Stop voting for fucking Tories

[sockwithaticket]

I've never watched Peston before, is he usually flapping his head like a pez dispenser instead of making an attempt to moderate the panel?

Berry has thus far escaped my notice, but seems yet another whose only interest is to take credit and displace blame. What a surprise. The Tories really are a part of political pygmies these days.

[I like neeps]

Sadiq Khan has decided to launch a report on the negative impact on Brexit. Would have loved to see Starmer's reaction to that

[tabascoboy]

Two by-elections almost certainly set for February 15th, both Tory held with substantial majority.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67943546

[petej]

I've never watched Peston before, is he usually flapping his head like a pez dispenser instead of making an attempt to moderate the panel?

Berry has thus far escaped my notice, but seems yet another whose only interest is to take credit and displace blame. What a surprise. The Tories really are a part of political pygmies these days.

Peston is a gormless patsy.

Sadiq Khan has decided to launch a report on the negative impact on Brexit. Would have loved to see Starmer's reaction to that

Fully agrees with it I expect. You can get the same useful output without the negative hitting Starmer at a national level and khan's electorate mostly dislike brexit so no damage there.

[Biffer]

Hyslop getting angry with Trump loving Berry on Peston on behalf of the whole country!

Quite like how Jess Phillips is just sitting there letting him look like an arsehole without any need to add anything. Just what Labour needs to do atm, let them demonstrate just how fucked up the entire tory party is.

[Insane_Homer]

[I like neeps]

I've never watched Peston before, is he usually flapping his head like a pez dispenser instead of making an attempt to moderate the panel?

Berry has thus far escaped my notice, but seems yet another whose only interest is to take credit and displace blame. What a surprise. The Tories really are a part of political pygmies these days.

Peston is a gormless patsy.

Sadiq Khan has decided to launch a report on the negative impact on Brexit. Would have loved to see Starmer's reaction to that

Fully agrees with it I expect. You can get the same useful output without the negative hitting Starmer at a national level and khan's electorate mostly dislike brexit so no damage there.

Really? The output is attack lines for Tories and the papers that Starmer and co have (wisely politically) been running away from.

[dpedin]

Hyslop getting angry with Trump loving Berry on Peston on behalf of the whole country!

Quite like how Jess Phillips is just sitting there letting him look like an arsehole without any need to add anything. Just what Labour needs to do atm, let them demonstrate just how fucked up the entire tory party is.

If the opposition is in a hole then don't take away their spade ... just stand back and let them dig deeper! This is essentially Starter's GE strategy, and quite right too.

[Sandstorm]

Could Peston sit his guests any further apart?? No wonder they have to shout at each other.

[tabascoboy]

[SaintK]

Thick as mince!

[dpedin]

Two good reasons for not voting Tory - we are poorer and we are dying earlier - great achievements by the tory Gov! Bastards ... and people vote for them!!!

[Insane_Homer]

faeces.jpg (139.98 KiB) Viewed 2280 times

[SaintK]

faeces.jpg

WTF????

[Sandstorm]

faeces.jpg

WTF????

Typo. Faces nightclub….

[Hal Jordan]

I see Braveman was out on a pro-Israel demonstration, I thought she wasn't in favour of Public Displays Of Appreciation?

[Rhubarb & Custard]

Was she giving those policing the event her mean faeces?

[shaggy]

faeces.jpg

WTF????

Typo. Faces nightclub….

Poster is not known for true and accurate content. Probably a fake, like a lot of his other posts turns out to be.

[SaintK]

faeces.jpg

WTF????

Typo. Faces nightclub….

Quite apt. She comes over as a piece of shit alright

[_Os_]

So ... the polling.

Regular readers will know I've been saying for awhile "I don't know why the media isn't looking at all the polls, and it's literally all the polls, and reporting the base case scenario of a Tory wipe out, instead they keep saying everything will magically tighten up". The Telegraph puts what every poll since Truss has been saying on its frontpage, and now Westminster journos are running around with their hair on fire.

