Let’s stop this fetish over VI polling – these are the numbers that matter – politicalbetting.com

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Let’s stop this fetish over VI polling – these are the numbers that matter – politicalbetting.com

One of the things that makes me so angry about the way the MSM covers polling is their obsession with voting intention. Opinion polls are at their best when they attempt to do just that and seek to find out opinions and their worst when those sampled are asked to predict future actions

Read the full story here

Beibheirli_C

1st

Heathener

An excellent thread and a solid basis for thinking that Boris Johnson's tories are toast at the next General Election.

Tory MP's don't want to know? Fine by opposition supporters (apart from the wrecking ball on Britain in the meantime).

Heathener

On the Ukraine I notice that the language has been altered this morning by the Defence Secretary. Now he speaks of an imminent 'incursion.'

stodge

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived and replaced by anger our inflation and falling living standards.

Pointing out Covid "has to be paid for" only gets you so far - Rishi Sunak has had to pivot from being "Mr Giveaway" to "Mr Takeback" and that won't do him any favours even if he gets the top job.

I am already hearing through my local Government contacts the belt tightening across Councils has started and will doubtless be more severe in years to come. For those Councils who obtain as much as 80% of income via Council Tax, rising inflation means increasing the Council Tax precept as much as possible so it's 5% for many people this far but that's set against the return of cuts in some services.

It may well be the changes to NI will alleviate some part of the issue over the provision of care for adults and vulnerable children but it remains a huge burden for many Councils.

The new working environment has, as we've seen, wrecked the operating models of most transport providers but the lack of new thinking (weekday engineering works anyone?) about how to operate services is telling.

HYUFD

Approval ratings are relevant but not as important as the preferred PM numbers as even unpopular PMs can be re elected if the Leader of the Opposition is even more unpopular.

On the preferred PM numbers there is no change to Starmer's score whether Johnson or Sunak is Tory leader, 40% still prefer him to be PM. However Sunak does get some more undecideds into his column with 38% preferring him as PM over Starmer to 33% who prefer Johnson over Starmer with RedfieldWilton

https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-7-february-2022/

In the US while Biden's approval has dipped to just 38% he still ties Trump with 41% each on the latest hypothetical 2024 Presidential election polling, showing that while Biden may not be popular with swing voters currently that does not mean they are all going to vote to put Trump back in the White House either

https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/joe-biden-administration-approval-ratings-and-hypothetical-voting-intention-6-february-2022/

Beibheirli_C

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived ...

I think that, outside of Conservative supporters, post-covid gratitude is zero. Protecting the country from threats like pandemics is what we elect the govt for. It is their actual day job.

Should we be grateful that they did what they were supposed to do? Is that how far we have fallen?

And that does not even take into account the moving of Covid positive people into Care Homes which wiped out the over 80s in some homes. Something which seems to have been forgotten as the flags get waved...

edmundintokyo

Heathener said:

An excellent thread and a solid basis for thinking that Boris Johnson's tories are toast at the next General Election.

Tory MP's don't want to know? Fine by opposition supporters (apart from the wrecking ball on Britain in the meantime).

Tory MPs have pretty good smoke detectors. If Boris's numbers look irreparably terrible as the election approaches they'll likely replace him then, but there's plenty of time before we get to that point and he might still recover.

Heathener

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election

Unless the seismic shift which has occurred: from roughly +10% to -10% is one of those once-in-a-generation moments.

I happen to think it is, so I don't think it's too early too call the next election let alone 'obviously'.

Under Boris Johnson there is no way back for the Conservatives to win.

malcolmg

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived and replaced by anger our inflation and falling living standards.

Pointing out Covid "has to be paid for" only gets you so far - Rishi Sunak has had to pivot from being "Mr Giveaway" to "Mr Takeback" and that won't do him any favours even if he gets the top job.

I am already hearing through my local Government contacts the belt tightening across Councils has started and will doubtless be more severe in years to come. For those Councils who obtain as much as 80% of income via Council Tax, rising inflation means increasing the Council Tax precept as much as possible so it's 5% for many people this far but that's set against the return of cuts in some services.

It may well be the changes to NI will alleviate some part of the issue over the provision of care for adults and vulnerable children but it remains a huge burden for many Councils.

The new working environment has, as we've seen, wrecked the operating models of most transport providers but the lack of new thinking (weekday engineering works anyone?) about how to operate services is telling.

Hardly likely to b emuch post - covid gratitude, the government were constantly partying hilst people were dying in the 10's of thousands, as they danced teh night away people were not allowed to see their dying relatives. More likely to be a lynch mob if people in UK had any backbone left.

Beibheirli_C

edmundintokyo said:

Heathener said:

An excellent thread and a solid basis for thinking that Boris Johnson's tories are toast at the next General Election.

Tory MP's don't want to know? Fine by opposition supporters (apart from the wrecking ball on Britain in the meantime).

Tory MPs have pretty good smoke detectors. If Boris's numbers look irreparably terrible as the election approaches they'll likely replace him then, but there's plenty of time before we get to that point and he might still recover.

And which candidate can recover from the reputational damage inflicted by Boris?

Heathener

Black Wednesday finished the tories in 1992. From that moment on the writing was on the wall. Labour rose into double digit leads and then, two years after BW, Tony Blair lifted them into even more stratospheric leads.

But it was Black Wednesday which finished them.

Partygate has finished the tories for 2024.

Would they do better under a different leader like Rishi Sunak? Possibly but it may just be damage limitation now.

edmundintokyo

Beibheirli_C said:

edmundintokyo said:

Heathener said:

An excellent thread and a solid basis for thinking that Boris Johnson's tories are toast at the next General Election.

Tory MP's don't want to know? Fine by opposition supporters (apart from the wrecking ball on Britain in the meantime).

Tory MPs have pretty good smoke detectors. If Boris's numbers look irreparably terrible as the election approaches they'll likely replace him then, but there's plenty of time before we get to that point and he might still recover.

And which candidate can recover from the reputational damage inflicted by Boris?

Too soon to say, that's another reason not to move yet. There are loads of ministers in the government, you only need one of them to be a nice, refreshing contrast and they only have to keep it up for the month or two between a Tory leadership contest and a general election.

Heathener

edmundintokyo said:

Heathener said:

An excellent thread and a solid basis for thinking that Boris Johnson's tories are toast at the next General Election.

Tory MP's don't want to know? Fine by opposition supporters (apart from the wrecking ball on Britain in the meantime).

Tory MPs have pretty good smoke detectors.

Is it time to debunk this myth?

Heseltine wielded the knife against Thatcher and in some ways the Party has never recovered from that act. The Daily Mail the other day dragged it back into the frame in urging tories to stay loyal to their 'winner' Boris.

I don't think the Conservative MPs have either the courage or the morals to remove Boris Johnson.

Scott_xP

Brandon Lewis reckons "it's a profound honour to be asked to serve" and will continue to do so, even if the person asking him is incompetent, dangerous, a liar and, even possibly, proves to be a criminal.

The I-was-only-following-orders school of ethics.
https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1492809856260136964

Big_G_NorthWales

Heathener said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election

Unless the seismic shift which has occurred: from roughly +10% to -10% is one of those once-in-a-generation moments.

I happen to think it is, so I don't think it's too early too call the next election let alone 'obviously'.

Under Boris Johnson there is no way back for the Conservatives to win.

Brave

Heathener

edmundintokyo said:

Beibheirli_C said:

edmundintokyo said:

Heathener said:

An excellent thread and a solid basis for thinking that Boris Johnson's tories are toast at the next General Election.

Tory MP's don't want to know? Fine by opposition supporters (apart from the wrecking ball on Britain in the meantime).

Tory MPs have pretty good smoke detectors. If Boris's numbers look irreparably terrible as the election approaches they'll likely replace him then, but there's plenty of time before we get to that point and he might still recover.

And which candidate can recover from the reputational damage inflicted by Boris?

There are loads of ministers in the government, you only need one of them to be a nice, refreshing contrast and they only have to keep it up for the month or two between a Tory leadership contest and a general election.

Fantasy

RochdalePioneers

Heathener said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election

Unless the seismic shift which has occurred: from roughly +10% to -10% is one of those once-in-a-generation moments.

I happen to think it is, so I don't think it's too early too call the next election let alone 'obviously'.

Under Boris Johnson there is no way back for the Conservatives to win.

This. Once you stop telling the truth and obeying the law you cross a line. In 2020s society that means becoming a meme and I see far more brutal stuff on WhatsApp groups than people say on here posted by people who are not remotely visceral anti-Tories.

If they remove him this summer, install a credible replacement and quickly start doing the basics right, they absolutely can win. However disengaged so many people now are with Johnson they aren't yet engaged with Starmer and his party is still dragged down by its past.

Alphabet_Soup

Beibheirli_C said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived ...

I think that, outside of Conservative supporters, post-covid gratitude is zero. Protecting the country from threats like pandemics is what we elect the govt for. It is their actual day job.

Should we be grateful that they did what they were supposed to do? Is that how far we have fallen?

And that does not even take into account the moving of Covid positive people into Care Homes which wiped out the over 80s in some homes. Something which seems to have been forgotten as the flags get waved...

Welcome to the dark side, Bev. Rich Tory pensioners were sacrificed so that young Labour voters had a hospital bed when they needed one. Outrageous.

RochdalePioneers

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Heathener said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election

Unless the seismic shift which has occurred: from roughly +10% to -10% is one of those once-in-a-generation moments.

I happen to think it is, so I don't think it's too early too call the next election let alone 'obviously'.

Under Boris Johnson there is no way back for the Conservatives to win.

Brave

A little Brave but likely correct. I cannot see how this government wins reelection. But I can see how the Conservatives win the next election under a competent new leader who draws a line under the worst of it.

Big_G_NorthWales

Heathener said:

edmundintokyo said:

Beibheirli_C said:

edmundintokyo said:

Heathener said:

An excellent thread and a solid basis for thinking that Boris Johnson's tories are toast at the next General Election.

Tory MP's don't want to know? Fine by opposition supporters (apart from the wrecking ball on Britain in the meantime).

Tory MPs have pretty good smoke detectors. If Boris's numbers look irreparably terrible as the election approaches they'll likely replace him then, but there's plenty of time before we get to that point and he might still recover.

And which candidate can recover from the reputational damage inflicted by Boris?

There are loads of ministers in the government, you only need one of them to be a nice, refreshing contrast and they only have to keep it up for the month or two between a Tory leadership contest and a general election.

Fantasy

Actually it is not and you do not know the conservative party if you think it is

Big_G_NorthWales

RochdalePioneers said:

Heathener said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election

Unless the seismic shift which has occurred: from roughly +10% to -10% is one of those once-in-a-generation moments.

I happen to think it is, so I don't think it's too early too call the next election let alone 'obviously'.

Under Boris Johnson there is no way back for the Conservatives to win.

This. Once you stop telling the truth and obeying the law you cross a line. In 2020s society that means becoming a meme and I see far more brutal stuff on WhatsApp groups than people say on here posted by people who are not remotely visceral anti-Tories.

If they remove him this summer, install a credible replacement and quickly start doing the basics right, they absolutely can win. However disengaged so many people now are with Johnson they aren't yet engaged with Starmer and his party is still dragged down by its past.

Interesting even today Yvette Cooper challenged about Diane Abbotts pro Russia stance on Marr

Big_G_NorthWales

RochdalePioneers said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Heathener said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election

Unless the seismic shift which has occurred: from roughly +10% to -10% is one of those once-in-a-generation moments.

I happen to think it is, so I don't think it's too early too call the next election let alone 'obviously'.

Under Boris Johnson there is no way back for the Conservatives to win.

Brave

A little Brave but likely correct. I cannot see how this government wins reelection. But I can see how the Conservatives win the next election under a competent new leader who draws a line under the worst of it.

Under Boris unlikely but not impossible and very dependent on Starmer being able to win conservative voters to labour

Eabhal

FPT: I find DavidL's response to partygate one of the more interesting on here. He had the same reaction right at the peak of the crisis for the PM.

I would've thought, given his background, that the principle of our lawmakers abiding by the law would be an important one, and he'd recognise that not doing so weakens our position when dealing with with lawless dictators such as Putin. Particularly when the laws are so personally restrictive, and unusual.

