I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Of course the reason people get really irate with Sunak is the colour of his skin. It's the great elephant in the room in British politics.
And equally obvious is the fact that the people who get most irate with him are Tories, for obvious reasons. People who don't support the Tories may find themselves amazed at his antics, but scarcely annoyed, given the likely consequences.
That would be the same racists who want to replace Sunak with Braverman or Badenoch.
I'd say it was fairly obvious that those who just disagree with him about politics and aren't racist will not hate him as much as the ones who both disagree with him about politics and are racist!
Wanting to replace a man of Indian origin with a woman of African origin - classic racist misogyny.
If they are in favour of replacing him this, they are racists who are overcompensating.
If they are against replacing him this, they simply racists.
Has anyone got a very large pair of scales and a duck?
If you really don't think race is a factor in the current situation - particularly among the anti-immigrant historical Tories who are now supporting RefUK - then that's your prerogative, but I think you are fooling yourself.
I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Disappointment, I'd say.
I didn't have high hopes for Sunak, but he's still surprised on the down side. That probably makes many of us exaggerate just how shit he is, as we're disappointed.
All politicians disappoint to some extent, I guess, but in my politically aware memory it goes something like this:
Major - out of his depth, but that was partly because the Tories were a chasm of shit at the time, so not really disappointing and he did many good things
Blair - disappointing over Iraq and some still feel this very keenly, harshly critised for that
Brown - performed more or less as expected, I guess
Cameron - likewise, brought at least a veneer of modernity and liberalism to the Tory party
May - disappointed some, was also severely criticised
Johnson - delivered more or less as expected, I guess - had people thought he had honour you'd have seen more vitriol over partygate etc
Truss - also performed more or less as expected
Sunak - he was doomed, but we thought he might have some dull managerial competence and maybe some decency - projection maybe; present complete shit show is below expectations
After some time has elapsed I think there's some sort of agreement that Blair's problem was Brown, and Brown's problem was Brown.
Blair's problem was his messiah complex. It wasn't Brown who invented sofa government or forced the bombardment of Afghanistan and invasion of Iraq.
Yes I think that was his problem. His early triumphs in foreign affairs rather went to his head.
I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Disappointment, I'd say.
I didn't have high hopes for Sunak, but he's still surprised on the down side. That probably makes many of us exaggerate just how shit he is, as we're disappointed.
All politicians disappoint to some extent, I guess, but in my politically aware memory it goes something like this:
Major - out of his depth, but that was partly because the Tories were a chasm of shit at the time, so not really disappointing and he did many good things
Blair - disappointing over Iraq and some still feel this very keenly, harshly critised for that
Brown - performed more or less as expected, I guess
Cameron - likewise, brought at least a veneer of modernity and liberalism to the Tory party
May - disappointed some, was also severely criticised
Johnson - delivered more or less as expected, I guess - had people thought he had honour you'd have seen more vitriol over partygate etc
Truss - also performed more or less as expected
Sunak - he was doomed, but we thought he might have some dull managerial competence and maybe some decency - projection maybe; present complete shit show is below expectations
After some time has elapsed I think there's some sort of agreement that Blair's problem was Brown, and Brown's problem was Brown.
Blair's problem was his messiah complex. It wasn't Brown who invented sofa government or forced the bombardment of Afghanistan and invasion of Iraq.
Yes I think that was his problem. His early triumphs in foreign affairs rather went to his head.
The hand of history did rather slap him in the face in the end.
I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Of course the reason people get really irate with Sunak is the colour of his skin. It's the great elephant in the room in British politics.
And equally obvious is the fact that the people who get most irate with him are Tories, for obvious reasons. People who don't support the Tories may find themselves amazed at his antics, but scarcely annoyed, given the likely consequences.
I don't believe Rochdale is a Tory. And so far as I'm aware those on pb most irate at him aren't Tories either.
I agree. He supports the apartheid government of Netanyahu but calling him a Tory is a step too far
Isn’t he standing for the Lib Dems at the next GE and is formerly Labour on the New labour side, which probably explains the support for Israel.
To call him a Tory, well, he’s not.
Has had some pretty specific comments about his local Tory MP, too.
I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Of course the reason people get really irate with Sunak is the colour of his skin. It's the great elephant in the room in British politics.
And equally obvious is the fact that the people who get most irate with him are Tories, for obvious reasons. People who don't support the Tories may find themselves amazed at his antics, but scarcely annoyed, given the likely consequences.
That would be the same racists who want to replace Sunak with Braverman or Badenoch.
I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Of course the reason people get really irate with Sunak is the colour of his skin. It's the great elephant in the room in British politics.
And equally obvious is the fact that the people who get most irate with him are Tories, for obvious reasons. People who don't support the Tories may find themselves amazed at his antics, but scarcely annoyed, given the likely consequences.
That would be the same racists who want to replace Sunak with Braverman or Badenoch.
I'd say it was fairly obvious that those who just disagree with him about politics and aren't racist will not hate him as much as the ones who both disagree with him about politics and are racist!
Wanting to replace a man of Indian origin with a woman of African origin - classic racist misogyny.
If they are in favour of replacing him this, they are racists who are overcompensating.
If they are against replacing him this, they simply racists.
Has anyone got a very large pair of scales and a duck?
If you really don't think race is a factor in the current situation - particularly among the anti-immigrant historical Tories who are now supporting RefUK - then that's your prerogative, but I think you are fooling yourself.
Sunak’s issue is being seen as an internationalist and elitist - see the various comments here about how he’ll be off to California 10 seconds after losing the election.
Maybe Sunak should have done a deal with Boris when they both had the numbers for a leadership vote. Let Boris try and inspire some swing back for the next GE, and take over if he lost
Maybe Sunak should have done a deal with Boris when they both had the numbers for a leadership vote. Let Boris try and inspire some swing back for the next GE, and take over if he lost
Is there any polling that shows Boris is currently viewed positively by the general electorate? The mood music (on here, and that I see in the media) seems to be generally against him?
