YouGov Favourability ratings: Johnson still beating Patel – politicalbetting.com

System

YouGov Favourability ratings: Johnson still beating Patel – politicalbetting.com

I always feel a sense of ownership over YouGov’s regular favourability ratings. During the coalition years I was asked by the firm if I would like a special question devised by me to be asked by the firm. After some consideration, I came up with favourability ratings which then were very common in the US but rarely seen in the UK.

Read the full story here

IshmaelZ

Patel equal with Corbyn's lowest ever score. What is she for?

TimS

IshmaelZ said:

Patel equal with Corbyn's lowest ever score. What is she for?

To take the flak for an inevitably chaotic migration regime?

Carnyx

TimS said:

IshmaelZ said:

Patel equal with Corbyn's lowest ever score. What is she for?

To take the flak for an inevitably chaotic migration regime?

To make Mr J look good?*

*Edit: not literally.

rottenborough

John Rentoul
@JohnRentoul
·
1h
The suitcase of booze is one of those images that is instantly historic; Boris Johnson's govt will be remembered for it
John Rentoul
@JohnRentoul
·
1h
It is already slang:
@MattChorley
on
@TimesRadio
just now talked about getting “absolutely suitcased”

Andy_JS

At the moment it looks pretty certain that the final 3 in the MPs vote will be Sunak, Truss and Hunt.

Nigelb

IshmaelZ said:

Patel equal with Corbyn's lowest ever score. What is she for?

Conservative Home Secretaries aren't supposed to be popular, other than with a very particular slice of the electorate.

And she's failing at that, too.

Stocky

Andy_JS said:

At the moment it looks pretty certain that the final 3 in the MPs vote will be Sunak, Truss and Hunt.

I agree and think the membership vote will be between Sunak and Hunt. This could be very close and hard to call. So at current odds I still think Hunt represents the value and lay Truss.

northern_monkey

Gah, fell into the thread hole. FPT, in reply to Leon:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Leon said:

That Guardian long-read on Dom Cummings’ blog, mentioned below, is indeed essential viewing

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy

This is superbly bang-on:

“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”

Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right

The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election

I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy

Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?

He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.

It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership

The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.

You know, I get everything you’re saying. I can see what you mean about posh Remainers.

From my decidedly non-posh standpoint, I think what appals me most about Brexit is that Red Wall people have been promised that we will Take Back Control. And we will.

But I fear, and nothing has happened to disabuse me of this notion, in fact things like that Leeds leg of HS2 being cancelled reinforce it, is that Red Wallers have been persuaded to hand back control to a system that, more often than not, elects Conservative governments that, more often than not, screw the north, the people I love and the communities I am part of.

The EU, or EEC as it was then, handed over big bucks through coalfield regeneration funding, which did help. Now I might be wrong, but I suspect a Conservative government wouldn’t have done such a thing.

Yes, we’re free to spend our own money now how we want. The point being the country very often chooses to elect a government that chooses to spend a disproportionate amount in the South East and London.

I suspect that Boris is now expendable. He got the Red Wallers vote, he sang the siren song on levelling up. Will it last or will the Tory Party revert to type? I suspect the latter.

Yes, wages have gone up for some unskilled people. Will it last? Will they be eaten up by inflation?

Red Wallers were convinced, I think, to vote to hand control from one remote bureaucracy, the EU, that at least had their interests at heart to some extent, though no doubt many will disagree, and give that control to another remote bureaucracy, in Westminster, that very often doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the north and the Midlands.

That's the con trick that really pisses me off.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. But I think Boris being flushed away will see levelling up go with him and the party return to type. Belt-tightening, inflation, post-pandemic austerity. Red Wallers will be no better off.

If you're a right-winger and you're wanting the market to run free, Britannia Unleashed, all that kind of thing, then fair enough, my wailing above probably doesn't touch you one bit. But, from what I can gather, when people up here ticked Leave in 2016, that's not what they thought they were going to get.

Edit: New Labour did help. Yes, they could have done more. Yes, they took us for granted. I think they've learned from that mistake.

ping

Andy_JS said:

At the moment it looks pretty certain that the final 3 in the MPs vote will be Sunak, Truss and Hunt.

I wouldn’t be so sure.

Things could look very different by the time the starting gun is fired. Even then, with the “worlds most sophisticated selectorate” I think we can expect surprises.

If you, or anyone, wants to bet on the last three, depending on the odds, I’ll probably take the other side of the bet.

Richard_Nabavi

Andy_JS said:

At the moment it looks pretty certain that the final 3 in the MPs vote will be Sunak, Truss and Hunt.

Hunt's support from what's left of the sane part of the parliamentary party is probably enough to get him to the final two, where he'll lose in the members' vote. So the interesting bit is whether Steve Baker and his disciplined band of ultras will want Sunak or Truss. My guess is that they'll be suspicious of both, but more so of Truss.

NorthofStoke

IshmaelZ said:

Patel equal with Corbyn's lowest ever score. What is she for?

Like Williamson was, to absorb incoming fire.

TheScreamingEagles

Number 10 apologises to the Queen... #DowningStreetParty



https://twitter.com/AndrewCrines/status/1481997407730733061

Scott_xP

My bit about the latest two Downing Street parties - your basic lockdown tale of basement DJing, a suitcase of booze, a broken kiddie’s swing, and an apology to the Queen. It’s called LEADERSHIP - look it up https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/14/booze-swing-no-10-hangover-party-prince-philip-boris-johnson

Luckyguy1983

northern_monkey said:

Gah, fell into the thread hole. FPT, in reply to Leon:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Leon said:

That Guardian long-read on Dom Cummings’ blog, mentioned below, is indeed essential viewing

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy

This is superbly bang-on:

“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”

Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right

The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election

I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy

Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?

He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.

It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership

The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.

You know, I get everything you’re saying. I can see what you mean about posh Remainers.

From my decidedly non-posh standpoint, I think what appals me most about Brexit is that Red Wall people have been promised that we will Take Back Control. And we will.

But I fear, and nothing has happened to disabuse me of this notion, in fact things like that Leeds leg of HS2 being cancelled reinforce it, is that Red Wallers have been persuaded to hand back control to a system that, more often than not, elects Conservative governments that, more often than not, screw the north, the people I love and the communities I am part of.

The EU, or EEC as it was then, handed over big bucks through coalfield regeneration funding, which did help. Now I might be wrong, but I suspect a Conservative government wouldn’t have done such a thing.

Yes, we’re free to spend our own money now how we want. The point being the country very often chooses to elect a government that chooses to spend a disproportionate amount in the South East and London.

I suspect that Boris is now expendable. He got the Red Wallers vote, he sang the siren song on levelling up. Will it last or will the Tory Party revert to type? I suspect the latter.

Yes, wages have gone up for some unskilled people. Will it last? Will they be eaten up by inflation?

Red Wallers were convinced, I think, to vote to hand control from one remote bureaucracy, the EU, that at least had their interests at heart to some extent, though no doubt many will disagree, and give that control to another remote bureaucracy, in Westminster, that very often doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the north and the Midlands.

That's the con trick that really pisses me off.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. But I think Boris being flushed away will see levelling up go with him and the party return to type. Belt-tightening, inflation, post-pandemic austerity. Red Wallers will be no better off.

If you're a right-winger and you're wanting the market to run free, Britannia Unleashed, all that kind of thing, then fair enough, my wailing above probably doesn't touch you one bit. But, from what I can gather, when people up here ticked Leave in 2016, that's not what they thought they were going to get.

HS2 was always a London project. If it wasn't, why wouldn't it start in the North before finally getting down to London?

TheScreamingEagles

I thought Johnson would survive until at least May, if not 2023 however these ratings, and they truly are dire, means he's polling as worse as May/Corbyn at their nadirs.

Malmesbury

MoonRabbit said:

Malmesbury said:

MoonRabbit said:

david_herdson said:

MoonRabbit said:

rottenborough said:

MoonRabbit said:

dixiedean said:

IshmaelZ said:

Sandpit said:

Carnyx said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Alistair said:

Leadsom for leader.

Roooth!

A ridiculous 25/1 with PP.

Are we past the days of having peers as PMs, in the sense of it being even legally possible? Though Lord Home got himself a safe seat as a MP pdq if I recall the recent discussion here. I'm sure someone could be persuaded to apply to the Chiltern Hundreds if need be, in a nice safe seat.

Nothing that legally says the PM cannot be in the Lords - although I imagine that there would be no such thing as a safe seat for a by-election these days, if a party tried to force one in such circumstances.

Halifax turned down PMship in 1940 on account of being a Lord

Is that so? I'd always assumed Labour wouldn't support him.

I read a couple of articles that had it as his for taking, but bottled it. He didn’t fancy being a war leader. Didn’t think we could win. Didn’t want to fight. The recent film of Churchill portrayed it like this?
Is this revisionist history? It’s been revised and is more accurate?

Labour wanted Halifax and that was the general consensus of the Commons. The King wanted Halifax and was a bit upset when Halifax raised the objection of being a peer and so not able to operate effectively in the House.

That’s where I disagree with you Rottenborough. I can’t do it because I am a Lord buries the truth and distorts true history which needs to be revised, therefore your favourite history books on your shelf you always thought was history are lying to you and you need to get new ones.
The truth being “havn’t slept for a week thinking I have to be war PM, I think we should make deal with Germans anyway.”

Halifax accepted that there was no constitutional bar on him being PM in the Lords; he turned the job down primarily because he didn't want to do it and recognised that Churchill would overshadow him, whatever their official statuses.

By 1940, it wasn't even accepted that a PM couldn't sit in the Lords. It was only 38 years then since it had last happened (the equivalent of 1984 from now), and Curzon had been seriously considered as a PM candidate in the early 1920s.

While it was certainly seen as unhelpful that a PM might sit in a House where the main opposition had barely any representation, it wasn't an absolute bar.

In any case, there were provisions that could have been made to ease the difficulty. One was to amend the HoC standing orders, to allow a non-MP PM to be able to address MPs from within the chamber; IIRC, another would have been for the king to put Halifax's peerage into abeyance.

Either way, you don't lose a world war for a point of minor constitutional principle which wasn't even convention at that stage. Had Halifax been the MP and Churchill the peer (far from impossible), it's very likely that the latter would still have become PM.

Awesome post.

Opening bit

“ Halifax accepted that there was no constitutional bar on him being PM in the Lords; he turned the job down primarily because he didn't want to do it and recognised that Churchill would overshadow him, whatever their official statuses. “.

Absolutely spot on as the history as I know it. But does raise questions as, not without skills and merit was Halifax nonetheless not leadership material crucially in his own mind? And how history books would wrongly copy each other as the reason for the decision as something else?

One of the weaknesses of history books and historians is how so much of it just copies each other? Especially now in the internet age, it’s not so many sources as it appears if all says same thing with so few alternative perspectives.

Indeed - going back to primary sources often reveals interesting things.

A very good recent example was "Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway" which pointed out that much of the layers of scholarship on the battle was wrong. Among other things, the Japanese carriers had physical limitations which meant that various things couldn't be true. And a major Japanese source had been proved to be less than accurate y historians in Japan....

From my reading of the period, Halifax saw himself as the wrong man to be PM - in a World War*. I think he would have jumped at the job, if it had been a matter of managing the continuing recovery of the economy, dealing with social issues and a bit of diplomacy.

*I seem to recall a story, that one of the pacifist types in the Labour party asked Atlee why he was serving under that "ghastly warmonger and warlover, Churchill?". Atlee is supposed to have replied that the country needed a warmonger.

I think what you have added to what David posted nails it now.

“ Halifax accepted that there was no constitutional bar on him being PM in the Lords; he turned the job down primarily because he didn't want to do it and recognised that Churchill would overshadow him, whatever their official statuses. “.

+

“ Halifax saw himself as the wrong man to be PM in a war “

= pretty much the true history of what happened. 👍🏻

Though still probably some questions around prevalence of “sign a truce rather than attempt a war” feeling? Like you said, go back to original sources, that would be a view of it from the other side of the war, without knowing that we won, without full or any awareness of the horrors of the concentration camps, and likely so many other ways where the view would be different, than the view of the same spot in history post war.

Halifax hated Hitler. His position *before* the fall of France was that no peace was possible with Germany, if Hitler was still in charge. We know this because he said this (and it was documented as being said) to an intermediary* with the German government.

It was after the French defeat that he suggested the old WWI plan of an armistice with Germany if the BEF was pushed out of France and France fell.

Basically - "Shit, the Germans have won. What do we do now?"

*Swedish chap, IIRC.

OnlyLivingBoy

As a rich liberal remainer, grateful for some advice. Rather than getting my coffee made by a Romanian, I made eight cups of tea today for the working class English people building something for me in the garden. And two cheese toasties. I also failed to tell them to work harder, as they seem to be working fairly hard without my input. Am I doing this wrong?

Leon

northern_monkey said:

Gah, fell into the thread hole. FPT, in reply to Leon:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Leon said:

That Guardian long-read on Dom Cummings’ blog, mentioned below, is indeed essential viewing

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy

This is superbly bang-on:

“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”

Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right

The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election

I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy

Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?

He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.

It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership

The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.

You know, I get everything you’re saying. I can see what you mean about posh Remainers.

From my decidedly non-posh standpoint, I think what appals me most about Brexit is that Red Wall people have been promised that we will Take Back Control. And we will.

But I fear, and nothing has happened to disabuse me of this notion, in fact things like that Leeds leg of HS2 being cancelled reinforce it, is that Red Wallers have been persuaded to hand back control to a system that, more often than not, elects Conservative governments that, more often than not, screw the north, the people I love and the communities I am part of.

The EU, or EEC as it was then, handed over big bucks through coalfield regeneration funding, which did help. Now I might be wrong, but I suspect a Conservative government wouldn’t have done such a thing.

Yes, we’re free to spend our own money now how we want. The point being the country very often chooses to elect a government that chooses to spend a disproportionate amount in the South East and London.

I suspect that Boris is now expendable. He got the Red Wallers vote, he sang the siren song on levelling up. Will it last or will the Tory Party revert to type? I suspect the latter.

Yes, wages have gone up for some unskilled people. Will it last? Will they be eaten up by inflation?

Red Wallers were convinced, I think, to vote to hand control from one remote bureaucracy, the EU, that at least had their interests at heart to some extent, though no doubt many will disagree, and give that control to another remote bureaucracy, in Westminster, that very often doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the north and the Midlands.

That's the con trick that really pisses me off.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. But I think Boris being flushed away will see levelling up go with him and the party return to type. Belt-tightening, inflation, post-pandemic austerity. Red Wallers will be no better off.

If you're a right-winger and you're wanting the market to run free, Britannia Unleashed, all that kind of thing, then fair enough, my wailing above probably doesn't touch you one bit. But, from what I can gather, when people up here ticked Leave in 2016, that's not what they thought they were going to get.

I agree with much of this diagnosis

Just two points: I don’t believe the Tories will return to ‘austerity’ for quite a while (unless forced by circumstances like a looming default). Big debt is with us for the medium term, as the global economy recovers from Covid (ins’allah)

Also, it’s not true to say Brexit has replaced one remote bureaucracy with another. We are now properly democratic. If the Red Wallers are angry at the Tory government’s betrayal (and fair enough, it’s not looking good) they can have the electoral satisfaction of sweeping them out of office, in humiliating style. Not something they can do to the EU Commission

And that, for me, was pretty much the whole point of Brexit

FrancisUrquhart

FFS....

