Plaid Cymru prove to be the big cheese in Caerphilly – politicalbetting.com
Plaid Cymru prove to be the big cheese in Caerphilly – politicalbetting.com
Caerphilly, Senedd constituency by-election result:PC: 47.4% (+19.0)REF: 36.0% (+34.2)LAB: 11.0% (-34.9)CON: 2.0% (-15.3)GRN: 1.5% (+1.5)LDEM: 1.5% (-1.2)GWL: 0.3% (+0.3)UKIP: 0.2% (+0.2)Plaid Cymru GAIN from Labour.
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Turnout increasing at a by-election from the previous general elections feels unprecedented.
Which says
1) Reform are attracting voters who don't usually vote (which means the vote could be very soft)
2) In some places there are a lot of people willing to come out and vote to ensure Reform don't win.
The last time I was writing about Lindsay Whittle was more than 30 years ago. My first job in journalism was on the South Wales Echo, where I spent more than a year in the early 1990s in the Caerphilly office covering the Rhymney Valley. Whittle was leader of the Plaid group on the council at the time. Even then he was a veteran (he was first elected as a councillor in the 1970s) and he was a useful contact (friendly, approachable, decent, public-spirited), but not that useful, because Labour ran south Wales, and the idea that Plaid might ever replace them seemed fanciful.
But 0% to 36% in one election cycle is pretty impressive too. Or should that be pretty worrying?
Good morning, everybody.
Until it was too late.
"There are a few reasons why I still think Labour have a chance of winning the next general election is because of that, people will coalesce around who is best placed to defeat Reform."
Labour are in government. That's a big problem. If support could coalesce around someone else (The Greens? The Lib Dems?), then that might be more plausible.
But in Scotland and Wales, Reform will clearly have an uphill task.
The thought of deporting people who are here lawfully is particularly repugnant to voters, see the Windrush scandal.
If Labour sort out the boats (to a significant decline in numbers and end to hotels) and the economy is ok or better they win, otherwise they don't imo.
Leaving the EU and whatever Reform claim to stand for are symptoms of more general discontent and could be addressed in other ways that actually solve some of the problems.
Keir Starmer
@Keir_Starmer
·
21m
I recently spoke with someone buying a house with her partner.
She told me that she had to pay just to verify who she was.
With digital ID that could be done in seconds and wipe out the costs.
Digital ID will save you time and money.
https://x.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1981618379850228183
If you look at how the opinion poll for this by-election was wrong, it wasn't that the Labour vote was squeezed to oblivion by tactical voting. It was that the combined Left vote was higher and the combined Right vote was lower.
The problem with tactical voting is that, in a lot of places, it will look like the obvious anti-Reform tactical vote will be for Labour - and people really don't want to vote for Labour.
Nigel Farage was everywhere in Caerphilly today.
He now appears to have vanished.
And just as bad as Sunak and Truss, and far worse than Johnson in selling what they are doing to the voting public.
One blessing is that after today all these Essex and Kent based Reformers will fuck off out of Caerphilly never to return
Why?
Oh, because it's dead.
(With apologies to Taylor Swift).
When you are starting out in life, with new jobs/houses/financial arrangements, you have to prove your identity a lot. And at the moment, doing so involves various somewhat leaky ways that are a PITA.
If you are established, those issues largely melt away; we saw that with voter ID. And someone here (eek?) who points out that it's easier for companies to take on foreigners than young locals, because they have ID papers in place.
Brexit was a temper tantrum by emotional toddlers who yearned for an imagined past
It's not a perfect anything
No passport and they just move on to the first candidate who can be quickly validated
If they attracted a result like that from nowhere in a by election, they’d still pick up tons of seats nationally in a GE.
What it might show is a nascent “anti Reform” vote that some have theorised might appear , which will make it much harder to obtain a majority.
This result is still a good result for them, but shows they are not invincible. And maybe, just maybe, some of our other parties actually need to start talking about sensible policies to ease concerns and bring us back together, rather than trying to ape Farage at every turn.
If they are the Tory leaders in cabinet come 2035 and they are looking for a scapegoat, how are Brits born overseas expected to feel comfortable under them?
By 2030, if polls are correct:
🏴Scottish nationalists will run Holyrood
🏴Welsh nationalists will run the Senedd
🇮🇪Irish nationalists will run Stormont
🏴English nationalists will run Westminster
🇬🇧People who believe in the UK need to reimagine it.
https://x.com/akmaciver/status/1981626874447966357
That was a decade ago, and we're all collectively more narked now than then. Question is whether there is a good idea that hasn't been tried that will work, or whether there are only bad ideas that have been tried and failed even more than this is failing.
And at least some of the complaints, such as "taxes are too high and we don't get enough from the government" are pulling in opposite directions.
As for Caerphilly - a solid win for Plaid and, let's be fair, a decent result for Reform. Everyone else was frankly squeezed out of it with incredibly poor results for the Greens, Conservatives and LDs and catastrophic for Labour in a former heartland.
I disagree with Tice and Farage (as I do on many things) - "two party politics" isn't dead, well, it is, if you assume that it's a monolithic conflict everywhere between Labour and Conservative.
There are all manner of one, two and three party (and possibly even four and five) party conflicts evolving across England, Scotland and Wales to mirror what has been happening in Northern Ireland for some time.
A number of these new conflicts don't include Labour or the Conservatives. Fenland, for example, a solid Conservative hold in what's probably the heart of their new heartland, is Conservative vs Reform.
IF there's a national overview involving Reform, it won't play out in seats like East Ham where Reform could conceivably come fourth at best. For us, it will either be Labour vs Newham Independents vs Green.
