe another couple of Green seats.
The party I’m least sure about is the SNP who are so deep in crisis (more so even than the Tories) that it’s not impossible they become the fringe party they were in the past. However right now I’d guess they would recover a 5-10 seats next time round.
It's incrrdible how the same nations always come to the fore. in the end, in world football
The semi-finaiists will be: England, France, Spain and Holland
Alongside Germany and Italy those are the most consequential nations in European football. For all the hard yakka of Turkey and Scotland, Belgium and Russia, Poland and Wales, in the end they never quite do it. And it is the same in world politics: in the last 600 years, the consequential nations are England, France, Germany, Italy, plus the USA, China, maybe Japan, Russia on a good day
That's actually rather lovely. And it gives me hope. Nice. Ta
The weirdest sporting identity I’ve met was a chap who was welsh for rugby and English for football. I still cannot understand how that works.
Quite common. If Wales are not playing which was always the case until recently, why not support England.
Because you are Welsh? I dont support wales if England aren’t playing.
Maybe we are more open minded than you, I dunno.
I always support the other home nations if England aren't playing. I'm genuinely surprised someone here doesn't.
I used to until it became clear how much the home nations hated England. When Wales can lose four matches out of five in the 6 Nations but beating England makes it a great year. When Scot’s fan buy shirts of Englands opponents. When the BBC runs an ad for the 6N where all the other fans most want to beat England.
I'm assuming there is a strategy to sprinkle a few old hands about to have some kind of institutional knowledge to share with the newer intake, but that in most cases they will be gone in a year or two - a lot of MPs will want to be able to start climbing the greasy pole.
If we had electronic voting these anomalies wouldn't happen, assuming they were spotted in the first place. You might have more actual visibility with bits of paper moving around but it doesn't make it any more accurate.
Not pushing one way or the other for online/electronic voting. It depends what people want to do. The issues aren't all way however.
It's the online voting one that worries me, I really don't think people are thinking of the complexities, or the advantages of a low tech option as we have now. Nor do I think it would appreciably affect turnout - it is not hard to vote now, if someone would be put off by what is there they would would find another reason to be put off.
Votes at 16 I am in the majority opposing, but it is a manifesto promise and simple to do, so it will happen, but it is interesting how it became an article of faith in some parties despite lacking clear public support.
Thinking further about online voting since the discussion here a couple of days ago. Online is how people want to do things now. I think that need/desire can be addressed safely.
The biggest additional challenge IMO for voting systems beyond anything else you might want to do securely online is the fact everyone votes at once. The main safeguard against system performance issues, at least initially, is to ensure alternative ways of voting are always available, even if the system goes down. I would ramp up slowly across several elections possibly starting with certain local elections, probably using the Government Gateway.
This risk managed implementation of very big systems is part of my day job FWIW. I don't see any obvious show stoppers with a cautious rollout of online voting. Going to paper isn't an option where I work but getting it wrong would have serious consequences. I don't work for Fujitsu.
Here's my question to anyone serious about online voting - how do you know that the result you get is correct?
I'm not yet sold on it for general elections (maybe at the edges where we're doing stuff like proxy+postal voting which is total garbage) but in the kind of systems that government wouldn't buy from Fujitsu there's a technique where the returning officer publishes a proof of the result and using the (open source) software on your local machine you can check that your vote was included in the result correctly counted, without you being able to prove this to anybody else. This is a feature that you don't have with the paper system. You can also check that no invalid votes from anyone else were counted (albeit see [1] below) and that their votes were correctly counted (without knowing who they were for).
The problems with this system are: 1) You had to register your keypair securely at the beginning of the process, the registrar's office can steal the election by issuing votes to people they shouldn't 2) You still have to trust the software you're using, which is only understood by a small subset of programmers and mathematicians 3) You still have to trust your computer, or whatever device you do the voting on 4) The returning officer can still tell how you voted (which many countries would consider a serious security flaw, but Britain apparently considers a security feature).
That's actually rather lovely. And it gives me hope. Nice. Ta
The weirdest sporting identity I’ve met was a chap who was welsh for rugby and English for football. I still cannot understand how that works.
Quite common. If Wales are not playing which was always the case until recently, why not support England.
Because you are Welsh? I dont support wales if England aren’t playing.
Maybe we are more open minded than you, I dunno.
