This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up income tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
See also May's disastrous dementia tax in 2017 that lost her her majority.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
That's odd because my taxes are going up in April along with 30m other people's tax. By your own black and white statements the Tories are no longer election winning.
National insurance is going up briefly to repay the extra money the NHS needed due to Covid. Other taxes are not and hopefully by the next general election tax will be cut again
If it doesn't start with himself, it's a waste of time.
Or a call to a shit hot divorce lawyer
Actually Carrie is by no means as bad as her misogynistic critics paint her. I hear she is devoting all her time to a charity for rescuing doggies from warzones full of awful poor brown people. The Blondi Trust.
She's highly rated in the animal welfare community - we see her as totally genuine.
Yes, Nick. You also rate doggies higher than darkies. That is implicit in that judgment.
And there isn't an "animal welfare community" for which you speak anyway. I am reponsible for the wellbeing of 9 equines (7 of them unridden and unrideable, as I am sure you think riding a horse is a refined form of abuse) and any number of dogs. I am guessing you aren't. Frankly I have you down as a borderline psychopath after your cynical deceit of this site throughout GE 2015 (tick tock) and your subsequent enthusiasm for the jew hater Corbyn. Surely animal welfare was only ever a career opening?
I sense a shifting of the the political tectonic plates. The next Tory leader must lance the boil of the ERG/Covid Recovery Group as Kinnock did with Momentum, although will probably face a similar fate. Since the CRG rebellion, the Rees-Moggs etc believe they have free reign, appealing to the c100,000 party members but increasingly alienating UK voters. As with Johnson, any new leader will be in thrall to the CRG unless they call a GE and remove the whip, so they can't stand, as Johnson did with Tory moderates. Johnson irretrievably lost any authority over his party with the CRG revolt against Plan B so was already a dead man walking. Even before 'party gate'. Previous PMs have been able to turn their tenure into filthy lucre. This option is no longer open to Johnson as he has already rewarded his acolytes and will have no traction as a columnist, expert meeting chair or lobbyist and will become. effectively homeless, on loss of office. Even as an after-dinner speaker to software salesmen, his appeal as the 'dim-sounding-but-actually-very-clever' speaker will fail if just one person suffered a bereavement during lockdown. Starmer must be hoping he'll cling on, with every PMQs 'he said this then, he said that then' which one is the truth? will resonate. Starmer has been collecting and collating receipts for 18 months now. His awkward squad, (Corbynite/Momentum) is easier to control. Without the whip, Corbyn faces a future of cultivating his allotment while collecting his pension. While his wife would advocate this course, his lifetime of 'tilting against windmills' will probably mean him setting up his own party. Without the party whip he cannot stand as an MP. Membership or support for such a new party would mean expulsion from Labour/removal of whip for Starmer's awkward squad. And then there is running a de facto 'progressive alliance' between Lib Dems and Labour where, as we have seen, there has already been an implicit pact in by-elections.
Welcome to PB!
On one of your points, think you're under-estimating Boris Johnson post-PM prospects. Certainly he would be a big draw in USA, as former premier AND as a Benny Hill impersonator. No BoJo fatigue over here! Heck, most of us barely know who he is. Certainly we have no real antipathy (or love) for him, just another Brit twit politico/talking head.
Am NOT talking chump change, but LOTS of greenback dollars, at least for a few years on (what used to be called) the rubber chicken circuit.
I've tipped Boris to become a moosehead professor at one of your well-heeled universities. He can teach a 2-hour course on British politics, and another on Ancient Greece. Seven figures for a week's work, if that. Here is an extract from his Rome vs Greece debate against Prof Mary Beard:-
To be absolutely fair, the Romans were utter bastards.
What, you mean like compared to the bubonic plague?
When they conquered people they conquered them, but I'm pushed to find an act of vindictive genocide anywhere near the one decreed by the hugely overrated C5th Athens for the Mytilenians and actually carried out on the Melians. And they managed to interact with the Jews without murderous antisemitism, which lots of people find quite tricky.
Siege of Jerusalem AD70, for a start?
Plenty of others, I think.
Mytilene and Melos were fellow Greeks and nominal allies. The decrees in both cases were for execution of adult males. Sure, Rome crushed rebellions of the theoretically subjugated, but there's a difference. And if it's not much of a difference, why the differential status granted to the Athenians?
I would say Athens tends to get a free pass because of the sheer volume of intellectual output. That's not to say it wasn't capable of brutality, ofcourse.
Yebbutnobutyeah
Plato was undoubtedly (I think) the crown of the output, but it seems perverse to credit him to the political system when he was rabidly antidemocratic anyway, and look what happened to Socrates.
Some of the literature was pretty good*, but if you are going to treat it as a credit to the politics you have to do the same for Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn... And if you say the Parthenon, same for St Peters, the Duomo, Taj Mahal, English cathedrals....
And the Mitylene and Melos decisions were at least as psychotically cruel as any Persian tyrant could have managed. A real advertisement against democracy.
And the universities built themselves on the theory that knowing Greek was the pinnacle of academic aspiration, and Athens was the standard by which everything should be judged (that is literally why "the classics" are called that), and what we end up with, is Boris.
* I have read all the surviving plays, in the original, so you don't have to. Trust me, a lot of it is fcking hard going.
But it was also the sheer range and versatility of output. At the top Plato was a political-metaphysical thinker, for instance, as well as in a way a literary one, so there was no need for reflected glory from part of society to the other. Again and again it's this multidimensionality which sets Athens apart, I would say, and sets many of our modern parameters. Its military and rituals could still be as brutal as any other.
I'd also hesitate to use Boris, and empty prestige and affectation among the wealthy, as the inevitable historical result of Athens. The Enlightenment wasn't just an affectation of wealthy people.
I'm not sure certain of our modern classicists weren't off sick in the sanatorium with a cold when the aphorisms at the Delphic Oracle were covered in class.
Leaving aside the politics. My biggest concern about 'party-gate' is the growing number of institutions at risk of getting burnt up in the storm - the reputation of the civil service, trust in the police, the integrity of the Union. Things which when lost are so hard to win back.
Given the invite was sent by a fucking civil servant, I think the reputation has already been burnt.
The civil servant in question, Martin Reynolds, was hand-picked by Boris, with whom he worked when the latter was Foreign Secretary. All the senior CS at No. 10 are hand-picked. The problem is the politicisation of the CS by the current government (starting with Cummings), not the CS itself.
That isn't a recent phenomenon. It was certainly politicised under Blair. A case could even be made that it began with Thatcher's post-Falklands attempt to set up what amounted to a parallel foreign office under Parsons.
A bigger problem seems to be that so many of them are just self evidently dumb and ignorant and yet unshakeably convinced of their own brilliance (rather like Cummings himself).
I don't agree with much of that. Under Blair, we knew who was a Civil Servant and who was a SPAD - mainly because the CS quietly got on while the SPADs hit the airwaves. He didn't clear out all the long-standing Senior CS, nor did they all run for the hills. Under this government, the distinction between SPADs and Senior CS has become (deliberately) blurred - do you know who's a SPAD and who's a CS?. Many of the best Senior CS were cleared out by Boris, Patel and others, or left because they no longer felt they could fulfil their neutral duty of advising ministers without fear or favour.
As I recall - and I'm working from memory so I may be wrong - Campbell and Whelan were both appointed civil servants and SPADs were given powers to manage departments.
This article would seem to partially at least bear that out:
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases tax again or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
watch this space
BETTING POST Lab maj at 5/1 looks screaming value to me
Nah. Too many seats to gain for a majority. Largest party perhaps, but a minority government.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases tax again or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
watch this space
BETTING POST Lab maj at 5/1 looks screaming value to me
Nah. Too many seats to gain for a majority. Largest party perhaps, but a minority government.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
John Major still got 31% in 1997 against a far, far better opponent than Starmer. Boris polled 28% yesterday with YouGov and there's still a big downwards trend.
What you fail to understand is that Boris can't Brexit again. That route to 44% evapourated on the day we exited the transition period and the TCA came into operation.
Boris is losing supporters, the people that got him an 80 seat majority and there's no real way to win new supporters. Relying in Labour imploding isn't going to work this time either because Statmer may be dull but he isn't a danger to the economy.
The mood among my Tory friends isn't improving at all, if anything Boris made it worse.
The Tories are on 33% in the latest poll today, higher than Major got in 1997 and higher than Hague and Howard got too
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
Is this big re-org number four?
1. The one when he took over, and put Dom in charge. 2. The one between Brexit and Covid, the one that the Saj couldn't swallow. 3. The one when Dom left. 4. The one now being leaked to the press to save BoJo's pasty hide.
It just might be that the support players in Downing Street aren't the issue.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
Who gives a primate's eructation about what the Americans and the Canadians do? You might as well inquire what the Fon of Bafut, and the Chinese Communist Party, do.
We are here in the UK, whether we like it or not.
And you still won't tell me if you think that the UK giving India independence was a good or bad thing. That's a lot closer to home that some Canadian person.
Where the same principle applies, see the Tories collapse post 1993 after imposing VAT on fuel. Or after May's dementia tax. Conservatives do not like tax rises.
I told you quite clearly Conservatives opposed Indian independence before 1948 but have accepted it since Attlee gave it. I was not born until 40 years after Indian independence view on it beyond factual comment on it is irrelevant
In other words, you would refuse to say that you approved of the abolition of slavery because etc etc.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up income tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
See also May's disastrous dementia tax in 2017 that lost her her majority.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
That's odd because my taxes are going up in April along with 30m other people's tax. By your own black and white statements the Tories are no longer election winning.
National insurance is going up briefly to repay the extra money the NHS needed due to Covid. Other taxes are not and hopefully by the next general election tax will be cut again
Isnt Brexit supposed to be paying for this? *innocent face*
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
John Major still got 31% in 1997 against a far, far better opponent than Starmer. Boris polled 28% yesterday with YouGov and there's still a big downwards trend.
What you fail to understand is that Boris can't Brexit again. That route to 44% evapourated on the day we exited the transition period and the TCA came into operation.
Boris is losing supporters, the people that got him an 80 seat majority and there's no real way to win new supporters. Relying in Labour imploding isn't going to work this time either because Statmer may be dull but he isn't a danger to the economy.
The mood among my Tory friends isn't improving at all, if anything Boris made it worse.
The Tories are on 33% in the latest poll today, higher than Major got in 1997 and higher than Hague and Howard got too
Polls can go up or down. Who knows where the floor is now?
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up income tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
See also May's disastrous dementia tax in 2017 that lost her her majority.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
That's odd because my taxes are going up in April along with 30m other people's tax. By your own black and white statements the Tories are no longer election winning.
National insurance is going up briefly to repay the extra money the NHS needed due to Covid. Other taxes are not and hopefully by the next general election tax will be cut again
Isnt Brexit supposed to be paying for this? *innocent face*
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
Who gives a primate's eructation about what the Americans and the Canadians do? You might as well inquire what the Fon of Bafut, and the Chinese Communist Party, do.
We are here in the UK, whether we like it or not.
And you still won't tell me if you think that the UK giving India independence was a good or bad thing. That's a lot closer to home that some Canadian person.
Where the same principle applies, see the Tories collapse post 1993 after imposing VAT on fuel. Or after May's dementia tax. Conservatives do not like tax rises.
I told you quite clearly Conservatives opposed Indian independence before 1948 but have accepted it since Attlee gave it. I was not born until 40 years after Indian independence view on it beyond factual comment on it is irrelevant
In other words, you would refuse to say that you approved of the abolition of slavery because etc etc.