What we are seeing is the end of national political movements - we now have a patchwork of regional or economic-based parties conflicting in different areas of England where East Ham and Fenland are a million miles apart on so many levels. Trying to read the runes of all that is going to be a challenge.
Pinnokeir's example is horseshit
Although will should be probably be replaced by would because I doubt they will get it through the Commons.
What every other party except for Reform has failed to do is communicate a single, simple and persuasive national message.
Reform's is pretty vile for a large slice of the electorate (and the rest of their policies are contradictory nonsense) but it does tick those boxes.
Whichever party can do that with something more civilised, backed with a coherent policy offering, will reap large dividends.
I don't want this ID bullshit anyway. And we recently just barely avoided a far left government led by Corbyn, and currently have Reform leading the polls, and I like even less the idea of this sort of system in the hands of a Corbyn or Farage.
The voters plainly got the message.
If the state chooses to retrospectively withdraw/put additional conditions on the right to remain indefinitely, then that is tough on the individuals concerned but legitimate. Of course this doesn’t mean ICE breaking down their doors the next morning - people would rightly revolt against that - but giving them 6-12 months to leave in an orderly fashion.
That is the point Starmer is getting out with an OD card the agency wouldn’t be able to charge £x0 to confirm you are Fred, you would have an ID card that confirmed the answer immediately.
Now it’s a niche issue but it’s an easy to explain one
In my view the digital ID thing is a decision for the younger people who will be affected throughout their lives. For me, only a few years.
Elections have always had at least as much "vote against" as "vote for" about them. The problem is going to be putting together a government with multiple blocks who dislike each other.
I fear the endless novelty value and infatuation with new tech is leading to gullible acceptance of new concepts that deserve more scrutiny, and to exchanging privacy and freedom for the sake of speed and convenience. Humbug!
No
It was, is and will forever remain, a bullshit argument.
Before Brexit we could vote Dan Hannan out of office. Now he makes our laws for life.
Where is my democratic consent for that?
My take is this: people are waking up to how nasty ReformTory are and want to stop them.
For the actual Tories that process is simple. Sack Badenoch, don’t elect Jenrick or Lam. Remember what conservative actually means.
For Reform? Their entire grift is based on weaponising fear and division to get the infrequent voters out. Let’s assume people coalesce around not being racist and those Reform leads start wilting. The never vote group go back to type and disappear. That leaves Reform beached and fighting each other.
I’m not saying they will immediately disappear.
And if they don't, that sounds more concerning not less.
Digital ID that bypasses all security checks, in the hands of a fraudster, would be a tremendous tool to commit identity theft and financial crimes.
The idea that a digital ID card would be secure and immune from theft or fraud is for the birds.
Labour come a poor third!
Broken, sleazy Tories, LibDems, and Greens lose their deposits
Although anyone lending you money will presumably still want to know who you are.
I enjoy wittering on about the Conservative Party - I know it annoys the "old school" Tories who proliferate on here.
The party is approaching a crossroads (not as in a fictional suburban Birmingham hotel). It's quite clear there is a niche (not perhaps a large one but one nonetheless) for a party determined to talk about sound finances and being supportive of business and aspiration (the details on that to follow presumably).
The corollary of that is recognising some form of immigration (specialist, professional, skilled but not exclusively) is needed to foster economic growth, raise tax revenues and cover our spending commitments whether they be welfare, defence or debt interest repayments. That's not to advocate uncontrolled mass immigration by any stretch but acknowledging there is a strong economic argument for importing (as well as developing internally) the skills required to grow the economy.
In the current mood, such a party might not poll well but might have the advantage of sounding coherent - sometimes you need to say what's right, not necessarily what people want to hear (Stodge's Eleventh Law of Politics).
The other side of that is looking at other parties realistically and seeing with whom these objectives can best be advanced or achieved in any future Parliament without an overall majority for any one party.
Theer are three options - first, move closer to Reform and accept the likely role of being a junior partner in a Government led by Farage and Tice. That means encouraging your voters to vote Reform in any seat where the Conservatives have no chance and Reform do. Second, move away from Reform and toward other parties as part of a broad anti-Reform movement - encourage your voters to vote tactically in any constituency where the Conservatives have no chance against Reform and choosing the party (whichever it may be) most likely to stop Reform.
The third option is to do neither and adopt the good old Alliance policy of equidistance. If you want sensible Conservative policies, vote Conservative would seem the obvious approach. There's an old adage "to thine own self be true" but first you have to decide what that "own self" really is and in what it believes.
This is the challenge which afflicted the Alliance and the Lib Dems from the mid 1980s to 2010 - in an unstable and potentially chaotic post-election Parliament, you might be the kingmaker - on whose head do you put the crown?
Turns out lying to the electorate diminishes trust and increases grievance. Not an EU flaw, a UK pro-EU political flaw.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/25567796.snp-huge-lead-holyrood-elections-new-poll-finds/?ref=ed_direct
Edit: and Tories below the Greens.
Otherwise it’s exactly the same as voting for any party as you have no idea how the fortunes of the party might change between elections.
Are you worried that if Starmer got dumped and through the middle came some extreme left or Corbyn type who large swathes of Labour voters wouldn’t have voted for?
Did you warn of this possibility before the last election or is it only Tories who can go rogue?
Less intrusive to do that, than to install an ID system.
ps Judging parties on their manifestos is naive to the point of ridiculous. Of course I won't do that.
There's something for everyone to take from this - except Labour and the Tories really.
Reform's job is now to portay Plaid as part of the uniparty and continuity Labour, and that should not be too hard a task, now that Plaid are looking to be a repository for tactical Labour and general left-wing votes, so will actively avoid radical positions.
No doubt Robert would be happy to provide a checking service....for a modest fee.
https://willhaywardwales.substack.com/p/plaid-smash-reform-to-win-in-caerphilly