On the current polling Labour are going to win a big majority. However if Sunak can win back 2019 Tories going DK or to RefUK he can still get a hung parliament. That requires cutting borrowing enough to enable tax cuts before the next general election in particular. Remember too Cameron was heading for a landslide majority in 2009 but Brown pulled it back to get to a hung parliament by polling day in 2010.
Changing the leader now would make sod all difference. Indeed if anything Sunak polls better than the Conservative Party overall now
From your point of view what would be a better result for the future of the Tories and the country, a hung parliament with a coalition of the current opposition or a significant labour majority? And why?
A hung parliament with the LDs not SNP holding the balance of power. Though obviously I prefer a Tory majority overall
If you get that you are pretty much looking at having some form of PR imposed.
On current polling the Tories would win more seats with PR than FPTP and RefUK would win seats.
Labour would also almost never win a majority with PR and PR would see the SNP lose half their seats too
On the current polling Labour are going to win a big majority. However if Sunak can win back 2019 Tories going DK or to RefUK he can still get a hung parliament. That requires cutting borrowing enough to enable tax cuts before the next general election in particular. Remember too Cameron was heading for a landslide majority in 2009 but Brown pulled it back to get to a hung parliament by polling day in 2010.
Changing the leader now would make sod all difference. Indeed if anything Sunak polls better than the Conservative Party overall now
From your point of view what would be a better result for the future of the Tories and the country, a hung parliament with a coalition of the current opposition or a significant labour majority? And why?
A hung parliament with the LDs not SNP holding the balance of power. Though obviously I prefer a Tory majority overall
If you get that you are pretty much looking at having some form of PR imposed.
On current polling the Tories would win more seats with PR than FPTP and RefUK would win seats.
Labour would also almost never win a majority with PR and PR would see the SNP lose half their seats too
The thing is you seem to think Labour not winning a majority again is a bad thing. And also you’re wrong, Jacinda did.
General observation: The number of people, not just on this platform, who find it impossible to separate their analysis of what is likely to happen from what they would personally like to happen, is astonishing, and deeply irritating.
Appeals court ruling says alleged domestic abusers have a constitutional right to keep their guns
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/02/09/guns-domestic-abuse-second-amendment/ Advocates for domestic violence victims were stunned by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which continued a string of court decisions citing the Second Amendment to erase gun restrictions… … In 2021 alone, 127 women in Texas were murdered by their male intimate partners with firearms, according to the Texas Council on Family Violence. Across the country, an average of 70 women each month are killed by their partners with guns. Research has shown that a domestic violence victim’s risk of death is five times higher when their abuser has access to a gun...
Shocking . Absolutely disgusting . Wtf is wrong with the USA where common sense and something most people would agree with as in keeping guns out of the hands of violent people is ignored so that they can bang on about their frigging gun rights .
The Second Amendment is wrong in the context of the 21st century. But it's there and we can't pretend it isn't.
'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed'
I don't want to get into the tired debate about which clause is the most important in that wording, but it strikes me that the 2nd Amendment's language could be open to a number of interpretations. Practically speaking, a person's right to keep and bear certain arms are already infringed; you can't keep a battle-ready tank, for example. There are restrictions on where individuals can bear arms, such as court rooms.
My right to own nuclear weapons has definitely been infringed.
The whole thing is complete bollox.
It made sense when the threat was the French/English/Spanish etc and you might be able to repel invaders with a well-armed local militia. Nowadays it is just a thin veneer to cover the self-interest of the money men who run the local arms industry.
On the current polling Labour are going to win a big majority. However if Sunak can win back 2019 Tories going DK or to RefUK he can still get a hung parliament. That requires cutting borrowing enough to enable tax cuts before the next general election in particular. Remember too Cameron was heading for a landslide majority in 2009 but Brown pulled it back to get to a hung parliament by polling day in 2010.
Changing the leader now would make sod all difference. Indeed if anything Sunak polls better than the Conservative Party overall now
From your point of view what would be a better result for the future of the Tories and the country, a hung parliament with a coalition of the current opposition or a significant labour majority? And why?
A hung parliament with the LDs not SNP holding the balance of power. Though obviously I prefer a Tory majority overall
If you get that you are pretty much looking at having some form of PR imposed.
On current polling the Tories would win more seats with PR than FPTP and RefUK would win seats.
Labour would also almost never win a majority with PR and PR would see the SNP lose half their seats too
The thing is you seem to think Labour not winning a majority again is a bad thing. And also you’re wrong, Jacinda did.
I said 'almost never'. However only 1 NZ governing party since 2000 has got a majority.
No German or Italian or Swedish governing party, countries which also have PR, has got a majority since 2000
On the current polling Labour are going to win a big majority. However if Sunak can win back 2019 Tories going DK or to RefUK he can still get a hung parliament. That requires cutting borrowing enough to enable tax cuts before the next general election in particular. Remember too Cameron was heading for a landslide majority in 2009 but Brown pulled it back to get to a hung parliament by polling day in 2010.
Changing the leader now would make sod all difference. Indeed if anything Sunak polls better than the Conservative Party overall now
From your point of view what would be a better result for the future of the Tories and the country, a hung parliament with a coalition of the current opposition or a significant labour majority? And why?
A hung parliament with the LDs not SNP holding the balance of power. Though obviously I prefer a Tory majority overall
If you get that you are pretty much looking at having some form of PR imposed.
On current polling the Tories would win more seats with PR than FPTP and RefUK would win seats.
Labour would also almost never win a majority with PR and PR would see the SNP lose half their seats too
The thing is you seem to think Labour not winning a majority again is a bad thing. And also you’re wrong, Jacinda did.
I said 'almost never'.
I don’t care if Labour never wins a majority again
Cheltenham is on its way, they obviously feel Love Envoi needs a run out before winning the Mares Hurdle in just 31 days time. if her season is about peaking for mares hurdle, I’m Napoleon today.
13:50 Newbury - Annual Invictus
2:05 Warwick - Love Envoi - NAP
15:00 Newbury - Mortlach
15:35 Newbury - Highway One O Two
Not this afternoon ya Josephine Don't be so mean I like the way you look But now I've got a date with horses and rugby
Witty. Resolute. Provocative. That’s my epitaph right there. 😄
Erm, there are only four selections in your six-shooter but what a range of prices! 8/13, 7/1, 25/1 and 50/1. Good luck.
Thank you.
Before becoming name of a bet I think six shooter was a racing term in its own right - shooting up for the win or something like that. My gran used to say it.
The original meaning is from a revolver gun that holds six bullets. It literally shoots six times, before one needs to stop and reload.
“a revolver gun that holds six bullets. It literally shoots six times, before one needs to stop and reload”. So lots of fast shooting, so fast horse is a six shooter?
On the current polling Labour are going to win a big majority. However if Sunak can win back 2019 Tories going DK or to RefUK he can still get a hung parliament. That requires cutting borrowing enough to enable tax cuts before the next general election in particular. Remember too Cameron was heading for a landslide majority in 2009 but Brown pulled it back to get to a hung parliament by polling day in 2010.
Changing the leader now would make sod all difference. Indeed if anything Sunak polls better than the Conservative Party overall now
From your point of view what would be a better result for the future of the Tories and the country, a hung parliament with a coalition of the current opposition or a significant labour majority? And why?
A hung parliament with the LDs not SNP holding the balance of power. Though obviously I prefer a Tory majority overall
If you get that you are pretty much looking at having some form of PR imposed.
On current polling the Tories would win more seats with PR than FPTP and RefUK would win seats.
Labour would also almost never win a majority with PR and PR would see the SNP lose half their seats too
The thing is you seem to think Labour not winning a majority again is a bad thing. And also you’re wrong, Jacinda did.
I said 'almost never'.
I don’t care if Labour never wins a majority again
More Lee Anderson trolling today, this time on net zero (where’s he’s out of touch with the vast majority even of 2019 Tory voters).
If Labour have their wits about them I think they can use the combination of him, Braverman and Raab to create a fear/disgust factor at the next election in the same way the Tories successfully did last time with Corbyn.
Labour need to keep reminding voters that the next election isn’t in the bag and if they don’t turn out and vote they could face 5 more years of the likes of Anderson.
My Tory member mum loves Braverman and Raab. You sure your not displaying all your biases?
Plenty of people’s bearded lefty uncles loved Corbyn too. But the silent majority hate extremists.
The silent majority aren't party members however
Hit the nail on the head there. Hence the Corbyn echoes.
Good morning. This is my first post so please be gentle. I wonder, apropos of the debate about a possible Labour majority, whether this would be a better result for the Tories in the long term than NOM. If, after large poll leads and a truly dreadful Government, the Labour Party cannot win a majority at the next GE, might they not conclude, egged on by the LDs and Greens, that PR is the way to go? If that happens what price the Conservatives then?
Welcome.
And yes. The Tories would also benefit from being forced to reflect on just how badly they threw away a golden opportunity - indeed, a series of golden opportunities - to genuinely change this country for the better and leave things, amazingly, in a worse state than in 2010.
I would suggest that, given the world events outside of their control, it was always likely that the Tories would leave the country in a worse state than they found it. I suspect there are few European countries that would consider they are currently in a better position than they were in 2010.
The remarkable point is just how much worse the Tories will be leaving it. More importantly, from their point of view, how much worse they will be leaving the state of their own party.
The first curious thing is that we've had four premierships since 2010; five if you count Coalition Dave and Majority Dave as different. That's odd in itself.
