United Kingdom General Election: July 4, 2024

[adma]

Up next, bringing back fox hunting and death penalty.

How about bringing back the cane?

[JimJamUK]

Spent the day doorknocking, had 7 people raise to me the National service plan (all negative). Not since the dementia tax has there been such a poorly performing policy. It’s wonderful.

Would welcome further updates along these lines if you (or anyone else) are able to post them. 

[Steve from Lambeth]

The Conservatives say the scheme would involve 30,000 selective military placements where "the brightest and best" would get involved in cyber security, logistics, or civil response operations full-time for a year.

Everyone else would do 25 days, or one weekend a month for a year, with non-military organisations including the fire service, the police, the NHS or charities.

From a BBC article on this.

And how will they tell apart the wheat (of those worthy to be enrolled into temporary Army service) from the chaff (of those who have to spend 5% of next year milling around their local Cancer Research UK store)?

- Will there be an application form and if there is, how will they assess you?
- Do you have to get a reference from your Head of Sixth Form?
- Is the Government just going to look at your A-Level results and automatically enlist you if you get at least one A* in a mathematical or science subject (which records show about 19,000 students in England did last year)?
- If prospective military service member #30,000 asks to be enrolled in volunteering, how do they get replaced if at all?
- When do you start at university? (This is a serious question. Universities don't teach at weekends so the ~700,000 volunteers can fit their job around their lives. The 30,000 national defence interns will have to commit so much time that their internship is, for all intents and purposes, a state-enforced gap year. The UCAS deadline is October for Oxbridge, January for the rest, clearing on Results Day.)
- Further to the above: WHEN will they tell apart the wheat from the chaff? Results Day is mid-August; National Service begins September 2025.

Or do I have to wait for the Royal Commission to report back?

There's a genuine merit in having 'mandatory' voluntary work. If anything, retirees might get the most benefit in terms of wellbeing. It should fall on everyone to varying degrees.

Instead it's being used as a stick against the 'youth blob' with no payoff. You'll still have to pay student loans...

Anyway, the obvious solution is to exempt anyone who has ever served among The 30,000 of Thermopylae from paying tuition fees at any level. They're smart enough and they're tough enough (and - if my numbers are right - it should cost less than a billion a year). You also get to accuse Labour of being "soft on service skippers" if they ever try to universalise the policy.

[TheTide]

Spent the day doorknocking, had 7 people raise to me the National service plan (all negative). Not since the dementia tax has there been such a poorly performing policy. It’s wonderful.

Would welcome further updates along these lines if you (or anyone else) are able to post them. 

I'd also be interested in hearing anecdotes from Tory canvessers. I seem to remember David Herdson (who was then canvassing for the Tories, but is now a member of the Yorkshire Party IIRC) saying that the dementia tax had 'gone down like a bucket of cold sick' on the doorsteps. That was probably one of the first signs that that election wasn't going to turn out as generally expected.   

[afleitch]

First Scottish poll of the campaign, from More In Common:

• Labour 35%
• SNP 30%
• Conservatives 17%
• Liberal Democrats at 10%
• Reform UK 4%
• Greens at 3%

If you plug that into a universal swing model, it puts us roughly on 28 Lab, 16 SNP, 8 Tory, 5 Lib Dem. Usual disclaimers about universal swing and tactical voting apply - we don't know how well anti-SNP unionist tactical voting will hold up compared to anti-Tory tactical voting.

They haven't polled Scotland before but they are an accurate. (especially in May) A deep dive suggests their weighting method prompts don't knows which is something you want to see at this point in polling. That is favourable to Labour. Also a more realistic Lib Dem vote.


On a personal note, a five point deficit isn't what I want to see, but the fundamentals are not as bad as they could be for the SNP especially compared to more recent polls, particularly on voter retention.

