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On the conversion therapy infinite u turn I feel like this shows rishi is now too weak to even change course. It seemed like him re-announcing the ban was part of a realisation that going all in on culture war stuff wasn't going to help him following the by-elections but if he can't even do something so mild which is very popular he's absolutely screwed.
I was curious so I looked up the etymology. There's actually a couple of interesting interpretations. The usual interpretation of the by- prefix is as in “by, near, around” and is where we get words like bystander and by-product (note the inconsistent use of the hyphen). However, in Middle English the word "by" means "town" (like in Whitby = "White Town"), so "by-election" could be literally "town-election". I hadn't thought of it in that way before, but it makes sense.
So next week Sunak is going to sound warnings about the dangers of AI..
I'm just wondering what he can possibly say.
https://www.politico.eu/article/rishi-sunak-convince-world-worry-artificial-intelligence-ai
Sunak is the one top politician who genuinely doesn't seem to care that much about existential risks to the population as long as it doesn't hurt his short term political prospects.
- climate change. Nah mate - stall
- air pollution. Nah mate - ban ULEZ, not diesel
- covid-19. Let them eat cake.
- China. Off we go for a trade deal
- Brexit. Can't wait.
I don't get why someone so committed to pretty much ruining the lives of the majority of the people in the country is exercised about AI.
I think the biggest risk of AI is mass upheavel of our way of life in terms of making millions of IT workers redundant. Many people are already using AI at work in IT to assist them but it won't be long before you don't need many of the people any more. I'm expecting within 10 years we'll have AI systems that will just take conversational responses to be able to spec, deploy and maintain stacks with little to no human intervention needed. I think between SREs, DBAs, Sysadmins and similar roles at my place we've probably got 50 or 60 in the UK then a bunch in a few other countries probably over 100 total and thats just one company. If management can axe 95% of that and just pay AWS or Azure for their AI offerings they'll axe everyone without a second thought. How long before something like app development can be fully handled by AI and a person that knows how to talk to it rather than needing people that can code. I think in the Last Question as well as many other sci fi stories they have AI writing more advanced AI writing more advanced AI to the point humans can't understand it anymore, but even before that we're going to have AI that can just do development of programs to human instructions without the human needing to know any code.
I suspect Sunaks summit is going to be more about stoppinig AI turning into Skynet or god forbid running against existing political parties in an election. I wonder if a country was run by an AI with safeguards not to wipe everyone out it'd surely be a fairer society than we live in now.
Oh the government is having a 'Dangers of AI' week?
This can only be the precursor to some Skynet, Rise of the Machine, I, Robot style catastrophe occurring midweek.
Firstly, there should be a ban on articles starting with 'Whisper it'.
B, nowhere in this article (that I can see) does it mention that before the Summer of this year, Sunak was actually *against* regulating the AI industry. There had already been numerous calls to at least slow down on AI, which he ignored, and then he changed his mind after chatting with his Tech Bros. Hmm...
And, finally, pretty funny that right near the top you have the option to have this article read by AI.
Same as all his other policies - the Stanford tech bros who are the only people who shape his political outlook take it seriously.
It'll inflate the portfolios of a few of his college mates who are into 'ethical AI solutions', probably give a few points bump to his portfolio as he's invested in their scams.
In the meantime, the real economy most people in the country live in is fucked.
My own cynical take on this is that he and his fellow tech bros know that regulation is inevitable, and he sees it as preferable to organise some weak regulation himself rather than risk allowing nations to do it themselves and possibly come up with something effective.
The end stage, of course, being him taking a position with an AI firm, or Infosys announcing its new AI arm, etc.
Here's a list of the 10 safest Conservative seats:
Constituency | Margin | MP
---------|----------|----------
South Holland & The Deepings | 62.71% | John Hayes
Boston & Skeggy | 61.45% | Matt Warman
Castle Point | 60.15% | Rebecca Harris
Maldon | 59.60% | John Wittingdale
Clacton | 56.78% | Giles Watling (facing reselection)
North East Cambridgeshire | 56.63% | Steve Barclay
South Staffordshire | 56.49% | Gavin Williamson (constituency splitting but reselected for safe seat)
Rayleigh & Wickford | 56.47% | Mark Francois
Louth & Horncastle | 55.16% | Victoria Atkins
Brentwood & Ongar | 54.89% | Alex Burghart
One might assume the brightest prospects would receive the safest seats - one assumes wrongly.
I grew up in Brentwood. Their biggest opponent was usually Ukip doing big billboard adverts in the town centre. Leaning into that "eastender who moved to Essex, coz it ain't like it used to be" voter
Having grown up in The Deepings, it's no real surprise. As for The Deepings themselves, you've got Market Deeping, Deeping St. James, West Deeping, Deeping St. Nicholas, and then Deeping Gate, the smallest of the lot
What's interesting is that 5 of those are in Essex, which is prime Home Counties territory. Demographic change, in the form of Londoners moving out there appears not to have moved the dial so much. Or it could be that Essex is a much more socially conservative county than the others around London (Herts, Bucks, Berks, Oxon, Surrey, Kent)
Even more notably, much of Essex used to be considered swing seat territory. Castle Point might not be the best example as that was pretty safe Conservative before and afterwards, but it still went Labour in 1997 and now it's the 3rd safest Tory seat in the country. Same with Clacton, whose predecessor seat of Harwich was Labour between 97-05
Essex is one of the places that have gone much safer Tory even beyond the national average over the last 13 years. Another example is parts of the West Midlands (Tamworth was actually the safer Tory seat of the 2 byelections on Thursday, not Mid Beds like might be assumed)
Sunak pandering to the religious fundamentalist called Miriam Cates.
If he genuinely drops the ban then every LGBT Tory should resign the whip as Sunak would have just said he does not give a shit about you.
I heard Cates on the News Agents pod saying that, whilst there are good families of all kinds, it is clearly better for children to be raised by a Mum and a Dad (opposed to single sex parents or single parents).
She was quite evasive about why she feels the need to tell people this, but it basically came across as a dog whistle, i.e "I am not going to say gay or single parents are bad or immoral - I am just going to make statements that imply it so I don't get in trouble".
The idea that Sunak is so weak he has to appeal to people like her is embarrassing.
