Which shows just how bad at politics Labour are
Westminster Politics
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
And so they voted for the party who introduced ulez in the first place and at the same time putting aside the moral issues, these people don't pay mortgages or rent?
I don't agree with the thinking, but clearly the ulez issue is one that has impacted on the vote there. I think it's an interesting example of when local/national issues collide - and an example again of how difficult polling and forecasting can be.
Not really. Labour in a difficult position to oppose Khan. People also seem to forget this was introduced by Johnson and the roll out requested by Shapps to continue the finding. There is also the mix of Boris fans there who still voted Tory. Don’t think a Labour will be losing much sleep over it considering they’ve overturned one of the biggest majorities in their history. Also makes a mockery of the Tories claim that Starmer only focusing on London when he’s had a clear impact elsewhere.
If people are so thick they don’t know about local and national policies, you can’t blame Labour. Come the general election, they will win these seat and the swing is great for other seats.
People have had enough of it, but his constituents gave him a majority of over 4000? Maybe the Tories should stop telling people what they think.
It was part of the candidates manifesto. I’m not saying go against it but don’t campaign on it for Christ sake.
Going from where they were in 2019 to "Well nobody expected us to win here"
After over 40 years and 14 elections, and over 50% of the vote in the last one, nobody expected us to win here.
Record IHT tax take.
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I get that he’s desperate to spin this as a positive result, but by saying Uxbridge was a shock he’s basically admitting that the Tories are facing a wipe-out at the next GE.
Good, increase it and pay for social care
Is that unexpected? Given inflation you'd expect a record take and IHT is a helpful deflationary policy here.
Oops, AJ Bell just sent a correction- should say £7.9bn, not £79bn. I was being too lazy to wade through the HMRC announcement myself, so used them.
Not sure if was expected or not. I'd have thought not, given the housing market has fallen.
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Sunak is the ideal patsy who's going to take all the flak when the Tories (hopefully) get hammered in the GE. Bet you Penny Mordaunt is getting her ducks lined up as we speak.
The Yorkshire guy looks and sounds about twelve. I'm off for a nice cup of tea and a hob nob.
There was a whole thread about it so the point has been made before, but inheritance tax is such an irrelevance. The cap and the various rules which increase it mean that only 4% of deaths lead to any IHT being paid - the overwhelming majority of people who inherit money won't pay a penny. A married couple leaving assets including a house to their kids can leave £1,000,000 tax-free before they even get into gifts or any of the various avoidance tactics.
This is it, in a 'nutshell', it was a perfectly aligned situation for a bye-election.
However, Starmer will have to look at his London base, to see how much. if in any way it would harm Labour's GE chances... pretty remote, but still needs some analysis by the 'bean counters' in Labour.
I doubt it will have too much of an impact to be honest, as it will almost certainly have been rolled out by then. It could have a more telling impact on the 2024 London mayoral election.
But I do think it may suggest that Labour are playing it right with their current messaging around not overly committing to public spending/green economy. This stuff will only be possible/likely of having long-term success once the economic situation stabilizes for households.
Polls are accurate. Whatever seat here or there that's a 20+ point demonstration in by-elections less than a year or just about a year out. As expected. Starmer has to lose because the Tories cannot win (if that makes sense). The kind of gains here are Blair majority type swings. Therefore, expect more of Starmer saying and doing much the same. Don't like him, don't trust him, or his version of Labour, but you can understand why (anyone, if you remove personality, would do the same).
Uxbridge, whether they won or lost, to be that close is insane. That's as Tory as it gets. It's a win basically for it to be within that margin.
Uxbridge, whether they won or lost, to be that close is insane. That's as Tory as it gets. It's a win basically for it to be within that margin.
Same with Cruella, she will be eyeing up the leadership as well. Sunak deserves all he gets, he a Cnut just as much as Johnson is.
Basically, he has to use the absolute hatred of the Tory government, socially, through unions, pay, cost of living, austerity, the shite that's been done to the country over ten years, and on and on, without actually being seen to be "pro-union". Don't interrupt your enemy when they're making mistakes. You have to hand it to him, despite the Tories being shit, he has done a hell of a job to put Labour into that position. It'll mean feck all if he cannot be a Labour leader with Labour policies but he's basically ripped the back out of the Tory vote. By going right wing unfortunately, but that's a comment upon the state of Britain. I don't know. Tories are finisished, question is if Labour can make a centrist government or just give you an establishment of more of the same.
To be fair you can probably count on one hand the amount of Lords who have actually had life experiences though
I don't think he's a patsy. Seems to me one of the more competent Tories currently alive. You could be Christ incarnate and it would make little difference considering the scandals and 13 year stench that precede this Tory administration. Poisoned chalice. Ironically, before the market shat out Truss, the polls were still competitive. Been anywhere from 20-40% in gap ever since. Tories losing all market credibility (remember the mini-budget cost about 40bn or something) in the midst of the worst cost of living crisis since the war was the final straw.
Oh feck off you gobshite.
I really wouldn’t call him competent as all, it’s maybe the impression he gives but he’s useless, pandering to the right wing, scared of scrutiny, scared of any difficult questions, he’s a weak leader relying on culture wars and attacks on migrants to assist him.
I think it impossible to judge based on the post-Truss/Johnson/May/Cameron shite on a stick he came on top of. He's not an idiot, rather decent in public terms (PR), and his policies aren't insane (economic) in Tory terms. But the Tories are finally being shat out by the British public just like in 1997 after a similar period of a decade + which has ended in scandal after scandal minus all the things even a centrist or lefty would have to credit Major and Thatcher for having achieved. Worst government of all time. Cannot think of a worse one in British modern history. Gay Marriage. Ten years ago. Nothing else but UK standard of living having gone so far backward that you marvel at how such a thing is even possible.
I put it in the economics thread, but the UK and US, the prime architects of neoliberalism, have weirdly outlying deficits in trade and per person debt as a result. Each is struggling to overcome the financial crash, as the world is, but comparatively, other nations are coming out of it a lot better. The EU, generally, is ahead. Just in pure trade (export/import) terms of the US and UK on a per capita basis. US is moving to alter its economy, under Biden regime, but that'll take the rest of the decade. Certainly another four years. Neoliberalism died and the US and UK are the last two to receive the message. (Biden's campaign, if anyone here is into US politics, was explicitly about the failures of neoliberalism in policy whereas Trump's is about the same thing but in weird nationalist rhetoric).
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Just shows how thick Tory voters are in general, regardless of elevated education or wealth. They will literally cut their nose to spite their face. Maga-lite.
The thing with ULEZ is that 90% of cars are compliant. The opposition to it is very loud and I will admit the timing of it being rolled out over the period of the cost of living crisis at its peak wasn't ideal. That helped fuel the narrative that it was a tax on the people already struggling. But do you kick the can down the road over making the air cleaner and more breathable? I don't believe so and Khan's focus on making London a frontier of tackling climate change is something everyone knew when he was on the ballot. I don't think Khan is in any danger whatsoever of losing the next election.
Expanding it is a hot button issue because people in these hilly boroughs on the outer London boundary of which Uxbridge is a part of look at it as an encroachment on their turf which doesn't have the same level of emissions for which ULEZ was initially brought in to tackle in Inner London. So it's portrayed as a sort of slippery slope. I don't agree with it because ULEZ has been pretty successful in that area so why not want better air and a cleaner environment across the board. The response to that is in inner London you have the access to great public transport for people to get off the roads if they don't want to buy a new car. It's harder when your transport network is less accessible. However that is also a being worked on to be improved and part of the problem is the mayor's ability to do so is handicapped by how much support the government in Downing Street provides. One of the things the Tories have repeatedly argued is that funds should be more distributed to the rest of England and not just London but they don't actually do that either.
Expanding it is a hot button issue because people in these hilly boroughs on the outer London boundary of which Uxbridge is a part of look at it as an encroachment on their turf which doesn't have the same level of emissions for which ULEZ was initially brought in to tackle in Inner London. So it's portrayed as a sort of slippery slope. I don't agree with it because ULEZ has been pretty successful in that area so why not want better air and a cleaner environment across the board. The response to that is in inner London you have the access to great public transport for people to get off the roads if they don't want to buy a new car. It's harder when your transport network is less accessible. However that is also a being worked on to be improved and part of the problem is the mayor's ability to do so is handicapped by how much support the government in Downing Street provides. One of the things the Tories have repeatedly argued is that funds should be more distributed to the rest of England and not just London but they don't actually do that either.