[The Mikado]

If you fancy another laugh, the Political Compass website has been updated to 2024. Apparently Reform are to the left of the Conservatives, George Galloway is more libertarian than Labour, and the SNP led by John Swinney and Kate Forbes is interchangeable on economics with the Greens.

www.politicalcompass.org/uk2024

A few years ago I wrote a long rant about how they don't even actually put the candidates/parties through their stupid test to determine their position on the chart, they just do it 100% on vibes.

So I tried myself by putting in Trump's and Biden's positions into the site and comparing it to their official 2020 US compass.

My takes first:

Trump:



Biden:





Their take:



They just make stuff up and don't even use their own test on these things.

[super6646]

Just read the national service plan the  tories want to institute, WTF are they thinking haha. Seriously, it’s like sunak absolutely wants to make sure he doesn’t have a job asap.

You write that last bit as if it's a surprise if he does want to just call it quits and get his kids in a nice Californian school before start of term. Like I said in a previous thread, it's patently obvious he has no respect for the status of the office. I doubt for example he'll even bother turning up for "Former PM events".

He sees it as another line on the CV. It's part of what makes him horrible at politics.

Yeah that's why I edited the post to make that more clear. It seems quite obviously he gives 0 s.

[MillennialModerate]

First Scottish poll of the campaign, from More In Common:

• Labour 35%
• SNP 30%
• Conservatives 17%
• Liberal Democrats at 10%
• Reform UK 4%
• Greens at 3%

If you plug that into a universal swing model, it puts us roughly on 28 Lab, 16 SNP, 8 Tory, 5 Lib Dem. Usual disclaimers about universal swing and tactical voting apply - we don't know how well anti-SNP unionist tactical voting will hold up compared to anti-Tory tactical voting.

They haven't polled Scotland before but they are an accurate. (especially in May) A deep dive suggests their weighting method prompts don't knows which is something you want to see at this point in polling. That is favourable to Labour. Also a more realistic Lib Dem vote.


On a personal note, a five point deficit isn't what I want to see, but the fundamentals are not as bad as they could be for the SNP especially compared to more recent polls, particularly on voter retention.

How effecient is the Labour vote in Scotland? a 35-30 margin enough for 12 more seats?

[bore]

Up next, bringing back fox hunting and death penalty.

We should have a forum sweepstake for what the next policy they announce will be.

My guess: Cyclists will have to pay road tax

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Up next, bringing back fox hunting and death penalty.

How about bringing back the cane?

As a criminal punishment, to repeal the reforms of arch-wokester Chuter Ede.

[icc]

First Scottish poll of the campaign, from More In Common:

• Labour 35%
• SNP 30%
• Conservatives 17%
• Liberal Democrats at 10%
• Reform UK 4%
• Greens at 3%

If you plug that into a universal swing model, it puts us roughly on 28 Lab, 16 SNP, 8 Tory, 5 Lib Dem. Usual disclaimers about universal swing and tactical voting apply - we don't know how well anti-SNP unionist tactical voting will hold up compared to anti-Tory tactical voting.

They haven't polled Scotland before but they are an accurate. (especially in May) A deep dive suggests their weighting method prompts don't knows which is something you want to see at this point in polling. That is favourable to Labour. Also a more realistic Lib Dem vote.


On a personal note, a five point deficit isn't what I want to see, but the fundamentals are not as bad as they could be for the SNP especially compared to more recent polls, particularly on voter retention.

How effecient is the Labour vote in Scotland? a 35-30 margin enough for 12 more seats?

Easily.

The vote efficiency depends a lot on how well the party is doing.

The SNP for example have an extremely efficient vote when they are doing well (their even vote allows them to win everywhere), but when they start dropping back their vote becomes extremely inefficient, particularly if it were a three way split with both Labour and the Tories (in which case the SNP would be second virtually everywhere, whilst the two unionist parties would split a bunch of 1sts and 3rds).

[JimJamUK]

How effecient is the Labour vote in Scotland? a 35-30 margin enough for 12 more seats?

