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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.

1 minute ago, tinker said:

They are heading that way anyway. If they timed it well they could grab some votes (as close to the election as they can) he could blame the present tories as being hopeless, not implementing Brexit correctly and win some votes back from the brexit brigade who would like to be proven right. I don't think the tories are clever enough or brave enough to do it  

It's plausible if you're talking about a five / ten year scenario. Any sooner than that, I'd be curious as to the mechanism you think would be play out that sees Farage go from owner of another political party --> Tory party member --> prospective Tory party parliamentary candidate --> Tory MP --> Tory leader. 

Isn't it quite likely that (a) a lot of people in charge in the Tory party might try to stop the first two of those happening, and (b) doesn't the third one rather depend on the Tories being able to win a seat?

7 hours ago, Marka Ragnos said:

Why isn't Labour's message winning against this?

How big a lead in the polls would Labour need for you to consider that they were winning?

Really just confirming an earlier one, but good to keep the by-elections frequent and regular. Just to build that "Tories get smashed in elections" narrative ahead of the General Election. 

2 minutes ago, Mark Albrighton said:

I therefore assume that they will be the best bet for me in order to bid a not so fond adieu to my local Tory. But I also am fairly sure they (the tories) will win this particular seat.

If you're The Wrekin then it's currently 60-40 to turn Labour according to the Electoral Calculus site.

10 hours ago, Seat68 said:

Will probably vote Green here. Parachuted in labour candidate and Greens representing me pretty well on the council so will put my vote on them. 

I should also caveat though my "last voted Labour in 2001" though with "...but would have voted to make Brown, Miliband, Corbyn and would vote to make Starmer PM, if I lived in a place where Labour were the obvious challenger to the Tory".

On 16/02/2024 at 10:28, bickster said:

Pretty sure I'm considered a Starmerite, as it currently stands I'm voting LibDem  

Same. 

I've voted Labour once in my life, back in 2001 and I can't imagine that will be changing for the foreseeable future.

44 minutes ago, Chindie said:

Both results are more a case of the official Tories being **** than a resounding show of support for disguised Tories in fairness.

Isn't "displeasure with the party in charge" the story of pretty much every Government by-election loss in history?

Don't see why these ones are different to all the others. 

6 minutes ago, desensitized43 said:

 Does this mean we need to find a new profanity filter?

Definitely seems harsh on Gen Kitchen, who seems pretty pleasant overall. 

Not to be confused with General Kitchener, obviously. 

Maybe this is one of those things where people only vaguely paying attention is going to work in Labour's favour:

11 minutes ago, Xann said:

GDP is a shit method of rating the success of a country.

Are we happier?

I remember seeing it described that purely in economic terms, the nation's GDP hero is a terminal cancer patient going through a costly divorce. 

1 hour ago, Genie said:

To be called a recession doesn’t it need 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth? Thats a bit more than a bad month blip.

All going well then.

1 hour ago, villan95 said:

Ah I was just going off the last 2 that had been tweeted by Britain Elects. The Savanta one saw the lead cut from 19pts to 12. Does seem odd that there is such a discrepancy between pollsters though.

If you dig into the reasons, it's not so strange.

Different polls ask slightly different things, and interpret the results differently. If you ask a group of people "would you vote Labour / Tory / other?", and then if they select "other" then it opens a sub-question of "you've chosen other, which of Lib Dem / Reform / Green etc would you vote for", that gives massively different results to asking an initial question of "would you vote Labour / Tory / Lib Dem / Green / etc?". So one psephologist might argue that they second is better, as it's in line with a voter seeing a list of candidates to vote for at an election. But another might say that the first is better, because someone who, when presented with a list of ideal options a year away from an election might say  that they'll vote Green, but they'll actually vote Labour in their Labour / Tory marginal. Or they might think the Tories are rubbish and are definitely going to vote Reform because Sunak is a lefty, Consocialist remainer but on election day, they don't want to be the missing vote that meant the Brexit guy they liked in 2019 loses to that Labour bloke who knocked on your door that time in a Progress Pride Flag t-shirt. 

