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Will the Lib Dems win more seats than the Tories? – politicalbetting.com
Will the Lib Dems win more seats than the Tories? – politicalbetting.com
I am not sure there’s any value in backing either side of this bet (due to the payout timeframe) but it shows the pickle Kemi Badenoch’s Tory party finds itself in that the Lib Dems are just 6/5 to win more seats at the next general election than the Tories.
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If a hung parliament next time which of the Tories or LDs win most seats could also be key to whether Farage or Starmer becomes PM. Assuming the Tories would back Reform and the LDs would back Labour
With Starmer in charge Labour lost her vote, to Reform.
In the event Corbyn creates himself a new party, I have no doubt she will be switching back to Corbyn's new party.
I wonder how common she is amongst the current Reform voters ?
Basically left behind, wanting a massive shake up with very left leaning economic ideas ?
I suspect there may be a rather large cross over between Farage and Corbyn supporters and this new party may have some unexpected results in where they get their voters from.
They could, if they ever crawl out of their comfort zone. Middle-class, liberal city-dwelling and rocket sandwich-devouring supporters are all well and good, but if they want to get well into triple figures they need to be able to get at least centrists on side, if not the soft right.
Polling start to the morning with YouGov this week
Ref 28 (=)
Lab 26 (=)
Con 16 (-1)
LD 15 (-1)
Green 11 (+1)
And Sky/MiC have a Senedd poll out which will cheer Labour up a bit as they are back in the game, another absolute shocker for the Tories though
🔷Reform: 28%
🌼 Plaid Cymru: 26%
🌹 Labour: 23%
🌳 Conservatives: 10%
🟠 Lib Dems: 7%
🟩 Green:4%
⬜️Other: 2%
WFA is *checks notes* a benefit.
Therefore, there are rich people on benefits.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g267xe3y6o
Hope @Cyclefree is well enough to watch after all her work on it.
It's just a real shame that it's going to take so long to bring some of the actual criminals involved to justice, as that's a separate report.
Conservative 17,561 35.04%
Labour 11,482 22.91%
Liberal Democrat 9,533 19.02%
Reform UK 9,084 18.12%
Not as nice a place as many current Lib Dem seats, and it would depend on a pretty helpful RefCon split, but far from crazy.
She also could be very strongly described as a low information voter who will have no real understanding of any parties actual policies.
We might need cricket rules on here. Stop for bad light - or more when there's more heat than light
Mind you, the former would give leftist extremist atheist IanB2 an unfair advantage in his current location!
Another interesting feature was how the rookies DNFed all over the place. And now Norris is only 8 points behind Piastri.
Podbean: https://undercutters.podbean.com/e/british-grand-prix-2025-piastri-s-penalty-rookies-fumble-hulk-smashes-the-podium/
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/british-grand-prix-2025-piastris-penalty-rookies-fumble/id1786574257?i=1000716287411
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5flCa6NPVQenJw3uH5pLK3
Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/bcfe213b-55fb-408a-a823-dc6693ee9f78/episodes/d0fc6daf-0d27-42a2-9ce7-a1adcefad653/undercutters---f1-podcast-british-grand-prix-2025-piastri’s-penalty-rookies-fumble-hulk-smashes-the-podium
Transcript: https://morrisf1.blogspot.com/2025/07/british-grand-prix-2025-piastris.html
In Port Talbot for example everyone is furious that Labour unilaterally closed the blast furnaces, we have had visits particularly from Nigel Farage, rueing the closure. Nigel says he will reopen them, presumably through some form of hitherto undisclosed magic, as they aren't "turn off and turn on able".
The second report will talk about blame, but probably no more than that.
Many might just have exited from the stage, interest-wise, and won't likely reanimate until an actual GE draws near. We are one year in of a four or five year term. Frankly, it's all performative and who cares.
In the meantime the Refs and the Jezzas will make hay.
Supplementary question: did she vote Leave in 2016?
More in Common arent particularly Labour friendly in UK VI polls but tend to be a bit higher Con than YG etc so its certainly surprising. Its their first Senedd only poll i think, they did a couple of Wales only GE polls last year in the campaign
Here we go again: Dogs have 4 legs, so an animal with 4 legs is a dog is the @hyufd level of logic.
So yes there are rich people on benefits. This particular benefit. WFA in fact. And it could be removed very easily in the same way as it is removed for all the other benefits that stop people with capital claiming them.
I though @hyufd had got over this type of argument. I don't like @leon's use of the IQ argument, but sometimes it does have merit.
The EU is only there to serve the elites apparently
Seriously though i think the return of the disinterested and fed up will keep them towards 100 seats at worst (say 80ish) and above the LDs. Theyll probably end up a bit better than that if their share recovers to low 20s generally and not just with a few pollsters
If they end up genuinely facing wipeout theyll fold into Reform - Reform need their experience and they dont want to become extinct
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/07/israeli-minister-reveals-plan-to-force-population-of-gaza-into-camp-on-ruins-of-rafah
*For the avoidance of doubt.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_camp
A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitation or punishment.
