RandoEFC

Natalie Elphicke has just swapped from Tory to Labour. She's on record as having attacked trade unions over P&O Ferries' fire and rehire a couple of years ago amongst other things. She's pretty right wing and pedals the Boris Johnson fan-fiction that Rishi Sunak took over the Conservatives via a political coup. She's the MP for Dover and is standing down at the next election, so the chosen Labour candidate is still going to stand in her seat, and this is clearly a handshake deal that she can join to make Rishi Sunak look like a tit at Prime Minister's Questions today without actually having a long-term future in the Labour Party. But she is still not remotely the type of person they should be welcoming into their tent. I just don't get why Labour do this to themselves. They're on track for a huge win at the next election and if they're losing any votes, it's on the left. There is no need for them to make this move and risk alienating a bunch of people on the left and centre-left just to consolidate their position with centre and centre-right voters who are already overwhelming leaning towards them or at least toward not voting instead of voting Tory. Baffling.

Crawley 3-0 MK Dons. MK Dons came into the playoffs having finished 7-8 points ahead of Doncaster, Crewe and Crawley in the other playoff positions. Ouch.

Bolton made to sweat in the end after Barnsley scored twice in the second half but Bolton hold on to win 5-4 on aggregate.

Unless Forest have made massive profits this year, you could see them having another point deduction next year. Probably Everton too and is sounds like Leicester having a significant one is pretty nailed on. Leeds' accounts don't look great either if they do come up.

They were lucky to only get 4 in the first place but I half-expected the Premier League to be weak and give them 1 back just because they slashed our initial punishment in half. I wish we'd have withdrawn our second appeal as soon as we guaranteed safety because apparently it's an expensive process and I don't think we'll get ours reduced from 2.

No points back for Forest on appeal apparently. Even if Luton win both games now, Forest just have to beat Burnley on the last day to be safe. They might even get it done against Chelsea because you never know what you'll get from them. Burnley have ended the season stronger than Luton and looked more like they might be developing into a team that can compete at this level to an extent but it's too little, too late.

Onana is awful. Mateta goal is powerful but it's at his near post. The last goal ended up in the middle of the net as well. It's always like that isn't it? All because there's probably about 10 United fans waiting to hate watch the post match interviews from their manager and players for every Palace fan who just wants to see the analysis on their team.

Is it? If I'd been out all night and switched the tele on right now and seen the score I genuinely don't think I'd bat an eyelid. No word of a lie, I'd be a lot more shocked to see Man Utd go to Selhurst Park and be 3-0 or 4-0 up than this. It's a miracle Man Utd are in the top half to be honest. And the FA Cup final! They look like one of the worst teams in the league whenever I see them and they just seem to be constantly getting battered and embarrassed.

How much worse could United actually do if they just sold every single member of their squad for whatever they could get for them and used the proceeds to start from scratch with a new manager and a new culture?

I can see why West Ham want to try something else but fuck me, it would genuinely be one of the funniest things ever if they're absolutely shite next season after thinking they can do better than Moyes for a second time . There was actually a growing appetite for this as we reached the latter stages of our terrible run from December to March but Dyche has now got credit in the bank after recent results that nobody can deny him at least another season and to take us to the new stadium as long as we aren't on track to take the plunge next season. The fans were talking a bit about Moyes but given that the owner isn't interested in running the club anymore, the director of football's contract expires this summer and the club don't have the money to pay off another manager and his backroom team, I think it was all academic and that Dyche would still have been managing us next season if we were in the Championship.

That race just goes to show that new tracks can look bad if their first couple of races are boring. The quality of an F1 race depends heavily on the circumstances of the day. The conditions and how competitive the field is. Any track can yield an all timer if the circumstances are right. Other more popular tracks can turf out snooze fests as well. Not saying Miami is a great track but I thought it was all very well balanced today. Overtaking through the field was possible but not too easy and Red Bull weren't able to win at a canter. These ingredients = entertaining F1.

Yesssssss.

I think Sainz is naughty there. Missed the apex and damaged Piastri's front wing in the process. Should be a penalty in my opinion. Lando looking good though .

Not sure if they messed up the safety car procedure a bit there because I don't think Norris should have gained that much of an advantage. This has been quite competitive anyway. Decent chance Norris could see this out. Verstappen has only had a tenth or two advantage over Ferrari and Mclaren throughout the race.

Richarlison really good when he came on.

Spurs body language is horrendous.

