ml1dch

36 minutes ago, Genie said:

The fact that MP’s are still backing it is part of the scandal.

But also the reason that the Government is surviving the apparent scandal. 

8 minutes ago, Genie said:

I think that is over simplifying it a tad  

Not really. Tory MPs have completely backed it in principle, as a policy. So why would anything but the cost be a reason for them to collapse their own Government?

6 minutes ago, Genie said:

I’ve no idea how the government are surviving this ever worsening scandal

Absolute madness. Link

"Government wastes money on terrible policy" isn't really the sort of thing that brings down a Government.

It's not going to cause a revolution, nor is it going to get around thirty of so Tory MPs to vote to end the parliament and trigger an election. 

16 minutes ago, Jareth said:

Sorry - yep agree. I suppose I’m in a state of agitation as I know we are now going to see a lot of denial and disowning of this result by Labour. And most likely be told good patriotic Labour voters didn’t turn out, whilst bad folks who protest against Israel voted. 

Yup, and given the turnout was (surprisingly) strong, anyone trying that particular line should be taking to task on it. 

However, the official line will be "there wasn't a Labour candidate on the ballot for them to vote for". Politicians tend not to like blaming the voters themselves. 

1 minute ago, Jareth said:

Who do you think voted for him? 

You posted while I was editing my post - "I expect that a very large percentage of people who voted for him previously voted Labour".

But I'm not sure that's really a point of contention is it?

8 minutes ago, Jareth said:

Are you labelling those that voted for him as belonging in either of those stereotypes and couldn't possibly be previous Labour voters? 

No, I'm describing the two different campaign leaflets that he produced and used in different parts of the constituency. I expect that a very large percentage of people who voted for him previously voted Labour.

31 minutes ago, Jareth said:

Do we think Labour were winning that if their candidate hadn’t been antisemitic? It looks like a strong win for an opportunist candidate campaigning on a single issue strongly in step with a majority of constituents. Labour will surely be relaxed but it does show they will lose votes on the issue of Gaza. 

He wasn't campaigning on a single issue. 

In half the constituency he was campaigning on a "stop Starmer's Israel killing our brothers and sisters in Palestine" ticket, in the other half he was on a Trumpy "go Brexit, I-know-what-a-woman-is, smash the grooming gangs" one.

Because he's an opportunistic piece of dog-shit. 

All going well then.

29 minutes ago, tinker said:

What about the consultants, doctors,  surgeons, engineers, dentist etc etc..........that are Muslims.

 

I imagine that @chrisp65's final line is the important one. I imagine doctors that are Muslim probably vote along the same sort of trends as doctors that aren't Muslim do. 

I genuinely can't work out why they think that doing this is going to do better in the eyes of the public than just giving an actual answer.

4 minutes ago, bickster said:

He was a Tory by then I think

It was during the 2019 General Election campaign.

2 minutes ago, blandy said:

I dunno. I mean the problem in my mind is the artificiality of it. By that I mean they wanted a debate and vote on their view that there should be a ceasefire in Gaza. Now I think there should be a ceasefire, I agree with their stance… but …the opposition day stuff is meaningless anyway, but in the case of Israel it’s double meaningless because what the SNP or opposition parties in parliament want is not something that overly troubles Netanyahu.

If it were a debate/ vote on something that actually affected the lives or circumstances of Scotlands residents and they’d been thwarted I’d agree with you, but they were (though they had every right to) playing games too. Labour poses a threat to them. Labour is divided on Gaza, expose that!  What followed that bit of point scoring was Labour spiking it and then the Tories spiking Labour and then the speaker letting all that spiking go through. The little kid got bundled, the speaker got on the wrong side of “protocol” then the angry ones did angry things and want the speaker out.

Well....yes. That's what I'm saying. They don't care about Gaza any more or less than anyone does. As I've said, they're chucking stones and seeing if they can break a few windows.

If the thing that had exposed divisions in other parties and made Westminster look like a pointless waste of space to make an extra few people in Scotland think "we might as well be out of that nonsense" had been council bin collections or the coup d'état in Gabon then they'd have used that instead. 

