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Post by shevii on Nov 30, 2023 9:28:41 GMT
Sure will. I'll be celebrating every disappointment for you with bubbly. This is the just the playing out of personal antagonism masquerading as serious political discussion. Kevin Keegan rides again. I'd luv it.... In any antagonist election night results special I think the Graham Taylor "Do I not like that" from whoever your opposition is will be more pleasurable. In that respect I think the David Mellor "concession" speech in 1997 will go down as my favourite to watch over and over had anyone put the clip as a standalone on youtube rather than just part of the 8 hour plus election night special. On the other hand the "Portillo moment" is tempered with how gracefully he took it and he'd never been much on my radar anyway. Clegg and Swinson, while having a moment of feeling sorry for anyone who's had a bad night and their career ended, were too fresh for the devastation they caused not to get considerable joy out of those.
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steve
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Post by steve on Nov 30, 2023 9:28:55 GMT
athena"Totally agree that there's space on the centre-right for the LDs and why they don't seem interested in occupying that territory has always been a bit of a mystery to me. " It's not a mystery to party members we regard ourselves as a centre left party in many ways currently to the left of the parliamentary Labour party. We don't currently want to be Tory lite , I can't speak for a time before I was a member ,however electorally profitable being soft right might be. Anyway Starmer appears to have parked his tanks on that particular lawn.
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neilj
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Post by neilj on Nov 30, 2023 9:33:16 GMT
Savanta
'NEW Westminster Voting Intention
📈18pt Labour lead
🌹Lab 44 (=) 🌳Con 26 (-1) 🔶LD 11 (=) ➡️Reform 7 (=) 🌍Green 5 (=) 🎗️SNP 3 (=) ⬜️Other 5 (+1)
2,266 UK adults, 24-26 November
The change poll-on-poll is minimal, but this is the lowest Conservative vote share we've recorded since mid-September.
For context, it hasn't been lower than 26% since the final poll of the Truss tenure'
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Post by graham on Nov 30, 2023 9:33:23 GMT
To be accurate here, LDs taking Tory seats in the South or anywhere else make no difference to Labour obtaining a majority in that both parties count as Opposition MPs. Delivery of a Labour majority depends entirely on the number of Labour MPs - not the split between LD and Tory MPs. But didn't the Tories hoovering up dozens of Lib Dem seats in 2015 give them their wafer thin overall majority? Labour collapsed in Scotland but relatively few Tory and Labour seats exchanged hands in that rather bizarre general election. The Tories won by basically eating their former coalition partners alive. Seems to me that the more seats the Tories lose, whoever the captors, the more that assists an overall Labour majority, especially if Lib Dem voters also vote ABT tactically in seats where Labour are the contenders. Labour voters likely to return the favour too. That process is another reason to beware taking their current opinion poll VI ratings at face value. Just building on the point I was making yesterday about their habit of bettering desultory mid term opinion polling when elections come calling, I think they have two very big things going for them that allows them to convert a relatively small VI into quite a respectable number of seats (they still get robbed by FPTP though). Firstly, they are usually very well organised on the ground in seats that they specifically target and, secondly, they are battle hardened, wily and experienced electoral campaigners. Much more so than any other of the smaller parties like the Greens and ReformUK. By the way, it is also completely risible to claim that they are a toxic political brand in need of long term decontamination. No party in that predicament could have made the spectacular by election gains that they have made in this parliament, nor won as many councillors in by elections as they have too. But in 2015 the Tories managed to win many LD seats - which did help to bring about a Tory majority because it increased the number of Tory MPs. Similarly any Labour gain from the LDs increases the possibility of a labour majority by increasing the total of Labour MPs. However, increasing the number of LD MPs at Tory expense has no impact at all on the number of Labour MPs.
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Post by shevii on Nov 30, 2023 9:48:23 GMT
athena "Totally agree that there's space on the centre-right for the LDs and why they don't seem interested in occupying that territory has always been a bit of a mystery to me. " It's not a mystery to party members we regard ourselves as a centre left party in many ways currently to the left of the parliamentary Labour party. We don't currently want to be Tory lite , I can't speak for a time before I was a member ,however electorally profitable being soft right might be. Anyway Starmer appears to have parked his tanks on that particular lawn. That's the Lib Dems problem really and why the coalition was so damaging because it's very hard for them to present as a soft left party after what happened, especially when their current leader was part of it all. So in a political climate where we have the most right wing Tory and Labour parties in modern times the Lib Dems natural position probably is to the left of Labour but the votes are more likely to come from soft Tories. Clegg's biggest mistake was to fully endorse the coalition and that seemed to be his genuine political position in favour of austerity etc. Had there been a bit more of an attitude of "we don't like this but for the sake of stability" or "we've stopped the Tories doing this" they might have come out of it a bit better. They sort of quietly mumble about tempering the worst of the Tory excesses but I didn't see any evidence of this and the circumstantial evidence that the Tories have got worse since is just circumstantial really. Had the coalition not happened they would probably be attracting a lot more left wing votes like NickP 2010 with issues such as Palestine where they have a much more balanced view than the other parties and not dissimilar to how Iraq ended up for Labour over time. Best hope is probably to come up with something on the NHS that sets them apart from the policies of Tory and Labour positions to be "funded from growth".