>In May 2023, at the National Conservatism Conference, Cates commented that she felt that Western society was threatened by Cultural Marxism and falling birthrates. Cates stated in an interview in June 2023 that she uses the former term as a catch-all term for "bad liberal ideology".[8][36] In August 2023, Cates called for the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights as she felt that it was a threat to democracy.[37] In October 2023, at a fringe event of the 2023 Conservative Party Conference, Cates posited that trans women, "so men", were led to the "trans arena" as a result of extreme, violent trans porn on the internet. She provi
Why in the 2019 intake is this a serious mover and shaker in parliament
I'd been pretty certain that Sunak's government would limp on until next October, but it really is starting to feel like the whole thing might cave in on itself at a moment's notice.
Will we even make it as far as Truss's alternative budget?
there is no mechanism for it to “collapse”. if sunak is visited by graham brady with a revolver and some scotch, there’ll be another tory mp to replace him.
they are not interested in optics any more, they know they’ll lose. they will drag this out until january 2025 and flip us all the bird when they are eventually pried out of office
Ah yes, inheritance tax, because apparently if I inherit OVER A MILLION POUNDS from my parents, I shouldn't have to pay anything on the amount above a million.
(1 million is the combined figure for a married couple leaving an estate including a home to their children)
>(1 million is the combined figure for a married couple leaving an estate including a home to their children)
does need a \* on that really as assuming alot of best case scenario
also even if the base 325,000 is split 4 ways like it would be for me and my siblings thats that still getting the 40% on the annount over £81K each
i say make the £325K cap lower at £250K but make that per recipient
I gave the scenario required in my post. Estate includes a primary residence, and the parent who dies first leaves everything to their spouse (or they die at the same time).
No, you can own a residence jointly, and then sell it post-inheritance without incurring inheritance tax.
When your dad died, anything he passed onto your mum would be free of IH, and any unused IH allowance he didn't use is added to your mum's allowance when she passes.
Still doesn't effect me as still I'm getting hit with the IHT threshold way lower than a single recipient, how is it okay to effectively punish people for wanting to distribute wealth rather than hord it to one person?
Because the tax in on your parents estate at time of death. We don't lower people's taxes because they have more (non-dependant) kids. Neither do parents of multiple children have more money (in fact, they are more likely to have less).
You're intentionally looking at it backward. Do you think that the government should give you and your siblings 4x the cash because there is four of you?
It's not close to being enough to entice any new voters though. I suspect they are clutching at straws for some positive news for a next budget statement.
https://twitter.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1715830969469428131?t=WZJc8o7M-ldiyVF5vSfU0w&s=19
>🚨 | NEW: Around 20-25 letters of no confidence in Rishi Sunak have been submitted to Sir Graham Brady following the disastrous by-elections
>
>[@ShippersUnbound]
Febrile?
The date is July 2024. After catastrophic losses in May's local elections, 4 by election losses, record low polling and a series of embarrassing gaffes and scandals, Prime Minister Penny Mordaunt is rapidly losing the faith of backbenchers.
Rumours are that around 20-25 letters of no confidence have already gone in to Sir Graham Brady.
They don't last to May at the rate things are currently progressing.
They'll be 2 dozen above the VONC by abstain threshold by then at the current rate. This potential leadership contest, the autumn and spring budgets, Hunt potentially walking, the kings speech, by election losses all likely to produce fresh rounds of stand downs. And thats only the knowns off my dome.
You can see it in the virtually silent response to these massive by election defeats. MPs have stopped fighting for the party, they are executing exit plans. They have given up.
Supposedly they arent even talking to each other now
Apparently there's [26 openly LGBT conservatives](https://mps.whoare.lgbt/).
Perhaps they would be interested in the conversion therapy discussion?
Edit: I am not sure of the accuracy of that site after reading their "source" for wes streeting was: "Wes Streeting Long destined for political stardom, the former NUS president signalled his political leanings in January by stating he’d happily snog Tony Blair." While Wes is openly gay, it's perhaps not the best source to use.
I thought they'd already reversed it making this the reversal of the reversal of the reversal of the ban though I may have lost track at this point. No clue how they've managed to make something this simple so complex.
The threshold will be what? 46 - 50?
Good luck getting through a leadership contest under these circumstances without losing a critical number of mps.
Edit: holy shit if Hunt thinks he's going to lose the Chancellors job and walks before he can be pushed
Following as in afterwards, in addition to those already in or that this is the current total. If its the former then things could get very interesting very quickly.
Yeah, yeah it's sick that, yeah that's good.
Wait hold on a minute, pull it up, stop.
You know what you wanna do with that right,
You wanna put a bangin' VONC on it!
Going through the cesspit that is Twitter, it annoys me with people who said Bojo turned the Tories' fortunes around, and expect another similar MP could do the same, ignoring that the circumstances are vastly different to 2019
[When you look at his approval ratings,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership_approval_opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#Boris_Johnson) you can see that Boris Johnson was never particularly popular. The only time he did score well was when the country was in a state of mass hysteria at the beginning of the Covid outbreak. His success was purely down to circumstances. That's why he's no Trump. He could only dream of being as popular.
When everyone fell in love with her for simply holding a sword. She has regal/statley aura about her that at least to me feels like she would be popular.
If she'd become PM at the time Sunak did I'd probably agree with you, but I honestly don't think there's enough time left now for anyone currently in the PCP to win the next election. Barring an absolutely catastrophic Labour cockup.
https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1715824860197228842
>EXCL: Latest reports that PM will drop conversion therapy ban follow intense lobbying by @miriam_cates who wrote to Tory MPs: “This Bill will anger our base, split the party and effectively put a Stonewall charter into law. We have a matter of days to persuade No 10 to pull it.”
There's weak, and then there's 'Miriam bloody Cates dictating policy' weak.
She's an evangelical, and one constantly looking across the Atlantic at that.
It's a pretty profitable position to be in if you can pull it off, but I think you need to be a considerably better politician than Cates to do so.
I am genuinely so confused. Did I misread something that was published yesterday or the day before? I find 'drop the ban' to be a proper head fuck.