There were no slaves in British India and Tory PM Wilberforce worked with Pitt to abolish it
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
Who gives a primate's eructation about what the Americans and the Canadians do? You might as well inquire what the Fon of Bafut, and the Chinese Communist Party, do.
We are here in the UK, whether we like it or not.
And you still won't tell me if you think that the UK giving India independence was a good or bad thing. That's a lot closer to home that some Canadian person.
Where the same principle applies, see the Tories collapse post 1993 after imposing VAT on fuel. Or after May's dementia tax. Conservatives do not like tax rises.
I told you quite clearly Conservatives opposed Indian independence before 1948 but have accepted it since Attlee gave it. I was not born until 40 years after Indian independence view on it beyond factual comment on it is irrelevant
In other words, you would refuse to say that you approved of the abolition of slavery because etc etc.
There were no slaves in British India and Tory PM Wilberforce worked with Pitt to abolish it
Not relevant to my point. YOu still won't say if you think it was good or bad to let India be independent. Always, always, blaming someone else.
I sense a shifting of the the political tectonic plates. The next Tory leader must lance the boil of the ERG/Covid Recovery Group as Kinnock did with Momentum, although will probably face a similar fate. Since the CRG rebellion, the Rees-Moggs etc believe they have free reign, appealing to the c100,000 party members but increasingly alienating UK voters. As with Johnson, any new leader will be in thrall to the CRG unless they call a GE and remove the whip, so they can't stand, as Johnson did with Tory moderates. Johnson irretrievably lost any authority over his party with the CRG revolt against Plan B so was already a dead man walking. Even before 'party gate'. Previous PMs have been able to turn their tenure into filthy lucre. This option is no longer open to Johnson as he has already rewarded his acolytes and will have no traction as a columnist, expert meeting chair or lobbyist and will become. effectively homeless, on loss of office. Even as an after-dinner speaker to software salesmen, his appeal as the 'dim-sounding-but-actually-very-clever' speaker will fail if just one person suffered a bereavement during lockdown. Starmer must be hoping he'll cling on, with every PMQs 'he said this then, he said that then' which one is the truth? will resonate. Starmer has been collecting and collating receipts for 18 months now. His awkward squad, (Corbynite/Momentum) is easier to control. Without the whip, Corbyn faces a future of cultivating his allotment while collecting his pension. While his wife would advocate this course, his lifetime of 'tilting against windmills' will probably mean him setting up his own party. Without the party whip he cannot stand as an MP. Membership or support for such a new party would mean expulsion from Labour/removal of whip for Starmer's awkward squad. And then there is running a de facto 'progressive alliance' between Lib Dems and Labour where, as we have seen, there has already been an implicit pact in by-elections.
Welcome to PB!
On one of your points, think you're under-estimating Boris Johnson post-PM prospects. Certainly he would be a big draw in USA, as former premier AND as a Benny Hill impersonator. No BoJo fatigue over here! Heck, most of us barely know who he is. Certainly we have no real antipathy (or love) for him, just another Brit twit politico/talking head.
Am NOT talking chump change, but LOTS of greenback dollars, at least for a few years on (what used to be called) the rubber chicken circuit.
I've tipped Boris to become a moosehead professor at one of your well-heeled universities. He can teach a 2-hour course on British politics, and another on Ancient Greece. Seven figures for a week's work, if that. Here is an extract from his Rome vs Greece debate against Prof Mary Beard:-
To be absolutely fair, the Romans were utter bastards.
What, you mean like compared to the bubonic plague?
When they conquered people they conquered them, but I'm pushed to find an act of vindictive genocide anywhere near the one decreed by the hugely overrated C5th Athens for the Mytilenians and actually carried out on the Melians. And they managed to interact with the Jews without murderous antisemitism, which lots of people find quite tricky.
Siege of Jerusalem AD70, for a start?
Plenty of others, I think.
Mytilene and Melos were fellow Greeks and nominal allies. The decrees in both cases were for execution of adult males. Sure, Rome crushed rebellions of the theoretically subjugated, but there's a difference. And if it's not much of a difference, why the differential status granted to the Athenians?
I would say Athens tends to get a free pass because of the sheer volume of intellectual output. That's not to say it wasn't capable of brutality, ofcourse.
Yebbutnobutyeah
Plato was undoubtedly (I think) the crown of the output, but it seems perverse to credit him to the political system when he was rabidly antidemocratic anyway, and look what happened to Socrates.
Some of the literature was pretty good*, but if you are going to treat it as a credit to the politics you have to do the same for Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn... And if you say the Parthenon, same for St Peters, the Duomo, Taj Mahal, English cathedrals....
And the Mitylene and Melos decisions were at least as psychotically cruel as any Persian tyrant could have managed. A real advertisement against democracy.
And the universities built themselves on the theory that knowing Greek was the pinnacle of academic aspiration, and Athens was the standard by which everything should be judged (that is literally why "the classics" are called that), and what we end up with, is Boris.
* I have read all the surviving plays, in the original, so you don't have to. Trust me, a lot of it is fcking hard going.
But it was also the sheer range and versatility of output. At the top Plato was a political-metaphysical thinker, for instance, as well as in a way a literary one, so there was no need for reflected glory from one part of society to the other. Again and again it's this multidimensionality which sets Athens apart, I would say, and sets many of our modern parameters. Its military and rituals could still be as brutal as any other, ofcourse.
I'd also hesitate to use Boris, and empty prestige and affectation among the wealthy, as the inevitable historical result of Athens. The Enlightenment wasn't just an affectation of the wealthy.
Yes, but Plato was despite the political set up, not because of it. And Pericles Senior "the many not the few" has to be read in the light of the mob's (the many's) casual judicial murder of his son over Arginusae.
Where the same principle applies, see the Tories collapse post 1993 after imposing VAT on fuel. Or after May's dementia tax. Conservatives do not like tax rises.
Except for elderly Conservatives, who adore tax rises on working age people so that they can have their arses wiped for free when they become demented. Them, and the expectant heirs awaiting their windfall.
This is only a slight oversimplification of the picture. Your party is one for entitled old people and those who stand to inherit property from them. It offers nothing to anyone else except being bled white to line the pockets of your client vote and rotten governance.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
Seems a bit foolish then to be sticking up taxes in April via NI and fiscal drag.
The choice though is either higher taxes still or shafting the Red Wall. My money is on the latter.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up income tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
See also May's disastrous dementia tax in 2017 that lost her her majority.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
That's odd because my taxes are going up in April along with 30m other people's tax. By your own black and white statements the Tories are no longer election winning.
National insurance is going up briefly to repay the extra money the NHS needed due to Covid. Other taxes are not and hopefully by the next general election tax will be cut again
But you just said election winning conservatives don't put up tax. This lot are about to put taxes up by a pretty large amount in April and they aren't putting up thresholds either. Another tax rise.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
Who gives a primate's eructation about what the Americans and the Canadians do? You might as well inquire what the Fon of Bafut, and the Chinese Communist Party, do.
We are here in the UK, whether we like it or not.
And you still won't tell me if you think that the UK giving India independence was a good or bad thing. That's a lot closer to home that some Canadian person.
Where the same principle applies, see the Tories collapse post 1993 after imposing VAT on fuel. Or after May's dementia tax. Conservatives do not like tax rises.
I told you quite clearly Conservatives opposed Indian independence before 1948 but have accepted it since Attlee gave it. I was not born until 40 years after Indian independence view on it beyond factual comment on it is irrelevant
In other words, you would refuse to say that you approved of the abolition of slavery because etc etc.
There were no slaves in British India and Tory PM Wilberforce worked with Pitt to abolish it
Not relevant to my point. YOu still won't say if you think it was good or bad to let India be independent. Always, always, blaming someone else.
Does it really matter? That was a lifetime ago, and there's absolutely zero chance of it changing.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
Who gives a primate's eructation about what the Americans and the Canadians do? You might as well inquire what the Fon of Bafut, and the Chinese Communist Party, do.
We are here in the UK, whether we like it or not.
And you still won't tell me if you think that the UK giving India independence was a good or bad thing. That's a lot closer to home that some Canadian person.
Where the same principle applies, see the Tories collapse post 1993 after imposing VAT on fuel. Or after May's dementia tax. Conservatives do not like tax rises.
I told you quite clearly Conservatives opposed Indian independence before 1948 but have accepted it since Attlee gave it. I was not born until 40 years after Indian independence view on it beyond factual comment on it is irrelevant
In other words, you would refuse to say that you approved of the abolition of slavery because etc etc.
There were no slaves in British India and Tory PM Wilberforce worked with Pitt to abolish it
Not relevant to my point. YOu still won't say if you think it was good or bad to let India be independent. Always, always, blaming someone else.
He's a racist, like Churchill was, so he thinks it was bad.
Where the same principle applies, see the Tories collapse post 1993 after imposing VAT on fuel. Or after May's dementia tax. Conservatives do not like tax rises.
Except for elderly Conservatives, who adore tax rises on working age people so that they can have their arses wiped for free when they become demented. Them, and the expectant heirs awaiting their windfall.
This is only a slight oversimplification of the picture. Your party is one for entitled old people and those who stand to inherit property from them. It offers nothing to anyone else except being bled white to line the pockets of your client vote and rotten governance.
To be fair the Tories proposed a significant change to funding of social care. But then it was branded a dementia tax and the rest is history.
If it doesn't start with himself, it's a waste of time.
Or a call to a shit hot divorce lawyer
Actually Carrie is by no means as bad as her misogynistic critics paint her. I hear she is devoting all her time to a charity for rescuing doggies from warzones full of awful poor brown people. The Blondi Trust.
She's highly rated in the animal welfare community - we see her as totally genuine.
Yes, Nick. You also rate doggies higher than darkies. That is implicit in that judgment.
And there isn't an "animal welfare community" for which you speak anyway. I am reponsible for the wellbeing of 9 equines (7 of them unridden and unrideable, as I am sure you think riding a horse is a refined form of abuse) and any number of dogs. I am guessing you aren't. Frankly I have you down as a borderline psychopath after your cynical deceit of this site throughout GE 2015 (tick tock) and your subsequent enthusiasm for the jew hater Corbyn. Surely animal welfare was only ever a career opening?
Nonsense. @NickP is a party loyalist, but everyone knows and expects that.
His work for CWF seems genuinely heartfelt to me, as does Carrie's love for animals. They bring out both the best and the worst of us a species.
Quite what we do with animals is a real ethical dilemma. Indeed I am part way through this very thoughtful book on the subject:
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
Who gives a primate's eructation about what the Americans and the Canadians do? You might as well inquire what the Fon of Bafut, and the Chinese Communist Party, do.
We are here in the UK, whether we like it or not.
And you still won't tell me if you think that the UK giving India independence was a good or bad thing. That's a lot closer to home that some Canadian person.
Where the same principle applies, see the Tories collapse post 1993 after imposing VAT on fuel. Or after May's dementia tax. Conservatives do not like tax rises.
I told you quite clearly Conservatives opposed Indian independence before 1948 but have accepted it since Attlee gave it. I was not born until 40 years after Indian independence view on it beyond factual comment on it is irrelevant
In other words, you would refuse to say that you approved of the abolition of slavery because etc etc.
There were no slaves in British India and Tory PM Wilberforce worked with Pitt to abolish it
Anjd, as with the former Duke of York being descended from all the others without mass adultery, illegitimacy and incest, your ijnterpretation of history is so awful that you are completey trashing your post.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
Who gives a primate's eructation about what the Americans and the Canadians do? You might as well inquire what the Fon of Bafut, and the Chinese Communist Party, do.
