Centrists here of both Tory and Libdem persuasion are still having more vapours about Farage winning five seats compared with Labours 400 odd I see.
I guess when you have had a monopoly of the right wing in parliament since the 1661 general election, a rival party of the right breaking through the first past the post wall and winning five seats as well as knocking you into third place in a lot of seats you held until this week is going to seem a bit existensial.
They do not like it.
Labour + Green + SDLP + WPB + Plaid + SNP (33.7% + 6.7% + 0.7% + 0.7% + 0.3% + 2.5) = 44.6%
I know the LDs/Alliance really really really want to count all their 12.6% of voters to the Left-wing block, but they're not. If I was being really generous I'd give them 60% of them and 40% to the Right-wing block. That'd still get you to only 51.1% v 44.2%, and that's on a reduced turnout where many Tories stayed at home.
Point is the country is still split into two-voter blocks. And there's not an awful lot between them, save the mathematics of FPTP, which computed into the landslide.
A lot can change quickly.
Reform aren't a right-wing bloc party, sorry. They compete against Tories and promise magic money tree for the NHS.
In some ways they are the anti-establishment mirror of the SNP.
Both parties argue that their constituents’ needs cannot be met within the current Westminster setup. SNP from the left(ish), Reform from the right.
One says independence is the solution, the other says - what? The Nietschian superman I suppose.
So you can’t group either into blocs with others because they are constitutionally set apart.
Plaid, not so much. More like SDLP, for now.
You can group them in in terms of whom they would support in government. So right now in mid 2024, the LDs would support a Labour-led government but almost certainly not a Conservative one. Reform would probably be the opposite way around. SNP would probably find it slightly tricky to support Labour but would never, ever support the Tories.
Casino is missing the point to a certain extent when he tries to split the Lib Dems down a 60-40 line and use that to keep them out of the left bloc. The Lib Dems would, in a hung parliament, have elevated Starmer with zero hesitation. He's right in that this reality can change but there's no sign of that any time soon.
Except they’ll be opposing them on quite a lot of stuff in this parliament, and they were part of a coalition with the Tories a decade back.
All Casino is effectively saying is that FPTP is the way it should be. That’s a circular argument, not one of principle.
Yes, the LDs coalitioned with the Tories in 2010. It's that experience that means they are fairly unlikely to repeat it any time soon! Of course the LDs will be opposing Labour at some points in this parliament, and if Labour start to do really badly in the eyes of LDs then you WILL see that drift away. Casino is right in implying the mutability of such support. But that future is undecided. Right now, the LD position on Labour v Tory is extremely clear, and will remain so until such a time that Labour or the Tories change. The likelier outcome, in my view, is that the LDs will still be on the Labour side of the fence come the next election.
That is risky given over 90% of LD seats now were won from the Tories, if they are sensible they will remain in the middle
And if Centrist southern Tories have any sense they will defect to the Libdems where they belong. Only needs 25 to defect and Libdems become the opposition. Less if a few right wingers join Reform.
Make polling day a bank holiday. We have public holidays for less. One day every five years to celebrate our democracy is a good and fully justified thing. We shouldn’t take it for granted.
I don’t quite know how to make this point, but it’s a serious one. Liz Truss generally comes across to me as a bit childish, lacking the kind of seriousness or gravitas you would normally expect. It seems to be a disease that has infected some on the right. They seem to want to shock and provoke rather than effect change. It’s a subtle thing, but they’re a long way from the kind of intellectual heft that sat behind the Thatcherite revolution.
Not just Truss. The British right loved Beano Boris, and grumily tolerated May and Sunak, who at least tried to be responsible national leaders. Or see the Spectator; yes it sells by the truckload but that's in part because it's given up on being a serious journal of right wing thinking and is now almost entirely there to make people think "OMG what are they going to say now?" Which is an excellent sales strategy, but a terrible way to run a country.
Let us hope that Boring Old PM Starmer can Make Britain Boring Again.
May I join in the chorus.
Reform Uk is the Party of childish politics, of wishful thinking. Farage is an essentially unserious politician, in it for the laughs.
True to an extent but Farage did bring Brexit and should not be underestimated
A careful reading of their manifesto shows us that underestimating him his impossible. It was the worst policy platform of any party and would see the economy curl up and die. Surprised fewer people talked about it, but therein lies the truth. Farage is a wrecking ball, not a builder. You vote for him if you prefer a pile of rubble over what we have now.
I have no doubt you are correct, but the rise of Reform and the right in Europe is not something easily dismissed
I have no regrets voting for Labour and think Starmer will do a decent job. I am impressed with the emphasis on honesty and integrity, after the Boris era. But I think the assumption that everything is now 'back to normal' is quite severely mistaken.
I do think that the greatest threat to democracy is not the Reform party but the dismissal and ostracisation of the Reform party. They should be able to represent their voters on things like 'woke' , 'immigration', 'net zero' , 'low traffic zones' without being slandered or defamed because amongst all the misinformation on every point there is something of value which Labour should take in to account. The 'woke' stuff has gone way too far. Illegal immigration is a massive problem and the asylum system is a failure. Net Zero imposes costs on working people which are too casually shrugged off. If the governing party can take this in to account then it defuses the threat from the reform party. If it goes full on culture war against the 'far right' as many of its MP's/members/supporters would like then it just perpetuates the polarisation and appeal of the Reform party.
You can't converse with conspiracy theorists without making yourself look like one too. Perfectly sensible Tories like Mark Harper made that mistake, undermining his own government's policies. It also leads to people like IDS siding with criminals.
Woke has had next to zero impact on most people's lives. Legal immigration is a material issue, not illegal immigration. Net Zero is the only path to growth for the UK, not protecting 20th century technologies and special interests. Cheap, secure British Energy for the British Economy.
If the Tories engage in the kind of paranoid culture battles you suggest, they'll just lose even more votes to Reform (the real deal) or the Lib Dems (the sensible alternative).
Does 'woke' impact peoples lives? Perhaps not a lot so far. But the desecration of our universities will certainly do so in the long term.
Affects my blood pressure having to listen to the tossers.
Woke is responsible for the pressure on the NHS. Millions of Daily Mail readers pushed to the edge of a heart attack by rainbow lanyards and vegan sausage rolls.
I will not mention "venison" as it upsets one of our esteemed posters.
Labour should introduce PR by the end of this term.
The clever move would be to introduce STV for local government in the first term, and kick off some slow process for looking at Westminster elections with a view to changing the national system during the second term. That would buy Labour a lot of friends, and yet give it a full two terms to push forward its manifesto.
Of course, they won't do that, and one day they'll be out of power for another fourteen years, rueing the missed opportunity to have done the right thing by changing our politics for good.
Robert Jenrick is the first leadership contender to break cover. He says the last government “insulted the public” by failing to deal with immigration. He sets out his stall here:
This is the list of the 22 Roman Catholic Cathedrals in England.
Arundel Cathedral - CONSERVATIVE St Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham - LABOUR? Brentwood Cathedral - CONSERVATIVE ? Cathedral of St Michael and St George, Aldershot - LABOUR Clifton Cathedral Lancaster Cathedral - LABOUR Leeds Cathedral - LABOUR Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral - LABOUR Middlesbrough Cathedral - LABOUR St Mary's Cathedral, Newcastle upon Tyne - LABOUR Northampton Cathedral St John the Baptist Cathedral, Norwich - LABOUR Nottingham Cathedral - LABOUR Old Sarum Cathedral Plymouth Cathedral - LABOUR Cathedral of St John the Evangelist, Portsmouth Pro-Cathedral of the Holy Apostles Salford Cathedral - LABOUR Cathedral Church of St Marie, Sheffield - LABOUR Shrewsbury Cathedral - LABOUR St George's Cathedral, Southwark - LABOUR Westminster Cathedral - LABOUR
I'm a bit less reliable on these, as I am not sure exactly where they all are to within a stone's throw.
The Roman Catholic vote probably voted Labour this time, Catholics tend to be swing voters as they are in the US and SF or SDLP in NI, Protestants tend to vote Conservative or Reform or LD or DUP/TUV/UUP /Alliance in NI. Jews likely voted Conservative again but much more narrowly than 2019 hence Labour narrowly won Finchley and Golders Green, Hendon and Chipping Barnet. Hindus likely voted Tory for Rishi hence the Tories gained Leicester East. Non religious and Muslims tend to vote Labour or SNP but some Muslims went Independent over Gaza hence Labour lost Blackburn, Dewsbury and Leicester S.
Make polling day a bank holiday. We have public holidays for less. One day every five years to celebrate our democracy is a good and fully justified thing. We shouldn’t take it for granted.
Too many bank holidays, it’s nuts and damages the economy. We’ve got one next Monday just because the King is visiting. They worked out it costs our gov £700k in terms of what they are paying staff but getting no productivity as well as the extra pay they have to give staff who have to work on the public holiday. If you scale that up to the UK public sector just think how much it costs the country.
Vote him out then. Nothing to do with us (except that we will have to learn to look forward to Jersey Republicans at the greengrocer every spring).
A majority on 33% is regrettable, a huge majority is problematic. But everyone knew this could happen one day, and could happen again on a lower vote next time (Reform 30% perhaps?).
Has there been any discussion of how automatic voter registration might affect the next election?
Harriet Harman was being a bit more open on election night about what Labour would do in power, and she was clear that auto-registration was about expanding representation for people not currently on the register.
That seems like a very strong hint that it would be followed by new boundaries.
It would have to be. There are large distortions between eligible voters and the electoral roll in many parts of the country.
Truss had been a minister and in the cabinet for a while by the time she became PM; I just assumed she would carry on muddling along as her predicessors had while using more colourful rhetoric than before - unpopular and low-achieving but not awful. But she did not take long to prove the most hysterical predictions about her to be entirely correct.
I say all this as a low tax, neoliberal free marketeer by instinct (though more on the Orange-Booker side than the Tory side). She has done far more damage to these ideas than any left-wing politician ever could.
It's quite staggering how much damage was done to a political party's brand in so short an amount of time, by a single individual. Her former constituents have done Sunak and his eventual successor a tremendous favour by voting her out, as the parliamentary Tory Party will not need to figure out what to do with her.
Whenever the Conservatives 'earn the right to be heard' (as IDS recently put it) again, they need to focus on competence above anything else. Views on Europe, immigration, tax and all the rest are far lower priorities. The overwhelming reason for their collapse in this election was incompetence over the last parliament in general, and during the Truss administration in particular.
(I confess I feel a little sorry for Truss as an individual despite it all. She brought it all upon herself, did almost everything wrong, and deserves all she got, but such a meteoric collapse in view of the entire world must be devastating.)
'I received regular death and rape threats because of her.'
Former SNP Joanna Cherry tells of the fallout from being branded a 'transphobe' by former party leader Nicola Sturgeon, saying the gender recognition reform argument was merely a 'microcosm of her leadership'. [VIDEO]
Here at @focaldataHQ we’ve produced a 53,000 person survey weighted to the result on “How Britain Voted” at #GE24...
The Conservatives lost votes to everyone. 25% of the 2019 vote to Reform, 23% to the left. The latter count double. Losing votes to the left ensured election defeat. Bleeding so heavily to reform turned that defeat into a cataclysm.
This is the list of the 22 Roman Catholic Cathedrals in England.
Arundel Cathedral - CONSERVATIVE St Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham - LABOUR? Brentwood Cathedral - CONSERVATIVE ? Cathedral of St Michael and St George, Aldershot - LABOUR Clifton Cathedral Lancaster Cathedral - LABOUR Leeds Cathedral - LABOUR Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral - LABOUR Middlesbrough Cathedral - LABOUR St Mary's Cathedral, Newcastle upon Tyne - LABOUR Northampton Cathedral St John the Baptist Cathedral, Norwich - LABOUR Nottingham Cathedral - LABOUR Old Sarum Cathedral Plymouth Cathedral - LABOUR Cathedral of St John the Evangelist, Portsmouth Pro-Cathedral of the Holy Apostles Salford Cathedral - LABOUR Cathedral Church of St Marie, Sheffield - LABOUR Shrewsbury Cathedral - LABOUR St George's Cathedral, Southwark - LABOUR Westminster Cathedral - LABOUR
I'm a bit less reliable on these, as I am not sure exactly where they all are to within a stone's throw.
Old Sarum Cathedral? All thats left is the foundation.
The Bristol (Clifton) pro cathedral is now student housing.
By the way most of the C of E ones are Catholic too (just under temporary occupation).
Good observations - my list is from the Wikipedia summary page.
But Old Sarum used to have 2 MPs
Clifton I do not know apart from formerly a former vicar of St Mary Redcliffe, and visits to the Bridge when visiting Bristol.
I'll leave your third point an unexplored rabbit hole, except to assert that all of the CofE cathedrals are Catholic, because the CofE is Catholic and Reformed .
I did once have a lovely conversation with a delightfully assertive old lady at St Etheldreda's Church in Ely Place, about why their "Bishops of London" stopped so abruptly hundreds of years ago.
An old priest once talked to an old lady who was remonstrating within about the iniquities of a Catholic Mass being celebrated in a (900 year old) C of E Church (by kind permission of the Vicar) that actually it is a Catholic Church as it has never been deconsecrated and many Catholics are buried in the Church and grounds.
Simildrly, my former local vicar said "It's yours really anyway" on bumping into me visiting it and discovering it is RC.
Fortunately, for financial reasons, they are all nationalised and the states problem!
Church of England churches are not owned by the state and get no financial help from the state.
Clifton Pro Cathedral was abandoned fifty years ago due to structural problems, but Clifton Cathedral is going along just fine.
Perhaps he meant the French ones .
The last time I looked at the numbers, maintaining their heritage church etc buildings costs the Government far more in France than the equivalent does in England.
Centrists here of both Tory and Libdem persuasion are still having more vapours about Farage winning five seats compared with Labours 400 odd I see.
I guess when you have had a monopoly of the right wing in parliament since the 1661 general election, a rival party of the right breaking through the first past the post wall and winning five seats as well as knocking you into third place in a lot of seats you held until this week is going to seem a bit existensial.
They do not like it.
Labour + Green + SDLP + WPB + Plaid + SNP (33.7% + 6.7% + 0.7% + 0.7% + 0.3% + 2.5) = 44.6%
I know the LDs/Alliance really really really want to count all their 12.6% of voters to the Left-wing block, but they're not. If I was being really generous I'd give them 60% of them and 40% to the Right-wing block. That'd still get you to only 51.1% v 44.2%, and that's on a reduced turnout where many Tories stayed at home.
Point is the country is still split into two-voter blocks. And there's not an awful lot between them, save the mathematics of FPTP, which computed into the landslide.
A lot can change quickly.
Reform aren't a right-wing bloc party, sorry. They compete against Tories and promise magic money tree for the NHS.
