Huddersfield is an interesting example as I think I'm in saying it represents a really good example of what Ramsey has been saying about electoral strategy: the Greens win seats in areas where they have spent years building a reputation on local government. Kirklees was one of the first councils anywhere with Greens on it I think. It's slow steady work. And involves very tightly focusing limited resources. It's a model of course the Liberals have used for years.
Polanski has argued - it seems successfully in the leader poll - that this is all far too slow.
It will be interesting in 2028/9 but me thinks Ramsey will be proved the better strategist.
I think that's right. The Labour council in Kirklees are pretty poor (something that tends to happen when a party has been in control for too long), and some of the Green councillors sensible pragmatists.
The national party is far less convincing.
The Greens were starting to build the priceless skill of being all things to all people that the Lib Dems had prior to the coalition. They could win concerned NIMBY votes in the leafy suburbs as well as radical student types in urban seats. Polanski risks throwing this away without the consolation of having been in power for a bit
I recall a previous Green "boom" - I think it was under Brown. Did quite well in some council elections. It collapsed when their new voters found out about the Red policies
Yes, I recall that, too. In SE Essex they pushed past the LibDems and, IIRC, Labour in one or two places. Then they seemed to collapse like the proverbial house of cards.
The Greens are full of loons who talk the most unscientific nonsense on everything bar, occasionally, climate issues and their influence in Scottish politics has been utterly worthless and dangerous.
The main challenge for them is finding some sensible grown ups to run and represent their party.
Some of the English Greens think the Scottish Greens are too nutty.
A few months ago I met up with a political strategist who knows a thing or two about winning general elections and they said the best way to stop Reform winning a general election was for the public to see them as a bunch of fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists mostly, things like this and lauding Lucy Connolly will seal the deal.
NEW: Linden Kemkaran, the Reform UK leader of Kent County Council, tells @TimesRadio the party should consider an inquiry into a possible link between the Covid vaccine and cancer.
Comes after Dr Aseem Malhotra told the Reform conference the jab gave the Royal Family cancer.
These asshats are going to further reduce vaccination rates of all sorts in this country, and lead to lots of disease and deaths as a result.
Vote Farage Party, vote death!
Importantly though not death for the older, vaccinated people, death for young people whose parents/guardians don't get them vaccinated.
Always some bitter and twisted halfwitted spotty youth who hates "old people", get a life loser.
Hello Malcy! I read the comment as being critical of Reform voters/antivaxxers not oldies in general.
I'd also add, perhaps even worse, complications from viruses - measles can infect old folk still as well as young people and children and cause some very nasty complications such as blindness and encephalitis.
What I don't know is how much even previously vaccinated oldies are at risk once herd immunity is gone thanks to those idiots.
Measles is particularly nasty as it attacks immune memory, so can remove existing immunity against other diseases.
Really? I have never heard of that. That is fascinating.
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
In all honesty, the Tories aren’t much in charge of their own destiny right now. They’ll either recover or decline based on the relative performance of Reform, in all likelihood, and there’s not a tremendous amount they can do up until that point other than reminding people they exist and trying to talk some vague sense.
Labour are the ones with their hands on the machinery of government. They are the ones who can deliver results. But a note on “centrism” per your post - if we are taking centrism to mean the broad consensus politics that we’ve been used to in recent years, that isn’t going to deliver the results - so there needs to be a type of “radical centrism” for want of a much better term; that acknowledges that departure from the precedent is the only way we are going to get society working for people. Some politicians are slowly starting to get this, but I doubt they have the political will to really try and do anything about it. We shall see.
The overall fate for the Tories, no they are a little adrift on the sea, but certainly there's a lot they can look at influencing - particularly firewalls. They can identify councils and seats to quietly fortify and work now to try and insure against apocalypse and what they can target where Reform are less rampant and wont be exhausting resources (Wycombe is an example) Thats what they should do if the long term survival and recovery of the Tories is the aim, if they are chasing a quick fix breakback in 2029 they are sunk.
Huddersfield is an interesting example as I think I'm in saying it represents a really good example of what Ramsey has been saying about electoral strategy: the Greens win seats in areas where they have spent years building a reputation on local government. Kirklees was one of the first councils anywhere with Greens on it I think. It's slow steady work. And involves very tightly focusing limited resources. It's a model of course the Liberals have used for years.
Polanski has argued - it seems successfully in the leader poll - that this is all far too slow.
It will be interesting in 2028/9 but me thinks Ramsey will be proved the better strategist.
I think that's right. The Labour council in Kirklees are pretty poor (something that tends to happen when a party has been in control for too long), and some of the Green councillors sensible pragmatists.
The national party is far less convincing.
The Greens were starting to build the priceless skill of being all things to all people that the Lib Dems had prior to the coalition. They could win concerned NIMBY votes in the leafy suburbs as well as radical student types in urban seats. Polanski risks throwing this away without the consolation of having been in power for a bit
I recall a previous Green "boom" - I think it was under Brown. Did quite well in some council elections. It collapsed when their new voters found out about the Red policies
Yes, I recall that, too. In SE Essex they pushed past the LibDems and, IIRC, Labour in one or two places. Then they seemed to collapse like the proverbial house of cards.
It was another example of how what the political (or other kind of) anoraks knows, suddenly spreads to the wider public.
I recall being confused by the Petrol Strike - having worked in the oil industry, the idea that 70-80% of the pump price of petrol is tax was standard knowledge. "Everyone knows this, surely?".
I'd even worked with a guy whose design for an international petrol pump was rejected by UK regulators - because it showed the tax...
Mrs Stodge (of the Kiwi persuasion) has been following the Tom Phillips story for some time. As she told me, it's probably how many thought it would end though there were fears the children wouldn't survive.
That part of the western Waikato is well off the tourist trail and the beaten track - it's not far from the back of beyond. Phillips had friends and supporters in the local community, at least initially, and was able to use them to evade the authorities but with time he became mosre brazen and desperate and in the end a confrontation with the Police was inevitable but as Mrs Stodge has told me, it's a complex and sad tale of family break down.
In East London, the normal occasional passage of underground trains, visible and occasionally audible (if the wind is in the right direction) from Stodge Towers is both invisible and inevitably muted this morning. The RMT dispute has had the effect desired or expected with almost no underground service in the capital. With home working now a largely accepted (except on parts of PB it seems) part of working life, the effects are not what they would have been though I suspect tomorrow will be more difficult with the DLR taken out by a separate dispute.
On topic, the Greens are a political force in my part of East London though the coming of the pro-Palestine Newham Independents has reduced their influence especailly in the more Muslim areas. Two councillors on Newham are entrenched in Stratford & New Town and the third (gained by defection from Labour) is in a Ward where the Greens have done well in the past.
Nonetheless, in a crowded anti-Labour field, it will be interesting to see if any kind of electoral pact (informal or otherwise) is in place next year so for example the Newham Independents will only stand in the Muslim Wards, the Greens in others and perhaps candidates from the Corbyn/Sultana grouping will fill the gaps. Labour will prevail and easily if the forces against them are fragmented but a single slate of anti-Labour candidates from the "left" could do very well as could a single Mayoral candidate.
London notable for quantity and ineptitude of cyclists this morning. Monday is usually one of the quieter days of the week on the morning commute but the roads were heaving this morning.
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
But they wouldn't, would they? Really? Deep down? And anyways. That would lead to a peeling off of half of their current support. Leaving them in single figures.
You reckon Labour would say they'd go in with the Tories to keep Reform out?
The debate today is four years out. If in 2027/8 Reform are 30-35% in the polls and another party has not cleaned up (eg Labour on 40-45!!!) then the national media discussion about alliances and tactical voting will be intense. The 1945-2024 Lab v Con social democrat centrist consensus was bust in 2024, and would be demolished in 2028/9.
The non Reform parties may (or of course may not) feel that it is in their best interest to project a strategy of 'Reform v Sane Parties' in some form.
We have not been here before, so precedent doesn't help much. When the SDP and successors were at hteir height they were just one more version of mainstream politics. At the moment Reform look like Trumplite.
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
In all honesty, the Tories aren’t much in charge of their own destiny right now. They’ll either recover or decline based on the relative performance of Reform, in all likelihood, and there’s not a tremendous amount they can do up until that point other than reminding people they exist and trying to talk some vague sense.
Labour are the ones with their hands on the machinery of government. They are the ones who can deliver results. But a note on “centrism” per your post - if we are taking centrism to mean the broad consensus politics that we’ve been used to in recent years, that isn’t going to deliver the results - so there needs to be a type of “radical centrism” for want of a much better term; that acknowledges that departure from the precedent is the only way we are going to get society working for people. Some politicians are slowly starting to get this, but I doubt they have the political will to really try and do anything about it. We shall see.
Thanks. Yes. Centrism comes in flavours and is more than consensus but has a common core. Trump, Corbyn, Farage (probably), Putin, Xi, Polanski, Galloway are not centrists. Centrism, as I see it, is serious about avoiding populism (simple answers to complex questions), accepting the democratic process, avoiding authoritarianism, upholding the rule of law and separation of powers, working with an international order, accepts the world is complicated and imperfect, upholds private enterprise and a substantial welfare state, doesn't demonise minorities, prefers Adam Smith and David Ricardo to Marx, is fiscally responsible.
Within those constraints any amount of radicalism is possible. As Attlee, Thatcher and Blair illustrate.
Morning, PB.
I'm not entirely sure that Thatcher would fit into that bracket, personally, and certainly not by Continental European standards.
On the Greens, they were the only people locally who used to stand up to some pretty egregious waste practices from local landowners when I lived in the country.
Rural feudalism runs stomg, even with Lib Dems, some times.
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
But they wouldn't, would they? Really? Deep down? And anyways. That would lead to a peeling off of half of their current support. Leaving them in single figures.
You reckon Labour would say they'd go in with the Tories to keep Reform out?
That's a different question entirely.
Is it? It's a bit weird to use grand coalition as a stick with which to beat the Tories but not do the same to Labour or anyone else for that matter.
Wasn't using it as anything. Labour won't be asked to choose between propping up a Tory government or a Reform one.
The problem for the Greens is that as they move left under Polanski they will lose ex Tory seats they won in Herefordshire and like Waveney and lose the chance of taking Isle of Wight East next time. Whereas originally the Greens were solely focused on the environment and mildly Eurosceptic, even Farage voted for them in the 1989 EU Parliament elections on that basis
Are we making the usual mistake of assuming massive political engagement by the electorate? How many concerned rural eco voters will be aware or particularly bothered about the fact Polanski is a Trot?
Especially with the Greens, who get very little national exposure. Remember most voters can’t even name the main party leaders let alone know what their views on Gaza are.
(And contrary to assumptions about yokels, I expect a fair proportion of Green voters in Herefordshire or Suffolk probably do share some of Polanski’s politics, if they know what they are.)
Is Polanski a Trot? He's espousing hard left politics, but they're not specifically Trotskyite. More problematic, maybe, is that I think he's a chancer. I think he says whatever he thinks will work. He was a LibDem, but didn't get picked as a candidate for a winnable seat, so he switched to the Greens. His views on Palestine evolved. I think he sees the "eco-populist" schtick as one that will take him places (and he's been right on that).
The problem for the Greens is that as they move left under Polanski they will lose ex Tory seats they won in Herefordshire and like Waveney and lose the chance of taking Isle of Wight East next time. Whereas originally the Greens were solely focused on the environment and mildly Eurosceptic, even Farage voted for them in the 1989 EU Parliament elections on that basis
Morning all. On this, I have my doubts Ramsay will be able to stomach staying in a harder left Green party and it will be interesting to see if and how long he stays after his return from compassionate leave. Id not be entirely surprised regardless of his movements to see a Green mk 2/Ecology Party emerge to try and sweep up that rural ex Tory, environmental vote. Of course they'd be tiny like the original Ecology Party but there is obviously a space for that in politics.
Defecting to the LibDems would probably be the easiest way for him to keep his seat.
The problem for the Greens is that as they move left under Polanski they will lose ex Tory seats they won in Herefordshire and like Waveney and lose the chance of taking Isle of Wight East next time. Whereas originally the Greens were solely focused on the environment and mildly Eurosceptic, even Farage voted for them in the 1989 EU Parliament elections on that basis
Are we making the usual mistake of assuming massive political engagement by the electorate? How many concerned rural eco voters will be aware or particularly bothered about the fact Polanski is a Trot?
Especially with the Greens, who get very little national exposure. Remember most voters can’t even name the main party leaders let alone know what their views on Gaza are.