The solicitors and barristers who did the prosecuting, including falsifying paperwork, come out extremely badly.
So do those who wrote the reports on the system for the Post Office and Fujitsu.
So do the senior managers at those firms.
So, frankly, do the courts. Their behaviour may have been due to frauds happening elsewhere in the system but it still sucked.
However, I wonder if anyone will actually face justice at all. It seems from the outside to be a classic example of process injustice where blame always gets transferred to somebody else so pinning it on one person is very hard. Examples might be made of say, Parsons and Dilley after they were caught lying to the inquiry, but I won't hold my breath for any senior managers to serve prison time.
Literally serving the elites.
The second report will not hold people criminally responsible because a public inquiry cannot legally do that. It is one of their failings but it will apportion blame.
In the meanwhile here is my Post Office Bingo Card for you to tick off:
- The human impact was awful.
- It was made worse by the conduct of the Post Office and others, including its lawyers and governments over many years.
- It is still continuing.
- Compensation is due, is urgent, is too slow and the government needs to get a move on because the current situation is disgraceful. 350 of the ca. 900 SPMs affected have died without getting compensation or the return of the money fraudulently taken from them.
- Tribute will be paid to the SPMs.
- The government will welcome the report, say how terrible it all is and pretend that it has no power to do anything about compensation even though the Treasury's dead hands are all over it.
- The Post Office will issue some PR guff about how sorry it is and how much it is doing. Someone will use the appalling phrase "at pace".
- Most journalists will forget to ask why it is that Rodric Williams one of the shiftiest of the PO lawyers who gave evidence and who was heavily involved during the entire period when the problems were known about and covered up is now in charge of compensation at the Post Office.
- The phrase "conflict of interest" will not be mentioned because no-one - other than me - seems to understand or recognise one, even when it is staring you in the face.
- The government continues to think overturning convictions & giving out a few baubles is enough.
- This is how all governments since at least Aberfan have operated. It is Potemkin justice.
Too cynical? Or just realistic? Let's see, shall we.
I also think that a warning is possible (we see this with track limits and advice to hand a place back if gained off-track etc). And there was the possibility of a 5s penalty, instead of jumping to 10s, which is what Verstappen got for deliberately driving into Russell.
Permit me two observations:
1) The damage done to the party post Covid is cataclysmic and so many of you appear to be in utter denial. Yes this Labour government is getting worse by the day, but few people think "so lets go back to the Tories". They think you were even worse than this lot.
2) The political zeitgeist has shifted considerably. Badenoch suffers from (1) very badly - to haughty to accept that she and her colleagues did a bad job - and is banging out about woke and bathrooms which aren't the issues people care about any more.
What is the way back for you? It isn't "Labour collapsing and people making us the government again. They won't - not without a serious change of mindset firstly from your party and then from the electorate.
It's the Truss debacle that killed them.
Yorkshire Water imposing a hosepipe ban starting on Friday. After hiking our bills by a humongous percentage earlier in the year.
I'm going to take advantage of the choice offered by privatisation and switch my supplier.
Its perfect. Farage the Childcatcher. Voters are enticed into his vehicle with the promise of sweeties, then find themselves inside a cage asking "how did we get in here?"
Important caveat. In America we have people who voted for Trump now Pleading For Their Lives as Trump dismantles the things they need or are important to them. Farming foreign markets, Medicaid, their family members. These morons still pledge fealty to Trump.
Their UK equivalents will not continue to pledge fealty to the Nigel if he screws them.
Since both the legal profession and government are deeply implicated in this case, it's almost impossible to hold an enquiry without conflicts of interest. It would be good to have that explicitly recognised, even if no more than that; I'm not holding my breath either.
Enjoy your day in the garden.
As a puzzle for your next visit, do you have any ideas how we might improve social care ?
2028, and counting...
That statement was directly contradicted by Katz, said Prof Amos Goldberg, historian of the Holocaust at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The defence minister laid out clear plans for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, Goldberg said, and the creation of “a concentration camp or a transit camp for Palestinians before they expel them”.
“It is neither humanitarian nor a city,” he said of Katz’s planned holding area for Palestinians.
“A city is a place where you have possibilities of work, of earning money, of making connections and freedom of movement.
“There are hospitals, schools, universities and offices. This is not what they have in mind. It will not be a livable place, just as the ‘safe areas’ are unliveable now.”..
Redcar is exactly the same sort of seat, the blast furnace was the main employer and since then they’ve voted party who offered hope, Labour, party who offered hope, Labour
You now have the audacity to expect taxpayers to pay a fortune to employ HMRC admins to trace said capital of legal tax dodgers like you just so you can have your WFA removed.