Extinction Rebellion: Jury clears protesters dragged off train roof

Last month, the Anglican priest admitted she was "surprised" to avoid jail for blocking the M25. She was one of seven members of Insulate Britain who were handed suspended sentences for breaching an injunction and being in contempt of court.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-59996870

So we can't even claim well it was just one of those things she got a bit carried away. She already guilty of blocking motorways and has a suspended sentence against her. Clear pattern of behaviour.

ping

Luckyguy1983 said:

northern_monkey said:

Gah, fell into the thread hole. FPT, in reply to Leon:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Leon said:

That Guardian long-read on Dom Cummings’ blog, mentioned below, is indeed essential viewing

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy

This is superbly bang-on:

“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”

Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right

The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election

I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy

Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?

He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.

It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership

The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.

You know, I get everything you’re saying. I can see what you mean about posh Remainers.

From my decidedly non-posh standpoint, I think what appals me most about Brexit is that Red Wall people have been promised that we will Take Back Control. And we will.

But I fear, and nothing has happened to disabuse me of this notion, in fact things like that Leeds leg of HS2 being cancelled reinforce it, is that Red Wallers have been persuaded to hand back control to a system that, more often than not, elects Conservative governments that, more often than not, screw the north, the people I love and the communities I am part of.

The EU, or EEC as it was then, handed over big bucks through coalfield regeneration funding, which did help. Now I might be wrong, but I suspect a Conservative government wouldn’t have done such a thing.

Yes, we’re free to spend our own money now how we want. The point being the country very often chooses to elect a government that chooses to spend a disproportionate amount in the South East and London.

I suspect that Boris is now expendable. He got the Red Wallers vote, he sang the siren song on levelling up. Will it last or will the Tory Party revert to type? I suspect the latter.

Yes, wages have gone up for some unskilled people. Will it last? Will they be eaten up by inflation?

Red Wallers were convinced, I think, to vote to hand control from one remote bureaucracy, the EU, that at least had their interests at heart to some extent, though no doubt many will disagree, and give that control to another remote bureaucracy, in Westminster, that very often doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the north and the Midlands.

That's the con trick that really pisses me off.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. But I think Boris being flushed away will see levelling up go with him and the party return to type. Belt-tightening, inflation, post-pandemic austerity. Red Wallers will be no better off.

If you're a right-winger and you're wanting the market to run free, Britannia Unleashed, all that kind of thing, then fair enough, my wailing above probably doesn't touch you one bit. But, from what I can gather, when people up here ticked Leave in 2016, that's not what they thought they were going to get.

HS2 was always a London project. If it wasn't, why wouldn't it start in the North before finally getting down to London?

I don’t get this argument. HS2 was all about capacity - the Brum-London bit was the most desperate for extra capacity, hence why it got built first.

Richard_Nabavi

OnlyLivingBoy said:

As a rich liberal remainer, grateful for some advice. Rather than getting my coffee made by a Romanian, I made eight cups of tea today for the working class English people building something for me in the garden. And two cheese toasties. I also failed to tell them to work harder, as they seem to be working fairly hard without my input. Am I doing this wrong?

Yes. Should have been eight cheese toasties.

Nigelb

Richard_Nabavi said:

Andy_JS said:

At the moment it looks pretty certain that the final 3 in the MPs vote will be Sunak, Truss and Hunt.

Hunt's support from what's left of the sane part of the parliamentary party is probably enough to get him to the final two, where he'll lose in the members' vote. So the interesting bit is whether Steve Baker and his disciplined band of ultras will want Sunak or Truss. My guess is that they'll be suspicious of both, but more so of Truss.

There are likely deals to be done, though.
And that is a case as much of willingness as it is of trustworthiness.

OnlyLivingBoy

Luckyguy1983 said:

northern_monkey said:

Gah, fell into the thread hole. FPT, in reply to Leon:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Leon said:

That Guardian long-read on Dom Cummings’ blog, mentioned below, is indeed essential viewing

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy

This is superbly bang-on:

“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”

Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right

The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election

I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy

Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?

He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.

It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership

The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.

You know, I get everything you’re saying. I can see what you mean about posh Remainers.

From my decidedly non-posh standpoint, I think what appals me most about Brexit is that Red Wall people have been promised that we will Take Back Control. And we will.

But I fear, and nothing has happened to disabuse me of this notion, in fact things like that Leeds leg of HS2 being cancelled reinforce it, is that Red Wallers have been persuaded to hand back control to a system that, more often than not, elects Conservative governments that, more often than not, screw the north, the people I love and the communities I am part of.

The EU, or EEC as it was then, handed over big bucks through coalfield regeneration funding, which did help. Now I might be wrong, but I suspect a Conservative government wouldn’t have done such a thing.

Yes, we’re free to spend our own money now how we want. The point being the country very often chooses to elect a government that chooses to spend a disproportionate amount in the South East and London.

I suspect that Boris is now expendable. He got the Red Wallers vote, he sang the siren song on levelling up. Will it last or will the Tory Party revert to type? I suspect the latter.

Yes, wages have gone up for some unskilled people. Will it last? Will they be eaten up by inflation?

Red Wallers were convinced, I think, to vote to hand control from one remote bureaucracy, the EU, that at least had their interests at heart to some extent, though no doubt many will disagree, and give that control to another remote bureaucracy, in Westminster, that very often doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the north and the Midlands.

That's the con trick that really pisses me off.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. But I think Boris being flushed away will see levelling up go with him and the party return to type. Belt-tightening, inflation, post-pandemic austerity. Red Wallers will be no better off.

If you're a right-winger and you're wanting the market to run free, Britannia Unleashed, all that kind of thing, then fair enough, my wailing above probably doesn't touch you one bit. But, from what I can gather, when people up here ticked Leave in 2016, that's not what they thought they were going to get.

HS2 was always a London project. If it wasn't, why wouldn't it start in the North before finally getting down to London?

Because more people want to travel between Birmingham and London than between Manchester and Birmingham?

IanB2

I'm surprised that Patel has cut through to the extent of her negative.

FrancisUrquhart

That interesting Guardian article on Cummings blog, when the author said "I’m a member of the chattering classes Cummings despises", he didn't say I am actually the 4th Viscount Runciman of Doxford....Eton, Cambridge, all my family went there...there is chattering classes and there is chattering classes.

MattW

northern_monkey said:

Gah, fell into the thread hole. FPT, in reply to Leon:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Leon said:

That Guardian long-read on Dom Cummings’ blog, mentioned below, is indeed essential viewing

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy

This is superbly bang-on:

“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”

Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right

The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election

I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy

Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?

He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.

It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership

The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.

You know, I get everything you’re saying. I can see what you mean about posh Remainers.

From my decidedly non-posh standpoint, I think what appals me most about Brexit is that Red Wall people have been promised that we will Take Back Control. And we will.

But I fear, and nothing has happened to disabuse me of this notion, in fact things like that Leeds leg of HS2 being cancelled reinforce it, is that Red Wallers have been persuaded to hand back control to a system that, more often than not, elects Conservative governments that, more often than not, screw the north, the people I love and the communities I am part of.

The EU, or EEC as it was then, handed over big bucks through coalfield regeneration funding, which did help. Now I might be wrong, but I suspect a Conservative government wouldn’t have done such a thing.

Yes, we’re free to spend our own money now how we want. The point being the country very often chooses to elect a government that chooses to spend a disproportionate amount in the South East and London.

I suspect that Boris is now expendable. He got the Red Wallers vote, he sang the siren song on levelling up. Will it last or will the Tory Party revert to type? I suspect the latter.

Yes, wages have gone up for some unskilled people. Will it last? Will they be eaten up by inflation?

Red Wallers were convinced, I think, to vote to hand control from one remote bureaucracy, the EU, that at least had their interests at heart to some extent, though no doubt many will disagree, and give that control to another remote bureaucracy, in Westminster, that very often doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the north and the Midlands.

That's the con trick that really pisses me off.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. But I think Boris being flushed away will see levelling up go with him and the party return to type. Belt-tightening, inflation, post-pandemic austerity. Red Wallers will be no better off.

If you're a right-winger and you're wanting the market to run free, Britannia Unleashed, all that kind of thing, then fair enough, my wailing above probably doesn't touch you one bit. But, from what I can gather, when people up here ticked Leave in 2016, that's not what they thought they were going to get.

Good comments imo.

At present, iSTM that BJ has managed the feat of burning down both potential halves of a changed Tory voting coalition. And that both halves are likely to be required for future success.

A way out is required.

Mexicanpete

OnlyLivingBoy said:

As a rich liberal remainer, grateful for some advice. Rather than getting my coffee made by a Romanian, I made eight cups of tea today for the working class English people building something for me in the garden. And two cheese toasties. I also failed to tell them to work harder, as they seem to be working fairly hard without my input. Am I doing this wrong?

A question, begging another question.

Did you personally work long hard hours in order to earn money to finance this construction work in your garden? Yes...so you are clearly doing this wrong. Where were your wealthy benefactors?

Chris

FrancisUrquhart said:

FFS....

Extinction Rebellion: Jury clears protesters dragged off train roof

Last month, the Anglican priest admitted she was "surprised" to avoid jail for blocking the M25. She was one of seven members of Insulate Britain who were handed suspended sentences for breaching an injunction and being in contempt of court.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-59996870

So we can't even claim well it was just one of those things she got a bit carried away. She already guilty of blocking motorways and has a suspended sentence against her. Clear pattern of behaviour.

Probably not surprising, given the current climate, that juries are no longer content to decide based on the law as it is, but on the law as they think it should be.

A problem.

Richard_Nabavi

Looks like Covid cases in France might be beginning to come down from the peak:

https://twitter.com/nicolasberrod/status/1482012612854525952

Their hospitalisations and deaths figures are also fairly stable, showing a similar pattern to ours.

FrancisUrquhart

Chris said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

FFS....

Extinction Rebellion: Jury clears protesters dragged off train roof

Last month, the Anglican priest admitted she was "surprised" to avoid jail for blocking the M25. She was one of seven members of Insulate Britain who were handed suspended sentences for breaching an injunction and being in contempt of court.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-59996870

So we can't even claim well it was just one of those things she got a bit carried away. She already guilty of blocking motorways and has a suspended sentence against her. Clear pattern of behaviour.

Probably not surprising, given the current climate, that juries are no longer content to decide based on the law as it is, but on the law as they think it should be.

A problem.

The thing is in this case as well, unlike Colston, where the defence was well the public were on their side, the blocking of that train, the public at that incident were furious at their actions.

Fairliered

Is there any reason why the next PM couldn’t be a member of the Lords?

MattW

OnlyLivingBoy said:

As a rich liberal remainer, grateful for some advice. Rather than getting my coffee made by a Romanian, I made eight cups of tea today for the working class English people building something for me in the garden. And two cheese toasties. I also failed to tell them to work harder, as they seem to be working fairly hard without my input. Am I doing this wrong?

The "working class" may be a misapprehension.

One trend for quite a long time now has been former 'professionals' going into more secure 'trade' occupations.

The last place I was properly employed at was a research institution where one of my middle aged female colleagues trained in her spare time, then left to be a plumber.

OnlyLivingBoy

Mexicanpete said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

As a rich liberal remainer, grateful for some advice. Rather than getting my coffee made by a Romanian, I made eight cups of tea today for the working class English people building something for me in the garden. And two cheese toasties. I also failed to tell them to work harder, as they seem to be working fairly hard without my input. Am I doing this wrong?

A question, begging another question.

Did you personally work long hard hours in order to earn money to finance this construction work in your garden? Yes...so you are clearly doing this wrong. Where were your wealthy benefactors?

I'm not working as hard as they are!

Leon

FrancisUrquhart said:

FFS....

Extinction Rebellion: Jury clears protesters dragged off train roof

Last month, the Anglican priest admitted she was "surprised" to avoid jail for blocking the M25. She was one of seven members of Insulate Britain who were handed suspended sentences for breaching an injunction and being in contempt of court.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-59996870

So we can't even claim well it was just one of those things she got a bit carried away. She already guilty of blocking motorways and has a suspended sentence against her. Clear pattern of behaviour.

Perhaps jury trial, like democracy, has had its day

I’m semi-serious. That’s another implication from Cummings’ blog. Democracy may be dying. If it is proved that other systems are better at delivering prosperity, peace and happiness is democracy intrinsically worry pursuing? Hence his (and my) fascination with Singapore

And yes I get the irony that I voted Leavd ‘because democracy’ but the world is full of complex ironies

FWIW I think democracy definitely IS finished, in the long term, thanks to AI. GPT37 will make decisions which are so much smarter and more strategic and less emotional than any politician - or Eurocrat, or CCP apparatchik - we will hand over all our governance to the machines

IanB2

Andy_JS said:

At the moment it looks pretty certain that the final 3 in the MPs vote will be Sunak, Truss and Hunt.

So the clever move by the MPs is either to deliver a deal that avoids anything going to the members at all, or managing things so that the final two are Sunak and Hunt?

Richard_Nabavi

Fairliered said:

Is there any reason why the next PM couldn’t be a member of the Lords?

A question for Lord Frost, I think.

ping

IanB2 said:

I'm surprised that Patel has cut through to the extent of her negative.

She’s managed to pull of the remarkable feat of being hated by the liberal left for being tough on forriners and dismissed by the autoritarian right as not being tough enough.

northern_monkey

Leon said:

northern_monkey said:

Gah, fell into the thread hole. FPT, in reply to Leon:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Leon said:

That Guardian long-read on Dom Cummings’ blog, mentioned below, is indeed essential viewing

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy

This is superbly bang-on:

“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”

Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right

The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election

I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy

Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?

He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.

It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership

The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.

You know, I get everything you’re saying. I can see what you mean about posh Remainers.

From my decidedly non-posh standpoint, I think what appals me most about Brexit is that Red Wall people have been promised that we will Take Back Control. And we will.

But I fear, and nothing has happened to disabuse me of this notion, in fact things like that Leeds leg of HS2 being cancelled reinforce it, is that Red Wallers have been persuaded to hand back control to a system that, more often than not, elects Conservative governments that, more often than not, screw the north, the people I love and the communities I am part of.

The EU, or EEC as it was then, handed over big bucks through coalfield regeneration funding, which did help. Now I might be wrong, but I suspect a Conservative government wouldn’t have done such a thing.

Yes, we’re free to spend our own money now how we want. The point being the country very often chooses to elect a government that chooses to spend a disproportionate amount in the South East and London.

I suspect that Boris is now expendable. He got the Red Wallers vote, he sang the siren song on levelling up. Will it last or will the Tory Party revert to type? I suspect the latter.

Yes, wages have gone up for some unskilled people. Will it last? Will they be eaten up by inflation?

Red Wallers were convinced, I think, to vote to hand control from one remote bureaucracy, the EU, that at least had their interests at heart to some extent, though no doubt many will disagree, and give that control to another remote bureaucracy, in Westminster, that very often doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the north and the Midlands.

That's the con trick that really pisses me off.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. But I think Boris being flushed away will see levelling up go with him and the party return to type. Belt-tightening, inflation, post-pandemic austerity. Red Wallers will be no better off.

If you're a right-winger and you're wanting the market to run free, Britannia Unleashed, all that kind of thing, then fair enough, my wailing above probably doesn't touch you one bit. But, from what I can gather, when people up here ticked Leave in 2016, that's not what they thought they were going to get.

I agree with much of this diagnosis

Just two points: I don’t believe the Tories will return to ‘austerity’ for quite a while (unless forced by circumstances like a looming default). Big debt is with us for the medium term, as the global economy recovers from Covid (ins’allah)

Also, it’s not true to say Brexit has replaced one remote bureaucracy with another. We are now properly democratic. If the Red Wallers are angry at the Tory government’s betrayal (and fair enough, it’s not looking good) they can have the electoral satisfaction of sweeping them out of office, in humiliating style. Not something they can do to the EU Commission

And that, for me, was pretty much the whole point of Brexit

They won't be daft enough to call it austerity, but a rose by any other name, and all that.