Perhaps exposure to the law burns you out, a bit like junior doctors and their care for patients. I'm still young, and naive, so I'm going to hold onto the idea that the parties were a serious betrayal of trust and a danger to a democracy where so much depends on personal integrity in the absence of a formal constitution.

RochdalePioneers

Big_G_NorthWales said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Heathener said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election

Unless the seismic shift which has occurred: from roughly +10% to -10% is one of those once-in-a-generation moments.

I happen to think it is, so I don't think it's too early too call the next election let alone 'obviously'.

Under Boris Johnson there is no way back for the Conservatives to win.

Brave

A little Brave but likely correct. I cannot see how this government wins reelection. But I can see how the Conservatives win the next election under a competent new leader who draws a line under the worst of it.

Under Boris unlikely but not impossible and very dependent on Starmer being able to win conservative voters to labour

I've said for a while that I expect apathy to be the big winner in red wall seats. 2019 Tories will see just how much of a donkey they loaned their votes to, but won't go back to Labour in large numbers either. So apathy will win. Labour will win a stack of seats back by their vote recovering a little and the Tory vote falling a lot.

Mexicanpete

malcolmg said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived and replaced by anger our inflation and falling living standards.

Pointing out Covid "has to be paid for" only gets you so far - Rishi Sunak has had to pivot from being "Mr Giveaway" to "Mr Takeback" and that won't do him any favours even if he gets the top job.

I am already hearing through my local Government contacts the belt tightening across Councils has started and will doubtless be more severe in years to come. For those Councils who obtain as much as 80% of income via Council Tax, rising inflation means increasing the Council Tax precept as much as possible so it's 5% for many people this far but that's set against the return of cuts in some services.

It may well be the changes to NI will alleviate some part of the issue over the provision of care for adults and vulnerable children but it remains a huge burden for many Councils.

The new working environment has, as we've seen, wrecked the operating models of most transport providers but the lack of new thinking (weekday engineering works anyone?) about how to operate services is telling.

Hardly likely to b emuch post - covid gratitude, the government were constantly partying hilst people were dying in the 10's of thousands, as they danced teh night away people were not allowed to see their dying relatives. More likely to be a lynch mob if people in UK had any backbone left.

malcolmg said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived and replaced by anger our inflation and falling living standards.

Pointing out Covid "has to be paid for" only gets you so far - Rishi Sunak has had to pivot from being "Mr Giveaway" to "Mr Takeback" and that won't do him any favours even if he gets the top job.

I am already hearing through my local Government contacts the belt tightening across Councils has started and will doubtless be more severe in years to come. For those Councils who obtain as much as 80% of income via Council Tax, rising inflation means increasing the Council Tax precept as much as possible so it's 5% for many people this far but that's set against the return of cuts in some services.

It may well be the changes to NI will alleviate some part of the issue over the provision of care for adults and vulnerable children but it remains a huge burden for many Councils.

The new working environment has, as we've seen, wrecked the operating models of most transport providers but the lack of new thinking (weekday engineering works anyone?) about how to operate services is telling.

Hardly likely to b emuch post - covid gratitude, the government were constantly partying hilst people were dying in the 10's of thousands, as they danced teh night away people were not allowed to see their dying relatives. More likely to be a lynch mob if people in UK had any backbone left.

Off topic

Norman Collier has just hijacked your keyboard!

Beibheirli_C

Alphabet_Soup said:

Beibheirli_C said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived ...

I think that, outside of Conservative supporters, post-covid gratitude is zero. Protecting the country from threats like pandemics is what we elect the govt for. It is their actual day job.

Should we be grateful that they did what they were supposed to do? Is that how far we have fallen?

And that does not even take into account the moving of Covid positive people into Care Homes which wiped out the over 80s in some homes. Something which seems to have been forgotten as the flags get waved...

Welcome to the dark side, Bev. Rich Tory pensioners were sacrificed so that young Labour voters had a hospital bed when they needed one. Outrageous.

Do not be so daft. It was not planned, it was just common-or-garden incompetence. However no one has been sanctioned for it. The unecessary, early deaths of thousands has been consequence free.

The vacated hospital beds were subsequently filled by people with no vaccine protection, but I cannot recall any of them being checked for political affiliations.

rottenborough

Jack Monroe
@BootstrapCook

Woke up this morning and realised I couldn’t procrastinate my food shop for a day longer, and decided it was time - three and a half weeks on from my accidentally viral tweet about the prices of basic foods at the supermarket - to brave it, and see what, if anything, had changed.

Jack Monroe
@BootstrapCook·18hReplying to @BootstrapCook

This time last year, the cheapest pasta in my local supermarket (Asda, Shoeburyness), was 29p for 500g. Last month it jumped to 70p. That was a 141% price increase as it hits the poorest and most vulnerable households. I literally held my breath as I turned into the pasta aisle.

Jack Monroe

@BootstrapCook·18h

(I actually gasped.)

{Photo of it at 29p again}

https://twitter.com/BootstrapCook/status/1492538937067606016

malcolmg

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Heathener said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election

Unless the seismic shift which has occurred: from roughly +10% to -10% is one of those once-in-a-generation moments.

I happen to think it is, so I don't think it's too early too call the next election let alone 'obviously'.

Under Boris Johnson there is no way back for the Conservatives to win.

Brave

If there are any morals left in the country it is 100% obvious. Who with any principles or morals will vote for the criminal party.

Mexicanpete

Beibheirli_C said:

Alphabet_Soup said:

Beibheirli_C said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived ...

I think that, outside of Conservative supporters, post-covid gratitude is zero. Protecting the country from threats like pandemics is what we elect the govt for. It is their actual day job.

Should we be grateful that they did what they were supposed to do? Is that how far we have fallen?

And that does not even take into account the moving of Covid positive people into Care Homes which wiped out the over 80s in some homes. Something which seems to have been forgotten as the flags get waved...

Welcome to the dark side, Bev. Rich Tory pensioners were sacrificed so that young Labour voters had a hospital bed when they needed one. Outrageous.

Do not be so daft. It was not planned, it was just common-or-garden incompetence. However no one has been sanctioned for it. The unecessary, early deaths of thousands has been consequence free.

The vacated hospital beds were subsequently filled by people with no vaccine protection, but I cannot recall any of them being checked for political affiliations.

That will be in the next Johnson manifesto!

HYUFD

RochdalePioneers said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Heathener said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election

Unless the seismic shift which has occurred: from roughly +10% to -10% is one of those once-in-a-generation moments.

I happen to think it is, so I don't think it's too early too call the next election let alone 'obviously'.

Under Boris Johnson there is no way back for the Conservatives to win.

Brave

A little Brave but likely correct. I cannot see how this government wins reelection. But I can see how the Conservatives win the next election under a competent new leader who draws a line under the worst of it.

Under Boris unlikely but not impossible and very dependent on Starmer being able to win conservative voters to labour

I've said for a while that I expect apathy to be the big winner in red wall seats. 2019 Tories will see just how much of a donkey they loaned their votes to, but won't go back to Labour in large numbers either. So apathy will win. Labour will win a stack of seats back by their vote recovering a little and the Tory vote falling a lot.

The redwall votes were loaned to Boris, note Boris not the Tories, in 2019 to get Brexit done. Remember most redwall seats voted for Corbyn in 2017 and Ed Miliband too and many even voted for Michael Foot. They are not natural Tory seats and it will be very difficult for the Tories to hold them now Brexit has got done and even more so without Boris.

As long as Starmer sticks to his line he will not rejoin the EU as PM and not rejoin the EEA with free movement either (only align closer to its regulations), it will be hard for the Tories to hold their redwall seats. Whoever is Tory leader the most they can hope for is a narrow majority like Major in 1992 or Cameron in 2015 or most seats in a hung parliament like May in 2017 or Cameroon in 2010 not another Conservative landslide like Boris won in 2019

malcolmg

Mexicanpete said:

malcolmg said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived and replaced by anger our inflation and falling living standards.

Pointing out Covid "has to be paid for" only gets you so far - Rishi Sunak has had to pivot from being "Mr Giveaway" to "Mr Takeback" and that won't do him any favours even if he gets the top job.

I am already hearing through my local Government contacts the belt tightening across Councils has started and will doubtless be more severe in years to come. For those Councils who obtain as much as 80% of income via Council Tax, rising inflation means increasing the Council Tax precept as much as possible so it's 5% for many people this far but that's set against the return of cuts in some services.

It may well be the changes to NI will alleviate some part of the issue over the provision of care for adults and vulnerable children but it remains a huge burden for many Councils.

The new working environment has, as we've seen, wrecked the operating models of most transport providers but the lack of new thinking (weekday engineering works anyone?) about how to operate services is telling.

Hardly likely to b emuch post - covid gratitude, the government were constantly partying hilst people were dying in the 10's of thousands, as they danced teh night away people were not allowed to see their dying relatives. More likely to be a lynch mob if people in UK had any backbone left.

malcolmg said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived and replaced by anger our inflation and falling living standards.

Pointing out Covid "has to be paid for" only gets you so far - Rishi Sunak has had to pivot from being "Mr Giveaway" to "Mr Takeback" and that won't do him any favours even if he gets the top job.

I am already hearing through my local Government contacts the belt tightening across Councils has started and will doubtless be more severe in years to come. For those Councils who obtain as much as 80% of income via Council Tax, rising inflation means increasing the Council Tax precept as much as possible so it's 5% for many people this far but that's set against the return of cuts in some services.

It may well be the changes to NI will alleviate some part of the issue over the provision of care for adults and vulnerable children but it remains a huge burden for many Councils.

The new working environment has, as we've seen, wrecked the operating models of most transport providers but the lack of new thinking (weekday engineering works anyone?) about how to operate services is telling.

Hardly likely to b emuch post - covid gratitude, the government were constantly partying hilst people were dying in the 10's of thousands, as they danced teh night away people were not allowed to see their dying relatives. More likely to be a lynch mob if people in UK had any backbone left.

Off topic

Norman Collier has just hijacked your keyboard!

new keyboard or fingers needed I think. I was making porridge so missed the edit window.

another_richard

Beibheirli_C said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived ...

I think that, outside of Conservative supporters, post-covid gratitude is zero. Protecting the country from threats like pandemics is what we elect the govt for. It is their actual day job.

Should we be grateful that they did what they were supposed to do? Is that how far we have fallen?

And that does not even take into account the moving of Covid positive people into Care Homes which wiped out the over 80s in some homes. Something which seems to have been forgotten as the flags get waved...

Well the 'envy of the world' would certainly like to have its part in the care homes deaths forgotten.

That said I don't think the government deserves any gratitude for its covid response - it got some things right and got some things wrong.

And many of the things it got wrong were senseless.

On the other hand a Starmer government would have handled things significantly worse.

Tres

Heathener said:

edmundintokyo said:

Heathener said:

An excellent thread and a solid basis for thinking that Boris Johnson's tories are toast at the next General Election.

Tory MP's don't want to know? Fine by opposition supporters (apart from the wrecking ball on Britain in the meantime).

Tory MPs have pretty good smoke detectors.

Is it time to debunk this myth?

Heseltine wielded the knife against Thatcher and in some ways the Party has never recovered from that act. The Daily Mail the other day dragged it back into the frame in urging tories to stay loyal to their 'winner' Boris.

I don't think the Conservative MPs have either the courage or the morals to remove Boris Johnson.

They obviously don't. If they did he'd be gone and we wouldn't be still talking about it.

Beibheirli_C

edmundintokyo said:

Beibheirli_C said:

edmundintokyo said:

Heathener said:

An excellent thread and a solid basis for thinking that Boris Johnson's tories are toast at the next General Election.

Tory MP's don't want to know? Fine by opposition supporters (apart from the wrecking ball on Britain in the meantime).

Tory MPs have pretty good smoke detectors. If Boris's numbers look irreparably terrible as the election approaches they'll likely replace him then, but there's plenty of time before we get to that point and he might still recover.

And which candidate can recover from the reputational damage inflicted by Boris?

Too soon to say, that's another reason not to move yet. There are loads of ministers in the government, you only need one of them to be a nice, refreshing contrast and they only have to keep it up for the month or two between a Tory leadership contest and a general election.

I might agree with that if I could see two candidates that the MPs would select and the membership vote for. Remember that a lot of the experienced Tories were either tossed out early on or have retired. That leaves us with a Cabinet of non-entities to choose from.

