The Columnist 🤷♂️
@Sime0nStylites
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Former Sage. Not ascetic. Best years far behind him.
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My uncontroversial opinion is that Brexit has had the worst outcome for ‘free market’ economics in the UK of any major event in the post war period. QED etc.
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The weird thing about this is the doubling down on the strategy that from a polling perspective has already proved disastrous. Reform voters won’t believe it and the left of the party will be more inclined to vote for Labour / the LDs.
SUN EXCLUSIVE
Britain will quit the ECHR if that’s what it takes to stop the boats, Rishi Sunak declares.
“I believe that border security and controlling illegal migration is more important than our membership of any foreign court.”
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This is getting increasingly odd. Sure, if you think ‘other’ parties are going to get 23% of the national vote Labour is not at its current national polling level of c 44%. But literally, LITERALLY no one thinks that + we have the evidence of all the polls and the by-elections.
Labour's lead over the Tories is down to just 7%, according to an updated National Equivalent Vote estimate.
Sky Elections Analyst Prof Michael Thrasher says Labour's lead needs to be double that to secure a majority.
#TrevorPhillips
🔗
📺 Sky 501
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Who could have ever predic
The answer almost certainly lies in Brexit.
Up until the EU referendum, the share of young Britons who said they "strongly dislike" the Conservative party was steady at 20%.
Since the vote to leave the EU it has climbed steadily and is now double that level.
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A surprise to absolutely no one paying even the vaguest of attention.
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As a broad rule of thumb, always vote against anyone proposing to reduce the scale / extent of the voting franchise.
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The whole *if only we were more Conservative* take now looks even more utterly ridiculous.
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I will be collecting the worst pundit takes re the UK local elections for a thread tmw.
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I find it astonishing that people do not seem to be able to realise the fundamental different between LE results and national polling. It does not speak well of a political operation if this is not understood.
Don’t understand the takes that this weeks results ‘don’t point to a Labour landslide’. They suggest the polls are broadly right and they definitely do point that way.
It might not happen but that’ll be because polls narrow not because of results this week.
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Always extremely humorous when people seem to think history doesn’t change — that it’s some immutable edifice of facts — a beautiful state of pure truth.
This is not correct. History changes all the time. Obvious with even the briefest thought.
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This seems completely bananas
Tory MPs currently voting that the public and journalists can no longer observe proceedings of the House for the rest of the day
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For me, the ‘Illegal Immigration Bill’ by a country mile - a surreal combination of performative meanness, self destruction, fantasy and incompetence.
What are your top ten worst things this government has done? This one I predict won't impact many people [few if any are going to Rwanda]. But legislating a false fact about Rwanda being 'safe' is particularly egregious and embarrassing.
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My view on this is we’re in a period of transition between debate focused on the cost of Brexit and a newer debate on the benefits / opportunities of closer relations with the EU.
Evaluating Brexit, honestly. New post on my Brexit & Beyond Blog looks at import controls, medicines, green regs & steel jobs, & discusses why it's hard but important to disentangle Brexit effects - but the real test is whether it has met its promises:
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And this is frankly astonishing…
4b/ And if Britain had to adopt the euro as a condition of re-joining the EU, how would people vote if there was a referendum tomorrow?
❎ Stay Out: 42% (NC)
☑️ Re-Join: 39% (NC)
🚫 Wouldn’t vote: 8% (+1)
🤷♂️ Don’t know: 11% (-1)
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London was the premier European city. Not so much post Brexit. Totally unarguable. But, of course, I recognise ‘freedom does not come for free’ etc etc.
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lmao
First London mayoral results in - Merton and Wandsworth
Khan 48.3%
Hall 28.6%
5.1% swing from Conservative to Labour since last time
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It’s small in the overall scheme of things but some of Labour didn’t do so well by-election commentary is I think telling of a wider problem of self interested and / or just plain wrong political commentary.
Lots of dubious by-election commentary contriving to make them bad for Labour actually or somehow delegitimising. Really odd.
I do think without a clear sense of purpose a Labour govt could become very unpopular very quickly. But that’s for another time not now.
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An extremely predictable accident in terms of lowering pay and welfare. Increased immigration was less predictable but not in any way an ‘accident’ - it was the deliberate result of government policy.
It can’t be an accident if hundreds of experts were warning you of these exact outcomes
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Somewhat amusingly this is a similar number to the estimated annual tax revenue cost of Brexit which is some kind of weird irony.
The Conservatives are planning to pay the Rwandan dictatorship roughly 2.5% of their annual budget for the next five years - this is the worst possible use of money.
The UK equivalent would be £30bn a year.
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Why not have expertise rather than ideology as the principal selection criterion for guests?
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!!!!!
“I’m depressed. I’m properly, really depressed. I can’t sleep.”
Four years since the UK left the EU, the leave-voting constituency Barking says they’ve seen no benefit from Brexit.
@Jo_Crawford
|
#TimesRadio
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If he *actually* did anything it might be meaningful, but this is not a PM who *actually* does anything (meaningful).
