The Labour brand is the most liked, the Starmer brand less so – politicalbetting.com
The Labour brand is the most liked, the Starmer brand less so – politicalbetting.com
The general rule is if a party leader is more liked than their party then the party will poll better than the polls suggest and the opposite is true, so on this basis Ed Davey, Zack Polanski, and Kemi Badenoch are positives for their parties whereas Sir Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage are drags on their parties.
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Oh shit :-(
Starmer's time is up. Ironic that the thing most likely to bring down the prig is covering up for paedophiles.
https://youtu.be/6YRHAro1iTE
Off topic, any Cambridge educated (or equally qualified) lawyers have comments on the time-limiting of Dacre's cross-examination?
Seems he's another editor who had only a passing interest in the origin and substantiation of the new stories published in his papers.
Is that actually true? Or is it just speculation?
Sources needed.
The VI polls just before an election predict the result pretty well - I once found a 90% correlation between the governing party's share in the polls three months before and in the subsequent vote. Leader favourability had a rather lower correlation. But I'm open minded, and if there's a correlation between polling error and leader favourability I'd be happy to see the evidence.
Otherwise, leader favourability is just a curiosity - interesting but fundamentally meaningless to what actually matters.
* The specificity kinda of gives the game away.
He lost it and continued the angry man act throughout PMQs
It is no wonder his female mps are unimpressed with him
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUkwHDjEu-O/?igsh=NmszanRsenMwbnMx
What are the levels of uncertainty on the GDP figures? If +/-1%, then declaring a 0.1% increase is nonsense on stilts.
At this point he could be up a tree trying to rescue a kitten and there'd be a lynch mob burning tyres around it and throwing stones.
He's cursed with Brown's popularity. I reckon that you preface a similar poll for Brown era leaders with the statement "Brown has spent his time since being PM campaigning to end child poverty and VAWG while Clegg has earned millions helping Facebook/Meta avoid regulation to mitigate exploitation of children on their platforms"
and Brown would still have a lower like and far higher dislike polling than Clegg.
Whereas Farage and Starmer are at least getting about the same who like them to vote for their party, in Farage's case often slightly more and closer to those who like his party.
Davey and Polanski face the same problem as Kemi and more so, they are not getting all those who like them to vote for their parties
The only thing that might help is if the BoE cuts interest rates.
Not sustainable in the long term obviously, indeed a major problem.
Sunshine is promised for Saturday. Just for one day, then more rain.
At least the reservoirs that were at crisis levels last year are now full to the brim.
No chance of a run for me this morning.
There are a number of large corporations and wealthy individuals freeloading on the state in the UK by avoiding taxes. They are acting rationally, but coldly, and I think it’s fair to describe them as selfish as a shorthand for that kind of behaviour. Ensuring they pay their keep is in the interest of us all - particularly small businesses who can't avoid taxes in the same way, and get crowded out, and people like me earning a good wage but paying a 56% marginal rate.
It is often overlooked but economies run on energy.
Edited extra bit: ahem, context, Germany energy is still cheaper than ours. But way costlier than it should be. It's not helping their manufacturing/exports much at all.
Germany: 0.2%
France: 0.9%
Italy: 0.7%
I agree growth has been weak, but it's not a uniquely UK problem.
Nor is it worse than previous periods: 1.1% in 2024, 0.3% in 2023, 1.2% average across 2020-2022 (annual figures lumpy given COVID), 1.3% in 2019.
We need to go back nearly a decade to 2014-2017 when growth was meaningfully higher (averaging over 2.5% pa).
There is also a huge private sector debt fueled boom there in the AI space. Remains to be seen how productive those investments are in aggregate.
After Joseph Boam (the 22 year old Andrew Tate enthusiast who used to lead childrens' services) tweeted in solidarity with ICE just after held down Alex Pretti and shot him multiple times, Head Councillor Harrison has asked RefUK to defenestrate him.
The irony is that Harrison is far worse than Boam on his extremist record.
(Abbreviated to preserve Taz' blood pressure.)
https://www.leicester.news/council-leader-urges-reform-uk-to-expel-joseph-boam/
I am very dry economically and would like to see our deficit come down, but the American one is huge.
Avoiding taxes is perfectly legal and rational. We pay too much. Jim Ratcliffe is sensible to manage his tax like it. We need to encourage high earners to stay and not stigmatise them.
The fact you clearly pay too much tax from your income doesn’t mean others need to be punished more.
Creating employment creates tax and NI revenues and businesses also pay local taxes to local authorities, corporation tax and all other manner of taxes. They also create work opportunities for smaller businesses and sole traders..
It is not a case of rich employers just taking money. If the state didn’t educate Labour or put in infrastructure then employers would go elsewhere. They don’t have to come here and we’d miss their money. Many employers, like my last company, actively,put back into the community and also give time, free, to go to events to support young people to go into STEM industries. They do this because they want to not because there’s a tax advantage.
We should be cutting taxes and doing more to attract businesses not stigmatising them.
From the latest available DWP statistics reported in November 2025 (covering data around October 2025):
• There were approximately 2.2 million working people on Universal Credit.
Many people don’t want more than 16 hours due to loss of not only UC but other benefits such as council tax reduction, housing benefit and many others.