Look at the oft-toted front runners - Truss, Raab, Sunak, et al. Only Sunak looks competent but the upcoming tax grabs will finish off his chances. He may win the Tory selectorate vote but as PM he would have no chance. The economics of the next few years will not be kind. His only chance would be an immediate snap election on becoming leader with a wholesale clearing out of Boris's Cabinet of non-talents and then he would be stuck with them on the back benches behind him and out for revenge

Dura_Ace

Heathener said:

On the Ukraine I notice that the language has been altered this morning by the Defence Secretary. Now he speaks of an imminent 'incursion.'

I will say this about Baldy Ben; he does at least comport himself with a modicum of dignity and competence relative to the rest of the shower of shite and is a great improvement over the two previous incumbents.

Scott_xP

HYUFD said:

The redwall voted were loaned to Boris, note Boris not the Tories, in 2019 to get Brexit done.

Not true

"When asked about reasons for their vote in 2019, there were far more mentions of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party than of the prime minister, and little evidence that he was uniquely popular with these voters." Eye-opening from @p_surridge
https://www.ft.com/content/6062ecf0-70d8-4433-bc3b-b2a66dfd162c

Beibheirli_C

another_richard said:

On the other hand a Starmer government would have handled things significantly worse.

Quite possibly, but counterfactuals... let us hope we never find out. No one wants a pandemic re-run.

StillWaters

Beibheirli_C said:

Alphabet_Soup said:

Beibheirli_C said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived ...

I think that, outside of Conservative supporters, post-covid gratitude is zero. Protecting the country from threats like pandemics is what we elect the govt for. It is their actual day job.

Should we be grateful that they did what they were supposed to do? Is that how far we have fallen?

And that does not even take into account the moving of Covid positive people into Care Homes which wiped out the over 80s in some homes. Something which seems to have been forgotten as the flags get waved...

Welcome to the dark side, Bev. Rich Tory pensioners were sacrificed so that young Labour voters had a hospital bed when they needed one. Outrageous.

Do not be so daft. It was not planned, it was just common-or-garden incompetence. However no one has been sanctioned for it. The unecessary, early deaths of thousands has been consequence free.

The vacated hospital beds were subsequently filled by people with no vaccine protection, but I cannot recall any of them being checked for political affiliations.

It was a choice they made.

They were worried about overload in the hospital system (northern Italy was at the same time). They chose to empty beds as far as they could. They also felt that old people in hospital would be vulnerable to incoming covid patients.

Unfortunately they didn’t know about asymptomatic covid

Big_G_NorthWales

Dura_Ace said:

Heathener said:

On the Ukraine I notice that the language has been altered this morning by the Defence Secretary. Now he speaks of an imminent 'incursion.'

I will say this about Baldy Ben; he does at least comport himself with a modicum of dignity and competence relative to the rest of the shower of shite and is a great improvement over the two previous incumbents.

I think he could be in with a chance especially as he now tops conhome, the membership bible

LostPassword

Eabhal said:

FPT: I find DavidL's response to partygate one of the more interesting on here. He had the same reaction right at the peak of the crisis for the PM.

I would've thought, given his background, that the principle of our lawmakers abiding by the law would be an important one, and he'd recognise that not doing so weakens our position when dealing with with lawless dictators such as Putin. Particularly when the laws are so personally restrictive, and unusual.

Perhaps exposure to the law burns you out, a bit like junior doctors and their care for patients. I'm still young, and naive, so I'm going to hold onto the idea that the parties were a serious betrayal of trust and a danger to a democracy where so much depends on personal integrity in the absence of a formal constitution.

It's similar to my wife's, though she has been more critical of Johnson for longer than DavidL. Her view is that, of all the things that Boris Johnson has done, she doesn't think much of the British public that they're upset at him for having parties when they weren't allowed to, and that it is that which is the final straw for many people, and not everything else.

Alphabet_Soup

Beibheirli_C said:

Alphabet_Soup said:

Beibheirli_C said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived ...

I think that, outside of Conservative supporters, post-covid gratitude is zero. Protecting the country from threats like pandemics is what we elect the govt for. It is their actual day job.

Should we be grateful that they did what they were supposed to do? Is that how far we have fallen?

And that does not even take into account the moving of Covid positive people into Care Homes which wiped out the over 80s in some homes. Something which seems to have been forgotten as the flags get waved...

Welcome to the dark side, Bev. Rich Tory pensioners were sacrificed so that young Labour voters had a hospital bed when they needed one. Outrageous.

Do not be so daft. It was not planned, it was just common-or-garden incompetence. However no one has been sanctioned for it. The unecessary, early deaths of thousands has been consequence free.

The vacated hospital beds were subsequently filled by people with no vaccine protection, but I cannot recall any of them being checked for political affiliations.

We don't need to check them for political affiliation. Countless opinion polls have done the work already. The bed-blocker clearance policy was an emergency political judgment that benefited the young at the expense of the old.

Dura_Ace

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Dura_Ace said:

Heathener said:

On the Ukraine I notice that the language has been altered this morning by the Defence Secretary. Now he speaks of an imminent 'incursion.'

I will say this about Baldy Ben; he does at least comport himself with a modicum of dignity and competence relative to the rest of the shower of shite and is a great improvement over the two previous incumbents.

I think he could be in with a chance especially as he now tops conhome, the membership bible

Remainer. No chance. The tory members will vote for the most overtly europhobic candidate in final vote.

HYUFD

Scott_xP said:

HYUFD said:

The redwall voted were loaned to Boris, note Boris not the Tories, in 2019 to get Brexit done.

Not true

"When asked about reasons for their vote in 2019, there were far more mentions of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party than of the prime minister, and little evidence that he was uniquely popular with these voters." Eye-opening from @p_surridge
https://www.ft.com/content/6062ecf0-70d8-4433-bc3b-b2a66dfd162c

The evidence is clear, most redwall seats voted for Corbyn in 2017.

The reason they voted for Boris in 2019 was solely to get Brexit done, not because they wanted a Tory government and hence most redwall voters have now returned to Labour now Brexit has got done

edmundintokyo

Heathener said:

edmundintokyo said:

Heathener said:

An excellent thread and a solid basis for thinking that Boris Johnson's tories are toast at the next General Election.

Tory MP's don't want to know? Fine by opposition supporters (apart from the wrecking ball on Britain in the meantime).

Tory MPs have pretty good smoke detectors.

Is it time to debunk this myth?

Heseltine wielded the knife against Thatcher and in some ways the Party has never recovered from that act. The Daily Mail the other day dragged it back into the frame in urging tories to stay loyal to their 'winner' Boris.

I don't think the Conservative MPs have either the courage or the morals to remove Boris Johnson.

Well, look at the electoral record and see how they did.

Switches they made correctly:
- Thatcher->Major
- IDS->Howard
- May->Johnson

Switches they made and shouldn't have:
None

Switches they should have made but didn't:
- May before she lost her majority, I guess. But in their defence, this was extremely not obvious until the middle of the campaign.
They could have switched Major out before his defeat but it's not obvious that would have helped. Likewise Hague, he was making the best of a bad job up against a talented opponent.

I know you think they should dump Boris so you think they're failing because they haven't but we don't yet know if you're right, and we also don't yet know if they'll do it since the window is still wide open.

Alphabet_Soup

Commenters on the previous thread were complaining about OAPs (yet again). The state pension is £8k for the majority and £10k for those born after 31 March 1951 and who have paid for their extra £2k by having their pension delayed by 12 months. It's true that many are asset-rich because of rising house prices but the beneficiaries will be their middle-aged descendants, not the pensioners themselves who need somewhere to live just like everyone else.

The solution is to raise inheritance taxes and block loopholes, but the combined forces of the elderly and middle-aged will never accept it. If a 30-year-old is facing a hard time they should look askance at their 55-year-old parents rather than their 80-year-old granny.

Eabhal

rottenborough said:

Jack Monroe
@BootstrapCook

Woke up this morning and realised I couldn’t procrastinate my food shop for a day longer, and decided it was time - three and a half weeks on from my accidentally viral tweet about the prices of basic foods at the supermarket - to brave it, and see what, if anything, had changed.

Jack Monroe
@BootstrapCook·18hReplying to @BootstrapCook

This time last year, the cheapest pasta in my local supermarket (Asda, Shoeburyness), was 29p for 500g. Last month it jumped to 70p. That was a 141% price increase as it hits the poorest and most vulnerable households. I literally held my breath as I turned into the pasta aisle.

Jack Monroe

@BootstrapCook·18h

(I actually gasped.)

{Photo of it at 29p again}

https://twitter.com/BootstrapCook/status/1492538937067606016

Inflation April 2021- April 2022 is only going to be mildly regressive (https://ifs.org.uk/publications/15905). Of course, that inflation eats up a larger proportion of lower income disposable income compared with richer people.

Much depends on whether benefits will be uprated in line with inflation (with the shadow of the benefit freeze still having an huge impact on current benefit rates).

Those hit hardest will be those who are in work, live in badly insulated homes and commute to work by car.

Scott_xP

HYUFD said:

The reason they voted for Boris in 2019 was solely to get Brexit done

The FT asked them why they voted the way that did and said Corbyn

Clearly truth has as little meaning for you as it does for BoZo

HYUFD

Alphabet_Soup said:

Commenters on the previous thread were complaining about OAPs (yet again). The state pension is £8k for the majority and £10k for those born after 31 March 1951 and who have paid for their extra £2k by having their pension delayed by 12 months. It's true that many are asset-rich because of rising house prices but the beneficiaries will be their middle-aged descendants, not the pensioners themselves who need somewhere to live just like everyone else.

The solution is to raise inheritance taxes and block loopholes, but the combined forces of the elderly and middle-aged will never accept it. If a 30-year-old is facing a hard time they should look askance at their 55-year-old parents rather than their 80-year-old granny.

And many of their 55 to 60 year old parents help their 30 year old children with deposits to buy their first property, while they will inherit again assets from their grandparents when they pass away

MaxPB

rottenborough said:

Jack Monroe
@BootstrapCook

Woke up this morning and realised I couldn’t procrastinate my food shop for a day longer, and decided it was time - three and a half weeks on from my accidentally viral tweet about the prices of basic foods at the supermarket - to brave it, and see what, if anything, had changed.

Jack Monroe
@BootstrapCook·18hReplying to @BootstrapCook

This time last year, the cheapest pasta in my local supermarket (Asda, Shoeburyness), was 29p for 500g. Last month it jumped to 70p. That was a 141% price increase as it hits the poorest and most vulnerable households. I literally held my breath as I turned into the pasta aisle.

Jack Monroe

@BootstrapCook·18h

(I actually gasped.)

{Photo of it at 29p again}

https://twitter.com/BootstrapCook/status/1492538937067606016

Yes, the real cost of living index rise for people on low incomes is significantly higher than for people on middle incomes. They're going to lose a much bigger proportion of their disposable income to price rises for basic goods and services. For younger people I saw a stat earlier this week that they will lose 30-40% of their disposable income vs a 20% loss for middle aged people and just around 10% for retirees.

Once again the government has taken an opportunity to shit on young people and treat the under 40s as a cash machine to buy votes from old people.

HYUFD

edmundintokyo said:

Heathener said:

edmundintokyo said:

Heathener said:

An excellent thread and a solid basis for thinking that Boris Johnson's tories are toast at the next General Election.

Tory MP's don't want to know? Fine by opposition supporters (apart from the wrecking ball on Britain in the meantime).

Tory MPs have pretty good smoke detectors.

Is it time to debunk this myth?

Heseltine wielded the knife against Thatcher and in some ways the Party has never recovered from that act. The Daily Mail the other day dragged it back into the frame in urging tories to stay loyal to their 'winner' Boris.

I don't think the Conservative MPs have either the courage or the morals to remove Boris Johnson.

Well, look at the electoral record and see how they did.

Switches they made correctly:
- Thatcher->Major
- IDS->Howard
- May->Johnson

Switches they made and shouldn't have:
None

Switches they should have made but didn't:
- May before she lost her majority, I guess. But in their defence, this was extremely not obvious until the middle of the campaign.
They could have switched Major out before his defeat but it's not obvious that would have helped. Likewise Hague, he was making the best of a bad job up against a talented opponent.

I know you think they should dump Boris so you think they're failing because they haven't but we don't yet know if you're right, and we also don't yet know if they'll do it since the window is still wide open.