As an example, if you look at the data from a couple of the recent polls the percentage of people who said that they were voting Labour was identical, but the methodology used gave Labour a 14 point lead in one and a 19 point lead in another.

The other big thing is how they treat "don't knows". Typically that's meant "I'll begrudgingly vote Tory", so some polls just stick about 60% of the don't knows on top of the Tory vote. Others  say that "don't know" in the current climate means they're more likely to vote for a change than not, so don't. 

The data that they're bringing back is all broadly the same, it's how they analyse it that brings in that discrepancy. In the absence of a better way, I'd probably look at who got previous elections closest and assume that until something changes to disprove it, then their method is probably the right one. 

34 minutes ago, Xann said:

Second Green on that.

Somewhere around Shepton, maybe? Which is where the Glastonbury site actually is.

Thought it might be Moggville for a minute, but I think he's a little further North?

Yandex-Mogg losing to a Green would be too good to be true.

Bristol West is the seat they're confident of taking, Carla Denyer taking it from Labour's Thangam Debbonaire.

2 minutes ago, bickster said:

That Rochdale bye-election candidate list is nuts

You have to feel sorry for Rochdale, politically speaking. Also the place where Gordon Brown had his Gillian Duffy moment, and they had the misfortune of being represented by massive wrong 'un Cyril Smith for twenty years. 

Now all this silliness. 

9 minutes ago, Mozzavfc said:

I can't believe how long they stuck by him today. It was clear he was going to be given the boot given the severity of what he said.

I wonder who the anti-tory vote will go to now

George Galloway. Which is the worst thing about this. 

Whatever any candidate, from any party has done they're very unlikely to be a worse person than him.

2 hours ago, desensitized43 said:

It’s too late to remove him from the ballot in the Rochdale by election and it seems that he won’t be removed from the party for…reasons…not quite sure why when countless others have been ejected for far less.

 

He has now. But there are plenty of MPs who would have been out on their ear a lot quicker than Ali has.

15 hours ago, CVByrne said:

Can people list the last 2 or 3 Labour party / Labour Leaders you were all in on supporting?

Labour have had five leaders in the last thirty years. Asking for the last '2 or 3' that someone was 'all in' on supporting seems to be asking a lot.

I'd even go as far to say that if you find you're emotionally attached to a politician who isn't an immediate family member to a level beyond "wary, arms-length support" then you're probably in a cult of some sort and should pick a different hobby. 

Maybe Paul Waugh will get to be the Rochdale candidate after all.

6 minutes ago, nick76 said:

There isn’t a national figure that has the following and not divisive within the party to get up to speed that could take the Democrat voters with them.  Also to replace the incumbent within your party doesn’t really happen.

Typically speaking, nor does an 81 year old running for President. Yet here we are. 

3 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

While bending over backwards to defend Sunak, Chris Philp refers to Briana as "himself" and doesn't react at all when corrected. 

To be fair to him (which I don't like doing, because he's a prick), "himself" in that interview is referring to Sunak. Earlier he refers to Briana as she. 

40 minutes ago, bickster said:

This isn't about votes, this is about limiting what he can be criticised for in terms of unfulfilled manifesto pledges after the election. 

Bingo. I was listening to someone the other day (may have been Patrick Maguire?), who was saying that given one of the biggest political attitudes at the moment is "they're all the same, they never deliver what they promise", Labour strategists are most scared of proving that correct, overpromising and underdelivering and thus vindicating that view. So the plan is to hopefully campaign for re-election on "we delivered what we promised" rather than "here's the excuses for why we haven't delivered what we promised". But it does mean that you don't really offer very much to make sure you can do it.

Quite possibly attributing a more noble cause to what they're doing than they deserve, but there you go.

One thing's for sure, the two main party manifestos are going to be more interesting than they've been in ages. 

6 minutes ago, bickster said:

They only thought he was a dickhead after he'd been in power, they just thought he was amusing when they voted for him. He's deeply unpopular now.

He was actually extremely unpopular at the time of the 2019 election. Just not as unpopular as his main opponent.