Owen Michael

@owenwmichael.bsky.social

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Welsh and European. Biromantic Asexual. @UKLabour, @unisontheunion, and @thefabians. Data person and all round geek. He/him/o

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Owen Michael

Maybe Macron is doing some elaborate double game to make everyone like Attal more by forcing him to be the one who went 'of course we're standing down to stop the far right where we're third behind the left, are you nuts?' Or maybe he just has gone nuts. Anyway, heartening results.

Leftwing surge thwarts far right in French election, polls suggestFinancial Timeswww.ft.com Projections indicate Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National has fallen well short of expected gains in parliament

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Owen Michael

the best method to ensure this mind you is to allow for a political life where the left and centre are allowed to freely compete instead of being straitjacketed into the same bloc, a metric that eg. America does very badly on

When you find common ground with people with whom you agree some of the time but not all of the time, you can prevent people with whom you agree none of the time from taking power. The left and the center have far more in common than either wants to admit.

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Owen Michael

I worry I will never be able to get Rishi Sunak’s 2024 campaign out of my head. How did they end up with a line on the NHS which was essentially “constant junior doctor strikes are an inevitable part of life, dumbass”?

But if he resolved the strikes, then he wouldn’t be able to go to the country with “hey, I know you had to spend 9 hours in A&E, but it’s all the junior doctor strike, which is a thing completely out of my control, like the weather or an earthquake”.

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Owen Michael

Balfour’s Rule: Nothing matters very much, and most things don’t matter at all

NEW: Biden has narrowed Trump’s lead in swing states despite a widely panned presidential debate performance, the Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll finds

Biden Narrows Gap With Trump in Swing States Despite Debate Losswww.bloomberg.com The incumbent trails his GOP rival by just 2 points across key states, a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult shows, even as three in 10 Democrats say he should leave the race.

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Owen Michael

the other thing is that people have no sense of how much space cars and so they imagine that a road full of cars must be a lot of people when it very often is not. a well-used bike lane transports like twice as many people during a given time as does a road

I've become convinced that one of the biggest obstacles to better road design in commercial areas is well-off business owners who drive their BMW to work every day and find it impossible to imagine a customer who uses any other mode of conveyance to arrive at the shop.

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Owen Michael

Meanwhile over at the Telegraph, a leader writer wonders if a community taking part in the democratic process means its time to stop "handing citizenship out" to them. The absolute state of this.

The lobby did a generally decent job last night. But this language/mindset around British Muslim voting trends is profoundly unsettling and offensive.

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Owen Michael

I think misplaced cynicism about election promises is causing a lot of people to work too hard on “why did the Tories lose so badly?” It’s not that deep: most parties keep at least 80 per cent of their pledges. This one…really the only one is that they didn’t raise VAT. How else was it gonna end?

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Owen Michael

Some initial thoughts on the UK elections. 1. It confirms once again that when a center-right party veers to the hard right to weaken the far right, it ends up doing the opposite. After purging moderates and going full-on wingnuts and fever swamp, the Tories got decimated by Reform, not Labour. 🧵

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Owen Michael

Very good thread this. In many ways this was a typical 2020s European election. When you consider how so many of those are ending, that's a bit worrying.

2. Labour held steady in total votes, but combined with the fractured vote on the right, won a historic parliamentary majority. This is in line with trends elsewhere in Europe. The far right rises and wins when the center-left atomizes (Italy, France) and falls short when it holds (Spain, Portugal).

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Owen Michael

It's fairly obvious from the results that this latest Labour Party coalition is dominated by public sector employees of various grades and skilled workers. Which is interesting as guess which parts of the workforce still have large numbers of TU members. Time is a flat circle?

I think I'll take Rishi conceding as the moment to crack open the prosecco

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Owen Michael

Essentially if you see this election as “the 2005 era Labour coalition against a much much weaker Tory party and when voters are much more willing to shop around” it makes a huge amount of sense.

The splitters must be so proud of themselves

Shapps gone - what about Michael Green?

Weirdly loud single cheer for the Elmo guy's 19 votes in Holborn and St Pancras there....

Second recount in Basildon. Lol at how the chicken run is working out

Nice to hear @stephenkb.bsky.social talking sense on Radio 4

Galloway out despite the technical difficulties! Congratulations Paul Waugh!

Oh fuck /off/

Mick Lynch saying he hopes to get on with working with the new government, and pointing out to the presenters that each step in a pro-worker direction is a step to what he wants when try to drump up conflict

So Barnsley North held fairly easily in the end.....

Everything people are saying about the TV is justifying my decision to just listen to Radio 4 (on @stephenbush.bsky.social's advice)

My predictions yesterday do look like I did pretty well based on the exit poll though

Whoops, so excited by exit poll I missed my station

Well Was definitely not expecting that many Reform

Out GOTV (MTV?) for Tim Roca and Macclesfield Labour this afternoon - final push!

Voted before work this morning for Jonny Reynolds, Labour and #Change. It will only happen if people vote for it - so do and remember photo ID!

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Owen Michael

Nina Power: “I’m literally a Nazi.” Kathleen Stock OBE:”Keep doing what you’re doing Nina, you are great.”

Kathleen Stock helped raise money so some fascist freaks could attempt to censor someone who pointed out that they are fascist freaks. It would be remiss of us to let her forget this.

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Owen Michael

frankly, the first defeat that we can hand them, in November, is the easiest possible one we are going to be offered, and we'd be fools not to make it happen.

a thing to remember, in all of this horror, is that these are not the actions of a political party that is confident it represents the will of the people, and who is currently out of power and enslaved to a deeply flawed avatar. the struggle is not over and they have not won

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Owen Michael

Conservatives; “there’s only two genders” Also conservatives: “check out this gender spectrum”

they keep inventing new guys