UK General Discussion:The Rt. Hon Alex Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Populist Hero

[Cassius]

Khan says FU Dick*

*It’s an older reference but it checks out.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Cressida Dick shows that women, too, can rise inexorably without trace to head up major organisations and then absolutely fuck it with repeated displays of egregious incompetence. It remains easier to do this if one is a bourgeois white man, but she showed what can be done! #girlboss

[Coldstream]

Khan says FU Dick*

*It’s an older reference but it checks out.

Personally I’d go with “Sadiq gets Dick out”.

[Blair]

Who gets the job now? Given they'll have some oversight over the Downing Street investigation, I hope this doesn't get Trumpian - the last thing this situation needs is a UK version of the Bill Barr appointment.

I just hope Khan has played his cards right here. If he and the Home Office have a public spat over the new commissioner, the whole thing could get messy. Wonder whether there is a primary candidate (or shortlist) in mind, or whether this is going to drag on...

From what the BBC (specifically Kuennsberg) is saying, it sounds like Dick is staying until a replacement is found, but there's no word on the timescale. As awful as Dick has been, it may be less awkward if the investigation completes before her successor is appointed.

I think it’s a quasi civil service led process e.g a long list and a shortlist, with the Home Sec required by law to consider the Mayors view.

There will be a Priti Patel backed candidate but I wouldn’t be shocked if it’s someone relatively experienced and competent (while being a headbanger) in order to beat the internal candidates from the Met.

I might be very wrong but I’m not really sure how someone could be worse- the Met already back the Governments draconian policing bill, they clobber peaceful protestors, have sat on politically sensitive cases and aren’t willing to carry out even modest reforms around the law on drugs or misogyny.

The only further regression possible is around the internal recruitment in the Met.

That's reassuring.

Apologies for the slight panic in my previous post, my understanding of the Met is pretty thin on the ground - feel very provincial out here in the North.

Well your worries might be proved right seeing as this same Government tried to get Paul Dacre to chair Ofcom and have Danial Haaaaanan on some quasi trade board.

[Blair]

Cressida Dick shows that women, too, can rise inexorably without trace to head up major organisations and then absolutely fuck it with repeated displays of egregious incompetence. It remains easier to do this if one is a bourgeois white man, but she showed what can be done! #girlboss

A rather sobering fact about the rotten core of the Met is that people still repeat the falsehoods that the Met spread after the shooting and killing of Jean Charles in 2005- an operation where Dick was the Gold commander in the Control room which oversee a bungled operation.

It should have been a career ending scandal but the Met spread vile falsehoods such as claiming he had jumped the barriers and that he had ran from the police.

[Conservatopia]

I would imo not be shocked if Patel looks at reforming the Met- partly as a way of screwing over the Mayor of London but also because while she is a reactionary Patel has shown a willingness to challenge the traditional HO thinking.

Set up a commission, go back to 32 borough policing under a new ‘police London’ badge and create a national police force directly accountable to the Home Sec that deals with counter terrorism, serious fraud etc

It would at least be change!

In effect turning the NCA into a British FBI?

[Pericles]

I saw this good news the other day-excess deaths 5,000 lower than normal. It is a relief that Omicron is so much milder. It looks like the official Covid death toll may now be overestimating the death toll, unlike in the rest of the pandemic, and recording people who just happened to have Covid and were not killed by it. The decision to get rid of legal isolation requirements feels extreme, but it probably needs to happen eventually especially since Omicron is so transmissible so is there really going to be a better time for it?

[Torrain]

I saw this good news the other day-excess deaths 5,000 lower than normal. It is a relief that Omicron is so much milder. It looks like the official Covid death toll may now be overestimating the death toll, unlike in the rest of the pandemic, and recording people who just happened to have Covid and were not killed by it. The decision to get rid of legal isolation requirements feels extreme, but it probably needs to happen eventually especially since Omicron is so transmissible so is there really going to be a better time for it?

Yeah - it’s pretty good news on the excess mortality stats.

Not sure what the national consensus is on total removal of lockdown rules is. At work, people are pretty skeptical, and there’s a local consensus that it’s just Johnson trying to shore up his support among the right of the party (anti-mask ’freedom lovers’ like Desmond Swain etc) - most of my colleagues fall into the ‘lefty academic’ stereotype though, so I may be in a slight echo chamber.

[Pericles]

I saw this good news the other day-excess deaths 5,000 lower than normal. It is a relief that Omicron is so much milder. It looks like the official Covid death toll may now be overestimating the death toll, unlike in the rest of the pandemic, and recording people who just happened to have Covid and were not killed by it. The decision to get rid of legal isolation requirements feels extreme, but it probably needs to happen eventually especially since Omicron is so transmissible so is there really going to be a better time for it?

Yeah - it’s pretty good news on the excess mortality stats.

Not sure what the national consensus is on total removal of lockdown rules is. At work, people are pretty skeptical, and there’s a local consensus that it’s just Johnson trying to shore up his support among the right of the party (anti-mask ’freedom lovers’ like Desmond Swain etc) - most of my colleagues fall into the ‘lefty academic’ stereotype though, so I may be in a slight echo chamber.

Johnson is obviously motivated by keeping his job so it is for the wrong reasons but hopefully it isn't the wrong decision.

[Cassius]

Neil Coyle has had the Labour whip suspended over allegations that he made racist remarks to a journalist in the Commons.

As an aside it was quite lolworthy that the journalist in question described the Commons bar as his ‘place of work’, although I suppose that’s technically true.

[CumbrianLefty]

Coyle's "issues" have been well known for a long time now. Shamefully, some still totally cynically and unscrupulously found him a "useful idiot" in their anti-Corbyn jihad.

[YL]

I saw this good news the other day-excess deaths 5,000 lower than normal. It is a relief that Omicron is so much milder. It looks like the official Covid death toll may now be overestimating the death toll, unlike in the rest of the pandemic, and recording people who just happened to have Covid and were not killed by it. The decision to get rid of legal isolation requirements feels extreme, but it probably needs to happen eventually especially since Omicron is so transmissible so is there really going to be a better time for it?

Yeah - it’s pretty good news on the excess mortality stats.

Not sure what the national consensus is on total removal of lockdown rules is. At work, people are pretty skeptical, and there’s a local consensus that it’s just Johnson trying to shore up his support among the right of the party (anti-mask ’freedom lovers’ like Desmond Swain etc) - most of my colleagues fall into the ‘lefty academic’ stereotype though, so I may be in a slight echo chamber.

What polling I've seen has suggested people are generally on the sceptical side.  This has been true throughout the pandemic; there's generally been a lot of support for restrictions.  But the "libertarian" right are well represented in the parliamentary party and in the Tory press, which I imagine has something to do with this.

Personally my biggest concern would be that if isolation is no longer required then that might cause people to be going to work when they shouldn't, either because of financial reasons or because of bullying management.  But the way to deal with this isn't to keep isolation compulsory, but to sort out sick pay rights and the like.

[CumbrianLefty]

Yes, and depressingly another reason why Tories back this is that removing legal compulsion to isolate helps the "force people back to the office" campaign some in the media have been running for a while.

[Torrain]

Here we go
https://mobile.twitter.com/BBCBreaking/status/1492255687249911811

[CumbrianLefty]

His "defence" will apparently be that he was working throughout these parties. Good luck with that

[Blair]

I don't pretend to understand polling enough to explain why but this does show how much in-house effects (and various tweaks) can have a big role- on the old method it would have been a 10 point lead for Labour and would have generated a very different story!

https://twitter.com/OpiniumResearch/status/1492589323916509184

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Essentially they're using an entirely new methodology that eliminates the usual variable turnout dynamic in favour of fixed assumptions about voter behaviour projected from the last election. The next stage in the shift of polling away from being an actual survey and towards a projection model that incorporates survey data. I've read the theoretical justifications and I'm really not convinced that this is a good idea: it might work out (and it should produce much more stable polls than we're used to), but there's a risk that they might just be ICMing themselves.

[CumbrianLefty]

Yes, its fair to say ICM have never recovered from their 2017 debacle (they were so completely sure they were right in the run up as well)

As a general principle, though, I am very much of the view that polls should be snapshots of opinion at that moment in time - nothing more, nothing less. Bringing in quasi-predictions makes them into a rather different beast entirely. If you think that current "don't knows" are important and could change things *potentially*, then give more prominence to them in your findings by all means.

[Torrain]

Have to agree with the above. The noise in polls is key to working out the long term trends when you can throw them in the average. Pre-averaging them for the sake of embarrassment when you didn’t get something exactly right feels hubristic, and like it could hurt the polling industry on the whole if you’re not careful.