I always support the other home nations if England aren't playing. I'm genuinely surprised someone here doesn't.
I used to until it became clear how much the home nations hated England. When Wales can lose four matches out of five in the 6 Nations but beating England makes it a great year. When Scot’s fan buy shirts of Englands opponents. When the BBC runs an ad for the 6N where all the other fans most want to beat England.
That doesn't mean your standards should fall to meet theirs.
Looking at the Labour target list is also very revealing - 72 more seats available to them on swings of 5% or less, the vast bulk of which are held by the Conservatives.
All of the LD seats bar two are outside of Labour's top 120 targets. We all know how damaging Reform defections were to the Conservatives, but if anything demonstrates the full extent of the anti-Tory tactical switching between Lab and LD that occurred as well, that is surely it.
Indeed but given Labour are over 400 seats now it is hard to see them gaining many more seats. Indeed in the general election after their 1997 landslide in 2001 Labour only gained 2 seats, Dorset South from the Tories and Ynys Mon from Plaid although they held almost all the seats they had won in 1997
Well we don't know, do we? Politics is becoming a more complicated, multi-cornered fight, and it only takes a small swing from either of the two right-wing parties to Labour for more Conservative defences to start to fall over. There are 24 Conservative seats available to Labour on a direct Con-Lab swing of under 2%, and more Con defections to Reform, although only half as useful to Labour, would make the situation even worse for the Tories.
Of course, if Labour does badly and loses a lot of support then that could go in the other direction to the Conservatives - but it could just as easily go to other parties, which would halve its net benefit to Con.
The more viable parties there are competing under FPTP, the more complex and unpredictable the electoral outcomes get. More random candidates will win individual seats on small fractions of the vote, even if they are utterly repellent to two-thirds or more of the voters in the constituency, and more extreme and perverse national outcomes will also occur. Indeed, an extreme and perverse outcome is essentially what we've just had with this election: Labour, as the single strongest party against a split opposition, has won two thirds of the seats with a third of the popular vote. If, in future, we have one truly dominant party against a collection of smaller parties, as happened in Scotland in 2015, then we'll end up with a gigantic governing bloc and very little opposition - try Baxtering this GE result, but taking enough extra share from the second largest party to top Labour's vote up to 40%, and see what happens. Indeed, look at what's already happened to Reform and the Greens - 21% of the popular vote between them and a grand total of 9 seats to show for it.
Crap voting system plus multi-party dynamics = inequitable and extreme results. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, it's going to throw up a truly indefensible and damaging outcome. Not that the party which ends up controlling 80% of the Commons, and has no effective Parliamentary counter left, will do anything about it.
More Labour gains from the Tories is the least likely outcome next time, more LD or Reform gains from the Tories maybe but not Labour gains. Reform also has a lot of Labour seats in its target list as does the Greens
If I had to predict right now, I’d imagine a few dozen or so Tory recoveries (a lot from Lib Dems but also a fair few Labour ones too), maybe another six or seven Reform wins - probably from Labour - and maybe another couple of Green seats.
The party I’m least sure about is the SNP who are so deep in crisis (more so even than the Tories) that it’s not impossible they become the fringe party they were in the past. However right now I’d guess they would recover a 5-10 seats next time round.
Labour to govern with a small majority
It's far too early to tell, but I would guess a small number of Lab and LD losses, but Lab still largest party and probable majority.
The Tories will find it much harder running their tax scares etc against an incumbent government.
Suella Braverman has said that the Conservatives “deserved” their historic election defeat, in an intervention that will be seen as laying the groundwork for her leadership bid.
Writing in The Telegraph, the former home secretary accuses Rishi Sunak of pursuing an “idiotic strategy” and suggests that some of her colleagues treated voters like “mugs”.
If we had electronic voting these anomalies wouldn't happen, assuming they were spotted in the first place. You might have more actual visibility with bits of paper moving around but it doesn't make it any more accurate.
Not pushing one way or the other for online/electronic voting. It depends what people want to do. The issues aren't all way however.
If electronic voting were to go wrong it would go reallllly wrong. A few bits of paper go missing is less likely to be significant, and as was noted by someone else the sheer number of people and stages involved make it harder to game.
Suella Braverman has said that the Conservatives “deserved” their historic election defeat, in an intervention that will be seen as laying the groundwork for her leadership bid.