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Visible from space etc
Labour to launch twin strategy for closer UK-EU relations if it wins power
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Whoooooops
Read our response to the Sunday Times article on International Foundation Year programmes at Russell Group universities. These are different to degree programmes, have separate admissions processes and, crucially, different entry requirements
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The incredible irony of UK conservatives advocating authoritarianism as they’re about to experience generational defeat.
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Conservative PM’s scathing indictment of Conservative government.
“Britain’s forgotten regions.” Forgotten by who exactly? It’s ten years this year since the Northern Powerhouse was launched
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And failing to provide that ‘better’ risks putting Labour into the incumbent disadvantage bucket. And that’s a very difficult challenge.
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Very complacent imv to assume this is somehow a good result for people who don’t want to rejoin the EU.
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Anyway, maybe the huh moral of the story is if you get a change mandate you better deliver change…
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(iii) Rejoining the EU with the difficulty of that process + obvs UK domestic political considerations.
Unless one is a pure sovereignty fan (in which case current situation is worth it), amazing to have ended up in such a bad strategic position.
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And it’s also good news for Labour because they’ll have a very substantial mandate for change. But…the catch is that has to be change…for the better…
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In other words, incumbency in bad times is a much more important driver of political change than any particular characteristics of that change alternative.
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This is pretty much settling in as the consensus estimate - 5% +/- 1%.
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Labour’s doing well because they’re most definitely not the incumbent not especially because they’re Labour.
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Populism is currently driven by reaction against incumbent political parties, driven by principally economic factors.
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Who can possibly imagine what this elusive, mysterious policy might be?
Casting my mind around for a policy that costs almost nothing but would deliver large increases in tax revenues to pay for nice things. Wonder what might fit that bill?
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We are but one more result away from the return of all the Conservative anti RS plotting takes.
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I’ll gently point out that I’ve seen no serious piece of work that compares the pros and cons etc of those 3 options.
Which is odd…because that’s likely to be a v important area of focus going forward.
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@Samfr
I can say 100% certainty they will not be sticking to Cons spending plans and nether would the Cons if they win.
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@DmitryOpines
@GeorgePeretzKC
And of course will blame poor implementation vs the unachievability of their objective (despite also being culpable for the implementation). The interesting part now is not the *failure* (widely accepted) but how it is addressed (we’re still some way from that discussion).
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Yes indeed. That’s why a clear-eyed, balanced look at the range of alternatives would be a very sensible idea.
Figures like this do not suggest the current Brexit equilibrium will be stable.
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Hold on a sec I thought we were on for a hung parliament.
Highest % to predict a Labour Gov't.
If a General Election in the UK were to take place, what do British voters think would be the most likely outcome of this election? (5 May)
Labour Gov't: 63% (+5)
Conservative Gov't: 21% (-2)
Changes +/- 28 April
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Way better than anything else I’ve read
got a big profile of Kemi Badenoch in this issue of the New European, which is actually mostly wondering whether she has any of the specific qualities to be an efficient opposition leader, as it's a very different job from being PM:
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Tony’s hit the proverbial nail on the head. Polling is useless from a public policy perspective if it’s only used to find positions that simply do not work.
Brexiteers have got themselves into a pickle by failing to do this. Slavishly divining inconsistent and therefore unrealizable hopes in polling is not the way to go.
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Going to need to rewrite all of those rejoin the EU polling going backwards pieces 😉
4a/ On Brexit, our polling continues to show a consistent trend on how Brits would vote if another EU referendum was held.
* All *
☑️ Re-join: 52% (+2)
❎ Stay Out: 31% (-2)
🤷 DK or not voting: 18% (NC)
* Exc DKs / won’t vote *
☑️ Re-join: 63% (+2)
❎ Stay Out: 37% (-2)
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I’ll just glide in to say that an in principle commitment to diversity and inclusion is now so standard (and rightly so) across all manner of institutions that it’s not even remotely close to an interesting news story.
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Amazed people post here anymore. Like watching people send faxes.
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Hutton for PM!
When you read opinion columnists explaining away Labour’s success in this morning’s papers, don’t forget that
@RobDotHutton
got there first
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…Not a very positive sign for Labour in government in general if they can’t work out a sensible line on this…
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Let universities charge a market rate for UK students. Or is that too (old school) conservative for the Conservative Party?
The Deliveroo Visa scandal looks worse and worse. So much for this being about the "best and brightest"
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Of course, this is deeply ironic but does anyone think there’ll be a free markets focused government in the UK in the next (say) 6 years. Add to that the 8 years since the referendum and it’s obviously been a disaster for the free markets cause.
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@Samfr
@dsquareddigest
Just to make sure I understand….if debt to gdp increases (say) from 95% to 105% between 2024 and 2028 but decreases from 105% to 104% between 2028 and 2029 then they’ve hit the target?
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If I was a free markets thinker I’d be trying to work out what went wrong, in the process avoiding simple blame type explanations and the pursuit of politically impossible dreams.
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Rejoin the EU and get your dancing back
#allofthisistrue
The live music bar in Barcelona is busier at 11.15 than it was when we arrived. In London, it would be shut.
