I see the usual ignorance on "public sector pensions" is getting an airing tonight from some of the usual suspects.
There are different kinds of pensions across "the public sector" - there's the Civil Service pension, Local Government pensions, Teachers' Pensions, the Police pension and the pension arrangements for other blue light workers as well as for the armed forces and NHS staff.
All are different and all are administered differently but as usual it's easier to generalise to try to make a point. The Local Government Pension is a Defined Contribution Scheme - I'm not sure the ones for the blue light workers and armed forces are but I could be wrong. You could argue Local Government workers should contribute more and indeed senior officers do and that comes (again, arguably) in lieu of having the money as salary.
We also have nonsense like that from Omid Djalili - there are very few "on the left" (whatever that means) who are publicly supportive of the theocracy in Tehran and a great number who would like the Mullahs removed but whatever follows has to be seen to be the will of the Iranian people and not the will of the White House or American business interests.
As we saw in Iraq, removing a tyrant is fairly easy if you have overwhelming force but what follows is the difficult bit. It's not just the politics but the infrastructure - ensuring the Iranian people have food, water, power and security would seem fairly important - that's not nation building in and of itself but as important as the political and governmental frameworks.
The public sector pension discussion is because Reform want to get their hands on the money to invest it. I’d have thought that is worth talking about.
The money has been invested, mostly.
The pension scheme of -say- Essex County Council will have been invested with asset managers.
If you want to rip up the contract that Essex County Council has with its employees and ex-employees, and then take any excess from the pension fund and give it to Central Government (or even give it to Essex County Council itself), then you will need primary legislation.
They would be better off disendowing public schools. At least then it would only be rich people complaining.
The only person I've ever heard in real life talking about civil war in the UK was very obviously wanting it to happen, which is not a good look. I've (briefly) met Danny Kruger and I'd like to think better of him than such a shady piece of rhetoric.
NEW: Reform UK MP Danny Kruger says a British civil war is possible if they don’t win the next general election
Youd least want to be Reform on that polling. Not even winning with a perfectly split left wing vote. Just about doubling their vote since 2024 in by election conditions vs a desperately unpopular govt? If thats the result lay the hell out of Ref win in 29
State of the Union: Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia will give the Democrats’ response.
NY Times blog
State of the Nation. State of this “game face”
What PB is missing. Considering Trump satisfaction ratings are not good, the Democratic Party satisfaction ratings have not been great over the last year either.
It’s good to flag up differences between US and UK politics. We don’t have presidential elections - President Gordon Brown or President Nigel Farage are two strong reasons UK will NEVER NEVER NEVER give up our Monarchy as head of State. Our PM needs to command the House of Commons. Would it be stronger for Democratic Party today, stronger for US politics, if their candidate for next US president was already known, and providing the State of the Nation replies?
The only person I've ever heard in real life talking about civil war in the UK was very obviously wanting it to happen, which is not a good look. I've (briefly) met Danny Kruger and I'd like to think better of him than such a shady piece of rhetoric.
NEW: Reform UK MP Danny Kruger says a British civil war is possible if they don’t win the next general election
I see the usual ignorance on "public sector pensions" is getting an airing tonight from some of the usual suspects.
There are different kinds of pensions across "the public sector" - there's the Civil Service pension, Local Government pensions, Teachers' Pensions, the Police pension and the pension arrangements for other blue light workers as well as for the armed forces and NHS staff.
All are different and all are administered differently but as usual it's easier to generalise to try to make a point. The Local Government Pension is a Defined Contribution Scheme - I'm not sure the ones for the blue light workers and armed forces are but I could be wrong. You could argue Local Government workers should contribute more and indeed senior officers do and that comes (again, arguably) in lieu of having the money as salary.
We also have nonsense like that from Omid Djalili - there are very few "on the left" (whatever that means) who are publicly supportive of the theocracy in Tehran and a great number who would like the Mullahs removed but whatever follows has to be seen to be the will of the Iranian people and not the will of the White House or American business interests.
As we saw in Iraq, removing a tyrant is fairly easy if you have overwhelming force but what follows is the difficult bit. It's not just the politics but the infrastructure - ensuring the Iranian people have food, water, power and security would seem fairly important - that's not nation building in and of itself but as important as the political and governmental frameworks.
The public sector pension discussion is because Reform want to get their hands on the money to invest it. I’d have thought that is worth talking about.
The money has been invested, mostly.
The pension scheme of -say- Essex County Council will have been invested with asset managers.
If you want to rip up the contract that Essex County Council has with its employees and ex-employees, and then take any excess from the pension fund and give it to Central Government (or even give it to Essex County Council itself), then you will need primary legislation.
Well the Reform guys want to reinvest the stuff that is already invested and invest the stuff that is just cash.
They want to treat it as a sovereign wealth fund.
Can you imagine the current asset managers giving up that investment and the fees that come with it without a fight. Or the Unions allowing it without a fight.
As stupid as it sounds given the background to the by election, there could be value in this. A three way split is not beyond probability
Yup.
So...
Labour - supporters disillusioned, getting hammered in the press, midterm byelection Green - surge of support with the young, motivated Reform - supporters trend older, motivated, oblivious to negative press reports
Labour going to struggle with turnout and punishment beating Green might underperform as their supporters fail to vote Reform voters will turnout
So sadly, I'd suggest Reform are value and Labour are talking up their chances to keep their campaigners motivated
Anyone on Labour should be ready to cash-out at any point on Thursday
I just struggle to see how Reform wins this seat:
- 2024 result: combined Tory-Reform vote of 22% versus Labour-Green vote of 64% - 2019 notional results: combined Tory-Brexit vote of 24% versus Labour-Green vote of 70%
Laying Reform seems the best value to me.
The combined Tory-Reform vote is up 9pp in the opinion polls since the general election, which would take them to 31% here. Plus it's a by-election, so swings can be exaggerated.
If Reform can only get to 30% at most then I think a split Labour/Green vote sees Reform finish third. If they can make it up to 35%, then it starts to get much more likely for them.
I think they're right on the cusp, which is what makes it hard to call. That and we have no idea whether the Greens can win a by-election campaign. We know that if it was the Lib Dems in their position they would likely have it sewn up.
Electoral calculus projects Gorton and Denton as 31% Reform, 23% Green and 22% Labour, 9% Conservative and 6% LD.
I see the usual ignorance on "public sector pensions" is getting an airing tonight from some of the usual suspects.
There are different kinds of pensions across "the public sector" - there's the Civil Service pension, Local Government pensions, Teachers' Pensions, the Police pension and the pension arrangements for other blue light workers as well as for the armed forces and NHS staff.
All are different and all are administered differently but as usual it's easier to generalise to try to make a point. The Local Government Pension is a Defined Contribution Scheme - I'm not sure the ones for the blue light workers and armed forces are but I could be wrong. You could argue Local Government workers should contribute more and indeed senior officers do and that comes (again, arguably) in lieu of having the money as salary.
We also have nonsense like that from Omid Djalili - there are very few "on the left" (whatever that means) who are publicly supportive of the theocracy in Tehran and a great number who would like the Mullahs removed but whatever follows has to be seen to be the will of the Iranian people and not the will of the White House or American business interests.
As we saw in Iraq, removing a tyrant is fairly easy if you have overwhelming force but what follows is the difficult bit. It's not just the politics but the infrastructure - ensuring the Iranian people have food, water, power and security would seem fairly important - that's not nation building in and of itself but as important as the political and governmental frameworks.
Great. Lets remove the tyrant then, then get out and let the Iranians decide what happens next.
You and I both know it's not as simple as that.
We can remove the tyranny (which isn't just Khamanei by any stretch) but essentially the country would be ungoverned until some form of new arrangement is put in place (whether republic, democracy or restored monarchy I agree should be left to the Iranian people).
No Government means no law and order short of what the invading forces could or would be willing to supply. It means ensuring the administration of law and the distribution of food (arguably the two main requirements for any society to function) are maintained across the country.
It also means it shouldn't be about the settling of scores or the creation of new ones as individual local power brokers take advantage of the vacuum.
That's the bit that a simplistic view always misses - removing the "bad guys" (however noble) creates a vacuum which the "good guys" can't always fill at once so the American would be looking at a prolonged involvement in Iran untila new order is created and settled.
There isn't an invading force, though. yea Just an awful lot of air power.
And reportedly they only have enough ordnance fur about a week's sustained bombing.
Youd least want to be Reform on that polling. Not even winning with a perfectly split left wing vote. Just about doubling their vote since 2024 in by election conditions vs a desperately unpopular govt? If thats the result lay the hell out of Ref win in 29
It's a very left wing constituency though. Reform+Tory 22% La+Green+Workers 74% at the GE. If anyone is placed to capitalise on Labour unpopularity it is the Greens.
I see the usual ignorance on "public sector pensions" is getting an airing tonight from some of the usual suspects.
There are different kinds of pensions across "the public sector" - there's the Civil Service pension, Local Government pensions, Teachers' Pensions, the Police pension and the pension arrangements for other blue light workers as well as for the armed forces and NHS staff.
All are different and all are administered differently but as usual it's easier to generalise to try to make a point. The Local Government Pension is a Defined Contribution Scheme - I'm not sure the ones for the blue light workers and armed forces are but I could be wrong. You could argue Local Government workers should contribute more and indeed senior officers do and that comes (again, arguably) in lieu of having the money as salary.
We also have nonsense like that from Omid Djalili - there are very few "on the left" (whatever that means) who are publicly supportive of the theocracy in Tehran and a great number who would like the Mullahs removed but whatever follows has to be seen to be the will of the Iranian people and not the will of the White House or American business interests.
As we saw in Iraq, removing a tyrant is fairly easy if you have overwhelming force but what follows is the difficult bit. It's not just the politics but the infrastructure - ensuring the Iranian people have food, water, power and security would seem fairly important - that's not nation building in and of itself but as important as the political and governmental frameworks.
The public sector pension discussion is because Reform want to get their hands on the money to invest it. I’d have thought that is worth talking about.
The money has been invested, mostly.
The pension scheme of -say- Essex County Council will have been invested with asset managers.
If you want to rip up the contract that Essex County Council has with its employees and ex-employees, and then take any excess from the pension fund and give it to Central Government (or even give it to Essex County Council itself), then you will need primary legislation.
They would be better off disendowing public schools. At least then it would only be rich people complaining.
Why do you think they should disendowpublic schools. The endowments were the wishes of people in their wills or lifetime. You might not like public schools but if people chose to leave land or money then why should they be punished now? Does this mean that in the future a government can decide strip to many charities, the National Trust for example, of gifts because those buildings could be used more “fairly”? Can we revisit inheritances after the fact because it’s just not fair?
What about universities, should Oxford and Cambridge have their endowments removed?
Youd least want to be Reform on that polling. Not even winning with a perfectly split left wing vote. Just about doubling their vote since 2024 in by election conditions vs a desperately unpopular govt? If thats the result lay the hell out of Ref win in 29
It's a very left wing constituency though. Reform+Tory 22% La+Green+Workers 74% at the GE. If anyone is placed to capitalise on Labour unpopularity it is the Greens.
It was also 50% Leave, it may be traditionally Labour but only half of it is progressive woke, the other half is white working class socially conservative
State of the Union: Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia will give the Democrats’ response.
NY Times blog
State of the Nation. State of this “game face”
What PB is missing. Considering Trump satisfaction ratings are not good, the Democratic Party satisfaction ratings have not been great over the last year either.
It’s good to flag up differences between US and UK politics. We don’t have presidential elections - President Gordon Brown or President Nigel Farage are two strong reasons UK will NEVER NEVER NEVER give up our Monarchy as head of State. Our PM needs to command the House of Commons. Would it be stronger for Democratic Party today, stronger for US politics, if their candidate for next US president was already known, and providing the State of the Nation replies?
Usually the reply to the State of the Union is given by a nonentity who then vanishes without trace. See that mad Senator Katie Britt from Alabama who replied to Biden a few years back and has vanished without trace other than being the butt of a thousand jokes.
Because of the way the primary system works you have a tendency for the candidates already known and with a significant body of work behind them to emerge victorious, even if it's a fake one like The Apprentice. They will be governors, high profile senators or ex-cabinet ministers (and only Trump since 1952 doesn't fit one of those categories). Replying to the State of the Union is of little bearing in building such a profile. Indeed, the fact she's speaking at all is probably a sign Spanberger isn't considering a bid.
Byline have finally released their poll . What drama !
Green 28 Lab 28 Reform 27 Con 6 Lib Dem 4 Other 6
Greens lead 30 28 28 on 'most likely to vote' voters on the same poll GOTV crucial then!
The Greens haven't been canvassing apparently unlike Labour and Reform, only leafletting and putting up posters so it really could be any of the 3 on that poll
I see the usual ignorance on "public sector pensions" is getting an airing tonight from some of the usual suspects.
There are different kinds of pensions across "the public sector" - there's the Civil Service pension, Local Government pensions, Teachers' Pensions, the Police pension and the pension arrangements for other blue light workers as well as for the armed forces and NHS staff.
All are different and all are administered differently but as usual it's easier to generalise to try to make a point. The Local Government Pension is a Defined Contribution Scheme - I'm not sure the ones for the blue light workers and armed forces are but I could be wrong. You could argue Local Government workers should contribute more and indeed senior officers do and that comes (again, arguably) in lieu of having the money as salary.
