Soon we could see the Greens second in the polls to Reform – politicalbetting.com
Soon we could see the Greens second in the polls to Reform – politicalbetting.com
Our latest Westminster voting intention (26-27 Oct) has Labour on their lowest figure ever recorded by YouGov, with the Greens on their highestReform UK: 27% (+1 from 19-20 Oct)Labour: 17% (-3)Conservatives: 17% (=)Greens: 16% (+1)Lib Dems: 15% (=)SNP: 3% (-1)yougov.co.uk/topics/polit…
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The Court of Session is currently hearing a claim for damages against the Scottish government for completely screwing up a recycling scheme brought into effect by a Green Minister during their coalition with the SNP. Even by the standards of the Scottish government the level of incompetence is simply mind blowing.
RON - (Re-Open Nominations)
However, as the media has shown no interest whatsoever in critiqueing RefUk, then I expect the Greens wil continue to have an easy rde - so I forecast them in second place before Christmas.
If we assume that the SNP and Plaid will sweep Scotland and Wales, and the Lib Dems will maintain their current seats, a rainbow coalition has a base of 150 seats. That leaves Labour the challenge of winning about 150 of their 350 seats in England which seems pretty doable to me.
More voters would opt for Reform than for a party of the far left.
Plus of course, on the slow moving but very real problem the country is facing around the fiscal costs of ageing, the populists and mainstream politicians alike have nothing to say.
Mitch McConnell
Rand Paul
Thom Tillis
Susan Collins
Lisa Murkowski
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1983310301253775700
Interesting.
Will be interesting, this time
Nor am I convinced that the SNP will sweep Scotland, either.
A lot of polling puts the parties of the right on .50%.
Susan Collins actually voted against Trump rather than remain 'concerned'.
(Not sure if persuading is always the right word- isn't part of the model of hypnosis relaxing people to believe things that they want to believe but can't?)
In this case, that there's a way out of our problems that only hurts people who deserve it. But pretty much everyone else in politics is doing that as well.
The Greens will do well with a minority of people deeply frustrated by a lack of a left-wing agenda. Reform could do well with a majority of people if the Channel remains a big issue in 2029. Otherwise...
He is an excellent communicator and willingly to go into bat to defend immigrants, Transfolk, and to speak out against rising inequality, genocide in Gaza and the Oligarchs. These may well be minority views on PB but go down well with the wider public. Our right wing press barons and twisted Social Media alogorithims are not representative.
Polanski is mining a substantial seam of support, helped by a strong anti-Starmer and anti-Farage feeling in much of the country.
The others didn’t like us much.
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
- the bat tunnel. No, not the cost. The specification, according to the chap who commissioned it, was “no bats could be allowed to be injured”. That is impossible. You could reduce the *probability* to 1 in a million. But eliminating risk completely requires infinite money.
- The farce over the Small Reactors. Demanding that a percentage of the employees are asylum seekers? When asylum seekers can’t work, by law.
- renting the asylum hotels at rates *above* the cost of block booking rooms.
- Wanting more homes built, then piling up contradictory regulations until they manage to stop flats being built. And then wanting to increase landfill costs….
(It occurs to me that Farage is good at the common sense vibe too...)
Edit: or not so closeted.
The process (at the time) was that a new election would be called. All the previous candidates could not stand. We had a long queue of people whinging about their devastated political careers.
It should be dealt with by the police, but is a 12/12 custodial sentence appropriate for such a low level non-violent offence? And one that most teenage girls will have experienced since time immemorial?
If so, then no wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.
Maybe it had to be custodial because of his housing situation, but locking up every lecherous man is just impossible.
Why not run yourself if you think you could do any better?
Partly that leads to frustration (improvement from here will be hard work to extract two percent a year if we're lucky). But also, it's boring. Some people do incredibly stupid things when they are bored.
I do have some sympathy with your point though. My hope is we will see enough gradual progress and tactical voting to see a Labour government continue.
The Judge who heard the evidence deemed it appropriate.
Why do people mitigate these offences on women by predatory men ?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cde3w04jwjzo
‘ A judge at Chelmsford Magistrates' Court also found him guilty of harassing the girl, inciting her to engage in sexual activity and an attempted sexual assault, and warned him to expect a prison sentence.