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one of the great mysteries of our time is how Conservative strategy advisors can be so incredibly bad at their job and still remain in employment
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Would make sense given the recount.
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That’s both good and bad news for both Conservatives and Labour. It’s obviously very very bad for the Cons and good for Labour in the context of the next election.
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According to this view, we’ve had two big change votes (2016 and 2019) both of which miserably failed to deliver positive change.
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The Number 1 question the Conservative Party needs to address (in the same sort of way as Labour post 2019) is how they have managed to fail so abjectly. Not being able to honestly answer this question will result in (at least) two terms in opposition.
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The key point is that if you agree that everything is a mess and badly needs fixing…you can’t really avoid the 2016 thing. And if you think you can…your fixing analysis is not going to be very effective.
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Put a bit differently, news should be in the business of communicating and interrogating the political views / positions of actual politicians vs others expressing political views.
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This is the best attempt I’ve seen to pull together the various different strands in a short form piece.
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If Sky News is taking from that the outcome of the GE is (currently) not very clear then that’s a major fail.
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@Samfr
@dsquareddigest
Ok that’s what I vaguely imagined but that truly is completely bonkers and entirely spurious.
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HoC UQ territory…
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Our national comparative advantage is - by a million miles - snark.
As someone following on radio AND twitter, he's allowing far too much time for people to come up with bantering commentary
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It is, perhaps, amusing that the strongest Brexit supporters have a strange tendency for advocate the policies that are most likely to get it reversed.
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@ShippersUnbound
@Simon_Nixon
The problems with the ‘it is what it is’ argument are that (i) it’s not some Ruth that somehow will just be left alone (biggest trading partner etc) and (ii) the ‘we can’t do anything about where we are’ mindset is a huge part of the problem.
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@mattholehouse
@NeilDotObrien
Not to mention the ready accessibility of dramatic changes in policy and tone over the course of the electoral term (eg Boris vs Truss vs Sunak) — ie we are currently a very long way away from the government elected in 2019.
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More subtle point about the Q4 numbers is that in a very slow growth economy small absolute changes can be very material relative to actual growth potential (eg 0.3% compared to say 1% growth economy vs 2% growth economy).
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And now is in the process of reversing again - another realignment! Excepts it’s not a ‘realignment’ in the sense of a semi-permanent shift, it’s a substantial change in voting intention driven by economic factors.
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Yes. These two things can be and probably are true (i) the Thrashing Rawler projection is a very good LE results projection (ii) LE results are not the same as GE results.
The question you are supposed to ask is *why* is there a difference between the projected national share and the polls. What does that difference tell us about the likely outcome of the next election?
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That all probably sounds very…obvious. Perhaps the less obvious point is the combination of bad economic times and volatility of voting intention.
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This brings me to the much misused ‘red wall’ theory of British politics. Here (I suggest) the interesting observation is not simply the previously observed demographic mismatch vs voting but the fact that mismatch ‘corrected’ in 2019.
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This to me seems intuitively obvious in current circumstances. Less obvious to me is who people think will be paying the higher taxes? Is it ‘me’ or someone else?
At
@InstituteGC
, we disaggregated this and asked about individual public services.
A belief the NHS needs more cash drives a lot of this support for more money for public services. However, people prefer more money than less even for areas like justice and the welfare system.
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Now all this suggests Labour should really be playing the change card. But they’re doing quite the opposite though I do think there are some important structural reasons for that (eg Cons as the perceived party of government etc etc).
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This would reduce enormously the bandwidth available to non-politician ideology motivated speakers.
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And here I think Rejoin (and its various alternatives) would do well think in terms of what might be rather than what we might have missed out on. Focus on ‘better together’ - the positive argument - rather than the negative - the ‘great mistake’.
/ends
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Oh…and this…
Perhaps even more important than overall GDP is GDP per capita, which adjusts for the rising population (v important given the scale of migration flows recently). It’s probably a better measure of real economic growth.
And it’s down by 0.7% in 2023.
That’s very bad!
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If you buy the economics driven volatility of voting intention view, then it’s game on for politicians who want to change things - but very difficult not get on the wrong side of that when in power.
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The first rule of rugby club is do not get sent off.
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But the second is what then happens if ‘closer’ is unachievable without material compromise on ‘difficult’ subjects - eg FoM eg rule taking etc etc etc?
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Slightly touched to see OMD on a French TV music program performing live and receiving an ecstatic reception.
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How is it possible to have a cold for literally 36 hours and then it’s gone?
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Maybe they should reconsider their belief in ideology driven dictatorship
Just a thought.
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Can’t implement your free markets ideology? Look enviously at chainsaw guy.
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@Wkrs
@DavidHenigUK
Sure there are of course possibly popular and possibly unpopular aspects. But the principle of it would be / is very popular. That’s a very good starting point and the other potentially unpopular issues would be subject to negotiation.
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@Samfr
@dsquareddigest
Oh and now I see the huh trap for Labour (actually for everyone) is that it’ll obviously be higher without the unworkable projected spending cuts?
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