We also have nonsense like that from Omid Djalili - there are very few "on the left" (whatever that means) who are publicly supportive of the theocracy in Tehran and a great number who would like the Mullahs removed but whatever follows has to be seen to be the will of the Iranian people and not the will of the White House or American business interests.
As we saw in Iraq, removing a tyrant is fairly easy if you have overwhelming force but what follows is the difficult bit. It's not just the politics but the infrastructure - ensuring the Iranian people have food, water, power and security would seem fairly important - that's not nation building in and of itself but as important as the political and governmental frameworks.
The public sector pension discussion is because Reform want to get their hands on the money to invest it. I’d have thought that is worth talking about.
There is a line which Tice has used which claims Reform could make better or more lucrative investment decisions than under the current arrangements. I find this curious as the Conservative Party, which has its share of people with financial acumen (I have been told) has never sought to do anything similar and has allowed the Trustees of the LPGS and others to make their own investment decisions to the benefit of the stakeholders.
I presume Tice thinks they can do 10% better and they can take that additional profit to the Treasury for the greater good. However, if Reform aren't the investment geniuses they would have us believe, would they make up the shortfall from public funds or expect the public sector pensioners to take the hit?
Don’t forget Jeremy Hunt has his eye on our money too. The Brit ISA and some DC pension money being repurposed into UK investments. So they were coming round to it. It’s where the money is as has been said. Reeves was keen too.
Why should the taxpayer make up any shortfall. It’s investment risk. Tice simply spouts the same rhetoric the Tories and Labour have about their ideas for our pensions. It will deliver better returns. Not something a financial adviser would say. It would be past performance is no predictor etc etc.
They should Leave well alone. Stop seeing peoples saved pensions as a pot for their indulgence.
State of the Union: Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia will give the Democrats’ response.
NY Times blog
State of the Nation. State of this “game face”
What PB is missing. Considering Trump satisfaction ratings are not good, the Democratic Party satisfaction ratings have not been great over the last year either.
It’s good to flag up differences between US and UK politics. We don’t have presidential elections - President Gordon Brown or President Nigel Farage are two strong reasons UK will NEVER NEVER NEVER give up our Monarchy as head of State. Our PM needs to command the House of Commons. Would it be stronger for Democratic Party today, stronger for US politics, if their candidate for next US president was already known, and providing the State of the Nation replies?
Usually the reply to the State of the Union is given by a nonentity who then vanishes without trace. See that mad Senator Katie Britt from Alabama who replied to Biden a few years back and has vanished without trace other than being the butt of a thousand jokes.
Didn't Rubio do it once and got very thirsty, which Trump later mocked quite humourously?
I don't get it. Labour is f*cking screaming value at 7.
If they win it'll be a huge victory. The start of the Labour Renaissance. But I can't see it. Unless they've got an exceptional candidate which I don't believe they have my guess is the bookies have got it right
You know how England are always much shorter odds than they should be at World Cups? Partly fans backing them because they overestimate their brilliance, but also as a gesture of support?
I wonder if there's something like that here, boosting the implied probability for Reform and Green. As far as we know, it's a three horse tossup, in which case one of the horses shouldn't be 7-1. What the odds should be is another matter.
(And to be clear, a narrow win in a three-way scramble would objectively be a blooming awful result for Labour. Almost as bad as a narrow loss etc.)
Except a Narrow Labour win, would be... a Labour win. One that would be coming a bare few days after it seemed that the entire UK press corps were utterly convinced that Starmer was obviously out and that Labour would anyway collapse if he did not go immediately.
Those of us who less convinced about this narrative were told we were fools. Now it is clear that even if Labour is defeated on Thursday, they are certainly not falling apart, and I think a lot of rethinking needs to happen about the general level of political commentary. Too many people got lost in the story and lost touch with the reality- neither Reform nor the Greens have a good ground war, and Labour despite having about as bad a background to the by-election they could have had, are still in touch and indeed may even win.
The fact is that Reality doesn't give a toss about the opinions of some jumped up PPE grads in the mediascape. The political media complex thinks that nothing is true, it is simply how you sell it that matters- that was and is horseshit. So, while too many in the news media simply sign up for whichever propaganda camp suits them, the old school tradition of calling things for what they are, rather than selling opinion as truth still has much to recommend it.
Its called reporting the facts. One can only hope that the seizure of different media channels by various oligarchs- Musk, Marshall, Murdoch et al will end up with their output being discounted as the biased propaganda that it is.
If Starmer wins the by-election then his decision to block Burnham will be vindicated.
With mildly better numbers on the FTSE, tax receipts and perhaps some interest rate cuts - i think he then lasts the year, regardless of how bad the locals are.
I don't think he fights the next GE though, regardless. That ship has long sailed.
I see the usual ignorance on "public sector pensions" is getting an airing tonight from some of the usual suspects.
There are different kinds of pensions across "the public sector" - there's the Civil Service pension, Local Government pensions, Teachers' Pensions, the Police pension and the pension arrangements for other blue light workers as well as for the armed forces and NHS staff.
All are different and all are administered differently but as usual it's easier to generalise to try to make a point. The Local Government Pension is a Defined Contribution Scheme - I'm not sure the ones for the blue light workers and armed forces are but I could be wrong. You could argue Local Government workers should contribute more and indeed senior officers do and that comes (again, arguably) in lieu of having the money as salary.
We also have nonsense like that from Omid Djalili - there are very few "on the left" (whatever that means) who are publicly supportive of the theocracy in Tehran and a great number who would like the Mullahs removed but whatever follows has to be seen to be the will of the Iranian people and not the will of the White House or American business interests.
As we saw in Iraq, removing a tyrant is fairly easy if you have overwhelming force but what follows is the difficult bit. It's not just the politics but the infrastructure - ensuring the Iranian people have food, water, power and security would seem fairly important - that's not nation building in and of itself but as important as the political and governmental frameworks.
Great. Lets remove the tyrant then, then get out and let the Iranians decide what happens next.
You and I both know it's not as simple as that.
We can remove the tyranny (which isn't just Khamanei by any stretch) but essentially the country would be ungoverned until some form of new arrangement is put in place (whether republic, democracy or restored monarchy I agree should be left to the Iranian people).
No Government means no law and order short of what the invading forces could or would be willing to supply. It means ensuring the administration of law and the distribution of food (arguably the two main requirements for any society to function) are maintained across the country.
It also means it shouldn't be about the settling of scores or the creation of new ones as individual local power brokers take advantage of the vacuum.
That's the bit that a simplistic view always misses - removing the "bad guys" (however noble) creates a vacuum which the "good guys" can't always fill at once so the American would be looking at a prolonged involvement in Iran untila new order is created and settled.
Didn't I read that Iran has a severe water shortage, too?
State of the Union: Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia will give the Democrats’ response.
NY Times blog
State of the Nation. State of this “game face”
What PB is missing. Considering Trump satisfaction ratings are not good, the Democratic Party satisfaction ratings have not been great over the last year either.
It’s good to flag up differences between US and UK politics. We don’t have presidential elections - President Gordon Brown or President Nigel Farage are two strong reasons UK will NEVER NEVER NEVER give up our Monarchy as head of State. Our PM needs to command the House of Commons. Would it be stronger for Democratic Party today, stronger for US politics, if their candidate for next US president was already known, and providing the State of the Nation replies?
I see the usual ignorance on "public sector pensions" is getting an airing tonight from some of the usual suspects.
There are different kinds of pensions across "the public sector" - there's the Civil Service pension, Local Government pensions, Teachers' Pensions, the Police pension and the pension arrangements for other blue light workers as well as for the armed forces and NHS staff.
All are different and all are administered differently but as usual it's easier to generalise to try to make a point. The Local Government Pension is a Defined Contribution Scheme - I'm not sure the ones for the blue light workers and armed forces are but I could be wrong. You could argue Local Government workers should contribute more and indeed senior officers do and that comes (again, arguably) in lieu of having the money as salary.
We also have nonsense like that from Omid Djalili - there are very few "on the left" (whatever that means) who are publicly supportive of the theocracy in Tehran and a great number who would like the Mullahs removed but whatever follows has to be seen to be the will of the Iranian people and not the will of the White House or American business interests.
As we saw in Iraq, removing a tyrant is fairly easy if you have overwhelming force but what follows is the difficult bit. It's not just the politics but the infrastructure - ensuring the Iranian people have food, water, power and security would seem fairly important - that's not nation building in and of itself but as important as the political and governmental frameworks.
The public sector pension discussion is because Reform want to get their hands on the money to invest it. I’d have thought that is worth talking about.
The money has been invested, mostly.
The pension scheme of -say- Essex County Council will have been invested with asset managers.
If you want to rip up the contract that Essex County Council has with its employees and ex-employees, and then take any excess from the pension fund and give it to Central Government (or even give it to Essex County Council itself), then you will need primary legislation.
They would be better off disendowing public schools. At least then it would only be rich people complaining.
Why do you think they should disendowpublic schools. The endowments were the wishes of people in their wills or lifetime. You might not like public schools but if people chose to leave land or money then why should they be punished now? Does this mean that in the future a government can decide strip to many charities, the National Trust for example, of gifts because those buildings could be used more “fairly”? Can we revisit inheritances after the fact because it’s just not fair?
What about universities, should Oxford and Cambridge have their endowments removed?
I don't think that was a serious suggestion from ydoethur. Just pointing out that raiding public sector pensions would be equivalent to that.
The spectre of a Reform government does make public sector pensions much less valuable though. You wouldn't bet against them retrospectvely altering the terms. Been a weird few days for them - a few statements in the run up to a by-election that you wouldn't consider vote-winners, including employment rights, ICE etc.
I see the usual ignorance on "public sector pensions" is getting an airing tonight from some of the usual suspects.
There are different kinds of pensions across "the public sector" - there's the Civil Service pension, Local Government pensions, Teachers' Pensions, the Police pension and the pension arrangements for other blue light workers as well as for the armed forces and NHS staff.
All are different and all are administered differently but as usual it's easier to generalise to try to make a point. The Local Government Pension is a Defined Contribution Scheme - I'm not sure the ones for the blue light workers and armed forces are but I could be wrong. You could argue Local Government workers should contribute more and indeed senior officers do and that comes (again, arguably) in lieu of having the money as salary.
We also have nonsense like that from Omid Djalili - there are very few "on the left" (whatever that means) who are publicly supportive of the theocracy in Tehran and a great number who would like the Mullahs removed but whatever follows has to be seen to be the will of the Iranian people and not the will of the White House or American business interests.
As we saw in Iraq, removing a tyrant is fairly easy if you have overwhelming force but what follows is the difficult bit. It's not just the politics but the infrastructure - ensuring the Iranian people have food, water, power and security would seem fairly important - that's not nation building in and of itself but as important as the political and governmental frameworks.
Great. Lets remove the tyrant then, then get out and let the Iranians decide what happens next.
You and I both know it's not as simple as that.
We can remove the tyranny (which isn't just Khamanei by any stretch) but essentially the country would be ungoverned until some form of new arrangement is put in place (whether republic, democracy or restored monarchy I agree should be left to the Iranian people).
No Government means no law and order short of what the invading forces could or would be willing to supply. It means ensuring the administration of law and the distribution of food (arguably the two main requirements for any society to function) are maintained across the country.
It also means it shouldn't be about the settling of scores or the creation of new ones as individual local power brokers take advantage of the vacuum.
That's the bit that a simplistic view always misses - removing the "bad guys" (however noble) creates a vacuum which the "good guys" can't always fill at once so the American would be looking at a prolonged involvement in Iran untila new order is created and settled.
There isn't an invading force, though. yea Just an awful lot of air power.
And reportedly they only have enough ordnance fur about a week's sustained bombing.
That might be enough; it also might not.
Hard to tell with autocratic regimes - sometimes they fall at the first proper sustained push, other times they can weather brutal losses and stagger on nonetheless. In a place as large as Iran with such an ingrained regime it's hard to imagine it does not retain some level of significant support, even if they have a lot of problems which make the average person dislike them.
The only person I've ever heard in real life talking about civil war in the UK was very obviously wanting it to happen, which is not a good look. I've (briefly) met Danny Kruger and I'd like to think better of him than such a shady piece of rhetoric.
NEW: Reform UK MP Danny Kruger says a British civil war is possible if they don’t win the next general election
The Telegraph just run with any old shit Farage tells them Like the '6 councils in London' bollocks Now, Birmingham
I’m sure Farage doesn’t have them on speed dial just as I’m sure Reform will be lucky to pick up more than a couple of seats in Brum.
Are you sure? Birmingham is very "flaggy". Labour are dead in the water and the Tories have already sunk without trace.
The only flags I’ve seen are Palestine ones by the Blues Ground !
I’d not expect Sutton C to go but I’d defer to Feersum Enjineeya on that if he has a different view as he’s local and he has canvassed there.
Maybe Bartley Green, Castle Bromwich, around Northfield. What parts have you been too that are flaggy ?
I may well be wrong but I just think City demographics work against them in Brum in a way they don’t in places like Sandwell, Tipton, Dudley and Walsall.
Kings Heath, Kings Norton, Moseley. Northfield, Cotteridge, West Heath. Although you could argue that the White Supremacists in these areas are more than offset by minorities.
Kings Heath and Moseley definitely and also trendy young people too. Kings Heath is surprisingly trendy now.
🧵1/ CV90 is no longer just a Swedish IFV. It’s becoming Europe’s armored backbone. A potential record deal in Örnsköldsvik isn’t just local news. It’s a structural shift... https://x.com/rospigge60559/status/2026375579121983623
I see the usual ignorance on "public sector pensions" is getting an airing tonight from some of the usual suspects.
There are different kinds of pensions across "the public sector" - there's the Civil Service pension, Local Government pensions, Teachers' Pensions, the Police pension and the pension arrangements for other blue light workers as well as for the armed forces and NHS staff.
All are different and all are administered differently but as usual it's easier to generalise to try to make a point. The Local Government Pension is a Defined Contribution Scheme - I'm not sure the ones for the blue light workers and armed forces are but I could be wrong. You could argue Local Government workers should contribute more and indeed senior officers do and that comes (again, arguably) in lieu of having the money as salary.
We also have nonsense like that from Omid Djalili - there are very few "on the left" (whatever that means) who are publicly supportive of the theocracy in Tehran and a great number who would like the Mullahs removed but whatever follows has to be seen to be the will of the Iranian people and not the will of the White House or American business interests.
As we saw in Iraq, removing a tyrant is fairly easy if you have overwhelming force but what follows is the difficult bit. It's not just the politics but the infrastructure - ensuring the Iranian people have food, water, power and security would seem fairly important - that's not nation building in and of itself but as important as the political and governmental frameworks.
The public sector pension discussion is because Reform want to get their hands on the money to invest it. I’d have thought that is worth talking about.
The money has been invested, mostly.
The pension scheme of -say- Essex County Council will have been invested with asset managers.
If you want to rip up the contract that Essex County Council has with its employees and ex-employees, and then take any excess from the pension fund and give it to Central Government (or even give it to Essex County Council itself), then you will need primary legislation.
They would be better off disendowing public schools. At least then it would only be rich people complaining.
Why do you think they should disendowpublic schools. The endowments were the wishes of people in their wills or lifetime. You might not like public schools but if people chose to leave land or money then why should they be punished now? Does this mean that in the future a government can decide strip to many charities, the National Trust for example, of gifts because those buildings could be used more “fairly”? Can we revisit inheritances after the fact because it’s just not fair?
What about universities, should Oxford and Cambridge have their endowments removed?
I don't. I'm saying that they were to disendow public schools it would be much less politically damaging than tampering with government pensions (also probably much more lucrative, given the state of government and particularly local government pensions).
On your substantive point, I would mention that a lot of those endowments were to provide education for the poor - not to enable Eton to run at a headline loss while charging £60,000 a year in fees. And there certainly is a legitimate question to ask about these schools which seem to delight in turning out too many rather stupid people with rich parents and an unshakeable belief in their own brilliance, and about Labour's VAT strategy and SEND strategy which looks set to entrench that advantage further.
And yes, that does apply to Oxbridge too.
But in a sense that's a different question. The point I was trying to get across is that tampering with pensions is insanity, if only because the worst affected are always the poorest and therefore most media friendly so would get sympathy, but there will be plenty of wealthy, savvy and well-connected people squealing too. It would be like council tax rebanding on steroids. Hard to imagine the same outrage about JAcob Rees-Mogg's little boys having to pay full fees.
A government (can't remember which one) a few years back did this with Royal Mail pension as a preliminary to privatisation. It's been a clusterfuck. But this would be a whole lot worse.
I don't get it. Labour is f*cking screaming value at 7.
SKS wouldn't have visited unless Labour thought it'd be close.
I've revised my bets on that basis.
I thought that, but I am being spooked by talk of the 'total collapse' of Labour and hardly anyone in any vox pops being prepared to back them.
Labour cannot back down and do expectations management here, because every vote counts to them. And as it's a three way marginal, they have to give the impression they are leading the greens.
It's all very perplexing.
Steve Swinford on it.
‘ Keir Starmer has visited Gorton and Denton
The fact he has visited is interesting in and of itself - there is mounting optimism in Labour that they can win the by-election, that undecided voters will peel off and back them over the Greens
During his recent trip to China Starmer repeatedly refused to say whether he would visit
There were concerns that his unpopularity meant he would do more harm than good in a tight contest. He has now decided that he wants to be directly associated with the outcome
He insists that the by-election is a 'straight fight' between Labour and Reform - of course it isn't, it's a straight fight between Reform, Labour and the Greens, but that's the narrative Labour wants to frame for voters’
He gave woeful 'analysis' on Times Radio the other day - his big scoop of the hour was that 'Labour aren't doing normal expectations management and playing down their chances in this by-election!!!' Of COURSE they're not doing that you pillock, the cannot be seen as losing to the Greens, and as the Greens have established themselves as the favourites, Labour must claim to be leading.
Youd least want to be Reform on that polling. Not even winning with a perfectly split left wing vote. Just about doubling their vote since 2024 in by election conditions vs a desperately unpopular govt? If thats the result lay the hell out of Ref win in 29
It's a very left wing constituency though. Reform+Tory 22% La+Green+Workers 74% at the GE. If anyone is placed to capitalise on Labour unpopularity it is the Greens.
That 10% for the Workers party are unlikely to shift to either Labour or Reform.
I see the usual ignorance on "public sector pensions" is getting an airing tonight from some of the usual suspects.
There are different kinds of pensions across "the public sector" - there's the Civil Service pension, Local Government pensions, Teachers' Pensions, the Police pension and the pension arrangements for other blue light workers as well as for the armed forces and NHS staff.
All are different and all are administered differently but as usual it's easier to generalise to try to make a point. The Local Government Pension is a Defined Contribution Scheme - I'm not sure the ones for the blue light workers and armed forces are but I could be wrong. You could argue Local Government workers should contribute more and indeed senior officers do and that comes (again, arguably) in lieu of having the money as salary.
We also have nonsense like that from Omid Djalili - there are very few "on the left" (whatever that means) who are publicly supportive of the theocracy in Tehran and a great number who would like the Mullahs removed but whatever follows has to be seen to be the will of the Iranian people and not the will of the White House or American business interests.
As we saw in Iraq, removing a tyrant is fairly easy if you have overwhelming force but what follows is the difficult bit. It's not just the politics but the infrastructure - ensuring the Iranian people have food, water, power and security would seem fairly important - that's not nation building in and of itself but as important as the political and governmental frameworks.
Great. Lets remove the tyrant then, then get out and let the Iranians decide what happens next.
You and I both know it's not as simple as that.
We can remove the tyranny (which isn't just Khamanei by any stretch) but essentially the country would be ungoverned until some form of new arrangement is put in place (whether republic, democracy or restored monarchy I agree should be left to the Iranian people).
No Government means no law and order short of what the invading forces could or would be willing to supply. It means ensuring the administration of law and the distribution of food (arguably the two main requirements for any society to function) are maintained across the country.
It also means it shouldn't be about the settling of scores or the creation of new ones as individual local power brokers take advantage of the vacuum.
That's the bit that a simplistic view always misses - removing the "bad guys" (however noble) creates a vacuum which the "good guys" can't always fill at once so the American would be looking at a prolonged involvement in Iran untila new order is created and settled.
Didn't I read that Iran has a severe water shortage, too?
It wouldn't surprise me - I think most of theirs fell in Scotland this January.
I see the usual ignorance on "public sector pensions" is getting an airing tonight from some of the usual suspects.
There are different kinds of pensions across "the public sector" - there's the Civil Service pension, Local Government pensions, Teachers' Pensions, the Police pension and the pension arrangements for other blue light workers as well as for the armed forces and NHS staff.
All are different and all are administered differently but as usual it's easier to generalise to try to make a point. The Local Government Pension is a Defined Contribution Scheme - I'm not sure the ones for the blue light workers and armed forces are but I could be wrong. You could argue Local Government workers should contribute more and indeed senior officers do and that comes (again, arguably) in lieu of having the money as salary.
We also have nonsense like that from Omid Djalili - there are very few "on the left" (whatever that means) who are publicly supportive of the theocracy in Tehran and a great number who would like the Mullahs removed but whatever follows has to be seen to be the will of the Iranian people and not the will of the White House or American business interests.
As we saw in Iraq, removing a tyrant is fairly easy if you have overwhelming force but what follows is the difficult bit. It's not just the politics but the infrastructure - ensuring the Iranian people have food, water, power and security would seem fairly important - that's not nation building in and of itself but as important as the political and governmental frameworks.
Great. Lets remove the tyrant then, then get out and let the Iranians decide what happens next.
You and I both know it's not as simple as that.
We can remove the tyranny (which isn't just Khamanei by any stretch) but essentially the country would be ungoverned until some form of new arrangement is put in place (whether republic, democracy or restored monarchy I agree should be left to the Iranian people).
No Government means no law and order short of what the invading forces could or would be willing to supply. It means ensuring the administration of law and the distribution of food (arguably the two main requirements for any society to function) are maintained across the country.
It also means it shouldn't be about the settling of scores or the creation of new ones as individual local power brokers take advantage of the vacuum.
That's the bit that a simplistic view always misses - removing the "bad guys" (however noble) creates a vacuum which the "good guys" can't always fill at once so the American would be looking at a prolonged involvement in Iran untila new order is created and settled.
Didn't I read that Iran has a severe water shortage, too?
It wouldn't surprise me - I think most of theirs fell in Scotland this January.
Quite a lot seems to have landed on the Cotswolds. I went for a walk in the Dursley/Stinchcombe area a couple of weeks ago and the mud had to be seen to be believed. Literally I was sinking in over my walking boots. Admittedly that's a heavy clay soil so the water tends to puddle, but even so it was extraordinary.
Byline have finally released their poll . What drama !
Green 28 Lab 28 Reform 27 Con 6 Lib Dem 4 Other 6
Greens lead 30 28 28 on 'most likely to vote' voters on the same poll GOTV crucial then!
The Greens haven't been canvassing apparently unlike Labour and Reform, only leafletting and putting up posters so it really could be any of the 3 on that poll
My entirely unscientific anecdotal evidence from living just beyond the seat boundary is that I've twice encountered Green canvassers when out and about, and not seen the others.
I see the usual ignorance on "public sector pensions" is getting an airing tonight from some of the usual suspects.
There are different kinds of pensions across "the public sector" - there's the Civil Service pension, Local Government pensions, Teachers' Pensions, the Police pension and the pension arrangements for other blue light workers as well as for the armed forces and NHS staff.
All are different and all are administered differently but as usual it's easier to generalise to try to make a point. The Local Government Pension is a Defined Contribution Scheme - I'm not sure the ones for the blue light workers and armed forces are but I could be wrong. You could argue Local Government workers should contribute more and indeed senior officers do and that comes (again, arguably) in lieu of having the money as salary.
We also have nonsense like that from Omid Djalili - there are very few "on the left" (whatever that means) who are publicly supportive of the theocracy in Tehran and a great number who would like the Mullahs removed but whatever follows has to be seen to be the will of the Iranian people and not the will of the White House or American business interests.
As we saw in Iraq, removing a tyrant is fairly easy if you have overwhelming force but what follows is the difficult bit. It's not just the politics but the infrastructure - ensuring the Iranian people have food, water, power and security would seem fairly important - that's not nation building in and of itself but as important as the political and governmental frameworks.
Great. Lets remove the tyrant then, then get out and let the Iranians decide what happens next.
You and I both know it's not as simple as that.
We can remove the tyranny (which isn't just Khamanei by any stretch) but essentially the country would be ungoverned until some form of new arrangement is put in place (whether republic, democracy or restored monarchy I agree should be left to the Iranian people).
No Government means no law and order short of what the invading forces could or would be willing to supply. It means ensuring the administration of law and the distribution of food (arguably the two main requirements for any society to function) are maintained across the country.
It also means it shouldn't be about the settling of scores or the creation of new ones as individual local power brokers take advantage of the vacuum.
That's the bit that a simplistic view always misses - removing the "bad guys" (however noble) creates a vacuum which the "good guys" can't always fill at once so the American would be looking at a prolonged involvement in Iran untila new order is created and settled.
Didn't I read that Iran has a severe water shortage, too?
It does. See this YouTube from CaspianReport from six months ago.
Byline have finally released their poll . What drama !
Green 28 Lab 28 Reform 27 Con 6 Lib Dem 4 Other 6
Greens lead 30 28 28 on 'most likely to vote' voters on the same poll GOTV crucial then!
The Greens haven't been canvassing apparently unlike Labour and Reform, only leafletting and putting up posters so it really could be any of the 3 on that poll
My entirely unscientific anecdotal evidence from living just beyond the seat boundary is that I've twice encountered Green canvassers when out and about, and not seen the others.
Byline have finally released their poll . What drama ! It’s conducted by Opinium .
Green 28 Lab 28 Reform 27 Con 6 Lib Dem 4 Other 6
HILARIOUS if its anywhere close to this.
If accurate (it probably isn't) then Labour would probably nick that as they'll have better canvassing data and be better at turnout.
Reform are quite shite at it.
I wonder if this might be quite an important factor. The structure of Reform surely means they don't have as much local infrastructure to canvas and GOTV. I can see this mattering less in a GE, but in a by-election I wonder if this will hurt them.
I suspect this also applies to the Greens, though they have at least been at it for longer.
Byline have finally released their poll . What drama !
Green 28 Lab 28 Reform 27 Con 6 Lib Dem 4 Other 6
Greens lead 30 28 28 on 'most likely to vote' voters on the same poll GOTV crucial then!