In some ways they are the anti-establishment mirror of the SNP.
Both parties argue that their constituents’ needs cannot be met within the current Westminster setup. SNP from the left(ish), Reform from the right.
One says independence is the solution, the other says - what? The Nietschian superman I suppose.
So you can’t group either into blocs with others because they are constitutionally set apart.
Plaid, not so much. More like SDLP, for now.
You can group them in in terms of whom they would support in government. So right now in mid 2024, the LDs would support a Labour-led government but almost certainly not a Conservative one. Reform would probably be the opposite way around. SNP would probably find it slightly tricky to support Labour but would never, ever support the Tories.
Casino is missing the point to a certain extent when he tries to split the Lib Dems down a 60-40 line and use that to keep them out of the left bloc. The Lib Dems would, in a hung parliament, have elevated Starmer with zero hesitation. He's right in that this reality can change but there's no sign of that any time soon.
Except they’ll be opposing them on quite a lot of stuff in this parliament, and they were part of a coalition with the Tories a decade back.
All Casino is effectively saying is that FPTP is the way it should be. That’s a circular argument, not one of principle.
Yes, the LDs coalitioned with the Tories in 2010. It's that experience that means they are fairly unlikely to repeat it any time soon! Of course the LDs will be opposing Labour at some points in this parliament, and if Labour start to do really badly in the eyes of LDs then you WILL see that drift away. Casino is right in implying the mutability of such support. But that future is undecided. Right now, the LD position on Labour v Tory is extremely clear, and will remain so until such a time that Labour or the Tories change. The likelier outcome, in my view, is that the LDs will still be on the Labour side of the fence come the next election.
That is risky given over 90% of LD seats now were won from the Tories, if they are sensible they will remain in the middle
in the middle in terms of policies perhaps but they definitely need to focus their fire on reducing the tory seats further. 121 vs 72, means that just 25 gains from the tories would put them ahead of them. Not likely but not impossible. For that they need to maintain the tactical voting from Labour (and vice versa), and hope that the Tories go for reform votes with a right wing leader.
Robert Jenrick is the first leadership contender to break cover. He says the last government “insulted the public” by failing to deal with immigration. He sets out his stall here:
It would have been better for your Party, Carlotta, if the Election had produced a more cleansing result. It would then have had less detritus like Jenrick to clear out before reconstruction begins.
I worry about the members, Peter.
They usually go for the most tub-thumping and dogmatic one. It really doesn't help.
I doubt they've learned many (any) lessons from this defeat.
I think there's an argument that this is the right way to go. They need to rebuild the base first and stop all the members defecting, and lose elections with a purist in charge until they get it out of their system.
One place Labour went wrong was putting a (relative) moderate up first, which pushed everything back by an entire parliament. If they'd picked Corbyn right away they could have got it out of their system in 2015 then got back into office in 2020.
Or, we could get it out of our system now - given we've just massively lost an election, near catastrophically - and go professional straight away.
The Conservatives aren't going to recover unless they can inspire and recruit some young people. Money is also going to be a problem, their costs are based on a pre-2024 Conservative party in government - why would anyone now contribute to the Conservatives? Their councillor numbers are likely to decline further. I cannot see a way back for them - though admit I am not inclined to look very hard for one.
Robert Jenrick is the first leadership contender to break cover. He says the last government “insulted the public” by failing to deal with immigration. He sets out his stall here:
You might have it the wrong way round, and Scots voters (or half of them) still want independence but now also demand an end to corruption and a return to competence.
Brexit voters wanted the moon on a stick as well
Now look at them
While it may be true that in the abstract when asked by a pollster whether they want Indy, some people said yes, last week in the voting booths when asked to put stubby pencil to paper in favour of it (as expressed by the SNP campaign) they overwhelmingly said "fuck that"
2014 was the high watermark
Total bollox through your myopic viewpoint. It was down to the SNP crookedness, weirdo policies , mismanagement and ignoring reality that cause dpeopel to give them a warning. Many still remember Labour rogering us for 50 years and handing everything over to london you moronic halfwitted twat. Labour will not last long unless the SNP stay as they are which is highly unlikely.
Make polling day a bank holiday. We have public holidays for less. One day every five years to celebrate our democracy is a good and fully justified thing. We shouldn’t take it for granted.
Too many bank holidays, it’s nuts and damages the economy. We’ve got one next Monday just because the King is visiting. They worked out it costs our gov £700k in terms of what they are paying staff but getting no productivity as well as the extra pay they have to give staff who have to work on the public holiday. If you scale that up to the UK public sector just think how much it costs the country.
One every five years. I think the economy can bare it.
Robert Jenrick is the first leadership contender to break cover. He says the last government “insulted the public” by failing to deal with immigration. He sets out his stall here:
It would have been better for your Party, Carlotta, if the Election had produced a more cleansing result. It would then have had less detritus like Jenrick to clear out before reconstruction begins.
I worry about the members, Peter.
They usually go for the most tub-thumping and dogmatic one. It really doesn't help.
I doubt they've learned many (any) lessons from this defeat.
I think there's an argument that this is the right way to go. They need to rebuild the base first and stop all the members defecting, and lose elections with a purist in charge until they get it out of their system.
One place Labour went wrong was putting a (relative) moderate up first, which pushed everything back by an entire parliament. If they'd picked Corbyn right away they could have got it out of their system in 2015 then got back into office in 2020.
Or, we could get it out of our system now - given we've just massively lost an election, near catastrophically - and go professional straight away.
The Conservatives aren't going to recover unless they can inspire and recruit some young people. Money is also going to be a problem, their costs are based on a pre-2024 Conservative party in government - why would anyone now contribute to the Conservatives? Their councillor numbers are likely to decline further. I cannot see a way back for them - though admit I am not inclined to look very hard for one.
I wonder if we will see Moonrabbit return.
Are you sure Moonrabbit isn't now an MP?
Unlikely. She'd need to have decided which Party she supports first.
Make polling day a bank holiday. We have public holidays for less. One day every five years to celebrate our democracy is a good and fully justified thing. We shouldn’t take it for granted.
Too many bank holidays, it’s nuts and damages the economy. We’ve got one next Monday just because the King is visiting. They worked out it costs our gov £700k in terms of what they are paying staff but getting no productivity as well as the extra pay they have to give staff who have to work on the public holiday. If you scale that up to the UK public sector just think how much it costs the country.
Vote him out then. Nothing to do with us (except that we will have to learn to look forward to Jersey Republicans at the greengrocer every spring).
I have no issue with the king but I object to a bank holiday being announced for his visit.
Robert Jenrick is the first leadership contender to break cover. He says the last government “insulted the public” by failing to deal with immigration. He sets out his stall here:
It would have been better for your Party, Carlotta, if the Election had produced a more cleansing result. It would then have had less detritus like Jenrick to clear out before reconstruction begins.
I worry about the members, Peter.
They usually go for the most tub-thumping and dogmatic one. It really doesn't help.
I doubt they've learned many (any) lessons from this defeat.
I think there's an argument that this is the right way to go. They need to rebuild the base first and stop all the members defecting, and lose elections with a purist in charge until they get it out of their system.
One place Labour went wrong was putting a (relative) moderate up first, which pushed everything back by an entire parliament. If they'd picked Corbyn right away they could have got it out of their system in 2015 then got back into office in 2020.
Or, we could get it out of our system now - given we've just massively lost an election, near catastrophically - and go professional straight away.
The Conservatives aren't going to recover unless they can inspire and recruit some young people. Money is also going to be a problem, their costs are based on a pre-2024 Conservative party in government - why would anyone now contribute to the Conservatives? Their councillor numbers are likely to decline further. I cannot see a way back for them - though admit I am not inclined to look very hard for one.
Robert Jenrick is the first leadership contender to break cover. He says the last government “insulted the public” by failing to deal with immigration. He sets out his stall here:
It would have been better for your Party, Carlotta, if the Election had produced a more cleansing result. It would then have had less detritus like Jenrick to clear out before reconstruction begins.
I worry about the members, Peter.
They usually go for the most tub-thumping and dogmatic one. It really doesn't help.
I doubt they've learned many (any) lessons from this defeat.
I think there's an argument that this is the right way to go. They need to rebuild the base first and stop all the members defecting, and lose elections with a purist in charge until they get it out of their system.
One place Labour went wrong was putting a (relative) moderate up first, which pushed everything back by an entire parliament. If they'd picked Corbyn right away they could have got it out of their system in 2015 then got back into office in 2020.
Or, we could get it out of our system now - given we've just massively lost an election, near catastrophically - and go professional straight away.
The Conservatives aren't going to recover unless they can inspire and recruit some young people. Money is also going to be a problem, their costs are based on a pre-2024 Conservative party in government - why would anyone now contribute to the Conservatives? Their councillor numbers are likely to decline further. I cannot see a way back for them - though admit I am not inclined to look very hard for one.
I wonder if we will see Moonrabbit return.
Are you sure Moonrabbit isn't now an MP?
It would be interesting (in an academic - not doxxing) sense to know how many posters and lurkers are MPs and journslists.
Quite a few I suspect judging by how often over the years things posted here end up in the press or things MPs say. Of course this might just be coincidental.
This is the list of the 22 Roman Catholic Cathedrals in England.
Arundel Cathedral - CONSERVATIVE St Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham - LABOUR? Brentwood Cathedral - CONSERVATIVE ? Cathedral of St Michael and St George, Aldershot - LABOUR Clifton Cathedral Lancaster Cathedral - LABOUR Leeds Cathedral - LABOUR Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral - LABOUR Middlesbrough Cathedral - LABOUR St Mary's Cathedral, Newcastle upon Tyne - LABOUR Northampton Cathedral St John the Baptist Cathedral, Norwich - LABOUR Nottingham Cathedral - LABOUR Old Sarum Cathedral Plymouth Cathedral - LABOUR Cathedral of St John the Evangelist, Portsmouth Pro-Cathedral of the Holy Apostles Salford Cathedral - LABOUR Cathedral Church of St Marie, Sheffield - LABOUR Shrewsbury Cathedral - LABOUR St George's Cathedral, Southwark - LABOUR Westminster Cathedral - LABOUR
I'm a bit less reliable on these, as I am not sure exactly where they all are to within a stone's throw.
Old Sarum Cathedral? All thats left is the foundation.
The Bristol (Clifton) pro cathedral is now student housing.
By the way most of the C of E ones are Catholic too (just under temporary occupation).
Good observations - my list is from the Wikipedia summary page.
But Old Sarum used to have 2 MPs
Clifton I do not know apart from formerly a former vicar of St Mary Redcliffe, and visits to the Bridge when visiting Bristol.
I'll leave your third point an unexplored rabbit hole, except to assert that all of the CofE cathedrals are Catholic, because the CofE is Catholic and Reformed .
I did once have a lovely conversation with a delightfully assertive old lady at St Etheldreda's Church in Ely Place, about why their "Bishops of London" stopped so abruptly hundreds of years ago.
An old priest once talked to an old lady who was remonstrating within about the iniquities of a Catholic Mass being celebrated in a (900 year old) C of E Church (by kind permission of the Vicar) that actually it is a Catholic Church as it has never been deconsecrated and many Catholics are buried in the Church and grounds.
Simildrly, my former local vicar said "It's yours really anyway" on bumping into me visiting it and discovering it is RC.
Fortunately, for financial reasons, they are all nationalised and the states problem!
Church of England churches are not owned by the state and get no financial help from the state.
Clifton Pro Cathedral was abandoned fifty years ago due to structural problems, but Clifton Cathedral is going along just fine.
Perhaps he meant the French ones .
The last time I looked at the numbers, maintaining their heritage church etc buildings costs the Government far more in France than the equivalent does in England.
And, ironically, a constant complaint among the French is that these places are not very well looked after.
Is there anyone particularly upset by the election? A lot of upsides across the political spectrum: Labour won a landslide Tories still breathing Best LibDem result in a century RefUK on the board Greens won 4 seats SNP routed
Any downsides?
yes, the second of your points...
It would have been joyous to see ELE. But that would almost certainly have elevated Farage and his mob - surely a worse outcome than what we have.
Also, just enough of the nutters survived in the Tory Party to ensure that the crazy circus carries on even longer. We have seen parties suffer a catastrophic drop in support and spend some time rebuilding before being competitive again. That is the Tories most likely scenario. Can't rule out another oscillation in 2029 that sees them sweep back - in today's politics everything is possible.
But the other scenario is to copy the Liberals a century ago. A crushing defeat followed by division, infighting and absolute self-destructive idiocy. Leading to another hammering into an even smaller total in the elections that follow. 121 may prove to be an impossible target in the next election...
If we had had proportional representation then Farage would have got 100 MPs, most of them having no political experience and paper candidates who would have been a disaster and probably imploded the party within 18 months.
FPTP keeps a party out until it reaches a critical mass and has now ensured that Farage only has his most able leiutenants in Parliament, with five years to professionalise the party.
PR enthusiasts should be careful what they wish for.
I support PR for two simple reasons: 1) In a democracy you should get what you vote for. Every vote should count equally. As a matter of principle it is an aberation that Reform won so many votes and so few seats 2) The best way to defeat any extreme is to expose it to scrutiny. Reform won 4.1m votes - 14.3%. If it has won 93 seats instead of 5 it would not have been a force at the next election. So many of those additional MPs would have been catastrophic for Reform. So many crazy people with appalling ideas and disgusting opinions. With them in the Commons we would have examined Faragism, been repelled by it and seen it off. Instead it continues to fester away in society.
The main objections to PR are all variations on the theme of not liking list systems, which is an absolutely fair point except that the obvious PR solution is STV in multi member constituencies, which doesn’t have a list system.
They might as well be list systems. The top candidate from the main two parties is almost guaranteed to win.
In numerous FPTP seats, which party will win is not in doubt, so that party’s candidate is almost guaranteed to win, and all the power to choose the candidate lies with the party.
'I received regular death and rape threats because of her.'
Former SNP Joanna Cherry tells of the fallout from being branded a 'transphobe' by former party leader Nicola Sturgeon, saying the gender recognition reform argument was merely a 'microcosm of her leadership'. [VIDEO]
Listening to a Reform Party suppporting podcast (Maya Tousi) an interesting couple of narratives.
All about the Votes the Votes the Votes (they sound like certain Lib Dems used to do), and how the Tories split the Right vote and prevented Reform winning more MPs - which is a little optimistic, but possible.
"Imagine if one million voters had voted Reform not Tory, so we both had 5 million votes." Hmmm.
And they clearly need to learn how Parliament works, plus there will be lots of rhetoric about "Islamist" MPs.
