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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The Grand Entrance. Sir Keir Starmer’s electoral challenges
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The Grand Entrance. Sir Keir Starmer’s electoral challenges
It’s the honour and privilege of my life to be elected as Leader of the Labour Party. I will lead this great party into a new era, with confidence and hope, so that when the time comes, we can serve our country again – in government. pic.twitter.com/F4X088FTYY
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https://twitter.com/manicode/status/1246497036389793792
This is of course utterly correct. However Labour appear to have a group of 160 odd MPs who are incapable/ unwilling to talk about topics far from these strands of thought.
Sir Keith needs to bring back a few MPs from the cold -Mrs Balls etc and perhaps dip into the Lords for some front benchers - and hide the Sultanas, Butlers and Abbotts in a locked cupboard.
https://twitter.com/QiZHAI/status/1246632280749039617
I’ve seen a least 2 stories now (the Guardian/LG story and the previous UAE/ventilator story) on “why won’t the government take the masks that I’ve sourced from them.
There is a very unpleasant trading environment out there and I’m glad the government isn’t participating
https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2020/03/30/i-spent-a-day-in-the-coronavirus-driven-feeding-frenzy-of-n95-mask-sellers-and-buyers-and-this-is-what-i-learned/#43556f9956d4
The post of Leader of the Conservative and Unionist party was created in 1922 (hence ‘the 1922 committee’). You are correct that from then until 2001 every Tory leader had been PM. By contrast six Labour leaders - Henderson, Lansbury, Gaitskell, Foot, Kinnock and Smith - had not been.
Prior to 1922 there had been a small number of semi-official leaders who had not been PM, notably Austen Chamberlain (Leader in the Commons 1921-22) Lord Lansdowne (Leader in the Lords 1903-1916) and Sir Stafford Northcote (Leader in the Commons 1876-1885). However, they were not officially party leaders.
https://twitter.com/SamanthaVpi/status/1246615616074612736
But that leaves Labour with some issues. All the weight and experience on the Left in the area goes with the Greens (even David Drew, while out of Parliament, sat as an independent councillor associated with the Greens). Meanwhile the older working class is walking away from Labour, as it is in the North. So it faces the classic dilemma it has across the country in microcosm - workers or middle classes? And you can’t have both, because the workers earn their living in things the middle classes believe should be got rid of.
If I am honest, I think Labour were fortunate to regain Stroud in 2017 and it was partly because Neil Carmichael is Richard Burgon on speed. They may find it very hard to do so again. The coalition they would need just doesn’t cohere.
Is there a) an automatic new PM from the current line up or b) a new leadership election?
(Johnson 'still has a cough and a high temperature' - today's Sunday Times.)
It depends a little on whether the betting companies would regard Raab as PM (which in law he would be) or acting PM (which in practice he might be).
This is however ample reason to wish Mr Johnson a speedy and complete recovery...
Once travel is enabled, we should send a delegation to South Korea to learn everything we can about their response, and to invite them to send some of their people back to the UK to work with us on improving our approach should either this or another disease outbreak like it happen again.
So they chose a Human Rights Lawyer who did everything possible to thwart Brexit
Rest is critical with this virus.
Professor John Wilson says: “The lining of the respiratory tree becomes injured, causing inflammation. This in turn irritates the nerves in the lining of the airway. Just a speck of dust can stimulate a cough.
“But if this gets worse, it goes past just the lining of the airway and goes to the gas exchange units, which are at the end of the air passages.
“If they become infected they respond by pouring out inflammatory material into the air sacs that are at the bottom of our lungs.”
If the air sacs then become inflamed, Wilson says this causes an “outpouring of inflammatory material [fluid and inflammatory cells] into the lungs and we end up with pneumonia.”
He says lungs that become filled with inflammatory material are unable to get enough oxygen to the bloodstream, reducing the body’s ability to take on oxygen and get rid of carbon dioxide.
“That’s the usual cause of death with severe pneumonia,” Prof John Wilson, president-elect of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and a respiratory physician.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/03/coronavirus-what-happens-to-peoples-lungs-acute-respiratory-when-they-get-covid-19
And, yes, I very much wish Boris to get better.