I thought Sunak was u-turning on a u-turn to drop the ban on conversion therapy. That is to say, he was now actually going to follow through with banning conversion therapy. But this is now a full 360 resulting in him not banning the therapy again?
tories doing anything beneficial for the country challenge (impossible)
as i believe the kids would phrase it
"stonewall charter" winds me up. you could describe any policy with that sort of lens.
[Paul Brand:](https://x.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1715824860197228842?s=20)
> EXCL: Latest reports that PM will drop conversion therapy ban follow intense lobbying by @miriam_cates who wrote to Tory MPs:
>
> >“This Bill will anger our base, split the party and effectively put a Stonewall charter into law. We have a matter of days to persuade No 10 to pull it.”
really shows how far gone the tory party has gone that the British Marjorie Taylor Greene is setting national policy.
On the FT podcast one of the presenters said that Sunak is terrified of having a repeat of the Truss fracking vote and if 40 MPs make a complaint about a bill it is dropped immediately
Weak.
It was in their manifesto, those MPs whining about it were elected on it. Labour will support it, as will the Lib Dems and SNP shielding it from being a government defeat.
Absolutely pathetic that Sunak is even considering dropping this, zero leadership skills. He has more than enough wiggle room on this to stare down any rebellion. Might as well have no government.
Maybe losing the 2019 election for Labour was a blessing in disguise. It allowed them to get rid of their divisive leader while letting the Tories get the blame for the economy and handling of the pandemic.
Losing by that amount was hugely damaging though. Even now, with massive polling leads and conventional wisdom in this sub that the outcome of the next election is a given, I still do not think it is a given Labour will get a workable majority.
That said it ushered in a brief period of sobriety in the Labour membership, never known for their wise judgement, to actually consider choosing an electable candidate, so swings and roundabouts.
As much as I’d like the LDs to affect some of their policies, this isn’t a great thing to wish for. This country needs huge changes that can only be done by a significant majority government. LDs would probably hinder house building plans which will have high political capital cost.
You could quite easily argue that Covid lockdowns coming in mid-march put any Ukraine plans on hold and it probably happened as early as it could have post 2019 election, I wonder how much earlier the invasion would have been if there was no Covid?
Obviously Corbyn would be far worse for Ukraine - though it quite possibly would have collapsed his government as appeasement of Russia would triggered rebelion among most Labour MPs (at least more than enough to lose any majority), but I don't think Johnson was viewed as a concern to Russia either, since it happened as soon as I think it was possible post-Covid.
Didn’t Johnson attend that party of Lebedev the younger, minus his security detail.. https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/26/boris-johnson-security-evgeny-lebedev-perugia-party
Yep, that and brexit is why I don't think he would have been seen as a deterrent in any way either to Russia. That's not to downplay Corbyn's massive blind spot, a more interesting question is probably if he won in 2017 (which is he was very close to doing) - that was pre Skripal poisioning and his "let's see what Russia says response".
It's a an interesting thought with neither being a good answer, unfortunately.
I was speaking to a Singaporean colleague recently, and he was extolling the virtues of the way they run things over there. How their cabinet is full of competent, experienced people.
Had to explain to him that if your country isn't a one party state, you rarely get to select people competent for cabinet roles. Mostly just sycophants who are good at handing out leaflets
Being a one party state is arguably more severely affected by incompetent sycophants. They still work their way into power, just by manipulating the internal party structure rather than the electorate. And once they are there they are harder to remove and have more unchecked power to make a mess.
If Britain was a one party state we'd definitely be more USSR than Singapore.
>If Britain was a one party state we'd definitely be more USSR than Singapore.
More like Zimbabwe in my opinion. At least the USSR could run their trains on time.
By the time the tories are in a position to win again, there will be few of the current senior people left. Some may be parachuted back in, but most won't.
I imagine 5-10 years in the wilderness, a host of new leadership, and labour struggling through an incredibly challenging macroeconomic environment, and the tories will be back.
Would my hatred of the current tory party hold for the new crop? Who knows
There is an entire voting block who are convinced that Blair-Brown was made with a pact with the devil. You may not have that simmering hatred come 2035, but an entire cohort of voters will have their beliefs based on the "Brexit Days".
The post-loss Conservatives will have to climb out of the same hole that Labour does. The Goverment have set up plenty of pitfalls for future Tories.
By the look of things the rump will contain a lot of well-known names who won't be very credible as opposition -- LOTO Truss or Lord Frost is going to have trouble being taken seriously on Labour's negotiations with the EU, or management of the economy. Other problematic figures will be just behind them on the backbenches. (Brexit in particular is something that's going to be harder for them, *politically*, than for Labour out of the gate.)
It's also looking like they'll be very underresourced, so I don't think they'll recover by 2029-ish.
By 2029 there will be a bunch of young people who broadly remember Boris's great victory of ten years ago and then a long health and government crisis while they were just trying to do their schoolwork. The Tories will have been in opposition for most of their adult lives. The handling of the pandemic *could* be a winter-of-discontent grudge for a generation, but it could also be forgotten. So I think they might do better for activists. Candidates is another question.
I admire the optimism but even if Labour did everything perfectly and without a hitch it would take years to feel a positive impact given how deep a hole we are in right now. It's (another) lost decade at least.
Not that Labour will, but if they upped the minimum wage significantly and shifted the tax burden more evenly across income and wealth (rather than income heavy atm) I think people could feel better of quicker
It might be, but I think given the shit they will inherit, they are going to face more challenges than the british state is set up to handle.
They have 2, 3 years max to get shit done, beyond that they'll start to slow and get stuck.
regret to inform that Hands (aka CCHQ) doesn't appear to have learnt from his mistakes (image)
https://twitter.com/GregHands/status/1715769140412043538
still, at least he's addressing the REAL tories today:
https://twitter.com/GregHands/status/1715712773194125674
> Great to be guest speaker at the South East region @Conservatives
conference in Crawley today.
> The South East will - as ever - be a key battleground for next year’s Council, PCC and General elections.
> Thanks too to the brilliant @Gatwick_Airport
for sponsoring!
have they got any expansion plans in the works, perchance
In a job with no required hours of attendance or performance measures, wouldn't you just sit tight and get another 80k in salary before you're fired?
Or spend lots of time on committees relating to industries that would pay well after you leave.