Writing in The Telegraph, the former home secretary accuses Rishi Sunak of pursuing an “idiotic strategy” and suggests that some of her colleagues treated voters like “mugs”.
Prisoners should get the vote before 16 and 17 year olds.
Our treatment of prisoners is a disgrace. We neither deter nor reform. If MPs actually had to pay attention to what goes on inside prisons we might get better policies.
Prisoners should get the vote before 16 and 17 year olds.
Our treatment of prisoners is a disgrace. We neither deter nor reform. If MPs actually had to pay attention to what goes on inside prisons we might get better policies.
Prisoners should get the vote before 16 and 17 year olds.
Our treatment of prisoners is a disgrace. We neither deter nor reform. If MPs actually had to pay attention to what goes on inside prisons we might get better policies.
Pleased to see the appointment of James Timpson.
I would like to see better treatment of prisoners and more effective approach to justice, but I don't have an issue with them not having the vote, so long as they get it back automatically after serving a custodial sentence.
We suspend all sorts of rights when in prison, being able to go whereever you want for a start, suspension from voting does not seem unreasonable to me.
Looking at the Labour target list is also very revealing - 72 more seats available to them on swings of 5% or less, the vast bulk of which are held by the Conservatives.
All of the LD seats bar two are outside of Labour's top 120 targets. We all know how damaging Reform defections were to the Conservatives, but if anything demonstrates the full extent of the anti-Tory tactical switching between Lab and LD that occurred as well, that is surely it.
Indeed but given Labour are over 400 seats now it is hard to see them gaining many more seats. Indeed in the general election after their 1997 landslide in 2001 Labour only gained 2 seats, Dorset South from the Tories and Ynys Mon from Plaid although they held almost all the seats they had won in 1997
Well we don't know, do we? Politics is becoming a more complicated, multi-cornered fight, and it only takes a small swing from either of the two right-wing parties to Labour for more Conservative defences to start to fall over. There are 24 Conservative seats available to Labour on a direct Con-Lab swing of under 2%, and more Con defections to Reform, although only half as useful to Labour, would make the situation even worse for the Tories.
Of course, if Labour does badly and loses a lot of support then that could go in the other direction to the Conservatives - but it could just as easily go to other parties, which would halve its net benefit to Con.
The more viable parties there are competing under FPTP, the more complex and unpredictable the electoral outcomes get. More random candidates will win individual seats on small fractions of the vote, even if they are utterly repellent to two-thirds or more of the voters in the constituency, and more extreme and perverse national outcomes will also occur. Indeed, an extreme and perverse outcome is essentially what we've just had with this election: Labour, as the single strongest party against a split opposition, has won two thirds of the seats with a third of the popular vote. If, in future, we have one truly dominant party against a collection of smaller parties, as happened in Scotland in 2015, then we'll end up with a gigantic governing bloc and very little opposition - try Baxtering this GE result, but taking enough extra share from the second largest party to top Labour's vote up to 40%, and see what happens. Indeed, look at what's already happened to Reform and the Greens - 21% of the popular vote between them and a grand total of 9 seats to show for it.
Crap voting system plus multi-party dynamics = inequitable and extreme results. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, it's going to throw up a truly indefensible and damaging outcome. Not that the party which ends up controlling 80% of the Commons, and has no effective Parliamentary counter left, will do anything about it.
More Labour gains from the Tories is the least likely outcome next time, more LD or Reform gains from the Tories maybe but not Labour gains. Reform also has a lot of Labour seats in its target list as does the Greens
If I had to predict right now, I’d imagine a few dozen or so Tory recoveries (a lot from Lib Dems but also a fair few Labour ones too), maybe another six or seven Reform wins - probably from Labour - and maybe another couple of Green seats.
The party I’m least sure about is the SNP who are so deep in crisis (more so even than the Tories) that it’s not impossible they become the fringe party they were in the past. However right now I’d guess they would recover a 5-10 seats next time round.
Labour to govern with a small majority
It's far too early to tell, but I would guess a small number of Lab and LD losses, but Lab still largest party and probable majority.
The Tories will find it much harder running their tax scares etc against an incumbent government.
Looking at the Labour target list is also very revealing - 72 more seats available to them on swings of 5% or less, the vast bulk of which are held by the Conservatives.
