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As the beauty parade begins – politicalbetting.com
As the beauty parade begins – politicalbetting.com
This week is key to the Tory leadership contest as the four candidates make their pitch at conference, as we saw in 2005 one good speech can upend a race.
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https://conservativehome.com/2024/09/29/jenrick-starts-to-close-the-gap-with-badenoch-in-our-pre-conference-leadership-survey/
Ratings Rankings for Vice Presidential Debates
2008: 69.9 Million
2020: 57.9 Million
1984: 56.7 Million
2012: 51.4 Million
1992: 51.2 Million
1988: 46.9 Million
2004: 43.5 Million
1976: 43.2 Million
2016: 36.0 Million
2000: 28.5 Million
1996: 26.6 Million..
https://x.com/nick_field90/status/1840540307961544964
I think we are at that point where MPs put up Cleverley against Jenrick in the members ballot, and Jenrick wins.
I almost spat out my coffee when Chris Mason said, apropos of the leadership election and Rishi's speech, that there is another month of this.
Surely everyone who has a vote knows who they will be voting for. Let's hold the ballot this evening and be done by Weds elevenses.
But, I do think it should finish one week earlier so the new leader can respond to the Budget and isn't overshadowed by the US presidential.
All I know is that I will not be voting for Jenrick.
If you want anyone to understand the bits between the lines in the Budget, it’s Spreadsheet Rishi.
Plus what on earth are you doing as members of the Nasty Party in the first place.
I suspect that for all your "I don'ts" if you were forced to make a decision today and name a name it would be the same one as you will eventually vote for on polling day.
Deep down she knows if she wins, she'd shit the bed with the budget response.
Looking forward to this debate, in a different way to Trump and Harris. Suspect there will be more policy and less personality.
I also suspect the recorded viewing figures will be well down, as most people will be watching it online rather than on TV, and not all on the official stream.
If SKS had been able to book tickets to a major sporting event plus hospitality for £350, the last three weeks might never have happened.
Not exactly mouth stuffed with gold is it.
TopCashBack gave me £30 for buying my car insurance through them.
Still precious little evidence that many (any) have done any deep thinking or have a plan.
Well done SNP, a winning policy. Even though alcohol related deaths increased when they promised the introduction of MUP would see them fall the policy is a winner as its advocates have said.
Meanwhile
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-61710564
And that's another thing. I used to work in Covent Garden and find it hard to believe anyone would pay £18 million to live there.
What I want to hear from the Tory candidates is who can restore the Conservative Party, removing the batshit English Revolutionary Party we've had this last decade or so. A Tory party focused on business investment and value for money in public services would be a very welcome thing, regardless of political affiliation.
You'll probably make some trite insult about me as always, but we do need the Tories back. You may disagree...
Which means policies are not actually that important at the moment (for anything discussed now will be irrelevant in 4 years time) except for policies that may attract Reform / Lib Dem voters. Now Jenrick is going all in on removing the ECHR which may attract Reform voters but it does mean that he's picked a smaller pond to fish in and one that will utterly repulse the voters in the other pond.
Crazy though the timetable is, it's probably what happens if a party is mad enough to call a July election and lose. (See also the Budget.)
The conference had to have a role, and that could either be the beauty parade or the big reveal. I guess the latter could have been made to work... Westminster rounds in July, before the summer recess. Membership vote in September, announcement today. I suspect that works better on paper than in reality. So you end up with what we have.
Railway timetable theory of history, except the timetable is by Avanti West Coast.
Feels to me like Tory MPs still haven’t learnt their lesson. Members (and then the electorate) decisively chose Johnson, and utterly rejected Jeremy Hunt. Johnson casually defenestrated by MPs. Members decisively choose Truss, utterly rejecting Sunak. Tory MPs think it a good idea to instead fight the election with a duo of Sunak and Hunt.
If this most “sophisticated” electorate think it wise to keep her name off the ballot, they deserve everything coming to them.
Yoon's approval rating sinks to lowest point since taking office
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=383344
President Yoon Suk Yeol's approval rating has fallen to 25.8 percent, the lowest level since he took office in 2022, with the negative assessment of his performance topping 70 percent for the first time, a poll showed Monday...
At least an hour for each candidate, we want to hear their vision and not just a 10m sofa chat filled with soundbites and platitudes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZG95grO-vc
The irony is that the issue he campaigned on, ending NHK's (the Japanese BBC's) licence fee, is wildly popular.
We all know what needs to be done (less consumption, more investment) but nobody knows how to be thanked for saying it.
I know that because I've continually objected to the proposed changes to the ECML timetable as LNER / Lumo try to remove trains from Durham / Darlington on dubious grounds.
Thankfully their arguments disappear when Darlington's realignment is finished..
But anyway, Network Rail is government-owned and ran...
But arithmetic can only be defeated for so long, and I'd rather not live through national bankruptcy or total defeat.
The truth is that theUK (sans London) is one of the poorest regions in the Western World and investment needs to be focussed on it to get things going.
What that investment looks like is the impossible question but it's why in the North Labour's opponents in the next election are going to be Reform rather than the Tories.
He would have wiped the floor with Starmer, possibly even building on his prior majority. Instead due to the quirks of FPTP, a small fraction of the electorate has hoisted socialism on the country.
Not a comfortable thing to admit if you have an aversion to Johnson the man, but it’s hard to deny that he’d have won another majority.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpw5yyjx75po
Not at all weird that Topping comments on something he hasn't looked at ?
