UK General Discussion: 2017 and onwards, Mayhem

[TheSaint250]

Was this whole thing because of his girlfriend?

Pretty much. His abrupt ending of his marriage for her focused the attention onto his personal life, and than when those texts leaked he was given an ultimatum by the party, simply to fight fire, that he needed to either resign or dump her. He 'chose' the latter, despite numerous reports of him being spotted having dinner and being intimate with her since, and today when interviewed he said he'd remain in contact with her. So fulfilling neither of the options, the party are mutinous. 

Also, I never could find the answer; why did Diane James resign?

Diane James resigned because she stood as leader on the mistaken belief she could turf out the old guard and turn it into a semi-respectable party, and was promptly disabused of that notion upon election. Rather, I suspect, she was told she'd be the change of face and agreeable representative for the party, but she'd be 'leading' in the manner she was told to.

Thanks for answering

(sorry, just saw this )

[ViaActiva]

Thinking about tea leaves for Tory leadership contest if it happens, sorted by Brexiteer / moderate:

Likely to run:

Boris Johnson

Gavin Williamson
Amber Rudd

Could run

Michael Gove
Dominic Raab
Penny Mordaunt
Priti Patel
Andrea Leadsom

Jeremy Hunt
Justine Greening
Rory Stewart
George Freeman
Tom Tugendhat

Unlikely to run

David Davis
Liam Fox
Jacob Rees-Mogg

Philip Hammond


I think one of the Brexiteer 'could runs' would be in with a real shot in this scenario. Not what I want but likely given the Tory activist base.

[EPG]

Hunt will run. Then if it is Hunt versus Boris, Rees-Mogg or a remainer, Hunt will win.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

"Buy".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/28/jeremy-corbyn-announces-labour-will-buy-every-homeless-person/

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

"Buy".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/28/jeremy-corbyn-announces-labour-will-buy-every-homeless-person/

The Absolute Boy!

I'm sure there'll be a lot of suddenly open homes all around London for the government to "buy".

[MaxQue]

"Buy".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/28/jeremy-corbyn-announces-labour-will-buy-every-homeless-person/

The Absolute Boy!

I'm sure there'll be a lot of suddenly open homes all around London for the government to "buy".

Kensington is full of empty houses belonging to Russian friends of Putin.

[Leftbehind]

"Buy".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/28/jeremy-corbyn-announces-labour-will-buy-every-homeless-person/

The Absolute Boy!

I'm sure there'll be a lot of suddenly open homes all around London for the government to "buy".

Should be a steal then.

[ViaActiva]

Strongly in favour of government investing more in temporary accommodation and social housing but think that this proposal is a bit half-baked.

Back of a fag packet calculation - if you were looking at the cheapest areas of the country (e.g. Stoke and Burnley) i.e. you would be prepared to ask people to re-locate, the majority of whom will be in inner cities, and assuming an average price of around £50,000 (doubt there's 8,000 at the very low end) then this would be £400m. A significant but not huge sum in fiscal terms.

But some immediate considerations:

1) Would be extremely expensive - likely billions of pounds of taxpayer money if purchasing property near to where the majority of homeless people currently live i.e. inner cities.

2) The 8,000 figure is only for homeless people sleeping rough at a point in time - the total figure is significantly higher at 60,000, most of whom are in temporary accommodation or staying with others for short periods of time. Local authorities would have to decide who was in priority need, adding resource pressure.

3) A significant number of homeless people have some form of mental health and/or alcohol/drug dependence problem. If you were re-locating them as above then you may be completely cutting them off from existing support networks and placing them in an unfamiliar environment where they get much worse. Even you found accommodation nearby this won't immediately improve the lives of the people who would probably be far better supported in temporary accommodation.

4) Would they have to pay rent? In which case there would be an added fiscal cost in terms of subsidising this through housing benefit (which is not cheap!). If not, then there is an issue of incentives and equity if the state is providing this for free while people on minimum wage jobs are paying rent / saving for a deposit. Unless there is some form of conditionality to the homeless person staying in that property i.e. a six month time-limit (potentially defeats the purpose) or support available (expensive).