All of the LD seats bar two are outside of Labour's top 120 targets. We all know how damaging Reform defections were to the Conservatives, but if anything demonstrates the full extent of the anti-Tory tactical switching between Lab and LD that occurred as well, that is surely it.
Indeed but given Labour are over 400 seats now it is hard to see them gaining many more seats. Indeed in the general election after their 1997 landslide in 2001 Labour only gained 2 seats, Dorset South from the Tories and Ynys Mon from Plaid although they held almost all the seats they had won in 1997
Well we don't know, do we? Politics is becoming a more complicated, multi-cornered fight, and it only takes a small swing from either of the two right-wing parties to Labour for more Conservative defences to start to fall over. There are 24 Conservative seats available to Labour on a direct Con-Lab swing of under 2%, and more Con defections to Reform, although only half as useful to Labour, would make the situation even worse for the Tories.
Of course, if Labour does badly and loses a lot of support then that could go in the other direction to the Conservatives - but it could just as easily go to other parties, which would halve its net benefit to Con.
The more viable parties there are competing under FPTP, the more complex and unpredictable the electoral outcomes get. More random candidates will win individual seats on small fractions of the vote, even if they are utterly repellent to two-thirds or more of the voters in the constituency, and more extreme and perverse national outcomes will also occur. Indeed, an extreme and perverse outcome is essentially what we've just had with this election: Labour, as the single strongest party against a split opposition, has won two thirds of the seats with a third of the popular vote. If, in future, we have one truly dominant party against a collection of smaller parties, as happened in Scotland in 2015, then we'll end up with a gigantic governing bloc and very little opposition - try Baxtering this GE result, but taking enough extra share from the second largest party to top Labour's vote up to 40%, and see what happens. Indeed, look at what's already happened to Reform and the Greens - 21% of the popular vote between them and a grand total of 9 seats to show for it.
Crap voting system plus multi-party dynamics = inequitable and extreme results. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, it's going to throw up a truly indefensible and damaging outcome. Not that the party which ends up controlling 80% of the Commons, and has no effective Parliamentary counter left, will do anything about it.
More Labour gains from the Tories is the least likely outcome next time, more LD or Reform gains from the Tories maybe but not Labour gains. Reform also has a lot of Labour seats in its target list as does the Greens
If I had to predict right now, I’d imagine a few dozen or so Tory recoveries (a lot from Lib Dems but also a fair few Labour ones too), maybe another six or seven Reform wins - probably from Labour - and maybe another couple of Green seats.
The party I’m least sure about is the SNP who are so deep in crisis (more so even than the Tories) that it’s not impossible they become the fringe party they were in the past. However right now I’d guess they would recover a 5-10 seats next time round.
Labour to govern with a small majority
It's far too early to tell, but I would guess a small number of Lab and LD losses, but Lab still largest party and probable majority.
The Tories will find it much harder running their tax scares etc against an incumbent government.
Looking at those target lists, the 2 most surprising seats for me are that Llanelli is Reform target number 1 and that Brent West is Con target number 100.
In terms of Reform, the other surprise for me is that Barnsley N and Hartlepool are not in their top 150 target seats. The vast majority of their targets are Con 2019 seats (either where Con just hung on or where Lab narrowly won)
Looking at the Labour target list is also very revealing - 72 more seats available to them on swings of 5% or less, the vast bulk of which are held by the Conservatives.
All of the LD seats bar two are outside of Labour's top 120 targets. We all know how damaging Reform defections were to the Conservatives, but if anything demonstrates the full extent of the anti-Tory tactical switching between Lab and LD that occurred as well, that is surely it.
Indeed but given Labour are over 400 seats now it is hard to see them gaining many more seats. Indeed in the general election after their 1997 landslide in 2001 Labour only gained 2 seats, Dorset South from the Tories and Ynys Mon from Plaid although they held almost all the seats they had won in 1997
Well we don't know, do we? Politics is becoming a more complicated, multi-cornered fight, and it only takes a small swing from either of the two right-wing parties to Labour for more Conservative defences to start to fall over. There are 24 Conservative seats available to Labour on a direct Con-Lab swing of under 2%, and more Con defections to Reform, although only half as useful to Labour, would make the situation even worse for the Tories.