(Then again, I'm rather biased against Boris as a politician...)
Why does an 'anarcho-capitalist' want to deny women the right to choose when to become mothers? Is that the anarcho or the capitalist bit?
Do Anarcho-capitalists exist? I'm far from sure they do now, and I suspect they never have.
I think it's a fancy name for libertarian.
It's a bit of a step on from libertarianism in that libertarians generally believe in a minimal state to enforce contracts and property rights, whereas anarcho-capitalists believe that's unnecessary. Medieval Iceland comes up a lot.
I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Of course the reason people get really irate with Sunak is the colour of his skin. It's the great elephant in the room in British politics.
And equally obvious is the fact that the people who get most irate with him are Tories, for obvious reasons. People who don't support the Tories may find themselves amazed at his antics, but scarcely annoyed, given the likely consequences.
I don't believe Rochdale is a Tory. And so far as I'm aware those on pb most irate at him aren't Tories either.
I agree. He supports the apartheid government of Netanyahu but calling him a Tory is a step too far
Isn’t he standing for the Lib Dems at the next GE and is formerly Labour on the New labour side, which probably explains the support for Israel.
To call him a Tory, well, he’s not.
Definitely not a Tory. One of the most persuasive opposition to the Government posters on here. I thought he was Labour but the difference between Labour and Lib Dem is academic. No one knows the specifics of either. Just being semi decent who would never invent a plan like Rwanda or employ a Home Secretary like Braverman is enough for now
I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Of course the reason people get really irate with Sunak is the colour of his skin. It's the great elephant in the room in British politics.
And equally obvious is the fact that the people who get most irate with him are Tories, for obvious reasons. People who don't support the Tories may find themselves amazed at his antics, but scarcely annoyed, given the likely consequences.
Why does an 'anarcho-capitalist' want to deny women the right to choose when to become mothers? Is that the anarcho or the capitalist bit?
Do Anarcho-capitalists exist? I'm far from sure they do now, and I suspect they never have.
Agh. Debatable. They exist, but I don't think they've ever seized power except by default when states collapse (see Somalia). It's the equivalent of running a state without a state, and you can imagine how much fun that is
I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Disappointment, I'd say.
I didn't have high hopes for Sunak, but he's still surprised on the down side. That probably makes many of us exaggerate just how shit he is, as we're disappointed.
All politicians disappoint to some extent, I guess, but in my politically aware memory it goes something like this:
Major - out of his depth, but that was partly because the Tories were a chasm of shit at the time, so not really disappointing and he did many good things
Blair - disappointing over Iraq and some still feel this very keenly, harshly critised for that
Brown - performed more or less as expected, I guess
Cameron - likewise, brought at least a veneer of modernity and liberalism to the Tory party
May - disappointed some, was also severely criticised
Johnson - delivered more or less as expected, I guess - had people thought he had honour you'd have seen more vitriol over partygate etc
Truss - also performed more or less as expected
Sunak - he was doomed, but we thought he might have some dull managerial competence and maybe some decency - projection maybe; present complete shit show is below expectations
After some time has elapsed I think there's some sort of agreement that Blair's problem was Brown, and Brown's problem was Brown.
Blair's problem was his messiah complex. It wasn't Brown who invented sofa government or forced the bombardment of Afghanistan and invasion of Iraq.
Yes I think that was his problem. His early triumphs in foreign affairs rather went to his head.
David Owen wrote quite a decent book on what he dubbed "hubris syndrome" a few years ago.
The essence of it is that very successul politicians have, by definition, been quite lucky at key moments as well, in fairness, as being quite skillful as politicians. But they tend to discount the luck element completely, and conclude all their success is entirely down to exceptionally good political judgment. That's particularly the case for those who haven't had major political setbacks on the way. The over-confidence then actually impairs their once pretty decent political judgment as they increasingly give insufficient weight (indeed, often no weight) to evidence they may be wrong. In a sense, they keep upping the stakes in the belief they can't lose, and become reckless in a way they'd never have been early in their careers.
For Blair, Iraq. For Thatcher, would she really have implemented or persisted with the Poll Tax earlier in her career? It was a bit of an odd hill to die on in retrospect.
Maybe Sunak should have done a deal with Boris when they both had the numbers for a leadership vote. Let Boris try and inspire some swing back for the next GE, and take over if he lost
Is there any polling that shows Boris is currently viewed positively by the general electorate? The mood music (on here, and that I see in the media) seems to be generally against him?
(Then again, I'm rather biased against Boris as a politician...)
The mood music was against him on here when he won an 80 seat majority! Even before that, Alastair Meeks made him a 10/1 shot to make the final two of the 2019 leadership election, which he won easily
The PB mood music is always against anyone who isn’t a centrist, (albeit Boris probably is) but UKIP, the referendum, Corbyn and Boris all showed mood music isn’t always worth listening to.
When Boris was just about to quit he was still doing a lot better than Sunak is now on ‘Best PM’ vs Sir Keir
I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Of course the reason people get really irate with Sunak is the colour of his skin. It's the great elephant in the room in British politics.
And equally obvious is the fact that the people who get most irate with him are Tories, for obvious reasons. People who don't support the Tories may find themselves amazed at his antics, but scarcely annoyed, given the likely consequences.
I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Jesus fucking Christ.
Our oldest son, in the sprit of the season, asked our (younger than him - pre-school) daughter if she knew what Jesus was. Yes, she replied, it's a word grown ups use when they're cross.
(We have since attempted to moderate our taking of the Lord's* name in vain within the household)
*is it still taking the Lord's name in vain, what with the holy trinity etc - Jesus is also the Lord?
Jesus is described as 'Lord' hundreds of times in the New Testament. Sometimes it is clear that the Greek word used (kurios) is translating the Hebrew word 'Yahweh' - which means God all the time in the Old Testament, sometimes it is clear that it is just a respectful title, and many times it is a matter of opinion. To Christians 'Jesus is Lord' in both senses is a foundational claim of the faith.