TL;DR: far better to invest in existing means of support for homeless people and build more social housing.


As for the government requisitioning private property - say goodbye to any foreign investment in the UK in the coming decades, with horrendous consequences for everyone living here.

[NewYorkExpress]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/31/i-am-thoroughly-ashamed-british-lord-resigns-after-arriving-late-to-work/?utm_term=.baebf605f122

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Hmm, I'm not sure this is worth quitting over, especially from the House of Lords...

[MaxQue]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/31/i-am-thoroughly-ashamed-british-lord-resigns-after-arriving-late-to-work/?utm_term=.baebf605f122

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Hmm, I'm not sure this is worth quitting over, especially from the House of Lords...

Bad article. He's a ministerand he was 30 minutes and missed a question he was scheduled to answer, which is an issue. He was also resigning from the minister post, not as a Lord.
In any way, May refused his resignation and even Labour said his resignation wasn't needed.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

UKIP are apparently going to have to pay for the settlements in the Jane Collins MEP libel case, which may cause the party to declare bankruptcy. (They have £300,000 in their coffers and they could be obliged to pay up to double that)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ahahaha. A heartwarming story that one.

[Leftbehind]

Carl Sargeant, AM for Alyn & Deeside since 2003 and a longserving minister in various capacities until a few days ago, has committed suicide. He was the subject of a number of accusations in the ongoing sexual harassment story (details not yet know I believe) and as a result had been sacked as a minister and had his Party membership suspended. He was 49.

By-election was tonight, with Carl's son standing for Labour (which apparently ensured UKIP's non-participation):

Lab 60.7% (+14.9)
Con 25.4% (+4.4)
Lib 6.3% (+1.8)
PC 5.7% (-3.3)
Grn 1.9% (-0.5)

[Babeuf]

Holy sh**t. I thought some of the tabloid press coverage of Miliband leading up to 2015 was skirting around the edge of anti-semitism but this is shockingly blatant.

[mileslunn]

Recent yougov poll shows Tories 43% and Labour 39%, while another is 41% Conservative and 40% Labour so is this a blip or could it be a trend.  With all the troubles the government is having you would think Labour would have a much bigger lead so it does suggest that while Corbyn does well amongst younger voters he is a liability amongst many.  When I visited Britain I found he is still a turnoff to much of the over 50 crowd so while the party gained a lot under him, he doesn't seem to be able to pull them much beyond the 40% mark.  While its tough to know if a centrist would do better, certainly there seems to be a limit to how much he can grow the party.  Will be interesting though if other polls confirm the trend or if it is just a blip.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

Recent yougov poll shows Tories 43% and Labour 39%, while another is 41% Conservative and 40% Labour so is this a blip or could it be a trend.  With all the troubles the government is having you would think Labour would have a much bigger lead so it does suggest that while Corbyn does well amongst younger voters he is a liability amongst many.  When I visited Britain I found he is still a turnoff to much of the over 50 crowd so while the party gained a lot under him, he doesn't seem to be able to pull them much beyond the 40% mark.  While its tough to know if a centrist would do better, certainly there seems to be a limit to how much he can grow the party.  Will be interesting though if other polls confirm the trend or if it is just a blip.

Thank F***. Here's hoping.

[mileslunn]

Looking forward to Hodges' Twitter meltdown after the Tories get obliterated this May in the locals.

