Kemi Badenoch absolutely nails it, politically pitch perfect...
Kemi Badenoch@KemiBadenoch This is a significant result, and I want to start by congratulating @DLumsden_MSP on becoming the new Member of Parliament for Aberdeen South and the newest Conservative MP!
Makerfield was about one man’s job.
Aberdeen South was about thousands of jobs in oil and gas across our country and the future of an entire city.
Yesterday, the people of Aberdeen sent a message on behalf of the whole country. Energy security is national security. They know it is common sense to use our own oil and gas rather than importing it from overseas. They know it is madness to make ourselves poorer, weaker and more dependent at a time when even the government’s own intelligence says we are under threat. The first duty of any government is to keep its people safe. The Conservative Party will always put Britain’s security first.
What makes this result particularly significant is that many people who voted Conservative today have never voted Conservative before. I want to thank every one of them.
Many will have voted for us because they care deeply about Aberdeen and its future. Many will have voted for us because they are sick of the SNP’s shenanigans. Others because they are worried about what Labour’s policies mean for their jobs and livelihoods. Many voted for us because they wanted a strong local champion.
Douglas is that champion. He has lived in Aberdeen all his life. He spent two decades working in the oil and gas industry. He knows this city, he knows its people, and throughout this campaign he brought energy, optimism and a genuine belief in Aberdeen’s future. Wherever he went, he had a smile on his face and a positive message about what this great city can achieve.
The Conservative Party is working to earn the trust of the country again. I am grateful and humbled that Aberdeen looked at the choice before them and decided that the Conservative Party was the party that would fight for families, workers and business.
Thank you, Aberdeen. I will never stop fighting for you. Douglas will never stop fighting for you.
X Dean M Thomson@DeanMThomson "Makerfield was about one man’s job. Aberdeen South was about thousands of jobs in oil and gas" That line has cut through. Burnham's team will wince, as face prospects of a bloodied coup to oust Starmer. As Labour descends into infighting, free-range for Tories to define him https://x.com/DeanMThomson/status/2067879031270449511
1) Kudos first of all to @KnightOut (I think?), whose 160% betting strategy I successfully followed. Other more spectacular wins were available but I liked the safety of this one.
2) My wife has just come in RAGING because she has had to go to my daughter's school to pick up a quiche which my daughter had made because [perfectly good reasons but they don't matter here] only the quiche could not be found. And I understand her frustration of a pointless journey when she was already busy. But the inclusion of the word 'quiche' in the story made it impossible not to laugh. The incongruity of her utter fury and the frequency with which the word 'quiche' was used was highly enjoyable. To make it even better, she has inherited from her mother the quirk of the occasional use of the word 'flan' to mean quiche, which is an even sillier word to say when you are angry. "I can't believe I've had to spend half an hour of my fucking morning when I was supposed to be working going to fucking ***** ***** School to fetch a fucking quiche which wasn't there. They could not have cared less about the non-existence of the fucking quiche."
This could be pun.
A pastiche quiche unleashed.
Canonically, a quiche is a sub-category of flan. Are you from South of Watford?
I am from very much North of Watford. 'Flan' is a word I would never use at all (except in reference to a strange boy at school with the name Flanagan). I find it oddly funny that my very South of Watford mother-in-law uses the word 'flan'. It's an even funnier word than 'quiche'.
I love the story.
My family used to call quiches, flans. And North Nottinghamshire is canonical (this fact is not open to debate).
You now of course have to make a quiche for tea.
I will now be having one for lunch.
Following this, my wife's friend - whose daughter is in my daughter's class - stopped outside her house trying to get away from her garrulous pilates companion who was discussing at great length the price a neighbour's house had been listed at. My wife popped out to rescue her, and they subsequently talked about the missing quiche at surprising length. I feel like I am in a David Nobbs sketch.
Clearly an excellent night for Burnham and Kemi and a bad night for Farage and Starmer and not a great night for Swinney either. Burnham won and even increased the Labour voteshare in Makerfield on 2024 squeezing the LDs and Greens especially and now has a mandate to challenge Starmer. He would likely win a members ballot too anyway whatever Harman says.
