Qassändra

The below still stands.

I'm CERTAIN he was out before now...

I'm not going to bother listening as he's dead to me ever since that insult of a concert last year, but for anyone who HAS is it more lumpen Coldplay-inspired leftovers or is it something worth actually giving a spin?

Again, given the entire point of the Scottish manifesto was to disprove the idea in Labour circles that SNP success was based on them being a radical left wing alternative (which it did resoundingly), I'm not sure that's reason to dismiss her appeal to go away from that politics. It's like saying 'how can we trust the burns victim to tell us how to avoid the fire?'. They have something to say about it. They know where the fire is.

That isn't Chi Onwurah's claim - as you would know if you read her article/had read it but weren't being obtuse. She said that any major company that treated her and Thangam Debbonaire the way they had been done, coincidentally identically, as two of the very few BAME women in the PLP, would have been investigated for professional misconduct, with racial discrimination investigated as well. And they would have done. Most companies would be mortified to be accused of racism, but plenty would still likely be capable of an action which looked exactly like it couldn't tell two black women apart and had gotten them mixed up in a decision with huge professional repercussions. Nonetheless, that Chi is one of the MPs going vocal with such criticisms shows exactly how shatteringly incapable Corbyn is of operating as a remotely functioning leader. She is the epitome of "won't say boo to a goose, loyalty to the leader first, don't rock the boat" soft leftism (hell, probably even a bit lefter than that). She is nobody's idea of a Blairite stooge trying an 'evil stitch-up'. She is exactly the type of MP that really tried to make it work with Corbyn. And yet he refused to meet her, refused to co-ordinate with her, trod all over her work, gave away half her job without even speaking to or calling her, and treats her as non-existent. If Corbyn can't make it work with someone like Chi Onwurah, it is difficult to think who he *could* make it work with who he didn't agree with chapter and verse. That kind of leader isn't going to make it through a general election alive. I don't know what planet you're on that you think anybody who can't even command the confidence of the soft elements of their party who try to make it work with them is going to be the figure best placed to get the least bad result.

Council elections in London, not Euros. I didn't count Euros as FPTP vs PR is an unfair comparison. But the council swing from 2010 to 2014 was a 4.5% swing to 36%, compared with an 8% swing for the general election to 44% (or thereabouts IIRC)

Higher percentage of the vote and bigger swing compared with 2010 between the two elections.

This, actually, is part of the reason I think she'll do quite well - because I think she'll be good at avoiding looking like a typical politician (unless she goes ahead and calls that snap election for electoral advantage without a government confidence issue being at stake). She 'panders' (to whatever extent you can call it that, given I think she genuinely believes it) to popular issues in ways that the public isn't used to being pandered to, because politicians haven't pulled those levers in a long time: grammar schools, actually going all out to cut immigration, cutting down on cronyism and doing something about the House of Lords, generally favouring social order and stable society over unfettered capitalism. She's generally been profiled as someone who doesn't let go of an issue until she's achieved the goal, which is the kind of thing that I can imagine earning grudging respect - and, crucially, would also add to a view that she isn't typical given it's not a trait most people would ascribe to the last few Prime Ministers. The difficulty it probably raises is that a lot of those policy objectives and aims have been left well alone for good reason - because they're counterproductive or have big knock-on effects that are fairly costly. It will be interesting to see if those kinds of policies have an impact on her popularity when the negative consequences come out, in the long-term.

It would be, but then it won't.

I was going to caveat 2011 as the obvious exception given the Lib Dem collapse and the rise of Ukip but Wikipedia LIED to me and told me they got 35% when I thought they were using Rallings & Thrasher so I FOOLISHLY GAVE IT A MISS :angry: The only thing that matters in general elections is how you do relative to the competition. That doesn't apply to midterm elections for the very obvious reason that a small lead for the opposition at a local election doesn't give any indication that the opposition is going to do well in a general election. Therefore the kinds of things you want to be looking for are a. *big* leads, b. preferably big leads based on votes taken away from the governing party (this is entirely anecdotal but I would be astounded if many other seats contradicted the experience of everyone I know of the 2016 locals as an 'L T Y'-free zone when it came to canvassing sheets), and c. voteshares above what you would expect at the next general election. The Rallings and Thrasher graph of the last 30 years has a certain rhythm every five years, and it isn't a pretty one for opposition parties that don't feature the above three factors in their result. http://i66.tinypic.com/2ex4mu1.png I think it is likely to be more predictive, but mainly as I think Theresa May is a less flawed politician and far more competent operator compared with Gordon Brown. Plus, I think that the principles of the general political outlook of 'Mayism' command more public support than...whatever Brownism in government rather than theory turned out to be in the end (QUICK, LAUNCH ANOTHER INITIATIVE) On the other hand, she'll have to deal with problems Brown never had to deal with (everyone's shopping basket going up by about 15% over the next year as hedging and futures contracts expire; a majority of 12; a public that prefers Brexit to the EU, prefers the EEA to hard Brexit, but prefers the EU to the EEA, meaning it will therefore likely be pissed off with whatever option we go with - but then, she gets to choose the one that likely does Tory support the least damage). But I would be shocked if she had the kind of implosion that Brown had, especially given that implosion came from Brown doing something that completely cut against everything he sold himself as up until that point. I have a feeling Theresa May is probably more canny than that. Big cities trending towards Labour didn't really aid Labour in many city swing seats against the Tories elsewhere in the country. Labour's result in the capital outdid the party's performance at the council and EU elections the year before hugely, which makes me think that there were factors involved beyond just demographics. Nonetheless, I take the view that someone who advanced a little on a fairly good result (which they oversaw to begin with) is probably better placed to talk about electoral success than someone who pretty much stood still on an awful result the year prior despite the collapse of the other party nationally.

