24-April 2023 : LAB 44% / CON 29% / LDEM 11% / GRN 5%

[Danny]

Newsnight last night talked about the split in the labour party, which seems to be widening publicly.

The chart just above from redfield and wilson is tagged by expatr as 'really bad for Sunak', and yet taken over the whole year it covers, what it shows is the conservative vote holding steady, but labour having dropped 5%.

R&W have placed a number of headlines along the timeline which I guess is their take on important events which may have affected the vote share. If you believe them, then the rot set in for labour when 'Starmer announced his five missions'. Newsnight last night also talked about Sunak's 5 pledges, with two con and one lab guest scoring how they thought it was going. Lab and one con thought he would achieve none of them, the other con thought he could still achieve all of them, but really only by giving very wide interpretataion to the pledge. He did however also agree that it is unlikely that the spirit of eg growing the economy or cutting inflation or reducing immigration will be felt to have been achieved by voters, even if the letter is.

Both sides made the same pledge to grow the economy. I dont see any public plan how lab might do this better than con, though of course con will be blamed for a failure now as they are in power. Just, lab has no obvious way of doing better. And perhaps this is the point newsnight missed. It isnt about con being able to meet these pledges, its all about pointing out lab had no better plan either.

Both sides pledged to improve the NHS. Con have now clearly accepted the NHS is not going to improve before the next election, instead they have proposed an enquiry into its reform. Thats a pretty good strategy! Obviously no report will be published before an election so no need to accept or reject any proposals. The two obvious problems of the NHS are not anything to do with its efficiency of operation but are a shortage of staff and a lack of funding (which of course also impacts the first point if pay is bad and falling). The recent King's fund report already said its as effective as any other health service considering its funding and staffing. However what Con has done will allow them to accept it has problems, but deflect claims they have no plan to solve this, because now they do. It sidesteps any attack they simply havnt spent enough by claiming its structure is failing and the report wil show what is needed, and they as a new government would implement that. And as an especial silver lining, con want to privatise the NHS, so any proposals which might move in that direction would be good for them, and any incoming government which might want to restore the NHS as a government owned organisation might find itself hampered by any conclusion towards privatisation. So, it gets them off the hook for now and might tie the hands of a successor. But of course lab have no plans of their own, and are sidestepping the obvious one of giving the NHS more money. If the NHS worsens before an election, well con have the plan in train to fix it.

Lab pledged to make Britain a clean energy superpower, remove barriers to opportunity and make Britains streets safe. Con pledged to halve inflation, cut the national debt and cut illegal immigration.

Con seem to be veering towards abandoning clean energy. The fault line then will be labour pushing something seen as causing huge energy price rises, while con will argue clean energy has failed and we need to go back to more conventional sources. This does of course reflect con having ended insulation grants, banned onshore wind and closed gas storage facilites, but I doubt they will admit to having caused this crisis. Instead they will argue the whole conept is misconceived and has caused the problems we now experience. That lab is simply offering to make this all worse. They will argue lab is going in the wrong direction. They didnt make a specific pledge, but they have their counter in place.

Halving inflation might or might not happen, but con will argue inflation is coming down. Even if the specific pledge fails, its nonetheless more likely to be met by the deadline of the latest next election than the original one year deadline as trend should be down. The measure of failure will be whether the Uk is performing noticeably worse than comparable countries. It is right now, but currently the excuse is this is temporary. By a late election, the economy could have settled more into a post brexit pattern of stagnation. Brexit is a big problem for con because it seems all its promises are failing. These new promises are much easier to justify than those made about Brexit. They roll back expectations massively.


Illegal immigration - the target will not be met but the electoral battle is going well. The worst case outcome for con would have been to pass its Rwanda bill, start sending immigrants there, but then new immigrants do not stop coming to the UK. While stories start about horrible things happening to those sent to Rwanda, like being sent back to their native countries and dying. The lords has scuttled the bill to remove people from the UK while the courts have pronounced the policy illegal. Con have done the same with this issue as with a failing NHS, they have said someone else is at blame here, its not their solution failing but other have prevented them solving the world migration problem.