We are here in the UK, whether we like it or not.
And you still won't tell me if you think that the UK giving India independence was a good or bad thing. That's a lot closer to home that some Canadian person.
Where the same principle applies, see the Tories collapse post 1993 after imposing VAT on fuel. Or after May's dementia tax. Conservatives do not like tax rises.
I told you quite clearly Conservatives opposed Indian independence before 1948 but have accepted it since Attlee gave it. I was not born until 40 years after Indian independence view on it beyond factual comment on it is irrelevant
In other words, you would refuse to say that you approved of the abolition of slavery because etc etc.
There were no slaves in British India and Tory PM Wilberforce worked with Pitt to abolish it
Not relevant to my point. YOu still won't say if you think it was good or bad to let India be independent. Always, always, blaming someone else.
Does it really matter? That was a lifetime ago, and there's absolutely zero chance of it changing.
It does in terms of what HYUFD thinks about giving independence to various nations when it is technically (on his definition) not necessary.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
Who gives a primate's eructation about what the Americans and the Canadians do? You might as well inquire what the Fon of Bafut, and the Chinese Communist Party, do.
We are here in the UK, whether we like it or not.
And you still won't tell me if you think that the UK giving India independence was a good or bad thing. That's a lot closer to home that some Canadian person.
Where the same principle applies, see the Tories collapse post 1993 after imposing VAT on fuel. Or after May's dementia tax. Conservatives do not like tax rises.
I told you quite clearly Conservatives opposed Indian independence before 1948 but have accepted it since Attlee gave it. I was not born until 40 years after Indian independence view on it beyond factual comment on it is irrelevant
In other words, you would refuse to say that you approved of the abolition of slavery because etc etc.
There were no slaves in British India and Tory PM Wilberforce worked with Pitt to abolish it
Not relevant to my point. YOu still won't say if you think it was good or bad to let India be independent. Always, always, blaming someone else.
It was not Conservative policy at the time. I am not going to say I supported it as I am not going to allow you to say I must therefore also support Scottish independence. The Conservative Party opposed Indian independence until Attlee had granted it, once given post Indian independence they accepted it as do I.
Note too Scotland is not a colony unlike Scotland otherwise we would have no Scottish MPs at Westminster
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up income tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
See also May's disastrous dementia tax in 2017 that lost her her majority.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
That's odd because my taxes are going up in April along with 30m other people's tax. By your own black and white statements the Tories are no longer election winning.
National insurance is going up briefly to repay the extra money the NHS needed due to Covid. Other taxes are not and hopefully by the next general election tax will be cut again
Fake news
Ni is going up each year by 1.25% though in 23 it will be shown separately
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases tax again or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
watch this space
BETTING POST Lab maj at 5/1 looks screaming value to me
Nah. Too many seats to gain for a majority. Largest party perhaps, but a minority government.
Yebbut I forgot to say, focaldata's MRP model last December showed a lab maj of 26
Leaving aside the politics. My biggest concern about 'party-gate' is the growing number of institutions at risk of getting burnt up in the storm - the reputation of the civil service, trust in the police, the integrity of the Union. Things which when lost are so hard to win back.
Given the invite was sent by a fucking civil servant, I think the reputation has already been burnt.
The civil servant in question, Martin Reynolds, was hand-picked by Boris, with whom he worked when the latter was Foreign Secretary. All the senior CS at No. 10 are hand-picked. The problem is the politicisation of the CS by the current government (starting with Cummings), not the CS itself.
That isn't a recent phenomenon. It was certainly politicised under Blair. A case could even be made that it began with Thatcher's post-Falklands attempt to set up what amounted to a parallel foreign office under Parsons.
A bigger problem seems to be that so many of them are just self evidently dumb and ignorant and yet unshakeably convinced of their own brilliance (rather like Cummings himself).
I don't agree with much of that. Under Blair, we knew who was a Civil Servant and who was a SPAD - mainly because the CS quietly got on while the SPADs hit the airwaves. He didn't clear out all the long-standing Senior CS, nor did they all run for the hills. Under this government, the distinction between SPADs and Senior CS has become (deliberately) blurred - do you know who's a SPAD and who's a CS?. Many of the best Senior CS were cleared out by Boris, Patel and others, or left because they no longer felt they could fulfil their neutral duty of advising ministers without fear or favour.
As I recall - and I'm working from memory so I may be wrong - Campbell and Whelan were both appointed civil servants and SPADs were given powers to manage departments.
This article would seem to partially at least bear that out:
No, Campbell and Whelan were never Civil Servants, always SPADs. But Blair did give them too much power, including the power to order civil servants around. An error, I agree. But they never concealed that they were political appointees doing a political job.
I sense a shifting of the the political tectonic plates. The next Tory leader must lance the boil of the ERG/Covid Recovery Group as Kinnock did with Momentum, although will probably face a similar fate. Since the CRG rebellion, the Rees-Moggs etc believe they have free reign, appealing to the c100,000 party members but increasingly alienating UK voters. As with Johnson, any new leader will be in thrall to the CRG unless they call a GE and remove the whip, so they can't stand, as Johnson did with Tory moderates. Johnson irretrievably lost any authority over his party with the CRG revolt against Plan B so was already a dead man walking. Even before 'party gate'. Previous PMs have been able to turn their tenure into filthy lucre. This option is no longer open to Johnson as he has already rewarded his acolytes and will have no traction as a columnist, expert meeting chair or lobbyist and will become. effectively homeless, on loss of office. Even as an after-dinner speaker to software salesmen, his appeal as the 'dim-sounding-but-actually-very-clever' speaker will fail if just one person suffered a bereavement during lockdown. Starmer must be hoping he'll cling on, with every PMQs 'he said this then, he said that then' which one is the truth? will resonate. Starmer has been collecting and collating receipts for 18 months now. His awkward squad, (Corbynite/Momentum) is easier to control. Without the whip, Corbyn faces a future of cultivating his allotment while collecting his pension. While his wife would advocate this course, his lifetime of 'tilting against windmills' will probably mean him setting up his own party. Without the party whip he cannot stand as an MP. Membership or support for such a new party would mean expulsion from Labour/removal of whip for Starmer's awkward squad. And then there is running a de facto 'progressive alliance' between Lib Dems and Labour where, as we have seen, there has already been an implicit pact in by-elections.
Welcome to PB!
On one of your points, think you're under-estimating Boris Johnson post-PM prospects. Certainly he would be a big draw in USA, as former premier AND as a Benny Hill impersonator. No BoJo fatigue over here! Heck, most of us barely know who he is. Certainly we have no real antipathy (or love) for him, just another Brit twit politico/talking head.
Am NOT talking chump change, but LOTS of greenback dollars, at least for a few years on (what used to be called) the rubber chicken circuit.
I've tipped Boris to become a moosehead professor at one of your well-heeled universities. He can teach a 2-hour course on British politics, and another on Ancient Greece. Seven figures for a week's work, if that. Here is an extract from his Rome vs Greece debate against Prof Mary Beard:-
To be absolutely fair, the Romans were utter bastards.
What, you mean like compared to the bubonic plague?
When they conquered people they conquered them, but I'm pushed to find an act of vindictive genocide anywhere near the one decreed by the hugely overrated C5th Athens for the Mytilenians and actually carried out on the Melians. And they managed to interact with the Jews without murderous antisemitism, which lots of people find quite tricky.
Siege of Jerusalem AD70, for a start?
Plenty of others, I think.
Mytilene and Melos were fellow Greeks and nominal allies. The decrees in both cases were for execution of adult males. Sure, Rome crushed rebellions of the theoretically subjugated, but there's a difference. And if it's not much of a difference, why the differential status granted to the Athenians?
I would say Athens tends to get a free pass because of the sheer volume of intellectual output. That's not to say it wasn't capable of brutality, ofcourse.
Yebbutnobutyeah
Plato was undoubtedly (I think) the crown of the output, but it seems perverse to credit him to the political system when he was rabidly antidemocratic anyway, and look what happened to Socrates.
Some of the literature was pretty good*, but if you are going to treat it as a credit to the politics you have to do the same for Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn... And if you say the Parthenon, same for St Peters, the Duomo, Taj Mahal, English cathedrals....
And the Mitylene and Melos decisions were at least as psychotically cruel as any Persian tyrant could have managed. A real advertisement against democracy.
And the universities built themselves on the theory that knowing Greek was the pinnacle of academic aspiration, and Athens was the standard by which everything should be judged (that is literally why "the classics" are called that), and what we end up with, is Boris.
* I have read all the surviving plays, in the original, so you don't have to. Trust me, a lot of it is fcking hard going.
But it was also the sheer range and versatility of output. At the top Plato was a political-metaphysical thinker, for instance, as well as in a way a literary one, so there was no need for reflected glory from one part of society to the other. Again and again it's this multidimensionality which sets Athens apart, I would say, and sets many of our modern parameters. Its military and rituals could still be as brutal as any other, ofcourse.
I'd also hesitate to use Boris, and empty prestige and affectation among the wealthy, as the inevitable historical result of Athens. The Enlightenment wasn't just an affectation of the wealthy.
Yes, but Plato was despite the political set up, not because of it. And Pericles Senior "the many not the few" has to be read in the light of the mob's (the many's) casual judicial murder of his son over Arginusae.
But this versatility was also built into the political structure. You were just required and expected to be many things simultaneously as a citizen, so it was natural that many of its intellectual innovators would also innovate in multiple areas simultaneously. I don't think there's any way round this intellectual plurality and versatility as something pretty exceptional.
I agree that doesn't mean we should skate over Athenian violence and brutality where it took place, though, or imagine them as some sort of perfect civilisation like whitewashed marble.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up income tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
See also May's disastrous dementia tax in 2017 that lost her her majority.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
That's odd because my taxes are going up in April along with 30m other people's tax. By your own black and white statements the Tories are no longer election winning.
National insurance is going up briefly to repay the extra money the NHS needed due to Covid. Other taxes are not and hopefully by the next general election tax will be cut again
Briefly? When did anyone say it was a one off. Now they may rename it and then use it for social care, but it is still a permanent tax rise. And I wouldn't mind betting that it will continue to go up again and again whether Con or Lab just so PMs can pretend they haven't put up income tax.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up income tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
See also May's disastrous dementia tax in 2017 that lost her her majority.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
That's odd because my taxes are going up in April along with 30m other people's tax. By your own black and white statements the Tories are no longer election winning.
National insurance is going up briefly to repay the extra money the NHS needed due to Covid. Other taxes are not and hopefully by the next general election tax will be cut again
Tory tax cuts are like those supermarket promotions, where they hike the price by 20% and then two weeks later tell you that it's 10% off.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
Who gives a primate's eructation about what the Americans and the Canadians do? You might as well inquire what the Fon of Bafut, and the Chinese Communist Party, do.
We are here in the UK, whether we like it or not.
And you still won't tell me if you think that the UK giving India independence was a good or bad thing. That's a lot closer to home that some Canadian person.
Where the same principle applies, see the Tories collapse post 1993 after imposing VAT on fuel. Or after May's dementia tax. Conservatives do not like tax rises.
I told you quite clearly Conservatives opposed Indian independence before 1948 but have accepted it since Attlee gave it. I was not born until 40 years after Indian independence view on it beyond factual comment on it is irrelevant
In other words, you would refuse to say that you approved of the abolition of slavery because etc etc.
There were no slaves in British India and Tory PM Wilberforce worked with Pitt to abolish it
Anjd, as with the former Duke of York being descended from all the others without mass adultery, illegitimacy and incest, your ijnterpretation of history is so awful that you are completey trashing your post.
