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And they’re off – Is Sunak about to call an election for July 4?

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All of Sunak’s cabinet have been ordered to abandon their travel plans and head back to London for a meeting at 4.15pm

Alternatively, is Rishi going to try and mitigate the worst effects of what looks sure to be a disastrous election for his party by making way for Paula Vennells.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/may/22/labour-tories-police-prison-overcrowding-crisis-pmqs-rishi-sunak-keir-starmer-uk-politics-latest-updates

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  3. Coming out in the next few minutes

    Daily Fail poll* shows 236 majority for Lab (442 seats vs Tories 124).

    * Doubly unreliable due its being an OP and the Daily Fail,

  8. Having just watched it, I’m baffled why his big speech couldn’t have been made indoors, just a few feet behind him, where (1) it is dry and (2) it’s presumably soundproofed enough that you can’t be drowned out by “Things Can Only Get Better”.

    Have his people completely given up already? Regardless of his politics, Rishi came across like a soaking wet, small man without the power to be properly heard over a protester with a loudspeaker. It’s amazing to think that, not that long ago history-wise, we controlled a large part of the entire world (rightly or wrongly). How far we have fallen.

  10. I know how I’m going to vote, and I’ll be the first in the queue on the day to it, so I’m rather inclined to try to completely avoid all the coverage.

    For the Referendum disaster, I was second in the queue to an old, white male (I wonder how he voted?)… I knew it was a bad day, make that decade, right there and then.

  11. Ukraine…

    Gaza…

    The US presidential election…

    And now a UK GE as well…

    Great time for the BBC to totally emasculate Newsnight which will cease
    to exist in its award-winning in-depth coverage format and become a panel
    discussion from Friday onwards

  12. I wonder who will provide the “Portillo moment” this time. I am betting on either Jeremy Hunt (my MP, who is up against a well-financed campaign run by the Lib Dems) or Rees-Mogg. Braverman perhaps? Truss? There is such a long list to choose from. It will be so good to see the back of them all – but what a trail of devastation they leave behind.

  13. I don’t believe opinion polls. My money is on a hung parliament with Labour desperately trying to make a deal to form a government. Don’t think I can vote and I probably shouldn’t

    • While he’s a million times more appealing than Tragic Grandpa, Starmer doesn’t seem to be that popular so I think it will be closer than current polls suggest

      The only OP worth a damn is the exit poll on the day, the results of which are only released after the polling stations shut.

      Would be interested in seeing whether OPs in the run up to elections have any impact in dissuading people from voting.

      • But Sunak isn’t Mr Charisma either, and was parachuted into the job. At the last GE there was a choice of two incompetents who both had enormous appeal to sections of the electorate, and this time two rather dull bureaucrats. I’m reasonably confident Starmer will win, but natural Tory voters sitting on their hands or opting for Reform (the current fringe option of choice among that demographic) may be more telling than a greater number choosing Labour.

      • he’s a million times more appealing than Tragic Grandpa

        Ah, Jaygee, we very much differ on that opinion. Name-calling does add a certain weight to your view though. It’s why The Sun is so popular.

                • @Gary

                  Not my opinion or your opinion on Corbyn that matters.

                  It’s the opinion of all those who couldn’t stomach him and whose 2019 votes for the Tories paved the way for the odious Johnson. and the car crash of the last five years.

                  FWIW, giving public figures flattering and unflattering nicknames was popular long before The Scum was a gleam in the Dirty Digger’s eye

                  • “All those who couldn’t stomach him” being the Tory voters, the right wingers, the press barons, the high earning tax avoiders, those who see “socialism” as a threat and those who believed the smears. They’re who I’d blame for the car crash of the last five years. Not the man himself.
                    Will Starmer be a better leader than Johnson, May, Truss and Sunak? I imagine so, though that’s an incredibly low bar.

                    • Large numbers of those who couldn’t stomach him were lifelong Labour voters who lived in the previously impregnable Red Wall seats whose going Tory gave Johnson an 80-odd seat majority.

