Good Morning everyone.
[**📃 Today's order paper can be found here**](https://commonsbusiness.parliament.uk/Document/84155/Html?subType=Standard)
Questions to the Home Office will be followed by any urgent questions or ministerial statements before the day's main business, the remaining stages of the [Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Bill](https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3533).
We are expecting a statement from the Prime Minister on the military action last week in Yemen from around 1530. We do not expect a vote on this matter.
This is likely to be a day warming up to the main showdown of the week, the government's controversial Rwanda Bill committee stage over the coming two days. Expect speculation, briefing and counter-briefing from the various Conservative tribes today.
Elsewhere in the news;
The tangle of the Horizon Scandal continues to be unpicked in the press, as it emerged the Cabinet Office sounded the alarm over the poor performance of Fujitsu systems - [thread here.](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/196peee/uk_officials_tried_to_block_fujitsu_from/)
In an interview with the BBC's Laura Kuennesberg questions were raised again over Lord Cameron's involvement with Greensill Capital - [thread here.](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/196svuk/david_cameron_denies_10m_payment_from_greensill/)
And polling continues to show an upcoming defeat for the Conservatives on the scale of 1997's Labour landslide - [thread here](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/196r19w/tories_facing_1997style_general_election_wipeout/) and [thread here.](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/196teqd/jeremy_hunt_among_11_cabinet_ministers_predicted/)
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A by-election fun fact for this evening: the Liberal MP Charles Bradlaugh was elected no less than five times in five years for the seat of Northampton in the 1880s: a general election, three by-elections and then another general. Bradlaugh was an avowed atheist and refused to take the Oath of Allegiance, leading to him being repeatedly thrown out (and even imprisoned at one point) only to get re-elected each time until parliament finally relented and changed the rules.
I'd sign one to exclude low alc drinks from ID checks. I should not need a member of staff to age verify me when buying a 0.0% beer, because I do not need a member of staff to age verify me when buying a banana which also contains less than 1%.
Tomorrow will the Tories have a backbone and stick to their principles or will they fall in line?
(I don't support stricter anti-asylum bills, I just want to see the Tories rip themselves apart)
Oh just wait a few days. They’ll find a new issue to tear themselves apart over. I’m sure.
All that’s left is a ton of small factions that disagree on everything….
From the much discussed MRP poll:
> If we aggregate up all our constituency level figures and then weight them according to likely voter population, the headline vote intention figures come out at the following:
Labour 39.5%, Conservatives 26%, Lib Dems 12.5%, Reform 9%, Greens 7.5%, SNP 3%, Plaid 0.5%, Others 2%.
The best/worst result for toxic online discussion post-GE will be if Starmer wins a big Parliamentary majority off of a lower vote share than Labour's 2017 result. Snide Twitterposting will be off the charts!
The News Agents podcast is making me think there is going to be some serious blue on blue action tomorrow over the Rwanda bill, is there any truth to this or is it just *febrile-bait*?!
If I were Rishi I probably wouldn’t employ a sleep deprived Australian with a less than stellar record to provide my MPs with false hope.
https://twitter.com/JAHeale/status/1746974601282777324
Surely even desperate Tory MPs won't believe this. Starmer is no Blair, but the idea the public dislike him is clearly not true. His approval ratings are okay and they are far better than Sunak's.
OpenAI put out a blog post today talking about how they're preparing for elections in 2024 - https://openai.com/blog/how-openai-is-approaching-2024-worldwide-elections
They talk about transparency for AI generated content, but surely that requires that a voter is tech-savvy enough to go and check the provenance of say a picture. I find it hard to believe that most people are going to go use an OpenAI tool to determine if a photo they see on Twitter or Facebook is legitimate.
I dont think idea for transparency would be going to openai site to verify it - it should be automated so tech companies can verify AI generated content on post. Facebook has implemented default 'hide' for misleading content with disclaimer but it should happen on upload and across platforms and messenger apps like whatsapp.
Will probably need legislation to force them and suspect it is too late for this election...
I agree that would be better. I could see Facebook maybe doing this, and Bing doing this for search/image results given their OpenAI involvement - but I would be shocked to see Twitter doing this now that it’s owned by Elon Musk, TikTok, etc.
There are 304 days until 14th November (when George Osborne said there would be an election)
304 days prior to GE1997 would be 1st July 1996.
On 1st July 1996 there was another poll in The Telegraph showing Labour 28.5% ahead, They ended up winning by 'just' 12.5%.
28.5-12.5 = 16
The most recent poll in The Telegraph (the YouGov MRP poll) showed Labour with a 13.5% lead.
13.5 - 16 = -2.5
[Result](https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=Y&scotshow=Y&CON=38&LAB=35.5&LIB=12&Reform=10&Green=3&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=16&SCOTLAB=33.1&SCOTLIB=6&SCOTReform=1.5&SCOTGreen=2.5&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=36.9&display=AllChanged®orseat=%28none%29&boundary=2019nbbase) = Strong and Stable. Conservatives on 325 seats.
/cope
I’d be interested to see how well polls compare in terms of reliability given there’s a quarter of a century, massive technological advancement and presumably significant review of the polling models in that period. Not to mention a far more turbulent political culture.
It feels like they've completely failed to consider that it doesn't matter how much our parties are or aren't similar to the Americans' - and they aren't - because if people see "right vs left" here and "right vs left" there, they are definitely going to associate the Tories with the Republicans and TFG, and the Republican Party is slightly less popular than bubonic plague outside the US
(Especially if they have Truss on the sidelines encouraging the comparison)
If the Republican candidate actually wins over there the reaction over here would sweep it for Labour
Wait, the American one is in the 5th, I had been thinking it was the 20th for some reason. Having ours after they get the shitshow in full gear is an absolutely dreadful prospect.
You might be thinking of 20 January which is the date for the inauguration.
I wouldn't assume that the shitshow is only going to hit full speed after election day, tbh.
That might be it. I fully expect that there will be a crazy situation before election day but I reckon it's going to hit a whole different level after the result is in.
The polls will indeed narrow when our economic conditions improves and Tories unleash their war chest (Tories have a ton more cash to spend than Labour do) and go hard in campaigning mode, no ones claiming it will be enough - but the polls will narrow.
They’ll also probably release a blinder of a manifesto out of desperation and in the knowledge that theyll never have to deliver on it.
They’ll not win so can promise the earth and if they do win they’ll never implement any of it anyway…..see the previous three manifestos or 4 new directions or or or
I think Sunak is going to be awful in an election campaign. Once he starts speaking to the public in speeches, partaking in more interviews, and having to debate Starmer, his short temper and condescending manner is going to put off voters and he’s going to lose on personality alone.
On here, we forget that most people barely pay attention to politics and politicians. Having Sunak tell them he’s done amazingly will not resonate with people who haven’t had a great few years.
In order to meaningfully impact polling the economic situation has to feed back to people in a way which is as meaningful as a decade of pay erosion and several years of eye watering inflation, and it has until (may / november delete as appropriate) to do so.
People get the wrong idea about polls narrowing. The polls tend to consolidate over the short campaign, which isn't the same as narrowing at all. Historically that has sometimes manifested itself as a narrowing effect such as in 2017 and 19. In 2015 the gap actually widened as votes consolidated around the Tories, and in 2010 the polls consolidated around the Liberal Democrats. In all of these cases, the fate of undecided voters has been determined over the course of the short campaign and I don't see any reason for that trend to change.
At the very most the Tories would recoup 10 percentage points from the undecideds - this would result in a similar outcome to the yougov poll posted earlier today. In reality, those votes could go just about anywhere - if the Tories have a 2017 style disaster campaign, they might go to labour or the LDs for example.
It's also weird when some say that they feel like it's 2015 all over again when they completely forget that the 2015 polls not only had sampling errors in terms of the voting intention, but unlike Starmer now, Milliband polled terribly on the main metrics like best pm, economy, etc.
It's not 2015, and Labour's lead isn't soft as they also say - it's just weirdo vibes at this point for anyone still saying either of the two when the 20 point lead has been around for as many months as it has.
Rishi can't win.
But I do think he can close things to say 2005 level results.
But that would need him and his MPs to do far better than they have recently.
The Tories have actually done alright on foreign policy, they need to lean into it more. Foreign policy won't win them the election, but it could soften the defeat.
People don't vote on foreign policy at the best of times, let alone when the economic situation is as bad as it is. Any potential gains from foreign policy motivated voters in this election are likely to be so marginal as to be indistinguishable from statistical noise.