Randomly sampling the 1,402 comments while he was speaking he seems to inspire support and hope from all over Latin America
If you randomly sample the 3,459 Comments under the video for Gary Numan's 2021 track "Intruder", he seems to inspire support and hope from all over the world. Mostly from geriatric goths, but there y'go. It's worth watching with an open mind for people who have him marked down as just a throwback with eyeliner and unconvincing hair.
I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Disappointment, I'd say.
I didn't have high hopes for Sunak, but he's still surprised on the down side. That probably makes many of us exaggerate just how shit he is, as we're disappointed.
All politicians disappoint to some extent, I guess, but in my politically aware memory it goes something like this:
Major - out of his depth, but that was partly because the Tories were a chasm of shit at the time, so not really disappointing and he did many good things
Blair - disappointing over Iraq and some still feel this very keenly, harshly critised for that
Brown - performed more or less as expected, I guess
Cameron - likewise, brought at least a veneer of modernity and liberalism to the Tory party
May - disappointed some, was also severely criticised
Johnson - delivered more or less as expected, I guess - had people thought he had honour you'd have seen more vitriol over partygate etc
Truss - also performed more or less as expected
Sunak - he was doomed, but we thought he might have some dull managerial competence and maybe some decency - projection maybe; present complete shit show is below expectations
After some time has elapsed I think there's some sort of agreement that Blair's problem was Brown, and Brown's problem was Brown.
Blair's problem was his messiah complex. It wasn't Brown who invented sofa government or forced the bombardment of Afghanistan and invasion of Iraq.
Yes I think that was his problem. His early triumphs in foreign affairs rather went to his head.
David Owen wrote quite a decent book on what he dubbed "hubris syndrome" a few years ago.
The essence of it is that very successul politicians have, by definition, been quite lucky at key moments as well, in fairness, as being quite skillful as politicians. But they tend to discount the luck element completely, and conclude all their success is entirely down to exceptionally good political judgment. That's particularly the case for those who haven't had major political setbacks on the way. The over-confidence then actually impairs their once pretty decent political judgment as they increasingly give insufficient weight (indeed, often no weight) to evidence they may be wrong. In a sense, they keep upping the stakes in the belief they can't lose, and become reckless in a way they'd never have been early in their careers.
For Blair, Iraq. For Thatcher, would she really have implemented or persisted with the Poll Tax earlier in her career? It was a bit of an odd hill to die on in retrospect.
I think it is much simpler with Blair.
He had a close relationship and natural affinity with Clinton. That worked well for him. When Bush became President, Blair had a dilemma. He had no such affinity with Bush but it was important to retain good relations with the White House. Clinton advised Blair that you could only be fully for or against Bush and his team. Half-measures were unacceptable. So Blair decided to row in with Bush and Co.
Iraq was the most disastrous consequence of this decision, in many respects, not least the trashing of Blair's reputation.
If you can ignore Iraq (very big 'if') Blair wasn't a bad PM. He would however have been a much better one if he had kept the White House more at arm's length, and strengthened his ties with Europe, where the administrations were more sympatico.
I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Of course the reason people get really irate with Sunak is the colour of his skin. It's the great elephant in the room in British politics.
And equally obvious is the fact that the people who get most irate with him are Tories, for obvious reasons. People who don't support the Tories may find themselves amazed at his antics, but scarcely annoyed, given the likely consequences.
That would be the same racists who want to replace Sunak with Braverman or Badenoch.
I'd say it was fairly obvious that those who just disagree with him about politics and aren't racist will not hate him as much as the ones who both disagree with him about politics and are racist!
Wanting to replace a man of Indian origin with a woman of African origin - classic racist misogyny.
If they are in favour of replacing him this, they are racists who are overcompensating.
If they are against replacing him this, they simply racists.
Has anyone got a very large pair of scales and a duck?
If you really don't think race is a factor in the current situation - particularly among the anti-immigrant historical Tories who are now supporting RefUK - then that's your prerogative, but I think you are fooling yourself.
I think race probably is a factor, but only to a tiny percent, perhaps 1%, and that probably balanced by the Hindutva vote so winds up a wash. Certainly the latter is present amongst some of my Hindu friends in Leicester.
Mostly though it is about him being a "Citizen of Nowhere" and I don't think that covert racism. Its his chosen career, obvious love of California, Green Card and Non-Dom wife. He even said in the leadership contest that if he hadn't gone into UK politics he would be in California.
I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Disappointment, I'd say.
I didn't have high hopes for Sunak, but he's still surprised on the down side. That probably makes many of us exaggerate just how shit he is, as we're disappointed.
All politicians disappoint to some extent, I guess, but in my politically aware memory it goes something like this:
Major - out of his depth, but that was partly because the Tories were a chasm of shit at the time, so not really disappointing and he did many good things
Blair - disappointing over Iraq and some still feel this very keenly, harshly critised for that
Brown - performed more or less as expected, I guess
Cameron - likewise, brought at least a veneer of modernity and liberalism to the Tory party
May - disappointed some, was also severely criticised
Johnson - delivered more or less as expected, I guess - had people thought he had honour you'd have seen more vitriol over partygate etc
Truss - also performed more or less as expected
Sunak - he was doomed, but we thought he might have some dull managerial competence and maybe some decency - projection maybe; present complete shit show is below expectations
After some time has elapsed I think there's some sort of agreement that Blair's problem was Brown, and Brown's problem was Brown.
Blair's problem was his messiah complex. It wasn't Brown who invented sofa government or forced the bombardment of Afghanistan and invasion of Iraq.
Yes I think that was his problem. His early triumphs in foreign affairs rather went to his head.
David Owen wrote quite a decent book on what he dubbed "hubris syndrome" a few years ago.
The essence of it is that very successul politicians have, by definition, been quite lucky at key moments as well, in fairness, as being quite skillful as politicians. But they tend to discount the luck element completely, and conclude all their success is entirely down to exceptionally good political judgment. That's particularly the case for those who haven't had major political setbacks on the way. The over-confidence then actually impairs their once pretty decent political judgment as they increasingly give insufficient weight (indeed, often no weight) to evidence they may be wrong. In a sense, they keep upping the stakes in the belief they can't lose, and become reckless in a way they'd never have been early in their careers.