(And contrary to assumptions about yokels, I expect a fair proportion of Green voters in Herefordshire or Suffolk probably do share some of Polanski’s politics, if they know what they are.)
Is Polanski a Trot? He's espousing hard left politics, but they're not specifically Trotskyite. More problematic, maybe, is that I think he's a chancer. I think he says whatever he thinks will work. He was a LibDem, but didn't get picked as a candidate for a winnable seat, so he switched to the Greens. His views on Palestine evolved. I think he sees the "eco-populist" schtick as one that will take him places (and he's been right on that).
A man who promised to grow women's breasts through the power of the mind is a chancer....surely not.
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
In all honesty, the Tories aren’t much in charge of their own destiny right now. They’ll either recover or decline based on the relative performance of Reform, in all likelihood, and there’s not a tremendous amount they can do up until that point other than reminding people they exist and trying to talk some vague sense.
Labour are the ones with their hands on the machinery of government. They are the ones who can deliver results. But a note on “centrism” per your post - if we are taking centrism to mean the broad consensus politics that we’ve been used to in recent years, that isn’t going to deliver the results - so there needs to be a type of “radical centrism” for want of a much better term; that acknowledges that departure from the precedent is the only way we are going to get society working for people. Some politicians are slowly starting to get this, but I doubt they have the political will to really try and do anything about it. We shall see.
Thanks. Yes. Centrism comes in flavours and is more than consensus but has a common core. Trump, Corbyn, Farage (probably), Putin, Xi, Polanski, Galloway are not centrists. Centrism, as I see it, is serious about avoiding populism (simple answers to complex questions), accepting the democratic process, avoiding authoritarianism, upholding the rule of law and separation of powers, working with an international order, accepts the world is complicated and imperfect, upholds private enterprise and a substantial welfare state, doesn't demonise minorities, prefers Adam Smith and David Ricardo to Marx, is fiscally responsible.
Within those constraints any amount of radicalism is possible. As Attlee, Thatcher and Blair illustrate.
Online the term has simply come to mean 'interested in politics but not hard left and not voting for Farage'.
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
But they wouldn't, would they? Really? Deep down? And anyways. That would lead to a peeling off of half of their current support. Leaving them in single figures.
That all depends on what sort of Tory party they want to be. Of course they would lose support of they went 'we are not Reform, we are One Nation Tories, we are not unpleasant English nationalists'. But that's because they have already lost their centrist One Nation heartland voters. Look at 2024, look at the polls.
No-one wants to vote Tory at the moment because they are useless, unprincipled, incoherent and Reformlite.
The way back is not populism, Farage will always beat them there, but articulating in principle and policy what Toryism stands for and how it works, here and now.
The Tories could try saying...
We want to do something about immigration, but we're not racists We want to reform healthcare, but we're not vaccine deniers We're conservative, but Donald Trump isn't our hero
But the problem is their brand is too damaged by their last period in government. They need time for people to forget.
Thanks for the header, @GarethoftheVale2 . A good piece, and this is what I would like in the next one.
I would like to see some analysis of where the Greens have grown their Council seat base, and how well they hold areas they have won.
It seems to be both rural (eg High Peaks in Derbyshire - 2 seats) but also Red Wall (eg Darlington - 6 seats). I've had some contact with both of those two wrt active travel, which is why I mention them. The Greens in my experience are the only party who are reliable on the principles on this - all of the others, including the Lib Dems, will trim on these and regard accessibility as part of a political negotiation to at least some extent.
There's a threshold in 2019, when they had 179 Council seats in England, and today they have 859.
I want to know where they have gone from effectively nothing to a decent sized group, and why.
The Greens won 3 seats in Darlington as the NIMBY party in a ward where an awful lot of housing is being built without infrastructure improvements
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
But they wouldn't, would they? Really? Deep down? And anyways. That would lead to a peeling off of half of their current support. Leaving them in single figures.
That all depends on what sort of Tory party they want to be. Of course they would lose support of they went 'we are not Reform, we are One Nation Tories, we are not unpleasant English nationalists'. But that's because they have already lost their centrist One Nation heartland voters. Look at 2024, look at the polls.
No-one wants to vote Tory at the moment because they are useless, unprincipled, incoherent and Reformlite.
The way back is not populism, Farage will always beat them there, but articulating in principle and policy what Toryism stands for and how it works, here and now.
The Tories could try saying...
We want to do something about immigration, but we're not racists We want to reform healthcare, but we're not vaccine deniers We're conservative, but Donald Trump isn't our hero
But the problem is their brand is too damaged by their last period in government. They need time for people to forget.
They also need to have some plans to solve those issues that would survive contact with reality to start to get some credibility back.
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
In all honesty, the Tories aren’t much in charge of their own destiny right now. They’ll either recover or decline based on the relative performance of Reform, in all likelihood, and there’s not a tremendous amount they can do up until that point other than reminding people they exist and trying to talk some vague sense.
Labour are the ones with their hands on the machinery of government. They are the ones who can deliver results. But a note on “centrism” per your post - if we are taking centrism to mean the broad consensus politics that we’ve been used to in recent years, that isn’t going to deliver the results - so there needs to be a type of “radical centrism” for want of a much better term; that acknowledges that departure from the precedent is the only way we are going to get society working for people. Some politicians are slowly starting to get this, but I doubt they have the political will to really try and do anything about it. We shall see.
The overall fate for the Tories, no they are a little adrift on the sea, but certainly there's a lot they can look at influencing - particularly firewalls. They can identify councils and seats to quietly fortify and work now to try and insure against apocalypse and what they can target where Reform are less rampant and wont be exhausting resources (Wycombe is an example) Thats what they should do if the long term survival and recovery of the Tories is the aim, if they are chasing a quick fix breakback in 2029 they are sunk.
The backstop metric for the Cons as they seek to navigate this existential crisis has to be to stay ahead of the Lib Dems.
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
But they wouldn't, would they? Really? Deep down? And anyways. That would lead to a peeling off of half of their current support. Leaving them in single figures.
You reckon Labour would say they'd go in with the Tories to keep Reform out?
That's a different question entirely.
Is it? It's a bit weird to use grand coalition as a stick with which to beat the Tories but not do the same to Labour or anyone else for that matter.
Wasn't using it as anything. Labour won't be asked to choose between propping up a Tory government or a Reform one.
They'll be asked about coalition partners. It's the same thing.
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
In all honesty, the Tories aren’t much in charge of their own destiny right now. They’ll either recover or decline based on the relative performance of Reform, in all likelihood, and there’s not a tremendous amount they can do up until that point other than reminding people they exist and trying to talk some vague sense.
Labour are the ones with their hands on the machinery of government. They are the ones who can deliver results. But a note on “centrism” per your post - if we are taking centrism to mean the broad consensus politics that we’ve been used to in recent years, that isn’t going to deliver the results - so there needs to be a type of “radical centrism” for want of a much better term; that acknowledges that departure from the precedent is the only way we are going to get society working for people. Some politicians are slowly starting to get this, but I doubt they have the political will to really try and do anything about it. We shall see.
Thanks. Yes. Centrism comes in flavours and is more than consensus but has a common core. Trump, Corbyn, Farage (probably), Putin, Xi, Polanski, Galloway are not centrists. Centrism, as I see it, is serious about avoiding populism (simple answers to complex questions), accepting the democratic process, avoiding authoritarianism, upholding the rule of law and separation of powers, working with an international order, accepts the world is complicated and imperfect, upholds private enterprise and a substantial welfare state, doesn't demonise minorities, prefers Adam Smith and David Ricardo to Marx, is fiscally responsible.
Within those constraints any amount of radicalism is possible. As Attlee, Thatcher and Blair illustrate.
Online the term has simply come to mean 'interested in politics but not hard left and not voting for Farage'.
I should think the great majority of 'centrists' under that definition are 'centrists' under my description too.
The problem for the Greens is that as they move left under Polanski they will lose ex Tory seats they won in Herefordshire and like Waveney and lose the chance of taking Isle of Wight East next time. Whereas originally the Greens were solely focused on the environment and mildly Eurosceptic, even Farage voted for them in the 1989 EU Parliament elections on that basis
Morning all. On this, I have my doubts Ramsay will be able to stomach staying in a harder left Green party and it will be interesting to see if and how long he stays after his return from compassionate leave. Id not be entirely surprised regardless of his movements to see a Green mk 2/Ecology Party emerge to try and sweep up that rural ex Tory, environmental vote. Of course they'd be tiny like the original Ecology Party but there is obviously a space for that in politics.
Defecting to the LibDems would probably be the easiest way for him to keep his seat.
They lost their deposit in 2024. They wont be winning Waveney Valley any time soon
The problem for the Greens is that as they move left under Polanski they will lose ex Tory seats they won in Herefordshire and like Waveney and lose the chance of taking Isle of Wight East next time. Whereas originally the Greens were solely focused on the environment and mildly Eurosceptic, even Farage voted for them in the 1989 EU Parliament elections on that basis
Are we making the usual mistake of assuming massive political engagement by the electorate? How many concerned rural eco voters will be aware or particularly bothered about the fact Polanski is a Trot?
Especially with the Greens, who get very little national exposure. Remember most voters can’t even name the main party leaders let alone know what their views on Gaza are.
(And contrary to assumptions about yokels, I expect a fair proportion of Green voters in Herefordshire or Suffolk probably do share some of Polanski’s politics, if they know what they are.)
Is Polanski a Trot? He's espousing hard left politics, but they're not specifically Trotskyite. More problematic, maybe, is that I think he's a chancer. I think he says whatever he thinks will work. He was a LibDem, but didn't get picked as a candidate for a winnable seat, so he switched to the Greens. His views on Palestine evolved. I think he sees the "eco-populist" schtick as one that will take him places (and he's been right on that).
A man who promised to grow women's breasts through the power of the mind is a chancer....surely not.
People criticise the BBC etc for giving Reform too much airtime, but here we are, twenty comments into a thread about the Green Party, and everyone’s talking about Reform. Why would the media be any different?
Actually a study published in yesterdays independent/i paper showed Farage wasn’t on mainstream tv more than other politicians. He wasn’t even the top Reformer
Nigel Farage is not given more airtime on TV than other politicians, an academic study has found
Thanks for the header, @GarethoftheVale2 . A good piece, and this is what I would like in the next one.
I would like to see some analysis of where the Greens have grown their Council seat base, and how well they hold areas they have won.
It seems to be both rural (eg High Peaks in Derbyshire - 2 seats) but also Red Wall (eg Darlington - 6 seats). I've had some contact with both of those two wrt active travel, which is why I mention them. The Greens in my experience are the only party who are reliable on the principles on this - all of the others, including the Lib Dems, will trim on these and regard accessibility as part of a political negotiation to at least some extent.
There's a threshold in 2019, when they had 179 Council seats in England, and today they have 859.
I want to know where they have gone from effectively nothing to a decent sized group, and why.
The Greens won 3 seats in Darlington as the NIMBY party in a ward where an awful lot of housing is being built without infrastructure improvements
My nice, middle class, north London council ward has three councillors, one Green and two Labour. (Siân Berry used to be our councillor, but she left for Brighton, and triggered a by-election, won by another Green, who had previously defected from Labour.) The leaflets we receive are very NIMBY, more than anything else. There's no sign of radical economic policies usually.
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
In all honesty, the Tories aren’t much in charge of their own destiny right now. They’ll either recover or decline based on the relative performance of Reform, in all likelihood, and there’s not a tremendous amount they can do up until that point other than reminding people they exist and trying to talk some vague sense.
Labour are the ones with their hands on the machinery of government. They are the ones who can deliver results. But a note on “centrism” per your post - if we are taking centrism to mean the broad consensus politics that we’ve been used to in recent years, that isn’t going to deliver the results - so there needs to be a type of “radical centrism” for want of a much better term; that acknowledges that departure from the precedent is the only way we are going to get society working for people. Some politicians are slowly starting to get this, but I doubt they have the political will to really try and do anything about it. We shall see.
The overall fate for the Tories, no they are a little adrift on the sea, but certainly there's a lot they can look at influencing - particularly firewalls. They can identify councils and seats to quietly fortify and work now to try and insure against apocalypse and what they can target where Reform are less rampant and wont be exhausting resources (Wycombe is an example) Thats what they should do if the long term survival and recovery of the Tories is the aim, if they are chasing a quick fix breakback in 2029 they are sunk.
The backstop metric for the Cons as they seek to navigate this existential crisis has to be to stay ahead of the Lib Dems.
