UK general election

[Richard Rathbone]

The Tories are  getting stuffed, the only question is whether they'll be the leading opposition party or not. Yougov's constituency polling estimates that the Greens (1) have more safe seats than the Tories (0). I don't rate Youguv's modelling  as  anywhere near the quality of Nate Silvers modelling  of  US elections, but I do think its as good as anyone and far  better  than most UK analysts.

My own constituency has seen virtually no campaigning at  all. When I first moved here my MP was the chairman of the Tory party, now its one of the safest Libdem seats in the country. Chris Patten, who sacrificed his own chances by concentrating on the national campaign that Major won rather than fighting his own seat. If  there's someone of his quality in politics today, they aren't in  the Tory party. All the local Labour and Green activists  have been in Bristol fighting to stop or get  a  second seat for the Greens, and the LibDems and Tories have been doing  the same for  Rees-Mogg. I do my own poll of window posters and garden placards on my walks into town each  election, and I've never seen so few. A few Libdem garden placards and thats it. Absolutely no one at all willing to promote their Tory views. A dozen each for Libdem and Tories means the Tories will win, because its not the most Tory part of town, but rather than 15:5, which is a normal comfortable LibDem win its 3:0.

Yougov's final seat  projection is Labour 431, Tory 102, LibDem 72, SNP 18, Reform 3, Plaid 2, NI + independents 19. Yougov have actually been fairly bullish for the Tories compared to  other constituency modellers and there are a lot of close battles. Libdem 80, Tory 50 is still a possibility, at  least until  the votes  are counted. The Tories have been whining about don't  give  Labour a supermajority, but the size of majority  is completely  irrelevant in the UK. What does matter and is at risk, is who is second and I'm hoping it  isn't the Tories. "Go back to your constituencies and prepare for Opposition" to misquote a previous Liberal leader who failed to  anticipate how the  Argentines would save  Thatcher.

[Richard Rathbone]

BBC Exit  poll has Labour 410, Tory 131, Libdem 61. However I think  Yougov's methodology is superior and the Tories will do worse than this. Its not nailed on that Sunak's successor is the Leader of the Opposition, but I only give Ed Davy an outside chance at  this point. The BBC are giving the SNP an even worse result in Scotland (10 seats) and Reform a lot more (13 seats) but this is consistent with the bias I think their model has.

[Richard Rathbone]

3 hours into  the count and so far its only a few seats that Labour were obviously going to win that have been declared. Turnout is very low. Labour is doing a little worse and Reform a little better than the Yougov model predicted but no declaration yet where the Reform vote could make a difference to the result.

[Richard Rathbone]

Results  coming  in at quite a clip now. It looks like the Tories are holding out a bit better than expected in close seats and the SNP are getting massacred in Scotland.  Projected Labour majority now 160 and Conservatives  easily in second  place. Very similar to Blair's Labour landslide. Reform has converted its 3 biggest changes, Farage is now an MP,  but is not looking likely to  get  many more. The  amount of calibration from declared results means this projection is  going to be pretty close.

Projection: Lab 405, Con 154, LibDem 56, SNP 6, Plaid  4, Reform 4 Green 2, Others 19

There's a substantial Moslem anti-Labour vote as a consequence of  its refusal  to  support a ceasefire in Gaza. Despite the catastrophic  collapse in the Tory  vote,  anti-labour candidates  have done enough splitting of the labour vote to hand one seat labour were defending to the conservatives so far and Starmer himself had his majority slashed. The labour ex-leader, Jeremy Corbyn, kicked out of the party for antisemitism, has also held his seat as an independent.

[Richard Rathbone]

Almost all  counted now. I don't  think I can manage to see  out  the final few.

Lab 411, Con 119, LibDem 71, SNP 9, Reform 4, Green 4, Independents 6, 5 still counting, (plus NI which has counted but is complicated)

The independents are all taken  from Labour,  and almost entirely due to anger over Gaza. There are several  seats that the Conservatives held due to Gaza protest voting. There are not only a swathe  of  Tory  cabinet  ministers losing  their "safe seats", a couple of Labour Shadow Ministers got taken out too. 

The former PM Liz Truss, not only lost her seat, but couldn't face up to making the traditional speech that every losing MP makes after the count is announced. There were plenty of Tories that departed with dignity, but Truss's behaviour was extraordinary.

