ml1dch

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Well, you reap what you sow.

At least the new one knows when he's doing something he shouldn't. Even if he then does it anyway.

Bloody Gary Lineker and his podcasts.

Also, at the point that the precursor to the license fee was introduced via The Wireless Telegraphy Act 1904, TV advertising was, unsurprisingly not something that they'd considered.

Happy anniversary

Possibly a bigger issue, it's on the regulations rather than the writing. There was a change that meant that sort of programme now has to have the consent of the participants before they film. So whereas Ali G and its ilk was done "blind", all the Cunk stuff - everyone is in on the joke. Which renders the whole thing pretty pointless.

The Electoral Calculus website (not an exact science, I know) seem to think that Labour should take it pretty comfortably.

Which constituency are you in?

No, that's in real terms. Percentage of GDP is the best indicator of whether spending on something is going up or down. Health is 18.3% compared to 16% back then. Debt interest is now 8.4% versus 4.5%. Link if you're interested

In terms of "what is using up more tax money than it used to", interest payable on Government debt has doubled in the last fifteen years. The amount that it's increased by is more than the entire defence budget. Health is the other big one, hoovering up around £210bn per year now, compared to £140bn or so per year fifteen years ago.

I don't think he's trying to attract any new voters. I think that the only real hope that the Tories now have (and it's really not much of one), is that something happens and they can find a way to make stick the idea of "yes, we've screwed up - but that lot? Brexit-hating, immigrant-loving, gold-selling, bacon sandwich-mangling, prosperity-stifling Labour? You might not like us, but you still need to hold your nose and come out and vote so that they don't ruin things even more" This isn't trying to get people who would never vote Labour to vote Labour, it's trying to get people who would always vote Tory to not be scared into being desperate to keep Labour out. And as said previously, I don't think it'll really make a big difference. It's been all of what, three weeks since we were being told that Starmer had lost the votes of hundreds of thousands of Muslims over his Gaza stance - now that appears to be more or less forgotten and it's not made even a tiny dent on any opinion poll since.

I think I'm right in saying as well that any impact these changes have won't reflect in the official figures until after the next election anyway. So there's a pretty good chance that Starmer ends up getting the "credit" for numbers going down.

73% of British people don't earn enough money to marry and live with a foreigner.

Being clumsy and being slippery are two different things though. I think if you'd said the latter, I'd have no issue with it. But it's not clumsy.

I think it's the fourth option. He's not explicitly saying that she was good or bad, he's talking in neutral terms. So he's not lying to you (here, anyway), and he's not lying to Sir Bufton-Tufton reading The Telegraph over his morning brandy. He's not being clumsy with his words, he's being pretty deliberate with them. He's framing Thatcher in the way that audience sees her, without really offering any opinion. Reassurance that he's Definitely Not Jeremy Corbyn, while not really saying anything at all. Whether it's good or bad politics (I've read convincing things from people saying both), I guess we wait and see what happens next year. As Blandy says, I don't think it'll really move the dial much either way.

He's following the Cameron mantra. Pick the words that you need to say to make the voters that you need to switch, switch. For Cameron it was saying a couple of nice things about Blair in The Guardian, for Starmer it's saying a couple of nice things about Thatcher in The Telegraph.

Jenkins. Loathsome is back in the Government as some minor bag carrier in the Department of Health. So isn't sending anti-Sunak letters anywhere.

I can only assume they had no interest in a load of woke, lefty rubbish about a boy wanting to be a dancer and are thus completely unaware of its existence.

Mostly fun for hearing none-more-establisment Sir Reg describing Michael Heseltine as a Representative for Wellingborough.

She doesn't have a job role. It's a party management thing, not a governance thing. She's literally Minister For Defending Sunak From A Position On The Right Of The Party. Or as Stephen Bush puts it: