The Clown Circus

[Steely Glint]

Twitter Link

I'm sorry but what the fuck was that?

[Loki]

He forgot to mention that he'll serve the aristocrats, the upper class, and the working class, before snickering at the last one.

[Aimless]

nobody could've foreseen etc etc

https://committees.parliament.uk/pub...97199/default/

[Hazir]

90 days.

[Aimless]

90 days.

I mean he's already resigned so they're just recommending withholding the former Member's pass

But imagine being on record defending this man's character and fitness for office!

[Hazir]

I mean he's already resigned so they're just recommending withholding the former Member's pass

But imagine being on record defending this man's character and fitness for office!

I'm happy to say that I literally can't.

[Steely Glint]

[Aimless]

[Aimless]

Thorough repudiation of the Rwanda policy, as expected.

Toryblades respond with calls to break the law, as expected

[Aimless]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics...nts-rwanda-uk/

The Bill must enable flights before the next general election
Legislation must therefore circumvent the lengthy process of further domestic litigation, to ensure that flights can take off as soon as the new Bill becomes law. To do this, the Bill must exclude all avenues of legal challenge. The entirety of the Human Rights Act and European Convention on Human Rights, and other relevant international obligations, or legislation, including the Refugee Convention, must be disapplied by way of clear “notwithstanding” clauses.
Judicial Review, all common law challenges, and all injunctive relief, including the suspensive challenges available under the Illegal Migration Act must be expressly excluded. Individuals would, however, be given the chance to demonstrate that they had entered the country legally, were under 18, or were medically unfit to fly – but Home Office decisions on these claims could not be challenged in court.

[Steely Glint]

Twitter Link

ouch

[Aimless]

Twitter Link

ouch

Would be fascinating to see voter flow stats since Farage farted out his candidacy announcement.

[Steely Glint]

It doesn't seem to have moved the overall polls too much, maybe +3-5 for Reform, hard to pick out where exactly the votes are coming from from the overall noise of the polls and other campaign events. The issue is that that Tories' don't have that many votes to spare. Although current projections have winning something on the order of 150 seats, many of those seats are marginal enough to be within the typical opinion poll error range. Anything that shifts the polls much more in Labour's direction (polling error, another swing to Labour, third party taking votes off the Tories) could turn a disaster (150 seats) into an apocalypse (50-60 seats), which would be the difference between being out of power for a couple of terms and out of power for a generation or more.

Also, polls show that Farage has a negative rating amongst Labour voters and a positive one amongst Tory voters, so most of the damage he does will be to the Tories.

[Aimless]

I love this for them



He has been cursed by the medium of photography itself

[Steely Glint]

Reform within 1% of the Tories
Lib Dems within 3% of the Tories
Tories are closer to the Greens than they are to Labour.

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[Loki]

I bet they wish they instituted PR.

[Steely Glint]

I don't think that would necessarily increase their seats by too much, mostly it would massively harm Labour and benefit Reform, so I guess it depends on who they hate more.

[Loki]

They'd have a shot at a coalition government with Reform. In the current system, Reform is going to be their version of the Lib Dems, constantly keeping them from getting a majority.

[Steely Glint]

Labour still have more seats than Tories + Reform combined under PR if those results happened in the election, just by a measure of 10 or 20, rather than 100s. Plus they still have an option of coalition with the Lib-Dems.

[Loki]

Tories without Sunak would instantly gain 5+%, but they really can't help themselves. They're in their own Corbyn phase.

[Steely Glint]

Not sure how that connects to PR, but to answer your point - who do you put in Sunak's place? The reason he was elected unopposed, and why he was never replaced since, despite failing to makeup any ground on Labour after the initial 'not being liz truss' bounce, is that they really have no one else. The Tories would give their right arm to get Corbyn's 2019 result (32%), if you told them they could get 10% less votes than Corbyn, they'd probably at least take it. Their problems go far deeper than just a Sunak being a poor leader.

[Loki]

Their problem is that their voters want insane leaders, so the party either has to accept an insane leader (see Truss) or pick one without party member input (see Sunak). Neither are great recipes for electoral success. That's the same issue Labour had in its Corbyn phase.

[Steely Glint]

I don't think the fact that Sunak didn't win an a leadership contest amongst Tory members is even in the top 10 in the list of electoral problems they have right now. Fact is, since they took power, they've had 1 leader who would be considered 'insane' by your standards -Truss- and she was in power for no more than a few months.

[Loki]

Johnson was insane, too, but he was good with the voters, which minimized the electoral consequences of his insanity. Sunak has 0 charisma and is at best a mediocre politician. Tories make up more than 18% of the electorate. But he can't even get the support of his own party's voters.

[Steely Glint]

Johnson was a corrupt, incompetent liar but what about his policy platform was 'insane' to you? You can see the 2019 manifesto here, there's really nothing particularly outlandish - get brexit done, make some hospitals and schools, get down immigration. No Austrian school-style economic experiments, no culture wars.

The fact that they delivered on basically none of it and now basically everyone admits that Brexit has been a disaster and have had numerous other disasters and scandals since then tells you why they are where they are in the polls, Sunak's bizarre unforced errors are just icing on the cake.

[Aimless]

Sunak's charisn'tma is painful, but bear in mind what we're seeing ahead of this election reflects the entire party's performance wrt governance and politics over the past several years. Anyway can we at least agree that his misfortune is very funny

[Steely Glint]

My hot take is that anyone who was even mildly inclined to not vote Tory had already resolved to do so long ago, so all he's doing with his cockups is convincing natural Tory voters to either vote reform or stay home. The d-day thing is literally unfathomable to me. Even the greatest minds at the International Institute for Stupid Bullshit Studies could not hope to probe its secrets.

[Steely Glint]

Survation's final call is unhinged, yet glorious.

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I still think there's a large potential range of results - too many seats on a knife edge so it comes down to vagaries of the modal on how low the Tories go. Calling the Tory total as 80-100 for no particular reason other than it's more narratively interesting that way. 100+ seats and they'll likely recover, a bad defeat and nothing more 97 - all over again. If it's low as Survation says, they may never again attain power in my life time, or possibly any life time. 80-100 could go either way.

Also, the % vote share that would deliver the above result is something like Labour: 40%, Tories, 18%, Reform 16%, Lib Dems 11%, which I think demonstrates what a great system FPTP is.

[Steely Glint]

Exit Poll

Labour: 410
Con: 131
Lib: 61
Reform: 13

Conservatives perform at the upper bound of polling expectations, and keep themselves alive.

[Aimless]

Two countries celebrated freedom from Tory rule yesterday fully expect Starmer to fumble this opportunity to advance British social democracy in a desperate quest to nab a few dozen Reform voters, but I hope grassroots orgs can compensate for that and build a solid platform for future Labour victories. Wonder how British forumites voted