But what's really odd is how much each new PM has run against the record of their predecessor. May told Osborne to go away and kept Gove out for a time. Johnson blew up everything May wanted to achieve. Truss ran against fiscal orthodoxy. Sunak was appointed to clear up Truss's mess.
Cheltenham is on its way, they obviously feel Love Envoi needs a run out before winning the Mares Hurdle in just 31 days time. if her season is about peaking for mares hurdle, I’m Napoleon today.
13:50 Newbury - Annual Invictus
2:05 Warwick - Love Envoi - NAP
15:00 Newbury - Mortlach
15:35 Newbury - Highway One O Two
Not this afternoon ya Josephine Don't be so mean I like the way you look But now I've got a date with horses and rugby
Witty. Resolute. Provocative. That’s my epitaph right there. 😄
Erm, there are only four selections in your six-shooter but what a range of prices! 8/13, 7/1, 25/1 and 50/1. Good luck.
Thank you.
Before becoming name of a bet I think six shooter was a racing term in its own right - shooting up for the win or something like that. My gran used to say it.
The original meaning is from a revolver gun that holds six bullets. It literally shoots six times, before one needs to stop and reload.
“a revolver gun that holds six bullets. It literally shoots six times, before one needs to stop and reload”. So lots of fast shooting, so fast horse is a six shooter?
Mr. Roy, the Conservatives would bite your hand off to only be decimated at the next election.
Feeling quietly confident of my Lab majority bet (tipped by someone here... perhaps Ishmael Z).
I believe he tipped and backed at 5/1 and cashed out at evens. An odious fellow, but with sound instincts on some matters.
Is there a tory leader at next GE market anywhere? There sometimes is, but can't find one. If yes back Sunak at almost any price, because he will call one rather than be ousted.
I think he will be leader at the General Election, but not for the reason you give.
If neither Johnson nor Truss seriously tried to press the button on an election when they were imperilled, despite speculation they may, Sunak is hardly going to. He's a much more conventional politician than either of them.
Timescale. It would look petulant mid term, it is much more easily disguised as prudent politics in the last 18 months. Major got no plaudits for hanging in there.
I don't agree with your idea it would be "easily disguised" if he was calling an election to avoid a confidence vote.
I also simply don't think he'd be interested in doing it as he is quite conventional and I don't think he's going to say "well, sod the lot of you - I'm burning down the farm" which is essentially what a pre-emptive election means - "back me or sack me" invites only one answer from the electorate, and he knows it.
Sunak believes the best result after a Conservative win is a fairly narrow defeat (which I don't think is the Johnson view - he's more sh1t or bust). He believes he needs to go into an election saying, "I've provided 18 months of stability and sanity after several whacky years." Going in on the back of a leadership crisis just doesn't do that.
Bienderg has indicated that he would like Sunak to take his ball away if the Conservatives attempt to flush him; that appears to have solidified into a confident prediction. I certainly wouldn't bet against it; Sunak's noxious fellow travellers would no doubt approve of the strategy. I wouldn't call it a certainty though. It would be nice to think he might step aside (in exchange for a cabinet post) for someone with an actual plan that worked a bit quicker than maths lessons till 18.
Good morning. This is my first post so please be gentle. I wonder, apropos of the debate about a possible Labour majority, whether this would be a better result for the Tories in the long term than NOM. If, after large poll leads and a truly dreadful Government, the Labour Party cannot win a majority at the next GE, might they not conclude, egged on by the LDs and Greens, that PR is the way to go? If that happens what price the Conservatives then?
Welcome.
And yes. The Tories would also benefit from being forced to reflect on just how badly they threw away a golden opportunity - indeed, a series of golden opportunities - to genuinely change this country for the better and leave things, amazingly, in a worse state than in 2010.
I would suggest that, given the world events outside of their control, it was always likely that the Tories would leave the country in a worse state than they found it. I suspect there are few European countries that would consider they are currently in a better position than they were in 2010.
The remarkable point is just how much worse the Tories will be leaving it. More importantly, from their point of view, how much worse they will be leaving the state of their own party.
I know you've denied before that Brexit was responsible for the intellectual hollowing out of the Tory Party... but it was inevitable after the referendum that whoever replaced Cameron as leader would either be brought down by the ERG (May) or end up being in hoc to the ERG (Johnson, Truss, Sunak to an extent). May's Lancaster House speech didn't help matters, but it really is difficult to see who could have replaced Cameron who was competent and could have pursued a soft version of Brexit without getting destroyed by the ERG.
Appeals court ruling says alleged domestic abusers have a constitutional right to keep their guns
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/02/09/guns-domestic-abuse-second-amendment/ Advocates for domestic violence victims were stunned by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which continued a string of court decisions citing the Second Amendment to erase gun restrictions… … In 2021 alone, 127 women in Texas were murdered by their male intimate partners with firearms, according to the Texas Council on Family Violence. Across the country, an average of 70 women each month are killed by their partners with guns. Research has shown that a domestic violence victim’s risk of death is five times higher when their abuser has access to a gun...
Shocking . Absolutely disgusting . Wtf is wrong with the USA where common sense and something most people would agree with as in keeping guns out of the hands of violent people is ignored so that they can bang on about their frigging gun rights .
The Second Amendment is wrong in the context of the 21st century. But it's there and we can't pretend it isn't.
Then they need to modify it to stop violent people owning guns . Oh how lucky we are to live in a civilized country where people care more about the lives of others than owning a gun.
Trying to think what our equivalent is. Something massively damaging but so ingrained in centuries of British tradition that nobody dare change or ban it, or even tighten regulations.
Any candidates I can think of: alcohol, smoking, driving, boxing, hunting, waste disposal etc. have all been progressively regulated to reduce harm.
As the Spectator pointed out, very wisely, it is the NHS
Ironically it’s the Spectator that’s part of the problem. That right wing cozy club of eloquent bullshitters and blaggers that get by on connections rather than talent and crowd out true entrepreneurialism. Get rid of that and the nation can progress.
And when you've removed these people from society along with everyone else you disagree with and the NHS is still broken beyond repair who then will you blame?
Jacinda’s PR absolute majority was only achieved under the incredibly unusual circumstances of Covid.
Totally abnormal.
Otherwise, PR in the UK can be predicted to lead to some combination of Lab/Green/Nats alternating power with Con/Reform, with LD and perhaps the odd Unionist floating in between.
Aren't Fairbrass, Bridgen and GeeBeebies vaccine sceptics?
All a bit incongruous when Boris invented the Covid vaccine, and seldom fails to remind us he got COVID right.
TCW is the among the most radical Tory sites, I'd expect the fruitcake element to eclipse the Boris element (despise him or not he was a politician from the tory mainstream).
Yes I do despise him.
I'm very much against him myself, but that was irrelevant to him being, essentially, a mainstream Tory. He wasn't and isn't some anti-establishment insurgent from the fringes of the party.
Sure, his personal standards of conduct are execreble, and he'll try new initiatives to present as radically reforming if he wants, but he isn't a crank.
Now I would dispute your final assertion.
Whatever is necessary for his own personal aggrandisement is inside his set of rules. If extremism from the left or right, or even vanity wars (hat tip to Blair) keep the wheels rolling, he would in my view give them a spin.
Aren't Fairbrass, Bridgen and GeeBeebies vaccine sceptics?
All a bit incongruous when Boris invented the Covid vaccine, and seldom fails to remind us he got COVID right.
TCW is the among the most radical Tory sites, I'd expect the fruitcake element to eclipse the Boris element (despise him or not he was a politician from the tory mainstream).
Yes I do despise him.
I'm very much against him myself, but that was irrelevant to him being, essentially, a mainstream Tory. He wasn't and isn't some anti-establishment insurgent from the fringes of the party.
Sure, his personal standards of conduct are execreble, and he'll try new initiatives to present as radically reforming if he wants, but he isn't a crank.
Now I would dispute your final assertion.
Whatever is necessary for his own personal aggrandisement is inside his set of rules. If extremism from the left or right, or even vanity wars (hat tip to Blair) keep the wheels rolling, he would in my view give them a spin.
Yes, the idea that Boris is “mainstream Tory” is a nonsense. Essentially he defies such categorisations, which is part of his “gift”.
Cheltenham is on its way, they obviously feel Love Envoi needs a run out before winning the Mares Hurdle in just 31 days time. if her season is about peaking for mares hurdle, I’m Napoleon today.
13:50 Newbury - Annual Invictus
2:05 Warwick - Love Envoi - NAP
15:00 Newbury - Mortlach
15:35 Newbury - Highway One O Two
Not this afternoon ya Josephine Don't be so mean I like the way you look But now I've got a date with horses and rugby
Witty. Resolute. Provocative. That’s my epitaph right there. 😄
Erm, there are only four selections in your six-shooter but what a range of prices! 8/13, 7/1, 25/1 and 50/1. Good luck.
Thank you.
Before becoming name of a bet I think six shooter was a racing term in its own right - shooting up for the win or something like that. My gran used to say it.
The original meaning is from a revolver gun that holds six bullets. It literally shoots six times, before one needs to stop and reload.
“a revolver gun that holds six bullets. It literally shoots six times, before one needs to stop and reload”. So lots of fast shooting, so fast horse is a six shooter?
I would be confident of a Labour majority, but for the fact that the Conservatives are making it impossible for 3+ million mainly younger adults to vote without first making a lot of effort to get additional photo ID just for the purpose of voting.