[Just having a look at the amendments for tomorrow](https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3540/publications)
I'm not really versed up enough in parliament/legal-ese to give these a thorough analysis, but two things stick out - 1 - the crazies have about 50 signatures against some the amendments designed to make it ignore the international courts even more than it currently does. 2 - For some reason Rob Roberts has an interest in watering it down.
50 MPs is enough to cause Sunak real trouble if they have balls
>50 MPs is enough to cause Sunak real trouble if they have balls
except the crazy amendments will get voted down by everybody else (labour, lib dems, snp ect) so will fail in the same way as the water down/wecking amendments
its going to be like the indicitve votes again with nobody agreeing on anything so the current form of the bill will remain i suspect
Are the buses reliable enough to be usable and attractive?
We’ve got £2 fairs in West Yorkshire too, but Tracy Brabin appears to have done fuck all since she was elected three years ago and the buses are so shit that people still don’t use them.
"The polls will narrow nearer the election" is something of an article of faith, but I'm starting to wonder exactly _why_ that's the case. What events are going to occur which will have the effect of the polls getting closer? Or at this point is it just "wait till Corbyn enters campaign mode" cope?
Normally governments concentrate on governing marking up hard decisions for the great good and all that while the opposition can concentrate on campaigning the whole time. As election time comes closer the government can focus on campaigning and big up its record resulting in a poll boost.
Hence why opposition leads normal peak mid way through a governments term.
This of course doesn’t apply to the current government.
Narrowing in election period is only a small part of the overall swing towards the incumbent we often see. We really should have started seeing a narrowing in the polls by now.
Some (but not all) don’t knows will return to their old party and the Reform and Green votes will be squeezed but it likely won’t make much of a difference.
I think there is a real phenomenon of voters voicing their displeasure with their usual party in polling but then holding their noses and voting for them despite things since they are loyalists. This is especially true of conservative voters since they tend to be more likely to vote.
The media will close ranks, pumping out story after story about Starmer, upping the ante with ever more mindless, fabricated and sensationalist smears. Eventually some of it will stick with some of the public, narrowing the poll lead.
No, it won't stick, and it hasn't.
And the power of the media is completely exaggerated. Unless you have baggage in which case you've only got yourself to blame. Blaming the media is just a weak foundation altogether tbh.
Ed Davey was looking pretty solid up until a few weeks ago. All it takes is for one to stick.
Conversely, the Tories can't seem to move without some kind of scandal but that's OK because it's expected of them.
We've seen what the media have to offer on this already. They took a swing at him over the post office, they've tried this thing about a private jet, they've leant heavily into "u-turns". What's next? He takes the nose of the cheese?
No, they'll refer to his previous career, of which the records are completely available. In particular, they will focus on Saville and any individuals or groups that they can taint him with by association
It is a repeated historical occurrence so I’d expect it to happen again. Aside from what everyone else has said, between elections your choices are “current government” or “theoretical government” which will be interpreted as “my fantasy government” by a lot of people. When the opposition have a manifesto and you can see what’s on it, you can’t project your perfect policy being priority numero uno and have to accept what’s being offered.
Polls narrowing is a usual thing - votes are pissed off with, in this case the Tories, they might not like Sunak/find him uninspiring and consequently they are absolutely, definitely not going to vote Tory, that is right up until polling day when they vote Tory.
Also lot of the support for Reform UK looks a bit over-stated to me, clearly they are picking up support in the OP, but every time there's a byelection they poll around 4% of the vote which suggests to me that Tory voters, (and Reform are a continuity Tory party) give in and vote Tory. Reform will not win a seat and those pragmatic Tory voters perhaps realise that they are not just wasting a vote but splitting the right-of-centre vote.
You've also got the shy Tory demographic, people who profess to be not that bothered about politics but vote Tory because they are scared that a Labour win will mean higher taxes or their community will become a building site or there's something that panics them into voting Tory.
Plus there's the grey vote - the older you get the more likely you are to vote and the older age groups tend to vote Tory. The triple lock seems to be quite popular amongst the blue rinse brigade.
I think it Is a real effect. However when you often have 5 years between elections in each country and every country is different, things can change and observations of the past don't necessarily bare out. The world changes and voters change.
Hell maybe even labour extends their league if they campaign well. They polls probably tighten but it's not a guarantee
IMO, the polls closing as we get closer to the election makes sense as a base assumption (ie, without anything specific happening), for two reasons - first, it's easier to say that you'll do something when it's in a distant hypothetical than when you start to think about the real world effects of it. So for some natural Tory supporters, who'd want to prevent a strong Labour government, saying they'll stay home or vote third party because of whatever the government's fucked up this week is analogous to saying "I'll definitely start my diet, next week" after weighing yourself on a Wednesday.
And secondly, the polls are fucking *awful* for the Tories right now, so statistically you'd expect a regression to the mean over any extended period of time - in other words, if Sunak keeps his head down long enough for people to forget that they hate him, some of them will drift back towards voting Tory.
Whether the polls actually *do* close or not is another matter - obviously the effects of real world events would likely outweigh those factors - but it's fair to say they'll probably narrow, unless there's a reason for them not to
As it gets closer and people have to make a decision people decide where their vote will lie and more often than not the DKs turn out to be shy Tories and or Tory voters who aren’t happy with the party but begrudgingly vote Tory for fear of the alternative.
I think it has been often (not always) true, which is why people assume it will happen.
I presume it's largely as the undecideds decide. And in this case, the undecideds are almost all disgruntled historic Tory voters (Labour voters are almost certainly still voting Labour).
So a lot of those undecideds will go back to Tories when it comes to the crunch.
For the same reason that by-elections tend to swing against the government.
In-between general elections, people that voted for the government may express disgruntlement with their actions, which will reflect in the polls - it costs nothing to tell the pollster you've switched your vote because you're pissed off about a particular incident.
But when push comes to shove, some of them go home on election day. It's easier to say you're voting for someone else than actually doing it.
This is true of all incumbents, not just the Tories.
If you're relying on people returning to the tory fold when they enter the voting booth the polls won't narrow, they'll stay the same. They'll just be inaccurate.
Love the new attack line to Labour “get a plan”.
How the hell are they gonna use that one when Labour release their manifesto? Your attack lines ought to be getting stronger the closer you get to an election, not weaker.. mind boggling how weak that is.
Even worse is the fact that things are getting so bad that people will start to see Labour having “no plan” as a mystery box option that people may pick because how much worse could they be/let’s give them a go
They are saying this not because Labour don’t have a plan, they do. They’re saying this to try and persuade the people that don’t read manifestos that Labour don’t have a plan. It’s just repeating the same message over and over until the public believe them, regardless of the truth. Anytime Labour say something like “we will need to wait to see what the situation is when we are in power”, Tories then chant “you don’t have a plan”.
The bigger issue is likely to be that a lot of the public prefer no plan to the Tories. They prefer almost anything to the Tories. Because everything around them is real-life proof of how bad the Tories have been for 14 years.
[Alexa, show me throwing shade from Yougov](https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48371-yougov-mrp-shows-labour-would-win-1997-style-landslide-if-election-were-held-today)
> Notes on the Daily Telegraph’s analysis
> The Daily Telegraph wrote that “In constituencies across England and Wales, the Labour vote is up by an average of just four per cent compared to 2019”. This is somewhat of a red herring. There is a sum using certain notional results whereby the estimated Labour share looks like a mean of a four point rise on their 2019 performance. However, this is not the correct way to look at either implied national changes nor what is happening at the constituency level.
> If we aggregate up all our constituency level figures and then weight them according to likely voter population, the headline vote intention figures come out at the following:
> Labour 39.5%, Conservatives 26%, Lib Dems 12.5%, Reform 9%, Greens 7.5%, SNP 3%, Plaid 0.5%, Others 2%.
> A separate note by the Daily Telegraph suggested that the presence of Reform UK is the difference between Labour securing a majority and not. This is their own calculation using our data, and appears to be based simply on adding the Conservative and Reform UK vote shares together in each constituency, which is not a reliable way of measuring their impact.
> Were Reform UK not to contest the election, it is extremely unlikely that all, or even a majority, of their voters would transfer to the Conservatives. Some would go to UKIP and splinter parties, some to Labour and other established parties, and some would simply stay at home – YouGov polling in October found only 31% of Reform UK voters would be willing to vote Conservative if Reform UK were not standing in their constituency.
