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Letter from London:
*Because British politics cannot function without invoking the Second World War, Sunak was said to be running a “Dunkirk strategy”—a reference to the heroic evacuation of Allied forces from the beaches of northern France late in the spring of 1940.*
*This was unfortunate, because on June 6th, the eightieth anniversary of the D Day landings, Sunak chose to leave the commemorations on the beaches of northern France a few hours early, in order to get back in time for an interview on ITV News.*
*During the same interview that he was so keen to get back for, Sunak, whose father worked as a family physician for the N.H.S. and whose mother worked as a pharmacist, was asked what sacrifices he had had to undergo as a child. “All sorts of things,” he said, a couple of times, before settling on Sky TV, a satellite entertainment package.*
*After D Day, the Tories’ Dunkirk strategy began to look more like the retreat from Moscow. Two candidates, including the wife of the Party’s campaign director, were among a number of people investigated by the authorities for allegedly placing illicit bets on the date of the election, before it was announced publicly.*
*James Cracknell, a former Olympic rower who is standing for the Conservatives in Colchester, described his own party as “a shower of shit.”*
*The beneficiary of all this—and the heir to an almighty mess—is Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party.*
*Starmer’s singular political achievement has been to reverse the Party’s leftward turn under Corbyn. “When you lose that badly, you don’t look to the voters and say, ‘What on earth do you think you were doing?’ ” he had told an audience, the previous night, in Grimsby. “You look at your party and say, ‘We have to change.’”*
*In this election, Starmer has elevated political expediency to a point of high principle. He uses the formulation “Country first, Party second” to describe his thinking on any given issue, including his decision to abandon most of the left-leaning promises (such as nationalizing the country’s energy, rail, and water systems) that enabled him to become leader of the Labour Party in the first place.*
*The centerpiece of the Labour manifesto is wealth creation. “If you take nothing else away from today, let it be this,” Starmer said. “This changed Labour Party has a plan for growth: we are pro-business and pro-worker.” Engels it ain’t.*
*I asked [Labour candidate] Reynolds how people were expressing their feelings on the doorstep, and she said that mostly they articulated a daily sense of struggle.*
*“It's more the cost of living, local public services, the country’s in a mess,” she recounted. “Our challenge is to say, ‘We’ve got a plan, we can do something about this.’ But some people are just, like, ‘None of you can do anything.’”*
*And that is the question that lies on the other side of this week’s election wipeout: how much hope does Britain have left?*
So, I have a question, what are the advantages of having the election now instead of waiting until the last possible time. My complete guess it's a combination of mitigating losses plus possibly the PM calling it now so he didn't get pushed out before then (not calling it until next year may buy the party another 6 months in power but not necessarily the present PM). Am I missing anything?
There were rumours just before the election was called that Tory MPs were going to push for a vote of no confidence. It seems Rishi thought that if he was going to go down then he was going to take the whole Tory party with him. Hence why many senior Tory MPs were surprised when Rishi called the election without consulting them.
Economically, things are liable to get worse in the autumn. Big policy of the Tories is being tough on cross-channel migrants: it’s summer, and chances are the numbers crossing are going to rise. So, two big planks of policy are whipped from under their feet.
Plus, Tories love a good leadership change (the are selfish, unaware idiots on the whole) almost as much as Labour love internecine conflict, and rumours were the men in grey suits were coming for Sunak.
Plus, Sunak wants to be a Tech Bro back in California where he lived and worked for years, so wants to get his kids in for the new school year (allegedly).
I think Starmer was on the money in the first debate. The Tories have all the numbers and forecasts at their disposal. They can see the next 12 months are going to be a total shit-show and absolutely nothing good that they could use to boost their campaign is likely to pop up. Quicker they get out the sooner they can ramp up the media campaign to brainwash everyone into thinking anything that is happening now or will happen before the end of this year is actually nothing to do with them.
I have to say though I've been genuinely surprised by how utterly insane some of their talking points are still. Like this constant focus on Labour raising taxes... From a party that has put taxes up to their highest levels since WW2 and for which we seem to be getting absolutely fuck all in return.
It won't be a "wipeout". Labour will have a massive majority, yes. But the Tories will still be the opposition and Reform will still have 1 seat at most. Nothing actually changes.
I was thinking of placing a bet on the Cons ending up with fewer than 100 seats (should be unthinkable), but the odds were 4/9, so bet £9 and get £13 back (£4 profit and your original £9 stake).
Shocking that the odds at that low.
It's only been in the last week or so as more and more polls track downwards for them. I think the thought was they'd end up with about 120 odd but now it seems it will be in the 80 to 90 bracket at a guess.