There is that potential electoral satisfaction, yes you're right. And I get what you're saying about the EU Commission. It's a perfectly valid point. For you Brexit's the greater good, we've reverted to the better system. Fine. I just disagree. For me the lesser evil, in terms of the north, was being in the EU. But that battle's been lost. Ah well.

OnlyLivingBoy

Richard_Nabavi said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

As a rich liberal remainer, grateful for some advice. Rather than getting my coffee made by a Romanian, I made eight cups of tea today for the working class English people building something for me in the garden. And two cheese toasties. I also failed to tell them to work harder, as they seem to be working fairly hard without my input. Am I doing this wrong?

Yes. Should have been eight cheese toasties.

For two people?
Not sure my 30 year old sandwich toaster could have coped with that level of demand.

IanB2

northern_monkey said:

Gah, fell into the thread hole. FPT, in reply to Leon:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Leon said:

That Guardian long-read on Dom Cummings’ blog, mentioned below, is indeed essential viewing

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy

This is superbly bang-on:

“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”

Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right

The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election

I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy

Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?

He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.

It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership

The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.

You know, I get everything you’re saying. I can see what you mean about posh Remainers.

From my decidedly non-posh standpoint, I think what appals me most about Brexit is that Red Wall people have been promised that we will Take Back Control. And we will.

But I fear, and nothing has happened to disabuse me of this notion, in fact things like that Leeds leg of HS2 being cancelled reinforce it, is that Red Wallers have been persuaded to hand back control to a system that, more often than not, elects Conservative governments that, more often than not, screw the north, the people I love and the communities I am part of.

The EU, or EEC as it was then, handed over big bucks through coalfield regeneration funding, which did help. Now I might be wrong, but I suspect a Conservative government wouldn’t have done such a thing.

Yes, we’re free to spend our own money now how we want. The point being the country very often chooses to elect a government that chooses to spend a disproportionate amount in the South East and London.

I suspect that Boris is now expendable. He got the Red Wallers vote, he sang the siren song on levelling up. Will it last or will the Tory Party revert to type? I suspect the latter.

Yes, wages have gone up for some unskilled people. Will it last? Will they be eaten up by inflation?

Red Wallers were convinced, I think, to vote to hand control from one remote bureaucracy, the EU, that at least had their interests at heart to some extent, though no doubt many will disagree, and give that control to another remote bureaucracy, in Westminster, that very often doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the north and the Midlands.

That's the con trick that really pisses me off.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. But I think Boris being flushed away will see levelling up go with him and the party return to type. Belt-tightening, inflation, post-pandemic austerity. Red Wallers will be no better off.

If you're a right-winger and you're wanting the market to run free, Britannia Unleashed, all that kind of thing, then fair enough, my wailing above probably doesn't touch you one bit. But, from what I can gather, when people up here ticked Leave in 2016, that's not what they thought they were going to get.

Edit: New Labour did help. Yes, they could have done more. Yes, they took us for granted. I think they've learned from that mistake.

Perhaps these voters actually took the longer-term view and, rather than switching in the expectation that the Tories will deliver for them, they switched in order to make sure Labour will deliver for them down the road?

noneoftheabove

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

northern_monkey said:

Gah, fell into the thread hole. FPT, in reply to Leon:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Leon said:

That Guardian long-read on Dom Cummings’ blog, mentioned below, is indeed essential viewing

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy

This is superbly bang-on:

“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”

Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right

The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election

I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy

Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?

He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.

It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership

The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.

You know, I get everything you’re saying. I can see what you mean about posh Remainers.

From my decidedly non-posh standpoint, I think what appals me most about Brexit is that Red Wall people have been promised that we will Take Back Control. And we will.

But I fear, and nothing has happened to disabuse me of this notion, in fact things like that Leeds leg of HS2 being cancelled reinforce it, is that Red Wallers have been persuaded to hand back control to a system that, more often than not, elects Conservative governments that, more often than not, screw the north, the people I love and the communities I am part of.

The EU, or EEC as it was then, handed over big bucks through coalfield regeneration funding, which did help. Now I might be wrong, but I suspect a Conservative government wouldn’t have done such a thing.

Yes, we’re free to spend our own money now how we want. The point being the country very often chooses to elect a government that chooses to spend a disproportionate amount in the South East and London.

I suspect that Boris is now expendable. He got the Red Wallers vote, he sang the siren song on levelling up. Will it last or will the Tory Party revert to type? I suspect the latter.

Yes, wages have gone up for some unskilled people. Will it last? Will they be eaten up by inflation?

Red Wallers were convinced, I think, to vote to hand control from one remote bureaucracy, the EU, that at least had their interests at heart to some extent, though no doubt many will disagree, and give that control to another remote bureaucracy, in Westminster, that very often doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the north and the Midlands.

That's the con trick that really pisses me off.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. But I think Boris being flushed away will see levelling up go with him and the party return to type. Belt-tightening, inflation, post-pandemic austerity. Red Wallers will be no better off.

If you're a right-winger and you're wanting the market to run free, Britannia Unleashed, all that kind of thing, then fair enough, my wailing above probably doesn't touch you one bit. But, from what I can gather, when people up here ticked Leave in 2016, that's not what they thought they were going to get.

HS2 was always a London project. If it wasn't, why wouldn't it start in the North before finally getting down to London?

Because more people want to travel between Birmingham and London than between Manchester and Birmingham?

Typical remainer answer lacking self awareness using numbers and facts imo.

DecrepiterJohnL

FrancisUrquhart said:

That interesting Guardian article on Cummings blog, when the author said "I’m a member of the chattering classes Cummings despises", he didn't say I am actually the 4th Viscount Runciman of Doxford....Eton, Cambridge, all my family went there...there is chattering classes and there is chattering classes.

Eton. So he went to school with... who? Cameron, Rees-Mogg, who? Has someone made a handy table of who was in which class?

MattW

Leon said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

FFS....

Extinction Rebellion: Jury clears protesters dragged off train roof

Last month, the Anglican priest admitted she was "surprised" to avoid jail for blocking the M25. She was one of seven members of Insulate Britain who were handed suspended sentences for breaching an injunction and being in contempt of court.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-59996870

So we can't even claim well it was just one of those things she got a bit carried away. She already guilty of blocking motorways and has a suspended sentence against her. Clear pattern of behaviour.

Perhaps jury trial, like democracy, has had its day

I’m semi-serious. That’s another implication from Cummings’ blog. Democracy may be dying. If it is proved that other systems are better at delivering prosperity, peace and happiness is democracy intrinsically worry pursuing? Hence his (and my) fascination with Singapore

And yes I get the irony that I voted Leavd ‘because democracy’ but the world is full of complex ironies

FWIW I think democracy definitely IS finished, in the long term, thanks to AI. GPT37 will make decisions which are so much smarter and more strategic and less emotional than any politician - or Eurocrat, or CCP apparatchik - we will hand over all our governance to the machines

I'm not a connoisseur of these.

Do we get to find out of it was eg a unanimous decision to find innocent, or a blockage of a guilty decision by not reaching a majority? Or vice versa?

MoonRabbit

Malmesbury said:

MoonRabbit said:

Malmesbury said:

MoonRabbit said:

david_herdson said:

MoonRabbit said:

rottenborough said:

MoonRabbit said:

dixiedean said:

IshmaelZ said:

Sandpit said:

Carnyx said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Alistair said:

Leadsom for leader.

Roooth!

A ridiculous 25/1 with PP.

Are we past the days of having peers as PMs, in the sense of it being even legally possible? Though Lord Home got himself a safe seat as a MP pdq if I recall the recent discussion here. I'm sure someone could be persuaded to apply to the Chiltern Hundreds if need be, in a nice safe seat.

Nothing that legally says the PM cannot be in the Lords - although I imagine that there would be no such thing as a safe seat for a by-election these days, if a party tried to force one in such circumstances.

Halifax turned down PMship in 1940 on account of being a Lord

Is that so? I'd always assumed Labour wouldn't support him.

I read a couple of articles that had it as his for taking, but bottled it. He didn’t fancy being a war leader. Didn’t think we could win. Didn’t want to fight. The recent film of Churchill portrayed it like this?
Is this revisionist history? It’s been revised and is more accurate?

Labour wanted Halifax and that was the general consensus of the Commons. The King wanted Halifax and was a bit upset when Halifax raised the objection of being a peer and so not able to operate effectively in the House.

That’s where I disagree with you Rottenborough. I can’t do it because I am a Lord buries the truth and distorts true history which needs to be revised, therefore your favourite history books on your shelf you always thought was history are lying to you and you need to get new ones.
The truth being “havn’t slept for a week thinking I have to be war PM, I think we should make deal with Germans anyway.”

Halifax accepted that there was no constitutional bar on him being PM in the Lords; he turned the job down primarily because he didn't want to do it and recognised that Churchill would overshadow him, whatever their official statuses.

By 1940, it wasn't even accepted that a PM couldn't sit in the Lords. It was only 38 years then since it had last happened (the equivalent of 1984 from now), and Curzon had been seriously considered as a PM candidate in the early 1920s.

While it was certainly seen as unhelpful that a PM might sit in a House where the main opposition had barely any representation, it wasn't an absolute bar.

In any case, there were provisions that could have been made to ease the difficulty. One was to amend the HoC standing orders, to allow a non-MP PM to be able to address MPs from within the chamber; IIRC, another would have been for the king to put Halifax's peerage into abeyance.

Either way, you don't lose a world war for a point of minor constitutional principle which wasn't even convention at that stage. Had Halifax been the MP and Churchill the peer (far from impossible), it's very likely that the latter would still have become PM.

Awesome post.

Opening bit

“ Halifax accepted that there was no constitutional bar on him being PM in the Lords; he turned the job down primarily because he didn't want to do it and recognised that Churchill would overshadow him, whatever their official statuses. “.

Absolutely spot on as the history as I know it. But does raise questions as, not without skills and merit was Halifax nonetheless not leadership material crucially in his own mind? And how history books would wrongly copy each other as the reason for the decision as something else?

One of the weaknesses of history books and historians is how so much of it just copies each other? Especially now in the internet age, it’s not so many sources as it appears if all says same thing with so few alternative perspectives.

Indeed - going back to primary sources often reveals interesting things.

A very good recent example was "Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway" which pointed out that much of the layers of scholarship on the battle was wrong. Among other things, the Japanese carriers had physical limitations which meant that various things couldn't be true. And a major Japanese source had been proved to be less than accurate y historians in Japan....

From my reading of the period, Halifax saw himself as the wrong man to be PM - in a World War*. I think he would have jumped at the job, if it had been a matter of managing the continuing recovery of the economy, dealing with social issues and a bit of diplomacy.

*I seem to recall a story, that one of the pacifist types in the Labour party asked Atlee why he was serving under that "ghastly warmonger and warlover, Churchill?". Atlee is supposed to have replied that the country needed a warmonger.

I think what you have added to what David posted nails it now.

“ Halifax accepted that there was no constitutional bar on him being PM in the Lords; he turned the job down primarily because he didn't want to do it and recognised that Churchill would overshadow him, whatever their official statuses. “.

+

“ Halifax saw himself as the wrong man to be PM in a war “

= pretty much the true history of what happened. 👍🏻

Though still probably some questions around prevalence of “sign a truce rather than attempt a war” feeling? Like you said, go back to original sources, that would be a view of it from the other side of the war, without knowing that we won, without full or any awareness of the horrors of the concentration camps, and likely so many other ways where the view would be different, than the view of the same spot in history post war.

Halifax hated Hitler. His position *before* the fall of France was that no peace was possible with Germany, if Hitler was still in charge. We know this because he said this (and it was documented as being said) to an intermediary* with the German government.

It was after the French defeat that he suggested the old WWI plan of an armistice with Germany if the BEF was pushed out of France and France fell.

Basically - "Shit, the Germans have won. What do we do now?"

*Swedish chap, IIRC.

Oh we are carrying on over here. Nice.

So the next question would be, were we all that concerned with Germans Partying victory in Paris… in 1871? Historically we sided with other people against the French. The rise of German Empire in the Second Reich (I understand is German for rich - the Holy Roman Empire being the first rich) complicates things leaves Britain uncertain about a German Empire controlling or dominating mainland Europe in upstart crow of an Empire to rival our own? That is then thinking as we go into First World War, and into the 20th century… yet, there is still all these books and TV programmes about how close UK upper classes were to the Germans in the thirties? You see what I mean?

Leon

northern_monkey said:

Leon said:

northern_monkey said:

Gah, fell into the thread hole. FPT, in reply to Leon:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Leon said:

That Guardian long-read on Dom Cummings’ blog, mentioned below, is indeed essential viewing

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy

This is superbly bang-on:

“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”

Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right

The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election

I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy

Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?

He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.

It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership

The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.

You know, I get everything you’re saying. I can see what you mean about posh Remainers.

From my decidedly non-posh standpoint, I think what appals me most about Brexit is that Red Wall people have been promised that we will Take Back Control. And we will.

But I fear, and nothing has happened to disabuse me of this notion, in fact things like that Leeds leg of HS2 being cancelled reinforce it, is that Red Wallers have been persuaded to hand back control to a system that, more often than not, elects Conservative governments that, more often than not, screw the north, the people I love and the communities I am part of.

The EU, or EEC as it was then, handed over big bucks through coalfield regeneration funding, which did help. Now I might be wrong, but I suspect a Conservative government wouldn’t have done such a thing.

Yes, we’re free to spend our own money now how we want. The point being the country very often chooses to elect a government that chooses to spend a disproportionate amount in the South East and London.

I suspect that Boris is now expendable. He got the Red Wallers vote, he sang the siren song on levelling up. Will it last or will the Tory Party revert to type? I suspect the latter.

Yes, wages have gone up for some unskilled people. Will it last? Will they be eaten up by inflation?

Red Wallers were convinced, I think, to vote to hand control from one remote bureaucracy, the EU, that at least had their interests at heart to some extent, though no doubt many will disagree, and give that control to another remote bureaucracy, in Westminster, that very often doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the north and the Midlands.

That's the con trick that really pisses me off.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. But I think Boris being flushed away will see levelling up go with him and the party return to type. Belt-tightening, inflation, post-pandemic austerity. Red Wallers will be no better off.

If you're a right-winger and you're wanting the market to run free, Britannia Unleashed, all that kind of thing, then fair enough, my wailing above probably doesn't touch you one bit. But, from what I can gather, when people up here ticked Leave in 2016, that's not what they thought they were going to get.

I agree with much of this diagnosis

Just two points: I don’t believe the Tories will return to ‘austerity’ for quite a while (unless forced by circumstances like a looming default). Big debt is with us for the medium term, as the global economy recovers from Covid (ins’allah)

Also, it’s not true to say Brexit has replaced one remote bureaucracy with another. We are now properly democratic. If the Red Wallers are angry at the Tory government’s betrayal (and fair enough, it’s not looking good) they can have the electoral satisfaction of sweeping them out of office, in humiliating style. Not something they can do to the EU Commission

And that, for me, was pretty much the whole point of Brexit

They won't be daft enough to call it austerity, but a rose by any other name, and all that.

There is that potential electoral satisfaction, yes you're right. And I get what you're saying about the EU Commission. It's a perfectly valid point. For you Brexit's the greater good, we've reverted to the better system. Fine. I just disagree. For me the lesser evil, in terms of the north, was being in the EU. But that battle's been lost. Ah well.

