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Above is my latest spreadsheet of all the recent EURef polls. As can be seen the battle is quite tight with, by a smidgeon, the edge at the moment being to REMAIN.
Comments
How NOT to develop property !
Online polls: it's a close-run thing
Phone polls: It's NOT a close-run thing.
There are really a lot of people at all levels who would like to know which of those statements is accurate, so some more phone polling and some analysis of why the differences are so large would be of general interest.
In any case, I'm sceptical whether enthusiasm either way will matter that much on this occasion. Whether to stay in or leave the EU is seen as a big decision even among those who don't wear Knock-off Nigel t-shirts or twelve-starred underpants. I expect turnout to be high for that reason - unless it looks like being a landslide either way.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/457a3484-9443-11e5-bd82-c1fb87bef7af.html?ftcamp=published_links/rss/brussels/feed//product#axzz3scMCjBzX
This sort of war is about two thousand years off my preferred period, but won't that make confusion greater and accidents likelier to occur?
I mean we know they are split over Syria, that McMao green room story was contradicted, but no hug a Jahadi, no tickle a suicide bomber with a feather duster, no quoting from the words of wisdom of a mass murder? Must go down a successful day, no?
No. I'm not aware of any polling evidence for it. I just think that this is Leave's referendum, something the Leave side have campaigned for for years. EU (non)-membership matters to Leave in a way that staying in doesn't to Remainers.
I think you are right that turn out will be reasonably high - at something like GE level - but I think Leave will have a significant edge.
Of course, there will be other factors favouring Remain.
@BBCPolitics ·
Watch full interview - Hilary Benn tells @bbclaurak he thinks there is a "compelling" case for Syria action: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34938387 …
BBC Breaking News @BBCBreaking · 2m2 minutes ago
UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is writing to his MPs to say he can't support PM's proposal for air strikes in Syria http://bbc.in/1MFQyKb
Jim Pickard @PickardJE · 2m2 minutes ago
Extraordinary that Jeremy Corbyn didn't consult with Hilary Benn, his own shadow foreign secretary, before responding to Cameron on Syria.
In what sense does the Labour party meaningfully exist tonight?
@CycleFree
Mrs Free, one has to start off with an objective - the thing that has to be obtained. It doesn't matter if one uses traditional words or more modern management speak such as SMART or Well-Formed Outcomes or any other jargon-du-jour. The key point is that there is a goal which everyone can understand and to which everyone knows is the common objective. Without that no organisation, be it military or civilian, public sector or private sector, large or small, can do anything other than flail around.
Cameron's 36 page paper to my mind falls at the first fence because it does not set down in clear and unambiguous terms (or indeed any terms at all) what he UK wants to achieve. We have been given seven platitudes masquerading as tasks but no succes criteria for any of them.
Indeed the document is almost an analogue for Cameron's premiership - well meaning in a sort of wishy-washy kind of way (providing it doesn't actually offend too many people) but with no actual purpose. In this particular case Cameron wants to lead us deeper into a war but on the basis of seven unmeasurable platitudes.
Parliament should, in my view, tell him to go away and come back when he has actually thought about it. His essay as submitted is not even worth an E minus.
So he has pre-empted any idea of collective decision-making. A Rubicon has been crossed tonight.
What odds those who think not?
Benn's words were not the kind that you can row back from. And he clearly wasn't expecting the letter. Will he resign tonight?
Kevin Maguire @Kevin_Maguire 31m31 minutes ago
Serial rebel Corbyn rebel would always struggle to impose discipline but Hilary Benn backing bombing before a Shad Cab decision is chaos
Tom Newton Dunn @tnewtondunn 26m26 minutes ago
Extraordinary intervention by Hilary Benn on Syria this afternoon. In effect, has told Jeremy Corbyn to offer a free vote or sack him.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/nov/26/full-text-of-david-camerons-memorandum-on-syria-airstrikes
Miss Plato, that's a depressing thing to read.