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steve
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Post by steve on Nov 30, 2023 10:01:13 GMT
domjgAs you might anticipate I think having the Labour party dependent on lib dem votes in parliament is entirely progressive , it's the biggest chance we'll have of moving to a fair voting system and moving back to the centre of European cooperation that's realistically achievable at this time, the first under a massive Labour win would put it off for another wasted decade However I'll settle for the Tories being consigned to the political dustbin as a fairly good second prize.
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Post by crossbat11 on Nov 30, 2023 10:03:40 GMT
This is the just the playing out of personal antagonism masquerading as serious political discussion. Kevin Keegan rides again. I'd luv it.... In any antagonist election night results special I think the Graham Taylor "Do I not like that" from whoever your opposition is will be more pleasurable. In that respect I think the David Mellor "concession" speech in 1997 will go down as my favourite to watch over and over had anyone put the clip as a standalone on youtube rather than just part of the 8 hour plus election night special. On the other hand the "Portillo moment" is tempered with how gracefully he took it and he'd never been much on my radar anyway. Clegg and Swinson, while having a moment of feeling sorry for anyone who's had a bad night and their career ended, were too fresh for the devastation they caused not to get considerable joy out of those. What makes the Mellor concession speech so enjoyable was not just that it represented his own political demise but also because of who was the recipient of his venomous put-downs. None other than Sir James Goldsmith. The highlight of being up for Portillo was seeing Stephen Twigg's incredulous and joyful grin! Can't remember much about Portillo's speech.
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neilj
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Post by neilj on Nov 30, 2023 10:28:35 GMT
This is why there won't be a May Election
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 30, 2023 10:33:21 GMT
Hancock giving evidence. Not got far yet, but he argues he and department of healthe were trying to get natioanl action back in January by getting all government to pay attention to the threat, but cabinet office wasnt interested and didnt get into action until February. That is not inconsistent with ecidence fro Whitty and Mclean about sending in warnings through channels, but not much happening.
He gave an interesting comment on the inadequacies of previous epidemic plans, arguing they had been designed to manage the consequences of an epidemci which just did its thing and happened. The difference now was an attempt to devise a plan to actually halt it, which had never been done before. (it deoes of course beg the question whether we did manage to halt it rather than just delay it a bit, and whether in the end this helped).
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 30, 2023 11:00:22 GMT
This is why there won't be a May Election Ok then, take the trend back to 2020 which is a fall for con about 6% a year, and rise for lab about the same, so the labour lead in a year's time will be 12% bigger. How many extra lost seats is that? Is that a good reason to go now?
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Post by Danny on Nov 30, 2023 11:18:19 GMT
mark61 Totally agree that there's space on the centre-right for the LDs and why they don't seem interested in occupying that territory has always been a bit of a mystery to me. They're not credible as a left-wing alternative to Labour. Libs only did well in the same manner Brexit was sold to the nation. Tell each person what they want to hear. They cannot be seen to occupy one identifiable space for fear of alienating all the voters who do not see themselves as there. If they have a credible strategy in power it has to be different to both lab and con, not defined by the differences between those two. The activists went along with being con light in coalition. Rather, its a chunk of their voters which rejected this as we saw in 2015. They were thrown out because they staked themselves as centre right. Well yes, but again what they did do if we believe them was push the government more to the centre right. Student fees went up, just by not quite so much. Indeed had they insisted PR now, no fees rises, whatever else were key points in the manifesto, then they could have claimed they totally delivered and seen their seats double at the next election. Instead centre right saw them halve. Their vote share was way in excess of their number of MPs and they should have insisted this was their measure of legitimacy and power in making government decisions.
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pjw1961
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Post by pjw1961 on Nov 30, 2023 11:43:16 GMT
pnw1961 Yes, I agree, the increased media exposure that an election campaign will afford them will be a significant shot in the arm for political parties like the Lib Dems. I also happen to think that Davey will prove to be much more of an effective campaigner than past leaders like Farron, Cable and Swinson were. I agree, but that is a low bar. Davey doesn't measure up to the appeal of Steele, Ashdown or Kennedy. Looking back to 2019, the three major GB wide party leaders were Johnson, Corbyn and Swinson - I actually feel sorry for the electorate.
