Be Excellent To Each Other

Immediately booked my leave for clerking. After the many 'expressions of interest' at the local elections, I'm expecting a part-carnival atmosphere.

I’m on holiday, so will need to do a postal vote. I wonder what choices I’ll get? Either way it’s a new MP as Sajid isn’t standing (and hasn’t been heard from for ages).

Oh, and…

Everyone make sure they have their ID!

Or apply for postal vote and you don't need it.

We've been postal voting for a few years now

I'm away too that week.

I'll have to watch the results show on catchup.

Postal vote application just sent off!

Postal for me, which does me out of a beer.

Not quite fully updated yet, but https://tactical.vote/

Obviously this is just media punditry, but I think this would be fairly hilarious if it happened. Holding a leadership contest in the run-up to a general election seems like a certain way to just slam your vote share head-first into the floor. We'd end up with some insane situation where Labour has a majority of 400 and Penny Morduant is the leader of a Conservative Party that has 8 MPs

Yes, sounds mostly like he's talking to himself, or dragging someone else to his frotting dreams in with leading questions, but still an entertaining and not unbelievable scenario.

Whenever I hear owd Rishi speak, and for some reason it was particularly noticeable during his speech yesterday, all I can hear is Will from the Inbetweeners.

Surely they've twigged this is a bad idea by now? I imahine every editor in every news org has the office intern checking people who ask questions against lists of local councillors or whatever.

That was a bewildering and entertaining watch yesterday. I couldn't remember when watching it if it was tradition for PMs when announcing the date to do long rambling tetchy speeches or just say, "Here's the date kthnxbye." It was also a bit weird hearing a bleak recital of past events and a bleak projection of future dangerous geopolitical events with him saying that only he can bring the stability and stern watchfulness that can help see us through it, when the entire legacy of the Tory party has been one of infighting chaos and that he didn't have the gumption to bring a brolly with him or indeed use the press room they expressly built for this kind of thing when there's a very heavy downpour threatening. His final glower before stalking off was a strange watch as well.

Sorry to hear you won't get to watch it live, Kern! I always enjoy your running commentaries on these things.

Also I've booked the day after the election off, so I can recover.

https://x.com/TomLarkinSky/status/1793608546015490381

Rishi Sunak taking a brave approach to small talk at a brewery in Wales.

He asked workers if they're looking forward to 'all the football'. One quickly pointed out that Wales haven't qualified for the Euros 😬 pic.twitter.com/kiHRxNVipe

— Tom Larkin (@TomLarkinSky) May 23, 2024

Going well already.

At least he picked one of the few genuinely good Welsh breweries instead of Brains or Tiny Rebel. Though, of course, he doesn't drink, so no fun there. And he picked a part of the UK that actively hates him for his campaign launch. And etc.

He won't have picked it, it will likely have been one of the civil servants at No. 10. And someone will have given him prompts for what to talk about. I hope they told him to mention the footy in the knowledge that Wales haven't qualified.

I'm also really hoping that someone in his office will 'accidentally' set Rishi up for a debacle like Rudy Giulliani at Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

Ian Dunt's email today talking about the Tories sending out an email looking for 200-odd (!) candidates (Labour need 100 or so). They'll have a fortnight to vet them. Many will be in very safe seats for other parties, so you'll need "someone very odd" to run.

Expect more hilarity.

Reform are apparently aiming to put 600-odd candidates forward. I imagine some very interesting characters will pop up.

Where do you fancy standing?

https://www.reformparty.uk/candidate-ap ... l-election

Have you ever been a member of, or affiliated with, any of the following: Tommy Robinson, National Front (NF), British National Party (BNP), Britain First, English Defence League (EDL), For Britain Movement or Antifa?

One of these things is not like the others, one of these does not belong

I saw that. It wasn’t clear if these are seen as a negative or positive

Clearly they're just looking for good people and there's good people on both sides.

A bit left of centre, please.

https://www.politics.co.uk/news-feature ... reform-uk/

They walk amongst us

Not sure if I can bothered to watch Sunak v Starmer on ITV tonight, unless they're going straight to the cage fight.

What if they add a surprise guest, the new leader of the Reform Party?

Tories pledge annual cap on migration, but Cleverly won't put a number on it.

Or, to put it another way, 'Tories pledge annual cap on migration, but cleverly won't put a number on it.'

It's a really small number though. Whatever number you're thinking of, it's lower than that. Promise

69, dudes!
<Guitar noise>

Title of your sex tape.

Excellent!

Ten minutes in and if I hear the word 'plan' one more time I think I'll throw something at the telly.

I saw the first three seconds and gibbed it off.

Cannot stand the PM. Effete, tiresomely smug, and not nearly as with it as he thinks he is.

Trying to work out how it's been staged to make them look of similar height.

My bet is a slightly sloping stage.

Well, that was staggeringly unenlightening.

Both awful, the host not much better.

About the only thing I can remember from last night was Starmer getting very excited when asked about football at the end.

I should have stayed listening to the lovely octets on Radio 3 instead. Oh well.

Just watched nothing but 5 minutes of just this.



Somewhere, Nigel is going apoplectic and writing to the BBC to accuse them of sabotaging his campaign ..... unless ...... that WAS the Reform Election Broadcast, incorporating the Four Cs - Clear, Concise, Complete Correct.

ITVs was the same, so it must be deliberate

Maybe Reform have a really tight marketing budget.

And there are a reasonable number of people who *do* like the idea of something genuinely different to vote for, but find Farage offputting.

So they have an election broadcast without him in it, or any of the other Reform candidates who might say something unacceptable to public decency. Sneaky bastards.

Or because the whole thing has been thrown together on the whim of a narcissistic madman, they didn't have time to do anything real

I've just had a look on YouTube to see if there was anything about it and found this on Times Radio


“The fact that this would have been past around mates, talked about in the pub that’s an incredibly powerful effect”.

Reform UK reveal their five minutes of static party political broadcast as a "finger in the eye to the Westminster establishment" says Mark Lucas former director of presentation for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

I reckon they picked up on some stat that "on average people only watch a few seconds of a party political broadcast" and went from there.