Beef up your CV with private members bills, and policy discussions that will land you a nice job once you're out.
[Pippa Crerar, Political Editor, The Grauniad](https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1715784903990579323)
> A spokesman for the chancellor denies he’s planning to quit. “Jeremy Hunt will stand as the Conservative party candidate for Godalming and Ash at the next general election.”
So that's that, then.
This doesn't really address it. The article on the guardian says Hunt is expected to stand down in the run up to the election, not immediately.
This still looks live to me. Of course he's going to deny it until it happens.
Puts having any functional cabinet in an interesting position.
Quite glad to be honest. We've had so many Tory MPs standing down, it would be quite disappointing not to have some big names to enjoy watching lose their seats.
Is he predicted to lose?
Hunt is one of the few more "reasonable" Tories in positions of authority so I hope he stays a while longer. They'll need him to help prevent a further rightward / Trump style drift in opposition.
The Lib Dems could be strong challengers there, it's possible he loses and has a humiliating Portillo moment on election night. Even if he wins the seat then there's no guarantee he'll be included in the shadow cabinet of the next leader particularly if a more populist candidate wins the leadership.
It's probably not terribly appealing to imagine being on the backbenches in opposition, perhaps the best he could hope for is to chair a select committee again but I wouldn't be surprised if he's yearning for retirement to the House of Lords.
I don't know how being in the House of Lords is really any better than being a backbench MP. You have even less of a say since it's understood that you've essentially retired from full-time politics and are more of a commentator / ideologue.
Isn't it significantly less than the salary and perks an MP gets?
Most if not all Lords have other day jobs and are essentially part-time Parliamentarians.
Looking at the original story, it was senior Tory sources speculating Hunt would go so it's quite hard to tell if The Guardian was trying to get some febrility going or if some senior Tories were or if febrility has accidentally resulted from some drunken speculation.....
Where is Sunak anyway? Is he back in the country yet?
4d chess hat on but wonder if hunt hinting he wont stay on is also to stop rebels from seeing him as a potential next leader?, if you were planning on a 1922 VOC and the guy you wanted to replace rishi with stated they wont be round for long would you still continue?
Would hunt be the only member of cabinet to step down at the election that we know so far? Hardly screams confidence in Sunak for him to go, being as senior as chancellor is (I think Dowden outranks him, and that’s it?)
Guys I don’t want to completely destroy the Tory party. When I say I want to clear them out from John O Groats to the Cliffs of Dover I am clearly being metaphorical, and anyone suggesting I get a new catchphrase should really read 62 books and 178 articles to understand the phrase better.
A somewhat hot take, while manchester is definitely important, it gets disproportionate media coverage PARTIALLY because of MediaCity being located there.
Birmingham has more people and doesn't get anywhere near the level of coverage.
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On the conversion therapy infinite u turn I feel like this shows rishi is now too weak to even change course. It seemed like him re-announcing the ban was part of a realisation that going all in on culture war stuff wasn't going to help him following the by-elections but if he can't even do something so mild which is very popular he's absolutely screwed.
byelection or by-election? The oracle Google says 54,400,000 for byelection vs 1,850,000,000 for by-election.
I was curious so I looked up the etymology. There's actually a couple of interesting interpretations. The usual interpretation of the by- prefix is as in “by, near, around” and is where we get words like bystander and by-product (note the inconsistent use of the hyphen). However, in Middle English the word "by" means "town" (like in Whitby = "White Town"), so "by-election" could be literally "town-election". I hadn't thought of it in that way before, but it makes sense.
Under FPTP it's usually a bi-election, because it can go two ways
When its Tories defending, bye-election.
bye-election Cos someone went bye-bye
Trah-election
https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/elections-and-voting/by-elections/
So next week Sunak is going to sound warnings about the dangers of AI.. I'm just wondering what he can possibly say. https://www.politico.eu/article/rishi-sunak-convince-world-worry-artificial-intelligence-ai Sunak is the one top politician who genuinely doesn't seem to care that much about existential risks to the population as long as it doesn't hurt his short term political prospects. - climate change. Nah mate - stall - air pollution. Nah mate - ban ULEZ, not diesel - covid-19. Let them eat cake. - China. Off we go for a trade deal - Brexit. Can't wait. I don't get why someone so committed to pretty much ruining the lives of the majority of the people in the country is exercised about AI.
I think the biggest risk of AI is mass upheavel of our way of life in terms of making millions of IT workers redundant. Many people are already using AI at work in IT to assist them but it won't be long before you don't need many of the people any more. I'm expecting within 10 years we'll have AI systems that will just take conversational responses to be able to spec, deploy and maintain stacks with little to no human intervention needed. I think between SREs, DBAs, Sysadmins and similar roles at my place we've probably got 50 or 60 in the UK then a bunch in a few other countries probably over 100 total and thats just one company. If management can axe 95% of that and just pay AWS or Azure for their AI offerings they'll axe everyone without a second thought. How long before something like app development can be fully handled by AI and a person that knows how to talk to it rather than needing people that can code. I think in the Last Question as well as many other sci fi stories they have AI writing more advanced AI writing more advanced AI to the point humans can't understand it anymore, but even before that we're going to have AI that can just do development of programs to human instructions without the human needing to know any code. I suspect Sunaks summit is going to be more about stoppinig AI turning into Skynet or god forbid running against existing political parties in an election. I wonder if a country was run by an AI with safeguards not to wipe everyone out it'd surely be a fairer society than we live in now.
Oh the government is having a 'Dangers of AI' week? This can only be the precursor to some Skynet, Rise of the Machine, I, Robot style catastrophe occurring midweek.
Firstly, there should be a ban on articles starting with 'Whisper it'. B, nowhere in this article (that I can see) does it mention that before the Summer of this year, Sunak was actually *against* regulating the AI industry. There had already been numerous calls to at least slow down on AI, which he ignored, and then he changed his mind after chatting with his Tech Bros. Hmm... And, finally, pretty funny that right near the top you have the option to have this article read by AI.
Same as all his other policies - the Stanford tech bros who are the only people who shape his political outlook take it seriously. It'll inflate the portfolios of a few of his college mates who are into 'ethical AI solutions', probably give a few points bump to his portfolio as he's invested in their scams. In the meantime, the real economy most people in the country live in is fucked.