National debt. This target might or might not technically be met, but it is trying hard to keep down government wages. It will say excessive debt is the fault of striking doctors, etc, etc. Also incidentally responsible for a failure to cut waiting lists, despite strikes not really impacting the figures. Labour is desperately trying not to pledge to spend anything, which undermines its claims to have any solution to the raw problem government wages are far too low in many sectors. Either it therfore has no solution, or con will claim lab would only make the deficit worse.

Labour removing barriers to opportunity. Um. How? Going to end university fees? Improve low end wages? Improve state education system? Cheap housing?


So, despite the headline that con might fail all their targets, hidden within each is a plan to be seen to have failed, but yet still be better than lab. This is addressing the issue we seem to agree on, that governments win or lose elections, not the opposition. Its deflecting the issue towards labour's absence of policies. They wouldnt do any better.

Perhaps R&W were correct, the labour pledges were deeply unimpressive and played into government hands because they highlighted lab as having no ideas to fix anything. A labour safe pair of hands simply offering more of the right wing same is not impressive.

[Danny]

Jul 5, 2023 5:59:16 GMT alec said:

Meanwhile, Sky reporting that 48% of GPs in a BMA survey had lost work time through persistent covid symptoms - news.sky.com/story/one-in-five-doctors-forced-to-stop-working-or-cut-back-hours-due-to-long-covid-12914407

Oh dear, you seem to have accidentally misled us there. I read your post as meaning 48% of all GPs have suffered long covid and had to take time off work. Whereas the actual survey is out of doctors diagnosed with long covid, 48% have taken time off work. Which is kinda unsurprising.

Ad new research from the Nordic countries gives some interesting observations on the impact of covid precautions on cancer diagnostic services - onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ijc.34029

It's commonly believed that lockdowns caused delayed oncology diagnoses and treatment, but this research doesn't bear that out in this group of countries. Sweden - no formal lockdown - saw a bigger dip in new diagnoses than it's neaghbours. This isn't surprising to those that understand pandemics. If you allow a disease to run uncontrolled, the public reacts defensively, whether or not you have formal regulations. So they choose to stay away from doctors, you get worse outcomes.

Very simple, been observed for centuries, but now anti public health claptrap is elevated to a religion by some.

So you are providing evidence that a legal lockdown was never necessary? That people would have made sensible choices to avoid risky locations all by themselves?

As to Sweden's performance, didn't they come bottom in the recent report on how many beds or intensive care beds they had? Maybe that was always going to impact how well they could cope. Though they did end up with 2/3 our death rate. Oh for such failure.

[Danny]

Jul 5, 2023 6:02:03 GMT alec said:

NHS - lost of red herrings this morning about charges, how we pay for it, big reforms etc.

First things first. We need to talk first and foremost about how much we pay. Get ourselves up to the average to countries with good health services. Once we've done that, then we can work out the best way to meet those financial commitments. Or we can decide to pay less and have a second rate health service, like the present situation. Very simple.

Its funny, but in the past you have banged on about covid being the root of the NHS' problems, whereas I and some others have argued all its failings including compromised ability to cope with covid have been down to ten years starving of funding. Good to see you do finally agree the root of this problem is a choice to cap its funding.

Not that labour is promising to spend more. Not that anyone is holding the debate which is really needed, which is to decide how much as a nation we want to spend on the NHS, whether we want to spend more or want to continue rationing care so that demand is met by people dying a bit early.   What are we willing to pay for that extra 'bit' of life, and how big a bit is it really?  The fact someone got their cancer treatment quickly doesnt mean they live forever, just a bit longer on average.

A big problem with covid management was government asked what could be done to minimise spread of covid, SAGE told them, government did it. No one answered the question whether the achieved slowing of spread would actually make any significant improvement to the final outcome or at what cost.  The ultimate answer seems to be it made minimal saving of life at massive economic cost. A bad deal as we are seeing now when that money could have been spent so much better on general health care. But are we willing to fund general health care more, is even this far better deal actually worth it to voters?

[steve]

@isa
Be fair though every tank can get an entire crew of generals
And every frigate can get 3 admirals

[steve]

graham
"I suppose it will provide useful material for local Labour literature there. 'A LD vote helps the Tories win!'

Or of course Labour allowing the Tories in.

[steve]

Here's the byelection breakdown

King's Hedges (Cambridge) Council By-Election Result:

CON: 34.9% (+3.0)
LAB: 33.6% (-5.6)
LDM: 23.5% (+8.5)
GRN: 8.0% (-6.0)

Conservative GAIN from Labour.
Changes w/ 2023.