It’s not so much the Labour vote being efficient as the SNP vote being inefficient. IIRC a 3 way tie between the SNP, Labour and Tories in 2017 would have seen the SNP a clear 3rd in terms of seats. The SNP have a fairly evenly spread vote owing to their support being defined by Scottish independence rather than sharp demographic differences. Consequently, they can sweep the board on 45-50% of the vote in a way an English landslide win would not achieve, but when their vote dips below 35% they risk losing almost all of the Central Belt to Labour while losing many rural seats to the Tories (and a scattering of LDs). Ironically, it’s some of the more unionist seats where they have the best hope, owing to a possible even split in the non-SNP vote between Labour and the Tories eg; East Renfrewshire, Aberdeen South, and Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock.

[OSR stands with Israel]

https://twitter.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1794842931406266625?t=8jj1w3w40pCZaaefroWm...

My goodness

[GeorgiaModerate]

They're trying to lose, aren't they?

[Torrain]

Alliance Leader Naomi Long has confirmed she’s running in Belfast East, against interim DUP leader Gavin Robinson. She was 1.8k votes short of unseating him last time - a lot has changed since then.

[brucejoel99]

They're trying to lose, aren't they?

Honestly seems that way, doesn't it? Calling the election on a lark when the party is unprepared in over 200 constituencies. Blair-ing "Things Can Only Get Better" over his election call while he was busy getting drenched head-to-toe by heavy rain because No. 10 apparently forgot the concept of an indoor speech after COVID. His Welsh football mistake. Docking the sinking ship at the Titanic Quarter in Belfast because the Tory just had to go on a 4-nation tour like Nixon went to Hawaii in 1960. Trusting Gove to not retire. One-up'ing a tepidly unpopular Starmer announcement by announcing certifiably insane policy. If he's a Labour mole playing the long game, I'm not sure what he should've done any differently to kick the campaign off. I'm just sayin', if we never actually ruled out Truss being a secret Lib Dem mole solely intent on taking the Tories down, maybe we can't rule out a guy who was 16 in 1997 being a secret Blair fanboy either

[Dr. Cynic]

Up next, bringing back fox hunting and death penalty.

How about bringing back the cane?

Perhaps burning suspected witches at the stake would get those voters back!

[adma]

Up next, bringing back fox hunting and death penalty.

How about bringing back the cane?

Perhaps burning suspected witches at the stake would get those voters back!

Naw, that's more something the "Nick Fuentes" crowd in the US would advocate.

As for caning, I suppose it'd be Cuthbert Cringeworthy Rees-Mogg's attempt to secure the vote of all those Bash Street Teachers out there ;-)

[Lumine]

In about two or three days they'll be pledging to bring back rum, sodomy and the lash to the Royal Navy.

The funniest thing for me is that this was already attempted as a transparent - if effective - gimmick in the (original) British House of Cards, only that Francis Urquhart could pretend to do it while projecting strength and a sense of purpose.

[Coldstream]

Sunak has 100% placed a bet on Labour to win.

[Battista Minola 1616]

In about two or three days they'll be pledging to bring back rum, sodomy and the lash to the Royal Navy.

The funniest thing for me is that this was already attempted as a transparent - if effective - gimmick in the (original) British House of Cards, only that Francis Urquhart could pretend to do it while projecting strength and a sense of purpose.

Is it a good thing or a bad thing that Shane MacGowan died just in time not to see that happen?

[OSR stands with Israel]

https://torymanifesto.org.uk/

This is brutal

[brucejoel99]

https://torymanifesto.org.uk/

This is brutal

Mr. President, there's a 2nd parody Tory manifesto website: https://www.conservativemanifesto.org.uk/

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Up next, bringing back fox hunting and death penalty.

We should have a forum sweepstake for what the next policy they announce will be.

My guess: Cyclists will have to pay road tax

Just before the election the Government announced plans for a new criminal offence of death by dangerous cycling, so not far off lol

[Blair]

Going well. Another day for Labour to sit with their huge opinion poll lead and to be happy that we are not talking about taxation.

https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1794845627765104901