For Blair, Iraq. For Thatcher, would she really have implemented or persisted with the Poll Tax earlier in her career? It was a bit of an odd hill to die on in retrospect.
I think it is much simpler with Blair.
He had a close relationship and natural affinity with Clinton. That worked well for him. When Bush became President, Blair had a dilemma. He had no such affinity with Bush but it was important to retain good relations with the White House. Clinton advised Blair that you could only be fully for or against Bush and his team. Half-measures were unacceptable. So Blair decided to row in with Bush and Co.
Iraq was the most disastrous consequence of this decision, in many respects, not least the trashing of Blair's reputation.
If you can ignore Iraq (very big 'if') Blair wasn't a bad PM. He would however have been a much better one if he had kept the White House more at arm's length, and strengthened his ties with Europe, where the administrations were more sympatico.
It's ironic that Blair did more than anyone to Americanise Britain despite his stated aim of being at the heart of Europe.
OT. Interesting piece on the radio about an Irishman who drives a smart SUV and tells people a variety of stories that require them to loan him some money so he can get his family back to Ireland. He would pay them back as soon as he could contact his bank. People have given him up to £350. It seems he only approaches men and the number of people who have given him money could run into hundreds.
I think I was an early customer though at that time from memory he only needed petrol so I only gave him £10 which he was going to transfer to my bank as soon as he got home. They don't know if it's one Irishman or several but he was very believable
I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Jesus fucking Christ.
Our oldest son, in the sprit of the season, asked our (younger than him - pre-school) daughter if she knew what Jesus was. Yes, she replied, it's a word grown ups use when they're cross.
(We have since attempted to moderate our taking of the Lord's* name in vain within the household)
*is it still taking the Lord's name in vain, what with the holy trinity etc - Jesus is also the Lord?
Jesus is described as 'Lord' hundreds of times in the New Testament. Sometimes it is clear that the Greek word used (kurios) is translating the Hebrew word 'Yahweh' - which means God all the time in the Old Testament, sometimes it is clear that it is just a respectful title, and many times it is a matter of opinion. To Christians 'Jesus is Lord' in both senses is a foundational claim of the faith.
Though I remember Tony Benn (or was it Michael Foot?) saying that he couldn't agree with "Jesus is Lord" as while he had no objection to Jesus, he didn't believe in Lords.
Randomly sampling the 1,402 comments while he was speaking he seems to inspire support and hope from all over Latin America
If you randomly sample the 3,459 Comments under the video for Gary Numan's 2021 track "Intruder", he seems to inspire support and hope from all over the world. Mostly from geriatric goths, but there y'go. It's worth watching with an open mind for people who have him marked down as just a throwback with eyeliner and unconvincing hair.
Maybe Sunak should have done a deal with Boris when they both had the numbers for a leadership vote. Let Boris try and inspire some swing back for the next GE, and take over if he lost
Is there any polling that shows Boris is currently viewed positively by the general electorate? The mood music (on here, and that I see in the media) seems to be generally against him?
(Then again, I'm rather biased against Boris as a politician...)
The mood music was against him on here when he won an 80 seat majority! Even before that, Alastair Meeks made him a 10/1 shot to make the final two of the 2019 leadership election, which he won easily
The PB mood music is always against anyone who isn’t a centrist, (albeit Boris probably is) but UKIP, the referendum, Corbyn and Boris all showed mood music isn’t always worth listening to.
When Boris was just about to quit he was still doing a lot better than Sunak is now on ‘Best PM’ vs Sir Keir
In 2019 quite a bit of PB opinion saw Boris as the only person who could achieve Brexit either successfully or at all and that the point had been reached where progress was essential. It was obvious that he was a flawed political genius, people hoped that high office + massive ambition to be PM for a long time would enable him to act on the angels of his better nature in self interest if for no other reason. It was also essential to have a government which was not led by Hamas's friend, and later events have shown why with great clarity.
Some bits of this proved correct and others not.
I don't think Boris, Trump or the current UK government have a single clear and reasoned supporter on PB at the moment; this is sad, but is it possible this says more about them than about PB contributors?
OT. Interesting piece on the radio about an Irishman who drives a smart SUV and tells people a variety of stories that require them to loan him some money so he can get his family back to Ireland. He would pay them back as soon as he could contact his bank. People have given him up to £350. It seems he only approaches men and the number of people who have given him money could run into hundreds.
I think I was an early customer though at that time from memory he only needed petrol so I only gave him £10 which he was going to transfer to my bank as soon as he got home. They don't know if it's one Irishman or several but he was very believable
A case where the pronoun 'they' would be correct, and not just politically
OT. Interesting piece on the radio about an Irishman who drives a smart SUV and tells people a variety of stories that require them to loan him some money so he can get his family back to Ireland. He would pay them back as soon as he could contact his bank. People have given him up to £350. It seems he only approaches men and the number of people who have given him money could run into hundreds.
I think I was an early customer though at that time from memory he only needed petrol so I only gave him £10 which he was going to transfer to my bank as soon as he got home. They don't know if it's one Irishman or several but he was very believable
Coming back from the clinic last week, I gave £20 to a chap who needed to buy food. He then offered to buy me a drink.
Until the Tories go into opposition and Labour have to deal with the economy, the Conservative brand isn't likely to improve much. As the poll ratings show there is no massively positive rated alternative to Sunak with the public anyway
Meanwhile. Client needs to put UK address on everything it imports from 31st January. About to print reams of stickers for an EU factory. "address format is wrong" i point out, substituting the correct address.
We need to use the wrong address format (no postal town FFS) apparently to be consistent. Yes, consistently wrong. Is an incomplete address accepted as an address by customs assholes?
Post towns are an anachronism. Even Royal Mail barely uses them any more.