Next they're going to work out something else I've been saying on this thread. The Tories need to stop mentioning immigration at all. Being "tough on immigration" isn't the huge win for them they think it is. Like Brexit it has fallen prey to the Tory radical/far right, which as is their want now just keeps demanding more impossible things regardless of if it's workable/will improve anything/is a good idea. Like Brexit there's also the sense the Tory radical/far right will never be happy whatever the immigration situation is, it's something they're going to keep wallowing in until it becomes so painful they refuse to talk about it. Among a small selection of Tory aligned media people (the most prominent being Goodwin and Douglas Murray) the line is now basically "foreign born people are stealing the houses and jobs", it is pointed out to them a foreign born person can be a British citizen/national or have permanent residency, but they never seem to care. It's very obvious these people are becoming more radical on the subject and aren't going to give up even if Rwanda happens. There's now a mountain of stuff done largely to appease anti-immigrant sentiment and it's never enough, quit the SM, quit the entire EU, Australian points based immigration system, etc. None of it is unsubstantial, always the Tory radical/far right say everything is still shit.

They have generated a situation where they obsessively focus on something they view as a existential crisis, yet any solution they come up is never sufficient for them and they always demand more. The existential crisis they have imagined never recedes let alone ends. Their poll numbers are never going up if they keep a debate going which has this structure to it, I have no clue what they hope to gain from it. If the Tories want their poll numbers up they need a solid year of no talking about immigration from anyone on their side in any capacity.

The poll numbers are very bad for the Tories. For those that don't know, 40% of the vote in a constituency is a lock in once the other 60% is divided up, 35% means the seat is up in the air and contestable by the second place, a 10% gap between first and second place also means the seat could go either way.

The detail of the YouGov MRP is far worse for the Tories than the topline result.
There are no seats where they score more than 40% of the vote. In only 74 do they score more than 35%.
There are fewer than 40 seats where they are 10pts ahead of the 2nd placed party.
There are just 12 seats where the Tory vote share outweights the combined Labour and LD vote share. And only two if you include the Greens as well.
Gives an indication as to the damage heavy tactical voting could do.

A couple of examples. The MRP has Stratford-upon-Avon (Zahawi's seat) as:
34% Con
31% LD
19% Lab
You've got to assume Labour are going to put zero effort into that seat and LDs will bombard with "only we can win here" leaflets.

Or Spelthorne which is Kwasi Kwarteng's seat:
34% Con
29% Lab
19% LD
Same pattern the other way round (and this is not a seat anywhere near Labour's target list).

A lot of the remaining "Tory-held" seats look something like this.
On top of which YouGov have allocated don't knows to the party whose supporters the person most looks like, which helps the Tories. So this already assumes undecideds will come back to them.
It of coure true that things could improve for the Tories. But as this MRP makes clear it is also true there are perilously close to going below 100 seats if things continue to get worse for them.

Going through the YouGov MRP data to add some tactical squeezing. If just one third of Lab-LD-Grn voters in England and Wales vote tactically for the strongest party, the result changes to:
Con 69 (-100 on MRP)
Lab 463 (+78)
LD 70 (+22)
Nat 28
Grn 1

If you increase the tactical voting rate to 50% of progressive voters - probably a bit high - then we really are talking Canada 93-level stuff.
Con 24 (-145 on MRP)
Lab 502 (+117)
LD 76 (+28)
Nat 28
Grn 1

Even if you add
@LukeTryl
's Reform absence numbers on top of one-third of progressives tactically voting, it's not getting much better for the Tories:
Con 114
Lab 426
LD 63
Nat 28
Grn 1
Probably a more plausible result.

Some feel a third is too high, so let's lower it to a quarter, while keeping Reform adjustments.
Con 138
Lab 409
LD 55
Nat 28
Grn 1

Even if we up the Reform -> Con numbers to 50%, while keeping 25% cross-progressive tactical voting, it's still not much better than the original MRP:
Con 175 (+6)
Lab 378 (-7)
LD 49 (+1)
Nat 28
Oth 1

This is based on a 13.5-point Labour lead (as it estimates where don't knows will go).
However, if we adjust to the latest regular YouGov poll (23-point lead), these would be the results:
LAB: 503
CON: 57 (!)
LDM: 46
Almost electoral oblivion if the polls don't move.

