19-Nov-2021 : CON 36 / LAB 34 / GREEN 10 / LIBDEM 7

[Deleted]

PS Pretty sure CON HMG won't want to 'own' an Energy Supplier business come the Spring and will push those customers into the 'survivors' when the price cap is next reset (ie why I stated Spring'22 and minimal/minimised cost to taxpayer via SoRL+SAR). I can see merit in a State owned player in each utility sector and that was IMO where LAB missed their opportunity. I can see why if LAB wanted 'A' State player then some folks would push for a state-run monopoly (which I wouldn't want) and that is perhaps why Miliband said what he said (and why he certainly avoided mention of cost of what to do come Spring'22) - IMO of course!

[oldnat]

Is Johnson clever enough to put on that display of rambling incompetence, just to draw attention away from the English Health and Care Bill?

[baggy07]

Shevii

I think you have made a great point about the less politically engaged and getting out the vote, there is I believe 40% of the population who will never vote Labour culturally, 7 to 8% of the nation of uk who vote for the Nationalists in Scotland and Wales leaving Centrist Labour only having a potential pool of 52 to 53% to get there potential vote. This 52% has to be shared between Lib Dems, Greens and Labour.
Also with Keir attacking people like Corbyn, Rebecca Long Bailey, trying to sideline Angela Raynor and not quelling rumours of mps like Sultana etc being unseated by their constituencies etc leaves Labour potentially losing votes from 2 to 3 million strong left wing voters as well as the less politically engaged especially in the north who are not motivated to vote because all he is saying is I am not Boris Johnston.
In some ways I believe it is similar to 2010 when Cameron even after the 2008 recession and Labour completely knackered in govt could not bring many from the right of his party with him and he got a Hung Parliament.
I believe that unless he acts like Biden ie hugs the left of the party too him and brings them along, he will not even get a Hung Parliament, it is quite funny because at this stage in the Last Parliament Labour had got to level pegging and people from the right of the party said Corbyn should be 20 points clear.
You have Covid disaster, Cash for Honours,. Hs2 getting cut and sleaze in the Tory Party and even with all that Starmer without getting any attacks from the press only at best level pegging with the Tories.

[oldnat]

Nov 22, 2021 19:40:48 GMT baggy07 said:

7 to 8% of the nation of uk who vote for the Nationalists in Scotland and Wales

Those voting for independence for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (why do so many who talk of the UK ignore NI on such a regular basis?) and a fair number who don't so vote would question why anyone would describe the UK as a "nation". It's a vague term, at best, and seldom used to describe the inhabitants of a multi-national entity - other than by propagandists.

[jib]

baggy07

I think the left of Labour were very well indulged by Corbyn and McDonnell / Abbott.

A manifesto comprehensively rejected in 2019, after moderate interest in 2017.

Labour can only win from centrist policies.

[davwel]

"7 to 8% of the nation of the UK who vote for the Nationalists in Scotland and Wales" "Labour completely knackered .. in 2010" etc.

What a strange, old-fashioned outlook we have here. For a start there are 4 nations comprising the UK. And Corbyn is a big loser of potential Labour votes, while Starmer gets regular comments in the papers that I see of "nobody knows his policies, if he has any".

But no doubt Baggy is speaking for some very-left Labour supporters.

[jib]

Nov 22, 2021 19:36:23 GMT oldnat said:

Is Johnson clever enough to put on that display of rambling incompetence, just to draw attention away from the English Health and Care Bill?

Possibly, there is a track record of distraction techniques. I note his bridge / tunnel idea was deemed unfeasible today.

[leftieliberal]

@tw a quote from Bulb's blog:

"Wholesale prices have skyrocketed and continue to be extremely volatile. The gas supply shortage combined with lower exports from Russia and increased demand means they remain high and unpredictable. Prices have hit close to £4.00 per therm recently, compared with 50p per therm a year ago. We’ve always been big supporters of the idea of a price cap to protect customers, but the current price cap is set at a level around 70p per therm, well below the cost of energy. The news last week about Nord Stream 2 has sent gas prices back up again. Nord Stream 2 is a new gas pipeline from Russia to Europe which must be approved by Germany and the EU. Last week, Germany suspended its approval process, and there’s growing geopolitical pressure to scrap the project. As a result, the industry has seen many suppliers fail over the past few months and many more are expected to do so over the winter."