" Tory PM Wilberforce".
Even '1066 and all that' would be more accurate.
I am trying to watch a TV programme while replying to your usual Nat rants, obviously I meant the other way round
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
Who gives a primate's eructation about what the Americans and the Canadians do? You might as well inquire what the Fon of Bafut, and the Chinese Communist Party, do.
We are here in the UK, whether we like it or not.
And you still won't tell me if you think that the UK giving India independence was a good or bad thing. That's a lot closer to home that some Canadian person.
Where the same principle applies, see the Tories collapse post 1993 after imposing VAT on fuel. Or after May's dementia tax. Conservatives do not like tax rises.
I told you quite clearly Conservatives opposed Indian independence before 1948 but have accepted it since Attlee gave it. I was not born until 40 years after Indian independence view on it beyond factual comment on it is irrelevant
In other words, you would refuse to say that you approved of the abolition of slavery because etc etc.
There were no slaves in British India and Tory PM Wilberforce worked with Pitt to abolish it
Not relevant to my point. YOu still won't say if you think it was good or bad to let India be independent. Always, always, blaming someone else.
Does it really matter? That was a lifetime ago, and there's absolutely zero chance of it changing.
It does in terms of what HYUFD thinks about giving independence to various nations when it is technically (on his definition) not necessary.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
Who gives a primate's eructation about what the Americans and the Canadians do? You might as well inquire what the Fon of Bafut, and the Chinese Communist Party, do.
We are here in the UK, whether we like it or not.
And you still won't tell me if you think that the UK giving India independence was a good or bad thing. That's a lot closer to home that some Canadian person.
Where the same principle applies, see the Tories collapse post 1993 after imposing VAT on fuel. Or after May's dementia tax. Conservatives do not like tax rises.
I told you quite clearly Conservatives opposed Indian independence before 1948 but have accepted it since Attlee gave it. I was not born until 40 years after Indian independence view on it beyond factual comment on it is irrelevant
In other words, you would refuse to say that you approved of the abolition of slavery because etc etc.
There were no slaves in British India and Tory PM Wilberforce worked with Pitt to abolish it
Not relevant to my point. YOu still won't say if you think it was good or bad to let India be independent. Always, always, blaming someone else.
It was not Conservative policy at the time. I am not going to say I supported it as I am not going to allow you to say I must therefore also support Scottish independence. The Conservative Party opposed Indian independence until Attlee had granted it, once given post Indian independence they accepted it as do I.
Note too Scotland is not a colony unlike Scotland otherwise we would have no Scottish MPs at Westminster
Oh, so it's not a colony? Today, we've had Mr Rees Mogg telling us that the Scottish elected politicians don;t count at all and that only the Colonial Exarch appointed by Mr Johnson counts. Today. Specifically for all Scots, including Tories.
I sense a shifting of the the political tectonic plates. The next Tory leader must lance the boil of the ERG/Covid Recovery Group as Kinnock did with Momentum, although will probably face a similar fate. Since the CRG rebellion, the Rees-Moggs etc believe they have free reign, appealing to the c100,000 party members but increasingly alienating UK voters. As with Johnson, any new leader will be in thrall to the CRG unless they call a GE and remove the whip, so they can't stand, as Johnson did with Tory moderates. Johnson irretrievably lost any authority over his party with the CRG revolt against Plan B so was already a dead man walking. Even before 'party gate'. Previous PMs have been able to turn their tenure into filthy lucre. This option is no longer open to Johnson as he has already rewarded his acolytes and will have no traction as a columnist, expert meeting chair or lobbyist and will become. effectively homeless, on loss of office. Even as an after-dinner speaker to software salesmen, his appeal as the 'dim-sounding-but-actually-very-clever' speaker will fail if just one person suffered a bereavement during lockdown. Starmer must be hoping he'll cling on, with every PMQs 'he said this then, he said that then' which one is the truth? will resonate. Starmer has been collecting and collating receipts for 18 months now. His awkward squad, (Corbynite/Momentum) is easier to control. Without the whip, Corbyn faces a future of cultivating his allotment while collecting his pension. While his wife would advocate this course, his lifetime of 'tilting against windmills' will probably mean him setting up his own party. Without the party whip he cannot stand as an MP. Membership or support for such a new party would mean expulsion from Labour/removal of whip for Starmer's awkward squad. And then there is running a de facto 'progressive alliance' between Lib Dems and Labour where, as we have seen, there has already been an implicit pact in by-elections.
Welcome to PB!
On one of your points, think you're under-estimating Boris Johnson post-PM prospects. Certainly he would be a big draw in USA, as former premier AND as a Benny Hill impersonator. No BoJo fatigue over here! Heck, most of us barely know who he is. Certainly we have no real antipathy (or love) for him, just another Brit twit politico/talking head.
Am NOT talking chump change, but LOTS of greenback dollars, at least for a few years on (what used to be called) the rubber chicken circuit.
I've tipped Boris to become a moosehead professor at one of your well-heeled universities. He can teach a 2-hour course on British politics, and another on Ancient Greece. Seven figures for a week's work, if that. Here is an extract from his Rome vs Greece debate against Prof Mary Beard:-
To be absolutely fair, the Romans were utter bastards.
What, you mean like compared to the bubonic plague?
When they conquered people they conquered them, but I'm pushed to find an act of vindictive genocide anywhere near the one decreed by the hugely overrated C5th Athens for the Mytilenians and actually carried out on the Melians. And they managed to interact with the Jews without murderous antisemitism, which lots of people find quite tricky.
Siege of Jerusalem AD70, for a start?
Plenty of others, I think.
Mytilene and Melos were fellow Greeks and nominal allies. The decrees in both cases were for execution of adult males. Sure, Rome crushed rebellions of the theoretically subjugated, but there's a difference. And if it's not much of a difference, why the differential status granted to the Athenians?
I would say Athens tends to get a free pass because of the sheer volume of intellectual output. That's not to say it wasn't capable of brutality, ofcourse.
Yebbutnobutyeah
Plato was undoubtedly (I think) the crown of the output, but it seems perverse to credit him to the political system when he was rabidly antidemocratic anyway, and look what happened to Socrates.
Some of the literature was pretty good*, but if you are going to treat it as a credit to the politics you have to do the same for Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn... And if you say the Parthenon, same for St Peters, the Duomo, Taj Mahal, English cathedrals....
And the Mitylene and Melos decisions were at least as psychotically cruel as any Persian tyrant could have managed. A real advertisement against democracy.
And the universities built themselves on the theory that knowing Greek was the pinnacle of academic aspiration, and Athens was the standard by which everything should be judged (that is literally why "the classics" are called that), and what we end up with, is Boris.
* I have read all the surviving plays, in the original, so you don't have to. Trust me, a lot of it is fcking hard going.
I've read about five of them and I found them delightful. Gorgias is my favourite.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases tax again or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
watch this space
BETTING POST Lab maj at 5/1 looks screaming value to me
Nah. Too many seats to gain for a majority. Largest party perhaps, but a minority government.
Mmm. I have been a big believer in a much reduced Tory majority next time. However. It looks like the PM is staying. His reputation is toast. He is openly mocked by all and sundry. They're laughing at him not with him. It the Stalin to Mr Bean of Brown all over again. The polls are all one way traffic. The decline was slow since June. Rapid after November hasn't shown any sign of slowing down. He can't Brexit again. COVID is on its way out. Tax rises and inflation in. Moreover. He is beholden to factions who are seriously out of touch with majority opinion on a range of issues. And obsessed with others of trivial importance to most. Most importantly though. The population is fed up. We are all weary, restless and traumatised. We crave some quiet time to do familiar stuff while a competent government hums along in the background doing not much. This isn't Boris at all to say the least. There is no obvious successor. Any change would be a brutal bunfight. The downside potential for it getting very ugly indeed is high. Labour majority at 5-1 may be good value.
If it doesn't start with himself, it's a waste of time.
Or a call to a shit hot divorce lawyer
Actually Carrie is by no means as bad as her misogynistic critics paint her. I hear she is devoting all her time to a charity for rescuing doggies from warzones full of awful poor brown people. The Blondi Trust.
She's highly rated in the animal welfare community - we see her as totally genuine.
Yes, Nick. You also rate doggies higher than darkies. That is implicit in that judgment.
And there isn't an "animal welfare community" for which you speak anyway. I am reponsible for the wellbeing of 9 equines (7 of them unridden and unrideable, as I am sure you think riding a horse is a refined form of abuse) and any number of dogs. I am guessing you aren't. Frankly I have you down as a borderline psychopath after your cynical deceit of this site throughout GE 2015 (tick tock) and your subsequent enthusiasm for the jew hater Corbyn. Surely animal welfare was only ever a career opening?
Nonsense. @NickP is a party loyalist, but everyone knows and expects that.
His work for CWF seems genuinely heartfelt to me, as does Carrie's love for animals. They bring out both the best and the worst of us a species.
Quite what we do with animals is a real ethical dilemma. Indeed I am part way through this very thoughtful book on the subject:
Rubbish. The Pen Farthing thing was a clear line: doggies or (loyal to this country) brownies. You know, people. Who are being, you know, tortured to, you know, death. Because they didn't get out, because doggies.
Genuinely heartfelt.
And Corbyn was a jew hater. And his supporters condoned it.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
Who gives a primate's eructation about what the Americans and the Canadians do? You might as well inquire what the Fon of Bafut, and the Chinese Communist Party, do.
We are here in the UK, whether we like it or not.
And you still won't tell me if you think that the UK giving India independence was a good or bad thing. That's a lot closer to home that some Canadian person.
Where the same principle applies, see the Tories collapse post 1993 after imposing VAT on fuel. Or after May's dementia tax. Conservatives do not like tax rises.
I told you quite clearly Conservatives opposed Indian independence before 1948 but have accepted it since Attlee gave it. I was not born until 40 years after Indian independence view on it beyond factual comment on it is irrelevant
In other words, you would refuse to say that you approved of the abolition of slavery because etc etc.
There were no slaves in British India and Tory PM Wilberforce worked with Pitt to abolish it
Not relevant to my point. YOu still won't say if you think it was good or bad to let India be independent. Always, always, blaming someone else.
Does it really matter? That was a lifetime ago, and there's absolutely zero chance of it changing.
It does in terms of what HYUFD thinks about giving independence to various nations when it is technically (on his definition) not necessary.
Does that really matter either?
It does, because it drills down into his reasons and justifications for the views which he expresses.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
Who gives a primate's eructation about what the Americans and the Canadians do? You might as well inquire what the Fon of Bafut, and the Chinese Communist Party, do.
We are here in the UK, whether we like it or not.
And you still won't tell me if you think that the UK giving India independence was a good or bad thing. That's a lot closer to home that some Canadian person.
Where the same principle applies, see the Tories collapse post 1993 after imposing VAT on fuel. Or after May's dementia tax. Conservatives do not like tax rises.
I told you quite clearly Conservatives opposed Indian independence before 1948 but have accepted it since Attlee gave it. I was not born until 40 years after Indian independence view on it beyond factual comment on it is irrelevant
In other words, you would refuse to say that you approved of the abolition of slavery because etc etc.
There were no slaves in British India and Tory PM Wilberforce worked with Pitt to abolish it
Not relevant to my point. YOu still won't say if you think it was good or bad to let India be independent. Always, always, blaming someone else.
Does it really matter? That was a lifetime ago, and there's absolutely zero chance of it changing.
It does in terms of what HYUFD thinks about giving independence to various nations when it is technically (on his definition) not necessary.