Howard did no better in 2005 than IDS was polling in 2003

Beibheirli_C

Eabhal said:

FPT: I find DavidL's response to partygate one of the more interesting on here. He had the same reaction right at the peak of the crisis for the PM.

I would've thought, given his background, that the principle of our lawmakers abiding by the law would be an important one, and he'd recognise that not doing so weakens our position when dealing with with lawless dictators such as Putin. Particularly when the laws are so personally restrictive, and unusual.

Perhaps exposure to the law burns you out, a bit like junior doctors and their care for patients. I'm still young, and naive, so I'm going to hold onto the idea that the parties were a serious betrayal of trust and a danger to a democracy where so much depends on personal integrity in the absence of a formal constitution.

It seems to me that for some posters, party loyalty wins out every time.

I sometimes suspect that if Boris was filmed peeing on the roses in No.10's garden, his supporters on here would laud him for fertilising publicly owned plants and praise his selfless giving to the nation...

NickPalmer

Heathener said:

Black Wednesday finished the tories in 1992. From that moment on the writing was on the wall. Labour rose into double digit leads and then, two years after BW, Tony Blair lifted them into even more stratospheric leads.

But it was Black Wednesday which finished them.

Partygate has finished the tories for 2024.

Would they do better under a different leader like Rishi Sunak? Possibly but it may just be damage limitation now.

I'd like to think so. But I remember Tony Benn saying "We need to be careful of the Tory habit of picking a new leader and telling people they've got a new government." Johnson has pulled that off, big time - even serious lefties struggle to blame him for austerity.

Starmer has successfully moved Labour to the point that a majority of voters (literally, over 50%) see him as a credible alternative. He's not yet moved them to think "Wow, Starmer would be great." There is a risk that a new Tory leader could slip into that position with a snap election.

RochdalePioneers

HYUFD said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Heathener said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election

Unless the seismic shift which has occurred: from roughly +10% to -10% is one of those once-in-a-generation moments.

I happen to think it is, so I don't think it's too early too call the next election let alone 'obviously'.

Under Boris Johnson there is no way back for the Conservatives to win.

Brave

A little Brave but likely correct. I cannot see how this government wins reelection. But I can see how the Conservatives win the next election under a competent new leader who draws a line under the worst of it.

Under Boris unlikely but not impossible and very dependent on Starmer being able to win conservative voters to labour

I've said for a while that I expect apathy to be the big winner in red wall seats. 2019 Tories will see just how much of a donkey they loaned their votes to, but won't go back to Labour in large numbers either. So apathy will win. Labour will win a stack of seats back by their vote recovering a little and the Tory vote falling a lot.

The redwall votes were loaned to Boris, note Boris not the Tories, in 2019 to get Brexit done. Remember most redwall seats voted for Corbyn in 2017 and Ed Miliband too and many even voted for Michael Foot. They are not natural Tory seats and it will be very difficult for the Tories to hold them now Brexit has got done and even more so without Boris.

As long as Starmer sticks to his line he will not rejoin the EU as PM and not rejoin the EEA with free movement either (only align closer to its regulations), it will be hard for the Tories to hold their redwall seats. Whoever is Tory leader the most they can hope for is a narrow majority like Major in 1992 or Cameron in 2015 or most seats in a hung parliament like May in 2017 or Cameroon in 2010 not another Conservative landslide like Boris won in 2019

I do love it when you tell me how my neighbours voted and why. I lived most of my adult life in a variety of red wall seats and spent a decade talking to, campaigning with and representing red wall voters. So its understandable that I need you to tell me what they think and why they voted.

another_richard

LostPassword said:

Eabhal said:

FPT: I find DavidL's response to partygate one of the more interesting on here. He had the same reaction right at the peak of the crisis for the PM.

I would've thought, given his background, that the principle of our lawmakers abiding by the law would be an important one, and he'd recognise that not doing so weakens our position when dealing with with lawless dictators such as Putin. Particularly when the laws are so personally restrictive, and unusual.

Perhaps exposure to the law burns you out, a bit like junior doctors and their care for patients. I'm still young, and naive, so I'm going to hold onto the idea that the parties were a serious betrayal of trust and a danger to a democracy where so much depends on personal integrity in the absence of a formal constitution.

It's similar to my wife's, though she has been more critical of Johnson for longer than DavidL. Her view is that, of all the things that Boris Johnson has done, she doesn't think much of the British public that they're upset at him for having parties when they weren't allowed to, and that it is that which is the final straw for many people, and not everything else.

Here's a thought - Boris thought that as nobody cared about Churchill's belly stuffing. champagne/brandy guzzling and cigar smoking in the 1940s then nobody would care about what he and his gang got up to.

ClippP

HYUFD said:

Approval ratings are relevant but not as important as the preferred PM numbers as even unpopular PMs can be re elected if the Leader of the Opposition is even more unpopular.

Too simple, young HY. There is a third group - "Don't know". This is the category that I would place myself in. Although I most certainly do know. The real answer is "Neither", but this is not presented as an option.

If you were to take the figure preferring "Boris" and then add together all those not preferring "Boris", you would find your boy is a long way behind. I know you like to find comfort out of whatever straw you happen to see blowing in the wind, and while you may like to clutch at them to keep your spirits up, that is not very helpful for seeing into the future.

RochdalePioneers

another_richard said:

Beibheirli_C said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived ...

I think that, outside of Conservative supporters, post-covid gratitude is zero. Protecting the country from threats like pandemics is what we elect the govt for. It is their actual day job.

Should we be grateful that they did what they were supposed to do? Is that how far we have fallen?

And that does not even take into account the moving of Covid positive people into Care Homes which wiped out the over 80s in some homes. Something which seems to have been forgotten as the flags get waved...

Well the 'envy of the world' would certainly like to have its part in the care homes deaths forgotten.

That said I don't think the government deserves any gratitude for its covid response - it got some things right and got some things wrong.

And many of the things it got wrong were senseless.

On the other hand a Starmer government would have handled things significantly worse.

The option wasn't a Starmer government. A *Corbyn* government would have handled it worse, thats for sure. Not sure about Starmer.

The main attack line thrown about by Liar is that Starmer would have stuck with the EU vaccines system which would have presented us from having developed and rolled out the vaccine. The rather basic problem with that attack line is that it isn't true. At least according to the person who signed off the vaccine for use when asked at a Downing Street press conference.

Andy_Cooke

FPT:

Leon said:

Hands up how many PB-ears would have correctly guessed that Voronezh and Rostov are in Russia not Ukraine (or some other Russiany-but-not-actually-Russian place?

I’m pretty damn good at geography, but I would have not confidently known. My only knowledge is that Rostov is surely also known as “Rostov-on-Don” so that means it is probably in the Donbas, which is disputed territory of Ukraine?

The Fiendish Russians phrased the question to embarrass her. Now, arguably, the Foreign Sec should not be so “easily” tripped up, but I can see why she got it wrong

Those here, however, are not the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, entering fraught diplomatic negotiations with the Russians over events on the border of Russia and Ukraine.

We have not been receiving multiple briefs on the situation and various classifications, with maps of the areas and regions of interest highlighted.

She failed to do her job, failed to prepare, failed to know fundamentals of the areas of concern on which she was repeatedly briefed, and failed the people of the UK and the West.

Now, we may compare her to the unbriefed general public thrown in at zero notice on sensitive diplomatic negotiations, but I would suggest that this is not the appropriate threshold of competence to use in this scenario.

RochdalePioneers

Beibheirli_C said:

edmundintokyo said:

Beibheirli_C said:

edmundintokyo said:

Heathener said:

An excellent thread and a solid basis for thinking that Boris Johnson's tories are toast at the next General Election.

Tory MP's don't want to know? Fine by opposition supporters (apart from the wrecking ball on Britain in the meantime).

Tory MPs have pretty good smoke detectors. If Boris's numbers look irreparably terrible as the election approaches they'll likely replace him then, but there's plenty of time before we get to that point and he might still recover.

And which candidate can recover from the reputational damage inflicted by Boris?

Too soon to say, that's another reason not to move yet. There are loads of ministers in the government, you only need one of them to be a nice, refreshing contrast and they only have to keep it up for the month or two between a Tory leadership contest and a general election.

I might agree with that if I could see two candidates that the MPs would select and the membership vote for. Remember that a lot of the experienced Tories were either tossed out early on or have retired. That leaves us with a Cabinet of non-entities to choose from.

Look at the oft-toted front runners - Truss, Raab, Sunak, et al. Only Sunak looks competent but the upcoming tax grabs will finish off his chances. He may win the Tory selectorate vote but as PM he would have no chance. The economics of the next few years will not be kind. His only chance would be an immediate snap election on becoming leader with a wholesale clearing out of Boris's Cabinet of non-talents and then he would be stuck with them on the back benches behind him and out for revenge

PM Sunak would cancel "Boris Johnson's Tax Rise"...

Beibheirli_C

Alphabet_Soup said:

Beibheirli_C said:

Alphabet_Soup said:

Beibheirli_C said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived ...

I think that, outside of Conservative supporters, post-covid gratitude is zero. Protecting the country from threats like pandemics is what we elect the govt for. It is their actual day job.

Should we be grateful that they did what they were supposed to do? Is that how far we have fallen?

And that does not even take into account the moving of Covid positive people into Care Homes which wiped out the over 80s in some homes. Something which seems to have been forgotten as the flags get waved...

Welcome to the dark side, Bev. Rich Tory pensioners were sacrificed so that young Labour voters had a hospital bed when they needed one. Outrageous.

Do not be so daft. It was not planned, it was just common-or-garden incompetence. However no one has been sanctioned for it. The unecessary, early deaths of thousands has been consequence free.

The vacated hospital beds were subsequently filled by people with no vaccine protection, but I cannot recall any of them being checked for political affiliations.

We don't need to check them for political affiliation. Countless opinion polls have done the work already. The bed-blocker clearance policy was an emergency political judgment that benefited the young at the expense of the old.

The young did not wind up in hospital, unless being in your 50's is "young". The people in hospital were predominately 50 and older and many over 65 came out in coffins.

If you are going to shill for the govt, at least try harder.

FrankBooth

As ever an excellent summary by Andrew Rawnsley.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/13/britain-is-trapped-in-no-mans-land-while-tory-mps-dither-over-ditching-boris-johnson

“The phrase you hear a lot of in the tearoom is ‘we can’t go on like this’.” So I asked him whether he had submitted a letter calling for a confidence vote. He confessed that he hadn’t, before arguing that it was too early to move. He was choosing to go on like this.

Elsewhere some positive signs from Germany.

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/germany-loses-patience-ex-chancellors-014827641.html

Cyclefree

Eabhal said:

FPT: I find DavidL's response to partygate one of the more interesting on here. He had the same reaction right at the peak of the crisis for the PM.

I would've thought, given his background, that the principle of our lawmakers abiding by the law would be an important one, and he'd recognise that not doing so weakens our position when dealing with with lawless dictators such as Putin. Particularly when the laws are so personally restrictive, and unusual.

Perhaps exposure to the law burns you out, a bit like junior doctors and their care for patients. I'm still young, and naive, so I'm going to hold onto the idea that the parties were a serious betrayal of trust and a danger to a democracy where so much depends on personal integrity in the absence of a formal constitution.

Well, I'm a lawyer and I am incandescent with rage at the damage this government has done and is doing to the rule of law and the breakdown of trust, as I have said ad bloody nauseam both above and below the line since the Blonde Berk was elected.

As for Ms Truss, the criticism to be made of her is that she did not do her homework before the meetings. She did not prepare, did not read or absorb any briefings. She wants to be compared with Mrs T, does she? Very well then. The one thing you could say about Mrs T is that she was on top of the detail, she did her preparation, she understood the issues and she had a seriousness and gravitas about her which made other leaders and countries respect her - and by extension - Britain. She was a serious politician.

What we have these days are performative ones. If I want to see children playing at being grown ups in costumes that don't quite fit I can go to a school play.

As for next leader I have already made my suggestion as to someone outside the Cabinet - and so not tainted by the pathetic excuses those who are dragged in front of a microphone have to come out with - and with some real achievements to his name.

But until the Tory party grows up it is all pretty hopeless, frankly.

MikeSmithson

Generally speaking @HYUFD chooses the best numbers to fit his position. Best PM ratings over the decades are heavily biased towards the incumbent. Remember how Maggie rated against Callaghan at GE1979.