Essentially the important bits of your address are the top line and the postcode. Everything else is just error correction in case you get either of those two wrong.
In US plenty (or only slightly fewer) examples of towns with same five-digit ZIP code; plus plenty of folks get the town wrong but the postal code right.
I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Disappointment, I'd say.
I didn't have high hopes for Sunak, but he's still surprised on the down side. That probably makes many of us exaggerate just how shit he is, as we're disappointed.
All politicians disappoint to some extent, I guess, but in my politically aware memory it goes something like this:
Major - out of his depth, but that was partly because the Tories were a chasm of shit at the time, so not really disappointing and he did many good things
Blair - disappointing over Iraq and some still feel this very keenly, harshly critised for that
Brown - performed more or less as expected, I guess
Cameron - likewise, brought at least a veneer of modernity and liberalism to the Tory party
May - disappointed some, was also severely criticised
Johnson - delivered more or less as expected, I guess - had people thought he had honour you'd have seen more vitriol over partygate etc
Truss - also performed more or less as expected
Sunak - he was doomed, but we thought he might have some dull managerial competence and maybe some decency - projection maybe; present complete shit show is below expectations
After some time has elapsed I think there's some sort of agreement that Blair's problem was Brown, and Brown's problem was Brown.
Blair's problem was his messiah complex. It wasn't Brown who invented sofa government or forced the bombardment of Afghanistan and invasion of Iraq.
Yes I think that was his problem. His early triumphs in foreign affairs rather went to his head.
David Owen wrote quite a decent book on what he dubbed "hubris syndrome" a few years ago.
The essence of it is that very successul politicians have, by definition, been quite lucky at key moments as well, in fairness, as being quite skillful as politicians. But they tend to discount the luck element completely, and conclude all their success is entirely down to exceptionally good political judgment. That's particularly the case for those who haven't had major political setbacks on the way. The over-confidence then actually impairs their once pretty decent political judgment as they increasingly give insufficient weight (indeed, often no weight) to evidence they may be wrong. In a sense, they keep upping the stakes in the belief they can't lose, and become reckless in a way they'd never have been early in their careers.
For Blair, Iraq. For Thatcher, would she really have implemented or persisted with the Poll Tax earlier in her career? It was a bit of an odd hill to die on in retrospect.
Musk with Twitter? That has a whiff of hubristic overreach.
It's quite a moment. As with Thatcher and later Blair going, whatever your views on the individuals, these were epoch-defining characters who changed politics and the nation for better or worse.
Sorry? In what way is Drakeford an “epoch-defining” character?
What a churlish question. Look, you may have beef with the man. But, in years to come, entire generations will be defined as "Thatcher's children", "Blair's children" and "Drakeford's children". That's the simple fact of it.
Don't forget Johnson's children (though he tries to).
On topic. That favourability of 37-30 Lab/Con. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see that ending up as the GE result. Hung Parliament on UNS. Decent majority once Scotland is factored in.
I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Of course the reason people get really irate with Sunak is the colour of his skin. It's the great elephant in the room in British politics.
And equally obvious is the fact that the people who get most irate with him are Tories, for obvious reasons. People who don't support the Tories may find themselves amazed at his antics, but scarcely annoyed, given the likely consequences.
PB contributors may remember that I have been an open advocate of Sunak. I liked his economic interventions at the start of Covid. I thought his self-promotion was quite clever. I met him and found him to be entirely personable.
His decline from those heights to what we see now is pitiful. What does his ethnicity have to do with anything - that hasn't changed since I sang his praises on here. What has changed is that he has been promoted PM and is fucking useless at it.
He is going to need to hide in a Boris fridge for the entire campaign. Any time anyone challenges him he gets angry and increasingly petulant. Not a good look.
Yep - I watched PMQs today and thought the Prime Minister was very leaden footed and tetchy. I get that he’s been a busy boy for the last few days. COVID inquiry swotting and arm twisting for his rift valley boondoggle - apropos of nothing can we count the bung to Rwanda as part of our overseas aid contribution, might get us back to the 0.7% GDP?
But the heat of a campaign is also going to be similarly tough, so while the geeks only watch PMQs, he’s going to have to learn to slow down and speed up as needed - and show some human.
The final Starmer question was a classic. PMs get the last word and always use that one to slag the opposition leader and throw around facts that suit their argument to gee up the troops before lunch knowing that the opposition leader can’t pick him up on the veracity of those facts (lower taxes and cheaper mortgages indeed). Prime Minister Sunak just went through his lines without, seemingly, being aware that the Labour leader had changed the tone entirely.
The basic problem with Sunak is that he's very privileged and has great belief in his own intelligence and is very bad at disguising both, which makes him look incredibly tetchy when he's questioned. He's not really known failure or bad times since primary school and it really does show that he doesn't like the suggestion he might be one as PM.
Nothing necessarily wrong with either - many of our politicians possess both traits - but in recent times have either played them down (Cameron, Blair) or played them for laughs (Boris).
In good times and with a party that wasn't an absolute clown show his self-confidence and earnest mild poshness might be endearing - in fact it was. During the pandemic people quite liked the guy who gave the impression he knew what he was doing. His smart investment banker vibes are what got him the job in the end. But like bankers themselves during the financial crisis, he makes himself incredibly bad by looking like he's upset people have the temerity to not be grateful to him when they think he and his party have screwed things up for them.
Maybe Sunak should have done a deal with Boris when they both had the numbers for a leadership vote. Let Boris try and inspire some swing back for the next GE, and take over if he lost
Is there any polling that shows Boris is currently viewed positively by the general electorate? The mood music (on here, and that I see in the media) seems to be generally against him?
(Then again, I'm rather biased against Boris as a politician...)
The mood music was against him on here when he won an 80 seat majority! Even before that, Alastair Meeks made him a 10/1 shot to make the final two of the 2019 leadership election, which he won easily
The PB mood music is always against anyone who isn’t a centrist, (albeit Boris probably is) but UKIP, the referendum, Corbyn and Boris all showed mood music isn’t always worth listening to.