Of course, if Labour does badly and loses a lot of support then that could go in the other direction to the Conservatives - but it could just as easily go to other parties, which would halve its net benefit to Con.
The more viable parties there are competing under FPTP, the more complex and unpredictable the electoral outcomes get. More random candidates will win individual seats on small fractions of the vote, even if they are utterly repellent to two-thirds or more of the voters in the constituency, and more extreme and perverse national outcomes will also occur. Indeed, an extreme and perverse outcome is essentially what we've just had with this election: Labour, as the single strongest party against a split opposition, has won two thirds of the seats with a third of the popular vote. If, in future, we have one truly dominant party against a collection of smaller parties, as happened in Scotland in 2015, then we'll end up with a gigantic governing bloc and very little opposition - try Baxtering this GE result, but taking enough extra share from the second largest party to top Labour's vote up to 40%, and see what happens. Indeed, look at what's already happened to Reform and the Greens - 21% of the popular vote between them and a grand total of 9 seats to show for it.
Crap voting system plus multi-party dynamics = inequitable and extreme results. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, it's going to throw up a truly indefensible and damaging outcome. Not that the party which ends up controlling 80% of the Commons, and has no effective Parliamentary counter left, will do anything about it.
More Labour gains from the Tories is the least likely outcome next time, more LD or Reform gains from the Tories maybe but not Labour gains. Reform also has a lot of Labour seats in its target list as does the Greens
How do you know? Labour is starting from a surprisingly low share and the next election is probably at least four years away.
Labour is starting from 10% ahead of the Tories on voteshare, a lead over the Conservatives it has managed to match or exceed only twice in the last 100 years, 1945 and 1997. Labour is also now in government having to deal with the economy and the need to control immigration in a world where almost every incumbent government in the western world is behind or no more than level pegging in the polls
It is not impossible for well ordered Governments to maintain or increase their support in office, so we shall see.
Besides, the lesson of this week is that the national total of votes matters less than where you get those votes. Which has been staring us in the face during the rise and fall of the SNP, but we mostly ignored it because that was for viewers in Scotland.
If I were looking for further Conservative losses, I'd be looking for places where the tactical squeeze didn't fully work out this time. Take Huntingdon- Conservatives held it by 1500 over Labour, but there were still nearly 5000 Lib Dem votes.
Prisoners should get the vote before 16 and 17 year olds.
Our treatment of prisoners is a disgrace. We neither deter nor reform. If MPs actually had to pay attention to what goes on inside prisons we might get better policies.
Prisoners should get the vote before 16 and 17 year olds.
Our treatment of prisoners is a disgrace. We neither deter nor reform. If MPs actually had to pay attention to what goes on inside prisons we might get better policies.
Prisoners should get the vote before 16 and 17 year olds.
Our treatment of prisoners is a disgrace. We neither deter nor reform. If MPs actually had to pay attention to what goes on inside prisons we might get better policies.
Prisoners should get the vote before 16 and 17 year olds.
Our treatment of prisoners is a disgrace. We neither deter nor reform. If MPs actually had to pay attention to what goes on inside prisons we might get better policies.
Prisoners should get the vote before 16 and 17 year olds.
Our treatment of prisoners is a disgrace. We neither deter nor reform. If MPs actually had to pay attention to what goes on inside prisons we might get better policies.
Labour are set to bring back Sir Tony Blair’s health secretary Alan Milburn to help reform the NHS, in a sign that the private sector and consumer choice will be at the heart of their plans.
It comes after the Prime Minister said in his first press conference that the NHS was “broken”.
Mr Milburn’s exact role is yet to be decided, and talks are still ongoing, but it is understood that he has already been advising the Health Secretary Wes Streeting and his team in recent weeks to ensure they can “hit the ground running” upon entering government.
I know I said the Labour top team looked a bit bare, but Jacqui pissing Smith.....surely in that 400 MPs they have somebody better.
I was thinking that.
I guess there is a bunch of practical stuff in train in the DofE (the school repair programme? I don't know?) and they wanted someone who knows how to run the delivery function in that dept and keep the momentum going.
Prisoners should get the vote before 16 and 17 year olds.
Our treatment of prisoners is a disgrace. We neither deter nor reform. If MPs actually had to pay attention to what goes on inside prisons we might get better policies.