DavidL

Eabhal said:

FPT: I find DavidL's response to partygate one of the more interesting on here. He had the same reaction right at the peak of the crisis for the PM.

I would've thought, given his background, that the principle of our lawmakers abiding by the law would be an important one, and he'd recognise that not doing so weakens our position when dealing with with lawless dictators such as Putin. Particularly when the laws are so personally restrictive, and unusual.

Perhaps exposure to the law burns you out, a bit like junior doctors and their care for patients. I'm still young, and naive, so I'm going to hold onto the idea that the parties were a serious betrayal of trust and a danger to a democracy where so much depends on personal integrity in the absence of a formal constitution.

I think I have bored people to death on this already but I am not saying that civil servants and ministers ignoring the law is not important or trivial, even although the penalty for breaching the law is a FPN. There clearly should be disciplinary implications for that and an investigation as to how such stupidity ever came to pass. But, for me, the key point is that Boris lied to the Commons when he told them that there were to the best of his knowledge no such parties and that he would be angry if there had been. Parties that he had attended and which had been organised by his PPS and which even took place in his own flat. That is unforgiveable.

What has seriously disappointed me is that the 640 odd Members of Parliament have not stepped up to their duty and removed a PM that has behaved like that. Instead, they sought to assign their duty and responsibility to a civil servant, Gray, then to the hapless police service. It is a disgrace and a derogation of duty.

We saw the consequences of tolerating lies from PMs over Iraq, another PM who got away with egregious lying. It undermines confidence in our politics and democracy. It is important. And it is not something that any MP conscious of their duty can derogate to someone else. He should be gone.

HYUFD

Scott_xP said:

HYUFD said:

The reason they voted for Boris in 2019 was solely to get Brexit done

The FT asked them why they voted the way that did and said Corbyn

Clearly truth has as little meaning for you as it does for BoZo

They voted for Corbyn in 2017, they voted Conservative in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done.

The simple fact most redwall seats had a Labour MP in 2017, elected a Tory MP in 2019 and in polling have now gone back to Labour with Brexit done tells you that

another_richard

StillWaters said:

Beibheirli_C said:

Alphabet_Soup said:

Beibheirli_C said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived ...

I think that, outside of Conservative supporters, post-covid gratitude is zero. Protecting the country from threats like pandemics is what we elect the govt for. It is their actual day job.

Should we be grateful that they did what they were supposed to do? Is that how far we have fallen?

And that does not even take into account the moving of Covid positive people into Care Homes which wiped out the over 80s in some homes. Something which seems to have been forgotten as the flags get waved...

Welcome to the dark side, Bev. Rich Tory pensioners were sacrificed so that young Labour voters had a hospital bed when they needed one. Outrageous.

Do not be so daft. It was not planned, it was just common-or-garden incompetence. However no one has been sanctioned for it. The unecessary, early deaths of thousands has been consequence free.

The vacated hospital beds were subsequently filled by people with no vaccine protection, but I cannot recall any of them being checked for political affiliations.

It was a choice they made.

They were worried about overload in the hospital system (northern Italy was at the same time). They chose to empty beds as far as they could. They also felt that old people in hospital would be vulnerable to incoming covid patients.

Unfortunately they didn’t know about asymptomatic covid

Much was not known about covid in the first weeks which made it all the more important to delay its entry into the UK.

Instead:

The Foreign Office faced a backlash on Sunday over its lack of clear advice for British people with holidays booked in northern Italy and those currently in quarantine as a result of the region’s escalating coronavirus crisis.

Hours after a decree was approved to lock down the Lombardy region, the department was still advising that it was safe to travel anywhere in Italy except for 11 towns where the outbreak originated.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/08/coronavirus-foreign-office-advice-over-italy-confuses-british-holidaymakers

Cyclefree

FrankBooth said:

As ever an excellent summary by Andrew Rawnsley.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/13/britain-is-trapped-in-no-mans-land-while-tory-mps-dither-over-ditching-boris-johnson

“The phrase you hear a lot of in the tearoom is ‘we can’t go on like this’.” So I asked him whether he had submitted a letter calling for a confidence vote. He confessed that he hadn’t, before arguing that it was too early to move. He was choosing to go on like this.

Elsewhere some positive signs from Germany.

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/germany-loses-patience-ex-chancellors-014827641.html

Vladimir: "I can't go on like this."

Estragon: "That's what you think."

Waiting for Godot.

Beibheirli_C

RochdalePioneers said:

Beibheirli_C said:

edmundintokyo said:

Beibheirli_C said:

edmundintokyo said:

Heathener said:

An excellent thread and a solid basis for thinking that Boris Johnson's tories are toast at the next General Election.

Tory MP's don't want to know? Fine by opposition supporters (apart from the wrecking ball on Britain in the meantime).

Tory MPs have pretty good smoke detectors. If Boris's numbers look irreparably terrible as the election approaches they'll likely replace him then, but there's plenty of time before we get to that point and he might still recover.

And which candidate can recover from the reputational damage inflicted by Boris?

Too soon to say, that's another reason not to move yet. There are loads of ministers in the government, you only need one of them to be a nice, refreshing contrast and they only have to keep it up for the month or two between a Tory leadership contest and a general election.

I might agree with that if I could see two candidates that the MPs would select and the membership vote for. Remember that a lot of the experienced Tories were either tossed out early on or have retired. That leaves us with a Cabinet of non-entities to choose from.

Look at the oft-toted front runners - Truss, Raab, Sunak, et al. Only Sunak looks competent but the upcoming tax grabs will finish off his chances. He may win the Tory selectorate vote but as PM he would have no chance. The economics of the next few years will not be kind. His only chance would be an immediate snap election on becoming leader with a wholesale clearing out of Boris's Cabinet of non-talents and then he would be stuck with them on the back benches behind him and out for revenge

PM Sunak would cancel "Boris Johnson's Tax Rise"...

I do not think that would save him from post-covid inflation and Brexit-induced inflation. Whoever is next up is in for a bad time

NickPalmer

Is this close to you, HYUFD? What do you make of it?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/13/satellite-technology-creates-virtual-grazing-areas-in-epping-forest

Theuniondivvie

another_richard said:

LostPassword said:

Eabhal said:

FPT: I find DavidL's response to partygate one of the more interesting on here. He had the same reaction right at the peak of the crisis for the PM.

I would've thought, given his background, that the principle of our lawmakers abiding by the law would be an important one, and he'd recognise that not doing so weakens our position when dealing with with lawless dictators such as Putin. Particularly when the laws are so personally restrictive, and unusual.

Perhaps exposure to the law burns you out, a bit like junior doctors and their care for patients. I'm still young, and naive, so I'm going to hold onto the idea that the parties were a serious betrayal of trust and a danger to a democracy where so much depends on personal integrity in the absence of a formal constitution.

It's similar to my wife's, though she has been more critical of Johnson for longer than DavidL. Her view is that, of all the things that Boris Johnson has done, she doesn't think much of the British public that they're upset at him for having parties when they weren't allowed to, and that it is that which is the final straw for many people, and not everything else.

Here's a thought - Boris thought that as nobody cared about Churchill's belly stuffing. champagne/brandy guzzling and cigar smoking in the 1940s then nobody would care about what he and his gang got up to.

I would have thought an historian as BJ claims to be would have known that the British public 1940-45 were largely unaware of Churchill’s belly stuffing and bevvy guzzling while seeing the cigars as a necessary stage prop to accompany him flicking the vickies at the Narzis.

As an adjunct to Foxy’s point about BJ’s popularity having always been somewhat illusory, feelings towards WSC weren’t necessarily positive during WWII, booed in the East End etc.

Cyclefree

RochdalePioneers said:

Beibheirli_C said:

edmundintokyo said:

Beibheirli_C said:

edmundintokyo said:

Heathener said:

An excellent thread and a solid basis for thinking that Boris Johnson's tories are toast at the next General Election.

Tory MP's don't want to know? Fine by opposition supporters (apart from the wrecking ball on Britain in the meantime).

Tory MPs have pretty good smoke detectors. If Boris's numbers look irreparably terrible as the election approaches they'll likely replace him then, but there's plenty of time before we get to that point and he might still recover.

And which candidate can recover from the reputational damage inflicted by Boris?

Too soon to say, that's another reason not to move yet. There are loads of ministers in the government, you only need one of them to be a nice, refreshing contrast and they only have to keep it up for the month or two between a Tory leadership contest and a general election.

I might agree with that if I could see two candidates that the MPs would select and the membership vote for. Remember that a lot of the experienced Tories were either tossed out early on or have retired. That leaves us with a Cabinet of non-entities to choose from.

Look at the oft-toted front runners - Truss, Raab, Sunak, et al. Only Sunak looks competent but the upcoming tax grabs will finish off his chances. He may win the Tory selectorate vote but as PM he would have no chance. The economics of the next few years will not be kind. His only chance would be an immediate snap election on becoming leader with a wholesale clearing out of Boris's Cabinet of non-talents and then he would be stuck with them on the back benches behind him and out for revenge

PM Sunak would cancel "Boris Johnson's Tax Rise"...

What about the sneaky tax rise on the young over the student loans? I'm furious about that.

HYUFD

MikeSmithson said:

Generally speaking @HYUFD chooses the best numbers to fit his position. Best PM ratings over the decades are heavily biased towards the incumbent. Remember how Maggie rated against Callaghan at GE1979.

Major led on preferred PM in 1992 but the Tories trailed on voting intention, the Tories won. Cameron led on preferred PM in 2015 but the Tories were neck and neck with Labour on voting intention, the Tories won.

1979 is the only time the preferred PM has not won, though if we had had a Presidential system Callaghan would likely have stayed President but the Tories won the Commons

malcolmg

Beibheirli_C said:

Alphabet_Soup said:

Beibheirli_C said:

Alphabet_Soup said:

Beibheirli_C said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived ...

I think that, outside of Conservative supporters, post-covid gratitude is zero. Protecting the country from threats like pandemics is what we elect the govt for. It is their actual day job.

Should we be grateful that they did what they were supposed to do? Is that how far we have fallen?

And that does not even take into account the moving of Covid positive people into Care Homes which wiped out the over 80s in some homes. Something which seems to have been forgotten as the flags get waved...

Welcome to the dark side, Bev. Rich Tory pensioners were sacrificed so that young Labour voters had a hospital bed when they needed one. Outrageous.

Do not be so daft. It was not planned, it was just common-or-garden incompetence. However no one has been sanctioned for it. The unecessary, early deaths of thousands has been consequence free.

The vacated hospital beds were subsequently filled by people with no vaccine protection, but I cannot recall any of them being checked for political affiliations.

We don't need to check them for political affiliation. Countless opinion polls have done the work already. The bed-blocker clearance policy was an emergency political judgment that benefited the young at the expense of the old.

The young did not wind up in hospital, unless being in your 50's is "young". The people in hospital were predominately 50 and older and many over 65 came out in coffins.

If you are going to shill for the govt, at least try harder.

It is all relative Bev, I now see 50 as young unfortunately.

geoffw

Fantastic ice-hockey. Down 0-3 with 20 minutes to go, Finland beat Sweden 4-3!

eek

DavidL said:

Eabhal said:

FPT: I find DavidL's response to partygate one of the more interesting on here. He had the same reaction right at the peak of the crisis for the PM.

I would've thought, given his background, that the principle of our lawmakers abiding by the law would be an important one, and he'd recognise that not doing so weakens our position when dealing with with lawless dictators such as Putin. Particularly when the laws are so personally restrictive, and unusual.

Perhaps exposure to the law burns you out, a bit like junior doctors and their care for patients. I'm still young, and naive, so I'm going to hold onto the idea that the parties were a serious betrayal of trust and a danger to a democracy where so much depends on personal integrity in the absence of a formal constitution.

I think I have bored people to death on this already but I am not saying that civil servants and ministers ignoring the law is not important or trivial, even although the penalty for breaching the law is a FPN. There clearly should be disciplinary implications for that and an investigation as to how such stupidity ever came to pass. But, for me, the key point is that Boris lied to the Commons when he told them that there were to the best of his knowledge no such parties and that he would be angry if there had been. Parties that he had attended and which had been organised by his PPS and which even took place in his own flat. That is unforgiveable.