Add in some extra tactical voting (25% of Lib Dems and Greens opting for Labour in close seats) and the Conservatives would be reduced to just SIX (6) seats.

[_Os_]

Looking at those polling numbers and the analysis out there, if an election was held tomorrow:

Poor Tory performance: 50-ish seats. (less than this is extremely unlikely)
Average Tory performance: 130 seats
Good Tory performance: 160-ish seats
Excellent Tory performance: 170 to 210 seats (more than this seems extremely unlikely)

As things stand all of those outcomes are possible, there's a 160 seat range from 50-ish seats to 210-ish seats. The Tories getting something like 200 seats or crashing to 60 seats, both look about as likely right now. Par result looks like about 150.


... Obviously the solution is to bang on and on about Rwanda and "foreign born people", focusing obsessively on an issue the Tories have spent more time and energy on than any other single topic over the past decade and half (everything from the hostile environment when May was Home Secretary onwards), that dictated the entire direction of Brexit (cannot be in the SM because of free movement etc), when all of this track record is a total failure. Best to always talk about it because of Farage, even though the Tories are losing more voters to their left than their right.

[Rhubarb & Custard]

There is no way they've spent more time and energy on migration than Europe/Brexit, it's not even close.

[_Os_]

There is no way they've spent more time and energy on migration than Europe/Brexit, it's not even close.

But pre-vote immigration dictated the debate and was used by Vote Leave ("Turkey will join the EU and flood the UK" etc), it was the main reason people gave for voting leave along with sovereignty (Ashcroft exit polling), and when people were quizzed about sovereignty that often became immigration too (Q: "But what does take back control actually mean? Sovereignty over what?" A: "immigration!"). Then May decided the key issue in Brexit was not being part of free movement because of immigration, which took the UK out of the SM (it's not clear the Tories understood that redline would do that when they made it), which then meant years of the Tories trying to negotiate themselves into the SM without free movement, and failing. Johnson then took a shit deal just to get that stage of Brexit done, neglecting any deal on asylum seekers, which setup the small boats issue when his Brexit deal was implemented ...

Immigration has been the constant ongoing obsession of this era of Tory rule. It's behind a lot of the disasters, including Brexit.

If the Tories spend this final year focusing on immigration, it's the same as focusing on their own biggest failure in government. If this is the topic they focus on then they will hole themselves below the waterline, their track record is objectively terrible on immigration. But they're the government so get to set a lot of the debate, so far this is their choice.

How do they think voters will respond: "my life is worse than it was, but at least the Tories keep doing stuff on immigration they later say is shit and a failure"???

[Biffer]

There is no way they've spent more time and energy on migration than Europe/Brexit, it's not even close.

You can’t genuinely think those two aren’t closely associated. And in the last few years Brexit and Europe has had a lot less focus than the paranoia over small boats.

[fishfoodie]

There is no way they've spent more time and energy on migration than Europe/Brexit, it's not even close.

You can’t genuinely think those two aren’t closely associated. And in the last few years Brexit and Europe has had a lot less focus than the paranoia over small boats.

Yes because the focus is generated by the Tory owned MSM, which doesn't want to discuss what a clusterfuck Brexit is; so it's; "Oh look, a Squirrel !"

[tabascoboy]

Well well...

UNHCR finds new UK-Rwanda treaty and Safety of Rwanda Bill are incompatible with international refugee law

Summary
Important updated legal analysis finds failings of original migration partnership have not been adequately addressed

...
IV – Conclusion

28. UNHCR has reviewed the updated UK-Rwanda scheme in light of the principles and standards set out in its 2022 analysis and summarised in Part I above. It maintains its position that the arrangement, as now articulated in the UK-Rwanda Partnership Treaty and accompanying legislative scheme [23] does not meet the required standards relating to the legality and appropriateness of the transfer of asylum seekers and is not compatible with international refugee law.

https://www.ein.org.uk/news/unhcr-finds ... al-refugee

[SaintK]

What we all know!