I really don’t see what the EU ‘did for the north’. They just took British taxpayers’ money and randomly gave SOME back to poorer parts of the UK, but most of our money went to Eastern Europe. How is that a ‘good deal’ for the North of England?

And the idea that fat Eurocrats in Strasbourg brasseries spent their time worrying about ‘voters in Stoke’ is worthy of a cartoon

IanB2

Malmesbury said:

MoonRabbit said:

Malmesbury said:

MoonRabbit said:

david_herdson said:

MoonRabbit said:

rottenborough said:

MoonRabbit said:

dixiedean said:

IshmaelZ said:

Sandpit said:

Carnyx said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Alistair said:

Leadsom for leader.

Roooth!

A ridiculous 25/1 with PP.

Are we past the days of having peers as PMs, in the sense of it being even legally possible? Though Lord Home got himself a safe seat as a MP pdq if I recall the recent discussion here. I'm sure someone could be persuaded to apply to the Chiltern Hundreds if need be, in a nice safe seat.

Nothing that legally says the PM cannot be in the Lords - although I imagine that there would be no such thing as a safe seat for a by-election these days, if a party tried to force one in such circumstances.

Halifax turned down PMship in 1940 on account of being a Lord

Is that so? I'd always assumed Labour wouldn't support him.

I read a couple of articles that had it as his for taking, but bottled it. He didn’t fancy being a war leader. Didn’t think we could win. Didn’t want to fight. The recent film of Churchill portrayed it like this?
Is this revisionist history? It’s been revised and is more accurate?

Labour wanted Halifax and that was the general consensus of the Commons. The King wanted Halifax and was a bit upset when Halifax raised the objection of being a peer and so not able to operate effectively in the House.

That’s where I disagree with you Rottenborough. I can’t do it because I am a Lord buries the truth and distorts true history which needs to be revised, therefore your favourite history books on your shelf you always thought was history are lying to you and you need to get new ones.
The truth being “havn’t slept for a week thinking I have to be war PM, I think we should make deal with Germans anyway.”

Halifax accepted that there was no constitutional bar on him being PM in the Lords; he turned the job down primarily because he didn't want to do it and recognised that Churchill would overshadow him, whatever their official statuses.

By 1940, it wasn't even accepted that a PM couldn't sit in the Lords. It was only 38 years then since it had last happened (the equivalent of 1984 from now), and Curzon had been seriously considered as a PM candidate in the early 1920s.

While it was certainly seen as unhelpful that a PM might sit in a House where the main opposition had barely any representation, it wasn't an absolute bar.

In any case, there were provisions that could have been made to ease the difficulty. One was to amend the HoC standing orders, to allow a non-MP PM to be able to address MPs from within the chamber; IIRC, another would have been for the king to put Halifax's peerage into abeyance.

Either way, you don't lose a world war for a point of minor constitutional principle which wasn't even convention at that stage. Had Halifax been the MP and Churchill the peer (far from impossible), it's very likely that the latter would still have become PM.

Awesome post.

Opening bit

“ Halifax accepted that there was no constitutional bar on him being PM in the Lords; he turned the job down primarily because he didn't want to do it and recognised that Churchill would overshadow him, whatever their official statuses. “.

Absolutely spot on as the history as I know it. But does raise questions as, not without skills and merit was Halifax nonetheless not leadership material crucially in his own mind? And how history books would wrongly copy each other as the reason for the decision as something else?

One of the weaknesses of history books and historians is how so much of it just copies each other? Especially now in the internet age, it’s not so many sources as it appears if all says same thing with so few alternative perspectives.

Indeed - going back to primary sources often reveals interesting things.

A very good recent example was "Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway" which pointed out that much of the layers of scholarship on the battle was wrong. Among other things, the Japanese carriers had physical limitations which meant that various things couldn't be true. And a major Japanese source had been proved to be less than accurate y historians in Japan....

From my reading of the period, Halifax saw himself as the wrong man to be PM - in a World War*. I think he would have jumped at the job, if it had been a matter of managing the continuing recovery of the economy, dealing with social issues and a bit of diplomacy.

*I seem to recall a story, that one of the pacifist types in the Labour party asked Atlee why he was serving under that "ghastly warmonger and warlover, Churchill?". Atlee is supposed to have replied that the country needed a warmonger.

I think what you have added to what David posted nails it now.

“ Halifax accepted that there was no constitutional bar on him being PM in the Lords; he turned the job down primarily because he didn't want to do it and recognised that Churchill would overshadow him, whatever their official statuses. “.

+

“ Halifax saw himself as the wrong man to be PM in a war “

= pretty much the true history of what happened. 👍🏻

Though still probably some questions around prevalence of “sign a truce rather than attempt a war” feeling? Like you said, go back to original sources, that would be a view of it from the other side of the war, without knowing that we won, without full or any awareness of the horrors of the concentration camps, and likely so many other ways where the view would be different, than the view of the same spot in history post war.

Halifax hated Hitler. His position *before* the fall of France was that no peace was possible with Germany, if Hitler was still in charge. We know this because he said this (and it was documented as being said) to an intermediary* with the German government.

It was after the French defeat that he suggested the old WWI plan of an armistice with Germany if the BEF was pushed out of France and France fell.

Basically - "Shit, the Germans have won. What do we do now?"

*Swedish chap, IIRC.

At least he made himself a second career lending people money to buy houses?

Andy_JS

Barry Gardiner interview with Iain Dale.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH3pL_pBvmo

Mexicanpete

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Mexicanpete said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

As a rich liberal remainer, grateful for some advice. Rather than getting my coffee made by a Romanian, I made eight cups of tea today for the working class English people building something for me in the garden. And two cheese toasties. I also failed to tell them to work harder, as they seem to be working fairly hard without my input. Am I doing this wrong?

A question, begging another question.

Did you personally work long hard hours in order to earn money to finance this construction work in your garden? Yes...so you are clearly doing this wrong. Where were your wealthy benefactors?

I'm not working as hard as they are!

You could have put your feet up if you knew David Brownlow. The procedure as I understand it, is send out for the tea and cheese toasties and add the receipt to Lulu Lytle's invoice.

IanB2

Richard_Nabavi said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

As a rich liberal remainer, grateful for some advice. Rather than getting my coffee made by a Romanian, I made eight cups of tea today for the working class English people building something for me in the garden. And two cheese toasties. I also failed to tell them to work harder, as they seem to be working fairly hard without my input. Am I doing this wrong?

Yes. Should have been eight cheese toasties.

Four cups of tea each was overdoing things already.

rcs1000

Leon said:

northern_monkey said:

Leon said:

northern_monkey said:

Gah, fell into the thread hole. FPT, in reply to Leon:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Leon said:

That Guardian long-read on Dom Cummings’ blog, mentioned below, is indeed essential viewing

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy

This is superbly bang-on:

“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”

Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right

The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election

I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy

Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?

He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.

It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership

The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.

You know, I get everything you’re saying. I can see what you mean about posh Remainers.

From my decidedly non-posh standpoint, I think what appals me most about Brexit is that Red Wall people have been promised that we will Take Back Control. And we will.

But I fear, and nothing has happened to disabuse me of this notion, in fact things like that Leeds leg of HS2 being cancelled reinforce it, is that Red Wallers have been persuaded to hand back control to a system that, more often than not, elects Conservative governments that, more often than not, screw the north, the people I love and the communities I am part of.

The EU, or EEC as it was then, handed over big bucks through coalfield regeneration funding, which did help. Now I might be wrong, but I suspect a Conservative government wouldn’t have done such a thing.

Yes, we’re free to spend our own money now how we want. The point being the country very often chooses to elect a government that chooses to spend a disproportionate amount in the South East and London.

I suspect that Boris is now expendable. He got the Red Wallers vote, he sang the siren song on levelling up. Will it last or will the Tory Party revert to type? I suspect the latter.

Yes, wages have gone up for some unskilled people. Will it last? Will they be eaten up by inflation?

Red Wallers were convinced, I think, to vote to hand control from one remote bureaucracy, the EU, that at least had their interests at heart to some extent, though no doubt many will disagree, and give that control to another remote bureaucracy, in Westminster, that very often doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the north and the Midlands.

That's the con trick that really pisses me off.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. But I think Boris being flushed away will see levelling up go with him and the party return to type. Belt-tightening, inflation, post-pandemic austerity. Red Wallers will be no better off.

If you're a right-winger and you're wanting the market to run free, Britannia Unleashed, all that kind of thing, then fair enough, my wailing above probably doesn't touch you one bit. But, from what I can gather, when people up here ticked Leave in 2016, that's not what they thought they were going to get.

I agree with much of this diagnosis

Just two points: I don’t believe the Tories will return to ‘austerity’ for quite a while (unless forced by circumstances like a looming default). Big debt is with us for the medium term, as the global economy recovers from Covid (ins’allah)

Also, it’s not true to say Brexit has replaced one remote bureaucracy with another. We are now properly democratic. If the Red Wallers are angry at the Tory government’s betrayal (and fair enough, it’s not looking good) they can have the electoral satisfaction of sweeping them out of office, in humiliating style. Not something they can do to the EU Commission

And that, for me, was pretty much the whole point of Brexit

They won't be daft enough to call it austerity, but a rose by any other name, and all that.

There is that potential electoral satisfaction, yes you're right. And I get what you're saying about the EU Commission. It's a perfectly valid point. For you Brexit's the greater good, we've reverted to the better system. Fine. I just disagree. For me the lesser evil, in terms of the north, was being in the EU. But that battle's been lost. Ah well.

I really don’t see what the EU ‘did for the north’. They just took British taxpayers’ money and randomly gave SOME back to poorer parts of the UK, but most of our money went to Eastern Europe. How is that a ‘good deal’ for the North of England?

And the idea that fat Eurocrats in Strasbourg brasseries spent their time worrying about ‘voters in Stoke’ is worthy of a cartoon

Jesus - Eurocrats don't have to eat in downmarket brasseries. How out of touch with ordinary Eurocrats are you?

Mexicanpete

Fairliered said:

Is there any reason why the next PM couldn’t be a member of the Lords?

NOT FROSTY??? ARGH!!!

OnlyLivingBoy

FrancisUrquhart said:

That interesting Guardian article on Cummings blog, when the author said "I’m a member of the chattering classes Cummings despises", he didn't say I am actually the 4th Viscount Runciman of Doxford....Eton, Cambridge, all my family went there...there is chattering classes and there is chattering classes.

Ha ha, bloody hell. This country is fucking ridiculous.

northern_monkey

IanB2 said:

northern_monkey said:

Gah, fell into the thread hole. FPT, in reply to Leon:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Leon said:

That Guardian long-read on Dom Cummings’ blog, mentioned below, is indeed essential viewing

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy

This is superbly bang-on:

“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”

Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right

The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election

I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy

Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?

He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.

It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership

The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.

You know, I get everything you’re saying. I can see what you mean about posh Remainers.

From my decidedly non-posh standpoint, I think what appals me most about Brexit is that Red Wall people have been promised that we will Take Back Control. And we will.

But I fear, and nothing has happened to disabuse me of this notion, in fact things like that Leeds leg of HS2 being cancelled reinforce it, is that Red Wallers have been persuaded to hand back control to a system that, more often than not, elects Conservative governments that, more often than not, screw the north, the people I love and the communities I am part of.

The EU, or EEC as it was then, handed over big bucks through coalfield regeneration funding, which did help. Now I might be wrong, but I suspect a Conservative government wouldn’t have done such a thing.

Yes, we’re free to spend our own money now how we want. The point being the country very often chooses to elect a government that chooses to spend a disproportionate amount in the South East and London.

I suspect that Boris is now expendable. He got the Red Wallers vote, he sang the siren song on levelling up. Will it last or will the Tory Party revert to type? I suspect the latter.

Yes, wages have gone up for some unskilled people. Will it last? Will they be eaten up by inflation?

Red Wallers were convinced, I think, to vote to hand control from one remote bureaucracy, the EU, that at least had their interests at heart to some extent, though no doubt many will disagree, and give that control to another remote bureaucracy, in Westminster, that very often doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the north and the Midlands.

That's the con trick that really pisses me off.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. But I think Boris being flushed away will see levelling up go with him and the party return to type. Belt-tightening, inflation, post-pandemic austerity. Red Wallers will be no better off.

If you're a right-winger and you're wanting the market to run free, Britannia Unleashed, all that kind of thing, then fair enough, my wailing above probably doesn't touch you one bit. But, from what I can gather, when people up here ticked Leave in 2016, that's not what they thought they were going to get.

Edit: New Labour did help. Yes, they could have done more. Yes, they took us for granted. I think they've learned from that mistake.

Perhaps these voters actually took the longer-term view and, rather than switching in the expectation that the Tories will deliver for them, they switched in order to make sure Labour will deliver for them down the road?

It's a possibility. Not sure it's a suggestion that convinces me but you could be right.

FF43

FrancisUrquhart said:

That interesting Guardian article on Cummings blog, when the author said "I’m a member of the chattering classes Cummings despises", he didn't say I am actually the 4th Viscount Runciman of Doxford....Eton, Cambridge, all my family went there...there is chattering classes and there is chattering classes.

He's over generous to Cummings, who apart from certain specific skills on project management and running a campaign is quite mediocre. I mean, if Cummings had ever made the world a better place, even in the smallest of ways, it might be different.

Cookie

noneoftheabove said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

northern_monkey said:

Gah, fell into the thread hole. FPT, in reply to Leon:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Leon said:

That Guardian long-read on Dom Cummings’ blog, mentioned below, is indeed essential viewing

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy

This is superbly bang-on:

“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”

Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right

The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election

I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy

Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?

He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.

It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership

The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.

You know, I get everything you’re saying. I can see what you mean about posh Remainers.

From my decidedly non-posh standpoint, I think what appals me most about Brexit is that Red Wall people have been promised that we will Take Back Control. And we will.

But I fear, and nothing has happened to disabuse me of this notion, in fact things like that Leeds leg of HS2 being cancelled reinforce it, is that Red Wallers have been persuaded to hand back control to a system that, more often than not, elects Conservative governments that, more often than not, screw the north, the people I love and the communities I am part of.

The EU, or EEC as it was then, handed over big bucks through coalfield regeneration funding, which did help. Now I might be wrong, but I suspect a Conservative government wouldn’t have done such a thing.

Yes, we’re free to spend our own money now how we want. The point being the country very often chooses to elect a government that chooses to spend a disproportionate amount in the South East and London.

I suspect that Boris is now expendable. He got the Red Wallers vote, he sang the siren song on levelling up. Will it last or will the Tory Party revert to type? I suspect the latter.

Yes, wages have gone up for some unskilled people. Will it last? Will they be eaten up by inflation?

Red Wallers were convinced, I think, to vote to hand control from one remote bureaucracy, the EU, that at least had their interests at heart to some extent, though no doubt many will disagree, and give that control to another remote bureaucracy, in Westminster, that very often doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the north and the Midlands.

That's the con trick that really pisses me off.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. But I think Boris being flushed away will see levelling up go with him and the party return to type. Belt-tightening, inflation, post-pandemic austerity. Red Wallers will be no better off.

If you're a right-winger and you're wanting the market to run free, Britannia Unleashed, all that kind of thing, then fair enough, my wailing above probably doesn't touch you one bit. But, from what I can gather, when people up here ticked Leave in 2016, that's not what they thought they were going to get.

HS2 was always a London project. If it wasn't, why wouldn't it start in the North before finally getting down to London?

Because more people want to travel between Birmingham and London than between Manchester and Birmingham?

