domjg
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Post by domjg on May 3, 2024 9:12:33 GMT
I've never been under any illusion about that. Until Jan 1st 2021 it could have been reversed at any time. The second after we left the transition period it was like the UK had never been a member. The EU is a tough organisation and as a club exists to prioritise the interests of it's members. We were now outside and it would rightly play hardball with us. I'm looking for an eventual re-alignment on freedom of movement and customs at least much like Norway or Switzerland. We'll be 'rule-takers' and not rule makers as we were before but I couldn't care less about that if it aids the economy and restores individual's rights. Yes it comes down to the interests of the members. Surely from both an economic and military point of view it would be in their best interests to let the UK rejoin ASAP. The 'return of the prodigal' would be potentially a propaganda coup but I think they'd want to make sure that this wouldn't be a flip-flopping thing with the UK wanting to leave again 15 years later. Being a member of the EU is a commitment with most states bound by the Euro and Schengen (though of course Schengen includes non EU states) not a club to dip in and out of. They'd want to be certain we were in it for ever and that would possibly mean a commitment to the single currency. I don't see military issues come into it. If one day there is a European defence force alongside or, heaven forbid, instead of NATO I suspect it will be developed outside of the EU structures and we would be part of it's formation from the get go. Norway would also be an indispensable non EU member of such a force, as it borders Russia in the Arctic. |
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Post by lululemonmustdobetter on May 3, 2024 9:23:10 GMT
Full result for Blackpool South By-Election 🌹 LAB: 58.9% (+20.6) 🌳 CON: 17.5% (-32.1) YouGov MRP had this as: Lab 50 Con 21 Britain forecast was Lab 50% Con 30% I think Labour will be happy . So the Tories will be very worried! I think early on in Sunderland (I love elections but sadly was only able to stay up for a bit last night) that results in Labour wards were showing swings to Lab from Con in the double digits. So where Labour is already strong they are seeing big swings.
Perhaps, the nature and scope of the elections last night will make it extremely difficult to unpick! But I believe Sunak is sunk.
Possibly the most reliable gage could be the estimated national % share. Will a Labour lead in that reflect what we are seeing in the polls? |
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Post by jib on May 3, 2024 9:31:07 GMT
I think the Tory Party will blow its top after all this.
What a shambles!
I can see the silly fools engaging in a completely surreal internal leadership election - hustings and all - over the summer!
Penny vs Suella!
Or will they just realise that its best to let Sunak go down with the ship?
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Post by James E on May 3, 2024 9:33:22 GMT
Full result for Blackpool South By-Election 🌹 LAB: 58.9% (+20.6) 🌳 CON: 17.5% (-32.1) ➡️ RFM: 16.9% (+10.7) 🔶 LDM: 2.1% (-1.0) 🌍 GRN: 2.0% (+0.3) 🙋 IND: 0.9% (New) 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 ADF: 0.8% (New) 🎩 MRLP: 0.7% (New) ....... I think Labour will be happy That is a monumental collapse of the Conservative vote. 17.5% is just 35% of their 2019 share, and is even lower than the 38-39% they recorded in Wellingborough and Rochdale. And the increase in the Labour vote will be very pleasing for Starmer. In rough terms, the Conservatives' lost vote share went two-thirds to Labour and one-third to Reform UK. That isn't what the polls are showing, as most have this the other way round. And even Survation, who I think are likely to be the most accurate for RUK, show Labour taking just a bit more of the Con 2019 vote than RUK (16% to 14%). Reform UK's vote share is marginally lower than the 17.3% which UKIP achieved in 2015, when UKIP took 12.5% of the GB vote. Given that the pre-2015 by-elections produced far better results for UKIP than the subsequent General Election, it should be clear that they are unlikely to be in contention for any seats, even if they retain 10-13% of the vote. |
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Post by jib on May 3, 2024 9:33:45 GMT
Yes it comes down to the interests of the members. Surely from both an economic and military point of view it would be in their best interests to let the UK rejoin ASAP. The 'return of the prodigal' would be potentially a propaganda coup but I think they'd want to make sure that this wouldn't be a flip-flopping thing with the UK wanting to leave again 15 years later. Being a member of the EU is a commitment with most states bound by the Euro and Schengen (though of course Schengen includes non EU states) not a club to dip in and out of. They'd want to be certain we were in it for ever and that would possibly mean a commitment to the single currency. I don't see military issues come into it. If one day there is a European defence force alongside or, heaven forbid, instead of NATO I suspect it will be developed outside of the EU structures and we would be part of it's formation from the get go. Norway would also be an indispensable non EU member of such a force, as it borders Russia in the Arctic. Rejoin! Even the Lib Dems have given up talking about it (OK....maybe not steve , but....). See any mention here? www.libdems.org.uk/planNot happening, not on any serious political agenda. 2016 was a generational decision and all that. |
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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A step on the way toward the demise of the liberal elite? Or just a blip…
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on May 3, 2024 9:37:50 GMT
At least the very first bit shows some sort of grasp on reality. I'm looking for an eventual re-alignment on freedom of movement and customs In principle, if that were to happen, that would be right up my street. In practice however, it tends not to be just that: there is more under the radar. In order to secure tariff-free trade etc., they also tend to insist on our accepting things like restrictions on state investment. Which is a big reason why leaving the EU doesn’t give quite the freedom some might think it does. “You can check out any time you like but you can never leave”. Even if it did, other trade arrangements like the World Trade Organisation, and the Pacific partnership we recently joined, also tend to include such restrictions (though they may not always be avidly policed). This is the way things have been set up: in order to get some right-wing things we might want, e.g. in terms of reducing trade frictions, we also have to accept some other right-wing anti-state stuff alongside, like restrictions on state investment which can hamper growth and constrain action on things like climate change. (Which is why the US recently in effect said “sod this”, daring the EU to sue, and started breaking the rules on state investment so they can pump more into the green economy). |
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domjg
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Post by domjg on May 3, 2024 9:38:13 GMT
The 'return of the prodigal' would be potentially a propaganda coup but I think they'd want to make sure that this wouldn't be a flip-flopping thing with the UK wanting to leave again 15 years later. Being a member of the EU is a commitment with most states bound by the Euro and Schengen (though of course Schengen includes non EU states) not a club to dip in and out of. They'd want to be certain we were in it for ever and that would possibly mean a commitment to the single currency. I don't see military issues come into it. If one day there is a European defence force alongside or, heaven forbid, instead of NATO I suspect it will be developed outside of the EU structures and we would be part of it's formation from the get go. Norway would also be an indispensable non EU member of such a force, as it borders Russia in the Arctic. Rejoin! Even the Lib Dems have given up talking about it (OK....maybe not steve , but....). See any mention here? www.libdems.org.uk/planNot happening, not on any serious political agenda. 2016 was a generational decision and all that. Like I said re-join is not going to happen anytime soon. Re-alignment by stealth so that we eventually end up in a place where we have many of the attributes of membership but without having a say will happen as it makes sense economically, diplomatically and culturally once this ideologically hidebound gvt is gone. What do you feel about that? |
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Post by James E on May 3, 2024 9:41:00 GMT
@lululemonmustdobetter
"Possibly the most reliable gauge could be the estimated national % share. Will a Labour lead in that reflect what we are seeing in the polls?"
No, it won't.
Local Elections produce a different pattern of results to General Elections, even when the two are held on the same day.
Labour take a lower share of the overall vote than in GE polls, particularly when they are doing well. As I mentioned yesterday, the best comparison for NEV would be last year's figures of Lab 35%, Con 26%, LD 20%. Looking further back, in 1995 and 1996 when Labour were polling in the mid-to-high 50s, they Local Election NEV was still around 8-10 points lower than that.
