Eloise's Thoughts and Fancies

The 2024 Local Elections are in, and they need a little bit of unpacking. The headline is clear: this is a catastrophe for the Conservatives. However, it’s worth remembering that the Tories had an unexpected high mark when these seats were last contested - it was just after the first vaccine rollout and they had a huge lift in the polls. Big losses were inevitable because they’re nowhere near that. That said, in most parts of the country, they’ve lost, and lost badly to Labour. In places where they were up against the LibDems, they’ve lost to them. This is pretty much business as usual for British politics. While it is tricky to generalise from local elections to general elections, it would be fair to say this pattern reflects the national opinion polls and while you couldn’t say “this means Labour will win seat X” or “the LibDems will win seat Y” with any confidence but you can suggest that the LibDems will be a threat in seats where they were second to the Tories in 2019, while Lab...

Super Saturday is here. There are quite a few questions this year. Can Wales win a game and do better than the men? Can they avoid the wooden spoon? Who will finish third and not only play in WX1 but guarantee a place at next year’s World Cup? (The other three teams can still make it, but the team that finishes third will qualify today.) The Matches Wales v Italy The match was played at The Principality Stadium as part of a huge day of Welsh rugby, four matches in total. While I think this is a great thing in general, the women’s fixtures have been packing out the Arm's Park and the same crowd (actually a somewhat larger one) is lost in the Principality, which is a bit of a shame. This was a nervy match, it’s not right to say that neither side wanted to win, they both tried but the shortcomings that have been on display throughout the championship haunted both sides. The Welsh pack were superior, although far from faultless, the Italian backs were superior but the Welsh defence c...