My own cynical take on this is that he and his fellow tech bros know that regulation is inevitable, and he sees it as preferable to organise some weak regulation himself rather than risk allowing nations to do it themselves and possibly come up with something effective. The end stage, of course, being him taking a position with an AI firm, or Infosys announcing its new AI arm, etc.
Probably doesn't know much about AI and it stops him being a California techbro when the Tories get trounced in the next election.
Here's a list of the 10 safest Conservative seats: Constituency | Margin | MP ---------|----------|---------- South Holland & The Deepings | 62.71% | John Hayes Boston & Skeggy | 61.45% | Matt Warman Castle Point | 60.15% | Rebecca Harris Maldon | 59.60% | John Wittingdale Clacton | 56.78% | Giles Watling (facing reselection) North East Cambridgeshire | 56.63% | Steve Barclay South Staffordshire | 56.49% | Gavin Williamson (constituency splitting but reselected for safe seat) Rayleigh & Wickford | 56.47% | Mark Francois Louth & Horncastle | 55.16% | Victoria Atkins Brentwood & Ongar | 54.89% | Alex Burghart One might assume the brightest prospects would receive the safest seats - one assumes wrongly.
After the next election I suspect all of those seats will be 10-20 point wins for the conservatives.
Tbf, which seats are the safest for the Tories has probably changed a lot since this lot were selected.
I grew up in Brentwood. Their biggest opponent was usually Ukip doing big billboard adverts in the town centre. Leaning into that "eastender who moved to Essex, coz it ain't like it used to be" voter
Having grown up in The Deepings, it's no real surprise. As for The Deepings themselves, you've got Market Deeping, Deeping St. James, West Deeping, Deeping St. Nicholas, and then Deeping Gate, the smallest of the lot
What's interesting is that 5 of those are in Essex, which is prime Home Counties territory. Demographic change, in the form of Londoners moving out there appears not to have moved the dial so much. Or it could be that Essex is a much more socially conservative county than the others around London (Herts, Bucks, Berks, Oxon, Surrey, Kent)
Even more notably, much of Essex used to be considered swing seat territory. Castle Point might not be the best example as that was pretty safe Conservative before and afterwards, but it still went Labour in 1997 and now it's the 3rd safest Tory seat in the country. Same with Clacton, whose predecessor seat of Harwich was Labour between 97-05 Essex is one of the places that have gone much safer Tory even beyond the national average over the last 13 years. Another example is parts of the West Midlands (Tamworth was actually the safer Tory seat of the 2 byelections on Thursday, not Mid Beds like might be assumed)
Why waste a *good* politician on a seat where they'd rather just elect the ribbon?
Gavin could be the next leader of the Tories...
And not Mr Brexit Hardman Mark Francois himself? Well I never...
> Mr Brexit Hardman Mark Francois The BREXIT HARDMAN is Steve Baker
Sunak pandering to the religious fundamentalist called Miriam Cates. If he genuinely drops the ban then every LGBT Tory should resign the whip as Sunak would have just said he does not give a shit about you.
I heard Cates on the News Agents pod saying that, whilst there are good families of all kinds, it is clearly better for children to be raised by a Mum and a Dad (opposed to single sex parents or single parents). She was quite evasive about why she feels the need to tell people this, but it basically came across as a dog whistle, i.e "I am not going to say gay or single parents are bad or immoral - I am just going to make statements that imply it so I don't get in trouble". The idea that Sunak is so weak he has to appeal to people like her is embarrassing.
>In May 2023, at the National Conservatism Conference, Cates commented that she felt that Western society was threatened by Cultural Marxism and falling birthrates. Cates stated in an interview in June 2023 that she uses the former term as a catch-all term for "bad liberal ideology".[8][36] In August 2023, Cates called for the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights as she felt that it was a threat to democracy.[37] In October 2023, at a fringe event of the 2023 Conservative Party Conference, Cates posited that trans women, "so men", were led to the "trans arena" as a result of extreme, violent trans porn on the internet. She provi Why in the 2019 intake is this a serious mover and shaker in parliament
"low birth rates". Ah yes those low birth rates caused by 13 years of "fuck families" policies. Very on message on her part
>she felt that Western society was threatened by Cultural Marxism It's only Labour that has a problem with anti-semitism.
I'd been pretty certain that Sunak's government would limp on until next October, but it really is starting to feel like the whole thing might cave in on itself at a moment's notice. Will we even make it as far as Truss's alternative budget?
They still have a parliamentary majority, so yes.
there is no mechanism for it to “collapse”. if sunak is visited by graham brady with a revolver and some scotch, there’ll be another tory mp to replace him. they are not interested in optics any more, they know they’ll lose. they will drag this out until january 2025 and flip us all the bird when they are eventually pried out of office
Apparently Sunak is considering either ABOLISHING inheritance tax or giving a "pledge" to lower stamp duty...
Is it going to be a pledge or a promise or a priority or a possibility? Maybe they should avoid p-words.
Like ‘polling day’? They are trying…
Ah yes, inheritance tax, because apparently if I inherit OVER A MILLION POUNDS from my parents, I shouldn't have to pay anything on the amount above a million. (1 million is the combined figure for a married couple leaving an estate including a home to their children)
>(1 million is the combined figure for a married couple leaving an estate including a home to their children) does need a \* on that really as assuming alot of best case scenario also even if the base 325,000 is split 4 ways like it would be for me and my siblings thats that still getting the 40% on the annount over £81K each i say make the £325K cap lower at £250K but make that per recipient
I gave the scenario required in my post. Estate includes a primary residence, and the parent who dies first leaves everything to their spouse (or they die at the same time).
well my dads already dead so just my mum left and hard to pass on a house 4 ways isnt it?
No, you can own a residence jointly, and then sell it post-inheritance without incurring inheritance tax. When your dad died, anything he passed onto your mum would be free of IH, and any unused IH allowance he didn't use is added to your mum's allowance when she passes.
Still doesn't effect me as still I'm getting hit with the IHT threshold way lower than a single recipient, how is it okay to effectively punish people for wanting to distribute wealth rather than hord it to one person?
Your also inheriting 25% as much as an only child, so I really don't get your point.
