The fact that someone who is not even a member of the Conservative Party is being seriously discussed as its possible next leader speaks volumes - about the Conservative Party.He just needs to get second-place among the MPS, of which there are going to be a lot fewer than at present.As the relative sizes of the groupings in the Tory party showed this week, I don't see Farage getting anywhere near the leadership. The far-right (an awful term really, the ERG are NOT Nazis, despite what some social media warriors claim) are not that numerous, and many will likely be lost at the election.I suspect it will be more like:Nigel Farage will need to become a Conservative MP before he can become leader, which in practice means he will need to join the party and its candidate list (subject to leader's veto) and be chosen for a safe seat before the next election which may be as soon as next spring.Three takeaways from yesterday's events:Disagree on all three, not strongly, but think 1 is decent odds against, 2 is pretty uncertain and volatile, and 3 only applies with the parliamentary party, within the Tory members, donors and media the post fascists or whatever they should be called are dominant, and I expect Farage as leader within 4 years.
1. There will almost certainly be deportations to Rwanda this side of a general election.
2. That, along with tax cuts in early 2024, will drive something of a Tory comeback. Labour minority or small majority looks like a much better bet than Labour landslide.
3. The post-fascist Tory far-right is nowhere near as powerful as they and the media have led us to believe. There is a very low likelihood of the Braverman/Jenrick branch of the PCP providing the party's next leader. If 1 and 2 do happen, Cleverley is surely likeliest to succeed Sunak.
Same for Boris (at least the candidate part).
All those hoping for Boris or Farage need to keep an eye on the calendar. If nothing happens soon, it won't happen.
2024 GE Crushing defeat
2024/5 New populist leader takes over and woos Farage
2025-6 Random By Election
2027/8 Farage defenestrates leader silly enough to woo him in
Can he get the ex BNP voters inside?Oh alright, I shouldn't but ...He'd need appeal in many areas: National, Westminster...With Christmas on its way will Santander liver a leadership contest he can win?Yep. Nationwide appeal is limited, I'd say.I wouldn't bank on it.Three takeaways from yesterday's events:Barclay is most likely Tory Leader of the Opposition still in my view if as is likely the Conservatives lose the next general election, though if she got to the membership Badenoch would be hard to beat
1. There will almost certainly be deportations to Rwanda this side of a general election.
2. That, along with tax cuts in early 2024, will drive something of a Tory comeback. Labour minority or small majority looks like a much better bet than Labour landslide.
3. The post-fascist Tory far-right is nowhere near as powerful as they and the media have led us to believe. There is a very low likelihood of the Braverman/Jenrick branch of the PCP providing the party's next leader. If 1 and 2 do happen, Cleverley is surely likeliest to succeed Sunak.
(we might as well get this over with, right?)
Yes he'll need to go Chasing votes.
Humbug as usual from StarmerHe never answers any of Rishi's questions. It really isn't on.
The greatest Welshman ever quits.All Wales motorists to slow down to 20mph as a mark of respect?
Wales' First Minister Mark Drakeford resigns
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-67702232
No driving over 20mph until the period of mourning is over.A sad day for PB. I'm going to go for my Parkrun PB on Saturday in tribute.PB is going into a 12 day period of mourning.
#theDrake
Their 'excellent by-election results' are displacement activity. The Lib Dems are in danger of simply being a bucket anti-Tory vote (but nicer than Labour) which is fine at a protest election but gets them nowhere when there are serious issues in play and they're not in the debate because they have nothing to say, and get squeezed by those who are.I suggest some at least of the LibDems problems are down to them being the fourth, not the third, party in Parliament.Too damned busy to comment much. LD pretty poor polling given the state of the Tories - piss-poor leader muchly to blame. Labour going to be asked lots of questions in the election camapign to which they will have no answers - and look evasive and flat-footed. Tories could have a relatively good campaign and save several dozen seats.A notable lack of comment on the current state of play. LD Green shoots, and Conservative mass deforestation methinks.Er...not me. I was reporting here on that deforestation.You may recall 2010-2015, when thanks to Lord Ashcroft there were daily YouGovs. We ended up looking at the daily tree and ignoring/wilfully misinterpreting the die-back in the LibDem forestMonthly and even quarterly GDP statistics are worth precisely nothing, and it is stupid to make decisions on that basis. For one thing, they are routinely revised by large amounts. For another, factors like a snowy spell or a couple of bank holidays or a big sports tournament can thrown everything off. Also the changes month to month are invariably tiny.Poor economic data just released . At this rate the BOE will be cutting interest rates sooner rather than later .GDP was flat (0.0% growth) in the three months to October.
In the month of October, GDP fell 0.3%.
➡️ ons.gov.uk/economy/grossd…
https://twitter.com/ONS/status/1734830520742060079?t=ecKRICiN7RpNRpMV5elhWQ&s=19
But most importantly, an obsessive focus on the very short term detracts from focusing on our main economic problem: that, long term, we have all but stopped growing. And often measures to raise growth in the long term have adverse effects in the short term, as Mrs Thatcher discovered in the early 80s. So if I had my way, I'd stop the production of very short-term numbers - it's an American practice, partly reflecting and partly causing the very short-term focus of US financial markets, and, like so many American habits we've imported, it is hurting not helping us.
We'll know within the year.
When push came to shove they have had some excellent by-election results.
So it's largely the fault of successive governments since Thatcher ?I don't agree. I know Ofwat extremely well professionally. Their over-cautious "rinsing" of consumers is caused by the difference in their legal duties compared to other regulators. The law forced them to assign a higher priority to maintaining investors' confidence than in, say, energy or telecoms. This was because, when they were privatised, the main priority was to finance a huge programme of capex to replace existing assets and attain an unnecessarily high level of drinking water purity. This has now been replaced by the need to clean up sewers and to finance Net Zero, which affects water less than energy, but is still an expensive proposition.What three and a half decades of privatised monopoly has wrought.OFWAT is a classic example of regulatory capture and there is a revolving door between it and the water companies.
If Thames Water has to be nationalised, so be it. Ofwat should not be bullied
https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2023/dec/12/thames-water-nationalised-ofwat-mps-customers
It's a safe prediction that Ofwat is likely to fold to the shareholders' pressure, at the expense of customers.
There is indeed a revolving door between the regulator and the industry, as in most regulators, but I know of only one instance where that clearly influenced regulatory decision making, and that wasn't in the water sector (somebody was about to join a regulated company which was under investigation for some violation or other, and, surely after he left, it was discovered that the papers relating to the investigation were missing, so the investigation had to be dropped. It was the days before electronic filing and obsessive backups of everything). I'm not usually one for given civil servants the benefit of the doubt, but most of the Ofwat staff I dealt with do their best to act in customers' interests. Their over-cautious decisions are due to their legal duties and the nature of the industry, not because they hope to get jobs in the regulated companies.
Morning all! 6 client days left until we stop for Christmas and lets hope they pass quickly.I'm not really a pb Tory, but I remain a pb not-Labour.
I do have to ask the remaining PB Tories what the appeal of their party is supposed to be to ordinary voters. We now have the "Five Families" of Tory MPs - which sounds like the mafia until you remember how shit they are. The country is beaten and broken and crumbling, with people's lived experience an increasingly bewildered mess wondering how things got this bad. And you're all off knifing each other in the front doing performative stupidity.
I know there have been a few attempts on here to deflect onto Starmer - the man who forced Tory MPs to implode their own majority in 2015. But normals think you are crazy, not he...