That leaves me with 3 questions:
1 - How many 2nd places did the Tories get? 2 - How will Mr Farage get the attention he seeks in the House of Commons. Are we about to see lots of conflict with the Speaker a la Euro Parliament, or will he have engaged Dennis Skinner on a "how to cause trouble" consultancy contract? I expect he won't sweat the detail. 3 - Will we see more Tory defections to Reform? Perhaps not until after the leadership election is determined.
Here at @focaldataHQ we’ve produced a 53,000 person survey weighted to the result on “How Britain Voted” at #GE24...
The Conservatives lost votes to everyone. 25% of the 2019 vote to Reform, 23% to the left. The latter count double. Losing votes to the left ensured election defeat. Bleeding so heavily to reform turned that defeat into a cataclysm.
Listening to a Reform Party suppporting podcast (Maya Tousi) an interesting couple of narratives.
All about the Votes the Votes the Votes (they sound like certain Lib Dems used to do), and how the Tories split the Right vote and prevented Reform winning more MPs - which is a little optimistic, but possible.
"Imagine if one million voters had voted Reform not Tory, so we both had 5 million votes." Hmmm.
And they clearly need to learn how Parliament works, plus there will be lots of rhetoric about "Islamist" MPs.
That leaves me with 2 questions:
1 - How many 2nd places did the Tories get? 2 - How will Mr Farage get the attention he seeks in the House of Commons. Are we about to see lots of conflict with the Speaker a la Euro Parliament, or will he have engaged Dennis Skinner on a "how to cause trouble" consultancy contract? I expect he won't sweat the detail.
On point 2 it seems like they have an extremely embarrassing plan which they think is a wizard wheeze to get attention and show they mean business.
Re Mordaunt via a Sunak by election. This cannot happen unless the Tory Party rules are changed. The leader must be an MP. Rishi quits Parliament, he can't be leader. Mordaunt is ineligible, as she isn't an MP. Only alternative is a temporary leader. Why should someone keep the seat warm for one who might not win the by-election. And probably wouldn't win the leadership? No Tory not currently an MP will be the next leader. It isn't going to happen.
I don’t quite know how to make this point, but it’s a serious one. Liz Truss generally comes across to me as a bit childish, lacking the kind of seriousness or gravitas you would normally expect. It seems to be a disease that has infected some on the right. They seem to want to shock and provoke rather than effect change. It’s a subtle thing, but they’re a long way from the kind of intellectual heft that sat behind the Thatcherite revolution.
Spot on.
Before wittering about immigration or whatever, the Tories need to think hard about the 4 things they have lacked or deliberately abandoned in recent years.
1. An understanding of Burkean principles - the idea that conservatism is about preserving the best of what we have built but also about building on that for the next generations - to leave the country in a better state than they found it. So it is not enough to focus only on one elderly generation but to remember those that are and those to come and to make life and opportunities better for them. (Why in God's name did a Conservative government kill off Sure Start? - to give just one example.)
2. Chesterton's Fence: you don't just randomly and angrily attack and destroy institutions and conventions just because they stand in your way. You are meant to be grown ups not tantruming toddlers. The attacks on the rule of law, on any standards of integrity and political decency, on independent institutions etc was pathetic, dangerous and, well, unconservative. See point 1.
3. Competence: obvious but forgotten. Just try to do your tasks well. Good administration, thinking about the consequences, thinking ahead, getting advice, planning, sorting out mistakes, learning from them, small practical improvements instead of snake oil promises backed by nothing more than bullshit etc. You forgot that. You will have to relearn this and try to demonstrate it where you can - in how you run your party and whatever councils you control. It will take time and you won't be listened to for a long time. But unless you do start doing this now, forget the rest.
4. Character: the single most important factor. The moral character, the integrity, the honesty of those who lead your party and those in it and how they behave says more about you than any manifesto. You chose some dreadful leaders in a Faustian pact which has well and truly bitten you on the arse. You abandoned all standards of political decency. You allowed corruption and shadiness and spivs in public office to fester. You gave the impression that duty and public service were jokes. The one abiding image for your years in power was parties in Downing Street while a widowed queen sat alone at her husband's funeral. That image stood for many who did their job while you treated their old-fashioned virtues with contempt. Really, how dare you call yourself conservative and behave like that.
Get these right. Then you can start worrying about policies. The current government will eventually make mistakes in all these areas. (I mean, Jacqui Smith, really?) But they won't listen to you until you've admitted you fucked things up and have changed.
Available for consultation at £1,3750 per hour + VAT or its euro equivalent. An absolute bargain.
Centrists here of both Tory and Libdem persuasion are still having more vapours about Farage winning five seats compared with Labours 400 odd I see.
I guess when you have had a monopoly of the right wing in parliament since the 1661 general election, a rival party of the right breaking through the first past the post wall and winning five seats as well as knocking you into third place in a lot of seats you held until this week is going to seem a bit existensial.
They do not like it.
Labour + Green + SDLP + WPB + Plaid + SNP (33.7% + 6.7% + 0.7% + 0.7% + 0.3% + 2.5) = 44.6%
I know the LDs/Alliance really really really want to count all their 12.6% of voters to the Left-wing block, but they're not. If I was being really generous I'd give them 60% of them and 40% to the Right-wing block. That'd still get you to only 51.1% v 44.2%, and that's on a reduced turnout where many Tories stayed at home.
Point is the country is still split into two-voter blocks. And there's not an awful lot between them, save the mathematics of FPTP, which computed into the landslide.
A lot can change quickly.
Reform aren't a right-wing bloc party, sorry. They compete against Tories and promise magic money tree for the NHS.
In some ways they are the anti-establishment mirror of the SNP.
Both parties argue that their constituents’ needs cannot be met within the current Westminster setup. SNP from the left(ish), Reform from the right.
One says independence is the solution, the other says - what? The Nietschian superman I suppose.
So you can’t group either into blocs with others because they are constitutionally set apart.
Plaid, not so much. More like SDLP, for now.
You can group them in in terms of whom they would support in government. So right now in mid 2024, the LDs would support a Labour-led government but almost certainly not a Conservative one. Reform would probably be the opposite way around. SNP would probably find it slightly tricky to support Labour but would never, ever support the Tories.
Casino is missing the point to a certain extent when he tries to split the Lib Dems down a 60-40 line and use that to keep them out of the left bloc. The Lib Dems would, in a hung parliament, have elevated Starmer with zero hesitation. He's right in that this reality can change but there's no sign of that any time soon.
Except they’ll be opposing them on quite a lot of stuff in this parliament, and they were part of a coalition with the Tories a decade back.
All Casino is effectively saying is that FPTP is the way it should be. That’s a circular argument, not one of principle.
Yes, the LDs coalitioned with the Tories in 2010. It's that experience that means they are fairly unlikely to repeat it any time soon! Of course the LDs will be opposing Labour at some points in this parliament, and if Labour start to do really badly in the eyes of LDs then you WILL see that drift away. Casino is right in implying the mutability of such support. But that future is undecided. Right now, the LD position on Labour v Tory is extremely clear, and will remain so until such a time that Labour or the Tories change. The likelier outcome, in my view, is that the LDs will still be on the Labour side of the fence come the next election.
That is risky given over 90% of LD seats now were won from the Tories, if they are sensible they will remain in the middle
And if Centrist southern Tories have any sense they will defect to the Libdems where they belong. Only needs 25 to defect and Libdems become the opposition. Less if a few right wingers join Reform.
I doubt that happens unless Braverman or Patel become next Tory leader, in which case the Tories would likely merge with Reform anyway given they would have no policy differences from Farage
Make polling day a bank holiday. We have public holidays for less. One day every five years to celebrate our democracy is a good and fully justified thing. We shouldn’t take it for granted.
No. Means a substantial proportion of the population is drunk or off its tits on cheap coke when it votes.
Is there anyone particularly upset by the election? A lot of upsides across the political spectrum: Labour won a landslide Tories still breathing Best LibDem result in a century RefUK on the board Greens won 4 seats SNP routed
Any downsides?
yes, the second of your points...
It would have been joyous to see ELE. But that would almost certainly have elevated Farage and his mob - surely a worse outcome than what we have.
Also, just enough of the nutters survived in the Tory Party to ensure that the crazy circus carries on even longer. We have seen parties suffer a catastrophic drop in support and spend some time rebuilding before being competitive again. That is the Tories most likely scenario. Can't rule out another oscillation in 2029 that sees them sweep back - in today's politics everything is possible.
But the other scenario is to copy the Liberals a century ago. A crushing defeat followed by division, infighting and absolute self-destructive idiocy. Leading to another hammering into an even smaller total in the elections that follow. 121 may prove to be an impossible target in the next election...
If we had had proportional representation then Farage would have got 100 MPs, most of them having no political experience and paper candidates who would have been a disaster and probably imploded the party within 18 months.
FPTP keeps a party out until it reaches a critical mass and has now ensured that Farage only has his most able leiutenants in Parliament, with five years to professionalise the party.
PR enthusiasts should be careful what they wish for.
I support PR for two simple reasons: 1) In a democracy you should get what you vote for. Every vote should count equally. As a matter of principle it is an aberation that Reform won so many votes and so few seats 2) The best way to defeat any extreme is to expose it to scrutiny. Reform won 4.1m votes - 14.3%. If it has won 93 seats instead of 5 it would not have been a force at the next election. So many of those additional MPs would have been catastrophic for Reform. So many crazy people with appalling ideas and disgusting opinions. With them in the Commons we would have examined Faragism, been repelled by it and seen it off. Instead it continues to fester away in society.
The main objections to PR are all variations on the theme of not liking list systems, which is an absolutely fair point except that the obvious PR solution is STV in multi member constituencies, which doesn’t have a list system.
They might as well be list systems. The top candidate from the main two parties is almost guaranteed to win.
In numerous FPTP seats, which party will win is not in doubt, so that party’s candidate is almost guaranteed to win, and all the power to choose the candidate lies with the party.
For a single election, perhaps. But over the previous decade there's been a monumental churn in seats.
Re Mordaunt via a Sunak by election. This cannot happen unless the Tory Party rules are changed. The leader must be an MP. Rishi quits Parliament, he can't be leader. Mordaunt is ineligible, as she isn't an MP. Only alternative is a temporary leader. Why should someone keep the seat warm for one who might not win the by-election. And probably wouldn't win the leadership? No Tory not currently an MP will be the next leader. It isn't going to happen.
It's Suella for leader. They're going to do it, aren't they?
Centrists here of both Tory and Libdem persuasion are still having more vapours about Farage winning five seats compared with Labours 400 odd I see.
I guess when you have had a monopoly of the right wing in parliament since the 1661 general election, a rival party of the right breaking through the first past the post wall and winning five seats as well as knocking you into third place in a lot of seats you held until this week is going to seem a bit existensial.
They do not like it.
Labour + Green + SDLP + WPB + Plaid + SNP (33.7% + 6.7% + 0.7% + 0.7% + 0.3% + 2.5) = 44.6%
I know the LDs/Alliance really really really want to count all their 12.6% of voters to the Left-wing block, but they're not. If I was being really generous I'd give them 60% of them and 40% to the Right-wing block. That'd still get you to only 51.1% v 44.2%, and that's on a reduced turnout where many Tories stayed at home.
Point is the country is still split into two-voter blocks. And there's not an awful lot between them, save the mathematics of FPTP, which computed into the landslide.
A lot can change quickly.
Reform aren't a right-wing bloc party, sorry. They compete against Tories and promise magic money tree for the NHS.
In some ways they are the anti-establishment mirror of the SNP.
Both parties argue that their constituents’ needs cannot be met within the current Westminster setup. SNP from the left(ish), Reform from the right.
One says independence is the solution, the other says - what? The Nietschian superman I suppose.
So you can’t group either into blocs with others because they are constitutionally set apart.
Plaid, not so much. More like SDLP, for now.
You can group them in in terms of whom they would support in government. So right now in mid 2024, the LDs would support a Labour-led government but almost certainly not a Conservative one. Reform would probably be the opposite way around. SNP would probably find it slightly tricky to support Labour but would never, ever support the Tories.
Casino is missing the point to a certain extent when he tries to split the Lib Dems down a 60-40 line and use that to keep them out of the left bloc. The Lib Dems would, in a hung parliament, have elevated Starmer with zero hesitation. He's right in that this reality can change but there's no sign of that any time soon.
Except they’ll be opposing them on quite a lot of stuff in this parliament, and they were part of a coalition with the Tories a decade back.
All Casino is effectively saying is that FPTP is the way it should be. That’s a circular argument, not one of principle.
Yes, the LDs coalitioned with the Tories in 2010. It's that experience that means they are fairly unlikely to repeat it any time soon! Of course the LDs will be opposing Labour at some points in this parliament, and if Labour start to do really badly in the eyes of LDs then you WILL see that drift away. Casino is right in implying the mutability of such support. But that future is undecided. Right now, the LD position on Labour v Tory is extremely clear, and will remain so until such a time that Labour or the Tories change. The likelier outcome, in my view, is that the LDs will still be on the Labour side of the fence come the next election.
That is risky given over 90% of LD seats now were won from the Tories, if they are sensible they will remain in the middle
in the middle in terms of policies perhaps but they definitely need to focus their fire on reducing the tory seats further. 121 vs 72, means that just 25 gains from the tories would put them ahead of them. Not likely but not impossible. For that they need to maintain the tactical voting from Labour (and vice versa), and hope that the Tories go for reform votes with a right wing leader.
So, in essence, the Lib Dem’s should become the posh wing of the Labour Party?
Centrists here of both Tory and Libdem persuasion are still having more vapours about Farage winning five seats compared with Labours 400 odd I see.
I guess when you have had a monopoly of the right wing in parliament since the 1661 general election, a rival party of the right breaking through the first past the post wall and winning five seats as well as knocking you into third place in a lot of seats you held until this week is going to seem a bit existensial.
They do not like it.
Labour + Green + SDLP + WPB + Plaid + SNP (33.7% + 6.7% + 0.7% + 0.7% + 0.3% + 2.5) = 44.6%
I know the LDs/Alliance really really really want to count all their 12.6% of voters to the Left-wing block, but they're not. If I was being really generous I'd give them 60% of them and 40% to the Right-wing block. That'd still get you to only 51.1% v 44.2%, and that's on a reduced turnout where many Tories stayed at home.
Point is the country is still split into two-voter blocks. And there's not an awful lot between them, save the mathematics of FPTP, which computed into the landslide.
A lot can change quickly.
Reform aren't a right-wing bloc party, sorry. They compete against Tories and promise magic money tree for the NHS.
In some ways they are the anti-establishment mirror of the SNP.
Both parties argue that their constituents’ needs cannot be met within the current Westminster setup. SNP from the left(ish), Reform from the right.
One says independence is the solution, the other says - what? The Nietschian superman I suppose.
So you can’t group either into blocs with others because they are constitutionally set apart.