May have been some skulduggery too. There is a lot of bad blood between the SNP and LDs which dates from the Kennedy era.
Definitely something weird - once the verification was done the votes should not have left the room, so how on earth was the count so wrong initially that they decided to come back later? Sure, you might be a few out on first count, but that's normal and usually swiftly resolved (a bundle of eleven batches of ten votes rather than ten for example.
I know I said the Labour top team looked a bit bare, but Jacqui pissing Smith.....surely in that 400 MPs they have somebody better.
She's not really had much of a role since the last series of The Thick of it, has she?
Bringing back an Eddie Spheroids, I could see. But Jacqui Smith was a walking disaster even before her ex-husband was knocking one out at the taxpayer expense.
Labour are set to bring back Sir Tony Blair’s health secretary Alan Milburn to help reform the NHS, in a sign that the private sector and consumer choice will be at the heart of their plans.
It comes after the Prime Minister said in his first press conference that the NHS was “broken”.
Mr Milburn’s exact role is yet to be decided, and talks are still ongoing, but it is understood that he has already been advising the Health Secretary Wes Streeting and his team in recent weeks to ensure they can “hit the ground running” upon entering government.
Rumour has it as the new CEO. I am not a Milburn fan.
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
80% of the Cabinet went to a comprehensive as did 63% of MPs overall, indeed there are now a higher percentage of OEs amongst living British Oscar winners or Olympic gold medallists than in the House of Commons
Not surprising, given policies on selling off school playing fields for non-posh schools.
No OEs in tonight's England football squad though, albeit a prominent OE in the Prince of Wales in the crowd as FA President
[ignore - wrong PoW]
No the King went to Gordonstoun, the Prince of Wales to Eton. Though Eton would have suited the King more, while Harry would have preferred Gordonstoun which is more into action and sport and less academic and less arts focused
Labour are set to bring back Sir Tony Blair’s health secretary Alan Milburn to help reform the NHS, in a sign that the private sector and consumer choice will be at the heart of their plans.
It comes after the Prime Minister said in his first press conference that the NHS was “broken”.
Mr Milburn’s exact role is yet to be decided, and talks are still ongoing, but it is understood that he has already been advising the Health Secretary Wes Streeting and his team in recent weeks to ensure they can “hit the ground running” upon entering government.
Rumour has it as the new CEO. I am not a Milburn fan.
Comments
https://edgbaston.com/fixtures/major-match-day/india-v-pakistan-wcl/
If you are subjected to defeat, and you're smarting and full of butt hurt, you're fulminating since you think you got beaten because the leadership wasn't radical enough, and you crave the comfort and certainty of the true religion, then you're liable to pick someone more radical to take over. We know all this because Corbyn. He brought conviction and welcome messages that energised the base. There's no reason at all why history can't repeat itself now.
Conservatives 150-200 7/1 LOST
Conservatives most seats except Labour 3/10 WON
Conservatives more seats than Reform 1/3 WON
LibDems under 56.5 1/1 LOST
Local constituency, Libdems 1/10 WON
Reform under 11.5 seats 1/1 WON
Turnout 57.5-59.99 5/1 WON (I think, but not settled yet)
Not too bad overall.
First ministerial appointments. Douglas Alexander and Jacqui Smith - now Baroness - return to government after 14 years
https://x.com/mattholehouse/status/1809677457353764913
Depending on the day you visit you should also be able to see what the A1 trust are building (think it’s still the Prince of Wales to Sir Nigel Gresley’s 1934 original design at the moment)
I lost money betting against the LibDems, but those bets were made partly for psychological reasons. I also lost on Corbyn (to lose) and Galloway (to win). I also lost on the turnout, overestimated, and Tory seats over 140, which on the night looked like a winner for a while.
Significant wins were on the election date (I forget how heavily I had laid Jan 2025), Tories to hold Sevenoaks (which should have received my life savings, such an obvious winner yet 1/3), Tory seats over 100, Green seats over 2, Labour most seats in Scotland, Tories second most seats in UK, LibDems more seats than SNP, and various seat bets including IDS to win, LDs in Tewkesbury (following the PB herd), Harrow E, On the night itself I made money on Rishi to hold his seat, Tory seats over 100, and Labour vote share under 43%.
I also made money on LibDems to win Newton Abbot and Didcot…I couldn’t resist betting on those two
Must be on YouTube somewhere...