                      Corbyn and Corbynism are irrelevant and will have zero impact on what will happen in the next six weeks.

                      If you would like to debate your hero and his ethos further, why not start a dedicated thread?

                    • I certainly wouldn’t describe him as my “hero”. You brought him up, not me.
                      I agree he’s irrelevant now (though I’m interested to see how he fares in the GE as an independent) but right wingers, including Sunak, seem to be obsessed with him still. Perhaps cos it gives them a scapegoat to blame?

                      I think Labour’s loss of the “red wall” started (or at least, first came to light) the day Gordon Brown was caught off mic calling Gillian Duffy an “ignorant woman” due to her concerns about immigration.

                    • @Gary

                      I think you, I and probably 99% of other AWers are in agreement that the most important thing here is to get the Tories out.

                      That sadly looks like being the easy part.

                      While Starmer is criticized for keeping his cards close to his chest vis a vis policies, I think he is quite shrewd to steer well clear of over-promising.

                      Assuming Labour does win the GE, I suspect the horrific extent of the mess facing them is only going to start becoming apparent on Friday July 5.

                    • It remains to be seen whether Starmer’s u-.turns on various policies are a tactic to win over the centrists and more moderate right-wingers. Get to power, then get out the guns and make some real, positive changes. Not a bad strategy by any means. Others argue that he simply is a centrist and his government will be closer to Thatcher or Major than anything vaguely left wing. Like many on the Left, I await with curiosity to see which is nearer the truth, though his first-term government might not be able to achieve much in the wake of Brexit and last few years, so here’s hoping we all live long enough to see what he can achieve in a second term.

                      (Ps., I’d still like to see him lose his constituency to Feinstein. That would be very interesting.)

                    • Getting back to the point, none of that would scan when sung to Seven Nation Army. Or to Karma Chameleon.

                      Not even the Manics would attempt to cram that much into one song.

                    • I’m a life-long socialist and I couldn’t stomach Corbyn. Not when when he was a waste-of-space backbench MP, and certainly not when he was Labour’s worst leader since Lansbury. We are all paying the price for having an anti-EU bigot leading the Labour Party to near–destruction.

                      I’ve nothing against people who went to private schools per se (why, some of my best friends etc.). However, I think a valid criticism of private education is the tendency to produce people with a self-confidence and self-regard that is disproportionate to their actual abilities. Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson are two such examples – truly, two cheeks of the same arse.

                      The reason that so much of the pretendy, hobbyist left resent Keir Starmer is that he is the real deal – a working class boy who has not only done well in life but has already made more of a genuine contribution than any of them ever will. I think he’ll make a great PM, though it will be in very difficult circumstances.

                    • @lando-cakes
                      Out of interest, Mr Cakes, have you watched ‘The Labour Files’, ‘The Big Lie’ or Simon Maginn’s videos about Corbyn? I ask not as a provocation nor a request for you to do so, but I would simply be genuinely interested to hear what a life-long socialist who can’t stomach Corbyn thinks of them. I remember there was a lot of discussion after that Panorama film about anti-semitism in Corbyn’s Labour Party. but very little discussion of the films and videos “debunking” it.
                      My opinions on them (FWIW): ‘The Big Lie’ I can’t really say I’ve “watched” (due to the YouTube video’s lack of subtitles for deafs) but I didn’t get the impression that it’s worth the palaver of my trying to watch it properly. Maginn’s videos are interesting. However ‘The Labour Files’, imho, is essential viewing for anyone interested in politics in that period.

                    • @Gary whether it’s 9/11 ‘truthers, flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers or Corbin-was-framed-ers, life is, and always will be, much too short to spend a nanosecond of it on their crank YouTube videos.

                    • Yeah, that’s the regular response from anti-Corbyns of both sides (not from the “crank left” themselves, obvs). And fair enough, of course.