They're not always this hated. It's really off the charts right now. But the reasons they've won during my adult life is because they were always seen as the safe, competent party while Labour have been cast as economically illiterate since the financial crash in 2008ish and routinely have leaders that aren't trusted by the public. These perceptions haven't always been fair but the Tories have always been helped by a friendly press who will go to insane lengths to smear any centre-left leader to fuck while not batting an eyelid at bad behaviour from Tory leaders. The English public are conditioned to see privately educated posh boys like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson as being automatically intelligent and trustworthy because they've been raised to speak a bit like the royal family. That bit is weird. Labour also are responsible to an extent. Corbyn was very popular to a small section of the public but abhorrent to the rest. The Labour Party membership which tends to be made up of very politically active and left-leaning people, often straight out of university, elect their leaders, so they usually end up with leaders who appeal to their activist base but won't necessarily appeal to the masses as Prime Minister. The Tories have generally been more pragmatic when choosing their leaders. Their members care more about being in power than whether their leader is completely ideologically in line with them. Although they seem to have bucked this trend with Liz Truss and it seems likely they'll do something stupid again when they lose the election and dump Sunak. So yeah, a combination of things. The Tories aren't usually popular per se, but the way the majority of the public is absolutely sick of them now is something like I've never seen in my life.

I love it when they mention that there's no great enthusiasm for Starmer or Labour. Basically just admitting that they're polling terribly because everyone hates them.

Yeah there's a large Rupert Murdoch sized shadow hanging over both of these elections. The greatest shame about Corbyn's Labour is that after the election hammering against Johnson's Tories, the polling showed that actually, the policy platform put forward by Labour which was centre left by most developed countries' measures but deemed quite "extremist" in the political climate that dominates the UK (and the US and Australia from what little I understand but my knowledge is mediocre so I might be wrong) was largely popular. Corbyn himself was a sitting duck having shared a platform with various anti-semites and referred to the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah as "friends". A more "conservative-looking" leader like Starmer could probably have run on a similar, fairly progressive policy platform without that personal baggage and had success because the right wing press can't really find much ammunition against him but he's played it very safe and, if anything, picked a fight with the lefty wing of the Labour party. Centrism is better than the pretty xenophobic offer that the Tories have put forward since the referendum but Starmer has been given an open goal really and I can only hope that Labour's manifesto going into the next election is more progressive than what he has led us to expect.

Hilarious. According to "vibes" over the past couple of days, Susan Hall was actually going to run Sadiq Khan close in London and maybe actually sneak a win. Then after the actual counting, Khan wins a third term with his greatest margin yet. Then later in the day Labour win the West Midlands mayoralty ahead of relatively popular Tory incumbent Andy Street. Days of conservative-leaning columnists pontificating about Labour needing to do more to win a majority at the next general election, up in smoke. Conclusions from these local elections. Tory disaster. Labour lose some lefty votes to Greens and Independents but overall on course for a landslide majority at the general election. Genuinely going to see their seat count into the 400s and the Tories below 200.

Two no-shows this time. We haven't managed all ten people predicting for 4 races in a row. Predictions were posted on Tuesday morning so I tried .

Love to see Arsenal deny City but it just won't happen. As I said since Liverpool drew at Old Trafford, City don't and won't blink if you put it in their hands regardless of whether there's 3 or 23 games to the end of the season. Fulham, Spurs, West Ham, prove me wrong.

Tories getting another hammering. I keep seeing people say Sunak isn't going to call an election until the latest time because why would he call one when his party is 20% behind in the polls? I find it a weird take. Unless it comes out that Starmer is a literal paedophile or something with photo evidence then the polls aren't going to get any better for the Tories over the next few months. People have made up their minds. It's in their own interests to get it over with and start to rebuild. But they're morons so they probably genuinely do think they can turn it around. All the while the country decays. Like many, I have no great enthusiasm for Starmer but Labour will clearly be a hundred times better than the current shower. It has disappointed me how safe Starmer has gone on a few key issues. The immigration stuff, Gaza, the green stuff. I got it early days when he had to stave off the links to the toxic Corbyn brand but over the past 18 months or so since the Tories properly imploded, he's had a lot more headroom to be principled and risk upsetting some of the Daily Mail types without risking much but he still seems scared of doing so.

Poor and scrappy match last night. Thought we weathered the storm in the first five minutes. Took control of the game, got the lead. Then we conceded what I think was a poor goal. Good play from Adebayo but it's too easy from our perspective. Luton took the momentum from there and we never really reestablished ourselves. Still defended resolutely to see out the draw. A shame not to sustain our winning streak against a poor side but we didn't deserve more than a point.

@The Palace Fan @Whiskey @Coma deadline about this time tomorrow. Anyone else can edit predictions up until the start of main qualifying.