What has seriously disappointed me is that the 640 odd Members of Parliament have not stepped up to their duty and removed a PM that has behaved like that. Instead, they sought to assign their duty and responsibility to a civil servant, Gray, then to the hapless police service. It is a disgrace and a derogation of duty.

We saw the consequences of tolerating lies from PMs over Iraq, another PM who got away with egregious lying. It undermines confidence in our politics and democracy. It is important. And it is not something that any MP conscious of their duty can derogate to someone else. He should be gone.

The 649 MPs in Parliament can't really do much about Boris as the Government has a majority that makes a VONC in the Government impossible.

The issue is that the 357 or so Tory MPs don't have any morals or standards so haven't done what is required.

That may or may not impact the votes come the next election but I suspect the opposition will all have a "As people died alone, XYZ was happy for Bozo to party" leaflets sent to swing a few votes.

Removing that leaflet drop is reason enough to remove Bozo...

Gallowgate

HYUFD said:

MikeSmithson said:

Generally speaking @HYUFD chooses the best numbers to fit his position. Best PM ratings over the decades are heavily biased towards the incumbent. Remember how Maggie rated against Callaghan at GE1979.

Major led on preferred PM in 1992 but the Tories trailed on voting intention, the Tories won. Cameron led on preferred PM in 2015 but the Tories were neck and neck with Labour on voting intention, the Tories won.

You used these historical precedents to argue that it was very unlikely Trump wouldn’t win a second term and then look what happened.

RochdalePioneers

StillWaters said:

Beibheirli_C said:

Alphabet_Soup said:

Beibheirli_C said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived ...

I think that, outside of Conservative supporters, post-covid gratitude is zero. Protecting the country from threats like pandemics is what we elect the govt for. It is their actual day job.

Should we be grateful that they did what they were supposed to do? Is that how far we have fallen?

And that does not even take into account the moving of Covid positive people into Care Homes which wiped out the over 80s in some homes. Something which seems to have been forgotten as the flags get waved...

Welcome to the dark side, Bev. Rich Tory pensioners were sacrificed so that young Labour voters had a hospital bed when they needed one. Outrageous.

Do not be so daft. It was not planned, it was just common-or-garden incompetence. However no one has been sanctioned for it. The unecessary, early deaths of thousands has been consequence free.

The vacated hospital beds were subsequently filled by people with no vaccine protection, but I cannot recall any of them being checked for political affiliations.

It was a choice they made.

They were worried about overload in the hospital system (northern Italy was at the same time). They chose to empty beds as far as they could. They also felt that old people in hospital would be vulnerable to incoming covid patients.

Unfortunately they didn’t know about asymptomatic covid

They did know. They were given explicit warnings by the NHS which they ignored. They then tried to blame the NHS for it and said they knew nothing was done locally. Which was rather disproved by the leaked correspondence showing them ordering the NHS to do so.

Whether it was the least worst option as they saw it or not, they could have been honest and owned it. Instead it was lie after lie.

Beibheirli_C

StillWaters said:

Beibheirli_C said:

Alphabet_Soup said:

Beibheirli_C said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived ...

I think that, outside of Conservative supporters, post-covid gratitude is zero. Protecting the country from threats like pandemics is what we elect the govt for. It is their actual day job.

Should we be grateful that they did what they were supposed to do? Is that how far we have fallen?

And that does not even take into account the moving of Covid positive people into Care Homes which wiped out the over 80s in some homes. Something which seems to have been forgotten as the flags get waved...

Welcome to the dark side, Bev. Rich Tory pensioners were sacrificed so that young Labour voters had a hospital bed when they needed one. Outrageous.

Do not be so daft. It was not planned, it was just common-or-garden incompetence. However no one has been sanctioned for it. The unecessary, early deaths of thousands has been consequence free.

The vacated hospital beds were subsequently filled by people with no vaccine protection, but I cannot recall any of them being checked for political affiliations.

It was a choice they made.

They were worried about overload in the hospital system (northern Italy was at the same time). They chose to empty beds as far as they could. They also felt that old people in hospital would be vulnerable to incoming covid patients.

Unfortunately they didn’t know about asymptomatic covid

Try harder. All diseases have an asymptomatic stage. That is why we have (for centuries) had quarantine procedures.

Those being moved should have been quarantined first.

Beibheirli_C

Even the level of Tory shills on here has become sub-standard.

Cyclefree

Beibheirli_C said:

Eabhal said:

FPT: I find DavidL's response to partygate one of the more interesting on here. He had the same reaction right at the peak of the crisis for the PM.

I would've thought, given his background, that the principle of our lawmakers abiding by the law would be an important one, and he'd recognise that not doing so weakens our position when dealing with with lawless dictators such as Putin. Particularly when the laws are so personally restrictive, and unusual.

Perhaps exposure to the law burns you out, a bit like junior doctors and their care for patients. I'm still young, and naive, so I'm going to hold onto the idea that the parties were a serious betrayal of trust and a danger to a democracy where so much depends on personal integrity in the absence of a formal constitution.

It seems to me that for some posters, party loyalty wins out every time.

I sometimes suspect that if Boris was filmed peeing on the roses in No.10's garden, his supporters on here would laud him for fertilising publicly owned plants and praise his selfless giving to the nation...

You pee on the compost heap. Not the roses.

Seriously. It works as an accelerator.

NickPalmer

Cyclefree said:

FrankBooth said:

As ever an excellent summary by Andrew Rawnsley.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/13/britain-is-trapped-in-no-mans-land-while-tory-mps-dither-over-ditching-boris-johnson

“The phrase you hear a lot of in the tearoom is ‘we can’t go on like this’.” So I asked him whether he had submitted a letter calling for a confidence vote. He confessed that he hadn’t, before arguing that it was too early to move. He was choosing to go on like this.

Elsewhere some positive signs from Germany.

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/germany-loses-patience-ex-chancellors-014827641.html

Vladimir: "I can't go on like this."

Estragon: "That's what you think."

Waiting for Godot.

My eye was caught by the sentence "Some who have not declared a position say they will spend the 10-day parliamentary recess, which began on Thursday, sampling opinion among constituents and local party members, which is one way of ducking their responsibility to make a decision."

I was hyperactive as an MP, canvassing nearly every week, replying to 100+ emails a day, writing long blogs, etc. But what did I do during a 10-day recess? I took a break, usually away from home, and so did every colleague that I knew. I absolutely do not believe that a single MP is wandering around this week asking random constituents what they think about Johnson.

DavidL

eek said:

DavidL said:

Eabhal said:

FPT: I find DavidL's response to partygate one of the more interesting on here. He had the same reaction right at the peak of the crisis for the PM.

I would've thought, given his background, that the principle of our lawmakers abiding by the law would be an important one, and he'd recognise that not doing so weakens our position when dealing with with lawless dictators such as Putin. Particularly when the laws are so personally restrictive, and unusual.

Perhaps exposure to the law burns you out, a bit like junior doctors and their care for patients. I'm still young, and naive, so I'm going to hold onto the idea that the parties were a serious betrayal of trust and a danger to a democracy where so much depends on personal integrity in the absence of a formal constitution.

I think I have bored people to death on this already but I am not saying that civil servants and ministers ignoring the law is not important or trivial, even although the penalty for breaching the law is a FPN. There clearly should be disciplinary implications for that and an investigation as to how such stupidity ever came to pass. But, for me, the key point is that Boris lied to the Commons when he told them that there were to the best of his knowledge no such parties and that he would be angry if there had been. Parties that he had attended and which had been organised by his PPS and which even took place in his own flat. That is unforgiveable.

What has seriously disappointed me is that the 640 odd Members of Parliament have not stepped up to their duty and removed a PM that has behaved like that. Instead, they sought to assign their duty and responsibility to a civil servant, Gray, then to the hapless police service. It is a disgrace and a derogation of duty.

We saw the consequences of tolerating lies from PMs over Iraq, another PM who got away with egregious lying. It undermines confidence in our politics and democracy. It is important. And it is not something that any MP conscious of their duty can derogate to someone else. He should be gone.

The 649 MPs in Parliament can't really do much about Boris as the Government has a majority that makes a VONC in the Government impossible.

The issue is that the 357 or so Tory MPs don't have any morals or standards so haven't done what is required.

That may or may not impact the votes come the next election but I suspect the opposition will all have a "As people died alone, XYZ was happy for Bozo to party" leaflets sent to swing a few votes.

Removing that leaflet drop is reason enough to remove Bozo...

As I said at the time, SKS made a serious mistake in not moving a VONC. Had he done so, and had the Tory MPs stood by Boris, for all their moaning, those leaflets could be printed now.

HYUFD

Gallowgate said:

HYUFD said:

MikeSmithson said:

Generally speaking @HYUFD chooses the best numbers to fit his position. Best PM ratings over the decades are heavily biased towards the incumbent. Remember how Maggie rated against Callaghan at GE1979.

Major led on preferred PM in 1992 but the Tories trailed on voting intention, the Tories won. Cameron led on preferred PM in 2015 but the Tories were neck and neck with Labour on voting intention, the Tories won.

You used these historical precedents to argue that it was very unlikely Trump wouldn’t win a second term and then look what happened.

I did not say it was impossible, see Carter in 1980 based on his approval ratings.

Trump also got closer to Biden than Carter did to Reagan

edmundintokyo

HYUFD said:

edmundintokyo said:

Heathener said:

edmundintokyo said:

Heathener said:

An excellent thread and a solid basis for thinking that Boris Johnson's tories are toast at the next General Election.

Tory MP's don't want to know? Fine by opposition supporters (apart from the wrecking ball on Britain in the meantime).

Tory MPs have pretty good smoke detectors.

Is it time to debunk this myth?

Heseltine wielded the knife against Thatcher and in some ways the Party has never recovered from that act. The Daily Mail the other day dragged it back into the frame in urging tories to stay loyal to their 'winner' Boris.

I don't think the Conservative MPs have either the courage or the morals to remove Boris Johnson.

Well, look at the electoral record and see how they did.

Switches they made correctly:
- Thatcher->Major
- IDS->Howard
- May->Johnson

Switches they made and shouldn't have:
None

Switches they should have made but didn't:
- May before she lost her majority, I guess. But in their defence, this was extremely not obvious until the middle of the campaign.
They could have switched Major out before his defeat but it's not obvious that would have helped. Likewise Hague, he was making the best of a bad job up against a talented opponent.

I know you think they should dump Boris so you think they're failing because they haven't but we don't yet know if you're right, and we also don't yet know if they'll do it since the window is still wide open.

Howard did no better in 2005 than IDS was polling in 2003

OK but we reckon governments tend to recover from mid-term, no? So the default assumption is that IDS would have done worse than that.

Eabhal

DavidL said:

Eabhal said:

FPT: I find DavidL's response to partygate one of the more interesting on here. He had the same reaction right at the peak of the crisis for the PM.

I would've thought, given his background, that the principle of our lawmakers abiding by the law would be an important one, and he'd recognise that not doing so weakens our position when dealing with with lawless dictators such as Putin. Particularly when the laws are so personally restrictive, and unusual.

Perhaps exposure to the law burns you out, a bit like junior doctors and their care for patients. I'm still young, and naive, so I'm going to hold onto the idea that the parties were a serious betrayal of trust and a danger to a democracy where so much depends on personal integrity in the absence of a formal constitution.

I think I have bored people to death on this already but I am not saying that civil servants and ministers ignoring the law is not important or trivial, even although the penalty for breaching the law is a FPN. There clearly should be disciplinary implications for that and an investigation as to how such stupidity ever came to pass. But, for me, the key point is that Boris lied to the Commons when he told them that there were to the best of his knowledge no such parties and that he would be angry if there had been. Parties that he had attended and which had been organised by his PPS and which even took place in his own flat. That is unforgiveable.

What has seriously disappointed me is that the 640 odd Members of Parliament have not stepped up to their duty and removed a PM that has behaved like that. Instead, they sought to assign their duty and responsibility to a civil servant, Gray, then to the hapless police service. It is a disgrace and a derogation of duty.

We saw the consequences of tolerating lies from PMs over Iraq, another PM who got away with egregious lying. It undermines confidence in our politics and democracy. It is important. And it is not something that any MP conscious of their duty can derogate to someone else. He should be gone.

Thanks for clarifying.

Basically, parties = Johnson bad, no consequences = Parliament/Tories bad, refusal to investigate and silly questionairre = Police bad, civil servants organising parties = civil service bad. Inevitable Johnson GE victory in 2024 = Britain bad.