Labour and the LDs are asleep at the wheel over Conservative voter ID, voter suppression tactics.
I would be confident of a Labour majority, but for the fact that the Conservatives are making it impossible for 3+ million mainly younger adults to vote without first making a lot of effort to get additional photo ID just for the purpose of voting.
Labour and the LDs are asleep at the wheel over Conservative voter ID, voter suppression tactics.
As noted yesterday, LDs appear to be asleep at the wheel full-stop.
Appeals court ruling says alleged domestic abusers have a constitutional right to keep their guns
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/02/09/guns-domestic-abuse-second-amendment/ Advocates for domestic violence victims were stunned by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which continued a string of court decisions citing the Second Amendment to erase gun restrictions… … In 2021 alone, 127 women in Texas were murdered by their male intimate partners with firearms, according to the Texas Council on Family Violence. Across the country, an average of 70 women each month are killed by their partners with guns. Research has shown that a domestic violence victim’s risk of death is five times higher when their abuser has access to a gun...
Shocking . Absolutely disgusting . Wtf is wrong with the USA where common sense and something most people would agree with as in keeping guns out of the hands of violent people is ignored so that they can bang on about their frigging gun rights .
The Second Amendment is wrong in the context of the 21st century. But it's there and we can't pretend it isn't.
Then they need to modify it to stop violent people owning guns . Oh how lucky we are to live in a civilized country where people care more about the lives of others than owning a gun.
Trying to think what our equivalent is. Something massively damaging but so ingrained in centuries of British tradition that nobody dare change or ban it, or even tighten regulations.
Any candidates I can think of: alcohol, smoking, driving, boxing, hunting, waste disposal etc. have all been progressively regulated to reduce harm.
As the Spectator pointed out, very wisely, it is the NHS
Ironically it’s the Spectator that’s part of the problem. That right wing cozy club of eloquent bullshitters and blaggers that get by on connections rather than talent and crowd out true entrepreneurialism. Get rid of that and the nation can progress.
And when you've removed these people from society along with everyone else you disagree with and the NHS is still broken beyond repair who then will you blame?
Remove pensioners and the NHS will work fine!
Yes, get rid of the patients and it will be excellent
When I was little at primary we had Mr. Jones come to speak to us, who brought different animals, in wooden boxes, and would let us handle them. Snakes, insects, small mammals - the experience of him removing them from the crates was enchanting. He was missing a few fingers too, which added to the excitement. It feels like today's kids get a raw deal.
What is more interesting is what is likely to happen to the Tories post the coming electoral defeat.
Will the Brexity loons cement their grip on the party, or will there be some kind of return to the relative pragmatism of mainstream Tory tradition?
It'll get worse before it gets better. Whoever wins the leadership will do so by appealing to the ERG and the same fools in the membership who voted for Truss. They'll need to have another terrible defeat in 2028/9 before they realise the ERG need to be removed (just as Labour, in the end, neutralised the Corbynites).
More Lee Anderson trolling today, this time on net zero (where’s he’s out of touch with the vast majority even of 2019 Tory voters).
If Labour have their wits about them I think they can use the combination of him, Braverman and Raab to create a fear/disgust factor at the next election in the same way the Tories successfully did last time with Corbyn.
Labour need to keep reminding voters that the next election isn’t in the bag and if they don’t turn out and vote they could face 5 more years of the likes of Anderson.
In 2017 though Corbyn got 40% of the vote and a hung parliament, only in 2019 at his second attempt was he heavily beaten
Yes. You have to consider both elections for a fair assessment of Corbyn's electoral appeal.
But what does unlocking their economic potential look like? Is it something the people of those cities will go for? And (probably the greater challenge) something the people in between those cities will go for?
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
Aren't Fairbrass, Bridgen and GeeBeebies vaccine sceptics?
All a bit incongruous when Boris invented the Covid vaccine, and seldom fails to remind us he got COVID right.
TCW is the among the most radical Tory sites, I'd expect the fruitcake element to eclipse the Boris element (despise him or not he was a politician from the tory mainstream).
Yes I do despise him.
I'm very much against him myself, but that was irrelevant to him being, essentially, a mainstream Tory. He wasn't and isn't some anti-establishment insurgent from the fringes of the party.
Sure, his personal standards of conduct are execreble, and he'll try new initiatives to present as radically reforming if he wants, but he isn't a crank.
Now I would dispute your final assertion.
Whatever is necessary for his own personal aggrandisement is inside his set of rules. If extremism from the left or right, or even vanity wars (hat tip to Blair) keep the wheels rolling, he would in my view give them a spin.
He might, but I still think that he has no attachment to radical ideals shows him simply to be a shameless opportunist, not a committed crank like the Bridgens of the world for example.
But what does unlocking their economic potential look like? Is it something the people of those cities will go for? And (probably the greater challenge) something the people in between those cities will go for?
Well it starts with transport infrastructure, radical devolution, industrial strategy and R&D.
The people of these cities haven’t consciously opted for low living standards, they’re just trapped in a bigger system that maintains the status quo.
More Lee Anderson trolling today, this time on net zero (where’s he’s out of touch with the vast majority even of 2019 Tory voters).
If Labour have their wits about them I think they can use the combination of him, Braverman and Raab to create a fear/disgust factor at the next election in the same way the Tories successfully did last time with Corbyn.
Labour need to keep reminding voters that the next election isn’t in the bag and if they don’t turn out and vote they could face 5 more years of the likes of Anderson.
In 2017 though Corbyn got 40% of the vote and a hung parliament, only in 2019 at his second attempt was he heavily beaten
Yes. You have to consider both elections for a fair assessment of Corbyn's electoral appeal.
No. Rather like Johnson, he was found out.
In 2017 most people knew him as a somewhat ineffectual but benign bearded old school socialist, who just might help prevent a hard Brexit. Just like they used to see Boris as an enjoyably buffoonish character who was in touch with real people.
By 2019 they’d seen him for what he was: a Russia-appeasing, out of touch menace who kept decidedly off-colour company.
I think the moment when he demanded the evidence for the Scripal poisoning be sent to Russia for testing was probably the turning point.
Appeals court ruling says alleged domestic abusers have a constitutional right to keep their guns
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/02/09/guns-domestic-abuse-second-amendment/ Advocates for domestic violence victims were stunned by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which continued a string of court decisions citing the Second Amendment to erase gun restrictions… … In 2021 alone, 127 women in Texas were murdered by their male intimate partners with firearms, according to the Texas Council on Family Violence. Across the country, an average of 70 women each month are killed by their partners with guns. Research has shown that a domestic violence victim’s risk of death is five times higher when their abuser has access to a gun...
Shocking . Absolutely disgusting . Wtf is wrong with the USA where common sense and something most people would agree with as in keeping guns out of the hands of violent people is ignored so that they can bang on about their frigging gun rights .
The Second Amendment is wrong in the context of the 21st century. But it's there and we can't pretend it isn't.
Then they need to modify it to stop violent people owning guns . Oh how lucky we are to live in a civilized country where people care more about the lives of others than owning a gun.
Trying to think what our equivalent is. Something massively damaging but so ingrained in centuries of British tradition that nobody dare change or ban it, or even tighten regulations.
Any candidates I can think of: alcohol, smoking, driving, boxing, hunting, waste disposal etc. have all been progressively regulated to reduce harm.
As the Spectator pointed out, very wisely, it is the NHS
Whilst I agree that the NHS is too difficult to properly look and reform in serious ways, I also agree with the premise of the question being about something ingrained for centuries of tradition and culture means it does not apply.
I have no idea whether the NHS is irreformable, but in this case the facts and the trick is simple, if required.
It is universally acknowledged that in the UK there has to be health care for all access to which is not based on ability to pay at the point of contact. This is a mixture of national wealth, culture and civilization.
Rule (1) keep calling it the NHS Rule (2) run it any way you like that actually works as long as you keep the name and principle.
The staff, for whose benefit is sometimes feels to exist, care about details. The tax paying general public know nothing and care less about the logistics. They just want it to work.
This doesn't work with guns.
My rule (3) would be: agree what % of GDP is spent on health and social care. Give a Quango the money and tell them to spend it. Abolish 90% of the Dept of Health.
Appeals court ruling says alleged domestic abusers have a constitutional right to keep their guns
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/02/09/guns-domestic-abuse-second-amendment/ Advocates for domestic violence victims were stunned by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which continued a string of court decisions citing the Second Amendment to erase gun restrictions… … In 2021 alone, 127 women in Texas were murdered by their male intimate partners with firearms, according to the Texas Council on Family Violence. Across the country, an average of 70 women each month are killed by their partners with guns. Research has shown that a domestic violence victim’s risk of death is five times higher when their abuser has access to a gun...
Shocking . Absolutely disgusting . Wtf is wrong with the USA where common sense and something most people would agree with as in keeping guns out of the hands of violent people is ignored so that they can bang on about their frigging gun rights .
The Second Amendment is wrong in the context of the 21st century. But it's there and we can't pretend it isn't.
Then they need to modify it to stop violent people owning guns . Oh how lucky we are to live in a civilized country where people care more about the lives of others than owning a gun.
Trying to think what our equivalent is. Something massively damaging but so ingrained in centuries of British tradition that nobody dare change or ban it, or even tighten regulations.
Any candidates I can think of: alcohol, smoking, driving, boxing, hunting, waste disposal etc. have all been progressively regulated to reduce harm.
