05-Feb 2024 : LAB 45% / CON 24% / REF 12% / LDM 9%

[Mark]

Westminster VI (4 February):

Labour 45% (–)
Conservative 24% (+2)
Reform UK 12% (–)
Liberal Democrat 9% (-2)
Green 4% (-2)
Scottish National Party 3% (–)
Other 2% (+1)

@redfield Wilton
Changes +/- 28 January

[crossbat11]

Second!

😅🔥

[jib]

No major surprises really, but the decline of the Lib Dems is certainly pretty obvious.

[crossbat11]

Feb 5, 2024 18:51:13 GMT jib said:

No major surprises really, but the decline of the Lib Dems is certainly pretty obvious.

Steve will be here so we should be able to resume this discussion soon and keep it going for another 362 pages.

Looking forward to it.

[leftieliberal]

One in four Britons want Trump back in the White House.

Some 20 per cent of Labour voters and 31 per cent of Conservative voters would prefer a Trump victory.
I can quite believe that 31% of Tory voters are headbangers, but 20% of Labour voters??? What have they been smoking?

[steve]

Attachment Deleted
crossbat11
There is no point.

[Deleted]

And in good time here comes our noble lord.

(Richard III for you duffers.)

[Deleted]

Feb 5, 2024 19:11:09 GMT leftieliberal said:

One in four Britons want Trump back in the White House.

Some 20 per cent of Labour voters and 31 per cent of Conservative voters would prefer a Trump victory.
I can quite believe that 31% of Tory voters are headbangers, but 20% of Labour voters??? What have they been smoking?

There are clearly a lot of people who admire a man (not so much a woman) who “says what he thinks”.

Actually analysing it is, of course, another matter.

[steve]

There are clearly a lot of people who admire a man (not so much a woman) who “says what he thinks”.


And in the traitors case he thinks Nikki Hayley is Nancy Pelosi, Jo Biden is Barak Obama and he prevented World war two

[graham]

Did Gallup ask British voters in 1939 how many admired Adolf Hitler?

[crossbat11]

Feb 5, 2024 20:19:37 GMT graham said:

Did Gallup ask British voters in 1939 how many admired Adolf Hitler?

All I know about Hitler was that he was somewhat to the Left of Keir Starmer.

[graham]

Feb 5, 2024 20:24:39 GMT crossbat11 said:

Feb 5, 2024 20:19:37 GMT graham said:

Did Gallup ask British voters in 1939 how many admired Adolf Hitler?

All I know about Hitler was that he was somewhat to the Left of Keir Starmer.

I could not possibly comment.

[Old Southendian]

Apologies to Royalists. Maybe Sunak has another reason to cling to power as long as possible so he can match Truss' achievement by killing a monarch.

[Deleted]

Feb 5, 2024 19:56:59 GMT @fecklessmiser said:

Feb 5, 2024 19:11:09 GMT leftieliberal said:

One in four Britons want Trump back in the White House.

Some 20 per cent of Labour voters and 31 per cent of Conservative voters would prefer a Trump victory.
I can quite believe that 31% of Tory voters are headbangers, but 20% of Labour voters??? What have they been smoking?

There are clearly a lot of people who admire a man (not so much a woman) who “says what he thinks”.

Actually analysing it is, of course, another matter.

Another thought is that we are thinking about people who pay very little attention to world affairs and politics generally. They probably think along the lines of: “He’d be good for a laugh.”

[mercian]

Feb 5, 2024 19:11:09 GMT leftieliberal said:

One in four Britons want Trump back in the White House.

Some 20 per cent of Labour voters and 31 per cent of Conservative voters would prefer a Trump victory.
I can quite believe that 31% of Tory voters are headbangers, but 20% of Labour voters??? What have they been smoking?

Good to see you admit that more Labour voters are drug addicts. Explains a lot. 