The Greens haven't been canvassing apparently unlike Labour and Reform, only leafletting and putting up posters so it really could be any of the 3 on that poll
My entirely unscientific anecdotal evidence from living just beyond the seat boundary is that I've twice encountered Green canvassers when out and about, and not seen the others.
I think they have been canvassing, but I would say ground game in the seat goes:
1. Labour 2. Reform 3. Greens
Not sure how great the Greens GOTV operations is going to be. I think Reform's and Labour's will be pretty good.
Byline have finally released their poll . What drama !
Green 28 Lab 28 Reform 27 Con 6 Lib Dem 4 Other 6
Greens lead 30 28 28 on 'most likely to vote' voters on the same poll GOTV crucial then!
The Greens haven't been canvassing apparently unlike Labour and Reform, only leafletting and putting up posters so it really could be any of the 3 on that poll
My entirely unscientific anecdotal evidence from living just beyond the seat boundary is that I've twice encountered Green canvassers when out and about, and not seen the others.
If they can't even get the boundaries right they're probably a lay.
I see the usual ignorance on "public sector pensions" is getting an airing tonight from some of the usual suspects.
There are different kinds of pensions across "the public sector" - there's the Civil Service pension, Local Government pensions, Teachers' Pensions, the Police pension and the pension arrangements for other blue light workers as well as for the armed forces and NHS staff.
All are different and all are administered differently but as usual it's easier to generalise to try to make a point. The Local Government Pension is a Defined Contribution Scheme - I'm not sure the ones for the blue light workers and armed forces are but I could be wrong. You could argue Local Government workers should contribute more and indeed senior officers do and that comes (again, arguably) in lieu of having the money as salary.
We also have nonsense like that from Omid Djalili - there are very few "on the left" (whatever that means) who are publicly supportive of the theocracy in Tehran and a great number who would like the Mullahs removed but whatever follows has to be seen to be the will of the Iranian people and not the will of the White House or American business interests.
As we saw in Iraq, removing a tyrant is fairly easy if you have overwhelming force but what follows is the difficult bit. It's not just the politics but the infrastructure - ensuring the Iranian people have food, water, power and security would seem fairly important - that's not nation building in and of itself but as important as the political and governmental frameworks.
The public sector pension discussion is because Reform want to get their hands on the money to invest it. I’d have thought that is worth talking about.
The money has been invested, mostly.
The pension scheme of -say- Essex County Council will have been invested with asset managers.
If you want to rip up the contract that Essex County Council has with its employees and ex-employees, and then take any excess from the pension fund and give it to Central Government (or even give it to Essex County Council itself), then you will need primary legislation.
They would be better off disendowing public schools. At least then it would only be rich people complaining.
Why do you think they should disendowpublic schools. The endowments were the wishes of people in their wills or lifetime. You might not like public schools but if people chose to leave land or money then why should they be punished now? Does this mean that in the future a government can decide strip to many charities, the National Trust for example, of gifts because those buildings could be used more “fairly”? Can we revisit inheritances after the fact because it’s just not fair?
What about universities, should Oxford and Cambridge have their endowments removed?
I don't think that was a serious suggestion from ydoethur. Just pointing out that raiding public sector pensions would be equivalent to that.
The spectre of a Reform government does make public sector pensions much less valuable though. You wouldn't bet against them retrospectvely altering the terms. Been a weird few days for them - a few statements in the run up to a by-election that you wouldn't consider vote-winners, including employment rights, ICE etc.
A better approach would be what can the govt do to create a friendly environment so we can see career average pensions start to come into the private sector. Undo the harm that imbecile Gordon Brown wreaked on DB pensions with his 97 budget, which yielded sod all for the treasury.
The current NEST scheme is a cop out for businesses allowing them to reduce their current offer, like a company I once worked for did for all new starters, and has ridiculously high up front charges. Pooled DC pots are a nonsense. No proof they will improve returns.
Long term it would benefit the treasury too getting career average schemes back in the private sector.
Byline have finally released their poll . What drama ! It’s conducted by Opinium .
Green 28 Lab 28 Reform 27 Con 6 Lib Dem 4 Other 6
HILARIOUS if its anywhere close to this.
If accurate (it probably isn't) then Labour would probably nick that as they'll have better canvassing data and be better at turnout.
Reform are quite shite at it.
I wonder if this might be quite an important factor. The structure of Reform surely means they don't have as much local infrastructure to canvas and GOTV. I can see this mattering less in a GE, but in a by-election I wonder if this will hurt them.
I suspect this also applies to the Greens, though they have at least been at it for longer.
I just can't call this one at all.
I would like to see a three way tie and a coin toss.
I want to know, of Polanski, Farage and Starmer, who the greatest tosser is.
I see the usual ignorance on "public sector pensions" is getting an airing tonight from some of the usual suspects.
There are different kinds of pensions across "the public sector" - there's the Civil Service pension, Local Government pensions, Teachers' Pensions, the Police pension and the pension arrangements for other blue light workers as well as for the armed forces and NHS staff.
All are different and all are administered differently but as usual it's easier to generalise to try to make a point. The Local Government Pension is a Defined Contribution Scheme - I'm not sure the ones for the blue light workers and armed forces are but I could be wrong. You could argue Local Government workers should contribute more and indeed senior officers do and that comes (again, arguably) in lieu of having the money as salary.
We also have nonsense like that from Omid Djalili - there are very few "on the left" (whatever that means) who are publicly supportive of the theocracy in Tehran and a great number who would like the Mullahs removed but whatever follows has to be seen to be the will of the Iranian people and not the will of the White House or American business interests.
As we saw in Iraq, removing a tyrant is fairly easy if you have overwhelming force but what follows is the difficult bit. It's not just the politics but the infrastructure - ensuring the Iranian people have food, water, power and security would seem fairly important - that's not nation building in and of itself but as important as the political and governmental frameworks.
The public sector pension discussion is because Reform want to get their hands on the money to invest it. I’d have thought that is worth talking about.
The money has been invested, mostly.
The pension scheme of -say- Essex County Council will have been invested with asset managers.
If you want to rip up the contract that Essex County Council has with its employees and ex-employees, and then take any excess from the pension fund and give it to Central Government (or even give it to Essex County Council itself), then you will need primary legislation.
They would be better off disendowing public schools. At least then it would only be rich people complaining.
Why do you think they should disendowpublic schools. The endowments were the wishes of people in their wills or lifetime. You might not like public schools but if people chose to leave land or money then why should they be punished now? Does this mean that in the future a government can decide strip to many charities, the National Trust for example, of gifts because those buildings could be used more “fairly”? Can we revisit inheritances after the fact because it’s just not fair?
What about universities, should Oxford and Cambridge have their endowments removed?
I don't. I'm saying that they were to disendow public schools it would be much less politically damaging than tampering with government pensions (also probably much more lucrative, given the state of government and particularly local government pensions).
On your substantive point, I would mention that a lot of those endowments were to provide education for the poor - not to enable Eton to run at a headline loss while charging £60,000 a year in fees. And there certainly is a legitimate question to ask about these schools which seem to delight in turning out too many rather stupid people with rich parents and an unshakeable belief in their own brilliance, and about Labour's VAT strategy and SEND strategy which looks set to entrench that advantage further.
And yes, that does apply to Oxbridge too.
But in a sense that's a different question. The point I was trying to get across is that tampering with pensions is insanity, if only because the worst affected are always the poorest and therefore most media friendly, but there will be plenty of wealthy, savvy and well-connected people squealing too. It would be like council tax rebanding on steroids.
A government (can't remember which one) a few years back did this with Royal Mail pension as a preliminary to privatisation. It's been a clusterfuck. But this would be a whole lot worse.
That’s fair enough. One thing that I would pick up on is that the endowments weren’t some lovely fluffy modern concept of lifting the poor. Winchester, and then Eton for similar reasons, we’re set up to educate poor scholars but not for some sort of lovely ideal, they wanted a production line of clergy and lawyers going from Winchester/new college then Eton and kings to be highly educated and provide a civil service and government or religious cadre who would be very elevated from the poor that they had come from.
When William of Wykeham set up Winchester and New College it was because the plague had wiped out a lot of the educated clergy and he realised he needed a production line. It wasn’t pure charity.
They didn’t go round a few mud huts and pick a winner, they chose sons of men who weren’t bog dwelling serfs but below the nobility and could often be gentry.
And, whilst I am clearly not a perfect exemplar, there are, and have been, many very intelligent people come out of those schools, apart from a few blips they were always relative academic hothouses and apart from a few of the schools, money didn’t guarantee entry. There will always be the Borises of the world who are a nightmare but don’t doubt that the majority go on to have lower profile jobs in science, the law, diplomacy, finance and industry - not just because of where they went to school but because they were actually quite bright.
Byline have finally released their poll . What drama ! It’s conducted by Opinium .
Green 28 Lab 28 Reform 27 Con 6 Lib Dem 4 Other 6
HILARIOUS if its anywhere close to this.
If accurate (it probably isn't) then Labour would probably nick that as they'll have better canvassing data and be better at turnout.
Reform are quite shite at it.
I wonder if this might be quite an important factor. The structure of Reform surely means they don't have as much local infrastructure to canvas and GOTV. I can see this mattering less in a GE, but in a by-election I wonder if this will hurt them.
I suspect this also applies to the Greens, though they have at least been at it for longer.
Byline have finally released their poll . What drama ! It’s conducted by Opinium .
Green 28 Lab 28 Reform 27 Con 6 Lib Dem 4 Other 6
HILARIOUS if its anywhere close to this.
If accurate (it probably isn't) then Labour would probably nick that as they'll have better canvassing data and be better at turnout.
Reform are quite shite at it.
That makes sense. Plus I'm not sure how you weight a constituency poll? YouGov could do it as a single-seat MRP which makes a kind of sense.
Ok, the best way of predicting a constituency election is a *properly weighted* poll. Another good way is postal vote sampling. Yes I know it's illegal but has anybody got their ear to the ground?
I like @MoonRabbit 's method of counting the posters and signs.
State of the Union: Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia will give the Democrats’ response.
NY Times blog
State of the Nation. State of this “game face”
What PB is missing. Considering Trump satisfaction ratings are not good, the Democratic Party satisfaction ratings have not been great over the last year either.
It’s good to flag up differences between US and UK politics. We don’t have presidential elections - President Gordon Brown or President Nigel Farage are two strong reasons UK will NEVER NEVER NEVER give up our Monarchy as head of State. Our PM needs to command the House of Commons. Would it be stronger for Democratic Party today, stronger for US politics, if their candidate for next US president was already known, and providing the State of the Nation replies?
Usually the reply to the State of the Union is given by a nonentity who then vanishes without trace. See that mad Senator Katie Britt from Alabama who replied to Biden a few years back and has vanished without trace other than being the butt of a thousand jokes.
Because of the way the primary system works you have a tendency for the candidates already known and with a significant body of work behind them to emerge victorious, even if it's a fake one like The Apprentice. They will be governors, high profile senators or ex-cabinet ministers (and only Trump since 1952 doesn't fit one of those categories). Replying to the State of the Union is of little bearing in building such a profile. Indeed, the fact she's speaking at all is probably a sign Spanberger isn't considering a bid.
The fact she is a formal intelligence officer, is probably a sign why she has been chosen to respond? The type of response they plan, backed up by her expertise?
And the fact her ancestors lived near a beautiful bridge or something in Germany reminds us of the narrow vote just selecting English over German as the national language of the United States? Before they then changed it to a language that says things like miss-ull for missile, and now Hispanic is the main language.
English being spoken in North America makes sense as it’s part of English Empire. If story true there was such a close vote, this would be before Germany actually existed? Any reason for so many Germanic speaking people moving there from where they were? What was unattractive in Germanic Europe? Technically nineteenth century was all on the up for them?
Byline have finally released their poll . What drama ! It’s conducted by Opinium .
Green 28 Lab 28 Reform 27 Con 6 Lib Dem 4 Other 6
HILARIOUS if its anywhere close to this.
If accurate (it probably isn't) then Labour would probably nick that as they'll have better canvassing data and be better at turnout.
Reform are quite shite at it.
I wonder if this might be quite an important factor. The structure of Reform surely means they don't have as much local infrastructure to canvas and GOTV. I can see this mattering less in a GE, but in a by-election I wonder if this will hurt them.
I suspect this also applies to the Greens, though they have at least been at it for longer.
I just can't call this one at all.
I've narrowed it down to Green or Labour or Reform. I'm helpful, me. 😄
It will be interesting to see the reaction in Labour and Green camps if Reform sneak through by a few percentage points. On the Byline figures it is clear that there is sufficient support for a left-wing winner (if you can still call Labour left-wing) and it is only the apparent toss-up between Labour and Green that means tactical voting might not come into play.
I can see a fair bit of acrimony coming.
ETA: Though I do think LuckyGuy is on the money when he says there is no way Labour could cede tactically to the Greens here, so their apparent confidence could just be bluster. And Starmer's visit might just be a high stakes roll of the dice to try to dig himself out of a hole. Honestly, who knows?
I see the usual ignorance on "public sector pensions" is getting an airing tonight from some of the usual suspects.
There are different kinds of pensions across "the public sector" - there's the Civil Service pension, Local Government pensions, Teachers' Pensions, the Police pension and the pension arrangements for other blue light workers as well as for the armed forces and NHS staff.