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pjw1961
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Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
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Post by pjw1961 on May 3, 2024 9:42:33 GMT
Full result for Blackpool South By-Election 🌹 LAB: 58.9% (+20.6) 🌳 CON: 17.5% (-32.1) ➡️ RFM: 16.9% (+10.7) 🔶 LDM: 2.1% (-1.0) 🌍 GRN: 2.0% (+0.3) 🙋 IND: 0.9% (New) 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 ADF: 0.8% (New) 🎩 MRLP: 0.7% (New) ....... I think Labour will be happy That is a monumental collapse of the Conservative vote. 17.5% is just 35% of their 2019 share, and is even lower than the 38-39% they recorded in Wellingborough and Rochdale. And the increase in the Labour vote will be very pleasing for Starmer. In rough terms, the Conservatives' lost vote share went two-thirds to Labour and one-third to Reform UK. That isn't what the polls are showing, as most have this the other way round. And even Survation, who I think are likely to be the most accurate for RUK, show Labour taking just a bit more of the Con 2019 vote than RUK (16% to 14%). Reform UK's vote share is marginally lower than the 17.3% which UKIP achieved in 2015, when UKIP took 12.5% of the GB vote. Given that the pre-2015 by-elections produced far better results for UKIP than the subsequent General Election, it should be clear that they are unlikely to be in contention for any seats, even if they retain 10-13% of the vote. Although we shouldn't ignore the contribution to those numbers of the very low turnout. Labour's 58.9% represented only 10,825 votes. Clearly a lot of Tory inclined voters are simply staying at home. I suspect we may see some of that at the GE as well, albeit on a smaller scale. |
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Post by lululemonmustdobetter on May 3, 2024 9:47:02 GMT
So Harlow result, in'19 the Tories won the seat with 63.5% and Labour haven't held it since 2005. They only just fell short last night. Really GE's are different, so as a seat its clearly in play. Wow, how the political map has changed since 2021.
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Post by lululemonmustdobetter on May 3, 2024 9:50:22 GMT
@lululemonmustdobetter " Possibly the most reliable gauge could be the estimated national % share. Will a Labour lead in that reflect what we are seeing in the polls?"
No, it won't. Local Elections produce a different pattern of results to General Elections, even when the two are held on the same day. |
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pjw1961
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Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
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Post by pjw1961 on May 3, 2024 9:54:09 GMT
So Harlow result, in'19 the Tories won the seat with 63.5% and Labour haven't held it since 2005. They only just fell short last night. Really GE's are different, so as a seat its clearly in play. Wow, how the political map has changed since 2021. Talking Essex, the Thurrock* result was even better. Admittedly there were local as well as national factors, the Conservatives having bankrupted the Council, but defending 13 seats and losing 12 of them (8 to Labour) can only be seen as disastrous. * Furruk to the denizens of south Essex  |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 3, 2024 9:54:34 GMT
Khan has dug in over clean air and ULEZ when he was under pressure from his own party to change tack after Uxbridge and he has dug in over Green Belt as compared to say, Burnham in Manchester, who bottled and continues to bottle the clean air measures and seems much less bothered about Green Land. Isn't (or wasnt) the issue of air pollution rather worse in London than anywhere else, which might justify giving it rather less attention elsewhere. It would be quite ridiuculous to argue it would improve health in hastings, at the opposite extreme. Green belts wwere created as part of a policy to shrink the size of London and probably other cities too. Given we now have a policy of growing cities, they may very well make no sense at all. Just force up property prices unnecessarily. |
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Post by jib on May 3, 2024 10:02:36 GMT
Rejoin! Even the Lib Dems have given up talking about it (OK....maybe not steve , but....). See any mention here? www.libdems.org.uk/planNot happening, not on any serious political agenda. 2016 was a generational decision and all that. Like I said re-join is not going to happen anytime soon. Re-alignment by stealth so that we eventually end up in a place where we have many of the attributes of membership but without having a say will happen as it makes sense economically, diplomatically and culturally once this ideologically hidebound gvt is gone. What do you feel about that? Inevitable I'd say and I hope Labour push on with getting us back to where we should have reached after 2016 in any case - the Norway+ option. Clearly we will never be full members of the EU, but the EU will be more than happy that we're aligned and stand shoulder to shoulder when it comes to Russian, Iranian and Chinese aggression. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 3, 2024 10:11:03 GMT