It's a counsel of perfection to expect all suppliers to be fully hedged for their gas supplies (which in turn affect electricity prices). Doing so has major implications for business cash flow, which I suspect only the very largest suppliers could afford. We are in serious danger of going back to the quasi-monopolistic world of the "Big Six".

[steamdrivenandy]

I'm thinking that if things continue as they have been, then rather than ABT it'll be ABBJ that'll win the election. Whether that's through Tories abstaining, LOC's tactical voting, or a mix of both, it could be a perfect storm.

[barbara]

Nov 22, 2021 20:49:07 GMT steamdrivenandy said:

I'm thinking that if things continue as they have been, then rather than ABT it'll be ABBJ that'll win the election. Whether that's through Tories abstaining, LOC's tactical voting, or a mix of both, it could be a perfect storm.

I agree. Just as Johnson's personality brought him his 80 sear majority, so will it be his downfall.

[oldnat]

I note that the cheapest ticket to Peppa Pig World for a family of 3 costs more than £100. I don't know how much Johnson paid for just a ticket for himself.

[jib]

Nov 22, 2021 22:17:52 GMT oldnat said:

I note that the cheapest ticket to Peppa Pig World for a family of 3 costs more than £100. I don't know how much Johnson paid for just a ticket for himself.

You haven't factored in the discount for buying in advance.

Just over £20 for an individual over 1m. 

Money well spent I'd say as he really seems to have enjoyed the day.

Correction: He did take his wife and son. So just over £70 with said discount.

[alec]

@tw - "but Bulb were known for not hedging their risk.."

Really?

Ofgem rules require all suppliers to have a hedging strategy and suppliers are not allowed to publish/share their strategies under the terms of license, so it's not clear to me how anyone knew that Bulb were not hedging.

Elsewhere: Govt wins care vote by 26, so a good night for Labour. Plenty of discontent on Con benches, but the albatross policy still gets through. Just what an opposition needs. Widespread criticism of the U turn on this, and an excellent demolition speech by Labs Justin Madders. Don't know him, but he impressed, and no doubt made Con MPs squirm. Labour are all over this, with the factually correct notion that Johnson and Sunak are working to protect million pound homeowners by making folks in Hartlepool pay up.

[alec]

On Bulb, it's also worth noting that in the electricity market, following complaints by smaller suppliers of a lack of liquidity in the form of insufficient forward traded blocks of future supply - what you need for a hedging strategy - Ofgem announced a review and concluded on Dec 1st 2020 that there was sufficient liquidity in the market, and that no reforms were necessary.

The issue revolves around the fact that the big six are large scale generators as well as retail suppliers, so they can use their vertical integration to secure hedging supplies, whereas retail only operations are left struggling to access hedging capacity at reasonable prices.

Bottom line really is that if multiple critical service suppliers like energy companies were not financially sound, for whatever reason, the regulator needs to answer some searching questions. Energy companies cannot operate without strict licensing conditions from Ofgem, and blaming the companies that have been deemed as sufficiently secure to be allowed to enter the market raises a host of questions over the role of the regulator.

[oldnat]

Nov 22, 2021 22:31:02 GMT jib said:

Nov 22, 2021 22:17:52 GMT oldnat said:

"You haven't factored in the discount for buying in advance."  (I haven't got the hang of this site yet!)

Seems a dangerous assumption that Johnson plans anything in advance.

[oldnat]

Nov 22, 2021 22:36:53 GMT alec said:

Govt wins care vote by 26, so a good night for Labour.

A strange definition of a "good night". Your opponents win and push through a policy that you (quite rightly) detest.

Not only that, but they use the machinery of elections, that you enthusiastically support, that enables a dominant faction of a party that has minority support in the polity to do it!

("you" refers to Labour - not Alec!)

[eor]

Nov 22, 2021 17:50:38 GMT barbara said:

Now that we're now sitting at ROC parties 41% LOC parties 56%. (approx), the chance of the next election yielding a hung parliament very much rests on the willingness and forethought of the 56% to vote tactically

(I've left off the rest of the sentence not to misrepresent your point but cos I'll do a separate response to the bit about the ROC voters who won't vote for Johnson) 

I think saying it's down to the 56% is a long way short of being realistically accurate, and is one of the problems with the perennial arguments about a "Progressive Alliance" or similar. 