Yeah, that's true. I don't see them falling behind them outside the odd outlier poll at the moment though, the problem might be councils and councillors being the metric narrative (and Holyrood next year, i tbink theyre sade from Lib overtaking them in the Senedd)
Gen Z are flocking to the National Trust to relieve climate anxiety and get away from social media.
The conservation charity has seen a surge in popularity among young people, with membership among 18 to 25-year-olds rising by 35 per cent in the year to March. Young membership numbers have increased by a further 16 per cent since the start of March, according to its annual report.
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
In all honesty, the Tories aren’t much in charge of their own destiny right now. They’ll either recover or decline based on the relative performance of Reform, in all likelihood, and there’s not a tremendous amount they can do up until that point other than reminding people they exist and trying to talk some vague sense.
Labour are the ones with their hands on the machinery of government. They are the ones who can deliver results. But a note on “centrism” per your post - if we are taking centrism to mean the broad consensus politics that we’ve been used to in recent years, that isn’t going to deliver the results - so there needs to be a type of “radical centrism” for want of a much better term; that acknowledges that departure from the precedent is the only way we are going to get society working for people. Some politicians are slowly starting to get this, but I doubt they have the political will to really try and do anything about it. We shall see.
Thanks. Yes. Centrism comes in flavours and is more than consensus but has a common core. Trump, Corbyn, Farage (probably), Putin, Xi, Polanski, Galloway are not centrists. Centrism, as I see it, is serious about avoiding populism (simple answers to complex questions), accepting the democratic process, avoiding authoritarianism, upholding the rule of law and separation of powers, working with an international order, accepts the world is complicated and imperfect, upholds private enterprise and a substantial welfare state, doesn't demonise minorities, prefers Adam Smith and David Ricardo to Marx, is fiscally responsible.
Within those constraints any amount of radicalism is possible. As Attlee, Thatcher and Blair illustrate.
Online the term has simply come to mean 'interested in politics but not hard left and not voting for Farage'.
I should think the great majority of 'centrists' under that definition are 'centrists' under my description too.
@Leon is the Ultimate Centrist Dad, always bangin' on about how well he gets on with his daughters
The problem for the Greens is that as they move left under Polanski they will lose ex Tory seats they won in Herefordshire and like Waveney and lose the chance of taking Isle of Wight East next time. Whereas originally the Greens were solely focused on the environment and mildly Eurosceptic, even Farage voted for them in the 1989 EU Parliament elections on that basis
Morning all. On this, I have my doubts Ramsay will be able to stomach staying in a harder left Green party and it will be interesting to see if and how long he stays after his return from compassionate leave. Id not be entirely surprised regardless of his movements to see a Green mk 2/Ecology Party emerge to try and sweep up that rural ex Tory, environmental vote. Of course they'd be tiny like the original Ecology Party but there is obviously a space for that in politics.
Defecting to the LibDems would probably be the easiest way for him to keep his seat.
They lost their deposit in 2024. They wont be winning Waveney Valley any time soon
Because Ramsay hoovered up their potential vote. If Ramsay defects and brings some of the local party with him, I think they'd be well placed to hold the seat.
People criticise the BBC etc for giving Reform too much airtime, but here we are, twenty comments into a thread about the Green Party, and everyone’s talking about Reform. Why would the media be any different?
Actually a study published in yesterdays independent/i paper showed Farage wasn’t on mainstream tv more than other politicians. He wasn’t even the top Reformer
Nigel Farage is not given more airtime on TV than other politicians, an academic study has found
Paywalled. But what time does it cover? Pre-Reform or Reform? And does it weight for numbers of MP/MSP/MS/MLA or voters?
I can read it, and I am not a subscriber.
However analysis of party representation across flagship TV political programmes by Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Culture, found Farage appeared less frequently on flagship political shows last year, “contrary to long-standing claims that Nigel Farage is allocated more frequent appearances than other politicians on programmes such as Question Time”.
We conducted an analysis of guests selected across five of the UK’s most prominent political discussion programmes, including Any Questions (BBC Radio 4), Peston (ITV), Question Time (BBC), Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg (BBC) and Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips (Sky News).
Mm, thanks. "Last year." So it's after/overlapping with the period Mr F became a Reform MP and the rules kicked in? Or am I misunderstanding?
Starmer Strategist Leaves Downing Street After Two Weeks
Tom Kibasi was seconded from NHS England to work on part of the government reboot and was expected to be involved for months. Kibasi — who helped Starmer win the Labour Party leadership in 2020 — left Downing Street at the end of August despite initially being expected to be there for several months.
People criticise the BBC etc for giving Reform too much airtime, but here we are, twenty comments into a thread about the Green Party, and everyone’s talking about Reform. Why would the media be any different?
Actually a study published in yesterdays independent/i paper showed Farage wasn’t on mainstream tv more than other politicians. He wasn’t even the top Reformer
Nigel Farage is not given more airtime on TV than other politicians, an academic study has found
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
But they wouldn't, would they? Really? Deep down? And anyways. That would lead to a peeling off of half of their current support. Leaving them in single figures.
You reckon Labour would say they'd go in with the Tories to keep Reform out?
That's a different question entirely.
Is it? It's a bit weird to use grand coalition as a stick with which to beat the Tories but not do the same to Labour or anyone else for that matter.
Wasn't using it as anything. Labour won't be asked to choose between propping up a Tory government or a Reform one.
They'll be asked about coalition partners. It's the same thing.
And just like the Tories they'd be mad to answer it.
"Pay growth across the economy fell to a near four-year low as the availability of workers rose in a cooling labour market."
Heading into a period of real terms pay contraction while inflation is still rising. Things are about to get very bumpy for the government if they don't get a handle on inflation.
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
But they wouldn't, would they? Really? Deep down? And anyways. That would lead to a peeling off of half of their current support. Leaving them in single figures.
You reckon Labour would say they'd go in with the Tories to keep Reform out?
That's a different question entirely.
Is it? It's a bit weird to use grand coalition as a stick with which to beat the Tories but not do the same to Labour or anyone else for that matter.
Wasn't using it as anything. Labour won't be asked to choose between propping up a Tory government or a Reform one.
They'll be asked about coalition partners. It's the same thing.
And just like the Tories they'd be mad to answer it.
There's a good chance the next election will produce a hung Parliament (although who knows what the polling will look like closer to the time). All the parties might get asked about coalitions. Labour and the Tories, by virtue of having achieved majorities for most of the last 75 years, might be able to get away with just replying, "We're aiming for a majority." However, if the polling by then is looking set to produce a hung result, it's going to be one of the top questions in every interview.
"Pay growth across the economy fell to a near four-year low as the availability of workers rose in a cooling labour market."
Heading into a period of real terms pay contraction while inflation is still rising. Things are about to get very bumpy for the government if they don't get a handle on inflation.
Good job the government won't have to raise taxes a load more in a couple of months.
» show previous quotes I really don't think the public care that Starmer has no outward charisma. His massive problem is that he can't inspire any loyalty or even fear amongst his cabinet and MPs. I think that Starmer's resemblance to Ted Heath grows each day he is in office but at least Heath inspired fierce loyalty among his lieutenants and fear on the back benches.
He is like a wet blanket , no -one would want to be stuck with him. Like a grey cardboard cutout of a less able John Major. I reckon he models himself on Roy from Corrie , minus the shopping bag.
Early Starmer, maybe. Current Starmer might find Roy a bit soft on trans rights.
(Corrie was quite ahead of its time really - I remember half watching that storyline as a kid/teenager - my mum watched religiously and I'd pick up bits if I was in the room)
Gen Z are flocking to the National Trust to relieve climate anxiety and get away from social media.
The conservation charity has seen a surge in popularity among young people, with membership among 18 to 25-year-olds rising by 35 per cent in the year to March. Young membership numbers have increased by a further 16 per cent since the start of March, according to its annual report.
No booze, church and National Trust. Gen Z are a funny lot.
Visiting smart places is quite expensive these days, as one who can remember it costing 1d to get into Kew Gardens.
For those who get around a lot, NT membership is probably a quite good value thing to be in; you only have to go to a few for it to pay for itself; and visiting stuff is a very good social thing to do with others.
The problem for the Greens is that as they move left under Polanski they will lose ex Tory seats they won in Herefordshire and like Waveney and lose the chance of taking Isle of Wight East next time. Whereas originally the Greens were solely focused on the environment and mildly Eurosceptic, even Farage voted for them in the 1989 EU Parliament elections on that basis
Morning all. On this, I have my doubts Ramsay will be able to stomach staying in a harder left Green party and it will be interesting to see if and how long he stays after his return from compassionate leave. Id not be entirely surprised regardless of his movements to see a Green mk 2/Ecology Party emerge to try and sweep up that rural ex Tory, environmental vote. Of course they'd be tiny like the original Ecology Party but there is obviously a space for that in politics.
Defecting to the LibDems would probably be the easiest way for him to keep his seat.
They lost their deposit in 2024. They wont be winning Waveney Valley any time soon
Because Ramsay hoovered up their potential vote. If Ramsay defects and brings some of the local party with him, I think they'd be well placed to hold the seat.
They hold one council ward within Waveney Valley (narrowly) and never got more than 15% of the vote in the predecessor Waveney seat which was in 2010 at their height. The notional vote for LDs going in to 2024 was 9%, so not much vote to hoover. They arent a factor in the seat and won't be in 2029.
Huddersfield is an interesting example as I think I'm in saying it represents a really good example of what Ramsey has been saying about electoral strategy: the Greens win seats in areas where they have spent years building a reputation on local government. Kirklees was one of the first councils anywhere with Greens on it I think. It's slow steady work. And involves very tightly focusing limited resources. It's a model of course the Liberals have used for years.
Polanski has argued - it seems successfully in the leader poll - that this is all far too slow.
It will be interesting in 2028/9 but me thinks Ramsey will be proved the better strategist.
I think that's right. The Labour council in Kirklees are pretty poor (something that tends to happen when a party has been in control for too long), and some of the Green councillors sensible pragmatists.
The national party is far less convincing.
The Greens were starting to build the priceless skill of being all things to all people that the Lib Dems had prior to the coalition. They could win concerned NIMBY votes in the leafy suburbs as well as radical student types in urban seats. Polanski risks throwing this away without the consolation of having been in power for a bit
Firstly, I don't think the impression of single party control is quite right, Kirklees is not a Tameside, Oldham, Wakefield one party state scenario - checking on Wikipedia it has had majority control, Labour, for just 4 years this century, the rest of the time being NOC. It's right that recent years have been Labour led in the main but there was a good many years of LD minority administrations up to the coalition and, iirc, I think even the Cons may have had a go briefly at minority control in the late 10s. That said Labour has had all the trouble of Corbynism, Gaza losses and the like whittle at it over the years.
The Green contingent on Kirklees has for many years amounted to 3 councillors in one ward, my ward of Newsome, they haven't lost here since, I think, 1996 and typical now poll in the 55-70% range in the ward. They often just call out from the sidelines, but they are excellent locally and their votes have counted in some of those NOC situations. I've voted for them locally since Corbyn.
In 2024 they expanded out in a second ward (Crossland...) and narrowly missed out on a third (Greenhead) due to a Gaza candidate splitting the vote. At the GE they got the Gaza vote here in the full absence of a dedicated Independent, and had an excellent campaign with the 25+ year time served councillor who is the core of their ward success as the parliamentary candidate. They will be hopeful of getting into double figures in councillors in next year's all ups.
The challenges for them are the national ones though - Reform are competitive in the constituency and that could lead to "stick to nurse" tactical voting, the Future Left (pre-YP) held a one day conference with Corbyn in Huddersfield, which was definitely a tanks on the lawn type move, Cllr Cooper is not a young man and could a generic Green campaign as well as him, could their council bloc get mired in what is almost certainly going to be a massively split and messy election result next year, awareness of Green competitiveness is not that widespread or assumed and the national party may favour Bristol where word is out - needs a broad Winning Here across all wards.
That's a bit of a similarity to Ashfield Independents. Up until last May they held 10 out of 10 county council seats, with majorities typically in the 30-50% range. They obtained 30% of the vote vs 50% for Ref UK, and they now have a single County seat left. They now hold something like 27 from 33 for the District Council, but it is very shaky.
As I see it there are several strategies, of which three are:
You can do the Jenrick xenophobia strategy, try to out-Farage Farage. - "We are being invaded by the brown ethnics", "We hate Muslims more than Reform UK do", and so on. That seems to me to be a national politics strategy, and a hope that national issues will overwhelm local politics. Also I'd say that Farage is twisting the kaleidoscope towards different things he's picked up from Maga.
