01-Oct 2022 : LAB: 46% / CON: 27% / LDEM: 9% / GRN: 6%

[graham]

Oct 15, 2022 18:06:46 GMT pjw1961 said:

I have noticed something odd about electoral calculus. If you put in the 2019 vote shares and the 2019 boundaries - i.e. replay 2019 - you would expect to get more or less the historical result (Scotland might throw it off a bit). But you don't; you get a Conservative landslide majority of 156. Which suggests a problem with their model.

I have never been a fan of Electoral Calculus.

[alec]

colin - "She has no authority over him. A prisoner of her Chancellor.

Its nuts."

Yes, but good for Labour.

Truss remains in place as the nation's bogeywoman, but is unable to wreak any more damage on this Great Country as she is powerless.

What could be better?

[crossbat11]

I really ought to write this post with the same cadence as Auden's Night Mail poem. Train travelling as I am, but I lack the great man's poetic gifts. Pure prose instead, alas.

As another Tory psychodrama unfolds and we start to examine more runners and riders being saddled or unsaddled in this increasingly deranged political party, can't someone, anyone, please make the story about something else? Twelve years of these largely malign fools and still we obsess about them, walk in their shoes and devise plotlines where they rebound and triumph to rule us all again.

The story should instead be about our benighted country and what can be done to save it and maybe revive it. That really has nothing to do with Toryism. Please, someone somewhere seize that narrative. I'm done with Liz's, Penny's, Jeremy's and Rishis.

I weep for my country not the Tory Party. They're now part of the problem not the solution. Maybe they always were.

[neilj]

Recused himself, surely he should be sacked

[Deleted]

Personally I believe this catastrophic collapse in support for the Tories has its roots in the pathetic self indulgent weeks long charade of a leadership election which left everybody but the most diehard Tories with the impression that they were deluded inward looking charlatans that cared not one jot for the country or its ills, just their own narrow games.

[mercian]

Oct 15, 2022 16:35:56 GMT johntel said:

Oct 15, 2022 16:05:33 GMT robbiealive said:

@mark If this isn't bullying I don't know what is.

If you want to get mark's attention you might try using Mark (@ admin without the space)

[johntel]

Oct 15, 2022 18:06:46 GMT pjw1961 said:

I have noticed something odd about electoral calculus. If you put in the 2019 vote shares and the 2019 boundaries - i.e. replay 2019 - you would expect to get more or less the historical result (Scotland might throw it off a bit). But you don't; you get a Conservative landslide majority of 156. Which suggests a problem with their model.

A very good point. It just shows that if pollsters don't take into account local socio-economic factors their predictions are useless. For example - in Surrey the Tories will lose seats to the Lib Dems, not Labour, in the next election.

[Danny]

Oct 15, 2022 13:06:26 GMT RAF said:

The Tories are in a bind. Changing course to pay for our whopping decicit via public spending cuts - likely to be seen as Austerity #2 - may becalm the markets but is unlikely to resonate with the voters, who already can't afford the cost of living.

well it might or it might not. Markets dont care whether you are giving tax cuts to the rich. Being of the richer persuasion, they might even like that. What they didnt like was the idea of borrowing a massive amount with no plan to pay it back. Or perhaps a half baked claim that trickle down would make the nation richer and therefore pay it. Which obviously they thought was ridiculous.

But is funding so huge an amount through cuts credible either?

Oct 15, 2022 13:30:44 GMT shevii said:

Jeremy Hunt, supposedly the "good Tory" (a bar that seems to get lowered every year since Thatcher), is quoted as saying that there will be cuts everywhere including "health". It's absolutely crazy stuff to be suggesting this when all the headlines are about ambulance queuing, often with hours waits for heat attack patients, bedblocking because there's nowhere to send patients afterwards, staff shortages, difficulty getting GP appointments, potential Covid spikes and a hundred other things in the headlines every single day.

Whatever the financial crisis we are facing, it's incredible that anyone would not be protecting and improving the health budget given the crisis the NHS is in.

As i said...

[Danny]

Oct 15, 2022 14:51:15 GMT alec said:

While I agree with RAF that Bailey should also have mentioned Brexit, what he said about covid and the workforce is - "Long covid could be contributing to labour shortages in the UK, the governor of the Bank of England has said.

Andrew Bailey told a G30 seminar that labour shortages are largely being driven by an increase in older people choosing not to work, with possible reasons including long covid, people with long-term health conditions reluctant to work during pandemic and public health systems not treating people as promptly in a covid world."