Plaid, not so much. More like SDLP, for now.
You can group them in in terms of whom they would support in government. So right now in mid 2024, the LDs would support a Labour-led government but almost certainly not a Conservative one. Reform would probably be the opposite way around. SNP would probably find it slightly tricky to support Labour but would never, ever support the Tories.
Casino is missing the point to a certain extent when he tries to split the Lib Dems down a 60-40 line and use that to keep them out of the left bloc. The Lib Dems would, in a hung parliament, have elevated Starmer with zero hesitation. He's right in that this reality can change but there's no sign of that any time soon.
Except they’ll be opposing them on quite a lot of stuff in this parliament, and they were part of a coalition with the Tories a decade back.
All Casino is effectively saying is that FPTP is the way it should be. That’s a circular argument, not one of principle.
Yes, the LDs coalitioned with the Tories in 2010. It's that experience that means they are fairly unlikely to repeat it any time soon! Of course the LDs will be opposing Labour at some points in this parliament, and if Labour start to do really badly in the eyes of LDs then you WILL see that drift away. Casino is right in implying the mutability of such support. But that future is undecided. Right now, the LD position on Labour v Tory is extremely clear, and will remain so until such a time that Labour or the Tories change. The likelier outcome, in my view, is that the LDs will still be on the Labour side of the fence come the next election.
That is risky given over 90% of LD seats now were won from the Tories, if they are sensible they will remain in the middle
And if Centrist southern Tories have any sense they will defect to the Libdems where they belong. Only needs 25 to defect and Libdems become the opposition. Less if a few right wingers join Reform.
I doubt that happens unless Braverman or Patel become next Tory leader, in which case the Tories would likely merge with Reform anyway given they would have no policy differences from Farage
I still cant quite believe that just 25 defections would mean the Libdems are the Opposition.
This is the list of the 22 Roman Catholic Cathedrals in England.
Arundel Cathedral - CONSERVATIVE St Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham - LABOUR? Brentwood Cathedral - CONSERVATIVE ? Cathedral of St Michael and St George, Aldershot - LABOUR Clifton Cathedral Lancaster Cathedral - LABOUR Leeds Cathedral - LABOUR Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral - LABOUR Middlesbrough Cathedral - LABOUR St Mary's Cathedral, Newcastle upon Tyne - LABOUR Northampton Cathedral St John the Baptist Cathedral, Norwich - LABOUR Nottingham Cathedral - LABOUR Old Sarum Cathedral Plymouth Cathedral - LABOUR Cathedral of St John the Evangelist, Portsmouth Pro-Cathedral of the Holy Apostles Salford Cathedral - LABOUR Cathedral Church of St Marie, Sheffield - LABOUR Shrewsbury Cathedral - LABOUR St George's Cathedral, Southwark - LABOUR Westminster Cathedral - LABOUR
I'm a bit less reliable on these, as I am not sure exactly where they all are to within a stone's throw.
Old Sarum Cathedral? All thats left is the foundation.
The Bristol (Clifton) pro cathedral is now student housing.
By the way most of the C of E ones are Catholic too (just under temporary occupation).
Good observations - my list is from the Wikipedia summary page.
But Old Sarum used to have 2 MPs
Clifton I do not know apart from formerly a former vicar of St Mary Redcliffe, and visits to the Bridge when visiting Bristol.
I'll leave your third point an unexplored rabbit hole, except to assert that all of the CofE cathedrals are Catholic, because the CofE is Catholic and Reformed .
I did once have a lovely conversation with a delightfully assertive old lady at St Etheldreda's Church in Ely Place, about why their "Bishops of London" stopped so abruptly hundreds of years ago.
An old priest once talked to an old lady who was remonstrating within about the iniquities of a Catholic Mass being celebrated in a (900 year old) C of E Church (by kind permission of the Vicar) that actually it is a Catholic Church as it has never been deconsecrated and many Catholics are buried in the Church and grounds.
Simildrly, my former local vicar said "It's yours really anyway" on bumping into me visiting it and discovering it is RC.
Fortunately, for financial reasons, they are all nationalised and the states problem!
Church of England churches are not owned by the state and get no financial help from the state.
Clifton Pro Cathedral was abandoned fifty years ago due to structural problems, but Clifton Cathedral is going along just fine.
Perhaps he meant the French ones .
The last time I looked at the numbers, maintaining their heritage church etc buildings costs the Government far more in France than the equivalent does in England.
Indeed the French govt supports financially the maintenance of medieval and pre 20th century grade listed historic non established Roman Catholic cathedrals and churches but the UK government doesn't fund the maintenance of medieval and pre 20th century grade listed Anglican cathedrals and churches despite the fact the C of E is an established church. Yes they get some tax breaks and support from the Historic Churches Trust and the lottery but other than that Parishes have to maintain them themselves largely
'I received regular death and rape threats because of her.'
Former SNP Joanna Cherry tells of the fallout from being branded a 'transphobe' by former party leader Nicola Sturgeon, saying the gender recognition reform argument was merely a 'microcosm of her leadership'. [VIDEO]
I do not know or care about the merits in any particular case but Joanna Cherry gives the impression from a distance of having fallen out with just about everyone over the years.
Is there anyone particularly upset by the election? A lot of upsides across the political spectrum: Labour won a landslide Tories still breathing Best LibDem result in a century RefUK on the board Greens won 4 seats SNP routed
Any downsides?
yes, the second of your points...
It would have been joyous to see ELE. But that would almost certainly have elevated Farage and his mob - surely a worse outcome than what we have.
Also, just enough of the nutters survived in the Tory Party to ensure that the crazy circus carries on even longer. We have seen parties suffer a catastrophic drop in support and spend some time rebuilding before being competitive again. That is the Tories most likely scenario. Can't rule out another oscillation in 2029 that sees them sweep back - in today's politics everything is possible.
But the other scenario is to copy the Liberals a century ago. A crushing defeat followed by division, infighting and absolute self-destructive idiocy. Leading to another hammering into an even smaller total in the elections that follow. 121 may prove to be an impossible target in the next election...
If we had had proportional representation then Farage would have got 100 MPs, most of them having no political experience and paper candidates who would have been a disaster and probably imploded the party within 18 months.
FPTP keeps a party out until it reaches a critical mass and has now ensured that Farage only has his most able leiutenants in Parliament, with five years to professionalise the party.
PR enthusiasts should be careful what they wish for.
I support PR for two simple reasons: 1) In a democracy you should get what you vote for. Every vote should count equally. As a matter of principle it is an aberation that Reform won so many votes and so few seats 2) The best way to defeat any extreme is to expose it to scrutiny. Reform won 4.1m votes - 14.3%. If it has won 93 seats instead of 5 it would not have been a force at the next election. So many of those additional MPs would have been catastrophic for Reform. So many crazy people with appalling ideas and disgusting opinions. With them in the Commons we would have examined Faragism, been repelled by it and seen it off. Instead it continues to fester away in society.
The main objections to PR are all variations on the theme of not liking list systems, which is an absolutely fair point except that the obvious PR solution is STV in multi member constituencies, which doesn’t have a list system.
They might as well be list systems. The top candidate from the main two parties is almost guaranteed to win.
In numerous FPTP seats, which party will win is not in doubt, so that party’s candidate is almost guaranteed to win, and all the power to choose the candidate lies with the party.
For a single election, perhaps. But over the previous decade there's been a monumental churn in seats.
As there can be under STV or list PR or AV or SNTV.
Robert Jenrick is the first leadership contender to break cover. He says the last government “insulted the public” by failing to deal with immigration. He sets out his stall here:
I see the Tories are adding Reform votes to them again. No, no, no, no.
As just commented on BBC Politics South, West Dorset is an interesting case, which the Tories have held unbroken since the 1880s. The seat didn't even have a Reform candidate, yet the Tories still got slaughtered.
Anyone know the back story to this, the now ex-Tory MP is local and seems to have done a reasonable job of his first term?
The ex Tory MP was a bit of a clown. His main priority seemed to be using connections to cosy up to shooting estates who were doing bad stuff.
Starmer's GOATs are a welcome move of looking 'serious'.
Tories need to welcome back Gauke and co asap rather than head off to the fringes with Braverman.
Sadly I don't think they will.
Starmer's GOATS appointments smack too much of gimmicks, and will doubtless annoy or disappoint backbenchers who regard themselves, rightly or wrongly, as at least as talented and more deserving than Blairite retreads and the Covid bloke. It stores up trouble for the future, although to be cynical, Starmer will be ready to take his bus pass by the next election.
Can anyone think of a GOAT who succeeded in achieving anything much, and/or stuck around?
In a sense, they're a hostage to fortune, because they're seen as semi-independent and if they get fed up and stomp off, you get a bad publicity hit.
Re Mordaunt via a Sunak by election. This cannot happen unless the Tory Party rules are changed. The leader must be an MP. Rishi quits Parliament, he can't be leader. Mordaunt is ineligible, as she isn't an MP. Only alternative is a temporary leader. Why should someone keep the seat warm for one who might not win the by-election. And probably wouldn't win the leadership? No Tory not currently an MP will be the next leader. It isn't going to happen.
Yes, we had similar speculation about a change of leadership before the election too, much of it flawed in the same way. It can't be Cameron; it can't be Farage; it can't be Boris.
Is there anyone particularly upset by the election? A lot of upsides across the political spectrum: Labour won a landslide Tories still breathing Best LibDem result in a century RefUK on the board Greens won 4 seats SNP routed
Any downsides?
yes, the second of your points...
It would have been joyous to see ELE. But that would almost certainly have elevated Farage and his mob - surely a worse outcome than what we have.
Also, just enough of the nutters survived in the Tory Party to ensure that the crazy circus carries on even longer. We have seen parties suffer a catastrophic drop in support and spend some time rebuilding before being competitive again. That is the Tories most likely scenario. Can't rule out another oscillation in 2029 that sees them sweep back - in today's politics everything is possible.
But the other scenario is to copy the Liberals a century ago. A crushing defeat followed by division, infighting and absolute self-destructive idiocy. Leading to another hammering into an even smaller total in the elections that follow. 121 may prove to be an impossible target in the next election...
If we had had proportional representation then Farage would have got 100 MPs, most of them having no political experience and paper candidates who would have been a disaster and probably imploded the party within 18 months.
FPTP keeps a party out until it reaches a critical mass and has now ensured that Farage only has his most able leiutenants in Parliament, with five years to professionalise the party.
PR enthusiasts should be careful what they wish for.
I support PR for two simple reasons: 1) In a democracy you should get what you vote for. Every vote should count equally. As a matter of principle it is an aberation that Reform won so many votes and so few seats 2) The best way to defeat any extreme is to expose it to scrutiny. Reform won 4.1m votes - 14.3%. If it has won 93 seats instead of 5 it would not have been a force at the next election. So many of those additional MPs would have been catastrophic for Reform. So many crazy people with appalling ideas and disgusting opinions. With them in the Commons we would have examined Faragism, been repelled by it and seen it off. Instead it continues to fester away in society.
The main objections to PR are all variations on the theme of not liking list systems, which is an absolutely fair point except that the obvious PR solution is STV in multi member constituencies, which doesn’t have a list system.
They might as well be list systems. The top candidate from the main two parties is almost guaranteed to win.
In numerous FPTP seats, which party will win is not in doubt, so that party’s candidate is almost guaranteed to win, and all the power to choose the candidate lies with the party.
Mmm. Regardless of system, the vast majority of voters in almost all cases have almost no interest in the particular candidate and are voting for the party. So the party will have the upper hand in candidate selection regardless. I think it's valuable for the system to include a way for voters to chuck out a specific candidate when they're obviously awful, but it's very rarely going to get used. At least with the right kind of PR system you can vote "party X, but not that idiot" if you want to.
Re Mordaunt via a Sunak by election. This cannot happen unless the Tory Party rules are changed. The leader must be an MP. Rishi quits Parliament, he can't be leader. Mordaunt is ineligible, as she isn't an MP. Only alternative is a temporary leader. Why should someone keep the seat warm for one who might not win the by-election. And probably wouldn't win the leadership? No Tory not currently an MP will be the next leader. It isn't going to happen.
Having considered this more, temporary leader is possible. Jeremy Hunt. Someone who won't be running for the permanent post. This, however, relies on gaining everyone's agreement. Won't happen. All too complex. Simple answer. Next leader will be one of the 121. Minus Rishi.
Labour should introduce PR by the end of this term.
The clever move would be to introduce STV for local government in the first term, and kick off some slow process for looking at Westminster elections with a view to changing the national system during the second term. That would buy Labour a lot of friends, and yet give it a full two terms to push forward its manifesto.
Of course, they won't do that, and one day they'll be out of power for another fourteen years, rueing the missed opportunity to have done the right thing by changing our politics for good.
Some of us already have STV for local government. It works quite well. It is better than either FPTP or AV.
Labour should introduce PR by the end of this term.
Why would they do that? The current system works perfectly for them.
Presumably when they reach a point where they're about to lose the election under FPTP but could still govern under PR in a coalition with LDs, Greens.
@SuzyJourno · 13h Jim Allister celebrates his North Antrim win over Ian Paisley in style tonight. A piper leads the TUV leader & wife Ruth into the hooley in Ballymena's Tullyglass Hotel. Goujons, cocktail sausages, chips, traybakes & tea provided. And I'm told the orangeade was flowing! #GE24
Biden back as favourite for the Democrat nomination
Biden 2.42-2.46 Harris 2.74-2.82
:-(
How are they going to explain away the brain doctor constantly visiting the White House?
Or the failed BC interview on Friday?
Asked whether he had played back the debate video tape to review it, he could not remember.
Quizzed on why it all went wrong he started on about being thrown by so many lies from Trump. The interviewer pointed out it went wrong from question 1.
And so on.
Dems from House of Reps are meeting later today iirc.
When is the Dem convention?
August.
iirc it is quite late this year and so there's been issues with the ballot for Ohio.
He is deteriorating anyway, and I can't think of anything better designed to accelerate his deterioration than the knowledge that the world is scrutinising him. The paranoiac whom everyone really is out to get sorted of thing.
The propping up puts me in mind of Charlie Kennedy. Presumably the proppers do it because their importance derives 100% from the main man and or because they can't agree about the succession. I can't think of a non contemptible excuse for doing it.
And it should be remembered despite all the retrospective piety on here that once the LDs (having known about the drinking all along) decided to jettison Kennedy they were pretty merciless. Lots of leaking I believe.
Robert Jenrick is the first leadership contender to break cover. He says the last government “insulted the public” by failing to deal with immigration. He sets out his stall here:
@MichaelDnes1 It’s a truth universally acknowledged that road pricing is political suicide.
But what if it wasn’t? And what if I knew people who’d almost proved it?