It really doesn't look like a lib dems block does it?
Labour vote falls.
Can't read much into a local but very remain Cambridge maybe isn't enamoured of Starmer's make Brexit work bollocks.

[alurqa]

Jul 4, 2023 21:12:17 GMT @fecklessmiser said:

Apologies for multiple posts. I should be practising Bach’s Ciaccona but am trying to emulate ole Danny instead. Did anyone else know that J. S. Bach wrote the first draft of Partita no. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004 when he was holidaying in Hastings in 1722 by the way?

He'd be 37 by then, so would probably have 15 to 20 kids in tow. What a holiday!

[neilj]

@danny
"The chart just above from redfield and wilson is tagged by expatr as 'really bad for Sunak', and yet taken over the whole year it covers, what it shows is the conservative vote holding steady, but labour having dropped 5%."

In relation to polling alone you are starting from a very low point for the tories
They were bound to recover a little after the disastrous Truss debacle
But looking at the below wiki link and the graphical summary for the country as a whole and not just the blue wall, in the last 6 weeks it is very clear the Labour vote has increased and the tory vote decreased
The Labour lead is now back to what it was at the beginning of March
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election

[Danny]

Jul 5, 2023 6:08:53 GMT alec said:

More from that BMA covid survey. In their statement, the BMA said;

“Infection control guidelines are fundamentally flawed: SARS-CoV-2 is airborne. It is outrageous that three-and-a-half years into this pandemic, staff and patients are still, knowingly and repeatedly, being exposed to a level-3 biohazard – a virus known to cause brain damage and significantly increased risk of life-threatening blood complications even in those recovered. Healthcare workers must be provided with respiratory protection and the air quality in hospitals be monitored and improved through the installation of ventilation systems and air filter units.”

Won't get your health service back until everyone wakes up to this. Everything else is window dressing. Follow the science.

No one should become a doctor if they are afraid of catching their patients illnesses. Its inevitable. Always has been. But one thing I have noticed about doctors and nurses, quite a few of them have personal experience of illness and that contributed to them wanting to become such. Become an MP and you risk being murdered by outraged constituents. Become a medic and you risk catching something by working in a place stuffed full of sick people at close quarters.

One of the news programs last night reported the number of NHS staff from outside the Uk has gone up 100,000 since 2019. The item expressed concern most of these have come from very poor countries with desperate shortages of medical staff already. NHS has always paid to import trained staff from other countries. Whats really different now as we have become even more reliant on these immigrants because we simply arent training enough staff ourselves, is that outr pay rates for the NHS are falling in absolute terms and also in relative terms compared to competitor countries also seeking medical staff. The central problem of the NHS is pay is too low.

[alec]

It's like having my own private stalker.

[alec]

"Become an MP and you risk being murdered by outraged constituents. Become a medic and you risk catching something by working in a place stuffed full of sick people at close quarters."

What a stupid thing to say.

[Mr Poppy]

Jul 4, 2023 23:43:12 GMT @isa said:

Jul 4, 2023 23:29:49 GMT graham said:

The Tories have gained Kings Hedges in Cambridge by 24 votes.
Con 622
Lab 598
LD 418
Grn 142

Not a very good example of tactical voting!

I suppose it will provide useful material for local Labour literature there. 'A LD vote helps the Tories win!'

Mid-Beds electors, please note.

So who should ABCON voters in Mid-Beds vote for in the by-election? Starmer-LAB on the basis LAB came 2nd in GE'19 or LDEM given LDEM usually do very well in by-elections or Green as they want to send a 'protest' vote that the main parties are ignoring Climate Change issues (and a by-election is a good opportunity for a 'protest' vote that will be different to how someone might vote in a GE)

[hireton]

oldnat

Re 16 in the Labour Party document, it is difficult to see how a convention which has been completely ignored on all important issues in recent years can even be said to exist let alone be enhanced especially one which the courts have said is not justiciable despite being referenced in the Scotland Act.

The Brown Report contained an elaborate set of proposals on councils, committees etc regarding devolution. However, on the central issue of protecting devolution through the new second chamber its proposals on the role, composition and powers of the second chamber were vague and in so far as they were specific they retained the legislative supremacy of the House of Commons still elected by FPTP.