Every day there's a new Corbyn clusterfuck that renders your piece redundant.
After three short spells in prison in Syria for pro-democracy activism, Abdulrahman came to Britain in 2000 fearing a longer, fourth jail term.
"I came to Britain the day Hafez al-Assad died, and I'll return when Bashar al-Assad goes," Abdulrahman said, referring to Bashar's father and predecessor Hafez, also an autocrat.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/12/08/uk-britain-syria-idUKTRE7B71XG20111208
'For nearly two years, SOHR has reported only acts of violence by the regime against the rebels. Mainstream international media like the BBC, al-Jazeera and al-Arabya, have relied on it as their sole source of news.
In recent months, several experts and Syrians interviewed by AsiaNews accused Western and Gulf State media of selective reporting. More recently, coverage has become more impartial, but SOHR continues to defend Islamic extremists to avoid losing support among rebel forces.'
http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Massacres-by-Islamic-extremists-bolster-Bashar-al-Assad-28219.html
'the organisation includes opposition combatants among the number of civilian casualties, as long as these are not former members of the military.'
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mepo.12003/abstract - via wiki
-not on the ground
'When RT wondered when the last time Abdulrahman actually went to Syria was, he said it was 15 years ago.'
https://www.rt.com/news/317813-sohr-visit-syria-long/
-not a professional outfit
Statistic after horrific statistic pours from "the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" (AP). It's hard to find a news report about Syria that doesn't cite them. But who are they? "They" are Rami Abdulrahman (or Rami Abdel Rahman), who lives in Coventry.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/12/syrian-opposition-doing-the-talking
-not cross-checked
'The organization claims to have a wide network of contacts in the region who feed their information to the head office, where it is processed and then posted on the SOHR website, Facebook and Twitter accounts.
RT asked Abdulrahman whether he personally knows "hundreds of people," as he himself puts it, working in Syria for SOHR, and whether he can really trust all of them.
"I know all of the activists working for the SOHR," he replied.
When RT wondered when the last time Abdulrahman actually went to Syria was, he said it was 15 years ago.
"But I know some of the Observatory activists through common friends."
https://www.rt.com/news/317813-sohr-visit-syria-long/
On this one, I take Hilary's side.
(But please get a different picture - I'm fed up with that jacket!)
For example, Brentford & Isleworth:
Lab maj: 465
Chinese population (2011 census): 1,631
http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/LeadTableView.do?a=7&b=6507768&c=brentford&d=27&e=61&g=6329729&i=1001x1003x1032x1004&m=0&r=1&s=1448560241766&enc=1&dsFamilyId=2575
I expect Corbyn to stay until 2020 (health OK).
His task is not achieved until Labour deselect all non Corbyn supporters and turn it in to a proper socialist party..
(And I am completely serious - you all think Corbyn should care if he loses any by-election etc or even the GE. Those are transient compared to the goal of a "proper" socialist " party.. )
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CUwXWm8XIAAZX28.jpg
opposition ..." is a platitude not an objective.
And yet, off to war it looks as if we are going......
He will leave only if the membership desert him. To date, that has not looked likely. Anecdotally, however, John McDonnell's stunt with the Little Red Book has disheartened even quite a few diehard Corbynistas. They cannot take membership support for granted indefinitely.
A mass resignation of the Shadow Cabinet might work. But the whole labour party have descended into pantomime already so he might even survive that
Ealing Central & Acton:
Lab maj: 274
Chinese population (2011 census): 2,195
http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/LeadTableView.do?a=7&b=6507863&c=ealing+central&d=27&e=61&g=6323153&i=1001x1003x1032x1004&m=0&r=1&s=1448560475906&enc=1&dsFamilyId=2575
Subjects covered included what we should do in Syria, how I was planning to vote in the EU referendum, what I considered the most important things that influence my vote in the referendum, and I was also asked about Ronseal and Black Friday
http://blogs.channel4.com/gary-gibbon-on-politics/syria-70000-45-minutes/31952
The key passage is after all the fun, near the end:
"But the truth is, there is no fixed plan for a political assassination, just mounting discontent and anger that has, for now, focused round the issues thrown up after the Paris shootings.