The Here vs the World (Passport to Pimlico) strategy. Ashfield Indies did that - we will protect Ashfield from the County Council; nobody but Ashfield Independents love Ashfield.
The "We are the best local councillors you can get" strategy, which is Lib Dem (and now Green) Pavement Politics. And noting that the Greens put a different emphasis on it.
Good morning from the Douro river and a sunny Portugal. Have been visiting the country one and off during the last decade. It’s clear from the state of some of the properties here, some inward investment from immigrants would help boost the economy but …
The golden visas I understand have been cancelled due to too much rich immigration.
Meanwhile a hundred miles north in Galicia where I have family, Ryanair have withdrawn their aircraft due to dropping demand as tourists were less welcome than before.
So it seems populist politics is all about cakes even though it’s not necessarily in the best interests of the people there.
From a betting perspective best not to bet logically. Think like a NIMBY.
The problem for the Greens is that as they move left under Polanski they will lose ex Tory seats they won in Herefordshire and like Waveney and lose the chance of taking Isle of Wight East next time. Whereas originally the Greens were solely focused on the environment and mildly Eurosceptic, even Farage voted for them in the 1989 EU Parliament elections on that basis
Morning all. On this, I have my doubts Ramsay will be able to stomach staying in a harder left Green party and it will be interesting to see if and how long he stays after his return from compassionate leave. Id not be entirely surprised regardless of his movements to see a Green mk 2/Ecology Party emerge to try and sweep up that rural ex Tory, environmental vote. Of course they'd be tiny like the original Ecology Party but there is obviously a space for that in politics.
Defecting to the LibDems would probably be the easiest way for him to keep his seat.
They lost their deposit in 2024. They wont be winning Waveney Valley any time soon
Because Ramsay hoovered up their potential vote. If Ramsay defects and brings some of the local party with him, I think they'd be well placed to hold the seat.
They hold one council ward within Waveney Valley (narrowly) and never got more than 15% of the vote in the predecessor Waveney seat which was in 2010 at their height. The notional vote for LDs going in to 2024 was 9%, so not much vote to hoover. They arent a factor in the seat and won't be in 2029.
The notional vote for the Greens going in to 2024 was also 9%. (9.3% versus the LibDems' notional 9.2%.) And yet the Greens won. They won because they hoovered up the LibDem vote and a big chunk of the Labour vote, while the Conservatives saw their vote split with a Reform UK candidate.
The Greens are sometimes even better locally than the Lib Dens, and I've seen it in action. It depends on the area, but It's definitely key to their growth.
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
But they wouldn't, would they? Really? Deep down? And anyways. That would lead to a peeling off of half of their current support. Leaving them in single figures.
You reckon Labour would say they'd go in with the Tories to keep Reform out?
That's a different question entirely.
Is it? It's a bit weird to use grand coalition as a stick with which to beat the Tories but not do the same to Labour or anyone else for that matter.
Wasn't using it as anything. Labour won't be asked to choose between propping up a Tory government or a Reform one.
They'll be asked about coalition partners. It's the same thing.
And just like the Tories they'd be mad to answer it.
I very much the LibDems will go into coalition with the Tories again, after the way they were shafted in 2013-15.
"Pay growth across the economy fell to a near four-year low as the availability of workers rose in a cooling labour market."
Heading into a period of real terms pay contraction while inflation is still rising. Things are about to get very bumpy for the government if they don't get a handle on inflation.
Good job the government won't have to raise taxes a load more in a couple of months.
This is one of the things overlooked a little when discussing the outcome of the next GE.
If we genuinely do have a budget crisis in the next couple of years, it could completely turn politics on its head.
"Pay growth across the economy fell to a near four-year low as the availability of workers rose in a cooling labour market."
Heading into a period of real terms pay contraction while inflation is still rising. Things are about to get very bumpy for the government if they don't get a handle on inflation.
Good job the government won't have to raise taxes a load more in a couple of months.
This is one of the things overlooked a little when discussing the outcome of the next GE.
If we genuinely do have a budget crisis in the next couple of years, it could completely turn politics on its head.
It’s not difficult to see how we might get there.
I don’t think might is accurate - we will unless things really change
The problem for the Greens is that as they move left under Polanski they will lose ex Tory seats they won in Herefordshire and like Waveney and lose the chance of taking Isle of Wight East next time. Whereas originally the Greens were solely focused on the environment and mildly Eurosceptic, even Farage voted for them in the 1989 EU Parliament elections on that basis
Morning all. On this, I have my doubts Ramsay will be able to stomach staying in a harder left Green party and it will be interesting to see if and how long he stays after his return from compassionate leave. Id not be entirely surprised regardless of his movements to see a Green mk 2/Ecology Party emerge to try and sweep up that rural ex Tory, environmental vote. Of course they'd be tiny like the original Ecology Party but there is obviously a space for that in politics.
Defecting to the LibDems would probably be the easiest way for him to keep his seat.
They lost their deposit in 2024. They wont be winning Waveney Valley any time soon
Because Ramsay hoovered up their potential vote. If Ramsay defects and brings some of the local party with him, I think they'd be well placed to hold the seat.
They hold one council ward within Waveney Valley (narrowly) and never got more than 15% of the vote in the predecessor Waveney seat which was in 2010 at their height. The notional vote for LDs going in to 2024 was 9%, so not much vote to hoover. They arent a factor in the seat and won't be in 2029.
The notional vote for the Greens going in to 2024 was also 9%. (9.3% versus the LibDems' notional 9.2%.) And yet the Greens won. They won because they hoovered up the LibDem vote and a big chunk of the Labour vote, while the Conservatives saw their vote split with a Reform UK candidate.
Well there is little point continuing the discussion, we have irreconcilable views on this. Ill be happy to frame a bet around the LD % next time if Ramsay defects to the LDs or indeed a sporting bet but its not going to happen.
The problem for the Greens is that as they move left under Polanski they will lose ex Tory seats they won in Herefordshire and like Waveney and lose the chance of taking Isle of Wight East next time. Whereas originally the Greens were solely focused on the environment and mildly Eurosceptic, even Farage voted for them in the 1989 EU Parliament elections on that basis
Morning all. On this, I have my doubts Ramsay will be able to stomach staying in a harder left Green party and it will be interesting to see if and how long he stays after his return from compassionate leave. Id not be entirely surprised regardless of his movements to see a Green mk 2/Ecology Party emerge to try and sweep up that rural ex Tory, environmental vote. Of course they'd be tiny like the original Ecology Party but there is obviously a space for that in politics.
Defecting to the LibDems would probably be the easiest way for him to keep his seat.
They lost their deposit in 2024. They wont be winning Waveney Valley any time soon
Because Ramsay hoovered up their potential vote. If Ramsay defects and brings some of the local party with him, I think they'd be well placed to hold the seat.
They hold one council ward within Waveney Valley (narrowly) and never got more than 15% of the vote in the predecessor Waveney seat which was in 2010 at their height. The notional vote for LDs going in to 2024 was 9%, so not much vote to hoover. They arent a factor in the seat and won't be in 2029.
The notional vote for the Greens going in to 2024 was also 9%. (9.3% versus the LibDems' notional 9.2%.) And yet the Greens won. They won because they hoovered up the LibDem vote and a big chunk of the Labour vote, while the Conservatives saw their vote split with a Reform UK candidate.
Well there is little point continuing the discussion, we have irreconcilable views on this. Ill be happy to frame a bet around the LD % next time if Ramsay defects to the LDs or indeed a sporting bet but its not going to happen.
It's a hypothetical. It probably won't happen. But if Ramsay does defect, happy to offer a bet then!
I think what is more likely is that all the current Green MPs stay in the party, albeit with tensions between the leaderships and the Ramsay/Chowns faction. With good local campaigns, I suspect Ramsay and Chowns can hang on, regardless of Polanski taking the party further left. But who knows what will happen in a few years time?
Gen Z are flocking to the National Trust to relieve climate anxiety and get away from social media.
The conservation charity has seen a surge in popularity among young people, with membership among 18 to 25-year-olds rising by 35 per cent in the year to March. Young membership numbers have increased by a further 16 per cent since the start of March, according to its annual report.
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
In all honesty, the Tories aren’t much in charge of their own destiny right now. They’ll either recover or decline based on the relative performance of Reform, in all likelihood, and there’s not a tremendous amount they can do up until that point other than reminding people they exist and trying to talk some vague sense.
Labour are the ones with their hands on the machinery of government. They are the ones who can deliver results. But a note on “centrism” per your post - if we are taking centrism to mean the broad consensus politics that we’ve been used to in recent years, that isn’t going to deliver the results - so there needs to be a type of “radical centrism” for want of a much better term; that acknowledges that departure from the precedent is the only way we are going to get society working for people. Some politicians are slowly starting to get this, but I doubt they have the political will to really try and do anything about it. We shall see.
The overall fate for the Tories, no they are a little adrift on the sea, but certainly there's a lot they can look at influencing - particularly firewalls. They can identify councils and seats to quietly fortify and work now to try and insure against apocalypse and what they can target where Reform are less rampant and wont be exhausting resources (Wycombe is an example) Thats what they should do if the long term survival and recovery of the Tories is the aim, if they are chasing a quick fix breakback in 2029 they are sunk.
For now the Tories should just be aiming to hold their 2024 vote, target seats Labour gained from them last year which voted Remain or Leave but only narrowly and then hope Farage loses the next GE
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
The problem is many people think what recent governments have been doing is fairly crazy, so what's the difference.
The looming political crisis in France will surely have some lessons for politicians on this side of the channel too. The French economy suffers from much of the same structural weaknesses as ours, save that they are a few years ahead of us. How they navigate this will be instructive. The only way forwards appears to be painful restructuring, but the Parliament won’t accept it, and politicians are still trying to persuade people that cakeism is an option. There’s also the risk (because, France) of this all descending into a general strike and street protest.
Next PM Francois Hollande? He was elected to the National Assembly last year as a candidate for the NFP, the leftist block which won most seats. Plus French MPs have consistently rejected spending cuts and he was the champion of taxing the rich as President
Good morning from the Douro river and a sunny Portugal. Have been visiting the country one and off during the last decade. It’s clear from the state of some of the properties here, some inward investment from immigrants would help boost the economy but …
The golden visas I understand have been cancelled due to too much rich immigration.
Meanwhile a hundred miles north in Galicia where I have family, Ryanair have withdrawn their aircraft due to dropping demand as tourists were less welcome than before.
So it seems populist politics is all about cakes even though it’s not necessarily in the best interests of the people there.
From a betting perspective best not to bet logically. Think like a NIMBY.
I am pretty sure the Golden Visa (and similar schemes) for Portugal are still open, but they did place restrictions on where you could invest your money e.g. You can't just buy yourself a villa in the Algarve and qualify as so many Brits, Irish, Russian, Chinese, etc, did.
The problem with Portugal is long standing one. Everything happens so slowly that for instance the Golden Visa scheme has a massive backlog because they process everything at a snails pace. There are people desperate to give them millions and yet it still takes months / years to sort it and just met with a shrug.
It isn't just the government that is massively inefficient, about 5 companies basically run everything and they operate as mono / duo - polies. So everything gets done at "their" pace and if you complain too much you are put on the naughty list and you are buggered.
It isn't just foreigners who suffer this, it is the Portuguese themselves. Get them talking about stuff like construction or having a phone line put in, and its makes the 60/70s in the UK sound like utopia.
The problem for the Greens is that as they move left under Polanski they will lose ex Tory seats they won in Herefordshire and like Waveney and lose the chance of taking Isle of Wight East next time. Whereas originally the Greens were solely focused on the environment and mildly Eurosceptic, even Farage voted for them in the 1989 EU Parliament elections on that basis
Morning all. On this, I have my doubts Ramsay will be able to stomach staying in a harder left Green party and it will be interesting to see if and how long he stays after his return from compassionate leave. Id not be entirely surprised regardless of his movements to see a Green mk 2/Ecology Party emerge to try and sweep up that rural ex Tory, environmental vote. Of course they'd be tiny like the original Ecology Party but there is obviously a space for that in politics.
Defecting to the LibDems would probably be the easiest way for him to keep his seat.
They lost their deposit in 2024. They wont be winning Waveney Valley any time soon
Because Ramsay hoovered up their potential vote. If Ramsay defects and brings some of the local party with him, I think they'd be well placed to hold the seat.