It's smoke and mirrors for the gullible.

[Mr Poppy]

Jul 4, 2023 20:33:48 GMT shevii said:

Jul 4, 2023 17:54:25 GMT pjw1961 said:

They were pretty happy with the Cameron/Clegg coalition as well (which stance did apparently cause some arguments in the newsroom) and as all who read it at the time will know, 80-90% of Guardian comment pieces were hostile to Corbyn - Owen Jones being the major exception. 

My recollection is that they started happy but gradually turned far more critical towards the end (including towards Lib Dems).  Some of this turnaround perhaps came from their readership not being happy, but I think also as they discovered that austerity hadn't worked the way it was supposed to.

Folks should of course read the link you provided in full but into GE'10 then the Groan were fully signed up to 'Cleggmania' with the one caveat of ABCON tactical voting in seats where LDEM had no chance.

1 May 2010: The liberal moment has come
‘If the Guardian had a vote it would be cast enthusiastically for the Liberal Democrats.’

A bit of an oops as they hoped LDEM would do well enough to force a coalition and expected that would be with LAB (eg see: ".. the cause of reform is overwhelmingly more likely to be achieved by a Lib Dem partnership of principle with Labour than by a Lib Dem marriage of convenience with a Tory party")

Given what happened after the GE then hardly a surprise that Groan felt 'betrayed' and embarrassed to have backed LDEM (as did a lot of other people who voted LDEM back in GE'10*) - but let's not get jib going again.

Hence in 2015 (and also in 2017 and 2019 - posted y'day) the Groan was backing LAB

2 May 2015: Britain confronts a profound choice. Labour offers the best chance of a new direction

Folks might try to pick out some of the 'caveats' to say otherwise but headlines are written for a reason and certainly summarise the Groan's view in recent GEs (can't be bothered to go back further than 2010 as that was IMO a bit of a 'watershed' (and vote shred) moment for LDEM)

Repost of the link where folks can 'click-thru' to each GE:
www.theguardian.com/politics/from-the-archive-blog/2015/apr/13/general-election-guardian-editorials-1918-2010

* See the infographic where LDEM vote was scattered to the four winds (LAB, CON, UKIP and Green - and in Scotland some even went to SNP 😱)
www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/blogs/Analysis_votermigration.html

[neilj]

This could be a vote winner for Labour depending on how much they give parents for their children 😀

[steve]

"It's like having my own private stalker."

If you popped outside everyday to make sure they were still waiting for you, you'd have a point.

[steve]

neilj
Is 28, 27, 24 and 23 too old to get nationalised?

Asking for a friend.

[pjw1961]

Jul 5, 2023 6:47:24 GMT steve said:

Here's the byelection breakdown

King's Hedges (Cambridge) Council By-Election Result:

CON: 34.9% (+3.0)
LAB: 33.6% (-5.6)
LDM: 23.5% (+8.5)
GRN: 8.0% (-6.0)

Conservative GAIN from Labour.
Changes w/ 2023.

It really doesn't look like a lib dems block does it?
Labour vote falls.
Can't read much into a local but very remain Cambridge maybe isn't enamoured of Starmer's make Brexit work bollocks.

As I noted in my preview yesterday, Labour are 'the establishment' here, in control of the Council. I forecast the Lib Dems might do well. However, the strength of the Conservatives performance does seem to relate to congestion charging schemes as others have noted. There was a similar effect in a local government by-election on the Cambridge outskirts earlier this year. All in all local factors rather than Brexit. 

[crossbat11]

Jul 5, 2023 7:10:25 GMT hireton said:

oldnat

Re 16 in the Labour Party document, it is difficult to see how a convention which has been completely ignored on all important issues in recent years can even be said to exist let alone be enhanced especially one which the courts have said is not justiciable despite being referenced in the Scotland Act.

The Brown Report contained an elaborate set of proposals on councils, committees etc regarding devolution. However, on the central issue of protecting devolution through the new second chamber its proposals on the role, composition and powers of the second chamber were vague and in so far as they were specific they retained the legislative supremacy of the House of Commons still elected by FPTP.

It's smoke and mirrors for the gullible.

The current opinion polls suggest that there may be more "gullible" voters in Scotland than you'd like to think. There are obviously more pressing reasons for the evaporation of the once gargantuan and long-standing SNP poll leads than Labour's devolution proposals, not least the growing realisation amongst voters of SNP misgovernment and internal party factional strife, but OldNat's and your desperate foraging through the undergrowth of Labour's proposals to try and find holes to pick, suggests to me that Mr Sarwar and his team are spooking the once complacent and somewhat arrogant SNP. Sarwar appears to be quite an able demolisher of SNP bull and bluster.

I think this genuine threat to continuous SNP hegemony in Scotland is an entirely good thing for British politics and long overdue.

[crossbat11]

pjw1961

While there may be some partisan disappointment in that local council by-election result, if it was due to a purely parochial issue like the imposition of a congestion charge then I'd say it's an encouraging sign of local politics working well. The Tory candidate ran on opposing the charge and won, albeit with the great assistance of FPTP. But he won and, in a contorted sense, the local people have spoken and sent their message to the council. Democracy in imperfect action.

More proof to me why it is faintly ridiculous to extrapolate anything of any national political and electoral significance from local council by election results.

[pjw1961]

Jul 5, 2023 7:53:45 GMT crossbat11 said:

pjw1961

While there may be some partisan disappointment in that local council by-election result, if it was due to a purely parochial issue like the imposition of a congestion charge then I'd say it's an encouraging sign of local politics working well. The Tory candidate ran on opposing the charge and won, albeit with the great assistance of FPTP. But he won and, in a contorted sense, the local people have spoken and sent their message to the council. Democracy in imperfect action.

More proof to me why it is faintly ridiculous to extrapolate anything of any national political and electoral significance from local council by election results.

Agree with your first paragraph, localism in action, although it is a demonstration of the shortcomings of FPTP - one candidate anti-congestion charge gets 35% of the vote, three candidates in favour get 65% of the vote, result 35% wins. AV would have produced a different result. As it happens this is the first Conservative elected to Cambridge City Council since 2012!

As to your final sentence, I agree about not getting excited about any individual result. Taken 'en-masse' over a cycle they are not dissimilar to local elections, with the same strengths and weaknesses as indicators of a trend, but overstating smaller parties compared to a GE.  

P.S. you will like Thursday's set as there is a virtually nailed on Labour gain from the SNP coming - more detail on the day. 

[athena]

For those who prefer not to rely on the Labour party's presentation of its own proposal the
Institute for Government provides a helpful analysis.

It may be a minority opinion, but I regard the Blair-Brown government's last attempt at devolution as a dreadful botch. It failed all the English regions that are ill-served by govt from the SE, largely in the interests of the SE, and created unecessary legislative and administrative complexity. I've always thought it was inherently unstable and left far too many hostages to fortune.

The Tory-led govts that have followed took advantage, adding to the unecessary complexity with its patchwork of mayoralties, all with slightly different powers, all still supplicants to the Westminster govt. The mayoralties cover only a fraction of England, by population and by area, and they're all urban.

Now Lab proposes to continue the same approach. And that's if you're inclined to trust that Starmer would be a decentralising PM, which on my reading of the straws in the wind seems unlikely.

I want a British Federation (NI would be welcome if it wants to be included), with England split up into states that have the same powers as the Scottish and Welsh states (as far as possible - Scotland would be likely to continue to be somewhat anomalous for some time, with its separate legal system), each with its own state premier and state parliament/assembly. We'd probably want a 'territory' category for areas that wouldn't sit comfortably in their local state (maybe some of the Scottish islands; London).* The states would all elect representatives to a federal parliament that would handle federal matters. I'd favour an updated version of the Barnett formula for deciding the allocation of federal funding to the states (avoids the federal government favouring states with an administration of the same political hue).

It's hard to see how to implement this kind of constitutional reform without moving to a codified constitution, which is one reason it won't happen, but I wish our main political parties would grasp that particular nettle.

*The eagle-eyed will note that I've borrowed Australian terminology. This is simply because it's the federal system I know best, but I can't resist pointing out that Australia, with a population of c.26 million is split into 6 states, plus two territories that have quite similar powers.

[shevii]

Jul 4, 2023 23:29:49 GMT graham said:

The Tories have gained Kings Hedges in Cambridge by 24 votes.
Con 622
Lab 598
LD 418
Grn 142

Not a very good example of tactical voting!

