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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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I don't think we do disagree. I think we very much do agree. There are some people for whom it is a massive warning sign. The examples you cite being two of them, and there's a reason I chose Corbyn not Galloway in my post. But we're not talking about those ideological wrong 'uns, we're talking about this "40% of Labour shadow cabinet members are being paid by Israel" thing. As if the pint, flight or dinner that they got from "Israel" means that they are forever more ideologically aligned as a result. Which they're obviously not. And the tacit insinuation that Labour would now be lining up in full support of the Palestinian cause if only the now-corrupted-and-bribed Emily Thornberry hadn't been given a nice hotel room in Tel Aviv a few years ago.

It's less about who deserves criticism for what, it's about assuming that somebody's political motives are going to be significantly swayed as a result of money or favours that they have received. I don't think that a politician that has been flown to Tel Aviv for a fact-finding trip (sic) is going to suddenly think "well I now clearly have to be on Netanyahu's side because of those nice dinners that I had on the beach that time". In the same way that I don't think the likes of Corbyn receiving money from Russian and Iranian state television means that his ideology automatically aligns with theirs.

I don't really have much of a dog in this fight, but if we're suggesting that someone unpleasant giving some favour means that their ideology in forever entwined and their future policy will be based around a free plane ticket or a paid-for-interview, then they really have accept that the Labour party 2015 - 2020 was aligned with the theocracy of Iran and Vladimir Putin. I don't personally think that they were, I just think that they're naive hypocrites. But their supporters should definitely reflect over which glass houses they're chucking their stones at.

As you say, threats and intimidation are A Very Bad Thing, and no MP of any flavour should have to deal with what he has had to deal with. But no, cynicism is probably appropriate - he's currently expected to get around 28% of the vote at the next election, behind both the Labour AND Lib Dem candidates. I'd probably think that it was worth "taking the risk" for the next nine months or so of salary, and then choosing to not lose an election.

And loses his counter-claim of defamation for being described as a racist. What a pity.

(now deleted post for reference)

It must be decades since we had an actual "McCarthyism was good and right, it was all the fault of the lefty infiltrators" take.

I don't think anyone is really arguing contrary to that position. Perfectly sound, and it's definitely not a bad thing that this is being raised in The Hague, whoever is bringing the case. The problem was with South Africa being described as "a beacon of hope and morality". Which is nonsense.

Looks like yesterday he went on This Morning to talk about anti-social behaviour, then met with Holocaust and Srebrenica survivors for Holocaust Memorial Day today, the day before that he was in Milton Keynes talking about knife crime, day before in the Commons for PMQs. Pretty normal LOTO stuff.

No running / no diving / no heavy petting / no thumping etc.

I was pretty confident that would be the case, mainly as @MakemineVanilla clearly isn't a massive wrong 'un. Even so, I feel its still a fairly sensible policy to have.

That might be the most insightful video in the world, but without a sentence or two of context as to what it's about first, there's no way I'm corrupting my YouTube algorithm with the sort of video that a guy with a Union Jack in his title talking about "British Democracy" could potentially be.

Oh, "senior party figures" is Simon Clarke. Imagine the state you've got yourself into for Simon Clarke to be someone whose opinions are considered important.