It was a Tory PM who went to war with the American colonies to prevent their independence, only a Liberal PM who gave Ireland independence and only a Labour PM who gave India independence.
The Tories only started giving nations independence under Macmillan once India and much of the Empire had already gone
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
Who gives a primate's eructation about what the Americans and the Canadians do? You might as well inquire what the Fon of Bafut, and the Chinese Communist Party, do.
We are here in the UK, whether we like it or not.
And you still won't tell me if you think that the UK giving India independence was a good or bad thing. That's a lot closer to home that some Canadian person.
Where the same principle applies, see the Tories collapse post 1993 after imposing VAT on fuel. Or after May's dementia tax. Conservatives do not like tax rises.
I told you quite clearly Conservatives opposed Indian independence before 1948 but have accepted it since Attlee gave it. I was not born until 40 years after Indian independence view on it beyond factual comment on it is irrelevant
In other words, you would refuse to say that you approved of the abolition of slavery because etc etc.
There were no slaves in British India and Tory PM Wilberforce worked with Pitt to abolish it
Not relevant to my point. YOu still won't say if you think it was good or bad to let India be independent. Always, always, blaming someone else.
Does it really matter? That was a lifetime ago, and there's absolutely zero chance of it changing.
It does in terms of what HYUFD thinks about giving independence to various nations when it is technically (on his definition) not necessary.
It was a Tory PM who went to war with the American colonies to prevent their independence, only a Liberal PM who gave Ireland independence and only a Labour PM who gave India independence.
The Tories only started giving nations independence under Macmillan once India and much of the Enpire had already gone
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
Who gives a primate's eructation about what the Americans and the Canadians do? You might as well inquire what the Fon of Bafut, and the Chinese Communist Party, do.
We are here in the UK, whether we like it or not.
And you still won't tell me if you think that the UK giving India independence was a good or bad thing. That's a lot closer to home that some Canadian person.
Where the same principle applies, see the Tories collapse post 1993 after imposing VAT on fuel. Or after May's dementia tax. Conservatives do not like tax rises.
I told you quite clearly Conservatives opposed Indian independence before 1948 but have accepted it since Attlee gave it. I was not born until 40 years after Indian independence view on it beyond factual comment on it is irrelevant
In other words, you would refuse to say that you approved of the abolition of slavery because etc etc.
There were no slaves in British India and Tory PM Wilberforce worked with Pitt to abolish it
Anjd, as with the former Duke of York being descended from all the others without mass adultery, illegitimacy and incest, your ijnterpretation of history is so awful that you are completey trashing your post.
" Tory PM Wilberforce".
Even '1066 and all that' would be more accurate.
I am trying to watch a TV programme while replying to your usual Nat rants, obviously I meant the other way round
You are a Natdionalist. I am pro-independence.
And we are not mindreaders. You tell us that black is white, we are quite entitled to draw the immediate conclusion.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up income tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
See also May's disastrous dementia tax in 2017 that lost her her majority.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
That's odd because my taxes are going up in April along with 30m other people's tax. By your own black and white statements the Tories are no longer election winning.
National insurance is going up briefly to repay the extra money the NHS needed due to Covid. Other taxes are not and hopefully by the next general election tax will be cut again
But once the NHS Covid bulge is through, the increased NI / new HSC levy (which will cost Mr and Mrs Voter just as much) is meant to be going to Social Care forever. The money hasn't quite been spent yet, but there's a very strong commitment.
I don't think anyone is expecting the massive economic boom that would render the increase unnecessary, and the idea that there are £12 billion of efficiency saving to be made in the public sector is for the birds.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
Who gives a primate's eructation about what the Americans and the Canadians do? You might as well inquire what the Fon of Bafut, and the Chinese Communist Party, do.
We are here in the UK, whether we like it or not.
And you still won't tell me if you think that the UK giving India independence was a good or bad thing. That's a lot closer to home that some Canadian person.
Where the same principle applies, see the Tories collapse post 1993 after imposing VAT on fuel. Or after May's dementia tax. Conservatives do not like tax rises.
I told you quite clearly Conservatives opposed Indian independence before 1948 but have accepted it since Attlee gave it. I was not born until 40 years after Indian independence view on it beyond factual comment on it is irrelevant
In other words, you would refuse to say that you approved of the abolition of slavery because etc etc.
There were no slaves in British India and Tory PM Wilberforce worked with Pitt to abolish it
Not relevant to my point. YOu still won't say if you think it was good or bad to let India be independent. Always, always, blaming someone else.
It was not Conservative policy at the time. I am not going to say I supported it as I am not going to allow you to say I must therefore also support Scottish independence. The Conservative Party opposed Indian independence until Attlee had granted it, once given post Indian independence they accepted it as do I.
Note too Scotland is not a colony unlike Scotland otherwise we would have no Scottish MPs at Westminster
Oh, so it's not a colony? Today, we've had Mr Rees Mogg telling us that the Scottish elected politicians don;t count at all and that only the Colonial Exarch appointed by Mr Johnson counts. Today. Specifically for all Scots, including Tories.
If Scotland was a colony we would shut Holyrood, expel Scottish MPs from Westminster and make Rees Mogg Governor General.
Chimes with my experience from last night, Brexit supporters now looking at a loss in 2024 if Boris stays and calculating that they can count on Rishi to hold onto the majority and not water down Brexit.
I sense a shifting of the the political tectonic plates. The next Tory leader must lance the boil of the ERG/Covid Recovery Group as Kinnock did with Momentum, although will probably face a similar fate. Since the CRG rebellion, the Rees-Moggs etc believe they have free reign, appealing to the c100,000 party members but increasingly alienating UK voters. As with Johnson, any new leader will be in thrall to the CRG unless they call a GE and remove the whip, so they can't stand, as Johnson did with Tory moderates. Johnson irretrievably lost any authority over his party with the CRG revolt against Plan B so was already a dead man walking. Even before 'party gate'. Previous PMs have been able to turn their tenure into filthy lucre. This option is no longer open to Johnson as he has already rewarded his acolytes and will have no traction as a columnist, expert meeting chair or lobbyist and will become. effectively homeless, on loss of office. Even as an after-dinner speaker to software salesmen, his appeal as the 'dim-sounding-but-actually-very-clever' speaker will fail if just one person suffered a bereavement during lockdown. Starmer must be hoping he'll cling on, with every PMQs 'he said this then, he said that then' which one is the truth? will resonate. Starmer has been collecting and collating receipts for 18 months now. His awkward squad, (Corbynite/Momentum) is easier to control. Without the whip, Corbyn faces a future of cultivating his allotment while collecting his pension. While his wife would advocate this course, his lifetime of 'tilting against windmills' will probably mean him setting up his own party. Without the party whip he cannot stand as an MP. Membership or support for such a new party would mean expulsion from Labour/removal of whip for Starmer's awkward squad. And then there is running a de facto 'progressive alliance' between Lib Dems and Labour where, as we have seen, there has already been an implicit pact in by-elections.
Welcome to PB!
On one of your points, think you're under-estimating Boris Johnson post-PM prospects. Certainly he would be a big draw in USA, as former premier AND as a Benny Hill impersonator. No BoJo fatigue over here! Heck, most of us barely know who he is. Certainly we have no real antipathy (or love) for him, just another Brit twit politico/talking head.
Am NOT talking chump change, but LOTS of greenback dollars, at least for a few years on (what used to be called) the rubber chicken circuit.
I've tipped Boris to become a moosehead professor at one of your well-heeled universities. He can teach a 2-hour course on British politics, and another on Ancient Greece. Seven figures for a week's work, if that. Here is an extract from his Rome vs Greece debate against Prof Mary Beard:-
To be absolutely fair, the Romans were utter bastards.
What, you mean like compared to the bubonic plague?
When they conquered people they conquered them, but I'm pushed to find an act of vindictive genocide anywhere near the one decreed by the hugely overrated C5th Athens for the Mytilenians and actually carried out on the Melians. And they managed to interact with the Jews without murderous antisemitism, which lots of people find quite tricky.
Siege of Jerusalem AD70, for a start?
Plenty of others, I think.
Mytilene and Melos were fellow Greeks and nominal allies. The decrees in both cases were for execution of adult males. Sure, Rome crushed rebellions of the theoretically subjugated, but there's a difference. And if it's not much of a difference, why the differential status granted to the Athenians?
I would say Athens tends to get a free pass because of the sheer volume of intellectual output. That's not to say it wasn't capable of brutality, ofcourse.
Yebbutnobutyeah
Plato was undoubtedly (I think) the crown of the output, but it seems perverse to credit him to the political system when he was rabidly antidemocratic anyway, and look what happened to Socrates.
Some of the literature was pretty good*, but if you are going to treat it as a credit to the politics you have to do the same for Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn... And if you say the Parthenon, same for St Peters, the Duomo, Taj Mahal, English cathedrals....
And the Mitylene and Melos decisions were at least as psychotically cruel as any Persian tyrant could have managed. A real advertisement against democracy.
And the universities built themselves on the theory that knowing Greek was the pinnacle of academic aspiration, and Athens was the standard by which everything should be judged (that is literally why "the classics" are called that), and what we end up with, is Boris.
* I have read all the surviving plays, in the original, so you don't have to. Trust me, a lot of it is fcking hard going.
I've read about five of them and I found them delightful. Gorgias is my favourite.
Gorgias is by Plato, and is technically a dialogue, and very good (as are all Plato's dialogues). I was talking about Euripides' tragedies which range from stupendously good (Bacchae) to straight-to-video (most of the rest).
Leaving aside the politics. My biggest concern about 'party-gate' is the growing number of institutions at risk of getting burnt up in the storm - the reputation of the civil service, trust in the police, the integrity of the Union. Things which when lost are so hard to win back.
Given the invite was sent by a fucking civil servant, I think the reputation has already been burnt.
The civil servant in question, Martin Reynolds, was hand-picked by Boris, with whom he worked when the latter was Foreign Secretary. All the senior CS at No. 10 are hand-picked. The problem is the politicisation of the CS by the current government (starting with Cummings), not the CS itself.
That isn't a recent phenomenon. It was certainly politicised under Blair. A case could even be made that it began with Thatcher's post-Falklands attempt to set up what amounted to a parallel foreign office under Parsons.
A bigger problem seems to be that so many of them are just self evidently dumb and ignorant and yet unshakeably convinced of their own brilliance (rather like Cummings himself).
One of my favourites is that before the Falklands war, MI6's chap in Argentina was warning that something was up.
The response of the mandarins of the Foreign office was to demand that he be binned and his career trashed for alarmism (aka upsetting the internal Foreign Office policy on the Falklands/Argentina).
*After* the Falklands War they still insisted that he was binned.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
Who gives a primate's eructation about what the Americans and the Canadians do? You might as well inquire what the Fon of Bafut, and the Chinese Communist Party, do.
We are here in the UK, whether we like it or not.
And you still won't tell me if you think that the UK giving India independence was a good or bad thing. That's a lot closer to home that some Canadian person.
Where the same principle applies, see the Tories collapse post 1993 after imposing VAT on fuel. Or after May's dementia tax. Conservatives do not like tax rises.
I told you quite clearly Conservatives opposed Indian independence before 1948 but have accepted it since Attlee gave it. I was not born until 40 years after Indian independence view on it beyond factual comment on it is irrelevant
In other words, you would refuse to say that you approved of the abolition of slavery because etc etc.
There were no slaves in British India and Tory PM Wilberforce worked with Pitt to abolish it
Not relevant to my point. YOu still won't say if you think it was good or bad to let India be independent. Always, always, blaming someone else.