I suppose it will provide useful material for local Labour literature there. 'A LD vote helps the Tories win!'

I think I could make it a bit snappier- vote LD get Tory :-)

[Danny]

More or less this week had a special on immigration. Not sure it said very much new, except a little wrinkle to the immigration act. It seems official statistics on immigration only count people officially allowed in. If the new immigration act limps through, a million boat people arrive in the UK but never get deported to Rwanda, under the act they will never be able to claim rights to live here so even if they are still here in ten years time, they will never be granted a right to be here and never count as immigrants.

If you cant get rid of them (plan A), just pretend they dont exist (plan B)!

Plan B has been in operation for some time, because unprocessed immigration applications also do not count as immigrants however long they are here.

[pjw1961]

Jul 5, 2023 8:19:10 GMT athena said:

For those who prefer not to rely on the Labour party's presentation of its own proposal the
Institute for Government provides a helpful analysis.

It may be a minority opinion, but I regard the Blair-Brown government's last attempt at devolution as a dreadful botch. It failed all the English regions that are ill-served by govt from the SE, largely in the interests of the SE, and created unecessary legislative and administrative complexity. I've always thought it was inherently unstable and left far too many hostages to fortune.

The Tory-led govts that have followed took advantage, adding to the unecessary complexity with its patchwork of mayoralties, all with slightly different powers, all still supplicants to the Westminster govt. The mayoralties cover only a fraction of England, by population and by area, and they're all urban.

Now Lab proposes to continue the same approach. And that's if you're inclined to trust that Starmer would be a decentralising PM, which on my reading of the straws in the wind that seems unlikely.

I want a British Federation (NI would be welcome if it wants to be included), with England split up into states that have the same powers as the Scottish and Welsh states (as far as possible - Scotland would be likely to continue to be somewhat anomalous for some time, with its separate legal system), each with its own state premier and state parliament/assembly. We'd probably want a 'territory' category for areas that wouldn't sit comfortably in their local state (maybe some of the Scottish islands; London).* The states would all elect representatives to a federal parliament that would handle federal matters. I'd favour an updated version of the Barnett formula for deciding the allocation of federal funding to the states (avoids the federal government favouring states with an administration of the same political hue).

It's hard to see how to implement this kind of constitutional reform without moving to a codified constitution, which is one reason it won't happen, but I wish our main political parties would grasp that particular nettle.

*The eage-eyed will note that I've borrowed Australian terminology. This is simply because it's the federal system I know best, but I can't resist pointing out that Australia, with a population of c.26 million is split into 6 states, plus two territories that have quite similar powers.

I don't think you can blame the Blair government - the problem was that people didn't want England broken up. The poll in the North East - considered the region most likely to back it - was 78% against.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_North_East_England_devolution_referendum

To me the obvious problem with our current constitutional arrangements is the lack of an English parliament. This results in Westminster being a de facto English parliament rather than a UK parliament (due to population) and creates all sorts of problems and resentments on all sides.  If England, like Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, had its own parliament elected by a form of proportional representation (I would prefer STV) and Westminster was a much smaller entity dealing with only UK issues (defence, some foreign affairs, etc.) most of the grievances would be addressed. I would have the small Westminster parliament indirectly appointed from the 4 elected national assemblies to avoid the need for another set of elections.  

[shevii]

Jul 4, 2023 20:40:43 GMT pjw1961 said:

Jul 4, 2023 20:22:39 GMT oldnat said:

For those that can't see Twitter. Here's Starmer tweeting at 8am this morning (or some eejit on his account) - This is the complete tweet.

"Keir Starmer
Labour will give communities control of their own future."

A reasonable person on any omnibus (or other form of transport) might consider that "What the fuck does that mean?" to be an appropriate response.

The traveller can be easily enlightened. It is a reference to this: 

labour.org.uk/page/a-new-britain/

I've been interested in seeing what this means in practice, because I do think more powers to the regions would be a good thing, within reason, but don't think I'd seen this document before, although would probably have heard if it there had been something substantive.

Unfortunately it's a word salad.  I could only pick out one substantive proposal which was to move some civil service jobs out of London and that's something that both main parties have been doing for quite some time, although perhaps not this current Tory administration- not sure.  One of the other proposals on reform of the HOL seems to have been pushed into the long grass as not a priority.

