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Johnson has 15% lead over Sunak amongst CON voters as “best PM” – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 12,143
edited February 2022 in General
imageJohnson has 15% lead over Sunak amongst CON voters as “best PM” – politicalbetting.com

The above chart is from pollster Redfield & Wilton and is a question I don’t think any other mainstream pollsters ask. In addition to its standard “best PM” comparison between Johnson and Starmer the firm include two other questions which to me seem highly relevant.

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578
    My first first!
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    My nth second
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578
    On topic, I think that poll (if it’s a true reflection so caveat required) mirrors what a few of us having been saying for a while namely Sunak - and the whole “Dishy Rishi” thing - is over-proportionally appealing to the chattering classes who are very unlikely to vote Conservative in the first place.
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,797
    4th again.
  • I think we have already seen the Tory nadir in polling where they bottomed out at 27% (which is unlikely to be repeated IMO) and the Labour lead seems to have stabilised at around 8% for the time being.

    This polling doesn't shock me too much as Johnson must still have a lot of positive support in places like the Midlands and Essex as HYUFD has been arguing even if the new found Tory support in the north is quite a bit softer.
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578

    I think we have already seen the Tory nadir in polling where they bottomed out at 27% (which is unlikely to be repeated IMO) and the Labour lead seems to have stabilised at around 8% for the time being.

    This polling doesn't shock me too much as Johnson must still have a lot of positive support in places like the Midlands and Essex as HYUFD has been arguing even if the new found Tory support in the north is quite a bit softer.

    Labour’s major issue is that their polling seems to be entirely driven by perceptions of the Conservative. Labour’s core vote - currently - is probably not far off the Tories’ 30pc. Their issue is the natural default for softer voters is the Conservatives. Chances are, if the news becomes more positive, Labour’s lead reverses out quickly.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 19,854
    MrEd said:

    On topic, I think that poll (if it’s a true reflection so caveat required) mirrors what a few of us having been saying for a while namely Sunak - and the whole “Dishy Rishi” thing - is over-proportionally appealing to the chattering classes who are very unlikely to vote Conservative in the first place.

    As a Tory fan of Johnson it must be nice to think so. I can imagine what it must feel like when your hero turns out to have feet of clay but I'm afraid that's where you are. There's not a snowball in Hell's chance Johnson's reputation will recover and it's little to do with parties. It's to do with being a confirmed pathological liar

    There's more chance of Kurt Zouma being made DG of the RSPCA than the Tories winning under Johnson.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,575
    I agree, most 2019 Tory voters still want Boris. They voted for him in 2019 after all.

    However amongst swing voters who the Tories need to win the general election there is now a preference for Sunak over Starmer but not Boris over Starmer. whereas before Boris as well as Sunak lead Starmer.

    40% of voters prefer Starmer over Boris as PM to just 33% who prefer Boris.

    By contrast 38% of voters prefer Sunak as PM over Starmer to 40% who prefer Starmer.

    So even if Starmer would still likely narrowly beat Sunak in a general election, more Tory MPs would save their seats
    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-7-february-2022/
  • HYUFD said:

    I agree, most 2019 Tory voters still want Boris. They voted for him in 2019 after all.

    However amongst swing voters who the Tories need to win the general election there is now a preference for Sunak over Starmer but not Boris over Starmer. whereas before Boris as well as Sunak lead Starmer.

    40% of voters prefer Starmer over Boris as PM to just 33% who prefer Boris.

    By contrast 38% of voters prefer Sunak as PM over Starmer to 40% who prefer Starmer.

    So even if Starmer would still likely narrowly beat Sunak in a general election, more Tory MPs would save their seats
    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-7-february-2022/

    Yes, I think Sunak is the survive to fight another day, tactical defeat option. Johnson is the die in a blaze of glory option. I expect Tory MPs to take the obvious course of action, eventually.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,270
    edited February 2022
    MrEd said:

    I think we have already seen the Tory nadir in polling where they bottomed out at 27% (which is unlikely to be repeated IMO) and the Labour lead seems to have stabilised at around 8% for the time being.

    This polling doesn't shock me too much as Johnson must still have a lot of positive support in places like the Midlands and Essex as HYUFD has been arguing even if the new found Tory support in the north is quite a bit softer.

    Labour’s major issue is that their polling seems to be entirely driven by perceptions of the Conservative. Labour’s core vote - currently - is probably not far off the Tories’ 30pc. Their issue is the natural default for softer voters is the Conservatives. Chances are, if the news becomes more positive, Labour’s lead reverses out quickly.
    Hmmm. Stranger things have happened, I daresay. However for Johnson to recover personally he needs something positive to happen, like singlehandedly defeating the Russian army, or throwing some really right-on red meat to the hoi poloi. I have suggested capital punishment for nonces, but you might have some tastier red meat to offer. Otherwise I don't see it.

    Labour's support is soft and the Conservative position post Johnson is hopeful, but for the economic catastrophe heading our way. I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose elections, Oppositions don't win them, and at the moment Johnson is making a pretty good hand of confirming that idea.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,575

    I think we have already seen the Tory nadir in polling where they bottomed out at 27% (which is unlikely to be repeated IMO) and the Labour lead seems to have stabilised at around 8% for the time being.

    This polling doesn't shock me too much as Johnson must still have a lot of positive support in places like the Midlands and Essex as HYUFD has been arguing even if the new found Tory support in the north is quite a bit softer.

    Indeed, Starmer leads Boris comfortably as preferred PM in London, the North, Scotland and Wales and also a bit more dubiously the East and South West. However Boris still leads Starmer as preferred PM in the South East and Midlands
    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-7-february-2022/
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,575
    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    TimS said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Stop The War really are quite venomously evil


    "While everyone is talking about "Stop The War Coalition", a reminder that when the Yazidi minority in Iraq were being massacred by Islamic State in 2014, the organisation was claiming the genocide was "mythical", and was designed to distract attention from "Palestinians in Gaza"."


    https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1492065913037799424?s=20&t=o6cngwwqBBU3Gc48-ls1qw

    I don’t know if evil is the right word, but “organisation with very misleading name for one stuffed and controlled by overseas branch of the grumpy peoples front for the liberation of Palestine from Jewish Occupation” is probably the right sentence.

    (Not wishing to wake Big John Knolls from his cave too early) the weakness of Di Abbotts attack on Starmer today is its based on too much fiction, not enough fact - Starmer is pro all war, would have voted not just for Blair’s invasion of Iraq but would have willingly thrown UK troops into Vietnam, would have liked nothing better than to join the whites against the reds in 1917, and wouldn’t have hesitated to back Churchill to the hilt over Tonypandy.

    Is that all you got Labour Left, making things up?
    No. Dismissing the Yazidi genocide as a myth, whatever your warped purposes, is EVIL
    More than anything they are just naive and annoying. They normally believe in a simplistic narrative that the 'west' is always evil, and anyone who doubts that has been brainwashed by the media, who are controlled by governments and corporations. The second part of the belief structure is that, if the west stop being evil then the human race will become more peaceful and enlightened.

    This wrong headed thinking is very common right across the labour party - until Starmer has purged the labour party of a large proportion of its membership, you can't completely trust labour on matters of war and peace.
    https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/


    Negative Nationalism

    1. Anglophobia. Within the intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear that the Axis powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly pleased when Singapore fell or when the British were driven out of Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein, or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of Britain. English left-wing intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese to win the war, but many of them could not help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia, or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics many intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong. As a result, ‘enlightened’ opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.
    Aren't they just two cheeks of the same arse? People who think their country is always in the wrong are no more or less likely to be correct than those who think their country is always in the right. STW may be full of twats but they were correct about the Iraq War, for instance, while centrist and right wing opinion was wrong.
    Arch centrists the Lib Dems were consistently right about the Iraq war from the start. All wings of the party with very few exceptions.
    Were they? The LDs backed the war in Afghanistan but opposed the war in Iraq.

    Iraq is now a democracy free of Saddam's brutal dictatorship. Afghanistan has returned to the control of the Taliban.

    Even Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan not Afghanistan
    The Afghan invasion helped stymie the outflow of Islamofascist terror to the West, which was its intention.
    The Iraq invasion unleashed more of it on us, and its intentions were malign.

    By those tokens, yes, the Lib Dems were spot on in their support/lack of support for each.
    Of course, they can't take much credit or blame for the implementation, being out of power for all but 5 years of the last 19, and only as a junior coalition party then. But yes, they made the right calls.
    Also, @HYUFD, can you please stop referring to Iraq as a democracy. By any reasonable measure it is absolutely not. You've been called out on this before, and you keep on with the same lie.
    The Economist can help signpost the way to the sorts of things you should and should not call democracies.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
    It is a democracy in comparison with most of its neighbours in the Middle East ie Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria. That is the only measure that counts.

    Under Saddam it was the most brutal dictatorship in the Middle East.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,400

    eek said:

    Off topic

    There was talk at conference time time that three Labour MPs would defect to the Conservatives. One of those mentioned, as I recall, was Neil Coyle. As he has now been drummed out of the PLP for alleged racist comments to a journalist, do we think a journey across the floor to the Government benches is now more likely?

    Well he clearly will fit in the Tory party better than in Labour...
    Nonsense! The Tory’s have been cuddling up to the Chinese and bestowing their agents with awards for the past past decade.

    Boris Conservative party, Bojists, have even modelled themselves on Mao and Jinping - with their own cultural revolution in 2019 expelling moderates from anywhere near power or influence.

    Beijing would likely black ball Coyle from being allowed in the Tory party.
    Who liked this post? It was only tongue in cheek nonsense 😆
    I found it rather pertinent and profound in the event of Coyle's alleged misdeed.

    P.S. I'll remove the "Like" if you'd prefer.
    I’m only posting to help discussion get to the nub of things.

    We only want to get it right in this world.

    If someone wants to do the right thing, what should they do if they have Fu Manchu films in their movie Libary now? Do we have to hand them in to the police, or will there be some kind of anonymous amnesty box 😶

    PS - you can like this one if you want to, it is quite funny peculiar - the suspicion here accepting Russian or Chinese dirty money, no parliamentary action or party whip withdrawn, use Fu Manchu trope once in a bar conversation, parliamentary bans and whip withdrawn.
  • MrEd said:

    On topic, I think that poll (if it’s a true reflection so caveat required) mirrors what a few of us having been saying for a while namely Sunak - and the whole “Dishy Rishi” thing - is over-proportionally appealing to the chattering classes who are very unlikely to vote Conservative in the first place.

    I am not enthusiastic about him, but would return to the Conservatives (my natural political home) if he replaced The Clown.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,270
    HYUFD said:

    I think we have already seen the Tory nadir in polling where they bottomed out at 27% (which is unlikely to be repeated IMO) and the Labour lead seems to have stabilised at around 8% for the time being.

    This polling doesn't shock me too much as Johnson must still have a lot of positive support in places like the Midlands and Essex as HYUFD has been arguing even if the new found Tory support in the north is quite a bit softer.

    Indeed, Starmer leads Boris comfortably as preferred PM in London, the North, Scotland and Wales and also a bit more dubiously the East and South West. However Boris still leads Starmer as preferred PM in the South East and Midlands
    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-7-february-2022/
    Are you suggesting we should transfer East Anglia and the South West back into the Johnson column due to spurious polling?
  • eekeek Posts: 28,172
    edited February 2022

    The Johnson lead in a much-reduced voter pool needs to be considered in the light of how many 2019 Tories have been lost, but would return with Sunak.

    I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.

    It will be a good test of their canvassing records to see if they remember that I regarded Bozo as a lying clown in 2019 so won't bother when the next election comes round.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,270

    MrEd said:

    On topic, I think that poll (if it’s a true reflection so caveat required) mirrors what a few of us having been saying for a while namely Sunak - and the whole “Dishy Rishi” thing - is over-proportionally appealing to the chattering classes who are very unlikely to vote Conservative in the first place.

    I am not enthusiastic about him, but would return to the Conservatives (my natural political home) if he replaced The Clown.
    I believe you need Hercules to clear out the Conservatives' Augean stables after Johnson has finally vacated. A period in opposition to remove the smell of corruption would be well deserved for the Conservative Party.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,011
    HYUFD said:

    I think we have already seen the Tory nadir in polling where they bottomed out at 27% (which is unlikely to be repeated IMO) and the Labour lead seems to have stabilised at around 8% for the time being.

    This polling doesn't shock me too much as Johnson must still have a lot of positive support in places like the Midlands and Essex as HYUFD has been arguing even if the new found Tory support in the north is quite a bit softer.

    Indeed, Starmer leads Boris comfortably as preferred PM in London, the North, Scotland and Wales and also a bit more dubiously the East and South West. However Boris still leads Starmer as preferred PM in the South East and Midlands
    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-7-february-2022/
    Great argument for English devolution, this. Starmer becomes PM for most of us with the SE and the Midlands allowed to hold on to their "Boris".
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,011
    MrEd said:

    My first first!

    See, like I was saying, it's a whole new you.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,011
    MrEd said:

    I think we have already seen the Tory nadir in polling where they bottomed out at 27% (which is unlikely to be repeated IMO) and the Labour lead seems to have stabilised at around 8% for the time being.

    This polling doesn't shock me too much as Johnson must still have a lot of positive support in places like the Midlands and Essex as HYUFD has been arguing even if the new found Tory support in the north is quite a bit softer.

    Labour’s major issue is that their polling seems to be entirely driven by perceptions of the Conservative. Labour’s core vote - currently - is probably not far off the Tories’ 30pc. Their issue is the natural default for softer voters is the Conservatives. Chances are, if the news becomes more positive, Labour’s lead reverses out quickly.
    They're changing that default. It's the whole SKS strategy.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,454
    eek said:

    The Johnson lead in a much-reduced voter pool needs to be considered in the light of how many 2019 Tories have been lost, but would return with Sunak.

    I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.

    It will be a good test of their canvassing records to see if they remember that I regarded Bozo as a lying clown in 2019 so won't bother when the next election comes round.
    Oh, there were plenty of those. They were marked accordingly....

    We'll know where to send Rishi to door-knock!
  • MrEd said:

    On topic, I think that poll (if it’s a true reflection so caveat required) mirrors what a few of us having been saying for a while namely Sunak - and the whole “Dishy Rishi” thing - is over-proportionally appealing to the chattering classes who are very unlikely to vote Conservative in the first place.

    I am not enthusiastic about him, but would return to the Conservatives (my natural political home) if he replaced The Clown.
    I believe you need Hercules to clear out the Conservatives' Augean stables after Johnson has finally vacated. A period in opposition to remove the smell of corruption would be well deserved for the Conservative Party.
    You could be right, but the thought of a bossy Labour government doesn't fill me with joy. My ideal is to have a genuine Conservative government that is keen on good governance with a reasonably plausible non-clownish leader
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,280

    FPT in response to @TimT -

    The external pressure is needed when you have a sector which refuses to accept the need for change. It's not attack which is needed but a regulator who will ensure that this is something which is always one of the key priorities i.e. who encourages, asks, rewards, who makes it a standing item on the agenda at regular meetings, who encourages best practice, who encourages it to learn from others. That's the kind of external oversight & pressure needed.

    I have seen this at close hand in finance. Banks had problem after problem for years before the financial crisis. They did nothing about the underlying problems. Nor did the regulator. It was really only after the Parliamentary report on Banking Standards that they began to get it and the regulator too. And the regulator expecting work on conduct really helped. It helped people like me because when I talked about the repeated behavioural issues I was seeing they started listening. Even the regulators listened. A talk I did was filmed & shared with the SEC, the Swiss & UK regulators as evidence of what was needed & how we were addressing it.