It was not Conservative policy at the time. I am not going to say I supported it as I am not going to allow you to say I must therefore also support Scottish independence. The Conservative Party opposed Indian independence until Attlee had granted it, once given post Indian independence they accepted it as do I.
Note too Scotland is not a colony unlike Scotland otherwise we would have no Scottish MPs at Westminster
Oh, so it's not a colony? Today, we've had Mr Rees Mogg telling us that the Scottish elected politicians don;t count at all and that only the Colonial Exarch appointed by Mr Johnson counts. Today. Specifically for all Scots, including Tories.
If Scotland was a colony we would shut Holyrood, expel Scottish MPs from Westminster and make Rees Mogg Governor General.
See Mr Rees-Mogg, and the way he treats your supposedly fellow Scottish Tories.
I sense a shifting of the the political tectonic plates. The next Tory leader must lance the boil of the ERG/Covid Recovery Group as Kinnock did with Momentum, although will probably face a similar fate. Since the CRG rebellion, the Rees-Moggs etc believe they have free reign, appealing to the c100,000 party members but increasingly alienating UK voters. As with Johnson, any new leader will be in thrall to the CRG unless they call a GE and remove the whip, so they can't stand, as Johnson did with Tory moderates. Johnson irretrievably lost any authority over his party with the CRG revolt against Plan B so was already a dead man walking. Even before 'party gate'. Previous PMs have been able to turn their tenure into filthy lucre. This option is no longer open to Johnson as he has already rewarded his acolytes and will have no traction as a columnist, expert meeting chair or lobbyist and will become. effectively homeless, on loss of office. Even as an after-dinner speaker to software salesmen, his appeal as the 'dim-sounding-but-actually-very-clever' speaker will fail if just one person suffered a bereavement during lockdown. Starmer must be hoping he'll cling on, with every PMQs 'he said this then, he said that then' which one is the truth? will resonate. Starmer has been collecting and collating receipts for 18 months now. His awkward squad, (Corbynite/Momentum) is easier to control. Without the whip, Corbyn faces a future of cultivating his allotment while collecting his pension. While his wife would advocate this course, his lifetime of 'tilting against windmills' will probably mean him setting up his own party. Without the party whip he cannot stand as an MP. Membership or support for such a new party would mean expulsion from Labour/removal of whip for Starmer's awkward squad. And then there is running a de facto 'progressive alliance' between Lib Dems and Labour where, as we have seen, there has already been an implicit pact in by-elections.
Welcome to PB!
On one of your points, think you're under-estimating Boris Johnson post-PM prospects. Certainly he would be a big draw in USA, as former premier AND as a Benny Hill impersonator. No BoJo fatigue over here! Heck, most of us barely know who he is. Certainly we have no real antipathy (or love) for him, just another Brit twit politico/talking head.
Am NOT talking chump change, but LOTS of greenback dollars, at least for a few years on (what used to be called) the rubber chicken circuit.
I've tipped Boris to become a moosehead professor at one of your well-heeled universities. He can teach a 2-hour course on British politics, and another on Ancient Greece. Seven figures for a week's work, if that. Here is an extract from his Rome vs Greece debate against Prof Mary Beard:-
To be absolutely fair, the Romans were utter bastards.
What, you mean like compared to the bubonic plague?
When they conquered people they conquered them, but I'm pushed to find an act of vindictive genocide anywhere near the one decreed by the hugely overrated C5th Athens for the Mytilenians and actually carried out on the Melians. And they managed to interact with the Jews without murderous antisemitism, which lots of people find quite tricky.
Siege of Jerusalem AD70, for a start?
Plenty of others, I think.
Mytilene and Melos were fellow Greeks and nominal allies. The decrees in both cases were for execution of adult males. Sure, Rome crushed rebellions of the theoretically subjugated, but there's a difference. And if it's not much of a difference, why the differential status granted to the Athenians?
I would say Athens tends to get a free pass because of the sheer volume of intellectual output. That's not to say it wasn't capable of brutality, ofcourse.
Yebbutnobutyeah
Plato was undoubtedly (I think) the crown of the output, but it seems perverse to credit him to the political system when he was rabidly antidemocratic anyway, and look what happened to Socrates.
Some of the literature was pretty good*, but if you are going to treat it as a credit to the politics you have to do the same for Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn... And if you say the Parthenon, same for St Peters, the Duomo, Taj Mahal, English cathedrals....
And the Mitylene and Melos decisions were at least as psychotically cruel as any Persian tyrant could have managed. A real advertisement against democracy.
And the universities built themselves on the theory that knowing Greek was the pinnacle of academic aspiration, and Athens was the standard by which everything should be judged (that is literally why "the classics" are called that), and what we end up with, is Boris.
* I have read all the surviving plays, in the original, so you don't have to. Trust me, a lot of it is fcking hard going.
I've read about five of them and I found them delightful. Gorgias is my favourite.
Gorgias is by Plato, and is technically a dialogue, and very good (as are all Plato's dialogues). I was talking about Euripides' tragedies which range from stupendously good (Bacchae) to straight-to-video (most of the rest).
Ups, sorry, I misunderstood. And I nearly corrected you on the play/dialogue thing too. I thought it was bit mean-spirited to be hating on Plato. Euripides is not a pleasure I have yet had.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up income tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
See also May's disastrous dementia tax in 2017 that lost her her majority.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
That's odd because my taxes are going up in April along with 30m other people's tax. By your own black and white statements the Tories are no longer election winning.
National insurance is going up briefly to repay the extra money the NHS needed due to Covid. Other taxes are not and hopefully by the next general election tax will be cut again
Tory tax cuts are like those supermarket promotions, where they hike the price by 20% and then two weeks later tell you that it's 10% off.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
Who gives a primate's eructation about what the Americans and the Canadians do? You might as well inquire what the Fon of Bafut, and the Chinese Communist Party, do.
We are here in the UK, whether we like it or not.
And you still won't tell me if you think that the UK giving India independence was a good or bad thing. That's a lot closer to home that some Canadian person.
Where the same principle applies, see the Tories collapse post 1993 after imposing VAT on fuel. Or after May's dementia tax. Conservatives do not like tax rises.
I told you quite clearly Conservatives opposed Indian independence before 1948 but have accepted it since Attlee gave it. I was not born until 40 years after Indian independence view on it beyond factual comment on it is irrelevant
In other words, you would refuse to say that you approved of the abolition of slavery because etc etc.
There were no slaves in British India and Tory PM Wilberforce worked with Pitt to abolish it
Anjd, as with the former Duke of York being descended from all the others without mass adultery, illegitimacy and incest, your ijnterpretation of history is so awful that you are completey trashing your post.
" Tory PM Wilberforce".
Even '1066 and all that' would be more accurate.
I am trying to watch a TV programme while replying to your usual Nat rants, obviously I meant the other way round
You are a Natdionalist. I am pro-independence.
And we are not mindreaders. You tell us that black is white, we are quite entitled to draw the immediate conclusion.
No you are a Scottish Nationalist and always will be, hence you support the Scottish National Party
I sense a shifting of the the political tectonic plates. The next Tory leader must lance the boil of the ERG/Covid Recovery Group as Kinnock did with Momentum, although will probably face a similar fate. Since the CRG rebellion, the Rees-Moggs etc believe they have free reign, appealing to the c100,000 party members but increasingly alienating UK voters. As with Johnson, any new leader will be in thrall to the CRG unless they call a GE and remove the whip, so they can't stand, as Johnson did with Tory moderates. Johnson irretrievably lost any authority over his party with the CRG revolt against Plan B so was already a dead man walking. Even before 'party gate'. Previous PMs have been able to turn their tenure into filthy lucre. This option is no longer open to Johnson as he has already rewarded his acolytes and will have no traction as a columnist, expert meeting chair or lobbyist and will become. effectively homeless, on loss of office. Even as an after-dinner speaker to software salesmen, his appeal as the 'dim-sounding-but-actually-very-clever' speaker will fail if just one person suffered a bereavement during lockdown. Starmer must be hoping he'll cling on, with every PMQs 'he said this then, he said that then' which one is the truth? will resonate. Starmer has been collecting and collating receipts for 18 months now. His awkward squad, (Corbynite/Momentum) is easier to control. Without the whip, Corbyn faces a future of cultivating his allotment while collecting his pension. While his wife would advocate this course, his lifetime of 'tilting against windmills' will probably mean him setting up his own party. Without the party whip he cannot stand as an MP. Membership or support for such a new party would mean expulsion from Labour/removal of whip for Starmer's awkward squad. And then there is running a de facto 'progressive alliance' between Lib Dems and Labour where, as we have seen, there has already been an implicit pact in by-elections.
Welcome to PB!
On one of your points, think you're under-estimating Boris Johnson post-PM prospects. Certainly he would be a big draw in USA, as former premier AND as a Benny Hill impersonator. No BoJo fatigue over here! Heck, most of us barely know who he is. Certainly we have no real antipathy (or love) for him, just another Brit twit politico/talking head.
Am NOT talking chump change, but LOTS of greenback dollars, at least for a few years on (what used to be called) the rubber chicken circuit.
I've tipped Boris to become a moosehead professor at one of your well-heeled universities. He can teach a 2-hour course on British politics, and another on Ancient Greece. Seven figures for a week's work, if that. Here is an extract from his Rome vs Greece debate against Prof Mary Beard:-
To be absolutely fair, the Romans were utter bastards.
What, you mean like compared to the bubonic plague?
When they conquered people they conquered them, but I'm pushed to find an act of vindictive genocide anywhere near the one decreed by the hugely overrated C5th Athens for the Mytilenians and actually carried out on the Melians. And they managed to interact with the Jews without murderous antisemitism, which lots of people find quite tricky.
Siege of Jerusalem AD70, for a start?
Plenty of others, I think.
Mytilene and Melos were fellow Greeks and nominal allies. The decrees in both cases were for execution of adult males. Sure, Rome crushed rebellions of the theoretically subjugated, but there's a difference. And if it's not much of a difference, why the differential status granted to the Athenians?
I would say Athens tends to get a free pass because of the sheer volume of intellectual output. That's not to say it wasn't capable of brutality, ofcourse.
Yebbutnobutyeah
Plato was undoubtedly (I think) the crown of the output, but it seems perverse to credit him to the political system when he was rabidly antidemocratic anyway, and look what happened to Socrates.
Some of the literature was pretty good*, but if you are going to treat it as a credit to the politics you have to do the same for Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn... And if you say the Parthenon, same for St Peters, the Duomo, Taj Mahal, English cathedrals....
And the Mitylene and Melos decisions were at least as psychotically cruel as any Persian tyrant could have managed. A real advertisement against democracy.
And the universities built themselves on the theory that knowing Greek was the pinnacle of academic aspiration, and Athens was the standard by which everything should be judged (that is literally why "the classics" are called that), and what we end up with, is Boris.
* I have read all the surviving plays, in the original, so you don't have to. Trust me, a lot of it is fcking hard going.
But it was also the sheer range and versatility of output. At the top Plato was a political-metaphysical thinker, for instance, as well as in a way a literary one, so there was no need for reflected glory from one part of society to the other. Again and again it's this multidimensionality which sets Athens apart, I would say, and sets many of our modern parameters. Its military and rituals could still be as brutal as any other, ofcourse.
I'd also hesitate to use Boris, and empty prestige and affectation among the wealthy, as the inevitable historical result of Athens. The Enlightenment wasn't just an affectation of the wealthy.