They hold one council ward within Waveney Valley (narrowly) and never got more than 15% of the vote in the predecessor Waveney seat which was in 2010 at their height. The notional vote for LDs going in to 2024 was 9%, so not much vote to hoover. They arent a factor in the seat and won't be in 2029.
The notional vote for the Greens going in to 2024 was also 9%. (9.3% versus the LibDems' notional 9.2%.) And yet the Greens won. They won because they hoovered up the LibDem vote and a big chunk of the Labour vote, while the Conservatives saw their vote split with a Reform UK candidate.
Well there is little point continuing the discussion, we have irreconcilable views on this. Ill be happy to frame a bet around the LD % next time if Ramsay defects to the LDs or indeed a sporting bet but its not going to happen.
It's a hypothetical. It probably won't happen. But if Ramsay does defect, happy to offer a bet then!
I think what is more likely is that all the current Green MPs stay in the party, albeit with tensions between the leaderships and the Ramsay/Chowns faction. With good local campaigns, I suspect Ramsay and Chowns can hang on, regardless of Polanski taking the party further left. But who knows what will happen in a few years time?
Ok I'll touch base with you in that circumstance! Im not sure Ramsay stands again if he remains a Green. He had a solid seat here in Norwich on the city Council when first elected deputy leader in 2010 but left to work in the Green Industry and then a Green charity. He doesn't seem wedded to elected political positions and if hes not keen on direction.......
The problem for the Greens is that as they move left under Polanski they will lose ex Tory seats they won in Herefordshire and like Waveney and lose the chance of taking Isle of Wight East next time. Whereas originally the Greens were solely focused on the environment and mildly Eurosceptic, even Farage voted for them in the 1989 EU Parliament elections on that basis
Morning all. On this, I have my doubts Ramsay will be able to stomach staying in a harder left Green party and it will be interesting to see if and how long he stays after his return from compassionate leave. Id not be entirely surprised regardless of his movements to see a Green mk 2/Ecology Party emerge to try and sweep up that rural ex Tory, environmental vote. Of course they'd be tiny like the original Ecology Party but there is obviously a space for that in politics.
Defecting to the LibDems would probably be the easiest way for him to keep his seat.
They lost their deposit in 2024. They wont be winning Waveney Valley any time soon
Because Ramsay hoovered up their potential vote. If Ramsay defects and brings some of the local party with him, I think they'd be well placed to hold the seat.
They hold one council ward within Waveney Valley (narrowly) and never got more than 15% of the vote in the predecessor Waveney seat which was in 2010 at their height. The notional vote for LDs going in to 2024 was 9%, so not much vote to hoover. They arent a factor in the seat and won't be in 2029.
The notional vote for the Greens going in to 2024 was also 9%. (9.3% versus the LibDems' notional 9.2%.) And yet the Greens won. They won because they hoovered up the LibDem vote and a big chunk of the Labour vote, while the Conservatives saw their vote split with a Reform UK candidate.
Well there is little point continuing the discussion, we have irreconcilable views on this. Ill be happy to frame a bet around the LD % next time if Ramsay defects to the LDs or indeed a sporting bet but its not going to happen.
You are of course consistently bearish on the Lib Dems (I wrote “consistently a Lib Dem bear” but realised that could be misconstrued), but I agree with you on this. Lib Dem and Green votes are less interchangeable than they might seem.
Good morning from the Douro river and a sunny Portugal. Have been visiting the country one and off during the last decade. It’s clear from the state of some of the properties here, some inward investment from immigrants would help boost the economy but …
The golden visas I understand have been cancelled due to too much rich immigration.
Meanwhile a hundred miles north in Galicia where I have family, Ryanair have withdrawn their aircraft due to dropping demand as tourists were less welcome than before.
So it seems populist politics is all about cakes even though it’s not necessarily in the best interests of the people there.
From a betting perspective best not to bet logically. Think like a NIMBY.
I am pretty sure the Golden Visa (and similar schemes) for Portugal are still open, but they did place restrictions on where you could invest your money e.g. You can't just buy yourself a villa in the Algarve and qualify (as so many did).
The problem with Portugal is long standing. Everything happens so slowly that for instance the Golden Visa scheme has a massive backlog because they process everything so slowly. It isn't just the government that is massively inefficient, about 5 companies basically run everything and they operate as mono / duo - polies. So everything gets done at "their" pace and if you complain too much you are put on the naughty list and you are buggered.
Sounds very similar to the kind of issues I've heard about in Greece, as they're trying to attract a lot of the more cash-rich types of Northern Europeans as digital nomads, too.
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
But they wouldn't, would they? Really? Deep down? And anyways. That would lead to a peeling off of half of their current support. Leaving them in single figures.
That all depends on what sort of Tory party they want to be. Of course they would lose support of they went 'we are not Reform, we are One Nation Tories, we are not unpleasant English nationalists'. But that's because they have already lost their centrist One Nation heartland voters. Look at 2024, look at the polls.
No-one wants to vote Tory at the moment because they are useless, unprincipled, incoherent and Reformlite.
The way back is not populism, Farage will always beat them there, but articulating in principle and policy what Toryism stands for and how it works, here and now.
Have they? Nearly half the current Tory vote were Remainers according to Yougov, the current Tory Party is more One Nation than it was after 2019 certainly, most of the hardest Leavers are now in Reform. Hence Cleverly is likely to replace Kemi if she is removed rather than Jenrick
Thank you for the article. I enjoyed it and its predecessors. I look forward to the next entry, as I'm sure we all do. The published ones in Gareth's "The Challenge For..." series are:
The problem for the Greens is that as they move left under Polanski they will lose ex Tory seats they won in Herefordshire and like Waveney and lose the chance of taking Isle of Wight East next time. Whereas originally the Greens were solely focused on the environment and mildly Eurosceptic, even Farage voted for them in the 1989 EU Parliament elections on that basis
Morning all. On this, I have my doubts Ramsay will be able to stomach staying in a harder left Green party and it will be interesting to see if and how long he stays after his return from compassionate leave. Id not be entirely surprised regardless of his movements to see a Green mk 2/Ecology Party emerge to try and sweep up that rural ex Tory, environmental vote. Of course they'd be tiny like the original Ecology Party but there is obviously a space for that in politics.
Defecting to the LibDems would probably be the easiest way for him to keep his seat.
They lost their deposit in 2024. They wont be winning Waveney Valley any time soon
Because Ramsay hoovered up their potential vote. If Ramsay defects and brings some of the local party with him, I think they'd be well placed to hold the seat.
They hold one council ward within Waveney Valley (narrowly) and never got more than 15% of the vote in the predecessor Waveney seat which was in 2010 at their height. The notional vote for LDs going in to 2024 was 9%, so not much vote to hoover. They arent a factor in the seat and won't be in 2029.
The notional vote for the Greens going in to 2024 was also 9%. (9.3% versus the LibDems' notional 9.2%.) And yet the Greens won. They won because they hoovered up the LibDem vote and a big chunk of the Labour vote, while the Conservatives saw their vote split with a Reform UK candidate.
Well there is little point continuing the discussion, we have irreconcilable views on this. Ill be happy to frame a bet around the LD % next time if Ramsay defects to the LDs or indeed a sporting bet but its not going to happen.
You are of course consistently bearish on the Lib Dems (I wrote “consistently a Lib Dem bear” but realised that could be misconstrued), but I agree with you on this. Lib Dem and Green votes are less interchangeable than they might seem.
Im a little bearish Tim (of the teddy variety), but tbf i think they will do pretty well next time but I think their vote will be a little bit down on 2024 and their efficiency will not be there to the same extent meaning that start to ship some seats. They arent (as it stands in my view) going under 50 and probably not under 55/60........ However I think the YP emergence might start to erode their yoof support a bit more
Starmer Strategist Leaves Downing Street After Two Weeks
Tom Kibasi was seconded from NHS England to work on part of the government reboot and was expected to be involved for months. Kibasi — who helped Starmer win the Labour Party leadership in 2020 — left Downing Street at the end of August despite initially being expected to be there for several months.
By sheer coincidence Sir Keir Starmer has replaced his Scottish secretary with Douglas Alexander, head of the Labour campaign for Holyrood next year. Very ruthless move, but not unexpected to see wee Dougie back in cabinet, he was never going to sit on the back benches for 5 years.
The best way to turn Slab fortunes round in the polls is for SKS to do a better job as prime minister, I can't help but think if wee Dougie manages a Labour win at Holyrood in 2026 it would be his biggest political achievement yet.
Of all the weekend cabinet changes, I feel this is the poorest Starmer has made. He clearly didn't expect the reaction from Labour MPs it received
Gen Z are flocking to the National Trust to relieve climate anxiety and get away from social media.
The conservation charity has seen a surge in popularity among young people, with membership among 18 to 25-year-olds rising by 35 per cent in the year to March. Young membership numbers have increased by a further 16 per cent since the start of March, according to its annual report.
No booze, church and National Trust. Gen Z are a funny lot.
Visiting smart places is quite expensive these days, as one who can remember it costing 1d to get into Kew Gardens.
For those who get around a lot, NT membership is probably a quite good value thing to be in; you only have to go to a few for it to pay for itself; and visiting stuff is a very good social thing to do with others.
There were also 6d days so the better off could keep themselves to themselves. Somewhere in Virginia Woolf's diaries is an entry along the lines of "Went to Kew but it was a sixpenny day so came straight home'.
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
In all honesty, the Tories aren’t much in charge of their own destiny right now. They’ll either recover or decline based on the relative performance of Reform, in all likelihood, and there’s not a tremendous amount they can do up until that point other than reminding people they exist and trying to talk some vague sense.
Labour are the ones with their hands on the machinery of government. They are the ones who can deliver results. But a note on “centrism” per your post - if we are taking centrism to mean the broad consensus politics that we’ve been used to in recent years, that isn’t going to deliver the results - so there needs to be a type of “radical centrism” for want of a much better term; that acknowledges that departure from the precedent is the only way we are going to get society working for people. Some politicians are slowly starting to get this, but I doubt they have the political will to really try and do anything about it. We shall see.
The overall fate for the Tories, no they are a little adrift on the sea, but certainly there's a lot they can look at influencing - particularly firewalls. They can identify councils and seats to quietly fortify and work now to try and insure against apocalypse and what they can target where Reform are less rampant and wont be exhausting resources (Wycombe is an example) Thats what they should do if the long term survival and recovery of the Tories is the aim, if they are chasing a quick fix breakback in 2029 they are sunk.
For now the Tories should just be aiming to hold their 2024 vote, target seats Labour gained from them last year which voted Remain or Leave but only narrowly and then hope Farage loses the next GE
I don't disagree. They ought to also be trying to ensure they grab 1 or 2 back in Wales (Monmouth and Clwyd North perhaps) and retain at least a foothold in each region. And work on clusters of seats - one example might be Gainsborough, Newark, Rushcliffe, Harborough, Rutland, Peterborough, Melton as a blue blob
Instead of being held to account for making the boat problem worse Farage is allegedly the solution . This from the Migration Observatory
“But there’s also increasing evidence of a Brexit effect. We speak with asylum seekers now, and often they’ve claimed asylum in the EU country, sometimes been refused, but they understand that because the UK is no longer a part of the EU, and no longer party to the EU’s fingerprint database for asylum seekers, if they can get to the UK, they have another bite of the cherry and another chance to secure asylum status and remain in Europe.”
And the figures clearly show the increase in the boats as soon as the UK left the EU .
On Zack Polanski, he is impressively well presented but becomes questionable once the surface is scratched. Imo he's less questionable than the Reformista bigwigs, because he at least has principles rather than nihilism.
On Hypnoboobs (which is a good quip) I not sure whether to look down for on him or his customers more. He was 30, and Harley Street is an epicentre of both quackery and the enablement of criminality - did not Mohammed Al Fayed have his victims pre-inspected there?
Perhaps he should have used blue pyramids?
I'm excited by the reference to blue pyramids, which I'm choosing to infer is a reference to the Great Pyramid of Stockport - which is where ZP went to school - but I don't fully understand it. So I expect my inference is wrong...?
I got onto the Stockport one last time.
This one is Sarah Ferguson in the early 1990s and a clairvoyant called Madame Vasso, where SF sat under a Blue Pyramid to be cleansed. Same sort of edgy stuff that highly intelligent or rich people swallow, to meet some sort of need.
A strange character, who betrayed Sarah Ferguson's confidences in a book - Isobel Oakeshott style.
