Best Of

The most dangerous moment for the monarchy was the 1936 abdication crisis.

Were it not for that we'd have had a delinquent Nazi-sympathising King on the throne, who couldn't control his behaviour or keep his gob shut, and the Attlee government would have abolished the monarchy in their post 1945 administration.

I suspect Clem Attlee (later 1st Earl Attlee) was just as much a monarchist as subsequent Labour PMs. Wouldna happen.

What, the man who came up with this?

There were few who thought him a starter,
Many who thought themselves smarter.
But he ended PM,
CH and OM,
an Earl and a Knight of the Garter.

Surely not!

He was married to a Tory, he just f**ked off and joined them late in life if he was ever a proper Socialist anyway.

(Is that sufficiently BJO like?)

Are international institutions breaking down?

COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c8jykpdgr08t

Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.

Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)


To rescue Britain, the public need to demand:
1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas.
2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction.
3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists.
4. End BBC licence fee. They lie.
5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties.
6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination.
7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons.
8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity.
9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us.
10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster

https://x.com/DouglasCarswell/status/1860351187213746539


In the end, somthing like this will be tried, because, in the end, voters will vote for it, in their desperation

On topic, why would Farage want to lead the Tories? It is already a 50/50 toss up who will lead the forthcoming Tory-Reform administration. Reform could be running Wales soon. Kemi is going to have to be brilliant and make the most of all her opportunities not to see the Tories go the way of the Liberals.

I agree, I'd say there's a real risk the Tories become the UUP to Reform's DUP.

However, and it's a big however, the Tories can also fish for LD (home counties) and Labour (switchers and floating voters as well) so they can face and pull in multiple directions, if they get the mix and tone right.

Not sure Badenoch is quite the right candidate to go fishing for LD and centrist Labour votes. Davey is a more conservative leader and overall safer bet.

Davey is anything but conservative. He's a socialist in a yellow suit with a flying bird on it.

Not at all.

For example the LDs oppose the abolition of AR on farms and imposition of VAT on private schools.

Davey certainly wasn't a Socialist when in government either.

It will be tough to expand the number of LD seats at the next GE, as there will surely be some dead cat bounce for the Tories, but it isn't impossible. There is not a lot of love out there for either of the big two parties. We may well be in one of those decades where the tectonic plates of party politics shift.

I suggest you read the interviews with him on his background and political philosophy, which was so left-wing the interviewer even asked him why he didn't join the Labour Party then - to which he gave some weakish answer about how he didn't like its tradition.

He's a Lefty through and through.

Don't confuse political opportunism for where his real sympathies lie, and he'd be delighted to prop up a Labour administration that fell short next time.

One of the interesting curiosities of modern politics is that Conservatives don’t look or act conservative. It’s all topsy turvey

On the contrary they seem determined to trash the country rather than conserve it.

It's to do now, with party loyalty running vertically through classes, rather than horizontally, across them.

People are still used to the idea of upper middle class people being overwhelmingly Conservative, and working class people being mainly Labour (with a substantial Conservative minority).

When in reality, the Conservatives have very little in common now, with much of the Establishment, and Labour have very little in common now, with broad swathes of working class Britain.

And, the same is true of the US, France, and other rich world democracies. Quite often now, the most solidly left-leaning constituencies are the most well-heeled.

It's fascinating to consider why that's the case.

Luxury beliefs of the university educated, especially women. They have to distinguish themselves from the hoi poloi who have always had small-c conservative views. Used to be done by owning a Jaguar, etc.

Luxury beliefs come a lot cheaper than luxury living or even traditional middle class living in southern England.

I wonder how much resentment there is among many recent graduates that they're not going to get the lifestyle they expected, that their parents had or what many of their age group who didn't go to university now has.

There's a lot of resentment around. Saw a Mumsnet post from a 40-something who had worked their way up to an income of £75k, and feels their standard of living doesn't match up to their parents who had a similar inflation-adjusted salary.

We could argue about why that is (housing?) and what to do about it, but people aren't happy and the spectacular Tory defeat was not the cathartic experience the country was looking for.

No there's a lot of buyer's remorse among the £50-70k class to voted Labour for the first time in ages or stayed home. They now realise Labour are going to destroy their jobs and tax them into poverty.

It's been a very steep learning curve for those voters and I expect out of the 2m who stayed home or switched Labour we can get 90% of them back and grab 1.5m from reform on the right. That becomes an election winning coalition in 2029 against what I think will be a deeply unpopular Labour government.

A lot of the £50-£70k class underestimate to a significant degree exactly how far up the pile they are.

Live in London or South East and tell me it's far up the pile.

Most people get that Max but it isn’t particularly relevant when it’s your party that is protecting the interests of those with the housing wealth and those who start sentences with “well in my day I only earned £6k a year”.

In my day I only earned £450 per year but that is a longtime ago [1962] !!!!

That salary is worth about £8,000 in today's money - but house prices were only £40,000 on average, compared with about £260,000 now.

In housing cost terms, you were earning about £55,000 in '24 prices.

Our first home in Edinburgh [1964] was an apartment in Comely Bank for £2 000 and we bought a new build semi detached bungalow here on Llandudno in 1965 for £3,250 so not sure about your figures

Indeed our present 4 bed detached cost £16,000 in April 1975 though I was earning more than £450pa by then

Our neighbours next door and next door but one bought the 5 bed London townhouses where they still live in the early 70s for £5k each. Fair to say they’re sitting on a bit of equity.

OMFG it's dark at 3pm

I find myself wanting to take a theatre rig to make it go dark outside @Leon 's flat at 2pm tomorrow, just for the purposes of finding out what will happen .

Where's The Truman Show apparatus when you need it?

"Cue the Sun"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn5oqtmzGMk

Seriously tho. This fucking weather

It's.... Satanic

I know you don't ordinarily pay for your trips around the world, but maybe use some of your money to have a holiday to Barbados and get some sunshine?

Somewhere like Southern Portugal is very nice this time of year and less than 3hr flight if you need to get back to UK.

The eastern Algarve probably has the nicest climate in Europe. Discuss...

Doesn't get as hideously hot as the Med coast (esp these days), avoids the high winds of the western Algarve

Also: proper beaches with proper tides.
The Med does not, for me, have proper beaches.

Since the topic of monarchy has turned up it was interesting listening to a radio 4 programme the other evening comparing the 1931 China floods that killed 2 million with the recent Spanish floods.

One of the guests was a Spanish journalist who spoke about the Royal visit a few days after the floods and the reaction of the crowds throwing mud. She said the impression given in the UK media was of it being a serious problem for the Spanish Royals when in fact it was the exact opposite. The anger was directed against the Spanish Socialist PM and the Valencia Region Right Wing President who had been throwing blame at each other since the floods.

Apparently both the PM and President fled but the Royals stayed and spoke to the crowd even though they were covered in mud. This went down extremely well with the crowd and has gone down extremely well in Spain as well and the Royal's standing has much improved. The only UK paper that has really covered this properly is the Times.