As the Spectator pointed out, very wisely, it is the NHS
Whilst I agree that the NHS is too difficult to properly look and reform in serious ways, I also agree with the premise of the question being about something ingrained for centuries of tradition and culture means it does not apply.
I have no idea whether the NHS is irreformable, but in this case the facts and the trick is simple, if required.
It is universally acknowledged that in the UK there has to be health care for all access to which is not based on ability to pay at the point of contact. This is a mixture of national wealth, culture and civilization.
Rule (1) keep calling it the NHS Rule (2) run it any way you like that actually works as long as you keep the name and principle.
The staff, for whose benefit is sometimes feels to exist, care about details. The tax paying general public know nothing and care less about the logistics. They just want it to work.
This doesn't work with guns.
My rule (3) would be: agree what % of GDP is spent on health and social care. Give a Quango the money and tell them to spend it. Abolish 90% of the Dept of Health.
Good morning. This is my first post so please be gentle. I wonder, apropos of the debate about a possible Labour majority, whether this would be a better result for the Tories in the long term than NOM. If, after large poll leads and a truly dreadful Government, the Labour Party cannot win a majority at the next GE, might they not conclude, egged on by the LDs and Greens, that PR is the way to go? If that happens what price the Conservatives then?
Welcome.
And yes. The Tories would also benefit from being forced to reflect on just how badly they threw away a golden opportunity - indeed, a series of golden opportunities - to genuinely change this country for the better and leave things, amazingly, in a worse state than in 2010.
I would suggest that, given the world events outside of their control, it was always likely that the Tories would leave the country in a worse state than they found it. I suspect there are few European countries that would consider they are currently in a better position than they were in 2010.
The remarkable point is just how much worse the Tories will be leaving it. More importantly, from their point of view, how much worse they will be leaving the state of their own party.
I know you've denied before that Brexit was responsible for the intellectual hollowing out of the Tory Party... but it was inevitable after the referendum that whoever replaced Cameron as leader would either be brought down by the ERG (May) or end up being in hoc to the ERG (Johnson, Truss, Sunak to an extent). May's Lancaster House speech didn't help matters, but it really is difficult to see who could have replaced Cameron who was competent and could have pursued a soft version of Brexit without getting destroyed by the ERG.
Would Gove have been more pragmatic if he'd won? I don't remember him being a full-on ERG nutter. But my memory of the details is so full of people screaming at each other I can't really remember now.
There used be a bunch of hard lefties that would turn up to protest Tommy Robinson and the like, which is fair enough - but now they’re turning up to their own event, to fight those protesting it, many of whom are Christian groups and parent groups?
Some high-profile nutters at the blue end, but also Flick Drummond (who she? Ed.)(though I think her seat is being abolished).
There's symmetry in life after all.
I'm in the ninth safest Labour seat in the country - I'll be bold and suggest the Greens will finish second in East Ham and edge the Conservatives into third.
Appeals court ruling says alleged domestic abusers have a constitutional right to keep their guns
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/02/09/guns-domestic-abuse-second-amendment/ Advocates for domestic violence victims were stunned by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which continued a string of court decisions citing the Second Amendment to erase gun restrictions… … In 2021 alone, 127 women in Texas were murdered by their male intimate partners with firearms, according to the Texas Council on Family Violence. Across the country, an average of 70 women each month are killed by their partners with guns. Research has shown that a domestic violence victim’s risk of death is five times higher when their abuser has access to a gun...
Shocking . Absolutely disgusting . Wtf is wrong with the USA where common sense and something most people would agree with as in keeping guns out of the hands of violent people is ignored so that they can bang on about their frigging gun rights .
The Second Amendment is wrong in the context of the 21st century. But it's there and we can't pretend it isn't.
Then they need to modify it to stop violent people owning guns . Oh how lucky we are to live in a civilized country where people care more about the lives of others than owning a gun.
Trying to think what our equivalent is. Something massively damaging but so ingrained in centuries of British tradition that nobody dare change or ban it, or even tighten regulations.
Any candidates I can think of: alcohol, smoking, driving, boxing, hunting, waste disposal etc. have all been progressively regulated to reduce harm.
As the Spectator pointed out, very wisely, it is the NHS
Whilst I agree that the NHS is too difficult to properly look and reform in serious ways, I also agree with the premise of the question being about something ingrained for centuries of tradition and culture means it does not apply.
I have no idea whether the NHS is irreformable, but in this case the facts and the trick is simple, if required.
It is universally acknowledged that in the UK there has to be health care for all access to which is not based on ability to pay at the point of contact. This is a mixture of national wealth, culture and civilization.
Rule (1) keep calling it the NHS Rule (2) run it any way you like that actually works as long as you keep the name and principle.
The staff, for whose benefit is sometimes feels to exist, care about details. The tax paying general public know nothing and care less about the logistics. They just want it to work.
This doesn't work with guns.
My rule (3) would be: agree what % of GDP is spent on health and social care. Give a Quango the money and tell them to spend it. Abolish 90% of the Dept of Health.
(3) is what happens today, essentially.
Not quite. Health is still quite politicised, with demands for ever increasing expenditure, ie an increasing % of a not fast increasing cake.
And note the rhetorical tropes: The rule is simple. Everything good about health care is to the credit of the NHS; everything bad about it is the wickedness of governments. My system will only be achieved when credit and blame are all going in the same direction.
Aren't Fairbrass, Bridgen and GeeBeebies vaccine sceptics?
All a bit incongruous when Boris invented the Covid vaccine, and seldom fails to remind us he got COVID right.
TCW is the among the most radical Tory sites, I'd expect the fruitcake element to eclipse the Boris element (despise him or not he was a politician from the tory mainstream).
Yes I do despise him.
I'm very much against him myself, but that was irrelevant to him being, essentially, a mainstream Tory. He wasn't and isn't some anti-establishment insurgent from the fringes of the party.
Sure, his personal standards of conduct are execreble, and he'll try new initiatives to present as radically reforming if he wants, but he isn't a crank.
Now I would dispute your final assertion.
Whatever is necessary for his own personal aggrandisement is inside his set of rules. If extremism from the left or right, or even vanity wars (hat tip to Blair) keep the wheels rolling, he would in my view give them a spin.
Yes, the idea that Boris is “mainstream Tory” is a nonsense. Essentially he defies such categorisations, which is part of his “gift”.
Well, we'll agree to disagree. I think his character (and his appeal) are not regular, but I see nothing in his approach to policies themselves which is not pretty mainstream for the Tories. He was not someone pushing at Brexit back when it was a fringe opinion, his immediate predecessor in effect condemned him for not being enough of a tax cutter for the free market heroes, and the hang em and flog em crowd want to go much further on immigration and boats than he did when in office.
He's got no particular philosophy, and that both aided and hindered him at times, but he seemed content to muddle along. Even on Brexit he talked a big game about no deal but quickly signed up to get a deal, which he then acted as though it was shit, in order to avoid no deal and its consequences.
He was a terrible PM and has an appalling approach to personal and professional standards, he was also willing to utilise any option if it aided him. But we all know he'd have happily adopted policies of the middle ground when it was appropriate.
I genuinely don't see what about Boris, other than presentation and level of shamelessness, is not mainstream.
Cheltenham is on its way, they obviously feel Love Envoi needs a run out before winning the Mares Hurdle in just 31 days time. if her season is about peaking for mares hurdle, I’m Napoleon today.
13:50 Newbury - Annual Invictus
2:05 Warwick - Love Envoi - NAP
15:00 Newbury - Mortlach
15:35 Newbury - Highway One O Two
Not this afternoon ya Josephine Don't be so mean I like the way you look But now I've got a date with horses and rugby
Witty. Resolute. Provocative. That’s my epitaph right there. 😄
Erm, there are only four selections in your six-shooter but what a range of prices! 8/13, 7/1, 25/1 and 50/1. Good luck.
Thank you.
Before becoming name of a bet I think six shooter was a racing term in its own right - shooting up for the win or something like that. My gran used to say it.
The original meaning is from a revolver gun that holds six bullets. It literally shoots six times, before one needs to stop and reload.
“a revolver gun that holds six bullets. It literally shoots six times, before one needs to stop and reload”. So lots of fast shooting, so fast horse is a six shooter?
I was watching non runners all morning expecting pull outs. Very close to Cheltenham now and Love Envoi is my tip for Mares Hurdle.
For the non-racing types, we should make it clear that you have the double, it's just that one leg is a non-runner, so the double is paid out at 6/1.
Not the same thing though, I napped it and was looking forward to getting excited. I understand though with her being a big favourite for the festival and everyone is getting nervy.
Do they protest outside Christmas pantomimes, too?
Apparently drag = paedophile is the equation, judging from what some folk seem to be waving or wearing in the slogan line.
Obviously that equivalence is insane, and the protestors are mentalists.
But why *has* Tate Britain employed a drag queen for its “nursery storytime”?
There shouldn't be a problem with a man dressing up as a woman to put on an amusing show for children. It's funny FFS.
If he were pushing the message that gender is a choice, that he really is a woman, that mentally ill people have the right to require society to accept their delusions as true (or as true as everything else), that would be a completely different matter. I haven't read anything yet that suggests he's doing anything of that kind. Mind you, the news reports don't seem to be covering what he actually does in his show.
The efforts on both sides are provocations. The low-level supporters are cannon fodder. There may well be a single office behind both sides.
