DoBelieveTheHype

The fact Labour is even opening it's door to somewhere as far right as Elphicke tells you exactly what kind of government were going to get from Labour. Thankfully she's not standing for election but I do really think Labour should have told her where to go rather than actually welcoming her into the party as if she was some centrist. She's the kind of person you'd expect to defect to Reform not the Labour Party.

Another Conservative defection to Labour from Natalie Elphicke. I can't be the only one who things Starmer should have told her where to shove it.

Actually, no. I think I was being a bit idealistic in suggesting that and having read the arguments against it - especially people who work away and those who have mobility issues. The old system where you had to evidence why you need a postal vote would be ideal but it would be too costly, overly bureaucratic and a bit pointless to reintroduce it. I've never needed a postal vote, but there's obvious situations where I could - as indeed any of us could and I'd be a bit miffed not to have the option. Coercion is a real issue in some communities but denying the disabled and people who work away a vote just because it might prevent some people being pressured by family members on postal votes is a bit too far on reflection. Unlike most members of parliament I can put my hand up when I'm wrong.

The modern face of democracy from the Conservatives Party - scrap postal voting. https://twitter.com/Bren4Bassetlaw/status/1...744981798527463?

What would be the point? As was shown in 2019 it was circumventable by a simple majority act of parliament and repealable by a simple majority act of parliament as shown in 2022. Any government with a majority would just repeal it - it was only useful during the 2010-2015 parliament due to very specific circumstances and in the 2017-2019 Conservative minority government parliament actually made it harder for the Tories to call an election due to the two-thirds majority requirement (hence the Early Parliamentary General Election Bill 2019). It's been got rid of for good reasons even if leaves frustration when watching a dead duck government run the clock to the last minute - but that happens when all governments are doing woefully in the polls (2005-2010 Labour, 1992-1997 Conservatives). Governments can't bind a future parliament so it was only ever of use in 2010-2015 and probably should have been repealed by Cameron in the 2015-17 parliament. George Osbourne said in January that the likely date of the election had been leaked to him and is 14 November - it'd seem a fairly good bet barring any miracles changing the Conservatives polling fortune.

So in the first shots to fire post-local elections the Liberal Democrats are going to table a motion of no confidence in the government tomorrow. It's somewhat unlikely to be selected for debate or voted on but if it is it will force the Tories to either publicly support Sunak or vote no confidence and essentially for a general election. Neither option is great for Tory MPs trying to distance themselves from their leader. https://www.thenational.scot/news/24301524....ory-government/

There might be a lot of pressure from other parties but the pressure from his own party has gone. You've even got rebels openly saying it's too late to replace him and wanting the defeat squarely put at his door. He was only going to go early if a viable plot to oust him and there's no such plot. That means he can wait until at least one flight to Rwanda has gone off and an interest rate cut has taken place. We should all remember though even if it was a "early election" it's technically a "late election" as the government repealed the legislation that meant it should have been held on May 2nd alongside the local elections.

Except for when people voting for a third party in 2015 led to a referendum on Europe and ultimately our exit from the European Union - 12.6% of our population having a bigger impact on policy than the 67.2% who voted for Labour/Conservative in that election. Third party votes do have an impact on policy of the major parties whether they're in opposition or government. It's not true to say it does nothing - it just doesn't necessarily affect the winner in that seat - it can still have a huge impact on main parties policies. Unfortunately it's not going to have as much impact under PR but it looks unlikely we'll get PR any time soon at the moment. There is also of course the 2010 election where people voting for a third party managed to moderate the worst excesses of a Tory majority government to some degree in that parliament - even if we ended up with a Tory government anyway 5 years later. On which note one of the interesting things at the next election will actually be the impact of third parties. Reform UK will not be replicating the Brexit Party in standing aside in rafts of seats to aid the Conservatives instead standing everywhere and the Workers Party of Great Britain say it will be standing in all seats. Whilst this probably lead to a large number of lost deposits for both parties, it could also influence both the Conservatives and the Labour Party in terms of election policy - with Conservatives veering further to the right - and Labour looking to through sops to more economically left-wing vote without going full on Corbynite or Gallowayian in their policies. There's also going to be a lot of pro-Gaza independents in heavily Muslim areas - looking at the council votes in more detail it's clear many Muslim areas shows independents doing well at Labours expense on that issue - I actually suspect a handful of MPs at the general might be decided on the Gaza issue - either WPGB or Independent pro-Palestinian candidates. Those announcements mean we can expect at least 6 candidates in most seats (Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Greens, Reform and Workers Party). That's before regionalist parties. smaller parties and independents are taken into account.