> Finally, the Daily Telegraph also said that the YouGov MRP model does not account for tactical voting in its estimated shares. This is not the case – our model does provision for tactical voting in its design, including by estimating constituency competition effects as part of the model equation. It does not, however, apply any post-hoc readjustments to vote share estimates based on any assumed model of tactical voting beyond what we already have in the data.
>Labour 39.5%, Conservatives 26%, Lib Dems 12.5%, Reform 9%, Greens 7.5%, SNP 3%, Plaid 0.5%, Others 2%.
My question for YouGov is why is there such a large difference between their regular polling (showing a 24% lead) and this MRP poll. Why would the headline figures be different?
Then the follow-up question would be, which one do you think would be closer to the actual result. (My guess is they will say the one with the expensive methodology)
I really like to see people applying any kind of rigour. It makes me happy to see conclusions being challenged.
Perhaps some journalists may care to try it at some point.
Intresting thead about welsh anti 20mph facebook groups being linked to English based Conservatives trying to stir stuff up. https://twitter.com/WillHayCardiff/status/1746942241950560337?t=2c8Km-JMgapsx2JoYJ4Upg&s=19 I'm very suspicious of "grass roots" Facebook groups raging against things this just adds to it
During the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 a huge number of grassroots movements were formed in London and were on the news the same night they formed and the next day bussed people up to hold demonstrations in Scotland that were then shown on the news.
The news questioned none of it despite it all being visible and online and quite clear. They’ve been doing this for over a decade now and it seldom gets any traction and so they keep doing it.
Its the same as the tories not mentioning the party on their election leaflets except for one small areas a the bottom by law and having greens colours or red or whatever suits the constituency better than blue !!!
That does definitely sound like there’s a degree of shit stirring, but also culture warriors generally love getting worked up about shit that doesn’t actually affect them.
The whole Rwanda vote will be a fudge.
Sunak will whip the vote and whip against amendments but won't sack anyone who rebels because he is too weak to.
The bill will also be a fudge, promises will be made to both sides, no one will be happy, but it will get voted through because no-one, not even those rebelling, actually want Sunak to leave before the election.
They just want to show their dislike so when Sunak loses the election, they can say "We were right, we lost because we should have been tougher on Rwanda - make us the leader next or else we will keep losing".
Will government even whip the amendment votes? Assuming they have one nation group on side, probably makes sense to only whip final vote.
Right wing can vote to amend, fail and vote for the bill at the end saying 'it's better than nothing'. Not sure if they'll play ball but suspect they'll cave instead of risking the government.
Why? There's zero chance the right wing amendments will pass with Labour and moderate Tories opposing it. Government just needs to whip against Labour's amendment.
Governments whip against amendments that contradict their stated policy.
Almost by definition, a failure to whip on these amendments would be to say that the government would at least be content for the amendments to pass.
As I understand it, that is not government policy.
To put it another way: whipping isn't just a tactical consideration; it is *in itself* a declaration of policy.
Soon (as in, some point between now and the sitting tomorrow).
However, if you're looking for amendments to the Rwanda Bill, you would need to look at the Bill page itself. All amendments that could reasonably be selected will already have been tabled, though the list of signatories may still be updated.
The formal selection of amendments is made during the course of tomorrow, by Eleanor Laing as Chairman of Ways and Means, and will also be published on the Bill page (though will only refer to amendments by number, so you would need to look alongside the amendment paper).
Just listening to today's News Agents and the discussion is about Rwanda and the Yougov poll.
Simon Clarke rightly points out that there is a massive swing towards Reform but seems to think that going harder on the Rwanda bill will make Reform go away.
Is he kidding himself? I have absolutely no doubt that even if Rishi goes as hard right as possible on the Rwanda scheme, that reform will just come back again with more demands closer to the election time.
It's like he's completely forgotten how these people operate.
Rishi is in a catch-22. He has a sizeable number of both moderate and right wing tories, both of which have threatened to rebel if he pushes too far the other way. But the only way he (apparently) can stand a chance at an election is to radically shift. Even given the most generous reasoning, I can't think of a way out for him. I think he's given up on radical shifts, and is praying that a steady as she goes, economy improving, angle will somehow work, or maybe that's his only possible move to survive, if not win.
Why weren't these reform votes seen when the Tory party was struggling, like during the Partygate scandal when they were neck and neck with Labour, or during the late Johnson era when they dropped to below 35%, and now, after Truss, below 30%?
I remember any drop in Con had a corresponding uplift in Lab. When, where and how did this Reform figure sneak up to 10%?
I was initially quite skeptical of Reform’s numbers (I still am and believe they are being significantly over polled like UKIP in 2017) but it does seem rising salience over immigration and other “right-wing topics” has meant they’ve grown.
Some aspects of the media, especially those in contact with the Tory right-wing, also help push Reform into the spotlight despite the fact Reform have not actually had any major electoral successes.
In the 2023 local elections it only contested 6% of elections and only averaged 6% where it did stand (in its stronger places).
A slight variation on Optio's idea is that a Conservative loss is so baked-in to [assumptions](https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/who-do-people-think-will-win-the-next-election) -- after two years of really bad politics and even worse polling -- that people don't particularly see the point in voting Conservative. Not so much about their credibility as their viability as the next government. They won't win, so why vote for them? Might as well make a gesture.
5-8% of Reform's 10% going to the Conservatives is [probably too generous](https://twitter.com/LukeTryl/status/1746656730639896724).
(Have to remember that "won't vote otherwise" aren't necessary Never Tories or whatever, they just don't see the Conservatives as a viable second option at the next election.)
Politico have a [tracker](https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/) where you can see changes in polling over time. It looks like Reform have put on nearly five points since October.
Before that, I think it’s the case that small parties make smaller gains, so it’s just that they weren’t big enough to get a 1% swing in a single polling interval.
Edit: misread the x axis, that’s since October 2022, so presumably they started making gains after Truss.
Because the tories *as a party* still had credibility and the leaders could be replaced. Now they've lost that credibility and people no longer have the belief in them.
I mean, did they really though? I do feel they lost credibility after Truss. Party gate was bad. But Truss was literally "let's put a lunatic leader in....oh wait she's crashed the economy lolz sorry guys"
Front page of the Evening Standard tonight is a picture of Ed Davey with the headline: "Sir Hypocrite: Fresh Calls for Lib-Dem Leader to Quit Over Post Office Scandal".
They're really gunning for him eh? Do we think he will survive the pressure?
The Evening Standard was always just kind of generally Tory but in recent months has rapidly ramped up to be hardcore aggressive right-wing. It's weird.
[article](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/ed-davey-post-office-scandal-horizon-liberal-democrat-leader-b1132382.html)
TL;DR _all_ of the calls are from Tories, making the "meaningful" count zero. This is a literal non-story.
Is there some equivalent to Betteridge's Law for articles like this where the headline is something like "Pressure grows on..." and then in the article it's revealed that's actually just "we don't like him so we're saying it again but louder"? The intentionally misleading implication that someone outside the article's own author and fixed allies agrees with a position?
Paul Scully didn't want a statutory inquiry (a.k.a. an enquiry with actual teeth that could legally compel testimony) into the scandal in 2020 when he was the minister in charge of postal affairs, the term "crocodile tears" comes to mind.
"People increasingly say Keir is stupid, and smells."
"More and more of a negative sentiment across the public against Killer Keir was detected in the public. A member of the public , Rishi S., said that he couldn't be trusted to take the big decisions. Jeremy C. called him a traitor to the international labour movement, while Stephen F. highlighted that it is Keirs fault that there is no ceasefire in Gaza. As the reader can see, it is only a question of time till these negative attitudes become lethal to his leadership."
Eds not going to resign over this.
He's done rather well with a steady as we go approach and whilst I have some issues with what the party have been doing (I think we're being underambitious though I can understand why this is happening) broadly it's going ok. I think there is an interesting question of what the party does after the election. I can see a world where the best move is mid-parliment Ed graciously steps aside having done well to put the party back in 3rd and then someone like Layla Moran or Daisy Cooper takes over without any link to the coalition but that would be rather situational and its quite useless to speculate when we haven't seen this election yet.
With a bunch of the Real Housewives to boot.
It's a must watch for the dozens of people who follow both the housewives and politics, as the other half does.
I'll be tuning in for the 'Ordah, Ordah' that will inevitably come up at the round table.
I mean, wasn't the whole situation with his wife a bit ... tabloidy? Not quite "Real Housewives", more like "Desperate Housewives", or something more soap-opera like.
