ml1dch

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. 

20 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

We'll have to disagree.

If I'm given a pint, flight or a dinner it's not really comparable to getting a talkshow on RT where someone earns 4-5 figures directly into their own bank account per episode on a state broadcaster from Iran and Russia. (GG and CW)

Corbyn is clearly just naive, repeatedly naive. And clearly blind to his actions and biased. If that's because he's received money or dinners from whoever I couldn't say, but for CW and GG I don't think there's much doubt.

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.

On 05/02/2024 at 07:27, magnkarl said:

I guess he's referring to the people who are now critising these MPs (rightly) for taking whatever off an Israeli, who thought it was perfectly reasonable for 'the other wing' to have their headline acts have a talkshow on Iranian or Russian propaganda TV. 

Both things are bad, but I think one is worse, much due to the fact that we're close to foreign agent territory with at least two of them (GG and CW).

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.