ml1dch

Interesting graphic for polling fans, showing the trends of where voters are moving to and from based on current averages and the 2019 result:

48 minutes ago, bickster said:

He's a really odd fit for Richmond (Yorkshire) and it’s pretty obvious why he’s their MP because it's one of the safest Tory seats in the country and the local association were asked to elect him for the sake of the party etc. 

Nah, I reckon he just turned up and pointed out that he and his billionaire family would want to move to the area and that sounded more impressive to a bunch of Tories than anything the two or three middle-aged councillors that he was up against could muster. 

Quote

 

Wendy Morton: Former chairman of the Richmond Conservative Association and Richmondshire District councillor. She has previously fought the marginal seat of Tynemouth at the 2010 General Election, She is vice chairman of the Conservative Party for Social Action.

Cllr Robert Light: Leader of the Conservative group on Kirklees Council in West Yorkshire and former council leader. A Commissioner at the Audit Commission and deputy chairman of the Environment Agency. He also runs a farming and equestrian business.

Chris Brannigan: a former Lieutenant Colonel in the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, with whom he served on eleven operational tours. In 2012, he was shortlisted to be the Conservative candidate for Hampshire Police and Crime Commissioner. He is manager of an art gallery.

 

That was his competition. 

7 hours ago, bannedfromHandV said:

Why has it taken a TV show to get the government interested in the Post Office / Horizon scandal?!

 

Its been in the news for a good while but now it’s been turned into a mini drama for TV the government decides to begin acting, absolute shitshow as per.

I bow to nobody in my dislike of this Government, but it didn't take a TV show to get them interested, they got interested in September 2020 when they set up an Independent Inquiry, which was promoted to a Statutory Inquiry in 2021. 

The TV programme means that their constituents and the media are now starting to ask them questions about it, the responses to which are now being more widely reported than they were.
 

4 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

In the by election caused by ther removal of the flasher Peter Bone, the local tory party has chosen his girlfriend to replace him.

He left his missus to shack up with his parliamentary assistant, showed his cock around the office, got fired, now his assistant is selected to take his job.

I’m not sure that selection will help the tories draw a line under the story.

Which is nice.

...and as a nice little blackmaily twist, there was lots of talk that Bone would stand as the Reform candidate, and he threatened do so if the Tories didn't select his missus. 

Hence Reform parachuting in Brexit embarrassment Ben Habib as candidate at the last minute, and Bone just has to live out his days with the shame of being Peter Bone.

I like this new way of forcing a General Election by removing MPs, one at a time until there is no majority left.

Does seem a bit inefficient though.

He looks like Ken Barlow if he were receiving end-of-life care.

I imagine this will be well-received on here.

1 hour ago, desensitized43 said:

The Tories are going to have to do some kind of grubby deal with Reform to get them to stand aside. It's obvious this is coming.

I wouldn't say it's obvious at all. 

Next eleven months of politics in the US is going to be wild.

57 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Didn't Boris say he had an oven ready free trade deal with USA.

Nope.

Always time for this 2012 tweet...

2 hours ago, bickster said:

It's getting to the stage where they'll find it hard to actually find a decent candidate to fight the seat for them. 

They couldn't find any decent candidates last time and they still romped home.

Nice, busy Westminster day to bury awkward stories.

20 minutes ago, Genie said:

Is it too much to expect something that is completed to be presented and then voted on? 

Well, yes. Hardly any legislation passes which hasn't been amended on the way. 

1 hour ago, bickster said:

I suspect the factions are only agreeing to vote for it on the first reading to get to the other side of Xmas

Problem is, that only helps one faction. The One Nation lot are keen to do that as it kicks the whole thing into the long grass.

The nutty lot have realised that if they don't set fire to it now, there's probably a chance they never get the opportunity to in all the Lords / Committee / Amendment stuff. But they probably don't have the numbers, so they're in a bit of a bind about "their" bit of the party looking weak if they go for it, and their point of view being relegated to a position of as irrelevance if they don't.

The conundrums you can face when you're an idiot. 

15 hours ago, markavfc40 said:

It is slightly worse than that. There is another 50 mill payment expected to be made on top of the 240 mill already paid so it will be 1.45 mill per person if , and it is a huge if, we send 200 people over.

 

So pessimistic. Given no asylum seekers are going to be sent to Rwanda, the cost per asylum seeker will be £0. Given the indivisibility of zero and all that.

11 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

For example, in Wyre Forest where I live there is no way that Labour would win here. 

On current polling, Labour take Wyre Forest, helped by a comparably high Reform vote. 

21 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

The system helps the 2 main paries big time.  Labour were useless last time and still won over 200 seats. In 97 the Tories still ended up with 165 seats.

You also need to look though at the changing sands of seats - it's very easy to get caught up in the results of elections and not see the trends underneath. 

Example - 2017 is broadly seen as a terrible election for the Tories, but May increased the Tory vote by 2m from the 2015 result, to lose thirteen seats. But those extra votes turned a load of safe Labour seats into marginals. In 2019, Johnson only added 300,000 votes to May's 2017 total, to gain forty eight seats - nearly all them the ones that May had softened up two years earlier.

What else happened in 2019? The Lib Dems went from twelve seats to eleven and Jo Swinson lost her seat. But in the process, they added over a million votes to their 2017 total which was the most extra votes that any party gained by a mile in that election. And the majority of those went into turning safe Tory seats into Tory / Lib Dem marginals in 2024.

If Starmer gets the stonking majority that looks likely at the moment, he's arguably got Jo Swinson to thank more than anybody on his own side. 

2 minutes ago, Genie said:

I am still not convinced Sunak is the mentalist he appears to be with the governments policies. 

I thought he’d be stronger on being sensible given he is in the privileged position of not having to keep the job to pay the bills. He should be able to tell the crazy factions in the party to jog on.

He’s actually completely spineless and has forgotten how to think for himself.

As Bicks said previously, he has two wings of the party of a hundred or so MPs each who want completely different things. If he significantly upsets either side them they will probably bring him down. If he slightly upsets all of them, they probably just about leave him here.

2 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Does he need party permission to call an election? 

Technically Parliament needs to vote for it. But obviously given most if not all opposition parties would vote for it, and any Tory who didn't would probably lose the whip and be deselected, it would probably be a formality. 

29 minutes ago, cyrusr said:

 Even as it stands its ignoring HRA/ECHR; meaning the "One Nation" Tories will rebel, because they are not that insane.

I feel that you are over-estimating the chances of Tory MPs voting with their conscience instead of their personal and party interest. 

13 hours ago, markavfc40 said:

Jenrick has resigned as immigration minister. Maybe the polices haven't gone far enough for that bastard.

 

It's very weird what's happened to Jenrick. He was supposedly put in as Immigration Minister to be the "sensible one" and keep Braverman on a tight leash so she didn't do anything too nutty. There was even talk at the time that he was the de facto Home Secretary and she just had the title.

But it seems like his time in the Home Office has completely radicalised him.