Also before we get all the revisionism in, Kezia Dugdale's entire platform for Scottish Labour this year was predicated on the 'go left' prescription. Probably not the platform she'd prescribe for the national party at a general election, given the choice. And given her weaknesses as a candidate (poor delivery, lack of gravitas etc) can be boiled down to things that are pretty much irrelevant to the things she's advising for the national party...

Because the result Corbyn got in those seats didn't indicate Labour strength so much as Conservative weakness? We got 31% of the vote nationally - historically appallingly low for an opposition a year in. That the Conservatives fell 7 percent but Labour gained 1 percent in vote share should be the giveaway that the swing and the result don't represent Corbyn's strength and ability to win those votes. Governments always lose support in the mid-term. What does it say when the opposition isn't the one benefiting from that? Particularly when oppositions almost without fail do worse in the general election on vote share than they do in their first set of council elections - and when governments almost without fail do better. I will also add that it's a slightly unfair comparison, in that had Labour performed nationally in its target seats as it had done in its London targets in 2015 it would've probably been the biggest party - a 7 percent swing and four of its seven seats lost in 2010 to the Tories taken back (plus the Lib Dems, but then we took those seats everywhere so those aren't especially London-centric successes). Take London out of the equation and Labour had a net loss of seats to the Tories in 2015 (and Sadiq was in charge of the 2015 London campaign, but obviously your mileage may vary on how much credit he can take for the result), so it feels a little harsh to condemn him for equalling what was one of the few areas where we actually did okay in 2015.

The other caveat being that in an election where voters are given two votes (and therefore the freedom to vote for who they like most first if they would ordinarily vote tactically), an increase in the vote on first preferences alone on the year before isn't a shabby result at all. He won Croydon Central on second preferences. By comparison, Labour lost council seats in Milton Keynes this year (and both parliamentary seats have 8,000+ majorities). Interrogating the validity of Labour's few winners at the moment feels a little like replying to the offer of a fizzy drink in the desert with a question on whether it's been in the fridge or not.

Measure it by absolute percentage rather than relative lead and it's not as cut and dried. 32% is unprecedentedly poor for an opposition one year in. Nobody seriously thinks the Conservatives will get 31% at the next election, whereas it's rare to find an opposition that gets a higher percentage of the vote at the general election than it did at the local elections one year in. The boroughs argument ignores that there are plenty of safe seats that skew the vote in those boroughs as well (you're never going to catch a Labour politician coming within a sniff of winning in Croydon South, for example), so without constituency data it's not really a fair comparison. Although the ward data is out there, so if anyone's got a lot of time on their hands...

Well it's not like people listen to the ones that can either. I also love how Corbyn within six months went from being the one who would single-handedly bring back Scotland to having absolutely nothing to do with the result because it was all systematic and generations in the making (but at the same time entirely Jim Murphy and Kezia Dugdale's fault)

Ever bought a fake painting? The more you pay for it, the less inclined you are to doubt it. Silly, but there we are.

I voted for Owen Smith, but at this point I'm almost past caring who wins. Burn it to the ground, salt the earth and start again.

Rumoured to be produced by Mark Ronson, Blood Pop (Grimes - Go, Tinashé - Bet, Justin Bieber - Sorry) and Kevin Parker from Tame Impala (Rihanna - Same Ol' Mistakes; has previously said he has a "fetish for sugary pop music from artists such as Britney and Kylie") :o

I'M SCREAMING

You may have noticed that we don't know the terms on which we'll be leaving yet. I wouldn't count your chickens on the outcome not meaning anything. (And again, no, no big business ever said it would leave the UK if we didn't join the Euro.)

Absolutely nobody was acting like the UK not being in the Euro was equivalent to the UK leaving the EU, apart from maybe a couple of deranged Lib Dems.

One got 31%, one got 48%. Which one's supposed to be the unpopular viewpoint again?

Yep. I mean how on earth does someone apparently this prone to unforced errors and emotional knee-jerk tantrums survive 30 years in business? I know inheriting a few billion helps, but sheesh.

I'm really coming back to that idea that this was all a conspiracy cooked up between Hillary and Trump.

Cambridge Analytica also worked for Ted Cruz's campaign.