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Like the Welsh rugby union team Welsh Labour are performing really badly – politicalbetting.com
Like the Welsh rugby union team Welsh Labour are performing really badly – politicalbetting.com
New @ITVWales poll puts Labour in THIRD in Wales, behind Plaid Cymru and Reform UK.If Labour don’t win next year’s Welsh elections, it’ll be first time they’ve not won an election there since 1922.?PLAID 30?REFORM 25?LABOUR 18?CONSERVATIVES 13?LIB DEMS 7?GREEN 5
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Good news for Wales
And Farage is taking all before him
Reform 29%
Labour 22%
Cons. 17% !!!!!
Lib Dem 16%
https://news.sky.com/story/politics-latest-local-elections-labour-reform-starmer-farage-tories-lib-dems-greens-12593360?postid=9546796#liveblog-body
So you and HY do have something in common!
And Labour might soon be joining them in the sub 20% range !
He's doing what public sector timeservers like him love doing, indeed fulfilling their raison d'etre - holding office and drawing a salary and its perks. The fact that few if any of his policies are working and most are actively harmful is irrelevant. When he almost quit after Hartlepool it was almost certainly because he looked unlikely ever to get the chance.
In the meantime, he has a huge majority where it counts and four more years till he needs to face the voters. Why would he quit?
F1: Briatore becoming team principal again (effectively) is not great to see.
Also suggests Colapinto's a done deal.
*Sorry Norns, no one cares.
The Tories are losing voters to Reform and the Lib Dem’s . The more they tack to the right the more will go to the latter and I don’t think you can out Reform Reform .
Labours Reform lite tribute act is also driving voters to the Lib Dem’s and Greens .
Its been an interesting season so far - great racing, a few shock driver changes. Needs to be some more, there's some "who?" drivers trundling around at the back every race as their teammate is much further forward.
https://x.com/LeftieStats/status/1919835891134083235?t=xTGw6ik3e6m-50ukwMd6Og&s=19
There is English (and Welsh) law. Scots Law. Northern Ireland, Isle of Man and the Channel Islands have their own laws which makes it reasonable(?) to have their own legislative bodies. But why Wales and the Senned? It's an outlier.
Off to find a tin hat.
Sauber were actually a little better last race. Hulkenberg 9th in the sprint and 14th (ahead of both Astons) in the race, but that was even with no VSC pit for him, yet one for Alonso (behind him).
Advice to Reform voters in Wales and elsewhere - do give some attention as to the name on the ballot paper!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senedd#:~:text=A democratically elected body, it,official languages of its business.
"The Conservative Party is nothing if not a party of power." Discuss with reference to the events of 2010-30.
(If nobody has said that, they should have. I would be happy to make up an attribution to go with it.)
But... have the Conservatives ever been so powerless? Mayors of Tees Valley and Cambridgeshire, some London boroughs, a few second-tier districts... and that's it.
I don't want Reform to succeed, and I still suspect that the anti-Reform vote is organised enough to beat them. But maybe the Conservatives need to die now so that the rest of politics can re-organise around them.
Its entirely possible this guy is away on business - had plans already post election and so what as there's no way they were getting elected...
I'm not sure what constituency they speak to now. Maybe a praetorian guard of historical loyalists.
That's it.
And we are not going to get good government anyway, there is no centre right, pro business party full of wisdom and experience, nor a confident, reforming centre left party.
Curious.
The problematic relationship with Russia and MAGA is still a question that has an answer that few will like.
"Events" can still go very wrong indeed for Farage. So I don't see any value in jumping on NF Nigel's bandwagon just yet.
Unfortunately Starmer and his government have been dreadful, not least in their political antenna, and with the conservatives suffering from electoral unpopularity the space has been given to Farage to walk through and he is a formidable politician
I never thought he could become PM but each day it seems more likely
This new Deportation Bill they have published, with intellectual titans like Matt I Like Parmos Me Vickers banging the drum for it.
If you support these policies Matt then why didn't your government introduce them? They had long enough. And that seems to be the general response to the Badenoch I'm Tough Bill - meh. Too little too late.
This now becomes their problem. They can try and radiate heat and light. But they're so far away from the political mainstream that the voters barely notice.
https://x.com/F1/status/1920011412618821792
"Your parents had a better life than you. Your life chances are ruined by Globalisation and Immigration"
It's the same pitch as Brexit
It doesn't matter that it's not true. Voters believe it.
Still, depressing doesn't even come close.
Do Labour MP's have the ruthlessness required to force out a Labour Prime Minister ?
So the dynamic is a little different.
And what is going to provide Starmer's Falkland's moment ?
If LabCon did that there would be an absolute pile-on. Reform? How dare you losers attack Nigel.
It all applies to the Conservatives as well. Voters have become completely comfortable with it, rightly or wrongly.
But I'm not president of the US.
REPORTER: Do you support Israel's plan to conquer Gaza?
TRUMP: These are very strange questions. I never like when they read them off of machines. Who is sending in a question to you? Let's not talk about that now. We're talking about the World Cup.
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1919855204234637557
"@DPJHodges
This perfectly encapsulates the problem with Keir Starmer. A couple of weeks ago he was proudly announcing the end of globalisation. This week he's proudly announcing tax cuts that will make it easier for Indian workers to take British jobs. It's utterly irrational politics."
https://www.twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1919809033432711242
Indigenous American have some news for the (ex) Great White Father.