People criticise the BBC etc for giving Reform too much airtime, but here we are, twenty comments into a thread about the Green Party, and everyone’s talking about Reform. Why would the media be any different?
Actually a study published in yesterdays independent/i paper showed Farage wasn’t on mainstream tv more than other politicians. He wasn’t even the top Reformer
Nigel Farage is not given more airtime on TV than other politicians, an academic study has found
On Zack Polanski, he is impressively well presented but becomes questionable once the surface is scratched. Imo he's less questionable than the Reformista bigwigs, because he at least has principles rather than nihilism.
On Hypnoboobs (which is a good quip) I not sure whether to look down for on him or his customers more. He was 30, and Harley Street is an epicentre of both quackery and the enablement of criminality - did not Mohammed Al Fayed have his victims pre-inspected there?
Perhaps he should have used blue pyramids?
I'm excited by the reference to blue pyramids, which I'm choosing to infer is a reference to the Great Pyramid of Stockport - which is where ZP went to school - but I don't fully understand it. So I expect my inference is wrong...?
I got onto the Stockport one last time.
This one is Sarah Ferguson in the early 1990s and a clairvoyant called Madame Vasso, where SF sat under a Blue Pyramid to be cleansed. Same sort of edgy stuff that highly intelligent or rich people swallow, to meet some sort of need.
A strange character, who betrayed Sarah Ferguson's confidences in a book - Isobel Oakeshott style.
The looming political crisis in France will surely have some lessons for politicians on this side of the channel too. The French economy suffers from much of the same structural weaknesses as ours, save that they are a few years ahead of us. How they navigate this will be instructive. The only way forwards appears to be painful restructuring, but the Parliament won’t accept it, and politicians are still trying to persuade people that cakeism is an option. There’s also the risk (because, France) of this all descending into a general strike and street protest.
Next PM Francois Hollande? He was elected to the National Assembly last year as a candidate for the NFP, the leftist block which won most seats. Plus French MPs have consistently rejected spending cuts and he was the champion of taxing the rich as President
This illustrates the differences between the challenges facing France and our own.
Superficially we are in similar straits: big economic and fiscal headwinds, disillusionment with established parties and the seemingly inexorable rise of the far right. Below the surface we remain 2 very different economies and polities though.
Britain’s economic problems are: sluggish growth, rising debt and interest payments, expensive electricity, rising pension and healthcare costs and a decrepit public sphere with failing public services.
France has even more sluggish growth, its debt situation is worse than ours although its interest costs are lower, its pension and healthcare obligations put ours in the shade, but it has cheaper electricity and crucially its public sphere is in really fine fettle. The place gleams.
They have much higher taxation and much higher public spending than us. They can - though it will be painful - afford to make substantial cuts to public spending to address their deficit, while maintaining reasonable service levels. Raising taxes would make little sense for one of the most taxed countries on earth.
Britain can scarcely afford to make the kind of spending cuts we’d need to balance the books without further emshittifying our decrepit infrastructure and plunging the NHS into further crisis. That’s our big dilemma.
France’s risk with spending cuts and public sector reform will be public opposition, strikes and protests. Ours will be people dying on trolleys.
France’s efforts to stop the migrant boats are dysfunctional in the face of extreme violence orchestrated by people-smuggling gangs, a policing chief has admitted. Marc Alegre, who represents officers in Calais and Dunkirk, said efforts by police and gendarmes were disjointed, plagued by a lack of training, faced shortages of recruits and spent British money on the wrong type of equipment.
The Greens are sometimes even better locally than the Lib Dens, and I've seen it in action. It's key to their growth.
Let me drop in what is one of my favourite presentations. Matthew Snedker (Leader of the Green Group in Darlington) on practical politics. He was an activist who got fed up of "trying to persuade the wrong people to make the right decisions", so went into local politics to start to persuade people that he had the right idea and could help make the right decisions.
It's very good on small c institutional conservatism, and fear of even minor change.
An interesting take on small boat arrivals from a researcher into what's causing people to come here, arguing that Brexit is one of the drivers. It really is the gift that keeps on giving.
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
In all honesty, the Tories aren’t much in charge of their own destiny right now. They’ll either recover or decline based on the relative performance of Reform, in all likelihood, and there’s not a tremendous amount they can do up until that point other than reminding people they exist and trying to talk some vague sense.
Labour are the ones with their hands on the machinery of government. They are the ones who can deliver results. But a note on “centrism” per your post - if we are taking centrism to mean the broad consensus politics that we’ve been used to in recent years, that isn’t going to deliver the results - so there needs to be a type of “radical centrism” for want of a much better term; that acknowledges that departure from the precedent is the only way we are going to get society working for people. Some politicians are slowly starting to get this, but I doubt they have the political will to really try and do anything about it. We shall see.
Thanks. Yes. Centrism comes in flavours and is more than consensus but has a common core. Trump, Corbyn, Farage (probably), Putin, Xi, Polanski, Galloway are not centrists. Centrism, as I see it, is serious about avoiding populism (simple answers to complex questions), accepting the democratic process, avoiding authoritarianism, upholding the rule of law and separation of powers, working with an international order, accepts the world is complicated and imperfect, upholds private enterprise and a substantial welfare state, doesn't demonise minorities, prefers Adam Smith and David Ricardo to Marx, is fiscally responsible.
Within those constraints any amount of radicalism is possible. As Attlee, Thatcher and Blair illustrate.
Online the term has simply come to mean 'interested in politics but not hard left and not voting for Farage'.
I think if it as ‘self satisfied, comfortably off with no empathy for people who struggle in a world they never go to’
By sheer coincidence Sir Keir Starmer has replaced his Scottish secretary with Douglas Alexander, head of the Labour campaign for Holyrood next year. Very ruthless move, but not unexpected to see wee Dougie back in cabinet, he was never going to sit on the back benches for 5 years.
The best way to turn Slab fortunes round in the polls is for SKS to do a better job as prime minister, I can't help but think if wee Dougie manages a Labour win at Holyrood in 2026 it would be his biggest political achievement yet.
Of all the weekend cabinet changes, I feel this is the poorest Starmer has made. He clearly didn't expect the reaction from Labour MPs it received
But we'd have a Labour MP and Colonial Secretary ordering the locals (MSPs) around even more from London when we already have a head of Slab who is a MSP (not a MP any more since the departure of Ross D. MP/MSP). I wonder how that will go. Could be smooth, could be ...
An interesting take on small boat arrivals from a researcher into what's causing people to come here, arguing that Brexit is one of the drivers. It really is the gift that keeps on giving.
The media don’t want to talk about it but it’s clearly had an impact and it’s so obvious by just looking at the figures post Brexit .
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
In all honesty, the Tories aren’t much in charge of their own destiny right now. They’ll either recover or decline based on the relative performance of Reform, in all likelihood, and there’s not a tremendous amount they can do up until that point other than reminding people they exist and trying to talk some vague sense.
Labour are the ones with their hands on the machinery of government. They are the ones who can deliver results. But a note on “centrism” per your post - if we are taking centrism to mean the broad consensus politics that we’ve been used to in recent years, that isn’t going to deliver the results - so there needs to be a type of “radical centrism” for want of a much better term; that acknowledges that departure from the precedent is the only way we are going to get society working for people. Some politicians are slowly starting to get this, but I doubt they have the political will to really try and do anything about it. We shall see.
Thanks. Yes. Centrism comes in flavours and is more than consensus but has a common core. Trump, Corbyn, Farage (probably), Putin, Xi, Polanski, Galloway are not centrists. Centrism, as I see it, is serious about avoiding populism (simple answers to complex questions), accepting the democratic process, avoiding authoritarianism, upholding the rule of law and separation of powers, working with an international order, accepts the world is complicated and imperfect, upholds private enterprise and a substantial welfare state, doesn't demonise minorities, prefers Adam Smith and David Ricardo to Marx, is fiscally responsible.
Within those constraints any amount of radicalism is possible. As Attlee, Thatcher and Blair illustrate.
Online the term has simply come to mean 'interested in politics but not hard left and not voting for Farage'.
I think if it as ‘self satisfied, comfortably off with no empathy for people who struggle in a world they never go to’
It's perfectly possible to feel empathy for people while believing that political extremism will only make their plight worse. Populism never ends well, and it is usually the most vulnerable who suffer the most.
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
In all honesty, the Tories aren’t much in charge of their own destiny right now. They’ll either recover or decline based on the relative performance of Reform, in all likelihood, and there’s not a tremendous amount they can do up until that point other than reminding people they exist and trying to talk some vague sense.
Labour are the ones with their hands on the machinery of government. They are the ones who can deliver results. But a note on “centrism” per your post - if we are taking centrism to mean the broad consensus politics that we’ve been used to in recent years, that isn’t going to deliver the results - so there needs to be a type of “radical centrism” for want of a much better term; that acknowledges that departure from the precedent is the only way we are going to get society working for people. Some politicians are slowly starting to get this, but I doubt they have the political will to really try and do anything about it. We shall see.
Thanks. Yes. Centrism comes in flavours and is more than consensus but has a common core. Trump, Corbyn, Farage (probably), Putin, Xi, Polanski, Galloway are not centrists. Centrism, as I see it, is serious about avoiding populism (simple answers to complex questions), accepting the democratic process, avoiding authoritarianism, upholding the rule of law and separation of powers, working with an international order, accepts the world is complicated and imperfect, upholds private enterprise and a substantial welfare state, doesn't demonise minorities, prefers Adam Smith and David Ricardo to Marx, is fiscally responsible.
Within those constraints any amount of radicalism is possible. As Attlee, Thatcher and Blair illustrate.
Online the term has simply come to mean 'interested in politics but not hard left and not voting for Farage'.
I think if it as ‘self satisfied, comfortably off with no empathy for people who struggle in a world they never go to’
It's perfectly possible to feel empathy for people while believing that political extremism will only make their plight worse. Populism never ends well, and it is usually the most vulnerable who suffer the most.
It depends what we mean by populists, though. Bernie Sanders and to a certain extent FDR were and are populists, for instance.
Possibly also Lula, in Brazil, too, and that Uraguayan chap in the Citroën 2cv.
An interesting take on small boat arrivals from a researcher into what's causing people to come here, arguing that Brexit is one of the drivers. It really is the gift that keeps on giving.
The media don’t want to talk about it but it’s clearly had an impact and it’s so obvious by just looking at the figures post Brexit .
Pre Brexit there were no boats but illegal crossings by HGVs
This was stopped, and by 2018 small boats crossings started with 299 and 599 the following year
In the years from 2020 the crossings surged along with the explosion in migration into Europe via Italy
This is not, as some would portray, a brexit issue but a more recent problem dominating governments around the globe
Gen Z are flocking to the National Trust to relieve climate anxiety and get away from social media.
The conservation charity has seen a surge in popularity among young people, with membership among 18 to 25-year-olds rising by 35 per cent in the year to March. Young membership numbers have increased by a further 16 per cent since the start of March, according to its annual report.
No booze, church and National Trust. Gen Z are a funny lot.
Visiting smart places is quite expensive these days, as one who can remember it costing 1d to get into Kew Gardens.
For those who get around a lot, NT membership is probably a quite good value thing to be in; you only have to go to a few for it to pay for itself; and visiting stuff is a very good social thing to do with others.
There were also 6d days so the better off could keep themselves to themselves. Somewhere in Virginia Woolf's diaries is an entry along the lines of "Went to Kew but it was a sixpenny day so came straight home'.
Kew is priced like the NT - such that for even a small number of visits, yearly membership is cheaper. This is because they rely on forgotten renewals by people who don't go - or renewals by people who tell themselves "this year it will be better, and we will use the memberships".
Is there any value in it? I've had a nibble on Lisa Nandy (4.4) and Rosena Allin-Khan (8.3).
There was. Laying Lammy was/is I think free money.
There seems to be some backing for Nandy too - she's obviously done pretty well in past elections, but all that past baggage isn't a plus in my view. Seems a lay too.
Alin-Khan is interesting - someone seems to have managed to get very lucky in 12p at 1000-1. Thornberry too might do well
I'm unsure about whether Burnham could run - seems he's decided not to even if he can though.
It could be the most exciting betting market of the year - admittedly a very poor betting year.
I still fondly recall Hattie Harman's great race victory - a bit of a coup for me betting-wise.
On Zack Polanski, he is impressively well presented but becomes questionable once the surface is scratched. Imo he's less questionable than the Reformista bigwigs, because he at least has principles rather than nihilism.
