To get the highest ever turnout in a seat during a by-election is also remarkable. To win 47% to 36% is clearly decisive and the takeaway is that voters really are prepared to turn out to see off Reform….bet accordingly.
That works well in Scotland, Wales and anywhere the Lib Dems are relevant. The much harder questions are about what happens when Labour are the only plausible vehicle to stop Reform? Or the Conservatives?
As things stand, there are an awful lot of seats in the first category and there may even be some in the second.
Yes, my constituency is likely to be blue vs turquoise next election, but theres no way I can support a party that might put Lam in the Home Office or number 10.
I think we see two effects in Caerphilly, an anti-Labour vote and an anti-Reform vote. In Wales PC is the obvious benificiary, but in England it is less obvious.
In Lib Dem, Green and Independent held seats the alternative is clear, but in Labour held constituencies in England what is going to happen?
I think we may well see anti-reform tactical voting in more marginal benefiting Labour to a degree, while hammering the Labour vote in seats where there is no perceived Reform threat.
We may well be in Greens take Bootle territory.
Completely agree with this, though I am less hopeful that in a direct Reform-Labour fight the tactical voting will be against Reform. I can see plenty of people rejecting Reform's populist racism, but I can also see plenty of people looking at Labour and thinking 'no f*ING way' to another term.
Yep - I think we can expect huge wins for Plaid, SNP, Lib Dem, Greens where they are the obvious left wing vote. Elsewhere, possible Reform landslide?
Would lead to a divided country. Literally, perhaps - incredible that the SNP under John Swinney are likely to win another election after 19 years in power.
I think we see two effects in Caerphilly, an anti-Labour vote and an anti-Reform vote. In Wales PC is the obvious benificiary, but in England it is less obvious.
In Lib Dem, Green and Independent held seats the alternative is clear, but in Labour held constituencies in England what is going to happen?
I think we may well see anti-reform tactical voting in more marginal benefiting Labour to a degree, while hammering the Labour vote in seats where there is no perceived Reform threat.
We may well be in Greens take Bootle territory.
Yes. Why not. In today's politics the impossible just hasn't happened yet - how many "that's impossible" results have we seen in successive elections since Brexit?
I think the momentum for change is going to be hard to stop now. People are sick and tired of their existence, but at the same time ReformTory have gone too far. So they want other options. Anything could happen, but I am calling this as Peak Farage just as Hartlepools was Peak Boris.
To get the highest ever turnout in a seat during a by-election is also remarkable. To win 47% to 36% is clearly decisive and the takeaway is that voters really are prepared to turn out to see off Reform….bet accordingly.
That works well in Scotland, Wales and anywhere the Lib Dems are relevant. The much harder questions are about what happens when Labour are the only plausible vehicle to stop Reform? Or the Conservatives?
As things stand, there are an awful lot of seats in the first category and there may even be some in the second.
Yes, my constituency is likely to be blue vs turquoise next election, but theres no way I can support a party that might put Lam in the Home Office or number 10.
I am beginning to get the sense that while the majority of the public will not accept immigration at 600k per year, neither will they accept the outright racism we're seeing mainstreamed on the political right.
Mariella Frostrup, "I just don't know when we started dehumanising people to the extent that we do now"
>Huge clap<
*In response to Nadine Dorries's long rant on leaving the ECHR and using the Royal Navy to address Farage's Brexit Small Boats Arrivals*
"I find it really shocking"
"Imagine if nobody wanted to come here then we'd really be depressed by Britain as a nation"
"Of course it is an issue. But we've decreased our budget for international development"
"We have a completely shambolic asylum system"
"You talk about people coming here illegally, but what are the legal routes?"
"We still don't have proper legal routes"
Nadine Dorries, "We do"
Mariella Frostrup, "Explain. I'm a woman in Congo. I'm one of the 80,000 women who has been raped as a result of the conflict going on there. I need to escape. My family has been wiped out. What's my legal way of applying to join my sister who is in the UK?"
*Nadine Dorries goes silent*
"It is impossible, our system is broken"
"The way we talk about people trying to come here, and the way we completely ignore the dilemmas that they face. And the fact that we have been instrumental in a lot of those conflicts"
"What happened to Afghanistan? When we were determined that people from Afghanistan could come here because of the way they supported us during that war"
"And now we're talking about them as if they're rubbish on the street"
"I think it's a shame we're allowing Reform UK to set the tone and the agenda and the way we talk about illegal immigrants"
Have you seen the clip? Its beautiful. Dorries absolutely taken apart with facts. The Tories are going to find out what happens when you follow fukers down a racist rabbit hole only to find that people aren't that racist after all.