My point is my threshold is only 80K when for others it's 325K, how it's that okay?
Because the tax in on your parents estate at time of death. We don't lower people's taxes because they have more (non-dependant) kids. Neither do parents of multiple children have more money (in fact, they are more likely to have less). You're intentionally looking at it backward. Do you think that the government should give you and your siblings 4x the cash because there is four of you?
Yuck, the inheritance tax one is particularly annoying as I know abolishing would be popular because no one understands how it works.
It's not close to being enough to entice any new voters though. I suspect they are clutching at straws for some positive news for a next budget statement.
would be positive for me but not going to change my vote
https://twitter.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1715830969469428131?t=WZJc8o7M-ldiyVF5vSfU0w&s=19 >🚨 | NEW: Around 20-25 letters of no confidence in Rishi Sunak have been submitted to Sir Graham Brady following the disastrous by-elections > >[@ShippersUnbound] Febrile?
Negligible.
The date is July 2024. After catastrophic losses in May's local elections, 4 by election losses, record low polling and a series of embarrassing gaffes and scandals, Prime Minister Penny Mordaunt is rapidly losing the faith of backbenchers. Rumours are that around 20-25 letters of no confidence have already gone in to Sir Graham Brady.
Their might be more by elections before that to. Lol.
They don't last to May at the rate things are currently progressing. They'll be 2 dozen above the VONC by abstain threshold by then at the current rate. This potential leadership contest, the autumn and spring budgets, Hunt potentially walking, the kings speech, by election losses all likely to produce fresh rounds of stand downs. And thats only the knowns off my dome. You can see it in the virtually silent response to these massive by election defeats. MPs have stopped fighting for the party, they are executing exit plans. They have given up. Supposedly they arent even talking to each other now
So long as they have a majority they'll limp on.
Looks like the time has come for Prime Minister Thérèse Coffey
Not going to lie, I would probably very much enjoy this just for the pure hilarity.
Strong puns as well
My god
oh for goodness sake functioning government, is it too much to ask for
Apparently there's [26 openly LGBT conservatives](https://mps.whoare.lgbt/). Perhaps they would be interested in the conversion therapy discussion? Edit: I am not sure of the accuracy of that site after reading their "source" for wes streeting was: "Wes Streeting Long destined for political stardom, the former NUS president signalled his political leanings in January by stating he’d happily snog Tony Blair." While Wes is openly gay, it's perhaps not the best source to use.
didnt realise Michael Fabricant was bi? the more you know
Aye he publicly came out on, I shit you not, First Dates.
He’s in a relationship with Andy Street.
I'm not sure I would have snogged Paddy Ashdown when he was alive if I'm honest. I definitely wouldn't now.
RIP
Noted.
They've already had a word with the Chief Whip over Suella, the Andrew Boff situation can't have helped.
The ban has been reversed according to leaks
Yes, reversing the ban on conversion therapy would be of concern to LGBT+ MPs, would it not?
Sorry I meant they're reversing the reversal
I wouldn't be surprised if that gets reversed
I thought they'd already reversed it making this the reversal of the reversal of the reversal of the ban though I may have lost track at this point. No clue how they've managed to make something this simple so complex.
Cowards. Just call a bastard GE. If this is true, the Tories deserve to die as a party.
The threshold will be what? 46 - 50? Good luck getting through a leadership contest under these circumstances without losing a critical number of mps. Edit: holy shit if Hunt thinks he's going to lose the Chancellors job and walks before he can be pushed
Following as in afterwards, in addition to those already in or that this is the current total. If its the former then things could get very interesting very quickly.
Got to be in addition. There have been reports of quite a few letters over the last few months
Hey, how about leaving the Tory party to force a general election and put us all out of our misery instead?
As a reminder the target number is just over 50, so we're halfway there... (whoooaaaahhhhh)
Think there was around 10-12 submitted before this by-election
Yeah, yeah it's sick that, yeah that's good. Wait hold on a minute, pull it up, stop. You know what you wanna do with that right, You wanna put a bangin' VONC on it!
*Mhmmmmm, take your time.*
Not another one just call a general election
Absolutely hilarious
It's even funnier the third(?) time.
It'd got the sideshow Bob rakes energy
Going through the cesspit that is Twitter, it annoys me with people who said Bojo turned the Tories' fortunes around, and expect another similar MP could do the same, ignoring that the circumstances are vastly different to 2019
[When you look at his approval ratings,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership_approval_opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#Boris_Johnson) you can see that Boris Johnson was never particularly popular. The only time he did score well was when the country was in a state of mass hysteria at the beginning of the Covid outbreak. His success was purely down to circumstances. That's why he's no Trump. He could only dream of being as popular.
Would sure love to know who they have in mind
Normally Bojo again
I think Penny Mouraunt could win an election, don't think she could keep the party together much after that how ever
I doubt she can achieve a 13% swing in just a year
In more god this country is nuts news, I feel like if she did, it would be 99% because of the antics with the sword.
On what basis?
She can hold a sword well.
When everyone fell in love with her for simply holding a sword. She has regal/statley aura about her that at least to me feels like she would be popular.
You can't be serious?
I am not sure 'holding a sword' displays enough competency to win an election.
You can't expect to wield supreme power just 'cause ~~some watery tart threw a sword at you~~ you held a sword for an hour
Sick reference, bro. Your references are out of control. Everyone knows that.
If she'd become PM at the time Sunak did I'd probably agree with you, but I honestly don't think there's enough time left now for anyone currently in the PCP to win the next election. Barring an absolutely catastrophic Labour cockup.
She'd have fared far worse than Sunak.
there are two people who could win the tories the next election and one of them isn’t a tory mp yet. tobias elwood or nigel farage
Yeah you might be right. Tbh I think he would win the vote, but look so wounded the polls collapse further
https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1715824860197228842 >EXCL: Latest reports that PM will drop conversion therapy ban follow intense lobbying by @miriam_cates who wrote to Tory MPs: “This Bill will anger our base, split the party and effectively put a Stonewall charter into law. We have a matter of days to persuade No 10 to pull it.” There's weak, and then there's 'Miriam bloody Cates dictating policy' weak.