On Hypnoboobs (which is a good quip) I not sure whether to look down for on him or his customers more. He was 30, and Harley Street is an epicentre of both quackery and the enablement of criminality - did not Mohammed Al Fayed have his victims pre-inspected there?
Perhaps he should have used blue pyramids?
I'm excited by the reference to blue pyramids, which I'm choosing to infer is a reference to the Great Pyramid of Stockport - which is where ZP went to school - but I don't fully understand it. So I expect my inference is wrong...?
I got onto the Stockport one last time.
This one is Sarah Ferguson in the early 1990s and a clairvoyant called Madame Vasso, where SF sat under a Blue Pyramid to be cleansed. Same sort of edgy stuff that highly intelligent or rich people swallow, to meet some sort of need.
A strange character, who betrayed Sarah Ferguson's confidences in a book - Isobel Oakeshott style.
The original vision was for a proper pyramid, rather than the slightly value-engineered step pyramid job which you see there when it became apparent that the original was hopelessly optimistic. In fact, originally, it was proposed that there would be about five of them. King's Valley, it was to be called...
The looming political crisis in France will surely have some lessons for politicians on this side of the channel too. The French economy suffers from much of the same structural weaknesses as ours, save that they are a few years ahead of us. How they navigate this will be instructive. The only way forwards appears to be painful restructuring, but the Parliament won’t accept it, and politicians are still trying to persuade people that cakeism is an option. There’s also the risk (because, France) of this all descending into a general strike and street protest.
Next PM Francois Hollande? He was elected to the National Assembly last year as a candidate for the NFP, the leftist block which won most seats. Plus French MPs have consistently rejected spending cuts and he was the champion of taxing the rich as President
This illustrates the differences between the challenges facing France and our own.
Superficially we are in similar straits: big economic and fiscal headwinds, disillusionment with established parties and the seemingly inexorable rise of the far right. Below the surface we remain 2 very different economies and polities though.
Britain’s economic problems are: sluggish growth, rising debt and interest payments, expensive electricity, rising pension and healthcare costs and a decrepit public sphere with failing public services.
France has even more sluggish growth, its debt situation is worse than ours although its interest costs are lower, its pension and healthcare obligations put ours in the shade, but it has cheaper electricity and crucially its public sphere is in really fine fettle. The place gleams.
They have much higher taxation and much higher public spending than us. They can - though it will be painful - afford to make substantial cuts to public spending to address their deficit, while maintaining reasonable service levels. Raising taxes would make little sense for one of the most taxed countries on earth.
Britain can scarcely afford to make the kind of spending cuts we’d need to balance the books without further emshittifying our decrepit infrastructure and plunging the NHS into further crisis. That’s our big dilemma.
France’s risk with spending cuts and public sector reform will be public opposition, strikes and protests. Ours will be people dying on trolleys.
True, though the UK is about middle in terms of tax and spending amongst developed and near developed nations, lower than France and Germany and the Nordic nations, the Benelux countries and Italy and Brazil, about the same as Japan, Poland, Canada, New Zealand and Spain and higher than S Korea, Switzerland, the USA, Australia, Chile and Argentina and Singapore and the UAE.
2 French PMs have tried spending cuts and public sector reform, Barnier and Bayrou, both failed. Now it looks like Macron will have to appoint Hollande or another leftist to increase already relatively high taxes on the rich and high earners yet higher still as the left have most seats in the French Parliament so only a leftwing budget will now likely get through.
If he does then Labour backbenchers will be demanding Reeves follows suit and taxes the rich until the pips squeek again to increase spending on public services and welfare
Gen Z are flocking to the National Trust to relieve climate anxiety and get away from social media.
The conservation charity has seen a surge in popularity among young people, with membership among 18 to 25-year-olds rising by 35 per cent in the year to March. Young membership numbers have increased by a further 16 per cent since the start of March, according to its annual report.
An interesting take on small boat arrivals from a researcher into what's causing people to come here, arguing that Brexit is one of the drivers. It really is the gift that keeps on giving.
The media don’t want to talk about it but it’s clearly had an impact and it’s so obvious by just looking at the figures post Brexit .
It is noticeable that these pieces on the "why" of the migrants find migrants with reasons to reinforce the thesis of the writer. As a result, I think that such pieces are plurals of anecdotes.
I've seen very little on scientific surveys of the mixture of reasons that people come here.
Something folks are missing here: this raid wasn’t about “illegals taking American jobs.” It was about ICE storming the Hyundai–LG battery plant in Georgia, part of a $7.6B Metaplant project that isn’t even operational yet.
They dragged out more than 300 South Korean engineers and specialists. People flown in to help stand the place up so it could eventually employ thousands of Georgians/Americans.
This plant wasn’t scheduled to start running until late 2025 or early 2026. These workers weren’t taking jobs; they were building the factory that would create them... https://x.com/cwebbonline/status/1964729036724420865
The MAGA replies to this are, to put it politely, unhinged.
On Zack Polanski, he is impressively well presented but becomes questionable once the surface is scratched. Imo he's less questionable than the Reformista bigwigs, because he at least has principles rather than nihilism.
On Hypnoboobs (which is a good quip) I not sure whether to look down for on him or his customers more. He was 30, and Harley Street is an epicentre of both quackery and the enablement of criminality - did not Mohammed Al Fayed have his victims pre-inspected there?
Perhaps he should have used blue pyramids?
I'm excited by the reference to blue pyramids, which I'm choosing to infer is a reference to the Great Pyramid of Stockport - which is where ZP went to school - but I don't fully understand it. So I expect my inference is wrong...?
I got onto the Stockport one last time.
This one is Sarah Ferguson in the early 1990s and a clairvoyant called Madame Vasso, where SF sat under a Blue Pyramid to be cleansed. Same sort of edgy stuff that highly intelligent or rich people swallow, to meet some sort of need.
A strange character, who betrayed Sarah Ferguson's confidences in a book - Isobel Oakeshott style.
The original vision was for a proper pyramid, rather than the slightly value-engineered step pyramid job which you see there when it became apparent that the original was hopelessly optimistic. In fact, originally, it was proposed that there would be about five of them. King's Valley, it was to be called...
There are parts of Cornwall (and others!) where National Trust membership gets you free parking at certain beaches. Over a two week break you can more than break even.
"You cannot hope to bribe or twist, Thank God, the British journalist, But when you see what he will do, Unbribed, There is no need."
When, over the course of about forty years of interest in politics, I've witnessed the actions of the sensible centrists, I think there is little need for populist extremists. The former are perfectly capable of screwing up.
Huddersfield is an interesting example as I think I'm in saying it represents a really good example of what Ramsey has been saying about electoral strategy: the Greens win seats in areas where they have spent years building a reputation on local government. Kirklees was one of the first councils anywhere with Greens on it I think. It's slow steady work. And involves very tightly focusing limited resources. It's a model of course the Liberals have used for years.
Polanski has argued - it seems successfully in the leader poll - that this is all far too slow.
It will be interesting in 2028/9 but me thinks Ramsey will be proved the better strategist.
Andrew Cooper is the Green leader in Huddersfield. He learned his trade as a Liberal activist and was cabinet member for housing in Kath Pinnock's Lib Dem- Green coalition administration.
By sheer coincidence Sir Keir Starmer has replaced his Scottish secretary with Douglas Alexander, head of the Labour campaign for Holyrood next year. Very ruthless move, but not unexpected to see wee Dougie back in cabinet, he was never going to sit on the back benches for 5 years.
The best way to turn Slab fortunes round in the polls is for SKS to do a better job as prime minister, I can't help but think if wee Dougie manages a Labour win at Holyrood in 2026 it would be his biggest political achievement yet.
Of all the weekend cabinet changes, I feel this is the poorest Starmer has made. He clearly didn't expect the reaction from Labour MPs it received
But we'd have a Labour MP and Colonial Secretary ordering the locals (MSPs) around even more from London when we already have a head of Slab who is a MSP (not a MP any more since the departure of Ross D. MP/MSP). I wonder how that will go. Could be smooth, could be ...
Good point. To be fair, Jackie Baillie is co campaign leader, though its odd to shove an MP in to oversee the job. I've simply no idea what they're going to offer to differentiate themselves in a crowded playing field. the start they have made in government since he took over as PM is awful.
For me there's a clear lack of understanding with how business works, which could be down to two things. Either an ignorance to the cause or being poorly advised. More likely a combination of both
Something folks are missing here: this raid wasn’t about “illegals taking American jobs.” It was about ICE storming the Hyundai–LG battery plant in Georgia, part of a $7.6B Metaplant project that isn’t even operational yet.
They dragged out more than 300 South Korean engineers and specialists. People flown in to help stand the place up so it could eventually employ thousands of Georgians/Americans.
This plant wasn’t scheduled to start running until late 2025 or early 2026. These workers weren’t taking jobs; they were building the factory that would create them... https://x.com/cwebbonline/status/1964729036724420865
The MAGA replies to this are, to put it politely, unhinged.
The more I see and hear about Maga the more I believe there needs to be a mass sterilisation programme to stop them breeding . They’re popping out an alarming rate of babies who are then brainwashed by their brain dead parents .
There are parts of Cornwall (and others!) where National Trust membership gets you free parking at certain beaches. Over a two week break you can more than break even.
Same if you're a keen walker or off-road cyclist, free parking near various trails across the UK.
I live in the Highgate ward of the London Borough of Camden. We have 1 Green and 2 Labour councillors. We abut the Highgate ward of the London Borough of Haringey, which has 3 LibDem councillors. We are demographically similar wards, although the Camden ward has more social housing, particularly around what's called Highgate New Town.
I think the sort of people who are voting Green in the Camden ward and the sort of people who are voting LibDem in the Haringey ward are pretty similar. The difference is in how active different local parties are. The party that puts in the work has won at council level. (I suspect many of these voters vote Labour at general elections and, given a choice between Farage or Starmer in No 10 in 2029, will vote Starmer.)
That doesn't mean that all Green supporters and all LibDem supporters are interchangeable, by any means, but there is overlap. More in some places than others.
Habib is applying to the EC and chucking 100 grand of his own cash in now Advance UK has reached 30,000 paid up members. Presumably we will start seeing Advance candidates in elections soon
By sheer coincidence Sir Keir Starmer has replaced his Scottish secretary with Douglas Alexander, head of the Labour campaign for Holyrood next year. Very ruthless move, but not unexpected to see wee Dougie back in cabinet, he was never going to sit on the back benches for 5 years.
The best way to turn Slab fortunes round in the polls is for SKS to do a better job as prime minister, I can't help but think if wee Dougie manages a Labour win at Holyrood in 2026 it would be his biggest political achievement yet.
Of all the weekend cabinet changes, I feel this is the poorest Starmer has made. He clearly didn't expect the reaction from Labour MPs it received
But we'd have a Labour MP and Colonial Secretary ordering the locals (MSPs) around even more from London when we already have a head of Slab who is a MSP (not a MP any more since the departure of Ross D. MP/MSP). I wonder how that will go. Could be smooth, could be ...
Good point. To be fair, Jackie Baillie is co campaign leader, though its odd to shove an MP in to oversea the job. I've simply no idea what they're going to offer to differentiate themselves in a crowded playing field. the start they have made in government since he took over as PM is awful.
For me there's a clear lack of understanding with how business works, which could be down to two things. Either an ignorance to the cause or being poorly advised. More likely a combination of both
Mm, interesting.
Edit: forget Mr Ross - I was too focussed on the issue of dual-parliamenting ...
I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
In all honesty, the Tories aren’t much in charge of their own destiny right now. They’ll either recover or decline based on the relative performance of Reform, in all likelihood, and there’s not a tremendous amount they can do up until that point other than reminding people they exist and trying to talk some vague sense.
Labour are the ones with their hands on the machinery of government. They are the ones who can deliver results. But a note on “centrism” per your post - if we are taking centrism to mean the broad consensus politics that we’ve been used to in recent years, that isn’t going to deliver the results - so there needs to be a type of “radical centrism” for want of a much better term; that acknowledges that departure from the precedent is the only way we are going to get society working for people. Some politicians are slowly starting to get this, but I doubt they have the political will to really try and do anything about it. We shall see.
Thanks. Yes. Centrism comes in flavours and is more than consensus but has a common core. Trump, Corbyn, Farage (probably), Putin, Xi, Polanski, Galloway are not centrists. Centrism, as I see it, is serious about avoiding populism (simple answers to complex questions), accepting the democratic process, avoiding authoritarianism, upholding the rule of law and separation of powers, working with an international order, accepts the world is complicated and imperfect, upholds private enterprise and a substantial welfare state, doesn't demonise minorities, prefers Adam Smith and David Ricardo to Marx, is fiscally responsible.