    Without something like this it is easy for organizations to slip back into old habits.

    The discipline is at the start. It's a way of cleansing the stables. It's a way of showing the good guys that they're not being mugs by being good guys. It gives them opportunities & encourages them to stand up for & reinforce the good behaviour you want.

    You need to change peoples' hearts not just give them rules & yes you need to show them & suggest ideas. You also need to make them unafraid of making mistakes & admitting them because people learn best from their mistakes (and those of others). It is counter-intuitive but what I say to my audiences is this: You need to make the sorts of mistakes you can learn from but not the sort that blow the place up.

    It was hard in finance because before you could make the change you had to strip away the carapace of denial & arrogance & it's only a few rotten apples. That takes time & effort. And then you start doing the positive stuff & keep on doing it etc.

    I think the Met is still at the denial stage. Intellectually some see the problems. But emotionally very many don't or are scared of what it entails. Dealing with that requires a toughness but also an emotional intelligence which is rarer than it should be in leaders.

    That is why I say that you need senior leaders & the next layers down to understand & buy into what is needed & exemplify it in their daily professional lives. There will be plenty of them around but they have been either disempowered or disheartened.

    I know I have gone about this before. But when I look at the Met I see so many echoes of what my sector went through. I do not pretend to have all the answers. But the Met really would do well to learn something from those organisations which had to go through similar because I really do believe that it would help.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,011
    edited February 2022

    MrEd said:

    I think we have already seen the Tory nadir in polling where they bottomed out at 27% (which is unlikely to be repeated IMO) and the Labour lead seems to have stabilised at around 8% for the time being.

    This polling doesn't shock me too much as Johnson must still have a lot of positive support in places like the Midlands and Essex as HYUFD has been arguing even if the new found Tory support in the north is quite a bit softer.

    Labour’s major issue is that their polling seems to be entirely driven by perceptions of the Conservative. Labour’s core vote - currently - is probably not far off the Tories’ 30pc. Their issue is the natural default for softer voters is the Conservatives. Chances are, if the news becomes more positive, Labour’s lead reverses out quickly.
    Hmmm. Stranger things have happened, I daresay. However for Johnson to recover personally he needs something positive to happen, like singlehandedly defeating the Russian army, or throwing some really right-on red meat to the hoi poloi. I have suggested capital punishment for nonces, but you might have some tastier red meat to offer. Otherwise I don't see it.

    Labour's support is soft and the Conservative position post Johnson is hopeful, but for the economic catastrophe heading our way. I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose elections, Oppositions don't win them, and at the moment Johnson is making a pretty good hand of confirming that idea.
    Also next time the Cons will be asking for their term to be extended from 14 years to 19 years. Time For A Change will play for Labour. Plus from the BBC election - Boris Brexit Corbyn - it's looking like all 3 factors will be gone and the one that might still be there will have flipped from asset to liability. On top of this you'll have a big chunk of the population struggling financially. I'm seeing this as Labour's to lose now. And Starmer is going to make damn sure to keep things very normcore so as not to risk doing that.
  • PolruanPolruan Posts: 2,083

    MrEd said:

    On topic, I think that poll (if it’s a true reflection so caveat required) mirrors what a few of us having been saying for a while namely Sunak - and the whole “Dishy Rishi” thing - is over-proportionally appealing to the chattering classes who are very unlikely to vote Conservative in the first place.

    I am not enthusiastic about him, but would return to the Conservatives (my natural political home) if he replaced The Clown.
    I believe you need Hercules to clear out the Conservatives' Augean stables after Johnson has finally vacated. A period in opposition to remove the smell of corruption would be well deserved for the Conservative Party.
    You could be right, but the thought of a bossy Labour government doesn't fill me with joy. My ideal is to have a genuine Conservative government that is keen on good governance with a reasonably plausible non-clownish leader
    On the anniversary of Thatcher becoming leader of the Conservatives (47th) it's interesting to think about how Thatcherite the party currently isn't and where it might be by the 50th anniversary. I guess if Johnson gets to take it into the next election any pretence of fiscal discipline, reducing barriers to trade, protecting the union, free-market competition and support for rule of law will be gone. Would Sunak be able to reverse the trend, or does the role of the members in choosing the leader mean that any candidate who wants to win has to stick to the populist agenda now?
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 49,857
    Cyclefree said:


    FPT in response to @TimT -

    The external pressure is needed when you have a sector which refuses to accept the need for change. It's not attack which is needed but a regulator who will ensure that this is something which is always one of the key priorities i.e. who encourages, asks, rewards, who makes it a standing item on the agenda at regular meetings, who encourages best practice, who encourages it to learn from others. That's the kind of external oversight & pressure needed.

    I have seen this at close hand in finance. Banks had problem after problem for years before the financial crisis. They did nothing about the underlying problems. Nor did the regulator. It was really only after the Parliamentary report on Banking Standards that they began to get it and the regulator too. And the regulator expecting work on conduct really helped. It helped people like me because when I talked about the repeated behavioural issues I was seeing they started listening. Even the regulators listened. A talk I did was filmed & shared with the SEC, the Swiss & UK regulators as evidence of what was needed & how we were addressing it.

    Without something like this it is easy for organizations to slip back into old habits.

    The discipline is at the start. It's a way of cleansing the stables. It's a way of showing the good guys that they're not being mugs by being good guys. It gives them opportunities & encourages them to stand up for & reinforce the good behaviour you want.

    You need to change peoples' hearts not just give them rules & yes you need to show them & suggest ideas. You also need to make them unafraid of making mistakes & admitting them because people learn best from their mistakes (and those of others). It is counter-intuitive but what I say to my audiences is this: You need to make the sorts of mistakes you can learn from but not the sort that blow the place up.

    It was hard in finance because before you could make the change you had to strip away the carapace of denial & arrogance & it's only a few rotten apples. That takes time & effort. And then you start doing the positive stuff & keep on doing it etc.

    I think the Met is still at the denial stage. Intellectually some see the problems. But emotionally very many don't or are scared of what it entails. Dealing with that requires a toughness but also an emotional intelligence which is rarer than it should be in leaders.

    That is why I say that you need senior leaders & the next layers down to understand & buy into what is needed & exemplify it in their daily professional lives. There will be plenty of them around but they have been either disempowered or disheartened.

    I know I have gone about this before. But when I look at the Met I see so many echoes of what my sector went through. I do not pretend to have all the answers. But the Met really would do well to learn something from those organisations which had to go through similar because I really do believe that it would help.

    "denial" ??

    It's not just a river in Africa

    the Met are so far into denial, that they are on a houseboat on Lake Victoria.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,575
    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    TimS said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Stop The War really are quite venomously evil


    "While everyone is talking about "Stop The War Coalition", a reminder that when the Yazidi minority in Iraq were being massacred by Islamic State in 2014, the organisation was claiming the genocide was "mythical", and was designed to distract attention from "Palestinians in Gaza"."


    https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1492065913037799424?s=20&t=o6cngwwqBBU3Gc48-ls1qw

    I don’t know if evil is the right word, but “organisation with very misleading name for one stuffed and controlled by overseas branch of the grumpy peoples front for the liberation of Palestine from Jewish Occupation” is probably the right sentence.

    (Not wishing to wake Big John Knolls from his cave too early) the weakness of Di Abbotts attack on Starmer today is its based on too much fiction, not enough fact - Starmer is pro all war, would have voted not just for Blair’s invasion of Iraq but would have willingly thrown UK troops into Vietnam, would have liked nothing better than to join the whites against the reds in 1917, and wouldn’t have hesitated to back Churchill to the hilt over Tonypandy.

    Is that all you got Labour Left, making things up?
    No. Dismissing the Yazidi genocide as a myth, whatever your warped purposes, is EVIL
    More than anything they are just naive and annoying. They normally believe in a simplistic narrative that the 'west' is always evil, and anyone who doubts that has been brainwashed by the media, who are controlled by governments and corporations. The second part of the belief structure is that, if the west stop being evil then the human race will become more peaceful and enlightened.

    This wrong headed thinking is very common right across the labour party - until Starmer has purged the labour party of a large proportion of its membership, you can't completely trust labour on matters of war and peace.
    https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/


    Negative Nationalism

    1. Anglophobia. Within the intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear that the Axis powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly pleased when Singapore fell or when the British were driven out of Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein, or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of Britain. English left-wing intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese to win the war, but many of them could not help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia, or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics many intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong. As a result, ‘enlightened’ opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.
    Aren't they just two cheeks of the same arse? People who think their country is always in the wrong are no more or less likely to be correct than those who think their country is always in the right. STW may be full of twats but they were correct about the Iraq War, for instance, while centrist and right wing opinion was wrong.
    Arch centrists the Lib Dems were consistently right about the Iraq war from the start. All wings of the party with very few exceptions.
    Were they? The LDs backed the war in Afghanistan but opposed the war in Iraq.

    Iraq is now a democracy free of Saddam's brutal dictatorship. Afghanistan has returned to the control of the Taliban.

    Even Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan not Afghanistan
    The Afghan invasion helped stymie the outflow of Islamofascist terror to the West, which was its intention.
    The Iraq invasion unleashed more of it on us, and its intentions were malign.

    By those tokens, yes, the Lib Dems were spot on in their support/lack of support for each.
    Of course, they can't take much credit or blame for the implementation, being out of power for all but 5 years of the last 19, and only as a junior coalition party then. But yes, they made the right calls.
    Also, @HYUFD, can you please stop referring to Iraq as a democracy. By any reasonable measure it is absolutely not. You've been called out on this before, and you keep on with the same lie.
    The Economist can help signpost the way to the sorts of things you should and should not call democracies.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
    It is a democracy in comparison with most of its neighbours in the Middle East ie Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria. That is the only measure that counts.

    Under Saddam it was the most brutal dictatorship in the Middle East.
    "That's the only measure that counts"?
    Good grief, man. No. Are you drunk?
    Of course it is. Nobody could have expected Iraq to become Sweden, Germany or New Zealand or Israel overnight.
    '
    However of the major Arab nations in the Middle East, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt, even on the link you provided Iraq is now the least authoritarian and most democratic
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,831

    The Johnson lead in a much-reduced voter pool needs to be considered in the light of how many 2019 Tories have been lost, but would return with Sunak.

    I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.

    Many (of us) left not only because of Boris but because he cleared out what we had regarded as the Cameroonian wing of the party. It left the party with the Dorries Rees-Moggs, Raabs et al as ascendant.

    As it is often pointed out, the new 2019 Cons MPs all signed the Brexit pledge and the Cons are now more than ever a hard Brexit party. Of course Brexit is done (talking to you, @Leon ) but the character of the party is significantly different even from 2017.

    Not to say that a change of leader wouldn't help and probably lead to personnel changes but the guts of the party I (we?) knew and liked have been removed.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,922
    My bit on Cressida Dick; whether it remotely matters if a prime minister breaks the law; and the general Absolute State of Things https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/11/farewell-cressida-dick-the-met-chief-only-interested-in-one-thing-ignoring-bad-coppers
  • PolruanPolruan Posts: 2,083
    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    I think we have already seen the Tory nadir in polling where they bottomed out at 27% (which is unlikely to be repeated IMO) and the Labour lead seems to have stabilised at around 8% for the time being.

    This polling doesn't shock me too much as Johnson must still have a lot of positive support in places like the Midlands and Essex as HYUFD has been arguing even if the new found Tory support in the north is quite a bit softer.

    Labour’s major issue is that their polling seems to be entirely driven by perceptions of the Conservative. Labour’s core vote - currently - is probably not far off the Tories’ 30pc. Their issue is the natural default for softer voters is the Conservatives. Chances are, if the news becomes more positive, Labour’s lead reverses out quickly.
    Hmmm. Stranger things have happened, I daresay. However for Johnson to recover personally he needs something positive to happen, like singlehandedly defeating the Russian army, or throwing some really right-on red meat to the hoi poloi. I have suggested capital punishment for nonces, but you might have some tastier red meat to offer. Otherwise I don't see it.

    Labour's support is soft and the Conservative position post Johnson is hopeful, but for the economic catastrophe heading our way. I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose elections, Oppositions don't win them, and at the moment Johnson is making a pretty good hand of confirming that idea.
    Also next time the Cons will be asking for their term to be extended from 14 years to 19 years. Time For A Change will play for Labour. Plus from the BBC election - Boris Brexit Corbyn - it's looking like all 3 factors will be gone and the one that might still be there will have flipped from asset to liability. On top of this you'll have a big chunk of the population struggling financially. I'm seeing this as Labour's to lose now. And Starmer is going to make damn sure to keep things very normcore so as not to risk doing that.
    Contrary view: Johnson won, in part, by portraying himself as the change candidate - and to be fair has done things pretty differently to his Conservative predecessors - if his successor is prepared to repudiate the aberration of 2019-2022 as non-Conservative chaos, they could present themselves as a change candidate to reverse the harm of a disastrous experiment. It's not really different to the levelling-up rhetoric that promised to fix the damage done by the evil 2010-2019 austerity governments.

    Following it through, that would probably mean that Johnson's replacement would prefer that the leadership contest takes place rather closer to the next election, or would otherwise have to call an earlier election while they could still be seen as "change" not "incumbent".
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,270
    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    I think we have already seen the Tory nadir in polling where they bottomed out at 27% (which is unlikely to be repeated IMO) and the Labour lead seems to have stabilised at around 8% for the time being.

    This polling doesn't shock me too much as Johnson must still have a lot of positive support in places like the Midlands and Essex as HYUFD has been arguing even if the new found Tory support in the north is quite a bit softer.

    Labour’s major issue is that their polling seems to be entirely driven by perceptions of the Conservative. Labour’s core vote - currently - is probably not far off the Tories’ 30pc. Their issue is the natural default for softer voters is the Conservatives. Chances are, if the news becomes more positive, Labour’s lead reverses out quickly.
    Hmmm. Stranger things have happened, I daresay. However for Johnson to recover personally he needs something positive to happen, like singlehandedly defeating the Russian army, or throwing some really right-on red meat to the hoi poloi. I have suggested capital punishment for nonces, but you might have some tastier red meat to offer. Otherwise I don't see it.

    Labour's support is soft and the Conservative position post Johnson is hopeful, but for the economic catastrophe heading our way. I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose elections, Oppositions don't win them, and at the moment Johnson is making a pretty good hand of confirming that idea.
    Also next time the Cons will be asking for their term to be extended from 14 years to 19 years. Time For A Change will play for Labour. Plus from the BBC election - Boris Brexit Corbyn - it's looking like all 3 factors will be gone and the one that might still be there will have flipped from asset to liability. On top of this you'll have a big chunk of the population struggling financially. I'm seeing this as Labour's to lose now. And Starmer is going to make damn sure to keep things very normcore so as not to risk doing that.
    I am not quite so convinced.

    Nonetheless, the longer Johnson remains PM, without some extraordinary bonus falling at his feet, the tougher the ask for the Conservatives.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,400

    eek said:

    Off topic

    There was talk at conference time time that three Labour MPs would defect to the Conservatives. One of those mentioned, as I recall, was Neil Coyle. As he has now been drummed out of the PLP for alleged racist comments to a journalist, do we think a journey across the floor to the Government benches is now more likely?