This is probably the lowest vote share that a government with a majority of seats has ever had. Labour has a landslide because they were the best place to profit from the Tory vote tanking,  but overwhelmingly the votes went to Reform. Its the same for the LibDems, they picked up very few new voters, but they were in the position to take seats when 30-50% of Tories switched to  Reform.

Starmer was all smiles in his victory speech,  but he was also warning that Labour has to deliver its manifesto or it'll suffer an electoral catastrophe at the next election. I think he's absolutely right. If the sentiment in 2028 is that Labour is an incompetent bunch of corrupt and self-serving piss-artists and has to go, its electoral position is even more fragile than that of the Tories was this time and its fall will be even more dramatic then than the Tory fall now. 

[gerontocrat]

So what changed?

[Richard Rathbone]

So what changed?

The arsonists got voted out.

Starmer isn't setting out to deliberately sabotage the UK economy for the benefit of foreigners, which is what Truss and many of the other leading Brexiteers did. Truss alone gave away £10,000 per man, woman and child almost entirely to foreign hedge fund investors. That £10,000 is coming out of our future taxes and services and healthcare. For those that were the wrong age, its coming out of their pensions. People that had to retire at the wrong time lost 40% of their pensions. The sewage in the Thames is the consequence of asset stripping by Arab and Chinese sovereign wealth funds. Britain is not a particularly rich country any more and policies designed to help rich people actually help the global rentier elite. The global financial system has been run by the US for the benefit of the US for over a century and it was a financial disaster that triggered the only general strike in British history when Churchill financial policies ignored this fact in the 1920s, and a financial disaster that precipitated the worst collapse ever of the Tory party in Parliament when the Brexiteers in general and Truss in particular ignored it in the 2020s.

[zenith]

you're still a vassal state of the united states empire, there will be limits to what can be done. your entire elite class is completely beholden to the empire and it's biggest cheerleader. what will the city of london allow is the question. without the finance sector the uk would do what?

[zenith]

a complete collapse in the number of votes across the board. it seems many british have given up on politics. was it a vote for labour or a vote against the tories? nearly every vassal state in the empire appears to be voting against the incumbent party as much as voting for someone they believe in. it's just opposite to most in the uk as the parties were reversed.

Tories crushed. Labour, declining victory. Farage triumphs

[Richard Rathbone]

It was quite clearly a vote against the Tories. The Tories assembled an alliance of Brexiteers, and then shafted half of them. The protest vote in UK politics has been substantial for a long time, and disaffected Brexiteers increased it to massive proportions. The Libdems spent three decades from 1980-2010 assembling an alliance of protest voters, and shafted them in the 2010-2015 parliament when that vote had got large enough to get them a share of power. Boris Johnson assembled an alliance of protest voters by promising to be a tax and spend Tory and won a large majority. His party got rid of him for being a tax and spend Tory. The Libdems lost half their voters in 2015 for going back on clear-cut manifesto promises and they haven't returned. The Tories lost half their voters in 2024 for going back on clear-cut manifesto promises. Farage got the votes, Starmer got the seats. Starmer got substantially less votes than Corbyn did, but he won his election and Corbyn lost his because Starmer let Sunak get into a fight with Farage for second place, while Johnson manipulated Corbyn into a fight with the Libdems for second place. Starmer looks like a Tory because he was electorally ruthless. He did what he needed to do to win the election once Truss's betrayal of them cost the Tories half their voters. Traditionally its been the Tories who are the electorally ruthless ones and fighting over second place is what Labour does. This time it was the other way round.

...

It all depends on what you mean by "vassal". The UK/US relationship certainly meets some of the features, but so does the US/Russia relationship and indeed the relationship of every country in the world to the US. However, vassallage is not just a power imbalance, its a relationship between individuals within a state rather than between states.  Prigozhin was a vassal of Putin.  He commanded an army loyal to him for the benefit of Putin, in exchange for economic privileges. That sort of personal relationship between the ruler and an army commander is virtually impossible between US Presidents and UK army commanders, the constitutions and traditions of both states are by design and evolution set  up to avoid it  within those states, let alone between them.

[gerontocrat]

So what changed?