Yes, but Plato was despite the political set up, not because of it. And Pericles Senior "the many not the few" has to be read in the light of the mob's (the many's) casual judicial murder of his son over Arginusae.
But this versatility was also built into the political structure. You were just required and expected to be many things simultaneously as a citizen, so it was natural that many of its intellectual innovators would also innovate in multiple areas simultaneously. I don't think there's any way round this intellectual plurality and versatility as something pretty exceptional.
I agree that doesn't mean we should skate over Athenian violence and brutality where it took place, though, or imagine them as some sort of perfect civilisation like whitewashed marble.
Very innovative to vote elderly philosophers to death because you've had enough of experts.
Be better to try and research when No. 10 had a night off. This is a dysfunctional workplace. Boris and his relationship with booze in general is an issue now. Like his hero.
This is shocking and heads need to roll - what on earth was their mindset
Apparently Boris had left to go to Chequers but just adds to the narrative
Boris gone by the end of the month looks very possible
Nah, a Tory leadership contest will take two to three months, which takes us to the locals and the new leader will not want their first major event to be a shellacking in the locals.
Boris Johnson is here to stay, in the near term at least.
The Tories got the Barry Gardner/Chinese spy story to the top of the news agenda for all of 30 minutes. Before Andy and then another instalment of the 24 Hour Party People.
That's got to be it. Can't disrespect the Queen in that way and still stay on as PM.
He is hardly going to have personally attended a party where one of the attendees broke his son's swing
Doesn't matter, he's the PM and could have banned all staff parties. He chose to turn a blind eye while the Queen was unable to give her husband a proper send off and not see her family and friends beyond the tiny allowable number.
You're supposed to the monarchist here, even I can see this is terrible news.
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
Who gives a primate's eructation about what the Americans and the Canadians do? You might as well inquire what the Fon of Bafut, and the Chinese Communist Party, do.
We are here in the UK, whether we like it or not.
And you still won't tell me if you think that the UK giving India independence was a good or bad thing. That's a lot closer to home that some Canadian person.
Where the same principle applies, see the Tories collapse post 1993 after imposing VAT on fuel. Or after May's dementia tax. Conservatives do not like tax rises.
I told you quite clearly Conservatives opposed Indian independence before 1948 but have accepted it since Attlee gave it. I was not born until 40 years after Indian independence view on it beyond factual comment on it is irrelevant
In other words, you would refuse to say that you approved of the abolition of slavery because etc etc.
There were no slaves in British India and Tory PM Wilberforce worked with Pitt to abolish it
Not relevant to my point. YOu still won't say if you think it was good or bad to let India be independent. Always, always, blaming someone else.
It was not Conservative policy at the time. I am not going to say I supported it as I am not going to allow you to say I must therefore also support Scottish independence. The Conservative Party opposed Indian independence until Attlee had granted it, once given post Indian independence they accepted it as do I.
Note too Scotland is not a colony unlike Scotland otherwise we would have no Scottish MPs at Westminster
Oh, so it's not a colony? Today, we've had Mr Rees Mogg telling us that the Scottish elected politicians don;t count at all and that only the Colonial Exarch appointed by Mr Johnson counts. Today. Specifically for all Scots, including Tories.
If Scotland was a colony we would shut Holyrood, expel Scottish MPs from Westminster and make Rees Mogg Governor General.
You have totally lost the plot and to be honest I find it quite disturbing
This new No. 10 reorganisation is another purge of dissenters. Anyone who responded that they thought the party was a bad idea or didn't attend will be sacked. Any person who has muttered that the PM should have known better will be hounded out. Boris values loyalty and fealty above all else, he will see anyone who isn't as guilty as him or anyone who had reservations about all the partying as disloyal and a risk.
The UK is no more than a fiefdom with a paralysed Tory party unable or unwilling to pull the trigger. The one thing they used to be good at seems to have been lost.
As people said at the time Boris was elected - Boris will completely trash the Tory party as he destroys support from all directions.
The Tories are still polling higher than May's Tories were after she failed to deliver Brexit or Major's Tories were by 1995 v New Labour
So not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet. Keep on digging...
Unless the government increases income tax or inheritance tax or imposes new restrictions on the vaccinated I doubt it will go much lower polling wise
But it has to increase income tax and inheritance tax to be a fiscally prudent Conservative party.
It was George Bush Snr putting up income tax against his pledge not to in 1988 that saw him fall to just 38% in the 1992 presidential election and Perot get 19% of the vote while Bill Clinton won comfortably.
Similarly the Progressive Conservative government in Canada introducing a new national goods and sales tax before the 1993 election saw them collapse to just 18% and 2 MPs under Kim Campbell who had taken over from Brian Mulroney as PM. They ended up even behind the populist right Reform Party as the Liberals won a landslide.
See also May's disastrous dementia tax in 2017 that lost her her majority.
Election winning Conservatives do not raise tax
That's odd because my taxes are going up in April along with 30m other people's tax. By your own black and white statements the Tories are no longer election winning.
National insurance is going up briefly to repay the extra money the NHS needed due to Covid. Other taxes are not and hopefully by the next general election tax will be cut again
But once the NHS Covid bulge is through, the increased NI / new HSC levy (which will cost Mr and Mrs Voter just as much) is meant to be going to Social Care forever. The money hasn't quite been spent yet, but there's a very strong commitment.
I don't think anyone is expecting the massive economic boom that would render the increase unnecessary, and the idea that there are £12 billion of efficiency saving to be made in the public sector is for the birds.
And, of course, now this tax has been created it's going to keep going up. And up. And up.
If the choice is between taxing assets or grinding earned incomes into the ground then what else would one expect the Conservatives to do?
This is shocking and heads need to roll - what on earth was their mindset
Apparently Boris had left to go to Chequers but just adds to the narrative
Boris gone by the end of the month looks very possible
Nah, a Tory leadership contest will take two to three months, which takes us to the locals and the new leader will not want their first major event to be a shellacking in the locals.
Boris Johnson is here to stay, in the near term at least.
Yup, I think my timeline is correct - he's offered a resignation timetable which installs the new leader and PM in early September after the May election drubbing.
I sense a shifting of the the political tectonic plates. The next Tory leader must lance the boil of the ERG/Covid Recovery Group as Kinnock did with Momentum, although will probably face a similar fate. Since the CRG rebellion, the Rees-Moggs etc believe they have free reign, appealing to the c100,000 party members but increasingly alienating UK voters. As with Johnson, any new leader will be in thrall to the CRG unless they call a GE and remove the whip, so they can't stand, as Johnson did with Tory moderates. Johnson irretrievably lost any authority over his party with the CRG revolt against Plan B so was already a dead man walking. Even before 'party gate'. Previous PMs have been able to turn their tenure into filthy lucre. This option is no longer open to Johnson as he has already rewarded his acolytes and will have no traction as a columnist, expert meeting chair or lobbyist and will become. effectively homeless, on loss of office. Even as an after-dinner speaker to software salesmen, his appeal as the 'dim-sounding-but-actually-very-clever' speaker will fail if just one person suffered a bereavement during lockdown. Starmer must be hoping he'll cling on, with every PMQs 'he said this then, he said that then' which one is the truth? will resonate. Starmer has been collecting and collating receipts for 18 months now. His awkward squad, (Corbynite/Momentum) is easier to control. Without the whip, Corbyn faces a future of cultivating his allotment while collecting his pension. While his wife would advocate this course, his lifetime of 'tilting against windmills' will probably mean him setting up his own party. Without the party whip he cannot stand as an MP. Membership or support for such a new party would mean expulsion from Labour/removal of whip for Starmer's awkward squad. And then there is running a de facto 'progressive alliance' between Lib Dems and Labour where, as we have seen, there has already been an implicit pact in by-elections.
Welcome to PB!
On one of your points, think you're under-estimating Boris Johnson post-PM prospects. Certainly he would be a big draw in USA, as former premier AND as a Benny Hill impersonator. No BoJo fatigue over here! Heck, most of us barely know who he is. Certainly we have no real antipathy (or love) for him, just another Brit twit politico/talking head.
Am NOT talking chump change, but LOTS of greenback dollars, at least for a few years on (what used to be called) the rubber chicken circuit.
I've tipped Boris to become a moosehead professor at one of your well-heeled universities. He can teach a 2-hour course on British politics, and another on Ancient Greece. Seven figures for a week's work, if that. Here is an extract from his Rome vs Greece debate against Prof Mary Beard:-
To be absolutely fair, the Romans were utter bastards.
What, you mean like compared to the bubonic plague?
When they conquered people they conquered them, but I'm pushed to find an act of vindictive genocide anywhere near the one decreed by the hugely overrated C5th Athens for the Mytilenians and actually carried out on the Melians. And they managed to interact with the Jews without murderous antisemitism, which lots of people find quite tricky.
Siege of Jerusalem AD70, for a start?
Plenty of others, I think.
Mytilene and Melos were fellow Greeks and nominal allies. The decrees in both cases were for execution of adult males. Sure, Rome crushed rebellions of the theoretically subjugated, but there's a difference. And if it's not much of a difference, why the differential status granted to the Athenians?
I would say Athens tends to get a free pass because of the sheer volume of intellectual output. That's not to say it wasn't capable of brutality, ofcourse.
Yebbutnobutyeah
Plato was undoubtedly (I think) the crown of the output, but it seems perverse to credit him to the political system when he was rabidly antidemocratic anyway, and look what happened to Socrates.
Some of the literature was pretty good*, but if you are going to treat it as a credit to the politics you have to do the same for Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn... And if you say the Parthenon, same for St Peters, the Duomo, Taj Mahal, English cathedrals....
And the Mitylene and Melos decisions were at least as psychotically cruel as any Persian tyrant could have managed. A real advertisement against democracy.
And the universities built themselves on the theory that knowing Greek was the pinnacle of academic aspiration, and Athens was the standard by which everything should be judged (that is literally why "the classics" are called that), and what we end up with, is Boris.
* I have read all the surviving plays, in the original, so you don't have to. Trust me, a lot of it is fcking hard going.
But it was also the sheer range and versatility of output. At the top Plato was a political-metaphysical thinker, for instance, as well as in a way a literary one, so there was no need for reflected glory from one part of society to the other. Again and again it's this multidimensionality which sets Athens apart, I would say, and sets many of our modern parameters. Its military and rituals could still be as brutal as any other, ofcourse.
I'd also hesitate to use Boris, and empty prestige and affectation among the wealthy, as the inevitable historical result of Athens. The Enlightenment wasn't just an affectation of the wealthy.
Yes, but Plato was despite the political set up, not because of it. And Pericles Senior "the many not the few" has to be read in the light of the mob's (the many's) casual judicial murder of his son over Arginusae.
But this versatility was also built into the political structure. You were just required and expected to be many things simultaneously as a citizen, so it was natural that many of its intellectual innovators would also innovate in multiple areas simultaneously. I don't think there's any way round this intellectual plurality and versatility as something pretty exceptional.
I agree that doesn't mean we should skate over Athenian violence and brutality where it took place, though, or imagine them as some sort of perfect civilisation like whitewashed marble.
Very innovative to vote elderly philosophers to death because you've had enough of experts.
Had it coming, he did.
I do find the Athenian attitude to women very, erm, different from today. Even the Lakedaimonians got it better. Though not the food.