All are different and all are administered differently but as usual it's easier to generalise to try to make a point. The Local Government Pension is a Defined Contribution Scheme - I'm not sure the ones for the blue light workers and armed forces are but I could be wrong. You could argue Local Government workers should contribute more and indeed senior officers do and that comes (again, arguably) in lieu of having the money as salary.
We also have nonsense like that from Omid Djalili - there are very few "on the left" (whatever that means) who are publicly supportive of the theocracy in Tehran and a great number who would like the Mullahs removed but whatever follows has to be seen to be the will of the Iranian people and not the will of the White House or American business interests.
As we saw in Iraq, removing a tyrant is fairly easy if you have overwhelming force but what follows is the difficult bit. It's not just the politics but the infrastructure - ensuring the Iranian people have food, water, power and security would seem fairly important - that's not nation building in and of itself but as important as the political and governmental frameworks.
The public sector pension discussion is because Reform want to get their hands on the money to invest it. I’d have thought that is worth talking about.
The money has been invested, mostly.
The pension scheme of -say- Essex County Council will have been invested with asset managers.
If you want to rip up the contract that Essex County Council has with its employees and ex-employees, and then take any excess from the pension fund and give it to Central Government (or even give it to Essex County Council itself), then you will need primary legislation.
They would be better off disendowing public schools. At least then it would only be rich people complaining.
Why do you think they should disendowpublic schools. The endowments were the wishes of people in their wills or lifetime. You might not like public schools but if people chose to leave land or money then why should they be punished now? Does this mean that in the future a government can decide strip to many charities, the National Trust for example, of gifts because those buildings could be used more “fairly”? Can we revisit inheritances after the fact because it’s just not fair?
What about universities, should Oxford and Cambridge have their endowments removed?
I don't. I'm saying that they were to disendow public schools it would be much less politically damaging than tampering with government pensions (also probably much more lucrative, given the state of government and particularly local government pensions).
On your substantive point, I would mention that a lot of those endowments were to provide education for the poor - not to enable Eton to run at a headline loss while charging £60,000 a year in fees. And there certainly is a legitimate question to ask about these schools which seem to delight in turning out too many rather stupid people with rich parents and an unshakeable belief in their own brilliance, and about Labour's VAT strategy and SEND strategy which looks set to entrench that advantage further.
And yes, that does apply to Oxbridge too.
But in a sense that's a different question. The point I was trying to get across is that tampering with pensions is insanity, if only because the worst affected are always the poorest and therefore most media friendly, but there will be plenty of wealthy, savvy and well-connected people squealing too. It would be like council tax rebanding on steroids.
A government (can't remember which one) a few years back did this with Royal Mail pension as a preliminary to privatisation. It's been a clusterfuck. But this would be a whole lot worse.
That’s fair enough. One thing that I would pick up on is that the endowments weren’t some lovely fluffy modern concept of lifting the poor. Winchester, and then Eton for similar reasons, we’re set up to educate poor scholars but not for some sort of lovely ideal, they wanted a production line of clergy and lawyers going from Winchester/new college then Eton and kings to be highly educated and provide a civil service and government or religious cadre who would be very elevated from the poor that they had come from.
When William of Wykeham set up Winchester and New College it was because the plague had wiped out a lot of the educated clergy and he realised he needed a production line. It wasn’t pure charity.
They didn’t go round a few mud huts and pick a winner, they chose sons of men who weren’t bog dwelling serfs but below the nobility and could often be gentry.
And, whilst I am clearly not a perfect exemplar, there are, and have been, many very intelligent people come out of those schools, apart from a few blips they were always relative academic hothouses and apart from a few of the schools, money didn’t guarantee entry. There will always be the Borises of the world who are a nightmare but don’t doubt that the majority go on to have lower profile jobs in science, the law, diplomacy, finance and industry - not just because of where they went to school but because they were actually quite bright.
All of which is also true. I would further add on the point about poorer people, yes that's true but the whole idea was it would be boys who *couldn't* afford the education but still required it to rise high in the professions you identify. The younger sons of nobility were generally taught at home by tutors (often educated in these schools, of course). There seems therefore to be a certain irony in the use they are put to now - although, of course, most public schools do still have bursaries that allow those from poorer backgrounds to rise very high, Sunak springing to mind as an example.
We could do that through the mass state system now, and therefore it would not be illogical to say that money could be put into a charitable foundation to benefit *every school* rather than selected ones (bearing in mind many of these endowments date from before mass education in 1871).
But it probably won't happen. If Labour are dumb enough to believe that VAT on private school fees plus business taxes (which they won't pay anyway) will drive the public schools out of business we must assume they know nothing about their financial basis. And if they aren't trying to drive them out of business then they won't disendow them anyway.
And in any case, it would still be a more sensible idea than tampering with local government pensions.
Byline have finally released their poll . What drama !
Green 28 Lab 28 Reform 27 Con 6 Lib Dem 4 Other 6
Greens lead 30 28 28 on 'most likely to vote' voters on the same poll GOTV crucial then!
The Greens haven't been canvassing apparently unlike Labour and Reform, only leafletting and putting up posters so it really could be any of the 3 on that poll
My entirely unscientific anecdotal evidence from living just beyond the seat boundary is that I've twice encountered Green canvassers when out and about, and not seen the others.
I think they have been canvassing, but I would say ground game in the seat goes:
1. Labour 2. Reform 3. Greens
Not sure how great the Greens GOTV operations is going to be. I think Reform's and Labour's will be pretty good.
The Greens strongest demographic aren’t known to be great at turning out to vote which will be a concern for them . I’m really surprised at that Labour result . It should be an exciting evening as we rarely ever get a battle between 3 parties .
Byline have finally released their poll . What drama !
Green 28 Lab 28 Reform 27 Con 6 Lib Dem 4 Other 6
Greens lead 30 28 28 on 'most likely to vote' voters on the same poll GOTV crucial then!
The Greens haven't been canvassing apparently unlike Labour and Reform, only leafletting and putting up posters so it really could be any of the 3 on that poll
My entirely unscientific anecdotal evidence from living just beyond the seat boundary is that I've twice encountered Green canvassers when out and about, and not seen the others.
I think they have been canvassing, but I would say ground game in the seat goes:
1. Labour 2. Reform 3. Greens
Not sure how great the Greens GOTV operations is going to be. I think Reform's and Labour's will be pretty good.
Are you saying, not being the UKs biggest mass member party like Reform is, holds back the size of vote Greens are capable of, and key reason they narrowly lose to reform?
I don't get it. Labour is f*cking screaming value at 7.
If they win it'll be a huge victory. The start of the Labour Renaissance. But I can't see it. Unless they've got an exceptional candidate which I don't believe they have my guess is the bookies have got it right
You know how England are always much shorter odds than they should be at World Cups? Partly fans backing them because they overestimate their brilliance, but also as a gesture of support?
I wonder if there's something like that here, boosting the implied probability for Reform and Green. As far as we know, it's a three horse tossup, in which case one of the horses shouldn't be 7-1. What the odds should be is another matter.
(And to be clear, a narrow win in a three-way scramble would objectively be a blooming awful result for Labour. Almost as bad as a narrow loss etc.)
Byline have finally released their poll . What drama !
Green 28 Lab 28 Reform 27 Con 6 Lib Dem 4 Other 6
Greens lead 30 28 28 on 'most likely to vote' voters on the same poll GOTV crucial then!
The Greens haven't been canvassing apparently unlike Labour and Reform, only leafletting and putting up posters so it really could be any of the 3 on that poll
My entirely unscientific anecdotal evidence from living just beyond the seat boundary is that I've twice encountered Green canvassers when out and about, and not seen the others.
It will be interesting to see the reaction in Labour and Green camps if Reform sneak through by a few percentage points. On the Byline figures it is clear that there is sufficient support for a left-wing winner (if you can still call Labour left-wing) and it is only the apparent toss-up between Labour and Green that means tactical voting might not come into play.
I can see a fair bit of acrimony coming.
If Labour have lost the left-wing vote, they only have themselves to blame. It's not an accident, they engineered it. They did so because they thought the Blair playbook still works in the 2020s. It doesn't.
Byline have finally released their poll . What drama ! It’s conducted by Opinium .
Green 28 Lab 28 Reform 27 Con 6 Lib Dem 4 Other 6
HILARIOUS if its anywhere close to this.
If accurate (it probably isn't) then Labour would probably nick that as they'll have better canvassing data and be better at turnout.
Reform are quite shite at it.
I wonder if this might be quite an important factor. The structure of Reform surely means they don't have as much local infrastructure to canvas and GOTV. I can see this mattering less in a GE, but in a by-election I wonder if this will hurt them.
I suspect this also applies to the Greens, though they have at least been at it for longer.
I just can't call this one at all.
But that's what makes it so exciting, isn't it?
Farage losing on the sartorial front in the accompanying Byline photo, diagonally patterned tie on a cross-hatched shirt.
Looking at the numbers LDs have been squeezed until their pips squeak, so they're out of the running in the bar chart "only X can win here" bloodbath, it's red on green
State of the Union: Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia will give the Democrats’ response.
NY Times blog
State of the Nation. State of this “game face”
What PB is missing. Considering Trump satisfaction ratings are not good, the Democratic Party satisfaction ratings have not been great over the last year either.
It’s good to flag up differences between US and UK politics. We don’t have presidential elections - President Gordon Brown or President Nigel Farage are two strong reasons UK will NEVER NEVER NEVER give up our Monarchy as head of State. Our PM needs to command the House of Commons. Would it be stronger for Democratic Party today, stronger for US politics, if their candidate for next US president was already known, and providing the State of the Nation replies?
Usually the reply to the State of the Union is given by a nonentity who then vanishes without trace. See that mad Senator Katie Britt from Alabama who replied to Biden a few years back and has vanished without trace other than being the butt of a thousand jokes.
Because of the way the primary system works you have a tendency for the candidates already known and with a significant body of work behind them to emerge victorious, even if it's a fake one like The Apprentice. They will be governors, high profile senators or ex-cabinet ministers (and only Trump since 1952 doesn't fit one of those categories). Replying to the State of the Union is of little bearing in building such a profile. Indeed, the fact she's speaking at all is probably a sign Spanberger isn't considering a bid.
The fact she is a formal intelligence officer, is probably a sign why she has been chosen to respond? The type of response they plan, backed up by her expertise?
And the fact her ancestors lived near a beautiful bridge or something in Germany reminds us of the narrow vote just selecting English over German as the national language of the United States? Before they then changed it to a language that says things like miss-ull for missile, and now Hispanic is the main language.
English being spoken in North America makes sense as it’s part of English Empire. If story true there was such a close vote, this would be before Germany actually existed? Any reason for so many Germanic speaking people moving there from where they were? What was unattractive in Germanic Europe? Technically nineteenth century was all on the up for them?
Short answer is the story is a myth. Its not true.
There were a lot of Germanic settlers in the USA though.
State of the Union: Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia will give the Democrats’ response.
NY Times blog
State of the Nation. State of this “game face”
What PB is missing. Considering Trump satisfaction ratings are not good, the Democratic Party satisfaction ratings have not been great over the last year either.
It’s good to flag up differences between US and UK politics. We don’t have presidential elections - President Gordon Brown or President Nigel Farage are two strong reasons UK will NEVER NEVER NEVER give up our Monarchy as head of State. Our PM needs to command the House of Commons. Would it be stronger for Democratic Party today, stronger for US politics, if their candidate for next US president was already known, and providing the State of the Nation replies?
Usually the reply to the State of the Union is given by a nonentity who then vanishes without trace. See that mad Senator Katie Britt from Alabama who replied to Biden a few years back and has vanished without trace other than being the butt of a thousand jokes.
Because of the way the primary system works you have a tendency for the candidates already known and with a significant body of work behind them to emerge victorious, even if it's a fake one like The Apprentice. They will be governors, high profile senators or ex-cabinet ministers (and only Trump since 1952 doesn't fit one of those categories). Replying to the State of the Union is of little bearing in building such a profile. Indeed, the fact she's speaking at all is probably a sign Spanberger isn't considering a bid.
The fact she is a formal intelligence officer, is probably a sign why she has been chosen to respond? The type of response they plan, backed up by her expertise?
And the fact her ancestors lived near a beautiful bridge or something in Germany reminds us of the narrow vote just selecting English over German as the national language of the United States? Before they then changed it to a language that says things like miss-ull for missile, and now Hispanic is the main language.
English being spoken in North America makes sense as it’s part of English Empire. If story true there was such a close vote, this would be before Germany actually existed? Any reason for so many Germanic speaking people moving there from where they were? What was unattractive in Germanic Europe? Technically nineteenth century was all on the up for them?
Er...okay. I don't know what a formal intelligence officer is - is it one who admits to being bought by the Russians (which would make Tulsi Gabbard an informal one, presumably)?
I also never realised that 'Davis' had anything to do with Germany or indeed bridges, but if you say so. It sounds Welsh to me, if I'm honest.
Edit - I think Spanberger might be Dutch rather than German, but I'm not an expert on Germanic languages.
I see the usual ignorance on "public sector pensions" is getting an airing tonight from some of the usual suspects.
There are different kinds of pensions across "the public sector" - there's the Civil Service pension, Local Government pensions, Teachers' Pensions, the Police pension and the pension arrangements for other blue light workers as well as for the armed forces and NHS staff.