[From the G].

It isn't just symptomatic long covid. What many people appear to miss is that there are a lot of people with other health conditions who are frightened of repeat covid infections, lots of officially CEV workers who really must avoid infection if at all possible.

Perhaps what people are missing is not that people might not be able to work because of illness, but after a years enforced idleness, they realised first they could afford not to work, and second they rather liked it.

[bedknobsandboomstick]

Oct 15, 2022 18:42:58 GMT johntel said:

Oct 15, 2022 18:06:46 GMT pjw1961 said:

I have noticed something odd about electoral calculus. If you put in the 2019 vote shares and the 2019 boundaries - i.e. replay 2019 - you would expect to get more or less the historical result (Scotland might throw it off a bit). But you don't; you get a Conservative landslide majority of 156. Which suggests a problem with their model.

A very good point. It just shows that if pollsters don't take into account local socio-economic factors their predictions are useless. For example - in Surrey the Tories will lose seats to the Lid Dems, not Labour, in the next election.

I've spotted this previously, however I seem to remember that they allow for realignment if votes between elections, so it is 'correct' .

[mercian]

Oct 15, 2022 18:06:46 GMT pjw1961 said:

I have noticed something odd about electoral calculus. If you put in the 2019 vote shares and the 2019 boundaries - i.e. replay 2019 - you would expect to get more or less the historical result (Scotland might throw it off a bit). But you don't; you get a Conservative landslide majority of 156. Which suggests a problem with their model.

That's very interesting. You would have thought they'd have tested it against past election results when they started doing predictions.  This was fairly recently IIRC. Previously they used to just do UNS I think.  It begs a couple of questions:
1) Is there any pattern in the seats that are 'predicted' differently to what actually happened.
2) Is there some sort of accidental anti-Tory bias, in which case their current prediction of 85 seats is likely to be an underestimate.

[mercian]

Oct 15, 2022 18:31:27 GMT crossbat11 said:

crossbat11
"As another Tory psychodrama unfolds and we start to examine more runners and riders being saddled or unsaddled in this increasingly deranged political party, can't someone, anyone, please make the story about something else?"

There's been plenty of people banging on and on about Brexit.

"...devise plotlines where they rebound and triumph to rule us all again."

Haven't you heard? They have the One Ring. 😁

[Deleted]

Oct 15, 2022 17:26:52 GMT crossbat11 said:

 I'm either at Ashton under Lyne or wherever they're drawn if their ball comes out of the bag second at Monday lunchtIf it's up in the North East young Crofty has offered to host me. Ashton and the younger son will be my confrere for the day. An evening in Stockport may beckon.

I don’t know if you’re bullying again or if it’s just your your usual “prating”** but I said no such thing.

I said I would go with you as it can be a bit rough up Norf - IF you buy me lunch and don’t get too drunk and embarrass me.

(** No, I dunno either.)

[Deleted]

Oct 15, 2022 18:42:06 GMT mercian said:

Oct 15, 2022 16:35:56 GMT johntel said:

@mark If this isn't bullying I don't know what is.

If you want to get mark's attention you might try using Mark (@ admin without the space)

I can’t see you getting that pint that Big bully boy Batty owes you now. Shame on you.

[Deleted]

Oct 15, 2022 18:31:27 GMT crossbat11 said:

I really ought to write this post with the same cadence as Auden's Night Mail poem. Train travelling as I am, but I lack the great man's poetic gifts. Pure prose instead, alas.

As another Tory psychodrama unfolds and we start to examine more runners and riders being saddled or unsaddled in this increasingly deranged political party, can't someone, anyone, please make the story about something else? Twelve years of these largely malign fools and still we obsess about them, walk in their shoes and devise plotlines where they rebound and triumph to rule us all again.

The story should instead be about our benighted country and what can be done to save it and maybe revive it. That really has nothing to do with Toryism. Please, someone somewhere seize that narrative. I'm done with Liz's, Penny's, Jeremy's and Rishis.

I weep for my country not the Tory Party. They're now part of the problem not the solution. Maybe they always were.

But, but, but, but…… what if Therese Coffey takes over and they make another comeback? Or someone else??

Of something…

[Danny]

Oct 15, 2022 17:30:55 GMT neilj said:

When this appears in the Telegraph, written by one of it's Editors, you know the Brexit dream is over.
Worth reading the article but a flavour here
'Downbeat predictions by the Treasury and others on the economic consequences of leaving the EU, contemptuously dismissed at the time by Brexit campaigners as "Project Fear", have been on a long fuse, but they have turned out to be overwhelmingly correct, and if anything have underestimated both the calamitous loss of international standing and the scale of the damage that six years of policy confusion and ineptitude has imposed on the country.'