Baroness Nicholson has written to the Tate board asking "Are [children] to be offered entertainment by murderers, paedophiles, terrorists, furries and other fetishists so their parents have to explain why they cannot be left with the kooky, colourful cartoon character they have seen promoted?"
Furries? Like in Disneyland? Like Roland Rat?
Nicholson, cousin of former MI5 director Eliza Manningham-Buller, was director of the Save the Children Foundation for 11 years. Enough said?
PS Maybe use Aida H Dee on Question Time opposing capital punishment a few days before a referendum on it and see what the result is. Worked with Eddie Izzard and Bremain.
More Lee Anderson trolling today, this time on net zero (where’s he’s out of touch with the vast majority even of 2019 Tory voters).
If Labour have their wits about them I think they can use the combination of him, Braverman and Raab to create a fear/disgust factor at the next election in the same way the Tories successfully did last time with Corbyn.
Labour need to keep reminding voters that the next election isn’t in the bag and if they don’t turn out and vote they could face 5 more years of the likes of Anderson.
In 2017 though Corbyn got 40% of the vote and a hung parliament, only in 2019 at his second attempt was he heavily beaten
Yes. You have to consider both elections for a fair assessment of Corbyn's electoral appeal.
No. Rather like Johnson, he was found out.
In 2017 most people knew him as a somewhat ineffectual but benign bearded old school socialist, who just might help prevent a hard Brexit. Just like they used to see Boris as an enjoyably buffoonish character who was in touch with real people.
By 2019 they’d seen him for what he was: a Russia-appeasing, out of touch menace who kept decidedly off-colour company.
I think the moment when he demanded the evidence for the Scripal poisoning be sent to Russia for testing was probably the turning point.
The lesson there is since we rarely give leaders 2 goes now it is perfectly possible someone really awful will not be found out until it is too late.
The thing about the drag queen story time hour protesters is that they're kissing cousins with the hardcore TERFS and the "all trans people are just men in a frock" types. Ultimately, both groups see trans people as sexual deviants and it's all too similar to the "all gays are paedos" mob of old.
Italy are 9/1 to beat England tomorrow. That’s VALUE
Agreed. One team aren't very good and are on the decline. The other were positively shocking, but are improving rapidly. Doubt whether we've reached crossover quite yet, especially at Twickenham. But not 9 times out of 10 certain.
Appeals court ruling says alleged domestic abusers have a constitutional right to keep their guns
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/02/09/guns-domestic-abuse-second-amendment/ Advocates for domestic violence victims were stunned by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which continued a string of court decisions citing the Second Amendment to erase gun restrictions… … In 2021 alone, 127 women in Texas were murdered by their male intimate partners with firearms, according to the Texas Council on Family Violence. Across the country, an average of 70 women each month are killed by their partners with guns. Research has shown that a domestic violence victim’s risk of death is five times higher when their abuser has access to a gun...
Shocking . Absolutely disgusting . Wtf is wrong with the USA where common sense and something most people would agree with as in keeping guns out of the hands of violent people is ignored so that they can bang on about their frigging gun rights .
The Second Amendment is wrong in the context of the 21st century. But it's there and we can't pretend it isn't.
Then they need to modify it to stop violent people owning guns . Oh how lucky we are to live in a civilized country where people care more about the lives of others than owning a gun.
Trying to think what our equivalent is. Something massively damaging but so ingrained in centuries of British tradition that nobody dare change or ban it, or even tighten regulations.
Any candidates I can think of: alcohol, smoking, driving, boxing, hunting, waste disposal etc. have all been progressively regulated to reduce harm.
As the Spectator pointed out, very wisely, it is the NHS
Whilst I agree that the NHS is too difficult to properly look and reform in serious ways, I also agree with the premise of the question being about something ingrained for centuries of tradition and culture means it does not apply.
I have no idea whether the NHS is irreformable, but in this case the facts and the trick is simple, if required.
It is universally acknowledged that in the UK there has to be health care for all access to which is not based on ability to pay at the point of contact. This is a mixture of national wealth, culture and civilization.
Rule (1) keep calling it the NHS Rule (2) run it any way you like that actually works as long as you keep the name and principle.
The staff, for whose benefit is sometimes feels to exist, care about details. The tax paying general public know nothing and care less about the logistics. They just want it to work.
This doesn't work with guns.
My rule (3) would be: agree what % of GDP is spent on health and social care. Give a Quango the money and tell them to spend it. Abolish 90% of the Dept of Health.
The way that staff are employed in the NHS is incredibly out of date.
It doesn’t really work for
1) the staff 2) the NHS 3) the government 4) those awkward, complaining idiots. The patients, that is.
Aren't Fairbrass, Bridgen and GeeBeebies vaccine sceptics?
All a bit incongruous when Boris invented the Covid vaccine, and seldom fails to remind us he got COVID right.
TCW is the among the most radical Tory sites, I'd expect the fruitcake element to eclipse the Boris element (despise him or not he was a politician from the tory mainstream).
Yes I do despise him.
I'm very much against him myself, but that was irrelevant to him being, essentially, a mainstream Tory. He wasn't and isn't some anti-establishment insurgent from the fringes of the party.
Sure, his personal standards of conduct are execreble, and he'll try new initiatives to present as radically reforming if he wants, but he isn't a crank.
Now I would dispute your final assertion.
Whatever is necessary for his own personal aggrandisement is inside his set of rules. If extremism from the left or right, or even vanity wars (hat tip to Blair) keep the wheels rolling, he would in my view give them a spin.
Yes, the idea that Boris is “mainstream Tory” is a nonsense. Essentially he defies such categorisations, which is part of his “gift”.
Well, we'll agree to disagree. I think his character (and his appeal) are not regular, but I see nothing in his approach to policies themselves which is not pretty mainstream for the Tories. He was not someone pushing at Brexit back when it was a fringe opinion, his immediate predecessor in effect condemned him for not being enough of a tax cutter for the free market heroes, and the hang em and flog em crowd want to go much further on immigration and boats than he did when in office.
He's got no particular philosophy, and that both aided and hindered him at times, but he seemed content to muddle along. Even on Brexit he talked a big game about no deal but quickly signed up to get a deal, which he then acted as though it was shit, in order to avoid no deal and its consequences.
He was a terrible PM and has an appalling approach to personal and professional standards, he was also willing to utilise any option if it aided him. But we all know he'd have happily adopted policies of the middle ground when it was appropriate.
I genuinely don't see what about Boris, other than presentation and level of shamelessness, is not mainstream.
But simply labelling Boris as “mainstream” ignores the very disruptive effect he had on his party and politics at large.
I accept he is not an anti-vax looncake, but if that is the threshold then mainstream loses some of its meaning to me.
But what does unlocking their economic potential look like? Is it something the people of those cities will go for? And (probably the greater challenge) something the people in between those cities will go for?
Well it starts with transport infrastructure, radical devolution, industrial strategy and R&D.
The people of these cities haven’t consciously opted for low living standards, they’re just trapped in a bigger system that maintains the status quo.
Agree about places not conciously opting for lower living standards, but there is sometimes an unconcious unwillingness to examine whether other choices have the effect of lowering living standards.
Thinking back to my time living in Yorkshire, there was a tendency to resent Leeds as the place where a (relatively) large amount of the investment and intervention went. It was seen as doing down Bradford, Huddersfield etc. But I suspect that the best way to make all of West Yorkshire richer is to start in the central hub. But that means accepting that it is the central hub.
Not just a Northern phenomenon; the same bickering between Portsmouth and Southampton probably holds both of them back. One of the reasons London works is that it has largely assimilated the secondary centres. Perhaps not Croydon, perhaps not Romford, though in both cases it's surely a matter of time.
There used be a bunch of hard lefties that would turn up to protest Tommy Robinson and the like, which is fair enough - but now they’re turning up to their own event, to fight those protesting it, many of whom are Christian groups and parent groups?
Strange that you're not directing your ire at the groups who are trying to get the event cancelled because they don't approve of it. I thought it was the left who were into cancel culture?
It's not to my taste, but I assume that parents have exercised their free will to take their kids to this story-telling. They should be able to do so without being harassed.
But what does unlocking their economic potential look like? Is it something the people of those cities will go for? And (probably the greater challenge) something the people in between those cities will go for?
Well it starts with transport infrastructure, radical devolution, industrial strategy and R&D.
The people of these cities haven’t consciously opted for low living standards, they’re just trapped in a bigger system that maintains the status quo.
Agree about places not conciously opting for lower living standards, but there is sometimes an unconcious unwillingness to examine whether other choices have the effect of lowering living standards.
Thinking back to my time living in Yorkshire, there was a tendency to resent Leeds as the place where a (relatively) large amount of the investment and intervention went. It was seen as doing down Bradford, Huddersfield etc. But I suspect that the best way to make all of West Yorkshire richer is to start in the central hub. But that means accepting that it is the central hub.
Not just a Northern phenomenon; the same bickering between Portsmouth and Southampton probably holds both of them back. One of the reasons London works is that it has largely assimilated the secondary centres. Perhaps not Croydon, perhaps not Romford, though in both cases it's surely a matter of time.
I think this rivalry is only really problematic within a system where Whitehall actually governs Yorkshire and South Hampshire to a degree pretty much unseen in other countries.
Rivalry between New York proper and, say, Newark, doesn’t seem to cause massive issues*. Indeed, it may encourage competition for tax dollar.
*Someone will now point out the paucity of transport options between New Jersey and Manhattan, but if that’s the case it stems from the lack of an overarching transport authority.