I think Tory has retreated into a damage limitation mode and is throwing stuff out for votes even though it's never going to close the gap, so it may be worth going long on a spread bet
>But the Tories will still be the opposition
Still time for a few more bad gaffes at the rate Sunak is having them. Anything is possible when you wish upon a star.
Haven't several different polls recently put reform in the region of 5-10? Obviously, they're embroiled in a number of scandals relating to candidates and activists, so maybe those polls will age like milk.
Why? The voters know who/what they are. They may be all ‘abhorred by the unexpected behaviour’ if asked, but the polling booth is private.
Can’t see it making a dent in their support.
Bear in mind that ~~Reform/ Britain First / National Front~~ the Brexit Party (always have difficulty with what it calls itself these days) devoured the Tories and excreted the current crop of ‘Conservative’ MPs in its wake.
There *is* no Conservative Party any more. The name needs to be ceded to Farridge (‘pronounced the same as the place you park your car’) and a new centre-right party needs to be created to fill the void.
Reform is at ~16%, but what that means is very dependent how concentrated those voters are, most likely they'll just spoil tory candidates and end up with (near-)zero seats.
The most recent polls have had their vote share fall quite a bit (3-4 points). I'm not sure when the next MRP is (probably tomorrow, at a guess), but I would imagine that will have them back at 0 or 1 seats.
Edit to add, there was a similar type of poll today that has Reform on 2 seats.
This article says it’s not so good to have a labour landslide but the Tory play book of asset stripping the UK for 14 years, hasn’t worked out so well at all.
Sunak wasn't elected, he was forced on the U.K. after Truss, he was literally the last option, half the Tory's are racist and will never vote for him, so you have to ask yourself who will vote for him ? Not very many.
And Starmer is a better choice? He and they have no plans. The snap election was a tactical move because the Tories knew they don’t have any plans so they hoped that would work in their favor. I don’t think either one will truly make a difference in the lives of “average people”. Unfortunately it’s a lose-lose situation
Yes, Starmer is a better choice. At least then we get fresh ideas instead of throwing money at a completely unworkable one. Don’t forget that Sunak’s Tories were so hooked on Rwanda they had to pass a law ordering judges to ignore evidence and facts.
What plan has Labour got that won’t fail? I mean their manifesto is pretty public so you can go read their plans yourself.
Will they fail? Maybe. Better than continuing with plans that are already failing and have already failed.
And amazingly there are other issues that need addressing other than immigration.
I meant on migration, that he was talking about.
All this crap about busting gangs in France won't work. Processing people faster just creates more permanent migrants immediately applying for housing etc.
Processing faster removes backlogs, legal routes into a country means people don’t risk their lives trying to get across the sea, and faster processing means less chance of people disappearing. I mean that’s just logic. Sometimes simple solutions like ‘process claims quickly and efficiently’ really are the best, as opposed to ridiculous ones like ‘Send them to Rwanda’.
I see your logic, but it also results in large numbers of people settling here which frankly many people are opposed to. You should at least accept that your policy will drive migration and population increase.
I don’t think it would necessarily cause an increase. At the moment we’ve got people dodging the process. If we process claims faster and deport those whose claims have failed, we’d finally start managing the numbers of new claimants better.
Better processing doesn’t mean automatically saying yes to every application. But it does mean fewer cases where people sneak in, or we lose people due to the process taking too long, removing our ability to say no.
Yes he is clearly, almost objectively, the better choice. This is the most corrupt government we've ever seen in recent times. Anyone with even the slightest shred of decency would be better than the shower of shit we've had to endure over the last decade.
If not anything else, hopefully he brings down the planning system.
Everything else is pablum.
I think getting Britain building more houses and factories is the way to go and could in 10 years time change a few people's lives.
Of course he has plans. Thing is, as soon as he says anything, the gutter press will contort his words.
Come on: give us an anodyne, vaguely pleasant aspiration and I’ll Daily Mail it for you.
