Best Of

We truly are in strange times:

Labour imploding
Tories imploded but it hasn't yet hit the central nervous system of those who remained to the end
Davey leading the Make A Stand movement with most people still sitting
Reform fighting it out with Tommeh Two-Names for command of "patriots"
Racist hate-filled cockwomble shot dead and the tragedy of his murder somehow wipes clean his life

I have no idea where our politics goes as we move forward, but I am clear that I don't have enough popcorn. Whatever happens I am glad that I will be here for the ride.

Frankly, after Musky Baby's 'intervention' at the weekend, this is where I stand:

I stand for democracy. We have a long-standing and robust democratic process, one which has seen us through many centuries with slow evolution.

Musky Baby does not stand for democracy. What he said was against democracy. And if the Farage Party wins, I expect UK democracy to disappear in the same way that it seems to be disappearing in the USA.

Off thread: Daughter #3 did the eleven plus today.
We don't really expect her to pass. When her oldest sister did it passing was the preserve of the top 25%, now it's significantly harder. And, what with the ADHD, she faces her own challenges. Still, she did her best and - in contrast to many - didn't come out crying. She didn't panic when unfamiliar material came up. So I'm proud of her.
We'll now be £2-3k a year better off as six years of paying for tutors (two years for each child).

I'm pretty ambivalent about the grammar school system. The whole process of what ten year olds in Trafford (and adjacent postcodes) have to go through seems ridiculous and ridiculously costly. Still, we've done pretty well out of it: my oldest two have ended up at what are probably the right schools for them; my youngest will probably also end up at the right school for her (indeed, if she does have, it will cause us a problem, so memtally geared are we all to the local High school).

Anyway - the rest of year 6 will be a breeze now.
What did she choose for her post-11+ treat? A small box of Ferrero Rocher.

Best of luck to her.

Seems odd to hear of the 'eleven plus' these days.

I don't think it helps Starmer that he has no substantial power base or ultra-loyalists within the Labour Party. I recall reading an article mentioning that there is no such thing as "Starmerism" and that in itself is instructive, I think.

He doesn't really believe in anything (he's not even confidently wedded to pragmatism, which Blair and Thatcher both had, aside from their overarching orthodoxies). And that makes it hard to inspire loyalty.

Most other PMs had to build a base of loyal, fellow travellers within their party - look at Thatcher, Blair, Brown, Cameron, Johnson - all good examples of this. Starmer instead inherited a party where the most ambitious figures were desperate to stop losing, and as a result I suspect that a lot of this iron-fisted party management style that people lauded him for was a bit of luck - in that the party was so weary of defeat people just accepted it. Compare this to New Labour, where the same desperation existed but the architects of that project realised they needed more.

This is now coming back to bite him, because now he is politically short of friends, who is there to help him? Who are his loyal lieutenants ready to ride to the rescue? Burnham clearly now sees himself as a rival. Rayner wasn't a "ride or die" ally, often on leadership manoeuvres herself. Streeting also has one eye on the top job. The closest he has is Reeves, who is also utterly discredited - and even for her, he couldn't back her in the Commons as she sobbed next to him. He also simply doesn't have the ace up his sleeve that other PMs had - the underpinning vision, the ideology, the team moving towards a common goal - that saved them and gave them allies through their darker hours.

The Starmer story is one of a man who was parachuted into the top of politics, who got very lucky but who ultimately lacks the skills that make a good political leader.

Superb post @numbertwelve! And I recommend that @TheScreamingEagles should do what Mike Smithson OGH used to do when he spotted a similar post containing such an excellent and insightful political analysis and he should use it as the headline in this mornings new thread.

I don't think it helps Starmer that he has no substantial power base or ultra-loyalists within the Labour Party. I recall reading an article mentioning that there is no such thing as "Starmerism" and that in itself is instructive, I think.

He doesn't really believe in anything (he's not even confidently wedded to pragmatism, which Blair and Thatcher both had, aside from their overarching orthodoxies). And that makes it hard to inspire loyalty.

Most other PMs had to build a base of loyal, fellow travellers within their party - look at Thatcher, Blair, Brown, Cameron, Johnson - all good examples of this. Starmer instead inherited a party where the most ambitious figures were desperate to stop losing, and as a result I suspect that a lot of this iron-fisted party management style that people lauded him for was a bit of luck - in that the party was so weary of defeat people just accepted it. Compare this to New Labour, where the same desperation existed but the architects of that project realised they needed more.