Most seats up for grabs this year are Labour strongholds.  It will be interesting to see more the results in swing areas as opposed to overall numbers.  That being said based on the polls I think Corbyn is a double edge sword.  He inspired many young people who wouldn't vote otherwise, but also a huge turnoff to older voters thus why he can get the party easily up to 40%, but has trouble going much beyond that.  Although to be fair Labour hasn't gotten over 45% in a general election for over 40 years mind you when Blair was PM and opposition leader in the 90s Labour did frequently top the 50% mark in the polls which Corbyn has been unable to do.  In terms of the Tories, I suspect if the alternative was more centrist their numbers wouldn't be as high.  Otherwise if you had a party similar to the Liberal Party of Canada or Democrats in the US, you probably could push the Tories down into the 30s, but as long as you have someone as left wing as Corbyn it will be tough to push them under 40%.  Sort of reminds me of my home province BC.  In the last federal election, the Tories crashed to 30% in BC as you had the centre-left Liberals, but provincially the centre-right BC Liberals (despite their name they are similar to British Tories in ideology) still got 40% when facing the NDP (who are like Labour although more like Brown or Miliband as opposed to Corbyn).

[mileslunn]

Are you quite alright?

Off course what are you talking about.  Just discussing the issues.  I tend to like long comments if you read my blogs.

[EPG]

Looking forward to Hodges' Twitter meltdown after the Tories get obliterated this May in the locals.

Most seats up for grabs this year are Labour strongholds.  It will be interesting to see more the results in swing areas as opposed to overall numbers.  That being said based on the polls I think Corbyn is a double edge sword.  He inspired many young people who wouldn't vote otherwise, but also a huge turnoff to older voters thus why he can get the party easily up to 40%, but has trouble going much beyond that.  Although to be fair Labour hasn't gotten over 45% in a general election for over 40 years mind you when Blair was PM and opposition leader in the 90s Labour did frequently top the 50% mark in the polls which Corbyn has been unable to do.  In terms of the Tories, I suspect if the alternative was more centrist their numbers wouldn't be as high.  Otherwise if you had a party similar to the Liberal Party of Canada or Democrats in the US, you probably could push the Tories down into the 30s, but as long as you have someone as left wing as Corbyn it will be tough to push them under 40%.  Sort of reminds me of my home province BC.  In the last federal election, the Tories crashed to 30% in BC as you had the centre-left Liberals, but provincially the centre-right BC Liberals (despite their name they are similar to British Tories in ideology) still got 40% when facing the NDP (who are like Labour although more like Brown or Miliband as opposed to Corbyn).

The good point here is that Labour tended historically to rely on two-handers with a good Liberal or Lib Dem performance to form governments. Most obviously 1964, however, it's hard to spot an election where the third party did poorly in England, but Labour formed a government. I don't think this is an iron law, but third parties seem able to reach parts of the English vote Labour can't reach, without which it's hard to eject the Conservatives from office.

[Leftbehind]

1966? Before then? I don't think that's true at all - whatever gains the Liberals take from the Conservatives where Labour are noncompetitive in the South they hurt the Labour vote everywhere else, depriving them of marginals. They aren't nearly as efficient as you think, and the collapse even helps Labour in that those the Liberals retain in everywhere but their bastions are usually the right-wing Orange Book variety who would just be voting Tory in another era.

The biggest obstacle for Labour is Scotland - where Labour have went from a reliable mid-forty bloc to half a dozen. If they still won those seats Labour would have 300 to Conservatives 317.  A 1% swing to Labour from 2017 would see the reverse.

[Leftbehind]

Looking forward to Hodges' Twitter meltdown after the Tories get obliterated this May in the locals.

Most seats up for grabs this year are Labour strongholds.  It will be interesting to see more the results in swing areas as opposed to overall numbers. 

What? No they aren't.

That being said based on the polls I think Corbyn is a double edge sword.  He inspired many young people who wouldn't vote otherwise, but also a huge turnoff to older voters thus why he can get the party easily up to 40%, but has trouble going much beyond that.  Although to be fair Labour hasn't gotten over 45% in a general election for over 40 years mind you when Blair was PM and opposition leader in the 90s Labour did frequently top the 50% mark in the polls which Corbyn has been unable to do.  In terms of the Tories, I suspect if the alternative was more centrist their numbers wouldn't be as high.  Otherwise if you had a party similar to the Liberal Party of Canada or Democrats in the US, you probably could push the Tories down into the 30s, but as long as you have someone as left wing as Corbyn it will be tough to push them under 40%.  Sort of reminds me of my home province BC.  In the last federal election, the Tories crashed to 30% in BC as you had the centre-left Liberals, but provincially the centre-right BC Liberals (despite their name they are similar to British Tories in ideology) still got 40% when facing the NDP (who are like Labour although more like Brown or Miliband as opposed to Corbyn).