Though there is evidence on PB that the fragrant Mariella’s judgment is not infallible.
Well done to Foxy and others who took the Plaid bet, think it was around 15/8 at the time
My thoughts were for strong Tactical Voting for Plaid, based on nothing more than gut. Voters may be "socially conservative" but they are actually quite left wing in these former Labour heartlands. Give them a tolerable left wing alternative and they will turn out.
I thought also a Nathan Gill effect too. Voters don't like traitors and Farage's attempts to handwave the issue away are not credible.
I got odds boost to 2/1, but only a fiver.
Nathan Gill was a footnote in the news even on the day of his plea. I don't believe that was decisive.
The PB faithful claiming earlier a 3500 majority is a marginal win are laughable. A win is a win, see Runcorn. I note the solid three figure vote for the Tories passed them by, so even by adding every Tory vote, Plaid coast home.
At 3.32 I posted - delighted and not even close
I expect many conservatives voted Plaid to keep out both labour and reform
There is a proud tradition of PB Tories voting Plaid...
Well done to Foxy and others who took the Plaid bet, think it was around 15/8 at the time
My thoughts were for strong Tactical Voting for Plaid, based on nothing more than gut. Voters may be "socially conservative" but they are actually quite left wing in these former Labour heartlands. Give them a tolerable left wing alternative and they will turn out.
I thought also a Nathan Gill effect too. Voters don't like traitors and Farage's attempts to handwave the issue away are not credible.
I got odds boost to 2/1, but only a fiver.
Nathan Gill was a footnote in the news even on the day of his plea. I don't believe that was decisive.
The PB faithful claiming earlier a 3500 majority is a marginal win are laughable. A win is a win, see Runcorn. I note the solid three figure vote for the Tories passed them by, so even by adding every Tory vote, Plaid coast home.
I am sure that your local knowledge is correct.
The Nathan Gill affair stinks, and Farage's lame handwaving away of Russian links to his party is not to be ignored.
The man was arrested, tried and convicted was he not?
A real 'affair' that 'stinks' is the Starmer Governments' position concerning the PRC - that is actually a live national security threat.
Yes he was. For what is - in my mind at least - treason.
Being convicted of something doesn't absolve someone. Quite the opposite.
Farage could have handled the Russian agent in his inner circle much better by stating how shocked he is, organising a proper internal party investigation into Russian influence and purging any others involved.
Well done to Foxy and others who took the Plaid bet, think it was around 15/8 at the time
My thoughts were for strong Tactical Voting for Plaid, based on nothing more than gut. Voters may be "socially conservative" but they are actually quite left wing in these former Labour heartlands. Give them a tolerable left wing alternative and they will turn out.
I thought also a Nathan Gill effect too. Voters don't like traitors and Farage's attempts to handwave the issue away are not credible.
I got odds boost to 2/1, but only a fiver.
Nathan Gill was a footnote in the news even on the day of his plea. I don't believe that was decisive.
The PB faithful claiming earlier a 3500 majority is a marginal win are laughable. A win is a win, see Runcorn. I note the solid three figure vote for the Tories passed them by, so even by adding every Tory vote, Plaid coast home.
At 3.32 I posted - delighted and not even close
I expect many conservatives voted Plaid to keep out both labour and reform
I think the idea that all Tory voters are switching to reform is for the birds. In a lot of constituencies there will be Tory voters who find Reform racist and they are people who could easily be persuaded to tactically vote for the could beat Reform candidate.
The issue in a lot of constituencies especially outside a By-election will be correctly working out which candidate is the one best placed to beat Reform..
In which case there are going to be a lot more of those dodgy Tactical Voting Websites, which look authoritative but are in fact highly partisan. Will there be some way of validating these sites in future? Or will it be like Opinion Polling companies - we all prefer the ones which agree with our biases?
Well done to Foxy and others who took the Plaid bet, think it was around 15/8 at the time
My thoughts were for strong Tactical Voting for Plaid, based on nothing more than gut. Voters may be "socially conservative" but they are actually quite left wing in these former Labour heartlands. Give them a tolerable left wing alternative and they will turn out.