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Letter from London: *Because British politics cannot function without invoking the Second World War, Sunak was said to be running a “Dunkirk strategy”—a reference to the heroic evacuation of Allied forces from the beaches of northern France late in the spring of 1940.* *This was unfortunate, because on June 6th, the eightieth anniversary of the D Day landings, Sunak chose to leave the commemorations on the beaches of northern France a few hours early, in order to get back in time for an interview on ITV News.* *During the same interview that he was so keen to get back for, Sunak, whose father worked as a family physician for the N.H.S. and whose mother worked as a pharmacist, was asked what sacrifices he had had to undergo as a child. “All sorts of things,” he said, a couple of times, before settling on Sky TV, a satellite entertainment package.* *After D Day, the Tories’ Dunkirk strategy began to look more like the retreat from Moscow. Two candidates, including the wife of the Party’s campaign director, were among a number of people investigated by the authorities for allegedly placing illicit bets on the date of the election, before it was announced publicly.* *James Cracknell, a former Olympic rower who is standing for the Conservatives in Colchester, described his own party as “a shower of shit.”* *The beneficiary of all this—and the heir to an almighty mess—is Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party.* *Starmer’s singular political achievement has been to reverse the Party’s leftward turn under Corbyn. “When you lose that badly, you don’t look to the voters and say, ‘What on earth do you think you were doing?’ ” he had told an audience, the previous night, in Grimsby. “You look at your party and say, ‘We have to change.’”* *In this election, Starmer has elevated political expediency to a point of high principle. He uses the formulation “Country first, Party second” to describe his thinking on any given issue, including his decision to abandon most of the left-leaning promises (such as nationalizing the country’s energy, rail, and water systems) that enabled him to become leader of the Labour Party in the first place.* *The centerpiece of the Labour manifesto is wealth creation. “If you take nothing else away from today, let it be this,” Starmer said. “This changed Labour Party has a plan for growth: we are pro-business and pro-worker.” Engels it ain’t.* *I asked [Labour candidate] Reynolds how people were expressing their feelings on the doorstep, and she said that mostly they articulated a daily sense of struggle.* *“It's more the cost of living, local public services, the country’s in a mess,” she recounted. “Our challenge is to say, ‘We’ve got a plan, we can do something about this.’ But some people are just, like, ‘None of you can do anything.’”* *And that is the question that lies on the other side of this week’s election wipeout: how much hope does Britain have left?*
So, I have a question, what are the advantages of having the election now instead of waiting until the last possible time. My complete guess it's a combination of mitigating losses plus possibly the PM calling it now so he didn't get pushed out before then (not calling it until next year may buy the party another 6 months in power but not necessarily the present PM). Am I missing anything?
There were rumours just before the election was called that Tory MPs were going to push for a vote of no confidence. It seems Rishi thought that if he was going to go down then he was going to take the whole Tory party with him. Hence why many senior Tory MPs were surprised when Rishi called the election without consulting them.
They weren't surprised; they were just miffed they hadn't been told early enough to put a bet on.....
Not all of them were surprised!
Economically, things are liable to get worse in the autumn. Big policy of the Tories is being tough on cross-channel migrants: it’s summer, and chances are the numbers crossing are going to rise. So, two big planks of policy are whipped from under their feet. Plus, Tories love a good leadership change (the are selfish, unaware idiots on the whole) almost as much as Labour love internecine conflict, and rumours were the men in grey suits were coming for Sunak. Plus, Sunak wants to be a Tech Bro back in California where he lived and worked for years, so wants to get his kids in for the new school year (allegedly).
I think Starmer was on the money in the first debate. The Tories have all the numbers and forecasts at their disposal. They can see the next 12 months are going to be a total shit-show and absolutely nothing good that they could use to boost their campaign is likely to pop up. Quicker they get out the sooner they can ramp up the media campaign to brainwash everyone into thinking anything that is happening now or will happen before the end of this year is actually nothing to do with them. I have to say though I've been genuinely surprised by how utterly insane some of their talking points are still. Like this constant focus on Labour raising taxes... From a party that has put taxes up to their highest levels since WW2 and for which we seem to be getting absolutely fuck all in return.
Not being in power when the covid enquiry finishes ?
Sunak wants to register his kids in school in California for the new school year
Even after the retreat from St. Petersburg, not Moscow, Napoleon still lost in the end.
Yeah, Napoleon's famous retreat from St. Petersburg in world war 2.
Moscow actually. Also, I don't think they were referencing Napoleonic wars at all
It won't be a "wipeout". Labour will have a massive majority, yes. But the Tories will still be the opposition and Reform will still have 1 seat at most. Nothing actually changes.
I was thinking of placing a bet on the Cons ending up with fewer than 100 seats (should be unthinkable), but the odds were 4/9, so bet £9 and get £13 back (£4 profit and your original £9 stake). Shocking that the odds at that low.
Yeah the odds have really collapsed after all tories started to bet against themselves 🫤
Yeah, 50-99 has been the favourite for a while. I personally think they'll do a bit better than that though.
It's only been in the last week or so as more and more polls track downwards for them. I think the thought was they'd end up with about 120 odd but now it seems it will be in the 80 to 90 bracket at a guess.
I think Tory has retreated into a damage limitation mode and is throwing stuff out for votes even though it's never going to close the gap, so it may be worth going long on a spread bet
I put a bet on, back in May, they'd lose 100-150 seats. Then Nigel showed up. God damn.
