General Election 2024?

[DCI Frank Burnside 3,887]

7 minutes ago, RoverAndOut said:

 

Why the hell is Angela not making the obvious point? "Nothing gets done, Linda?" The last Labour government set up the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. Introduced the Minimum Wage. Brought peace to Northern Ireland. Introduced Civil Partnerships. Brought in the Human Rights Act. Reduced NHS Waiting Times. Improved School Outcomes. We transformed Britain. Since the Tories came in, local authorities have seen their budgets slashed, NHS waiting times have skyrocketed, schools are falling apart, the cost-of-living has gone through the roof and they've spent a decade trying to make a success out of Brexit. Is it any wonder you've lost all hope?"

 

You are Alastair Campbell and I claim my five pounds 

 

 

 

 

 

[RoverAndOut 4,746]

On 29/05/2024 at 21:09, RoverAndOut said:

 

 

Me and Alistair Campbell on the same page tonight. Something about East Lancs lads. So long as we don't talk football...

 

On 29/05/2024 at 21:30, En Passant said:

Same page? It's nearly word for word. You are  Alastair Campbell and I claim my 5 pounds.

 

10 minutes ago, DCI Frank Burnside said:

You are Alastair Campbell and I claim my five pounds 

 

Oh Jesus Christ! I'm not sure how much longer I can deny this. 

[RoverAndOut 4,746]

 

That sounds about right to me, but it's very easy to win a debate when you're grandstanding and have absolutely no decisions to defend. Of the 7 people on stage, the only person apart from Farage who has no record in government to defend was Carla Denyer (who also did pretty well). If he actually gets the power he is aiming for he'll literally shit himself. And I'll be emigrating.

[Brad252 807]

Mordaunt got 'shanked' in that debate. 

[TQR 14,400]

Politics aside, no single clear winner imo but three tiers of performance:

 

Daisy Cooper - Would be great if she didn't shout every word. A fair few refreshingly direct responses to questions, good understanding of key issues and policy, appeared honest, defended well when attacked.

Stephen Flynn - SNP are in the toilet and lack answers in many respects, but Flynn's a bloody effective debater. Deserves a tonne of respect for opening up the possibility that, get this, immigration might not be a bad thing, and articulated perfectly why not. On this particular point, he could teach Labour a thing or two.

Carla Denyer - I loved her focus on what was being asked, with very little desire to be drawn into all the catfighting. Solid outlining of policy in the little time she was allotted. Great, but you can't be too polite in a debate.

 

Nigel Farage - Same shit, different bucket. At home on the attack, but no real answers to anything other than something something immigration something, which were then promptly shot down effectively by the other minor parties.

Angela Rayner - Very strong against the Tories, missed a few points in her direct answers to the questions (e.g. what Labour achieved under Blair & Brown, as Rover pointed out). Holds her own but just not informative enough.

Rhun ap Iorwerth - Okay debut; personable, positive, with the odd few well-considered contributions, but a total lack of presence and not much substance when it came to Plaid's party policy.

 

Penny Mordaunt - Useless as a fishnet condom. Repeated Rishi's lies and tantrums. A perfect illustration of a party broken beyond repair. Honestly came across as being in dire need of mental health first aid.

[msc 18,476]

53 minutes ago, TQR said:

Politics aside, no single clear winner imo but three tiers of performance:

 

Daisy Cooper - Would be great if she didn't shout every word. A fair few refreshingly direct responses to questions, good understanding of key issues and policy, appeared honest, defended well when attacked.

Stephen Flynn - SNP are in the toilet and lack answers in many respects, but Flynn's a bloody effective debater. Deserves a tonne of respect for opening up the possibility that, get this, immigration might not be a bad thing, and articulated perfectly why not. On this particular point, he could teach Labour a thing or two.

Carla Denyer - I loved her focus on what was being asked, with very little desire to be drawn into all the catfighting. Solid outlining of policy in the little time she was allotted. Great, but you can't be too polite in a debate.

 

Nigel Farage - Same shit, different bucket. At home on the attack, but no real answers to anything other than something something immigration something, which were then promptly shot down effectively by the other minor parties.

Angela Rayner - Very strong against the Tories, missed a few points in her direct answers to the questions (e.g. what Labour achieved under Blair & Brown, as Rover pointed out). Holds her own but just not informative enough.

Rhun ap Iorwerth - Okay debut; personable, positive, with the odd few well-considered contributions, but a total lack of presence and not much substance when it came to Plaid's party policy.

 

Penny Mordaunt - Useless as a fishnet condom. Repeated Rishi's lies and tantrums. A perfect illustration of a party broken beyond repair. Honestly came across as being in dire need of mental health first aid.