If I’m not mistaken, this kind of ‘normalising’ levels of support for parties based entirely on the previous election could/would have completely missed the impact of the Brexit Party in 2019, or the sudden dominance of the SNP, their retreat in 2017 and return in 2019.

In a country where small parties emerge, meaningfully influence all of two elections and then collapse (*cough* UKIP), this just seems shortsighted.

[politicallefty]

I don't pretend to understand polling enough to explain why but this does show how much in-house effects (and various tweaks) can have a big role- on the old method it would have been a 10 point lead for Labour and would have generated a very different story!

https://twitter.com/OpiniumResearch/status/1492589323916509184

Can Labour win with a 37-34 lead over the Conservatives? I know there's a huge difference between 3% and 4% with the SNP vote share (literally the difference between 2017 and 2019), but that doesn't necessarily mean those seats are going back to Labour.

[Oryxslayer]

I don't pretend to understand polling enough to explain why but this does show how much in-house effects (and various tweaks) can have a big role- on the old method it would have been a 10 point lead for Labour and would have generated a very different story!

Can Labour win with a 37-34 lead over the Conservatives? I know there's a huge difference between 3% and 4% with the SNP vote share (literally the difference between 2017 and 2019), but that doesn't necessarily mean those seats are going back to Labour.

The UK presently in effect has the Conservatives and Unionist parties on one side of the benches and Labour, the SNP, and maybe the Lib-Dems on the other. A 3% lead likely couldn't give Labour the seat plurality, but it likely would see power swing away from blue benches. Labour would need a bigger lead for Scotland to be ignorable and a minority or majority govt to be on the cards. It would also be a question if Labour and the SNP, despite both benefiting from agreement, could agree on even a C&S. 

[Antonio the Sixth]

Jonathan Pie says it best, as always.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Can Labour win with a 37-34 lead over the Conservatives?

Yes. 34% would be an eleven point fall in the Conservative vote from the previous election and for various reasons the falls would be hardest exactly where they would not wish for them to be* - the result would be the loss of a very large number of seats and a clear sense of defeat. Whether Labour would win a majority would depend on the situation in Scotland, which is unknowable and impossible to model, but they would be the only party capable of forming a government no matter. It is also the case that the SNP do not vote on most domestic legislation, which makes the day-to-day running of a minority administration rather easier in reality than on paper.

_{*Essentially because percentage drops would be lowest in the constituencies where their percentage was lowest going in. If there's (say) a 10pt drop nationally, it is very unlikely that you will drop 10pts in a constituency where you polled 45% and one where you polled 15% - the fall will be lower in the latter (even if the proportion of the previous vote lost is the same!), which means it must be higher somewhere else. This is where FPTP gets brutal.}

[politicallefty]

Yes. 34% would be an eleven point fall in the Conservative vote from the previous election and for various reasons the falls would be hardest exactly where they would not wish for them to be* - the result would be the loss of a very large number of seats and a clear sense of defeat. Whether Labour would win a majority would depend on the situation in Scotland, which is unknowable and impossible to model, but they would be the only party capable of forming a government no matter. It is also the case that the SNP do not vote on most domestic legislation, which makes the day-to-day running of a minority administration rather easier in reality than on paper.

Not to quibble, but 34% would be just under a 10% drop for the Conservatives. I think the biggest question is whether or not Labour could be the largest party in a hung Parliament. (I definitely don't think 37-34 gets Labour to a Majority Government the way it could back in the days of Tony Blair.) If Labour is the largest party, they'd almost certainly form a government. But what happens if the Conservatives still have a decent lead in seats (let's say 20-30) and Labour can only overcome that with the support of the SNP? Would Labour make the figurative deal with the devil or would they be content with another Conservative Government? (I'm assuming the SNP holds at least 40-45 seats.)

[CumbrianLefty]

Yes. 34% would be an eleven point fall in the Conservative vote from the previous election and for various reasons the falls would be hardest exactly where they would not wish for them to be* - the result would be the loss of a very large number of seats and a clear sense of defeat. Whether Labour would win a majority would depend on the situation in Scotland, which is unknowable and impossible to model, but they would be the only party capable of forming a government no matter. It is also the case that the SNP do not vote on most domestic legislation, which makes the day-to-day running of a minority administration rather easier in reality than on paper.

Not to quibble, but 34% would be just under a 10% drop for the Conservatives.

Nope, we are talking about GB shares here - which is also how most polling is done.