                    • Gary, perhaps you could help us, and Sir Keir Starmer, out by telling us what “socialism” is. In this interview in the Independent he has to ask “what does that mean?”

                      https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/over-the-pandemic-the-world-has-changed-and-so-has-the-labour-party-says-sir-keir-starmer-1354342?ito=twitter_share_article-top

                      I had a former colleague who was a member of the Labour Party. Her membership card definitely said “Labour Is A Democratic Socialist Party”.

                      Weird that their leader doesn’t know what it means.

                    • Hey @alias, I wasn’t sure how to answer your question. I only know “socialism” as a word that scares some people. I thought it meant, like, “cuddly” and stuff. However, as luck would have it, just as the initial phase of the research I intended to undertake in order to answer your question was about to kick in, I came across this handy article in today’s The Guardian, which says all I have to say on the subject. More, probably.

                      //www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/may/28/is-starmer-really-a-socialist-and-what-will-happen-if-labour-wins-election

                  • It’s not a very helpful debating techique though.

                    I for one had no idea who or what a Tragic Grandpa is. Or indeed a Dirty Digger. Off the top of my head though, I’d go for Rolf Harris and Alan Titchmarsh?

                    • Gary of course has never, in the course of many political discussions here, ever referred to any politician by an unflattering nickname

                    • I’m trying to think of anyone I might have used an unflattering nickname for and I can’t think of anyone. I doubt I have, tbh.

  14. Is it time for the LibDems to bring some sanity to the left/right (centre-left/centre-right?) “it’s time to give someone else a go” proceedings …
    Both Sunak and Starmer have popularity failings, so maybe the future is Orange

        • Zero chance in Sheffield after the Student Grant betrayal. LibDem is still a dirty word there, after all this time. About as likely as The Sun selling well in Liverpool.

          • The LDs need a swing of less than 1% to take the seat back. It’s their 4th best prospect. And locally, the fact that the Labour guy that replaced Clegg is doing 4 years for fraud is well remembered by many.

      • That’ll be wonderful news for all those still struggling to pay off their student loans as a result of the Lib Dem’s capitulation.

        While they’re an excellent choice at local council level, an X next to the
        Lib Dem candidate at national level is sadly a wasted vote.

        • What if Lib Dem votes topple the local Tory MP? The only option where I live.

          I don’t regard any vote as wasted anyway, but that one certainly wouldn’t be if the intention was to get a new government into office.

          • Good point but as recent history (Brexit, Trump and Johnson) shows, voting against something (the EU, the Washington political establishment and tragic Grandpa) has rarely ended well.

        • The wasted vote line is one being pushed by my MP – because he knows its not true. At the 2019 election the Tories won comfortably but lost ground against the LD candidate; the Tory vote increased by less than 1% whilst the LD vote was up 8%. The Labour candidate barely held on to their deposit.

          Boundary changes are making my MP so jittery that he’s actually started to reply to email, even show up at local events. That’s in no small part down to the fact that the changes bring in areas where LD support polled well last time, and won hands down in recent local elections.

          I’ve met the LD candidate and she was quite underwhelming but a country mile better than the entitled slime ball currently in place, and at least available, unlike the Labour candidate who has still to be chosen.

          Anyone who wants to see a Labour gov’t replace the Tories in my constituency should vote LD. Labour are going to win, but the size of their majority will hinge on how many Tory seats fall, and if that’s to happen here, it’s only via the LD’s.
          Party tribalism will ensure that many blindly vote Labour, and they will be the ones truly wasting their votes.

        • The fees were set by an independent review set up by Labour and all parties agreed to support the outcome. The level of fees is set by the university and the government only sets the maximum (which they immediately jumped to). Had they not gone up there would probably be fewer places now, probably for wealthy students who could afford them. The LDs made the Tories introduce a fairer system which still sucks but someone has to pay for it.

