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The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.

Representative of public opinion

Is it really tough?

The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.

I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.

I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.

Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.

Starmer is a laughing stock.

There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even (slightly) more than Liz Truss.
That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism.
But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.

Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.

The scary thing about this post, which is enlightening, is the “oh we’ll have to deal with a Reform government” fatalism from mid-level public service apparatchiks.

If such attitudes remain prevalent, the UK is basically finished. Neither bond market traders, nor various Celtic nationalists, will show any mercy.

Centrist dads need to stop bedwetting and start mobilizing.

The ultimate centrist Dad is the PM.

He has managed to negotiate a deal where, it seems, we return no migrants to France.

Centrist Dadism is finished. It has been since Cameron resigned. And has never recovered. Hence the Brexit AlwaysRemainer Syndrome

There are, though, more centrist Dads in the population, than crypto-fascists. The British electorate remains instinctively moderate. Centrist Dads (and Mums) lack a political figurehead equal to the task of leading them.

Former Tory health minister defects to Reform
Maria Caulfield is latest to join Nigel Farage’s party after Danny Kruger defected on Monday
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/09/16/former-tory-health-minister-maria-caulfield-defects-reform/ (£££)

Here is the trend:
1) The dam is breaking open. Once defection to refuk becomes normalised then surely a succession of Tories will follow. They want to remain MPs and will justify the switch as "reform are the true Tories now"
2) The more Tory MPs join the fukers saying "reform are the true Tories now" the harder it is for Farage to argue that Reform are the antidote to the uniparty. Fed up with faux Tories who want to hug a hoody? Have you seen our new head of strategy? Here to explain why we're not the Tories is Sir Jake Berry and Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg. Next we have a seminar or "why Boris Johnson was a traitor", led by Nadine Dorries

The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.

Representative of public opinion

Is it really tough?

The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.

I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.

I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.

Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.

Starmer is a laughing stock.

There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even Truss had a 'well it'll all be over soon' air about it.
That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism.
But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.

Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.

That’s my experience. Even apolitical people laugh at him. He’s a clown at best and an object of contempt for many

Now I admit my personal loathing of him IS slightly unhinged. It’s of a ferocity I’ve never felt before. But, unfortunately, he is the kind of guy that evokes unhinged loathing

He doesn’t seem to have any redeeming features whatsoever. Not a sense of humour to disarm you, not an air of competence to placate you, not a smart brain to impress you. Nothing. Just dull homourless venal hypocritical narcissistic incompetence tinged with outright treachery

You appear to be going through some sort of breakdown.

Meanwhile, no British government is popular midterm and they always become a focus for either ridicule or dislike. Nevertheless there's no logic for getting worked up beyond mild to moderate disappointment.

Most governments arent desperately unpopular during their honeymoon though

Especially not when they’ve actually done very little.

They spent almost all of their political capital on tinkering around, managing to seriously upset several well-organised groups of people while not actually increasing revenues by much.

An incoming government with a huge majority should really have bitten the bullet and gone for a “temporary” increase in income tax.

They’ve not even really looked at non-financial stuff, with no progress on planning reform nor on illegal immigration.

FPT - because, as always, there's a new thread.

I argued last evening those who think two party politics is dead have got it wrong.

The parties may end up with different names but ultimately it will resolve down to a binary choice - the big change is the nature of the faultline. For decades, it was economic - one side favoured lower taxes, less spending and regulation, the other saw the State as the provider, supported taxation and spending.

That line is no longer valid or has the priority it once did - the divide is now socio-cultural. If you are socially conservative, there's a party for you (possibly two) whereas if you have a more liberal mindset, there are three or four parties for you.

This has had two impacts - first, social conservatives and liberals who mixed together happily under the same economic programme in the Labour and Conservative parties have now flocked to Reform gutting both parties and leaving them shadows of the coalitions they once were.

The other question is whether there are enough social conservatives under FPTP to give Reform a majority on perhaps 30% of the vote - probably but if the liberally minded vote tactically, probably not.

It is the change in the faultline which has damaged Labour and the Conservatives - the politics of economics no longer matter, the politics of society and culture do.

This may be true, but can only stay true until the new party on one side of the new faultline has a go at running the country. At that point the old issues rear their heads whether people like it or not. And these old issues are in fact about how to run a national economy really well, and running it taking full account of debt, deficit, tax, spend, employment, global trade, the health of manufacturing and financial services, ag and fish.

Maybe an election can be won on the issue of a tiny % of migrants being boat people, but a country can't be run on it. The old verities return, and it won't take long.

