Santa isn’t the only one struggling in the poles this Christmas!

As this week draws to a close, the data team at Trafalgar Strategy tracked and analysed the sentiment of tweets about the Prime Minister. Over a one week period, they tracked a sample of 15k tweets and visualised the data on a swingometer, to assess the Twitter fallout and measure the damage done to a Prime Minister whose time in Downing Street could well be up.

Unsurprisingly, as revelations emerged about a Christmas Party at Downing street last year, the public reaction on Twitter has been visceral and swift. Throughout the week – as shown on the swingometer – sentiment has nosedived. Starting low, the average sentiment expressed on Twitter has fallen by almost 50% over the past seven days.

Angela Rayner perfectly summed up the mood – with the best performing Tweet on the topic – accusing the Prime Minister of consistently breaking rules and taking the British public for fools. Not one to shy away from attacking the Prime Minister, Anna Soubry used similar language in an attack on the Prime Minister that focused not on COVID, or parties, but the Prime Minister’s plans to allow ministers to throw out legal rulings they don’t support.

Although one would expect both Rayner and Soubry to attack the Prime Minister, of more concern should be the normal, non-Westminster Twitter users who’ve reacted with outrage. One such user, @stevewright58 found overwhelming Twitter support when he tweeted: “Hey @BorisJohnson my mum just found out about the Downing Street parties last year, when she was terrified to come to ours. God help you if she gets hold of you.” Despite only having just over 380 followers, the tweet was shared over 2,300 times and liked by more than 13k users.

Commenting on the findings, Giles Kenningham said: “The Conservative party is, and has always been a ruthless electioneering machine – with no compunction in replacing leaders unable to deliver at the ballot box.”

#Data #Politics #SocialMedia

Under The Radar – 03 December

This week, we discuss:

1. Starmer shuffles the deck and shows his hand

2. Iran nuclear deal talks restart

3. Watchdog calls for tuition fee refund over strikes

Starmer shuffles the deck and shows his hand

What Happened?

Keir Starmer reshuffled his shadow cabinet for the second time this year.

Yvette Cooper has returned for the first time since she resigned in 2015, picking up where she left off as Shadow Home Secretary. Meanwhile, David Lammy has replaced Lisa Nandy as Shadow Foreign Secretary, with the latter now shadowing Michael Gove in the “levelling-up” brief.

What does it mean?

These appointments indicate where Labour intend to fight the next election.

By installing Yvette Cooper as Shadow Home Secretary, Starmer is deploying a politician from the centre ground who is comfortable enough to talk tough on crime and has the experience to skewer Priti Patel’s dysfunctional Home Office.

Meanwhile, David Lammy is one of the few Labour MPs with some degree of cut through with the public – partly due to his successful LBC show – and holds appeal to liberal minded Conservatives who are uncomfortable with Boris Johnson’s right-wing approach to the culture wars.

Similarly, Lisa Nandy is one of Labour’s strongest media performers and is infamously known for her love of towns and local bus services; it makes sense to task her with scrutinising the government’s progress on “levelling-up” and crafting Labour’s vision for this crucial part of the electoral map.

Labour needs to gain ground on issues where they have long been perceived as weak. Instead of fighting elections on the NHS, where they are already trusted, defeating the Tory’s on their own turf – crime and the economy – is the only way they can win an election.   

Iran nuclear deal talks restart

What happened? Formal discussions will take place in Vienna on Monday to discuss the future of the Iran Nuclear Pact, known as JCPOA. Aside from Iran, Russia and China will be attendance, alongside Germany, France and Britain. The original deal was struck in 2015 to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. What does this mean?

Next week’s meeting of global superpowers brings together the usual mismatch of ideologies and agendas although a degree of unity between the parties here offers hope. All five countries negotiating with Iran want a full implementation of the deal, along with the current US sanctions to be lifted. The US will be notable in their absence from Vienna but rest assured that the Biden administration will be keeping a close eye on talks.

Whilst in power, President Trump pulled out from the Iran deal with Washington now seeking an immediate return. When the original pact was negotiated, the US and Israel sought to stop Iran from becoming a so-called “threshold” state. According to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who recently declared the Iranian nuclear program to be at “a watershed moment”, they are failing.

So, does the deal matter? Mark Fitzpatrick, veteran non-proliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, argues that “the answer is certainly yes”, especially for the enhanced verification measures the agreement entails.

Fitzpatrick does, however, flag that due to Iran’s series of unrealistic demands, a return to JCPOA seems unrealistic. For such an unstable region in the Middle East, surely even a weak deal is better than no deal.

Watchdog calls for tuition fee refund over strike action

What happened?

The third wave of industrial action at universities is underway, prompting the student watchdog to call on universities to offer partial tuition fee refunds in compensation for the disruption. What does it mean?

Universities across the country are being hit with significant strike action this week with a three-day walkout at 58 institutions now underway. With staff striking over proposed pension cuts, and pay and working conditions, more than a million students in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and more than 100,000 enrolled with the Open University are likely to be impacted.

This is the latest in a series of strikes that have disrupted the higher education sector over recent years, with two-week long strikes occurring in 2018 and 2019. In March 2018, around a million students were estimated to have been affected by strike action – with that number ramping up as the strike action has continued.