The Queen doesn’t appoint people to be PM on a temporary basis.
The point about whether the betting companies would honour it is interesting.
By the way, why would Dominic Raab automatically be made PM? Is that on Boris' fiat? Do we have a constitutional Deputy PM in the same way that the US has a VP?
Much as I admire the zealous social media campaign to keep us all indoors, if you're wearing proper protective gear outdoors you are very unlikely to catch it.
It’s different in the Liberal Democrats who have a recognised office of Acting Leader.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/coronavirus-case-counts-are-meaningless/
Worth reading in full.
... Failure to account for testing strategies can also render comparisons between states and countries meaningless. According to two recent epidemiological studies, which tried to infer the true number of infected people from the reported number of deaths, there is roughly a 20-fold difference in case detection rates between the countries that are doing the best job of it, such as Norway and the worst job, such as the United Kingdom. (The United States is probably somewhere in the middle of the pack by this standard.) That means, for example, that in one country that reports 1,000 COVID-19 cases, there could actually be 5,000 infected people, and in another country that reports 1,000 cases, there might be 100,000!...
... There are quite a few things to look at here. The most obvious and probably the most important one is simply that a 15-day delay between when someone gets infected and when their case shows up in the data as a positive test makes a huge difference. Even if everything else was going perfectly — 100 percent of the population was being tested and the tests are 100 percent accurate — with an R of 2.6, a 15-day delay would result in there being about 18 times more newly infected people in the population than the number of newly reported positive tests at any given time....
...
Whilst this is true, the Lib Dems are still very much of the equation...
...Labour can probably form a government so long as Labour, the SNP and the Lib Dems tally a combined 320 seats or so.
Would Labour ever consider doing a deal with the Lib Dems? Would the two parties benefit from giving the other a free run in seats such as:
For Labour (LD votes in excess of the Tory majority):
Kensington (9,162)
Watford (4,890)
Chipping Barnet (4,720)
Warrington South (3,722)
Truro and Falmouth (2,589)
Southport (2,352)
Wycombe (2,329)
High Peak (2,160)
Burnley (2,149)
Rushcliffe (1,957)
Bury South (1,913)
North West Durham (1,687)
Gedling (1,600)
Chingford and Woodford Green (1,482)
Delyn (1,481)
There are a further 16 seats where the Lib Dem vote was more than the Tory majority.
For the Lib Dems (Labour votes in excess of the Tory majority):
Wimbledon (11,915)
Cities of London and Westminster (7,671)
Finchley and Golders Green (6,785)
Carshalton and Wallington (5,452)
South Cambridgeshire (4,899)
Cheadle (4,515)
Hitchin and Harpenden (3,064)
Cheltenham (1,940)
Winchester (1,738)
Guildford (1,178)
Hazel Grove (1,085)
Lewes (749)
Esher and Walton (95)
These are the only 13 seats that the Labour vote was more than the Tory majority. However, there are other seats (Chelsea and Fulham, Eastbourne, St Ives, Wokingham, Woking and South East Cambridgeshire) where the majority was fewer than 1,000 votes more than the Labour vote.
Obviously this would be a big deal for Labour. But given that it is difficult to see Labour winning an outright majority at the next election, why not do a deal that might be deny the Tories a majority?
Thank you. Not clear cut by any means then?
I hope Boris recovers, obviously. I certainly don't wish this hideous virus on any political opponent.
Bear in mind that in our system of government technically there is no Prime Minister. There is a Minister nominated by the Sovereign to chair the cabinet. So in the absence of the nominated minister, the Sovereign nominates another one.
Someone mentioned Matt Hancock. I can't stand him personally and nor can a lot of people I know. Something about his face and voice that oozes insincerity on every level.
I've started re-watching the wonderful House of Cards (despite KS) and of course Frank Underwood's great play for office was to secure the Vice Presidency.
