Filters BETA
comments below the blog for those eager to share bank holiday political thoughts.cue music), though at least one Conservative MP has retweeted Macron.
“Conflix” website [geddit?] that mockingly tells the story of “14 years of Tory chaos”
The party’s chair, Anneliese Dodds, was challenged about the site on Sky News this morning and whether the party was relying on “stunts” rather than policy proposals. She insisted that the “detail of policy” was there, in the form of initiatives like GB Energy.
Conservative MPs could defect to Labour before the next general election, HuffPost UK’s Kevin Schofield reports.
He says that handful of Tory MPs are understood to have held talks with Labour officials about the possibility of switching sides.
The would join two other MPs elected as Tories in 2019 – Christian Wakeford and Dan Poulter. The latter, a former health minister staged a dramatic defection to Labour last month, saying the Conservatives have become a “nationalist party of the right” that has abandoned compassion and no longer prioritises the NHS.
An analysis has shown that despite huge gains in council seats, seizing the West Midlands mayoralty, and Sadiq Khan, the Muslim mayor of London, winning a third term, there was an almost 18% drop in the Labour vote in areas of England where more than a fifth of people identified as Muslim.Scotland under the projection Sunak was referring too, Caulfield eventually said “I think because these were English local elections, it doesn’t touch on the Scottish results.”
It was then put to her that the assumption being made is that Labour would retain just one seat in Scotland. Recent polling has suggested that Labour may have taken a small lead over the SNP in voting intention for a general election.
She was told “nobody is suggesting that these results would be replicated at a general election. The experts aren’t suggesting it. I put it to you that, really, the prime minister, if he is suggesting it to his own side, is taking them for fools.”
Caulfield went on to say:
What we can see from these results and it was consistent … is that people are not switching to Labour. Labour did not get the results in places like Teeside or Harlow that they were expecting, even though they threw the kitchen sink at some of those. Voters are tending at the moment to stay at home. They don’t want a Labour government.
Speaking to the Times, Sunak has said that the projection by the elections expert Michael Thrasher that extrapolated the share of local council voting nationwide to a general election showed that the country was heading for “a hung parliament with Labour as the largest party”.
The fifth Conservative prime minister in the last eight years told the newspaper:
Keir Starmer propped up in Downing Street by the SNP, Liberal Democrats and the Greens would be a disaster for Britain. The country doesn’t need more political horse trading, but action. We are the only party that has a plan to deliver on the priorities of the people.
John Swinney to be confirmed as new SNP leader after Graeme McCormick said he had the support to run but opted not to. The nominations will be announced at noon, and Swinney may be the only candidate.
Here are your headlines …
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The president of the Trades Union Congress has warned that watering down Labour’s plan to strengthen workers’ rights would be disastrous for the party’s relations with unions. Amid reports that Sir Keir Starmer may bow to pressure from business and amend important parts of his “new deal for workers”, Matt Wrack said the Labour leader risked causing “significant anger” among union members.
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Aslef restarts rail strikes in England with a week of action.
Drivers in the Aslef union will strike for 24 hours at each of England’s national train operators over the course of three days from Tuesday until Thursday, while an overtime ban will apply nationwide from Monday until Saturday. -
Leaked documents seen by Sky News suggest the government had planned a Rwanda-style deportation deal with Iraq. Rwanda has admitted it can’t guarantee how many deported asylum seekers it will take in
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Farmers’ confidence has hit its lowest level in at least 14 years, with extreme weather and the post-Brexit phasing-out of EU subsidies blamed for the drop
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The Conservative party is continuing to come to terms with shattering local election and mayoral contest losses over the weekend and last week. The prime minister will take questions in a pooled interview on a visit to a community centre in the late afternoon.
It’sBen Quinn here
Source: theguardian.com