The arsonists got voted out.

True enough. But?

The decay of the fabric that keeps a country going (health, education, water and sewage, maintenance of basic infrastructure & so so on) from 14 years of austerity and wilful neglect, and the handing over of ownership of a high proportion of businesses to private business increasingly in the hands of foreign entities, may mean the UK has passed a tipping point.

Perhaps no matter how well-intentioned the Labour Government may be, and it's innate caution, the situation is irretrievable.

[zenith]

It all depends on what you mean by "vassal". The UK/US relationship certainly meets some of the features, but so does the US/Russia relationship and indeed the relationship of every country in the world to the US. However, vassallage is not just a power imbalance, its a relationship between individuals within a state rather than between states.  Prigozhin was a vassal of Putin.  He commanded an army loyal to him for the benefit of Putin, in exchange for economic privileges. That sort of personal relationship between the ruler and an army commander is virtually impossible between US Presidents and UK army commanders, the constitutions and traditions of both states are by design and evolution set  up to avoid it  within those states, let alone between them.

try to reverse the effects of more than 4 decades of neoliberal economic policies so the nationalized trains work properly and benefit the people and not private corporate interests, you'll find out how autonomous you are. try to close american military bases in the country, try to take an independent decision on foreign policy - try to do anything that isn't in american interests and private profits...

Here’s How America Really Runs Britain | Aaron Bastani meets Angus Hanton

of course the british transferred their empire to the usa after wwII and the elite are ideologically aligned so it's a moot point. many call it the anglo-american empire and the 5 eyes are all in, of course the americans are our heroic leaders (they've led us all off a cliff). the rest of western europe are 'allies' too of course and we saw how that went for ze germans and their energy supply. japan is a close ally and we saw what the americans demanded when their economy got too big for it's britches. s. korea are a close ally and we'll see how that works out when it matters.

'It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.' - Henry Kissinger

[SteveMDFP]

Here’s How America Really Runs Britain | Aaron Bastani meets Angus Hanton

He conflates two very distinct trends.  Most of his focus is on how the ordinary British people are increasingly serfs in the global corporate system.  So are ordinary American people.  Global corporate capitalism settles itself in the US because the American system is quite accommodating to those interests.  Rather like the City of London is, but across a vastly larger territory and range of economic activities.  Should the US become less accommodating to those interests, assets and activity would simply shift to Dubai or Singapore or wherever over time.

This is related to, but distinct from, US political heft in geopolitical terms.  He mentions the UK being strong-armed into dropping Huawei equipment.  He's probably right, but that's a mere footnote in the scheme of things.  A far more salient example would be the UK being hoodwinked by the Bush Jr. administration into joining in the Gulf War.  That was a transparent fraud and foreseeable disaster for much of the world.

As with the UK, much the same would hold for Australia, Canada, etc.

He's certainly right, though, that the Tories have exacerbated suzerainty of the UK.  The Tories richly deserve the drubbing they've received.

[Richard Rathbone]

So what changed?

The arsonists got voted out.

True enough. But?

The decay of the fabric that keeps a country going (health, education, water and sewage, maintenance of basic infrastructure & so so on) from 14 years of austerity and wilful neglect, and the handing over of ownership of a high proportion of businesses to private business increasingly in the hands of foreign entities, may mean the UK has passed a tipping point.

Perhaps no matter how well-intentioned the Labour Government may be, and it's innate caution, the situation is irretrievable.

Us boomers won't  live forever. One of the fundamental issues that is driving the UK is that care for people in the last couple of years of their lives is very expensive. The fraction of the population in that demographic has been growing for a while, and is going to be high for a while, but as the boomers die off, the hold of that generation on public policy will fade. The triple lock, which enriches boomers by means of starving children, will become accepted as the vile distortion that it is. The health of the country not only shows up in declining life expectancy over the last 14 years, it shows up in children getting shorter. A labour party will eventually be able to reorientate the state to supporting productive work rather than supporting idleness and death because it won't have to pander to the interests of the boomers in the way that every government from Thatcher onwards has had to do. A Tory government won't have to simultaneously act like its tough on immigration while simultaneously allowing record levels of it. The Tory government knew immigration was an absolute necessity to have enough taxpayers to fund the handouts to their voters. In order to cover this up they publicly treat refugees with deliberate cruelty. Its not only despicable treatment of vulnerable people, its an extremely wasteful use of public money. The bribes to Rwanda are of the order of 1 million pounds per person they accept. The commitments if it ever actually happened were in the billions. Keeping refugees in prison by deliberate incompetence in assessing their claims, also has costs that run into the billions. The Tory practice on immigration has been to allow record levels of it while spending billions to publicly maltreat tens of thousands of people in order to pretend that  immigration was out of their control.