Inevitable I'd say and I hope Labour push on with getting us back to where we should have reached after 2016 in any case - the Norway+ option. You mean the vassal state option? follow the rules but dont make them? There is indeed a case to be made for stripping the westminster government of all possible powers. Devolving as many as possible to local bodies and putting the rest in the hands of an international organisation in which we have no decision making say. Only that sounds the exact opposite of the Brexiteers goal. |
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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A step on the way toward the demise of the liberal elite? Or just a blip…
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on May 3, 2024 10:14:15 GMT
Rejoin! Even the Lib Dems have given up talking about it (OK....maybe not steve , but....). See any mention here? www.libdems.org.uk/planNot happening, not on any serious political agenda. 2016 was a generational decision and all that. Like I said re-join is not going to happen anytime soon. Re-alignment by stealth so that we eventually end up in a place where we have many of the attributes of membership but without having a say will happen as it makes sense economically, diplomatically and culturally once this ideologically hidebound gvt is gone. What do you feel about that? The right keep saying how we will have less influence outside the pro-capital bloc, and it might be true in some ways, but it is worth questioning these memes: quite often you can have more influence outside the tent pissing in, because you may have more options lying outside the anti-state rules. And this can make quite a big difference. One relatively recent example was the banking crash. Because we were outside the Euro, and controlled our own currency, we were able to fashion our own response, using QE etc., which the Americans quickly accepted, and the eurozone eventually adopted. Another example was the pandemic: we did our own thing and moved quickly to get the vaccine going quickly and the EU wound up copying us in some respects. Meanwhile the US has decided to break ranks with the EU and do a different thing on climate change, leave the right-wing World Trade Organisation economic tent somewhat with more state investment, and dragged the EU into doing something similar. More generally, an advantage of having lots of different states with lots of freedom, as opposed to all being made to follow a similar path, is they are able to try and lots of different approaches, and you get to observe what works the best and pick the best responses out of all of them. If states are all forced into a more similar funnel, you may not get to explore the same range of options. |
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Post by crossbat11 on May 3, 2024 10:22:06 GMT
Lewis Baston, an elections specialist, has written an analysis of the results so far for the Guardian. He thinks the outlook looks better for Labour than some of the council seat change figures imply. I've highlighted in bold the main reasons why this may be the case: -
"The Blackpool South byelection was not a routine mid-term setback for the party of government. For a start, it comes well into the fifth year of the parliament and is therefore late-term; the swing is also much higher than normal for mid-terms. We have become used to swings of more than 20 percentage points and Blackpool South is the fifth Conservative seat to fall to Labour on such a large movement in the last year.
No previous parliament since 1945 has had more than two such wins for the main opposition. Blackpool’s verdict looks like an electoral death sentence for the Conservative government. While it is true that the turnout was very low (32.5%) this makes the disappearance of the Conservative vote all the more remarkable. Fewer people voted Tory in 2024 (3,218) than comprised Scott Benton’s marginal majority in 2019 (3,690). Labour polled well over half the vote; its victory owed nothing to the rise of Reform UK to threaten the Tories’ hold on second place …
The results demonstrate how we no longer have the same party system for different levels of election. In Blackpool South, Labour dominated the centre-left vote, the Lib Dems and Greens both losing their deposit. The rightwing vote was divided almost evenly between the Conservatives and Reform UK, giving Labour a massive margin of victory. In the local elections. the pattern is different, with Lib Dems and Greens having local strongholds and dividing the centre-left, while Reform’s limited participation in the local elections meant the Conservatives did not have to worry about vote splits outside a few localities like Hartlepool and Sunderland.