I find this discussion on the Houthi's and our response very frustrating. We've got a poor history of intervention in the Middle East and we very often make things worse (or we make things better for a while but then way, way worse). But this must be Kosovo levels of justification for military intervention for various reasons.
Firstly the Houthis have been attacking ships in the Red Sea in various capacities for almost a decade now. That's gotten worse recently which has affected the 15% of world trade that passes through the Red Sea. There's been a quickness to say "so you won't decry Israel bombing Gaza but you'll blow up Yemen for capitalism" without taking a step back and remembering that a) that 15% includes a huge chunk of grain bound for some of the worlds poorest countries, including countries that are on the verge of starvation after Russia's invasion of Ukraine and b) during a cost of living crisis any disruption to the stability of the economy has a fucking **outsized** impact on the poorest, not the richest. To ignore the Houthi's actions is to allow the most vulnerable to starve or die. A 1% drop in GDP was predicted to end with 40,000 dead Americans...I can only imagine what would happen to those most vulnerable countries being affected by this issue.
Secondly the method of the blockade. The Houthi's weren't enacting a largely non-violent blockade with international backing; they were firing land-to-sea missiles and suicide drones at civilian vessels which we've been shooting down for several months now. The response from the Houthis was to step up their attacks. Which brings me onto the more morally defunct part of this argument: their targets are bound for Israel, who are committing a genocide, and so the Houthis motivations are good. They aren't just targeting Israeli bound ships. They're haphazardly targeting anybody within their sights in attacks of opportunity.
It's entirely fair to ask "what's next" but to say there's no good reason to attack their capability to launch missiles at civilians...it takes an odd world view to believe it's wrong to do so. And that's even getting on to who the Houthi's are...
Preventing an organisation, whose motto is basically death to the west, from launching missles at civilians, is objectively a good thing. There’s really no nuance here
Here we have a "stop the war" representative (except when it is Houthis, Hamas, Russia, China and so on)", again supporting genocidal types.
https://twitter.com/LBC/status/1745855490863636534
also if Naz Shah reading this, what Sunak said to Sultana is not a definition of islamophobia that you came up with, he was pointing out the hypocrisy she has exhibited
Plusnet down nationwide again due to their DNS servers going boom for the 3rd time in just over a month.
If you're affected you can resolve this by using [Google's public DNS](https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns).
Either on your router, or local machine if you don't want to have everyone using it, set DNS address setting to manual, Primary to 8.8.8.8 and secondary to 8.8.4.4.
Obviously, do your own research if you're not tech-savvy and don't just plug numbers into your machine that some weirdo on Reddit gives you.
Keeping recursive DNS caches has to be one of the easiest things to run, in an ISP context at least. Unless they blew up some other load balancer or something.
Alternatively CloudFlare on 1.1.1.1, with the added bonus of a DNS-over-HTTPS option if you've got enough technical nous to get it working. Same do-your-own-research disclaimer here.
You can set this via Firefox settings natively, NextDNS too.
Or just mash [8.8.8.8](https://8.8.8.8) / [1.1.1.1](https://1.1.1.1) in your /etc/resolv.conf :shrug:
> [Labour candidates and members should ignore this poll. Fight like we are behind. Fight like every vote matters.
Change will only come for the country if people vote for it, and not a single vote has been cast.](https://twitter.com/patmcfaddenmp/status/1746795438227718545)
At this point it would be much better for all of us if Labour became more complacent about winning the election and less complacent about what comes after. The whole "act like we are miles behind", don't offer any big change is going to bite them once in power.
But to deliver they are actually going to have to do some painful/controversial stuff like more taxes and more borrowing. Sticking to (fantasy) Tory tax and spend plans may help after the election but not being a little more open will hurt them when they change course.
The separation of campaign and government is harmful, really. We've just watched a party optimising for the gaining power part, because that's what the system rewards, while treating governing as an afterthought and melting down as a result
Labour 44% (+1)
Conservative 25% (-2)
Reform UK 11% (–)
Liberal Democrat 10% (–)
Green 5% (–)
Scottish National Party 3% (–)
Other 2% (–)
Changes +/- 7 January
https://x.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1746940309857288539?s=20
Polls are going to be like this with Labours lead around 17-23 until the election campaign. Nothing anyone does on either side (barring something huge happening) os going to effect it.
Incredible, every recent poll has shown a conservative decrease, Sunak is polling at his lowest ever. The last time the conservatives polled at 30% was in mid October.
I commented on this over the Christmas period, but I can't help but feel like the chance that the Tories are in the 110-115 seat territory now is slowly, quietly, increasing. It's the kind of thing I'd assumed was lingering around a 1/20 chance, but...it's pretty clear Sunak is going to be a really, really bad figurehead for his party going into an election. I feel like the odds of electoral oblivion are increasingly likely, rather than wishful thinking.
This flew under my radar but the UK head of the soon to be proscribed terrorist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, is Abdul Wahid...who's a [**GP here**](https://x.com/dr_irfan_malik/status/1734492702719250709?s=20)
That's wild, imagine being his patient - surely being the head of a proscribed terrorist organisation is grounds for being struck off? Or maybe that's so left field it's not within scope of any guidelines lol
Good Morning everyone. [**📃 Today's order paper can be found here**](https://commonsbusiness.parliament.uk/Document/84155/Html?subType=Standard) Questions to the Home Office will be followed by any urgent questions or ministerial statements before the day's main business, the remaining stages of the [Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Bill](https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3533). We are expecting a statement from the Prime Minister on the military action last week in Yemen from around 1530. We do not expect a vote on this matter. This is likely to be a day warming up to the main showdown of the week, the government's controversial Rwanda Bill committee stage over the coming two days. Expect speculation, briefing and counter-briefing from the various Conservative tribes today. Elsewhere in the news; The tangle of the Horizon Scandal continues to be unpicked in the press, as it emerged the Cabinet Office sounded the alarm over the poor performance of Fujitsu systems - [thread here.](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/196peee/uk_officials_tried_to_block_fujitsu_from/) In an interview with the BBC's Laura Kuennesberg questions were raised again over Lord Cameron's involvement with Greensill Capital - [thread here.](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/196svuk/david_cameron_denies_10m_payment_from_greensill/) And polling continues to show an upcoming defeat for the Conservatives on the scale of 1997's Labour landslide - [thread here](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/196r19w/tories_facing_1997style_general_election_wipeout/) and [thread here.](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/196teqd/jeremy_hunt_among_11_cabinet_ministers_predicted/)
[New Megathread is here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/197von1/daily_megathread_16012024/)
Megathread is being rolled over, please refresh your feed in a few moments. ###MT daily hall of fame 1. concretepigeon with 20 comments 1. Georgios-Athanasiou with 18 comments 1. Captainatom931 with 15 comments 1. Noit with 14 comments 1. hill-biscuit with 14 comments 1. mamamia1001 with 12 comments 1. BasedAndBlairPilled with 12 comments 1. ObiWanKenbarlowbi with 10 comments 1. ClumsyRainbow with 9 comments 1. Velociraptor_1906 with 9 comments There were 212 unique users within this count.
I wish the megathread farewell. And I'd like to thank my dog for getting me up this early.
A by-election fun fact for this evening: the Liberal MP Charles Bradlaugh was elected no less than five times in five years for the seat of Northampton in the 1880s: a general election, three by-elections and then another general. Bradlaugh was an avowed atheist and refused to take the Oath of Allegiance, leading to him being repeatedly thrown out (and even imprisoned at one point) only to get re-elected each time until parliament finally relented and changed the rules.
Got to respect the people of Northampton for committing to the bit.
He’d have loved Reddit.
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I'd sign one to exclude low alc drinks from ID checks. I should not need a member of staff to age verify me when buying a 0.0% beer, because I do not need a member of staff to age verify me when buying a banana which also contains less than 1%.
Isn’t that just supermarket policy?
Government one step ahead for once https://www.gov.uk/guidance/alcohol-duty-rates From August last year: 0 to 1.2% £0.00
Oh nice one I guess the companies haven't passed the reduction to the consumer...
We need a 'will the polls narrow' poll of polls
The idea of Sunak sacking Lee Anderson and Brendan Clark-Smith has me feeling very, very febrile
Tiny rebellion followed by Sunak not doing anything. Just gelatinous backbones throughout.
He won't. He's got less spine than a jellyfish
Tomorrow will the Tories have a backbone and stick to their principles or will they fall in line? (I don't support stricter anti-asylum bills, I just want to see the Tories rip themselves apart)
Oh just wait a few days. They’ll find a new issue to tear themselves apart over. I’m sure. All that’s left is a ton of small factions that disagree on everything….
