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[Starver]

That was more or less my thought (but low battery stymied an earlier reply..). Either extreme genius or extreme stupidity to choose Independence Day. Whoever ends up (deeming themselves) the winner will doubtless directly reference this as applying to their success.

(Well, at least Quatorze juillet isn't on a Thursday. As it is, I'm bettinv some of the leaflets coming through the door will reference the Auld Alliance.)

[Egan_BW]

I've never felt more patriotic.

[hector13]

Tories having a bad week so far.

They’ve been harping on about Labour policies costing families an extra £2,000. This is meant to be over four years, which they don’t say, but it turns out their basis for this claim is a report from the Treasury based on assumptions made by Conservative special advisors and is consequently considered a lot of nonsense. This hasn’t stopped them continuing to make the claims though.

PM Rishi Sunak also left the 80th anniversary commemorations for D-Day early, and is receiving a great deal of flak because of it. He also suggested during an apology that his decision not get politicized, even though he left the event to do a pre-recorded interview about politics.

This is the man wanting to bring back national service, too.

It’s like they’re trying not to win the election

[Starver]

I wouldn't be surprised.


It is noted that Labour reportedly has its own figures that state that it'll be something like £3000 more (per 4 years?) to go with the Tory policies (despite all the cutbacks/intention to get rid of National Insurance/etc), but they probably won't want (or need) to raise that if they can just laugh off the ridiculousness of their opponents 'side of the bus' calculations and use their opponent's actions against them.

Also, Sunak was never ever scheduled to go from the specific UK D-Day ceremonies to the international ones (in things arranged several weeks before he lit the General Election fuse), due to the timing not being condicive for him attending both. (An oversight, anyway.) But it certainly was a dropped ball to continue with that exact plan under the "now we've called a General Election" diary. And then use the 'free time' to go to what was essentially a campaign-related interview spot (rather than do something to promote their idea of youth volounteering/etc). It's probably the fault of same scheduler who said there'd be no need for an umbrella and then later sent him off into the Titanic quarter.


(Right now, there'll be a Leaders' Debate showing on TV, but I'm not in a position to watch it. The post-mortem will be all over the place within a few minutes of it finishing, though, and I might catch on how it all went for everyone soon after.

[Maximum Spin]

The way I see it, it's very possible they AREN'T trying to win the election, because then the new government will be blamed for what's going to happen anyway.

[hector13]

I listened to some of the debate, panel of 7 parties including the SNP and Plaid Cymru who were only really speaking to/of Scottish and Welsh issues respectively.

It seemed a lot of it was Labour and the Tories talking over each other. Carla Denyer of the Greens I thought came out really well, but she did have some of the points she made essentially get hijacked by the moderator for Labour or the Tories to talk about, particularly Labour dropping their £28bn environmental pledge, which was a bit sad.

At least the moderator pulled up Penny Mordaunt of the Tories one or two times about repeating the £2,000 thing (though I was unaware of Labour’s own analysis costing it at £3,000, something to look into, though Farage may have alluded to it later on when he said “whatever the numbers are, 2,000, 3,000”) and tried to keep everyone on track to answer the questions from the audience.

[Starver]

...is it telling that we really don't have anything to say in this thread, at five days to go?

(Compare and contrast the long drag towards the start of the next US presidential term...)

I mean, not meaning to tempt fate and start any big arguments. Not before the fractious post-mortem on whatever ends up being the result, at least!

[hector13]

All Starmer has to do is not drop the ball. There’s been scandal after scandal for Sunak, and they were projected to lose heavily prior to all that.

I don’t like either candidate, Starmer doesn’t actually seem to have anything for which he stands, and Farage is doing Farage. He’s basically just a more racist Boris Johnson.

[Starver]

Well, though I haven't actually made up my mind which way I'm personally thinking of voting (save for a few definite ideas of who I won't), I definitely know I won't get the opportunity to do so for Starmer, Sunak or Farage, because none of them are going to be on my voting-slip. (Between them, slightly under 235,000 people could do, but only one of them. Realistically, there's an upper-limit of 100k votes likely to go between them, and possibly as low as 50k (with similar number of votes against them). Same sort of thing goes for Davey, et al.

Whereas Foster, Swinney, etc are even more unvotable-for (or against) on this occasion.


Apart from actual trying to be clever about everything, though, perhaps one should vote for the actual candidates that best represent one's views. If they get to represent your constituency (and, persumably, a party/leadership that also roughly sits well with you), there's a better chance that their party (and ideas of the leader, if not the choice of one) swings that bit closer to your shared values in response. Even if they lose, it sends a message to the others (same party and others, with any luck) that there's an interest in more of their take on things.

Not that party-wide manifestos should be ignored, of course. I must say I am thoroughly reading them, as well. In particular, I do quite like the following promise from a party that's unfortunately not standing in my area...:

Greener Cars
Once in Government we promise to have more green cars on our roads. Politicians will have fluorescent green cars so that everyone can see them coming.

[Il Palazzo]

Is Count Binface running?

[hector13]

Eh, I forgot to register by the deadline, and even if I did, postal votes in Scotland don’t seem to be going well atm, with councils putting up emergency voting booths after delays with getting them sent out.

[Starver]

Is Count Binface running?

Richmond and Northallerton (formerly "Richmond (Yorkshire)", but with boundary changes).

Thus has a chance of unseating/non-seating Rishi Sunak!

Spoiler: Technically, at least (click to show/hide)

Although Labour would seem to have the best chance, with UKIP Reform as a spoiler, or possibly vice-versa if The Brexit Party Reform can severely turn around the bad publicity/use it as good publicity.

But it was 1/6th turnout for Labour (and 1/8th Lib-Dems) vs 2/3rds for Rishi last time, during a depressed year for Labour (they've been higher than a quarter, but never when there's been a Farage party in contention).

Realistically, though, the Richmond area has never been Red, only Blue or (in pre-Labour era) occasionally older-variant Yellow. Those times are long gone.

Edited for consistent specific key-shift errors thwt might have looked like a rather strange party-slur, not intended at all. On-screen keyboards aren't conducive to accurate touch-typing!

[Great Order]

Yeah, R&N is a super fucking conservative area but if there's going to be a change to voting patterns, even if it's only once, it'll be this year.

[Great Order]

Votes are beginning to come in. The exit polls indicate some pretty accurate polling.

[hector13]

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cn09xn9je7lt

410 seats projected for Labour, and 141 for the Tories.

A bit sad SNP are on 10, but apparently the swing from the Tories to Reform in the South Swindon seat (won by Labour overall) was much larger than expected, so it could be a very rough night for the Tories.

Edit: I’m telling porkies.

131 seats projected for Tories, the swing to Reform was less in Swindon, but was bigger toward Labour.