Kemi is clearly seeing the Conservatives make gains in Scotland as well as London where they have squeezed the Labour vote and where Reform are weaker. The Conservatives gain from the SNP in Aberdeen South will be a blow to Swinney only a month after he failed to win an SNP Holyrood majority though some relief for him they still held Arbroath and Broughty Ferry.
Bad night for Farage as Reform not only failed to beat Burnham and Labour in Makerfield, a top Reform target seat but saw Restore get 7% of the vote. While Restore did not match Lowe's hype they took enough votes from Reform to almost outweigh Reform gains of Conservative voters in the strong Leave seat
Is Swinney, who was always a bit caretaker-y, not long for the role? Flynn is clearly ambitious.
I guess the Holyrood result shields him for a while at least, but maybe not too long.
I think he will step down of his own volition within 24 months, maybe next year?
His wife doesn't keep the best of health, and hes been around at the top of party politics for some time. He's also getting pretty flustered by journo Qs and evasive around Murrellgate and would rather it moved on from that topic, which it won't until some of those issues are addressed. A good run for Scotland in the world cup will help him
Presume their political markets guy doesn't start work until 9am.
I want to take issue with your lauding of AndyJS on the previous thread. Yes, he predicted the 3 winners but virtually everybody predicted Makerfield & Arbroath correctly and split 50/50 on Aberdeen
His percentage predictions were rubbish though - from memory he had Makerfield and Aberdeen with less than one percent wins. He was about 20% out in Makerfield and Aberdeen wasn't much better. Loads of others predicted Burnham winning comfortably.
If you were betting on the size of the victories, you'd be right. If you were betting on the fact of the victories, you'd be wrong.
Unlike many others, @Andy_JS made measurable and complete predictions at a given moment in time and didn't haver back and forth. That's useful and I can calculate their accuracy. If they are also right then that is a happy accident.
Agreed but it hardly needed staggering insight to predict who would win each seat.
Most of the debate around Makerfield was on the size of the majority and he was dead wrong - he was 0.1% away from predicting a Reform win.
The SNP were favourites in Aberdeen South. Kudos to anyone predicting a Conservative win there. (Sure, predicting an SNP win in Abroath gets you no Brownie points. Predicting a Labour win in Makerfield was also not difficult.)
Regarding North Sea oil... The fiscal argument is being overstated on both sides.
Yes, the £25bn figure is doing a lot of heroic work. Even OEUK’s own case is cumulative, conditional, and heavily dependent on tax reform and investment actually happening. It is not a magic annual cheque for defence, pensions, potholes etc.
But treating this purely as a Treasury line item misses the Aberdeen point. Even if the Exchequer effect is modest, delayed, or even net negative after tax changes, the local economic effect can still be positive. Jobs, supply chains, engineering skills, harbour activity, household confidence and keeping transition capacity in the north east all matter.
f we are still consuming oil and gas during the transition, there is a strong case for managing domestic production where commercially viable, while using the time and revenue to build the replacement economy in places like Aberdeen rather than leaving them to discover “just transition” means a leaflet and a Job Centre.
Geology wins eventually. But policy decides whether Aberdeen gets a managed landing or another British industrial faceplant.
Aberdeen is heading for a faceplant either way, alas, because the national ability to develop new industries is very close to zero, and all the attention is on legacy industry rather than developing new industries.
We have massive amounts of debate around the oil and gas industry, but there's nothing being said and done about developing a British presence in battery manufacture, or rare earths, or building on some of the promising satellite startups.
At best, many members of our ruling classes genuinely believe engineering and tech is gauche and of less importance than the touchy-feely stuff. At worst, they think it's a threat to the status-quo they benefit from and thus the enemy.
The aggressive tone in the documents that came out of the BritVolt saga, towards technical knowledge, is instructive.
1) Kudos first of all to @KnightOut (I think?), whose 160% betting strategy I successfully followed. Other more spectacular wins were available but I liked the safety of this one.