          The getting rid of the fees was in the manifesto but they didn’t win the election. Clegg never wanted the policy anyway because it was unaffordable but the LD membership decides the manifesto and they did so he was stuck with it. Also there has been mass atonement so surely it’s time to move on?

            • There’s a good podcast called The Great University Con which really lays it out. It’s right wing nut job James Dellingpole but there guest is good.

              • If a young person could pinpoint the field in which they wanted to enter into, wouldn’t it be a good selling angle to learn as much about that subject in the library, in the newspapers, on the internet (advertising, the media, the law… anything really, apart from subjects like ‘doctor’ where you’d need hands-on experience) as possible, then turn up at an employers’ door and say “I will know more about this topic than any University student” (they almost certainly would), “… but I haven’t saddled myself with £90,000’s worth of debt for the pleasure, if you grant me half-an-hour of your time, I will prove it to you”.

                That would impress me, and I’d probably give them the job on the spot.

  16. seeing hour after hour of 10 Downing St on TV brought back memories
    of a primary school trip to London in the days when Downing Street was
    still open to the public.

    In addition to getting our pics taken outside No 10, the highlight or the
    Day was seeing Goldie the Eagle in Regents Park during one of his regular
    Escapes

  17. This lot:
    Presided over hundreds of thousands of people dying of Covid because they didn’t take it seriously at first and their blustering PM didn’t turn up to the first 5 COBRA meetings.
    Asked us to clap for nurses then laughed in the Commons as they voted down any pay increases for them.
    Gave contracts worth billions to their mates to provide equipment that didn’t work.
    Threw parties while we couldn’t even bury our dead friends and relatives with any closeness or dignity.

    That’s just the COVID stuff, off the top of my head. Fuck them. Fuck them all. I want to see them crushed into irrelevancy for the next thirty years.

  18. I’ll be glad to see the back of this government but I think the difference under Starmer’s version of Labour won’t be all that great. As for Ed Davey, how many voters would recognise him if they saw him in the street?

  19. No Rwanda flights before the election, and they’ll only happen afterwards if the Tories win. They won’t win but it gives him some ammo if Starmer can’t get a grip on the immigration ‘issue’. It seems that Rishi is resigned to losing but wants to try his best to set the next lot up to fail. I’ve seen this happen at my place of work.

    • The Rwanda policy only ever appealed to the headbanging fringe of the party and never got wider traction. If anything it has become a distraction from the wider boats/unrecorded immigration issue, which is a wider concern, instead of being an effective counter measure.

      I see Farage has predictably bottled his chance to have his arse handed to him again too.

  20. I watched the live broadcast. He looked irredeemably small and quite hopeless.

    The drenching rain and the mocking music. Party HQ must have been watching with head in hands and palms in faces. What must the rest of the world have thought? The post Brexit Brits fucking things up like a bad movie once again.

    Get fucking rid. Start again.

    Though the consensus in our house is for a hung parliament. We’ll be going through this mess one more time this year. Sharpen your voting pencils.

  21. “Vote for me and you’ll be farting through silk”. Frankly, most people are thinking “not you, mate”. The Tories are always silliest when they come on all tough and confident at this point in their perennial demises. As are Labour trying to sound sensible and grown-up. I personally reserve the right to make a farting noise at the back of the hall whoever wins, and smirk when the winning MP’s ego is undermined, glares and says “who said that?”

  22. I’m rather amused by the ‘Otherwise it’s back to Square One’ / ‘We don’t want to go back to Square One’ mantra. Sunak started it about seven or eight months ago, it seemed to lose favour, and now it’s back with a vengeance.

    Every time he says it I shout at the radio “Yes, back to Square One, right now!”
    Frankly, I think I’d take Square Minus Four.

  24. I don’t think the Tories will be wiped out, but a heavy defeat is likely for several reasons:

    Scotland will revert to Labour by default thanks to the SNP mortally wounding themselves and Alba splitting the vote.
    The Reform Party will shave off the Tory vote in many marginal seats, handing the win to Labour or Lib Dems.
    General zeitgeisty vibe that a change is necessary- even among many Tories.
    So a big Labour win with Portillo moments ahoy but Tories will get about 120 seats.