When Boris was just about to quit he was still doing a lot better than Sunak is now on ‘Best PM’ vs Sir Keir
That doesn't really answer my question: is there any polling showing that Boris is still well-regarded by the public?
I was 'against' Boris not because I am a centrist, but because his time as MoL showed that he'd be a terrible PM. The only way around that was be for him to recognise his flaws and address them. He did not do so.
No 'enemies' took Boris down; no external plot. His own character flaws were the source of his downfall.
On topic. That favourability of 37-30 Lab/Con. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see that ending up as the GE result. Hung Parliament on UNS. Decent majority once Scotland is factored in.
Maybe Sunak should have done a deal with Boris when they both had the numbers for a leadership vote. Let Boris try and inspire some swing back for the next GE, and take over if he lost
Is there any polling that shows Boris is currently viewed positively by the general electorate? The mood music (on here, and that I see in the media) seems to be generally against him?
(Then again, I'm rather biased against Boris as a politician...)
The mood music was against him on here when he won an 80 seat majority! Even before that, Alastair Meeks made him a 10/1 shot to make the final two of the 2019 leadership election, which he won easily
The PB mood music is always against anyone who isn’t a centrist, (albeit Boris probably is) but UKIP, the referendum, Corbyn and Boris all showed mood music isn’t always worth listening to.
When Boris was just about to quit he was still doing a lot better than Sunak is now on ‘Best PM’ vs Sir Keir
That doesn't really answer my question: is there any polling showing that Boris is still well-regarded by the public?
I was 'against' Boris not because I am a centrist, but because his time as MoL showed that he'd be a terrible PM. The only way around that was be for him to recognise his flaws and address them. He did not do so.
No 'enemies' took Boris down; no external plot. His own character flaws were the source of his downfall.
Well it answers the thing before your second question mark. I took that to be another question
As for current polling, I don’t know that there are any that show Boris doing better than Sunak now, although polls of Tory supporters when he quit show they wanted him over both Truss & Sunak
On topic. That favourability of 37-30 Lab/Con. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see that ending up as the GE result. Hung Parliament on UNS. Decent majority once Scotland is factored in.
37-30 or similar is indeed quite plausible and should give LAB a reasonable majority say 40 maj taking into account anticipated LAB progress in Scotland.
Not dissimilar to 2015 in reverse as far as vote share is concerned.
Maybe Sunak should have done a deal with Boris when they both had the numbers for a leadership vote. Let Boris try and inspire some swing back for the next GE, and take over if he lost
Is there any polling that shows Boris is currently viewed positively by the general electorate? The mood music (on here, and that I see in the media) seems to be generally against him?
(Then again, I'm rather biased against Boris as a politician...)
The mood music was against him on here when he won an 80 seat majority! Even before that, Alastair Meeks made him a 10/1 shot to make the final two of the 2019 leadership election, which he won easily
The PB mood music is always against anyone who isn’t a centrist, (albeit Boris probably is) but UKIP, the referendum, Corbyn and Boris all showed mood music isn’t always worth listening to.
When Boris was just about to quit he was still doing a lot better than Sunak is now on ‘Best PM’ vs Sir Keir
That doesn't really answer my question: is there any polling showing that Boris is still well-regarded by the public?
I was 'against' Boris not because I am a centrist, but because his time as MoL showed that he'd be a terrible PM. The only way around that was be for him to recognise his flaws and address them. He did not do so.
No 'enemies' took Boris down; no external plot. His own character flaws were the source of his downfall.
And it's not quite a like for like comparison anyway.
Suppose Boris had somehow survived Pinchergate. Let's be generous, and butterfly the Lying About Partygate investigation away without political cost.
Chances are that his reputation would have continued to drift down, because that's what almost always happens. Apart from the vaccine bounce, it happened pretty steadily to PM BoJo.
Events would still have happened, he'd have been as constrained as his successors. The default assumption has to be that BJ now would be below RS now.
I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Of course the reason people get really irate with Sunak is the colour of his skin. It's the great elephant in the room in British politics.
And equally obvious is the fact that the people who get most irate with him are Tories, for obvious reasons. People who don't support the Tories may find themselves amazed at his antics, but scarcely annoyed, given the likely consequences.
That would be the same racists who want to replace Sunak with Braverman or Badenoch.
All three are White Men.
Being a white man is not about one's physical appearance and appendages, it is about one's mindset.
Also, you can't simply self identify as a white man. On the contrary, it is a badge that is awarded by those who know,
Maybe Sunak should have done a deal with Boris when they both had the numbers for a leadership vote. Let Boris try and inspire some swing back for the next GE, and take over if he lost
Is there any polling that shows Boris is currently viewed positively by the general electorate? The mood music (on here, and that I see in the media) seems to be generally against him?
(Then again, I'm rather biased against Boris as a politician...)
The mood music was against him on here when he won an 80 seat majority! Even before that, Alastair Meeks made him a 10/1 shot to make the final two of the 2019 leadership election, which he won easily
The PB mood music is always against anyone who isn’t a centrist, (albeit Boris probably is) but UKIP, the referendum, Corbyn and Boris all showed mood music isn’t always worth listening to.
When Boris was just about to quit he was still doing a lot better than Sunak is now on ‘Best PM’ vs Sir Keir
That doesn't really answer my question: is there any polling showing that Boris is still well-regarded by the public?
I was 'against' Boris not because I am a centrist, but because his time as MoL showed that he'd be a terrible PM. The only way around that was be for him to recognise his flaws and address them. He did not do so.
No 'enemies' took Boris down; no external plot. His own character flaws were the source of his downfall.
And it's not quite a like for like comparison anyway.
Suppose Boris had somehow survived Pinchergate. Let's be generous, and butterfly the Lying About Partygate investigation away without political cost.
Chances are that his reputation would have continued to drift down, because that's what almost always happens. Apart from the vaccine bounce, it happened pretty steadily to PM BoJo.