This is now coming back to bite him, because now he is politically short of friends, who is there to help him? Who are his loyal lieutenants ready to ride to the rescue? Burnham clearly now sees himself as a rival. Rayner wasn't a "ride or die" ally, often on leadership manoeuvres herself. Streeting also has one eye on the top job. The closest he has is Reeves, who is also utterly discredited - and even for her, he couldn't back her in the Commons as she sobbed next to him. He also simply doesn't have the ace up his sleeve that other PMs had - the underpinning vision, the ideology, the team moving towards a common goal - that saved them and gave them allies through their darker hours.

The Starmer story is one of a man who was parachuted into the top of politics, who got very lucky but who ultimately lacks the skills that make a good political leader.

Hahahaha. That polling for Starmer

Has a prime minister ever had such negative polling with his own party? Extraordinary

You'd think he might say fuck it and retire

It gives me some consolation, as Britain goes down a Starmer-shaped khazi, that most sensible Britons share my outright loathing of this nauseating dork

Tipping Jess Phillips to be next Labour leader at 50/1 aside, I stand be when I said five years ago in this header, particularly…

“Last month, Keir Starmer appeared on the television in my front room to give his response to the Prime Minister’s Covid-19 statement. A few seconds later my eyes glazed over, a few more passed and I switched the tv off saying “Jesus, he is dull”. It set me thinking that in a world of Reality tv, tiktok, snapchat, (none of which I am a fan of), and general instant gratification, (which I kind of am) Starmer was too boring to be Prime Minister. Those with a keen interest in politics scrutinise policies, but it could be that a significant minority, perhaps even a small majority, of the public prefer someone they can imagine mucking in on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.”


https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/06/06/the-case-for-making-personality-ratings-a-good-electoral-indicator/

Fav to be next PM was indeed a contestant on said show

His dullness isn't his problem though. There's a market for dull. His problem is his incompetence. Or not really believing in anything except process. Or that even when he's telling you about sonething he really believes in - like football - he sounds insincere and inauthentic. Or his political tin ear. Or the fact he came in to office without any real plan apart from not being the Tories, assuming that was all that was needed. Or his grifting. Or his failure to understand how the private sector operates and how money is made. Or his London-centricity.
Compared to all that, his lack of charisma is only a minor handicap.

Off thread: Daughter #3 did the eleven plus today.
We don't really expect her to pass. When her oldest sister did it passing was the preserve of the top 25%, now it's significantly harder. And, what with the ADHD, she faces her own challenges. Still, she did her best and - in contrast to many - didn't come out crying. She didn't panic when unfamiliar material came up. So I'm proud of her.
We'll now be £2-3k a year better off as six years of paying for tutors (two years for each child).

I'm pretty ambivalent about the grammar school system. The whole process of what ten year olds in Trafford (and adjacent postcodes) have to go through seems ridiculous and ridiculously costly. Still, we've done pretty well out of it: my oldest two have ended up at what are probably the right schools for them; my youngest will probably also end up at the right school for her (indeed, if she does have, it will cause us a problem, so memtally geared are we all to the local High school).

Anyway - the rest of year 6 will be a breeze now.
What did she choose for her post-11+ treat? A small box of Ferrero Rocher.

One for @Leon, if the maggots haven't done for him...


(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges

Slightly long post. But there's a lot of concern on the moderate Left today about the Robinson event. Fine. But if you actually want to do something about it you have to understand four things:

1) To deal with the underlaying causes requires hard policy proscriptions on areas like immigration. And you will have to endorse positions that make you instinctively uncomfortable. But they are unavoidable.

2) The Blue Sky experiment has failed. You may hate Musk. But this is the most influential platform on the globe. If you abandon it to Robinson and his allies you have already lost.

https://x.com/DPJHodges/status/1967502268833403136

The last point is very true. Abandoning X en masse is huge mistake for the Left. There's many non-politically aligned people around the world, for whom it just represents their daily reality, and are posting on other issues.

If you abandon the political dimension of that global meeting-space entirely to the hatd right, that just becomes many politically unaligned people's sense of objective reality, and also majority opinion.

Musk has so twised the algorithms to repeat what he wants them to that I don't think the absence of some people on the left makes any difference.