Just taking the data from the 2019 GE, there were 52 seats which the Tories won, where the combined vote for Labour, the LibDems, the SNP, Plaid and the Green parties was higher than the Tory vote. Easily enough to remove the majority, maybe enough to prevent a Tory PM, quite possible the kind of knife-edge chaos that would keep us busy on here for months :-)

But.

In those 52 seats, 1.41m people voted for the various parties listed above. Of those, 1.08m already voted for the leading LoC party in that seat so can do nothing more to further the cause, leaving just the 33,000 or so people voting for other parties that you can try to convince. Roughly 1.25% of those voting in what turned out to be the most marginal Tory held/won seats last time, or very roughly 0.2% of the people declaring for those parties in an opinion poll.  

And it gets messier, because very few of those seats are remotely close between the second and third parties. If you look just at the seats where the party coming third had even 1/3rd of the votes of the party coming second, the seats in play drop from 52 to 12. So you're mostly not talking about inadvertent three-way marginals (of which there are now vanishingly few), but seats where small numbers of people continue to vote for their party without concern for the overall outcome in their seat. Those seem unlikely minds to be changed.

Whilst all of this analysis is necessarily oversimplified, because obviously there will be significant numbers of voters for a given party anywhere who are not motivated by whether the next PM is Tory or not, 11 of these 52 seats being Welsh or Scottish complicates it a bit further. 

[eor]

Nov 22, 2021 17:50:38 GMT barbara said:

plus those from the 41% who don't want Johnson to do the same. I also see in the Daily Mail today that Nigel Farage is contemplating a return to frontline politics. This may well split the ROC vote still further. After almost 2 years the polls are starting to get interesting!

I agree with this very much - if there is a proportion of previously Tory voters who come to regard Johnson with contempt, or who see little practical difference between having Johnson as PM rather than Starmer, then that could well be politically huge. Farage becoming active again could indeed highlight those fissures. 

The polling isn't showing any sign of this yet, but it's very much a possibility.

[eor]

Nov 22, 2021 19:40:48 GMT baggy07 said:

Shevii

I think you have made a great point about the less politically engaged and getting out the vote, there is I believe 40% of the population who will never vote Labour culturally, 7 to 8% of the nation of uk who vote for the Nationalists in Scotland and Wales leaving Centrist Labour only having a potential pool of 52 to 53% to get there potential vote. This 52% has to be shared between Lib Dems, Greens and Labour.
Also with Keir attacking people like Corbyn, Rebecca Long Bailey, trying to sideline Angela Raynor and not quelling rumours of mps like Sultana etc being unseated by their constituencies etc leaves Labour potentially losing votes from 2 to 3 million strong left wing voters as well as the less politically engaged especially in the north who are not motivated to vote because all he is saying is I am not Boris Johnston.
In some ways I believe it is similar to 2010 when Cameron even after the 2008 recession and Labour completely knackered in govt could not bring many from the right of his party with him and he got a Hung Parliament.
I believe that unless he acts like Biden ie hugs the left of the party too him and brings them along, he will not even get a Hung Parliament, it is quite funny because at this stage in the Last Parliament Labour had got to level pegging and people from the right of the party said Corbyn should be 20 points clear.
You have Covid disaster, Cash for Honours,. Hs2 getting cut and sleaze in the Tory Party and even with all that Starmer without getting any attacks from the press only at best level pegging with the Tories.

I think you made a number of interesting points, which have been mostly ignored because you committed the cardinal sin of even inferring you might possibly consider Scotland not to be a Nation one and extant and wonderful under God. Sorry about that, occupational hazard. In terms of what you did actually say tho;

7-8% seems a bit wild for the Scottish and Welsh nats, and remains so even when allowing for the NI voters that oldnat knows full well are not included in almost any opinion poll we discuss here. So the potential margin is probably a little bit larger than you suggest.

Beyond that, as a Coventry resident I'd be pretty astonished if there were any attempt to unseat Sultana. Being a Corbyn implant with no obvious local following I'm not aware that she inspires much love, but she's great at getting herself in the news and with a majority of hundreds in the normally Tory seat of the three it would seem a pointless risk to take. 