Agreed Daisy Cooper was one of the better performers and continues the pretty good week the Lib Dems had. Flynn is a good talker but a hypocrite. Easy to talk about climate and ignore the SNP just reneged on their own green policy rather publicly. Denyer her usual "all the problems in my party happened when someone else was there" self. Farage hates immigrants and the NHS as we already knew. Rayner had the look of someone ordered not to punch anyone and desperately trying to obey that order. Cosplay Thatcher was the cream of this Tory government: off, and needing put in the bin.

 

The Plaid chap was like the Silence from Doctor Who. They'd cut back to him and I'd go "wow where did he come from?"

[En Passant 3,741]

7 hours ago, RoverAndOut said:

Oh Jesus Christ! I'm not sure how much longer I can deny this. 

 

Oh don't fret, a tenner isn't that much taken from your podcast earnings.

 

@DCI Frank Burnside and I are definitely not the same person so don't think you can weasel out of the debt by claiming that either.

[YoungWillz 21,057]

Two things I found quite illuminating from last night, now I've had a sleep.

 

Penny Mordaunt said the Tories were planning tax cuts and was rightly challenged on the highest tax burden since 1948. While the laughing was going on, she insisted that her party "hated every minute" of raising tax. There's no evidence of that. No defections, no resignations, no impassioned speeches from the benches, nothing from raising tax - waving of order papers and cheers of MOOORRREEEE yes. It has been where the tax cuts fall, the vast majority of those for the ultra-wealthy. If we have the highest employment rate ever with more people paying tax, you would have thought that tax cuts were affordable and all public services would be adequately financed. Mordaunt's faux remorse is like your school bully taking your pocket money, giving you a purple nurple and then saying they had to do it because their therapy wasn't going well.

 

The response to Flynn's comments on immigration got a huge round of applause. Astonishing. Wasn't it only a few years ago that would have been met with silence, they are taking our jobs and working for less, let's bomb out of the EU and everything will be better?  I think that took the wind out of the sails of both Labour and Conservative reps, and even Farage looked like he had been slapped onto the fishmonger's slab ready for filleting. I think the country has come to the realisation that you can't blame everything on the immigrants a la Farage and Boris, that in fact it is the Government's absolute failure to get a grip of it and not spend our money responsibly. It is a gambit from Flynn I'd never have expected to get the warm reception it did.

[Thatcher 2,417]

I think Rotherham will be one of the most influential results in the long term for the future of the Conservative Party. With no Conservative candidate, it will be a trial run of a single right of centre party with Farage involved. 
 

2010: Labour - 16,741 (44%) / Con & UKIP & BNP - 12,405 (33%)

 

2015: Labour - 19,860 (52.5%) / Con & UKIP & BNP & English Democrat - 16,461 (43.5%)

 

2017: Labour - 21,404 (56.4%) / Con & UKIP - 13,333 (35%)

 

2019: Labour - 14,736 (41.3%) / Con & Brexit Party - 17,740 (49.8%)

 

Incredibly crude way of doing the numbers and you can never count voters as a bloc but if Reform are organised and funded with a good ground operation, it’s not unwinnable. If they do win then it will be used as evidence that a united right even with Farage as a figurehead can beat Labour, particularly in the Northern heartlands. Not so sure that would stack up in the blue wall in the South West and more rural constituencies.
 

It must also be accounted for that the demographics of Rotherham make it plausible that the Worker’s Party will suck a chunk of Labour votes, which means Reform surely must fancy their chances.

[DCI Frank Burnside 3,887]

 

How did Goodall not collapse into a fit of laughter.

 

Foreign people at an airport who knew!

 

[TQR 14,400]

[TQR 14,400]

2 minutes ago, DCI Frank Burnside said:

 

How did Goodall not collapse into a fit of laughter.

 

Foreign people at an airport who knew!

 

That “You can tell” at the end 

[RoverAndOut 4,746]

1 hour ago, YoungWillz said:

The response to Flynn's comments on immigration got a huge round of applause. Astonishing. Wasn't it only a few years ago that would have been met with silence, they are taking our jobs and working for less, let's bomb out of the EU and everything will be better?  I think that took the wind out of the sails of both Labour and Conservative reps, and even Farage looked like he had been slapped onto the fishmonger's slab ready for filleting. I think the country has come to the realisation that you can't blame everything on the immigrants a la Farage and Boris, that in fact it is the Government's absolute failure to get a grip of it and not spend our money responsibly. It is a gambit from Flynn I'd never have expected to get the warm reception it did.

 

Yes, I noticed that. Didn't he also get a round of applause for talking about the disaster of Brexit? The problem is that on both issues they are huge wedge issues in England and, to a lesser extent, Wales. This is why Labour tiptoe around the issues, which is frustrating, but they need to keep some leave voters on side. For all the dangers of Reform to the Tories, Labour cannot tack too far left, partly for fear of losing those on the centre right and moreso because they can't be as radical as the SNP, Greens or, to a lesser extent, the Lib Dems. In other words, they're not going to attract as many from the left as they can from the centre right. But the grown up discussion on immigration yesterday was refreshing. More of that please.