I'm not sure I can ethically bring myself to bet on this one. When I ordered my protective gear in January I did think of buying up 200 masks at the same time at a tenner a piece (it's a good one) but couldn't bring myself to do it. Benefitting from other people's misfortune may be the American Dream (John Green) but I can't be so overt about it. And karma teaches me not to roll the dice with this virus.
G'day to you all.
xx
Anyone know what would happen in France?
I'm sure we could go round the entire Peak District edge and Cheshire picking out a dozen seats with this interplay, seeing slightly less trendy post-industrial small places moving blue (Penistone & Stockbridge) and more trendy ones moving red (Staffs Moorlands would be a big ask for Labour, but I'd guess would trend red over time).
And the point is, everywhere has a commutable rural edge where this mix will.exist and which to some extent is seeing a flight from towns.
He'd have handled this 1000x better and I don't believe we'd now be in lockdown.
Labour has clear rules on what happen in those circumstances - the cabinet meet, nominate one of their number, and then advise the Sovereign to appoint that person. But the Tories’ rules on the leadership are very obscure, and tend to be about expediency than practicality.
It should be noted though that the last time this was an issue, when Eden resigned in 1957, that is roughly the procedure they adopted themselves. However, to complicate matters Eden was on sick leave and had nominated Butler to chair the cabinet and effectively act as PM in his absence.
It is a point that could do with clarifying. An addition to the Cabinet manual stating that the Cabinet immediately meet under a nominated office holder, listed in order by seniority of rank, or just the longest serving minister, to elect an interim successor would make things much easier.
I don't think any Health Secretary has made it to PM since the NHS was created.
"Ms Sturgeon’s recent appointment of Catherine Calderwood as Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer has also come under fire because she is a “gynaecologist without a scientific background”."
Meanwhile Scotland has a top expert who is sidelined for wrong thinking..
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1262843/nicola-sturgeon-news-snp-scotland-coronavirus-hugh-pennington-coronavirus-uk-death-cases
Europe was slow to react and enabled some really crass events to go ahead.
Asian countries got their act together very fast because they have experience of this. Hong Kong was scarred by SARS and Singapore and South Korea were really quick out of the blocks.
That's where Jeremy Hunt comes in. He was warning us long before the Government acted, and he really pissed off Cummings by doing so.
Why was Jeremy Hunt so quick to spot this danger? Obviously he's very sharp but of course he has massive Asian connections: not only has his business enterprises been rooted there, he lived in Japan has a Chinese wife and speaks Mandarin.
Hunt was shit hot compared to Johnson's characteristically blustering lazy approach in the early stages.
We're so flaming arrogant in this country. All that shit Hancock spouted the other day about how we are trying to find a vaccine and a cure. Er, because no other countries are already doing that of course?
We are a second-rate nation at best. Sorry. But true.
Some wounds wont heal..
And this fascist attack on people driving to the countryside. Why the fuck shouldn't they? If they are in their own cars and in a remote area they are not virus vectors. We are totally ridiculous sometimes.
You can even hear on social media an argument that they might crash their cars on the way and divert A&E staff. I mean really. Is that our level of argument now?
"precedents are made to be set" just doesn't look right.
BBC News - Coronavirus: The NHS workers wearing bin bags as protection
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52145140
The misery is not evenly spread.
I’m not saying that Hunt’s instincts mightn’t have been better. And he might not have taken better decisions if he had been in a position to do so. But I still think we would have ended up in the same place (lockdown). Like most of the rest of the world, some of which are still quite possibly unaffected enough to pursue a different course.
It was fake news using footage from last August. In fact it spawned some very funny memes last night on twitter.
If you go somewhere remote and don't go near people you're not a virus vector.
There's no Government information whatsoever on this. In our stampede to tell other people to stop enjoying fresh air we are inviting coronavirus into our homes. Thus not saving lives.
For the record, I have a decontamination room. In there I keep my outdoor clothing and disinfectant. Everything that comes into my house has to first be sprayed and wiped with anti-bacterials. Then I change out of the protective gear and go and wash.
I might still get the bloody thing but I'm not going to take lectures from an inept and incompetent Gov't about my use of fresh air whilst wearing my mask.