Come with me, and try to avoid losing a trillion dollars as we go.🧵
Interesting thread. TLDR is - bring in road pricing on vehicles registered from a point in the future onwards and people won't complain. But, now is the time to act. Soon it will be too late not impose road pricing on existing vehicles and that will be unpopular.
I have to say, I'm not sure it would be accepted just like that, but it would certainly have a better chance than getting to 2028 and going "oh, what are we going to do?"
Thinking that road pricing on future vehicles isn’t political suicide is interesting.
That seems to assume that existing car owners can’t conceive of needing a new(er) car sometime in the near future.
If nothing else, it would crash the car market in interesting ways.
Road pricing is essential to avoid national bankruptcy with electric vehicles and by combining in car trackers that insurance companies use and ANPR cameras (to fine those who disable it) it is possible to actually do.
Rule 1 has to be to move the costs of motoring from being mostly sunk costs to mostly per mile costs. So petrol duty goes and VED goes. If you are bold MOT fees go and insurance goes (the road toll insures you instead and is factored into it). If you are really bold you move to pay for tbe car by mile through an account like Student loans that is paid for through the road toll.
So it is cheap (upfront) to buy a car, and expensive to use it. Good for selling cars and good for removing congestion.
People like pensioners will end up better off as they are low mileage.
Reps in flashy cars get hammered.
Lorries pay their fair proportion of road infrastructure building and maintenance costs.
Buses become a no brainer for short urban journeys cost wise and train fares become value compared with hammering up then M1.
Plus you can charge more at peak times when roads are congested, charge more for better quality roads and charge penal rates over short distances for rat runs and quarter mile journeys ending at schools during school "rush hour".
A revolution but something Starmer needs to get on with NOW to get it done over the heads of vested interests.
It might even change the balance so much that new or reopened railways /light rail become a commercialy viable proposition, privately funded.
Excellent stuff. The key is that transfer of cost from fixed to marginal.
Note that there is a re-distributional aspect to this as well - it means that poorer people who can't afford the massive upfront cost of cars suddenly have much better accessibility for those essential journeys that require a car.
Solution 1: Car clubs. Most cars spend 95% of their time parked up on the street, taking up valuable space in towns and cities, depreciating value. Car clubs solve that problem as well as the fixed/marginal inbalance.
Problem 1: Any road pricing scheme is highly vulnerable to screwing people over in rural areas by accident. This is also an opportunity though - sell it as making journeys in the rural areas much, much cheaper.
Listening to a Reform Party suppporting podcast (Maya Tousi) an interesting couple of narratives.
All about the Votes the Votes the Votes (they sound like certain Lib Dems used to do), and how the Tories split the Right vote and prevented Reform winning more MPs - which is a little optimistic, but possible.
"Imagine if one million voters had voted Reform not Tory, so we both had 5 million votes." Hmmm.
And they clearly need to learn how Parliament works, plus there will be lots of rhetoric about "Islamist" MPs.
That leaves me with 2 questions:
1 - How many 2nd places did the Tories get? 2 - How will Mr Farage get the attention he seeks in the House of Commons. Are we about to see lots of conflict with the Speaker a la Euro Parliament, or will he have engaged Dennis Skinner on a "how to cause trouble" consultancy contract? I expect he won't sweat the detail.
On point 2 it seems like they have an extremely embarrassing plan which they think is a wizard wheeze to get attention and show they mean business.
Centrists here of both Tory and Libdem persuasion are still having more vapours about Farage winning five seats compared with Labours 400 odd I see.
I guess when you have had a monopoly of the right wing in parliament since the 1661 general election, a rival party of the right breaking through the first past the post wall and winning five seats as well as knocking you into third place in a lot of seats you held until this week is going to seem a bit existensial.
They do not like it.
Labour + Green + SDLP + WPB + Plaid + SNP (33.7% + 6.7% + 0.7% + 0.7% + 0.3% + 2.5) = 44.6%
I know the LDs/Alliance really really really want to count all their 12.6% of voters to the Left-wing block, but they're not. If I was being really generous I'd give them 60% of them and 40% to the Right-wing block. That'd still get you to only 51.1% v 44.2%, and that's on a reduced turnout where many Tories stayed at home.
Point is the country is still split into two-voter blocks. And there's not an awful lot between them, save the mathematics of FPTP, which computed into the landslide.
A lot can change quickly.
It’s more complicated though. Quite a few of those Reform voters are as keen on free owls as anybody.
Re Mordaunt via a Sunak by election. This cannot happen unless the Tory Party rules are changed. The leader must be an MP. Rishi quits Parliament, he can't be leader. Mordaunt is ineligible, as she isn't an MP. Only alternative is a temporary leader. Why should someone keep the seat warm for one who might not win the by-election. And probably wouldn't win the leadership? No Tory not currently an MP will be the next leader. It isn't going to happen.
Yes, we had similar speculation about a change of leadership before the election too, much of it flawed in the same way. It can't be Cameron; it can't be Farage; it can't be Boris.
It can be Farage, of course. (It could be Jeremy Corbyn). Both are closer to being currently eligible than Boris, Cameron or Mordaunt.* But again, the way to there is too complex.
* Because crossing the floor to become a Tory MP is relatively quick and simple when you're already an MP. The process of becoming one when you aren't, isn't.
Centrists here of both Tory and Libdem persuasion are still having more vapours about Farage winning five seats compared with Labours 400 odd I see.
I guess when you have had a monopoly of the right wing in parliament since the 1661 general election, a rival party of the right breaking through the first past the post wall and winning five seats as well as knocking you into third place in a lot of seats you held until this week is going to seem a bit existensial.
They do not like it.
Labour + Green + SDLP + WPB + Plaid + SNP (33.7% + 6.7% + 0.7% + 0.7% + 0.3% + 2.5) = 44.6%
I know the LDs/Alliance really really really want to count all their 12.6% of voters to the Left-wing block, but they're not. If I was being really generous I'd give them 60% of them and 40% to the Right-wing block. That'd still get you to only 51.1% v 44.2%, and that's on a reduced turnout where many Tories stayed at home.
Point is the country is still split into two-voter blocks. And there's not an awful lot between them, save the mathematics of FPTP, which computed into the landslide.
A lot can change quickly.
The important numbers are 121 and 411. The Conservatives need to get to 300 seats or so to form the next government even if they can get into a coalition with Reform. Meanwhile Labour have an issuance policy of a coalition with the Lib Dems if their seat count is drastically cut.
That conventional thinking is quite wrong, as shown last week. Winning an extra 200 seats is not 200 times as difficult as winning one. We are not liberating Europe from the Nazis one village at a time. Seats are fought in parallel, not in series.
And talk of a Labour LibDem coalition forgets 2010 to 2015. Why should the LibDems want to repeat the circumstances of their demise? Why should Labour be interested in the Tories' little helpers?
On the LibDem side, you'd want to do it because the point of being a political party is to try to make the country better by getting your ideas enacted, not merely to be a protest group. There are certainly tactical lessons to be learnt from 2010-15 about how being a junior coalition partner can be mismanaged and go badly wrong, but it would be strange for an avowedly pro-PR party to refuse to ever enter into a coalition again just because we didn't do as good a job of it as we should have last time we tried.
The Liberals and LibDems have a long track record of getting their policies enacted; indeed I recall a study of manifestos going back to the 1960s which found that more policies had eventually been implemented from Lib/LibDem manifestos than from Tory or Labour. The downside is that they rarely get the chance to do it themselves.
There's a certain cadre of Conservatives who are only "Conservative" by virtue of their class and schooling, and have no real intention of doing anything right-wing and, indeed, are ashamed of it - they secretly despise the members because they're not.
They are just there because they want to be in office with their own kind.
@SuzyJourno · 13h Jim Allister celebrates his North Antrim win over Ian Paisley in style tonight. A piper leads the TUV leader & wife Ruth into the hooley in Ballymena's Tullyglass Hotel. Goujons, cocktail sausages, chips, traybakes & tea provided. And I'm told the orangeade was flowing! #GE24
Re Mordaunt via a Sunak by election. This cannot happen unless the Tory Party rules are changed. The leader must be an MP. Rishi quits Parliament, he can't be leader. Mordaunt is ineligible, as she isn't an MP. Only alternative is a temporary leader. Why should someone keep the seat warm for one who might not win the by-election. And probably wouldn't win the leadership? No Tory not currently an MP will be the next leader. It isn't going to happen.
Having considered this more, temporary leader is possible. Jeremy Hunt. Someone who won't be running for the permanent post. This, however, relies on gaining everyone's agreement. Won't happen. All too complex. Simple answer. Next leader will be one of the 121. Minus Rishi.
Hunt would be the obvious place-holder.
The only people saying "no" would be a handful of people fearing they might not otherwise bounce the Party into being their Leader. Fuck 'em. Take your time.
I don’t quite know how to make this point, but it’s a serious one. Liz Truss generally comes across to me as a bit childish, lacking the kind of seriousness or gravitas you would normally expect. It seems to be a disease that has infected some on the right. They seem to want to shock and provoke rather than effect change. It’s a subtle thing, but they’re a long way from the kind of intellectual heft that sat behind the Thatcherite revolution.
Not just Truss. The British right loved Beano Boris, and grumily tolerated May and Sunak, who at least tried to be responsible national leaders. Or see the Spectator; yes it sells by the truckload but that's in part because it's given up on being a serious journal of right wing thinking and is now almost entirely there to make people think "OMG what are they going to say now?" Which is an excellent sales strategy, but a terrible way to run a country.
Let us hope that Boring Old PM Starmer can Make Britain Boring Again.
May I join in the chorus.
Reform Uk is the Party of childish politics, of wishful thinking. Farage is an essentially unserious politician, in it for the laughs.
True to an extent but Farage did bring Brexit and should not be underestimated
A careful reading of their manifesto shows us that underestimating him his impossible. It was the worst policy platform of any party and would see the economy curl up and die. Surprised fewer people talked about it, but therein lies the truth. Farage is a wrecking ball, not a builder. You vote for him if you prefer a pile of rubble over what we have now.
I have no doubt you are correct, but the rise of Reform and the right in Europe is not something easily dismissed
I have no regrets voting for Labour and think Starmer will do a decent job. I am impressed with the emphasis on honesty and integrity, after the Boris era. But I think the assumption that everything is now 'back to normal' is quite severely mistaken.
I do think that the greatest threat to democracy is not the Reform party but the dismissal and ostracisation of the Reform party. They should be able to represent their voters on things like 'woke' , 'immigration', 'net zero' , 'low traffic zones' without being slandered or defamed because amongst all the misinformation on every point there is something of value which Labour should take in to account. The 'woke' stuff has gone way too far. Illegal immigration is a massive problem and the asylum system is a failure. Net Zero imposes costs on working people which are too casually shrugged off. If the governing party can take this in to account then it defuses the threat from the reform party. If it goes full on culture war against the 'far right' as many of its MP's/members/supporters would like then it just perpetuates the polarisation and appeal of the Reform party.
You can't converse with conspiracy theorists without making yourself look like one too. Perfectly sensible Tories like Mark Harper made that mistake, undermining his own government's policies. It also leads to people like IDS siding with criminals.
Woke has had next to zero impact on most people's lives. Legal immigration is a material issue, not illegal immigration. Net Zero is the only path to growth for the UK, not protecting 20th century technologies and special interests. Cheap, secure British Energy for the British Economy.
If the Tories engage in the kind of paranoid culture battles you suggest, they'll just lose even more votes to Reform (the real deal) or the Lib Dems (the sensible alternative).
Does 'woke' impact peoples lives? Perhaps not a lot so far. But the desecration of our universities will certainly do so in the long term.
Affects my blood pressure having to listen to the tossers.
Woke is responsible for the pressure on the NHS. Millions of Daily Mail readers pushed to the edge of a heart attack by rainbow lanyards and vegan sausage rolls.
I will not mention "venison" as it upsets one of our esteemed posters.
I don’t quite know how to make this point, but it’s a serious one. Liz Truss generally comes across to me as a bit childish, lacking the kind of seriousness or gravitas you would normally expect. It seems to be a disease that has infected some on the right. They seem to want to shock and provoke rather than effect change. It’s a subtle thing, but they’re a long way from the kind of intellectual heft that sat behind the Thatcherite revolution.
Spot on.
Look at Liz Truss's PMQs performances, and look at Sunak's. And tell me who comes across as childish, wanting to provoke, and lacking the seriousness you'd expect.
Liz Truss.
You're just saying that as you're one of those lefty Tory haters who keep piling on poor Liz for no or partisan reasons.
Wait...
That's how @Luckyguy1983 will see it, despite me being on the Right of the party.
Can't compute that actually she was shit and a complete disaster for the brand.
You can go small state over time, but you can't be a fucking psycho about it.
Truss winning over Sunak was a disaster for the conservative party
Sunak is a decent person and widely complimented on his resignation speech, but poor at politics but then he had idiotic advisors
Had Sunak taken office we would not have had the Truss disaster and the biggest gift to any opposition by any politicians in living memory
Sunak would still have lost because it was a change election but not the wipe out that happened
No. Truss and Sunk making it to the final run off was the disaster. Once there, it was selecting from two poor options. The membership selected a chance of upside against no chance of upside, and they have been utterly vindicated in the event.
Centrists here of both Tory and Libdem persuasion are still having more vapours about Farage winning five seats compared with Labours 400 odd I see.
I guess when you have had a monopoly of the right wing in parliament since the 1661 general election, a rival party of the right breaking through the first past the post wall and winning five seats as well as knocking you into third place in a lot of seats you held until this week is going to seem a bit existensial.
They do not like it.
Labour + Green + SDLP + WPB + Plaid + SNP (33.7% + 6.7% + 0.7% + 0.7% + 0.3% + 2.5) = 44.6%
I know the LDs/Alliance really really really want to count all their 12.6% of voters to the Left-wing block, but they're not. If I was being really generous I'd give them 60% of them and 40% to the Right-wing block. That'd still get you to only 51.1% v 44.2%, and that's on a reduced turnout where many Tories stayed at home.
Point is the country is still split into two-voter blocks. And there's not an awful lot between them, save the mathematics of FPTP, which computed into the landslide.
A lot can change quickly.
The important numbers are 121 and 411. The Conservatives need to get to 300 seats or so to form the next government even if they can get into a coalition with Reform. Meanwhile Labour have an issuance policy of a coalition with the Lib Dems if their seat count is drastically cut.
That conventional thinking is quite wrong, as shown last week. Winning an extra 200 seats is not 200 times as difficult as winning one. We are not liberating Europe from the Nazis one village at a time. Seats are fought in parallel, not in series.
And talk of a Labour LibDem coalition forgets 2010 to 2015. Why should the LibDems want to repeat the circumstances of their demise? Why should Labour be interested in the Tories' little helpers?