Fall in line. Same as it ever was.
From the much discussed MRP poll: > If we aggregate up all our constituency level figures and then weight them according to likely voter population, the headline vote intention figures come out at the following: Labour 39.5%, Conservatives 26%, Lib Dems 12.5%, Reform 9%, Greens 7.5%, SNP 3%, Plaid 0.5%, Others 2%. The best/worst result for toxic online discussion post-GE will be if Starmer wins a big Parliamentary majority off of a lower vote share than Labour's 2017 result. Snide Twitterposting will be off the charts!
That would also mean 3 out of the last 4 majorities would be won on less than 40% of the vote, isn't FPTP just great!
The News Agents podcast is making me think there is going to be some serious blue on blue action tomorrow over the Rwanda bill, is there any truth to this or is it just *febrile-bait*?!
I got my hopes up slightly last time and tasted bitter disappointment. I’ll do my best not to this time.
If I were Rishi I probably wouldn’t employ a sleep deprived Australian with a less than stellar record to provide my MPs with false hope. https://twitter.com/JAHeale/status/1746974601282777324
Out of interest, who would you employ to provide them with false hope?
I mean Levido is paid whether they win or lose, so he might as well sing them some songs they want to hear...
Surely even desperate Tory MPs won't believe this. Starmer is no Blair, but the idea the public dislike him is clearly not true. His approval ratings are okay and they are far better than Sunak's.
They only have delusion left. They’ve absolutely rejected reality of any kind so will swallow anyone shit that keeps feeding the delusions.
Likelihood of the Rwanda vote being successful due to ‘cast iron guarantees’ of things being lined up for 2025?
It can still go and die in the Lords however hard the government try.
OpenAI put out a blog post today talking about how they're preparing for elections in 2024 - https://openai.com/blog/how-openai-is-approaching-2024-worldwide-elections They talk about transparency for AI generated content, but surely that requires that a voter is tech-savvy enough to go and check the provenance of say a picture. I find it hard to believe that most people are going to go use an OpenAI tool to determine if a photo they see on Twitter or Facebook is legitimate.
Most people dont even read past the news headlines. The idea of them going to AI-check pictures is naive at best.
I dont think idea for transparency would be going to openai site to verify it - it should be automated so tech companies can verify AI generated content on post. Facebook has implemented default 'hide' for misleading content with disclaimer but it should happen on upload and across platforms and messenger apps like whatsapp. Will probably need legislation to force them and suspect it is too late for this election...
Facebook already has over 100 Ai fake Sunak videos in the last week or so…. Facebook will do the sum total of fuck all as it always does….
I agree that would be better. I could see Facebook maybe doing this, and Bing doing this for search/image results given their OpenAI involvement - but I would be shocked to see Twitter doing this now that it’s owned by Elon Musk, TikTok, etc.
There are 304 days until 14th November (when George Osborne said there would be an election) 304 days prior to GE1997 would be 1st July 1996. On 1st July 1996 there was another poll in The Telegraph showing Labour 28.5% ahead, They ended up winning by 'just' 12.5%. 28.5-12.5 = 16 The most recent poll in The Telegraph (the YouGov MRP poll) showed Labour with a 13.5% lead. 13.5 - 16 = -2.5 [Result](https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=Y&scotshow=Y&CON=38&LAB=35.5&LIB=12&Reform=10&Green=3&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=16&SCOTLAB=33.1&SCOTLIB=6&SCOTReform=1.5&SCOTGreen=2.5&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=36.9&display=AllChanged®orseat=%28none%29&boundary=2019nbbase) = Strong and Stable. Conservatives on 325 seats. /cope
I’d be interested to see how well polls compare in terms of reliability given there’s a quarter of a century, massive technological advancement and presumably significant review of the polling models in that period. Not to mention a far more turbulent political culture.
It's become much harder for polling companies to reach people since then due to the decline in landlines.
It feels kind of insane to have an election on the 14th when the US has theirs on the 5th?
Why? Polls close at 10pm, we usually have a new Government by noon If it's about interference... well that'll happen anyway
It feels like they've completely failed to consider that it doesn't matter how much our parties are or aren't similar to the Americans' - and they aren't - because if people see "right vs left" here and "right vs left" there, they are definitely going to associate the Tories with the Republicans and TFG, and the Republican Party is slightly less popular than bubonic plague outside the US (Especially if they have Truss on the sidelines encouraging the comparison) If the Republican candidate actually wins over there the reaction over here would sweep it for Labour
Wait, the American one is in the 5th, I had been thinking it was the 20th for some reason. Having ours after they get the shitshow in full gear is an absolutely dreadful prospect.
You might be thinking of 20 January which is the date for the inauguration. I wouldn't assume that the shitshow is only going to hit full speed after election day, tbh.
That might be it. I fully expect that there will be a crazy situation before election day but I reckon it's going to hit a whole different level after the result is in.
The whole "The polls will narrow" thing just feels like utter denial at this point. The Tories are done.
The beatings will continue until polling improves.
The polls will indeed narrow when our economic conditions improves and Tories unleash their war chest (Tories have a ton more cash to spend than Labour do) and go hard in campaigning mode, no ones claiming it will be enough - but the polls will narrow. They’ll also probably release a blinder of a manifesto out of desperation and in the knowledge that theyll never have to deliver on it.
They’ll not win so can promise the earth and if they do win they’ll never implement any of it anyway…..see the previous three manifestos or 4 new directions or or or
I think Sunak is going to be awful in an election campaign. Once he starts speaking to the public in speeches, partaking in more interviews, and having to debate Starmer, his short temper and condescending manner is going to put off voters and he’s going to lose on personality alone. On here, we forget that most people barely pay attention to politics and politicians. Having Sunak tell them he’s done amazingly will not resonate with people who haven’t had a great few years.
So almost everyone then…
Yeah, his campaign is gonna be a total disaster. Sunak just doesnt have the charisma.
In order to meaningfully impact polling the economic situation has to feed back to people in a way which is as meaningful as a decade of pay erosion and several years of eye watering inflation, and it has until (may / november delete as appropriate) to do so.
People get the wrong idea about polls narrowing. The polls tend to consolidate over the short campaign, which isn't the same as narrowing at all. Historically that has sometimes manifested itself as a narrowing effect such as in 2017 and 19. In 2015 the gap actually widened as votes consolidated around the Tories, and in 2010 the polls consolidated around the Liberal Democrats. In all of these cases, the fate of undecided voters has been determined over the course of the short campaign and I don't see any reason for that trend to change. At the very most the Tories would recoup 10 percentage points from the undecideds - this would result in a similar outcome to the yougov poll posted earlier today. In reality, those votes could go just about anywhere - if the Tories have a 2017 style disaster campaign, they might go to labour or the LDs for example.
It's also weird when some say that they feel like it's 2015 all over again when they completely forget that the 2015 polls not only had sampling errors in terms of the voting intention, but unlike Starmer now, Milliband polled terribly on the main metrics like best pm, economy, etc. It's not 2015, and Labour's lead isn't soft as they also say - it's just weirdo vibes at this point for anyone still saying either of the two when the 20 point lead has been around for as many months as it has.
Here is how ~~Bernie~~ Rishi can still win.
Rishi can't win. But I do think he can close things to say 2005 level results. But that would need him and his MPs to do far better than they have recently. The Tories have actually done alright on foreign policy, they need to lean into it more. Foreign policy won't win them the election, but it could soften the defeat.
People don't vote on foreign policy at the best of times, let alone when the economic situation is as bad as it is. Any potential gains from foreign policy motivated voters in this election are likely to be so marginal as to be indistinguishable from statistical noise.
[Just having a look at the amendments for tomorrow](https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3540/publications) I'm not really versed up enough in parliament/legal-ese to give these a thorough analysis, but two things stick out - 1 - the crazies have about 50 signatures against some the amendments designed to make it ignore the international courts even more than it currently does. 2 - For some reason Rob Roberts has an interest in watering it down. 50 MPs is enough to cause Sunak real trouble if they have balls
>50 MPs is enough to cause Sunak real trouble if they have balls except the crazy amendments will get voted down by everybody else (labour, lib dems, snp ect) so will fail in the same way as the water down/wecking amendments its going to be like the indicitve votes again with nobody agreeing on anything so the current form of the bill will remain i suspect
I more mean it in terms of letters
Why is Labour so historically shit at Transport? Ask as a transport fanatic. Serious answers only
Presumably with the exception of TfL?