Maybe con have already decided time is up on brexit as a vote winner and the smart money is now to shift to rejoin before labour does.

Oct 15, 2022 17:55:47 GMT colin said:

She has no authority over him. A prisoner of her Chancellor.
Its nuts. 

No, not nuts. How to impose a compromise leaders without holding a leadership competition.

[johntel]

Oct 15, 2022 19:01:19 GMT @crofty said:

Oct 15, 2022 18:42:06 GMT mercian said:

If you want to get mark's attention you might try using Mark (@ admin without the space)

I can’t see you getting that pint that Big bully boy Batty owes you now. Shame on you.

more of @crofty's in-crowd banter lol.

[johntel]

And how is it possible to spend £120 million on a football team and still not be able to beat Wolves (or Aston Villa) for goodness sake.

[mercian]

johntel
Manchester City couldn't beat Villa earlier in the season and their squad must have cost close to a billion.

[oldnat]

Imperialist UK Government Ministers (perhaps high on cocaine) have decided that Bermudans can't legalise cannabis use in their own country.

www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/15/bermuda-cannabis-britain-overseas-territory/

[hireton]

I can't recall whether this Westminster VI poll has been posted but in case not:

Fieldwork 13/14 October but presumably most before the Kwarteng etc events?

[steve]

neilj
So on current polling that should boost the Tories to about 65

[crossbat11]

Oct 15, 2022 19:18:48 GMT johntel said:

And how is it possible to spend £120 million on a football team and still not be able to beat Wolves (or Aston Villa) for goodness sake.

You'll never beat the Villa, you'll never beat the Villa......
(repeat endlessly)

Of course it's possible that you may not beat anyone at all.

I don't know a good chant for that, I'm afraid.

[hireton]

It does seem that the Tory Party is now almost entirely concerned about its own factional fights:

[RAF]

Oct 15, 2022 19:26:18 GMT oldnat said:

Imperialist UK Government Ministers (perhaps high on cocaine) have decided that Bermudans can't legalise cannabis use in their own country.

www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/15/bermuda-cannabis-britain-overseas-territory/

I would like to know what international treaties ban the recreational use of cannabis as it is legal in many US states, and also of course in parts of the Netherlands (as well as in other countries and/or territories).

Of course Bermuda can always become fully independent and remove this problem.

[James E]

"It just shows that if pollsters don't take into account local socio-economic factors their predictions are useless. For example - in Surrey the Tories will lose seats to the Lid Dems, not Labour, in the next election."

Clearly, the tactical position in some Surrey seats makes them likely LD gains at the next GE - especially Guildford or Esher and Walton.

But in so far as we have socio-economic data from GB polling it really doesn't support your view. Firstly the Con>Lab swing is somewhat larger with higher social classes (especially C1s) than with C2 or DE voters. And recently, voting intentions for ABs and DEs have been near-identical - with both showing similar large Lab leads.

And by geography, the South of England is consistently showing the largest swings of anywhere in Britain. To take a couple of pollsters' figures:

YouGov - Combined South England (most recent 4 polls average)
Lab 49% (+23)
Con 29% (-24)
LibDem 12% (-4)
(Changes from GE2019)

R&W - SE England region only (most recent 5 polls average)
Lab 45% (+23)
Con 33% (-21)
LibDem 13% (-5)
(Changes from GE2109)

These are unprecendented figures. At GE1997 Labour trailed the Tories by 8 points in the Combined South (SE+SW+E) and by 13 points in SE England, so these figures are 12-14 points better for Labour in the South than their previous best performance. 

[RAF]

Oct 15, 2022 20:11:16 GMT hireton said:

It does seem that the Tory Party is now almost entirely concerned about its own factional fights:

Nothing about Austerity #2 will endear anyone to Hunt, whether other members of his party, or the country.

Austerity #1 never went away of course. It just got shifted down to a lower gear. Anyone seeking to crank up the power again is bound to fail.

[Deleted]

Oct 15, 2022 17:57:14 GMT neilj said:

Oct 15, 2022 17:55:47 GMT colin said:

She has no authority over him. A prisoner of her Chancellor.

Its nuts. 