‘Free money!’ Avanti West Coast bosses caught joking about UK government handouts
Firm regrets comments made in internal presentation slides, including managers calling performance payments ‘too good to be true’
Avanti West Coast managers joked about receiving “free money” from government and performance-related payments being “too good to be true” in an internal presentation at the notoriously unreliable train operator, it has emerged.

One slide, entitled “Roll up, roll-up get your free money here!” described how the Treasury and Department for Transport supported the firm with taxpayers’ money, provided third-party suppliers and inspections, and then paid Avanti fees on top.

[fishfoodie]

What we all know!

‘Free money!’ Avanti West Coast bosses caught joking about UK government handouts
Firm regrets comments made in internal presentation slides, including managers calling performance payments ‘too good to be true’
Avanti West Coast managers joked about receiving “free money” from government and performance-related payments being “too good to be true” in an internal presentation at the notoriously unreliable train operator, it has emerged.

One slide, entitled “Roll up, roll-up get your free money here!” described how the Treasury and Department for Transport supported the firm with taxpayers’ money, provided third-party suppliers and inspections, and then paid Avanti fees on top.

Bit of a Ratner moment there.

I suppose there is the minutest of chances that whoever this weeks Transport Minister is, they might seize the chance to get a bit of positive publicity by turning off the tap to these leeches, & make the regulator do their fucking job for a change.

[SaintK]

..........and the civil war continues!!!

[tabascoboy]

..........and the civil war continues!!!

No doubt positioning themselves to vote against the Rwanda bill in favour of "toughening it up" and they would have probably been removed had they done so before resigning. They want to be seen as the "Tory Alternative" - for which read even more rabidly right wing populist - by merging with Reform UK. The shitcart trundles ever towards the cliff edge...

also...

[Hal Jordan]

It's going to be total chaos and uproar without the firm guiding hands of the deputy chairmen.

[C69]

The Tories need to split as a Party now. They really are a group of cliques and loons.
I hope they have a slow painful death. They have fucked the Country for years to come.

[dpedin]

Tory MPs have already written off the next election and the Head Boy and are busy jostling for position either within the Tory Party or within Reform. I cant see the Squatter lasting much longer and I wouldn't be surprised to see him throwing in his jotters and feckin off to sunny California asap. If he is going to keep lurching on from one disaster to another then the Tories are just going to see an even bigger thrashing come the GE. It is not going to get any better for them, there is nothing on the horizon coming to save them, they need to cut their losses and call an election.

[Hal Jordan]

They won't go until the public purse has been raided as far as is humanly possible, and some appalling culture war legislation is passed. Salt the earth for Labour, blame them for not fixing the mess and then look to get back in after one term in Opposition, relying on the goldfish memory of the electorate.

[Tichtheid]

An item on the radio just now;

“Trolley waits” are cases where someone waits for over twelve hours on a hospital trolley before being admitted to a ward.
In 2011 there were four trolley waits in England, (I assume they were talking about England, but I missed if this included the other parts of the UK)

Last year there were forty four thousand trolley waits

[Slick]

An item on the radio just now;

“Trolley waits” are cases where someone waits for over twelve hours on a hospital trolley before being admitted to a ward.
In 2011 there were four trolley waits in England, (I assume they were talking about England, but I missed if this included the other parts of the UK)

Last year there were forty four thousand trolley waits

My 73 year old mum was one of them

[_Os_]

How do they think voters will respond: "my life is worse than it was, but at least the Tories keep doing stuff on immigration they later say is shit and a failure"???

As I was saying ...

Weeks were spent over summer on the huge urgency of housing asylum seekers on barges and how it was absolutely necessary.

also...

The cycle goes like this.