The older voters have always been the Tories bedrock, and the Tories are as repellent to the young as Labour are to the old. Post election studies point to Labour only becoming noncompetitive once you hit the over 55's, and they amount to 28% of the overall population. Corbyn's bedrock (18-40) eclipses that, and those between those two brackets lean Labour. Demographics certainly aren't Labour's weakpoint - they just need to improve upon turnout (having over half a million membership as opposed to the ever-shrinking Tory membership should help with that).

As for a centrist option - they already have that in the form of the Liberals, but aren't dissatisfied with Brexit or May enough to opt for that. I don't think we'd have seen the polarisation in 2017 if there was a yearning for centrism that you describe - we've been through the consensus era and it has led to the current situation.

[EPG]

1966? Before then? I don't think that's true at all - whatever gains the Liberals take from the Conservatives where Labour are noncompetitive in the South they hurt the Labour vote everywhere else, depriving them of marginals. They aren't nearly as efficient as you think, and the collapse even helps Labour in that those the Liberals retain in everywhere but their bastions are usually the right-wing Orange Book variety who would just be voting Tory in another era.

The biggest obstacle for Labour is Scotland - where Labour have went from a reliable mid-forty bloc to half a dozen. If they still won those seats Labour would have 300 to Conservatives 317.  A 1% swing to Labour from 2017 would see the reverse.

Oh sure it's an observation rather than a dissertation, but thinking about 1966, the Liberals did relatively well compared to 1959 or my "favourite" election as a political science event, 1970. Labour won one clear victory before that - it's really 1964 before Labour becomes a party winning office in normal times, right?

Now absolutely they should focus on winning whole regions rather than hoping for a protest that doesn't look like coming, but it's notable that Ukip 2015 didn't seem to help, squeezing the Lib Dems a little in 2017 didn't help much as the relevant gains seemed to go in every direction. So it looks like Corbyn needs to win the necessary votes versus the Conservatives on his own. This is, to my mind, a pretty significant change compared to Blair's position.

[Leftbehind]

Oh sure it's an observation rather than a dissertation, but thinking about 1966, the Liberals did relatively well compared to 1959 or my "favourite" election as a political science event, 1970. Labour won one clear victory before that - it's really 1964 before Labour becomes a party winning office in normal times, right?

Is it? If not for the irregularities of FPTP seat reward vs vote in '51 you'd have had a situation where both parties would've been in power for a decade. By that point it should be added that the Tories had ceded plenty of ground to Labour to enjoy that reign.

Now absolutely they should focus on winning whole regions rather than hoping for a protest that doesn't look like coming, but it's notable that Ukip 2015 didn't seem to help, squeezing the Lib Dems a little in 2017 didn't help much as the relevant gains seemed to go in every direction. So it looks like Corbyn needs to win the necessary votes versus the Conservatives on his own. This is, to my mind, a pretty significant change compared to Blair's position.

Well Blair was elected at a time when even reliable Tories were sick and disillusioned with their party, and Blair had ceded enough ground that they were happy to vote Labour. You certainly had plenty of tactical voting - with opposition voters piling onto anyone most likely to unseat the Tory in '97. That sort of efficiency did help, albeit post New Labour, and post-coalition, it's far less likely to get off the ground. UKIP were of no help because they became a party of opposition when Labour needed to be that, drawing anti-government voters away. The Liberal loyalists in 2015 were for the most part of the Orange Book variety and many who weren't were in seats where Labour were noncompetitive - it's hard to strip too many from that. I imagine in this new landscape there will be about ~15% of the 2017 Liberal vote who reappraise how irrelevant their party are in their locality and vote elsewhere next time, but that's your lot.