    • Quite possible that our pink little Tory lickspittle MP will scrape back in, as the Labour and LibDem candidates could well split the vote against him.

      I have no idea what the LibDems propose to do, should they win in the general election.
      Their supporters may claim that that’s because the media don’t report about it, but that excuse doesn’t wash with me. Despite a generally hostile media, the Labour party have managed to get media coverage. I think the LibDems just aren’t interesting enough to the media. And for the general voting public too.

      We have a pretty successful LibDem-dominated borough council (not a single Tory councillor for the last 8 years) and some of that will probably translate to their parliamentary candidate, but not quite enough for a convincing win, I suspect. Our local Labour parliamentary candidate has already tried and failed to get elected a few times. He’ll probably do better this time than on his previous attempts, but it’s doubtful he’ll get enough for a convincing win.

      • There are very few 3 way seats. They’re mostly Lab/Con or LD/Con. Actually I live in a 3 way and all parties are going hammer and tongs. Obviously the LDs don’t have the massive funds of the other two though. Labour are noticeably more active than the Tories who tend to use the post to deliver as they have lots of money and few members who can be arsed to get out and do anything.

  25. That speech though. As he’s talking you can see he’s getting wet from the rain, but when he turns towards the door you can see that he is absolutely soaked to the skin. Did he stand in the rain before the speech in order to come across as all tough and stoic?

  26. I see the Tories as piloting a plane on fire as far as they can go – burning up all the fuel, pushing it as high into the air as possible – so that when jettisoning at the last minute and watching, dangling from their silken parachutes, pockets stuffed with loot, it crashes deep into the ocean.

      • As long as they put the autopilot on and lock the cockpit door to keep it in the air for time enough after the election to wash their hands of responsibility, they won’t care where it lands, except Richmond, possibly.

  28. A salient reminder as to why people should vote, or at the very least give considerable thought about voting (if someone does that and then doesn’t vote, I haven’t got an issue with them at all), is the ending of the jaw-droppingly brilliant Italian film, ‘There’s Still Tomorrow’, which I went to see tonight.

  29. Starmer indicates willingness to extend voting rights to 16 and 17 year olds.

    Sunak responds by blethering on about national service for 18 year olds.

    Following hard on the heels of his metaphor-ready No 10 announcement,
    visit to the brewery and appearance at the Titanic shipbuilder, you just wonder
    the extent of the shambles they’re so desperate to leave behind.

  30. The Conservative Party need policies to appeal to the under-70s, not the over-70s.
    They incredibly still have a lead among that demographic.

    Can’t be too long before one of them says ‘Let’s bring back the death penalty’.
    My money’s on 30p Lee.

    One more thing, not only do I think 16-year-olds should get the vote, I think that over-75s shouldn’t. I’d be happy to not get the vote in twenty years time, as I simply wouldn’t have as much skin in the game as those younger than me. See: ‘Brexit’.

    • He’s hasn’t let you down.

      National Service for 18 year olds. Voluntary and compulsory. Either a year of military service or one day a week working in the community or places like the NHS. You have to do it – but if you don’t, you won’t be prosecuted.

      I’m sure it has been thoroughly costed and given this government’s track record it looks like they’ve delivered another winner.

      I think they are saying anything now. It’ll be hanging next.

      • I’m beginning to think that they are actually desperate to lose.

        That said, if I could find a bookie who’d take a bet that before polling day, the Tories will float a policy of a referendum on the death penalty I think I’d be tempted to remortgage the house.

      • Taking it face value, enforcement doesn’t need to be by prosecution. Had my son fai8led to register for Select Service (the draft), he would have rendered himself ineligible for Federal student financial aid, future federal jobs, certain forms of job training.

        He knew about all those things; he seemed blissfully unaware of the potential 5 years inside and $250k fine.