It's going to be hard for them to convince anyone to give a shit about £3000 in unpaid capital gains tax from a genuine error when the PM is responsible for hundreds of millions of pounds of PPE fraud whilst he was chancellor. The more concerning thing is that Sunak has decided a lurch to the hard-right will save his election fortunes. He's wrong but that's no solace for the people these policies target.

So with the local elections results almost wrapped it seems a good time to start this thread. The general election will be the first to be held since 12th December 2019. It must be held by the 28th January 2025 however it is widely expected to be held at some point in the latter half of 2024. The Prime Minister has said his “working assumption” is that the election will be held in the second half of 2024 - and given it’s in his power to call it there’s no reason not to believe him. For the first time since 2010 the boundaries of parliamentary constituencies will be changing however the total number of constituencies up for election will stay the same at 650. The actual results of the 2019 election by constituency can be found here. The notional results of the 2019 election by constituency based on the new boundaries can be found here. The breakdown of MPs elected in 2019 was: Conservative Party - 365 Labour Party - 202 Scottish National Party - 48 Liberal Democrats - 11 Democratic Unionist Party - 8 Sinn Fein - 7 Plaid Cymru - 4 Social Democratic and Labour Party - 2 Green Party of England and Wales - 1 Alliance Party of Northern Ireland - 1 Speaker - 1 Over the course of this parliament that breakdown has changed as a result of resignations, by-elections, defections and suspensions. The break down of current MPs is as follows: Conservative - 345 (-20) Labour - 203 (+1) Scottish National Party - 43 (-5) Liberal Democrats - 15 (+4) Democratic Unionist Party - 7 (-1) Sinn Fein - 7 (-) Plaid Cymru 3 (-1) Social Democratic and Labour Party - 2 (-) Alba Party - 2 (+2) Alliance Party of Northern Ireland - 1 (-) Green Party of England and Wales - 1 (-) Workers Party of Great Britain - 1 (+1) Reform UK - 1 (-) Independent - 18 (+18) Speaker - 1 The breakdown of vote-share for the parties that won more than 0.1% of the vote at the 2019 general election was as follows: Conservative - 43.63% Labour - 32.08% Liberal Democrats - 11.55% Scottish National Party - 3.88% Green Party of England and Wales - 2.61% Brexit Party - 2.01% DUP - 0.76% Sinn Fein - 0.57% Plaid Cymru - 0.48% Alliance - 0.42% SDLP - 0.37% Ulster Unionist - 0.29% According to analysis of the new boundaries Labour would need a record swing of 12.7% to win and overall majority in the election. That's more than achieved by Clement Attlee in 1945 or Tony Blair in 1997. Current polling suggest that they are on course to with a swing even bigger than that but the polls could narrow as we move closer to the election. The Guardians poll of polls at the time of writing this has the main parties as follows: Labour - 43.6% Conservative - 23.4% Reform - 12.1% Liberal Democrat - 9.3% Green Party - 5.8% Obviously under First Past the Post those vote-shares won't translate directly into seat numbers - as demonstrated by the last election. The current seat prediction from Electoral Calculus as of May is as follows: Conservatives - 85 Labour - 472 Liberal Democrat - 50 Reform - 0 Green - 2 Scottish National Party - 19 Plaid Cymru - 4 Other - 2 Democratic Unionist Party - 8 Sinn Fein - 7 Social Democratic and Labour Party - 2 Alliance Party of Northern Ireland - 1 There will be live coverage of the election results as they come in on BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky News. Other smaller channels may also cover it. At present it is not known if leadership debates that have been a feature since the 2010 election will take place or whether the Prime Minister will take part in them (in 2017 Theresa May boycotted them). Finally of note - a minimum of 100 MPs - 63 of them Conservatives - have already announced that they will be standing down/not seeking re-election at the upcoming general election. This may make some difference in the result in seats where an incumbency factor might have otherwise helped their party to keep the seat. Key Dates (added 28th May) 30th May - Parliament dissolved 5th-16th June - Party manifestos expected to be published (based on stats on past elections) 7th June - Deadline for candidate nominations 18th June - Deadline for new voter registrations 19th June - Deadline for new postal vote applications 26th June - Deadline for new proxy vote applications and voter authority certificates 4th July - Polling day. Emergency proxy votes deadline 5pm. Polls 7am-10pm.