Now Bozo before the money spent on Covid (and the spending cuts afterwards) would in all likelihood have won a second election but that world does not exist anymore..
Swinson: 3.7m votes (11.6%)
Davey: 3.5m votes (12.2%).
Doesn’t especially feel like the joyful stunts achieved much, more the ruthless efficiency of the LD operation under FPTP, combined with the Tory vote being split.
"Scotland has detected no cases of cervical cancer in women born between 1988-1996 who were fully vaccinated against HPV between the ages of 12 and 13."
https://x.com/johnthejack/status/1839750751414886514
I didn't particularly like Boris in many ways myself but both of those needed charisma and Hunt would I imagine have failed spectacularly at both.
I mean you can read, can't you.
Labour legal donation - good
Tory legal donation - bad
And vice versa.
Requires some serious anti-Beeb animus to read anything more than that into it.
If they don’t want to do it with Neil, then give them Stephen Sackur from BBC World News, he’s interviewed every mad and bad dictator over the last couple of decades.
As to the sporting ticket costs - that's just an indication of Football vs other sports.
He would not get my vote, but if there is to be a successor to Farage in public life (WRT capacity to have a public face which is populist and not entirely content free) Baker is a candidate.
Is he by any chance writing a book?
Texas Net Favorables:
Allred: +5%
Walz: -2%
Trump: -2%
Vance: -4%
Harris: -4%
Cruz: -8%
Public Policy Polling / Sept 26, 2024
https://x.com/USA_Polling/status/1840569612254974001
- The Lib Dem vote was extremely inefficient (by contrast Davey's vote in 2024 was merely proportional), as the party remained in the wilderness in its old SW seats while making progress, but not enough, in the Blue Wall
- Only a couple of months before they were at 18%+ and talking hubristically about making huge gains
- Swinson lost her own seat
Without Brexit as a lightning rod in the 2019-24 parliament the party could have rendered itself irrelevant. That it didn't, and managed a bump up during the campaign, is down to astute targeting and a positive campaign that gave everyone permission to vote tactically.
Allred may be colored but he was born in Texas and I expect those things at worse cancel themselves out and being local will usually significantly override the color issue.
Also he's against Cruz who during local disasters flies to Mexico on holiday.
I admit to being surprised how quickly that coalition disintegrated. Covid was a factor, and a challenge to governments that were a lot more effective than Johnson's. But for the rest I think the blame for the collapse lies entirely with the man himself. Fundamentally he was unsuitable for the job, which should have been obvious to everyone.
For the Lib Dems it's tricky. Brexit is done so banging on about Europe isn't going to pay dividends, especially while the EU goes through an economic downturn. So they could end up opposing things they know will chime with local voters, and that risks plunging them down the NIMBY rabbit hole which will lose them even staunch loyalists like me.
Badenoch has clearly had a gaffe which won't help her either
governing and campaigning are entirely different skills. But a man talented at the former and not the latter will almost never be elected. A man skilled in the latter but not the former will be. Yet the long term impact on the nation is solely dependent on governing.
I agree with you, probably obviously, on Johnson always being unsuitable. Conservative MPs signed their own medium (perhaps long) term death warrant by rejecting Hunt in favour of Johnson. He then hollowed out the party, culling those not on his wing, making it very difficult for them to compete on the centre ground.
I would guess the avuncular Cleverly is best at that sort of thing, and Kemi worst, but you will probably know best.
I'm just up there for the day tomorrow so unlikely to witness any of the interesting backroom stuff sadly.
Unless... the fact that I am now of these people's generation means I have entirely different standards... which means to today's 20 somethings I probably look qualitatively no different to how my generation thought William Hague ot Tony Blair looked.
Does the second place person get a £10 prize?
FPT I think: Of interest to a few ( @HYUFD and @MrBedfordshire at least, I think), Calvin Robinson explaining his understanding of ecclesiology, priestly orders, intercommunion, orthodoxy, and ecumenism - from his website.
https://www.calvinrobinson.com/p/ordained-to-priesthood-in-the-presbyteral
Personally, I think his political and cultural judgements are way off, but I'm interested to hear his explanation of his position on these particular questions.
Then whichever of Cleverly or Tugendhat is knocked out will send their votes to the other.
So it will almost certainly be Jenrick and Tugendhat or Cleverly Tory MPs send to the members.
Badenoch lost this race when she lost most of the ERG right to Jenrick. Much as Portillo lost in 2001 when he lost the Thatcherite right to IDS while the One Nation candidate remained Clarke and Mordaunt lost in 2022 when she lost the ERG right to Truss who ended up in the last two with Sunak
Picking a new Hezbollah leader is a lot like picking a Pope. When a new one has been confirmed it is signified by a sudden plume of smoke.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/24614945.scottish-conservatives-fewer-members-alba-party/
The east and Gulf coast dockworkers strike is due to start tomorrow . The GOP are already blaming Biden and Harris and the strike could have a huge impact on the economy .
Biden is reluctant to use the Taft-Hartley Act to force a cooling off period as that would be seen as anti-union . Much depends on how long the strike lasts for .
If you want a Harris win then start praying for a quick resolution to the strike .
Robert Jenrick has said the Star of David should be displayed at every point of entry to the UK to show “we stand with Israel”.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/robert-jenrick-calls-for-star-of-david-at-every-point-of-entry-to-the-uk/ar-AA1rs8J1?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=4d3a85adf87341b8b1c1675f24272084&ei=9
This one might be a good contest to lose though.