All are different and all are administered differently but as usual it's easier to generalise to try to make a point. The Local Government Pension is a Defined Contribution Scheme - I'm not sure the ones for the blue light workers and armed forces are but I could be wrong. You could argue Local Government workers should contribute more and indeed senior officers do and that comes (again, arguably) in lieu of having the money as salary.
We also have nonsense like that from Omid Djalili - there are very few "on the left" (whatever that means) who are publicly supportive of the theocracy in Tehran and a great number who would like the Mullahs removed but whatever follows has to be seen to be the will of the Iranian people and not the will of the White House or American business interests.
As we saw in Iraq, removing a tyrant is fairly easy if you have overwhelming force but what follows is the difficult bit. It's not just the politics but the infrastructure - ensuring the Iranian people have food, water, power and security would seem fairly important - that's not nation building in and of itself but as important as the political and governmental frameworks.
The public sector pension discussion is because Reform want to get their hands on the money to invest it. I’d have thought that is worth talking about.
The money has been invested, mostly.
The pension scheme of -say- Essex County Council will have been invested with asset managers.
If you want to rip up the contract that Essex County Council has with its employees and ex-employees, and then take any excess from the pension fund and give it to Central Government (or even give it to Essex County Council itself), then you will need primary legislation.
They would be better off disendowing public schools. At least then it would only be rich people complaining.
Why do you think they should disendowpublic schools. The endowments were the wishes of people in their wills or lifetime. You might not like public schools but if people chose to leave land or money then why should they be punished now? Does this mean that in the future a government can decide strip to many charities, the National Trust for example, of gifts because those buildings could be used more “fairly”? Can we revisit inheritances after the fact because it’s just not fair?
What about universities, should Oxford and Cambridge have their endowments removed?
I don't. I'm saying that they were to disendow public schools it would be much less politically damaging than tampering with government pensions (also probably much more lucrative, given the state of government and particularly local government pensions).
On your substantive point, I would mention that a lot of those endowments were to provide education for the poor - not to enable Eton to run at a headline loss while charging £60,000 a year in fees. And there certainly is a legitimate question to ask about these schools which seem to delight in turning out too many rather stupid people with rich parents and an unshakeable belief in their own brilliance, and about Labour's VAT strategy and SEND strategy which looks set to entrench that advantage further.
And yes, that does apply to Oxbridge too.
But in a sense that's a different question. The point I was trying to get across is that tampering with pensions is insanity, if only because the worst affected are always the poorest and therefore most media friendly, but there will be plenty of wealthy, savvy and well-connected people squealing too. It would be like council tax rebanding on steroids.
A government (can't remember which one) a few years back did this with Royal Mail pension as a preliminary to privatisation. It's been a clusterfuck. But this would be a whole lot worse.
That’s fair enough. One thing that I would pick up on is that the endowments weren’t some lovely fluffy modern concept of lifting the poor. Winchester, and then Eton for similar reasons, we’re set up to educate poor scholars but not for some sort of lovely ideal, they wanted a production line of clergy and lawyers going from Winchester/new college then Eton and kings to be highly educated and provide a civil service and government or religious cadre who would be very elevated from the poor that they had come from.
When William of Wykeham set up Winchester and New College it was because the plague had wiped out a lot of the educated clergy and he realised he needed a production line. It wasn’t pure charity.
They didn’t go round a few mud huts and pick a winner, they chose sons of men who weren’t bog dwelling serfs but below the nobility and could often be gentry.
And, whilst I am clearly not a perfect exemplar, there are, and have been, many very intelligent people come out of those schools, apart from a few blips they were always relative academic hothouses and apart from a few of the schools, money didn’t guarantee entry. There will always be the Borises of the world who are a nightmare but don’t doubt that the majority go on to have lower profile jobs in science, the law, diplomacy, finance and industry - not just because of where they went to school but because they were actually quite bright.
All of which is also true. I would further add on the point about poorer people, yes that's true but the whole idea was it would be boys who *couldn't* afford the education but still required it to rise high in the professions you identify. The younger sons of nobility were generally taught at home by tutors (often educated in these schools, of course). There seems therefore to be a certain irony in the use they are put to now - although, of course, most public schools do still have bursaries that allow those from poorer backgrounds to rise very high, Sunak springing to mind as an example.
We could do that through the mass state system now, and therefore it would not be illogical to say that money could be put into a charitable foundation to benefit *every school* rather than selected ones (bearing in mind many of these endowments date from before mass education in 1871).
But it probably won't happen. If Labour are dumb enough to believe that VAT on private school fees plus business taxes (which they won't pay anyway) will drive the public schools out of business we must assume they know nothing about their financial basis. And if they aren't trying to drive them out of business then they won't disendow them anyway.
And in any case, it would still be a more sensible idea than tampering with local government pensions.
Ok, we probably are in a bit of general agreement. My view is we have lost, or rather the very wealthy have, in the UK mass endowment of education. You do have examples where people reward their old universities but very little in the way of huge wealth being plowed into schools . Maybe it’s because it’s harder to throw millions at your old state school than an independent.
I think Sunak didn’t get an exhibition and definitely didn’t get a scholarship, his parents had to pay. When I was there each year in each house had one or two chaps who were there on the old govt scheme where they got assisted places which sadly went. It must have been very alien to them and they tended to either excel or struggle in my vague memory.
State of the Union: Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia will give the Democrats’ response.
NY Times blog
State of the Nation. State of this “game face”
What PB is missing. Considering Trump satisfaction ratings are not good, the Democratic Party satisfaction ratings have not been great over the last year either.
It’s good to flag up differences between US and UK politics. We don’t have presidential elections - President Gordon Brown or President Nigel Farage are two strong reasons UK will NEVER NEVER NEVER give up our Monarchy as head of State. Our PM needs to command the House of Commons. Would it be stronger for Democratic Party today, stronger for US politics, if their candidate for next US president was already known, and providing the State of the Nation replies?
Usually the reply to the State of the Union is given by a nonentity who then vanishes without trace. See that mad Senator Katie Britt from Alabama who replied to Biden a few years back and has vanished without trace other than being the butt of a thousand jokes.
Because of the way the primary system works you have a tendency for the candidates already known and with a significant body of work behind them to emerge victorious, even if it's a fake one like The Apprentice. They will be governors, high profile senators or ex-cabinet ministers (and only Trump since 1952 doesn't fit one of those categories). Replying to the State of the Union is of little bearing in building such a profile. Indeed, the fact she's speaking at all is probably a sign Spanberger isn't considering a bid.
The fact she is a formal intelligence officer, is probably a sign why she has been chosen to respond? The type of response they plan, backed up by her expertise?
And the fact her ancestors lived near a beautiful bridge or something in Germany reminds us of the narrow vote just selecting English over German as the national language of the United States? Before they then changed it to a language that says things like miss-ull for missile, and now Hispanic is the main language.
English being spoken in North America makes sense as it’s part of English Empire. If story true there was such a close vote, this would be before Germany actually existed? Any reason for so many Germanic speaking people moving there from where they were? What was unattractive in Germanic Europe? Technically nineteenth century was all on the up for them?
Short answer is the story is a myth. Its not true.
There were a lot of Germanic settlers in the USA though.
She was chosen because she flipped a state. It's not a huge mystery, and not a big deal.
It will be interesting to see the reaction in Labour and Green camps if Reform sneak through by a few percentage points. On the Byline figures it is clear that there is sufficient support for a left-wing winner (if you can still call Labour left-wing) and it is only the apparent toss-up between Labour and Green that means tactical voting might not come into play.
I can see a fair bit of acrimony coming.
If Labour have lost the left-wing vote, they only have themselves to blame. It's not an accident, they engineered it. They did so because they thought the Blair playbook still works in the 2020s. It doesn't.
Don't really understand this.
Its a very tough ask for Labour to appeal to Corbynites and centrists in multi party FPTP world. Without the centrists Labour become a party of protest only. So it is far from trivial to retain both sections of the electorate that are fundamentally different in outlook despite both sometimes, not always, voting Labour.
Add in the splits over Gaza and I'd suggest the opposite, mostly the votes Labour are losing on the left are beyond their control, on the proviso that they wish to be a party of government.
Byline have finally released their poll . What drama ! It’s conducted by Opinium .
Green 28 Lab 28 Reform 27 Con 6 Lib Dem 4 Other 6
HILARIOUS if its anywhere close to this.
If accurate (it probably isn't) then Labour would probably nick that as they'll have better canvassing data and be better at turnout.
Reform are quite shite at it.
I wonder if this might be quite an important factor. The structure of Reform surely means they don't have as much local infrastructure to canvas and GOTV. I can see this mattering less in a GE, but in a by-election I wonder if this will hurt them.
I suspect this also applies to the Greens, though they have at least been at it for longer.
I just can't call this one at all.
But that's what makes it so exciting, isn't it?
Farage losing on the sartorial front in the accompanying Byline photo, diagonally patterned tie on a cross-hatched shirt.
Looking at the numbers LDs have been squeezed until their pips squeak, so they're out of the running in the bar chart "only X can win here" bloodbath, it's red on green
Note that appears to be the largest sample of likely to vote, 339, vs omnisis, 265 and FON, <51 (vote likelihood not polled).
Byline have finally released their poll . What drama !
Green 28 Lab 28 Reform 27 Con 6 Lib Dem 4 Other 6
Greens lead 30 28 28 on 'most likely to vote' voters on the same poll GOTV crucial then!
The Greens haven't been canvassing apparently unlike Labour and Reform, only leafletting and putting up posters so it really could be any of the 3 on that poll
My entirely unscientific anecdotal evidence from living just beyond the seat boundary is that I've twice encountered Green canvassers when out and about, and not seen the others.
Byline have finally released their poll . What drama ! It’s conducted by Opinium .
Green 28 Lab 28 Reform 27 Con 6 Lib Dem 4 Other 6
HILARIOUS if its anywhere close to this.
If accurate (it probably isn't) then Labour would probably nick that as they'll have better canvassing data and be better at turnout.
Reform are quite shite at it.
That makes sense. Plus I'm not sure how you weight a constituency poll? YouGov could do it as a single-seat MRP which makes a kind of sense.
Ok, the best way of predicting a constituency election is a *properly weighted* poll. Another good way is postal vote sampling. Yes I know it's illegal but has anybody got their ear to the ground?
I like @MoonRabbit 's method of counting the posters and signs.
Not really about just counting posters and signs, but psephologist type journalists visiting by elections use this method as well as vox popping and talking to local media, to build their vibe about what is going on.
What I’m saying is, in the last week of a campaign, us on PB should visit all the journalist visits of recent weeks, across all the media organs, and what comes across as strongest from all that media feeling based on visits, is likely what is going to happen.
The vast majority of media visits here struggled to find people confident in a vote for Labour, based on my own reading up on “visit” journalism.
Labour to come third, some way behind the other two.
The LD barcharts in my area have always been properly proportioned, and usually with relevant data - I feel quite left out, and that they are letting their side down a little.
Byline have finally released their poll . What drama !
Green 28 Lab 28 Reform 27 Con 6 Lib Dem 4 Other 6
Greens lead 30 28 28 on 'most likely to vote' voters on the same poll GOTV crucial then!
The Greens haven't been canvassing apparently unlike Labour and Reform, only leafletting and putting up posters so it really could be any of the 3 on that poll
My entirely unscientific anecdotal evidence from living just beyond the seat boundary is that I've twice encountered Green canvassers when out and about, and not seen the others.
I think they have been canvassing, but I would say ground game in the seat goes:
1. Labour 2. Reform 3. Greens
Not sure how great the Greens GOTV operations is going to be. I think Reform's and Labour's will be pretty good.
The Greens strongest demographic aren’t known to be great at turning out to vote which will be a concern for them . I’m really surprised at that Labour result . It should be an exciting evening as we rarely ever get a battle between 3 parties .
Does anyone know how much (if any) of the local Labour organisation has gone over to the Greens?
I don't get it. Labour is f*cking screaming value at 7.
If they win it'll be a huge victory. The start of the Labour Renaissance. But I can't see it. Unless they've got an exceptional candidate which I don't believe they have my guess is the bookies have got it right
You know how England are always much shorter odds than they should be at World Cups? Partly fans backing them because they overestimate their brilliance, but also as a gesture of support?
I wonder if there's something like that here, boosting the implied probability for Reform and Green. As far as we know, it's a three horse tossup, in which case one of the horses shouldn't be 7-1. What the odds should be is another matter.
(And to be clear, a narrow win in a three-way scramble would objectively be a blooming awful result for Labour. Almost as bad as a narrow loss etc.)
Except a Narrow Labour win, would be... a Labour win. One that would be coming a bare few days after it seemed that the entire UK press corps were utterly convinced that Starmer was obviously out and that Labour would anyway collapse if he did not go immediately.
Those of us who less convinced about this narrative were told we were fools. Now it is clear that even if Labour is defeated on Thursday, they are certainly not falling apart, and I think a lot of rethinking needs to happen about the general level of political commentary. Too many people got lost in the story and lost touch with the reality- neither Reform nor the Greens have a good ground war, and Labour despite having about as bad a background to the by-election they could have had, are still in touch and indeed may even win.