2) My wife has just come in RAGING because she has had to go to my daughter's school to pick up a quiche which my daughter had made because [perfectly good reasons but they don't matter here] only the quiche could not be found. And I understand her frustration of a pointless journey when she was already busy. But the inclusion of the word 'quiche' in the story made it impossible not to laugh. The incongruity of her utter fury and the frequency with which the word 'quiche' was used was highly enjoyable. To make it even better, she has inherited from her mother the quirk of the occasional use of the word 'flan' to mean quiche, which is an even sillier word to say when you are angry. "I can't believe I've had to spend half an hour of my fucking morning when I was supposed to be working going to fucking ***** ***** School to fetch a fucking quiche which wasn't there. They could not have cared less about the non-existence of the fucking quiche."
I’m sure a ‘calm down, dear’ would’ve poured oil on troubled waters.
I doubt SNP will lose a lot of sleep over Aberdeen South. Arbroath and Broughty Ferry is a more typical constituency for them and they won it easily.
Indeed, there's a risk of taking the wrong lesson from a good result, as happened after Uxbridge.
Everyone, including Starmer and Burnham, concluded that bring the drivers' friend was the way to go, ignoring the detail that Zone 6 is an unusual bit of London. Chasing that vote was one of the signs of Sunak going mad.
Potentially, it's the same here, except eking out oil and gas for a bit longer. Obviously plays well in Aberdeen, not sure about nationwide.
Nobody will bring Aberdeen's glory days back. Geology prevents it even if saving the planet isn't your thing. But it's an emotional thing. People who made a good living out of the oil boom no longer do. Kemi Badenoch is playing the unlikely role of Arthur Scargill in his opposition to an unfeeling Margaret Thatcher towards the miners.
There is 25 billion of tax income from Kemi's policy which we are not receiving due to dogma, whilst at the same time Norway extracts the oil and gas and tax from it's fields around ours
It is not either or but both, maximise tax from extracting oil and gas and continue the transition to net zero
North sea oil and gas exploration will be very much on Burnham's agenda and significantly Wes Streeting is on the same page as Kemi
And fuck the planet.
The planet will be fine. Global temps have varied hugely over the millions of years. A bigger concern is the habitats of the species that live here and our own ability to survive. Some greens would rather we didn't, but then I think the world would be a poorer place with no-one to appreciate its beauty.
The sooner we end all use of fossil fuels the better, but what is stupid is not using our own resources in order to polish our halo while using them from elsewhere.
I wonder if that’s what the people on Venus said before the runaway greenhouse kicked off.
Do you genuinely believe that we are at risk of a runaway greenhouse effect?
That’s actually a salient point - most of the time we frame this debate as if the uncertainty in the models only runs in one direction, and there is some evidence that scientists are deliberately tempering their language to make their findings more palatable.
So yes, there probably is a risk, at least as large that the fuss we are making about climate change is overblown.
And I disagree. What evidence of a runaway greenhouse is presented?
I doubt SNP will lose a lot of sleep over Aberdeen South. Arbroath and Broughty Ferry is a more typical constituency for them and they won it easily.
Indeed, there's a risk of taking the wrong lesson from a good result, as happened after Uxbridge.
Everyone, including Starmer and Burnham, concluded that bring the drivers' friend was the way to go, ignoring the detail that Zone 6 is an unusual bit of London. Chasing that vote was one of the signs of Sunak going mad.
Potentially, it's the same here, except eking out oil and gas for a bit longer. Obviously plays well in Aberdeen, not sure about nationwide.
Nobody will bring Aberdeen's glory days back. Geology prevents it even if saving the planet isn't your thing. But it's an emotional thing. People who made a good living out of the oil boom no longer do. Kemi Badenoch is playing the unlikely role of Arthur Scargill in his opposition to an unfeeling Margaret Thatcher towards the miners.
There is 25 billion of tax income from Kemi's policy which we are not receiving due to dogma, whilst at the same time Norway extracts the oil and gas and tax from it's fields around ours
It is not either or but both, maximise tax from extracting oil and gas and continue the transition to net zero
North sea oil and gas exploration will be very much on Burnham's agenda and significantly Wes Streeting is on the same page as Kemi
And fuck the planet.