14 minutes ago, blandy said:

Well maybe. Obviously amongst their supporters that’s right. But maybe voters or supporters of other parties might view what the SNP did in a slightly more cynical light?

That's not really something that the SNP need to give much a toss about though, is it? They don't have potential voters in Wigan or Truro that they need to make sure they are keeping up political appearances to appease or persuade.

Their whole Westminster raison d'être is to convince slightly more than half of Scotland that they shouldn't need to be there and they can do the same thing just as well or badly in Edinburgh. 

14 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Westminster being seen to be run for the benefit of the two main parties in Westminster is probably as good an outcome as the SNP could have hoped for.

Yup. I imagine that's all they wanted out of the whole thing from the start. Turn up, kick a few bins over, chuck a few stones, make the whole thing look ridiculous. Which is fair enough, it's literally the point of them being in Westminster. 

19 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

There isn’t a magic number, there isn’t a codified process to get rid of the speaker. 

Given (s)he is installed by a majoriy vote of MPs, presumably (s)he is also removed by a majority vote of MPs.

And given Labour don't want him gone, and the Tories have got no interest in setting the precedent that any speaker that makes a decision unhelpful to the Government should just be removed and replaced, it's hard to see where the majority for Hoyle's removal comes from.

9 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Another 9 MPs have signed the motion of no confidence in Hoyle, bringing the total to 80. 

Just another 230 or so to go then.

The various factions of the Judean People's Front appear to devastated by this defection to the Red Tories.

17 minutes ago, Genie said:

Maybe it’s just the Spanish who aren’t stamping then as I think all my European trips have been to Spain, Balearics, Canaries. 

I've got stamps both in and out of Girona. So the Spanish are. 

1 hour ago, omariqy said:

Meanwhile another 160 innocent people are killed in the last 24 hours

And all it would have taken to stop them dying was Labour voting for the SNP's Opposition Day motion. 

31 minutes ago, bickster said:

I think there’s one thing missing and it’s quite crucial, parliamentary convention says that on an opposition day motion the speaker only usually selects only the government amendment, so you essentially have the motion as proposed by the one opposition party and the government amendment.

1 hour ago, ml1dch said:

So Hoyle went against precedent, selecting the Labour amendment when he normally wouldn't have (normally he'd have just chosen the Government amendment to the original text)

Nah, reckon I got it

2 minutes ago, meregreen said:

Recent polling, indicates that the electorate are turning away from tax cuts in favour of increased public spending. That gives me hope that this country is finding its soul again. It’s also hopefully, going to sound the death knell for the Party that.knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

I reckon there is a lot of merging between the popularity of ideas and popularity of those promoting them. I bet that for a lot of the country "tax cuts" are that thing that Liz Truss wanted that blew up the economy. And are therefore A Bad Thing, then hearing the also unpopular Jeremy Hunt talk about them mean that both he and they become less popular.

I've not checked this, but I bet the popularity of Brexit as a policy and the popularity of the Tories would probably track each other on a graph. Are the Tories becoming less popular because Brexit is a shit-show, or is Brexit becoming less popular because it's synonymous with those Tories that people also hate for a load of other reasons?

9 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Not sure I’ve said anything wrong or got any maths wrong.

You've probably not said anything wrong, but any "endorsement" will be judged by the number of MPs returned and nothing else. 

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

That doesn’t mean Labour won’t have a massive majority in Westminster, it’s just not quite the ringing endorsement it might first appear to be.

Nobody in December 2019 was caveating the 80 seat Tory majority with "well, actually it's not really that impressive to go from May's 13.6m votes to Johnson's 13.9m. Look at Jo Swinson weeping in the corner in happiness at adding four times that number of new votes to the Lib Dem total from last time..." 

Or take 1997. Blair's majority was created by the Tory vote dropping from 14m in 1992 to 9m in 1997. In the run-up to that election, all the same "lack of enthusiasm for Labour" opinions were being had. All forgotten the moment they doubled their number of MPs.