I sense a shifting of the the political tectonic plates. The next Tory leader must lance the boil of the ERG/Covid Recovery Group as Kinnock did with Momentum, although will probably face a similar fate. Since the CRG rebellion, the Rees-Moggs etc believe they have free reign, appealing to the c100,000 party members but increasingly alienating UK voters. As with Johnson, any new leader will be in thrall to the CRG unless they call a GE and remove the whip, so they can't stand, as Johnson did with Tory moderates. Johnson irretrievably lost any authority over his party with the CRG revolt against Plan B so was already a dead man walking. Even before 'party gate'. Previous PMs have been able to turn their tenure into filthy lucre. This option is no longer open to Johnson as he has already rewarded his acolytes and will have no traction as a columnist, expert meeting chair or lobbyist and will become. effectively homeless, on loss of office. Even as an after-dinner speaker to software salesmen, his appeal as the 'dim-sounding-but-actually-very-clever' speaker will fail if just one person suffered a bereavement during lockdown. Starmer must be hoping he'll cling on, with every PMQs 'he said this then, he said that then' which one is the truth? will resonate. Starmer has been collecting and collating receipts for 18 months now. His awkward squad, (Corbynite/Momentum) is easier to control. Without the whip, Corbyn faces a future of cultivating his allotment while collecting his pension. While his wife would advocate this course, his lifetime of 'tilting against windmills' will probably mean him setting up his own party. Without the party whip he cannot stand as an MP. Membership or support for such a new party would mean expulsion from Labour/removal of whip for Starmer's awkward squad. And then there is running a de facto 'progressive alliance' between Lib Dems and Labour where, as we have seen, there has already been an implicit pact in by-elections.
Welcome to PB!
On one of your points, think you're under-estimating Boris Johnson post-PM prospects. Certainly he would be a big draw in USA, as former premier AND as a Benny Hill impersonator. No BoJo fatigue over here! Heck, most of us barely know who he is. Certainly we have no real antipathy (or love) for him, just another Brit twit politico/talking head.
Am NOT talking chump change, but LOTS of greenback dollars, at least for a few years on (what used to be called) the rubber chicken circuit.
I've tipped Boris to become a moosehead professor at one of your well-heeled universities. He can teach a 2-hour course on British politics, and another on Ancient Greece. Seven figures for a week's work, if that. Here is an extract from his Rome vs Greece debate against Prof Mary Beard:-
To be absolutely fair, the Romans were utter bastards.
What, you mean like compared to the bubonic plague?
When they conquered people they conquered them, but I'm pushed to find an act of vindictive genocide anywhere near the one decreed by the hugely overrated C5th Athens for the Mytilenians and actually carried out on the Melians. And they managed to interact with the Jews without murderous antisemitism, which lots of people find quite tricky.
Siege of Jerusalem AD70, for a start?
Plenty of others, I think.
Mytilene and Melos were fellow Greeks and nominal allies. The decrees in both cases were for execution of adult males. Sure, Rome crushed rebellions of the theoretically subjugated, but there's a difference. And if it's not much of a difference, why the differential status granted to the Athenians?
I would say Athens tends to get a free pass because of the sheer volume of intellectual output. That's not to say it wasn't capable of brutality, ofcourse.
Yebbutnobutyeah
Plato was undoubtedly (I think) the crown of the output, but it seems perverse to credit him to the political system when he was rabidly antidemocratic anyway, and look what happened to Socrates.
Some of the literature was pretty good*, but if you are going to treat it as a credit to the politics you have to do the same for Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn... And if you say the Parthenon, same for St Peters, the Duomo, Taj Mahal, English cathedrals....
And the Mitylene and Melos decisions were at least as psychotically cruel as any Persian tyrant could have managed. A real advertisement against democracy.
And the universities built themselves on the theory that knowing Greek was the pinnacle of academic aspiration, and Athens was the standard by which everything should be judged (that is literally why "the classics" are called that), and what we end up with, is Boris.
* I have read all the surviving plays, in the original, so you don't have to. Trust me, a lot of it is fcking hard going.
But it was also the sheer range and versatility of output. At the top Plato was a political-metaphysical thinker, for instance, as well as in a way a literary one, so there was no need for reflected glory from one part of society to the other. Again and again it's this multidimensionality which sets Athens apart, I would say, and sets many of our modern parameters. Its military and rituals could still be as brutal as any other, ofcourse.
I'd also hesitate to use Boris, and empty prestige and affectation among the wealthy, as the inevitable historical result of Athens. The Enlightenment wasn't just an affectation of the wealthy.
Yes, but Plato was despite the political set up, not because of it. And Pericles Senior "the many not the few" has to be read in the light of the mob's (the many's) casual judicial murder of his son over Arginusae.
But this versatility was also built into the political structure. You were just required and expected to be many things simultaneously as a citizen, so it was natural that many of its intellectual innovators would also innovate in multiple areas simultaneously. I don't think there's any way round this intellectual plurality and versatility as something pretty exceptional.
I agree that doesn't mean we should skate over Athenian violence and brutality where it took place, though, or imagine them as some sort of perfect civilisation like whitewashed marble.
Very innovative to vote elderly philosophers to death because you've had enough of experts.
Had it coming, he did.
Well, as I said, I agree they were far from perfect.
On this latest report below on the all-night party before Philip's funeral, that really could be curtains.
Comments
A copy of our letter is below. https://twitter.com/CovidJusticeUK/status/1481710259584577538/photo/1
And there isn't an "animal welfare community" for which you speak anyway. I am reponsible for the wellbeing of 9 equines (7 of them unridden and unrideable, as I am sure you think riding a horse is a refined form of abuse) and any number of dogs. I am guessing you aren't. Frankly I have you down as a borderline psychopath after your cynical deceit of this site throughout GE 2015 (tick tock) and your subsequent enthusiasm for the jew hater Corbyn. Surely animal welfare was only ever a career opening?
γνῶθι σεαυτόν - know thyself
Μηδὲν ἄγαν - Nothing in excess
This article would seem to partially at least bear that out:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/jul/20/uk.Whitehall
1. The one when he took over, and put Dom in charge.
2. The one between Brexit and Covid, the one that the Saj couldn't swallow.
3. The one when Dom left.
4. The one now being leaked to the press to save BoJo's pasty hide.
It just might be that the support players in Downing Street aren't the issue.
This is only a slight oversimplification of the picture. Your party is one for entitled old people and those who stand to inherit property from them. It offers nothing to anyone else except being bled white to line the pockets of your client vote and rotten governance.
Could well be both/and.
His work for CWF seems genuinely heartfelt to me, as does Carrie's love for animals. They bring out both the best and the worst of us a species.
Quite what we do with animals is a real ethical dilemma. Indeed I am part way through this very thoughtful book on the subject:
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1118598/how-to-love-animals-in-a-human-shaped-world/9781787332089.html
" Tory PM Wilberforce".
Even '1066 and all that' would be more accurate.
Note too Scotland is not a colony unlike Scotland otherwise we would have no Scottish MPs at Westminster
Ni is going up each year by 1.25% though in 23 it will be shown separately
https://www.focaldata.com/blog/boris-johnson-mrp-vote-2021
Now I wouldn't know a sound MRP model from a packet of crisps, but I am very comfortable having a position on lab maj at 11/2
I agree that doesn't mean we should skate over Athenian violence and brutality where it took place, though, or imagine them as some sort of perfect civilisation like whitewashed marble.
I have been a big believer in a much reduced Tory majority next time.
However.
It looks like the PM is staying. His reputation is toast. He is openly mocked by all and sundry. They're laughing at him not with him. It the Stalin to Mr Bean of Brown all over again.
The polls are all one way traffic. The decline was slow since June. Rapid after November hasn't shown any sign of slowing down.
He can't Brexit again. COVID is on its way out. Tax rises and inflation in.
Moreover. He is beholden to factions who are seriously out of touch with majority opinion on a range of issues. And obsessed with others of trivial importance to most.
Most importantly though. The population is fed up. We are all weary, restless and traumatised. We crave some quiet time to do familiar stuff while a competent government hums along in the background doing not much. This isn't Boris at all to say the least.
There is no obvious successor. Any change would be a brutal bunfight.
The downside potential for it getting very ugly indeed is high. Labour majority at 5-1 may be good value.
Genuinely heartfelt.
And Corbyn was a jew hater. And his supporters condoned it.
The Tories only started giving nations independence under Macmillan once India and much
of the Empire had already gone
Bridgen becomes the fifth Tory to say Johnson must go.
Listen on Chopper's Politics podcast:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/01/13/brexiteer-becomes-fifth-tory-mp-week-submit-boris-johnson-no/
@ChoppersPodcast
Number 10 held two boozy parties the night before the Queen mourned Prince Philip alone.
Staff drank and at points danced until the early hours of the night of April 16.
Hours later, the Queen went to a socially-distanced funeral for Philip. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/01/13/two-parties-held-downing-street-queen-country-mourned-death/
And we are not mindreaders. You tell us that black is white, we are quite entitled to draw the immediate conclusion.
I don't think anyone is expecting the massive economic boom that would render the increase unnecessary, and the idea that there are £12 billion of efficiency saving to be made in the public sector is for the birds.
🥂Staff partied in the basement of No10, to music DJd by a special adviser.
🥂One broke Wilf Johnson’s swing in the No10 garden.
🥂Another was sent to the Co-op with a suitcase to buy booze.
Another event held to mark the departure of James Slack, Mr Johnson’s chief spinner, saw:
🍻 Staff gathered for a speech from Slack, with others dialling in via Zoom.
🍻Booze drunk and attendees spilling into the garden.
🍻Chatting and drinking into the early hours.
At the time Britain was in Step 2 of lockdown easing - which banned indoor gatherings and imposed the rule of six outside.
But the celebrations in No10 meant around 30 people were gathered for what a source declares were definitely parties.
Can No10 claim they were work events?
This was the scene in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle the next day.
Prince Philip’s funeral was restricted to 30 people, and the PM declined to attend, to make more space for family.
The Queen did not participate in the service. https://twitter.com/Tony_Diver/status/1481741378262638604/photo/1
The response of the mandarins of the Foreign office was to demand that he be binned and his career trashed for alarmism (aka upsetting the internal Foreign Office policy on the Falklands/Argentina).
*After* the Falklands War they still insisted that he was binned.
I can't see that being a winning strategy.
EXCLUSIVE
Number 10 held two boozy parties the night before the Queen mourned Prince Philip alone.
Staff drank and at points danced until the early hours of the night of April 16.
Hours later, the Queen went to a socially-distanced funeral for Philip.
https://twitter.com/Tony_Diver/status/1481741378262638604
I thought it was bit mean-spirited to be hating on Plato. Euripides is not a pleasure I have yet had.
And by the way, DLG did go to war over Ireland:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_War_of_Independence
Had it coming, he did.
The man in front of the tank.
The falling man.
Etc
This is a dysfunctional workplace.
Boris and his relationship with booze in general is an issue now. Like his hero.
Apparently Boris had left to go to Chequers but just adds to the narrative
Boris gone by the end of the month looks very possible
But people have been saying that for years. And it has always turned out that BoJo's brazenness has similar properties to Teflon.
And who are all the people who have treasured these things and pondered them in their hearts for the last year or two?
They're not much better.
Boris Johnson is here to stay, in the near term at least.
You're supposed to the monarchist here, even I can see this is terrible news.
His swing ffs!
The Queen or Boris. Let's see where your loyalties lie.
This is just like having a party when your parents, in this case read the Johnsons, were away
If the choice is between taxing assets or grinding earned incomes into the ground then what else would one expect the Conservatives to do?
Mind you, North hung in there for 12 years, beating all the "worst than since" players by about a decade on av.
What does it say about Boris Johnson that he employs people like this and never sacks them?
Wonder if they have any jobs going sounds like a hoot
On this latest report below on the all-night party before Philip's funeral, that really could be curtains.