Let's see how good these stats will be in 2 years time. I just think that there is more to this than initially meets the eye. The lunatics on the Right are emboldened at the moment but let's see how confident they are when the American economy tanks and they are ostracised on the international stage. As I said, there are plenty all too willing to see Farage fail. I just feel that his constituents will rebel against him as he takes less and less interest in him. I expect Labour to take the seat from him although I concur that Reform will also pick up seats elsewhere.
You're right that we're a long way from the next election and a lot can and will happen before then but it's hard to see Labour turning this around. Unless there's a war or some great national crisis governments almost never get more popular over time and they're already in serious trouble. We'll see what happens in America but the UK economy is already tanking and while that's not entirely their fault they're certainly not helping things. I don't see the Tories climbing much in the polls either. Virtually every time they say anything on any topic the universal response is basically "You had 14 years in power and did nothing." I suspect you're all too willing to see Farage fail and as a result you're saying this in hope rather than expectation. There's currently no reason to think he'll lose that seat. Personally I think the whole "He's a bad constituency MP" thing is hugely overblown by people who dislike him. I take an interest in politics but in all honesty I don't even remember my MP's name. I have no idea how often he runs surgeries, I don't know how good he and his staff are at answering letters or emails, I have no idea how often he attends parliament, speaks in debates or votes. Most people care about those things even less than I do and vote on national issues. I also think most people accept that party leaders are unlikely to be great local MPs because they have other responsibilities. Plenty of people in Clacton will see Farage on TV, radio or social media saying things they broadly agree with and be happy with that. As for Labour taking the seat, unless something astonishing happens before the next election that's simply not an option. Farage got just under 50% of the vote last summer, Labour has only ever won that constituency - actually its predecessor - once (in Blair's 1997 landslide), they finished third last time around and their poll ratings have fallen through the floor since July. I also doubt the Tories will gain in popularity enough to win. As I said above, they have 14 years of failure weighing them down.
Find out now are a notoriously weak pollster, but the trend is in there for sure. Still feel Lab Lib agreement is most likely next time out though poss with Reform as opposition, you have to factor in our system. The Tories currently face the darkest future.
Yeah, this is the best poll for Reform so far and sort of an outlier but Labour, Reform and the Tories are all consistently polling in the 20s at the moment. We're too far out for predictions to be worth much but if I had to guess I'd say there's a good chance the next election will leave no realistic path to a stable government. Most polls show Reform pretty much at (or at least very close to) the point where the first past the post system actually starts to work in their favour. If their vote share continues to rise their estimated seat numbers will start to rise sharply. I could easily see the next election result being like 1924 with Labour, Reform and the Tories all somewhere between 150 and 250 MPs. Chances are you're then either looking at a Lab-Con grand coalition or a weak minority Labour government that has to survive week by week and vote by vote. But I also think it's hard to see how or why either Labour or the Tories would go up in the polls much. I also wouldn't be at all shocked if the UK faces a major economic crisis in the next few years and that could blow the whole thing wide open. I agree on the Tories. I think the only age group where they're still reliably more popular than Reform is the over 65s.
Mississippi State Senator Bradford Blackmon has introduced the “Contraception Begins at Erection Act”. If passed it will make it illegal to “discharge genetic material without the intent to fertilise an embryo”. Violators could face fines, with a third strike costing $10,000. It says strike but it could be stroke. Good luck with that, but being America anything might happen.
Rosie Duffield’s resignation letter from the Labour Party. The 53-year-old MP sent a scathing resignation letter to Sir Keir Starmer She’s just saying what any decent person is thinking. Here is what she said in full: Dear Sir Keir, Usually letters like this begin, "It is with a heavy heart..." Mine has been increasingly heavy and conflicted and has longed for a degree of relief. I can no longer stay a Labour MP under your management of the party, and this letter is my notice that I wish to resign the Labour Party whip with immediate effect. Although many "last straws" have led to my decision, my reason for leaving now is the programme of policies you seem determined to stick to, however unpopular they are with the electorate and your own MPs. You repeat often that you will make the "tough decisions" and that the country is "all in this together". But those decisions do not directly affect any one of us in Parliament. They are cruel and unnecessary, and affect hundreds of thousands of our poorest, most vulnerable constituents. This is not what I was elected to do. It is not even wise politics, and it certainly is not "the politics of service". I did not vote for you to lead our party for reasons I won't describe in detail here. But, as someone elevated immediately to a shadow cabinet position without following the usual path of honing your political skills on the backbenches, you had very little previous political footprint. It was therefore unclear what your political passions, drive or direction might be as the leader of the Labour Party, a large movement of people united by a desire for social justice and support for those most in need. You also made the choice not to speak up once about the Labour Party's problems with antisemitism during your time in the shadow cabinet, leaving that to backbenchers, including new MPs such as me. Since you took office as Leader of the Opposition you have used various heavy-handed management tactics but have never shown what most experienced backbenchers would recognise as true or inspiring leadership. You have never regularly engaged with your own backbench MPs, many of whom have been in Parliament far longer than you, and some of whom served in the previous Labour government. You have chosen neither to seek our individual political opinions, nor learn about our constituency experiences, nor our specific or collective areas of political knowledge. We clearly have nothing you deem to be of value. Your promotion of those with no proven political skills and no previous parliamentary experience but who happen to be related to those close to you, or even each other, is frankly embarrassing. In particular, the recent treatment of Diane