I thought also a Nathan Gill effect too. Voters don't like traitors and Farage's attempts to handwave the issue away are not credible.
I got odds boost to 2/1, but only a fiver.
Nathan Gill was a footnote in the news even on the day of his plea. I don't believe that was decisive.
The PB faithful claiming earlier a 3500 majority is a marginal win are laughable. A win is a win, see Runcorn. I note the solid three figure vote for the Tories passed them by, so even by adding every Tory vote, Plaid coast home.
I am sure that your local knowledge is correct.
The Nathan Gill affair stinks, and Farage's lame handwaving away of Russian links to his party is not to be ignored.
The man was arrested, tried and convicted was he not?
A real 'affair' that 'stinks' is the Starmer Governments' position concerning the PRC - that is actually a live national security threat.
If you can't see the difference between taking cash from a hostile power to promote that hostile power from the pragmatism of failing to call China hostile for fear it might damage our economy you are not thinking straight.
The collapse of the case was wholly down to the CPS erroneously determining that without an assurance from this Government that the last Government considered China as a security threat. Legal minds have determined that the case was prosecutable without such an assurance. Although as Starmer is the DPP, I think we can still blame him.
Absolutely fascinating long read RUSI article which has major implication for UK defence procurement.
Apart from the enormously expanded role of all kinds of drones (which will be essential on any conceivable battlefield), the use and utility of armour has been greatly reduced.
And the new systems which the UK is procuring are particularly unsuited to the new warfare. Speed and manoeuvrability (and recoverability, repairability and ease of maintenance), are now far more important than better armour or increased firepower.
IOW, Challenger 3 and Ajax should probably be curtailed as soon as possible, and the funding put into more effective systems.
We should be wary of over-reacting to the Ukraine War. One of the features of the Ukraine War is that neither side has achieved air superiority. It's also possible that someone will develop an effective anti-FPV drone system.
Not close in the end. Look at the Labour and Tory scores.....dockerside hooker treatment.
3000 votes still pretty close.
Clearly massive Labour tactical voting for Plaid, most Tory voters went Reform and a few Labour voters did though but most Labour voters went Plaid
Yes. This must be seen as the 'right' result, because clearly there's still a far bigger left wing (soft and hard) vote there than a right wing one. PC had even more votes they could have squeezed from Labour and a few from the other parties. Reform sucked up the Tory vote very efficiently and there was really little they could have done.
It's not the result that I had hoped for, but it shows there's still a long way for Reform to go. The only real solution is to win people over to the right of politics, by making convincing arguments.
Well done to Foxy and others who took the Plaid bet, think it was around 15/8 at the time
My thoughts were for strong Tactical Voting for Plaid, based on nothing more than gut. Voters may be "socially conservative" but they are actually quite left wing in these former Labour heartlands. Give them a tolerable left wing alternative and they will turn out.
I thought also a Nathan Gill effect too. Voters don't like traitors and Farage's attempts to handwave the issue away are not credible.
I got odds boost to 2/1, but only a fiver.
Nathan Gill was a footnote in the news even on the day of his plea. I don't believe that was decisive.
The PB faithful claiming earlier a 3500 majority is a marginal win are laughable. A win is a win, see Runcorn. I note the solid three figure vote for the Tories passed them by, so even by adding every Tory vote, Plaid coast home.
I am sure that your local knowledge is correct.
The Nathan Gill affair stinks, and Farage's lame handwaving away of Russian links to his party is not to be ignored.
The man was arrested, tried and convicted was he not?
A real 'affair' that 'stinks' is the Starmer Governments' position concerning the PRC - that is actually a live national security threat.
Yes he was. For what is - in my mind at least - treason.
Being convicted of something doesn't absolve someone. Quite the opposite.
Comments
Would lead to a divided country. Literally, perhaps - incredible that the SNP under John Swinney are likely to win another election after 19 years in power.
I think the momentum for change is going to be hard to stop now. People are sick and tired of their existence, but at the same time ReformTory have gone too far. So they want other options. Anything could happen, but I am calling this as Peak Farage just as Hartlepools was Peak Boris.
NEW THfREAD
He won't though, he prefers to ignore the issue.
The collapse of the case was wholly down to the CPS erroneously determining that without an assurance from this Government that the last Government considered China as a security threat. Legal minds have determined that the case was prosecutable without such an assurance. Although as Starmer is the DPP, I think we can still blame him.