        All the Tories would have to do is the the first para, throw Benefits in there, and they’d get compliance.

  32. Now here’s an irony. Many people pour scorn on British exceptionalism ( unless it’s the NHS) and any desire to depart from what they see as more civilised ways in Europe. In this context, I see that here appears to be some form of citizen service, voluntary or oherwise, for young people in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Italy. Meanwhile, there is at least some element of military conscription in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria and others

    • It all depends if it is coming from a good place. I don’t think this is. It’s a knee-jerk hunch, dreamt up in about ten minutes, which is aimed at the lowest-common-denominator.

      Now, if they’d embarked on a long-term, well thought out research paper on the subject in the ‘fourteen’ years they’ve been in office… well, that would be a different matter.

    • yebbut those countries also have far stronger welfare states than ours, which engenders more of a sense of duty, reciprocity, obligation, that sort of thing. It’s the social contract, which the Tories have been busy dismantling for fourteen years. This shower of bastards have reduced the welfare safety net here to the state of an old Tesco bag with some holes in, and are now demanding service in return for not being able to see an NHS dentist, for schools not being to afford textbooks, for privatised utilities that don’t work, for a farcically expensive university education. It doesn’t work like that.

      • I think you’ve nailed it here.

        Taken in isolation, this policy doesn’t strike me as completely awful. We live in a more atomised society than once we did, and it probably wouldn’t hurt for there to be some sort of universal education in civic duty. I would want the options to extend beyond the armed forces obviously, and it shouldn’t be intended as some sort of replacement for a functioning welfare system, but I can imagine a world where such a policy, sensitively enacted by competent politicians, might be fairly positive.

        The issue is that – as with all things – it’s impossible to imagine this government sensitively, or even competently, enacting pretty much any policy, and therefore virtually every policy announcement comes across as nonsensical red meat for a certain section of their base. I wouldn’t trust this government to implement national/citizen service without matters descending into absolute disaster.

        It’s a good example of the limitations of manifesto pledges vs what really matters at the polls, which is the trust that the politicians charged with enacting said pledges are capable of being trusted with doing so. Which is also probably the only reason that Count Binface isn’t currently the Mayor of London.

        It’s also a great example of why we needed this election at least two years ago. Whatever you think of their politics, this government has long since run out of steam, and the nation has suffered while they cling on in hope of a change in the weather.

        • I suspect the non-military option offered to the youth will be at the expense of people already doing jobs that the government have their eyes on. Only those people are currently doing them for actual wages rather than for a glorified benefit payment.
          Pals of Rishi & co. will be running the schemes for profit, naturally.
          There’ll be no problems with those pesky public sector unions on such a scheme, either. They won’t have the same rights that actual employees have.

  34. Have you seen any of the recent Farage tv and radio interviews? He’s coming across appallingly..

    Irritable, peevish, flustered and wrong-footed. It’s joyful. He may win his seat in Clacton despite, however. All the same he seems to be older and more tired with the trying. True colours really showing now. ‘Just give me what I bloody want!’

    He way win, as said, but he’s going to be a terrible MP. Clacton will rue in short order.

    You won’t be able to see the sun for the rain of a hundred thousand milk shakes arcing towards him wherever he goes.

    Anyway. Carry on. You’re all doing very well.

    • That speaks precisely to his demographic though. ‘Just give what I bloody want!’ could be the slogan of the frustrated Brexiteer, who has found that Brexit isn’t what they voted for (even if it looks very like what lots of us voted against) and it’s someone else’s fault.

      • Yep. And he may win the seat, as said.

        He’ll be bloody terrible as an actual local MP though. He won’t give the slightest toss about any local issue. He won’t actively help anyone or anything in the area. Our outgoing MP, Theresa May, was (is), a steady hand. Quietly active and always helpful. She’s liked round here, and I am no Tory.

        He wants a stage and power. He’s Boris Johnson with a haircut.

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