 

My thought this morning was that, while they were drawn by lots, I'm not sure whether having Mordaunt and Rayner side by side at one end of the stage was a good thing or a bad thing. Would it have been less of a shouting match if they'd been on opposite ends of the stage? Or did it allow sharper contrasts between them? I'm inclined towards the former.

[TQR 14,400]

1 minute ago, RoverAndOut said:

My thought this morning was that, while they were drawn by lots, I'm not sure whether having Mordaunt and Rayner side by side at one end of the stage was a good thing or a bad thing. Would it have been less of a shouting match if they'd been on opposite ends of the stage? Or did it allow sharper contrasts between them? I'm inclined towards the former.

 

I dunno, I think Mordaunt might've started screaming, knocking down podiums and howling at the moon if she and Labour were a stage width apart. At least with Rayner in pointing and spitting distance she could keep a lid on her volatile temper.

[DCI Frank Burnside 3,887]

Wonder how much of her anger was a result of the fact that Rishi may well have sealed her fate as an MP with his antics the day before.

[RoverAndOut 4,746]

 

 

 

We used to have representatives like Margaret Beckett. Now we've got to make do with Rishi Sunak. "That was for Attlee." 

 

[The Old Crem 3,606]

1 hour ago, Thatcher said:

I think Rotherham will be one of the most influential results in the long term for the future of the Conservative Party. With no Conservative candidate, it will be a trial run of a single right of centre party with Farage involved. 
 

2010: Labour - 16,741 (44%) / Con & UKIP & BNP - 12,405 (33%)

 

2015: Labour - 19,860 (52.5%) / Con & UKIP & BNP & English Democrat - 16,461 (43.5%)

 

2017: Labour - 21,404 (56.4%) / Con & UKIP - 13,333 (35%)

 

2019: Labour - 14,736 (41.3%) / Con & Brexit Party - 17,740 (49.8%)

 

Incredibly crude way of doing the numbers and you can never count voters as a bloc but if Reform are organised and funded with a good ground operation, it’s not unwinnable. If they do win then it will be used as evidence that a united right even with Farage as a figurehead can beat Labour, particularly in the Northern heartlands. Not so sure that would stack up in the blue wall in the South West and more rural constituencies.
 

It must also be accounted for that the demographics of Rotherham make it plausible that the Worker’s Party will suck a chunk of Labour votes, which means Reform surely must fancy their chances.

Very much so. Could be a shock reform gain.

[DCI Frank Burnside 3,887]

 

Huntingdon fuckin hell they're in trouble.

 

[DCI Frank Burnside 3,887]

Lab 10/3 to win Sunaks seat. Could be worth a flutter in light of the D-Day fiasco given the military presence in the constituency 

[RoverAndOut 4,746]

29 minutes ago, DCI Frank Burnside said:

Lab 10/3 to win Sunaks seat. Could be worth a flutter in light of the D-Day fiasco given the military presence in the constituency 

 

Labour Mayor a month ago, too... 

[The Old Crem 3,606]

21 minutes ago, RoverAndOut said:

 

Labour Mayor a month ago, too... 

That was a big win for Labour

 

Through his seat  would have voted for the Tory candiate going by the figures for the North Yorkshire Council area  and the fact it contains two proper Labour key seats in holding Selby and winning Scarborough and Whitby 

[Toast 16,144]

1 hour ago, DCI Frank Burnside said:

Lab 10/3 to win Sunaks seat. Could be worth a flutter in light of the D-Day fiasco given the military presence in the constituency 

 

What are the odds for Count Binface?

[RoverAndOut 4,746]

8 minutes ago, Toast said:

What are the odds for Count Binface?

 

Much as I like Count Binface, if he ends up keeping Sunak in his seat by a couple of thousand votes I won't be impressed.

[En Passant 3,741]

9 minutes ago, RoverAndOut said:

 

Much as I like Count Binface, if he ends up keeping Sunak in his seat by a couple of thousand votes I won't be impressed.

 

Give the bloke a break.

 

Anyway, you don't know that votes for binface are ones that would have gone to lab / lib whoever comes second by those few thousand anyway. Might well have come from people who would never vote that way, but are utterly disaffected by the tories.

First past the post has a large part to play in that also innit? Hard to get shot of when having the power to do so depends on having used it to attain that power in the first place (as we all know ofc).

 

I'm still sitting in a small puddle of shock that he came top of my policy quiz. Perhaps I shouldn't be.

[TQR 14,400]

Quite some shenanigans going on in Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge. The newly created seat in which Gavin Williamson is standing had a Reform candidate in Tom Wellings, until he withdrew and defected to the Conservatives. Gavin Williamson has denied any foul play.