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The Queen was right to give Tony Blair a knighthood – politicalbetting.com
The Queen was right to give Tony Blair a knighthood – politicalbetting.com
The anti-Blair knighthood petitioners ignore one huge fact – in its entire history, Labour has only ever won five sustainable working Commons majorities – three of them under Tony Blair.
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A deserved knighthood.
This kind of meal is standard for certain classes. For your average punter it is astronomical.
That's fine when the economy is doing well and folk can aspire to it. It is what people expect.
It looks different when heating costs are through the roof and pay isn't keeping up. Looks like troughing and fits with the prevailing narrative I'm afraid.
Today is grim af.
Other PMs get knighted, just routine.
I'm not saying he is wrong but I've lived here for more than two decades and can't think of any that are much below that. I got close in Hakkasan once, but it was still a bust.
But it wasn't an average day to day dinner, was it? She was entertaining important diplomatic contacts wasn't she? What is she supposed to do instead? Tell then they can't order two g&ts each?
The failure in Iraq was as much the lack of comprehensive planning and action to follow up from Britain's very successful initial involvement in the fall of Sadam. As all Political Careers end in failure its not surprising its not all positive.
Ideally they should also all end up in the House of Lords which was where all ex PMs who left the House of Commons ended up. However since the late Baroness Thatcher no former PMs have gone to the Lords to use their expertise, instead focusing on making money or setting up charitable foundations
Now, as that gathers steam, with a common sense of the 1990's replaying itself, and Starmer as the Blair figure against sleaze, suddenly the Mail and other Tory papers are trying to explicitly recast him as the outcast and not the mainstream, with the crucial help of some voices on the left.
My own feelings about Blair are quite complex - I think he's quite a complex figure, for good and ill.
If someone is a Sir and then self-identifies as female (or goes the whole hog), does their title transition to Dame?
Torcuil Crichton
@Torcuil
·
26m
"No deal with the SNP going into an election, no deal with the SNP coming out of an election," says
@Keir_Starmer
when asked about a coalition with
@NicolaSturgeon
.
No coalition or C&S doesn't rule out more informal arrangements.
There has been nobody of his stature in Politics especially as PM since. Hearing him speak during the Pandemic on a number of issues you could see he still had it as a communicator.
The Knighthood was deserved and without the stain of Iraq it would have happened years ago.
Stupid non-story.
The Conservative Party has been accused of guaranteeing peerages to a group of multi-millionaires who have donated more than £3 million to the party.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/tory-donors-who-pay-3-million-get-seats-in-the-lords/ar-AAQoJTZ
Frankly I think they should be in the Lords (at least that way we’d get disclosure!) but post Major I think it will be tricky to go back to that, a so knighthood for departing PMs (including Sir Boris) is the right thing.
More interesting is that it is a Garter.
Which is a consistent running theme since "I can't possibly live on £85k" Paterson.
The Scottish Tories school young recruits early to keep their horizons very low. Gulhane missed those classes.
There will never be a SCon FM pre-independence, and at a pinch the highest office Gulhane could ever achieve would be as a minister serving a SLab or SLD FM. I just don’t see that cutting his mustard.
The Westminster and European Parliament routes are closed, so I suspect that politics’ loss will be the health services’ gain.
But answer there came none…
The sister restaurant, The Glasshouse at Kew is also worth going to....
Martin Baxter bases his predictions on a detailed mathematical modelling of 59 individual constituencies, using lots of full-sample Scottish polls as data inputs.
You predict SCon gains in Gordon and Ayr based on… a one-off Scottish sub-sample.
Forgive me if I tend towards the Baxter method.
Indeed, it's more of a placid gentle ripple in an espresso cup – to stretch the dining analogy much further than one should.
John Burn-Murdoch
@jburnmurdoch
NEW: first thread of 2022 is an Omicron situation
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1478339769646166019
Here are 12: https://www.cntraveller.com/article/michelin-lunch-deals-london
There are many more. You can save by googling!
But the departmental civil servants presumably *do* know what a reasonable price is and they thought this was too expensive.
Fixed menu
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10367237/North-Korean-mouthpiece-claims-Kim-Jong-Il-invented-BURRITOS-2011-sales-booming.html
A marquis, duke, an a that;
But an honest man's abon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa that!
For a that, an a that,
Their dignities an a that;
The pith o sense, an pride o worth,
Are higher rank than a that.
Military K9s get more.
Secondly even if it were possible all it would show is is who was better at winning not who was a better PM.
I have voted since Wilson and Heath. I put Boris bottom of my list of PMs with only May and Brown coming close.
When Gordon Brown was PM, there were some problems with equipment etc in Afghanistan. In the style of the clunking first approach, he thought that complaints from the Army should be dealt with by a bit of er.... kicking under the table.
So a toady backbencher tried to claim that the General in charge of the army was going over the top with the entertainment budget.... except it turned out that the General in question was taking people to the local Ask pizza/pasta chain restaurant (think Pizza Express level), complete with £9.50 bottles of Pinot Grigio...
The people he was wining and dining there included other heads of armed forces..... Including SACEUR, IIRC
On those grounds alone winning a bloody election as Labour leader, let alone three, falls within the "truly exceptional" criterion.
The next election's battleground won't necessarily be the same as 2019
Anthony Wells"
https://anthonyjwells.substack.com/p/stop-obsessing-about-the-red-wall
Quite a few people thought this was something I would say.
AA Gill Memorial Prize:
"London lunches are good, in Glasgow I'd rather eat shavings from a ped egg."
https://www.rollonfriday.com/news-content/firm-year-2019-best-comment-awards
Are the Nats really going to vote with the opposition Tories to bring down his new administration and risk a second immediate election (the FTPA will have been repealed by then) at which they will be pilloried? I don't think so.
The nearest equivalent is February 1974, when it was the Conservatives, terrified of another election, who abstained and let Harold Wilson form a minority administration.
I imagine that is what will happen again. So Starmer governs for several months - no deals with anyone - and goes to the country a few months later to secure a majority. Which he will likely obtain.
I would need to go to all of them before judging
eg
https://www.squaremeal.co.uk/restaurants/gymkhana_7808
https://www.squaremeal.co.uk/restaurants/elystan-street_11179
Haven't lived in London recently enough to guess.
The high end of my personal dining list was more around just under £100 for two some years ago.
(Still waiting for Headline @Scott_xP to identify his alleged lie.)
*If anyone thinks that excessive, consider that was the year that one of the directors of the company (and a 25% shareholder) bought a new country house from his dividends.
It would have been quite justifiable IMHO, to take a visiting American trade delegation to a Premier League match, to show them one of our largest cultural exports up close.