The planet will be fine. Global temps have varied hugely over the millions of years. A bigger concern is the habitats of the species that live here and our own ability to survive. Some greens would rather we didn't, but then I think the world would be a poorer place with no-one to appreciate its beauty.
The sooner we end all use of fossil fuels the better, but what is stupid is not using our own resources in order to polish our halo while using them from elsewhere.
I wonder if that’s what the people on Venus said before the runaway greenhouse kicked off.
Do you genuinely believe that we are at risk of a runaway greenhouse effect?
That’s actually a salient point - most of the time we frame this debate as if the uncertainty in the models only runs in one direction, and there is some evidence that scientists are deliberately tempering their language to make their findings more palatable.
So yes, there probably is a risk, at least as large that the fuss we are making about climate change is overblown.
And I disagree. What evidence of a runaway greenhouse is presented?
It's not evidence it's happening now more the theoretical impact of the release of Tundra Methane or Subsea Hydrates if they are released.
The modeling says a rapid release is unlikely so I for one aren't that worried, but as with all modelling, if it points to a potential catastrophy it really isn't smart to say, well if it hasn't happened yet and is unlikely, so why worry.
Stop the presses! We've talked before about the idea that the standing rule that social media aren't publishers should be abolished if they're using algorithms to promote specific material. Well, there's a bombshell* ruling by the EU Court of Justice that has just landed that makes that argument! See https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-41864400.html
* Possibly not a bombshell. It is, of course, more complicated than that.
Clearly an excellent night for Burnham and Kemi and a bad night for Farage and Starmer and not a great night for Swinney either. Burnham won and even increased the Labour voteshare in Makerfield on 2024 squeezing the LDs and Greens especially and now has a mandate to challenge Starmer. He would likely win a members ballot too anyway whatever Harman says.
Kemi is clearly seeing the Conservatives make gains in Scotland as well as London where they have squeezed the Labour vote and where Reform are weaker. The Conservatives gain from the SNP in Aberdeen South will be a blow to Swinney only a month after he failed to win an SNP Holyrood majority though some relief for him they still held Arbroath and Broughty Ferry.
Bad night for Farage as Reform not only failed to beat Burnham and Labour in Makerfield, a top Reform target seat but saw Restore get 7% of the vote. While Restore did not match Lowe's hype they took enough votes from Reform to almost outweigh Reform gains of Conservative voters in the strong Leave seat
Is Swinney, who was always a bit caretaker-y, not long for the role? Flynn is clearly ambitious.
I guess the Holyrood result shields him for a while at least, but maybe not too long.
In the face of the massive Murrell scandal, the SNP is walking on very thin ice. Pretending that it just one bad apple and there is nothing to see is not going to survive as a strategy when the next thing is discovered, and the one thing we do know is that there is more out there.
Flynn might be able to try with the new broom strategy, though losing his old seat is quite a bad look, but overall the Nats are looking both tired, somewhat entitled and a bit sleazy.
Therefore I think we could see growing softness in the SNP vote, and not just in the North East. Considering the long term strength of the SNP in Dundee and Angus, the result in Arbroath and Broughty Ferry was not particularly spectacular either - mostly a function of Labour weakness, and Reform splitting the right in a way that they could not do in Aberdeen. The SNP wave has crested, and if Labour or the Tories recover, the Nats may find the tide is going out, not just at Westminster but also Holyrood.
1) Kudos first of all to @KnightOut (I think?), whose 160% betting strategy I successfully followed. Other more spectacular wins were available but I liked the safety of this one.
2) My wife has just come in RAGING because she has had to go to my daughter's school to pick up a quiche which my daughter had made because [perfectly good reasons but they don't matter here] only the quiche could not be found. And I understand her frustration of a pointless journey when she was already busy. But the inclusion of the word 'quiche' in the story made it impossible not to laugh. The incongruity of her utter fury and the frequency with which the word 'quiche' was used was highly enjoyable. To make it even better, she has inherited from her mother the quirk of the occasional use of the word 'flan' to mean quiche, which is an even sillier word to say when you are angry. "I can't believe I've had to spend half an hour of my fucking morning when I was supposed to be working going to fucking ***** ***** School to fetch a fucking quiche which wasn't there. They could not have cared less about the non-existence of the fucking quiche."