[ptarmigan]

Interesting discussion in the previous thread on recent polling regarding Muslim voters and its electoral implications. There was a piece in the Guardian about a week ago on this subject which commented: "As long as Labour is 20 or more points ahead in the polls, Labour sources say these voters are unlikely to prevent the party from winning the election. But senior party figures are concerned that if the polls narrow, they could make the difference between victory and defeat in more than a dozen seats. Many of the Tory-held seats they are targeting, including Wycombe, Peterborough and Bury North, have Muslim populations well above 10%."

This prompted me to take more of a look into the demographics and I think it somewhat supports what the above is saying. Looking at census information in 2001 the Muslim population of England & Wales was 1.6m, by 2011 this had risen to 2.7m and by 2021 it stood at over 3.8m. As a % of the population Muslims made up 3% of the population in 2001 and now make up 6.5%. In 2005 when there was backlash over Iraq there were around 40 constituencies where Muslims comprised at least 10% of the population. There are now over 100 such constituencies. Despite this I'm not sure Labour need to be unduly worried at the moment - a lot of the seats with the largest Muslim populations are very safe Labour seats without an obvious alternative for disillusioned voters - but think it's worth noting that this is now quite a significant voting bloc with more potential to influence elections than in the past.  

[mercian]

ptarmigan
I wonder if any polling has been done to see if 'traditional' Labour voters are happy that Labour is now the party of choice for Muslims? In the longer term it could be a bigger problem for the party than the old left-right divergence, especially as Muslims tend to be socially conservative whereas the official party policy is very 'woke'.

[steve]

Good luck to Labour candidate Gen Kitchen in the upcoming Wellingborough election.

Here she is taking a break with her campaign manager Idris Elba.
Attachment Deleted

[neilj]

Both the Redfield Wilton and the Delta poll yesterday continued to show Starmer increasing his lead over Sunak
Starmer’s approval ratings are not great, but they are so much better than Sunak's and that's the person he's up against

[neilj]

Useful analysis of the effect of dissatisfaction among Muslim vote on Labour wins
In short he says it won't effect the chances of Labour winning seats in any appreciable numbers, if at all

[alec]

Well, if a 73 year old can start cancer treatment 24 hours after a diagnosis, the NHS can't be too bad, can it?

[alec]

Of Kings, Princes and paupers; Charlie gets cancer treatment inside 24 hours, everyone else queues round the block for the chance to see a dentist - www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/05/queue-new-nhs-dental-practice-bristol-st-pauls

Sometimes I really wish the Brits were like French farmers. We just sit there, like spineless jellyfish, idly watching while the Conservatives shaft us again and again and again.
Those 'Free Borne Englishmen' are such a pathetic bunch sometimes.

[Danny]

Feb 5, 2024 19:58:12 GMT alec said:

Pretty staggering numbers from the ONS today. After re-weighting their population data, they now think there are 2.8m working age people unable to work due to ill health, up from the 2.6m previously. They now think that since the start of the pandemic, long term sickness has risen by 33%, rather than the 24% previously, after a decade of mainly level or slightly falling numbers.

Really bad figures with huge long term implications, and according to the recent data, the rate of rise appears to be getting steeper. Covid is not done with us yet.

Health statistics have deteriorated from the point in time con took over from lab in 2010. Thats a combination of rising demand, more older people, coupled with funding rising slower than the rise in demand. Plus its not clear that although funding increases have been above general inflation, they have been above medical inflation. In that time doctors lost 1/3 of their pay in real terms (or 1/4 as calculated by 'more or less'). Which is not a sustainable way of funding care.

The arithmetic is simple and has been the same ever since the NHS was created. In the early days it was said that once everyone was cured, then the cost of the NHS would fall. This of course never happened, because when someone is helped to survive one illness, they just continues to age and become weaker before facing and needing help with another. The more care you provide, the more demand you create for that care.