Elections are point in time, the past is not a guide to the future etc. Nevertheless it's worth looking at likely possible pathways for the Conservatives to get to most seats from borderline third.
Win back seats they lost to Lib Dems? I buy the argument the LDs have been working the seats for years and will be difficult to dislodge. The Cons have a handicap of 70 that doesn't apply to Lab.
Reform increases their vote share and/or improves targeting to take seats off Labour. Possible but they will also take seats off the Tories in that case taking them away from their 300+ seat target.
Reform fade away as their voters bleed to an even more Reform like Conservative Party. Also possible, and helpful to increasing the Tory seat count but probably not enough on its own.
Labour crashes and their voters forget how much they despised the previous Conservative government, and make the switch.
Some combination of these is likely essentially,under conventional thinking. Five years seems a challenge. 200 or so seats next time would be an OK result for them demonstrating they are still in the game.
Centrists here of both Tory and Libdem persuasion are still having more vapours about Farage winning five seats compared with Labours 400 odd I see.
I guess when you have had a monopoly of the right wing in parliament since the 1661 general election, a rival party of the right breaking through the first past the post wall and winning five seats as well as knocking you into third place in a lot of seats you held until this week is going to seem a bit existensial.
They do not like it.
Labour + Green + SDLP + WPB + Plaid + SNP (33.7% + 6.7% + 0.7% + 0.7% + 0.3% + 2.5) = 44.6%
I know the LDs/Alliance really really really want to count all their 12.6% of voters to the Left-wing block, but they're not. If I was being really generous I'd give them 60% of them and 40% to the Right-wing block. That'd still get you to only 51.1% v 44.2%, and that's on a reduced turnout where many Tories stayed at home.
Point is the country is still split into two-voter blocks. And there's not an awful lot between them, save the mathematics of FPTP, which computed into the landslide.
A lot can change quickly.
It’s more complicated though. Quite a few of those Reform voters are as keen on free owls as anybody.
Also a proportion of labour voters will be in the 'right wing block'. That would probably include me. There are some other contributors on here I would put in this category.
Re Mordaunt via a Sunak by election. This cannot happen unless the Tory Party rules are changed. The leader must be an MP. Rishi quits Parliament, he can't be leader. Mordaunt is ineligible, as she isn't an MP. Only alternative is a temporary leader. Why should someone keep the seat warm for one who might not win the by-election. And probably wouldn't win the leadership? No Tory not currently an MP will be the next leader. It isn't going to happen.
Having considered this more, temporary leader is possible. Jeremy Hunt. Someone who won't be running for the permanent post. This, however, relies on gaining everyone's agreement. Won't happen. All too complex. Simple answer. Next leader will be one of the 121. Minus Rishi.
Hunt would be the obvious place-holder.
The only people saying "no" would be a handful of people fearing they might not otherwise bounce the Party into being their Leader. Fuck 'em. Take your time.
Presume they have to elect a new 1922 committee and chair first?
Then there are the qualification rules to consider - how many supporters will a candidate need? Brady gerrymandered the rules last time to ensure a Sunak coronation. What are they going to say this time, 10 supporters? 20? Who will gather the required support to enter the contest? A stitch-up won't wash.
Centrists here of both Tory and Libdem persuasion are still having more vapours about Farage winning five seats compared with Labours 400 odd I see.
I guess when you have had a monopoly of the right wing in parliament since the 1661 general election, a rival party of the right breaking through the first past the post wall and winning five seats as well as knocking you into third place in a lot of seats you held until this week is going to seem a bit existensial.
They do not like it.
Labour + Green + SDLP + WPB + Plaid + SNP (33.7% + 6.7% + 0.7% + 0.7% + 0.3% + 2.5) = 44.6%
I know the LDs/Alliance really really really want to count all their 12.6% of voters to the Left-wing block, but they're not. If I was being really generous I'd give them 60% of them and 40% to the Right-wing block. That'd still get you to only 51.1% v 44.2%, and that's on a reduced turnout where many Tories stayed at home.
Point is the country is still split into two-voter blocks. And there's not an awful lot between them, save the mathematics of FPTP, which computed into the landslide.
A lot can change quickly.
The important numbers are 121 and 411. The Conservatives need to get to 300 seats or so to form the next government even if they can get into a coalition with Reform. Meanwhile Labour have an issuance policy of a coalition with the Lib Dems if their seat count is drastically cut.
That conventional thinking is quite wrong, as shown last week. Winning an extra 200 seats is not 200 times as difficult as winning one. We are not liberating Europe from the Nazis one village at a time. Seats are fought in parallel, not in series.
And talk of a Labour LibDem coalition forgets 2010 to 2015. Why should the LibDems want to repeat the circumstances of their demise? Why should Labour be interested in the Tories' little helpers?
On the LibDem side, you'd want to do it because the point of being a political party is to try to make the country better by getting your ideas enacted, not merely to be a protest group. There are certainly tactical lessons to be learnt from 2010-15 about how being a junior coalition partner can be mismanaged and go badly wrong, but it would be strange for an avowedly pro-PR party to refuse to ever enter into a coalition again just because we didn't do as good a job of it as we should have last time we tried.
The Liberals and LibDems have a long track record of getting their policies enacted; indeed I recall a study of manifestos going back to the 1960s which found that more policies had eventually been implemented from Lib/LibDem manifestos than from Tory or Labour. The downside is that they rarely get the chance to do it themselves.
There's a certain cadre of Conservatives who are only "Conservative" by virtue of their class and schooling, and have no real intention of doing anything right-wing and, indeed, are ashamed of it - they secretly despise the members because they're not.
They are just there because they want to be in office with their own kind.
It's a problem that goes back decades.
Those Conservatives loved Cameron and the coalition with the LDs though as it matched their ideology while Labour was in opposition and the hard right went off to UKIP
I don’t quite know how to make this point, but it’s a serious one. Liz Truss generally comes across to me as a bit childish, lacking the kind of seriousness or gravitas you would normally expect. It seems to be a disease that has infected some on the right. They seem to want to shock and provoke rather than effect change. It’s a subtle thing, but they’re a long way from the kind of intellectual heft that sat behind the Thatcherite revolution.
Spot on.
Look at Liz Truss's PMQs performances, and look at Sunak's. And tell me who comes across as childish, wanting to provoke, and lacking the seriousness you'd expect.
Liz Truss.
You're just saying that as you're one of those lefty Tory haters who keep piling on poor Liz for no or partisan reasons.
Wait...
That's how @Luckyguy1983 will see it, despite me being on the Right of the party.
Can't compute that actually she was shit and a complete disaster for the brand.
You can go small state over time, but you can't be a fucking psycho about it.
Truss winning over Sunak was a disaster for the conservative party
Sunak is a decent person and widely complimented on his resignation speech, but poor at politics but then he had idiotic advisors
Had Sunak taken office we would not have had the Truss disaster and the biggest gift to any opposition by any politicians in living memory
Sunak would still have lost because it was a change election but not the wipe out that happened
No. Truss and Sunk making it to the final run off was the disaster. Once there, it was selecting from two poor options. The membership selected a chance of upside against no chance of upside, and they have been utterly vindicated in the event.
Liz Truss was thrown out whereas Rishi Sunak has the largest remaining Tory majority in the country. There are good reasons for this.
The membership chose Truss over Sunak because they're delusional fantasists who thought Truss sounded more like the Sainted Margaret.
@MichaelDnes1 It’s a truth universally acknowledged that road pricing is political suicide.
But what if it wasn’t? And what if I knew people who’d almost proved it?
Come with me, and try to avoid losing a trillion dollars as we go.🧵
Interesting thread. TLDR is - bring in road pricing on vehicles registered from a point in the future onwards and people won't complain. But, now is the time to act. Soon it will be too late not impose road pricing on existing vehicles and that will be unpopular.
I have to say, I'm not sure it would be accepted just like that, but it would certainly have a better chance than getting to 2028 and going "oh, what are we going to do?"
Thinking that road pricing on future vehicles isn’t political suicide is interesting.
That seems to assume that existing car owners can’t conceive of needing a new(er) car sometime in the near future.
If nothing else, it would crash the car market in interesting ways.
Road pricing is essential to avoid national bankruptcy with electric vehicles and by combining in car trackers that insurance companies use and ANPR cameras (to fine those who disable it) it is possible to actually do.
Rule 1 has to be to move the costs of motoring from being mostly sunk costs to mostly per mile costs. So petrol duty goes and VED goes. If you are bold MOT fees go and insurance goes (the road toll insures you instead and is factored into it). If you are really bold you move to pay for tbe car by mile through an account like Student loans that is paid for through the road toll.
So it is cheap (upfront) to buy a car, and expensive to use it. Good for selling cars and good for removing congestion.
People like pensioners will end up better off as they are low mileage.
Reps in flashy cars get hammered.
Lorries pay their fair proportion of road infrastructure building and maintenance costs.
Buses become a no brainer for short urban journeys cost wise and train fares become value compared with hammering up then M1.
Plus you can charge more at peak times when roads are congested, charge more for better quality roads and charge penal rates over short distances for rat runs and quarter mile journeys ending at schools during school "rush hour".
A revolution but something Starmer needs to get on with NOW to get it done over the heads of vested interests.
It might even change the balance so much that new or reopened railways /light rail become a commercialy viable proposition, privately funded.
Excellent stuff. The key is that transfer of cost from fixed to marginal.
Note that there is a re-distributional aspect to this as well - it means that poorer people who can't afford the massive upfront cost of cars suddenly have much better accessibility for those essential journeys that require a car.
Solution 1: Car clubs. Most cars spend 95% of their time parked up on the street, taking up valuable space in towns and cities, depreciating value. Car clubs solve that problem as well as the fixed/marginal inbalance.
Problem 1: Any road pricing scheme is highly vulnerable to screwing people over in rural areas by accident. This is also an opportunity though - sell it as making journeys in the rural areas much, much cheaper.
Thank you. Yes you would have to make per mile costs on rural roads cheaper (other than fast roads like the A30 west of Exeter) and good point about the levelling up/redistributive aspect.
You could also vary the price depending on how much mileage is done and charge more for excessive mileage (with some sort of credit if it is a one off and little mileage done in previous months),
Taking the A30 west of Exeter, you could charge more for using it between Exeter and Okehampton (where there is a rail alternative) than east of Okehampton (where there isn't) and give discounts to drivers who are not near a bus route (and to disabled drivers whos disabilities are such that they can't easily use a bus).
@MichaelDnes1 It’s a truth universally acknowledged that road pricing is political suicide.
But what if it wasn’t? And what if I knew people who’d almost proved it?
Come with me, and try to avoid losing a trillion dollars as we go.🧵
Interesting thread. TLDR is - bring in road pricing on vehicles registered from a point in the future onwards and people won't complain. But, now is the time to act. Soon it will be too late not impose road pricing on existing vehicles and that will be unpopular.
I have to say, I'm not sure it would be accepted just like that, but it would certainly have a better chance than getting to 2028 and going "oh, what are we going to do?"
Thinking that road pricing on future vehicles isn’t political suicide is interesting.
That seems to assume that existing car owners can’t conceive of needing a new(er) car sometime in the near future.
If nothing else, it would crash the car market in interesting ways.
Road pricing is essential to avoid national bankruptcy with electric vehicles and by combining in car trackers that insurance companies use and ANPR cameras (to fine those who disable it) it is possible to actually do.
Rule 1 has to be to move the costs of motoring from being mostly sunk costs to mostly per mile costs. So petrol duty goes and VED goes. If you are bold MOT fees go and insurance goes (the road toll insures you instead and is factored into it). If you are really bold you move to pay for tbe car by mile through an account like Student loans that is paid for through the road toll.
So it is cheap (upfront) to buy a car, and expensive to use it. Good for selling cars and good for removing congestion.
People like pensioners will end up better off as they are low mileage.
Reps in flashy cars get hammered.
Lorries pay their fair proportion of road infrastructure building and maintenance costs.
Buses become a no brainer for short urban journeys cost wise and train fares become value compared with hammering up then M1.
Plus you can charge more at peak times when roads are congested, charge more for better quality roads and charge penal rates over short distances for rat runs and quarter mile journeys ending at schools during school "rush hour".
A revolution but something Starmer needs to get on with NOW to get it done over the heads of vested interests.
It might even change the balance so much that new or reopened railways /light rail become a commercialy viable proposition, privately funded.
Excellent stuff. The key is that transfer of cost from fixed to marginal.
Note that there is a re-distributional aspect to this as well - it means that poorer people who can't afford the massive upfront cost of cars suddenly have much better accessibility for those essential journeys that require a car.
Solution 1: Car clubs. Most cars spend 95% of their time parked up on the street, taking up valuable space in towns and cities, depreciating value. Car clubs solve that problem as well as the fixed/marginal inbalance.
Problem 1: Any road pricing scheme is highly vulnerable to screwing people over in rural areas by accident. This is also an opportunity though - sell it as making journeys in the rural areas much, much cheaper.
All sounds good for the conservative / reform party in opposition.
Centrists here of both Tory and Libdem persuasion are still having more vapours about Farage winning five seats compared with Labours 400 odd I see.
I guess when you have had a monopoly of the right wing in parliament since the 1661 general election, a rival party of the right breaking through the first past the post wall and winning five seats as well as knocking you into third place in a lot of seats you held until this week is going to seem a bit existensial.
They do not like it.
Labour + Green + SDLP + WPB + Plaid + SNP (33.7% + 6.7% + 0.7% + 0.7% + 0.3% + 2.5) = 44.6%
I know the LDs/Alliance really really really want to count all their 12.6% of voters to the Left-wing block, but they're not. If I was being really generous I'd give them 60% of them and 40% to the Right-wing block. That'd still get you to only 51.1% v 44.2%, and that's on a reduced turnout where many Tories stayed at home.
Point is the country is still split into two-voter blocks. And there's not an awful lot between them, save the mathematics of FPTP, which computed into the landslide.
A lot can change quickly.
Reform aren't a right-wing bloc party, sorry. They compete against Tories and promise magic money tree for the NHS.
In some ways they are the anti-establishment mirror of the SNP.
Both parties argue that their constituents’ needs cannot be met within the current Westminster setup. SNP from the left(ish), Reform from the right.
One says independence is the solution, the other says - what? The Nietschian superman I suppose.
So you can’t group either into blocs with others because they are constitutionally set apart.
Plaid, not so much. More like SDLP, for now.
You can group them in in terms of whom they would support in government. So right now in mid 2024, the LDs would support a Labour-led government but almost certainly not a Conservative one. Reform would probably be the opposite way around. SNP would probably find it slightly tricky to support Labour but would never, ever support the Tories.