Kebatu attempted to kiss the girl and placed his hand on her thigh, as well as asking her to kiss another child in front of him, the court heard.
When a woman intervened he also placed his hand on her thigh, which she said made her feel "shocked, uncomfortable", before she called the police.’
In most ways I have you pegged as a thoughtful, patriotic, right of centre astute political analyst.
But I don't get this. You say you'd pick Trump over Corbyn. Granted, it's a terrible, terrible forced choice (and I can admit that even despite an instinctive desire for a leader who will dismantle the more egregious aspects of our current vulture capitalism; Corbyn is not that man).
But I would pick a right-of-centre incompetent over someone intent on pulling apart democracy every time. Can you show your working for picking Trump over Corbyn please?
(Not a dig, I'm genuinely interested. It feels to me like an emotional reaction to Corbyn causing some cognitive dissonance about quite how catastrophic Trump 2's actions are for global democracy and the relative supremacy of the West Vs China.)
On the YouGov numbers, you basically have four parties in a statistical tie for second place currently which is unprecedented in my time. If you want to see how much further you could go, the Dutch are going to the polls today.
The last IPSOS poll puts D66 (the Dutch equivalent of the LDs) in the lead but with the PVV and the Labour/Green Alliance only just behind (and I mean within 0.6%).
Imagine if we went into a polling day with the LDs just ahead of Labour, the Greens and Reform but with all four parties split by about one or two points...might happen, probably won't.
Once again, however, we have the traditional raging against the machine and the traditional vitriol against "politicians". First, and speaking purely personally, I doubt I could do any better. Second, we are in the midst of a significant demographic and societal shift unlike anything we've ever seen. All the economic and social models from the 20th century, which fitted well to typical pyramid population structures with lots of younger people working and most older people dying, no longer work.
Alternative governance to fit this emerging societal structure is yet to develop (it will). On top of that, technological and geopolitical shifts are wiping out the certainties of past eras - arguably, this began in 1989 with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the ramifications of which, I'd argue, still resonate.
In the face of all this volatility, there's a natural desire to withdraw, to isolate, to surround oneself with the familiar, to seek solace in certainties of identity and culture (and you'd better believe that doesn't just apply to indigenous peoples.)
I suspect a white offender with similar actions would have got off with a caution.
In September, Chelmsford Magistrates' Court heard Kebatu tried to kiss a 14-year-old girl on a bench and made numerous sexually explicit comments on 7 July.
The following day, he encountered the same girl and tried to kiss her before sexually assaulting her. He also sexually assaulted a woman who had offered to help him create a CV to find work.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c17pez0pl57t
But stuff like overly restrictive and onerous planning/building regs isn't particularly petty in its effects. Rather, it's a massive drag on the economy.
It looks like Reeves will have a budget raising tax on the rich and high earners in part to squeeze back the Greens via a shift of Labour to the left
Once there is a realistic prospect of Greens leading a government, many will stay at home rather than vote for them. So tactical voting will weaken considerably.
Climate change? Habitat loss? Species extinction? Nah, none of that boring eco-shit.
Not so great news for UK tax revenues.
If so we are going to need vastly larger prisons, and not just here but in the Sandpit too, where any woman will describe such behaviour as common.
I have never denied the facts of the offence, just the disproportionate sentence.
Your last sentence is where you are coming from. I suspect mitigating for him because of his being an asylum seeker. Just like Roger did. You just called him a lecherous man, he’s a convicted sex offender. Think of the victims.
In real life I was friends with many of the candidates, and the RAG Week committee campaigning for RON was the equivalanet of Screaming Lord Sutch or Count Binface running against the sitting Prime Minister. All’s fun in love and politics.
So no, a white offender who acted exactly this way wasn't getting a caution.
You would think it horrifically racist.
Maybe you're right. But I'm reasonably politically engaged (who am I kidding, I'm a nerd) and have a vague sense that Polanski is 'on the right side' but a bit bonkers economically. I couldn't give you specifics on his policies. Nor, I think, could the vast majority of people who tick 'Green' in the opinion poll.