Aren't Fairbrass, Bridgen and GeeBeebies vaccine sceptics?
All a bit incongruous when Boris invented the Covid vaccine, and seldom fails to remind us he got COVID right.
TCW is the among the most radical Tory sites, I'd expect the fruitcake element to eclipse the Boris element (despise him or not he was a politician from the tory mainstream).
Yes I do despise him.
I'm very much against him myself, but that was irrelevant to him being, essentially, a mainstream Tory. He wasn't and isn't some anti-establishment insurgent from the fringes of the party.
Sure, his personal standards of conduct are execreble, and he'll try new initiatives to present as radically reforming if he wants, but he isn't a crank.
Now I would dispute your final assertion.
Whatever is necessary for his own personal aggrandisement is inside his set of rules. If extremism from the left or right, or even vanity wars (hat tip to Blair) keep the wheels rolling, he would in my view give them a spin.
Yes, the idea that Boris is “mainstream Tory” is a nonsense. Essentially he defies such categorisations, which is part of his “gift”.
Well, we'll agree to disagree. I think his character (and his appeal) are not regular, but I see nothing in his approach to policies themselves which is not pretty mainstream for the Tories. He was not someone pushing at Brexit back when it was a fringe opinion, his immediate predecessor in effect condemned him for not being enough of a tax cutter for the free market heroes, and the hang em and flog em crowd want to go much further on immigration and boats than he did when in office.
He's got no particular philosophy, and that both aided and hindered him at times, but he seemed content to muddle along. Even on Brexit he talked a big game about no deal but quickly signed up to get a deal, which he then acted as though it was shit, in order to avoid no deal and its consequences.
He was a terrible PM and has an appalling approach to personal and professional standards, he was also willing to utilise any option if it aided him. But we all know he'd have happily adopted policies of the middle ground when it was appropriate.
I genuinely don't see what about Boris, other than presentation and level of shamelessness, is not mainstream.
But simply labelling Boris as “mainstream” ignores the very disruptive effect he had on his party and politics at large.
I accept he is not an anti-vax looncake, but if that is the threshold then mainstream loses some of its meaning to me.
I'm not sure what meaning you are looking for it to have. What is considered mainstream changes over time, we even have a term for that.
I'm looking at his actual policies when governing, which within the admittedly high disruption level of Brexit are not at the margins of the sorts of things some in his own party advocated and still do advocate - even ignoring the anti-vax kind of crowd, Boris did not pull out of the ECHR as just one example, when many would have ages ago.
His impact on political culture and behaviour is obviously outsized even acknowledging him as PM - the scandals, the prorogation stuff, all the rest, and his weirdly loyal fanbase - but I see that as demonstrating him as being more influential than most politicians, as we'd expect from a PM who managed to win a big majority, and nothing to do with judging whether his governing actions are extreme or not.
None of this is to try to give him credit, I hope it is not taken that way, but an establishment Tory who will consider any policy if he thought it would make him popular, and who has obviously disappointed the extreme voices in the party even if they won't admit it (hence Truss and co wanting to overhaul his entire economic strategy)? He's obviously not a radical, what else is left?
Appeals court ruling says alleged domestic abusers have a constitutional right to keep their guns
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/02/09/guns-domestic-abuse-second-amendment/ Advocates for domestic violence victims were stunned by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which continued a string of court decisions citing the Second Amendment to erase gun restrictions… … In 2021 alone, 127 women in Texas were murdered by their male intimate partners with firearms, according to the Texas Council on Family Violence. Across the country, an average of 70 women each month are killed by their partners with guns. Research has shown that a domestic violence victim’s risk of death is five times higher when their abuser has access to a gun...
Shocking . Absolutely disgusting . Wtf is wrong with the USA where common sense and something most people would agree with as in keeping guns out of the hands of violent people is ignored so that they can bang on about their frigging gun rights .
The Second Amendment is wrong in the context of the 21st century. But it's there and we can't pretend it isn't.
Then they need to modify it to stop violent people owning guns . Oh how lucky we are to live in a civilized country where people care more about the lives of others than owning a gun.
Trying to think what our equivalent is. Something massively damaging but so ingrained in centuries of British tradition that nobody dare change or ban it, or even tighten regulations.
Any candidates I can think of: alcohol, smoking, driving, boxing, hunting, waste disposal etc. have all been progressively regulated to reduce harm.
As the Spectator pointed out, very wisely, it is the NHS
Whilst I agree that the NHS is too difficult to properly look and reform in serious ways, I also agree with the premise of the question being about something ingrained for centuries of tradition and culture means it does not apply.
I have no idea whether the NHS is irreformable, but in this case the facts and the trick is simple, if required.
It is universally acknowledged that in the UK there has to be health care for all access to which is not based on ability to pay at the point of contact. This is a mixture of national wealth, culture and civilization.
Rule (1) keep calling it the NHS Rule (2) run it any way you like that actually works as long as you keep the name and principle.
The staff, for whose benefit is sometimes feels to exist, care about details. The tax paying general public know nothing and care less about the logistics. They just want it to work.
This doesn't work with guns.
My rule (3) would be: agree what % of GDP is spent on health and social care. Give a Quango the money and tell them to spend it. Abolish 90% of the Dept of Health.
The way that staff are employed in the NHS is incredibly out of date.
It doesn’t really work for
1) the staff 2) the NHS 3) the government 4) those awkward, complaining idiots. The patients, that is.
Could you elaborate on how the staff are employed and why it's a problem? I've read various things about GP contracts and people leaving to be rehired as 'contractors' - but not something wider (unless that's what you meant).
Do they protest outside Christmas pantomimes, too?
Apparently drag = paedophile is the equation, judging from what some folk seem to be waving or wearing in the slogan line.
Obviously that equivalence is insane, and the protestors are mentalists.
But why *has* Tate Britain employed a drag queen for its “nursery storytime”?
Why shouldn't it? Nobody is having it "rubbed in their face" as far as I can see. Don't like it? Don't go. We took our kids to a family friendly drag show at the Edinburgh Festival a few years ago. It was a bit earnest but entirely appropriate with a rather sweet story about acceptance, and was delivered with flair. The children enjoyed it. I'm sad for kids brought up by parents who are so closed minded and afraid of anything different or new.
There used be a bunch of hard lefties that would turn up to protest Tommy Robinson and the like, which is fair enough - but now they’re turning up to their own event, to fight those protesting it, many of whom are Christian groups and parent groups?
Strange that you're not directing your ire at the groups who are trying to get the event cancelled because they don't approve of it. I thought it was the left who were into cancel culture?
It's not to my taste, but I assume that parents have exercised their free will to take their kids to this story-telling. They should be able to do so without being harassed.
Nope. I’m all for freedom of speech and freedom of protest.
I’m just making it clear that the violence in this case is coming from a hard-left group, who don’t think that peaceful Christian and parent groups should be allowed to speak.
Appeals court ruling says alleged domestic abusers have a constitutional right to keep their guns
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/02/09/guns-domestic-abuse-second-amendment/ Advocates for domestic violence victims were stunned by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which continued a string of court decisions citing the Second Amendment to erase gun restrictions… … In 2021 alone, 127 women in Texas were murdered by their male intimate partners with firearms, according to the Texas Council on Family Violence. Across the country, an average of 70 women each month are killed by their partners with guns. Research has shown that a domestic violence victim’s risk of death is five times higher when their abuser has access to a gun...
Shocking . Absolutely disgusting . Wtf is wrong with the USA where common sense and something most people would agree with as in keeping guns out of the hands of violent people is ignored so that they can bang on about their frigging gun rights .
The Second Amendment is wrong in the context of the 21st century. But it's there and we can't pretend it isn't.
Then they need to modify it to stop violent people owning guns . Oh how lucky we are to live in a civilized country where people care more about the lives of others than owning a gun.
Trying to think what our equivalent is. Something massively damaging but so ingrained in centuries of British tradition that nobody dare change or ban it, or even tighten regulations.
Any candidates I can think of: alcohol, smoking, driving, boxing, hunting, waste disposal etc. have all been progressively regulated to reduce harm.
As the Spectator pointed out, very wisely, it is the NHS
Whilst I agree that the NHS is too difficult to properly look and reform in serious ways, I also agree with the premise of the question being about something ingrained for centuries of tradition and culture means it does not apply.
I have no idea whether the NHS is irreformable, but in this case the facts and the trick is simple, if required.
It is universally acknowledged that in the UK there has to be health care for all access to which is not based on ability to pay at the point of contact. This is a mixture of national wealth, culture and civilization.
Rule (1) keep calling it the NHS Rule (2) run it any way you like that actually works as long as you keep the name and principle.
The staff, for whose benefit is sometimes feels to exist, care about details. The tax paying general public know nothing and care less about the logistics. They just want it to work.
This doesn't work with guns.
My rule (3) would be: agree what % of GDP is spent on health and social care. Give a Quango the money and tell them to spend it. Abolish 90% of the Dept of Health.
The way that staff are employed in the NHS is incredibly out of date.
It doesn’t really work for
1) the staff 2) the NHS 3) the government 4) those awkward, complaining idiots. The patients, that is.
That can all be sorted, if sortable at all, without changing the name 'NHS'. There are excellent things about not changing names and nominal identities. Under cover of it you can do quite a bit but preserve the concept of continuity.
Examples would be 'Cambridge University'; 'The Bishop of Rome'; 'Merton College'.