This could be pun.
A pastiche quiche unleashed.
Canonically, a quiche is a sub-category of flan. Are you from South of Watford?
I am from very much North of Watford. 'Flan' is a word I would never use at all (except in reference to a strange boy at school with the name Flanagan). I find it oddly funny that my very South of Watford mother-in-law uses the word 'flan'. It's an even funnier word than 'quiche'.
I love the story.
My family used to call quiches, flans. And North Nottinghamshire is canonical (this fact is not open to debate).
You now of course have to make a quiche for tea.
I will now be having one for lunch.
Following this, my wife's friend - whose daughter is in my daughter's class - stopped outside her house trying to get away from her garrulous pilates companion who was discussing at great length the price a neighbour's house had been listed at. My wife popped out to rescue her, and they subsequently talked about the missing quiche at surprising length. I feel like I am in a David Nobbs sketch.
What happens now is that the school finds the quiche and calls her back in to collect it.
The issue for the North Sea and Aberdeen is Basin Collapse;
At present the cost of legacy infrastructure, pipelines, hubs, inter-connectors are spread over existing producers.
Over time as the cost of upgrading and maintaining it rises and the number of producers fall the burden on each rises and you reach a point where you get rapid decline.
Think of the cost of stamps, the cost of delivery is covered by the number of letters delivered but if email replaces snail mail the cost of each stamp rises until no one will buy stamps.
Denmark has already stopped delivering letters!
Much like Coal we have two choices, the German model; Invest in alternatives in mining areas before you close the mines or the British model; close the mines and struggle to pick up the pieces.
I listen to people talk about opening new fields and it reminds me of Scargill talking about “The cheapest deep mined Coal!”.
It was, but it was far more expensive than open cast from abroad.
I hear the same, “We understand our Industry better than politicians!” and think of all the fishing communities globally that have said “There’s plenty of Fish!”
Right up till the stocks collapsed.
If we don’t transition as widely and rapidly as we can if the next decade we are facing what happened to mining communities in the twenty years from 75-95 when jobs went from 250k to 50k.
Peter.
Basin collapse is likely to occur more rapidly if government discourages new drilling and extraction, of course.
Clearly an excellent night for Burnham and Kemi and a bad night for Farage and Starmer and not a great night for Swinney either. Burnham won and even increased the Labour voteshare in Makerfield on 2024 squeezing the LDs and Greens especially and now has a mandate to challenge Starmer. He would likely win a members ballot too anyway whatever Harman says.
Kemi is clearly seeing the Conservatives make gains in Scotland as well as London where they have squeezed the Labour vote and where Reform are weaker. The Conservatives gain from the SNP in Aberdeen South will be a blow to Swinney only a month after he failed to win an SNP Holyrood majority though some relief for him they still held Arbroath and Broughty Ferry.
Bad night for Farage as Reform not only failed to beat Burnham and Labour in Makerfield, a top Reform target seat but saw Restore get 7% of the vote. While Restore did not match Lowe's hype they took enough votes from Reform to almost outweigh Reform gains of Conservative voters in the strong Leave seat
Is Swinney, who was always a bit caretaker-y, not long for the role? Flynn is clearly ambitious.
I guess the Holyrood result shields him for a while at least, but maybe not too long.
In the face of the massive Murrell scandal, the SNP is walking on very thin ice. Pretending that it just one bad apple and there is nothing to see is not going to survive as a strategy when the next thing is discovered, and the one thing we do know is that there is more out there.
Flynn might be able to try with the new broom strategy, though losing his old seat is quite a bad look, but overall the Nats are looking both tired, somewhat entitled and a bit sleazy.
Therefore I think we could see growing softness in the SNP vote, and not just in the North East. Considering the long term strength of the SNP in Dundee and Angus, the result in Arbroath and Broughty Ferry was not particularly spectacular either - mostly a function of Labour weakness, and Reform splitting the right in a way that they could not do in Aberdeen. The SNP wave has crested, and if Labour or the Tories recover, the Nats may find the tide is going out, not just at Westminster but also Holyrood.