Imv the green vote simply reflects distaste with Starmer's Labour, combined with lingering distrust of the Lib Dems, combined with the country's general childish desire to tear everything down and make it anew.
He is benefitting from precisely the same paucity of political debate in the media as Farage is.
The Conservative vote in Caerphilly switched en masse to Reform, while the Labour vote switched en masse to Plaid, and both parties gained previous non-voters. The Right vote rose to 38%.
In a more Right-leaning constituency, those sorts of vote shifts would favour Reform over its left wing challenger.
WRT the Greens, I don’t see a platform of leaving NATO, unilateral disarmament, and big tax rises gaining traction in a median constituency.
This is one reason why I think the Lib Dems are missing a historic opportunity. They're so scarred by the experience of the 80s, that they appear to be focusing on a 100-seat strategy, incremental progress on their existing gains, but the opportunity exists to become a national party that competes for a majority.
Some time ago I was reading the House of Lords debate on the adoption of the Lee Enfield rifle.
What was striking was the balance of arguments from both sides - “infinite accuracy” vs “rugged”
Both acknowledged that there were limits to their ideas - quoting actually experts and tests.
There was also personal experience - but even there, the value of personal experience vs systematic testing was discussed.
The whole thing came across as people tried to make a reasoned choice based on knowledge.
If the pre-1911 House of Lords could manage that, surely our meritocracy could do better?
Well, the specialist ammunition buying unit in the MOD was shutdown under Blair. And replaced by generalists. Who bought the cheapest ammunition they could find. Then tried to claim that the M2 machine-gun was unreliable..,
It's like that lady said in the 2016 debates- it may reduce your GDP, but that's not my GDP. If you already have a nice house, building more causes you more pain than you get from one percent more of GDP.
The Wealth of Nations made a lot out of the way that individual selfishness adds up to collective improvement. And that's true a lot of the time. But there are situations where that doesn't work, and we don't really have a good answer for those.
Beyond that it is a platform designed to send swing voters in marginal seats in the suburbs and commuter belt, seaside and industrial towns to Farage and rural areas too would overall strongly vote Reform over a Polanski led Greens
Probably the worst storm to have ever hit the island (though that's unknowable) and Melissa is now ravaging eastern Cuba though it has diminished somewhat albeit still a dangerous storm.
Melissa ranks alongside Wilma and Milton in terms of intensity though typhoons in the Pacific can be even stronger.
I hope the international community stands ready to assist Jamaica if required.
But then I don't actually follow much political social media, and certainly not on the left.
And Corbyn's friendship with the west's enemies seems rather stronger than Trump's.
So politically, they are at worst level pegging. Meanwhile despite politicak misgivings, America actually seems to be doing relatively well economically. Which a Corbyn led UK certainly would not.
So, forced choice, for the above reasons, UK-Trump over Corbyn.
And to be fair, I suspect Labour would probably have made many of the same mistakes...
Speak to any 14 year old girl, or woman who remembers being 14. Such creepy behaviour by older men is very common.
We are three and a half years off an election - at the moment, the shouty extremes are making all the noise while those parties advocating less interesting but arguably more sensible and realistic policies (in my view and I'd include the Conservatives in this) are not getting much of a hearing.
That will change as the election approaches and minds are focused and three years is a political eternity. It's all fun for the political anoraks at this time but of meaningful long-term significance, unlikely though not impossible.
earning Londoners might flee
to after the Reeves budget.
France too has a leftist block with most seats in its
parliament pushing for higher
taxes on the rich.
Argentina might also be an option for those high earners and wealthy seeking Thatcherite and Reaganite economics after Milei's party won the midterms
You make good points. I would counter that Corbyn's actions as an MP (he was mine for a while) suggest a strong commitment to democracy. But I don't have a counter for his seeming inability to make politically astute decisions about which foreign leaders are friends of democracy and which are not, and hence I agree he is dangerous (just not as dangerous as Trump).
Hopefully we are never faced with such a choice.