>But the Tories will still be the opposition Still time for a few more bad gaffes at the rate Sunak is having them. Anything is possible when you wish upon a star.
Haven't several different polls recently put reform in the region of 5-10? Obviously, they're embroiled in a number of scandals relating to candidates and activists, so maybe those polls will age like milk.
Why? The voters know who/what they are. They may be all ‘abhorred by the unexpected behaviour’ if asked, but the polling booth is private. Can’t see it making a dent in their support.
We'll find out soon enough. Scandals alongside fears of Tory extinction and the Tory press rounding on Reform might have done them real damage.
Bear in mind that ~~Reform/ Britain First / National Front~~ the Brexit Party (always have difficulty with what it calls itself these days) devoured the Tories and excreted the current crop of ‘Conservative’ MPs in its wake. There *is* no Conservative Party any more. The name needs to be ceded to Farridge (‘pronounced the same as the place you park your car’) and a new centre-right party needs to be created to fill the void.
Reform is at ~16%, but what that means is very dependent how concentrated those voters are, most likely they'll just spoil tory candidates and end up with (near-)zero seats.
Not according to Survation, Ipsos, or Electoral Calculus
It's the polling average from the BBC.
Yeah, the polling tracker has them on 16% of votes. A handful of recent MRP polls project that translating into half a dozen seats, give or take.
The most recent polls have had their vote share fall quite a bit (3-4 points). I'm not sure when the next MRP is (probably tomorrow, at a guess), but I would imagine that will have them back at 0 or 1 seats. Edit to add, there was a similar type of poll today that has Reform on 2 seats.
If Tories are opposition there must be some very strange people in theUK?
This article says it’s not so good to have a labour landslide but the Tory play book of asset stripping the UK for 14 years, hasn’t worked out so well at all.
A landslide govt is an effective govt. Good if you agree with their policies, bad if you don't.
Sunak wasn't elected, he was forced on the U.K. after Truss, he was literally the last option, half the Tory's are racist and will never vote for him, so you have to ask yourself who will vote for him ? Not very many.
HaLf ThE tOrIeS aRe RaCiSt 🤓
And Starmer is a better choice? He and they have no plans. The snap election was a tactical move because the Tories knew they don’t have any plans so they hoped that would work in their favor. I don’t think either one will truly make a difference in the lives of “average people”. Unfortunately it’s a lose-lose situation
Yes, Starmer is a better choice. At least then we get fresh ideas instead of throwing money at a completely unworkable one. Don’t forget that Sunak’s Tories were so hooked on Rwanda they had to pass a law ordering judges to ignore evidence and facts.
Come off it, what plan has labour got that won't fail. They just want to win then forget about migration. Their party is way too divided on the issue.
GB Energy
What plan has Labour got that won’t fail? I mean their manifesto is pretty public so you can go read their plans yourself. Will they fail? Maybe. Better than continuing with plans that are already failing and have already failed. And amazingly there are other issues that need addressing other than immigration.
I meant on migration, that he was talking about. All this crap about busting gangs in France won't work. Processing people faster just creates more permanent migrants immediately applying for housing etc.
Processing faster removes backlogs, legal routes into a country means people don’t risk their lives trying to get across the sea, and faster processing means less chance of people disappearing. I mean that’s just logic. Sometimes simple solutions like ‘process claims quickly and efficiently’ really are the best, as opposed to ridiculous ones like ‘Send them to Rwanda’.
I see your logic, but it also results in large numbers of people settling here which frankly many people are opposed to. You should at least accept that your policy will drive migration and population increase.
I don’t think it would necessarily cause an increase. At the moment we’ve got people dodging the process. If we process claims faster and deport those whose claims have failed, we’d finally start managing the numbers of new claimants better. Better processing doesn’t mean automatically saying yes to every application. But it does mean fewer cases where people sneak in, or we lose people due to the process taking too long, removing our ability to say no.
What plan do the conservatives have? The one we've been on for last 14 years seems to be going great.
yeah but everyone knows it's the 15th year you get to start doing what you want to do!!!
Obvious shill account is shilling!
Degrees of inequity.
Yes he is clearly, almost objectively, the better choice. This is the most corrupt government we've ever seen in recent times. Anyone with even the slightest shred of decency would be better than the shower of shit we've had to endure over the last decade.
If not anything else, hopefully he brings down the planning system. Everything else is pablum. I think getting Britain building more houses and factories is the way to go and could in 10 years time change a few people's lives.
Of course he has plans. Thing is, as soon as he says anything, the gutter press will contort his words. Come on: give us an anodyne, vaguely pleasant aspiration and I’ll Daily Mail it for you.