In reality Blair-like candidates are repellent to both the left and right presently, neither happy to throw away the opportunity of socialist platform or Brexit. The path forward for Labour is to increase turnout amongst its voterbase and rely upon the situation in Scotland improving (either by unseating SNP candidates, or more likely a C&S with the SNP).

[IceAgeComing]

Its also not fair to say that most of the councils up are "Labour strongholds" - while most of the attention will be on the London boroughs (all up this time and while most were won by Labour in 2014 and they may well do better in London than they have since the mid 80s if what we think might happen does happen there still are 600 Tory councillors and nine Tory councils in London and them losing, say, Wandsworth or Westminster would be very important) and Labour gaining control of them would suggest significant shifts in parts of London that the Tories really should be winning) and the Metropolitan Boroughs (all Labour or NOC bar Dudley, Trafford and Solihull which are Tory controlled; don't know what might happen in those but I'd think that Trafford might be interesting to watch for potential Labour gains) you've also got the large number of non-met boroughs that still elect by third and which are voting this year many of which are Tory controlled and also that its a very simplistic way of looking at these elections.

In order for the Tories to form a decent working majority they need seats in wealthier areas of London and other more urban areas and in the last election the key reason why they lost was because richer, younger people voted Labour - and this isn't something that always happen, the ICM post-election polling suggests that it is a post-2010 thing.  To use London as an example here: Labour already did very well in the 2014 Locals so are defending from a very high level so Labour making further gains would be very impressive and show just how weak the Tories are in London - them losing Wandsworth and Westminster which is possible if Labour do well would be highly significant as both are very Tory (the former last was Labour in 1974 and under the 80s was often the London Borough used as an example of good government by the government at the time; the latter has always had a Tory majority council since the creation of Greater London in 1964) and perhaps symbolic of certain communities that the Tories have typically won but who have been alienated by recent changes to the Conservative Party.  You also have the South West London Boroughs and the question of how well the Liberals will do there; and since historically they've built strong local organisations (often not based on any policy basis; nor even deep support considering where the party is in many places which they controlled not so long ago) prior to winning seats in General Elections plus again the level of Lib Dem support, as has been said earlier in the thread, is important in General Elections as typically they take more seats off the Tories than they do Labour.

Sure you have places like Newham which aren't interesting at all (unless the very outside possibility of a Green opposition councillor managing to squeak in interests you for some reason?) but that's always the case in Local Elections - last year was very similar just rather than being lots of London Boroughs with either token or no opposition to Labour it was lots of Tory Counties with token opposition - and you have to naturally focus on the marginal authorities in every election because they're the interesting and important ones.

In relation to Scotland its still really in flux: the SNP have small majorities everywhere and their support falling even a little would cost them most of their seats; lots of which would go to Labour.  You'll never get back to the pre-2015 situation and the SNP will always be a presence in the Central Belt which historically they weren't; but Labour certainly can win in Scotland provided that they don't, well, be what Scottish Labour was.

[mileslunn]

A third poll has confirmed the Tories are now ahead so I think its fair to say at the moment if an election were held today the Tories would win.  Off course polls are just snapshots and can change but I do think Labour members need to really be asking themselves why they don't have a double digit lead with all the problems the Tories are facing.  Also Corbyn has negative approval ratings although not quite as bad as Theresa May while on best PM, most polls show May is still ahead.  While some say Britain is so polarized having someone more centrist wouldn't help, I am not totally sold on that.  I think if you put either Barack Obama or Justin Trudeau up against Theresa May both could beat her, so Labour needs to find their version of those two who is charismatic so excites younger voters but moderate enough he or she doesn't scare away older voters.  I think Sadiq Khan would in many ways fit that bill although his religion might be a problem in some smaller communities in England.