Agree, she is PM in name only

Absolutely. PMINO has a nice ring to it. How long can this work though? How long  can you have a PM who the whole world can see is a totally busted flush, completely devoid of power, authority, and even respect? She will rightly have her U-turns on this fiscal fiasco rammed down her throat incessantly in the coming days. Surely this is terminally untenable for her.

So what next? The longer she stays, the more the CON brand is trashed, because she is now such an easy target for a shoeing from KS and others, (glad to see he has taken my, and many others', advice to pin the blame for all this incompetence squarely with CON. LAB must maintain this drumbeat for all it's worth). Many on her own side know she has to go, and pronto, but how? What sort of mechanism? A 'Unity' candidate? Good luck with that with so many warring factions in the CLP. Another interminable 'election' among the blue rinse brigade? Surely a non-starter. A 'Coronation' of a new top team? If it could be arranged, (doubtful), there seems to be a rising groundswell among the public per recent polling that there is no appetite for this, since current policies bear so little resemblance to the 'mandate' from 2019, and a GE appears to be gaining popular traction as the way to resolve the situation. But CON know that an election any time soon is likely to mean defeat, possibly annihilation, and will be desperate to avoid one.

CON seem to be in a terrible bind, whichever way you slice it. Interesting days ahead.

[RAF]

Oct 15, 2022 20:39:35 GMT @isa said:

Oct 15, 2022 17:57:14 GMT neilj said:

Agree, she is PM in name only

Absolutely. PMINO has a nice ring to it. How long can this work though? How long  can you have a PM who the whole world can see is a totally busted flush, completely devoid of power, authority, and even respect? She will rightly have her U-turns on this fiscal fiasco rammed down her throat incessantly in the coming days. Surely this is terminally untenable for her.

So what next? The longer she stays, the more the CON brand is trashed, because she is now such an easy target for a shoeing from KS and others, (glad to see he has taken my, and many others', advice to pin the blame for all this incompetence squarely with CON. LAB must maintain this drumbeat for all it's worth). Many on her own side know she has to go, and pronto, but how? What sort of mechanism? A 'Unity' candidate? Good luck with that with so many warring factions in the CLP. Another interminable 'election' among the blue rinse brigade? Surely a non-starter. A 'Coronation' of a new top team? If it could be arranged, (doubtful), there seems to be a rising groundswell among the public per recent polling that there is no appetite for this, since current policies bear so little resemblance to the 'mandate' from 2019, and a GE appears to be gaining popular traction as the way to resolve the situation. But CON know that an election any time soon is likely to mean defeat, possibly annihilation, and will be desperate to avoid one.

CON seem to be in a terrible bind, whichever way you slice it. Interesting days ahead.

If they were the Republicans, they would go back to Boris - warts and all. Who else do they have who could be a vote winner. I'm coming around to the idea this will happen

[mandolinist]

Oct 15, 2022 20:39:35 GMT @isa said:

Oct 15, 2022 17:57:14 GMT neilj said:

Agree, she is PM in name only

Absolutely. PMINO has a nice ring to it. How long can this work though? How long  can you have a PM who the whole world can see is a totally busted flush, completely devoid of power, authority, and even respect? She will rightly have her U-turns on this fiscal fiasco rammed down her throat incessantly in the coming days. Surely this is terminally untenable for her.

So what next? The longer she stays, the more the CON brand is trashed, because she is now such an easy target for a shoeing from KS and others, (glad to see he has taken my, and many others', advice to pin the blame for all this incompetence squarely with CON. LAB must maintain this drumbeat for all it's worth). Many on her own side know she has to go, and pronto, but how? What sort of mechanism? A 'Unity' candidate? Good luck with that with so many warring factions in the CLP. Another interminable 'election' among the blue rinse brigade? Surely a non-starter. A 'Coronation' of a new top team? If it could be arranged, (doubtful), there seems to be a rising groundswell among the public per recent polling that there is no appetite for this, since current policies bear so little resemblance to the 'mandate' from 2019, and a GE appears to be gaining popular traction as the way to resolve the situation. But CON know that an election any time soon is likely to mean defeat, possibly annihilation, and will be desperate to avoid one.

CON seem to be in a terrible bind, whichever way you slice it. Interesting days ahead.

How I wish I wasn't living in interesting times. Truss certainly lacks all the things you mention, but more than that, she lacks humanity. Any party which has Truss as leader and Braverman as Home Secretary is a living breathing danger to other people, especially those who are most vulnerable. Who remembers Kinnocks's speech about not being weak or vulnerable, old or sick etc? Well here we are, and we didn't even have the chance to vote. Shame on them.