The toll of local government seat losses for the Conservatives, daunting though it may be as the day’s counting proceeds, is understating the potential for a general election drubbing."
What Baston is arguing, it seems to me, is that tactical voting on the centre left and splits on the centre right bite the Tories backsides in parliamentary elections far more than they do in the local elections where, ironically, a slightly reverse effect assists them.
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Post by wb61 on May 3, 2024 10:22:45 GMT
Must be a low turnout in the North East Mayoral election as BBC are predicting that the result will be much earlier than the 12:30 prediction.
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Post by moby on May 3, 2024 10:29:47 GMT
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 3, 2024 10:32:55 GMT
Although we shouldn't ignore the contribution to those numbers of the very low turnout. Labour's 58.9% represented only 10,825 votes. Clearly a lot of Tory inclined voters are simply staying at home. I suspect we may see some of that at the GE as well, albeit on a smaller scale. Plus this is a by-election. Many Tory voters are sending a message to Sunak by voting Reform (knowing the seat was lost anyway) and a chunk of those will drift back in a nationwide GE. |
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Post by graham on May 3, 2024 10:34:31 GMT
Houchen also wins Redcar & Cleveland by nearly 4000 votes. |
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Post by jimjam on May 3, 2024 10:36:47 GMT
Neil,
Re "Turnout for the Tees Valley Mayor vote is 30.53%, slightly down from 34% last time
Can't see Houchen losing it, but it will be despite the tory brand, not because of it"
Houchen winning comfortably - with 3 consituencies counted is around 39K+ v 33.5K for McEwan
Stockton, Houchen's best area and the largest to finish counting, so around 10% or just below victory seems likely as Darlington maybe closer being McEwan's home patch but still Houchen.
We hoped for a 20% swing which is a margin around 6% but looks like 18% perhaps.
Let's see what the NAO find when Labour in power?
Matt Storey looks set to take Cleveland PPC but that count later, just going off verification tallys feedback.
SKY have I hear
means
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Post by graham on May 3, 2024 10:37:42 GMT
Houchen wins Middlesborough by 536 votes.
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Post by graham on May 3, 2024 10:39:08 GMT
So Houchen is not seen locally as corrupt?
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Post by moby on May 3, 2024 10:43:18 GMT
James Heale
@jaheale
Expected timings for the big 11 mayoralties:
Today:
North East: 12pm
Tees Valley: 12.30pm
East Mids: 2pm
York & North Yorks: 3pm
Tomorrow:
London: 1.30pm
South Yorks: 2pm
Liverpool City Region: 2pm
West Mids: 3pm
West Yorks: 3.15pm
Greater Manchester: 4pm
Salford: 7pm
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pjw1961
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Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
Posts: 8,572
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Post by pjw1961 on May 3, 2024 10:53:20 GMT
BBC reporting that the mood at the East Midlands mayoral count is that Labour will win it, possibly comfortably.
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steve
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Post by steve on May 3, 2024 10:58:31 GMT
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Post by Deleted on May 3, 2024 11:00:59 GMT
Labour has won the police and crime commissioner election in Avon and Somerset, taking the post from the Conservatives. Clare Moody, Labour's candidate for the region, beat her Conservative predecessor Mark Shelford by more than 4,000 votes. The election was for Avon and Somerset Police's PCC, which covers areas including Bristol. The turnout however was shite barely 1 in 5 bothered to vote. These posts are largely pointless but even so. Yay! I've actually backed the winning horse and contributed to a LAB win, however modest, in rural Somerset!  |
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Post by jimjam on May 3, 2024 11:02:13 GMT
Re Mayoral elections, seems to me that victory margins may be different in some cases from expectations but the view that the West Midlands one is the only one really too close to call was right.
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Post by steamdrivenandy on May 3, 2024 11:08:29 GMT
On the current BBC councillor result figures:
Labour have gained 20%
Lib Dems have gained 19%
Con have lost 52%
Ind have gained 150%
Greens have gained 115%
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