There is no agreed candidate of the Centre/Right, no agreed mission, no agreed strategy."
When the final optimist agrees that Labour has hit bottom, then they will have hit bottom.
The other pages refer to answers given to the select committee and also the UN resolution.
I find it absurd that Mr Llama can make the comments he does.
Or will it? Everyone's an expert here it seems.. how will bombing Syria make people in the UK safer?
I'd rather close down mosques in London and arrest the people on Mondays Dispatches
Diane Abbott was one of the small number of Shadow ministers who spoke in agreement with Jeremy Corbyn (the others were Jon Trickett and the Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party John Cryer). John McDonnell didn’t speak.
Diane Abbott’s phone went off during her address, and she told MPs that she hadn’t listened to David Cameron’s statement to the Commons. When she suggested some points she was told (by Hilary Benn at one point) that those had been addressed in the House.
The idea that we can simply ignore this, and let them get on with it as they establish more territorial control and get more and more powerful, is out with the fairies, frankly.
As for your second point, it's not an either/or - we need to do a lot here as well, of course.
In a week's time there's only a by election that Labour are defending.
And on that note, wish me luck at Anfield as I freeze my nuts off.
WRT the Previous thread. I may have misattributed the quote - not intending to have a go at you. Sorry that it seemed so.
However, I am now off to a dance.
Jeremy Corbyn meets shadow cabinet. Tells them they must take time to consider issue. He then issues statement to press behind their backs.
Slight variation from the SNP's forecast last year.
WSC.
"Portillo: Just tell me what was the good thing that he did that made up for the 60 million people he murdered?
Abbott: He led his country from feudalism, he helped to defeat the Japanese, and he left his country on the verge of the great economic success they are having now.."
http://blogs.new.spectator.co.uk/2015/11/diane-abbott-on-the-positives-of-chairman-mao/
I'd like to see:
(a) number of professionals and businessmen in London and the South-East aged 35-55 in Class AB, employed graduates living in Bristol, Manchester, Oxford, Cambridge, Durham and Nottingham plus C1/C2 workers depending on car manufacturing, EU trade and services. Also NI nationalist community and Scots Nats. These will be motivated to vote Remain
(b) British men and women (but particularly men) in England and Wales aged over 55, in all social classes but excluding AB in London and the South East, NI unionists, Scottish fishermen, and most adults aged over 45 in areas affected by high EU immigration. They will be motivated to vote Leave.
They will form the basis of the vote. The rest will be down to turnout: e.g. getting lazy students to vote Remain and C2/D/E voters in areas like the North-East and the Welsh Valleys to vote Leave.
Swing constituencies will be Home Counties Tories and the (employed) WWC Labour vote virtually anywhere in E&W. Women will also (in general) be a key swing constituency.
In my absence it seems home grown/2nd generation immigrants that lived in segregated parts of cities and failed to assimilate have murdered hundreds of their countrymen after travelling to and from Syria using the migrant crisis as a cover by pretending to be refugees...
"I told you so" would have been in poor taste anyway, so prob a good thing
Have spoke to members of the Shadow Cabinet who say if Jeremy Corbyn tries to whip the vote on Syria, they will resign.
An OTR natter sounds fun... I will even buy you lunch
FPT @Sean_F
BTL's not a bad thing per se.
But the challenge is that, with low interest rates, yield hungry investors, tax-offsets and the availability of debt financing, BTL demand has been a significant component in driving house prices beyond the reach of the younger generation.
It all comes down to house prices being too high and how to bring them down without busting the banks
I'm close to calling Oldham West 50/50
Corbyn will replace them with more compliant MP's, keen to take up a Shadow Cabinet post.
He has run out of people.