Within those constraints any amount of radicalism is possible. As Attlee, Thatcher and Blair illustrate.
Online the term has simply come to mean 'interested in politics but not hard left and not voting for Farage'.
I think if it as ‘self satisfied, comfortably off with no empathy for people who struggle in a world they never go to’
Comments
Thats what they should do if the long term survival and recovery of the Tories is the aim, if they are chasing a quick fix breakback in 2029 they are sunk.
I recall being confused by the Petrol Strike - having worked in the oil industry, the idea that 70-80% of the pump price of petrol is tax was standard knowledge. "Everyone knows this, surely?".
I'd even worked with a guy whose design for an international petrol pump was rejected by UK regulators - because it showed the tax...
The non Reform parties may (or of course may not) feel that it is in their best interest to project a strategy of 'Reform v Sane Parties' in some form.
We have not been here before, so precedent doesn't help much. When the SDP and successors were at hteir height they were just one more version of mainstream politics. At the moment Reform look like Trumplite.
I'm not entirely sure that Thatcher would fit into that bracket, personally, and certainly not by Continental European standards.
On the Greens, they were the only people locally who used to stand up to some pretty egregious waste practices from local landowners when I lived in the country.
Rural feudalism runs stomg, even with Lib Dems, some times.
Labour won't be asked to choose between propping up a Tory government or a Reform one.
We want to do something about immigration, but we're not racists
We want to reform healthcare, but we're not vaccine deniers
We're conservative, but Donald Trump isn't our hero
But the problem is their brand is too damaged by their last period in government. They need time for people to forget.
Yeah, that's true. I don't see them falling behind them outside the odd outlier poll at the moment though, the problem might be councils and councillors being the metric narrative (and Holyrood next year, i tbink theyre sade from Lib overtaking them in the Senedd)
The conservation charity has seen a surge in popularity among young people, with membership among 18 to 25-year-olds rising by 35 per cent in the year to March. Young membership numbers have increased by a further 16 per cent since the start of March, according to its annual report.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/08/gen-z-flock-to-national-trust-as-antidote-to-climate-anxiet/
No booze, church and National Trust. Gen Z are a funny lot.
The party allocation issue remains.
Tom Kibasi was seconded from NHS England to work on part of the government reboot and was expected to be involved for months. Kibasi — who helped Starmer win the Labour Party leadership in 2020 — left Downing Street at the end of August despite initially being expected to be there for several months.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-08/keir-starmer-strategist-tom-kibasi-leaves-downing-street-after-two-weeks
"Pay growth across the economy fell to a near four-year low as the availability of workers rose in a cooling labour market."
Heading into a period of real terms pay contraction while inflation is still rising. Things are about to get very bumpy for the government if they don't get a handle on inflation.
(Corrie was quite ahead of its time really - I remember half watching that storyline as a kid/teenager - my mum watched religiously and I'd pick up bits if I was in the room)
ETA: Starmer might still (be)come a Cropper!
For those who get around a lot, NT membership is probably a quite good value thing to be in; you only have to go to a few for it to pay for itself; and visiting stuff is a very good social thing to do with others.
The notional vote for LDs going in to 2024 was 9%, so not much vote to hoover. They arent a factor in the seat and won't be in 2029.
As I see it there are several strategies, of which three are:
You can do the Jenrick xenophobia strategy, try to out-Farage Farage. - "We are being invaded by the brown ethnics", "We hate Muslims more than Reform UK do", and so on. That seems to me to be a national politics strategy, and a hope that national issues will overwhelm local politics. Also I'd say that Farage is twisting the kaleidoscope towards different things he's picked up from Maga.
The Here vs the World (Passport to Pimlico) strategy. Ashfield Indies did that - we will protect Ashfield from the County Council; nobody but Ashfield Independents love Ashfield.
The "We are the best local councillors you can get" strategy, which is Lib Dem (and now Green) Pavement Politics. And noting that the Greens put a different emphasis on it.
Building a Cat-Sized Lego Train: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3CnDXh7hH0
The golden visas I understand have been cancelled due to too much rich immigration.
Meanwhile a hundred miles north in Galicia where I have family, Ryanair have withdrawn their aircraft due to dropping demand as tourists were less welcome than before.
So it seems populist politics is all about cakes even though it’s not necessarily in the best interests of the people there.
From a betting perspective best not to bet logically. Think like a NIMBY.
If we genuinely do have a budget crisis in the next couple of years, it could completely turn politics on its head.
It’s not difficult to see how we might get there.
I think what is more likely is that all the current Green MPs stay in the party, albeit with tensions between the leaderships and the Ramsay/Chowns faction. With good local campaigns, I suspect Ramsay and Chowns can hang on, regardless of Polanski taking the party further left. But who knows what will happen in a few years time?
The problem with Portugal is long standing one. Everything happens so slowly that for instance the Golden Visa scheme has a massive backlog because they process everything at a snails pace. There are people desperate to give them millions and yet it still takes months / years to sort it and just met with a shrug.
It isn't just the government that is massively inefficient, about 5 companies basically run everything and they operate as mono / duo - polies. So everything gets done at "their" pace and if you complain too much you are put on the naughty list and you are buggered.
It isn't just foreigners who suffer this, it is the Portuguese themselves. Get them talking about stuff like construction or having a phone line put in, and its makes the 60/70s in the UK sound like utopia.
Im not sure Ramsay stands again if he remains a Green. He had a solid seat here in Norwich on the city Council when first elected deputy leader in 2010 but left to work in the Green Industry and then a Green charity. He doesn't seem wedded to elected political positions and if hes not keen on direction.......
Thank you for the article. I enjoyed it and its predecessors. I look forward to the next entry, as I'm sure we all do. The published ones in Gareth's "The Challenge For..." series are:
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/06/02/the-challenge-for-labour/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/06/12/the-challenge-for-plaid-cymru/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/06/21/the-challenge-for-reform-uk/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/07/11/the-challenge-for-the-liberal-democrats/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/07/22/challenge-for-the-snp/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/09/08/the-challenge-for-the-green-parties/
They arent (as it stands in my view) going under 50 and probably not under 55/60........
However I think the YP emergence might start to erode their yoof support a bit more
"Stop making mistakes" is excellent advice for a govt with a persistent habit of bumping into the furniture.
True. Let's see how it's going... It has been 0 days since the last fuckup.
By sheer coincidence Sir Keir Starmer has replaced his Scottish secretary with Douglas Alexander, head of the Labour campaign for Holyrood next year. Very ruthless move, but not unexpected to see wee Dougie back in cabinet, he was never going to sit on the back benches for 5 years.
The best way to turn Slab fortunes round in the polls is for SKS to do a better job as prime minister, I can't help but think if wee Dougie manages a Labour win at Holyrood in 2026 it would be his biggest political achievement yet.
Of all the weekend cabinet changes, I feel this is the poorest Starmer has made. He clearly didn't expect the reaction from Labour MPs it received
They ought to also be trying to ensure they grab 1 or 2 back in Wales (Monmouth and Clwyd North perhaps) and retain at least a foothold in each region. And work on clusters of seats - one example might be Gainsborough, Newark, Rushcliffe, Harborough, Rutland, Peterborough, Melton as a blue blob
“But there’s also increasing evidence of a Brexit effect. We speak with asylum seekers now, and often they’ve claimed asylum in the EU country, sometimes been refused, but they understand that because the UK is no longer a part of the EU, and no longer party to the EU’s fingerprint database for asylum seekers, if they can get to the UK, they have another bite of the cherry and another chance to secure asylum status and remain in Europe.”
And the figures clearly show the increase in the boats as soon as the UK left the EU .
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-15074283/keir-starmer-king-queen-balmoral-service.html
Still, just think how cleansed the patrons of the curry house which now inhabits the Great Pyramid of Stockport will be.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8j72jz1n3do
Superficially we are in similar straits: big economic and fiscal headwinds, disillusionment with established parties and the seemingly inexorable rise of the far right. Below the surface we remain 2 very different economies and polities though.
Britain’s economic problems are: sluggish growth, rising debt and interest payments, expensive electricity, rising pension and healthcare costs and a decrepit public sphere with failing public services.
France has even more sluggish growth, its debt situation is worse than ours although its interest costs are lower, its pension and healthcare obligations put ours in the shade, but it has cheaper electricity and crucially its public sphere is in really fine fettle. The place gleams.
They have much higher taxation and much higher public spending than us. They can - though it will be painful - afford to make substantial cuts to public spending to address their deficit, while maintaining reasonable service levels. Raising taxes would make little sense for one of the most taxed countries on earth.
Britain can scarcely afford to make the kind of spending cuts we’d need to balance the books without further emshittifying our decrepit infrastructure and plunging the NHS into further crisis. That’s our big dilemma.
France’s risk with spending cuts and public sector reform will be public opposition, strikes and protests. Ours will be people dying on trolleys.
France’s efforts to stop the migrant boats are dysfunctional in the face of extreme violence orchestrated by people-smuggling gangs, a policing chief has admitted. Marc Alegre, who represents officers in Calais and Dunkirk, said efforts by police and gendarmes were disjointed, plagued by a lack of training, faced shortages of recruits and spent British money on the wrong type of equipment.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/09/08/stop-small-boats-french-police-channel-migrants-crisis/
It's very good on small c institutional conservatism, and fear of even minor change.
https://youtu.be/nw_gBxUx_ss?t=621
An interesting take on small boat arrivals from a researcher into what's causing people to come here, arguing that Brexit is one of the drivers. It really is the gift that keeps on giving.
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.247456862
Is there any value in it?
I've had a nibble on Lisa Nandy (4.4) and Rosena Allin-Khan (8.3).
Giving Reform both barrels and laying into Jenrick .
Possibly also Lula, in Brazil, too, and that Uraguayan chap in the Citroën 2cv.
This was stopped, and by 2018 small boats crossings started with 299 and 599 the following year
In the years from 2020 the crossings surged along with the explosion in migration into Europe via Italy
This is not, as some would portray, a brexit issue but a more recent problem dominating governments around the globe
There seems to be some backing for Nandy too - she's obviously done pretty well in past elections, but all that past baggage isn't a plus in my view. Seems a lay too.
Alin-Khan is interesting - someone seems to have managed to get very lucky in 12p at 1000-1.
Thornberry too might do well
I'm unsure about whether Burnham could run - seems he's decided not to even if he can though.
It could be the most exciting betting market of the year - admittedly a very poor betting year.
I still fondly recall Hattie Harman's great race victory - a bit of a coup for me betting-wise.
2 French PMs have tried spending cuts and public sector reform, Barnier and Bayrou, both failed. Now it looks like Macron will have to appoint Hollande or another leftist to increase already relatively high taxes on the rich and high earners yet higher still as the left have most seats in the French Parliament so only a leftwing budget will now likely get through.
If he does then Labour backbenchers will be demanding Reeves follows suit and taxes the rich until the pips squeek again to increase spending on public services and welfare
I've seen very little on scientific surveys of the mixture of reasons that people come here.
They dragged out more than 300 South Korean engineers and specialists. People flown in to help stand the place up so it could eventually employ thousands of Georgians/Americans.
This plant wasn’t scheduled to start running until late 2025 or early 2026. These workers weren’t taking jobs; they were building the factory that would create them...
https://x.com/cwebbonline/status/1964729036724420865
The MAGA replies to this are, to put it politely, unhinged.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meidum
"You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
Thank God, the British journalist,
But when you see what he will do,
Unbribed,
There is no need."
When, over the course of about forty years of interest in politics, I've witnessed the actions of the sensible centrists, I think there is little need for populist extremists. The former are perfectly capable of screwing up.
For me there's a clear lack of understanding with how business works, which could be down to two things. Either an ignorance to the cause or being poorly advised. More likely a combination of both
Thank you for your attention to this matter !
I think the sort of people who are voting Green in the Camden ward and the sort of people who are voting LibDem in the Haringey ward are pretty similar. The difference is in how active different local parties are. The party that puts in the work has won at council level. (I suspect many of these voters vote Labour at general elections and, given a choice between Farage or Starmer in No 10 in 2029, will vote Starmer.)
That doesn't mean that all Green supporters and all LibDem supporters are interchangeable, by any means, but there is overlap. More in some places than others.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/sep/08/great-north-run-apologises-newcastle-map-medals-sunderland
Edit: forget Mr Ross - I was too focussed on the issue of dual-parliamenting ...