This has nothing whatever to do with covid, which in the end was no more than a very bad extended flu season. Pretty small in comparison to overall health needs. Had we done nothing whatever about covid, it actually doesnt seem likely many more would have died, not least because 'doing nothing' is not what happens when we get ill, we always change our behaviour to avoid infecting high risk people, but in much much cheaper ways than were attempted. However, if covid had been worse, then it would have killed more old people and so reduced long term demand for care into the future. Boris Johnson was helped to survive covid, but already in his 50s and overweight, he was and still is a walking high risk patient who will in all probability now go on to need lots of care before he eventually dies. Not to get into the morality of whether or not its right or wrong to extend life, the fact is that each time we do this we create future demand for more medical services.

The last labour government had a policy of increasing NHS funding faster than demand. The conservative government has a policy of allowing funding to fall behind demand. We see the results.  The political question is do we want  to reverse that again? Con chose to allow more to die earlier, do we want to continue that,  will we choose to tax more accumulated wealth  to fund it or is it considered preferable to allow a minority of individuals to amass more personal wealth and use it to live longer themselves?

Since WW2 growth of government spending for the common good has been funded by growth of the economy.  But for the last 20 years or so growth has slowed. There are a number of likely reasons. Greater proportion of pensioners who do not contribute. More surviving long term sick. School leaving age increased from about 16 to 21. Essential utilities  now operated to make private sector profits instead of funding state services or simply acting as a subsidy to industry.  Policy of housing shortage pushing up industries costs. Falling birth rate, and very probably a fall in real productivity per citizen as we become more wealthy. Most recently, brexit.

In the future this term of conservative government may be seen as a huge lost opportunity, where government needed to reinvest in British industry, starting with cheap money which however was squandered on tax cuts and ineffectual health measures. And took an axe to our main trading links.

[steve]

Alec
I'm sure he'll receive the best treatment our money can buy.

[Danny]

Feb 5, 2024 18:51:13 GMT jib said:

No major surprises really, but the decline of the Lib Dems is certainly pretty obvious.

Hmm. Might this be evidence that the undecided are already making up their minds? As labour's vote holds steady or maybe continues to rise, does it mean not that people have not thought about a coming election and started swinging back (to con), but they have chosen they arent going to?

[steve]

"does it mean not that people have not thought about a coming election and started swinging back (to con), but they have chosen they arent going to?"
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[hireton]

John Harris is amongst the best of the Guardian's commentators on English politics and his latest article on Reform UK's impact is worth a read:

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/04/conservatives-right-reform-uk-wellingborough-byelection

His overall assessment is:

"Meanwhile, the story about Reform’s often overlooked effects on Westminster grinds on. From the Rwanda bill to the so-called war on woke, there is an array of Tory stances and policies at least partly motivated by a flailing quest to somehow keep the Reform threat at bay. As the Conservatives are continually pulled to the right, moreover, Labour thinks it sees proof of an essentially reactionary electorate, and often follows suit."

It seems that leadership in politics is increasingly out of fashion.

[crossbat11]

Feb 6, 2024 7:20:42 GMT steve said:

Good luck to Labour candidate Gen Kitchen in the upcoming Wellingborough election.

Here she is taking a break with her campaign manager Idris Elba.
View AttachmentView Attachment

I have suddenly got the urge to do some campaigning in Wellingborough!

My Northfield experience should get Gen over the line, I'm sure

😛😜

[pjw1961]

Feb 6, 2024 2:03:38 GMT mercian said:

ptarmigan
I wonder if any polling has been done to see if 'traditional' Labour voters are happy that Labour is now the party of choice for Muslims? In the longer term it could be a bigger problem for the party than the old left-right divergence, especially as Muslims tend to be socially conservative whereas the official party policy is very 'woke'.

Interesting. Perhaps you would prefer that political parties were organised along ethnic and/or religious grounds. There are many countries in the world where that happens - Modi is doing very well in India out of Hindu nationalism for example - and we only need look at Northern Ireland to find parties with religion as a significant factor in their origins, but the noticable thing is it tends to be accompanied by rampant sectarianism, discrimination and often violence as well. 

[hireton]

For those interested in an analysis of how the new UK Westminster constituencies would have voted in the 2019 UK General Election:

www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2024/jan/16/find-your-constituency-uk-general-election-2024-boundary-changes-votes-map-postcode