    Well he clearly will fit in the Tory party better than in Labour...
    Nonsense! The Tory’s have been cuddling up to the Chinese and bestowing their agents with awards for the past past decade.

    Boris Conservative party, Bojists, have even modelled themselves on Mao and Jinping - with their own cultural revolution in 2019 expelling moderates from anywhere near power or influence.

    Beijing would likely black ball Coyle from being allowed in the Tory party.
    Who liked this post? It was only tongue in cheek nonsense 😆
    I found it rather pertinent and profound in the event of Coyle's alleged misdeed.

    P.S. I'll remove the "Like" if you'd prefer.
    I’m only posting to help discussion get to the nub of things.

    We only want to get it right in this world.

    If someone wants to do the right thing, what should they do if they have Fu Manchu films in their movie Libary now? Do we have to hand them in to the police, or will there be some kind of anonymous amnesty box 😶

    PS - you can like this one if you want to, it is quite funny peculiar - the suspicion here accepting Russian or Chinese dirty money, no parliamentary action or party whip withdrawn, use Fu Manchu trope once in a bar conversation, parliamentary bans and whip withdrawn.
    I refer to my mum as Mrs Fu Manchu. It’s made me think I have to stop doing that in polite company then?

    Insights into how we are racist passive bystanders all these years without realising it 😟
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,011
    edited February 2022

    The Johnson lead in a much-reduced voter pool needs to be considered in the light of how many 2019 Tories have been lost, but would return with Sunak.

    I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.

    You were quite a big Johnson supporter as I recall and I'm interested in what's changed it for you. Was it Peppa Pig? Paterson? the NIC hike? The parties? The lying to parliament? Or was it a case of all of it acting cumulatively and drip drip to replace in your mind's eye what you imagined Boris Johnson to be with what he actually is?
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,400
    *update on worlds best Travel Agent

    The Conservative Party’s Thatch Tribute Act will be back from her successful self promotion trip, to embed the good work with some Fizz with Liz.

    Liz , here, in this EXCLUSIVE clip, in full on campaign mode, sucking up every vote in the room

    But is that Leon Sunil & Briskin, bouncing up and down, wagging their tails with tongues hanging out, helping her crowd surf? 😈

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmn2o8Pfj3Q
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,011

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    I think we have already seen the Tory nadir in polling where they bottomed out at 27% (which is unlikely to be repeated IMO) and the Labour lead seems to have stabilised at around 8% for the time being.

    This polling doesn't shock me too much as Johnson must still have a lot of positive support in places like the Midlands and Essex as HYUFD has been arguing even if the new found Tory support in the north is quite a bit softer.

    Labour’s major issue is that their polling seems to be entirely driven by perceptions of the Conservative. Labour’s core vote - currently - is probably not far off the Tories’ 30pc. Their issue is the natural default for softer voters is the Conservatives. Chances are, if the news becomes more positive, Labour’s lead reverses out quickly.
    Hmmm. Stranger things have happened, I daresay. However for Johnson to recover personally he needs something positive to happen, like singlehandedly defeating the Russian army, or throwing some really right-on red meat to the hoi poloi. I have suggested capital punishment for nonces, but you might have some tastier red meat to offer. Otherwise I don't see it.

    Labour's support is soft and the Conservative position post Johnson is hopeful, but for the economic catastrophe heading our way. I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose elections, Oppositions don't win them, and at the moment Johnson is making a pretty good hand of confirming that idea.
    Also next time the Cons will be asking for their term to be extended from 14 years to 19 years. Time For A Change will play for Labour. Plus from the BBC election - Boris Brexit Corbyn - it's looking like all 3 factors will be gone and the one that might still be there will have flipped from asset to liability. On top of this you'll have a big chunk of the population struggling financially. I'm seeing this as Labour's to lose now. And Starmer is going to make damn sure to keep things very normcore so as not to risk doing that.
    I am not quite so convinced.

    Nonetheless, the longer Johnson remains PM, without some extraordinary bonus falling at his feet, the tougher the ask for the Conservatives.
    Second thoughts I'm not *quite* so convinced either. :smile:

    (But my lay of Lab maj at 6s is not my favourite position, let's just say that.)
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,270
    TOPPING said:

    The Johnson lead in a much-reduced voter pool needs to be considered in the light of how many 2019 Tories have been lost, but would return with Sunak.

    I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.

    Many (of us) left not only because of Boris but because he cleared out what we had regarded as the Cameroonian wing of the party. It left the party with the Dorries Rees-Moggs, Raabs et al as ascendant.

    As it is often pointed out, the new 2019 Cons MPs all signed the Brexit pledge and the Cons are now more than ever a hard Brexit party. Of course Brexit is done (talking to you, @Leon ) but the character of the party is significantly different even from 2017.

    Not to say that a change of leader wouldn't help and probably lead to personnel changes but the guts of the party I (we?) knew and liked have been removed.
    No, it is not the party of R. A. Butler.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,011
    Polruan said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    I think we have already seen the Tory nadir in polling where they bottomed out at 27% (which is unlikely to be repeated IMO) and the Labour lead seems to have stabilised at around 8% for the time being.

    This polling doesn't shock me too much as Johnson must still have a lot of positive support in places like the Midlands and Essex as HYUFD has been arguing even if the new found Tory support in the north is quite a bit softer.

    Labour’s major issue is that their polling seems to be entirely driven by perceptions of the Conservative. Labour’s core vote - currently - is probably not far off the Tories’ 30pc. Their issue is the natural default for softer voters is the Conservatives. Chances are, if the news becomes more positive, Labour’s lead reverses out quickly.
    Hmmm. Stranger things have happened, I daresay. However for Johnson to recover personally he needs something positive to happen, like singlehandedly defeating the Russian army, or throwing some really right-on red meat to the hoi poloi. I have suggested capital punishment for nonces, but you might have some tastier red meat to offer. Otherwise I don't see it.

    Labour's support is soft and the Conservative position post Johnson is hopeful, but for the economic catastrophe heading our way. I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose elections, Oppositions don't win them, and at the moment Johnson is making a pretty good hand of confirming that idea.
    Also next time the Cons will be asking for their term to be extended from 14 years to 19 years. Time For A Change will play for Labour. Plus from the BBC election - Boris Brexit Corbyn - it's looking like all 3 factors will be gone and the one that might still be there will have flipped from asset to liability. On top of this you'll have a big chunk of the population struggling financially. I'm seeing this as Labour's to lose now. And Starmer is going to make damn sure to keep things very normcore so as not to risk doing that.
    Contrary view: Johnson won, in part, by portraying himself as the change candidate - and to be fair has done things pretty differently to his Conservative predecessors - if his successor is prepared to repudiate the aberration of 2019-2022 as non-Conservative chaos, they could present themselves as a change candidate to reverse the harm of a disastrous experiment. It's not really different to the levelling-up rhetoric that promised to fix the damage done by the evil 2010-2019 austerity governments.

    Following it through, that would probably mean that Johnson's replacement would prefer that the leadership contest takes place rather closer to the next election, or would otherwise have to call an earlier election while they could still be seen as "change" not "incumbent".
    If they do ditch Johnson that's the trick they will try to pull, yes, but I think "clearing up Johnson's mess" will be an easier sell for Labour than for the Cons.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,400

    *update on worlds best Travel Agent

    The Conservative Party’s Thatch Tribute Act will be back from her successful self promotion trip, to embed the good work with some Fizz with Liz.

    Liz , here, in this EXCLUSIVE clip, in full on campaign mode, sucking up every vote in the room

    But is that Leon Sunil & Briskin, bouncing up and down, wagging their tails with tongues hanging out, helping her crowd surf? 😈

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmn2o8Pfj3Q

    **Front Page Apology - it is a Liz I misidentified the right Liz, this one’s a tart 🤦‍♀️

    Err moving hastily on

    ON TOPIC! Polling, betting, politics - I have the following problem with this header

    All those people who have only voted UKIP or Conservative in their lives, who turned up on mass in Beaconsfield Tory meeting to attempt to deselect their MP, are they part of “2019” Conservative voters, just the same as those who voted Labour always, except once in 2019?

    Bundling these two subsets together could probably disguise the killer swing in the second subset? The first subset doesn’t even have to move an inch away Boris, but if the second swings enough the Red Wall goes Labour?

    Tell me where I’m wrong.
  • PolruanPolruan Posts: 2,083
    kinabalu said:

    Polruan said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    I think we have already seen the Tory nadir in polling where they bottomed out at 27% (which is unlikely to be repeated IMO) and the Labour lead seems to have stabilised at around 8% for the time being.

    This polling doesn't shock me too much as Johnson must still have a lot of positive support in places like the Midlands and Essex as HYUFD has been arguing even if the new found Tory support in the north is quite a bit softer.

    Labour’s major issue is that their polling seems to be entirely driven by perceptions of the Conservative. Labour’s core vote - currently - is probably not far off the Tories’ 30pc. Their issue is the natural default for softer voters is the Conservatives. Chances are, if the news becomes more positive, Labour’s lead reverses out quickly.
    Hmmm. Stranger things have happened, I daresay. However for Johnson to recover personally he needs something positive to happen, like singlehandedly defeating the Russian army, or throwing some really right-on red meat to the hoi poloi. I have suggested capital punishment for nonces, but you might have some tastier red meat to offer. Otherwise I don't see it.

    Labour's support is soft and the Conservative position post Johnson is hopeful, but for the economic catastrophe heading our way. I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose elections, Oppositions don't win them, and at the moment Johnson is making a pretty good hand of confirming that idea.
    Also next time the Cons will be asking for their term to be extended from 14 years to 19 years. Time For A Change will play for Labour. Plus from the BBC election - Boris Brexit Corbyn - it's looking like all 3 factors will be gone and the one that might still be there will have flipped from asset to liability. On top of this you'll have a big chunk of the population struggling financially. I'm seeing this as Labour's to lose now. And Starmer is going to make damn sure to keep things very normcore so as not to risk doing that.
    Contrary view: Johnson won, in part, by portraying himself as the change candidate - and to be fair has done things pretty differently to his Conservative predecessors - if his successor is prepared to repudiate the aberration of 2019-2022 as non-Conservative chaos, they could present themselves as a change candidate to reverse the harm of a disastrous experiment. It's not really different to the levelling-up rhetoric that promised to fix the damage done by the evil 2010-2019 austerity governments.

    Following it through, that would probably mean that Johnson's replacement would prefer that the leadership contest takes place rather closer to the next election, or would otherwise have to call an earlier election while they could still be seen as "change" not "incumbent".
    If they do ditch Johnson that's the trick they will try to pull, yes, but I think "clearing up Johnson's mess" will be an easier sell for Labour than for the Cons.
    I'd like to agree, but: "Johnson was a spendthrift and you need a PM who will look after your money" might still play well. I don't see the electorate having the same kind of optimism that the country can afford nice things as it did in 1997; the legacy of Cameron/Osborne has been to cement the belief in zero-sum kitchen table economics.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,922
    IDS breaks cover in @theipaper

    Ex-Tory leader suggests Johnson will have to go if he is found to have broken the law.

    He tells @elliottengage: "That’s a decision made by my colleagues but I think it would be very tough for anyone to remain after that."
    https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-iain-duncan-smith-resign-coup-lockdown-parties-police-fine-1456279
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,575

    TOPPING said:

    The Johnson lead in a much-reduced voter pool needs to be considered in the light of how many 2019 Tories have been lost, but would return with Sunak.

    I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.

    Many (of us) left not only because of Boris but because he cleared out what we had regarded as the Cameroonian wing of the party. It left the party with the Dorries Rees-Moggs, Raabs et al as ascendant.

    As it is often pointed out, the new 2019 Cons MPs all signed the Brexit pledge and the Cons are now more than ever a hard Brexit party. Of course Brexit is done (talking to you, @Leon ) but the character of the party is significantly different even from 2017.

    Not to say that a change of leader wouldn't help and probably lead to personnel changes but the guts of the party I (we?) knew and liked have been removed.
    No, it is not the party of R. A. Butler.
    Butler was a Tory MP from 1929-65, during the entirety of which the UK was not even in the EEC.

    Boris' economic policies are also closer to Macmillan's than Thatcher's
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,683
    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    The Johnson lead in a much-reduced voter pool needs to be considered in the light of how many 2019 Tories have been lost, but would return with Sunak.

    I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.

    Many (of us) left not only because of Boris but because he cleared out what we had regarded as the Cameroonian wing of the party. It left the party with the Dorries Rees-Moggs, Raabs et al as ascendant.

    As it is often pointed out, the new 2019 Cons MPs all signed the Brexit pledge and the Cons are now more than ever a hard Brexit party. Of course Brexit is done (talking to you, @Leon ) but the character of the party is significantly different even from 2017.

    Not to say that a change of leader wouldn't help and probably lead to personnel changes but the guts of the party I (we?) knew and liked have been removed.
    No, it is not the party of R. A. Butler.
    Butler was a Tory MP from 1929-65, during the entirety of which the UK was not even in the EEC.

    Boris' economic policies are also closer to Macmillan's than Thatcher's
    He has economic policies?
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,422
    If there's a by-election in Bermondsey it could be a re-run of Simon Hughes vs Peter Tatchell although the latter would presumably be the Green candidate not the Labour one.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,011
    Polruan said:

    kinabalu said:

    Polruan said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    I think we have already seen the Tory nadir in polling where they bottomed out at 27% (which is unlikely to be repeated IMO) and the Labour lead seems to have stabilised at around 8% for the time being.

    This polling doesn't shock me too much as Johnson must still have a lot of positive support in places like the Midlands and Essex as HYUFD has been arguing even if the new found Tory support in the north is quite a bit softer.

    Labour’s major issue is that their polling seems to be entirely driven by perceptions of the Conservative. Labour’s core vote - currently - is probably not far off the Tories’ 30pc. Their issue is the natural default for softer voters is the Conservatives. Chances are, if the news becomes more positive, Labour’s lead reverses out quickly.
    Hmmm. Stranger things have happened, I daresay. However for Johnson to recover personally he needs something positive to happen, like singlehandedly defeating the Russian army, or throwing some really right-on red meat to the hoi poloi. I have suggested capital punishment for nonces, but you might have some tastier red meat to offer. Otherwise I don't see it.

    Labour's support is soft and the Conservative position post Johnson is hopeful, but for the economic catastrophe heading our way. I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose elections, Oppositions don't win them, and at the moment Johnson is making a pretty good hand of confirming that idea.
    Also next time the Cons will be asking for their term to be extended from 14 years to 19 years. Time For A Change will play for Labour. Plus from the BBC election - Boris Brexit Corbyn - it's looking like all 3 factors will be gone and the one that might still be there will have flipped from asset to liability. On top of this you'll have a big chunk of the population struggling financially. I'm seeing this as Labour's to lose now. And Starmer is going to make damn sure to keep things very normcore so as not to risk doing that.
    Contrary view: Johnson won, in part, by portraying himself as the change candidate - and to be fair has done things pretty differently to his Conservative predecessors - if his successor is prepared to repudiate the aberration of 2019-2022 as non-Conservative chaos, they could present themselves as a change candidate to reverse the harm of a disastrous experiment. It's not really different to the levelling-up rhetoric that promised to fix the damage done by the evil 2010-2019 austerity governments.

    Following it through, that would probably mean that Johnson's replacement would prefer that the leadership contest takes place rather closer to the next election, or would otherwise have to call an earlier election while they could still be seen as "change" not "incumbent".
    If they do ditch Johnson that's the trick they will try to pull, yes, but I think "clearing up Johnson's mess" will be an easier sell for Labour than for the Cons.
    I'd like to agree, but: "Johnson was a spendthrift and you need a PM who will look after your money" might still play well. I don't see the electorate having the same kind of optimism that the country can afford nice things as it did in 1997; the legacy of Cameron/Osborne has been to cement the belief in zero-sum kitchen table economics.
    Gosh that's a rather horrid thought you plant there. I'll need to forget about it once I've replied. The Cons win the next election on a 'sound money' ticket after trashing the public finances themselves! If that happens it will show just how deep the propaganda after the 08 crash sank into the public's psyche. It will also be time to give up. May as well get Jeremy back and spook people if they're going to just keep electing Tory governments anyway.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,270
    edited February 2022
    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    The Johnson lead in a much-reduced voter pool needs to be considered in the light of how many 2019 Tories have been lost, but would return with Sunak.

    I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.

    Many (of us) left not only because of Boris but because he cleared out what we had regarded as the Cameroonian wing of the party. It left the party with the Dorries Rees-Moggs, Raabs et al as ascendant.

    As it is often pointed out, the new 2019 Cons MPs all signed the Brexit pledge and the Cons are now more than ever a hard Brexit party. Of course Brexit is done (talking to you, @Leon ) but the character of the party is significantly different even from 2017.

    Not to say that a change of leader wouldn't help and probably lead to personnel changes but the guts of the party I (we?) knew and liked have been removed.
    No, it is not the party of R. A. Butler.
    Butler was a Tory MP from 1929-65, during the entirety of which the UK was not even in the EEC.

    Boris' economic policies are also closer to Macmillan's than Thatcher's
    Huh? I never mentioned Europe.

    Have you not come across "Butskellism" and the "Post War Consensus"? I don't believe Johnson would fit into any post-war consensus, except perhaps when he was Mayor of London, and that seems like a political lifetime ago. He is now a Trumpian populist.

    P.S. Johnson's economic policies are closer to Dave Nellist's than Mrs Thatcher's.
  • Scott_xP said:

    IDS breaks cover in @theipaper

    Ex-Tory leader suggests Johnson will have to go if he is found to have broken the law.

    He tells @elliottengage: "That’s a decision made by my colleagues but I think it would be very tough for anyone to remain after that."
    https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-iain-duncan-smith-resign-coup-lockdown-parties-police-fine-1456279

    At least he admits this is a choice for his colleagues and not the police, as a cabinet minister did earlier apparently. If the police find he broke the law then his MPs should be the ones acting. It is not the police who should feel responsible as to whether he stays or not.
  • MrEd said:

    On topic, I think that poll (if it’s a true reflection so caveat required) mirrors what a few of us having been saying for a while namely Sunak - and the whole “Dishy Rishi” thing - is over-proportionally appealing to the chattering classes who are very unlikely to vote Conservative in the first place.

    I am not enthusiastic about him, but would return to the Conservatives (my natural political home) if he replaced The Clown.
    I believe you need Hercules to clear out the Conservatives' Augean stables after Johnson has finally vacated. A period in opposition to remove the smell of corruption would be well deserved for the Conservative Party.
    You could be right, but the thought of a bossy Labour government doesn't fill me with joy. My ideal is to have a genuine Conservative government that is keen on good governance with a reasonably plausible non-clownish leader
    I'm more anti-Tory in sentiment than you but I think there is a lot of resistance to Labour out there which means that the Labour lead is soft and there are numerous ways for them to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Johnstone's and current Tory ratings are higher than they deserve because he has an anti-puritan image. Too much of Labour's current membership and probable programme cuts against the majority grain. Too authoritarian, too woke, too virtue signalling, too much identity politics, too much social engineering.
  • PolruanPolruan Posts: 2,083
    kinabalu said:

    Polruan said:

    kinabalu said:

    Polruan said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    I think we have already seen the Tory nadir in polling where they bottomed out at 27% (which is unlikely to be repeated IMO) and the Labour lead seems to have stabilised at around 8% for the time being.

    This polling doesn't shock me too much as Johnson must still have a lot of positive support in places like the Midlands and Essex as HYUFD has been arguing even if the new found Tory support in the north is quite a bit softer.

    Labour’s major issue is that their polling seems to be entirely driven by perceptions of the Conservative. Labour’s core vote - currently - is probably not far off the Tories’ 30pc. Their issue is the natural default for softer voters is the Conservatives. Chances are, if the news becomes more positive, Labour’s lead reverses out quickly.
    Hmmm. Stranger things have happened, I daresay. However for Johnson to recover personally he needs something positive to happen, like singlehandedly defeating the Russian army, or throwing some really right-on red meat to the hoi poloi. I have suggested capital punishment for nonces, but you might have some tastier red meat to offer. Otherwise I don't see it.

    Labour's support is soft and the Conservative position post Johnson is hopeful, but for the economic catastrophe heading our way. I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose elections, Oppositions don't win them, and at the moment Johnson is making a pretty good hand of confirming that idea.
    Also next time the Cons will be asking for their term to be extended from 14 years to 19 years. Time For A Change will play for Labour. Plus from the BBC election - Boris Brexit Corbyn - it's looking like all 3 factors will be gone and the one that might still be there will have flipped from asset to liability. On top of this you'll have a big chunk of the population struggling financially. I'm seeing this as Labour's to lose now. And Starmer is going to make damn sure to keep things very normcore so as not to risk doing that.
    Contrary view: Johnson won, in part, by portraying himself as the change candidate - and to be fair has done things pretty differently to his Conservative predecessors - if his successor is prepared to repudiate the aberration of 2019-2022 as non-Conservative chaos, they could present themselves as a change candidate to reverse the harm of a disastrous experiment. It's not really different to the levelling-up rhetoric that promised to fix the damage done by the evil 2010-2019 austerity governments.

    Following it through, that would probably mean that Johnson's replacement would prefer that the leadership contest takes place rather closer to the next election, or would otherwise have to call an earlier election while they could still be seen as "change" not "incumbent".
    If they do ditch Johnson that's the trick they will try to pull, yes, but I think "clearing up Johnson's mess" will be an easier sell for Labour than for the Cons.
    I'd like to agree, but: "Johnson was a spendthrift and you need a PM who will look after your money" might still play well. I don't see the electorate having the same kind of optimism that the country can afford nice things as it did in 1997; the legacy of Cameron/Osborne has been to cement the belief in zero-sum kitchen table economics.
    Gosh that's a rather horrid thought you plant there. I'll need to forget about it once I've replied. The Cons win the next election on a 'sound money' ticket after trashing the public finances themselves! If that happens it will show just how deep the propaganda after the 08 crash sank into the public's psyche. It will also be time to give up. May as well get Jeremy back and spook people if they're going to just keep electing Tory governments anyway.
    Bleak, isn't it? But if a party can trash the public realm by under-investing and then win by promising to spend more to fix it, running on sound money to fix the public finances sounds completely achievable. Actually, probably easier, because voters are more inclined to trust Labour to do spending, and the Conservatives to fix the finances.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 19,854
    Scott_xP said:

    IDS breaks cover in @theipaper

    Ex-Tory leader suggests Johnson will have to go if he is found to have broken the law.

    He tells @elliottengage: "That’s a decision made by my colleagues but I think it would be very tough for anyone to remain after that."
    https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-iain-duncan-smith-resign-coup-lockdown-parties-police-fine-1456279

    Great photo.
  • MightyAlexMightyAlex Posts: 1,650
    kinabalu said:

    Polruan said:

    kinabalu said:

    Polruan said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    I think we have already seen the Tory nadir in polling where they bottomed out at 27% (which is unlikely to be repeated IMO) and the Labour lead seems to have stabilised at around 8% for the time being.

    This polling doesn't shock me too much as Johnson must still have a lot of positive support in places like the Midlands and Essex as HYUFD has been arguing even if the new found Tory support in the north is quite a bit softer.

    Labour’s major issue is that their polling seems to be entirely driven by perceptions of the Conservative. Labour’s core vote - currently - is probably not far off the Tories’ 30pc. Their issue is the natural default for softer voters is the Conservatives. Chances are, if the news becomes more positive, Labour’s lead reverses out quickly.
    Hmmm. Stranger things have happened, I daresay. However for Johnson to recover personally he needs something positive to happen, like singlehandedly defeating the Russian army, or throwing some really right-on red meat to the hoi poloi. I have suggested capital punishment for nonces, but you might have some tastier red meat to offer. Otherwise I don't see it.

    Labour's support is soft and the Conservative position post Johnson is hopeful, but for the economic catastrophe heading our way. I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose elections, Oppositions don't win them, and at the moment Johnson is making a pretty good hand of confirming that idea.
    Also next time the Cons will be asking for their term to be extended from 14 years to 19 years. Time For A Change will play for Labour. Plus from the BBC election - Boris Brexit Corbyn - it's looking like all 3 factors will be gone and the one that might still be there will have flipped from asset to liability. On top of this you'll have a big chunk of the population struggling financially. I'm seeing this as Labour's to lose now. And Starmer is going to make damn sure to keep things very normcore so as not to risk doing that.
    Contrary view: Johnson won, in part, by portraying himself as the change candidate - and to be fair has done things pretty differently to his Conservative predecessors - if his successor is prepared to repudiate the aberration of 2019-2022 as non-Conservative chaos, they could present themselves as a change candidate to reverse the harm of a disastrous experiment. It's not really different to the levelling-up rhetoric that promised to fix the damage done by the evil 2010-2019 austerity governments.

    Following it through, that would probably mean that Johnson's replacement would prefer that the leadership contest takes place rather closer to the next election, or would otherwise have to call an earlier election while they could still be seen as "change" not "incumbent".
    If they do ditch Johnson that's the trick they will try to pull, yes, but I think "clearing up Johnson's mess" will be an easier sell for Labour than for the Cons.
    I'd like to agree, but: "Johnson was a spendthrift and you need a PM who will look after your money" might still play well. I don't see the electorate having the same kind of optimism that the country can afford nice things as it did in 1997; the legacy of Cameron/Osborne has been to cement the belief in zero-sum kitchen table economics.
    Gosh that's a rather horrid thought you plant there. I'll need to forget about it once I've replied. The Cons win the next election on a 'sound money' ticket after trashing the public finances themselves! If that happens it will show just how deep the propaganda after the 08 crash sank into the public's psyche. It will also be time to give up. May as well get Jeremy back and spook people if they're going to just keep electing Tory governments anyway.
    It helps me to think of them as Lite-Republicans*. Sticking soft pink fingers in to the American political pie.

    *Although Boris vs Trump on the BMI scale. They might be close.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,575
    edited February 2022

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    The Johnson lead in a much-reduced voter pool needs to be considered in the light of how many 2019 Tories have been lost, but would return with Sunak.

    I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.

    Many (of us) left not only because of Boris but because he cleared out what we had regarded as the Cameroonian wing of the party. It left the party with the Dorries Rees-Moggs, Raabs et al as ascendant.

    As it is often pointed out, the new 2019 Cons MPs all signed the Brexit pledge and the Cons are now more than ever a hard Brexit party. Of course Brexit is done (talking to you, @Leon ) but the character of the party is significantly different even from 2017.

    Not to say that a change of leader wouldn't help and probably lead to personnel changes but the guts of the party I (we?) knew and liked have been removed.
    No, it is not the party of R. A. Butler.
    Butler was a Tory MP from 1929-65, during the entirety of which the UK was not even in the EEC.

    Boris' economic policies are also closer to Macmillan's than Thatcher's
    Huh? I never mentioned Europe.

    Have you not come across "Butskellism" and the "Post War Consensus"? I don't believe Johnson would fit into any post-war consensus, except perhaps when he was Mayor of London, and that seems like a political lifetime ago. He is now a Trumpian populist.

    P.S. Johnson's economic policies are closer to Dave Nellist's than Mrs Thatcher's.
    Johnson is a big spender who wants to build more houses, his economic policies are closer to Macmillan and Butler's Tory Party than Thatcher's. Boris described himself as a 'Brexity Hezza' which is pretty accurate.

    Obviously however he is not a socialist like Nellist though, he is not nationalising industries, is not raising income tax and inheritance tax and nor is he allowing unions to strike at will, nor is he abolishing Eton or Marlborough, which he and Macmillan and Butler attended. Nellist and Militant wanted to do all that. Boris also complains a six figure income is not even enough for him, Nellist only took the average wage as an MP.

    Indeed after Thatcher in 1983 and 1987, the Tory leaders who have won the biggest general election majorities for their party since WW2 are Macmillan in 1959 and Boris in 2019
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,422
    edited February 2022
    There are now 8 independent MPs:

    Imran Khan
    Jeremy Corbyn
    Neil Coyle
    Jonathan Edwards
    Margaret Ferrier
    Anne Marie Morris
    Rob Roberts
    Claudia Webbe

    https://members.parliament.uk/members/commons?SearchText=&PartyId=8&Gender=Any&ForParliament=0&ShowAdvanced=False
  • HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    The Johnson lead in a much-reduced voter pool needs to be considered in the light of how many 2019 Tories have been lost, but would return with Sunak.

    I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.

    Many (of us) left not only because of Boris but because he cleared out what we had regarded as the Cameroonian wing of the party. It left the party with the Dorries Rees-Moggs, Raabs et al as ascendant.

    As it is often pointed out, the new 2019 Cons MPs all signed the Brexit pledge and the Cons are now more than ever a hard Brexit party. Of course Brexit is done (talking to you, @Leon ) but the character of the party is significantly different even from 2017.

    Not to say that a change of leader wouldn't help and probably lead to personnel changes but the guts of the party I (we?) knew and liked have been removed.
    No, it is not the party of R. A. Butler.
    Butler was a Tory MP from 1929-65, during the entirety of which the UK was not even in the EEC.

    Boris' economic policies are also closer to Macmillan's than Thatcher's
    Huh? I never mentioned Europe.

    Have you not come across "Butskellism" and the "Post War Consensus"? I don't believe Johnson would fit into any post-war consensus, except perhaps when he was Mayor of London, and that seems like a political lifetime ago. He is now a Trumpian populist.

    P.S. Johnson's economic policies are closer to Dave Nellist's than Mrs Thatcher's.
    Johnson is a big spender who wants to build more houses, his economic policies are closer to Macmillan and Butler's Tory Party than Thatcher's. Boris described himself as a 'Brexity Hezza' which is pretty accurate.

    Obviously however he is not a socialist like Nellist though, he is not nationalising industries, is not raising income tax and inheritance tax and nor is he allowing unions to strike at will, nor is he abolishing Eton or Marlborough, which he and Macmillan and Butler attended
    Butler was, of course, derided as "too clever by half" by the Marquess of Salisbury - surely the most damaging judgment an old Tory could deliver about a younger one. The header seems to suggest Sunak could fall prey to the same attitude. Butler spent his final years as master of Trinity (East Anglian branch) where his intellect was less of a handicap than it was in the parliamentary Conservative party.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,683
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    The Johnson lead in a much-reduced voter pool needs to be considered in the light of how many 2019 Tories have been lost, but would return with Sunak.

    I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.

    Many (of us) left not only because of Boris but because he cleared out what we had regarded as the Cameroonian wing of the party. It left the party with the Dorries Rees-Moggs, Raabs et al as ascendant.

    As it is often pointed out, the new 2019 Cons MPs all signed the Brexit pledge and the Cons are now more than ever a hard Brexit party. Of course Brexit is done (talking to you, @Leon ) but the character of the party is significantly different even from 2017.

    Not to say that a change of leader wouldn't help and probably lead to personnel changes but the guts of the party I (we?) knew and liked have been removed.
    No, it is not the party of R. A. Butler.
    Butler was a Tory MP from 1929-65, during the entirety of which the UK was not even in the EEC.

    Boris' economic policies are also closer to Macmillan's than Thatcher's
    Huh? I never mentioned Europe.

    Have you not come across "Butskellism" and the "Post War Consensus"? I don't believe Johnson would fit into any post-war consensus, except perhaps when he was Mayor of London, and that seems like a political lifetime ago. He is now a Trumpian populist.

    P.S. Johnson's economic policies are closer to Dave Nellist's than Mrs Thatcher's.
    Johnson is a big spender who wants to build more houses, his economic policies are closer to Macmillan and Butler's Tory Party than Thatcher's. Boris described himself as a 'Brexity Hezza' which is pretty accurate.

    Obviously however he is not a socialist like Nellist though, he is not nationalising industries, is not raising income tax and inheritance tax and nor is he allowing unions to strike at will, nor is he abolishing Eton or Marlborough, which he and Macmillan and Butler attended. Nellist and Militant wanted to do all that. Boris also complains a six figure income is not even enough for him, Nellist only took the average wage as an MP.

    Indeed after Thatcher in 1983 and 1987, the Tory leaders who have won the biggest general election majorities for their party since WW2 are Macmillan in 1959 and Boris in 2019
    That's describing chaos as a 'policy'.

    'Not nationalising' ... railways, Sheffield Forgemasters ...

    'not raising income tax' is a very polite way of describing the increase in NI ...

    'not raising [...] inheritance tax' ditto, not changing the allowances in a time of high inflation

  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,575
    edited February 2022

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    The Johnson lead in a much-reduced voter pool needs to be considered in the light of how many 2019 Tories have been lost, but would return with Sunak.

    I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.

    Many (of us) left not only because of Boris but because he cleared out what we had regarded as the Cameroonian wing of the party. It left the party with the Dorries Rees-Moggs, Raabs et al as ascendant.

    As it is often pointed out, the new 2019 Cons MPs all signed the Brexit pledge and the Cons are now more than ever a hard Brexit party. Of course Brexit is done (talking to you, @Leon ) but the character of the party is significantly different even from 2017.

    Not to say that a change of leader wouldn't help and probably lead to personnel changes but the guts of the party I (we?) knew and liked have been removed.
    No, it is not the party of R. A. Butler.
    Butler was a Tory MP from 1929-65, during the entirety of which the UK was not even in the EEC.

    Boris' economic policies are also closer to Macmillan's than Thatcher's
    Huh? I never mentioned Europe.

    Have you not come across "Butskellism" and the "Post War Consensus"? I don't believe Johnson would fit into any post-war consensus, except perhaps when he was Mayor of London, and that seems like a political lifetime ago. He is now a Trumpian populist.

    P.S. Johnson's economic policies are closer to Dave Nellist's than Mrs Thatcher's.
    Johnson is a big spender who wants to build more houses, his economic policies are closer to Macmillan and Butler's Tory Party than Thatcher's. Boris described himself as a 'Brexity Hezza' which is pretty accurate.

    Obviously however he is not a socialist like Nellist though, he is not nationalising industries, is not raising income tax and inheritance tax and nor is he allowing unions to strike at will, nor is he abolishing Eton or Marlborough, which he and Macmillan and Butler attended
    Butler was, of course, derided as "too clever by half" by the Marquess of Salisbury - surely the most damaging judgment an old Tory could deliver about a younger one. The header seems to suggest Sunak could fall prey to the same attitude. Butler spent his final years as master of Trinity (East Anglian branch) where his intellect was less of a handicap than it was in the parliamentary Conservative party.
    Indeed, Butler, Portillo, David Miliband all very clever Crown Princes who never got the main gig. Sunak will hope he is not in the same category.

    Butler was also a north Essex MP for Saffron Walden for many years, so as well as Cambridge had strong East Anglian links
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,011
    edited February 2022

    MrEd said:

    On topic, I think that poll (if it’s a true reflection so caveat required) mirrors what a few of us having been saying for a while namely Sunak - and the whole “Dishy Rishi” thing - is over-proportionally appealing to the chattering classes who are very unlikely to vote Conservative in the first place.

    I am not enthusiastic about him, but would return to the Conservatives (my natural political home) if he replaced The Clown.
    I believe you need Hercules to clear out the Conservatives' Augean stables after Johnson has finally vacated. A period in opposition to remove the smell of corruption would be well deserved for the Conservative Party.
    You could be right, but the thought of a bossy Labour government doesn't fill me with joy. My ideal is to have a genuine Conservative government that is keen on good governance with a reasonably plausible non-clownish leader.
    You have an odd perception of what a Labour government would entail, Nigel.

    And on another matter - I do hope you're exercising enough and getting your five a day?
  • PolruanPolruan Posts: 2,083
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    The Johnson lead in a much-reduced voter pool needs to be considered in the light of how many 2019 Tories have been lost, but would return with Sunak.

    I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.

    Many (of us) left not only because of Boris but because he cleared out what we had regarded as the Cameroonian wing of the party. It left the party with the Dorries Rees-Moggs, Raabs et al as ascendant.

    As it is often pointed out, the new 2019 Cons MPs all signed the Brexit pledge and the Cons are now more than ever a hard Brexit party. Of course Brexit is done (talking to you, @Leon ) but the character of the party is significantly different even from 2017.

    Not to say that a change of leader wouldn't help and probably lead to personnel changes but the guts of the party I (we?) knew and liked have been removed.
    No, it is not the party of R. A. Butler.
    Butler was a Tory MP from 1929-65, during the entirety of which the UK was not even in the EEC.

    Boris' economic policies are also closer to Macmillan's than Thatcher's
    Huh? I never mentioned Europe.

    Have you not come across "Butskellism" and the "Post War Consensus"? I don't believe Johnson would fit into any post-war consensus, except perhaps when he was Mayor of London, and that seems like a political lifetime ago. He is now a Trumpian populist.

    P.S. Johnson's economic policies are closer to Dave Nellist's than Mrs Thatcher's.
    Johnson is a big spender who wants to build more houses, his economic policies are closer to Macmillan and Butler's Tory Party than Thatcher's. Boris described himself as a 'Brexity Hezza' which is pretty accurate.

    Obviously however he is not a socialist like Nellist though, he is not nationalising industries, is not raising income tax and inheritance tax and nor is he allowing unions to strike at will, nor is he abolishing Eton or Marlborough, which he and Macmillan and Butler attended. Nellist and Militant wanted to do all that. Boris also complains a six figure income is not even enough for him, Nellist only took the average wage as an MP.

    Indeed after Thatcher in 1983 and 1987, the Tory leaders who have won the biggest general election majorities for their party since WW2 are Macmillan in 1959 and Boris in 2019
    Is "liking building stuff" driven by any kind of economic philosophy rather than basic vanity though? The Garden Bridge seems like the purest illustration of Johnson's economic policy.

    Also he *is* raising income tax, both through fiscal drag and an increase in the dividend rates.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,683
    edited February 2022
    Polruan said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    The Johnson lead in a much-reduced voter pool needs to be considered in the light of how many 2019 Tories have been lost, but would return with Sunak.

    I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.

    Many (of us) left not only because of Boris but because he cleared out what we had regarded as the Cameroonian wing of the party. It left the party with the Dorries Rees-Moggs, Raabs et al as ascendant.

    As it is often pointed out, the new 2019 Cons MPs all signed the Brexit pledge and the Cons are now more than ever a hard Brexit party. Of course Brexit is done (talking to you, @Leon ) but the character of the party is significantly different even from 2017.

    Not to say that a change of leader wouldn't help and probably lead to personnel changes but the guts of the party I (we?) knew and liked have been removed.
    No, it is not the party of R. A. Butler.
    Butler was a Tory MP from 1929-65, during the entirety of which the UK was not even in the EEC.

    Boris' economic policies are also closer to Macmillan's than Thatcher's
    Huh? I never mentioned Europe.

    Have you not come across "Butskellism" and the "Post War Consensus"? I don't believe Johnson would fit into any post-war consensus, except perhaps when he was Mayor of London, and that seems like a political lifetime ago. He is now a Trumpian populist.

    P.S. Johnson's economic policies are closer to Dave Nellist's than Mrs Thatcher's.
    Johnson is a big spender who wants to build more houses, his economic policies are closer to Macmillan and Butler's Tory Party than Thatcher's. Boris described himself as a 'Brexity Hezza' which is pretty accurate.

    Obviously however he is not a socialist like Nellist though, he is not nationalising industries, is not raising income tax and inheritance tax and nor is he allowing unions to strike at will, nor is he abolishing Eton or Marlborough, which he and Macmillan and Butler attended. Nellist and Militant wanted to do all that. Boris also complains a six figure income is not even enough for him, Nellist only took the average wage as an MP.

    Indeed after Thatcher in 1983 and 1987, the Tory leaders who have won the biggest general election majorities for their party since WW2 are Macmillan in 1959 and Boris in 2019
    Is "liking building stuff" driven by any kind of economic philosophy rather than basic vanity though? The Garden Bridge seems like the purest illustration of Johnson's economic policy.

    Also he *is* raising income tax, both through fiscal drag and an increase in the dividend rates.
    Garden Bridge was "Not building stuff", albeit as a "big spender".

    Edit: come to think of it, spending £900K or whatever it was on finding out that he was "not building the Ulster bridge" is also on the same lines.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 54,905
    Just had the best burger of my life

    FFFWWWOO

    The wagyu burger at Nihonbashi, Colombo. Served by the genius chef himself

    Jesus
  • HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    The Johnson lead in a much-reduced voter pool needs to be considered in the light of how many 2019 Tories have been lost, but would return with Sunak.

    I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.

    Many (of us) left not only because of Boris but because he cleared out what we had regarded as the Cameroonian wing of the party. It left the party with the Dorries Rees-Moggs, Raabs et al as ascendant.

    As it is often pointed out, the new 2019 Cons MPs all signed the Brexit pledge and the Cons are now more than ever a hard Brexit party. Of course Brexit is done (talking to you, @Leon ) but the character of the party is significantly different even from 2017.

    Not to say that a change of leader wouldn't help and probably lead to personnel changes but the guts of the party I (we?) knew and liked have been removed.
    No, it is not the party of R. A. Butler.
    Butler was a Tory MP from 1929-65, during the entirety of which the UK was not even in the EEC.

    Boris' economic policies are also closer to Macmillan's than Thatcher's
    Huh? I never mentioned Europe.

    Have you not come across "Butskellism" and the "Post War Consensus"? I don't believe Johnson would fit into any post-war consensus, except perhaps when he was Mayor of London, and that seems like a political lifetime ago. He is now a Trumpian populist.

    P.S. Johnson's economic policies are closer to Dave Nellist's than Mrs Thatcher's.
    Johnson is a big spender who wants to build more houses, his economic policies are closer to Macmillan and Butler's Tory Party than Thatcher's. Boris described himself as a 'Brexity Hezza' which is pretty accurate.

    Obviously however he is not a socialist like Nellist though, he is not nationalising industries, is not raising income tax and inheritance tax and nor is he allowing unions to strike at will, nor is he abolishing Eton or Marlborough, which he and Macmillan and Butler attended. Nellist and Militant wanted to do all that. Boris also complains a six figure income is not even enough for him, Nellist only took the average wage as an MP.

    Indeed after Thatcher in 1983 and 1987, the Tory leaders who have won the biggest general election majorities for their party since WW2 are Macmillan in 1959 and Boris in 2019
    Macmillan's victory was impressive because it was against a credible opponent (Gaitskell) . In 2019 the Tory Clown won against one of the few possible Labour "leaders" who is an even more absurd figure than even Johnson is.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,011
    Polruan said:

    kinabalu said:

    Polruan said:

    kinabalu said:

    Polruan said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    I think we have already seen the Tory nadir in polling where they bottomed out at 27% (which is unlikely to be repeated IMO) and the Labour lead seems to have stabilised at around 8% for the time being.

    This polling doesn't shock me too much as Johnson must still have a lot of positive support in places like the Midlands and Essex as HYUFD has been arguing even if the new found Tory support in the north is quite a bit softer.

    Labour’s major issue is that their polling seems to be entirely driven by perceptions of the Conservative. Labour’s core vote - currently - is probably not far off the Tories’ 30pc. Their issue is the natural default for softer voters is the Conservatives. Chances are, if the news becomes more positive, Labour’s lead reverses out quickly.
    Hmmm. Stranger things have happened, I daresay. However for Johnson to recover personally he needs something positive to happen, like singlehandedly defeating the Russian army, or throwing some really right-on red meat to the hoi poloi. I have suggested capital punishment for nonces, but you might have some tastier red meat to offer. Otherwise I don't see it.

    Labour's support is soft and the Conservative position post Johnson is hopeful, but for the economic catastrophe heading our way. I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose elections, Oppositions don't win them, and at the moment Johnson is making a pretty good hand of confirming that idea.
    Also next time the Cons will be asking for their term to be extended from 14 years to 19 years. Time For A Change will play for Labour. Plus from the BBC election - Boris Brexit Corbyn - it's looking like all 3 factors will be gone and the one that might still be there will have flipped from asset to liability. On top of this you'll have a big chunk of the population struggling financially. I'm seeing this as Labour's to lose now. And Starmer is going to make damn sure to keep things very normcore so as not to risk doing that.
    Contrary view: Johnson won, in part, by portraying himself as the change candidate - and to be fair has done things pretty differently to his Conservative predecessors - if his successor is prepared to repudiate the aberration of 2019-2022 as non-Conservative chaos, they could present themselves as a change candidate to reverse the harm of a disastrous experiment. It's not really different to the levelling-up rhetoric that promised to fix the damage done by the evil 2010-2019 austerity governments.

    Following it through, that would probably mean that Johnson's replacement would prefer that the leadership contest takes place rather closer to the next election, or would otherwise have to call an earlier election while they could still be seen as "change" not "incumbent".
    If they do ditch Johnson that's the trick they will try to pull, yes, but I think "clearing up Johnson's mess" will be an easier sell for Labour than for the Cons.
    I'd like to agree, but: "Johnson was a spendthrift and you need a PM who will look after your money" might still play well. I don't see the electorate having the same kind of optimism that the country can afford nice things as it did in 1997; the legacy of Cameron/Osborne has been to cement the belief in zero-sum kitchen table economics.
    Gosh that's a rather horrid thought you plant there. I'll need to forget about it once I've replied. The Cons win the next election on a 'sound money' ticket after trashing the public finances themselves! If that happens it will show just how deep the propaganda after the 08 crash sank into the public's psyche. It will also be time to give up. May as well get Jeremy back and spook people if they're going to just keep electing Tory governments anyway.
    Bleak, isn't it? But if a party can trash the public realm by under-investing and then win by promising to spend more to fix it, running on sound money to fix the public finances sounds completely achievable. Actually, probably easier, because voters are more inclined to trust Labour to do spending, and the Conservatives to fix the finances.
    Yep, good point. Leveling up what they've spent a decade leveling down. A cunning stunt indeed. It's the political equivalent of a perpetual motion machine.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,270
    edited February 2022
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    The Johnson lead in a much-reduced voter pool needs to be considered in the light of how many 2019 Tories have been lost, but would return with Sunak.

    I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.

    Many (of us) left not only because of Boris but because he cleared out what we had regarded as the Cameroonian wing of the party. It left the party with the Dorries Rees-Moggs, Raabs et al as ascendant.

    As it is often pointed out, the new 2019 Cons MPs all signed the Brexit pledge and the Cons are now more than ever a hard Brexit party. Of course Brexit is done (talking to you, @Leon ) but the character of the party is significantly different even from 2017.

    Not to say that a change of leader wouldn't help and probably lead to personnel changes but the guts of the party I (we?) knew and liked have been removed.
    No, it is not the party of R. A. Butler.
    Butler was a Tory MP from 1929-65, during the entirety of which the UK was not even in the EEC.

    Boris' economic policies are also closer to Macmillan's than Thatcher's
    Huh? I never mentioned Europe.

    Have you not come across "Butskellism" and the "Post War Consensus"? I don't believe Johnson would fit into any post-war consensus, except perhaps when he was Mayor of London, and that seems like a political lifetime ago. He is now a Trumpian populist.

    P.S. Johnson's economic policies are closer to Dave Nellist's than Mrs Thatcher's.
    Johnson is a big spender who wants to build more houses, his economic policies are closer to Macmillan and Butler's Tory Party than Thatcher's. Boris described himself as a 'Brexity Hezza' which is pretty accurate.

    Obviously however he is not a socialist like Nellist though, he is not nationalising industries, is not raising income tax and inheritance tax and nor is he allowing unions to strike at will, nor is he abolishing Eton or Marlborough, which he and Macmillan and Butler attended. Nellist and Militant wanted to do all that. Boris also complains a six figure income is not even enough for him, Nellist only took the average wage as an MP.

    Indeed after Thatcher in 1983 and 1987, the Tory leaders who have won the biggest general election majorities for their party since WW2 are Macmillan in 1959 and Boris in 2019
    You've sold me on Dave Nellist. Coventry's finest! If only I lived in Erdington.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 49,857
    UK cases by specimen date

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  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 49,857
    UK cases by specimen date and scaled to 100K

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  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 49,857
    UK R

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  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,270
    Carnyx said:

    Polruan said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    The Johnson lead in a much-reduced voter pool needs to be considered in the light of how many 2019 Tories have been lost, but would return with Sunak.

    I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.

    Many (of us) left not only because of Boris but because he cleared out what we had regarded as the Cameroonian wing of the party. It left the party with the Dorries Rees-Moggs, Raabs et al as ascendant.

    As it is often pointed out, the new 2019 Cons MPs all signed the Brexit pledge and the Cons are now more than ever a hard Brexit party. Of course Brexit is done (talking to you, @Leon ) but the character of the party is significantly different even from 2017.

    Not to say that a change of leader wouldn't help and probably lead to personnel changes but the guts of the party I (we?) knew and liked have been removed.
    No, it is not the party of R. A. Butler.
    Butler was a Tory MP from 1929-65, during the entirety of which the UK was not even in the EEC.

    Boris' economic policies are also closer to Macmillan's than Thatcher's
    Huh? I never mentioned Europe.

    Have you not come across "Butskellism" and the "Post War Consensus"? I don't believe Johnson would fit into any post-war consensus, except perhaps when he was Mayor of London, and that seems like a political lifetime ago. He is now a Trumpian populist.

    P.S. Johnson's economic policies are closer to Dave Nellist's than Mrs Thatcher's.
    Johnson is a big spender who wants to build more houses, his economic policies are closer to Macmillan and Butler's Tory Party than Thatcher's. Boris described himself as a 'Brexity Hezza' which is pretty accurate.

    Obviously however he is not a socialist like Nellist though, he is not nationalising industries, is not raising income tax and inheritance tax and nor is he allowing unions to strike at will, nor is he abolishing Eton or Marlborough, which he and Macmillan and Butler attended. Nellist and Militant wanted to do all that. Boris also complains a six figure income is not even enough for him, Nellist only took the average wage as an MP.

    Indeed after Thatcher in 1983 and 1987, the Tory leaders who have won the biggest general election majorities for their party since WW2 are Macmillan in 1959 and Boris in 2019
    Is "liking building stuff" driven by any kind of economic philosophy rather than basic vanity though? The Garden Bridge seems like the purest illustration of Johnson's economic policy.

    Also he *is* raising income tax, both through fiscal drag and an increase in the dividend rates.
    Garden Bridge was "Not building stuff", albeit as a "big spender".

    Edit: come to think of it, spending £900K or whatever it was on finding out that he was "not building the Ulster bridge" is also on the same lines.
    Invisible bridges are the perfect monuments to Boris Johnson.
  • Leon said:

    Just had the best burger of my life

    FFFWWWOO

    The wagyu burger at Nihonbashi, Colombo. Served by the genius chef himself

    Jesus

    They're also on special offer from Ocado this week.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 49,857
    Case summary

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  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 70,790
    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    TimS said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Stop The War really are quite venomously evil


    "While everyone is talking about "Stop The War Coalition", a reminder that when the Yazidi minority in Iraq were being massacred by Islamic State in 2014, the organisation was claiming the genocide was "mythical", and was designed to distract attention from "Palestinians in Gaza"."


    https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1492065913037799424?s=20&t=o6cngwwqBBU3Gc48-ls1qw

    I don’t know if evil is the right word, but “organisation with very misleading name for one stuffed and controlled by overseas branch of the grumpy peoples front for the liberation of Palestine from Jewish Occupation” is probably the right sentence.

    (Not wishing to wake Big John Knolls from his cave too early) the weakness of Di Abbotts attack on Starmer today is its based on too much fiction, not enough fact - Starmer is pro all war, would have voted not just for Blair’s invasion of Iraq but would have willingly thrown UK troops into Vietnam, would have liked nothing better than to join the whites against the reds in 1917, and wouldn’t have hesitated to back Churchill to the hilt over Tonypandy.

    Is that all you got Labour Left, making things up?
    No. Dismissing the Yazidi genocide as a myth, whatever your warped purposes, is EVIL
    More than anything they are just naive and annoying. They normally believe in a simplistic narrative that the 'west' is always evil, and anyone who doubts that has been brainwashed by the media, who are controlled by governments and corporations. The second part of the belief structure is that, if the west stop being evil then the human race will become more peaceful and enlightened.

    This wrong headed thinking is very common right across the labour party - until Starmer has purged the labour party of a large proportion of its membership, you can't completely trust labour on matters of war and peace.
    https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/


    Negative Nationalism

    1. Anglophobia. Within the intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear that the Axis powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly pleased when Singapore fell or when the British were driven out of Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein, or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of Britain. English left-wing intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese to win the war, but many of them could not help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia, or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics many intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong. As a result, ‘enlightened’ opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.
    Aren't they just two cheeks of the same arse? People who think their country is always in the wrong are no more or less likely to be correct than those who think their country is always in the right. STW may be full of twats but they were correct about the Iraq War, for instance, while centrist and right wing opinion was wrong.
    Arch centrists the Lib Dems were consistently right about the Iraq war from the start. All wings of the party with very few exceptions.
    Were they? The LDs backed the war in Afghanistan but opposed the war in Iraq.

    Iraq is now a democracy free of Saddam's brutal dictatorship. Afghanistan has returned to the control of the Taliban.

    Even Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan not Afghanistan
    The Afghan invasion helped stymie the outflow of Islamofascist terror to the West, which was its intention.
    The Iraq invasion unleashed more of it on us, and its intentions were malign.

    By those tokens, yes, the Lib Dems were spot on in their support/lack of support for each.
    Of course, they can't take much credit or blame for the implementation, being out of power for all but 5 years of the last 19, and only as a junior coalition party then. But yes, they made the right calls.
    Also, @HYUFD, can you please stop referring to Iraq as a democracy. By any reasonable measure it is absolutely not. You've been called out on this before, and you keep on with the same lie.
    The Economist can help signpost the way to the sorts of things you should and should not call democracies.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
    Perhaps we should be more worried about his expectations for democratic government from our own point of view...
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 49,857
    Hospitals

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    Deaths

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  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 49,857
    Age related data

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  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 70,790
    Roger said:

    MrEd said:

    On topic, I think that poll (if it’s a true reflection so caveat required) mirrors what a few of us having been saying for a while namely Sunak - and the whole “Dishy Rishi” thing - is over-proportionally appealing to the chattering classes who are very unlikely to vote Conservative in the first place.

    As a Tory fan of Johnson it must be nice to think so. I can imagine what it must feel like when your hero turns out to have feet of clay but I'm afraid that's where you are. There's not a snowball in Hell's chance Johnson's reputation will recover and it's little to do with parties. It's to do with being a confirmed pathological liar

    There's more chance of Kurt Zouma being made DG of the RSPCA than the Tories winning under Johnson.
    While I agree with you, I'm seriously worried that you've made an actual prediction, Roger.......
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 70,790
    Leon said:

    Just had the best burger of my life...

    What else now remains ?
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,270
    kinabalu said:

    Polruan said:

    kinabalu said:

    Polruan said:

    kinabalu said:

    Polruan said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    I think we have already seen the Tory nadir in polling where they bottomed out at 27% (which is unlikely to be repeated IMO) and the Labour lead seems to have stabilised at around 8% for the time being.

    This polling doesn't shock me too much as Johnson must still have a lot of positive support in places like the Midlands and Essex as HYUFD has been arguing even if the new found Tory support in the north is quite a bit softer.

    Labour’s major issue is that their polling seems to be entirely driven by perceptions of the Conservative. Labour’s core vote - currently - is probably not far off the Tories’ 30pc. Their issue is the natural default for softer voters is the Conservatives. Chances are, if the news becomes more positive, Labour’s lead reverses out quickly.
    Hmmm. Stranger things have happened, I daresay. However for Johnson to recover personally he needs something positive to happen, like singlehandedly defeating the Russian army, or throwing some really right-on red meat to the hoi poloi. I have suggested capital punishment for nonces, but you might have some tastier red meat to offer. Otherwise I don't see it.

    Labour's support is soft and the Conservative position post Johnson is hopeful, but for the economic catastrophe heading our way. I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose elections, Oppositions don't win them, and at the moment Johnson is making a pretty good hand of confirming that idea.
    Also next time the Cons will be asking for their term to be extended from 14 years to 19 years. Time For A Change will play for Labour. Plus from the BBC election - Boris Brexit Corbyn - it's looking like all 3 factors will be gone and the one that might still be there will have flipped from asset to liability. On top of this you'll have a big chunk of the population struggling financially. I'm seeing this as Labour's to lose now. And Starmer is going to make damn sure to keep things very normcore so as not to risk doing that.
    Contrary view: Johnson won, in part, by portraying himself as the change candidate - and to be fair has done things pretty differently to his Conservative predecessors - if his successor is prepared to repudiate the aberration of 2019-2022 as non-Conservative chaos, they could present themselves as a change candidate to reverse the harm of a disastrous experiment. It's not really different to the levelling-up rhetoric that promised to fix the damage done by the evil 2010-2019 austerity governments.

    Following it through, that would probably mean that Johnson's replacement would prefer that the leadership contest takes place rather closer to the next election, or would otherwise have to call an earlier election while they could still be seen as "change" not "incumbent".
    If they do ditch Johnson that's the trick they will try to pull, yes, but I think "clearing up Johnson's mess" will be an easier sell for Labour than for the Cons.
    I'd like to agree, but: "Johnson was a spendthrift and you need a PM who will look after your money" might still play well. I don't see the electorate having the same kind of optimism that the country can afford nice things as it did in 1997; the legacy of Cameron/Osborne has been to cement the belief in zero-sum kitchen table economics.
    Gosh that's a rather horrid thought you plant there. I'll need to forget about it once I've replied. The Cons win the next election on a 'sound money' ticket after trashing the public finances themselves! If that happens it will show just how deep the propaganda after the 08 crash sank into the public's psyche. It will also be time to give up. May as well get Jeremy back and spook people if they're going to just keep electing Tory governments anyway.
    Bleak, isn't it? But if a party can trash the public realm by under-investing and then win by promising to spend more to fix it, running on sound money to fix the public finances sounds completely achievable. Actually, probably easier, because voters are more inclined to trust Labour to do spending, and the Conservatives to fix the finances.
    Yep, good point. Leveling up what they've spent a decade leveling down. A cunning stunt indeed. It's the political equivalent of a perpetual motion machine.
    Respect for your Johnson related spoonerism.
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578
    Nigelb said:

    Roger said:

    MrEd said:

    On topic, I think that poll (if it’s a true reflection so caveat required) mirrors what a few of us having been saying for a while namely Sunak - and the whole “Dishy Rishi” thing - is over-proportionally appealing to the chattering classes who are very unlikely to vote Conservative in the first place.

    As a Tory fan of Johnson it must be nice to think so. I can imagine what it must feel like when your hero turns out to have feet of clay but I'm afraid that's where you are. There's not a snowball in Hell's chance Johnson's reputation will recover and it's little to do with parties. It's to do with being a confirmed pathological liar

    There's more chance of Kurt Zouma being made DG of the RSPCA than the Tories winning under Johnson.
    While I agree with you, I'm seriously worried that you've made an actual prediction, Roger.......
    I think I’ll go and put my money on BI winning the next GE right now…
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    The Johnson lead in a much-reduced voter pool needs to be considered in the light of how many 2019 Tories have been lost, but would return with Sunak.

    I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.

    Many (of us) left not only because of Boris but because he cleared out what we had regarded as the Cameroonian wing of the party. It left the party with the Dorries Rees-Moggs, Raabs et al as ascendant.

    As it is often pointed out, the new 2019 Cons MPs all signed the Brexit pledge and the Cons are now more than ever a hard Brexit party. Of course Brexit is done (talking to you, @Leon ) but the character of the party is significantly different even from 2017.

    Not to say that a change of leader wouldn't help and probably lead to personnel changes but the guts of the party I (we?) knew and liked have been removed.
    No, it is not the party of R. A. Butler.
    Butler was a Tory MP from 1929-65, during the entirety of which the UK was not even in the EEC.

    Boris' economic policies are also closer to Macmillan's than Thatcher's
    Huh? I never mentioned Europe.

    Have you not come across "Butskellism" and the "Post War Consensus"? I don't believe Johnson would fit into any post-war consensus, except perhaps when he was Mayor of London, and that seems like a political lifetime ago. He is now a Trumpian populist.

    P.S. Johnson's economic policies are closer to Dave Nellist's than Mrs Thatcher's.
    Johnson is a big spender who wants to build more houses, his economic policies are closer to Macmillan and Butler's Tory Party than Thatcher's. Boris described himself as a 'Brexity Hezza' which is pretty accurate.

    Obviously however he is not a socialist like Nellist though, he is not nationalising industries, is not raising income tax and inheritance tax and nor is he allowing unions to strike at will, nor is he abolishing Eton or Marlborough, which he and Macmillan and Butler attended. Nellist and Militant wanted to do all that. Boris also complains a six figure income is not even enough for him, Nellist only took the average wage as an MP.

    Indeed after Thatcher in 1983 and 1987, the Tory leaders who have won the biggest general election majorities for their party since WW2 are Macmillan in 1959 and Boris in 2019
    You've sold me on Dave Nellist. Coventry's finest! If only I lived in Erdington.
    Even though Nellist’s views were slightly different from mine, I always respected that he took an average worker’s salary
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 49,857
    COVID Summary

    - Cases falling. R is below 1. Regional R is below 1 for all regions. Age R is below 1 for all age groups
    - Hospital admissions down - R is solidly below 1
    - MV beds down
    - In hospital down
    - Deaths down. Massively.

    image
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,517

    MrEd said:

    I think we have already seen the Tory nadir in polling where they bottomed out at 27% (which is unlikely to be repeated IMO) and the Labour lead seems to have stabilised at around 8% for the time being.

    This polling doesn't shock me too much as Johnson must still have a lot of positive support in places like the Midlands and Essex as HYUFD has been arguing even if the new found Tory support in the north is quite a bit softer.

    Labour’s major issue is that their polling seems to be entirely driven by perceptions of the Conservative. Labour’s core vote - currently - is probably not far off the Tories’ 30pc. Their issue is the natural default for softer voters is the Conservatives. Chances are, if the news becomes more positive, Labour’s lead reverses out quickly.
    Hmmm. Stranger things have happened, I daresay. However for Johnson to recover personally he needs something positive to happen, like singlehandedly defeating the Russian army, or throwing some really right-on red meat to the hoi poloi. I have suggested capital punishment for nonces, but you might have some tastier red meat to offer. Otherwise I don't see it.

    Labour's support is soft and the Conservative position post Johnson is hopeful, but for the economic catastrophe heading our way. I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose elections, Oppositions don't win them, and at the moment Johnson is making a pretty good hand of confirming that idea.
    Good discussion and I broadly agree. There is something of a slow race going on between Labour getting some concrete, attractive proposals well-known and the Conservatives sorting themselves out and saying "Now, forward with this!"

    Labour has lots of low-profile policies but both the delays in internal policy process and the difficulty of oppositions in getting coverage are hampering the process - the closest we've got is probably scrapping VAT on energy, which ticks both the "help living standards" and "use Brexit constructively" boxes (though green voters purse their lips dubiously). But it still feels more like tactics than strategy.

    The closest the Tories have got is Gove's levelling-up programme, which got a "not ambitious enough" reception rather than outright rejection, but was obscured by Partygate. I do think that the Tories are more than Labour in danger of a sense of drift and decline - people don't really expect the Opposition to be full of practical ideas for the next few months, but they notice if the Government isn't.

    Meanwhile the LibDems have Labour's problem only more so, and arguably their strength in by-elections is masking the underlying issue that there aren't a lot of people who know what direction they're going. I doubt if their national poll ratings will improve until that becomes clearer.
  • John Burn-Murdoch
    @jburnmurdoch
    A reminder that UK is only country in the world with regular, reliable data on total infection numbers (not just cases), thanks to
    @ONS
    random sample representative survey.

    It’s vital that the survey’s funding is extended. Without it, we’re flying blind

    https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1492138146661818372
  • pingping Posts: 3,805
    Scott_xP said:

    IDS breaks cover in @theipaper

    Ex-Tory leader suggests Johnson will have to go if he is found to have broken the law.

    He tells @elliottengage: "That’s a decision made by my colleagues but I think it would be very tough for anyone to remain after that."
    https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-iain-duncan-smith-resign-coup-lockdown-parties-police-fine-1456279

    They’ve fallen into his trap. Boris has successfully set the bar at a height that he’ll probably jump over.

    I think he’s likely safe. He’s bloody good at this politics business.
  • What is missing from the thread header is the overall numbers for the same question rather than just broken down by party. On these figures it looks to me like Sunak is probably ahead of Johnson overall.

    And here's the thing. How many of those 2019 Tory voters saying they prefer Johnson are actually going to vote for another party if Johnson is not there? On these numbers I would suggest it is clear that Sunak is the better bet if the Tories want to win the next election as he looks to have a much better chance of winning over non-Tory voters.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,683

    Leon said:

    Just had the best burger of my life

    FFFWWWOO

    The wagyu burger at Nihonbashi, Colombo. Served by the genius chef himself

    Jesus

    They're also on special offer from Ocado this week.
    https://colombogazette.com/2021/08/17/nihonbashi-burgers-present-a-japanese-range-of-hamburgers-to-colombo/

    *hungry*
  • All of this is profoundly troubling. It points to a Met that does not want to investigate potential criminality in Government, or to a police force that is excessively deferential to those in power.

    https://goodlawproject.org/news/partygate-met-police-investigate/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=MetPoliceBlog110222&utm_medium=social media
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,270

    MrEd said:

    I think we have already seen the Tory nadir in polling where they bottomed out at 27% (which is unlikely to be repeated IMO) and the Labour lead seems to have stabilised at around 8% for the time being.

    This polling doesn't shock me too much as Johnson must still have a lot of positive support in places like the Midlands and Essex as HYUFD has been arguing even if the new found Tory support in the north is quite a bit softer.

    Labour’s major issue is that their polling seems to be entirely driven by perceptions of the Conservative. Labour’s core vote - currently - is probably not far off the Tories’ 30pc. Their issue is the natural default for softer voters is the Conservatives. Chances are, if the news becomes more positive, Labour’s lead reverses out quickly.
    Hmmm. Stranger things have happened, I daresay. However for Johnson to recover personally he needs something positive to happen, like singlehandedly defeating the Russian army, or throwing some really right-on red meat to the hoi poloi. I have suggested capital punishment for nonces, but you might have some tastier red meat to offer. Otherwise I don't see it.

    Labour's support is soft and the Conservative position post Johnson is hopeful, but for the economic catastrophe heading our way. I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose elections, Oppositions don't win them, and at the moment Johnson is making a pretty good hand of confirming that idea.
    Good discussion and I broadly agree. There is something of a slow race going on between Labour getting some concrete, attractive proposals well-known and the Conservatives sorting themselves out and saying "Now, forward with this!"

    Labour has lots of low-profile policies but both the delays in internal policy process and the difficulty of oppositions in getting coverage are hampering the process - the closest we've got is probably scrapping VAT on energy, which ticks both the "help living standards" and "use Brexit constructively" boxes (though green voters purse their lips dubiously). But it still feels more like tactics than strategy.

    The closest the Tories have got is Gove's levelling-up programme, which got a "not ambitious enough" reception rather than outright rejection, but was obscured by Partygate. I do think that the Tories are more than Labour in danger of a sense of drift and decline - people don't really expect the Opposition to be full of practical ideas for the next few months, but they notice if the Government isn't.

    Meanwhile the LibDems have Labour's problem only more so, and arguably their strength in by-elections is masking the underlying issue that there aren't a lot of people who know what direction they're going. I doubt if their national poll ratings will improve until that becomes clearer.
    I don't see "Levelling Up" past the slogan.

    The best opportunity to level up was throwing Social Fund money at deprived areas, which happened wholesale in the 1980s and 90s. The trouble is when the incentives stopped the fun stopped. That will happen again.
  • MrEd said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    The Johnson lead in a much-reduced voter pool needs to be considered in the light of how many 2019 Tories have been lost, but would return with Sunak.

    I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.

    Many (of us) left not only because of Boris but because he cleared out what we had regarded as the Cameroonian wing of the party. It left the party with the Dorries Rees-Moggs, Raabs et al as ascendant.

    As it is often pointed out, the new 2019 Cons MPs all signed the Brexit pledge and the Cons are now more than ever a hard Brexit party. Of course Brexit is done (talking to you, @Leon ) but the character of the party is significantly different even from 2017.

    Not to say that a change of leader wouldn't help and probably lead to personnel changes but the guts of the party I (we?) knew and liked have been removed.
    No, it is not the party of R. A. Butler.
    Butler was a Tory MP from 1929-65, during the entirety of which the UK was not even in the EEC.

    Boris' economic policies are also closer to Macmillan's than Thatcher's
    Huh? I never mentioned Europe.

    Have you not come across "Butskellism" and the "Post War Consensus"? I don't believe Johnson would fit into any post-war consensus, except perhaps when he was Mayor of London, and that seems like a political lifetime ago. He is now a Trumpian populist.

    P.S. Johnson's economic policies are closer to Dave Nellist's than Mrs Thatcher's.
    Johnson is a big spender who wants to build more houses, his economic policies are closer to Macmillan and Butler's Tory Party than Thatcher's. Boris described himself as a 'Brexity Hezza' which is pretty accurate.

    Obviously however he is not a socialist like Nellist though, he is not nationalising industries, is not raising income tax and inheritance tax and nor is he allowing unions to strike at will, nor is he abolishing Eton or Marlborough, which he and Macmillan and Butler attended. Nellist and Militant wanted to do all that. Boris also complains a six figure income is not even enough for him, Nellist only took the average wage as an MP.

    Indeed after Thatcher in 1983 and 1987, the Tory leaders who have won the biggest general election majorities for their party since WW2 are Macmillan in 1959 and Boris in 2019
    You've sold me on Dave Nellist. Coventry's finest! If only I lived in Erdington.
    Even though Nellist’s views were slightly different from mine, I always respected that he took an average worker’s salary
    I believe Nadia Whittome does that as well.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 70,790

    The Johnson lead in a much-reduced voter pool needs to be considered in the light of how many 2019 Tories have been lost, but would return with Sunak.

    I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.

    An honest and probably correct assessment, I think.
    I marked you down as a Tory to take notice of for betting purposes some time back.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,575
    edited February 2022
    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    TimS said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Stop The War really are quite venomously evil


    "While everyone is talking about "Stop The War Coalition", a reminder that when the Yazidi minority in Iraq were being massacred by Islamic State in 2014, the organisation was claiming the genocide was "mythical", and was designed to distract attention from "Palestinians in Gaza"."


    https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1492065913037799424?s=20&t=o6cngwwqBBU3Gc48-ls1qw

    I don’t know if evil is the right word, but “organisation with very misleading name for one stuffed and controlled by overseas branch of the grumpy peoples front for the liberation of Palestine from Jewish Occupation” is probably the right sentence.

    (Not wishing to wake Big John Knolls from his cave too early) the weakness of Di Abbotts attack on Starmer today is its based on too much fiction, not enough fact - Starmer is pro all war, would have voted not just for Blair’s invasion of Iraq but would have willingly thrown UK troops into Vietnam, would have liked nothing better than to join the whites against the reds in 1917, and wouldn’t have hesitated to back Churchill to the hilt over Tonypandy.

    Is that all you got Labour Left, making things up?
    No. Dismissing the Yazidi genocide as a myth, whatever your warped purposes, is EVIL
    More than anything they are just naive and annoying. They normally believe in a simplistic narrative that the 'west' is always evil, and anyone who doubts that has been brainwashed by the media, who are controlled by governments and corporations. The second part of the belief structure is that, if the west stop being evil then the human race will become more peaceful and enlightened.

    This wrong headed thinking is very common right across the labour party - until Starmer has purged the labour party of a large proportion of its membership, you can't completely trust labour on matters of war and peace.
    https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/


    Negative Nationalism

    1. Anglophobia. Within the intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear that the Axis powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly pleased when Singapore fell or when the British were driven out of Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein, or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of Britain. English left-wing intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese to win the war, but many of them could not help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia, or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics many intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong. As a result, ‘enlightened’ opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.
    Aren't they just two cheeks of the same arse? People who think their country is always in the wrong are no more or less likely to be correct than those who think their country is always in the right. STW may be full of twats but they were correct about the Iraq War, for instance, while centrist and right wing opinion was wrong.
    Arch centrists the Lib Dems were consistently right about the Iraq war from the start. All wings of the party with very few exceptions.
    Were they? The LDs backed the war in Afghanistan but opposed the war in Iraq.

    Iraq is now a democracy free of Saddam's brutal dictatorship. Afghanistan has returned to the control of the Taliban.

    Even Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan not Afghanistan
    The Afghan invasion helped stymie the outflow of Islamofascist terror to the West, which was its intention.
    The Iraq invasion unleashed more of it on us, and its intentions were malign.

    By those tokens, yes, the Lib Dems were spot on in their support/lack of support for each.
    Of course, they can't take much credit or blame for the implementation, being out of power for all but 5 years of the last 19, and only as a junior coalition party then. But yes, they made the right calls.
    Also, @HYUFD, can you please stop referring to Iraq as a democracy. By any reasonable measure it is absolutely not. You've been called out on this before, and you keep on with the same lie.
    The Economist can help signpost the way to the sorts of things you should and should not call democracies.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
    It is a democracy in comparison with most of its neighbours in the Middle East ie Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria. That is the only measure that counts.

    Under Saddam it was the most brutal dictatorship in the Middle East.
    "That's the only measure that counts"?
    Good grief, man. No. Are you drunk?
    Of course it is. Nobody could have expected Iraq to become Sweden, Germany or New Zealand or Israel overnight.
    '
    However of the major Arab nations in the Middle East, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt, even on the link you provided Iraq is now the least authoritarian and most democratic
    Nobody expected it to become Sweden overnight. Aye, mebbe. So why do you pretend that it is anywhere close? You said Iraq is a democracy. It is not. Don't twist the truth to fit the point you're trying to make.
    Iraq elects its own President and Parliament in competitive multi party elections, that is a democracy even if not a perfect democracy.

    Iraq did not elect its President and Parliament in competitive elections under Saddam, so my point stands
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,270
    ping said:

    Scott_xP said:

    IDS breaks cover in @theipaper

    Ex-Tory leader suggests Johnson will have to go if he is found to have broken the law.

    He tells @elliottengage: "That’s a decision made by my colleagues but I think it would be very tough for anyone to remain after that."
    https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-iain-duncan-smith-resign-coup-lockdown-parties-police-fine-1456279

    They’ve fallen into his trap. Boris has successfully set the bar at a height that he’ll probably jump over.

    I think he’s likely safe. He’s bloody good at this politics business.
    If misleading Parliament and not resigning is "bloody good at this politics business" you have a point.
  • kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    On topic, I think that poll (if it’s a true reflection so caveat required) mirrors what a few of us having been saying for a while namely Sunak - and the whole “Dishy Rishi” thing - is over-proportionally appealing to the chattering classes who are very unlikely to vote Conservative in the first place.

    I am not enthusiastic about him, but would return to the Conservatives (my natural political home) if he replaced The Clown.
    I believe you need Hercules to clear out the Conservatives' Augean stables after Johnson has finally vacated. A period in opposition to remove the smell of corruption would be well deserved for the Conservative Party.
    You could be right, but the thought of a bossy Labour government doesn't fill me with joy. My ideal is to have a genuine Conservative government that is keen on good governance with a reasonably plausible non-clownish leader.
    You have an odd perception of what a Labour government would entail, Nigel.

    And on another matter - I do hope you're exercising enough and getting your five a day?
    Labour governments are always bossy. They like to tell people how to live their lives. Labour politicians are essentially instinctively bossy people who primarily look after those in the public sector. That doesn't necessarily mean all bad, and Labour has done some great things when in power, but I will always view them with great distrust. Would I trust Starmer more than The Clown, yes, most definitely. Would I vote Labour if The Clown is still PM, yes quite possibly

    No idea whatsoever, what your other comment references tho.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,217

    What is missing from the thread header is the overall numbers for the same question rather than just broken down by party. On these figures it looks to me like Sunak is probably ahead of Johnson overall.

    And here's the thing. How many of those 2019 Tory voters saying they prefer Johnson are actually going to vote for another party if Johnson is not there? On these numbers I would suggest it is clear that Sunak is the better bet if the Tories want to win the next election as he looks to have a much better chance of winning over non-Tory voters.

    Crucially you want to consider the Tory 2019 voters who don't currently give Tory as their current voting intention.