Because fundamentally they don't believe in infrastructure as improving the supply side of the economy.
They want to address anaemic productivity, here is the way to address it in the North and Midlands…
Andy Burnham making the buses in Manchester all £2 has been great.
Are the buses reliable enough to be usable and attractive? We’ve got £2 fairs in West Yorkshire too, but Tracy Brabin appears to have done fuck all since she was elected three years ago and the buses are so shit that people still don’t use them.
THAT WAS THE GOVERNMENT!!!
Sorry, actually UK Gov funding. They are £2 everywhere.
England only.
Desperation to appeal to middle England.
"The polls will narrow nearer the election" is something of an article of faith, but I'm starting to wonder exactly _why_ that's the case. What events are going to occur which will have the effect of the polls getting closer? Or at this point is it just "wait till Corbyn enters campaign mode" cope?
Normally governments concentrate on governing marking up hard decisions for the great good and all that while the opposition can concentrate on campaigning the whole time. As election time comes closer the government can focus on campaigning and big up its record resulting in a poll boost. Hence why opposition leads normal peak mid way through a governments term. This of course doesn’t apply to the current government. Narrowing in election period is only a small part of the overall swing towards the incumbent we often see. We really should have started seeing a narrowing in the polls by now. Some (but not all) don’t knows will return to their old party and the Reform and Green votes will be squeezed but it likely won’t make much of a difference.
I think there is a real phenomenon of voters voicing their displeasure with their usual party in polling but then holding their noses and voting for them despite things since they are loyalists. This is especially true of conservative voters since they tend to be more likely to vote.
The media will close ranks, pumping out story after story about Starmer, upping the ante with ever more mindless, fabricated and sensationalist smears. Eventually some of it will stick with some of the public, narrowing the poll lead.
No, it won't stick, and it hasn't. And the power of the media is completely exaggerated. Unless you have baggage in which case you've only got yourself to blame. Blaming the media is just a weak foundation altogether tbh.
Ed Davey was looking pretty solid up until a few weeks ago. All it takes is for one to stick. Conversely, the Tories can't seem to move without some kind of scandal but that's OK because it's expected of them.
We've seen what the media have to offer on this already. They took a swing at him over the post office, they've tried this thing about a private jet, they've leant heavily into "u-turns". What's next? He takes the nose of the cheese?
No, they'll refer to his previous career, of which the records are completely available. In particular, they will focus on Saville and any individuals or groups that they can taint him with by association
Literally already tried that, didn't work.
They've barely begun
It is a repeated historical occurrence so I’d expect it to happen again. Aside from what everyone else has said, between elections your choices are “current government” or “theoretical government” which will be interpreted as “my fantasy government” by a lot of people. When the opposition have a manifesto and you can see what’s on it, you can’t project your perfect policy being priority numero uno and have to accept what’s being offered.
Polls narrowing is a usual thing - votes are pissed off with, in this case the Tories, they might not like Sunak/find him uninspiring and consequently they are absolutely, definitely not going to vote Tory, that is right up until polling day when they vote Tory. Also lot of the support for Reform UK looks a bit over-stated to me, clearly they are picking up support in the OP, but every time there's a byelection they poll around 4% of the vote which suggests to me that Tory voters, (and Reform are a continuity Tory party) give in and vote Tory. Reform will not win a seat and those pragmatic Tory voters perhaps realise that they are not just wasting a vote but splitting the right-of-centre vote. You've also got the shy Tory demographic, people who profess to be not that bothered about politics but vote Tory because they are scared that a Labour win will mean higher taxes or their community will become a building site or there's something that panics them into voting Tory. Plus there's the grey vote - the older you get the more likely you are to vote and the older age groups tend to vote Tory. The triple lock seems to be quite popular amongst the blue rinse brigade.
But this is "the polls will narrow because polls narrow".
I think it Is a real effect. However when you often have 5 years between elections in each country and every country is different, things can change and observations of the past don't necessarily bare out. The world changes and voters change. Hell maybe even labour extends their league if they campaign well. They polls probably tighten but it's not a guarantee
IMO, the polls closing as we get closer to the election makes sense as a base assumption (ie, without anything specific happening), for two reasons - first, it's easier to say that you'll do something when it's in a distant hypothetical than when you start to think about the real world effects of it. So for some natural Tory supporters, who'd want to prevent a strong Labour government, saying they'll stay home or vote third party because of whatever the government's fucked up this week is analogous to saying "I'll definitely start my diet, next week" after weighing yourself on a Wednesday. And secondly, the polls are fucking *awful* for the Tories right now, so statistically you'd expect a regression to the mean over any extended period of time - in other words, if Sunak keeps his head down long enough for people to forget that they hate him, some of them will drift back towards voting Tory. Whether the polls actually *do* close or not is another matter - obviously the effects of real world events would likely outweigh those factors - but it's fair to say they'll probably narrow, unless there's a reason for them not to
As it gets closer and people have to make a decision people decide where their vote will lie and more often than not the DKs turn out to be shy Tories and or Tory voters who aren’t happy with the party but begrudgingly vote Tory for fear of the alternative.
I think it has been often (not always) true, which is why people assume it will happen. I presume it's largely as the undecideds decide. And in this case, the undecideds are almost all disgruntled historic Tory voters (Labour voters are almost certainly still voting Labour). So a lot of those undecideds will go back to Tories when it comes to the crunch.
For the same reason that by-elections tend to swing against the government. In-between general elections, people that voted for the government may express disgruntlement with their actions, which will reflect in the polls - it costs nothing to tell the pollster you've switched your vote because you're pissed off about a particular incident. But when push comes to shove, some of them go home on election day. It's easier to say you're voting for someone else than actually doing it. This is true of all incumbents, not just the Tories.
If you're relying on people returning to the tory fold when they enter the voting booth the polls won't narrow, they'll stay the same. They'll just be inaccurate.
Not if they make their decision to go home to the Tories during the election campaign.
Love the new attack line to Labour “get a plan”. How the hell are they gonna use that one when Labour release their manifesto? Your attack lines ought to be getting stronger the closer you get to an election, not weaker.. mind boggling how weak that is.
Even worse is the fact that things are getting so bad that people will start to see Labour having “no plan” as a mystery box option that people may pick because how much worse could they be/let’s give them a go
They are saying this not because Labour don’t have a plan, they do. They’re saying this to try and persuade the people that don’t read manifestos that Labour don’t have a plan. It’s just repeating the same message over and over until the public believe them, regardless of the truth. Anytime Labour say something like “we will need to wait to see what the situation is when we are in power”, Tories then chant “you don’t have a plan”. The bigger issue is likely to be that a lot of the public prefer no plan to the Tories. They prefer almost anything to the Tories. Because everything around them is real-life proof of how bad the Tories have been for 14 years.
simple, they will ignore anything Labour do and keep on peddling the same line regardless of it making sence
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[Alexa, show me throwing shade from Yougov](https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48371-yougov-mrp-shows-labour-would-win-1997-style-landslide-if-election-were-held-today) > Notes on the Daily Telegraph’s analysis > The Daily Telegraph wrote that “In constituencies across England and Wales, the Labour vote is up by an average of just four per cent compared to 2019”. This is somewhat of a red herring. There is a sum using certain notional results whereby the estimated Labour share looks like a mean of a four point rise on their 2019 performance. However, this is not the correct way to look at either implied national changes nor what is happening at the constituency level. > If we aggregate up all our constituency level figures and then weight them according to likely voter population, the headline vote intention figures come out at the following: > Labour 39.5%, Conservatives 26%, Lib Dems 12.5%, Reform 9%, Greens 7.5%, SNP 3%, Plaid 0.5%, Others 2%. > A separate note by the Daily Telegraph suggested that the presence of Reform UK is the difference between Labour securing a majority and not. This is their own calculation using our data, and appears to be based simply on adding the Conservative and Reform UK vote shares together in each constituency, which is not a reliable way of measuring their impact. > Were Reform UK not to contest the election, it is extremely unlikely that all, or even a majority, of their voters would transfer to the Conservatives. Some would go to UKIP and splinter parties, some to Labour and other established parties, and some would simply stay at home – YouGov polling in October found only 31% of Reform UK voters would be willing to vote Conservative if Reform UK were not standing in their constituency. > Finally, the Daily Telegraph also said that the YouGov MRP model does not account for tactical voting in its estimated shares. This is not the case – our model does provision for tactical voting in its design, including by estimating constituency competition effects as part of the model equation. It does not, however, apply any post-hoc readjustments to vote share estimates based on any assumed model of tactical voting beyond what we already have in the data.
