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The vast majority of postal votes are posted within 2-3 days of recieving them. Around 20% of votes were postal in 2019 so I'd guess close to that figure have already voted now. I'm a Labour canvasser and we had a big push last week targeting likely postal voters.

I agree that we need to increase taxes but the problem for Labour is that every time it's gone into an election while in opposition with even a hint that it's going to raise taxes, it loses. The party is scarred by 1992 and 2015. The British public want European public services with US-level taxes. I think Labour has one shot at a 'Doctor's Budget' in the autumn where Rachel Reeves says something along the lines of: "We've looked at the figures and the Tories have messed up the public finances even more than we thought - we need to operate. To fix this we're going to need to raise specific taxes for a bit and we'll try to bring them back down once we've fixed stuff." Osborne did the mirror image of this in 2010 when his nonsense 'emergency budget' laid the foundations for a decade of austerity.

Only one view from the ground, but I was chatting with someone at the weekend who's been out canvassing for Labour in Islington North and they think it will be a comfortable but not huge Labour win. Personally I think it will be quite close but I don't know the area at all so I'm going purely off vibes.

Saw that she has a marketing background so that makes sense. Good to know which ‘fans’ matter to the club and which don’t.

Apologies if this has been mentioned already. The club recruited a Head of Fan Engagement three months ago, reportedly on a 70k+ salary. The price of matchday tickets seems like an important thing fans should be engaged on, but according to the main supporter groups this has not happened. What exactly does the Head of Fan Engagement do?

This is the real centre of English politics. Fund the NHS, bring back the death penalty.

This is Labour's exact policy! https://great-british-energy.org.uk/

Only happened to me once, when I was student living in a marginal. Have lived in safe seats the past decade or so and never been canvassed once. Although as a paid up Labour member I’d be worried about the data operation if I got a knock on the door.

Been out door knocking for Labour in two North West marginal seats this weekend. One is a bellwether seat, won by the Tories in 2019 but has been Labour before. The other has been held by the Tories since it was created 30 years ago. A few takeaways: I’ve not spoken to a single person voting Conservative, including quite a few who did in 2019. Of those 2019 Conservative voters I’d say a third are planning to vote Labour. The rest a mix of Reform, Lib Dem and not voting. Even the guy I spoke to who sends his kids to private school and was very annoyed at Labour’s VAT on private schools policy is planning to vote Lib Dem. I wouldn’t say there’s a wave of enthusiasm for Labour but quite a few people have heard more from Starmer over the last few weeks and like him. A lot of “he seems like a safe pair of hands”. Spoke to a few 2017 and 2019 Labour voters and the vast majority are voting Labour this time. Didn’t speak to anyone going Green. It helps that these are marginal seats where it’s essentially a straight choice between Labour and Conservative. Pretty much everyone thought the NHS is in a terrible state and that will influence how they vote. Generally there’s a lot of anti-politics feeling. I didn’t hear a lot of “they’re all the same” but the 2019 Conservative voters I spoke to felt very let down by Brexit (both remainers and leavers) and the chaos of the last few years. The key for Labour over the next couple of weeks is turning those voters from ‘definitely not Tory’ to Labour.

Fantastic city. Was there last autumn and met Ayoze Perez in a pizza restaurant! If you like wine I really recommend a place called Lama La Uva, near the Metropol Parasol. They do lovely tapas and if you tell them what kinds of wine you like they'll bring you various glasses to try out. A great spot for people watching.

Plenty to be critical about with the current leadership of the club, but when it comes to managers the track record over the last decade has been overwhelmingly positive. They also tend to move quickly to appoint once there is a vacancy. I imagine we'll have someone confirmed in the next 7-10 days.

This is exactly my concern with Moyes. That season with Sunderland was awful. Turned on the fans, digging out players in public etc.

He’s going to Bologna.

Can only talk about my time supporting the club really, so early 1990s onwards. 'Legendary' status comes from a combination of talent, longevity, achievements and charisma. In that time I'd say the certified legendary players are: Walsh Izzet Vardy Kasper Morgan Mahrez For managers it's O'Neill, Pearson and Ranieri.

A 40% switch rate on a 20% increase would make it one of the most price elastic goods in the world. That's the type of elasticity you'd associate with car insurance, not moving your kids to another school. Not only that, but those assumptions are based on every private school in the UK passing all of that 20% on to their customers, which seems highly unlikely. In fact, we already have some good evidence about the effect of increases in the price of private schooling. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, private school fees in the UK have risen by 20% above inflation since 2010, and by 55% above inflation since 2003. In that 20-year period, the percentage of UK pupils in private schools has remained remarkably static, hovering between 6% and 7%. Data here if anyone is interested: https://ifs.org.uk/publications/tax-private-school-fees-and-state-school-spending

Think their fans might spontaneously combust if they sell Gallagher and sign Winks.

Unbelievable. What an extraordinary game.

Starmer is not popular - albeit he is still the most popular party leader. It’s just not true to say Labour isn’t popular amongst 18-24 year olds. They’re polling the same as they did in the 2019 election amongst that age group. They are very unpopular amongst a small group of very online young people, but the polling suggests that group is not representative of your average teen/early 20-something. Obviously it’s likely that if elected they will become less popular with all demographics, because that’s what happens to every government.

Was wondering how many times a promoted team had changed manager in pre-season so had a quick look at the last 10 years. It's only happened twice in that period: Watford in 2015-16 (who stayed up) and Hull in 2016-17 (who went down).

3 that spring to mind: Bringing train operators back into public ownership Establish a new publicly owned energy company Bring into law a new bill of workers rights including banning zero hour contracts and strengthening union rights

'Democratic socialist' is a phrase which means a lot of different things to different people, so I suspect we won't agree on Corbyn. But that's ok. Let's return in 2029 and we can discuss what Labour have done in government.

Yeah, I don't think he's secretly a communist or anything. My view is that opposition is really different to government, it's mainly about positioning, and once you're in government a lot of what you do is dictated by events rather than what's in your manifesto anyway. I think what you can determine from Starmer's positioning in oppposition is that his government is going to try to prioritise the economy and revitalising public services, and everything else is regarded as a distraction. Not only does he actually believe in that stuff, but it also happens to be what the electorate are most bothered about. There's nothing wrong of course with being passionate about trans rights, or Palestine, or the undercover policing scandal. But let's face it, most people don't care about that stuff so if oppositions are percieved to be focusing on those issues they risk being percieved as out of touch. Case Study 101: The Labour Party 2010-2020.

A big part of Starmer's MO over the last four years is to not do anything pointless that makes no difference to the actual policy outcomes but could give the Tories a stick to beat them with. Think that vote falls squarely into that category. As it looks like he's on course to win a triple figure majority I'd say it's a strategy that's worked. Obviously it's a matter of opinion whether getting into power is more important than the outcomes of individual votes while in opposition. Personally I think it is.

I thought this might be what you referring to, but was confused because Section 35 doesn't require Parliamentary legislation to be used - it's a statutory instrument. There was a standing order debate in the Commons but that has no bearing on whether S35 is applied.

Can you explain what you mean by this?