They've decided to wheel out Suella Braverman as face of the Conservative Party following the general election. You don't even have to listen to what she says to realise that the government have taken the wrong message from these local elections. They're going to get rightly hammered when we do eventually get a general election.

I really can't see them going that low - polls generally narrow towards an election.

Rishi Sunak's article in the telegraph is one hell of an exercise in denial.

You might be disappointed - the polls are almost always worse for the Tories than the reality.

I can't debate with people who are this blinkered by their own support for certain parties. I just can't. The Boundary Commission - an independent body that has nothing to do with the Conservatives - redraw the boundaries based on population sizes and other factors. It's not gerrymandering and would have happened regardless of party in power. Everyone has had plenty of warning they need ID to vote - if they don't have it by now that's on them. The Tories are evil - as evidenced by their attitude to disability benefits in recent days - but lets not make stuff up.

They need to get rid of postal voting and make everyone vote in person with ID. it's coercion not fraud that's the biggest issue. Most countries around the world use voter ID. It's frankly absurd we used to just take people at face value that they were who they said they were to be honest. The fact we still do for postal votes is absurd. It's not that hard to get Photo ID, and most people have multiple anyway. It's one of the few things this government has done that makes any sense.

I get pulling the Sunday update but it seems a bit odd to remove the Friday chart show as well given it's one of the core parts of the schedule, I swear in the past it's still went out.

Crikey Sunak's going to have a hard time staying as PM if the local election results line up anything like that. Going to have to suffer Kuenssberg presenting the local elections overnight. Thankfully it'll be Jo Coburn during the day tomorrow when the more significant results come in. It's times like this you really miss David Dimbleby. Shame he quit.

I'd imagine he'll keep a system that's designed to and does prevent voter fraud, it would be a rather bad luck weird if he got rid of it. The next step should be getting rid of postal voting so people can't coerce family members to vote the same way as them and show them it as is common in some communities. Everybody has had plenty of warning that they need Voter ID to vote - and the longer we have it the more I agree with it. It's almost shown up how open to abuse the old system was given they never even checked your poll card and just took it at face value you were who you said you were.

O'Sullivan out. The semi-final line up is David Gilbert v Kyren Wilson Jak Jones v Stuart Bingham Have to wonder what sort of odds any budding Nostradamus could have got from the bookies on that being the line up...

Jak Jones beats Judd Trump 13-9 denying everybody the Trump v Ronnie semi we wanted.

Sounds dreadful.

Neither of them should have been let into the party - that doesn't mean antisemitism doesn't exist.

He wasn't technically incumbent for the position as the North East Mayor (and the new North East Mayoral Combined Authority) is a new position that covers the entire north east rather than just the North of Tyne mayor area that he was elected mayor for. This new post replaces that. Most of the new Mayoral area have previously only had 'not directly elected mayors' to cover the smaller council areas. But yes he was dropped for refusing to condemn comments made by Ken Loach after Loach - who made some unsavoury comments about jews and Israel - not because Loach is a socialist or just for appearing with him as Driscoll's team have tried to spin it it as. I'm honestly undecided on who to vote for but I'm certainly not naïve enough to fall for this framing that he was kicked out just for being a left-winger - had he been grown up enough to apologise rather than blinkered by his factionalism he'd be on the ballot.

The Tories won't get in - they're polling ridiculously low - Reform would have a better chance at taking the top place in event of the vote being split - but it looks as though the winner will be either Driscoll or McGuiness even with a split vote. The strange thing is one of the biggest groups Driscoll is actually 2019 Conservative voters who you'd expect to resent everything a old left winger like him stands for. I think McGuiness will win it but only because of people worried Reform/The Tories could take it with a split left wing vote.