[spidermonkey09]

 Agree that's worth reading, some interesting bits.

However, this;

At least one Byline Times reader – who contacted the newspaper as part of its VoteWatch project – is considering a police complaint over a Reform candidate who she suspects may not exist. She said: “There’s no online presence for her, and the Reform website just has a blank page and generic email address.”

Is completely risible for all the reasons that are public knowledge. And it's been confirmed that there is absolutely no evidence to support the idea that there were any fake candidates. It was a conspiracy theory.


BBC News - Reform UK fake candidate conspiracy theories debunked - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckvgl9kzwzjo?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Bbbc.news.twitter%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D&at_format=link&at_ptr_name=twitter&at_campaign=Social_Flow&at_link_type=web_link&at_link_origin=BBCPolitics&at_medium=social&at_campaign_type=owned&at_link_id=9AD79EBE-3F1E-11EF-A453-CAF2D3B88A98&at_bbc_team=editorial

[tomtom]

Risable! :D

[Will Hunt]

It is a bit. I've just googled my mum using information that would be available from the ballot paper. She has no online footprint. Does that mean my mum doesn't exist 
If I search harder using information I know about her I can see a scant Facebook account and a quote in the local rag from 2003. There will be hundreds of thousands of such people, who don't engage with social media and have never had a professional job, who will be the same. It doesn't mean that they don't exist.

Who knows, there may be some truth in it, but a conspiracy theory that fits with your worldview is no less a conspiracy theory. Even the people putting it about admit that there isn't a shred of evidence to support it. Why should we abandon our critical faculties when it suits us?

[tomtom]

I find the use of the term conspiracy theory here odd though. Because as far as I can see there’s no conspiracy. There’s an accusation of the law being broken and some of those accusations have been shown to be wrong. Forgive me but where is the conspiracy here?

As in where is the plot, ploy, or scheme, or any a secret plan or agreement between people?

I’m beginning to feel conspired against in this thread 😂😂 it’s not just risable - it’s silly! 🤪

[Will Hunt]

The conspiracy would be the secret plot (secret because it involves breaking the law and you normally do that in secret, unless you are a high-ranking member of the Conservative party) to stand fake candidates in an election. As you note, perhaps imply(?), the reason for this could be to net a not inconsiderable amount of short money.

[stone]

It is a bit. I've just googled my mum using information that would be available from the ballot paper. She has no online footprint. Does that mean my mum doesn't exist 
If I search harder using information I know about her I can see a scant Facebook account and a quote in the local rag from 2003. There will be hundreds of thousands of such people, who don't engage with social media and have never had a professional job, who will be the same. It doesn't mean that they don't exist.

I just Googled my sister who does have a professional job but one that requires (a bit of mild) discretion. I couldn't find a trace of her.

[Paul B]

That isn't remotely the same as someone looking for votes in a GE!

[Will Hunt]

But they're not looking for votes. They're paper candidates. I can imagine there being plenty of candidates who would actually be irked to win because they'd then have to be an MP!

[stone]

Last minute paper candidates who happened to be teachers, mid-rank civil servants, probation officers, not keen on public social media, etc etc.

Genuinely doesn't seem wildly implausible to me.

[stone]

Ever since election day, I've been hoping to see such a chart of how voters did or didn't switch. There was some churn but its so impressive to see how huge a turn around in fortunes hinges on a few percent switching here and there. As the title says, it was various types of switches by some of the 2019 Tory voters that mainly did it.

[Paul B]

I think I saw something similar in either John Burn-Murdoch's Twitter feed or perhaps Gabriel Pogrund. Both are worth a follow:
https://x.com/jburnmurdoch/
https://x.com/Gabriel_Pogrund


Edit:
https://x.com/TomHCalver/status/1809125259775205483
https://x.com/TomHCalver/status/1809090481311064314

[teestub]

Ever since election day, I've been hoping to see such a chart of how voters did or didn't switch. There was some churn but its so impressive to see how huge a turn around in fortunes hinges on a few percent switching here and there.

I’m not sure what the numbers on the right represent, but that’s a decent chunk flowing from Con to Reform right, not just a few percent?

[Paul B]

That was essentially the story in my constituency (Pendle & Clitheroe). The Labour increase was 1.4% but the Con vote was lost in part to Reform resulting in a Labour win (compared with Con previously).

[stone]

Same in mine in High Peak with Labour gain but with Labour vote numbers actually down (as in country in the whole).

I was made up though that Olivia Blake in Sheffield Hallam substantially increased both her vote share, her majority and her number of votes.

