All that being said, over the last few days Sir Keir has come up with some things that make me start to believe that maybe he does have a clue - so maybe it'll all be moot in the end. He absolutely has to use this as a springboard to put forward a manifesto to improve the country on his own terms, and to get a big enough majority to implement it. The Tories aren't going to win the next election, so the country needs Labour to be strong and effective in government. A hung parliament doesn't help anyone.
It's coming, Driver, that manifesto. Just try and hang on a little longer if you can.
Anyways. I got a full time, permanent post at my school today for next September. This was despite dropping an entire tin of hot Scotch broth over myself 20 minutes before the final interview yesterday. And despite the Head coming in halfway through with two reporters from ITV and starting to give them the full tour of our brand new music lodge. Before suddenly saying "Oh. Are the interviews in here?" The outstanding candidate. Best interview. Am chuffed. Validation. And security. If a pay cut.
Well done... I've done something similar - been offered and accepted a full time job in the public sector even though it means a pay cut. I took a break from it for a couple of years after getting fed up with the dysfunctionality of the public sector. I found that a) I am not motivated to make money despite lots of opportunities to do so and b) after a while you want to stick at doing one thing, work in a solid team etc, rather than hopping around, and c) no job is a life sentence and there are always alternatives.
Yeah. Do you know what? After going on supply last September I discovered that finding a line manager who I could not design to be more supportive, nor more likeable as a person, nor better at her job, is worth many £1000's a year. In fact it's priceless. I want to go to work for her. Cos she's great. She's stifled by lunatic decisions from higher up of course. We have laughter daily about the ludicrosity of it all. And have each others' backs. I like her very much. I would never have applied for permanent otherwise. One of the things you realise with age if you're lucky I guess.
Nonsense, we should all be working 100 hours a week powered by cocaine in the City so we can become multi millionaires who talk about mergers and multi-purpose tax liquidation initiatives or whatever.
And at our desks for those 100 hours, naturally. After all JRM has identified WFH part time as the reason the Met Office didn't get their forecast 110% right in December. And he is a genius. Of some proportion.
As anticipated, the scale of these losses and opposition celebration means anything they may have said about the voter ID changes has been pretty much lost.
It won't be a priority to fix - after all, after the next GE the system in place will have produced a new government, so how bad could it be?
I would be amazed if a Labour government gets rid of photo ID for voting. I hope they do though.
Indeed. The scale of the Tory hammering will mean that this will just get lost in the fog of war. But, it shouldn’t. It was a sad day today to see that happening.
Many people lost their vote. That’s awful, even if it was the last desperate act of a Tory Party that has run out of ideas.
The other thing, about rejoining the public sector, is that it is good to go back in and challenge extreme socially progressive initiatives in government. I've accepted a role in an organisation that is oestensibly very 'woke' but my experience is that, aside from a small minority, the people who work there don't actually buy in to it.
My theoretically 'woke' place has a full time person looking into our history of problematic involvement with slavery. And meanwhile we are ever-expanding our connections with the Chinese government with never a whiff of chat about what they are up to w/regards Uyghurs or the like.
Matt Goodwin hesitantly sits on the fence on the subject of whether the Tories are diabolically or merely catastrophically bad. He doesn't outline how anyone might have done different in any sort of detail. Worth reading for a line on what thoughtful Tory friends are feeling.
Conclusion: being a politics prof is easier than having to run a country.
Does he conclude that the Tories did badly because they didn't talk enough about immigration?
It's true that the Tories have utterly failed on the topic of immigration.
Well. What do they want? Hugely reduced immigration. But real terms public sector pay cuts and simultaneously no public sector labour shortages. No surprise they can't square that circle.
A migrant worker dominated public sector on low pay, living in dormitories and unable to vote with a high pay, low tax private sector for the locals would be the optimum for the Conservatives.
Parties obviously don't mention their losses - of which all parties always have one or two in Council elections (e.g. Slough for Labour, Brighton for Greens, Bedford mayor for Lib Dems, and basically anywhere you care to mention for the Tories).
But the overall results matter, and the trends are very, very clear. The Greens had a really good set of elections overall - I'm not one, but you need to be serious for a moment and accept that they did on any sensible measure.
They're either involved in a massive scandal or the residents of Slough are the biggest contrarians of all time.
Though in the case of the former areas vote back in those involved in massive scandals all the time of course - look at Luftur Rahman.
Apparently the council went bankrupt a couple of years ago.
There will be more like them soon.
Why do you think a rash of Council bankruptcies is coming?
You may be right, but I think it's worth saying that these don't generally arise from disappointing funding settlements. That sort of thing doesn't make the administration popular as they need to set Council Tax rises to the maximum allowable, and cut services. But bankruptcies tend to relate to really terrible investments and other forms of catastrophic financial mismanagement... as was the case for Slough.
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Many people lost their vote. That’s awful, even if it was the last desperate act of a Tory Party that has run out of ideas.
Isn't Singapore somewhat like that ?
But the overall results matter, and the trends are very, very clear. The Greens had a really good set of elections overall - I'm not one, but you need to be serious for a moment and accept that they did on any sensible measure.
You may be right, but I think it's worth saying that these don't generally arise from disappointing funding settlements. That sort of thing doesn't make the administration popular as they need to set Council Tax rises to the maximum allowable, and cut services. But bankruptcies tend to relate to really terrible investments and other forms of catastrophic financial mismanagement... as was the case for Slough.