Who has come out of it ok? Starmer sort of neutral - didn't get the kill. Ross a valiant rear guard action. Sturgeon didn't really use it.

Leon

For some reason, taxi-driver-anecdotes get a bad press on here. But anyway, this is another


Just got a tuk-tuk to Slave Island to buy some sleepers before my flight home (Sri Lanka, it seems, being one of the last places you can buy them OTC if you choose your pharmacy correctly. - go for ones near stations, a bit grubby, down a side street, but not totally derelict)

The tuk tuk driver, on discovering I am British, said “All the time we ask ourselves, why did you British go? Why did the British leave? Everything was better with the British, ever since you left it has been corruption corruption and war. And now the Chinese own us”

This went on for a few minutes. And it is not the first time I have encountered this attitude in Sri Lanka, it is widely held

Of course there are Russians who feel nostalgic for Stalin, and East Germans who pine for Marxism, but it is still quite striking

I wonder if Sri Lanka had the BEST experience of British imperialism? I cannot think of many colonies where British rule was so benign, and where it was so clearly superior to what came before and after

Tasmania, it ain’t

Beibheirli_C

Cyclefree said:

Beibheirli_C said:

Eabhal said:

FPT: I find DavidL's response to partygate one of the more interesting on here. He had the same reaction right at the peak of the crisis for the PM.

I would've thought, given his background, that the principle of our lawmakers abiding by the law would be an important one, and he'd recognise that not doing so weakens our position when dealing with with lawless dictators such as Putin. Particularly when the laws are so personally restrictive, and unusual.

Perhaps exposure to the law burns you out, a bit like junior doctors and their care for patients. I'm still young, and naive, so I'm going to hold onto the idea that the parties were a serious betrayal of trust and a danger to a democracy where so much depends on personal integrity in the absence of a formal constitution.

It seems to me that for some posters, party loyalty wins out every time.

I sometimes suspect that if Boris was filmed peeing on the roses in No.10's garden, his supporters on here would laud him for fertilising publicly owned plants and praise his selfless giving to the nation...

You pee on the compost heap. Not the roses.

Seriously. It works as an accelerator.

Maybe that is why I never had any luck with roses......

RochdalePioneers

Cyclefree said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Beibheirli_C said:

edmundintokyo said:

Beibheirli_C said:

edmundintokyo said:

Heathener said:

An excellent thread and a solid basis for thinking that Boris Johnson's tories are toast at the next General Election.

Tory MP's don't want to know? Fine by opposition supporters (apart from the wrecking ball on Britain in the meantime).

Tory MPs have pretty good smoke detectors. If Boris's numbers look irreparably terrible as the election approaches they'll likely replace him then, but there's plenty of time before we get to that point and he might still recover.

And which candidate can recover from the reputational damage inflicted by Boris?

Too soon to say, that's another reason not to move yet. There are loads of ministers in the government, you only need one of them to be a nice, refreshing contrast and they only have to keep it up for the month or two between a Tory leadership contest and a general election.

I might agree with that if I could see two candidates that the MPs would select and the membership vote for. Remember that a lot of the experienced Tories were either tossed out early on or have retired. That leaves us with a Cabinet of non-entities to choose from.

Look at the oft-toted front runners - Truss, Raab, Sunak, et al. Only Sunak looks competent but the upcoming tax grabs will finish off his chances. He may win the Tory selectorate vote but as PM he would have no chance. The economics of the next few years will not be kind. His only chance would be an immediate snap election on becoming leader with a wholesale clearing out of Boris's Cabinet of non-talents and then he would be stuck with them on the back benches behind him and out for revenge

PM Sunak would cancel "Boris Johnson's Tax Rise"...

What about the sneaky tax rise on the young over the student loans? I'm furious about that.

Yeah - there are a lot of other things he will struggle to wiggle off the hook for. As has been pointed out the economic storm that is coming will be very difficult for any government to navigate.

Beibheirli_C

malcolmg said:

Beibheirli_C said:

Alphabet_Soup said:

Beibheirli_C said:

Alphabet_Soup said:

Beibheirli_C said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived ...

I think that, outside of Conservative supporters, post-covid gratitude is zero. Protecting the country from threats like pandemics is what we elect the govt for. It is their actual day job.

Should we be grateful that they did what they were supposed to do? Is that how far we have fallen?

And that does not even take into account the moving of Covid positive people into Care Homes which wiped out the over 80s in some homes. Something which seems to have been forgotten as the flags get waved...

Welcome to the dark side, Bev. Rich Tory pensioners were sacrificed so that young Labour voters had a hospital bed when they needed one. Outrageous.

Do not be so daft. It was not planned, it was just common-or-garden incompetence. However no one has been sanctioned for it. The unecessary, early deaths of thousands has been consequence free.

The vacated hospital beds were subsequently filled by people with no vaccine protection, but I cannot recall any of them being checked for political affiliations.

We don't need to check them for political affiliation. Countless opinion polls have done the work already. The bed-blocker clearance policy was an emergency political judgment that benefited the young at the expense of the old.

The young did not wind up in hospital, unless being in your 50's is "young". The people in hospital were predominately 50 and older and many over 65 came out in coffins.

If you are going to shill for the govt, at least try harder.

It is all relative Bev, I now see 50 as young unfortunately.

That is "younger" Malc, not "young".

Sadly, I share your perspective and for the same reasons!

another_richard

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

Beibheirli_C said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived ...

I think that, outside of Conservative supporters, post-covid gratitude is zero. Protecting the country from threats like pandemics is what we elect the govt for. It is their actual day job.

Should we be grateful that they did what they were supposed to do? Is that how far we have fallen?

And that does not even take into account the moving of Covid positive people into Care Homes which wiped out the over 80s in some homes. Something which seems to have been forgotten as the flags get waved...

Well the 'envy of the world' would certainly like to have its part in the care homes deaths forgotten.

That said I don't think the government deserves any gratitude for its covid response - it got some things right and got some things wrong.

And many of the things it got wrong were senseless.

On the other hand a Starmer government would have handled things significantly worse.

The option wasn't a Starmer government. A *Corbyn* government would have handled it worse, thats for sure. Not sure about Starmer.

The main attack line thrown about by Liar is that Starmer would have stuck with the EU vaccines system which would have presented us from having developed and rolled out the vaccine. The rather basic problem with that attack line is that it isn't true. At least according to the person who signed off the vaccine for use when asked at a Downing Street press conference.

And yet:

A British opposition frontbencher apologized Monday for suggesting the country should have signed up to the EU’s vaccination scheme.

Catherine West, the Labour Party’s shadow Europe minister, said a 2020 message condemning the U.K.’s decision to opt out of the bloc-wide program to buy and distribute vaccines had now “proven to be wrong.”

West initially responded to a report on Britain’s move last year by tweeting: “Dumber and dumber.”

But she said in a fresh social media post Monday: “Last year, I tweeted about the EU vaccine scheme. My tweet has proven to be wrong, and I’ve now apologised and deleted it. Our NHS is doing a great job and I’ll continue supporting the effort to vaccine Britain.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/labour-mp-apologizes-for-jibe-at-uks-opt-out-of-eu-vaccine-scheme/

And then there was the LibDems:

In response to the UK government’s decision to walk away from the latest initiative, Munira Wilson, the Liberal Democrats’ health spokeswoman, said: “When coronavirus is such a threat to people’s lives and livelihoods, ministers should leave no stone unturned in their bid to end the pandemic.

“This government’s stubborn unwillingness to work with the European Union through the current crisis is unforgivable.

“The crisis does not stop at any national border. It is about time the prime minister started showing leadership, including fully participating in all EU efforts to secure critical medical supplies and a vaccine.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/10/uk-poised-to-shun-eu-coronavirus-vaccine-scheme

Aside from vaccines I don't think there's much doubt that Starmer would have had significantly more restrictions for significantly longer with all the resulting economic and social damage.

Leon

Beibheirli_C said:

StillWaters said:

Beibheirli_C said:

Alphabet_Soup said:

Beibheirli_C said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived ...

I think that, outside of Conservative supporters, post-covid gratitude is zero. Protecting the country from threats like pandemics is what we elect the govt for. It is their actual day job.

Should we be grateful that they did what they were supposed to do? Is that how far we have fallen?

And that does not even take into account the moving of Covid positive people into Care Homes which wiped out the over 80s in some homes. Something which seems to have been forgotten as the flags get waved...

Welcome to the dark side, Bev. Rich Tory pensioners were sacrificed so that young Labour voters had a hospital bed when they needed one. Outrageous.

Do not be so daft. It was not planned, it was just common-or-garden incompetence. However no one has been sanctioned for it. The unecessary, early deaths of thousands has been consequence free.

The vacated hospital beds were subsequently filled by people with no vaccine protection, but I cannot recall any of them being checked for political affiliations.

It was a choice they made.

They were worried about overload in the hospital system (northern Italy was at the same time). They chose to empty beds as far as they could. They also felt that old people in hospital would be vulnerable to incoming covid patients.

Unfortunately they didn’t know about asymptomatic covid

Try harder. All diseases have an asymptomatic stage. That is why we have (for centuries) had quarantine procedures.

Those being moved should have been quarantined first.

I’m so bored of Covid I have forgotten, and can’t be arsed to google, but I thought one thing that makes Covid - or did - so troublesome is that it is deeply infectious even when you are pre-symptomatic, or asymptomatic, and this can go on for a while?

Hence the gave difficulty of containing it

rottenborough

NickPalmer said:

Cyclefree said:

FrankBooth said:

As ever an excellent summary by Andrew Rawnsley.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/13/britain-is-trapped-in-no-mans-land-while-tory-mps-dither-over-ditching-boris-johnson

“The phrase you hear a lot of in the tearoom is ‘we can’t go on like this’.” So I asked him whether he had submitted a letter calling for a confidence vote. He confessed that he hadn’t, before arguing that it was too early to move. He was choosing to go on like this.

Elsewhere some positive signs from Germany.

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/germany-loses-patience-ex-chancellors-014827641.html

Vladimir: "I can't go on like this."

Estragon: "That's what you think."

Waiting for Godot.

My eye was caught by the sentence "Some who have not declared a position say they will spend the 10-day parliamentary recess, which began on Thursday, sampling opinion among constituents and local party members, which is one way of ducking their responsibility to make a decision."

I was hyperactive as an MP, canvassing nearly every week, replying to 100+ emails a day, writing long blogs, etc. But what did I do during a 10-day recess? I took a break, usually away from home, and so did every colleague that I knew. I absolutely do not believe that a single MP is wandering around this week asking random constituents what they think about Johnson.

I dunno why they need to go around asking even more people what they think of Johnson and Partygate. Plenty will have made their voices heard already in the three or four weeks this has been rumbled along. 1000s have emailed their MPs. I have. Twice. The country has made its mind up that he break his own rules and laws and he lied about it.

If Tory MPs choose to hesitate and prevaricate then it's their funeral and their lost seats. All good for Labour.

kinabalu

Leon said:

For some reason, taxi-driver-anecdotes get a bad press on here. But anyway, this is another


Just got a tuk-tuk to Slave Island to buy some sleepers before my flight home (Sri Lanka, it seems, being one of the last places you can buy them OTC if you choose your pharmacy correctly. - go for ones near stations, a bit grubby, down a side street, but not totally derelict)

The tuk tuk driver, on discovering I am British, said “All the time we ask ourselves, why did you British go? Why did the British leave? Everything was better with the British, ever since you left it has been corruption corruption and war. And now the Chinese own us”

This went on for a few minutes. And it is not the first time I have encountered this attitude in Sri Lanka, it is widely held

Of course there are Russians who feel nostalgic for Stalin, and East Germans who pine for Marxism, but it is still quite striking

I wonder if Sri Lanka had the BEST experience of British imperialism? I cannot think of many colonies where British rule was so benign, and where it was so clearly superior to what came before and after

Tasmania, it ain’t

Probably angling to maximize the tip.