You aren't one of these people whose mental map of everywhere North of Oxford is simply a massive blank marked "Here Be Dragons", are you?
PB Nats will find this amusing, I imagine.
Advanced cryptographic designs such as MACI call for a user-defined field called a
saltwhich can encode up to 32 bytes of genitalia. You may also be able to use thenonce.But she is completely the wrong person to deliver it, she is too abrasive and entirely lacks charm
I always want the posh lads to lose against Wales.
Our treatment of prisoners is a disgrace. We neither deter nor reform. If MPs actually had to pay attention to what goes on inside prisons we might get better policies.
Pleased to see the appointment of James Timpson.
I’ve not really been close to pretty well any of the sports we’re usually good at, but I enjoy watching the Olympics as a sport fan more than a patriot (tbh that goes for football these days too; obviously I want England to succeed but I don’t get hugely exercised either way).
When it comes to the rugby union I'd rather support North Korea than the Conservative Party at play England.
Lib Dems over 2000 votes ahead!
I did well on turnout, mostly after the first results which showed low turnout.
I did well on Con % share and seats, date of election (Q3 rather than July) and Ref share. Both of these were Green already but I boosted them a fair bit after the first results.
Constituency bets a bit more patchy, winning on LDs in the South, and Con in Leicester East, Harborough and IoW East, Greens in Herefordshire, but losing on Clacton and a number of others.
I lost on Lab share and Lab seats and Con seats lost. Also too bearish on LD seats.
Overall a good night, about half the profit made after the Exit poll. My estimates of turnout and voteshares were adjusted quite a bit at that point.
https://x.com/michaelsavage/status/1809671850122965308/photo/1
The party I’m least sure about is the SNP who are so deep in crisis (more so even than the Tories) that it’s not impossible they become the fringe party they were in the past. However right now I’d guess they would recover a 5-10 seats next time round.
Labour to govern with a small majority
The semi-finaiists will be: England, France, Spain and Holland
Alongside Germany and Italy those are the most consequential nations in European football. For all the hard yakka of Turkey and Scotland, Belgium and Russia, Poland and Wales, in the end they never quite do it. And it is the same in world politics: in the last 600 years, the consequential nations are England, France, Germany, Italy, plus the USA, China, maybe Japan, Russia on a good day
Even now this remains the case. Why?
I'm usually English for football, although sometimes Welsh. I don't actively hate Scotland though and do remember Archie Gemmill.
I have one Welsh, one English, and two Scottish grandparents and have a Welsh name.
I think that makes me a Yoon?
Not pushing one way or the other for online/electronic voting. It depends what people want to do. The issues aren't all way however.
The problems with this system are:
1) You had to register your keypair securely at the beginning of the process, the registrar's office can steal the election by issuing votes to people they shouldn't
2) You still have to trust the software you're using, which is only understood by a small subset of programmers and mathematicians
3) You still have to trust your computer, or whatever device you do the voting on
4) The returning officer can still tell how you voted (which many countries would consider a serious security flaw, but Britain apparently considers a security feature).
Spain or France, hmmmmm
I support Wales over Scotland because they know their place - under an English boot.
The Tories will find it much harder running their tax scares etc against an incumbent government.
We suspend all sorts of rights when in prison, being able to go whereever you want for a start, suspension from voting does not seem unreasonable to me.
In terms of Reform, the other surprise for me is that Barnsley N and Hartlepool are not in their top 150 target seats. The vast majority of their targets are Con 2019 seats (either where Con just hung on or where Lab narrowly won)
Football's coming home.
If I were looking for further Conservative losses, I'd be looking for places where the tactical squeeze didn't fully work out this time. Take Huntingdon- Conservatives held it by 1500 over Labour, but there were still nearly 5000 Lib Dem votes.
Where did that go?
It comes after the Prime Minister said in his first press conference that the NHS was “broken”.
Mr Milburn’s exact role is yet to be decided, and talks are still ongoing, but it is understood that he has already been advising the Health Secretary Wes Streeting and his team in recent weeks to ensure they can “hit the ground running” upon entering government.
I guess there is a bunch of practical stuff in train in the DofE (the school repair programme? I don't know?) and they wanted someone who knows how to run the delivery function in that dept and keep the momentum going.