Typical remainer answer lacking self awareness using numbers and facts imo.

A bit simplistic though.
HS2 is about capacity. Where you build high speed trains, you improve capacity on the network you're taking the high speed trains off. So you can do more with that track.
I would argue that the biggest improvements to the rail network need to be made in the North (specifically in Manchester and its hinterland, but that may be a parochial view). So start from the North.
There is more demand for rail in the south - so starting from the south isn't daft - but also considerably more supply. I would argue the bigger step changes can be made by starting in the North.

MoonRabbit

Richard_Nabavi said:

Fairliered said:

Is there any reason why the next PM couldn’t be a member of the Lords?

A question for Lord Frost, I think.

Do you have a feeling he wants it?

I do. I think he should be serious outside candidate in betting as one the brexiteers would trust and get behind.

The Lord thing easily put on suspension.

DecrepiterJohnL

Leon said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

FFS....

Extinction Rebellion: Jury clears protesters dragged off train roof

Last month, the Anglican priest admitted she was "surprised" to avoid jail for blocking the M25. She was one of seven members of Insulate Britain who were handed suspended sentences for breaching an injunction and being in contempt of court.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-59996870

So we can't even claim well it was just one of those things she got a bit carried away. She already guilty of blocking motorways and has a suspended sentence against her. Clear pattern of behaviour.

Perhaps jury trial, like democracy, has had its day

I’m semi-serious. That’s another implication from Cummings’ blog. Democracy may be dying. If it is proved that other systems are better at delivering prosperity, peace and happiness is democracy intrinsically worry pursuing? Hence his (and my) fascination with Singapore

And yes I get the irony that I voted Leavd ‘because democracy’ but the world is full of complex ironies

FWIW I think democracy definitely IS finished, in the long term, thanks to AI. GPT37 will make decisions which are so much smarter and more strategic and less emotional than any politician - or Eurocrat, or CCP apparatchik - we will hand over all our governance to the machines

Erm, isn't Singapore a democracy? Even if the same side always wins.

IshmaelZ

MattW said:

Leon said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

FFS....

Extinction Rebellion: Jury clears protesters dragged off train roof

Last month, the Anglican priest admitted she was "surprised" to avoid jail for blocking the M25. She was one of seven members of Insulate Britain who were handed suspended sentences for breaching an injunction and being in contempt of court.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-59996870

So we can't even claim well it was just one of those things she got a bit carried away. She already guilty of blocking motorways and has a suspended sentence against her. Clear pattern of behaviour.

Perhaps jury trial, like democracy, has had its day

I’m semi-serious. That’s another implication from Cummings’ blog. Democracy may be dying. If it is proved that other systems are better at delivering prosperity, peace and happiness is democracy intrinsically worry pursuing? Hence his (and my) fascination with Singapore

And yes I get the irony that I voted Leavd ‘because democracy’ but the world is full of complex ironies

FWIW I think democracy definitely IS finished, in the long term, thanks to AI. GPT37 will make decisions which are so much smarter and more strategic and less emotional than any politician - or Eurocrat, or CCP apparatchik - we will hand over all our governance to the machines

I'm not a connoisseur of these.

Do we get to find out of it was eg a unanimous decision to find innocent, or a blockage of a guilty decision by not reaching a majority? Or vice versa?

Democracy = inputting memes into meat computers and counting outputs. Might as well streamline the system by bypassing the computers and just run the meme streams straight into the ballot boxes.

Cookie

northern_monkey said:

Leon said:

northern_monkey said:

Gah, fell into the thread hole. FPT, in reply to Leon:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Leon said:

That Guardian long-read on Dom Cummings’ blog, mentioned below, is indeed essential viewing

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy

This is superbly bang-on:

“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”

Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right

The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election

I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy

Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?

He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.

It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership

The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.

You know, I get everything you’re saying. I can see what you mean about posh Remainers.

From my decidedly non-posh standpoint, I think what appals me most about Brexit is that Red Wall people have been promised that we will Take Back Control. And we will.

But I fear, and nothing has happened to disabuse me of this notion, in fact things like that Leeds leg of HS2 being cancelled reinforce it, is that Red Wallers have been persuaded to hand back control to a system that, more often than not, elects Conservative governments that, more often than not, screw the north, the people I love and the communities I am part of.

The EU, or EEC as it was then, handed over big bucks through coalfield regeneration funding, which did help. Now I might be wrong, but I suspect a Conservative government wouldn’t have done such a thing.

Yes, we’re free to spend our own money now how we want. The point being the country very often chooses to elect a government that chooses to spend a disproportionate amount in the South East and London.

I suspect that Boris is now expendable. He got the Red Wallers vote, he sang the siren song on levelling up. Will it last or will the Tory Party revert to type? I suspect the latter.

Yes, wages have gone up for some unskilled people. Will it last? Will they be eaten up by inflation?

Red Wallers were convinced, I think, to vote to hand control from one remote bureaucracy, the EU, that at least had their interests at heart to some extent, though no doubt many will disagree, and give that control to another remote bureaucracy, in Westminster, that very often doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the north and the Midlands.

That's the con trick that really pisses me off.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. But I think Boris being flushed away will see levelling up go with him and the party return to type. Belt-tightening, inflation, post-pandemic austerity. Red Wallers will be no better off.

If you're a right-winger and you're wanting the market to run free, Britannia Unleashed, all that kind of thing, then fair enough, my wailing above probably doesn't touch you one bit. But, from what I can gather, when people up here ticked Leave in 2016, that's not what they thought they were going to get.

I agree with much of this diagnosis

Just two points: I don’t believe the Tories will return to ‘austerity’ for quite a while (unless forced by circumstances like a looming default). Big debt is with us for the medium term, as the global economy recovers from Covid (ins’allah)

Also, it’s not true to say Brexit has replaced one remote bureaucracy with another. We are now properly democratic. If the Red Wallers are angry at the Tory government’s betrayal (and fair enough, it’s not looking good) they can have the electoral satisfaction of sweeping them out of office, in humiliating style. Not something they can do to the EU Commission

And that, for me, was pretty much the whole point of Brexit

They won't be daft enough to call it austerity, but a rose by any other name, and all that.

There is that potential electoral satisfaction, yes you're right. And I get what you're saying about the EU Commission. It's a perfectly valid point. For you Brexit's the greater good, we've reverted to the better system. Fine. I just disagree. For me the lesser evil, in terms of the north, was being in the EU. But that battle's been lost. Ah well.

I think your analysis is pretty good.
I don't agree with your position: I think the chances of the UK being better off out of the EU outweigh the chances that we will be worse off; and the North will be better off as part of a better off UK. But if I am wrong I think it will be for the reasons you outline.

noneoftheabove

OnlyLivingBoy said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

That interesting Guardian article on Cummings blog, when the author said "I’m a member of the chattering classes Cummings despises", he didn't say I am actually the 4th Viscount Runciman of Doxford....Eton, Cambridge, all my family went there...there is chattering classes and there is chattering classes.

Ha ha, bloody hell. This country is fucking ridiculous.

Intern anyone from Eton?

Leon

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

northern_monkey said:

Leon said:

northern_monkey said:

Gah, fell into the thread hole. FPT, in reply to Leon:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Leon said:

That Guardian long-read on Dom Cummings’ blog, mentioned below, is indeed essential viewing

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy

This is superbly bang-on:

“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”

Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right

The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election

I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy

Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?

He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.

It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership

The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.

You know, I get everything you’re saying. I can see what you mean about posh Remainers.

From my decidedly non-posh standpoint, I think what appals me most about Brexit is that Red Wall people have been promised that we will Take Back Control. And we will.

But I fear, and nothing has happened to disabuse me of this notion, in fact things like that Leeds leg of HS2 being cancelled reinforce it, is that Red Wallers have been persuaded to hand back control to a system that, more often than not, elects Conservative governments that, more often than not, screw the north, the people I love and the communities I am part of.

The EU, or EEC as it was then, handed over big bucks through coalfield regeneration funding, which did help. Now I might be wrong, but I suspect a Conservative government wouldn’t have done such a thing.

Yes, we’re free to spend our own money now how we want. The point being the country very often chooses to elect a government that chooses to spend a disproportionate amount in the South East and London.

I suspect that Boris is now expendable. He got the Red Wallers vote, he sang the siren song on levelling up. Will it last or will the Tory Party revert to type? I suspect the latter.

Yes, wages have gone up for some unskilled people. Will it last? Will they be eaten up by inflation?

Red Wallers were convinced, I think, to vote to hand control from one remote bureaucracy, the EU, that at least had their interests at heart to some extent, though no doubt many will disagree, and give that control to another remote bureaucracy, in Westminster, that very often doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the north and the Midlands.

That's the con trick that really pisses me off.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. But I think Boris being flushed away will see levelling up go with him and the party return to type. Belt-tightening, inflation, post-pandemic austerity. Red Wallers will be no better off.

If you're a right-winger and you're wanting the market to run free, Britannia Unleashed, all that kind of thing, then fair enough, my wailing above probably doesn't touch you one bit. But, from what I can gather, when people up here ticked Leave in 2016, that's not what they thought they were going to get.

I agree with much of this diagnosis

Just two points: I don’t believe the Tories will return to ‘austerity’ for quite a while (unless forced by circumstances like a looming default). Big debt is with us for the medium term, as the global economy recovers from Covid (ins’allah)

Also, it’s not true to say Brexit has replaced one remote bureaucracy with another. We are now properly democratic. If the Red Wallers are angry at the Tory government’s betrayal (and fair enough, it’s not looking good) they can have the electoral satisfaction of sweeping them out of office, in humiliating style. Not something they can do to the EU Commission

And that, for me, was pretty much the whole point of Brexit

They won't be daft enough to call it austerity, but a rose by any other name, and all that.

There is that potential electoral satisfaction, yes you're right. And I get what you're saying about the EU Commission. It's a perfectly valid point. For you Brexit's the greater good, we've reverted to the better system. Fine. I just disagree. For me the lesser evil, in terms of the north, was being in the EU. But that battle's been lost. Ah well.

I really don’t see what the EU ‘did for the north’. They just took British taxpayers’ money and randomly gave SOME back to poorer parts of the UK, but most of our money went to Eastern Europe. How is that a ‘good deal’ for the North of England?

And the idea that fat Eurocrats in Strasbourg brasseries spent their time worrying about ‘voters in Stoke’ is worthy of a cartoon

Jesus - Eurocrats don't have to eat in downmarket brasseries. How out of touch with ordinary Eurocrats are you?

I dunno, this Strasbourg brasserie ‘spectacularly converted from an 18th century royal stud farm’ looks… tolerable


https://les-haras-brasserie.com/?lng=en


God, I miss travel

Malmesbury

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Leon said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

FFS....

Extinction Rebellion: Jury clears protesters dragged off train roof

Last month, the Anglican priest admitted she was "surprised" to avoid jail for blocking the M25. She was one of seven members of Insulate Britain who were handed suspended sentences for breaching an injunction and being in contempt of court.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-59996870

So we can't even claim well it was just one of those things she got a bit carried away. She already guilty of blocking motorways and has a suspended sentence against her. Clear pattern of behaviour.

Perhaps jury trial, like democracy, has had its day

I’m semi-serious. That’s another implication from Cummings’ blog. Democracy may be dying. If it is proved that other systems are better at delivering prosperity, peace and happiness is democracy intrinsically worry pursuing? Hence his (and my) fascination with Singapore

And yes I get the irony that I voted Leavd ‘because democracy’ but the world is full of complex ironies

FWIW I think democracy definitely IS finished, in the long term, thanks to AI. GPT37 will make decisions which are so much smarter and more strategic and less emotional than any politician - or Eurocrat, or CCP apparatchik - we will hand over all our governance to the machines

Erm, isn't Singapore a democracy? Even if the same side always wins.

It's a nicer, better run version of Putinville. It's all great until someone thinks that you might possibly have suggested that the ruling party is not wonderful. Then they drop a bridge on you.

IanB2

northern_monkey said:

IanB2 said:

northern_monkey said:

Gah, fell into the thread hole. FPT, in reply to Leon:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Leon said:

That Guardian long-read on Dom Cummings’ blog, mentioned below, is indeed essential viewing

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy

This is superbly bang-on:

“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”

Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right

The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election

I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy

Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?

He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.

It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership

The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.

You know, I get everything you’re saying. I can see what you mean about posh Remainers.

From my decidedly non-posh standpoint, I think what appals me most about Brexit is that Red Wall people have been promised that we will Take Back Control. And we will.

But I fear, and nothing has happened to disabuse me of this notion, in fact things like that Leeds leg of HS2 being cancelled reinforce it, is that Red Wallers have been persuaded to hand back control to a system that, more often than not, elects Conservative governments that, more often than not, screw the north, the people I love and the communities I am part of.

The EU, or EEC as it was then, handed over big bucks through coalfield regeneration funding, which did help. Now I might be wrong, but I suspect a Conservative government wouldn’t have done such a thing.

Yes, we’re free to spend our own money now how we want. The point being the country very often chooses to elect a government that chooses to spend a disproportionate amount in the South East and London.

I suspect that Boris is now expendable. He got the Red Wallers vote, he sang the siren song on levelling up. Will it last or will the Tory Party revert to type? I suspect the latter.

Yes, wages have gone up for some unskilled people. Will it last? Will they be eaten up by inflation?

Red Wallers were convinced, I think, to vote to hand control from one remote bureaucracy, the EU, that at least had their interests at heart to some extent, though no doubt many will disagree, and give that control to another remote bureaucracy, in Westminster, that very often doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the north and the Midlands.

That's the con trick that really pisses me off.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. But I think Boris being flushed away will see levelling up go with him and the party return to type. Belt-tightening, inflation, post-pandemic austerity. Red Wallers will be no better off.

If you're a right-winger and you're wanting the market to run free, Britannia Unleashed, all that kind of thing, then fair enough, my wailing above probably doesn't touch you one bit. But, from what I can gather, when people up here ticked Leave in 2016, that's not what they thought they were going to get.

Edit: New Labour did help. Yes, they could have done more. Yes, they took us for granted. I think they've learned from that mistake.

Perhaps these voters actually took the longer-term view and, rather than switching in the expectation that the Tories will deliver for them, they switched in order to make sure Labour will deliver for them down the road?

It's a possibility. Not sure it's a suggestion that convinces me but you could be right.

I suppose I wasn't thinking that they'd consciously rationalised it. But there's an analogy in human behaviour - the neglected partner having a fling wanting to be discovered, hoping for some attention.

CarlottaVance

File under "You could not make it up"

EXCLUSIVE :

Kate Josephs, the former head of the Government unit responsible for drawing covid-19 restrictions, was given a leaving do in the Cabinet Office on December 17 2020 - the day before the Number 10 Xmas Party

https://twitter.com/HarryYorke1/status/1482014927577624583?s=20

In The Telegraph....

northern_monkey

Leon said:

northern_monkey said:

Leon said:

northern_monkey said:

Gah, fell into the thread hole. FPT, in reply to Leon:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Leon said:

That Guardian long-read on Dom Cummings’ blog, mentioned below, is indeed essential viewing

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy

This is superbly bang-on:

“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”

Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right

The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election

I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy

Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?

He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.

It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership

The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.

You know, I get everything you’re saying. I can see what you mean about posh Remainers.

From my decidedly non-posh standpoint, I think what appals me most about Brexit is that Red Wall people have been promised that we will Take Back Control. And we will.

But I fear, and nothing has happened to disabuse me of this notion, in fact things like that Leeds leg of HS2 being cancelled reinforce it, is that Red Wallers have been persuaded to hand back control to a system that, more often than not, elects Conservative governments that, more often than not, screw the north, the people I love and the communities I am part of.