Some high-profile nutters at the blue end, but also Flick Drummond (who she? Ed.)(though I think her seat is being abolished).
Mogg, Bridgen, Jenkin, Bone, and IDS all to be deservedly given their P45s based on that. A Johnson chicken run to Mid Bedfordshire would also fail. Francois and Braverman to hang on unfortunately.
Do they protest outside Christmas pantomimes, too?
Apparently drag = paedophile is the equation, judging from what some folk seem to be waving or wearing in the slogan line.
Obviously that equivalence is insane, and the protestors are mentalists.
But why *has* Tate Britain employed a drag queen for its “nursery storytime”?
Some boring person in boring normal person clothes is just the same as storytime with their nursery/school teachers, but have someone in a colourful, flamboyant outfit, with sparkly make-up, and you have an Event, and you more easily capture the attention of the children.
There used be a bunch of hard lefties that would turn up to protest Tommy Robinson and the like, which is fair enough - but now they’re turning up to their own event, to fight those protesting it, many of whom are Christian groups and parent groups?
Strange that you're not directing your ire at the groups who are trying to get the event cancelled because they don't approve of it. I thought it was the left who were into cancel culture?
It's not to my taste, but I assume that parents have exercised their free will to take their kids to this story-telling. They should be able to do so without being harassed.
Nope. I’m all for freedom of speech and freedom of protest.
I’m just making it clear that the violence in this case is coming from a hard-left group, who don’t think that peaceful Christian and parent groups should be allowed to speak.
The thing about the drag queen story time hour protesters is that they're kissing cousins with the hardcore TERFS and the "all trans people are just men in a frock" types. Ultimately, both groups see trans people as sexual deviants and it's all too similar to the "all gays are paedos" mob of old.
I'm quite happy to be labelled as a fellow traveller of TERFs, but I have no problem with drag queens. I would be surprised if most TERFs were bothered. Drag queens seem to have a good understanding of the difference between reality and make-believe.
There used be a bunch of hard lefties that would turn up to protest Tommy Robinson and the like, which is fair enough - but now they’re turning up to their own event, to fight those protesting it, many of whom are Christian groups and parent groups?
Poor Patriotic Alternative fresh from their Greenock and Knowsley antics, just hanging out minding their own business.
There used be a bunch of hard lefties that would turn up to protest Tommy Robinson and the like, which is fair enough - but now they’re turning up to their own event, to fight those protesting it, many of whom are Christian groups and parent groups?
Strange that you're not directing your ire at the groups who are trying to get the event cancelled because they don't approve of it. I thought it was the left who were into cancel culture?
It's not to my taste, but I assume that parents have exercised their free will to take their kids to this story-telling. They should be able to do so without being harassed.
Nope. I’m all for freedom of speech and freedom of protest.
I’m just making it clear that the violence in this case is coming from a hard-left group, who don’t think that peaceful Christian and parent groups should be allowed to speak.
I would say that, on balance, the 'drag queen story hour' thing is a gift to the political right. The one thing that seems to go very well for them is when they brand their opponents as paedophiles. They keep finding examples of sexualised performances by drag queens to young children and putting them on Twitter, and then whip up hysteria that way; they also find public servants, politicians etc defending the performances, which adds to their conspiratorial narrative.
In many ways this is a weak spot for the 'woke'. They just keep giving their opponents what they want. The 'hard left' counter protestors are just shooting themselves in the foot.
The thing about the drag queen story time hour protesters is that they're kissing cousins with the hardcore TERFS and the "all trans people are just men in a frock" types. Ultimately, both groups see trans people as sexual deviants and it's all too similar to the "all gays are paedos" mob of old.
I'm quite happy to be labelled as a fellow traveller of TERFs, but I have no problem with drag queens. I would be surprised if most TERFs were bothered. Drag queens seem to have a good understanding of the difference between reality and make-believe.
Plus that kind of protest is un-British.
Some loud tut-tuting*? Maybe aggressively closing some net curtains?
*Definitely not pooh-poohing. That’s over the limit.
More Lee Anderson trolling today, this time on net zero (where’s he’s out of touch with the vast majority even of 2019 Tory voters).
If Labour have their wits about them I think they can use the combination of him, Braverman and Raab to create a fear/disgust factor at the next election in the same way the Tories successfully did last time with Corbyn.
Labour need to keep reminding voters that the next election isn’t in the bag and if they don’t turn out and vote they could face 5 more years of the likes of Anderson.
In 2017 though Corbyn got 40% of the vote and a hung parliament, only in 2019 at his second attempt was he heavily beaten
Yes. You have to consider both elections for a fair assessment of Corbyn's electoral appeal.
No. Rather like Johnson, he was found out.
In 2017 most people knew him as a somewhat ineffectual but benign bearded old school socialist, who just might help prevent a hard Brexit. Just like they used to see Boris as an enjoyably buffoonish character who was in touch with real people.
By 2019 they’d seen him for what he was: a Russia-appeasing, out of touch menace who kept decidedly off-colour company.
I think the moment when he demanded the evidence for the Scripal poisoning be sent to Russia for testing was probably the turning point.
Some truth but too jaundiced.
I think Brexit was the bigger factor. In 2017 it worked to flatter him. Remainers voted Labour as a kind of soft protest vote. Then in 2019, the opposite. Get Brexit Done was a juggernaut attracting both Leavers and people generally fed up with the impasse.
Upshot. Corbyn's true par value was masked both times. It lay between the 2. He was less popular in 2017 than the result implies. And he was less toxic in 2019 than that result implies.
Appeals court ruling says alleged domestic abusers have a constitutional right to keep their guns
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/02/09/guns-domestic-abuse-second-amendment/ Advocates for domestic violence victims were stunned by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which continued a string of court decisions citing the Second Amendment to erase gun restrictions… … In 2021 alone, 127 women in Texas were murdered by their male intimate partners with firearms, according to the Texas Council on Family Violence. Across the country, an average of 70 women each month are killed by their partners with guns. Research has shown that a domestic violence victim’s risk of death is five times higher when their abuser has access to a gun...
Shocking . Absolutely disgusting . Wtf is wrong with the USA where common sense and something most people would agree with as in keeping guns out of the hands of violent people is ignored so that they can bang on about their frigging gun rights .
The Second Amendment is wrong in the context of the 21st century. But it's there and we can't pretend it isn't.
Then they need to modify it to stop violent people owning guns . Oh how lucky we are to live in a civilized country where people care more about the lives of others than owning a gun.
Trying to think what our equivalent is. Something massively damaging but so ingrained in centuries of British tradition that nobody dare change or ban it, or even tighten regulations.
Any candidates I can think of: alcohol, smoking, driving, boxing, hunting, waste disposal etc. have all been progressively regulated to reduce harm.
As the Spectator pointed out, very wisely, it is the NHS
Whilst I agree that the NHS is too difficult to properly look and reform in serious ways, I also agree with the premise of the question being about something ingrained for centuries of tradition and culture means it does not apply.
I have no idea whether the NHS is irreformable, but in this case the facts and the trick is simple, if required.
It is universally acknowledged that in the UK there has to be health care for all access to which is not based on ability to pay at the point of contact. This is a mixture of national wealth, culture and civilization.
Rule (1) keep calling it the NHS Rule (2) run it any way you like that actually works as long as you keep the name and principle.
The staff, for whose benefit is sometimes feels to exist, care about details. The tax paying general public know nothing and care less about the logistics. They just want it to work.
This doesn't work with guns.
My rule (3) would be: agree what % of GDP is spent on health and social care. Give a Quango the money and tell them to spend it. Abolish 90% of the Dept of Health.
The way that staff are employed in the NHS is incredibly out of date.
It doesn’t really work for
1) the staff 2) the NHS 3) the government 4) those awkward, complaining idiots. The patients, that is.
Could you elaborate on how the staff are employed and why it's a problem? I've read various things about GP contracts and people leaving to be rehired as 'contractors' - but not something wider (unless that's what you meant).
The whole thing - the pay, the conditions, the way “shifts” are organised. It’s all very 1950s - in one hospital I saw an actual bloke with a clipboard doing time/motion counts on the doctors in A&E.
The idiocy of screwing this up and the hiring the same staff back in on “agency” to do the work…
It’s not as if predicting the amount of staff required is *that* hard.
@Foxy can explain better than I can - but we need to employee NHS frontline staff according to the best practices of the 21st cent. Not the worst of the late 19th.
Comments
Labour would also almost never win a majority with PR and PR would see the SNP lose half their seats too
It made sense when the threat was the French/English/Spanish etc and you might be able to repel invaders with a well-armed local militia. Nowadays it is just a thin veneer to cover the self-interest of the money men who run the local arms industry.
No German or Italian or Swedish governing party, countries which also have PR, has got a majority since 2000
Annual Invictus just won at 6/1 and Love Envoi is a non-runner. Good luck with the other two at outrageous prices.
But what's really odd is how much each new PM has run against the record of their predecessor. May told Osborne to go away and kept Gove out for a time. Johnson blew up everything May wanted to achieve. Truss ran against fiscal orthodoxy. Sunak was appointed to clear up Truss's mess.
No wonder so little has actually got done.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/10zgefz/due_to_russias_endless_human_wave_attacks/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Note the MG3 - the updated version of the MG42 that the Germans used in WWII.
Depending on how it is setup, up to 1800 rounds/minute.
What we need to do is unlock the economic potential of the 18m people who live within a 100km radius of Stoke-on-Trent.