While those on actual real benefits like UC and pension credit get it as they are really on low incomes with next to no capital at all to trace
There are a number of possibilities here:
1. Some of the criminal trials where the Fujitsu witness and some of the low level PO lawyers etc could be done.
2. The 2019 civil litigation: the PO's GC (now in Australia) and other PO witnesses could be done here. 2 were reported to the authorities at the time by Mr Justice Fraser.
3. The criminal appeals to the Court of Appeal: did senior PO staff withhold relevant material? It appears so but whether this is perverting the course of justice is another matter.
4. The evidence given by Vennells and others to the Parliamentary Select Committee: only Parliament - not the courts - can take action over that. Vennells was careful to stay away publicly from items 1 (most of the trials happened before her time, to be fair) and item 2.
It is worth remembering what happened in Hillsborough where a solicitor and 2 police officers who rewrote witness statements could not be tried because they did it for the ten Taylor Inquiry and it was not, as a matter of law, a course of justice. It is not the lying which will be difficult to prove but whether it can be sufficiently tied in to specific court proceedings. I have explored this in more detail in my book.
The other problem is that it will be relatively easier to get low level people involved but harder the higher up you go because they were careful to adopt a "this is what I want done" approach while leaving as little trace of it as possible.
Finally - for now - if you want to blame one Minister above all, blame Blair. He it was who insisted on going ahead with Fujitsu despite al the warnings. He it was who insisted on the absurd "at arm's length" approach to the PO which meant that the civil service and Ministers had no real control over an entity they controlled and funded and the PO was left free to do whatever it wanted with no effective accountability thus turning into the arrogant incompetent tosspot we have come to know and loathe.
Then the Cameron government and Cable who were so focused on privatising Royal Mail that they and their minions suppressed all the evidence that was then coming out what had been happening in the previous decade.
When I suggested the 2 week /month court of appeal summer session to clear the cases I had a secondary thought. They could have had the post office lawyers there and as the post office worker was declared innocent the lawyer who used the horizon evidence (post the date issues had been known) could have been given a few extra months for contempt due to providing knowingly false evidence to the courts).
At least Pauline Vennells won’t become Bishop of London.
Within the constricting bounds of his adopted dogmas, he was quite a rational character. I'm not convinced Farage's smoke and mirrors would have held that much appeal to him.
Going bankrupt here !!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgeqxgpdp7do
Farage is absolutely right to call for this to be reformed. The govts plan is woefully inadequate and this is yet another shit sandwich bequeathed by the useless prior Tory regime.
That said, I think we'd all be happy to bang up Starmer for his role whilst DPP as the scapegoat.
However the anecdote suggests the existence of a particular group with a common characteristic, which is nothing to do with party labels or old fashioned notions of left and right.
This is the group which to an extreme degree believes that solutions to things are simple and obvious, only those in charge have perversely missed the point, and, crucially, possess no concept of the relationship between getting stuff done and the problems of financing it.
Their intellectual gurus are the promoters of MMT, a concept which unites in a vague way the hard left, Reform voters and Trussonomics.
Any properly run organisation should realise that, even if his conduct at the time was beyond reproach, he should not now be in charge of compensation. He is conflicted regardless of his personal conduct. He is conflicted because of his role.
The PO as a whole is conflicted and should not, IMO, be in charge of it. But if they are none of the lawyers previously involved in this matter should be anywhere near the compensation schemes.
I am not so sick that I could not give proper training - to the entire establishment it seems - on what conflicts of interest are, why they are a bad thing, how to recognise and avoid/mitigate them. Even Lord Nolan got this wrong. Hopeless.
We've come a long way.
Thankfully.
(Michael Foot showed his nasty side in that case.)
The last Government were splendid at spending money they didn't have to scupper the next Government. Genius.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/07/07/trump-netanyahu-live-latest-white-house-ceasefire/
Which I guess confirms how desperate Trump is to get it that he is even getting the least suitable leaders in the world to nominate him for it. I would have thought this nomination by itself is enough for the committee to reject Trump for ever..
(Although if a woman is to be appointed I would expect it to be Mary Stallard. Depends how tainted by association she is with the Bangor scandal. Dorrien Davies is probably favourite.)
On topic, short answer, I don't know. Long answer, I really don't know.
I've often said the fortunes of the LDs are entirely dependent on the fortunes of other parties and that now includes Reform so that makes three variables.
Second problem is we have no idea when the election will be - mid 2028 to mid 2029 seems the most likely window but I could see Starmer going on to May or even June 2029 if he wants maximum time for his party's fortunes to turn and maximum time for Reform to implode under scrutiny.
I'll leave this and try and find some winners at the Newmarket July Meeting .
Perhaps they can have a conference in a beautiful villa by a lake to finalise the details.