The EU, or EEC as it was then, handed over big bucks through coalfield regeneration funding, which did help. Now I might be wrong, but I suspect a Conservative government wouldn’t have done such a thing.

Yes, we’re free to spend our own money now how we want. The point being the country very often chooses to elect a government that chooses to spend a disproportionate amount in the South East and London.

I suspect that Boris is now expendable. He got the Red Wallers vote, he sang the siren song on levelling up. Will it last or will the Tory Party revert to type? I suspect the latter.

Yes, wages have gone up for some unskilled people. Will it last? Will they be eaten up by inflation?

Red Wallers were convinced, I think, to vote to hand control from one remote bureaucracy, the EU, that at least had their interests at heart to some extent, though no doubt many will disagree, and give that control to another remote bureaucracy, in Westminster, that very often doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the north and the Midlands.

That's the con trick that really pisses me off.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. But I think Boris being flushed away will see levelling up go with him and the party return to type. Belt-tightening, inflation, post-pandemic austerity. Red Wallers will be no better off.

If you're a right-winger and you're wanting the market to run free, Britannia Unleashed, all that kind of thing, then fair enough, my wailing above probably doesn't touch you one bit. But, from what I can gather, when people up here ticked Leave in 2016, that's not what they thought they were going to get.

I agree with much of this diagnosis

Just two points: I don’t believe the Tories will return to ‘austerity’ for quite a while (unless forced by circumstances like a looming default). Big debt is with us for the medium term, as the global economy recovers from Covid (ins’allah)

Also, it’s not true to say Brexit has replaced one remote bureaucracy with another. We are now properly democratic. If the Red Wallers are angry at the Tory government’s betrayal (and fair enough, it’s not looking good) they can have the electoral satisfaction of sweeping them out of office, in humiliating style. Not something they can do to the EU Commission

And that, for me, was pretty much the whole point of Brexit

They won't be daft enough to call it austerity, but a rose by any other name, and all that.

There is that potential electoral satisfaction, yes you're right. And I get what you're saying about the EU Commission. It's a perfectly valid point. For you Brexit's the greater good, we've reverted to the better system. Fine. I just disagree. For me the lesser evil, in terms of the north, was being in the EU. But that battle's been lost. Ah well.

I really don’t see what the EU ‘did for the north’. They just took British taxpayers’ money and randomly gave SOME back to poorer parts of the UK, but most of our money went to Eastern Europe. How is that a ‘good deal’ for the North of England?

And the idea that fat Eurocrats in Strasbourg brasseries spent their time worrying about ‘voters in Stoke’ is worthy of a cartoon

'Some' being better than the square root of bugger all that we got before! It's like this levelling up funding that is being poured into constituencies that went blue in 2019, or have become marginal. There was a story over Xmas I saw that some Tory peer got some of it to fill potholes in on a private road in his estate. It never gets to the places that really need it.

Maybe I'm naive but I think that Eurocrats did worry, or at least care, about the poorer parts of the UK. Certainly more than many of our domestic politicians. Give me a choice between a Eurocrat or JRM...

Anyway, I'm going to drag my lazy backside out for a run before it gets dark. Play nice everyone.

Richard_Nabavi

MoonRabbit said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Fairliered said:

Is there any reason why the next PM couldn’t be a member of the Lords?

A question for Lord Frost, I think.

Do you have a feeling he wants it?

I do. I think he should be serious outside candidate in betting as one the brexiteers would trust and get behind.

The Lord thing easily put on suspension.

I'm sure he does want it, and (to go back to the self-awareness theme) he's probably deluded enough to think he has a chance. Certainly he seems to be on manoeuvres. But the practical obstacles are overwhelming, ain't gonna happen.

rcs1000

Richard_Nabavi said:

Andy_JS said:

At the moment it looks pretty certain that the final 3 in the MPs vote will be Sunak, Truss and Hunt.

Hunt's support from what's left of the sane part of the parliamentary party is probably enough to get him to the final two, where he'll lose in the members' vote. So the interesting bit is whether Steve Baker and his disciplined band of ultras will want Sunak or Truss. My guess is that they'll be suspicious of both, but more so of Truss.

It is entirely possible, surely, that they elevate one of their own. And that isn't necessarily a cabinet minister.

FF43

northern_monkey said:

Leon said:

northern_monkey said:

Gah, fell into the thread hole. FPT, in reply to Leon:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Leon said:

That Guardian long-read on Dom Cummings’ blog, mentioned below, is indeed essential viewing

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy

This is superbly bang-on:

“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”

Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right

The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election

I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy

Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?

He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.

It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership

The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.

You know, I get everything you’re saying. I can see what you mean about posh Remainers.

From my decidedly non-posh standpoint, I think what appals me most about Brexit is that Red Wall people have been promised that we will Take Back Control. And we will.

But I fear, and nothing has happened to disabuse me of this notion, in fact things like that Leeds leg of HS2 being cancelled reinforce it, is that Red Wallers have been persuaded to hand back control to a system that, more often than not, elects Conservative governments that, more often than not, screw the north, the people I love and the communities I am part of.

The EU, or EEC as it was then, handed over big bucks through coalfield regeneration funding, which did help. Now I might be wrong, but I suspect a Conservative government wouldn’t have done such a thing.

Yes, we’re free to spend our own money now how we want. The point being the country very often chooses to elect a government that chooses to spend a disproportionate amount in the South East and London.

I suspect that Boris is now expendable. He got the Red Wallers vote, he sang the siren song on levelling up. Will it last or will the Tory Party revert to type? I suspect the latter.

Yes, wages have gone up for some unskilled people. Will it last? Will they be eaten up by inflation?

Red Wallers were convinced, I think, to vote to hand control from one remote bureaucracy, the EU, that at least had their interests at heart to some extent, though no doubt many will disagree, and give that control to another remote bureaucracy, in Westminster, that very often doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the north and the Midlands.

That's the con trick that really pisses me off.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. But I think Boris being flushed away will see levelling up go with him and the party return to type. Belt-tightening, inflation, post-pandemic austerity. Red Wallers will be no better off.

If you're a right-winger and you're wanting the market to run free, Britannia Unleashed, all that kind of thing, then fair enough, my wailing above probably doesn't touch you one bit. But, from what I can gather, when people up here ticked Leave in 2016, that's not what they thought they were going to get.

I agree with much of this diagnosis

Just two points: I don’t believe the Tories will return to ‘austerity’ for quite a while (unless forced by circumstances like a looming default). Big debt is with us for the medium term, as the global economy recovers from Covid (ins’allah)

Also, it’s not true to say Brexit has replaced one remote bureaucracy with another. We are now properly democratic. If the Red Wallers are angry at the Tory government’s betrayal (and fair enough, it’s not looking good) they can have the electoral satisfaction of sweeping them out of office, in humiliating style. Not something they can do to the EU Commission

And that, for me, was pretty much the whole point of Brexit

They won't be daft enough to call it austerity, but a rose by any other name, and all that.

There is that potential electoral satisfaction, yes you're right. And I get what you're saying about the EU Commission. It's a perfectly valid point. For you Brexit's the greater good, we've reverted to the better system. Fine. I just disagree. For me the lesser evil, in terms of the north, was being in the EU. But that battle's been lost. Ah well.

A big problem with Brexit, it gives you a theoretical power to choose what you don't want while ensuring you don't get what you actually do want. It's taking a long time for the penny to drop on that.

MoonRabbit

Mexicanpete said:

Fairliered said:

Is there any reason why the next PM couldn’t be a member of the Lords?

NOT FROSTY??? ARGH!!!

Yes frosty. The heir of Brexit done. The only one entitled to say, make Brexit work. Instantly unites all brexiteers to him. Swallows up all other votes and bets as being a fresh pair of hands. The perfect long shot winner in hindsight there was never anything to stop him, should have been odds-on.

This is happening folks.

JosiasJessop

MoonRabbit said:

Malmesbury said:

MoonRabbit said:

Malmesbury said:

MoonRabbit said:

david_herdson said:

MoonRabbit said:

rottenborough said:

MoonRabbit said:

dixiedean said:

IshmaelZ said:

Sandpit said:

Carnyx said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Alistair said:

Leadsom for leader.

Roooth!

A ridiculous 25/1 with PP.

Are we past the days of having peers as PMs, in the sense of it being even legally possible? Though Lord Home got himself a safe seat as a MP pdq if I recall the recent discussion here. I'm sure someone could be persuaded to apply to the Chiltern Hundreds if need be, in a nice safe seat.

Nothing that legally says the PM cannot be in the Lords - although I imagine that there would be no such thing as a safe seat for a by-election these days, if a party tried to force one in such circumstances.

Halifax turned down PMship in 1940 on account of being a Lord

Is that so? I'd always assumed Labour wouldn't support him.

I read a couple of articles that had it as his for taking, but bottled it. He didn’t fancy being a war leader. Didn’t think we could win. Didn’t want to fight. The recent film of Churchill portrayed it like this?
Is this revisionist history? It’s been revised and is more accurate?

Labour wanted Halifax and that was the general consensus of the Commons. The King wanted Halifax and was a bit upset when Halifax raised the objection of being a peer and so not able to operate effectively in the House.

That’s where I disagree with you Rottenborough. I can’t do it because I am a Lord buries the truth and distorts true history which needs to be revised, therefore your favourite history books on your shelf you always thought was history are lying to you and you need to get new ones.
The truth being “havn’t slept for a week thinking I have to be war PM, I think we should make deal with Germans anyway.”

Halifax accepted that there was no constitutional bar on him being PM in the Lords; he turned the job down primarily because he didn't want to do it and recognised that Churchill would overshadow him, whatever their official statuses.

By 1940, it wasn't even accepted that a PM couldn't sit in the Lords. It was only 38 years then since it had last happened (the equivalent of 1984 from now), and Curzon had been seriously considered as a PM candidate in the early 1920s.

While it was certainly seen as unhelpful that a PM might sit in a House where the main opposition had barely any representation, it wasn't an absolute bar.

In any case, there were provisions that could have been made to ease the difficulty. One was to amend the HoC standing orders, to allow a non-MP PM to be able to address MPs from within the chamber; IIRC, another would have been for the king to put Halifax's peerage into abeyance.

Either way, you don't lose a world war for a point of minor constitutional principle which wasn't even convention at that stage. Had Halifax been the MP and Churchill the peer (far from impossible), it's very likely that the latter would still have become PM.

Awesome post.

Opening bit

“ Halifax accepted that there was no constitutional bar on him being PM in the Lords; he turned the job down primarily because he didn't want to do it and recognised that Churchill would overshadow him, whatever their official statuses. “.

Absolutely spot on as the history as I know it. But does raise questions as, not without skills and merit was Halifax nonetheless not leadership material crucially in his own mind? And how history books would wrongly copy each other as the reason for the decision as something else?

One of the weaknesses of history books and historians is how so much of it just copies each other? Especially now in the internet age, it’s not so many sources as it appears if all says same thing with so few alternative perspectives.

Indeed - going back to primary sources often reveals interesting things.

A very good recent example was "Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway" which pointed out that much of the layers of scholarship on the battle was wrong. Among other things, the Japanese carriers had physical limitations which meant that various things couldn't be true. And a major Japanese source had been proved to be less than accurate y historians in Japan....

From my reading of the period, Halifax saw himself as the wrong man to be PM - in a World War*. I think he would have jumped at the job, if it had been a matter of managing the continuing recovery of the economy, dealing with social issues and a bit of diplomacy.

*I seem to recall a story, that one of the pacifist types in the Labour party asked Atlee why he was serving under that "ghastly warmonger and warlover, Churchill?". Atlee is supposed to have replied that the country needed a warmonger.

I think what you have added to what David posted nails it now.

“ Halifax accepted that there was no constitutional bar on him being PM in the Lords; he turned the job down primarily because he didn't want to do it and recognised that Churchill would overshadow him, whatever their official statuses. “.

+

“ Halifax saw himself as the wrong man to be PM in a war “

= pretty much the true history of what happened. 👍🏻

Though still probably some questions around prevalence of “sign a truce rather than attempt a war” feeling? Like you said, go back to original sources, that would be a view of it from the other side of the war, without knowing that we won, without full or any awareness of the horrors of the concentration camps, and likely so many other ways where the view would be different, than the view of the same spot in history post war.

Halifax hated Hitler. His position *before* the fall of France was that no peace was possible with Germany, if Hitler was still in charge. We know this because he said this (and it was documented as being said) to an intermediary* with the German government.

It was after the French defeat that he suggested the old WWI plan of an armistice with Germany if the BEF was pushed out of France and France fell.

Basically - "Shit, the Germans have won. What do we do now?"

*Swedish chap, IIRC.

Oh we are carrying on over here. Nice.

So the next question would be, were we all that concerned with Germans Partying victory in Paris… in 1871? Historically we sided with other people against the French. The rise of German Empire in the Second Reich (I understand is German for rich - the Holy Roman Empire being the first rich) complicates things leaves Britain uncertain about a German Empire controlling or dominating mainland Europe in upstart crow of an Empire to rival our own? That is then thinking as we go into First World War, and into the 20th century… yet, there is still all these books and TV programmes about how close UK upper classes were to the Germans in the thirties? You see what I mean?

I am not an historian (tm), but I think that Germany in 1871 wasn't seen as much of a threat to UK interests. It was in the process of unification from a series of separate states (the unification actually being declared at Versailles). As such, Germany's massive power, as it developed over the next few decades, had not become clear.

TBF, we were probably happier that France had been knocked down a peg or two, and that there was a third power to rival France and Russia on the continent. I think we probably regretted it within a handful of years, when it was clear that the new German state was rather more militaristic that we had hoped...

IshmaelZ

CarlottaVance said:

File under "You could not make it up"

EXCLUSIVE :

Kate Josephs, the former head of the Government unit responsible for drawing covid-19 restrictions, was given a leaving do in the Cabinet Office on December 17 2020 - the day before the Number 10 Xmas Party

https://twitter.com/HarryYorke1/status/1482014927577624583?s=20

In The Telegraph....

Just stop already. this is over egging it.

IanB2

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Andy_JS said:

At the moment it looks pretty certain that the final 3 in the MPs vote will be Sunak, Truss and Hunt.

Hunt's support from what's left of the sane part of the parliamentary party is probably enough to get him to the final two, where he'll lose in the members' vote. So the interesting bit is whether Steve Baker and his disciplined band of ultras will want Sunak or Truss. My guess is that they'll be suspicious of both, but more so of Truss.

It is entirely possible, surely, that they elevate one of their own. And that isn't necessarily a cabinet minister.

The classic resolution then being Sunak with a big job for the chosen ultra, assuming (as I do) that they really won't want a long drawn-out contest risking the outcome on their membership

Mexicanpete

CarlottaVance said:

File under "You could not make it up"

EXCLUSIVE :

Kate Josephs, the former head of the Government unit responsible for drawing covid-19 restrictions, was given a leaving do in the Cabinet Office on December 17 2020 - the day before the Number 10 Xmas Party

https://twitter.com/HarryYorke1/status/1482014927577624583?s=20

In The Telegraph....

Maybe the DT are so keen to see the return of their top columnist that they are helping him through the window.

rcs1000

northern_monkey said:

Gah, fell into the thread hole. FPT, in reply to Leon:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Leon said:

That Guardian long-read on Dom Cummings’ blog, mentioned below, is indeed essential viewing

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy

This is superbly bang-on:

“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”

Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right

The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election

I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy

Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?

He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.

It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership

The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.

You know, I get everything you’re saying. I can see what you mean about posh Remainers.