The ULEZ fiasco just shows there's no hope for this country. What would it cost people to do three-minute research?
Yes. Also, there are millions of closeted tories that will fall over themselves to openly vote for them at the slightest opportunity. In this case was the ULEZ, which I'm positive the vast majority of them don't really give a shit about or are affected by it whatsoever. Plus, the fact this is BoJo's initiative and was promoted by Shapps is being criminally underreported. The level of manipulation and disinformation in British media is very worrying.
Guardian:
"About 20% of people reading the blog today are from outside the UK. Here is question from one of them, which I’ll answer here for the sake of non-British readers.
I am writing from outside the UK. Following your coverage of the byelections I noticed that in the background of the two men who won against the Tories, there are strange things going on. There’s someone with a metal bucket over his head, a woman with what looks like one of those talking dolls and a man with a huge label “Loony Party”. As someone from Switzerland, I cannot quite understand if they wanted to place an ironic protest or if they actually participated in the elections? Maybe you could elaborate.
I’m afraid it’s not a protest. These are actual candidates, which is why they are allowed on stage when the result is declared.
Obviously, I can assure foreign readers that here in the UK that the cranks and weirdos never actually get elected to parliament …"
I can assure foreign readers that over there in the UK only cranks and weirdos ever get elected to parliament.....
"About 20% of people reading the blog today are from outside the UK. Here is question from one of them, which I’ll answer here for the sake of non-British readers.
I am writing from outside the UK. Following your coverage of the byelections I noticed that in the background of the two men who won against the Tories, there are strange things going on. There’s someone with a metal bucket over his head, a woman with what looks like one of those talking dolls and a man with a huge label “Loony Party”. As someone from Switzerland, I cannot quite understand if they wanted to place an ironic protest or if they actually participated in the elections? Maybe you could elaborate.
I’m afraid it’s not a protest. These are actual candidates, which is why they are allowed on stage when the result is declared.
Obviously, I can assure foreign readers that here in the UK that the cranks and weirdos never actually get elected to parliament …"
I can assure foreign readers that over there in the UK only cranks and weirdos ever get elected to parliament.....
I have no idea if there is a super injunction, but something is amiss because the lack of coverage over this has been telling.
Why research when the Daily Mail can tell you everything you need to know. Doesn't matter that BoJo introduced it or that Shapps was behind them to roll it out further. The Mail blames it on Labour so there we go.
And Sir Kid Starver, six months after backing Khan's position, blames Khan for it.
I was thinking the other day - the Lib Dem’s fecked their voters back in the day with student loans, and they got decimated. A generation grew up largely refusing to vote Lib Dem again for a long time, it meant LDs went from a consistent “third party” to being on the absolute fringes.
I imagine the Tories now. There are literal entire generations who will likely NEVER vote conservative, after everything in the last few years/decade. What possible way back is there now for the tories? This could very well be the last time we see a conservative government in this country.
I imagine the Tories now. There are literal entire generations who will likely NEVER vote conservative, after everything in the last few years/decade. What possible way back is there now for the tories? This could very well be the last time we see a conservative government in this country.
The problem is with ULEZ in Uxbridge is because it's a really spread population, with a lot of it outside of greater London, Denham and the local villages, for example.
Those areas are almost green belt areas, where people live more like people outside of the south East than the even towns like slough and staines. But they commute into Uxbridge proper, and are employed by Uxbridge residents.
However, it's smack bang next Heathrow, so it has a lot of transitional transport, those going on holiday, and a lot of commercial transport.
The people of Uxbridge are caught between a rock and a hard place. A lot more of them aren't commuters compared to other parts of London and only commute locally. However, they live next to one of the biggest airports in the world.
She's so obviously his daughter and I can't wait for it to come out
It’s just so weird no one has questioned it.