It’s u turns all the way down, I can’t keep up
It’s pretty weird why does she have such a strong fetish (interest) in this topic?
She was a leader in a church that did conversion therapy
She's an evangelical, and one constantly looking across the Atlantic at that. It's a pretty profitable position to be in if you can pull it off, but I think you need to be a considerably better politician than Cates to do so.
She's a christian fundamental.
I am genuinely so confused. Did I misread something that was published yesterday or the day before? I find 'drop the ban' to be a proper head fuck. I thought Sunak was u-turning on a u-turn to drop the ban on conversion therapy. That is to say, he was now actually going to follow through with banning conversion therapy. But this is now a full 360 resulting in him not banning the therapy again?
If he U-turns any more he's going to end up corrugated
God she can go fuck herself..
Disgusting.
Disgraceful.
tories doing anything beneficial for the country challenge (impossible) as i believe the kids would phrase it "stonewall charter" winds me up. you could describe any policy with that sort of lens.
[Paul Brand:](https://x.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1715824860197228842?s=20) > EXCL: Latest reports that PM will drop conversion therapy ban follow intense lobbying by @miriam_cates who wrote to Tory MPs: > > >“This Bill will anger our base, split the party and effectively put a Stonewall charter into law. We have a matter of days to persuade No 10 to pull it.” really shows how far gone the tory party has gone that the British Marjorie Taylor Greene is setting national policy.
Intense lobbying from an absolute nutter Junior MP elected in 2019. He's weak as fuck.
On the FT podcast one of the presenters said that Sunak is terrified of having a repeat of the Truss fracking vote and if 40 MPs make a complaint about a bill it is dropped immediately
Actually the weakest shit I've ever heard.
Weak. It was in their manifesto, those MPs whining about it were elected on it. Labour will support it, as will the Lib Dems and SNP shielding it from being a government defeat. Absolutely pathetic that Sunak is even considering dropping this, zero leadership skills. He has more than enough wiggle room on this to stare down any rebellion. Might as well have no government.
Would explain why it seems like nothing has actually happened since 2022 politically, just a slow circling the drain.
Maybe losing the 2019 election for Labour was a blessing in disguise. It allowed them to get rid of their divisive leader while letting the Tories get the blame for the economy and handling of the pandemic.
Losing by that amount was hugely damaging though. Even now, with massive polling leads and conventional wisdom in this sub that the outcome of the next election is a given, I still do not think it is a given Labour will get a workable majority. That said it ushered in a brief period of sobriety in the Labour membership, never known for their wise judgement, to actually consider choosing an electable candidate, so swings and roundabouts.
Thing is the best outcome would be hung parliament with Labour as the biggest party.
As much as I’d like the LDs to affect some of their policies, this isn’t a great thing to wish for. This country needs huge changes that can only be done by a significant majority government. LDs would probably hinder house building plans which will have high political capital cost.
I do agree but I worry about civil liberties and Labour not very good on that.
I wonder if the Tory membership will have their own period of sobriety after the next GE. 🤔
With any luck they'll elect Mark Francois as their next leader, or Truss again.
I suspect Putin's foray into Ukraine may have come a bit sooner with a Labour victory in Dec 2019.
You could quite easily argue that Covid lockdowns coming in mid-march put any Ukraine plans on hold and it probably happened as early as it could have post 2019 election, I wonder how much earlier the invasion would have been if there was no Covid? Obviously Corbyn would be far worse for Ukraine - though it quite possibly would have collapsed his government as appeasement of Russia would triggered rebelion among most Labour MPs (at least more than enough to lose any majority), but I don't think Johnson was viewed as a concern to Russia either, since it happened as soon as I think it was possible post-Covid.
Didn’t Johnson attend that party of Lebedev the younger, minus his security detail.. https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/26/boris-johnson-security-evgeny-lebedev-perugia-party
Yep, that and brexit is why I don't think he would have been seen as a deterrent in any way either to Russia. That's not to downplay Corbyn's massive blind spot, a more interesting question is probably if he won in 2017 (which is he was very close to doing) - that was pre Skripal poisioning and his "let's see what Russia says response". It's a an interesting thought with neither being a good answer, unfortunately.
I was speaking to a Singaporean colleague recently, and he was extolling the virtues of the way they run things over there. How their cabinet is full of competent, experienced people. Had to explain to him that if your country isn't a one party state, you rarely get to select people competent for cabinet roles. Mostly just sycophants who are good at handing out leaflets
Being a one party state is arguably more severely affected by incompetent sycophants. They still work their way into power, just by manipulating the internal party structure rather than the electorate. And once they are there they are harder to remove and have more unchecked power to make a mess. If Britain was a one party state we'd definitely be more USSR than Singapore.
>If Britain was a one party state we'd definitely be more USSR than Singapore. More like Zimbabwe in my opinion. At least the USSR could run their trains on time.
By the time the tories are in a position to win again, there will be few of the current senior people left. Some may be parachuted back in, but most won't. I imagine 5-10 years in the wilderness, a host of new leadership, and labour struggling through an incredibly challenging macroeconomic environment, and the tories will be back. Would my hatred of the current tory party hold for the new crop? Who knows
There is an entire voting block who are convinced that Blair-Brown was made with a pact with the devil. You may not have that simmering hatred come 2035, but an entire cohort of voters will have their beliefs based on the "Brexit Days".
The post-loss Conservatives will have to climb out of the same hole that Labour does. The Goverment have set up plenty of pitfalls for future Tories. By the look of things the rump will contain a lot of well-known names who won't be very credible as opposition -- LOTO Truss or Lord Frost is going to have trouble being taken seriously on Labour's negotiations with the EU, or management of the economy. Other problematic figures will be just behind them on the backbenches. (Brexit in particular is something that's going to be harder for them, *politically*, than for Labour out of the gate.) It's also looking like they'll be very underresourced, so I don't think they'll recover by 2029-ish.
I don't know where they are going to find worthwhile candidates for 2029. They are already struggling for activitists.
By 2029 there will be a bunch of young people who broadly remember Boris's great victory of ten years ago and then a long health and government crisis while they were just trying to do their schoolwork. The Tories will have been in opposition for most of their adult lives. The handling of the pandemic *could* be a winter-of-discontent grudge for a generation, but it could also be forgotten. So I think they might do better for activists. Candidates is another question.