From my decidedly non-posh standpoint, I think what appals me most about Brexit is that Red Wall people have been promised that we will Take Back Control. And we will.

But I fear, and nothing has happened to disabuse me of this notion, in fact things like that Leeds leg of HS2 being cancelled reinforce it, is that Red Wallers have been persuaded to hand back control to a system that, more often than not, elects Conservative governments that, more often than not, screw the north, the people I love and the communities I am part of.

The EU, or EEC as it was then, handed over big bucks through coalfield regeneration funding, which did help. Now I might be wrong, but I suspect a Conservative government wouldn’t have done such a thing.

Yes, we’re free to spend our own money now how we want. The point being the country very often chooses to elect a government that chooses to spend a disproportionate amount in the South East and London.

I suspect that Boris is now expendable. He got the Red Wallers vote, he sang the siren song on levelling up. Will it last or will the Tory Party revert to type? I suspect the latter.

Yes, wages have gone up for some unskilled people. Will it last? Will they be eaten up by inflation?

Red Wallers were convinced, I think, to vote to hand control from one remote bureaucracy, the EU, that at least had their interests at heart to some extent, though no doubt many will disagree, and give that control to another remote bureaucracy, in Westminster, that very often doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the north and the Midlands.

That's the con trick that really pisses me off.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. But I think Boris being flushed away will see levelling up go with him and the party return to type. Belt-tightening, inflation, post-pandemic austerity. Red Wallers will be no better off.

If you're a right-winger and you're wanting the market to run free, Britannia Unleashed, all that kind of thing, then fair enough, my wailing above probably doesn't touch you one bit. But, from what I can gather, when people up here ticked Leave in 2016, that's not what they thought they were going to get.

Edit: New Labour did help. Yes, they could have done more. Yes, they took us for granted. I think they've learned from that mistake.

Actually, I think the issue is slightly (although not much) different.

The Conservative Party is dependent on older voters: and its policy choices (such as raising NI over income tax) seem to be more about protecting them, than maximising employment (and therefore wages).

Richard_Nabavi

Rob Ford @robfordmancs

Zeno's Party Paradox:

Sue Gray constantly moves towards completing her report on parties, but never reaches the finish line before another party gets added to the list of parties to investigate

TimS

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Leon said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

FFS....

Extinction Rebellion: Jury clears protesters dragged off train roof

Last month, the Anglican priest admitted she was "surprised" to avoid jail for blocking the M25. She was one of seven members of Insulate Britain who were handed suspended sentences for breaching an injunction and being in contempt of court.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-59996870

So we can't even claim well it was just one of those things she got a bit carried away. She already guilty of blocking motorways and has a suspended sentence against her. Clear pattern of behaviour.

Perhaps jury trial, like democracy, has had its day

I’m semi-serious. That’s another implication from Cummings’ blog. Democracy may be dying. If it is proved that other systems are better at delivering prosperity, peace and happiness is democracy intrinsically worry pursuing? Hence his (and my) fascination with Singapore

And yes I get the irony that I voted Leavd ‘because democracy’ but the world is full of complex ironies

FWIW I think democracy definitely IS finished, in the long term, thanks to AI. GPT37 will make decisions which are so much smarter and more strategic and less emotional than any politician - or Eurocrat, or CCP apparatchik - we will hand over all our governance to the machines

Erm, isn't Singapore a democracy? Even if the same side always wins.

Singapore is basically a business that happens to have a seat at the UN. With the same degree of democracy as most listed companies, i.e. decent corporate governance but you still know who's boss.

Carnyx

Mexicanpete said:

Fairliered said:

Is there any reason why the next PM couldn’t be a member of the Lords?

NOT FROSTY??? ARGH!!!

We were speculating on Ruth Davidson earlier today. But too remainery, I think.

LostPassword

Richard_Nabavi said:

Andy_JS said:

At the moment it looks pretty certain that the final 3 in the MPs vote will be Sunak, Truss and Hunt.

Hunt's support from what's left of the sane part of the parliamentary party is probably enough to get him to the final two, where he'll lose in the members' vote. So the interesting bit is whether Steve Baker and his disciplined band of ultras will want Sunak or Truss. My guess is that they'll be suspicious of both, but more so of Truss.

I think Mr Ed's questions about what the northern/2019 entry MPs want and who they will support, could be important.

I don't particularly see why they should support Sunak, Truss or Hunt. If there's a surprise in the forthcoming leadership contest it will be because they vote as a bloc for someone else.

Assuming the leadership election is before the next GE, of course, otherwise they might not be taking part in the MPs stage.

CarlottaVance

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Leon said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

FFS....

Extinction Rebellion: Jury clears protesters dragged off train roof

Last month, the Anglican priest admitted she was "surprised" to avoid jail for blocking the M25. She was one of seven members of Insulate Britain who were handed suspended sentences for breaching an injunction and being in contempt of court.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-59996870

So we can't even claim well it was just one of those things she got a bit carried away. She already guilty of blocking motorways and has a suspended sentence against her. Clear pattern of behaviour.

Perhaps jury trial, like democracy, has had its day

I’m semi-serious. That’s another implication from Cummings’ blog. Democracy may be dying. If it is proved that other systems are better at delivering prosperity, peace and happiness is democracy intrinsically worry pursuing? Hence his (and my) fascination with Singapore

And yes I get the irony that I voted Leavd ‘because democracy’ but the world is full of complex ironies

FWIW I think democracy definitely IS finished, in the long term, thanks to AI. GPT37 will make decisions which are so much smarter and more strategic and less emotional than any politician - or Eurocrat, or CCP apparatchik - we will hand over all our governance to the machines

Erm, isn't Singapore a democracy? Even if the same side always wins.

Not as we know it.....

Ranks below Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia in SE Asia:

https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores?sort=desc&order=Total Score and Status

RochdalePioneers

Leon said:

northern_monkey said:

Leon said:

northern_monkey said:

Gah, fell into the thread hole. FPT, in reply to Leon:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Leon said:

That Guardian long-read on Dom Cummings’ blog, mentioned below, is indeed essential viewing

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy

This is superbly bang-on:

“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”

Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right

The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election

I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy

Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?

He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.

It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership

The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.

You know, I get everything you’re saying. I can see what you mean about posh Remainers.

From my decidedly non-posh standpoint, I think what appals me most about Brexit is that Red Wall people have been promised that we will Take Back Control. And we will.

But I fear, and nothing has happened to disabuse me of this notion, in fact things like that Leeds leg of HS2 being cancelled reinforce it, is that Red Wallers have been persuaded to hand back control to a system that, more often than not, elects Conservative governments that, more often than not, screw the north, the people I love and the communities I am part of.

The EU, or EEC as it was then, handed over big bucks through coalfield regeneration funding, which did help. Now I might be wrong, but I suspect a Conservative government wouldn’t have done such a thing.

Yes, we’re free to spend our own money now how we want. The point being the country very often chooses to elect a government that chooses to spend a disproportionate amount in the South East and London.

I suspect that Boris is now expendable. He got the Red Wallers vote, he sang the siren song on levelling up. Will it last or will the Tory Party revert to type? I suspect the latter.

Yes, wages have gone up for some unskilled people. Will it last? Will they be eaten up by inflation?

Red Wallers were convinced, I think, to vote to hand control from one remote bureaucracy, the EU, that at least had their interests at heart to some extent, though no doubt many will disagree, and give that control to another remote bureaucracy, in Westminster, that very often doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the north and the Midlands.

That's the con trick that really pisses me off.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. But I think Boris being flushed away will see levelling up go with him and the party return to type. Belt-tightening, inflation, post-pandemic austerity. Red Wallers will be no better off.

If you're a right-winger and you're wanting the market to run free, Britannia Unleashed, all that kind of thing, then fair enough, my wailing above probably doesn't touch you one bit. But, from what I can gather, when people up here ticked Leave in 2016, that's not what they thought they were going to get.

I agree with much of this diagnosis

Just two points: I don’t believe the Tories will return to ‘austerity’ for quite a while (unless forced by circumstances like a looming default). Big debt is with us for the medium term, as the global economy recovers from Covid (ins’allah)

Also, it’s not true to say Brexit has replaced one remote bureaucracy with another. We are now properly democratic. If the Red Wallers are angry at the Tory government’s betrayal (and fair enough, it’s not looking good) they can have the electoral satisfaction of sweeping them out of office, in humiliating style. Not something they can do to the EU Commission

And that, for me, was pretty much the whole point of Brexit

They won't be daft enough to call it austerity, but a rose by any other name, and all that.

There is that potential electoral satisfaction, yes you're right. And I get what you're saying about the EU Commission. It's a perfectly valid point. For you Brexit's the greater good, we've reverted to the better system. Fine. I just disagree. For me the lesser evil, in terms of the north, was being in the EU. But that battle's been lost. Ah well.

I really don’t see what the EU ‘did for the north’. They just took British taxpayers’ money and randomly gave SOME back to poorer parts of the UK, but most of our money went to Eastern Europe. How is that a ‘good deal’ for the North of England?

And the idea that fat Eurocrats in Strasbourg brasseries spent their time worrying about ‘voters in Stoke’ is worthy of a cartoon

What they did for the north was spend money making things better. Money not spent by UK governments before or after.

I'm happy to agree that its not remotely an efficient way to allocate the funds. But it did happen - and now it isn't. We already have regions begging this government to replace the EU development money and being told no. The "towns fund" is a threadbare sticking plaster of a replacement.

FrancisUrquhart

CarlottaVance said:

File under "You could not make it up"

EXCLUSIVE :

Kate Josephs, the former head of the Government unit responsible for drawing covid-19 restrictions, was given a leaving do in the Cabinet Office on December 17 2020 - the day before the Number 10 Xmas Party

https://twitter.com/HarryYorke1/status/1482014927577624583?s=20

In The Telegraph....

On top of all the fact of all these parties, there seems to be a hell of a lot of people who have left #10 over the past year or so. Given all these seem to do is having parties, makes you wonder why they are all jumping ship.

IanB2

JosiasJessop said:

MoonRabbit said:

Malmesbury said:

MoonRabbit said:

Malmesbury said:

MoonRabbit said:

david_herdson said:

MoonRabbit said:

rottenborough said:

MoonRabbit said:

dixiedean said:

IshmaelZ said:

Sandpit said:

Carnyx said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Alistair said:

Leadsom for leader.

Roooth!

A ridiculous 25/1 with PP.

Are we past the days of having peers as PMs, in the sense of it being even legally possible? Though Lord Home got himself a safe seat as a MP pdq if I recall the recent discussion here. I'm sure someone could be persuaded to apply to the Chiltern Hundreds if need be, in a nice safe seat.

Nothing that legally says the PM cannot be in the Lords - although I imagine that there would be no such thing as a safe seat for a by-election these days, if a party tried to force one in such circumstances.

Halifax turned down PMship in 1940 on account of being a Lord

Is that so? I'd always assumed Labour wouldn't support him.

I read a couple of articles that had it as his for taking, but bottled it. He didn’t fancy being a war leader. Didn’t think we could win. Didn’t want to fight. The recent film of Churchill portrayed it like this?
Is this revisionist history? It’s been revised and is more accurate?

Labour wanted Halifax and that was the general consensus of the Commons. The King wanted Halifax and was a bit upset when Halifax raised the objection of being a peer and so not able to operate effectively in the House.

That’s where I disagree with you Rottenborough. I can’t do it because I am a Lord buries the truth and distorts true history which needs to be revised, therefore your favourite history books on your shelf you always thought was history are lying to you and you need to get new ones.
The truth being “havn’t slept for a week thinking I have to be war PM, I think we should make deal with Germans anyway.”

Halifax accepted that there was no constitutional bar on him being PM in the Lords; he turned the job down primarily because he didn't want to do it and recognised that Churchill would overshadow him, whatever their official statuses.

By 1940, it wasn't even accepted that a PM couldn't sit in the Lords. It was only 38 years then since it had last happened (the equivalent of 1984 from now), and Curzon had been seriously considered as a PM candidate in the early 1920s.

While it was certainly seen as unhelpful that a PM might sit in a House where the main opposition had barely any representation, it wasn't an absolute bar.

In any case, there were provisions that could have been made to ease the difficulty. One was to amend the HoC standing orders, to allow a non-MP PM to be able to address MPs from within the chamber; IIRC, another would have been for the king to put Halifax's peerage into abeyance.

Either way, you don't lose a world war for a point of minor constitutional principle which wasn't even convention at that stage. Had Halifax been the MP and Churchill the peer (far from impossible), it's very likely that the latter would still have become PM.

Awesome post.

Opening bit

“ Halifax accepted that there was no constitutional bar on him being PM in the Lords; he turned the job down primarily because he didn't want to do it and recognised that Churchill would overshadow him, whatever their official statuses. “.

Absolutely spot on as the history as I know it. But does raise questions as, not without skills and merit was Halifax nonetheless not leadership material crucially in his own mind? And how history books would wrongly copy each other as the reason for the decision as something else?

One of the weaknesses of history books and historians is how so much of it just copies each other? Especially now in the internet age, it’s not so many sources as it appears if all says same thing with so few alternative perspectives.

Indeed - going back to primary sources often reveals interesting things.

A very good recent example was "Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway" which pointed out that much of the layers of scholarship on the battle was wrong. Among other things, the Japanese carriers had physical limitations which meant that various things couldn't be true. And a major Japanese source had been proved to be less than accurate y historians in Japan....

From my reading of the period, Halifax saw himself as the wrong man to be PM - in a World War*. I think he would have jumped at the job, if it had been a matter of managing the continuing recovery of the economy, dealing with social issues and a bit of diplomacy.

*I seem to recall a story, that one of the pacifist types in the Labour party asked Atlee why he was serving under that "ghastly warmonger and warlover, Churchill?". Atlee is supposed to have replied that the country needed a warmonger.

I think what you have added to what David posted nails it now.

“ Halifax accepted that there was no constitutional bar on him being PM in the Lords; he turned the job down primarily because he didn't want to do it and recognised that Churchill would overshadow him, whatever their official statuses. “.

+

“ Halifax saw himself as the wrong man to be PM in a war “

= pretty much the true history of what happened. 👍🏻

Though still probably some questions around prevalence of “sign a truce rather than attempt a war” feeling? Like you said, go back to original sources, that would be a view of it from the other side of the war, without knowing that we won, without full or any awareness of the horrors of the concentration camps, and likely so many other ways where the view would be different, than the view of the same spot in history post war.

Halifax hated Hitler. His position *before* the fall of France was that no peace was possible with Germany, if Hitler was still in charge. We know this because he said this (and it was documented as being said) to an intermediary* with the German government.

It was after the French defeat that he suggested the old WWI plan of an armistice with Germany if the BEF was pushed out of France and France fell.

Basically - "Shit, the Germans have won. What do we do now?"

*Swedish chap, IIRC.

Oh we are carrying on over here. Nice.

So the next question would be, were we all that concerned with Germans Partying victory in Paris… in 1871? Historically we sided with other people against the French. The rise of German Empire in the Second Reich (I understand is German for rich - the Holy Roman Empire being the first rich) complicates things leaves Britain uncertain about a German Empire controlling or dominating mainland Europe in upstart crow of an Empire to rival our own? That is then thinking as we go into First World War, and into the 20th century… yet, there is still all these books and TV programmes about how close UK upper classes were to the Germans in the thirties? You see what I mean?

I am not an historian (tm), but I think that Germany in 1871 wasn't seen as much of a threat to UK interests. It was in the process of unification from a series of separate states (the unification actually being declared at Versailles). As such, Germany's massive power, as it developed over the next few decades, had not become clear.