Casino is missing the point to a certain extent when he tries to split the Lib Dems down a 60-40 line and use that to keep them out of the left bloc. The Lib Dems would, in a hung parliament, have elevated Starmer with zero hesitation. He's right in that this reality can change but there's no sign of that any time soon.
Except they’ll be opposing them on quite a lot of stuff in this parliament, and they were part of a coalition with the Tories a decade back.
All Casino is effectively saying is that FPTP is the way it should be. That’s a circular argument, not one of principle.
Yes, the LDs coalitioned with the Tories in 2010. It's that experience that means they are fairly unlikely to repeat it any time soon! Of course the LDs will be opposing Labour at some points in this parliament, and if Labour start to do really badly in the eyes of LDs then you WILL see that drift away. Casino is right in implying the mutability of such support. But that future is undecided. Right now, the LD position on Labour v Tory is extremely clear, and will remain so until such a time that Labour or the Tories change. The likelier outcome, in my view, is that the LDs will still be on the Labour side of the fence come the next election.
That is risky given over 90% of LD seats now were won from the Tories, if they are sensible they will remain in the middle
And if Centrist southern Tories have any sense they will defect to the Libdems where they belong. Only needs 25 to defect and Libdems become the opposition. Less if a few right wingers join Reform.
And if the LDs are sensible they will turn them down.
Edit: Unless they have a dated photocopy of their letter to the 1922 committee no-confidencing Sunak.
I don’t quite know how to make this point, but it’s a serious one. Liz Truss generally comes across to me as a bit childish, lacking the kind of seriousness or gravitas you would normally expect. It seems to be a disease that has infected some on the right. They seem to want to shock and provoke rather than effect change. It’s a subtle thing, but they’re a long way from the kind of intellectual heft that sat behind the Thatcherite revolution.
Spot on.
Look at Liz Truss's PMQs performances, and look at Sunak's. And tell me who comes across as childish, wanting to provoke, and lacking the seriousness you'd expect.
Liz Truss.
You're just saying that as you're one of those lefty Tory haters who keep piling on poor Liz for no or partisan reasons.
Wait...
That's how @Luckyguy1983 will see it, despite me being on the Right of the party.
Can't compute that actually she was shit and a complete disaster for the brand.
You can go small state over time, but you can't be a fucking psycho about it.
Truss winning over Sunak was a disaster for the conservative party
Sunak is a decent person and widely complimented on his resignation speech, but poor at politics but then he had idiotic advisors
Had Sunak taken office we would not have had the Truss disaster and the biggest gift to any opposition by any politicians in living memory
Sunak would still have lost because it was a change election but not the wipe out that happened
No. Truss and Sunk making it to the final run off was the disaster. Once there, it was selecting from two poor options. The membership selected a chance of upside against no chance of upside, and they have been utterly vindicated in the event.
Liz Truss was thrown out whereas Rishi Sunak has the largest remaining Tory majority in the country. There are good reasons for this.
The membership chose Truss over Sunak because they're delusional fantasists who thought Truss sounded more like the Sainted Margaret.
Just to point out that there appear to be plenty more delusionists queueing up for when Sunak departs.
Go all in, but do it early. Get Patel and Braverman in as leader and then out on their backsides before 2029.
Listening to a Reform Party suppporting podcast (Maya Tousi) an interesting couple of narratives.
All about the Votes the Votes the Votes (they sound like certain Lib Dems used to do), and how the Tories split the Right vote and prevented Reform winning more MPs - which is a little optimistic, but possible.
"Imagine if one million voters had voted Reform not Tory, so we both had 5 million votes." Hmmm.
And they clearly need to learn how Parliament works, plus there will be lots of rhetoric about "Islamist" MPs.
That leaves me with 2 questions:
1 - How many 2nd places did the Tories get? 2 - How will Mr Farage get the attention he seeks in the House of Commons. Are we about to see lots of conflict with the Speaker a la Euro Parliament, or will he have engaged Dennis Skinner on a "how to cause trouble" consultancy contract? I expect he won't sweat the detail.
On point 2 it seems like they have an extremely embarrassing plan which they think is a wizard wheeze to get attention and show they mean business.
Centrists here of both Tory and Libdem persuasion are still having more vapours about Farage winning five seats compared with Labours 400 odd I see.
I guess when you have had a monopoly of the right wing in parliament since the 1661 general election, a rival party of the right breaking through the first past the post wall and winning five seats as well as knocking you into third place in a lot of seats you held until this week is going to seem a bit existensial.
They do not like it.
Labour + Green + SDLP + WPB + Plaid + SNP (33.7% + 6.7% + 0.7% + 0.7% + 0.3% + 2.5) = 44.6%
I know the LDs/Alliance really really really want to count all their 12.6% of voters to the Left-wing block, but they're not. If I was being really generous I'd give them 60% of them and 40% to the Right-wing block. That'd still get you to only 51.1% v 44.2%, and that's on a reduced turnout where many Tories stayed at home.
Point is the country is still split into two-voter blocks. And there's not an awful lot between them, save the mathematics of FPTP, which computed into the landslide.
A lot can change quickly.
The important numbers are 121 and 411. The Conservatives need to get to 300 seats or so to form the next government even if they can get into a coalition with Reform. Meanwhile Labour have an issuance policy of a coalition with the Lib Dems if their seat count is drastically cut.
That conventional thinking is quite wrong, as shown last week. Winning an extra 200 seats is not 200 times as difficult as winning one. We are not liberating Europe from the Nazis one village at a time. Seats are fought in parallel, not in series.
And talk of a Labour LibDem coalition forgets 2010 to 2015. Why should the LibDems want to repeat the circumstances of their demise? Why should Labour be interested in the Tories' little helpers?
On the LibDem side, you'd want to do it because the point of being a political party is to try to make the country better by getting your ideas enacted, not merely to be a protest group. There are certainly tactical lessons to be learnt from 2010-15 about how being a junior coalition partner can be mismanaged and go badly wrong, but it would be strange for an avowedly pro-PR party to refuse to ever enter into a coalition again just because we didn't do as good a job of it as we should have last time we tried.
The Liberals and LibDems have a long track record of getting their policies enacted; indeed I recall a study of manifestos going back to the 1960s which found that more policies had eventually been implemented from Lib/LibDem manifestos than from Tory or Labour. The downside is that they rarely get the chance to do it themselves.
There's a certain cadre of Conservatives who are only "Conservative" by virtue of their class and schooling, and have no real intention of doing anything right-wing and, indeed, are ashamed of it - they secretly despise the members because they're not.
They are just there because they want to be in office with their own kind.
It's a problem that goes back decades.
And had been slowly fading away until Cameron won the leadership when he put it into reverse.
Centrists here of both Tory and Libdem persuasion are still having more vapours about Farage winning five seats compared with Labours 400 odd I see.
I guess when you have had a monopoly of the right wing in parliament since the 1661 general election, a rival party of the right breaking through the first past the post wall and winning five seats as well as knocking you into third place in a lot of seats you held until this week is going to seem a bit existensial.
They do not like it.
Labour + Green + SDLP + WPB + Plaid + SNP (33.7% + 6.7% + 0.7% + 0.7% + 0.3% + 2.5) = 44.6%
I know the LDs/Alliance really really really want to count all their 12.6% of voters to the Left-wing block, but they're not. If I was being really generous I'd give them 60% of them and 40% to the Right-wing block. That'd still get you to only 51.1% v 44.2%, and that's on a reduced turnout where many Tories stayed at home.
Point is the country is still split into two-voter blocks. And there's not an awful lot between them, save the mathematics of FPTP, which computed into the landslide.
A lot can change quickly.
The important numbers are 121 and 411. The Conservatives need to get to 300 seats or so to form the next government even if they can get into a coalition with Reform. Meanwhile Labour have an issuance policy of a coalition with the Lib Dems if their seat count is drastically cut.
That conventional thinking is quite wrong, as shown last week. Winning an extra 200 seats is not 200 times as difficult as winning one. We are not liberating Europe from the Nazis one village at a time. Seats are fought in parallel, not in series.
And talk of a Labour LibDem coalition forgets 2010 to 2015. Why should the LibDems want to repeat the circumstances of their demise? Why should Labour be interested in the Tories' little helpers?
On the LibDem side, you'd want to do it because the point of being a political party is to try to make the country better by getting your ideas enacted, not merely to be a protest group. There are certainly tactical lessons to be learnt from 2010-15 about how being a junior coalition partner can be mismanaged and go badly wrong, but it would be strange for an avowedly pro-PR party to refuse to ever enter into a coalition again just because we didn't do as good a job of it as we should have last time we tried.
The Liberals and LibDems have a long track record of getting their policies enacted; indeed I recall a study of manifestos going back to the 1960s which found that more policies had eventually been implemented from Lib/LibDem manifestos than from Tory or Labour. The downside is that they rarely get the chance to do it themselves.
There's a certain cadre of Conservatives who are only "Conservative" by virtue of their class and schooling, and have no real intention of doing anything right-wing and, indeed, are ashamed of it - they secretly despise the members because they're not.
They are just there because they want to be in office with their own kind.
Robert Jenrick is the first leadership contender to break cover. He says the last government “insulted the public” by failing to deal with immigration. He sets out his stall here:
Robert Jenrick is the first leadership contender to break cover. He says the last government “insulted the public” by failing to deal with immigration. He sets out his stall here:
I don’t quite know how to make this point, but it’s a serious one. Liz Truss generally comes across to me as a bit childish, lacking the kind of seriousness or gravitas you would normally expect. It seems to be a disease that has infected some on the right. They seem to want to shock and provoke rather than effect change. It’s a subtle thing, but they’re a long way from the kind of intellectual heft that sat behind the Thatcherite revolution.
Spot on.
Look at Liz Truss's PMQs performances, and look at Sunak's. And tell me who comes across as childish, wanting to provoke, and lacking the seriousness you'd expect.
Liz Truss.
You're just saying that as you're one of those lefty Tory haters who keep piling on poor Liz for no or partisan reasons.
Wait...
That's how @Luckyguy1983 will see it, despite me being on the Right of the party.
Can't compute that actually she was shit and a complete disaster for the brand.
You can go small state over time, but you can't be a fucking psycho about it.
Truss winning over Sunak was a disaster for the conservative party
Sunak is a decent person and widely complimented on his resignation speech, but poor at politics but then he had idiotic advisors
Had Sunak taken office we would not have had the Truss disaster and the biggest gift to any opposition by any politicians in living memory
Sunak would still have lost because it was a change election but not the wipe out that happened
No. Truss and Sunk making it to the final run off was the disaster. Once there, it was selecting from two poor options. The membership selected a chance of upside against no chance of upside, and they have been utterly vindicated in the event.
Liz Truss was thrown out whereas Rishi Sunak has the largest remaining Tory majority in the country. There are good reasons for this.
The membership chose Truss over Sunak because they're delusional fantasists who thought Truss sounded more like the Sainted Margaret.
I think Robert Buckley summarised it well in his speech after losing in Swindon. He mentioned cheap populism and said "Do we value those who work to bring people together and to come into politics to do something rather than be someone? Or do we shrug our shoulders and accept politics as a mere circus?"
I don’t quite know how to make this point, but it’s a serious one. Liz Truss generally comes across to me as a bit childish, lacking the kind of seriousness or gravitas you would normally expect. It seems to be a disease that has infected some on the right. They seem to want to shock and provoke rather than effect change. It’s a subtle thing, but they’re a long way from the kind of intellectual heft that sat behind the Thatcherite revolution.
Spot on.
Look at Liz Truss's PMQs performances, and look at Sunak's. And tell me who comes across as childish, wanting to provoke, and lacking the seriousness you'd expect.
Liz Truss.
You're just saying that as you're one of those lefty Tory haters who keep piling on poor Liz for no or partisan reasons.
Wait...
That's how @Luckyguy1983 will see it, despite me being on the Right of the party.
Can't compute that actually she was shit and a complete disaster for the brand.
You can go small state over time, but you can't be a fucking psycho about it.
Truss winning over Sunak was a disaster for the conservative party
Sunak is a decent person and widely complimented on his resignation speech, but poor at politics but then he had idiotic advisors
Had Sunak taken office we would not have had the Truss disaster and the biggest gift to any opposition by any politicians in living memory
Sunak would still have lost because it was a change election but not the wipe out that happened
No. Truss and Sunk making it to the final run off was the disaster. Once there, it was selecting from two poor options. The membership selected a chance of upside against no chance of upside, and they have been utterly vindicated in the event.
I don’t quite know how to make this point, but it’s a serious one. Liz Truss generally comes across to me as a bit childish, lacking the kind of seriousness or gravitas you would normally expect. It seems to be a disease that has infected some on the right. They seem to want to shock and provoke rather than effect change. It’s a subtle thing, but they’re a long way from the kind of intellectual heft that sat behind the Thatcherite revolution.
Spot on.
Look at Liz Truss's PMQs performances, and look at Sunak's. And tell me who comes across as childish, wanting to provoke, and lacking the seriousness you'd expect.
Liz Truss.
You're just saying that as you're one of those lefty Tory haters who keep piling on poor Liz for no or partisan reasons.
Wait...
That's how @Luckyguy1983 will see it, despite me being on the Right of the party.
Can't compute that actually she was shit and a complete disaster for the brand.
You can go small state over time, but you can't be a fucking psycho about it.
Truss winning over Sunak was a disaster for the conservative party
Sunak is a decent person and widely complimented on his resignation speech, but poor at politics but then he had idiotic advisors
Had Sunak taken office we would not have had the Truss disaster and the biggest gift to any opposition by any politicians in living memory
Sunak would still have lost because it was a change election but not the wipe out that happened
No. Truss and Sunk making it to the final run off was the disaster. Once there, it was selecting from two poor options. The membership selected a chance of upside against no chance of upside, and they have been utterly vindicated in the event.
Liz Truss was thrown out whereas Rishi Sunak has the largest remaining Tory majority in the country. There are good reasons for this.
The membership chose Truss over Sunak because they're delusional fantasists who thought Truss sounded more like the Sainted Margaret.
I think Robert Buckley summarised it well in his speech after losing in Swindon. He mentioned cheap populism and said "Do we value those who work to bring people together and to come into politics to do something rather than be someone? Or do we shrug our shoulders and accept politics as a mere circus?"
Centrists here of both Tory and Libdem persuasion are still having more vapours about Farage winning five seats compared with Labours 400 odd I see.
I guess when you have had a monopoly of the right wing in parliament since the 1661 general election, a rival party of the right breaking through the first past the post wall and winning five seats as well as knocking you into third place in a lot of seats you held until this week is going to seem a bit existensial.
They do not like it.
Labour + Green + SDLP + WPB + Plaid + SNP (33.7% + 6.7% + 0.7% + 0.7% + 0.3% + 2.5) = 44.6%
I know the LDs/Alliance really really really want to count all their 12.6% of voters to the Left-wing block, but they're not. If I was being really generous I'd give them 60% of them and 40% to the Right-wing block. That'd still get you to only 51.1% v 44.2%, and that's on a reduced turnout where many Tories stayed at home.