Events would still have happened, he'd have been as constrained as his successors. The default assumption has to be that BJ now would be below RS now.
Well of course it is your default assumption, but why should it be so for Tory voters who rated Boris over Rishi when Boris was at his lowest ebb?
Parliament spent three years saying getting a deal agreed and through the house was impossible. A few months later Boris had done it
I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Of course the reason people get really irate with Sunak is the colour of his skin. It's the great elephant in the room in British politics.
And equally obvious is the fact that the people who get most irate with him are Tories, for obvious reasons. People who don't support the Tories may find themselves amazed at his antics, but scarcely annoyed, given the likely consequences.
That would be the same racists who want to replace Sunak with Braverman or Badenoch.
All three are White Men.
Being a white man is not about one's physical appearance and appendages, it is about one's mindset.
Also, you can't simply self identify as a white man. On the contrary, it is a badge that is awarded by those who know,
If it's possible for a bloke to self-identify as a lady...
On topic. That favourability of 37-30 Lab/Con. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see that ending up as the GE result. Hung Parliament on UNS. Decent majority once Scotland is factored in.
37-30 or similar is indeed quite plausible and should give LAB a reasonable majority say 40 maj taking into account anticipated LAB progress in Scotland.
Not dissimilar to 2015 in reverse as far as vote share is concerned.
On topic. That favourability of 37-30 Lab/Con. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see that ending up as the GE result. Hung Parliament on UNS. Decent majority once Scotland is factored in.
Isn't it 37-20?
Is it? Oops. I must have seen 37-30, as it accords with my prediction...funny how that happens.
I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Disappointment, I'd say.
I didn't have high hopes for Sunak, but he's still surprised on the down side. That probably makes many of us exaggerate just how shit he is, as we're disappointed.
All politicians disappoint to some extent, I guess, but in my politically aware memory it goes something like this:
Major - out of his depth, but that was partly because the Tories were a chasm of shit at the time, so not really disappointing and he did many good things
Blair - disappointing over Iraq and some still feel this very keenly, harshly critised for that
Brown - performed more or less as expected, I guess
Cameron - likewise, brought at least a veneer of modernity and liberalism to the Tory party
May - disappointed some, was also severely criticised
Johnson - delivered more or less as expected, I guess - had people thought he had honour you'd have seen more vitriol over partygate etc
Truss - also performed more or less as expected
Sunak - he was doomed, but we thought he might have some dull managerial competence and maybe some decency - projection maybe; present complete shit show is below expectations
After some time has elapsed I think there's some sort of agreement that Blair's problem was Brown, and Brown's problem was Brown.
Blair's problem was his messiah complex. It wasn't Brown who invented sofa government or forced the bombardment of Afghanistan and invasion of Iraq.
Yes I think that was his problem. His early triumphs in foreign affairs rather went to his head.
David Owen wrote quite a decent book on what he dubbed "hubris syndrome" a few years ago.
The essence of it is that very successul politicians have, by definition, been quite lucky at key moments as well, in fairness, as being quite skillful as politicians. But they tend to discount the luck element completely, and conclude all their success is entirely down to exceptionally good political judgment. That's particularly the case for those who haven't had major political setbacks on the way. The over-confidence then actually impairs their once pretty decent political judgment as they increasingly give insufficient weight (indeed, often no weight) to evidence they may be wrong. In a sense, they keep upping the stakes in the belief they can't lose, and become reckless in a way they'd never have been early in their careers.
For Blair, Iraq. For Thatcher, would she really have implemented or persisted with the Poll Tax earlier in her career? It was a bit of an odd hill to die on in retrospect.
I was once sat next to Warren East on a plane, and we ended up discussing the role of luck in people's success. I opined that luck played a vastly greater role in people's success that most people are willing to accept.
I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Of course the reason people get really irate with Sunak is the colour of his skin. It's the great elephant in the room in British politics.
And equally obvious is the fact that the people who get most irate with him are Tories, for obvious reasons. People who don't support the Tories may find themselves amazed at his antics, but scarcely annoyed, given the likely consequences.
That would be the same racists who want to replace Sunak with Braverman or Badenoch.
All three are White Men.
Being a white man is not about one's physical appearance and appendages, it is about one's mindset.
Also, you can't simply self identify as a white man. On the contrary, it is a badge that is awarded by those who know,
If it's possible for a bloke to self-identify as a lady...
Of course, I'm not doubting that one can self identify as a white male. But - candidly - that is like self identifying as a tea pot. If you don't have the mindset of privelege that defines white man-ness, then you can no more be a white man than a kitchen appliance.
Their social media team are awful. Unfunny and, as you say, makes no sense - Labour could literally use the same meme against them, and it would have the advantage of being demonstrably true.
It also goes against the Conservatives brand - they should be better than this. Reform could get away with it
In fact if I were Reform, I’d make our ads more highbrow and sensible to show there is someone who takes it seriously
OT. Interesting piece on the radio about an Irishman who drives a smart SUV and tells people a variety of stories that require them to loan him some money so he can get his family back to Ireland. He would pay them back as soon as he could contact his bank. People have given him up to £350. It seems he only approaches men and the number of people who have given him money could run into hundreds.
I think I was an early customer though at that time from memory he only needed petrol so I only gave him £10 which he was going to transfer to my bank as soon as he got home. They don't know if it's one Irishman or several but he was very believable
Coming back from the clinic last week, I gave £20 to a chap who needed to buy food. He then offered to buy me a drink.
I was conned when about 17 in 198x.
Talked by a gent who sat down at by cafe table into giving him £50 I took out of a cash machine. The patter was I need money to access more money, and I will give you back more than you lend me when I have got it.
Obviously in practice took the £50 and ran away full tilt.
The patter is very similar as used by phone-you-up con artists - get you to ignore the obvious points where falling-for-it, and tie you up with chatter and distractions. I've only had one occasion when I started to be pulled in to that, but I was distracted by thinking about other things in my life so it was a bit close.