    My assumption is that they would give a very low score to Johnson now, but it would be interesting to see how Sunak does against don't knows in that segment.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 95,979
    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    TimS said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Stop The War really are quite venomously evil


    "While everyone is talking about "Stop The War Coalition", a reminder that when the Yazidi minority in Iraq were being massacred by Islamic State in 2014, the organisation was claiming the genocide was "mythical", and was designed to distract attention from "Palestinians in Gaza"."


    https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1492065913037799424?s=20&t=o6cngwwqBBU3Gc48-ls1qw

    I don’t know if evil is the right word, but “organisation with very misleading name for one stuffed and controlled by overseas branch of the grumpy peoples front for the liberation of Palestine from Jewish Occupation” is probably the right sentence.

    (Not wishing to wake Big John Knolls from his cave too early) the weakness of Di Abbotts attack on Starmer today is its based on too much fiction, not enough fact - Starmer is pro all war, would have voted not just for Blair’s invasion of Iraq but would have willingly thrown UK troops into Vietnam, would have liked nothing better than to join the whites against the reds in 1917, and wouldn’t have hesitated to back Churchill to the hilt over Tonypandy.

    Is that all you got Labour Left, making things up?
    No. Dismissing the Yazidi genocide as a myth, whatever your warped purposes, is EVIL
    More than anything they are just naive and annoying. They normally believe in a simplistic narrative that the 'west' is always evil, and anyone who doubts that has been brainwashed by the media, who are controlled by governments and corporations. The second part of the belief structure is that, if the west stop being evil then the human race will become more peaceful and enlightened.

    This wrong headed thinking is very common right across the labour party - until Starmer has purged the labour party of a large proportion of its membership, you can't completely trust labour on matters of war and peace.
    https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/


    Negative Nationalism

    1. Anglophobia. Within the intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear that the Axis powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly pleased when Singapore fell or when the British were driven out of Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein, or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of Britain. English left-wing intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese to win the war, but many of them could not help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia, or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics many intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong. As a result, ‘enlightened’ opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.
    Aren't they just two cheeks of the same arse? People who think their country is always in the wrong are no more or less likely to be correct than those who think their country is always in the right. STW may be full of twats but they were correct about the Iraq War, for instance, while centrist and right wing opinion was wrong.
    Arch centrists the Lib Dems were consistently right about the Iraq war from the start. All wings of the party with very few exceptions.
    Were they? The LDs backed the war in Afghanistan but opposed the war in Iraq.

    Iraq is now a democracy free of Saddam's brutal dictatorship. Afghanistan has returned to the control of the Taliban.

    Even Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan not Afghanistan
    The Afghan invasion helped stymie the outflow of Islamofascist terror to the West, which was its intention.
    The Iraq invasion unleashed more of it on us, and its intentions were malign.

    By those tokens, yes, the Lib Dems were spot on in their support/lack of support for each.
    Of course, they can't take much credit or blame for the implementation, being out of power for all but 5 years of the last 19, and only as a junior coalition party then. But yes, they made the right calls.
    Also, @HYUFD, can you please stop referring to Iraq as a democracy. By any reasonable measure it is absolutely not. You've been called out on this before, and you keep on with the same lie.
    The Economist can help signpost the way to the sorts of things you should and should not call democracies.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
    It is a democracy in comparison with most of its neighbours in the Middle East ie Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria. That is the only measure that counts.

    Under Saddam it was the most brutal dictatorship in the Middle East.
    "That's the only measure that counts"?
    Good grief, man. No. Are you drunk?
    Of course it is. Nobody could have expected Iraq to become Sweden, Germany or New Zealand or Israel overnight.
    '
    However of the major Arab nations in the Middle East, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt, even on the link you provided Iraq is now the least authoritarian and most democratic
    Nobody expected it to become Sweden overnight. Aye, mebbe. So why do you pretend that it is anywhere close? You said Iraq is a democracy. It is not. Don't twist the truth to fit the point you're trying to make.
    Iraq elects its own President and Parliament in competitive multi party elections, that is a democracy even if not a perfect democracy.

    Iraq did not elect its President and Parliament in competitive elections under Saddam, so my point stands
    Holding a vote is not the same as having free and fair elections. Even Vladimir Putin plays pretendy democracy.
    Yes, the more interesting authoritarian regimes are ones which do not by implication suggest democracy is a good thing, as most do by the way they play at having a democracy. Even North Korea holds 'votes' of a kind, however ludicrous.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,575
    edited February 2022
    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    TimS said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Stop The War really are quite venomously evil


    "While everyone is talking about "Stop The War Coalition", a reminder that when the Yazidi minority in Iraq were being massacred by Islamic State in 2014, the organisation was claiming the genocide was "mythical", and was designed to distract attention from "Palestinians in Gaza"."


    https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1492065913037799424?s=20&t=o6cngwwqBBU3Gc48-ls1qw

    I don’t know if evil is the right word, but “organisation with very misleading name for one stuffed and controlled by overseas branch of the grumpy peoples front for the liberation of Palestine from Jewish Occupation” is probably the right sentence.

    (Not wishing to wake Big John Knolls from his cave too early) the weakness of Di Abbotts attack on Starmer today is its based on too much fiction, not enough fact - Starmer is pro all war, would have voted not just for Blair’s invasion of Iraq but would have willingly thrown UK troops into Vietnam, would have liked nothing better than to join the whites against the reds in 1917, and wouldn’t have hesitated to back Churchill to the hilt over Tonypandy.

    Is that all you got Labour Left, making things up?
    No. Dismissing the Yazidi genocide as a myth, whatever your warped purposes, is EVIL
    More than anything they are just naive and annoying. They normally believe in a simplistic narrative that the 'west' is always evil, and anyone who doubts that has been brainwashed by the media, who are controlled by governments and corporations. The second part of the belief structure is that, if the west stop being evil then the human race will become more peaceful and enlightened.

    This wrong headed thinking is very common right across the labour party - until Starmer has purged the labour party of a large proportion of its membership, you can't completely trust labour on matters of war and peace.
    https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/


    Negative Nationalism

    1. Anglophobia. Within the intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear that the Axis powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly pleased when Singapore fell or when the British were driven out of Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein, or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of Britain. English left-wing intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese to win the war, but many of them could not help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia, or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics many intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong. As a result, ‘enlightened’ opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.
    Aren't they just two cheeks of the same arse? People who think their country is always in the wrong are no more or less likely to be correct than those who think their country is always in the right. STW may be full of twats but they were correct about the Iraq War, for instance, while centrist and right wing opinion was wrong.
    Arch centrists the Lib Dems were consistently right about the Iraq war from the start. All wings of the party with very few exceptions.
    Were they? The LDs backed the war in Afghanistan but opposed the war in Iraq.

    Iraq is now a democracy free of Saddam's brutal dictatorship. Afghanistan has returned to the control of the Taliban.

    Even Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan not Afghanistan
    The Afghan invasion helped stymie the outflow of Islamofascist terror to the West, which was its intention.
    The Iraq invasion unleashed more of it on us, and its intentions were malign.

    By those tokens, yes, the Lib Dems were spot on in their support/lack of support for each.
    Of course, they can't take much credit or blame for the implementation, being out of power for all but 5 years of the last 19, and only as a junior coalition party then. But yes, they made the right calls.
    Also, @HYUFD, can you please stop referring to Iraq as a democracy. By any reasonable measure it is absolutely not. You've been called out on this before, and you keep on with the same lie.
    The Economist can help signpost the way to the sorts of things you should and should not call democracies.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
    It is a democracy in comparison with most of its neighbours in the Middle East ie Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria. That is the only measure that counts.

    Under Saddam it was the most brutal dictatorship in the Middle East.
    "That's the only measure that counts"?
    Good grief, man. No. Are you drunk?
    Of course it is. Nobody could have expected Iraq to become Sweden, Germany or New Zealand or Israel overnight.
    '
    However of the major Arab nations in the Middle East, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt, even on the link you provided Iraq is now the least authoritarian and most democratic
    Nobody expected it to become Sweden overnight. Aye, mebbe. So why do you pretend that it is anywhere close? You said Iraq is a democracy. It is not. Don't twist the truth to fit the point you're trying to make.
    Iraq elects its own President and Parliament in competitive multi party elections, that is a democracy even if not a perfect democracy.

    Iraq did not elect its President and Parliament in competitive elections under Saddam, so my point stands
    Holding a vote is not the same as having free and fair elections. Even Vladimir Putin plays pretendy democracy.
    Nope, it is a democracy.

    Russia is also a democracy, if not a perfect one, certainly more so than under Stalin for instance.

    My point stands. Iraq is now one of the most democratic nations in the Middle East, under Saddam it was the most authoritarian and repressed nation in the Middle East.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 95,979

    MrEd said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    The Johnson lead in a much-reduced voter pool needs to be considered in the light of how many 2019 Tories have been lost, but would return with Sunak.

    I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.

    Many (of us) left not only because of Boris but because he cleared out what we had regarded as the Cameroonian wing of the party. It left the party with the Dorries Rees-Moggs, Raabs et al as ascendant.

    As it is often pointed out, the new 2019 Cons MPs all signed the Brexit pledge and the Cons are now more than ever a hard Brexit party. Of course Brexit is done (talking to you, @Leon ) but the character of the party is significantly different even from 2017.

    Not to say that a change of leader wouldn't help and probably lead to personnel changes but the guts of the party I (we?) knew and liked have been removed.
    No, it is not the party of R. A. Butler.
    Butler was a Tory MP from 1929-65, during the entirety of which the UK was not even in the EEC.

    Boris' economic policies are also closer to Macmillan's than Thatcher's
    Huh? I never mentioned Europe.

    Have you not come across "Butskellism" and the "Post War Consensus"? I don't believe Johnson would fit into any post-war consensus, except perhaps when he was Mayor of London, and that seems like a political lifetime ago. He is now a Trumpian populist.

    P.S. Johnson's economic policies are closer to Dave Nellist's than Mrs Thatcher's.
    Johnson is a big spender who wants to build more houses, his economic policies are closer to Macmillan and Butler's Tory Party than Thatcher's. Boris described himself as a 'Brexity Hezza' which is pretty accurate.

    Obviously however he is not a socialist like Nellist though, he is not nationalising industries, is not raising income tax and inheritance tax and nor is he allowing unions to strike at will, nor is he abolishing Eton or Marlborough, which he and Macmillan and Butler attended. Nellist and Militant wanted to do all that. Boris also complains a six figure income is not even enough for him, Nellist only took the average wage as an MP.

    Indeed after Thatcher in 1983 and 1987, the Tory leaders who have won the biggest general election majorities for their party since WW2 are Macmillan in 1959 and Boris in 2019
    You've sold me on Dave Nellist. Coventry's finest! If only I lived in Erdington.
    Even though Nellist’s views were slightly different from mine, I always respected that he took an average worker’s salary
    I believe Nadia Whittome does that as well.
    Never really saw the need, since being an MP is not being an average worker even if you eschew taking the full salary, but it is at least a significant gesture.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 95,979
    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    TimS said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Stop The War really are quite venomously evil


    "While everyone is talking about "Stop The War Coalition", a reminder that when the Yazidi minority in Iraq were being massacred by Islamic State in 2014, the organisation was claiming the genocide was "mythical", and was designed to distract attention from "Palestinians in Gaza"."


    https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1492065913037799424?s=20&t=o6cngwwqBBU3Gc48-ls1qw

    I don’t know if evil is the right word, but “organisation with very misleading name for one stuffed and controlled by overseas branch of the grumpy peoples front for the liberation of Palestine from Jewish Occupation” is probably the right sentence.

    (Not wishing to wake Big John Knolls from his cave too early) the weakness of Di Abbotts attack on Starmer today is its based on too much fiction, not enough fact - Starmer is pro all war, would have voted not just for Blair’s invasion of Iraq but would have willingly thrown UK troops into Vietnam, would have liked nothing better than to join the whites against the reds in 1917, and wouldn’t have hesitated to back Churchill to the hilt over Tonypandy.

    Is that all you got Labour Left, making things up?
    No. Dismissing the Yazidi genocide as a myth, whatever your warped purposes, is EVIL
    More than anything they are just naive and annoying. They normally believe in a simplistic narrative that the 'west' is always evil, and anyone who doubts that has been brainwashed by the media, who are controlled by governments and corporations. The second part of the belief structure is that, if the west stop being evil then the human race will become more peaceful and enlightened.

    This wrong headed thinking is very common right across the labour party - until Starmer has purged the labour party of a large proportion of its membership, you can't completely trust labour on matters of war and peace.
    https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/


    Negative Nationalism

    1. Anglophobia. Within the intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear that the Axis powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly pleased when Singapore fell or when the British were driven out of Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein, or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of Britain. English left-wing intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese to win the war, but many of them could not help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia, or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics many intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong. As a result, ‘enlightened’ opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.
    Aren't they just two cheeks of the same arse? People who think their country is always in the wrong are no more or less likely to be correct than those who think their country is always in the right. STW may be full of twats but they were correct about the Iraq War, for instance, while centrist and right wing opinion was wrong.
    Arch centrists the Lib Dems were consistently right about the Iraq war from the start. All wings of the party with very few exceptions.
    Were they? The LDs backed the war in Afghanistan but opposed the war in Iraq.

    Iraq is now a democracy free of Saddam's brutal dictatorship. Afghanistan has returned to the control of the Taliban.

    Even Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan not Afghanistan
    The Afghan invasion helped stymie the outflow of Islamofascist terror to the West, which was its intention.
    The Iraq invasion unleashed more of it on us, and its intentions were malign.

    By those tokens, yes, the Lib Dems were spot on in their support/lack of support for each.
    Of course, they can't take much credit or blame for the implementation, being out of power for all but 5 years of the last 19, and only as a junior coalition party then. But yes, they made the right calls.
    Also, @HYUFD, can you please stop referring to Iraq as a democracy. By any reasonable measure it is absolutely not. You've been called out on this before, and you keep on with the same lie.
    The Economist can help signpost the way to the sorts of things you should and should not call democracies.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
    It is a democracy in comparison with most of its neighbours in the Middle East ie Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria. That is the only measure that counts.

    Under Saddam it was the most brutal dictatorship in the Middle East.
    "That's the only measure that counts"?
    Good grief, man. No. Are you drunk?
    Of course it is. Nobody could have expected Iraq to become Sweden, Germany or New Zealand or Israel overnight.
    '
    However of the major Arab nations in the Middle East, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt, even on the link you provided Iraq is now the least authoritarian and most democratic
    Nobody expected it to become Sweden overnight. Aye, mebbe. So why do you pretend that it is anywhere close? You said Iraq is a democracy. It is not. Don't twist the truth to fit the point you're trying to make.
    Iraq elects its own President and Parliament in competitive multi party elections, that is a democracy even if not a perfect democracy.

    Iraq did not elect its President and Parliament in competitive elections under Saddam, so my point stands
    Holding a vote is not the same as having free and fair elections. Even Vladimir Putin plays pretendy democracy.
    Russia is also a democracy, if not a perfect one, certainly more so than under Stalin for instance.
    I think even authoritarian regimes generally wouldn't think they deserve praise for being more democratic than Joseph Stalin. Even for them that's a low bar to clear.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 70,790
    Two bits of good Covid news today in the UK.

    First, adding another two weeks of ONS data means Covid’s infection fatality rate has now crossed below the "2x flu" line.

    Latest IFR is roughly 60% higher than flu and still falling.

    https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1492138139103768576
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