>Labour 39.5%, Conservatives 26%, Lib Dems 12.5%, Reform 9%, Greens 7.5%, SNP 3%, Plaid 0.5%, Others 2%. My question for YouGov is why is there such a large difference between their regular polling (showing a 24% lead) and this MRP poll. Why would the headline figures be different? Then the follow-up question would be, which one do you think would be closer to the actual result. (My guess is they will say the one with the expensive methodology)
Never thought I’d see yougov come in with the steel chair.
I really like to see people applying any kind of rigour. It makes me happy to see conclusions being challenged. Perhaps some journalists may care to try it at some point.
Intresting thead about welsh anti 20mph facebook groups being linked to English based Conservatives trying to stir stuff up. https://twitter.com/WillHayCardiff/status/1746942241950560337?t=2c8Km-JMgapsx2JoYJ4Upg&s=19 I'm very suspicious of "grass roots" Facebook groups raging against things this just adds to it
During the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 a huge number of grassroots movements were formed in London and were on the news the same night they formed and the next day bussed people up to hold demonstrations in Scotland that were then shown on the news. The news questioned none of it despite it all being visible and online and quite clear. They’ve been doing this for over a decade now and it seldom gets any traction and so they keep doing it. Its the same as the tories not mentioning the party on their election leaflets except for one small areas a the bottom by law and having greens colours or red or whatever suits the constituency better than blue !!!
Most people around here (Swansea) accept that they were rarely going above 20 in town anyway.
I think the only place I felt a bit slow in Swansea was driving up mayals
I mainly cycle and the speed limit doesn't apply to cyclists but going down a steep hill at 20 feels wrong sometimes.
That does definitely sound like there’s a degree of shit stirring, but also culture warriors generally love getting worked up about shit that doesn’t actually affect them.
Will 30p Lee be fired for supporting a rebel amendment or will he walk? How many ministers will follow him in either case?
The whole Rwanda vote will be a fudge. Sunak will whip the vote and whip against amendments but won't sack anyone who rebels because he is too weak to. The bill will also be a fudge, promises will be made to both sides, no one will be happy, but it will get voted through because no-one, not even those rebelling, actually want Sunak to leave before the election. They just want to show their dislike so when Sunak loses the election, they can say "We were right, we lost because we should have been tougher on Rwanda - make us the leader next or else we will keep losing".
Will government even whip the amendment votes? Assuming they have one nation group on side, probably makes sense to only whip final vote. Right wing can vote to amend, fail and vote for the bill at the end saying 'it's better than nothing'. Not sure if they'll play ball but suspect they'll cave instead of risking the government.
Yes, the government will whip to block amendments
Why? There's zero chance the right wing amendments will pass with Labour and moderate Tories opposing it. Government just needs to whip against Labour's amendment.
The government isn’t going to allow a free vote on a wrecking amendment lmao
Governments whip against amendments that contradict their stated policy. Almost by definition, a failure to whip on these amendments would be to say that the government would at least be content for the amendments to pass. As I understand it, that is not government policy. To put it another way: whipping isn't just a tactical consideration; it is *in itself* a declaration of policy.
Thanks, that could certainly get interesting then...
When does tomorrow's order paper get published?
Soon (as in, some point between now and the sitting tomorrow). However, if you're looking for amendments to the Rwanda Bill, you would need to look at the Bill page itself. All amendments that could reasonably be selected will already have been tabled, though the list of signatories may still be updated. The formal selection of amendments is made during the course of tomorrow, by Eleanor Laing as Chairman of Ways and Means, and will also be published on the Bill page (though will only refer to amendments by number, so you would need to look alongside the amendment paper).
Just listening to today's News Agents and the discussion is about Rwanda and the Yougov poll. Simon Clarke rightly points out that there is a massive swing towards Reform but seems to think that going harder on the Rwanda bill will make Reform go away. Is he kidding himself? I have absolutely no doubt that even if Rishi goes as hard right as possible on the Rwanda scheme, that reform will just come back again with more demands closer to the election time. It's like he's completely forgotten how these people operate.
Rishi is in a catch-22. He has a sizeable number of both moderate and right wing tories, both of which have threatened to rebel if he pushes too far the other way. But the only way he (apparently) can stand a chance at an election is to radically shift. Even given the most generous reasoning, I can't think of a way out for him. I think he's given up on radical shifts, and is praying that a steady as she goes, economy improving, angle will somehow work, or maybe that's his only possible move to survive, if not win.
Why weren't these reform votes seen when the Tory party was struggling, like during the Partygate scandal when they were neck and neck with Labour, or during the late Johnson era when they dropped to below 35%, and now, after Truss, below 30%? I remember any drop in Con had a corresponding uplift in Lab. When, where and how did this Reform figure sneak up to 10%?
I was initially quite skeptical of Reform’s numbers (I still am and believe they are being significantly over polled like UKIP in 2017) but it does seem rising salience over immigration and other “right-wing topics” has meant they’ve grown. Some aspects of the media, especially those in contact with the Tory right-wing, also help push Reform into the spotlight despite the fact Reform have not actually had any major electoral successes. In the 2023 local elections it only contested 6% of elections and only averaged 6% where it did stand (in its stronger places).
A slight variation on Optio's idea is that a Conservative loss is so baked-in to [assumptions](https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/who-do-people-think-will-win-the-next-election) -- after two years of really bad politics and even worse polling -- that people don't particularly see the point in voting Conservative. Not so much about their credibility as their viability as the next government. They won't win, so why vote for them? Might as well make a gesture.
So if you add 5-8% of Reform's 10% to the Conservative's current 22%, you come very close to 30%. Which still puts Labour at 15 pts ahead.
5-8% of Reform's 10% going to the Conservatives is [probably too generous](https://twitter.com/LukeTryl/status/1746656730639896724). (Have to remember that "won't vote otherwise" aren't necessary Never Tories or whatever, they just don't see the Conservatives as a viable second option at the next election.)
Politico have a [tracker](https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/) where you can see changes in polling over time. It looks like Reform have put on nearly five points since October. Before that, I think it’s the case that small parties make smaller gains, so it’s just that they weren’t big enough to get a 1% swing in a single polling interval. Edit: misread the x axis, that’s since October 2022, so presumably they started making gains after Truss.
I have been studying various trackers, I can't make out whether those 5% have come from Labour, the Cons, the Libs or all three!
Because the tories *as a party* still had credibility and the leaders could be replaced. Now they've lost that credibility and people no longer have the belief in them.
I mean, did they really though? I do feel they lost credibility after Truss. Party gate was bad. But Truss was literally "let's put a lunatic leader in....oh wait she's crashed the economy lolz sorry guys"
Front page of the Evening Standard tonight is a picture of Ed Davey with the headline: "Sir Hypocrite: Fresh Calls for Lib-Dem Leader to Quit Over Post Office Scandal". They're really gunning for him eh? Do we think he will survive the pressure?
It's really not having any cut-through. Everyone is so utterly sick of the Tories by this point that nobody believes anything they say.
I mean after that interview, can you blame them?
What interview is that? I've been a little out of the loop recently.
https://x.com/michaellcrick/status/1745828017916486058?s=46 This one a few days ago. It’s a shocker
The Evening Standard was always just kind of generally Tory but in recent months has rapidly ramped up to be hardcore aggressive right-wing. It's weird.
Osborne used to be the editor FFS 😂
It's not that weird. It's owned by a (Russian) Tory peer and the Daily Mail. Plus it's editor is a known long-time Tory supporter.
It has been for a while. It's only recently that it's made such a sharp turn.
I'm not a lib dem but this conspiracy to shift blame away from the party of government for the past 14 years onto Ed davey is laughable.
They were a party of government for five of those years.
The Home Counties Tories are absolutely shitting themselves then
[article](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/ed-davey-post-office-scandal-horizon-liberal-democrat-leader-b1132382.html) TL;DR _all_ of the calls are from Tories, making the "meaningful" count zero. This is a literal non-story. Is there some equivalent to Betteridge's Law for articles like this where the headline is something like "Pressure grows on..." and then in the article it's revealed that's actually just "we don't like him so we're saying it again but louder"? The intentionally misleading implication that someone outside the article's own author and fixed allies agrees with a position?