Abbott, now Mother of the House, was deeply shameful and led to comments from voters across the political spectrum. A woman of her political stature and place in history is deserving of respect and support, regardless of political differences. As Prime Minister, your managerial and technocratic approach, and lack of basic politics and political instincts, have come crashing down on us as a party after we worked so hard, promised so much, and waited a long fourteen years to be mandated by the British public to return to power. Since the change of government in July, the revelations of hypocrisy have been staggering and increasingly outrageous. I cannot put into words how angry I and my colleagues are at your total lack of understanding about how you have made us all appear. How dare you take our longed-for victory, the electorate's sacred and precious trust, and throw it back in their individual faces and the faces of dedicated and hardworking Labour MPs?! The sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale. I am so ashamed of what you and your inner circle have done to tarnish and humiliate our once proud party. Someone with far-above-average wealth choosing to keep the Conservatives' two-child limit to benefit payments which entrenches children in poverty, while inexplicably accepting expensive personal gifts of designer suits and glasses costing more than most of those people can grasp - this is entirely undeserving of holding the title of Labour Prime Minister. Forcing a vote to make many older people iller and colder while you and your favourite colleagues enjoy free family trips to events most people would have to save hard for - why are you not showing even the slightest bit of embarrassment or remorse? I now have no confidence in your commitment to deliver the so-called "change" you promised during the General Election campaign and the changes we have been striving for as a political party for over a decade. My values are those of a democratic socialist Labour Party and I have been elected three times to act on those values on behalf of my constituents. Canterbury made history when its voters elected their first woman, and only non-Conservative, MP since the seat was created in the thirteenth century. My constituents elected an independent-minded MP who vowed to put constituency before party, and to keep tackling the issues that most affect us here - Brexit fallout, funding for our universities, our desperately struggling East Kent NHS, dire housing situation, repeated sewage pollution and protecting our vital green spaces. I am confident that I can continue to do so as an independent MP guided by my core Labour values. Sadly, the Labour Party has never shown any interest in my wonderful constituency in the seven years that I have been in Parliament. But I am proud of my community and will continue to serve them to the best of my ability. My constituents care deeply about social issues such as child poverty and helping those who cannot help themselves. I will continue to uphold those values as I pledged to do when I first stood before them for election in 2017. As someone who joined a trade union in my first job, at seventeen, Labour has always been my natural political home. I was elected as a single mum, a former teaching assistant in receipt of tax credits. The Labour Party was formed to speak for those of us without a voice, and I stood for election partly because I saw decisions about the lives of those like me being made in Westminster by only the most privileged few. Right now, I cannot look my constituents in the eye and tell them that anything has changed. I hope to be able to return to the party in the future, when it again resembles the party I love, putting the needs of the many before the greed of the few. Yours sincerely Rosie Duffield
Not sure if I said it on here but I have previously predicted that the Labour Party would split as a result of Starmer. I haven’t changed my mind on that yet.
Rosie Duffield has been notoriously difficult as an MP, unlikely to be the sign of a greater split incoming. I thought she left months ago anyway?
In other news, Trump is harnessing the well-known north-south gravitational effect to save California:
https://www.private-eye.co.uk/issue-1641/current-issue Read all about it including:- Local troubles The Rotten Boroughs Awards 2024 **** OF THE YEAR The runaway winner (although he has not run away, far from it) has to be Jonathan Nunn, Conservative leader of West Northants council until April 2024, when the Eye exposed him as a serial wife-beater with a 30-year history of domestic violence against at least five women. LICENSING APPLICATION OF THE YEAR Tower Hamlets Aspire party councillor Amin Rahman was accused in court of soliciting a bribe of between £80,000 and £100,000 on behalf of his mates on the licensing committee as a condition of renewing the licence of a lap-dancing club. The club's owner said he had refused to pay and sued the council. The high court ordered the council to reinstate the licence and pay hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation for loss of business. STANDING JOKE Orkney Islands council spent half an hour debating whether councillors should stand (as has been traditional) or sit when addressing the chamber. The sitters prevailed by 11 votes to nine, despite warnings that they were on "a slippery slope”. It was agreed no one would be forced to sit if they didn't want to. IN AND OUT AWARD Cllr Lucy Nethsingha, Lib Dem leader of Cambridgeshire county council, made substantial donations to two Lib Dem general election candidates, and was then rewarded with part-time Westminster jobs by both of them after they were elected, according to her register of interests. Quelle surprise! GOOD MONEY AFTER BAD Cambridgeshire county council's wholly owned housebuilding dud, This Land, sold more land to developers to keep up the interest payments on its massive unaffordable loans from the council. Over three years it has only repaid £2m loan principal, leaving £113.8m outstanding. HIGH LIFE AWARD It was trebles all round for Essex county council's former "head of strengthening communities”, Kirsty O'Callaghan, when she celebrated her birthday at Claridge's with several friends who had been the beneficiaries of verbal contracts totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds, many of which remained un- or only partly fulfilled. Inspector Knacker has a whistleblower's report on the affair, but the embarrassed council seems reluctant to pursue the matter.
Trump the ethnic cleanser lives by the sea. "The US president, Donald Trump, has suggested large numbers of Palestinians should leave Gaza to “just clean out” the whole strip, after ordering the US military to restart shipments of 2,000lb bombs to Israel. Trump said that he wanted Gaza residents to move to neighbouring nations, and that their displacement could be “temporarily or could be long-term”, after a phone call with Jordan’s King Abdullah on Saturday." “I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say: ‘You know, it’s over.’” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...000-pound-bombs-to-israel-undoing-biden-pause