Crossing the channel in small boats in order to escape an oppressive foreign regime? How British can you get? And the Tories encouraged this to happen so that they can single these people out for a public show of cruelty. Boomers are too young to have been at  Dunkirk, but their childhood was full of WW2 war films and a lot of natural Tories will have been instinctively revolted by what their government was doing. They don't want immigration, but they don't want a public display of their values being trashed either. Voting Farage was the perfect outlet for them.

However, the thing that really killed the Tories, was that didn't only remove Boris, they reversed flagship economic policies that he had been elected on for ideological reasons, with disastrous outcomes in practice. Brexit was a disaster, but it was a disaster the voters had asked for. COVID was a disaster, but it was unpredictable and happened early enough to be recoverable. Truss was a disaster, but it was a disaster the voters hadn't asked for. They lost half their voters overnight and they never came back. Starmer avoided being cast as the sort of bogeyman that Corbyn was so fear that Starmer would be worse didn't work. Farage provided the perfect outlet for those who felt they had to vote but couldn't vote Labour and were repulsed by the behaviour of the Tories. They'd likely be even more repulsed by what Farage did if he was elected, but that hasn't  happened (yet).

[zenith]

and now you have keir starmer when france is voting out macron and trudeau is fighting for survival as leader of his party which will be defeated next election. different day, same result. don't expect much to change.

[Richard Rathbone]

This is related to, but distinct from, US political heft in geopolitical terms.  He mentions the UK being strong-armed into dropping Huawei equipment.  He's probably right, but that's a mere footnote in the scheme of things.  A far more salient example would be the UK being hoodwinked by the Bush Jr. administration into joining in the Gulf War.  That was a transparent fraud and foreseeable disaster for much of the world.

Blair knew it was a fraud, but judged the alliance required him to acquiesce in it. Doing so cost him his political career, but he accepted that as a necessary price. He considered the US/UK alliance was a key to keeping the US in NATO and hence keeping the world powers in the sort of balance that had prevailed post WW2, rather than the sort of balance that led to WW2. 

No Brexit, no war in Ukraine? Maybe. It certainly loosened the ties between Europe and the US in the way Blair feared would lead to war in Europe.

[zenith]

Here’s How America Really Runs Britain | Aaron Bastani meets Angus Hanton

He conflates two very distinct trends.  Most of his focus is on how the ordinary British people are increasingly serfs in the global corporate system.  So are ordinary American people.  Global corporate capitalism settles itself in the US because the American system is quite accommodating to those interests.  Rather like the City of London is, but across a vastly larger territory and range of economic activities.  Should the US become less accommodating to those interests, assets and activity would simply shift to Dubai or Singapore or wherever over time.

This is related to, but distinct from, US political heft in geopolitical terms.  He mentions the UK being strong-armed into dropping Huawei equipment.  He's probably right, but that's a mere footnote in the scheme of things.  A far more salient example would be the UK being hoodwinked by the Bush Jr. administration into joining in the Gulf War.  That was a transparent fraud and foreseeable disaster for much of the world.

As with the UK, much the same would hold for Australia, Canada, etc.

He's certainly right, though, that the Tories have exacerbated suzerainty of the UK.  The Tories richly deserve the drubbing they've received.

you missed the 5 eyes reference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

delaware is a great place to launder money and engage in shady financial/corporate dealings, it's been stealing business from the other shady financial centres for some time now. it's impossible to pin us power down to just one aspect but the lynchpin was the petrodollar. over on the Empire - America and the future thread i posted a couple videos with German MP, Sevim Dagdelen where she describes american ownership in german corporations as a main way germany is controlled by the united states as well.

i read/heard that since the russian sanctions the city of london has lost 30% of it's business.

The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire | The Secret World of Finance