The Sunday Times: "Simon Case to step down as Whitehall prepares for change at the top"
"Cabinet secretary will leave in January prompting a possible return for Sir Oliver Robbins -– the rising star who quit abruptly when Boris Johnson won his 2019 landslide"
This is flying extremely low under the radar and the election noise today, Simon Case is Cabinet Secretary (Head of the UK Civil Service) ... well worth a read
@Natasha_Jay IIRC there was a lot of chatter when he was appointed about his lack of seniority and experience having never been a Permanent Secretary. In Yes Minister terms it was as if Sir Humphrey appointed Bernard as his successor.
"Written as a letter to a child in Gaza, this film takes the audience on a haunting & realistic journey through Gaza today from a child’s perspective imbued with guilt of a foreign journalist.
"Stylish, artistic, horrifying, yet hopeful that we can do better. After all — we must."
Loving how every UK independent polling analyst I follow has got completely bored with the actual UK election result, and has now moved on to focus on pretty much two issues:
transparency / assumptions to allow unpicking of the MRP model per polling company post-election 📈
formally modeling the probability of Ed Davey becoming Leader of the Opposition (LOTO) 🥰
@Natasha_Jay@jen@zbrown It's one of these things where just a slight fall in the Tory vote and/or rise in the LibDem numbers could see a large number of seats fall. First Past The Post and Gerrymandering is generally very good for the Tories, right up until the tipping point is reached and suddenly it isn't any more.
@A_C_McGregor
I suspect a lot about Reform too
Yes, there's a tipping point where the Tories fall apart and 50-60 seats becomes a reality, especially with tactical voting
There have been multiple constituency opinion polls this election and multiple MRP polls. To try to tell which MRP's are more accurate, I've compared the constituency opinion poll results with the equivalent MRP seat projections, and the results are very interesting.
Thread below, but the TLDR version is that the #Ipsos and #WeThink MRPs seem to be the closest match to the constituency polling we've seen.
VOTERS IN BRITAIN: Please be aware that today is the last day (deadline at 5pm) to apply for Voter ID if you don't already have a form of valid ID.
And please make sure that you do have a form of valid ID. Actually, I'm sure that all of you for whom this is relevant do indeed have valid ID already. So please check that your friends and relatives do too! Especially those who aren't particularly engaged in politics.
When you do follow politics closely, it's easy to forget that there are a lot of people out there for whom this is a big surprise. Help them to make sure they have valid ID if you can, help them to check not assume.
It's primarily the photo on the ID that they are interested in. My driving licence had expired when I last voted but they accepted it because the photo was still a likeness.
Having said that I now have a voter ID certificate with a new photo.
@Natasha_Jay What I don't think I've seen yet is much about how this upswell of Reform support might translate into seats in our FPTP system. I suspect it might cause a lot of disgruntled voters come 5th July and add to their social disillusion.
@MintSpies
It means there are a lot more seats the Tories may lose to Labour and the LDs with a Reform squeeze. I can see them reduced to anywhere between 50 and 170 seats, as many are too close to call
@Natasha_Jay When you’ve got a party dominated by finance bros from the City they’ll bet on anything where they think they have an edge ( which is kinda their former jobs anyway). If you really want to depress yourself look into how much hedge funds made betting on a post-Brexit economic collapse and how much those same fund managers donated to Vote Leave.