Politicians have created this system. They did so to make people reliant in part on the state. Blame employers all you like.
Just get out there, it rinses the sweat off. Good to get out, the only downsides are it being skaty under foot in places and having to find a route that is mostly above water.
How strong the dislike is is going to matter. If I had to guess, most dislike of Tories and Labour is in part atavistic, knee jerk and situational. There they are, and like the weather we don't like them. But we accept them however cheerlessly. And we dislike them more now because recent times have rendered them more useless than usual.
Is it different with Reform? I will vote for whoever (except Galloway) can beat them. But my feelings about the others, while negative are qualitatively different. I care but not that much. Though I would start to care more if the Tories really lurched to the extreme, as they sometimes threaten.
So maybe the numbers don't help as much as we think. Its the depth of dislike that counts. It is possible that the G and D by election will be informative about this.
"He is like a 12 year old demanding an apology before he will come down for dinner"
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kgYBjKthuRI
British bread under threat as wheat fields flooded
Heavy rainfall and fears of poor harvest risks leading to reliance on European imports
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/02/12/british-bread-under-threat-wheat-fields-flooded/
Ed Conway wrote a really interesting book on raw materials and, as part of that, visited factories producing products like Nitrogen and Soda Ash in the U.K. key products we need.
In the few years since he wrote the book many of these places had closed down. Energy prices being a major problem.
Railway set?
Railway shed?
Railway driver?
Probably only supported Labour because he wanted the govt to pay for the CCS project that was going to take CO2 from Grangemouth.
It’s just relentless at the moment.
Forecast tomorrow too.
It runs right through, from their navy ships with crews half as big again to their higher welfare and health spending achioeving far less with far more.
Heaven knows how good it would be if they ran it effectively.
Booths Windermere is a former railway station - relative to other Booths it’s a strange shop
A post-MAGA Republican President that actually COULD make America great.
All of which is made worse when getting prices down is not a priority for the government, in fact quite the opposite is true with Mr Miliband around running one of the most destructive economic policies since WWII - not that the last lot were any better of course.
(Areas of unclarity include: debt, deficit, defence, work and benefits, housing both private and social, regional devolution, energy and costs thereof for industry. Lots of others I am sure.)
Just having 'nothing' happen for a bit might do us the world of good. People clamouring for more political upheaval should remember that.
Findings scream 'five party system' shocker
I think Leader figures are always going to be slanted against the lowest common denominator eg the lowest sets the base trend and the others map accordingly.
The Party one I think is based on a much longer term structural perception, so fear of the unknown or known reflects a more nuanced view.
So how do you extrapolate the figures
Labour can have comfort that the brand is far from shot but the leader is a drag.
Tories brand is utterly shot but the leader is marginally better on perception.
LD as always are a bit of a comfort blanket but strong where they are stop.
Green have a populist leader, God knows why imho but Joe public likes him and as always Reform are pure Marmite.
Green and Reform though are somewhat dictatorial in the sense on the personality of leaders.
LD are what they are.
Labour should have some comfort in there is clearly a way to victory on brand not leader, Tories should have grave concerns about brand and limited impact of leader.
The recent changes to ground rent are tinkering around the edges.
These stories seem to be the tip of the iceberg. People need to realise their home is worth what someone will pay for it not what Foxtons tell them.
https://x.com/mortgagemiken2/status/2019781816375226755?s=61
https://x.com/alexgroundwater/status/2021620248366264530?s=61
https://x.com/alexgroundwater/status/2021642630296482261?s=61
(I am not especially.)
https://www.etui.org/news/industrial-accelerator-act-upcoming-commission-proposal
And therefore the number of hours worked doesn't affect eligibility in any way.
As we enter a world where ever increasing amounts of ‘leccy are from wind or solar this is ridiculous.
See the rules on air-con
I had a leasehold flat with share of freehold, so managed by the residents, myself included eventually for several years until I escaped.
If competently managed a flat will have lower shared maintenance costs than a similar sized house, my service charge for a 2 bed flat was £1200/annum over 10+ years with a one-off surcharge of £3k for a new roof on the block.
OAP accommodation are different, high supported living charges etc and caravan parks, from what I've heard, are the wild west ("your caravan has suffered an unfortunate accident, but I've got a good deal on an almost new one")
"This was the editor whom celebrities and politicians most feared, whose management diatribes were so notoriously foul-mouthed that they were nicknamed “the vagina monologues” on account of the number of times he used the word “cunt”."
It’s not a case of evil employers exploiting workers. It is a case of incentives driving behaviour and other in works benefits not part of UC are lost once too much is earned
And frankly reducing energy use to lower prices does make basic economic sense. Part of the reason that massive increase in electricity is not going to drive prices down too much is because of increased demand from EVs, AI etc.
He's one of a number of initially successful businessmen who tend to be egotistical by nature meaning political parties give them leeway in return for backing.
The likes of Sugar, Branson, Dyson, Martin, spring to mind immediately.
May be the sanest is Caldwell.
One very noticeable fact is the response by Labour which would not have happened last week.
Farage and Davey have responded as you'd expect.
Silence it seems from the Tories? Although that may just be that the 3 day a week part time leader was tucked up on the sofa and her x feed administrator was out on the piss