1. Claims by fringe politicians (Farage etc) that immigration is an existential crisis and a massive emergency, get outsized attention in the media.
2. A really extreme proposal starts being supported by the Tories and gets all the media coverage. None of the details matter and there's very little real debate. If it makes any sort of sense does not matter. It's unhinged from reality.
3. Some version of it happens, usually the most extreme version anyone can come up with.
4. For those impacted which is usually legal immigrants/innocent people, the change is massively damaging. But it does none of the things those who supported wanted it to do because it never could.
5. The policy, which once dominated government/parliament/media for weeks as the most important and urgent issue, is forgotten or openly called shit and a failure.
6. It becomes painfully obvious that the UK needs migrants at around this point (eg the truck driver crisis). But those who want no immigration are prepared to sacrifice nothing. They don't want ordinary people to have free quality education and/or skills training, because those ordinary people would then compete against their children who they sent to the best schools and universities precisely so their children could beat everyone else on a non-merit basis, that's what they're paying for. Those ordinary people are the vast majority of the workforce and cannot meet the needs of the economy. Businessmen who are Tory donors then demand and get exceptions from the new laws for their industry, this ends up covering the entire economy.
7. Go back to step 1.

[Paddington Bear]

https://x.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/17475 ... 88660?s=20

Found this thread interesting. Korea produces nuclear plants at speeds we can only dream of, at wholesale prices a quarter of ours. Being able to achieve this would have an astonishing impact on our industrial costs and personal costs of living.

This is essentially ‘catch up growth’ - it’s not that hard with political will. The starting point has to be accepting the ego hit of how badly we’re managing things, and that we should look externally for solutions.

[tabascoboy]

So just to bring you up to date, the Prime Minister of the day is currently planning to explicitly force civil servants to break the law in order to buy off his own MPs

Michael Tomlinson confirms the civil service code could be updated to satiate Rwanda rebels.

Asked if the code will be changed to tell civil servants to advise ministers to ignore rulings by judges, the Illegal Migration minister says govt is "looking at the detail of that".

[inactionman]

https://x.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/17475 ... 88660?s=20

Found this thread interesting. Korea produces nuclear plants at speeds we can only dream of, at wholesale prices a quarter of ours. Being able to achieve this would have an astonishing impact on our industrial costs and personal costs of living.

This is essentially ‘catch up growth’ - it’s not that hard with political will. The starting point has to be accepting the ego hit of how badly we’re managing things, and that we should look externally for solutions.

I can only speak in a very limited context, but I take all this with a large pinch of salt. South Korea isn't the wild west but I have seen cases where H&S and corporate responsibility isn't as intrinsic as it should be.

As example*, the Scottish Government gave tax incentives for wind turbine manufacture in Helensbrough a few years back, taken on by a south Korean company. Workers raised all sorts of issues about errant health and safety practices that were simply not dealt with by the Korean management as they would add to production cost. The plant remained in business only as long as the financial incentive remained in place. I appreciate this incentive hunting is pretty common, and many companies will shift sites arounds the UK and abroad to chase subsidies,, but the real issue was that they couldn't economically make these in Scotland, or - more accurately - they could make them more cheaply where they weren't held to the same standard of site safety (i.e. back in South Korea).

There are, sensibly, very stringent safety and planning restrictions on nuclear. Quite what is just red tape and what is essential safety checks isn't clear, but we cannot make mistakes and I'd rather go too far than not far enough. I'd also be very reluctant to follow the leads of other countries who have different risk appetites or approaches to governance (e.g. Japan, whose regulator knew flood defences of key infrastructure at Fukushima were inadequate given the risks). We've had a nuclear accident at windscale and the chief engineer hadn't insisted on filters on the top of the chimney stacks we could have had a very, very bad time of it indeed.

Apols if this seems snarky, not my intent- it's just to raise the point that things aren't equivalent in all places and we can admire the results but not necessarily want to replicate the appraoches.

(*apols, I cannot for the life of me lay a hand on the article I read on this, if I find it I'll insert a link - I'm also going from memory which isn't what it once was)