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The great disappointment – politicalbetting.com
The great disappointment – politicalbetting.com
30% of Britons see Labour and the Conservatives as similar, with this view doubling among Labour voters since last AugustAll Britons: 30% say similar (+5 from 13-14 Aug 2024)By party voted for in 2024Conservative: 18% (=)Labour: 25% (+12)Lib Dem: 26% (+4)Green: 51% (+14)Reform UK: 53% (+12)
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What they have done is take centre-right positions on defence and welfare spending, however - and more effectively than the Conservatives did - which is a sweet place to be electorally.
They are simultaneously alienating their own voters and failing to win back former voters gone to Reform. Hence falling Labour polling, rising Reform polling, rising LD and Green polling and the Conservatives watching the world pass them by.
And more of the same is exactly what the claim that Tories and Labour are identical is playing into and emphasising.
That doubling of Labour voters who think the Tories and Labour are similar suggests this might be a fertile ground for Farage & Reform, as well as the Greens, Lib Dems, and for the Celtic nationalists as Labour's support potentially splinters in several directions.
I suspect they will be pretty rubbish at running councils. Speaking of which, how would Farage resolve the bins in Brum? Maybe someone would like to ask him. Unless they have some ex-counsellors in their ranks - maybe defectors from the Tories? - they will be pretty clueless from day one.
They are right where they need to be to capture swing voters in English marginals in a GE.
The header illustrates Unaparty rhetoric, perhaps.
In addition to the comments made, does that make the Greens (nationally) the mirror of Reform nationally. To me that suggests that makes local performance important. Personally I would vote for Greens locally, but would not nationally due to their dodgy economic policies.
Labour rarely cut taxes though they have in the past.
The Conservatives often cut public spending but it's Labour who do it more brutally whether now or back under Healey in the mid 70s.
It's not a question of being two sides of the same coin or two cheeks of the same arse - it's the circumstances in which they find themselves and the responses they are able to put forward. If you are having issues with the public finances what are your options? Some argue for raising taxes and cutting spending, others argue for cutting taxes and spending to generate growth. It's not however an either/or or even a both/and.
At a fundamental level, it's about the kind of life and society we all want or are willing to pay for. It's also about some form of longer term vision for what the country could or should be in terms of what it provides for its citizens and the obligations placed on its citizens in return. I'd rather we'd spent 2016 discussing that than whether we should be in the European Union.
Reform and the Greens are by far the most similar parties, because they don't believe in the physical universe in which we live.
Cut those pesky Anglo-Saxons out of the equation and just have proper Brits running things.
This now qualifies as mid-term, even if that's mathematically generous on the semantics.
They won in July 24 with wide but shallow support, as I am sure you recognise. As such they are highly geared. They have lots of safe seats (though some are not as safe as they thought, see Leicester South and Leicester East), but very many more vulnerable ones when the tide goes out. I reckon that Labour will have 150-200 seats after the next GE.
Labour have raised them much more.
The difference is that Conservatives will raise if they think they must, whereas Labour will raise as far as they can so they can achieve their social and public policy objectives.
If we still had continuous economic growth, and broad social stability, neither would feature.
The Reform one has a strong flavour of orange nuts.
It's always risky to turn your back on your traditional core, but it worked for previous winners.
In the short term, they might as well keep buggering on- it will either work by 2028/9, or it won't. And some of the disenchantment is just that there isn't a magic way out of the state we are in.
It will take years to recover; however funding in real terms has built since 2018. I think the difference wrt the Starmer Govt is that we can expect them to plan further than the end of their nose, rather than run in headless chicken mode. The increase in the Local Authority component of funding is notable.
Various components of police funding 2015-2025 at 2025 prices.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-funding-for-england-and-wales-2015-to-2025/police-funding-for-england-and-wales-2015-to-2025
Part of that was Sunak's decision to locate the CCS boondoggle at Teeside.
They might be crackers though.
Trump is an arsehole, but it’s not in our interest to have him cut off intelligence to Ukraine and to other things that hurt the West, out of spite.
Hence, having campaigned on change but not yet delivered any, Labour's rating is tanking, but so is the Tories' - since being disappointed at the lack of change doesn't mean people have forgotten what we wanted to change from.
(From memory, DYOR)
We have to import both the coking coal and the iron ore, so don't have real strategic advantage over simply importing steel.
Telegraph
Labour, on the other hand, would prefer to expand the reach of State provision to help as many of those as they see to be in need of help and to provide a better quality of life by service provision so will raise taxes if necessary to meet that goal.
Thus, it's a choice (of sorts) between low personal taxation and lesser public services and higher personal taxation and better quality services, in theory.
If you believe the public sector is a bottomless pit which will never be better irrespective of whether you pour in billions or trillions, fine, the Conservatives will get your vote every time.
If you think the State is doing a good job and needs all the help it can get to provide for the disadvantaged and those in genuine need of help to lead a decent life, the Labour box is for you.
It's far more nuanced than that of course.
Brisbane is amazing place which is putting up 80 storey buildings at pace for the population and forthcoming Olympics. Things may be described as terrible for the current PM but the streets don’t reflect it
Pic
Meanwhile it is emerging that Farage/Reform HQ seems to have been trying to get rid of their IOW East candidate because some of her views are quite extreme, hence her walking out as party chair and candidate, taking some of the committee with her. There's a council by-election on 1 May, which they stopped her standing for, so now Reform is putting up a candidate, and their former parliamentary candidate is also standing, now as an Independent. Should be interesting.
It's in the style of old fashioned Radio 4, liberal, humerous, tolerant, pointy headed, though with less attempt to strike a balance between sane and lunatic positions. There is something even more chilling about these sane and well informed people discussing their own country's descent into authoritarianism in the last five minutes or so.
Its chairman became globally famous a couple of weeks ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPnOQRf5GO0
East Ham Police Station was sold - bought by the University of East London, I believe. The problem with selling a Police station is the operational impact. If someone is arrested, they now have to go to Manor Park to be processed which takes offices off patrol for an inordinate amount of time reducing cover and that's before we get into the whole issue of translators etc, etc. When the offender could be dropped off at a local station, the time spent not doing the job was much reduced.
She was a fairly strong performer in the GE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Wight_East_(UK_Parliament_constituency)
Populations that are generally comfortable, but aware of a slow loss of ethno-national supremacy and a little bored, talking themselves into revolution on social media.
These govern our lives and spend the money. Almost all the differences are window dressing or trivial, or (as today) driven by a crisis.
There is still a reasonable amount of inward migration, but it is controlled migration, and the migrants are all skilled migrants, who are law-abiding & assimilate easily (because they are educated).
The chance to actually make our grid robust enough and reliable enough to have mass electric vehicles having unfortunately been missed, we are rather stuck on this.
I am saying this without looking at the details so I don't know the difference in revenue generation, nor which has a bigger impact on the economy. It is just a gut feel for me so happy to be proved wrong. The employer NI obviously deters employers from expanding, but the employee impacts consumers buying power.
https://strawpoll.com/BDyNzOwk4yR
And I’m so cross that it might happen due to Starmer’s huge majority, because it’s such lazy pathetic lefty government to even consider it. This Plants loss making because it can’t compete with competition for its expensively produced product, it also can’t comply with Net Zero so has to close anyway if it doesn’t do massively expensive electric refit. Labour are so out of touch if they think they can rush this through during an election campaign - they will break the ministerial code with this stunt - the British tax payer taking this ENORMOUS LIABILITY on.
UK government can’t use this steel in any UK projects, as it would make those projects massively more expensive and beyond affordable - Labour don’t have an answer to this reason British government always sensibly imports much much cheaper steel for all its projects - happy to import cheap steel from abroad for projects with public money is a policy that proves UK is hundreds of times smarter than Donald Trump.
Anyone saying yes Nationalise it are saying yes take seven hundred thousand pounds each week away from the NHS, and throwing the good money into a furnace - madness - only stupid people like Trump and Reform Supporters are saying Nationalise this money pit. Now let’s watch how many Labour MPs are going to stand up and flag up to their tax paying, NHS long time waiting list constituents how useless and stupid they are, taking our country back to nationalisation. Today the Thatcherite Conservative opposition will absolutely shred Labour in debate.
Reform won’t win anything but they will winge win or lose.
It’s also never too late to do something meaningful on EV infrastructure, but tug evidence suggests it’s at least partly the loss of major cost advantages between off premises charging and petrol prices that has caused the slow down.
In our own recent history, Brexit was a key factor in 2019 election.
And in 2024, Gaza probably cost Labour 10 seats?
Either the centre-left finds an answer, or the far right will get the chance to prove yet again to history that the snake oil doesn't work, or there will come a tipping point where the younger mostly losers from the current economic settlement become the majority and vote for something much more radical on the left.