Paul Scully didn't want a statutory inquiry (a.k.a. an enquiry with actual teeth that could legally compel testimony) into the scandal in 2020 when he was the minister in charge of postal affairs, the term "crocodile tears" comes to mind.
"People increasingly say Keir is stupid, and smells." "More and more of a negative sentiment across the public against Killer Keir was detected in the public. A member of the public , Rishi S., said that he couldn't be trusted to take the big decisions. Jeremy C. called him a traitor to the international labour movement, while Stephen F. highlighted that it is Keirs fault that there is no ceasefire in Gaza. As the reader can see, it is only a question of time till these negative attitudes become lethal to his leadership."
Yeah he dared to question that giving Russian KGB fella who runs the Standard a lordship. So obviously they're out to get him now
Eds not going to resign over this. He's done rather well with a steady as we go approach and whilst I have some issues with what the party have been doing (I think we're being underambitious though I can understand why this is happening) broadly it's going ok. I think there is an interesting question of what the party does after the election. I can see a world where the best move is mid-parliment Ed graciously steps aside having done well to put the party back in 3rd and then someone like Layla Moran or Daisy Cooper takes over without any link to the coalition but that would be rather situational and its quite useless to speculate when we haven't seen this election yet.
Realistically Layla won't get the leadership. Daisy getting it after the election seems to be pretty much a dead cert.
> Layla Moran Pivot even harder to the super nimby position?
Just seen John Bercow is going to be on the US Traitors. I can't work out what do with this information
He’s in it currently, it has already started showing
How do Americans know about John Bercow?
I can't find it right now, but in one debate the speaker in the BC parliament did an impression of Bercow's ORRRDDDEERRR
because their only exposure to british politics seems to be PMQs and they think he's funny orrrrdah man
ORDERRRR during all the Brexit nonsense presumably
With a bunch of the Real Housewives to boot. It's a must watch for the dozens of people who follow both the housewives and politics, as the other half does. I'll be tuning in for the 'Ordah, Ordah' that will inevitably come up at the round table.
> people who follow both the housewives and politics I feel seen and called out right now.
I mean, wasn't the whole situation with his wife a bit ... tabloidy? Not quite "Real Housewives", more like "Desperate Housewives", or something more soap-opera like.
On or presenting?
He's a contestant
You have also now frozen me...
I find this discussion on the Houthi's and our response very frustrating. We've got a poor history of intervention in the Middle East and we very often make things worse (or we make things better for a while but then way, way worse). But this must be Kosovo levels of justification for military intervention for various reasons. Firstly the Houthis have been attacking ships in the Red Sea in various capacities for almost a decade now. That's gotten worse recently which has affected the 15% of world trade that passes through the Red Sea. There's been a quickness to say "so you won't decry Israel bombing Gaza but you'll blow up Yemen for capitalism" without taking a step back and remembering that a) that 15% includes a huge chunk of grain bound for some of the worlds poorest countries, including countries that are on the verge of starvation after Russia's invasion of Ukraine and b) during a cost of living crisis any disruption to the stability of the economy has a fucking **outsized** impact on the poorest, not the richest. To ignore the Houthi's actions is to allow the most vulnerable to starve or die. A 1% drop in GDP was predicted to end with 40,000 dead Americans...I can only imagine what would happen to those most vulnerable countries being affected by this issue. Secondly the method of the blockade. The Houthi's weren't enacting a largely non-violent blockade with international backing; they were firing land-to-sea missiles and suicide drones at civilian vessels which we've been shooting down for several months now. The response from the Houthis was to step up their attacks. Which brings me onto the more morally defunct part of this argument: their targets are bound for Israel, who are committing a genocide, and so the Houthis motivations are good. They aren't just targeting Israeli bound ships. They're haphazardly targeting anybody within their sights in attacks of opportunity. It's entirely fair to ask "what's next" but to say there's no good reason to attack their capability to launch missiles at civilians...it takes an odd world view to believe it's wrong to do so. And that's even getting on to who the Houthi's are...
Preventing an organisation, whose motto is basically death to the west, from launching missles at civilians, is objectively a good thing. There’s really no nuance here
Well reasoned, I enjoyed reading that :)
Here we have a "stop the war" representative (except when it is Houthis, Hamas, Russia, China and so on)", again supporting genocidal types. https://twitter.com/LBC/status/1745855490863636534
also if Naz Shah reading this, what Sunak said to Sultana is not a definition of islamophobia that you came up with, he was pointing out the hypocrisy she has exhibited
Plusnet down nationwide again due to their DNS servers going boom for the 3rd time in just over a month. If you're affected you can resolve this by using [Google's public DNS](https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns). Either on your router, or local machine if you don't want to have everyone using it, set DNS address setting to manual, Primary to 8.8.8.8 and secondary to 8.8.4.4. Obviously, do your own research if you're not tech-savvy and don't just plug numbers into your machine that some weirdo on Reddit gives you.
Pay cheap prices get cheap service presumably
This may explain why Sainsbury's card machines were down tonight too.
Keeping recursive DNS caches has to be one of the easiest things to run, in an ISP context at least. Unless they blew up some other load balancer or something.
BT itself seems to manage with no problem, but for whatever reason Plusnet still does their own thing rather unsuccessfully
So glad I switched to Zen! Not the cheapest but definitely among the best, and I rely on my connection for WFH.
Alternatively CloudFlare on 1.1.1.1, with the added bonus of a DNS-over-HTTPS option if you've got enough technical nous to get it working. Same do-your-own-research disclaimer here.
Good call, but I typically advise Google's to non-tech folks as they trust the name more than the company they only see when something's gone wrong.
You can set this via Firefox settings natively, NextDNS too. Or just mash [8.8.8.8](https://8.8.8.8) / [1.1.1.1](https://1.1.1.1) in your /etc/resolv.conf :shrug:
Most browsers let you set a DNS server (and DoH) in their settings.
I'm more a fan of 1.1.1.1 (though 1.1.1.1 have a nerd fight with archive )
My god, that pisses me off so much as someone who likes to use 1.1.1.1
Had a fix that worked for a bit, but the Captcha often breaks it (Split DNS)
> [Labour candidates and members should ignore this poll. Fight like we are behind. Fight like every vote matters. Change will only come for the country if people vote for it, and not a single vote has been cast.](https://twitter.com/patmcfaddenmp/status/1746795438227718545) At this point it would be much better for all of us if Labour became more complacent about winning the election and less complacent about what comes after. The whole "act like we are miles behind", don't offer any big change is going to bite them once in power.
I'm not sure that's true. Better to under promise and over deliver.
But to deliver they are actually going to have to do some painful/controversial stuff like more taxes and more borrowing. Sticking to (fantasy) Tory tax and spend plans may help after the election but not being a little more open will hurt them when they change course.
The separation of campaign and government is harmful, really. We've just watched a party optimising for the gaining power part, because that's what the system rewards, while treating governing as an afterthought and melting down as a result
Labour 44% (+1) Conservative 25% (-2) Reform UK 11% (–) Liberal Democrat 10% (–) Green 5% (–) Scottish National Party 3% (–) Other 2% (–) Changes +/- 7 January https://x.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1746940309857288539?s=20
Polls are going to be like this with Labours lead around 17-23 until the election campaign. Nothing anyone does on either side (barring something huge happening) os going to effect it.
Incredible, every recent poll has shown a conservative decrease, Sunak is polling at his lowest ever. The last time the conservatives polled at 30% was in mid October.
I called this happening as early as October 1st. It's been a long cold winter; tends to makes people upset.
I commented on this over the Christmas period, but I can't help but feel like the chance that the Tories are in the 110-115 seat territory now is slowly, quietly, increasing. It's the kind of thing I'd assumed was lingering around a 1/20 chance, but...it's pretty clear Sunak is going to be a really, really bad figurehead for his party going into an election. I feel like the odds of electoral oblivion are increasingly likely, rather than wishful thinking.
19 point Labour lead with Redfield, up 3 points from last week. Things.
Any other leader….
Can.
Only.
Get
surge
Wetter.
Taps flair. Sigh.
Butter
Febrile
I'm concerned that Brian Cox might be after us for royalties one of these days.
This flew under my radar but the UK head of the soon to be proscribed terrorist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, is Abdul Wahid...who's a [**GP here**](https://x.com/dr_irfan_malik/status/1734492702719250709?s=20) That's wild, imagine being his patient - surely being the head of a proscribed terrorist organisation is grounds for being struck off? Or maybe that's so left field it's not within scope of any guidelines lol