It’s the third-biggest such stretch of population in Europe.
*Although we should do this too, if people want to.
Oh no. I thought I was guaranteed a double.
I was watching non runners all morning expecting pull outs. Very close to Cheltenham now and Love Envoi is my tip for Mares Hurdle.
Totally abnormal.
Otherwise, PR in the UK can be predicted to lead to some combination of Lab/Green/Nats alternating power with Con/Reform, with LD and perhaps the odd Unionist floating in between.
Whatever is necessary for his own personal
aggrandisement is inside his set of rules. If extremism from the left or right, or even vanity wars (hat tip to Blair) keep the wheels rolling, he would in my view give them a spin.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11739361/Right-wing-protesters-clash-outside-Tate-Britain-drag-queen-story-telling-children.html
What is more interesting is what is likely to happen to the Tories post the coming electoral defeat.
Will the Brexity loons cement their grip on the party, or will there be some kind of return to the relative pragmatism of mainstream Tory tradition?
And if drag plus children does not comprise a permissible mix, that's Christmas pantomimes scuppered. Or have they already been?
Do they protest outside Christmas pantomimes, too?
https://youtu.be/oQLUu3xEVno
But why *has* Tate Britain employed a drag queen for its “nursery storytime”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_Weekend_TV
But what does unlocking their economic potential look like? Is it something the people of those cities will go for? And (probably the greater challenge) something the people in between those cities will go for?
(To be fair, there's a sexy element to Ru Paul drag that really isn't there in Panto drag. But it's also stupid.)
Panto is a long-lasting entertainment tradition which plays upon the humour inherent in cross-dressing.
Drag queens spring from a consciously ribald and vulgar gay sub-culture.
The people of these cities haven’t consciously opted for low living standards, they’re just trapped in a bigger system that maintains the status quo.
In 2017 most people knew him as a somewhat ineffectual but benign bearded old school socialist, who just might help prevent a hard Brexit. Just like they used to see Boris as an enjoyably buffoonish character who was in touch with real people.
By 2019 they’d seen him for what he was: a Russia-appeasing, out of touch menace who kept decidedly off-colour company.
I think the moment when he demanded the evidence for the Scripal poisoning be sent to Russia for testing was probably the turning point.
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/orderedseats.html
Some high-profile nutters at the blue end, but also Flick Drummond (who she? Ed.)(though I think her seat is being abolished).
It is universally acknowledged that in the UK there has to be health care for all access to which is not based on ability to pay at the point of contact. This is a mixture of national wealth, culture and civilization.
Rule (1) keep calling it the NHS
Rule (2) run it any way you like that actually works as long as you keep the name and principle.
The staff, for whose benefit is sometimes feels to exist, care about details. The tax paying general public know nothing and care less about the logistics. They just want it to work.
This doesn't work with guns.
My rule (3) would be: agree what % of GDP is spent on health and social care. Give a Quango the money and tell them to spend it. Abolish 90% of the Dept of Health.
Italy are 9/1 to beat England tomorrow. That’s VALUE
Not my thing, but I guess they felt its a popular enough thing so why not? Not sure why it would have sprung to mind as a particular option.
There used be a bunch of hard lefties that would turn up to protest Tommy Robinson and the like, which is fair enough - but now they’re turning up to their own event, to fight those protesting it, many of whom are Christian groups and parent groups?
The question is why Tate Britain is hosting.
I don’t think this is a massive issue, obviously, and I deplore the idiotic protesters, but doesn’t it strike anyone else as…ODD?
I'm in the ninth safest Labour seat in the country - I'll be bold and suggest the Greens will finish second in East Ham and edge the Conservatives into third.
Standard of this years 6 nations has been great
We’ve not only caught up with the Southern Hemisphere. We’re better.
And note the rhetorical tropes: The rule is simple. Everything good about health care is to the credit of the NHS; everything bad about it is the wickedness of governments. My system will only be achieved when credit and blame are all going in the same direction.
He's got no particular philosophy, and that both aided and hindered him at times, but he seemed content to muddle along. Even on Brexit he talked a big game about no deal but quickly signed up to get a deal, which he then acted as though it was shit, in order to avoid no deal and its consequences.
He was a terrible PM and has an appalling approach to personal and professional standards, he was also willing to utilise any option if it aided him. But we all know he'd have happily adopted policies of the middle ground when it was appropriate.
I genuinely don't see what about Boris, other than presentation and level of shamelessness, is not mainstream.
If he were pushing the message that gender is a choice, that he really is a woman, that mentally ill people have the right to require society to accept their delusions as true (or as true as everything else), that would be a completely different matter. I haven't read anything yet that suggests he's doing anything of that kind. Mind you, the news reports don't seem to be covering what he actually does in his show.
The efforts on both sides are provocations. The low-level supporters are cannon fodder. There may well be a single office behind both sides.
Baroness Nicholson has written to the Tate board asking "Are [children] to be offered entertainment by murderers, paedophiles, terrorists, furries and other fetishists so their parents have to explain why they cannot be left with the kooky, colourful cartoon character they have seen promoted?"
Furries? Like in Disneyland? Like Roland Rat?
Nicholson, cousin of former MI5 director Eliza Manningham-Buller, was director of the Save the Children Foundation for 11 years. Enough said?
PS Maybe use Aida H Dee on Question Time opposing capital punishment a few days before a referendum on it and see what the result is. Worked with Eddie Izzard and Bremain.
From a different point of view, one could substitute "gay", or "Jew", or "black" or "Irishman" in the question.
One team aren't very good and are on the decline.
The other were positively shocking, but are improving rapidly.
Doubt whether we've reached crossover quite yet, especially at Twickenham.
But not 9 times out of 10 certain.
It doesn’t really work for
1) the staff
2) the NHS
3) the government
4) those awkward, complaining idiots. The patients, that is.
I accept he is not an anti-vax looncake, but if that is the threshold then mainstream loses some of its meaning to me.
Thinking back to my time living in Yorkshire, there was a tendency to resent Leeds as the place where a (relatively) large amount of the investment and intervention went. It was seen as doing down Bradford, Huddersfield etc. But I suspect that the best way to make all of West Yorkshire richer is to start in the central hub. But that means accepting that it is the central hub.
Not just a Northern phenomenon; the same bickering between Portsmouth and Southampton probably holds both of them back. One of the reasons London works is that it has largely assimilated the secondary centres. Perhaps not Croydon, perhaps not Romford, though in both cases it's surely a matter of time.
It's not to my taste, but I assume that parents have exercised their free will to take their kids to this story-telling. They should be able to do so without being harassed.
Rivalry between New York proper and, say, Newark, doesn’t seem to cause massive issues*. Indeed, it may encourage competition for tax dollar.
*Someone will now point out the paucity of transport options between New Jersey and Manhattan, but if that’s the case it stems from the lack of an overarching transport authority.
I'm looking at his actual policies when governing, which within the admittedly high disruption level of Brexit are not at the margins of the sorts of things some in his own party advocated and still do advocate - even ignoring the anti-vax kind of crowd, Boris did not pull out of the ECHR as just one example, when many would have ages ago.
His impact on political culture and behaviour is obviously outsized even acknowledging him as PM - the scandals, the prorogation stuff, all the rest, and his weirdly loyal fanbase - but I see that as demonstrating him as being more influential than most politicians, as we'd expect from a PM who managed to win a big majority, and nothing to do with judging whether his governing actions are extreme or not.
None of this is to try to give him credit, I hope it is not taken that way, but an establishment Tory who will consider any policy if he thought it would make him popular, and who has obviously disappointed the extreme voices in the party even if they won't admit it (hence Truss and co wanting to overhaul his entire economic strategy)? He's obviously not a radical, what else is left?
PS Drag queens and those who are as camp as a row of tents will absolutely love the coronation!
We took our kids to a family friendly drag show at the Edinburgh Festival a few years ago. It was a bit earnest but entirely appropriate with a rather sweet story about acceptance, and was delivered with flair. The children enjoyed it. I'm sad for kids brought up by parents who are so closed minded and afraid of anything different or new.
I’m just making it clear that the violence in this case is coming from a hard-left group, who don’t think that peaceful Christian and parent groups should be allowed to speak.
Examples would be 'Cambridge University'; 'The Bishop of Rome'; 'Merton College'.
Francois and Braverman to hang on unfortunately.
Are you there?
https://reduxx.info/rest-in-power-drag-queen-story-hour-uk-founder-fundraising-for-convicted-child-sex-offenders-funeral/
In many ways this is a weak spot for the 'woke'. They just keep giving their opponents what they want. The 'hard left' counter protestors are just shooting themselves in the foot.
Some loud tut-tuting*? Maybe aggressively closing some net curtains?
*Definitely not pooh-poohing. That’s over the limit.
I think Brexit was the bigger factor. In 2017 it worked to flatter him. Remainers voted Labour as a kind of soft protest vote. Then in 2019, the opposite. Get Brexit Done was a juggernaut attracting both Leavers and people generally fed up with the impasse.
Upshot. Corbyn's true par value was masked both times. It lay between the 2. He was less popular in 2017 than the result implies. And he was less toxic in 2019 than that result implies.
The idiocy of screwing this up and the hiring the same staff back in on “agency” to do the work…
It’s not as if predicting the amount of staff required is *that* hard.
@Foxy can explain better than I can - but we need to employee NHS frontline staff according to the best practices of the 21st cent. Not the worst of the late 19th.