I have been working out ways that Johnson survives. Here is my most ludicrous, but it could work
What if at 20.00 this evening he addresses the nation, surrounded by flags, reporting that we are on the brink of war with Russia. He puts us on an immediate war footing, .
The whole nation will see straight through it.
I'm afraid that after the 45 minute dossier no-one will believe a word anyone says on threats
The attempted putsch has unleashed infighting between rival camps of Tory MPs, with whips also accused of heavy-handed attempts to intimidate the rebels with the threat of revealing allegations about their sex lives.
One MP claims it was hinted that he would be outed as homosexual, while another was reportedly warned that alleged sexual harassment would be revealed. A third was confronted with hotly denied claims of unusual sexual peccadillos with male prostitutes. One has threatened to release a recording of a whip’s threats.
One thing that struck me in the Dan Hodges Mail article was this line:
"But any hopes within No 10 that this provided evidence of the Chancellor’s loyalty were misplaced. Within hours Tricky Rishi was holding meetings with leading rebels, who set out their terms for backing him in any leadership contest."
If Rishi starts to get the reputation (?) for being slippery and not to be trusted, it;s potentially very damaging. It doesn't sound as though he convinced many of the Red Wall MPs he would follow through on more funding for the RW.
I wouldn't trust Sunak one iota but I feel that about anyone who worked at the hedge fund he was at.
Ms Cyclefree - you have mentioned a few times that you have an issue with the hedge fund Sunak worked for and that you do not trust him. Please could you expand on this as it’s not clear if you are saying there was some sort of illegality or just sharp practice - obviously there is plain illegality at one end of the spectrum and things that aren’t great morally but perfectly legal at the other.
I think if you are going to cast shade on Sunak by virtue of his work history it’s only fair to make it clear if it’s something he has done, something in the culture of his employers and if legal or not.
I could be being very naive but I don’t really understand why, if there are skeletons in his closet, they haven’t been thrown out there either by Boris and outriders, rivals or by the guardian in a deep reporting exposé so think if someone is hinting at this then would only be fair to back it up and explain why you hint at dark issues or alternatively not hint at them unless they can be backed up?
If you are right then it’s important that people know this but if you aren’t then it’s also not right to cast shade.
I am a little constrained in what I can say. There are issues around the legality of some of the stuff which went on in 2007 which I cannot discuss in a public forum. All I will say is that there was more illegality going on than has come out and there were huge missed opportunities to clamp down hard on behaviour which was in my view unlawful and which, if done, could have reduced or potentially stopped some of the worst effects in this country of the financial crisis. Some of it has spilt out from other players. The reason why more has not come out is because (a) there are and have been legal constraints on this happening; (b) it does not reflect well on others who have an interest - even now - in not fully lifting up the carpet on what went on in the finance sector in this country in 2007/2008, a cost for which we as taxpayers are still paying.
I do not have anything against Sunak personally. I am happy to make this clear. But I do have confidential information about the activities of The Childrens Investment Fund, the hedge fund where he worked, in relation to the period in 2007-2008, which makes me doubtful about those working there at the time. The culture of the place was not a good one. There have been serious criticisms of the truthfulness of the evidence given by its founder, Chris Hohn, by various judges in various legal cases. Culture comes from the top.
There are some who think that Sunak will be better because he is skilled, is a money man, has worked effectively in business. And that may well be the case. The Treasury was pretty competent with the furlough scheme. But if it is right to praise him for the skills he has learnt then it is also right to wonder about what else he learnt from the culture of the place he worked at.
That is why I am sceptical about the idea that he is some sort of clean skin Messiah. These doubts are reinforced by three things: 1.The government's initial instincts on the financial consequences of Covid were wrong. I wrote about this at the time here - https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/03/17/budgeting-for-a-crisis/. Sunak was Chancellor then. He reversed pretty quickly which is to his credit. But that has raised a doubt in my mind about how good his instincts really are. 2. His subsequent decisions as Chancellor - on UC, on the NI increase etc, on funding for transport schemes in the North. 3. The way he apparently seeks to distance himself from his own decisions when they become uncomfortable or unpopular. I wonder whether he is a bit like Chris Hohn in that instance - good at the positive self-publicity ("my hedge fund gives money to charities!") but quick to evade responsibility and under the surface not quite as nice as he likes to make out.
Four other reasons to think that Sunak is rubbish:
- his department has raised taxes mainly to subsidise the elderly affluent at the expense of the working population, against an explicit manifesto promise. While the initiative on that probably came from No 10, he clearly went along with it. - he's done basically nothing to address our main economic problem: lower productivity than we should have. I'm not even sure he realises the problem is there. - the furlough scheme and other related measures weren't nearly as good as most people think. They had lots of perverse incentives, in particular keeping zombie companies operating for far too long. And they didn't cover up to five million people, such as people who just entered the labour market or people who worked through their own companies, apparently because it was "too difficult" - in other words, Sunak simply couldn't be bothered - the restaurant scheme was a stupid gimmick, which did nothing to help recovery and may have helped spread the virus.
I think he's the most overrated minister in politics. But, as you say, he does have a great PR team.
I have been working out ways that Johnson survives. Here is my most ludicrous, but it could work
What if at 20.00 this evening he addresses the nation, surrounded by flags, reporting that we are on the brink of war with Russia. He puts us on an immediate war footing, .
The whole nation will see straight through it.
I'm afraid that after the 45 minute dossier no-one will believe a word anyone says on threats
The attempted putsch has unleashed infighting between rival camps of Tory MPs, with whips also accused of heavy-handed attempts to intimidate the rebels with the threat of revealing allegations about their sex lives.
One MP claims it was hinted that he would be outed as homosexual, while another was reportedly warned that alleged sexual harassment would be revealed. A third was confronted with hotly denied claims of unusual sexual peccadillos with male prostitutes. One has threatened to release a recording of a whip’s threats.
One thing that struck me in the Dan Hodges Mail article was this line:
"But any hopes within No 10 that this provided evidence of the Chancellor’s loyalty were misplaced. Within hours Tricky Rishi was holding meetings with leading rebels, who set out their terms for backing him in any leadership contest."
If Rishi starts to get the reputation (?) for being slippery and not to be trusted, it;s potentially very damaging. It doesn't sound as though he convinced many of the Red Wall MPs he would follow through on more funding for the RW.
I wouldn't trust Sunak one iota but I feel that about anyone who worked at the hedge fund he was at.
Ms Cyclefree - you have mentioned a few times that you have an issue with the hedge fund Sunak worked for and that you do not trust him. Please could you expand on this as it’s not clear if you are saying there was some sort of illegality or just sharp practice - obviously there is plain illegality at one end of the spectrum and things that aren’t great morally but perfectly legal at the other.
I think if you are going to cast shade on Sunak by virtue of his work history it’s only fair to make it clear if it’s something he has done, something in the culture of his employers and if legal or not.
I could be being very naive but I don’t really understand why, if there are skeletons in his closet, they haven’t been thrown out there either by Boris and outriders, rivals or by the guardian in a deep reporting exposé so think if someone is hinting at this then would only be fair to back it up and explain why you hint at dark issues or alternatively not hint at them unless they can be backed up?
If you are right then it’s important that people know this but if you aren’t then it’s also not right to cast shade.
I am a little constrained in what I can say. There are issues around the legality of some of the stuff which went on in 2007 which I cannot discuss in a public forum. All I will say is that there was more illegality going on than has come out and there were huge missed opportunities to clamp down hard on behaviour which was in my view unlawful and which, if done, could have reduced or potentially stopped some of the worst effects in this country of the financial crisis. Some of it has spilt out from other players. The reason why more has not come out is because (a) there are and have been legal constraints on this happening; (b) it does not reflect well on others who have an interest - even now - in not fully lifting up the carpet on what went on in the finance sector in this country in 2007/2008, a cost for which we as taxpayers are still paying.
I do not have anything against Sunak personally. I am happy to make this clear. But I do have confidential information about the activities of The Childrens Investment Fund, the hedge fund where he worked, in relation to the period in 2007-2008, which makes me doubtful about those working there at the time. The culture of the place was not a good one. There have been serious criticisms of the truthfulness of the evidence given by its founder, Chris Hohn, by various judges in various legal cases. Culture comes from the top.
There are some who think that Sunak will be better because he is skilled, is a money man, has worked effectively in business. And that may well be the case. The Treasury was pretty competent with the furlough scheme. But if it is right to praise him for the skills he has learnt then it is also right to wonder about what else he learnt from the culture of the place he worked at.
That is why I am sceptical about the idea that he is some sort of clean skin Messiah. These doubts are reinforced by three things: 1.The government's initial instincts on the financial consequences of Covid were wrong. I wrote about this at the time here - https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/03/17/budgeting-for-a-crisis/. Sunak was Chancellor then. He reversed pretty quickly which is to his credit. But that has raised a doubt in my mind about how good his instincts really are. 2. His subsequent decisions as Chancellor - on UC, on the NI increase etc, on funding for transport schemes in the North. 3. The way he apparently seeks to distance himself from his own decisions when they become uncomfortable or unpopular. I wonder whether he is a bit like Chris Hohn in that instance - good at the positive self-publicity ("my hedge fund gives money to charities!") but quick to evade responsibility and under the surface not quite as nice as he likes to make out.
- “… under the surface not quite as nice as he likes to make out.“
In fairness, he is a Tory.
Wouldn't be surprised if Ruth is on the Rishi bus when it comes careering round the corner.
Applebaum is spinning wildly there. I've been educated on PB to understand the case for weapons to Ukraine better, but it's not disreputable for someone to argue the other way. I very much doubt if China will express an opinion either way.
The woman seems utterly deranged to me. Her special brand of warmongering polemicism seems to find an appreciative audience on here though.
Does it? It might have made the defeat worse but had Healey won the Labour leadership in 1980 not Foot would he have beaten Thatcher in 1983? I doubt it. Had Clarke beaten Hague for the Tory leadership in 1997 would he have beaten Blair in 2001? I doubt it. Had David Miliband beaten Ed Miliband for the Labour leadership in 2010 would he have beaten Cameron in 2015? I doubt it, though he might have prevented a Tory majority and just seen Cameron win most seats again.
Had Healey won in 1980 there would have been no SDP and no Alliance. I'm sure Margaret Thatcher would have won in 1983 but not with a 144-seat majority. The Conservative vote share fell 1.5% from 1979 to 1983 even with the "Falklands Factor". Assuming Healey can keep most of the Labour vote that would put Labour at 37-38% so a closer result than 1979.
Clarke would undoubtedly have reduced the Blair majority in 2001 but could he have carried on after that defeat? It's clear the Conservative Party was changing during that period and Clarke's once mainstream Conservative views were now a minority especially on Europe. Perhaps he would have been challenged by Iain Duncan-Smith or William Hague - it's an interesting line.
As for whether David Miliband would have won in 2015 - I think that's a hard one to call. The Conservatives won their majority primarily on the back of the LD collapse while Labour's main losses were to the SNP. Could a David Miliband leadership have prevented any of that? It's hard to see how but he wouldn't have had to make much difference to stop Cameron winning a majority.
A minority Cameron Government - he's off the hook of a referendum on the EU as he doesn't have a parliamentary majority but would such semantics have cut any ice with his backbenchers - I suspect not.
One reason for the 2015 manifesto promise of a referendum was that few people expect Cameron to win a majority, most Tory leadership expected a second coalition with the Lib Dems with the referendum dropped as one of the first compromises.
That doesn't however explain the completely incompetent remain campaign that did nearly as much to lose the referendum as leave did to win it.
Arguably Labour electing Ed Miliband not David Miliband in 2010 meant Cameron got a majority in 2015 and ended the Coalition leading to the EU referendum. Labour then electing Corbyn over Burnham in 2015 meant May risked an election in 2017, lost her majority and forced the Tories to make Boris their leader.
So arguably the ultimate blame for Brexit and Boris lies with Labour Party members
I thought we had already discussed this: Eric Joyce gets drunk and punches a couple of people in a HoC bar; He gets expelled from Labour; Unite try to fix the Falkirk constituency selection for his replacement; Ed Miliband brings in One Member One Vote to take the unions down a peg; Corbyn wins members' ballot; etc. etc.
Exactly. Miliband got to inflict years of chaos on the country without even winning the election, that’s how flipping dangerous he was.
I don't think David Miliband would have beaten Cameron in 2015. People forget how associated he was with some of the low points of the New Labour era, which people were then still extremely fed up with.
I think to have won in 2015 David Miliband would either have to dealt with the 'you will be in Nicola/Alex's pocket' attack line better or have somehow managed to have prevented supported for SLAB collapsing as a result of indyref. Can't see I'm convinced he'd been able to pull off either.
I’ll yield to any insider info from Lab supporters but D.Miliband has always struck me as lacking in the empathy and winning people round departments, certainly compared to his brother. The editor of the Holyrood magazine described him as the rudest interviewee that she’s encountered, and I imagine she’s interviewed a few rude buggers.
I'm not sure it's insider info, but my feeling is that David was seen as more closely associated with Iraq and other mistakes (e.g. renditions), and would have come under a lot of pressure on those. Ed was seen more as a fresh pair of hands, as well as perhaps being marginally to the left of David and therefore more transfer-friendly from members further left. Whether David would have done better or worse I don't think we can really guess.
At risk of sounding like an armchair general, couldn’t we plonk a load of British troops in Ukraine on “training” and dare Putin to attack? Would he?
Would you be volunteering to be amongst those troops?
It wouldn’t deter Putin one bit as he would say that they shouldn’t have been there as it’s not our business and there is f all we could do in retaliation apart from the actions we can take already if Russia invades - so some British families lose loved ones for nothing and the situation is as it was anyway……
It would be a deterrent. If it would be enough of a deterrent, that’s another question.
But at the end of the day, if not to defend democracy against international bullies, what on earth is our military for?
To defend the UK, primarily. Not quite the same thing. All else is secondary. For instance, there is arguably no point in having a carrier force for intervention in the Pacific if it means that defence of maritime trade routes and economic assets (e.g. power systems) in the coastal waters and approaches has been neglected.
I couldn't disagree with you more.
The coastal waters around the UK aren't at real risk of a gunfight and if it ever came to that the world has already gone to hell in a handcart already.
We need to deal with the world as it is, and suggesting we can abdicate potential troubles in the Pacific as nothing to do with us is as wilfully naïve as suggesting that some people getting sick from a strange novel virus in Wuhan, China is nothing to do with us.
A pirate has a vested interest in there being no useful naval presence.
I said 'primarily'; if the RN can't defend the UK at home (for instance, the lack of antisubmarine torpedo tubes in new friegates as discussed here) then it has failed in its primary mission.
But of course you don't believe in energy security or food security. Import everything if it is a few pence cheaper. As much discussed previously.
We already don't have either full energy security or food security and haven't for many decades. I do actually believe we should be investing more in domestic wind/tidal energy so we can rely less upon the Sheikhs and Putin's of this world.
But yes ensuring trade is safe by keeping the military security of the Pacific and the rest of the seas and air, keeps our food and energy security too by ensuring trade flows.
I have been working out ways that Johnson survives. Here is my most ludicrous, but it could work
What if at 20.00 this evening he addresses the nation, surrounded by flags, reporting that we are on the brink of war with Russia. He puts us on an immediate war footing, making some startling announcement to demonstrate the gravity of our predicament, maybe reintroducing conscription. Really going to town on the severity of the situation.
He indicates his strength and resolve and if necessary his fearless use of the nuclear deterrent, contrasting himself with the weakness of Starmer, Biden, Germany, the EU and NATO.
He calls out his detractors as traitorous Russian shills. Safety assured, and a ten point poll lead by next weekend, particularly if Putin pulls the trigger in the meantime.
Imagine the opportunity too for PB Johnsonites to claim his foresight and statesmanship.
Ten point poll lead as thousands of body bags arrive in England?
He doesn't have to send any troops. The demonstration of his Churchillian resolve would be enough. Sending troops would be foolhardy.
Thatcher had to sent ships and troops to the south Atlantic to get her poll boost.
The comparison doesn't really work. Whether or not you agree with us being in charge of a bit of rock 8000 miles away, the fact remains that it was British sovereign territory that was invaded.
I think it's probably time to be a bolder in what I state: next-to-no-one in Britain really cares about the Ukraine. Sorry, I know it's bad in theory but they don't. Just as they don't really care about Taiwan.
They will only care if we're stupid enough to get involved and British service personnel start returning in body bags. Viz. Afghanistan.
Opinions can change quickly. In April* 1982, 39% of people thought the Falklands situation was the most important issue facing the country, exactly equal with unemployment. Three weeks later "Falklands" was up to 61% and "Unemployment" was down to 25%.
*Nearly 2 weeks after the invasion
The Falklands were unimportant until the Argentine military junta made them important.
Then it became an issue. When it became clear that it wasn't a stupid border dispute and it was going to involve people shooting at each other, it popped to the top of the *popular* political agenda
Most people don't spend the day think about, or worrying about various bits of territory - no one was sparing much thought for Montserrat until the eruption, for example.
Under Thatcher, and possibly I think, Callaghan, some sort of deal was being discussed with the Argentines for joint control of the Islands, which the FO saw as too far away to be of interest in a post-colonial world. Unfortunately, and stupidly, Galteri jumped the gun.
Fortunately for the Falklanders, however. Very quietly, over the last decades, they have become stupidly rich (fishing licenses and so on). If global warming continues they might become a highly valuable asset. They are already almost in a position where they will be able to afford their own defence
And think of the wind power surrounding our Antarctic possessions. Surely the fiercest winds in the world - probably too mighty for modern windmills? But in the future…
And what would we do with the electric? It is at the other end of the world. We cannot even make the economic case for moving solar energy from the Sahara to southern Europe.
What do the non-noninterventionsts want the UK government to do in Ukraine? Specifically.
Any proposal has to be something that is both physically possible with what's left of the armed forces and something that won't get cockblocked by the Americans.
To pick a Gov as candidate would be an admission that the Dem leadership in Washington had failed.
Which would very likely mean a GOP win in 2024.
I don't think your logic works here.
If there are concerns over Democrat leadership in Washington - and that's likely to play out in mid-terms in November - the sensible reaction is surely NOT to deny there is a problem and stick with a Washington insider, but embrace someone outside that as candidate.
There's an analogy with Johnson who, despite having been Foreign Secretary, did successfully present in 2019 as being a new thing as opposed to a continuation of a Conservative run/led Government had been in place for a decade. It didn't work for all that long and the administration now very much looks its age... but it worked for long enough to win an election handsomely.
I think a GOP win in the mid-terms also causes them problems, by the way. They are the ones then setting the domestic agenda - so do they allow Biden the opportunity to do things like veto a further Obamacare repeal (gifting him a "saving your health cover" message) or go for things that are harder to veto, doubtless riling the right including Trump? It isn't a great election to win.
I don't think a Dem party running on "okay Biden, Harris and the government have been crap and Pelosi, Schumer and the rest of the Washington gang aren't any better but Gov Joe Nobody who you've never heard of before is brilliant and should be President" has much chance of winning in 2024.
I acknowledge your point that it is harder to run a change campaign when your party is in the White House.
Of course you don't say "the government have been crap" - you say "thanks for your service over many decades, Joe, you've been a bridge to the future - and the future is new ideas from beyond the Beltway..." But it is harder than if the President is a Republican.
On name recognition, this is always massively overrated. Presidential elections get blanket coverage - Joe Nobody doesn't remain Joe Nobody for long at all. Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter are classic cases - their name recognition outside Arkansas and Georgia was negligible before they ran, but that changed very rapidly.
The Nus Ghani allegations are appalling, if not exactly surprising.
Boris has completely screwed up the party for a generation, I suspect. The culture of bullying, nastiness, insouciance of the rules, arrogance, and incompetence will years to sort out, and I don't think voters are going to forgive the Tories for a long time. Eventually some future David Cameron may emerge and take the party through all the detoxification again, but it could be a long wait. And that's without even taking into account the multiple crises coming (NHS backlog, care for elderly crisis, cost of living, justice system backlogs, Brexit damage to the economy...). Some of those are admittedly not entirely the government's fault, but it will get the blame all the same.
Good on those Tory MPs (including, if the reports are true, our very own member for Newcastle under Lyme) who have grasped the nettle. Getting rid of Boris is the indispensable first step for improving things, both for the party and, more importantly, the country, but it will be only the first step.
I'm not so sure. I don't think people are seeing the Tory Party per se as the culprit but Boris Johnson. The analogy is with 1990 and when Major replaced Thatcher.
Also, and this has gotten forgotten in the mists of time, Labour has a deep structural problem - the "Labour till I die" types in RW seats are dying off, in many places the Labour brand is toxic as it is associated with minority causes and the party is becoming an unstable coalition of urban, liberal professionals with socially conservative ethnic minority voters. The risk for Labour in the current situation is they fail to address the structural issues and believe they can ride to victory on Tory Sleaze. If anyone is going to profit from these disenchanted voters, it will be a restructured UKIP (which is why I think Farage was getting involving in the Djokavic case - it got him publicity a and association with a cause that has its adherents).
You seem completely oblivious to everything Keir Starmer has said and done since he took over.
Why don't you enlighten me (and us) instead of just making a statement without explanation?
As far as I can see, Starmer has not done anything concrete except focused on the one issue that is of overwhelming importance to London Zone 1 wealthy Labour liberals like yourself, namely dealing with JC and the allegations of anti-Semitism. If he spent as much time on developing his policies for what he is going to do to address levelling up (and other issues) as he did on that topic, all of us might have a better understanding of what he stands for.
A major flaw with this argument is that you say distancing Labour from Corbynism is of importance to "London Zone 1 wealthy Labour liberals" but actually Labour did reasonably well in such areas under Corbyn - their only 2019 gain, indeed, was Putney (which is possibly zone 2 but you get the point).
I'd suggest the very public distancing from Corbyn is very much to appeal to Red Wall areas in the Midlands and North, who felt that Labour under Corbyn was more about Palestine, Assange, and the plight of Chilean textile workers than health, education and crime.
I'm not a massive Starmer fanboy, by the way. I do think he struggles to connect and often presents as a fairly cold, elitist figure. But I also think he gets the challenge in strategic terms in a way that Labour hasn't in a while, and shouldn't be underestimated by the Tories as a threat.
I think we have a different view of the problems JC caused in Red Wall areas, which is fair enough but it does mean Labour is at risk of missing the shifts.
JC's political views were well known in 2017, as well as his support for various causes. The Conservative press had attacked him on that since he became leader and such attacks had been widely publicised and magnified in the run up to the 2017 election. So I don't find the idea that RW voters didn't have a clue about his views in 2017 but suddenly woke up in the next 2 years to whom he supported particularly compelling.
What did change with JC between 2017 and 2019 - and where I think both Labour's issue with the RW accelerated and where JC suddenly became a lot less popular with those voters - is because he was seen to change his stance on Brexit. Most RW / pro-Brexit Labour voters saw in the JC of 2017 someone who shared their scepticism of the EU and who was likely not to stop the UK's exit (his economic policies would also have been popular there). By 2019, that trust had been massively eroded as Labour was seen as shifting on whether it would accept the vote.
Your view (and this is not a personal attack) is a comforting one for Labour to follow. First, because it allows Starmer to evade responsibility for his actions when he was devising Labour's policy and persuading JC to go along with that course of action. It also feeds into the narrative of "if we only get rid of JC, then things will be fine." However, it doesn't really fit the facts. Labour's polling position (nor SKS') did not improve when he took action on the anti-Semitism issue, it didn't really change at all, it really has only been in the past two months that we have seen consistent Labour leads off the back of the revelations.
I have been working out ways that Johnson survives. Here is my most ludicrous, but it could work
What if at 20.00 this evening he addresses the nation, surrounded by flags, reporting that we are on the brink of war with Russia. He puts us on an immediate war footing, .
The whole nation will see straight through it.
Your conscription thing is hilarious - the military would simply reject it, as a start.
The only result of the action you describe would be to cause problems with bookies claiming that the Prime Minister leaving Downing Street in a strait jacket doesn't count as him losing office.
That was my insanity not @Heathener It would be simply rhetoric to save Johnson. Sending the recently conscripted troops as Russian cannon fodder would be political suicide.
No - it wouldn't even be rhetoric. There is no mechanism for conscription in the UK. CDS would simply phone everyone to say that the PM has lost the plot. BJ would be in the Priory for "stress" within hours.
EDIT: there seem to be quite a few people on the non-intervention side who seem upset that the UK isn't sending troops. I presume because it is hard to attack a policy of giving weapons to a democracy that is trying to defend itself.
As a non- interventionist, I wouldn't for one moment suggest sending troops, that would be absolute suicidal insanity.
I was merely suggesting a means to save Big Dog under the cover of current international circumstances.
Don't we already have troops "training"? Suspect those-who-are-not-mentioned may be there and calling in the airstrikes/spotting for artillery if the tanks come across the border. We could fly drones fairly deniably as well, think they are based at Culdrose.
A small number of people explaining how the weapons we are sending work - primarily trining up Ukrainian instructors who will then instruct the front line troops - as I understand it.
Using UK equipment directly controlled by UK troops/advisers would be a different thing - and would escalate the potential war to another level. I would bet heavily that that doesn't happen.
The Hereford Boat Club are probably in Ukraine at the moment, as observers.
When did they "observe" anything?
Whatever, we need to make sure that if Putin orders a general advance across the border, he is met with fire and iron.
My worry is that there is a nasty little salient between Belarus, Ukraine and Russia that puts Moscow within striking distance of Kyiv. Some of it is the Pripyat Marshes but I bet a lot of it is good tank country. It might be a good theatre to test a few fuel-air bombs.
I have been working out ways that Johnson survives. Here is my most ludicrous, but it could work
What if at 20.00 this evening he addresses the nation, surrounded by flags, reporting that we are on the brink of war with Russia. He puts us on an immediate war footing, .
The whole nation will see straight through it.
I'm afraid that after the 45 minute dossier no-one will believe a word anyone says on threats
The attempted putsch has unleashed infighting between rival camps of Tory MPs, with whips also accused of heavy-handed attempts to intimidate the rebels with the threat of revealing allegations about their sex lives.
One MP claims it was hinted that he would be outed as homosexual, while another was reportedly warned that alleged sexual harassment would be revealed. A third was confronted with hotly denied claims of unusual sexual peccadillos with male prostitutes. One has threatened to release a recording of a whip’s threats.
One thing that struck me in the Dan Hodges Mail article was this line:
"But any hopes within No 10 that this provided evidence of the Chancellor’s loyalty were misplaced. Within hours Tricky Rishi was holding meetings with leading rebels, who set out their terms for backing him in any leadership contest."
If Rishi starts to get the reputation (?) for being slippery and not to be trusted, it;s potentially very damaging. It doesn't sound as though he convinced many of the Red Wall MPs he would follow through on more funding for the RW.
I wouldn't trust Sunak one iota but I feel that about anyone who worked at the hedge fund he was at.
Ms Cyclefree - you have mentioned a few times that you have an issue with the hedge fund Sunak worked for and that you do not trust him. Please could you expand on this as it’s not clear if you are saying there was some sort of illegality or just sharp practice - obviously there is plain illegality at one end of the spectrum and things that aren’t great morally but perfectly legal at the other.
I think if you are going to cast shade on Sunak by virtue of his work history it’s only fair to make it clear if it’s something he has done, something in the culture of his employers and if legal or not.
I could be being very naive but I don’t really understand why, if there are skeletons in his closet, they haven’t been thrown out there either by Boris and outriders, rivals or by the guardian in a deep reporting exposé so think if someone is hinting at this then would only be fair to back it up and explain why you hint at dark issues or alternatively not hint at them unless they can be backed up?
If you are right then it’s important that people know this but if you aren’t then it’s also not right to cast shade.
I am a little constrained in what I can say. There are issues around the legality of some of the stuff which went on in 2007 which I cannot discuss in a public forum. All I will say is that there was more illegality going on than has come out and there were huge missed opportunities to clamp down hard on behaviour which was in my view unlawful and which, if done, could have reduced or potentially stopped some of the worst effects in this country of the financial crisis. Some of it has spilt out from other players. The reason why more has not come out is because (a) there are and have been legal constraints on this happening; (b) it does not reflect well on others who have an interest - even now - in not fully lifting up the carpet on what went on in the finance sector in this country in 2007/2008, a cost for which we as taxpayers are still paying.
I do not have anything against Sunak personally. I am happy to make this clear. But I do have confidential information about the activities of The Childrens Investment Fund, the hedge fund where he worked, in relation to the period in 2007-2008, which makes me doubtful about those working there at the time. The culture of the place was not a good one. There have been serious criticisms of the truthfulness of the evidence given by its founder, Chris Hohn, by various judges in various legal cases. Culture comes from the top.
There are some who think that Sunak will be better because he is skilled, is a money man, has worked effectively in business. And that may well be the case. The Treasury was pretty competent with the furlough scheme. But if it is right to praise him for the skills he has learnt then it is also right to wonder about what else he learnt from the culture of the place he worked at.
That is why I am sceptical about the idea that he is some sort of clean skin Messiah. These doubts are reinforced by three things: 1.The government's initial instincts on the financial consequences of Covid were wrong. I wrote about this at the time here - https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/03/17/budgeting-for-a-crisis/. Sunak was Chancellor then. He reversed pretty quickly which is to his credit. But that has raised a doubt in my mind about how good his instincts really are. 2. His subsequent decisions as Chancellor - on UC, on the NI increase etc, on funding for transport schemes in the North. 3. The way he apparently seeks to distance himself from his own decisions when they become uncomfortable or unpopular. I wonder whether he is a bit like Chris Hohn in that instance - good at the positive self-publicity ("my hedge fund gives money to charities!") but quick to evade responsibility and under the surface not quite as nice as he likes to make out.
- “… under the surface not quite as nice as he likes to make out.“
In fairness, he is a Tory.
Wouldn't be surprised if Ruth is on the Rishi bus when it comes careering round the corner.
She was certainly doing her bit for Rishi in yesterday’s Sunday Times:
Ruth Davidson: ‘Johnson is unfit for office. What has come to light in the past weeks shows it’
I don't think David Miliband would have beaten Cameron in 2015. People forget how associated he was with some of the low points of the New Labour era, which people were then still extremely fed up with.
I think to have won in 2015 David Miliband would either have to dealt with the 'you will be in Nicola/Alex's pocket' attack line better or have somehow managed to have prevented supported for SLAB collapsing as a result of indyref. Can't see I'm convinced he'd been able to pull off either.
I’ll yield to any insider info from Lab supporters but D.Miliband has always struck me as lacking in the empathy and winning people round departments, certainly compared to his brother. The editor of the Holyrood magazine described him as the rudest interviewee that she’s encountered, and I imagine she’s interviewed a few rude buggers.
I'm not sure it's insider info, but my feeling is that David was seen as more closely associated with Iraq and other mistakes (e.g. renditions), and would have come under a lot of pressure on those. Ed was seen more as a fresh pair of hands, as well as perhaps being marginally to the left of David and therefore more transfer-friendly from members further left. Whether David would have done better or worse I don't think we can really guess.
iirc David Miliband was a policy wonk who spoke jargon not human. And the Tory press would have had as much fun with David's banana photo as they did with Ed's unequal struggle with a bacon roll.
Does it? It might have made the defeat worse but had Healey won the Labour leadership in 1980 not Foot would he have beaten Thatcher in 1983? I doubt it. Had Clarke beaten Hague for the Tory leadership in 1997 would he have beaten Blair in 2001? I doubt it. Had David Miliband beaten Ed Miliband for the Labour leadership in 2010 would he have beaten Cameron in 2015? I doubt it, though he might have prevented a Tory majority and just seen Cameron win most seats again.
Had Healey won in 1980 there would have been no SDP and no Alliance. I'm sure Margaret Thatcher would have won in 1983 but not with a 144-seat majority. The Conservative vote share fell 1.5% from 1979 to 1983 even with the "Falklands Factor". Assuming Healey can keep most of the Labour vote that would put Labour at 37-38% so a closer result than 1979.
Clarke would undoubtedly have reduced the Blair majority in 2001 but could he have carried on after that defeat? It's clear the Conservative Party was changing during that period and Clarke's once mainstream Conservative views were now a minority especially on Europe. Perhaps he would have been challenged by Iain Duncan-Smith or William Hague - it's an interesting line.
As for whether David Miliband would have won in 2015 - I think that's a hard one to call. The Conservatives won their majority primarily on the back of the LD collapse while Labour's main losses were to the SNP. Could a David Miliband leadership have prevented any of that? It's hard to see how but he wouldn't have had to make much difference to stop Cameron winning a majority.
A minority Cameron Government - he's off the hook of a referendum on the EU as he doesn't have a parliamentary majority but would such semantics have cut any ice with his backbenchers - I suspect not.
The broader point is that elections are almost always won from the centre, and so going to the extremes reduces your chances
I'm not sure I agree there. Certainly not in 2019, 1979 or even arguably 1945. These were possibly the three most decisive and important elections of the last seventy five years - the jury is still out on 2019, obviously - and I wouldn't say any of the three look like centrist victories , to me.
I don’t agree with the last two.
2019 is easy; the Conservatives were clearly closer to the centre than Labour under Corbyn, hence they attracted support from many centrist voters, fearful of what a Corbyn government would mean. Further, ConHome is full of posts from Conservatives moaning about how they might as well vote for Starmer given Johnson’s spending, environmentalism and general wokeness. They can’t all be SeanT.
Brexit was, arguably, an extreme measure, but that had already agreed in a referendum. Subsequent events suggest that it is Johnson’s behaviour, not his policies or politics, that are extreme.
1979 is more questionable, but it is certainly true that the platform on which Thatcher was elected was nothing like as radical as their approach to government became in subsequent years. Further, Labour was already moving to the left, and the consequences of a Labour government were seen as extreme, given the winter of discontent. By 1983, Labour presented an extreme alternative, and without the Falklands it is possible that the Conservatives might have been defeated by a new centrist alternative.
From Major through Blair and Cameron up to and including Johnson, election winners have been the more centrist of the major party offerings. The same was true of May, insofar as she won in 2017.
The Nus Ghani allegations are appalling, if not exactly surprising.
Boris has completely screwed up the party for a generation, I suspect. The culture of bullying, nastiness, insouciance of the rules, arrogance, and incompetence will years to sort out, and I don't think voters are going to forgive the Tories for a long time. Eventually some future David Cameron may emerge and take the party through all the detoxification again, but it could be a long wait. And that's without even taking into account the multiple crises coming (NHS backlog, care for elderly crisis, cost of living, justice system backlogs, Brexit damage to the economy...). Some of those are admittedly not entirely the government's fault, but it will get the blame all the same.
Good on those Tory MPs (including, if the reports are true, our very own member for Newcastle under Lyme) who have grasped the nettle. Getting rid of Boris is the indispensable first step for improving things, both for the party and, more importantly, the country, but it will be only the first step.
I'm not so sure. I don't think people are seeing the Tory Party per se as the culprit but Boris Johnson. The analogy is with 1990 and when Major replaced Thatcher.
Also, and this has gotten forgotten in the mists of time, Labour has a deep structural problem - the "Labour till I die" types in RW seats are dying off, in many places the Labour brand is toxic as it is associated with minority causes and the party is becoming an unstable coalition of urban, liberal professionals with socially conservative ethnic minority voters. The risk for Labour in the current situation is they fail to address the structural issues and believe they can ride to victory on Tory Sleaze. If anyone is going to profit from these disenchanted voters, it will be a restructured UKIP (which is why I think Farage was getting involving in the Djokavic case - it got him publicity a and association with a cause that has its adherents).
You seem completely oblivious to everything Keir Starmer has said and done since he took over.
Why don't you enlighten me (and us) instead of just making a statement without explanation?
As far as I can see, Starmer has not done anything concrete except focused on the one issue that is of overwhelming importance to London Zone 1 wealthy Labour liberals like yourself, namely dealing with JC and the allegations of anti-Semitism. If he spent as much time on developing his policies for what he is going to do to address levelling up (and other issues) as he did on that topic, all of us might have a better understanding of what he stands for.
I'm not sure that's quite true. On just about every issue where we've heard a peep from him, he's advocating more state - more spending, more intervention, more regulation, more nannying. In particular he's pretty much been in favour of stricter lockdowns throughout.
I think that approach would be a complete disaster for the country (as the current government often shows), because what we need is actually much less government overall, but at least it's a consistent view.
I think those views are more what people think of the Labour brand in general (more state, more nannying etc) than SKS' proposals. I doubt anyone can name a signature Labour policy. The only area where I think he may have cut through, as you said, is the idea that PM SKS would have introduced tighter lockdown measures and tied us more into the EU approach, neither of which are likely to do him much favour.
I have been working out ways that Johnson survives. Here is my most ludicrous, but it could work
What if at 20.00 this evening he addresses the nation, surrounded by flags, reporting that we are on the brink of war with Russia. He puts us on an immediate war footing, .
The whole nation will see straight through it.
I'm afraid that after the 45 minute dossier no-one will believe a word anyone says on threats
The attempted putsch has unleashed infighting between rival camps of Tory MPs, with whips also accused of heavy-handed attempts to intimidate the rebels with the threat of revealing allegations about their sex lives.
One MP claims it was hinted that he would be outed as homosexual, while another was reportedly warned that alleged sexual harassment would be revealed. A third was confronted with hotly denied claims of unusual sexual peccadillos with male prostitutes. One has threatened to release a recording of a whip’s threats.
One thing that struck me in the Dan Hodges Mail article was this line:
"But any hopes within No 10 that this provided evidence of the Chancellor’s loyalty were misplaced. Within hours Tricky Rishi was holding meetings with leading rebels, who set out their terms for backing him in any leadership contest."
If Rishi starts to get the reputation (?) for being slippery and not to be trusted, it;s potentially very damaging. It doesn't sound as though he convinced many of the Red Wall MPs he would follow through on more funding for the RW.
I wouldn't trust Sunak one iota but I feel that about anyone who worked at the hedge fund he was at.
Ms Cyclefree - you have mentioned a few times that you have an issue with the hedge fund Sunak worked for and that you do not trust him. Please could you expand on this as it’s not clear if you are saying there was some sort of illegality or just sharp practice - obviously there is plain illegality at one end of the spectrum and things that aren’t great morally but perfectly legal at the other.
I think if you are going to cast shade on Sunak by virtue of his work history it’s only fair to make it clear if it’s something he has done, something in the culture of his employers and if legal or not.
I could be being very naive but I don’t really understand why, if there are skeletons in his closet, they haven’t been thrown out there either by Boris and outriders, rivals or by the guardian in a deep reporting exposé so think if someone is hinting at this then would only be fair to back it up and explain why you hint at dark issues or alternatively not hint at them unless they can be backed up?
If you are right then it’s important that people know this but if you aren’t then it’s also not right to cast shade.
I am a little constrained in what I can say. There are issues around the legality of some of the stuff which went on in 2007 which I cannot discuss in a public forum. All I will say is that there was more illegality going on than has come out and there were huge missed opportunities to clamp down hard on behaviour which was in my view unlawful and which, if done, could have reduced or potentially stopped some of the worst effects in this country of the financial crisis. Some of it has spilt out from other players. The reason why more has not come out is because (a) there are and have been legal constraints on this happening; (b) it does not reflect well on others who have an interest - even now - in not fully lifting up the carpet on what went on in the finance sector in this country in 2007/2008, a cost for which we as taxpayers are still paying.
I do not have anything against Sunak personally. I am happy to make this clear. But I do have confidential information about the activities of The Childrens Investment Fund, the hedge fund where he worked, in relation to the period in 2007-2008, which makes me doubtful about those working there at the time. The culture of the place was not a good one. There have been serious criticisms of the truthfulness of the evidence given by its founder, Chris Hohn, by various judges in various legal cases. Culture comes from the top.
There are some who think that Sunak will be better because he is skilled, is a money man, has worked effectively in business. And that may well be the case. The Treasury was pretty competent with the furlough scheme. But if it is right to praise him for the skills he has learnt then it is also right to wonder about what else he learnt from the culture of the place he worked at.
That is why I am sceptical about the idea that he is some sort of clean skin Messiah. These doubts are reinforced by three things: 1.The government's initial instincts on the financial consequences of Covid were wrong. I wrote about this at the time here - https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/03/17/budgeting-for-a-crisis/. Sunak was Chancellor then. He reversed pretty quickly which is to his credit. But that has raised a doubt in my mind about how good his instincts really are. 2. His subsequent decisions as Chancellor - on UC, on the NI increase etc, on funding for transport schemes in the North. 3. The way he apparently seeks to distance himself from his own decisions when they become uncomfortable or unpopular. I wonder whether he is a bit like Chris Hohn in that instance - good at the positive self-publicity ("my hedge fund gives money to charities!") but quick to evade responsibility and under the surface not quite as nice as he likes to make out.
Four other reasons to think that Sunak is rubbish:
- his department has raised taxes mainly to subsidise the elderly affluent at the expense of the working population, against an explicit manifesto promise. While the initiative on that probably came from No 10, he clearly went along with it. - he's done basically nothing to address our main economic problem: lower productivity than we should have. I'm not even sure he realises the problem is there. - the furlough scheme and other related measures weren't nearly as good as most people think. They had lots of perverse incentives, in particular keeping zombie companies operating for far too long. And they didn't cover up to five million people, such as people who just entered the labour market or people who worked through their own companies, apparently because it was "too difficult" - in other words, Sunak simply couldn't be bothered - the restaurant scheme was a stupid gimmick, which did nothing to help recovery and may have helped spread the virus.
I think he's the most overrated minister in politics. But, as you say, he does have a great PR team.
In fairness it is easy to be the most overrated when most are not rated at all in the first place.
The Nus Ghani allegations are appalling, if not exactly surprising.
Boris has completely screwed up the party for a generation, I suspect. The culture of bullying, nastiness, insouciance of the rules, arrogance, and incompetence will years to sort out, and I don't think voters are going to forgive the Tories for a long time. Eventually some future David Cameron may emerge and take the party through all the detoxification again, but it could be a long wait. And that's without even taking into account the multiple crises coming (NHS backlog, care for elderly crisis, cost of living, justice system backlogs, Brexit damage to the economy...). Some of those are admittedly not entirely the government's fault, but it will get the blame all the same.
Good on those Tory MPs (including, if the reports are true, our very own member for Newcastle under Lyme) who have grasped the nettle. Getting rid of Boris is the indispensable first step for improving things, both for the party and, more importantly, the country, but it will be only the first step.
Have those been made publicly, or under Parliamentary Privilege?
Spencer was very firm in his rejection of the allegations.
I don't think David Miliband would have beaten Cameron in 2015. People forget how associated he was with some of the low points of the New Labour era, which people were then still extremely fed up with.
I think to have won in 2015 David Miliband would either have to dealt with the 'you will be in Nicola/Alex's pocket' attack line better or have somehow managed to have prevented supported for SLAB collapsing as a result of indyref. Can't see I'm convinced he'd been able to pull off either.
I’ll yield to any insider info from Lab supporters but D.Miliband has always struck me as lacking in the empathy and winning people round departments, certainly compared to his brother. The editor of the Holyrood magazine described him as the rudest interviewee that she’s encountered, and I imagine she’s interviewed a few rude buggers.
I'm not sure it's insider info, but my feeling is that David was seen as more closely associated with Iraq and other mistakes (e.g. renditions), and would have come under a lot of pressure on those. Ed was seen more as a fresh pair of hands, as well as perhaps being marginally to the left of David and therefore more transfer-friendly from members further left. Whether David would have done better or worse I don't think we can really guess.
iirc David Miliband was a policy wonk who spoke jargon not human. And the Tory press would have had as much fun with David's banana photo as they did with Ed's unequal struggle with a bacon roll.
The Nus Ghani allegations are appalling, if not exactly surprising.
Boris has completely screwed up the party for a generation, I suspect. The culture of bullying, nastiness, insouciance of the rules, arrogance, and incompetence will years to sort out, and I don't think voters are going to forgive the Tories for a long time. Eventually some future David Cameron may emerge and take the party through all the detoxification again, but it could be a long wait. And that's without even taking into account the multiple crises coming (NHS backlog, care for elderly crisis, cost of living, justice system backlogs, Brexit damage to the economy...). Some of those are admittedly not entirely the government's fault, but it will get the blame all the same.
Good on those Tory MPs (including, if the reports are true, our very own member for Newcastle under Lyme) who have grasped the nettle. Getting rid of Boris is the indispensable first step for improving things, both for the party and, more importantly, the country, but it will be only the first step.
I'm not so sure. I don't think people are seeing the Tory Party per se as the culprit but Boris Johnson. The analogy is with 1990 and when Major replaced Thatcher.
Also, and this has gotten forgotten in the mists of time, Labour has a deep structural problem - the "Labour till I die" types in RW seats are dying off, in many places the Labour brand is toxic as it is associated with minority causes and the party is becoming an unstable coalition of urban, liberal professionals with socially conservative ethnic minority voters. The risk for Labour in the current situation is they fail to address the structural issues and believe they can ride to victory on Tory Sleaze. If anyone is going to profit from these disenchanted voters, it will be a restructured UKIP (which is why I think Farage was getting involving in the Djokavic case - it got him publicity a and association with a cause that has its adherents).
You seem completely oblivious to everything Keir Starmer has said and done since he took over.
Why don't you enlighten me (and us) instead of just making a statement without explanation?
As far as I can see, Starmer has not done anything concrete except focused on the one issue that is of overwhelming importance to London Zone 1 wealthy Labour liberals like yourself, namely dealing with JC and the allegations of anti-Semitism. If he spent as much time on developing his policies for what he is going to do to address levelling up (and other issues) as he did on that topic, all of us might have a better understanding of what he stands for.
A major flaw with this argument is that you say distancing Labour from Corbynism is of importance to "London Zone 1 wealthy Labour liberals" but actually Labour did reasonably well in such areas under Corbyn - their only 2019 gain, indeed, was Putney (which is possibly zone 2 but you get the point).
I'd suggest the very public distancing from Corbyn is very much to appeal to Red Wall areas in the Midlands and North, who felt that Labour under Corbyn was more about Palestine, Assange, and the plight of Chilean textile workers than health, education and crime.
I'm not a massive Starmer fanboy, by the way. I do think he struggles to connect and often presents as a fairly cold, elitist figure. But I also think he gets the challenge in strategic terms in a way that Labour hasn't in a while, and shouldn't be underestimated by the Tories as a threat.
I think we have a different view of the problems JC caused in Red Wall areas, which is fair enough but it does mean Labour is at risk of missing the shifts.
JC's political views were well known in 2017, as well as his support for various causes. The Conservative press had attacked him on that since he became leader and such attacks had been widely publicised and magnified in the run up to the 2017 election. So I don't find the idea that RW voters didn't have a clue about his views in 2017 but suddenly woke up in the next 2 years to whom he supported not particularly compelling.
What did change with JC between 2017 and 2019 - and where I think both Labour's issue with the RW accelerated and where JC suddenly became a lot less popular with those voters - is because he was seen to change his stance on Brexit. Most RW / pro-Brexit Labour voters saw in the JC of 2017 someone who shared their scepticism of the EU and who was likely not to stop the UK's exit (his economic policies would also have been popular there). By 2019, that trust had been massively eroded as Labour was seen as shifting on whether it would accept the vote.
Your view (and this is not a personal attack) is a comforting one for Labour to follow. First, because it allows Starmer to evade responsibility for his actions when he was devising Labour's policy and persuading JC to go along with that course of action. It also feeds into the narrative of "if we only get rid of JC, then things will be fine." However, it doesn't really fit the facts. Labour's polling position (nor SKS') did not improve when he took action on the anti-Semitism issue, it didn't really change at all, it really has only been in the past two months that we have seen consistent Labour leads off the back of the revelations.
aiui CCHQ in 2019 did a lot of under-the-radar campaigning to paint Corbyn as anti-British and pro-terrorist, and there were accounts later that this came up on the doorstep. Also, CCHQ had noticed what worked for Corbyn in 2017 and pinched those bits for Boris.
What do the non-noninterventionsts want the UK government to do in Ukraine? Specifically.
Any proposal has to be something that is both physically possible with what's left of the armed forces and something that won't get cockblocked by the Americans.
France has had this surge on since Omicron, it's a function of lesser natural immunity and similar vaccine immunity overall. I expect Denmark will have the same issues. Our adult population is ca. 90% double vaxxed and 70% triple vaxxed and we've had something like 20m infections in the last 6 months. It's probably one of the best immunity profiles in the world and why the UK is probably a bit more resilient to any new variant or subvariant. Even with Omicron the hospitalisation rate looks like it peaked at about 900-1200 per day non-incidental in England.
Europe made a huge error in not reopening fully and letting the virus let rip in the summer, this is the result. Stupidly New Zealand is about the make the same error.
According to the UKHSA blood survey the UK had 98% of adults with antibodies, and that was months ago. There are very few people in the UK who are both unvaccinated and have never had a covid infection. Unless some sort of super-vaccine comes out this is about as good as it can get.
AFAICS France reckon they have an overlap between tail end of Delta and Omicron still peaking in most places.
In UK at present hospital patients are now plummeting, and deaths are still roughly flat.
The Nus Ghani allegations are appalling, if not exactly surprising.
Boris has completely screwed up the party for a generation, I suspect. The culture of bullying, nastiness, insouciance of the rules, arrogance, and incompetence will years to sort out, and I don't think voters are going to forgive the Tories for a long time. Eventually some future David Cameron may emerge and take the party through all the detoxification again, but it could be a long wait. And that's without even taking into account the multiple crises coming (NHS backlog, care for elderly crisis, cost of living, justice system backlogs, Brexit damage to the economy...). Some of those are admittedly not entirely the government's fault, but it will get the blame all the same.
Good on those Tory MPs (including, if the reports are true, our very own member for Newcastle under Lyme) who have grasped the nettle. Getting rid of Boris is the indispensable first step for improving things, both for the party and, more importantly, the country, but it will be only the first step.
I'm not so sure. I don't think people are seeing the Tory Party per se as the culprit but Boris Johnson. The analogy is with 1990 and when Major replaced Thatcher.
Also, and this has gotten forgotten in the mists of time, Labour has a deep structural problem - the "Labour till I die" types in RW seats are dying off, in many places the Labour brand is toxic as it is associated with minority causes and the party is becoming an unstable coalition of urban, liberal professionals with socially conservative ethnic minority voters. The risk for Labour in the current situation is they fail to address the structural issues and believe they can ride to victory on Tory Sleaze. If anyone is going to profit from these disenchanted voters, it will be a restructured UKIP (which is why I think Farage was getting involving in the Djokavic case - it got him publicity a and association with a cause that has its adherents).
You seem completely oblivious to everything Keir Starmer has said and done since he took over.
Why don't you enlighten me (and us) instead of just making a statement without explanation?
As far as I can see, Starmer has not done anything concrete except focused on the one issue that is of overwhelming importance to London Zone 1 wealthy Labour liberals like yourself, namely dealing with JC and the allegations of anti-Semitism. If he spent as much time on developing his policies for what he is going to do to address levelling up (and other issues) as he did on that topic, all of us might have a better understanding of what he stands for.
A major flaw with this argument is that you say distancing Labour from Corbynism is of importance to "London Zone 1 wealthy Labour liberals" but actually Labour did reasonably well in such areas under Corbyn - their only 2019 gain, indeed, was Putney (which is possibly zone 2 but you get the point).
I'd suggest the very public distancing from Corbyn is very much to appeal to Red Wall areas in the Midlands and North, who felt that Labour under Corbyn was more about Palestine, Assange, and the plight of Chilean textile workers than health, education and crime.
I'm not a massive Starmer fanboy, by the way. I do think he struggles to connect and often presents as a fairly cold, elitist figure. But I also think he gets the challenge in strategic terms in a way that Labour hasn't in a while, and shouldn't be underestimated by the Tories as a threat.
I think we have a different view of the problems JC caused in Red Wall areas, which is fair enough but it does mean Labour is at risk of missing the shifts.
JC's political views were well known in 2017, as well as his support for various causes. The Conservative press had attacked him on that since he became leader and such attacks had been widely publicised and magnified in the run up to the 2017 election. So I don't find the idea that RW voters didn't have a clue about his views in 2017 but suddenly woke up in the next 2 years to whom he supported particularly compelling.
What did change with JC between 2017 and 2019 - and where I think both Labour's issue with the RW accelerated and where JC suddenly became a lot less popular with those voters - is because he was seen to change his stance on Brexit. Most RW / pro-Brexit Labour voters saw in the JC of 2017 someone who shared their scepticism of the EU and who was likely not to stop the UK's exit (his economic policies would also have been popular there). By 2019, that trust had been massively eroded as Labour was seen as shifting on whether it would accept the vote.
Your view (and this is not a personal attack) is a comforting one for Labour to follow. First, because it allows Starmer to evade responsibility for his actions when he was devising Labour's policy and persuading JC to go along with that course of action. It also feeds into the narrative of "if we only get rid of JC, then things will be fine." However, it doesn't really fit the facts. Labour's polling position (nor SKS') did not improve when he took action on the anti-Semitism issue, it didn't really change at all, it really has only been in the past two months that we have seen consistent Labour leads off the back of the revelations.
The other massive change between 2017 and 2019 is that in the former, Labour MPs could say, effectively, "it's safe to vote for me to represent you because there's no chance Corbyn could become PM".
I have been working out ways that Johnson survives. Here is my most ludicrous, but it could work
What if at 20.00 this evening he addresses the nation, surrounded by flags, reporting that we are on the brink of war with Russia. He puts us on an immediate war footing, .
The whole nation will see straight through it.
I'm afraid that after the 45 minute dossier no-one will believe a word anyone says on threats
The attempted putsch has unleashed infighting between rival camps of Tory MPs, with whips also accused of heavy-handed attempts to intimidate the rebels with the threat of revealing allegations about their sex lives.
One MP claims it was hinted that he would be outed as homosexual, while another was reportedly warned that alleged sexual harassment would be revealed. A third was confronted with hotly denied claims of unusual sexual peccadillos with male prostitutes. One has threatened to release a recording of a whip’s threats.
One thing that struck me in the Dan Hodges Mail article was this line:
"But any hopes within No 10 that this provided evidence of the Chancellor’s loyalty were misplaced. Within hours Tricky Rishi was holding meetings with leading rebels, who set out their terms for backing him in any leadership contest."
If Rishi starts to get the reputation (?) for being slippery and not to be trusted, it;s potentially very damaging. It doesn't sound as though he convinced many of the Red Wall MPs he would follow through on more funding for the RW.
I wouldn't trust Sunak one iota but I feel that about anyone who worked at the hedge fund he was at.
Ms Cyclefree - you have mentioned a few times that you have an issue with the hedge fund Sunak worked for and that you do not trust him. Please could you expand on this as it’s not clear if you are saying there was some sort of illegality or just sharp practice - obviously there is plain illegality at one end of the spectrum and things that aren’t great morally but perfectly legal at the other.
I think if you are going to cast shade on Sunak by virtue of his work history it’s only fair to make it clear if it’s something he has done, something in the culture of his employers and if legal or not.
I could be being very naive but I don’t really understand why, if there are skeletons in his closet, they haven’t been thrown out there either by Boris and outriders, rivals or by the guardian in a deep reporting exposé so think if someone is hinting at this then would only be fair to back it up and explain why you hint at dark issues or alternatively not hint at them unless they can be backed up?
If you are right then it’s important that people know this but if you aren’t then it’s also not right to cast shade.
I am a little constrained in what I can say. There are issues around the legality of some of the stuff which went on in 2007 which I cannot discuss in a public forum. All I will say is that there was more illegality going on than has come out and there were huge missed opportunities to clamp down hard on behaviour which was in my view unlawful and which, if done, could have reduced or potentially stopped some of the worst effects in this country of the financial crisis. Some of it has spilt out from other players. The reason why more has not come out is because (a) there are and have been legal constraints on this happening; (b) it does not reflect well on others who have an interest - even now - in not fully lifting up the carpet on what went on in the finance sector in this country in 2007/2008, a cost for which we as taxpayers are still paying.
I do not have anything against Sunak personally. I am happy to make this clear. But I do have confidential information about the activities of The Childrens Investment Fund, the hedge fund where he worked, in relation to the period in 2007-2008, which makes me doubtful about those working there at the time. The culture of the place was not a good one. There have been serious criticisms of the truthfulness of the evidence given by its founder, Chris Hohn, by various judges in various legal cases. Culture comes from the top.
There are some who think that Sunak will be better because he is skilled, is a money man, has worked effectively in business. And that may well be the case. The Treasury was pretty competent with the furlough scheme. But if it is right to praise him for the skills he has learnt then it is also right to wonder about what else he learnt from the culture of the place he worked at.
That is why I am sceptical about the idea that he is some sort of clean skin Messiah. These doubts are reinforced by three things: 1.The government's initial instincts on the financial consequences of Covid were wrong. I wrote about this at the time here - https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/03/17/budgeting-for-a-crisis/. Sunak was Chancellor then. He reversed pretty quickly which is to his credit. But that has raised a doubt in my mind about how good his instincts really are. 2. His subsequent decisions as Chancellor - on UC, on the NI increase etc, on funding for transport schemes in the North. 3. The way he apparently seeks to distance himself from his own decisions when they become uncomfortable or unpopular. I wonder whether he is a bit like Chris Hohn in that instance - good at the positive self-publicity ("my hedge fund gives money to charities!") but quick to evade responsibility and under the surface not quite as nice as he likes to make out.
- “… under the surface not quite as nice as he likes to make out.“
In fairness, he is a Tory.
Wouldn't be surprised if Ruth is on the Rishi bus when it comes careering round the corner.
Do you think she'll stand for election as a MP?
Stranger things have happened but lords having a place in government seems an increasing thing and it would save her the frightful fag of having to win votes.
I have been working out ways that Johnson survives. Here is my most ludicrous, but it could work
What if at 20.00 this evening he addresses the nation, surrounded by flags, reporting that we are on the brink of war with Russia. He puts us on an immediate war footing, making some startling announcement to demonstrate the gravity of our predicament, maybe reintroducing conscription. Really going to town on the severity of the situation.
He indicates his strength and resolve and if necessary his fearless use of the nuclear deterrent, contrasting himself with the weakness of Starmer, Biden, Germany, the EU and NATO.
He calls out his detractors as traitorous Russian shills. Safety assured, and a ten point poll lead by next weekend, particularly if Putin pulls the trigger in the meantime.
Imagine the opportunity too for PB Johnsonites to claim his foresight and statesmanship.
Ten point poll lead as thousands of body bags arrive in England?
He doesn't have to send any troops. The demonstration of his Churchillian resolve would be enough. Sending troops would be foolhardy.
Thatcher had to sent ships and troops to the south Atlantic to get her poll boost.
The comparison doesn't really work. Whether or not you agree with us being in charge of a bit of rock 8000 miles away, the fact remains that it was British sovereign territory that was invaded.
I think it's probably time to be a bolder in what I state: next-to-no-one in Britain really cares about the Ukraine. Sorry, I know it's bad in theory but they don't. Just as they don't really care about Taiwan.
They will only care if we're stupid enough to get involved and British service personnel start returning in body bags. Viz. Afghanistan.
Opinions can change quickly. In April* 1982, 39% of people thought the Falklands situation was the most important issue facing the country, exactly equal with unemployment. Three weeks later "Falklands" was up to 61% and "Unemployment" was down to 25%.
*Nearly 2 weeks after the invasion
The Falklands were unimportant until the Argentine military junta made them important.
Then it became an issue. When it became clear that it wasn't a stupid border dispute and it was going to involve people shooting at each other, it popped to the top of the *popular* political agenda
Most people don't spend the day think about, or worrying about various bits of territory - no one was sparing much thought for Montserrat until the eruption, for example.
Under Thatcher, and possibly I think, Callaghan, some sort of deal was being discussed with the Argentines for joint control of the Islands, which the FO saw as too far away to be of interest in a post-colonial world. Unfortunately, and stupidly, Galteri jumped the gun.
Fortunately for the Falklanders, however. Very quietly, over the last decades, they have become stupidly rich (fishing licenses and so on). If global warming continues they might become a highly valuable asset. They are already almost in a position where they will be able to afford their own defence
And think of the wind power surrounding our Antarctic possessions. Surely the fiercest winds in the world - probably too mighty for modern windmills? But in the future…
If floating windmills float in the North Sea off Scotland, they will perhaps float almost anywhere else.
Except perhaps in typhoon country and the Southern Oceans :-) .
I have been working out ways that Johnson survives. Here is my most ludicrous, but it could work
What if at 20.00 this evening he addresses the nation, surrounded by flags, reporting that we are on the brink of war with Russia. He puts us on an immediate war footing, .
The whole nation will see straight through it.
Your conscription thing is hilarious - the military would simply reject it, as a start.
The only result of the action you describe would be to cause problems with bookies claiming that the Prime Minister leaving Downing Street in a strait jacket doesn't count as him losing office.
That was my insanity not @Heathener It would be simply rhetoric to save Johnson. Sending the recently conscripted troops as Russian cannon fodder would be political suicide.
No - it wouldn't even be rhetoric. There is no mechanism for conscription in the UK. CDS would simply phone everyone to say that the PM has lost the plot. BJ would be in the Priory for "stress" within hours.
EDIT: there seem to be quite a few people on the non-intervention side who seem upset that the UK isn't sending troops. I presume because it is hard to attack a policy of giving weapons to a democracy that is trying to defend itself.
As a non- interventionist, I wouldn't for one moment suggest sending troops, that would be absolute suicidal insanity.
I was merely suggesting a means to save Big Dog under the cover of current international circumstances.
Don't we already have troops "training"? Suspect those-who-are-not-mentioned may be there and calling in the airstrikes/spotting for artillery if the tanks come across the border. We could fly drones fairly deniably as well, think they are based at Culdrose.
A small number of people explaining how the weapons we are sending work - primarily trining up Ukrainian instructors who will then instruct the front line troops - as I understand it.
Using UK equipment directly controlled by UK troops/advisers would be a different thing - and would escalate the potential war to another level. I would bet heavily that that doesn't happen.
The Hereford Boat Club are probably in Ukraine at the moment, as observers.
When did they "observe" anything?
Whatever, we need to make sure that if Putin orders a general advance across the border, he is met with fire and iron.
My worry is that there is a nasty little salient between Belarus, Ukraine and Russia that puts Moscow within striking distance of Kyiv. Some of it is the Pripyat Marshes but I bet a lot of it is good tank country. It might be a good theatre to test a few fuel-air bombs.
Pripyat? I thought it glowed in the dark......
I don't know, I've only been there in the daytime.
Does it? It might have made the defeat worse but had Healey won the Labour leadership in 1980 not Foot would he have beaten Thatcher in 1983? I doubt it. Had Clarke beaten Hague for the Tory leadership in 1997 would he have beaten Blair in 2001? I doubt it. Had David Miliband beaten Ed Miliband for the Labour leadership in 2010 would he have beaten Cameron in 2015? I doubt it, though he might have prevented a Tory majority and just seen Cameron win most seats again.
Had Healey won in 1980 there would have been no SDP and no Alliance. I'm sure Margaret Thatcher would have won in 1983 but not with a 144-seat majority. The Conservative vote share fell 1.5% from 1979 to 1983 even with the "Falklands Factor". Assuming Healey can keep most of the Labour vote that would put Labour at 37-38% so a closer result than 1979.
Clarke would undoubtedly have reduced the Blair majority in 2001 but could he have carried on after that defeat? It's clear the Conservative Party was changing during that period and Clarke's once mainstream Conservative views were now a minority especially on Europe. Perhaps he would have been challenged by Iain Duncan-Smith or William Hague - it's an interesting line.
As for whether David Miliband would have won in 2015 - I think that's a hard one to call. The Conservatives won their majority primarily on the back of the LD collapse while Labour's main losses were to the SNP. Could a David Miliband leadership have prevented any of that? It's hard to see how but he wouldn't have had to make much difference to stop Cameron winning a majority.
A minority Cameron Government - he's off the hook of a referendum on the EU as he doesn't have a parliamentary majority but would such semantics have cut any ice with his backbenchers - I suspect not.
The broader point is that elections are almost always won from the centre, and so going to the extremes reduces your chances
I'm not sure I agree there. Certainly not in 2019, 1979 or even arguably 1945. These were possibly the three most decisive and important elections of the last seventy five years - the jury is still out on 2019, obviously - and I wouldn't say any of the three look like centrist victories , to me.
I don’t agree with the last two.
2019 is easy; the Conservatives were clearly closer to the centre than Labour under Corbyn, hence they attracted support from many centrist voters, fearful of what a Corbyn government would mean. Further, ConHome is full of posts from Conservatives moaning about how they might as well vote for Starmer given Johnson’s spending, environmentalism and general wokeness. They can’t all be SeanT.
Brexit was, arguably, an extreme measure, but that had already agreed in a referendum. Subsequent events suggest that it is Johnson’s behaviour, not his policies or politics, that are extreme.
1979 is more questionable, but it is certainly true that the platform on which Thatcher was elected was nothing like as radical as their approach to government became in subsequent years. Further, Labour was already moving to the left, and the consequences of a Labour government were seen as extreme, given the winter of discontent. By 1983, Labour presented an extreme alternative, and without the Falklands it is possible that the Conservatives might have been defeated by a new centrist alternative.
From Major through Blair and Cameron up to and including Johnson, election winners have been the more centrist of the major party offerings. The same was true of May, insofar as she won in 2017.
We'll have to agree to differ on that. Thatcher in 1979 was offering a very clear break, I think, and in 2019 I also wouldn't characterise the Boris election platform as more moderate than Corbyn's. Only a few weeks before the election, don't forget, Johnson was ranting about the "Surrender Bill" in Parliament and in effect casting his opponents as enemies of the state ; also as all the while being open in his approbation of and links to Trump.
The Nus Ghani allegations are appalling, if not exactly surprising.
Boris has completely screwed up the party for a generation, I suspect. The culture of bullying, nastiness, insouciance of the rules, arrogance, and incompetence will years to sort out, and I don't think voters are going to forgive the Tories for a long time. Eventually some future David Cameron may emerge and take the party through all the detoxification again, but it could be a long wait. And that's without even taking into account the multiple crises coming (NHS backlog, care for elderly crisis, cost of living, justice system backlogs, Brexit damage to the economy...). Some of those are admittedly not entirely the government's fault, but it will get the blame all the same.
Good on those Tory MPs (including, if the reports are true, our very own member for Newcastle under Lyme) who have grasped the nettle. Getting rid of Boris is the indispensable first step for improving things, both for the party and, more importantly, the country, but it will be only the first step.
I'm not so sure. I don't think people are seeing the Tory Party per se as the culprit but Boris Johnson. The analogy is with 1990 and when Major replaced Thatcher.
Also, and this has gotten forgotten in the mists of time, Labour has a deep structural problem - the "Labour till I die" types in RW seats are dying off, in many places the Labour brand is toxic as it is associated with minority causes and the party is becoming an unstable coalition of urban, liberal professionals with socially conservative ethnic minority voters. The risk for Labour in the current situation is they fail to address the structural issues and believe they can ride to victory on Tory Sleaze. If anyone is going to profit from these disenchanted voters, it will be a restructured UKIP (which is why I think Farage was getting involving in the Djokavic case - it got him publicity a and association with a cause that has its adherents).
You seem completely oblivious to everything Keir Starmer has said and done since he took over.
Why don't you enlighten me (and us) instead of just making a statement without explanation?
As far as I can see, Starmer has not done anything concrete except focused on the one issue that is of overwhelming importance to London Zone 1 wealthy Labour liberals like yourself, namely dealing with JC and the allegations of anti-Semitism. If he spent as much time on developing his policies for what he is going to do to address levelling up (and other issues) as he did on that topic, all of us might have a better understanding of what he stands for.
I don't think you're the sharpest observer of Labour. Thing is, he's done the very opposite of trying to please people like me. He's altered the tone of the party with a view to attracting back the sort of voters turned off by the (imo largely false but still needs addressing) perception of Corbyn Labour as being unpatriotic, more animated by predominantly urban 'hot button' issues than the bread & butter, more interested in South America than the North of England, all of that stuff. As for policies, they are being developed and will be launched at the right time for policies - when the election comes.
The Nus Ghani allegations are appalling, if not exactly surprising.
Boris has completely screwed up the party for a generation, I suspect. The culture of bullying, nastiness, insouciance of the rules, arrogance, and incompetence will years to sort out, and I don't think voters are going to forgive the Tories for a long time. Eventually some future David Cameron may emerge and take the party through all the detoxification again, but it could be a long wait. And that's without even taking into account the multiple crises coming (NHS backlog, care for elderly crisis, cost of living, justice system backlogs, Brexit damage to the economy...). Some of those are admittedly not entirely the government's fault, but it will get the blame all the same.
Good on those Tory MPs (including, if the reports are true, our very own member for Newcastle under Lyme) who have grasped the nettle. Getting rid of Boris is the indispensable first step for improving things, both for the party and, more importantly, the country, but it will be only the first step.
Have those been made publicly, or under Parliamentary Privilege?
Spencer was very firm in his rejection of the allegations.
Will be interesting.
Ghani didn’t say it was Spencer who said those things. Spencer could be telling the truth that he didn’t say anything like that, and Ghani could be telling the truth that someone else did say those things.
I have been working out ways that Johnson survives. Here is my most ludicrous, but it could work
What if at 20.00 this evening he addresses the nation, surrounded by flags, reporting that we are on the brink of war with Russia. He puts us on an immediate war footing, .
The whole nation will see straight through it.
I'm afraid that after the 45 minute dossier no-one will believe a word anyone says on threats
The attempted putsch has unleashed infighting between rival camps of Tory MPs, with whips also accused of heavy-handed attempts to intimidate the rebels with the threat of revealing allegations about their sex lives.
One MP claims it was hinted that he would be outed as homosexual, while another was reportedly warned that alleged sexual harassment would be revealed. A third was confronted with hotly denied claims of unusual sexual peccadillos with male prostitutes. One has threatened to release a recording of a whip’s threats.
One thing that struck me in the Dan Hodges Mail article was this line:
"But any hopes within No 10 that this provided evidence of the Chancellor’s loyalty were misplaced. Within hours Tricky Rishi was holding meetings with leading rebels, who set out their terms for backing him in any leadership contest."
If Rishi starts to get the reputation (?) for being slippery and not to be trusted, it;s potentially very damaging. It doesn't sound as though he convinced many of the Red Wall MPs he would follow through on more funding for the RW.
I wouldn't trust Sunak one iota but I feel that about anyone who worked at the hedge fund he was at.
Ms Cyclefree - you have mentioned a few times that you have an issue with the hedge fund Sunak worked for and that you do not trust him. Please could you expand on this as it’s not clear if you are saying there was some sort of illegality or just sharp practice - obviously there is plain illegality at one end of the spectrum and things that aren’t great morally but perfectly legal at the other.
I think if you are going to cast shade on Sunak by virtue of his work history it’s only fair to make it clear if it’s something he has done, something in the culture of his employers and if legal or not.
I could be being very naive but I don’t really understand why, if there are skeletons in his closet, they haven’t been thrown out there either by Boris and outriders, rivals or by the guardian in a deep reporting exposé so think if someone is hinting at this then would only be fair to back it up and explain why you hint at dark issues or alternatively not hint at them unless they can be backed up?
If you are right then it’s important that people know this but if you aren’t then it’s also not right to cast shade.
I am a little constrained in what I can say. There are issues around the legality of some of the stuff which went on in 2007 which I cannot discuss in a public forum. All I will say is that there was more illegality going on than has come out and there were huge missed opportunities to clamp down hard on behaviour which was in my view unlawful and which, if done, could have reduced or potentially stopped some of the worst effects in this country of the financial crisis. Some of it has spilt out from other players. The reason why more has not come out is because (a) there are and have been legal constraints on this happening; (b) it does not reflect well on others who have an interest - even now - in not fully lifting up the carpet on what went on in the finance sector in this country in 2007/2008, a cost for which we as taxpayers are still paying.
I do not have anything against Sunak personally. I am happy to make this clear. But I do have confidential information about the activities of The Childrens Investment Fund, the hedge fund where he worked, in relation to the period in 2007-2008, which makes me doubtful about those working there at the time. The culture of the place was not a good one. There have been serious criticisms of the truthfulness of the evidence given by its founder, Chris Hohn, by various judges in various legal cases. Culture comes from the top.
There are some who think that Sunak will be better because he is skilled, is a money man, has worked effectively in business. And that may well be the case. The Treasury was pretty competent with the furlough scheme. But if it is right to praise him for the skills he has learnt then it is also right to wonder about what else he learnt from the culture of the place he worked at.
That is why I am sceptical about the idea that he is some sort of clean skin Messiah. These doubts are reinforced by three things: 1.The government's initial instincts on the financial consequences of Covid were wrong. I wrote about this at the time here - https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/03/17/budgeting-for-a-crisis/. Sunak was Chancellor then. He reversed pretty quickly which is to his credit. But that has raised a doubt in my mind about how good his instincts really are. 2. His subsequent decisions as Chancellor - on UC, on the NI increase etc, on funding for transport schemes in the North. 3. The way he apparently seeks to distance himself from his own decisions when they become uncomfortable or unpopular. I wonder whether he is a bit like Chris Hohn in that instance - good at the positive self-publicity ("my hedge fund gives money to charities!") but quick to evade responsibility and under the surface not quite as nice as he likes to make out.
- “… under the surface not quite as nice as he likes to make out.“
In fairness, he is a Tory.
Wouldn't be surprised if Ruth is on the Rishi bus when it comes careering round the corner.
Do you think she'll stand for election as a MP?
Stranger things have happened but lords having a place in government seems an increasing thing and it would save her the frightful fag of having to win votes.
quite. It also avoids the difficult decision of where to stand.
I think if she does call for one candidate (as opposed to 'not Mr J') it will be quite interesting. It's not as if she has anything to lose at present under the Johnson regime, other than the Tory whip in the Lords.
Of course she is very like Mr Johnson in her liking for photo ops, but then she resembles Mr Sunak in that too.
I have been working out ways that Johnson survives. Here is my most ludicrous, but it could work
What if at 20.00 this evening he addresses the nation, surrounded by flags, reporting that we are on the brink of war with Russia. He puts us on an immediate war footing, .
The whole nation will see straight through it.
Your conscription thing is hilarious - the military would simply reject it, as a start.
The only result of the action you describe would be to cause problems with bookies claiming that the Prime Minister leaving Downing Street in a strait jacket doesn't count as him losing office.
That was my insanity not @Heathener It would be simply rhetoric to save Johnson. Sending the recently conscripted troops as Russian cannon fodder would be political suicide.
No - it wouldn't even be rhetoric. There is no mechanism for conscription in the UK. CDS would simply phone everyone to say that the PM has lost the plot. BJ would be in the Priory for "stress" within hours.
EDIT: there seem to be quite a few people on the non-intervention side who seem upset that the UK isn't sending troops. I presume because it is hard to attack a policy of giving weapons to a democracy that is trying to defend itself.
As a non- interventionist, I wouldn't for one moment suggest sending troops, that would be absolute suicidal insanity.
I was merely suggesting a means to save Big Dog under the cover of current international circumstances.
An an inteventionist, it's barking.
We absolutely should be intervening, but conscription is the last thing that should be on the agenda.
The suggested policy wouldn't save BJ - it would finish him within the hour.
Incidentally, which countries should we defend with UK military forces if attacked?
1) Latvia 2) Estonia 3) Lithuania 4) Poland 5) Germany 6) France 7) Italy 8) Spain ?
I notice that some of the Royal Navy is currently moored up in Albania.
I don't think David Miliband would have beaten Cameron in 2015. People forget how associated he was with some of the low points of the New Labour era, which people were then still extremely fed up with.
I think to have won in 2015 David Miliband would either have to dealt with the 'you will be in Nicola/Alex's pocket' attack line better or have somehow managed to have prevented supported for SLAB collapsing as a result of indyref. Can't see I'm convinced he'd been able to pull off either.
I’ll yield to any insider info from Lab supporters but D.Miliband has always struck me as lacking in the empathy and winning people round departments, certainly compared to his brother. The editor of the Holyrood magazine described him as the rudest interviewee that she’s encountered, and I imagine she’s interviewed a few rude buggers.
I'm not sure it's insider info, but my feeling is that David was seen as more closely associated with Iraq and other mistakes (e.g. renditions), and would have come under a lot of pressure on those. Ed was seen more as a fresh pair of hands, as well as perhaps being marginally to the left of David and therefore more transfer-friendly from members further left. Whether David would have done better or worse I don't think we can really guess.
I doubt that he would have. His geeky/dorky pitch always has limited appeal. He’s been amazingly lucky to land a job that pays him huge amounts of ££$$ just to come on the radio whenever there’s a disaster somewhere else in the world and tell us all that we need to send help.
The Nus Ghani allegations are appalling, if not exactly surprising.
Boris has completely screwed up the party for a generation, I suspect. The culture of bullying, nastiness, insouciance of the rules, arrogance, and incompetence will years to sort out, and I don't think voters are going to forgive the Tories for a long time. Eventually some future David Cameron may emerge and take the party through all the detoxification again, but it could be a long wait. And that's without even taking into account the multiple crises coming (NHS backlog, care for elderly crisis, cost of living, justice system backlogs, Brexit damage to the economy...). Some of those are admittedly not entirely the government's fault, but it will get the blame all the same.
Good on those Tory MPs (including, if the reports are true, our very own member for Newcastle under Lyme) who have grasped the nettle. Getting rid of Boris is the indispensable first step for improving things, both for the party and, more importantly, the country, but it will be only the first step.
I'm not so sure. I don't think people are seeing the Tory Party per se as the culprit but Boris Johnson. The analogy is with 1990 and when Major replaced Thatcher.
Also, and this has gotten forgotten in the mists of time, Labour has a deep structural problem - the "Labour till I die" types in RW seats are dying off, in many places the Labour brand is toxic as it is associated with minority causes and the party is becoming an unstable coalition of urban, liberal professionals with socially conservative ethnic minority voters. The risk for Labour in the current situation is they fail to address the structural issues and believe they can ride to victory on Tory Sleaze. If anyone is going to profit from these disenchanted voters, it will be a restructured UKIP (which is why I think Farage was getting involving in the Djokavic case - it got him publicity a and association with a cause that has its adherents).
You seem completely oblivious to everything Keir Starmer has said and done since he took over.
Why don't you enlighten me (and us) instead of just making a statement without explanation?
As far as I can see, Starmer has not done anything concrete except focused on the one issue that is of overwhelming importance to London Zone 1 wealthy Labour liberals like yourself, namely dealing with JC and the allegations of anti-Semitism. If he spent as much time on developing his policies for what he is going to do to address levelling up (and other issues) as he did on that topic, all of us might have a better understanding of what he stands for.
I don't think you're the sharpest observer of Labour. Thing is, he's done the very opposite of trying to please people like me. He's altered the tone of the party with a view to attracting back the sort of voters turned off by the (imo largely false but still needs addressing) perception of Corbyn Labour as being unpatriotic, more animated by predominantly urban 'hot button' issues than the bread & butter, more interested in South America than the North of England, all of that stuff. As for policies, they are being developed and will be launched at the right time for policies - when the election comes.
Tut Tur, @Kinablu, no need for personal insults, you risk coming across as a prick. In any event, I suspect I have a closer idea of what a RW voter may be thinking about than you do living in Gloucester Crescent.
The simple fact is that , for all your glorification of SKS and his Grand Plan, he was getting little traction in the polls until BJ self-combusted. Which suggests that his messaging wasn't cutting through. The better question to ask - which I doubt you will - is what would JC have been doing in the polls given the current Tory problems. My guess is he actually would have been roughly similar - a loss of urban metro lefties like yourself but gaining some extra RW voters who would like his economic policies and general views on Brexit (minus the influence of a SKS)
I have been working out ways that Johnson survives. Here is my most ludicrous, but it could work
What if at 20.00 this evening he addresses the nation, surrounded by flags, reporting that we are on the brink of war with Russia. He puts us on an immediate war footing, .
The whole nation will see straight through it.
I'm afraid that after the 45 minute dossier no-one will believe a word anyone says on threats
The attempted putsch has unleashed infighting between rival camps of Tory MPs, with whips also accused of heavy-handed attempts to intimidate the rebels with the threat of revealing allegations about their sex lives.
One MP claims it was hinted that he would be outed as homosexual, while another was reportedly warned that alleged sexual harassment would be revealed. A third was confronted with hotly denied claims of unusual sexual peccadillos with male prostitutes. One has threatened to release a recording of a whip’s threats.
One thing that struck me in the Dan Hodges Mail article was this line:
"But any hopes within No 10 that this provided evidence of the Chancellor’s loyalty were misplaced. Within hours Tricky Rishi was holding meetings with leading rebels, who set out their terms for backing him in any leadership contest."
If Rishi starts to get the reputation (?) for being slippery and not to be trusted, it;s potentially very damaging. It doesn't sound as though he convinced many of the Red Wall MPs he would follow through on more funding for the RW.
I wouldn't trust Sunak one iota but I feel that about anyone who worked at the hedge fund he was at.
Ms Cyclefree - you have mentioned a few times that you have an issue with the hedge fund Sunak worked for and that you do not trust him. Please could you expand on this as it’s not clear if you are saying there was some sort of illegality or just sharp practice - obviously there is plain illegality at one end of the spectrum and things that aren’t great morally but perfectly legal at the other.
I think if you are going to cast shade on Sunak by virtue of his work history it’s only fair to make it clear if it’s something he has done, something in the culture of his employers and if legal or not.
I could be being very naive but I don’t really understand why, if there are skeletons in his closet, they haven’t been thrown out there either by Boris and outriders, rivals or by the guardian in a deep reporting exposé so think if someone is hinting at this then would only be fair to back it up and explain why you hint at dark issues or alternatively not hint at them unless they can be backed up?
If you are right then it’s important that people know this but if you aren’t then it’s also not right to cast shade.
I am a little constrained in what I can say. There are issues around the legality of some of the stuff which went on in 2007 which I cannot discuss in a public forum. All I will say is that there was more illegality going on than has come out and there were huge missed opportunities to clamp down hard on behaviour which was in my view unlawful and which, if done, could have reduced or potentially stopped some of the worst effects in this country of the financial crisis. Some of it has spilt out from other players. The reason why more has not come out is because (a) there are and have been legal constraints on this happening; (b) it does not reflect well on others who have an interest - even now - in not fully lifting up the carpet on what went on in the finance sector in this country in 2007/2008, a cost for which we as taxpayers are still paying.
I do not have anything against Sunak personally. I am happy to make this clear. But I do have confidential information about the activities of The Childrens Investment Fund, the hedge fund where he worked, in relation to the period in 2007-2008, which makes me doubtful about those working there at the time. The culture of the place was not a good one. There have been serious criticisms of the truthfulness of the evidence given by its founder, Chris Hohn, by various judges in various legal cases. Culture comes from the top.
There are some who think that Sunak will be better because he is skilled, is a money man, has worked effectively in business. And that may well be the case. The Treasury was pretty competent with the furlough scheme. But if it is right to praise him for the skills he has learnt then it is also right to wonder about what else he learnt from the culture of the place he worked at.
That is why I am sceptical about the idea that he is some sort of clean skin Messiah. These doubts are reinforced by three things: 1.The government's initial instincts on the financial consequences of Covid were wrong. I wrote about this at the time here - https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/03/17/budgeting-for-a-crisis/. Sunak was Chancellor then. He reversed pretty quickly which is to his credit. But that has raised a doubt in my mind about how good his instincts really are. 2. His subsequent decisions as Chancellor - on UC, on the NI increase etc, on funding for transport schemes in the North. 3. The way he apparently seeks to distance himself from his own decisions when they become uncomfortable or unpopular. I wonder whether he is a bit like Chris Hohn in that instance - good at the positive self-publicity ("my hedge fund gives money to charities!") but quick to evade responsibility and under the surface not quite as nice as he likes to make out.
- “… under the surface not quite as nice as he likes to make out.“
In fairness, he is a Tory.
Wouldn't be surprised if Ruth is on the Rishi bus when it comes careering round the corner.
Do you think she'll stand for election as a MP?
she has it too cushy in HOL and her various directorships, why take on something where she actually has to do some work now and again.
At risk of sounding like an armchair general, couldn’t we plonk a load of British troops in Ukraine on “training” and dare Putin to attack? Would he?
Would you be volunteering to be amongst those troops?
It wouldn’t deter Putin one bit as he would say that they shouldn’t have been there as it’s not our business and there is f all we could do in retaliation apart from the actions we can take already if Russia invades - so some British families lose loved ones for nothing and the situation is as it was anyway……
It would be a deterrent. If it would be enough of a deterrent, that’s another question.
But at the end of the day, if not to defend democracy against international bullies, what on earth is our military for?
Our military exists for the defence of our country (wtf at even having to state this?). It is no more to be plopped into every situation of world injustice to kill some 'baddies' than the NHS exists to heal the bunions of the world.
I have been working out ways that Johnson survives. Here is my most ludicrous, but it could work
What if at 20.00 this evening he addresses the nation, surrounded by flags, reporting that we are on the brink of war with Russia. He puts us on an immediate war footing, .
The whole nation will see straight through it.
Your conscription thing is hilarious - the military would simply reject it, as a start.
The only result of the action you describe would be to cause problems with bookies claiming that the Prime Minister leaving Downing Street in a strait jacket doesn't count as him losing office.
That was my insanity not @Heathener It would be simply rhetoric to save Johnson. Sending the recently conscripted troops as Russian cannon fodder would be political suicide.
No - it wouldn't even be rhetoric. There is no mechanism for conscription in the UK. CDS would simply phone everyone to say that the PM has lost the plot. BJ would be in the Priory for "stress" within hours.
EDIT: there seem to be quite a few people on the non-intervention side who seem upset that the UK isn't sending troops. I presume because it is hard to attack a policy of giving weapons to a democracy that is trying to defend itself.
As a non- interventionist, I wouldn't for one moment suggest sending troops, that would be absolute suicidal insanity.
I was merely suggesting a means to save Big Dog under the cover of current international circumstances.
An an inteventionist, it's barking.
We absolutely should be intervening, but conscription is the last thing that should be on the agenda.
The suggested policy wouldn't save BJ - it would finish him within the hour.
Incidentally, which countries should we defend with UK military forces if attacked?
1) Latvia 2) Estonia 3) Lithuania 4) Poland 5) Germany 6) France 7) Italy 8) Spain ?
By putting boots on the ground? None of them. By supporting with sea power (chuckle these days I know) blockades etc., and selling hardware? Yes (depending on the specifics of the situation). But the same goes if Russia was attacked in an unwarranted fashion by (for example) China.
The talk of whips "blackmailing" Conservative back-benchers and its possible police investigation ignores section 21 of the Theft Act 1968. This defines "blackmail" as making "an unwarranted demand with menaces". Since when has a demand to be loyal to the Party whose money, manpower and manifesto secured your election in the first place been "unwarranted"?
The talk of whips "blackmailing" Conservative back-benchers and its possible police investigation ignores section 21 of the Theft Act 1968. This defines "blackmail" as making "an unwarranted demand with menaces". Since when has a demand to be loyal to the Party whose money, manpower and manifesto secured your election in the first place been "unwarranted"?
So a warranted demand with menaces is a ok?
Besides, an expectation of general loyalty to the party is not unwarranted. But unwavering loyalty is not warranted, since MPs have a higher loyalty to their constituents to act in their best interests.
What is talked about may not amount to blackmail, I am no lawyer. It certainly is not unusual. But there are still meant to be some lines in politics - a party might say there will be consequences for your career advancement, even for your ability to be selected as a candidate again. But consequences for your constituents? For your family if personal, non political matters are used to strong arm you?
Nothing makes someone ungrateful faster than demaning they be grateful. And few things may stoke disloyalty more effectively than demanding robotic loyalty in service to a leader, leaders who do not last forever.
The Nus Ghani allegations are appalling, if not exactly surprising.
Boris has completely screwed up the party for a generation, I suspect. The culture of bullying, nastiness, insouciance of the rules, arrogance, and incompetence will years to sort out, and I don't think voters are going to forgive the Tories for a long time. Eventually some future David Cameron may emerge and take the party through all the detoxification again, but it could be a long wait. And that's without even taking into account the multiple crises coming (NHS backlog, care for elderly crisis, cost of living, justice system backlogs, Brexit damage to the economy...). Some of those are admittedly not entirely the government's fault, but it will get the blame all the same.
Good on those Tory MPs (including, if the reports are true, our very own member for Newcastle under Lyme) who have grasped the nettle. Getting rid of Boris is the indispensable first step for improving things, both for the party and, more importantly, the country, but it will be only the first step.
I'm not so sure. I don't think people are seeing the Tory Party per se as the culprit but Boris Johnson. The analogy is with 1990 and when Major replaced Thatcher.
Also, and this has gotten forgotten in the mists of time, Labour has a deep structural problem - the "Labour till I die" types in RW seats are dying off, in many places the Labour brand is toxic as it is associated with minority causes and the party is becoming an unstable coalition of urban, liberal professionals with socially conservative ethnic minority voters. The risk for Labour in the current situation is they fail to address the structural issues and believe they can ride to victory on Tory Sleaze. If anyone is going to profit from these disenchanted voters, it will be a restructured UKIP (which is why I think Farage was getting involving in the Djokavic case - it got him publicity a and association with a cause that has its adherents).
You seem completely oblivious to everything Keir Starmer has said and done since he took over.
Why don't you enlighten me (and us) instead of just making a statement without explanation?
As far as I can see, Starmer has not done anything concrete except focused on the one issue that is of overwhelming importance to London Zone 1 wealthy Labour liberals like yourself, namely dealing with JC and the allegations of anti-Semitism. If he spent as much time on developing his policies for what he is going to do to address levelling up (and other issues) as he did on that topic, all of us might have a better understanding of what he stands for.
I don't think you're the sharpest observer of Labour. Thing is, he's done the very opposite of trying to please people like me. He's altered the tone of the party with a view to attracting back the sort of voters turned off by the (imo largely false but still needs addressing) perception of Corbyn Labour as being unpatriotic, more animated by predominantly urban 'hot button' issues than the bread & butter, more interested in South America than the North of England, all of that stuff. As for policies, they are being developed and will be launched at the right time for policies - when the election comes.
Tut Tur, @Kinablu, no need for personal insults, you risk coming across as a prick. In any event, I suspect I have a closer idea of what a RW voter may be thinking about than you do living in Gloucester Crescent.
The simple fact is that , for all your glorification of SKS and his Grand Plan, he was getting little traction in the polls until BJ self-combusted. Which suggests that his messaging wasn't cutting through. The better question to ask - which I doubt you will - is what would JC have been doing in the polls given the current Tory problems. My guess is he actually would have been roughly similar - a loss of urban metro lefties like yourself but gaining some extra RW voters who would like his economic policies and general views on Brexit (minus the influence of a SKS)
It is hard to say whether JC would have been similar. But my reason for thinking he wouldn't goes like this - Starmer may not have been cutting through until Boris combusted, but what he did manage was establish himself as unthreatening and reasonable, and so was in a good position to take advantage when Boris self combusted. Whereas with Corbyn we saw what happened when it was betweem him and Boris. Could he have turned that around? Perhaps. But unlike Starmer he was coming with so much of his own baggage that I don't think he could present himself as a plausible alternative when the wheels came of the Boris car, not when the public had already had their say on him.
Policies I honestly don't think are very important, it is about leadership and the gut feel people have about your side, which is impossible to truly measure. But Corbyn repelled too many right from the start and, though he had some recoveries, could never escape that. Starmer had avoided repelling too many, and as Boris begins to repel Starmer has actually started pulling people instead - that's why the Labour score is up, not just the Tories down.
Comments
- his department has raised taxes mainly to subsidise the elderly affluent at the expense of the working population, against an explicit manifesto promise. While the initiative on that probably came from No 10, he clearly went along with it.
- he's done basically nothing to address our main economic problem: lower productivity than we should have. I'm not even sure he realises the problem is there.
- the furlough scheme and other related measures weren't nearly as good as most people think. They had lots of perverse incentives, in particular keeping zombie companies operating for far too long. And they didn't cover up to five million people, such as people who just entered the labour market or people who worked through their own companies, apparently because it was "too difficult" - in other words, Sunak simply couldn't be bothered
- the restaurant scheme was a stupid gimmick, which did nothing to help recovery and may have helped spread the virus.
I think he's the most overrated minister in politics. But, as you say, he does have a great PR team.
But yes ensuring trade is safe by keeping the military security of the Pacific and the rest of the seas and air, keeps our food and energy security too by ensuring trade flows.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2022_Australian_federal_election
Any proposal has to be something that is both physically possible with what's left of the armed forces and something that won't get cockblocked by the Americans.
Of course you don't say "the government have been crap" - you say "thanks for your service over many decades, Joe, you've been a bridge to the future - and the future is new ideas from beyond the Beltway..." But it is harder than if the President is a Republican.
On name recognition, this is always massively overrated. Presidential elections get blanket coverage - Joe Nobody doesn't remain Joe Nobody for long at all. Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter are classic cases - their name recognition outside Arkansas and Georgia was negligible before they ran, but that changed very rapidly.
JC's political views were well known in 2017, as well as his support for various causes. The Conservative press had attacked him on that since he became leader and such attacks had been widely publicised and magnified in the run up to the 2017 election. So I don't find the idea that RW voters didn't have a clue about his views in 2017 but suddenly woke up in the next 2 years to whom he supported particularly compelling.
What did change with JC between 2017 and 2019 - and where I think both Labour's issue with the RW accelerated and where JC suddenly became a lot less popular with those voters - is because he was seen to change his stance on Brexit. Most RW / pro-Brexit Labour voters saw in the JC of 2017 someone who shared their scepticism of the EU and who was likely not to stop the UK's exit (his economic policies would also have been popular there). By 2019, that trust had been massively eroded as Labour was seen as shifting on whether it would accept the vote.
Your view (and this is not a personal attack) is a comforting one for Labour to follow. First, because it allows Starmer to evade responsibility for his actions when he was devising Labour's policy and persuading JC to go along with that course of action. It also feeds into the narrative of "if we only get rid of JC, then things will be fine." However, it doesn't really fit the facts. Labour's polling position (nor SKS') did not improve when he took action on the anti-Semitism issue, it didn't really change at all, it really has only been in the past two months that we have seen consistent Labour leads off the back of the revelations.
Ruth Davidson: ‘Johnson is unfit for office. What has come to light in the past weeks shows it’
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ruth-davidson-johnson-is-unfit-for-office-what-has-come-to-light-in-the-past-weeks-shows-it-jp77h529z
2019 is easy; the Conservatives were clearly closer to the centre than Labour under Corbyn, hence they attracted support from many centrist voters, fearful of what a Corbyn government would mean. Further, ConHome is full of posts from Conservatives moaning about how they might as well vote for Starmer given Johnson’s spending, environmentalism and general wokeness. They can’t all be SeanT.
Brexit was, arguably, an extreme measure, but that had already agreed in a referendum. Subsequent events suggest that it is Johnson’s behaviour, not his policies or politics, that are extreme.
1979 is more questionable, but it is certainly true that the platform on which Thatcher was elected was nothing like as radical as their approach to government became in subsequent years. Further, Labour was already moving to the left, and the consequences of a Labour government were seen as extreme, given the winter of discontent. By 1983, Labour presented an extreme alternative, and without the Falklands it is possible that the Conservatives might have been defeated by a new centrist alternative.
From Major through Blair and Cameron up to and including Johnson, election winners have been the more centrist of the major party offerings. The same was true of May, insofar as she won in 2017.
Spencer was very firm in his rejection of the allegations.
Will be interesting.
In UK at present hospital patients are now plummeting, and deaths are still roughly flat.
NEW THREAD
Except perhaps in typhoon country and the Southern Oceans :-) .
This thread has been whipped into silence.
Next subject please...
I think if she does call for one candidate (as opposed to 'not Mr J') it will be quite interesting. It's not as if she has anything to lose at present under the Johnson regime, other than the Tory whip in the Lords.
Of course she is very like Mr Johnson in her liking for photo ops, but then she resembles Mr Sunak in that too.
The simple fact is that , for all your glorification of SKS and his Grand Plan, he was getting little traction in the polls until BJ self-combusted. Which suggests that his messaging wasn't cutting through. The better question to ask - which I doubt you will - is what would JC have been doing in the polls given the current Tory problems. My guess is he actually would have been roughly similar - a loss of urban metro lefties like yourself but gaining some extra RW voters who would like his economic policies and general views on Brexit (minus the influence of a SKS)
Besides, an expectation of general loyalty to the party is not unwarranted. But unwavering loyalty is not warranted, since MPs have a higher loyalty to their constituents to act in their best interests.
What is talked about may not amount to blackmail, I am no lawyer. It certainly is not unusual. But there are still meant to be some lines in politics - a party might say there will be consequences for your career advancement, even for your ability to be selected as a candidate again. But consequences for your constituents? For your family if personal, non political matters are used to strong arm you?
Nothing makes someone ungrateful faster than demaning they be grateful. And few things may stoke disloyalty more effectively than demanding robotic loyalty in service to a leader, leaders who do not last forever.
Policies I honestly don't think are very important, it is about leadership and the gut feel people have about your side, which is impossible to truly measure. But Corbyn repelled too many right from the start and, though he had some recoveries, could never escape that. Starmer had avoided repelling too many, and as Boris begins to repel Starmer has actually started pulling people instead - that's why the Labour score is up, not just the Tories down.