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pjw1961
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Post by pjw1961 on Nov 30, 2023 11:44:15 GMT
This is why there won't be a May Election Ok then, take the trend back to 2020 which is a fall for con about 6% a year, and rise for lab about the same, so the labour lead in a year's time will be 12% bigger. How many extra lost seats is that? Is that a good reason to go now? That isn't what is happening. The polls have essentially been static since the Spring.
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steve
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Post by steve on Nov 30, 2023 11:45:32 GMT
PC Broadhead the officer involved in the taser incident and accused of gross professional misconduct has been cleared of all allegations.
"Commander Jon Savell said: “This is an extremely rare and unusual case. In the immediate days after the incident a senior officer visited the address to apologise for the trauma caused to the girl and her family. Although no misconduct has been found, we repeat this apology today.
“The panel found that PC Broadhead did not breach professional standards based on the information known to him at the time and the clear threat presented, and that he had acted in accordance with his training for the safety of all those involved.
“Tasers provide officers with the ability to de-escalate situations and protect others from harm. We welcome scrutiny around the use of Taser and are working hard to engage with communities to involve them in monitoring how we use this tactic."
The IOPC also passed the allegations on to the CPS who have recommended no case to answer.
To avoid unnecessary confusion my opinion is I almost certainly would not have tasered the girl and would have endeavoured to disarm her directly if necessary, however I also don't think the officer acted inappropriately by choosing to reduce the danger of injury by using his taser in compliance with guidance.
In other words he acted in compliance with advice and I wouldn't have!
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steve
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Post by steve on Nov 30, 2023 11:58:16 GMT
The singer of the best Christmas song ever Shame McGowan has just died aged 65, a remarkably long life given his life long love of vast quantities of alcohol.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 30, 2023 12:01:14 GMT
Hancock getting a grilling why policy was not changed to assume asymptomtic spread. He made it pretty clear that he always acted on the formal scientific advice. He seems to have suspected asymptomatic spread all the way back to January, but the official position was no previous sars virus had spread asymptomatically (or at least no evidence of such) and so the advice was to assume the same. He says it was a source of enormous frustration that many advisors seemed to agree there was reason to suspect asyptomatic spread, even expect it, but nonetheless the advice remained the same until absolute proof was obtained. Hancock compared the issue to wheter chloroquine helped treat patients and the suspicion that it did leading to it being used, but the later proof it didnt work at all.
Which however rather begs the question that means of transmission was irrelevant if interventions did not in the end change the outcome. I guess Hancock's stance is that by acting faster, assuming asymptomatic spread, supercharging test and isolate, it might after all have been able to halt the disease before it got started. Unlikely, if it as already merrily spreading unnoticed in Hastings and other spots in the UK.
So far he is coming over quite well.
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steve
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Post by steve on Nov 30, 2023 12:03:43 GMT
pjw1961 Objectively like him or not Nick Clegg was a consummate campaigner in 2010. In televised debates he effectively ignored both Brown and Cameron stared straight at the camera and addressed the watching audience, a tactic never used in UK political debate it worked and left the other two resorting to " I agree with Nick" at points during the campaign it looked as if in voting numbers it might have been a three way tie. My personal opinion of Clegg was as Tories go he wasn't the worst ever.Shame he was leading a centre left party.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 30, 2023 12:15:44 GMT
Ok then, take the trend back to 2020 which is a fall for con about 6% a year, and rise for lab about the same, so the labour lead in a year's time will be 12% bigger. How many extra lost seats is that? Is that a good reason to go now? That isn't what is happening. The polls have essentially been static since the Spring. Isnt data wonderful? As I said, averaging over the last 4 years. I'd justify that by saying that within the period both parties had ups and downs and sudden sharp changes caused by specific events. There has however been a steady average trend from con to lab. During approx the last six months lab has gone through two saw tooth sharp rises then falls, whereas con has fallen steadily at approximately trend rate. Which has to indicate transfer is not automatically from con to lab. But again, if you go back 18 months, then lab was on a steady rising trend which was interrupted by probably Truss as leader, which caused lab support to shoot up far ahead of trend. Since then lab support has fallen back, but right now is back exactly on trend as if the whole leader change business truss then sunak had never happened.
So, one might expect con to have lost another 10 points difference to lab in another year. Sure they could find some event to do better than trend, but then they might find some event to do worse! The outside chance at the moment has to be an utter con wipeout placing them in third place. Starmer must know that and is likely trying for it, and that is why he is being so cautious. But con must know this too, and so their option is to accept a bad outcome now, or bet on whether things get better or worse in a year. They might be thinking about whether the following election in 6 years is winnable, and what straetgey now would maximise their chances then, assuming they have already written off this one.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 30, 2023 12:18:35 GMT
My personal opinion of Clegg was as Tories go he wasn't the worst ever. Shame he was leading a centre left party. I am reminded that Trump first sought a nomination from the democratic party. It was only after they wouldnt have him that he went republican. I wouldnt exactly describe him as a main stream republican, but he did get to be president, and Clegg got to be deputy prime minister.