Same with Zara Sultana in Coventry South.

(I'm a fan of them both).

[stone]

I should have put the source of that chart I posted above. It's https://www.focaldata.com/blog/how-britain-voted-2024

[Duma]

I have a hard time believing that 6% of 2019 green voters switched to reform

[seankenny]

I have a hard time believing that 6% of 2019 green voters switched to reform

It doesn’t make sense if the Greens are coded “decent” in your mind, but if they’re coded “batty and unworkable” then it’s much easier to accept. Both parties are fundamentally populist ones and it’s easier to switch between two varieties of populism than to make the leap from boring mainstream parties to the fringe. The Greens’ deputy leader is a former hypnotist who once hypnotised a Sun reporter in order to enlarge her breasts. That’s such a Reform Party bio!

There’s always been a strong right wing element to environmentalism, eg fears over population growth easily shading into fears over too many of the wrong sort of people, or anti-vax types. If you love the countryside and are scared it’s going to get built over with ugly houses then it’s a very short leap to being anti-immigration.

[spidermonkey09]

What Sean said. I grew up in Waveney Valley in Suffolk, one of the new Green seats. That seat has been largely won on the back of NIMBY opposition to the Sizewell C nuclear plant (which fortunately has already been approved so will be getting built anyway). However, it also pulled in an extremely sizeable UKIP vote in their heyday and the whole area was extremely pro-Brexit. There will definitely be some crossover in terms of people who voted both for UKIP/Brexit back then, and for the Greens this time. If anything, 5% in that specific constituency would feel a bit low to me. So it wouldn't surprise me that there was a 5% swing the other way nationally.

[Will Hunt]

Maybe this should go in a general politics thread, but can anyone explain whether and why Labour's policy on lowering energy bills works? My understanding of the policy is that by starting a publicly owned energy company and investing lots in renewables you lower bills. Perhaps I've misunderstood or missed something in the detail, but if energy prices are pegged to the most expensive form of production (oil/gas/nuclear I guess?) then we'd only see bills reduce when all our energy needs are met with cheaper production methods? Even then, if energy is traded internationally then you'd still find your prices pegged to the more expensive fossil fuel production. So it's great to invest more in renewables, and since those are more profitable you can take those profits and do more good stuff with it, but how does it lower energy bills?

[stone]

Maybe this should go in a general politics thread, but can anyone explain whether and why Labour's policy on lowering energy bills works? My understanding of the policy is that by starting a publicly owned energy company and investing lots in renewables you lower bills. Perhaps I've misunderstood or missed something in the detail, but if energy prices are pegged to the most expensive form of production (oil/gas/nuclear I guess?) then we'd only see bills reduce when all our energy needs are met with cheaper production methods? Even then, if energy is traded internationally then you'd still find your prices pegged to the more expensive fossil fuel production. So it's great to invest more in renewables, and since those are more profitable you can take those profits and do more good stuff with it, but how does it lower energy bills?

Thanks for prompting me to Google this as I'm also interested. This looks a good link https://www.rabobank.com/knowledge/d011318792-the-basics-of-electricity-price-formation
I think the gist is that only some of the price comes from dispatch-able electricity bought on the spot market. Much of the price is bought further ahead at a price that does get reduced by a wodge coming from low cost production. 

[stone]

Sean, your use of the term "populism" seems to me to basically amount to meaning "whatever Sean dislikes".

The most useful definition of the term that I've come across is meaning divisive politics -where an enemy group is "othered" so as to rally supporters of the populist as defenders of the "proper sort" of people.

-The Green Party of E&W can be accused of many things but that isn't one of them. They are the most pro-immigrant party in the UK etc. Of course that doesn't mean everyone voting for them feels like that.

[seankenny]

Sean, your use of the term "populism" seems to me to basically amount to meaning "whatever Sean dislikes".

It really doesn’t, but whatever…

[James Malloch]

I have a hard time believing that 6% of 2019 green voters switched to reform

It doesn’t make sense if the Greens are coded “decent” in your mind, but if they’re coded “batty and unworkable” then it’s much easier to accept. Both parties are fundamentally populist ones and it’s easier to switch between two varieties of populism than to make the leap from boring mainstream parties to the fringe. The Greens’ deputy leader is a former hypnotist who once hypnotised a Sun reporter in order to enlarge her breasts. That’s such a Reform Party bio!

There’s always been a strong right wing element to environmentalism, eg fears over population growth easily shading into fears over too many of the wrong sort of people, or anti-vax types. If you love the countryside and are scared it’s going to get built over with ugly houses then it’s a very short leap to being anti-immigration.