Reform do not wish to talk about it. This is ominous.

Even better is what "no migration" does to the economy.

We have waves of migration when we have significant gaps in the labour force. We have one today. We don't want to work on farms or in factories. We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots and so attainment levels drop especially in the WWC. So we aren't well trained, especially in the things we need like medicine and engineering. And we have a declining birth rate and an ageing population.

So lets say Farage wins and we do move to no migration. What happens? Well there's a load of jobs we can't fill. "Send the scroungers to do it" will only last for a short time until people realise they are up for forced relocation to work on a farm. And we all get sicker as the NHS falls apart. Even better, we have less people working paying less taxes and circulating less money. So a big recession. Sound - what does Farage do then? Who does his movement scapegoat - the gays?

We absolutely need to invest in education skills and training. Invest in making proper jobs sexy again - construction, engineering, food. That will take vision and time and money. And we're prepared to invest none of that. But we want the brown people to go away because they are raping and murdering our women, taking our homes, stealing both the jobs and claiming benefits. So sayeth Musk and Yaxley-Robinson.

"We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots" - any substantiation for that rather odd claim? I think people on the right have suggested that teachers tend to be on the left, and worry about them infecting children with woke, but I don't think they have been characterised as idiots.

We have a broader culture that values the arts far more than STEM. It should never be acceptable to say "I'm no good at maths' and laugh about it. When Paxman was presenting University Challenge he would sneer at students not knowing some obscure musical composition or writer, or basically anything from the arts and then stumble over pronouncing a basic science term.

The answer to farming is NOT more low paid manual work, its increasing productivity by better ways of working, whether that is growing salad 365 days a year indoors with green electricity, or using robots to harvest crops.

On education? Endless attacks by The Sun, Daily Mail and various Tories. When tabloid-reading parents are fed an endless attack on the education system is it any wonder they don't care if their kids achieve in school?

On farming the robot pickers are vastly expensive and most farmers are low on cash. As for electricity that needs to be cheap, and thanks to the right's war on "Net Zero" we have the highest energy prices anywhere in Europe.

BIB - But not attacks saying teachers are idiots.

industry has had to be transformed - the old nationalised industries have been replaced. Farming has seen a huge amount of innovation - I am of the country and know it well. Most farmers don't own a combine - they rent them. Yes farming has financial challenges - that partly the market driving it, and partly the consumer not valuing quality food enough. And I am afraid that sometimes farms are not longer economic- partly because so much has become automated or improved with tech that the land doesn't need as much in man hours. Its common now for farming couples to have one of more jobs outside of the farm too. And farms tend to get bigger.

And come off it - its not the rights war on net zero that's causing high energy prices - its our own decisions to close down energy supplies locally and import from elsewhere. Thats one of the more bonkers things you've ever said.

Why is our leccy so expensive? Because 98% of the time we price based on gas. And not a stored price, the spot price. Why not stored? Because *the Tories* allowed the storage capacity to be removed.

Which energy supplies locally do you refer to? Coal? Declined for years, killed off by Heseltine, with a switch to imported coal for the remaining life of the coal power stations. Gas? Burnt off post privatisation - the "dash for gas" in the newly marketised sector. Nuclear? We're now reliant on a choice of foreign governments.

What have the Tories done on energy? Launched net zero, attacked oil and gas. Then attacked wind. Now they pretend they always backed oil and gas despite years of doing the opposite. I'm not saying the idiot Miliband is good, but how we got here is entirely on the Tories.

Virtually all the wind farms were built under the conservatives

Which they then started attacking. No more wind farms etc. Hard to invest when government is blowing hot and cold

The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.

Representative of public opinion

Is it really tough?

The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.

I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.

I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.

Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.

Starmer is a laughing stock.

There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even Truss had a 'well it'll all be over soon' air about it.
That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism.
But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.

Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.

Yep. He's the equal and opposite of Rishi: Labour's own Sunak. Governing too left wing for his opponents, too right-wing sounding for his own party.

Mandelson debate to start in the house

3 hours of it

Another indicator of British decline.
Not a subject worthy of an “emergency debate”.
Just circus stuff.

How many hours of emergency debate have we had about Russian violating Polish territory?

I despair at this and I am one of life’s optimists.

Poland closing ofthe railway lines from Belarus, in retaliation for airspace violations last week, appears to be getting Beijing’s attention, thousands of containers already getting backed up.

Land transport from China to Europe is a €25bn/year business, and 90% of it runs through Belarus and Poland!

https://x.com/theresaafallon/status/1967883494979142118

We all need to stop buying so much Chinese crap.