What I will say is that I wouldn't want to be the Treasury at the moment, Trump has made predicting the future utterly impossible because you can no longer even use the assumption based on past experience the USA will continue to work as before.
Globalisation is either dead or dying. The belief that we can buy anything from anywhere and need only choose the cheapest is seeping away, day by day. The Ukraine war has taught us that we need to make our own steel for our own armed forces, because another country may simply refuse to sell to us. Since such strategic products cannot be left to the vicissitudes of the market, they must be nationalised.
A yucky bowl of Pea Soup? We are smarter than this, PB!
Hard, long-term decisions are required but if anyone attempted to be really honest with the electorate they would howl and whine because a substantial wedge of the electorate want everything to be excellent (healthcare, education, defence) but don't want to pay the price necessary (not personally at least). No party can square that circle so the voters lurch about latching on to the next snake-oil salesman.
Like it or not autocracies have the upper hand over democracies in this respect which is why I also expect China to win its battle with Trump.
In the short term, this might not matter politically because, as a wise man once said, it started in America so no-one will blame our own government but further out it will have wrecked many retirement plans and left younger workers, especially those newly and compulsorily enrolled into DC pension schemes, wondering what on earth is the point if their savings are instantly eroded.
(but you're right and it's a good point)
Does anyone know what the annual ongoing subsidy required would be ?
SKS doesn't want to go into the locals with Nigel Paul banging on about how 2TK has killed the Great British Steel Industry so we have to import inferior, "woke" steel from Neutral Moresnet. The government is just neutralising the issue so it's not a political problem. The financial and strategic implications can take care of themselves or go and fuck themselves. Whichever is easier.
Two years ago,
@Nigel_Farage
said the govt shouldn’t step in to help British steelworkers.
As with his calls to privatise the NHS and his sucking up to Putin over Ukraine, he can’t escape his record.
Labour WILL step in and stand up for British jobs today - and defend the national interest.
https://x.com/paulwaugh/status/1910956322650009955
After all, our country did pretty well through history when we had decent, high-performing monarchs, but sadly every so often inheritance or events delivered us up a numpty or villain.
There are multiple reasons for this. Just one is the greater ability of autocracies to make difficult long term decisions
I’ve just discovered that one gulag here - just one camp - Karlag - was 60,000 square km in size (arguably larger). That is to say: almost the size of Scotland
(Insert joke about Wick, here)
Where’s the autobiography Ace? At least one chapter of diamond smuggling too now. You need to type it up before you lose rest of your fingers in your workshop.
Per your second point: foreign companies may refuse to sell to us via politics, or be unable to sell to us via warfare. If it is necessary for national survival then it has to be sourced locally. The "invisible hand" of the free market can be broken by violent or coercive action and cannot be relied upon in extremis.
In USA, which just elected a fascist government, the median household income is still higher, and living standards better, than a decade or two decades ago. And even in stagnating Western economies, with the possible exception of Japan, the average person is better off now with higher life expectancy, higher literacy, cleaner air and water than during the supposed peak of Western supremacy in the 1990s.
Thanks to global liberal capitalism, reinforced in Europe by sensible regulation and social programmes. The main fly in the ointment is the galloping warming of the atmosphere and oceans.
It’s easy to criticise “neoliberalism” and
globalisation but frankly nobody has made any real effort to explain what would be better. It struck me in Mexico this week. A country that has doubled real GDP per capita in 20 years.
There are other problems - big ones - but they are cultural and societal, not economic.
Can flesh be put on the skeleton beyond the truism that we need policies X, Y and Z but don't want the price. In other words, do pointy headed people work on and publish detailed manifestos of what policies X, Y and Z are, how much they cost, how the money would be raised, what society would look like in the 5, 10, 15 year term and so on?
For what you say is often said. But does anyone tekll me what it looks like in detail, both the pluses and the downsides?
Without it, it remains a truism only.
The varieties - on 106 rootstock are:
Ashmeads Kernel
Egremont Russet
and
Concorde Pear
We already have pear, apple and plum trees in the front plus blackberries, white and redcurrants and a huge bay tree.
Whether I will live to see these trees grow to maturity is another matter. But as the Greeks said:
"A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit."
It’s one of those days I wake up and realise all my fellow PBers are total Trumpicons? Don’t you listen to me and Barty Bobbins?