TBF, we were probably happier that France had been knocked down a peg or two, and that there was a third power to rival France and Russia on the continent. I think we probably regretted it within a handful of years, when it was clear that the new German state was rather more militaristic that we had hoped...

We'd just completed what is still in real terms (pre-covid at least) the biggest ever public spending programme, covering the south of England in fortifications and gun emplacements in fear of a French naval invasion (cf. Palmerston's follies) so, yes.

Big_G_NorthWales

99,652 - 270 - 2,423

Scott_xP

EXCLUSIVE :

Kate Josephs, the former head of the Government unit responsible for drawing covid-19 restrictions, was given a leaving do in the Cabinet Office on December 17 2020 - the day before the Number 10 Xmas Party

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/01/14/former-government-head-responsible-covid-rules-held-boozy-leaving/

FrancisUrquhart

Sub 100k cases on the headline figure.

Mechanical ventilation beds usage in England down again.

noneoftheabove

CarlottaVance said:

File under "You could not make it up"

EXCLUSIVE :

Kate Josephs, the former head of the Government unit responsible for drawing covid-19 restrictions, was given a leaving do in the Cabinet Office on December 17 2020 - the day before the Number 10 Xmas Party

https://twitter.com/HarryYorke1/status/1482014927577624583?s=20

In The Telegraph....

It might be easier for Sue Gray to start documenting the days without parties.

Scott_xP

Can of worms latest: former Director General of the Cabinet Office COVID Taskforce apologises for holding lockdown busting leaving drinks. https://twitter.com/katejosephs/status/1482010169693413383

turbotubbs

Scott_xP said:

EXCLUSIVE :

Kate Josephs, the former head of the Government unit responsible for drawing covid-19 restrictions, was given a leaving do in the Cabinet Office on December 17 2020 - the day before the Number 10 Xmas Party

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/01/14/former-government-head-responsible-covid-rules-held-boozy-leaving/

Not exclusive - I've already read this. I think you are losing your touch...

MoonRabbit

FrancisUrquhart said:

CarlottaVance said:

File under "You could not make it up"

EXCLUSIVE :

Kate Josephs, the former head of the Government unit responsible for drawing covid-19 restrictions, was given a leaving do in the Cabinet Office on December 17 2020 - the day before the Number 10 Xmas Party

https://twitter.com/HarryYorke1/status/1482014927577624583?s=20

In The Telegraph....

On top of all the fact of all these parties, there seems to be a hell of a lot of people who have left #10 over the past year or so. Given all these seem to do is having parties, makes you wonder why they are all jumping ship.

Because of how they are connected, people will pay them oodles of money for it?

Malmesbury

MoonRabbit said:

Malmesbury said:

MoonRabbit said:

Malmesbury said:

MoonRabbit said:

david_herdson said:

MoonRabbit said:

rottenborough said:

MoonRabbit said:

dixiedean said:

IshmaelZ said:

Sandpit said:

Carnyx said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Alistair said:

Leadsom for leader.

Roooth!

A ridiculous 25/1 with PP.

Are we past the days of having peers as PMs, in the sense of it being even legally possible? Though Lord Home got himself a safe seat as a MP pdq if I recall the recent discussion here. I'm sure someone could be persuaded to apply to the Chiltern Hundreds if need be, in a nice safe seat.

Nothing that legally says the PM cannot be in the Lords - although I imagine that there would be no such thing as a safe seat for a by-election these days, if a party tried to force one in such circumstances.

Halifax turned down PMship in 1940 on account of being a Lord

Is that so? I'd always assumed Labour wouldn't support him.

I read a couple of articles that had it as his for taking, but bottled it. He didn’t fancy being a war leader. Didn’t think we could win. Didn’t want to fight. The recent film of Churchill portrayed it like this?
Is this revisionist history? It’s been revised and is more accurate?

Labour wanted Halifax and that was the general consensus of the Commons. The King wanted Halifax and was a bit upset when Halifax raised the objection of being a peer and so not able to operate effectively in the House.

That’s where I disagree with you Rottenborough. I can’t do it because I am a Lord buries the truth and distorts true history which needs to be revised, therefore your favourite history books on your shelf you always thought was history are lying to you and you need to get new ones.
The truth being “havn’t slept for a week thinking I have to be war PM, I think we should make deal with Germans anyway.”

Halifax accepted that there was no constitutional bar on him being PM in the Lords; he turned the job down primarily because he didn't want to do it and recognised that Churchill would overshadow him, whatever their official statuses.

By 1940, it wasn't even accepted that a PM couldn't sit in the Lords. It was only 38 years then since it had last happened (the equivalent of 1984 from now), and Curzon had been seriously considered as a PM candidate in the early 1920s.

While it was certainly seen as unhelpful that a PM might sit in a House where the main opposition had barely any representation, it wasn't an absolute bar.

In any case, there were provisions that could have been made to ease the difficulty. One was to amend the HoC standing orders, to allow a non-MP PM to be able to address MPs from within the chamber; IIRC, another would have been for the king to put Halifax's peerage into abeyance.

Either way, you don't lose a world war for a point of minor constitutional principle which wasn't even convention at that stage. Had Halifax been the MP and Churchill the peer (far from impossible), it's very likely that the latter would still have become PM.

Awesome post.

Opening bit

“ Halifax accepted that there was no constitutional bar on him being PM in the Lords; he turned the job down primarily because he didn't want to do it and recognised that Churchill would overshadow him, whatever their official statuses. “.

Absolutely spot on as the history as I know it. But does raise questions as, not without skills and merit was Halifax nonetheless not leadership material crucially in his own mind? And how history books would wrongly copy each other as the reason for the decision as something else?

One of the weaknesses of history books and historians is how so much of it just copies each other? Especially now in the internet age, it’s not so many sources as it appears if all says same thing with so few alternative perspectives.

Indeed - going back to primary sources often reveals interesting things.

A very good recent example was "Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway" which pointed out that much of the layers of scholarship on the battle was wrong. Among other things, the Japanese carriers had physical limitations which meant that various things couldn't be true. And a major Japanese source had been proved to be less than accurate y historians in Japan....

From my reading of the period, Halifax saw himself as the wrong man to be PM - in a World War*. I think he would have jumped at the job, if it had been a matter of managing the continuing recovery of the economy, dealing with social issues and a bit of diplomacy.

*I seem to recall a story, that one of the pacifist types in the Labour party asked Atlee why he was serving under that "ghastly warmonger and warlover, Churchill?". Atlee is supposed to have replied that the country needed a warmonger.

I think what you have added to what David posted nails it now.

“ Halifax accepted that there was no constitutional bar on him being PM in the Lords; he turned the job down primarily because he didn't want to do it and recognised that Churchill would overshadow him, whatever their official statuses. “.

+

“ Halifax saw himself as the wrong man to be PM in a war “

= pretty much the true history of what happened. 👍🏻

Though still probably some questions around prevalence of “sign a truce rather than attempt a war” feeling? Like you said, go back to original sources, that would be a view of it from the other side of the war, without knowing that we won, without full or any awareness of the horrors of the concentration camps, and likely so many other ways where the view would be different, than the view of the same spot in history post war.

Halifax hated Hitler. His position *before* the fall of France was that no peace was possible with Germany, if Hitler was still in charge. We know this because he said this (and it was documented as being said) to an intermediary* with the German government.

It was after the French defeat that he suggested the old WWI plan of an armistice with Germany if the BEF was pushed out of France and France fell.

Basically - "Shit, the Germans have won. What do we do now?"

*Swedish chap, IIRC.

Oh we are carrying on over here. Nice.

So the next question would be, were we all that concerned with Germans Partying victory in Paris… in 1871? Historically we sided with other people against the French. The rise of German Empire in the Second Reich (I understand is German for rich - the Holy Roman Empire being the first rich) complicates things leaves Britain uncertain about a German Empire controlling or dominating mainland Europe in upstart crow of an Empire to rival our own? That is then thinking as we go into First World War, and into the 20th century… yet, there is still all these books and TV programmes about how close UK upper classes were to the Germans in the thirties? You see what I mean?

The continental policy of the UK was to try and prevent one power taking over the whole thing. If they did, they could then amass enough naval power to overwhelm us.

Until 1870, that was France. Bismarck was very careful to manoeuvre France into declaring war in 1870 - which meant we stayed neutral. Because he was about to construct a bigger power than France and wanted no interruptions.

WWI was largely about this, for the UK.

After WWI, many people believed in Anything But That, Ever Again. This was taken by many to mean friendship with Germany. Since it was believed that the rhetoric in the run up to WWI had been part of the problem....

The rise of Hitler then split politics into four groups - Hitler = War (Churchill etc), Appeasement, The Pacifists No Matter What* and a small group who actually like Hitler.

*Who believed in Disarmament as a cure for everything.

FrancisUrquhart

Booster shots uptake has really dropped off.

Cookie

FF43 said:

northern_monkey said:

Leon said:

northern_monkey said:

Gah, fell into the thread hole. FPT, in reply to Leon:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Leon said:

That Guardian long-read on Dom Cummings’ blog, mentioned below, is indeed essential viewing

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy

This is superbly bang-on:

“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”

Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right

The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election

I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy

Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?

He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.

It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership

The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.

You know, I get everything you’re saying. I can see what you mean about posh Remainers.

From my decidedly non-posh standpoint, I think what appals me most about Brexit is that Red Wall people have been promised that we will Take Back Control. And we will.

But I fear, and nothing has happened to disabuse me of this notion, in fact things like that Leeds leg of HS2 being cancelled reinforce it, is that Red Wallers have been persuaded to hand back control to a system that, more often than not, elects Conservative governments that, more often than not, screw the north, the people I love and the communities I am part of.

The EU, or EEC as it was then, handed over big bucks through coalfield regeneration funding, which did help. Now I might be wrong, but I suspect a Conservative government wouldn’t have done such a thing.

Yes, we’re free to spend our own money now how we want. The point being the country very often chooses to elect a government that chooses to spend a disproportionate amount in the South East and London.

I suspect that Boris is now expendable. He got the Red Wallers vote, he sang the siren song on levelling up. Will it last or will the Tory Party revert to type? I suspect the latter.

Yes, wages have gone up for some unskilled people. Will it last? Will they be eaten up by inflation?

Red Wallers were convinced, I think, to vote to hand control from one remote bureaucracy, the EU, that at least had their interests at heart to some extent, though no doubt many will disagree, and give that control to another remote bureaucracy, in Westminster, that very often doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the north and the Midlands.

That's the con trick that really pisses me off.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. But I think Boris being flushed away will see levelling up go with him and the party return to type. Belt-tightening, inflation, post-pandemic austerity. Red Wallers will be no better off.

If you're a right-winger and you're wanting the market to run free, Britannia Unleashed, all that kind of thing, then fair enough, my wailing above probably doesn't touch you one bit. But, from what I can gather, when people up here ticked Leave in 2016, that's not what they thought they were going to get.

I agree with much of this diagnosis

Just two points: I don’t believe the Tories will return to ‘austerity’ for quite a while (unless forced by circumstances like a looming default). Big debt is with us for the medium term, as the global economy recovers from Covid (ins’allah)

Also, it’s not true to say Brexit has replaced one remote bureaucracy with another. We are now properly democratic. If the Red Wallers are angry at the Tory government’s betrayal (and fair enough, it’s not looking good) they can have the electoral satisfaction of sweeping them out of office, in humiliating style. Not something they can do to the EU Commission

And that, for me, was pretty much the whole point of Brexit

They won't be daft enough to call it austerity, but a rose by any other name, and all that.

There is that potential electoral satisfaction, yes you're right. And I get what you're saying about the EU Commission. It's a perfectly valid point. For you Brexit's the greater good, we've reverted to the better system. Fine. I just disagree. For me the lesser evil, in terms of the north, was being in the EU. But that battle's been lost. Ah well.

A big problem with Brexit, it gives you a theoretical power to choose what you don't want while ensuring you don't get what you actually do want. It's taking a long time for the penny to drop on that.

That's not Brexit, that's FPTP.

CarlottaVance

Back below 100,000!

99,652.

Admissions 7DA trending down too now

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

turbotubbs

FrancisUrquhart said:

Booster shots uptake has really dropped off.

Panic is over isn't it, people can see that omicron is 'nothing to worry about' and besides we've done christmas, so if you get it now its a week off/isolating/wfh...

Leon

CarlottaVance said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Leon said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

FFS....

Extinction Rebellion: Jury clears protesters dragged off train roof

Last month, the Anglican priest admitted she was "surprised" to avoid jail for blocking the M25. She was one of seven members of Insulate Britain who were handed suspended sentences for breaching an injunction and being in contempt of court.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-59996870

So we can't even claim well it was just one of those things she got a bit carried away. She already guilty of blocking motorways and has a suspended sentence against her. Clear pattern of behaviour.

Perhaps jury trial, like democracy, has had its day

I’m semi-serious. That’s another implication from Cummings’ blog. Democracy may be dying. If it is proved that other systems are better at delivering prosperity, peace and happiness is democracy intrinsically worry pursuing? Hence his (and my) fascination with Singapore

And yes I get the irony that I voted Leavd ‘because democracy’ but the world is full of complex ironies

FWIW I think democracy definitely IS finished, in the long term, thanks to AI. GPT37 will make decisions which are so much smarter and more strategic and less emotional than any politician - or Eurocrat, or CCP apparatchik - we will hand over all our governance to the machines

Erm, isn't Singapore a democracy? Even if the same side always wins.

Not as we know it.....

Ranks below Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia in SE Asia:

https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores?sort=desc&order=Total Score and Status

It is also far richer than any of those, indeed it is one of the richest countries on the planet

And it has zero crime

I’ve said this before on PB: 90% of people, if offered a choice between life in rich, crime-free, not-very-democratic Singapore, or life in a less rich, more dangerous, properly democratic alternative, would choose Singapore

Which is why Singapore is a challenge to liberal democracies (and liberalism) and why democracy is entirely doomed, long term. The super-computers will be the Singapore government on steroids. Cold, calculating, but phenomenally efficient at producing results

LostPassword

My project has a new PM. She hasn't turned her webcam on in any meeting so far, but she sounds exactly like the Dead Ringers impression of Liz Truss. It's very disconcerting.

TimT

FPT
TimT Posts: 5,068
10:51AM
Malmesbury said:
» show previous quotes
I find it interesting that as religion as such fades in the population, the instincts and habits we associate with religion have been re-purposed.


Cookie - sounds like someone has read Jonathan Haidt. I always love this video from him

https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_liberals_and_conservatives?language=en

TheWhiteRabbit

turbotubbs said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Booster shots uptake has really dropped off.

Panic is over isn't it, people can see that omicron is 'nothing to worry about' and besides we've done christmas, so if you get it now its a week off/isolating/wfh...

You can't get boosted if you've had COVID within 28(?) days.

IanB2

Carnyx said:

Mexicanpete said:

Fairliered said:

Is there any reason why the next PM couldn’t be a member of the Lords?

NOT FROSTY??? ARGH!!!

We were speculating on Ruth Davidson earlier today. But too remainery, I think.

The Tories aren't that clever, for that could be a masterstroke, solving a whole host of their problems.

Big_G_NorthWales

Scott_xP said:

Can of worms latest: former Director General of the Cabinet Office COVID Taskforce apologises for holding lockdown busting leaving drinks. https://twitter.com/katejosephs/status/1482010169693413383

Sky have just said she is a senior civil servant and the concern now is that the drinks culture is widespread across the civil service

As I suggested earlier I expect changes to employment rules to follow relating to drinking in the workplace