The Reform paradox, being the country’s most popular and unpopular party – politicalbetting.com
The Reform paradox, being the country’s most popular and unpopular party – politicalbetting.com
This poll from YouGov confirms a hunch that I’ve had for a while, Reform are simultaneously the country’s most popular party and the country’s most unpopular party which bodes well for tactical anti Reform voting (see the Caerphilly by-election as an example.)
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Caerphilly was one of the most left wing constituencies in the country. If the left can't cobble together a byelection-winning coalition there, it's all up for them.
May bode very ill in by-elections for Reform but there'll be less tactical voting come the General Election.
Edited: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caerphilly_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s
I see there were some incredibly uninformed comments about EV charging if you don't have your own driveway, pipe down until you've seen these options.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c987kepxg5po
and.
https://trojan.energy/trojanhome/
***Laughs as I pay 6p per kWh to charge my car.***
Boris never did anything with it, and as we know, Kemi delivered nothing when she scrapped a pitiful speck of EU laws under Sunak.
This would discomfit the Tories and open up a potentially wounding issue for them, as well as give Reform an interesting agenda beyond tax cuts, which they have now ruled out. And Brexit isn't really a difficult or divisive issue for Reform, for obvious reasons.
If you want to charge for cheap overnight, you’ll be using a 13A socket.
What will worry Farage is over half of LD voters are willing to vote Labour to beat Reform in Labour seats but fewer than half of Tories are willing to tactically vote Reform. Indeed more Green voters say they would tactically vote Labour than Tory voters say they would tactically vote Reform.
In Conservative held seats over a third of Labour and LD voters say they would tactically vote Tory to beat Reform. That could enable many Conservative MPs to cling on despite a Reform surge
https://bsky.app/profile/ronfilipkowski.bsky.social/post/3m4wexfdtx22z
I forsee some logistical challenges to that.
At the moment, Farage supporters are enthusiastic and hardly anyone else is, though Polanski fans are heading that way. FON's turnout filter picks that up, YouGov's model dials that down. Who is right in an actual election, especially if a constituency resolves down to Lab vs. Ref, remains to be seen.
Why should I vote Tory when they are likely to prop up a Farage government?
No way Jose!
https://x.com/GovPressOffice/status/1986154749247545406
My guess is they'd be like the ERG on acid - they would spend all their time pissing, with minor scandals, and be spectacularly ineffective.
Jenrick, on the other hand, with Katie Lam would probably get quite a bit done.
The tariffs case is not going well for Trump.
Gorsuch: What's the reason to accept the notion that Congress can hand off the power to declare war to the president?
Sauer: Well, we don't contend that
Gorsuch: You do, you say it's unreviewable…
https://x.com/LucasSa56947288/status/1986102170496704816
All out elections in May. I'm not expecting Labour to retain control, to put it mildly.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crex2w3985wo
At least in by-election conditions.
And from memory Bradford is completely screwed by child social care - it really does have no money..
https://bsky.app/profile/paulandstorm.bsky.social/post/3m4vridyhfs22
The latest sanctions on Russia appear to be doing a good job as well, just need to send the Tomahawks to Ukraine now so they can take out the Shahed drone factory.
Looks like we will have to cancel a cruise booked for Feb as I have broken my leg and my orthopaedic consultant is not confident it will be fixed well enough in time for me to travel safely. Due to pay the balance on Monday so now is the time to cancel.
Cunard won't give me back the deposit (c. £2k) but I could claim it off my travel insurance.
Question: do any PBers have experience of what impact claiming on travel insurance might have on future premiums? Just wondering if it's like pet insurance - claim once and the insurers bump up future premiums massively. The thing is with travel insurance, I feel it's non-negotiable as the costs if uninsured could be huge.
Any views?
They have persuaded people in Jaywick and beyond that all their problems are forrin, and simply Send Them Back and their community will be a bustling paradise again.
As we now get more elected fukers doing actual governing we see the truth - slash and burn to your services. Which will erode their voter coalition anyway. I've said before I'll say it again - they will lose people to the right. Once you weaponise ignorant racism you can always be outmanoeuvred to the right. The Tories keep going absurdly dog whistle racist and get nowhere as Reform are beyond them. Next will be Reform, outflanked and out-gobbed by Tommy Ten-Names and Advance UK.
Circa 2003 when I hurt my knee I claimed on my AMEX insurance and when I went to renew I was unable to tick the box where it said have you made any claims in the last five years.
Hope you feel better soon.
“Adding the number of death referenced in these reports cited by InterSociety does not result in the stated total of 7,000.
“The BBC added up the number of deaths from the 70 reports and found that the total was around 3,000 deaths. Some of the attacks also appear to be reported more than once.”
Caerphilly provides absolutely no evidence for your theories - the Tory vote collapsed neatly into the Reform vote, and I'd like to see any backing up of your claim that anyone bar a few loons on day-release went Tory to Plaid.
Inflationary and wage pressures; largely unfunded rise in NI costs imposed by government; increasing demand for services legally mandated (but not directly funded) by central government ... etc
Are you really so unaware of the problems of local government ?
The Tories held Keighley in the GE at least in part due to service cuts impacting the constituency.