With regards to what the Labour Party is doing at present, internally they are centralising power away from local constituencies to the NEC, when this is something Starmer pledged would be the opposite.  Externally, Labour abstained on the Scottish Gender recognition reform bill in the HOC when at a Scottish parliament level Labour had been just as supportive of the bill, arguably more so in percentages, as the SNP.  Labour has also appeared very reluctant to offer Scotland the choice to hold a second referendum on independence.

So it's a good idea in theory but very little evidence in current Labour Party behaviour that they would do anything substantive in pushing powers and financial control to the regions and I suspect anything that they do end up doing will be such a carefully controlled remit that power still resides in Westminster.

[Deleted]

Jul 4, 2023 20:50:35 GMT pjw1961 said:

Jul 4, 2023 20:42:23 GMT colin said:

So if you are relaxed about life expectancy have a look at those two reports on outcomes for treatment of serious disease. Or just keep worshiping at the NHS shrine with the approved doctrine.

I'm not at all relaxed about life expectancy. I would like to see radical government action against the food manufacturing and retailing industries who place profit above people's health. 

As to the NHS, I'm afraid we are all wise to the Tory trick of massively under-funding it for years and then claiming it has failed so that it can be flogged off for profit. Away with you, sir. 

If you think the way to lift life expectancy in this country to the level of other countries , is state interventions in the food industry  then I'm not surprised that you think Switzerland, Iceland, Norway , Japan, Australia & Sweden  are mediterranean countries.

The 75 years of the NHS's existence   has seen over 65's in this country double as a % of the population.( and rising). It cannot cope now with the demands on it. If you had an open enough mind to read the reports from Kings Fund & OECD  which I referred to you would see that overcapacity , diversity of provision and less restrictive gateways are a feature of systems providing good health outcomes. And , yes, as are mandatory and optional health insurance funding components. 

It is to be hoped that Streeting-our next Health Secretary,  understands that money  alone is not the answer to NHS's plight .

[Rafwan]

Jul 5, 2023 7:53:45 GMT crossbat11 said:

pjw1961

While there may be some partisan disappointment in that local council by-election result, if it was due to a purely parochial issue like the imposition of a congestion charge then I'd say it's an encouraging sign of local politics working well. The Tory candidate ran on opposing the charge and won, albeit with the great assistance of FPTP. But he won and, in a contorted sense, the local people have spoken and sent their message to the council. Democracy in imperfect action.

More proof to me why it is faintly ridiculous to extrapolate anything of any national political and electoral significance from local council by election results.

So two-thirds of voters want a congestion charge and one-third don’t, and the ‘don’t’ group ‘wins’ the representative? That brings a whole new meaning to “imperfect”.

And sorry, PJ, don’t see what there is to ‘agree’ with at all. Nor do I understand why ‘national’ politics will somehow be invulnerable to such aberration.

[steve]

shevii
You could except the Labour vote went down the lib dems vote went up.
You could more accurately say too many people voted Labour to keep the Tories out.

[pjw1961]

Jul 5, 2023 9:06:16 GMT Rafwan said:

Jul 5, 2023 7:53:45 GMT crossbat11 said:

pjw1961

While there may be some partisan disappointment in that local council by-election result, if it was due to a purely parochial issue like the imposition of a congestion charge then I'd say it's an encouraging sign of local politics working well. The Tory candidate ran on opposing the charge and won, albeit with the great assistance of FPTP. But he won and, in a contorted sense, the local people have spoken and sent their message to the council. Democracy in imperfect action.

More proof to me why it is faintly ridiculous to extrapolate anything of any national political and electoral significance from local council by election results.

So two-thirds of voters want a congestion charge and one-third don’t, and the ‘don’t’ group ‘wins’ the representative? That brings a whole new meaning to “imperfect”.

And sorry, PJ, don’t see what there is to ‘agree’ with at all. Nor do I understand why ‘national’ politics will somehow be invulnerable to such aberration.

I was agreeing with the idea that local elections are often about local issues rather that national ones and that is inherently a good thing. 

As to FPTP, I have no time for that at any level of government. I would like STV introduced for all elections and AV for single seat by-elections.