The fact is that Reality doesn't give a toss about the opinions of some jumped up PPE grads in the mediascape. The political media complex thinks that nothing is true, it is simply how you sell it that matters- that was and is horseshit. So, while too many in the news media simply sign up for whichever propaganda camp suits them, the old school tradition of calling things for what they are, rather than selling opinion as truth still has much to recommend it.
Its called reporting the facts. One can only hope that the seizure of different media channels by various oligarchs- Musk, Marshall, Murdoch et al will end up with their output being discounted as the biased propaganda that it is.
I agree to an extent. but we don't know the result yet! If Labour wins, sure, you're right here. If Labour get <10%, then maybe the jumped up PPE grads are right.
The impact of a Green win, however narrow, in Gorton & Denton will be felt beyond the constituency boundary.
In London, Polanski's party are challenging Labour across a number of Inner London boroughs and a win for Hannah Spencer will be a big help to those Green council candidates as we approach May. I'd expect Spencer, as the first MP under the Polanski leadership, to be sent to London to help the campaigns in places like Hackney, Lewisham and Greenwich among others.
In my neck of the woods, the two Green councillors in Newham will be seeking to build their group but I suspect they will stay clear of the areas being targetted by the Newham Independents (whether some kind of informal deal has been reached I don't know) and the possibility still exists the Independents and the Greens will win enough seats to deprive Labour of their majority and force a change in administration but we'll see.
Byline have finally released their poll . What drama !
Green 28 Lab 28 Reform 27 Con 6 Lib Dem 4 Other 6
Greens lead 30 28 28 on 'most likely to vote' voters on the same poll GOTV crucial then!
The Greens haven't been canvassing apparently unlike Labour and Reform, only leafletting and putting up posters so it really could be any of the 3 on that poll
My entirely unscientific anecdotal evidence from living just beyond the seat boundary is that I've twice encountered Green canvassers when out and about, and not seen the others.
"it appears the Greens are focusing on leafleting rather than canvassing. Tameside Council candidate, Raymond Dunning, declared that the Greens “aren’t knocking because they’ve nothing to say to the people here,” He further dismissed their rhetoric as merely: “Greyhound dogs and a load of bollocks.”"
It would need more than the opinion of one (presumably Reform) council candidate quoted on ConHome for me to take a betting position on it.
As stupid as it sounds given the background to the by election, there could be value in this. A three way split is not beyond probability
Yup.
So...
Labour - supporters disillusioned, getting hammered in the press, midterm byelection Green - surge of support with the young, motivated Reform - supporters trend older, motivated, oblivious to negative press reports
Labour going to struggle with turnout and punishment beating Green might underperform as their supporters fail to vote Reform voters will turnout
So sadly, I'd suggest Reform are value and Labour are talking up their chances to keep their campaigners motivated
Anyone on Labour should be ready to cash-out at any point on Thursday
I just struggle to see how Reform wins this seat:
- 2024 result: combined Tory-Reform vote of 22% versus Labour-Green vote of 64% - 2019 notional results: combined Tory-Brexit vote of 24% versus Labour-Green vote of 70%
Laying Reform seems the best value to me.
The combined Tory-Reform vote is up 9pp in the opinion polls since the general election, which would take them to 31% here. Plus it's a by-election, so swings can be exaggerated.
If Reform can only get to 30% at most then I think a split Labour/Green vote sees Reform finish third. If they can make it up to 35%, then it starts to get much more likely for them.
I think they're right on the cusp, which is what makes it hard to call. That and we have no idea whether the Greens can win a by-election campaign. We know that if it was the Lib Dems in their position they would likely have it sewn up.
Electoral calculus projects Gorton and Denton as 31% Reform, 23% Green and 22% Labour, 9% Conservative and 6% LD.
I expected that the Greens would have more joy squeezing the Labour vote to stop reform. It may happen yet of course. A higher profile candidate would have helped. Still think that they are favourites.
I see the usual ignorance on "public sector pensions" is getting an airing tonight from some of the usual suspects.
There are different kinds of pensions across "the public sector" - there's the Civil Service pension, Local Government pensions, Teachers' Pensions, the Police pension and the pension arrangements for other blue light workers as well as for the armed forces and NHS staff.
All are different and all are administered differently but as usual it's easier to generalise to try to make a point. The Local Government Pension is a Defined Contribution Scheme - I'm not sure the ones for the blue light workers and armed forces are but I could be wrong. You could argue Local Government workers should contribute more and indeed senior officers do and that comes (again, arguably) in lieu of having the money as salary.
We also have nonsense like that from Omid Djalili - there are very few "on the left" (whatever that means) who are publicly supportive of the theocracy in Tehran and a great number who would like the Mullahs removed but whatever follows has to be seen to be the will of the Iranian people and not the will of the White House or American business interests.
As we saw in Iraq, removing a tyrant is fairly easy if you have overwhelming force but what follows is the difficult bit. It's not just the politics but the infrastructure - ensuring the Iranian people have food, water, power and security would seem fairly important - that's not nation building in and of itself but as important as the political and governmental frameworks.
The public sector pension discussion is because Reform want to get their hands on the money to invest it. I’d have thought that is worth talking about.
The money has been invested, mostly.
The pension scheme of -say- Essex County Council will have been invested with asset managers.
If you want to rip up the contract that Essex County Council has with its employees and ex-employees, and then take any excess from the pension fund and give it to Central Government (or even give it to Essex County Council itself), then you will need primary legislation.
They would be better off disendowing public schools. At least then it would only be rich people complaining.
Why do you think they should disendowpublic schools. The endowments were the wishes of people in their wills or lifetime. You might not like public schools but if people chose to leave land or money then why should they be punished now? Does this mean that in the future a government can decide strip to many charities, the National Trust for example, of gifts because those buildings could be used more “fairly”? Can we revisit inheritances after the fact because it’s just not fair?
What about universities, should Oxford and Cambridge have their endowments removed?
I don't. I'm saying that they were to disendow public schools it would be much less politically damaging than tampering with government pensions (also probably much more lucrative, given the state of government and particularly local government pensions).
On your substantive point, I would mention that a lot of those endowments were to provide education for the poor - not to enable Eton to run at a headline loss while charging £60,000 a year in fees. And there certainly is a legitimate question to ask about these schools which seem to delight in turning out too many rather stupid people with rich parents and an unshakeable belief in their own brilliance, and about Labour's VAT strategy and SEND strategy which looks set to entrench that advantage further.
And yes, that does apply to Oxbridge too.
But in a sense that's a different question. The point I was trying to get across is that tampering with pensions is insanity, if only because the worst affected are always the poorest and therefore most media friendly, but there will be plenty of wealthy, savvy and well-connected people squealing too. It would be like council tax rebanding on steroids.
A government (can't remember which one) a few years back did this with Royal Mail pension as a preliminary to privatisation. It's been a clusterfuck. But this would be a whole lot worse.
That’s fair enough. One thing that I would pick up on is that the endowments weren’t some lovely fluffy modern concept of lifting the poor. Winchester, and then Eton for similar reasons, we’re set up to educate poor scholars but not for some sort of lovely ideal, they wanted a production line of clergy and lawyers going from Winchester/new college then Eton and kings to be highly educated and provide a civil service and government or religious cadre who would be very elevated from the poor that they had come from.
When William of Wykeham set up Winchester and New College it was because the plague had wiped out a lot of the educated clergy and he realised he needed a production line. It wasn’t pure charity.
They didn’t go round a few mud huts and pick a winner, they chose sons of men who weren’t bog dwelling serfs but below the nobility and could often be gentry.
And, whilst I am clearly not a perfect exemplar, there are, and have been, many very intelligent people come out of those schools, apart from a few blips they were always relative academic hothouses and apart from a few of the schools, money didn’t guarantee entry. There will always be the Borises of the world who are a nightmare but don’t doubt that the majority go on to have lower profile jobs in science, the law, diplomacy, finance and industry - not just because of where they went to school but because they were actually quite bright.
All of which is also true. I would further add on the point about poorer people, yes that's true but the whole idea was it would be boys who *couldn't* afford the education but still required it to rise high in the professions you identify. The younger sons of nobility were generally taught at home by tutors (often educated in these schools, of course). There seems therefore to be a certain irony in the use they are put to now - although, of course, most public schools do still have bursaries that allow those from poorer backgrounds to rise very high, Sunak springing to mind as an example.
We could do that through the mass state system now, and therefore it would not be illogical to say that money could be put into a charitable foundation to benefit *every school* rather than selected ones (bearing in mind many of these endowments date from before mass education in 1871).
But it probably won't happen. If Labour are dumb enough to believe that VAT on private school fees plus business taxes (which they won't pay anyway) will drive the public schools out of business we must assume they know nothing about their financial basis. And if they aren't trying to drive them out of business then they won't disendow them anyway.
And in any case, it would still be a more sensible idea than tampering with local government pensions.
Ok, we probably are in a bit of general agreement. My view is we have lost, or rather the very wealthy have, in the UK mass endowment of education. You do have examples where people reward their old universities but very little in the way of huge wealth being plowed into schools . Maybe it’s because it’s harder to throw millions at your old state school than an independent.
I think Sunak didn’t get an exhibition and definitely didn’t get a scholarship, his parents had to pay. When I was there each year in each house had one or two chaps who were there on the old govt scheme where they got assisted places which sadly went. It must have been very alien to them and they tended to either excel or struggle in my vague memory.
I typed a long and involved reply about state schools that do get parental funding due to the affluence of the area, and Vanilla has swallowed it. Very odd. Must be being edited by an international socialist cabal or something. Anyway, I haven't the energy to type it again as it was only to inform and didn't add lots to what you've said.
You may well be right about Sunak, I haven't checked the records.
Have any undertakings been received from the Ayotollah?
I reckon the Iranians think Trump is a bottler.
Or put another way - someone who regards themselves as genius in the art of the deal, see’s it as his USP - is resulting to bombing instead of a deal, failure to them, and their USP?
Would be one of the oddest build ups of big military might in history, that didn’t go through with it, or feel pressure that it now had to in order to save face in eyes of watching world? Are there other examples?
As stupid as it sounds given the background to the by election, there could be value in this. A three way split is not beyond probability
Yup.
So...
Labour - supporters disillusioned, getting hammered in the press, midterm byelection Green - surge of support with the young, motivated Reform - supporters trend older, motivated, oblivious to negative press reports
Labour going to struggle with turnout and punishment beating Green might underperform as their supporters fail to vote Reform voters will turnout
So sadly, I'd suggest Reform are value and Labour are talking up their chances to keep their campaigners motivated
Anyone on Labour should be ready to cash-out at any point on Thursday
I just struggle to see how Reform wins this seat:
- 2024 result: combined Tory-Reform vote of 22% versus Labour-Green vote of 64% - 2019 notional results: combined Tory-Brexit vote of 24% versus Labour-Green vote of 70%
Laying Reform seems the best value to me.
The combined Tory-Reform vote is up 9pp in the opinion polls since the general election, which would take them to 31% here. Plus it's a by-election, so swings can be exaggerated.
If Reform can only get to 30% at most then I think a split Labour/Green vote sees Reform finish third. If they can make it up to 35%, then it starts to get much more likely for them.
I think they're right on the cusp, which is what makes it hard to call. That and we have no idea whether the Greens can win a by-election campaign. We know that if it was the Lib Dems in their position they would likely have it sewn up.
Electoral calculus projects Gorton and Denton as 31% Reform, 23% Green and 22% Labour, 9% Conservative and 6% LD.
If there's 40% RefCon, then Reform have a great chance in the by-election.
Yes, I'm a little confused as to where this vast bulk of left-wing voters have to come from in this poll to make it a three-way tie. I'd assume given how resilient the Labour vote appears to be, the split would make Reform the clear favourites?
The Telegraph just run with any old shit Farage tells them Like the '6 councils in London' bollocks Now, Birmingham
I’m sure Farage doesn’t have them on speed dial just as I’m sure Reform will be lucky to pick up more than a couple of seats in Brum.
Are you sure? Birmingham is very "flaggy". Labour are dead in the water and the Tories have already sunk without trace.
The only flags I’ve seen are Palestine ones by the Blues Ground !
I’d not expect Sutton C to go but I’d defer to Feersum Enjineeya on that if he has a different view as he’s local and he has canvassed there.
Maybe Bartley Green, Castle Bromwich, around Northfield. What parts have you been too that are flaggy ?
I may well be wrong but I just think City demographics work against them in Brum in a way they don’t in places like Sandwell, Tipton, Dudley and Walsall.
Kingstanding is very flaggy, it's a thoroughly WWC area. I'd bet on Reform taking wards around there and maybe other parts of Erdington. You may be right about Sutton though - it's mostly moderate conservatives of the type you'd expect to stay conservative. But I have seen a fair amount of support for Reform around here, so who knows?
State of the Union: Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia will give the Democrats’ response.
NY Times blog
State of the Nation. State of this “game face”
What PB is missing. Considering Trump satisfaction ratings are not good, the Democratic Party satisfaction ratings have not been great over the last year either.
It’s good to flag up differences between US and UK politics. We don’t have presidential elections - President Gordon Brown or President Nigel Farage are two strong reasons UK will NEVER NEVER NEVER give up our Monarchy as head of State. Our PM needs to command the House of Commons. Would it be stronger for Democratic Party today, stronger for US politics, if their candidate for next US president was already known, and providing the State of the Nation replies?