Absolutely second this astute analysis by @Cicero, and lets just see how long the current SNP Government can continue to service the ever growingly expensive and batshit crazy demands of their Scottish Green coalition partners in all but name!!
FPT. Cicero said: In the face of the massive Murrell scandal, the SNP is walking on very thin ice. Pretending that it just one bad apple and there is nothing to see is not going to survive as a strategy when the next thing is discovered, and the one thing we do know is that there is more out there.
Flynn might be able to try with the new broom strategy, though losing his old seat is quite a bad look, but overall the Nats are looking both tired, somewhat entitled and a bit sleazy.
Therefore I think we could see growing softness in the SNP vote, and not just in the North East. Considering the long term strength of the SNP in Dundee and Angus, the result in Arbroath and Broughty Ferry was not particularly spectacular either - mostly a function of Labour weakness, and Reform splitting the right in a way that they could not do in Aberdeen. The SNP wave has crested, and if Labour or the Tories recover, the Nats may find the tide is going out, not just at Westminster but also Holyrood.
________________________________
Absolutely second this astute analysis by @Cicero, and lets just see how long the current SNP Government can continue to service the ever growingly expensive and batshit crazy demands of their Scottish Green coalition partners in all but name in return for shoring up their incompetent adminstration at Holyrood.!!
Comments
Dean M Thomson@DeanMThomson
"Makerfield was about one man’s job. Aberdeen South was about thousands of jobs in oil and gas"
That line has cut through. Burnham's team will wince, as face prospects of a bloodied coup to oust Starmer. As Labour descends into infighting, free-range for Tories to define him
https://x.com/DeanMThomson/status/2067879031270449511
NEW THREAD
His wife doesn't keep the best of health, and hes been around at the top of party politics for some time. He's also getting pretty flustered by journo Qs and evasive around Murrellgate and would rather it moved on from that topic, which it won't until some of those issues are addressed. A good run for Scotland in the world cup will help him
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britishvolt
The modeling says a rapid release is unlikely so I for one aren't that worried, but as with all modelling, if it points to a potential catastrophy it really isn't smart to say, well if it hasn't happened yet and is unlikely, so why worry.
Peter.
* Possibly not a bombshell. It is, of course, more complicated than that.
Flynn might be able to try with the new broom strategy, though losing his old seat is quite a bad look, but overall the Nats are looking both tired, somewhat entitled and a bit sleazy.
Therefore I think we could see growing softness in the SNP vote, and not just in the North East. Considering the long term strength of the SNP in Dundee and Angus, the result in Arbroath and Broughty Ferry was not particularly spectacular either - mostly a function of Labour weakness, and Reform splitting the right in a way that they could not do in Aberdeen. The SNP wave has crested, and if Labour or the Tories recover, the Nats may find the tide is going out, not just at Westminster but also Holyrood.
Cicero said: In the face of the massive Murrell scandal, the SNP is walking on very thin ice. Pretending that it just one bad apple and there is nothing to see is not going to survive as a strategy when the next thing is discovered, and the one thing we do know is that there is more out there.
Flynn might be able to try with the new broom strategy, though losing his old seat is quite a bad look, but overall the Nats are looking both tired, somewhat entitled and a bit sleazy.
Therefore I think we could see growing softness in the SNP vote, and not just in the North East. Considering the long term strength of the SNP in Dundee and Angus, the result in Arbroath and Broughty Ferry was not particularly spectacular either - mostly a function of Labour weakness, and Reform splitting the right in a way that they could not do in Aberdeen. The SNP wave has crested, and if Labour or the Tories recover, the Nats may find the tide is going out, not just at Westminster but also Holyrood.
________________________________
Absolutely second this astute analysis by @Cicero, and lets just see how long the current SNP Government can continue to service the ever growingly expensive and batshit crazy demands of their Scottish Green coalition partners in all but name in return for shoring up their incompetent adminstration at Holyrood.!!