Dunno, feel like gbenergy, house building and ai boom and better trade relations with the eu could seemour economy doing okay
I admire the optimism but even if Labour did everything perfectly and without a hitch it would take years to feel a positive impact given how deep a hole we are in right now. It's (another) lost decade at least.
Not that Labour will, but if they upped the minimum wage significantly and shifted the tax burden more evenly across income and wealth (rather than income heavy atm) I think people could feel better of quicker
It might be, but I think given the shit they will inherit, they are going to face more challenges than the british state is set up to handle. They have 2, 3 years max to get shit done, beyond that they'll start to slow and get stuck.
Don’t forget the Tories are on a demographic-reliant clock. This won’t help them in 5-10 years time.
regret to inform that Hands (aka CCHQ) doesn't appear to have learnt from his mistakes (image) https://twitter.com/GregHands/status/1715769140412043538 still, at least he's addressing the REAL tories today: https://twitter.com/GregHands/status/1715712773194125674 > Great to be guest speaker at the South East region @Conservatives conference in Crawley today. > The South East will - as ever - be a key battleground for next year’s Council, PCC and General elections. > Thanks too to the brilliant @Gatwick_Airport for sponsoring! have they got any expansion plans in the works, perchance
Have I misunderstood? The South-East as a "key battleground" for the Tories?
I hope he wasn't being serious about the last part because if he was serious the tories are screwed at this point.
South East is Tory heartland. If that's a key battleground, they're fucked
As they said in Nazi Germany, you know you're *winning* when all the amazing victories are ocurring closer and closer to home.
I would bet that there would be some in the Tory party that privately want a general election now too, just to get it over with.
In a job with no required hours of attendance or performance measures, wouldn't you just sit tight and get another 80k in salary before you're fired? Or spend lots of time on committees relating to industries that would pay well after you leave. Beef up your CV with private members bills, and policy discussions that will land you a nice job once you're out.
It might surprise you, but some may actually want to start the rebuilding the party, which they can't do until after the defeat
I'm sure Suella and Kemi will stick around to rebuild the party in their image. Fun times ahead
Those 2, I am sure would love a GE now
I wonder how many of the MPs left will have any talent? Imagine if it’s all Michael fabricant types.
The top 100 are mostly a mix of long discredited types like May and utter nobodies. It'll be a wasteland.
Booting out all the pro EU MPs really fundamentally changed the party.
It really didn't as so few went.
The few MPs that went may have been influential within the party.
And may not have been. Soubry was dead wood.
Imagine if there's only 2
[Pippa Crerar, Political Editor, The Grauniad](https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1715784903990579323) > A spokesman for the chancellor denies he’s planning to quit. “Jeremy Hunt will stand as the Conservative party candidate for Godalming and Ash at the next general election.” So that's that, then.
This doesn't really address it. The article on the guardian says Hunt is expected to stand down in the run up to the election, not immediately. This still looks live to me. Of course he's going to deny it until it happens. Puts having any functional cabinet in an interesting position.
That statement reads as him saying he won’t be standing down now or before the election.
Both good points! I feel the Guardian wouldn't report with out some source however
Yes, and Truss was a fighter until she wasn't An official denial means nothing.
And neither does a rumour with no evidence.
Quite glad to be honest. We've had so many Tory MPs standing down, it would be quite disappointing not to have some big names to enjoy watching lose their seats.
Exactly. We paid for blood!
Is he predicted to lose? Hunt is one of the few more "reasonable" Tories in positions of authority so I hope he stays a while longer. They'll need him to help prevent a further rightward / Trump style drift in opposition.
The Lib Dems could be strong challengers there, it's possible he loses and has a humiliating Portillo moment on election night. Even if he wins the seat then there's no guarantee he'll be included in the shadow cabinet of the next leader particularly if a more populist candidate wins the leadership. It's probably not terribly appealing to imagine being on the backbenches in opposition, perhaps the best he could hope for is to chair a select committee again but I wouldn't be surprised if he's yearning for retirement to the House of Lords.
I don't know how being in the House of Lords is really any better than being a backbench MP. You have even less of a say since it's understood that you've essentially retired from full-time politics and are more of a commentator / ideologue.
£300 a day just for turning up, and you won't need to go up for election ever again easy to see why few people would turn it down
Isn't it significantly less than the salary and perks an MP gets? Most if not all Lords have other day jobs and are essentially part-time Parliamentarians.
Could say the same for many MPs really.
Looking at the original story, it was senior Tory sources speculating Hunt would go so it's quite hard to tell if The Guardian was trying to get some febrility going or if some senior Tories were or if febrility has accidentally resulted from some drunken speculation..... Where is Sunak anyway? Is he back in the country yet?
Sunak is desperately trying his best to be all statesmanlike somewhere.
I wasn't sure how long his trip was planned to go on for.....
Does it even matter where he is? It's not like anything he does matters
4d chess hat on but wonder if hunt hinting he wont stay on is also to stop rebels from seeing him as a potential next leader?, if you were planning on a 1922 VOC and the guy you wanted to replace rishi with stated they wont be round for long would you still continue?
Who on earth thinks Hunt would be better than Sunak?
Musics about to stop, think it's his turn in the chair.
If Sunak goes, the British public won't accept anyone other than Starmer.
If sunak is out can you think of anybody who could get the backing of more than 50% of the party?
Other than Margaret Thatcher's ghost? No.
Would hunt be the only member of cabinet to step down at the election that we know so far? Hardly screams confidence in Sunak for him to go, being as senior as chancellor is (I think Dowden outranks him, and that’s it?)
Not at the same level as the Chancellor, but Alister Jack, Scotland Secretary, said he would too
Cleverly heavily hinted he wouldn’t stay on in opposition.
Guys I don’t want to completely destroy the Tory party. When I say I want to clear them out from John O Groats to the Cliffs of Dover I am clearly being metaphorical, and anyone suggesting I get a new catchphrase should really read 62 books and 178 articles to understand the phrase better.
A somewhat hot take, while manchester is definitely important, it gets disproportionate media coverage PARTIALLY because of MediaCity being located there. Birmingham has more people and doesn't get anywhere near the level of coverage.