Rishi! Sunak!

The thing with him starting his 6 month long election campaign early is that the more people see of him, the less they like him.

I know his enormous ego won’t allow him to even countenance this, but his horrible entitled, condescending tone when delivering speech’s coupled with his whiney, tetchy ‘how dare you?!’ attitude when questioned are hardly very appealing. So the longer he hangs on for, the more his personal approval rates plummet

It’s just a shame that the country is in limbo, effectively with no government, while this nonsense drags on

Two separate opinion polls out today, PeoplePolling and YouGov, give identical results for Labour, Conservative, LibDems, and Greens, I have never seen that before.

Although I struggle to believe that the LibDems are only one percentage point ahead of the Greens, which both polls claim.

@binners that article is properly boiling my piss.
How the hell is that fair or legal. Utterly insane that children’s care is for profit

Westminster Voting Intention:LAB: 47% (+2)CON: 20% (+1)REF: 14% (=)LDM: 9% (=)GRN: 8% (=)SNP: 0% (-4)Via @PeoplePolling, On 16 May,Changes w/ 4 April.
byu/Rualn1441 inScotland

https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49455-voting-intention-con-20-lab-47-15-16-may-2024

that article is properly boiling my piss.

How the hell is that fair or legal. Utterly insane that children’s care is for profit

Now imagine you are married to a social worker who has had to travel all over the country to get a child into one of those units.

And the staff who have to deal with them there are chronically undervalued and underpaid.

Absolutely **** criminal, literal theft of public money while rarely delivering the support and outcomes those children need.

SNP 0%?  Or just another UK wide poll that is nonsense in its application to Scotland?

It’s not a proper poll. Ignore it. The YouGov poll makes more sense.

“Now imagine you are married to a social worker who has had to travel all over the country to get a child into one of those units.”

I can’t even imagine how bad it is. Just grateful there are people able to do the job. Yet another area where the funding for people and the needs should be as good as it should be

kelvinFull Member
It’s not a proper poll. Ignore it. The YouGov poll makes more sense.

Yeah people polling are a bit of a weird one, they do a lot of work for gbnews so that immediately makes me suspicious

You’d think they’d see the snp score and think maybe this isnt good data before publishing?

Anyway interesting breakdown of the yougov has 2019 tory voters going 1/3rd tory, ~20%  to reform 12% Labour, 18% don’t know and 6% won’t vote

The 18% dks are where the tories have the potential to turn a wipeout into ‘just a defeat’ be interesting to see if they can pull that off come November /  January

SNP 0%? Or just another UK wide poll that is nonsense in its application to Scotland?

Of course it is UK wide, it is voting intentions for the Westminster parliament.

Zero for the SNP does seem strange, almost all polls put the SNP share at 2-3%. Having said that the accepted margin of error is 3%

The very latest opinion poll which concluded yesterday puts SNP on 2%

https://x.com/wethinkpolling/status/1791494365254172797

Edit: That ^^ poll puts the LibDems and the Greens on an identical share of the vote. I would love to believe that the Greens might possibly become the third party in UK politics but I imagine that the general election result will be very different.

ernie – totally meaningless in regard to the SNP vote – UK wide polls are not granular enough to be able to have any prediction on the SNP vote – as their vote is around 4% and margin or error is 3%

SNP are the third largest party in the UK by a long way with 43 seats.  Greens and lib dems are nowhere near them

SNP are the third largest party in the UK by a long way with 43 seats.

Not for much longer.

SNP are the third largest party in the UK by a long way with 43 seats.

I am of course talking about share of the vote, sorry I thought that obvious.

IN FPTP seats is the only thing that counts.  🙂

I think the thing that counts is that the SNP has very little support outside Scotland.

You know how the next general election isn’t all about London, and not everyone is obsessed with how London thinks politically? Well the same is true of Scotland.

so being the 3rd largest party with a fair chance of holding the balance of power is irrelevant?

I doubt they will be holding anything and I cant see either main stream party wanting anything to do with the SNP. Be interesting to see how they do in the general election, I imagine they will have less than 43 seats next year.

Oh they will lose seats ok – 10 – 20 loss range is my bet.  Still a toss up that they will be the third largest party

Its just classic how the third largest party is ignored and gets a tiny fraction of the air time / media attention of smaller parties such as the lib dems or reform.  Many of the other parties have no representation over vast swathes of the UK as well.

the third largest party is ignored and gets a tiny fraction of the air time / media attention of smaller parties such as the lib dems

That’s because the Liberal Democrats recieved THREE TIMES MORE votes than the SNP at the last general election.