Since then, calls for tuition fund rebates to compensate for disruption and loss of teaching have grown louder. In March 2018, a petition calling for tuition fees rebate amassed more than 126,000 signatures.

Nicola Dandridge, the head of the Office for Students (OfS), the higher education regulator in England, said that universities affected by the industrial action would need to make up for any disruption. She highlighted the fact that universities are subject to consumer protection laws too and would therefore have to put in place measures to make up for any disruption caused by industrial action.

This week’s must reads

1. “How UK trade went woke” by Emilio Casalicchio for Politico

2. “It’s smart to give Lisa Nandy the levelling-up brief. But what’s most needed is money” by Larry Elliot for The Guardian

3. “Nationalism is bankrupt and has no answers” by William Hague for The Times

4. “The end of Roe” by Mary Ziegler for The Atlantic

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Under The Radar – 26 November

This week, we discuss:

1. Sweden’s first female PM resigns within hours

2. OPEC+ members to halt global supplies

3. El Salvador attempts to become a crypto pioneer

Sweden’s first female prime minister resigns within hours

What Happened? Sweden’s first female Prime Minister-elect, Magdalena Andersson, was forced to resign just hours after being appointed. She stood down after her coalition partner, the Greens, quit the government. What does it mean?

Ms Andersson, the current finance minister, had just won a dramatic vote in the country’s Riksdag to become the country’s next prime minister. With 174 of the 349 Riksdag members voting against her and only 117 MPs backing her, Andersson did not win a majority. However, under Swedish law, she only needed a majority of MPs not to vote against her. As such, with 57 abstentions, she secured the narrowest of victories – by just one vote.

Andersson’s election as the head of a minority government came after an 11th-hour deal with the opposition Left party, who required concessions on higher pensions and health insurance in exchange for their support. Andersson had also initially secured the support of both the Centre Party and the Greens.

Despite Sweden’s flagship gender equality policies like shared parental leave, it is now the only Nordic nation to have never had a female prime minister. However, the Greens’ withdrawal from the government caused her leadership to unravel just a few hours later, making for a very short-lived tenure as Sweden’s first female leader.

Magdalena has since told the speaker of parliament that she hopes to be re-appointed as prime minister at the head of a single-party government instead. But, with elections set for next year, such an arrangement would put Andersson in a vulnerable position at a time when Swedish politics is becoming increasingly divided.

OPEC+ members to halt global supplies in response to release

What happened? The head of the International Energy Agency has called on OPEC+, the cartel of the 24 largest oil-exporting countries, to increase oil supplies in order to calm global markets amid rising prices.

What does this mean?

As the global energy market becomes increasingly unstable, the possibility of a political rift is emerging between major oil-exporting and consuming countries. Over the past week alone, the US, China, Japan and the UK have all said they will now release millions of barrels of oil from their strategic reserves. Though the move was aimed at lowering the global price of crude oil, this so far seems to have been unsuccessful – it has been reported that both Saudi Arabia and Russia are now considering a pause in their own supplies in response to the release of strategic reserves. Whilst OPEC+ members have been coordinating their outputs, Saudi Arabia and Russia now appear set on taking a different route. The UAE, however, does not believe a pause in supplies is necessary, meaning a disagreement between them at OPEC+’s next strategy meeting in December is expected. OPEC+ was created in 2018, through the addition of 10 members to the original 14 OPEC-founders, in an attempt to gain near-total control over global oil supplies and reserves. With such considerable influence over a vital global commodity, it remains to be seen whether the recent release of oil reserves will be strong enough to resist any backlash from OPEC+.

El Salvador attempts to become crypto pioneer

What happened?

President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador has announced plans to build a ‘volcano-powered bitcoin city’. The move reflects both Bukele’s commitment to El Salvador becoming a ‘crypto trailblazer’, in spite of thousands taking to the streets back in September to protest Bitcoin becoming legal tender. What does it mean?

In September, El Salvador became the first country to adopt cryptocurrency as legal tender, in an attempt to facilitate economic growth, greater financial inclusion and a lesser reliance on the US dollar. And whilst cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Dogecoin have been hot topics in the media for some time now, this latest development has raised several eyebrows. While on the surface it may appear that Bukele is leading a fintech revolution, commentators have linked his decision to the rocky funding talks between El Salvador and the IMF, centred around the IMF’s concerns over the economic risks involved in such a move. Public sentiment in El Salvador has been unenthusiastic, with the cost of transactions on everyday purchases often outweighing the cost of the purchase itself. Furthermore, Salvadorans have frequently been unable to utilise the platform because the app, Chivo, has been plagued by technical difficulties since its inception.

Despite the scepticism around cryptocurrency and its stability – or lack thereof – several central banks are weighing up the pros and cons of launching their own digital currencies. Though it remains to be seen whether the institutionalised introduction of cryptocurrencies on a global scale will become commonplace, many will be watching developments in El Salvador closely.

This week’s must reads:

1. “The conservative war on education that failed” by Adam Laats for The New Statesman

2. “For Brexiteers who dreamed of taking back control, France is too close for comfort” by Rafael Behr for The Guardian

3. “The gap between Boris and business widens” by Kate Andrews for The Spectator

4. “The Times view on Europe’s Covid riots: Vaccine Lies” by The Times

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