As for where Labour ought to be at this stage, I think you're very much on the money. Whatever people say about COVID changing the clock, one way or another it's probably 18-30 months until the next election. And for the party that's been in Opposition for the last 11 years to not even have a clear lead, regardless of the recent events let alone because of them, seems pretty remarkable. 

[neilj]

Re the new care act, it seems clear the Lords will amend the legislation and send it back to the house. Some details of numbers from Tom Newton Dunn re MP's

'Numbers in on means testing vote: 18 Tory MPs voted No and around 30 abstained (I’m told there were a further 40 pairs and slips). 48 rebels enough for a full defeat if all voted No. Some say they only abstained because they know the Lords will defeat it anyway. U-turn ahead?'

Also it seems many of those sitting on their hands are waiting for an impact assessment on the proposals. This is likely to drag on for weeks and will not be good PR for the Government. Would tend to agree with Tom Newton Dunn and a U turn is possible

Tom Newton Dunn also tweeting

'Government majority slashed from 77 to just 26 tonight in the social care vote. And that’s despite the PM personally hitting the phones to try to persuade rebels. Not in a very persuasive way, I hear. Johnson told them he was in “transmit mode” only, and they were “crazy”

More evidence of Johnson losing his grip?

[steve]

Off topic but I feel interesting, evidence that now covid becomes a disease of the hard of thinking.
One of our most prolific posters on ukpr doesn't appear to be with us to deny this particular reality.

www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/23/covid-patients-in-icu-now-almost-all-unvaccinated-says-oxford-scientist

[Deleted]

Nov 22, 2021 20:34:43 GMT leftieliberal said:

I posted bulb's press release y'day at 13:00 (p8) and at 18:07 (p11) I stated 
"We might agree on what should happen next but being CON HMG then more likely a sticking plaster for Winter and back to a 'cartel' in the Spring. How cosy? Hopefully likes of Octopus will ensure the 'cartel' isn't too cosy and becomes more akin to 'supermarket' sector? TBC of course."

We discussed this some time ago back on UKPR. Perhaps you could (re)explain (with changes) what you want to see happen given I've already restated my view, same view as when we discussed this many weeks ago. Some small challengers who have hedged or have better resources might survive but I expected we'd end up with less than 10 suppliers by the time Winter is over and we had already discussed that Bulb being the weakest of the bigger players would be the 'tipping point' (not the term I used but WRT to when SoRL was overwhelmed and Kwarteng would have to use SAR).

A conversation for a new room (thread) in 'issue specific' perhaps? Although I have nothing new to say, having already said it on UKPR and again y'day on UKPR2, you might want to open a new thread in that section of UKPR2.

[jib]

Nov 23, 2021 7:29:25 GMT steve said:

Off topic but I feel interesting, evidence that now covid becomes a disease of the hard of thinking.
One of our most prolific posters on ukpr doesn't appear to be with us to deny this particular reality.

www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/23/covid-patients-in-icu-now-almost-all-unvaccinated-says-oxford-scientist

It certainly does look like that now doesn't it? You make your choices, but it does concern me that the refuseniks are clogging up the NHS.

Apparently AZ is producing a very robust T-cell response that is both highly effective and long term.

[jib]

Nov 23, 2021 1:11:27 GMT eor said:

Nov 22, 2021 17:50:38 GMT barbara said:

plus those from the 41% who don't want Johnson to do the same. I also see in the Daily Mail today that Nigel Farage is contemplating a return to frontline politics. This may well split the ROC vote still further. After almost 2 years the polls are starting to get interesting!

I agree with this very much - if there is a proportion of previously Tory voters who come to regard Johnson with contempt, or who see little practical difference between having Johnson as PM rather than Starmer, then that could well be politically huge. Farage becoming active again could indeed highlight those fissures. 

The polling isn't showing any sign of this yet, but it's very much a possibility.

Yes, a viable return of Farage on some anti rubber dinghy crusade would cause real trouble for the Tories and force Johnson out of middle of the road comfort.

I suspect Farage might be seen as a bitter old right winger this time though. He had his comeback fight Vs Theresa May.