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neilj
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Post by neilj on Nov 30, 2023 12:25:02 GMT
Ok then, take the trend back to 2020 which is a fall for con about 6% a year, and rise for lab about the same, so the labour lead in a year's time will be 12% bigger. How many extra lost seats is that? Is that a good reason to go now? That isn't what is happening. The polls have essentially been static since the Spring. Agree, indeed the Labour lead is slightly down following the disastrous Truss budget. The reality is it's all over for the tories, but they will be hoping some unexpected event comes to the rescue I remember the speculation there would be an election this year. Didn't happen as I and others predicted, because turkeys don't vote for Christmas
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Post by Rafwan on Nov 30, 2023 12:30:05 GMT
steveThat is very good news. After full due process, the officer is cleared and the senior officer is explicit that this was “an extremely rare and unusual case”. I am sure whitewashes and cover-ups can and do occur but apparently no one is suggesting this is happening here.
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pjw1961
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Post by pjw1961 on Nov 30, 2023 13:22:51 GMT
RIP Alistair Darling - only 70 as well.
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Post by leftieliberal on Nov 30, 2023 13:28:38 GMT
That isn't what is happening. The polls have essentially been static since the Spring. Agree, indeed the Labour lead is slightly down following the disastrous Truss budget. The reality is it's all over for the tories, but they will be hoping some unexpected event comes to the rescue I remember the speculation there would be an election this year. Didn't happen as I and others predicted, because turkeys don't vote for Christmas I think that the question should be "will Sunak dissolve Parliament as soon as the MPs come back from their Summer Recess, thus wiping out the Autumn 2024 Party Conferences or will he delay, allowing all the Conferences to be held and announce the General Election in a speech at the close of the Tory Party conference on 2nd October". In the latter case, the 21st or 28th November seem the most likely dates (remember that Parliament has one week of sittings after the announcement to 'wash up' - pass non-controversial legislation). While we are prepared for a 2nd May General Election, I don't expect one.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2023 13:50:30 GMT
RIP Alistair Darling - only 70 as well. Sad to read about his death. What a very different state this country would be in if instead of Cameron/Osborne we had had Brown/Darling continuing to steer us away from the worldwide crash of 2008. Small margins followed by hugely different outcomes.
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steve
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Post by steve on Nov 30, 2023 14:32:08 GMT
shevii"That's the Lib Dems problem really and why the coalition was so damaging because it's very hard for them to present as a soft left party after what happened, especially when their current leader was part of it all" Indeed, it's one of the main reasons I didn't vote for him as party leader. I voted for Layla Moran who only entered parliament in 2017. That being said he's a decent man and a seasoned and competent political campaigners who benefits from more of a human touch than either Sunakered ( not hard) or the somewhat wooden Starmer. I expect that might work reasonably well during a general election campaign.
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Post by alec on Nov 30, 2023 14:54:24 GMT
Interesting to contrast the characters of Alistair Darling and Mat Hancock, two politicians in the news today for very different reasons. While their careers were separated by less than a decade, they really look as if they emerged from completely different eras. Darling typified a long respected tradition of public service, where a sense of dignity and honesty was held in high regard, whereas Hancock represents a more modern age, where self interest and following the prevailing winds seem to be the order of the day. Their party affiliations are immaterial - I can think of quite a few of Hancock's former Conservative colleagues who I would place in the same bracket as Darling, and there are a fair few Labour grifters as well, but it's sad to see Darling depart so young.
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Post by crossbat11 on Nov 30, 2023 14:59:10 GMT
Extraordinary outpouring of respect, affection and grief, from right across the political spectrum, for Alistair Darling. All are united in their recognition of his decency, diligence and sense of public service.
I was particularly moved by a tribute from one of Osborne's financial team who bore testimony to the deep affection, respect and loyalty that they discovered there was for Darling throughout the Treasury when they took over in 2010. Apparently Darling was extraordinarily helpful to them as he handed over the reins of power. He said there was a lesson for all politicians to learn and it was a simple one. Be more like Alistair Darling.
I think history will be kind to Alistair Darling. I hope so, anyway.
I'm enormously saddened by his death
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neilj
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Post by neilj on Nov 30, 2023 15:12:23 GMT
That would do nicely
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Post by neilj on Nov 30, 2023 15:27:29 GMT
Annual inflation in the eurozone fell lower than expected to 2.4 per cent, half that of UK inflation
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 30, 2023 15:53:26 GMT
whereas Hancock represents a more modern age, where self interest and following the prevailing winds seem to be the order of the day. He really didnt come across like that at the enquiry today. Actually he was fighting hard the prevailing wind for what he saw was right. Though obviously, I think the whole approach was wrong, he didnt originate it.
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