The population of Scotland relative to the rest of the UK is tiny, to put some perspective on it the population of London is greater than the combined populations of Scotland and Wales, so a lot of people in the UK are not really that interested in the local politics of Scotland.

Obviously the SNP gets a huge amount of airtime on STW, certainly more than the LibDems, mostly thanks to you TJ. Despite you apparently never having voted for them 😂

The lib dems have less that half the seats and a tiny % of the members.    They are much less important than the SNP in national UK terms

Well that’s the whole point, in national UK terms the LibDems are far more important than the SNP. The LibDems received 3.7 million votes, which is why they get more airtime than the SNP who didn’t get anywhere near that level of support.

Obviously you want to milk the first past the post electoral system for all it’s worth but it doesn’t justify treating the SNP with the same level of importance as the LibDems, let alone more important, as you wish to claim.

Its just classic how the third largest party is ignored and gets a tiny fraction of the air time / media attention of smaller parties such as the lib dems or reform.

It is because they are only available to 7% of the UK population so pretty much irrelevant to anyone outside of that Scottish 7%.  The same as why we don’t find Plaid Cymru relevant when talking about UK government.

They have less chance of being the UK  government (as it is technically impossible) than the Green Party which is saying something…

What parochial attitudes you show.  The SNP have almost 3 times the seats of the lib dems.  This attitude you show here is one of the drivers for independence

But surely that’s the point…the SNP are almost the definition of parochial

Surely a party that I cannot vote for is pointless wasting too much time thinking about, they only impact is how they affect the parties I can vote for.

What parochial attitudes you show.

Oh the ironing ! 😂

You know full well that the SNP unlike the LibDems has no support outside Scotland, and that despite your consent reference to first past the post that the LibDems have three times more support throughout the UK than the SNP.

And yet you want them to both receive the same level of media coverage. Instead of repeating the same spin over and over again perhaps you should explain why you believe that the average person living in England and Wales should be particularly interested in Scottish politics?

Btw there are more Labour MPs in London than there are SNP MPs in Scotland, do you think that the rest of the UK should be particularly interested in the views of Labour MPs from London?

Why would I care about an insular little party like the snp when I can’t vote for them?
If we had a better form of voting then we would care even less

Fek me if you think Scottish politics is under reported at a UK level, try finding out about Wales. Actually the same probably goes for any region. Unless a total shitstorm is going on, it doesn’t get on the radar.

i’m no more interested in Scottish politics than I am the politics of Denmark or Norway.

And the West Lothian question is still a thing so maybe SNP supporters should stop moaning? 🤷🏻‍♂️

This attitude you show here is one of the drivers for independence

Is this the politcal equivalent of taking your cricket set home if you don’t get what you want? Sounds a bit like the brexiteers did before 2016.

i’m no more interested in Scottish politics than I am the politics of Denmark or Norway.

So you don’t care what’s happening in the UK – interesting…

So you don’t care what’s happening in the UK

Most of the important stuff is decided in Westminster. I’m all for devolving as much as possible to regional and local govt, but that should be within a greater federated state. The SNP though just have their cake and eat it much like Johnson et al wanted for brexit so no I’m not really interested in that.

Utterly insane that children’s care is for profit

You occasional reminder that most NHS High Street services – Dentists, Pharmacists, GPs, Care Homes, Opticians, Audiologists are all run by for-profit organisations.

I’m all for devolving as much as possible to regional and local govt, but that should be within a greater federated state.

Except you said you don’t care about Scottish politics, so you have no interest in “devolving as much as possible” as you still want the centre to have full control.

This attitude you show here is one of the drivers for independence

And yet the SNP care so much about independence their new leader has just scrapped the cabinet post specifically for it.

@nickc difference is, i knew about those. I don’t like that either

so you have no interest in “devolving as much as possible” as you still want the centre to have full control.

Devolving powers != Independence

TBH if Scotland wants to be independent that’s fine by me, I just think it will be a really stupid thing to do for all the reasons we thought leaving the EU was a bad idea.

@nickc difference is, i knew about those. I don’t like that either

Oh sure, I get that, I’m not making the case that for-profit is the best (or only) way these things should be organised, just that they are. I generally think most folks don’t really give it much thought, and are (like you) surprised when they discover some-one’s making money from it.

The difference between children’s care and those high street NHS services (ok, GPs not so much) is whether the service user gets to choose the service provider.

That difference is enough to justify the “utterly insane”. The children are the commodity in this business model.

What’s utterly insane is government funded bodies agreeing to pay those prices, like the NHS paying £2k to cover a shift with an agency nurse (and the agency taking half it).