Usually the reply to the State of the Union is given by a nonentity who then vanishes without trace. See that mad Senator Katie Britt from Alabama who replied to Biden a few years back and has vanished without trace other than being the butt of a thousand jokes.
Because of the way the primary system works you have a tendency for the candidates already known and with a significant body of work behind them to emerge victorious, even if it's a fake one like The Apprentice. They will be governors, high profile senators or ex-cabinet ministers (and only Trump since 1952 doesn't fit one of those categories). Replying to the State of the Union is of little bearing in building such a profile. Indeed, the fact she's speaking at all is probably a sign Spanberger isn't considering a bid.
The fact she is a formal intelligence officer, is probably a sign why she has been chosen to respond? The type of response they plan, backed up by her expertise?
And the fact her ancestors lived near a beautiful bridge or something in Germany reminds us of the narrow vote just selecting English over German as the national language of the United States? Before they then changed it to a language that says things like miss-ull for missile, and now Hispanic is the main language.
English being spoken in North America makes sense as it’s part of English Empire. If story true there was such a close vote, this would be before Germany actually existed? Any reason for so many Germanic speaking people moving there from where they were? What was unattractive in Germanic Europe? Technically nineteenth century was all on the up for them?
Er...okay. I don't know what a formal intelligence officer is - is it one who admits to being bought by the Russians (which would make Tulsi Gabbard an informal one, presumably)?
I also never realised that 'Davis' had anything to do with Germany or indeed bridges, but if you say so. It sounds Welsh to me, if I'm honest.
Edit - I think Spanberger might be Dutch rather than German, but I'm not an expert on Germanic languages.
Muhlenberg!
I have an answer, hold on a moment! It’s new to me and it’s interesting. 🧐🧫🔬🧪
It will be interesting to see the reaction in Labour and Green camps if Reform sneak through by a few percentage points. On the Byline figures it is clear that there is sufficient support for a left-wing winner (if you can still call Labour left-wing) and it is only the apparent toss-up between Labour and Green that means tactical voting might not come into play.
I can see a fair bit of acrimony coming.
ETA: Though I do think LuckyGuy is on the money when he says there is no way Labour could cede tactically to the Greens here, so their apparent confidence could just be bluster. And Starmer's visit might just be a high stakes roll of the dice to try to dig himself out of a hole. Honestly, who knows?
Labour are completely disingenuous about that sort of thing anyway. They're never going to stand aside for the Greens anywhere, so their argument is essentially that you have no choice but to vote for Labour for all time. Yeah, no.
The Greens do have to come ahead of Labour in the result so that it's clear that Labour were the wasted vote and not them, even though it's a ridiculous argument either way.
I tend to think that the relative positions of those two parties is almost more important than whether one (or more) of them finishes ahead of Reform. The implications for tactical voting arguments at the next GE will be pretty immense.
Have any undertakings been received from the Ayotollah?
Well he doesn't need any aircraft so the Ayatollahs undertaking to gift a new super yacht called Lady Ghislaine might swing Trump away from regime change.
Comments
NEW: Reform UK MP Danny Kruger says a British civil war is possible if they don’t win the next general election
“If we don’t win, or if we win and then make a mess of it, I do fear for our country”
https://nitter.poast.org/PolitlcsUK/status/2026244912547561969#m
https://swingometer.substack.com/p/gorton-and-denton-final-update-all?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1186392&post_id=188468733&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1mnpci&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
What PB is missing. Considering Trump satisfaction ratings are not good, the Democratic Party satisfaction ratings have not been great over the last year either.
It’s good to flag up differences between US and UK politics. We don’t have presidential elections - President Gordon Brown or President Nigel Farage are two strong reasons UK will NEVER NEVER NEVER give up our Monarchy as head of State. Our PM needs to command the House of Commons. Would it be stronger for Democratic Party today, stronger for US politics, if their candidate for next US president was already known, and providing the State of the Nation replies?
They want to treat it as a sovereign wealth fund.
Can you imagine the current asset managers giving up that investment and the fees that come with it without a fight. Or the Unions allowing it without a fight.
The Greens to win the Manchester council wards of Levenshulme and Burnage but Reform to win the other wards with the split on the left
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/seatdetails.py?seat=Gorton+and+Denton
Just an awful lot of air power.
And reportedly they only have enough ordnance fur about a week's sustained bombing.
That might be enough; it also might not.
What about universities, should Oxford and Cambridge have their endowments removed?
Because of the way the primary system works you have a tendency for the candidates already known and with a significant body of work behind them to emerge victorious, even if it's a fake one like The Apprentice. They will be governors, high profile senators or ex-cabinet ministers (and only Trump since 1952 doesn't fit one of those categories). Replying to the State of the Union is of little bearing in building such a profile. Indeed, the fact she's speaking at all is probably a sign Spanberger isn't considering a bid.
And - wait a minute - his fame is based on the Just Eat ads???
Why should the taxpayer make up any shortfall. It’s investment risk. Tice simply spouts the same rhetoric the Tories and Labour have about their ideas for our pensions. It will deliver better returns. Not something a financial adviser would say. It would be past performance is no predictor etc etc.
They should Leave well alone. Stop seeing peoples saved pensions as a pot for their indulgence.
With mildly better numbers on the FTSE, tax receipts and perhaps some interest rate cuts - i think he then lasts the year, regardless of how bad the locals are.
I don't think he fights the next GE though, regardless. That ship has long sailed.
Is that the best they can do.
The spectre of a Reform government does make public sector pensions much less valuable though. You wouldn't bet against them retrospectvely altering the terms. Been a weird few days for them - a few statements in the run up to a by-election that you wouldn't consider vote-winners, including employment rights, ICE etc.
The others you may well be right,
🧵1/
CV90 is no longer just a Swedish IFV.
It’s becoming Europe’s armored backbone.
A potential record deal in Örnsköldsvik isn’t just local news.
It’s a structural shift...
https://x.com/rospigge60559/status/2026375579121983623
On your substantive point, I would mention that a lot of those endowments were to provide education for the poor - not to enable Eton to run at a headline loss while charging £60,000 a year in fees. And there certainly is a legitimate question to ask about these schools which seem to delight in turning out too many rather stupid people with rich parents and an unshakeable belief in their own brilliance, and about Labour's VAT strategy and SEND strategy which looks set to entrench that advantage further.
And yes, that does apply to Oxbridge too.
But in a sense that's a different question. The point I was trying to get across is that tampering with pensions is insanity, if only because the worst affected are always the poorest and therefore most media friendly so would get sympathy, but there will be plenty of wealthy, savvy and well-connected people squealing too. It would be like council tax rebanding on steroids. Hard to imagine the same outrage about JAcob Rees-Mogg's little boys having to pay full fees.
A government (can't remember which one) a few years back did this with Royal Mail pension as a preliminary to privatisation. It's been a clusterfuck. But this would be a whole lot worse.
Reform are quite shite at it.
Lock him up!
https://youtu.be/CtcTG8-qzbA?si=b2Yb9VRV_yzUNus5
https://conservativehome.com/2026/02/18/alexandra-vivona-the-fear-and-loathing-in-gorton-and-denton/
I suspect this also applies to the Greens, though they have at least been at it for longer.
I just can't call this one at all.
1. Labour
2. Reform
3. Greens
Not sure how great the Greens GOTV operations is going to be. I think Reform's and Labour's will be pretty good.
The current NEST scheme is a cop out for businesses allowing them to reduce their current offer, like a company I once worked for did for all new starters, and has ridiculously high up front charges. Pooled DC pots are a nonsense. No proof they will improve returns.
Long term it would benefit the treasury too getting career average schemes back in the private sector.
I want to know, of Polanski, Farage and Starmer, who the greatest tosser is.
When William of Wykeham set up Winchester and New College it was because the plague had wiped out a lot of the educated clergy and he realised he needed a production line. It wasn’t pure charity.
They didn’t go round a few mud huts and pick a winner, they chose sons of men who weren’t bog dwelling serfs but below the nobility and could often be gentry.
And, whilst I am clearly not a perfect exemplar, there are, and have been, many very intelligent people come out of those schools, apart from a few blips they were always relative academic hothouses and apart from a few of the schools, money didn’t guarantee entry. There will always be the Borises of the world who are a nightmare but don’t doubt that the majority go on to have lower profile jobs in science, the law, diplomacy, finance and industry - not just because of where they went to school but because they were actually quite bright.
Greens? I see no Greens.
https://x.com/uklabour/status/2026390853309063292?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Ok, the best way of predicting a constituency election is a *properly weighted* poll. Another good way is postal vote sampling. Yes I know it's illegal but has anybody got their ear to the ground?
I like @MoonRabbit 's method of counting the posters and signs.
And the fact her ancestors lived near a beautiful bridge or something in Germany reminds us of the narrow vote just selecting English over German as the national language of the United States? Before they then changed it to a language that says things like miss-ull for missile, and now Hispanic is the main language.
English being spoken in North America makes sense as it’s part of English Empire. If story true there was such a close vote, this would be before Germany actually existed? Any reason for so many Germanic speaking people moving there from where they were? What was unattractive in Germanic Europe? Technically nineteenth century was all on the up for them?
"Doctor I'm pregnant!
"Have you had a check up?"
"No. It was a lad from Aberystwyth"
I can see a fair bit of acrimony coming.
ETA: Though I do think LuckyGuy is on the money when he says there is no way Labour could cede tactically to the Greens here, so their apparent confidence could just be bluster. And Starmer's visit might just be a high stakes roll of the dice to try to dig himself out of a hole. Honestly, who knows?
We could do that through the mass state system now, and therefore it would not be illogical to say that money could be put into a charitable foundation to benefit *every school* rather than selected ones (bearing in mind many of these endowments date from before mass education in 1871).
But it probably won't happen. If Labour are dumb enough to believe that VAT on private school fees plus business taxes (which they won't pay anyway) will drive the public schools out of business we must assume they know nothing about their financial basis. And if they aren't trying to drive them out of business then they won't disendow them anyway.
And in any case, it would still be a more sensible idea than tampering with local government pensions.
https://bsky.app/profile/owainsutton.bsky.social/post/3mfh7jdpvkc2f
Looking at the numbers LDs have been squeezed until their pips squeak, so they're out of the running in the bar chart "only X can win here" bloodbath, it's red on green
There were a lot of Germanic settlers in the USA though.
I also never realised that 'Davis' had anything to do with Germany or indeed bridges, but if you say so. It sounds Welsh to me, if I'm honest.
Edit - I think Spanberger might be Dutch rather than German, but I'm not an expert on Germanic languages.
We saw “community voting” & postal vote harvesting in Peterborough in 2019……
https://x.com/ticerichard/status/2026356214343319602?s=61
I think Sunak didn’t get an exhibition and definitely didn’t get a scholarship, his parents had to pay. When I was there each year in each house had one or two chaps who were there on the old govt scheme where they got assisted places which sadly went. It must have been very alien to them and they tended to either excel or struggle in my vague memory.
It's not a huge mystery, and not a big deal.
Its a very tough ask for Labour to appeal to Corbynites and centrists in multi party FPTP world. Without the centrists Labour become a party of protest only. So it is far from trivial to retain both sections of the electorate that are fundamentally different in outlook despite both sometimes, not always, voting Labour.
Add in the splits over Gaza and I'd suggest the opposite, mostly the votes Labour are losing on the left are beyond their control, on the proviso that they wish to be a party of government.
What I’m saying is, in the last week of a campaign, us on PB should visit all the journalist visits of recent weeks, across all the media organs, and what comes across as strongest from all that media feeling based on visits, is likely what is going to happen.
The vast majority of media visits here struggled to find people confident in a vote for Labour, based on my own reading up on “visit” journalism.
Labour to come third, some way behind the other two.
Hope this helps. I’m now going to have supper. 🍲
In London, Polanski's party are challenging Labour across a number of Inner London boroughs and a win for Hannah Spencer will be a big help to those Green council candidates as we approach May. I'd expect Spencer, as the first MP under the Polanski leadership, to be sent to London to help the campaigns in places like Hackney, Lewisham and Greenwich among others.
In my neck of the woods, the two Green councillors in Newham will be seeking to build their group but I suspect they will stay clear of the areas being targetted by the Newham Independents (whether some kind of informal deal has been reached I don't know) and the possibility still exists the Independents and the Greens will win enough seats to deprive Labour of their majority and force a change in administration but we'll see.
It would need more than the opinion of one (presumably Reform) council candidate quoted on ConHome for me to take a betting position on it.
HEY IT COULD HAPPEN RIGHT
You may well be right about Sunak, I haven't checked the records.
Or put another way - someone who regards themselves as genius in the art of the deal, see’s it as his USP - is resulting to bombing instead of a deal, failure to them, and their USP?
Would be one of the oddest build ups of big military might in history, that didn’t go through with it, or feel pressure that it now had to in order to save face in eyes of watching world? Are there other examples?
This is a really fun by-election.
I have an answer, hold on a moment! It’s new to me and it’s interesting. 🧐🧫🔬🧪
The Greens do have to come ahead of Labour in the result so that it's clear that Labour were the wasted vote and not them, even though it's a ridiculous argument either way.
I tend to think that the relative positions of those two parties is almost more important than whether one (or more) of them finishes ahead of Reform. The implications for tactical voting arguments at the next GE will be pretty immense.
It's a stastical polling three way tie.
Reform have used all their firepower on the Greens.