N=1 and all that, but someone I know hosts a local green party monthly meeting in their café. They were saying about how much of the local groups focus was on not building new homes in the fields near their houses (development is planned on basically all the local council owned fields), and why don't we focus on regenerating somewhere much less affluent 5-10 miles away.

A lot of what he has said revolved around doing what will make things better for them rather than think about what's actually needed.

EDIT - that's not to say that greens are bad or anything, just how local activists can be hugely driven by what affects them personally.

[Will Hunt]

Maybe this should go in a general politics thread, but can anyone explain whether and why Labour's policy on lowering energy bills works? My understanding of the policy is that by starting a publicly owned energy company and investing lots in renewables you lower bills. Perhaps I've misunderstood or missed something in the detail, but if energy prices are pegged to the most expensive form of production (oil/gas/nuclear I guess?) then we'd only see bills reduce when all our energy needs are met with cheaper production methods? Even then, if energy is traded internationally then you'd still find your prices pegged to the more expensive fossil fuel production. So it's great to invest more in renewables, and since those are more profitable you can take those profits and do more good stuff with it, but how does it lower energy bills?

Thanks for prompting me to Google this as I'm also interested. This looks a good link https://www.rabobank.com/knowledge/d011318792-the-basics-of-electricity-price-formation
I think the gist is that only some of the price comes from dispatch-able electricity bought on the spot market. Much of the price is bought further ahead at a price that does get reduced by a wodge coming from low cost production. 

Maybe this should go in a general politics thread, but can anyone explain whether and why Labour's policy on lowering energy bills works? My understanding of the policy is that by starting a publicly owned energy company and investing lots in renewables you lower bills. Perhaps I've misunderstood or missed something in the detail, but if energy prices are pegged to the most expensive form of production (oil/gas/nuclear I guess?) then we'd only see bills reduce when all our energy needs are met with cheaper production methods? Even then, if energy is traded internationally then you'd still find your prices pegged to the more expensive fossil fuel production. So it's great to invest more in renewables, and since those are more profitable you can take those profits and do more good stuff with it, but how does it lower energy bills?

Thanks for prompting me to Google this as I'm also interested. This looks a good link https://www.rabobank.com/knowledge/d011318792-the-basics-of-electricity-price-formation
I think the gist is that only some of the price comes from dispatch-able electricity bought on the spot market. Much of the price is bought further ahead at a price that does get reduced by a wodge coming from low cost production.

Thanks for sharing. Maybe I'm being thick, but that suggests that my assumptions were broadly right about energy bought on the spot market (next-day and same-day markets) but it doesn't explain how the future market might be different. It suggests as well that decoupling electricity price from gas price would require market reform, which presumably would require us to have the same approach as whatever the EU come up with.

[Oldmanmatt]

I have a hard time believing that 6% of 2019 green voters switched to reform

It doesn’t make sense if the Greens are coded “decent” in your mind, but if they’re coded “batty and unworkable” then it’s much easier to accept. Both parties are fundamentally populist ones and it’s easier to switch between two varieties of populism than to make the leap from boring mainstream parties to the fringe. The Greens’ deputy leader is a former hypnotist who once hypnotised a Sun reporter in order to enlarge her breasts. That’s such a Reform Party bio!

There’s always been a strong right wing element to environmentalism, eg fears over population growth easily shading into fears over too many of the wrong sort of people, or anti-vax types. If you love the countryside and are scared it’s going to get built over with ugly houses then it’s a very short leap to being anti-immigration.

N=1 and all that, but someone I know hosts a local green party monthly meeting in their café. They were saying about how much of the local groups focus was on not building new homes in the fields near their houses (development is planned on basically all the local council owned fields), and why don't we focus on regenerating somewhere much less affluent 5-10 miles away.

A lot of what he has said revolved around doing what will make things better for them rather than think about what's actually needed.

EDIT - that's not to say that greens are bad or anything, just how local activists can be hugely driven by what affects them personally.

🤷‍♂️ Adding the badge “Green” and “it’s about preserving the environment (mine)” to your NYMBY-ism is probably a great comfort blanket. Many people need that, rather than face their own essential selfishness.

Plus, surely those vote shifts are assumed and they have no idea if people switched, individually, or if people who didn’t vote in 2019 and did so this time (giving a different outcome) and people who did, then, didn’t now, etc?
All they know (in the case of the 6% Green shift) is that fewer people turned out to vote Green. How would they know if those people voted previously, let alone who they voted for?