Here is the simple truth - there is no solution to our current mess that voters will accept. We can't raise taxes. We can't slash public services which have already been slashed, so all that's left is removing provision of things like adult social care completely which will have its own gargantuan costs as chaos follows. We can't apparently challenge the status quo - treasury orthodoxy, faux-market complex costly structures, investment, taxation.
Reform won all this support because they offered a Change. A Solution. Making MY life better for once. But they can't do that - and as council after council is taken by Reform, beset by wazzockry and does little other than cut services and increase council tax, people will continue to shrink back from them.
As always, the trend is your friend, and this particular survey is very useful. Most voters hate Farage and everything he stands for. They'll swing vote all over the shop to stop him. So Reform need to nail their vote down to counter this, and it's just going to slide away from them.
I follow this lady who blogs about cruises, there’s a load of useful information on her website. https://emmacruises.com/
Good luck and get well soon!
This was entirely different, though, a 'local energy adviser' etc etc.
Has Sky hiked their bills? I don't have it, but I know Xbox has upped Gamepass subs ridiculously, to the extent the cancellation site crashed due to excessive demand.
https://x.com/mrhenrymorris/status/1986343260604768588/photo/1
"The rainy day fund is bone dry.... We're broke. The country is broke. Consumers are broke."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvAjAOdmzBw
There's a type of politician who is very effective while in opposition. Asking difficult questions, throwing effective bricks, but also standing up for their patch. Nothing shameful in any of that, the system doesn't work without that degree of piss and vinegar.
But it's a blooming disaster if such people end up running the show. To govern is to choose, and populism is often about denial that choices is necessary. Havering Council is currently run by the Residents' Association, who are another version of that archetype, and they're not particularly enjoying the experience. Some Labour MPs are also hating being the ones in the big chair.
Why should Reform be any different?
Meanwhile there’s a widespread view that Reform are a one-man-band without any coherent policy book. While they are not there yet, seems to me they are spending this parliament quietly building bench strength and developing a coherent project across a broad range of policies. Because it’s starting from scratch, there has also rarely if ever been a better opportunity for well informed people to get specific policy ideas into a manifesto for s government in waiting.
Hope it heals well and quickly
The YouGov data holds few surprises but it illuminates the Conservative dilemma. IF there is even an hint they would prop up or support in any way a minority Reform Government, they would lose the support of those prepared to support them tactically against Reform.
On the other hand, if the Conservatives eschew any support for Reform, what happens if the parliamentary arithmetic means the continuation of a Labour-led Government is dependent on their support?
I draw some amusement from seeing the Conservatives now in the same position the Alliance and later the Liberal Democrats were, Equidistance gets you only so far - when the time comes, which way do the Tories jump knowing whatever they do will cost them further support?
The only way back for the Conservatives is to once again become the leading party of the “right” or should that be “anti-left” - I sense the biggest grouping on here has always been those opposed to what they see as “the left” - and the only way for that to happen is for Reform to fail. The question then becomes do they watch Reform fail from the inside in Government or from the outside in Opposition?
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
This is cobblers.
We are going to see 4 / 5 / 6 way marginals, with sitting Labour MPs ousted to 4th or 5th. Some will survive of course as the least worst option. But that is not a McSweeney vote of confidence in Labour, and leaves a parliament where there is a choice of rainbow coalitions:
AXIS: Reform / Tories / DUP / Advance / exReform splinters 1 & 2
ALLIES: Labour / LibDem / SNP / Plaid / Alliance / Green / Your Party / ex YP splinters 1,2,3,4, 5 & 6
OTOH BlueSky went through 40 million users a few days ago. I've no idea what that means long term, but half a year ago I said we would not know for sure until mid-late 2026.
If it's under 100 million in 12 months time, then I'd say it will stay as a (large) niche product.
They've been hit by a trifecta of reduced subsidies in the US, greater competition, and Elon trashing the brand with the kind of people who buy Teslas.
(Most of the terrible things about modern life happen because they work on enough people for them to be worth doing.)
Ukraine's attacks on electricity substations appear to be focused on cutting off Moscow from electricity supply. This winter Ukraine is able to respond to attacks on its electricity infrastructure with attacks on the electricity supply to Moscow. It will be interesting to see whether this is successful enough to create a deterrent effect and how Muscovites will respond to experiencing the war more directly.
As you may be aware we travelled worldwide extensively from 2003 to 2019 and our premiums progressively increased with our age and pre existing medical conditions to the point that our travel insurance today would be more than the price of a cruise even if we could get it
I do not think your premiums would rise because of a claim but everything will evolve around your medical declaration and age
Hence why you should follow your dreams whilst you can and see the world
I would strongly advise not to be tempted to travel abroad without insurance
It's one of the reasons I occasionally (like yesterday) post history channels I rather like, especially smaller ones. They'll never get huge engagement because they're posting bullshit about Septimius Severus being a black Roman emperor and driving rage clicks.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/05/lancashires-reform-run-council-plans-to-close-care-homes-to-save-4m-a-year
My guess is Reform don't have quite enough in the tank to get to an overall majority under GE conditions.
(Checks: yes, according to Rochdale, it was:
@RochdalePioneers said:
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two. )