OnlyLivingBoy

Leon said:

For some reason, taxi-driver-anecdotes get a bad press on here. But anyway, this is another


Just got a tuk-tuk to Slave Island to buy some sleepers before my flight home (Sri Lanka, it seems, being one of the last places you can buy them OTC if you choose your pharmacy correctly. - go for ones near stations, a bit grubby, down a side street, but not totally derelict)

The tuk tuk driver, on discovering I am British, said “All the time we ask ourselves, why did you British go? Why did the British leave? Everything was better with the British, ever since you left it has been corruption corruption and war. And now the Chinese own us”

This went on for a few minutes. And it is not the first time I have encountered this attitude in Sri Lanka, it is widely held

Of course there are Russians who feel nostalgic for Stalin, and East Germans who pine for Marxism, but it is still quite striking

I wonder if Sri Lanka had the BEST experience of British imperialism? I cannot think of many colonies where British rule was so benign, and where it was so clearly superior to what came before and after

Tasmania, it ain’t

Bajaj driver in knowing how to maximise tip shocker.

Beibheirli_C

Leon said:

Beibheirli_C said:

StillWaters said:

Beibheirli_C said:

Alphabet_Soup said:

Beibheirli_C said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived ...

I think that, outside of Conservative supporters, post-covid gratitude is zero. Protecting the country from threats like pandemics is what we elect the govt for. It is their actual day job.

Should we be grateful that they did what they were supposed to do? Is that how far we have fallen?

And that does not even take into account the moving of Covid positive people into Care Homes which wiped out the over 80s in some homes. Something which seems to have been forgotten as the flags get waved...

Welcome to the dark side, Bev. Rich Tory pensioners were sacrificed so that young Labour voters had a hospital bed when they needed one. Outrageous.

Do not be so daft. It was not planned, it was just common-or-garden incompetence. However no one has been sanctioned for it. The unecessary, early deaths of thousands has been consequence free.

The vacated hospital beds were subsequently filled by people with no vaccine protection, but I cannot recall any of them being checked for political affiliations.

It was a choice they made.

They were worried about overload in the hospital system (northern Italy was at the same time). They chose to empty beds as far as they could. They also felt that old people in hospital would be vulnerable to incoming covid patients.

Unfortunately they didn’t know about asymptomatic covid

Try harder. All diseases have an asymptomatic stage. That is why we have (for centuries) had quarantine procedures.

Those being moved should have been quarantined first.

I’m so bored of Covid I have forgotten, and can’t be arsed to google, but I thought one thing that makes Covid - or did - so troublesome is that it is deeply infectious even when you are pre-symptomatic, or asymptomatic, and this can go on for a while?

Hence the gave difficulty of containing it

In the early days they were quarantining travellers returning to the UK, particularly from China. There were two main centres, one on the Wirral and another down South, so they knew to do quarantine.

However it was very unpopular with travellers and the travel industry so they stopped doing it and many people warned at the time that they should have been ramping up the quarantine procedures, not dropping them.

RochdalePioneers

DavidL said:

Eabhal said:

FPT: I find DavidL's response to partygate one of the more interesting on here. He had the same reaction right at the peak of the crisis for the PM.

I would've thought, given his background, that the principle of our lawmakers abiding by the law would be an important one, and he'd recognise that not doing so weakens our position when dealing with with lawless dictators such as Putin. Particularly when the laws are so personally restrictive, and unusual.

Perhaps exposure to the law burns you out, a bit like junior doctors and their care for patients. I'm still young, and naive, so I'm going to hold onto the idea that the parties were a serious betrayal of trust and a danger to a democracy where so much depends on personal integrity in the absence of a formal constitution.

I think I have bored people to death on this already but I am not saying that civil servants and ministers ignoring the law is not important or trivial, even although the penalty for breaching the law is a FPN. There clearly should be disciplinary implications for that and an investigation as to how such stupidity ever came to pass. But, for me, the key point is that Boris lied to the Commons when he told them that there were to the best of his knowledge no such parties and that he would be angry if there had been. Parties that he had attended and which had been organised by his PPS and which even took place in his own flat. That is unforgiveable.

What has seriously disappointed me is that the 640 odd Members of Parliament have not stepped up to their duty and removed a PM that has behaved like that. Instead, they sought to assign their duty and responsibility to a civil servant, Gray, then to the hapless police service. It is a disgrace and a derogation of duty.

We saw the consequences of tolerating lies from PMs over Iraq, another PM who got away with egregious lying. It undermines confidence in our politics and democracy. It is important. And it is not something that any MP conscious of their duty can derogate to someone else. He should be gone.

So when you bemoan that we're all stuck discussing parties and even Truss being a bumbling incompetent, it all comes back to the same issue. We cannot function with a government and a Prime Minister who are liars. Who cannot accept the self-evident facts. Who break the law.

You can't deal with the cost of living crisis because the PM repeatedly quotes stats which his own statisticians complain are lies. You can't deal with the Ukraine because "Kermit the Frog" and "what Brexit" and now Liz Truss have belittled us on the world stage. You can't tackle runaway inflation because he'd rather spread hard right smears then spend weeks having his loyal and stupid ministers arguinng in his defence rather than dealing with actual problems.

So when you attack those of us attacking the problem and say that we are the problem...

Leon

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Leon said:

For some reason, taxi-driver-anecdotes get a bad press on here. But anyway, this is another


Just got a tuk-tuk to Slave Island to buy some sleepers before my flight home (Sri Lanka, it seems, being one of the last places you can buy them OTC if you choose your pharmacy correctly. - go for ones near stations, a bit grubby, down a side street, but not totally derelict)

The tuk tuk driver, on discovering I am British, said “All the time we ask ourselves, why did you British go? Why did the British leave? Everything was better with the British, ever since you left it has been corruption corruption and war. And now the Chinese own us”

This went on for a few minutes. And it is not the first time I have encountered this attitude in Sri Lanka, it is widely held

Of course there are Russians who feel nostalgic for Stalin, and East Germans who pine for Marxism, but it is still quite striking

I wonder if Sri Lanka had the BEST experience of British imperialism? I cannot think of many colonies where British rule was so benign, and where it was so clearly superior to what came before and after

Tasmania, it ain’t

Bajaj driver in knowing how to maximise tip shocker.

I did tip him heftily, so it worked

Nonetheless I have heard it here rom people here who have no incentive to make money out of me. And you can see the attitude in the streets. No names have been changed, all the British colonial Alberts and Winchesters and Windsors and Victorias and Edwards have been retained. The best hotels pump out Raj era glamour if they can

They worship high tea, the elite speak with perfect British English accents - then there is the cricket, of course, Which is a religion

It many ways it is like it is still a British colony, but run by the Sri Lankans, and owned by the Chinese

DavidL

On topic I rather agree with Mike that these approve/disapprove figures tell you more about the government's standing than a hypothetical vote related poll does. However, I also agree with @HYUFD that at the end of the day we make a choice that all too often seems dismal (if not quite on the Trump/Biden scale, which must be one of the worst choices ever) so best PM is also important.

Mike makes the point these are biased in favour of the incumbent and that is true but it is also why we have had 2 complete changes of government in 42 years. The system favours the incumbent and that does not disappear when elections come around.

At the moment we have an incumbent with a very comfortable majority. I think Boris's personal ratings are now so poor that the Tories would be bordering on reckless letting him lead them into another election. Whether Rishi or whoever can do better, and whether they can be a better choice than SKS will determine the next election. I disagree with @Heathener about it being over already. I think it is all to play for but the government undoubtedly has a tricky hand on the economic front.

RochdalePioneers

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

Beibheirli_C said:

stodge said:

Morning all

It's obviously far too early to call the next election with any certainty - the economic headwinds look difficult and any post-Covid "gratitude" looks to be shortlived ...

I think that, outside of Conservative supporters, post-covid gratitude is zero. Protecting the country from threats like pandemics is what we elect the govt for. It is their actual day job.

Should we be grateful that they did what they were supposed to do? Is that how far we have fallen?

And that does not even take into account the moving of Covid positive people into Care Homes which wiped out the over 80s in some homes. Something which seems to have been forgotten as the flags get waved...

Well the 'envy of the world' would certainly like to have its part in the care homes deaths forgotten.

That said I don't think the government deserves any gratitude for its covid response - it got some things right and got some things wrong.

And many of the things it got wrong were senseless.

On the other hand a Starmer government would have handled things significantly worse.

The option wasn't a Starmer government. A *Corbyn* government would have handled it worse, thats for sure. Not sure about Starmer.

The main attack line thrown about by Liar is that Starmer would have stuck with the EU vaccines system which would have presented us from having developed and rolled out the vaccine. The rather basic problem with that attack line is that it isn't true. At least according to the person who signed off the vaccine for use when asked at a Downing Street press conference.

And yet:

A British opposition frontbencher apologized Monday for suggesting the country should have signed up to the EU’s vaccination scheme.

Catherine West, the Labour Party’s shadow Europe minister, said a 2020 message condemning the U.K.’s decision to opt out of the bloc-wide program to buy and distribute vaccines had now “proven to be wrong.”

West initially responded to a report on Britain’s move last year by tweeting: “Dumber and dumber.”

But she said in a fresh social media post Monday: “Last year, I tweeted about the EU vaccine scheme. My tweet has proven to be wrong, and I’ve now apologised and deleted it. Our NHS is doing a great job and I’ll continue supporting the effort to vaccine Britain.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/labour-mp-apologizes-for-jibe-at-uks-opt-out-of-eu-vaccine-scheme/

And then there was the LibDems:

In response to the UK government’s decision to walk away from the latest initiative, Munira Wilson, the Liberal Democrats’ health spokeswoman, said: “When coronavirus is such a threat to people’s lives and livelihoods, ministers should leave no stone unturned in their bid to end the pandemic.

“This government’s stubborn unwillingness to work with the European Union through the current crisis is unforgivable.

“The crisis does not stop at any national border. It is about time the prime minister started showing leadership, including fully participating in all EU efforts to secure critical medical supplies and a vaccine.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/10/uk-poised-to-shun-eu-coronavirus-vaccine-scheme

Aside from vaccines I don't think there's much doubt that Starmer would have had significantly more restrictions for significantly longer with all the resulting economic and social damage.

And yet what? The attack line is "would have stayed in the EU vaccinations programme which means we wouldn't have developed the vaccine."

That categorically isn't true. The medic (I forget her name) who personally signed off the vaccine said so directly at a Downing Street press conference.

That the EU has become a totemic issue isn't in question. But EU Vaccines = no vaccine is just incorrect. Wrong. A lie.

Theuniondivvie

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

For some reason, taxi-driver-anecdotes get a bad press on here. But anyway, this is another


Just got a tuk-tuk to Slave Island to buy some sleepers before my flight home (Sri Lanka, it seems, being one of the last places you can buy them OTC if you choose your pharmacy correctly. - go for ones near stations, a bit grubby, down a side street, but not totally derelict)

The tuk tuk driver, on discovering I am British, said “All the time we ask ourselves, why did you British go? Why did the British leave? Everything was better with the British, ever since you left it has been corruption corruption and war. And now the Chinese own us”

This went on for a few minutes. And it is not the first time I have encountered this attitude in Sri Lanka, it is widely held

Of course there are Russians who feel nostalgic for Stalin, and East Germans who pine for Marxism, but it is still quite striking

I wonder if Sri Lanka had the BEST experience of British imperialism? I cannot think of many colonies where British rule was so benign, and where it was so clearly superior to what came before and after

Tasmania, it ain’t

Probably angling to maximize the tip.

Only need the tuk tuk driver to say what is it with those Wokies destroying the Western canon and that the Jocks would be mad to go for independence for the full house.

RochdalePioneers

DavidL said:

On topic I rather agree with Mike that these approve/disapprove figures tell you more about the government's standing than a hypothetical vote related poll does. However, I also agree with @HYUFD that at the end of the day we make a choice that all too often seems dismal (if not quite on the Trump/Biden scale, which must be one of the worst choices ever) so best PM is also important.

Mike makes the point these are biased in favour of the incumbent and that is true but it is also why we have had 2 complete changes of government in 42 years. The system favours the incumbent and that does not disappear when elections come around.

At the moment we have an incumbent with a very comfortable majority. I think Boris's personal ratings are now so poor that the Tories would be bordering on reckless letting him lead them into another election. Whether Rishi or whoever can do better, and whether they can be a better choice than SKS will determine the next election. I disagree with @Heathener about it being over already. I think it is all to play for but the government undoubtedly has a tricky hand on the economic front.

Do you now accept that the reason politics can't move on to actually trying to face into these economic crises is because of the liar in Downing Street and the incompetents in cabinet?