Point is the country is still split into two-voter blocks. And there's not an awful lot between them, save the mathematics of FPTP, which computed into the landslide.
A lot can change quickly.
The important numbers are 121 and 411. The Conservatives need to get to 300 seats or so to form the next government even if they can get into a coalition with Reform. Meanwhile Labour have an issuance policy of a coalition with the Lib Dems if their seat count is drastically cut.
That conventional thinking is quite wrong, as shown last week. Winning an extra 200 seats is not 200 times as difficult as winning one. We are not liberating Europe from the Nazis one village at a time. Seats are fought in parallel, not in series.
And talk of a Labour LibDem coalition forgets 2010 to 2015. Why should the LibDems want to repeat the circumstances of their demise? Why should Labour be interested in the Tories' little helpers?
On the LibDem side, you'd want to do it because the point of being a political party is to try to make the country better by getting your ideas enacted, not merely to be a protest group. There are certainly tactical lessons to be learnt from 2010-15 about how being a junior coalition partner can be mismanaged and go badly wrong, but it would be strange for an avowedly pro-PR party to refuse to ever enter into a coalition again just because we didn't do as good a job of it as we should have last time we tried.
The Liberals and LibDems have a long track record of getting their policies enacted; indeed I recall a study of manifestos going back to the 1960s which found that more policies had eventually been implemented from Lib/LibDem manifestos than from Tory or Labour. The downside is that they rarely get the chance to do it themselves.
There's a certain cadre of Conservatives who are only "Conservative" by virtue of their class and schooling, and have no real intention of doing anything right-wing and, indeed, are ashamed of it - they secretly despise the members because they're not.
They are just there because they want to be in office with their own kind.
It's a problem that goes back decades.
It's a saving-grace that goes back decades.
Only for those of the left and centre left who (correctly) understands that the conservatives are why there isn't a right wing mainland GB party able to win seats in parliament as opposed do defecting and retaining (or had never been until Friday Morning)
Labour should introduce PR by the end of this term.
Why would they do that? The current system works perfectly for them.
Because, since the war LLG would have won 19 of 22 elections over Con/Ref and its predecessors. (That's ignoring the Nationalists - it would have been 20/22 if you count the Nats as left rather than right.)
I don’t quite know how to make this point, but it’s a serious one. Liz Truss generally comes across to me as a bit childish, lacking the kind of seriousness or gravitas you would normally expect. It seems to be a disease that has infected some on the right. They seem to want to shock and provoke rather than effect change. It’s a subtle thing, but they’re a long way from the kind of intellectual heft that sat behind the Thatcherite revolution.
Spot on.
Before wittering about immigration or whatever, the Tories need to think hard about the 4 things they have lacked or deliberately abandoned in recent years.
1. An understanding of Burkean principles - the idea that conservatism is about preserving the best of what we have built but also about building on that for the next generations - to leave the country in a better state than they found it. So it is not enough to focus only on one elderly generation but to remember those that are and those to come and to make life and opportunities better for them. (Why in God's name did a Conservative government kill off Sure Start? - to give just one example.)
2. Chesterton's Fence: you don't just randomly and angrily attack and destroy institutions and conventions just because they stand in your way. You are meant to be grown ups not tantruming toddlers. The attacks on the rule of law, on any standards of integrity and political decency, on independent institutions etc was pathetic, dangerous and, well, unconservative. See point 1.
3. Competence: obvious but forgotten. Just try to do your tasks well. Good administration, thinking about the consequences, thinking ahead, getting advice, planning, sorting out mistakes, learning from them, small practical improvements instead of snake oil promises backed by nothing more than bullshit etc. You forgot that. You will have to relearn this and try to demonstrate it where you can - in how you run your party and whatever councils you control. It will take time and you won't be listened to for a long time. But unless you do start doing this now, forget the rest.
4. Character: the single most important factor. The moral character, the integrity, the honesty of those who lead your party and those in it and how they behave says more about you than any manifesto. You chose some dreadful leaders in a Faustian pact which has well and truly bitten you on the arse. You abandoned all standards of political decency. You allowed corruption and shadiness and spivs in public office to fester. You gave the impression that duty and public service were jokes. The one abiding image for your years in power was parties in Downing Street while a widowed queen sat alone at her husband's funeral. That image stood for many who did their job while you treated their old-fashioned virtues with contempt. Really, how dare you call yourself conservative and behave like that.
Get these right. Then you can start worrying about policies. The current government will eventually make mistakes in all these areas. (I mean, Jacqui Smith, really?) But they won't listen to you until you've admitted you fucked things up and have changed.
Available for consultation at £1,3750 per hour + VAT or its euro equivalent. An absolute bargain.
This should be printed out and nailed to the Cabinet table in front of every chair. They should have to recite it at the start of every meeting.
This looks to be edging towards becoming a practical reality. Were it to do so, it would render an awful lot of the current energy market obsolete.
Design principles for enabling an anode-free sodium all-solid-state battery https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-024-01569-9 Anode-free batteries possess the optimal cell architecture due to their reduced weight, volume and cost. However, their implementation has been limited by unstable anode morphological changes and anode–liquid electrolyte interface reactions. Here we show that an electrochemically stable solid electrolyte and the application of stack pressure can solve these issues by enabling the deposition of dense sodium metal. Furthermore, an aluminium current collector is found to achieve intimate solid–solid contact with the solid electrolyte, which allows highly reversible sodium plating and stripping at both high areal capacities and current densities, previously unobtainable with conventional aluminium foil. A sodium anode-free all-solid-state battery full cell is demonstrated with stable cycling for several hundred cycles. This cell architecture serves as a future direction for other battery chemistries to enable low-cost, high-energy-density and fast-charging batteries.
Even journalists standing in Downing St wondering what might be announced is refreshing. Usually, by now, the Telegraph would have 70% of the full text, the Mail would be telling us all what to think about it, and the Sun would have anonymous senior sources complaining about it.
Comments
Of course, they won't do that, and one day they'll be out of power for another fourteen years, rueing the missed opportunity to have done the right thing by changing our politics for good.
I say all this as a low tax, neoliberal free marketeer by instinct (though more on the Orange-Booker side than the Tory side). She has done far more damage to these ideas than any left-wing politician ever could.
It's quite staggering how much damage was done to a political party's brand in so short an amount of time, by a single individual. Her former constituents have done Sunak and his eventual successor a tremendous favour by voting her out, as the parliamentary Tory Party will not need to figure out what to do with her.
Whenever the Conservatives 'earn the right to be heard' (as IDS recently put it) again, they need to focus on competence above anything else. Views on Europe, immigration, tax and all the rest are far lower priorities. The overwhelming reason for their collapse in this election was incompetence over the last parliament in general, and during the Truss administration in particular.
(I confess I feel a little sorry for Truss as an individual despite it all. She brought it all upon herself, did almost everything wrong, and deserves all she got, but such a meteoric collapse in view of the entire world must be devastating.)
'I received regular death and rape threats because of her.'
Former SNP Joanna Cherry tells of the fallout from being branded a 'transphobe' by former party leader Nicola Sturgeon, saying the gender recognition reform argument was merely a 'microcosm of her leadership'. [VIDEO]
https://x.com/LBC/status/1809900253157478726
Reform took 4% of the Labour vote. Less than from any other Party save the LD's. Including Greens.
The last time I looked at the numbers, maintaining their heritage church etc buildings costs the Government far more in France than the equivalent does in England.
So Richi has one last chance to completely screw over his colleagues by quitting early
Labour will not last long unless the SNP stay as they are which is highly unlikely.
She'd need to have decided which Party she supports first.
Quite a few I suspect judging by how often over the years things posted here end up in the press or things MPs say. Of course this might just be coincidental.
She doesn’t believe in the rule of law, never mind the ECHR.
All about the Votes the Votes the Votes (they sound like certain Lib Dems used to do), and how the Tories split the Right vote and prevented Reform winning more MPs - which is a little optimistic, but possible.
"Imagine if one million voters had voted Reform not Tory, so we both had 5 million votes." Hmmm.
And they clearly need to learn how Parliament works, plus there will be lots of rhetoric about "Islamist" MPs.
That leaves me with 3 questions:
1 - How many 2nd places did the Tories get?
2 - How will Mr Farage get the attention he seeks in the House of Commons. Are we about to see lots of conflict with the Speaker a la Euro Parliament, or will he have engaged Dennis Skinner on a "how to cause trouble" consultancy contract? I expect he won't sweat the detail.
3 - Will we see more Tory defections to Reform? Perhaps not until after the leadership election is determined.
75Lab, 72Brx/RFM, 66LDM, 61SNP, 59GRN, 52Con, 50PCY, 30OTH
So
- Green and Plaid lost a lot from 2019, but gained more from other parties
- SNP and Con lost a lot from 2019, but didn't gain more from other parties
- Lab and Brx/RFM and 66LDM kept their 2019 vote and gained from other parties
Takeawayshttps://www.thesun.co.uk/news/29014667/nigel-farage-reform-reservoir-dogs/
The SNP gave up any pretence of competence, accountability, ethics or reality "because INDY !!!", and now look at them.
The grand project is dead. They killed it.
This cannot happen unless the Tory Party rules are changed.
The leader must be an MP.
Rishi quits Parliament, he can't be leader.
Mordaunt is ineligible, as she isn't an MP.
Only alternative is a temporary leader.
Why should someone keep the seat warm for one who might not win the by-election. And probably wouldn't win the leadership?
No Tory not currently an MP will be the next leader.
It isn't going to happen.
It rather brings home what just happened.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/15/mp-eagles-not-welcome-constituency-received-funds-shooting-estate-chris-loder
https://raptorpersecutionuk.org/2023/01/03/more-info-revealed-on-dorset-polices-relationship-with-local-mp-the-botched-investigation-into-the-poisoned-white-tailed-eagle/
This, however, relies on gaining everyone's agreement.
Won't happen. All too complex.
Simple answer. Next leader will be one of the 121. Minus Rishi.
Once Labour pillage Scotland it will be back
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13h
Jim Allister celebrates his North Antrim win over Ian Paisley in style tonight. A piper leads the TUV leader & wife Ruth into the hooley in Ballymena's Tullyglass Hotel. Goujons, cocktail sausages, chips, traybakes & tea provided. And I'm told the orangeade was flowing! #GE24
https://x.com/SuzyJourno/status/1809715043866669484
Lab 33.69%
Con 23.70%
lead 9.99%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_general_election#Full_results
Opening more foodbanks is more her style
Note that there is a re-distributional aspect to this as well - it means that poorer people who can't afford the massive upfront cost of cars suddenly have much better accessibility for those essential journeys that require a car.
Solution 1: Car clubs. Most cars spend 95% of their time parked up on the street, taking up valuable space in towns and cities, depreciating value. Car clubs solve that problem as well as the fixed/marginal inbalance.
Problem 1: Any road pricing scheme is highly vulnerable to screwing people over in rural areas by accident. This is also an opportunity though - sell it as making journeys in the rural areas much, much cheaper.
It'll be more like the Famous Five:
"Five Get into Trouble"
I'm not sure how he'll deliver, but to me atm Farage bears a certain resemblance to a condom on a bicycle pump.
But again, the way to there is too complex.
* Because crossing the floor to become a Tory MP is relatively quick and simple when you're already an MP.
The process of becoming one when you aren't, isn't.
They are just there because they want to be in office with their own kind.
It's a problem that goes back decades.
Hunt would be the obvious place-holder.
The only people saying "no" would be a handful of people fearing they might not otherwise bounce the Party into being their Leader. Fuck 'em. Take your time.
Win back seats they lost to Lib Dems? I buy the argument the LDs have been working the seats for years and will be difficult to dislodge. The Cons have a handicap of 70 that doesn't apply to Lab.
Reform increases their vote share and/or improves targeting to take seats off Labour. Possible but they will also take seats off the Tories in that case taking them away from their 300+ seat target.
Reform fade away as their voters bleed to an even more Reform like Conservative Party. Also possible, and helpful to increasing the Tory seat count but probably not enough on its own.
Labour crashes and their voters forget how much they despised the previous Conservative government, and make the switch.
Some combination of these is likely essentially,under conventional thinking. Five years seems a challenge. 200 or so seats next time would be an OK result for them demonstrating they are still in the game.
Then there are the qualification rules to consider - how many supporters will a candidate need? Brady gerrymandered the rules last time to ensure a Sunak coronation. What are they going to say this time, 10 supporters? 20? Who will gather the required support to enter the contest? A stitch-up won't wash.
The membership chose Truss over Sunak because they're delusional fantasists who thought Truss sounded more like the Sainted Margaret.
You could also vary the price depending on how much mileage is done and charge more for excessive mileage (with some sort of credit if it is a one off and little mileage done in previous months),
Taking the A30 west of Exeter, you could charge more for using it between Exeter and Okehampton (where there is a rail alternative) than east of Okehampton (where there isn't) and give discounts to drivers who are not near a bus route (and to disabled drivers whos disabilities are such that they can't easily use a bus).
Edit: Unless they have a dated photocopy of their letter to the 1922 committee no-confidencing Sunak.
Go all in, but do it early. Get Patel and Braverman in as leader and then out on their backsides before 2029.
I be one of them.
There be quite a few escaped illegal immigrants roaming the countryside too after jumping out when the driver stops for a cuppa at Toddington.
Truss was a circus.
Were it to do so, it would render an awful lot of the current energy market obsolete.
Design principles for enabling an anode-free sodium all-solid-state battery
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-024-01569-9
Anode-free batteries possess the optimal cell architecture due to their reduced weight, volume and cost. However, their implementation has been limited by unstable anode morphological changes and anode–liquid electrolyte interface reactions. Here we show that an electrochemically stable solid electrolyte and the application of stack pressure can solve these issues by enabling the deposition of dense sodium metal. Furthermore, an aluminium current collector is found to achieve intimate solid–solid contact with the solid electrolyte, which allows highly reversible sodium plating and stripping at both high areal capacities and current densities, previously unobtainable with conventional aluminium foil. A sodium anode-free all-solid-state battery full cell is demonstrated with stable cycling for several hundred cycles. This cell architecture serves as a future direction for other battery chemistries to enable low-cost, high-energy-density and fast-charging batteries.
@sturdyAlex
Even journalists standing in Downing St wondering what might be announced is refreshing. Usually, by now, the Telegraph would have 70% of the full text, the Mail would be telling us all what to think about it, and the Sun would have anonymous senior sources complaining about it.
@davidyelland
For first time in years we have a PM not leaking to friends in press. This is partly why they are so angry. An era has ended. Their era.