Sky high deductions leading to low take home pay, expensive housing, cost of everything up, wages not keeping up and fewer job opportunities
People’s quality of life has gone down
Or in clear terms imagine earning the uk average salary and trying to live in London today vs 20 years ago
It’s a real problem. And that’s just the private economic stuff without all the other stuff that pisses people off
In my part of the world, the Greens are likely to run third behind Labour and the Newham Indepdendents - they'll hold the Stratford seat they already have and might pick up some more if there is a tacit electoral arrangement with the Newham Independents whereby the latter work the Muslim dominated Wards and the former the other Wards.
The tantalising question is whether the Independents and the Greens are capable of taking down the Labour majority on Newham Council - it's a big ask, they basically need to take 30 seats off Labour. I can see the Newham Independents winning 20 and the Greens certainly 4-6 but beyond that, I'm much less certain.
I think they probably have a much lower ceiling than Reform but it’s testament to the government’s current uselessness that they are losing so many votes in so many directions.
It’s not implausible that Labour will soon be facing their own existential crisis alongside the Tories.
But fundamentally you regard it as a “low level” offence rather than a case of repeated attempts to sexually assault a minor over multiple days, physical assault of a minor and of a women who attempted to intervene, and no admission of guilt or contrition.
So no, it was not “low level”.
And it’s shameful that you try to make it about race.
You have someone who has a target to reduce landfill and believes pricing is the way to do it. They have no target related to house building.
You have someone whose objective is to build houses and has no incentive to reduce landfill.
They don’t talk and their objectives set them in competition with each other.
Ministers should set priorities but have lost control of the mechanism of government
I'm clearly not saying Trump is ok. I'm saying I have no reason to believe the British far left are any better in their commitment to democratic norms.
Corbyn associates with communists and terrorists. It doesn't seem in any way improbable to me that if the far left were in power here and lost an election we would see a similar reaction, with similarly equivocal responses from a Corbyn.
Political Statement; Year 1 Organisational Strategy; Constitution; and Standing Orders.
The Online Editing complements the regional assemblies being held around the country, where members are discussing the documents face-to-face. The draft documents will be updated as they go, before being debated by attendees at their founding conference, with all members given the final say in online, one-member-one-vote ballots.
This is very impressive and ambitious! I wonder who is the driving force behind this.
Women should feel how they feel and not to be told to feel a certain thing .
Of course no man should without consent put his hands on a woman and suggest they have sex but really some of the reporting over the Kebatu case was over the top .
https://scotlandcommute.datashine.org.uk/
Meanwhile Polanskis Greens are sweeping up their supporters. Your Party are still on the starting blocks while Zack storms ahead.
You can't get a clearer sign that the people in charge are not in charge at all, and have no clue what they are doing.
I don't want to play down others' lived experience. But I do wonder whether as a country we have become a little bit spoilt. Sometimes things are tough - that's life. We've just been through the biggest pandemic since 1918 and we have the biggest war in Europe since 1945. We also literally voted to make ourselves poorer in 2016. Maybe we just to suck it up and stop moaning. Voting for chancers offering moon on the stick nonsense isn't going to help. I thought we were better than this.
So we need to draw attention to the danger repeatedly, and not be too complacent.
Community Service and a suspended sentance would have been better for her case too.
No wonder our prisons are bursting at the seems and in chaos. I think it was Hurd who described prison as "an expensive way of making bad people worse".
They would handle their delegated tasks and deal with the aggregation of priorities at a national level.
Perhaps this should be Starmer’s reworking of government?
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
·
1h
Civil war in Britain is inevitable.
Just a question of when.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1983444964848873569
DfID then? Oh, I see, it's been merged with the foreign office and had its budget slashed.
I'm sure China is ready to help.
“ Speak to any 14 year old girl, or woman who remembers being 14. Such creepy behaviour by older men is very common.” does that mean we just shrug and accept it? Of course it doesn’t and I can’t believe you really believe this.
I honestly think you are so down a rabbit hole where because this offender is a minority, an asylum seeker and was facing deportation it has coloured your judgement to be nonsensical.
Ask your sons’ girlfriends if they think that any man who gropes a 14 year old girl shouldn’t have the book thrown at them.