Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Barrister]

Look, I'm not deeply steeped in UK politics but I'm pretty sure the current Tory troubles run a bit deeper than Sunak.

This would be one of the uncommon times when Jacob and I agree.  Tories were behind in the polls before Sunak, and are behind in the polls after Sunak.

[Sheilbh]

Look, I'm not deeply steeped in UK politics but I'm pretty sure the current Tory troubles run a bit deeper than Sunak.

Oh 100% for sure - but that might be the narrative that emerges.

Personally my view is if Street and Houchen win then there sill be a narrative around whether the Tories are maybe not as screwed as we think, could there be a fightback etc etc. Not least because it's a new narrative so the press will want to fully explore it as, frankly, there's only so many ways you can right this level of polling stability up in an interesting way (I've picked YouGov but it's all pollsters)


I also think this is the danger of the right-wing press. On the way up and when the Tories are in their imperial phase, it's very nice having this supportive, positive papers around them. On the way down I think it means they can more easiily live in a bubble/not realise how bad things are.

The one slight wrinkle in all this is there's a metro-mayor race in North Yorkshire, which includes Sunak's seat and is Tory heartland. I think Sunak's seat is the second safest Tory seat in the country. North Yorkshire oerall went 30%+ for the Tories at the last election. This is partly offset by York which is a Labour town. But (and it's very difficult to do this type of polling in the UK so handle with care) there has been a poll for the Yorkshire Post that shows the metro-mayor going 40% Labour, 25% Tory.

So I could see a narrative that there's a "Sunak problem" if two metro-mayors are re-elected but he loses his own back yard badly. And I think there could be a Sunak problem - he is not good at retail politics and I think there's a real risk for the Tories that once he hits the campaign trail it makes Theresa May's 2017 campaign look like Beatlemania.

And because it's the Tories and they're like crabs in a bucket, there is, of course, plotting against him. I think they would be insane to get rid of him and move to a fourth Prime Minister in a single term (and I think they'd be forced into an election very shortly after a leaderhsip change). But I think they have a really unenviable choice. Oh dear, how sad, never mind

[Gups]

Yeah I worried I was being a bit prudish but I couldn't really see a justification for the way it's been shared.

Separately local elections tomorrow - only canvassers and leaflets I've received are Labour. Which I suppose isn't a surprise, given that I live in a constituency that went 71% for Labour

Edit: Also discovered today that Andy Street is apparently in a relationship with Michael Fabricant. I suppose it's progress that I wasn't aware he was gay, far less in a relationship with Fabricant - but it does raise profound concerns about his judgement

What the actual fuck?

[Richard Hakluyt]

The horror!!! The horror!!!

[Gups]

Thank god there's no footage.

Keep your hair on michael

[Gups]

Quite a long queue at my polling station at 07:15. I splitted my four votes equally between Lab and Lib Dem.

[The Brain]

Four votes? I don't think you should mention this on a public forum.

[Josquius]

I wouldn't trust Byline Times. It's a polite conspiracy sheet.

I haven't heard that before.
Its not a site I follow too regularly but it is about the only place to get local news beyond a level of "Council to introduce parking charges in Seaham. We sent our sub minimum wage journalist to chat to people on high street to find out what they think" and "Jarrow grandmother SHOCKED to find something in bag of crisps".

I definitely think there may be something fishy about the Freeport stuff which is being picked up by Private Eye - on the other hand it has been looked at by the National Audit Office who said there was no evidence of corruption or illegality. They did however criticise some of the governance structures and said the transparency wasn't good enough - they also said that "value for money" wasn't monitored closely enough particularly because they weren't doing things through formal tenders and public procurement (as someone who thinks our public procurement isn't fit for purpose and that the focus on "value for money" is a cause of lots of problems in under-investment, I'm fairly relaxed about that).

That the current planning system sucks is certainly true. But the checks it involves are there for a reason. The solution isn't to just ignore it where it suits suspiciously motivated projects.
The environmental shortcuts which have screwed things up far beyond the immediate area for instance should be considered worthy of criminal action.

I think he is quite like Johnson if Johnson wasn't who he is. He's fairly comfortable with spending money, he thinks the state has a role in industrial policy, he's a bit populist - the difference is he's actually doing it rather than just talking about it. Which is why, I suspect, he's got over 60% in his area who think he's doing a good job. He's very much a "here's what you could have won" for the Tories of what was possible after the 2017 and 19 election.

Maybe he's a step above Johnson when it comes to actually doing something. But again what he is doing is often very surface level only with little actual meat behind it.

Johnson won a huge majority and had an electoral map that could re-align British politics, having run on the most left-wing big spending Tory manifesto since MacMillan. As Andrew Neil was pointing out in his interview on election night there were two big problems with that: one was that those former Labour voters were only lending their votes to the Tories and expected them to deliver; the other was that lots of the party's traditional base and MPs hated those ideas and wanted standard Tory tax cuts instead. Maybe with focus, attention to detail and a lot of work the government could have delivered for their new voters - but that is immediately impossible if Boris Johnson is your Prime Minister. I'm not sure it was ever possible to reconcile the very centrist big spending manifesto which won a big majority in former Labour heartlands with most of your base being in well-off areas and wanting lower spending and taxes.

And tying yourself to negative growth policies like brekshit

Edit: Also discovered today that Andy Street is apparently in a relationship with Michael Fabricant. I suppose it's progress that I wasn't aware he was gay, far less in a relationship with Fabricant - but it does raise profound concerns about his judgement

That is bizzare.
I somehow don't think he's with him for his looks.... Maybe Street is making a brave sacrifice to defend staffers? (is that one too dark?).
It certainly does put into question the Street is a very non-Tory decent conservative as Fabricant is quite the piece of shit.

[Gups]

Four votes? I don't think you should mention this on a public forum.

  Gups is not my real names

[Tamas]

 

We are only voting for police commissioner which is lame. Actually, crossing off the couple of idiots, and then the carrier local councilmen, only the Labour candidate remains, who used to be a prosecutor. So I can vote along party lines while remaining rational. 

The incumbent is Conservative. I can't judge how good a job he has been doing it's not like I have police-related complaints, but being a Tory and having a CV of being various levels of somebody in local government is just too much for my stomach to handle.

[Josquius]

Unrelated to local elections but saw this yesterday and got me thinking on the topic of phasing out gas boilers  a lot.

I have heard of some experiments locally in the area...but it is mystifying we aren't doing this more as it sounds so tried and tested. Why are we putting so much into air source heat pumps when we've so many disused mines we can be using in many parts of the country- as the guy here says, heavily parts that could really use cheaper energy and are more likely to be susceptible to anti-green populist nonsense.

[Tamas]

Unrelated to local elections but saw this yesterday and got me thinking on the topic of phasing out gas boilers  a lot.

I have heard of some experiments locally in the area...but it is mystifying we aren't doing this more as it sounds so tried and tested. Why are we putting so much into air source heat pumps when we've so many disused mines we can be using in many parts of the country- as the guy here says, heavily parts that could really use cheaper energy and are more likely to be susceptible to anti-green populist nonsense.

Never would go past fear of earthquakes. Just build nuclear.