I am baffled that Conservative politicians cannot see the inevitability of this. Yes Jenrick will be better at the messaging than Badenoch, but that actually would lead to Reform gaining on the Conservatives faster than they are now!
These conventions are common to stop people being double taxed. The Tories really have nothing to carp about .
So there's potential that Wales may once again be an action learning experiment in advance of England, as it has been for certain other policies - 20mph speed limits and more uniform increased Council Tax for second homes for two.
Do we have any information on Reform UK policies for Wales in 2026?
Looking at RefUK Welsh Manifesto for Senedd elections in 2021, this strikes me as interesting:
A REFORM UK GOVERNMENT WILL: Raise the threshold at which people start paying income tax to £20,000.
Page 6, here: https://reformparty.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/ReformUK-Economic-Plan.pdf
That pledge was preserved unchanged into the RefUK 2024 Election for the UK, so I think will come back. It will be interesting to see if that makes it back into RefUK's proposals for the Senedd in 2026.
I don't believe that the Senedd has the power to set tax thresholds ... unless I missed something,as I have not followed Welsh politics in real detail for some time.
The RefUK economic document for the 2021 Senedd Election is here. The basic assumption is that their policies would increase growth by +1.25% per annum from year one.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210614082024/https://www.reformparty.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/ReformUK-Economic-Plan.pdf
I don't think he can get them much more than 20%, but at least it's not extinction. My older relatives would be comfortable voting for him, even as a protest against Farage.
So much criticism of their final couple of PMs and the "those are Labour policies" direction. Surely the obvious play for a new Tory leader is to wash their hands of those policies. "We got completely lost, lets go back to our roots".
A Tory leader talking up low tax small government pro business culturally conservative policies would be onto something. Yes, a threat from the populist mob but they don't actually have any solutions and we do. People are flocking to Farage not because the end place is no migrants, it's what they imagine that future society to do for them.
Start with the end in mind. Here is our vision. We are BRITAIN. Migration is just a detail, no matter how much certain lunatics spaff off about how migrants are staying in 4* luxury. Look beyond that.
Also, in around 1981, both Thatcher and Reagan were incredibly unpopular because of economic conditions.
Thatcher benefited from the Falklands & North Sea Oil, but neither of these factors applied to Reagan. And yet, the US economy improved rapidly at the same time as that of the UK, and Reagan was also elected in a landslide.
They are at the 66:33 ratio to the Tories that I’d postulated as the tipping point. I think this may be it.
Whether the Lib Dems can be brought along by the tidal changes, as the most obvious antithesis to Reform, really depends on electoral geography and their ability to replace both the one nation Conservatives and Labour in rural England.
So many "Brexit politics are over" pieces from 2022 will look really stupid if UK politics ends up with Reform and LibDems at 25% and Conservatives and Labour fighting it out for 3rd place at 15% with the Greens at 10.
Under a Conservative-Lib Dem coalition in 2012, the UK and Chile signed an agreement exempting temporary workers from social security contributions for *five* years
Not undercutting then, not undercutting now with India
Do better, people
https://x.com/AllieRenison/status/1919884275102400992
My guess is it isn't Zero but that the actual number is quite low.
Footnote: because the Labour mega majority is new and strange, less attention is being given to the fact that the great majority of seats in danger are Labour. Holding so few, the Tories can't lose more than 100 or so. Labour could lose over 300.
I wonder if in fact 500+ seats are now not 'safe'.
https://x.com/SamCoatesSky/status/1919995617025171491?t=hfRhAfJDY49TtwJpDFbNVA&s=19
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_1983_United_Kingdom_general_election
There's no leader that can claw the Conservatives back right now, IMHO.
ETA none of the above involves Starmer being deposed. I imagine he will retire early but on his own terms.
https://www.countypress.co.uk/news/25142745.new-reform-uk-councillor-fails-appear-isle-wight-county-hall/
Belfast West
Mid-Ulster
West Tyrone
Newry & Armagh
South Down
are, I think, all safe in 2029.
Safe as in betting odds of 1.001? Zero
Safe as in 1.01? <100
Safe as in 1.1-1.2? 200-250
Labour have crippled themselves by both having silly tax promises in their manifesto, and then keeping to the silliest aspects of the promises. Will Reform learn anything?
It turns out Darren Grimes’ mam Jacqueline Teasdale was a paper candidate in the local elections, and his brother Craig Marshall was too.
All three are now councillors in #Durham.
https://democracy.durham.gov.uk/mgMemberIndex.aspx?bcr=1
https://bsky.app/profile/reformexposed.bsky.social/post/3loixtloyz22f
And for goodness sake find someone who has at least a fractional clue at communications.
Perhaps a tell tale will be with their fantasy "slash DEI" nonsense with respect to local Government, and how they react when they discover it the target mainly does not exist - especially to the extent they have been shouting about, and is likely to be illegal anyway in large measure. It is also afaics many of their own base who will be in the crosshairs.
I'd say Lincs is the one to watch here, as the only place where they have both the Mayor and the County Council.
How far will emotion triumph over reality?