[somerjohn]

Nov 23, 2021 0:52:51 GMT eor said:

Nov 22, 2021 17:50:38 GMT barbara said:

Now that we're now sitting at ROC parties 41% LOC parties 56%. (approx), the chance of the next election yielding a hung parliament very much rests on the willingness and forethought of the 56% to vote tactically

In those 52 seats, 1.41m people voted for the various parties listed above. Of those, 1.08m already voted for the leading LoC party in that seat so can do nothing more to further the cause, leaving just the 33,000 or so people voting for other parties that you can try to convince. Roughly 1.25% of those voting in what turned out to be the most marginal Tory held/won seats last time, or very roughly 0.2% of the people declaring for those parties in an opinion poll. 
eor I'm responding mainly to try out the quote facility. But also to point out that 1.41m minus 1.08m is 330,000 not your 33,000. Which might have an impact on the strength of your point.

[somerjohn]

Ah. I clearly haven't got the hang of formatting responses yet. My bit of the above to eor is just the last two lines.

[lululemonmustdobetter]

Good morning all from a bloody cold PSRL.

eor & barbara

Currently I am not so sure of the veracity of the 'where an opposition party should/shouldn't be at this stage' point . A number of assumptions many of us have are based on a period of a relatively stable/predictable electorate. We may be in the process of returning to such a situation. Jim Jam (really hope he joins this board) is of the opinion we are returning to the 'normal' cycle its just its been delayed due to a number of factors. However, I'm not so sure that the volatility/seismic changes we have experienced are not yet over, and the probability of exogenous shock does seem quite high at the moment. Like you barbara, I do think things are getting more interesting again and love the avatar, very 'sweetie'.

[alec]

If Farage or someone similar does re-enter mainstream politics, I suspect it will be quite dangerous. Can't really see where such a movement would get votes from in terms of European debate, as that is done and dusted. We have the extremists in government, and there really isn't any further they can go on this topic. That just means digging deeper into the really divisive stuff, like Trump. Looking across the pond, this may happen, as the republicans are becoming ever more radicalized and are a real threat to democracy. There are inklings of that within RoC thinking here, but at a far lesser scale.

On energy supplier (again): I'm very conscious that folks don't wish to see a return to small debates between two posters overwhelming the board, so I'm only going to return to this point once. Tw again repeats an error over hedging when he implies some energy suppliers haven't hedged - "Some small challengers who have hedged...". The main reason we got into lengthy and dull spats was the continued repetition of falsehoods which - I believe - need to be challenged, else debate everywhere is devalued.

_All_ energy suppliers _must_ hedge against price rises. It's conditional in their licenses granted by Ofgem to show an adequate hedging strategy. Ofgem must be satisfied that the suppliers has a sufficiently robust risk management strategy and approves all the business plans. Ofgem specifically state that there is no one hedging strategy that is inherently better than another. Ofgem have, in the past, rejected a hedging strategy for being too comprehensive (the hedge period was deemed too long, and was therefore seen as unnecessarily increasing prices, and because of the market position of the supplier this was deemed anti competitive). Right up until the start of 2021 Ofgem were as concerned about long hedging period as short ones, because of the price implications.

Bulb will have hedged, and Ofgem were happy with this. To dismiss the collapse of Bulb as an artefact of a failure to hedge is a misrepresentation of facts, and repeating this is dishonest posting.

[somerjohn]

Thanks for that useful post Alec. Though I suspect the TWs will already have blocked posts from you (and me!) and therefore remain unenlightened. Their loss.

I'd add that I think the situation is very simple. Only the biggest and best-financed companies can for long continue business when they are forced to sell their product at way below cost.

Enforcing a price cap at well below cost is a mechanism for weeding out all but the big six. It was a government choice to do this, rather than the right, but politically difficult, choice of removing the cap (or raising it to a viable level).

It's been the triumph of short-term political expediency over market forces, and the sort of cop-out that comes back to bite populist regimes all over the world.

[alec]

somerjohn - I said on the old UKPR that the idea of screening out alternative view points is something I would never do because I want people to challenge my thinking and tell me when I have got something wrong (which happens frequently). I hope that it also prevents the spread of misinformation, either deliberate or unintentional, because false statements are quickly challenged, and even if the poster doesn't appear to accept the points raised, more often than not that enhanced knowledge resurfaces later in subsequent posts that accept the contended point.