Randomly sampling the 1,402 comments while he was speaking he seems to inspire support and hope from all over Latin America
If you randomly sample the 3,459 Comments under the video for Gary Numan's 2021 track "Intruder", he seems to inspire support and hope from all over the world. Mostly from geriatric goths, but there y'go. It's worth watching with an open mind for people who have him marked down as just a throwback with eyeliner and unconvincing hair.
Their social media team are awful. Unfunny and, as you say, makes no sense - Labour could literally use the same meme against them, and it would have the advantage of being demonstrably true.
It also goes against the Conservatives brand - they should be better than this. Reform could get away with it
In fact if I were Reform, I’d make our ads more highbrow and sensible to show there is someone who takes it seriously
Possibly an underrated problem for the Tories in the future is that they poll so badly with the under 40s, the only people left who'd actually work for the party in junior roles are the very online oddballs who think this kind of stuff is clever. They're drawing from a very small talent pool.
When Liz Truss quit, Redfield & Wilton ran these polls
At this moment, which of the following do voters think would be the better Prime Minister for the UK?
Starmer v Johnson:
Starmer 42% Johnson 39%
Starmer v Sunak:
Starmer 44% Sunak 33%
Starmer v Mordaunt:
Starmer 49% Mordaunt 22%
2019 Conservative Voters
At this moment, which of the following do 2019 Conservative voters think would be the better Prime Minister for the UK?
Starmer v Johnson:
Johnson 69% Starmer 19%
Starmer v Sunak:
Sunak 58% Starmer 25%
Starmer v Mordaunt:
Mordaunt 39% Starmer 32%
So between 19 and 32% of Con 2019 voters preferred Starmer to their possible leaders.
The Tories are completely shot away.
The question posed was ‘is there polling that suggests Johnson would be doing better than Sunak?’ and this is what I found
But a year old, so what relevance now?
Not least because Sunaks support has sunk even lower.
Perhaps Boris was rather rash in taking the Chiltern Hundreds, but he did and thereby stuffed his comeback chance.
Well the relevance is that, as he has always been rated more highly than Sunak in the eyes of Tory voters, it would take someone refusing to see reason to seriously try & argue that he wouldn’t be doing better than Sunak now
I've never been one to court popularity. On the previous thread Rochdale Pioneers referred to Sunak as a 'stroppy little shit.' Maybe this was an immediate reaction because he didn't respond directly to Starmer's anecdote about a homeless child?
Sorry but I'm not seeing this stroppiness at all. If anything he seems bizarrely tiggerish (in public) in spite of everything. Could he be deemed a little tone deaf? Yes but the reality is that day after day he is being asked to make decisions that affect thousands or indeed millions of people. Individual anecdotes are no basis for doing that even if more experienced politicians are better versed in responding to them. Still it sees as though there is a certain Rishi derangement syndrome. I find it hard to understand how people who weren't irked by Cameron nonetheless get really irate with Sunak. Perhaps it's his size, I say this as someone who was the smallest kid in the class, though I assumed people grew out of that one. The billionaire wife? I mean why would she choose someone like him? Pure luck I presume on his part. Same reason he was Head Boy at Winchester, got a first at Oxford and a Fullbright scholarship. Pure luck.
I would hate to say it's to do with the colour of his skin but I have to wonder. Is a non-white person choosing the Tories considered an act of betrayal by some?
Of course the reason people get really irate with Sunak is the colour of his skin. It's the great elephant in the room in British politics.
And equally obvious is the fact that the people who get most irate with him are Tories, for obvious reasons. People who don't support the Tories may find themselves amazed at his antics, but scarcely annoyed, given the likely consequences.
That would be the same racists who want to replace Sunak with Braverman or Badenoch.
All three are White Men.
Being a white man is not about one's physical appearance and appendages, it is about one's mindset.
Also, you can't simply self identify as a white man. On the contrary, it is a badge that is awarded by those who know,
And since I work for a company who ancestral founders founded the Illuminati*, I KNOW.
Maybe Sunak should have done a deal with Boris when they both had the numbers for a leadership vote. Let Boris try and inspire some swing back for the next GE, and take over if he lost
Is there any polling that shows Boris is currently viewed positively by the general electorate? The mood music (on here, and that I see in the media) seems to be generally against him?
(Then again, I'm rather biased against Boris as a politician...)
The mood music was against him on here when he won an 80 seat majority! Even before that, Alastair Meeks made him a 10/1 shot to make the final two of the 2019 leadership election, which he won easily
The PB mood music is always against anyone who isn’t a centrist, (albeit Boris probably is) but UKIP, the referendum, Corbyn and Boris all showed mood music isn’t always worth listening to.
When Boris was just about to quit he was still doing a lot better than Sunak is now on ‘Best PM’ vs Sir Keir
That doesn't really answer my question: is there any polling showing that Boris is still well-regarded by the public?
I was 'against' Boris not because I am a centrist, but because his time as MoL showed that he'd be a terrible PM. The only way around that was be for him to recognise his flaws and address them. He did not do so.
No 'enemies' took Boris down; no external plot. His own character flaws were the source of his downfall.
And it's not quite a like for like comparison anyway.
Suppose Boris had somehow survived Pinchergate. Let's be generous, and butterfly the Lying About Partygate investigation away without political cost.
Chances are that his reputation would have continued to drift down, because that's what almost always happens. Apart from the vaccine bounce, it happened pretty steadily to PM BoJo.
Events would still have happened, he'd have been as constrained as his successors. The default assumption has to be that BJ now would be below RS now.
Well of course it is your default assumption, but why should it be so for Tory voters who rated Boris over Rishi when Boris was at his lowest ebb?
Parliament spent three years saying getting a deal agreed and through the house was impossible. A few months later Boris had done it
Not just Boris, though. Here are the graphs going back to Thatcher;
Spike up when you win an election, drift down afterwards. You need a Bloody Huge Event (Falklands, Vaccines) to counteract that. It might have happened, but it can't be the default assumption.
So why would Summer 2022 have been Boris's lowest ebb? Seems much more likely that he would have kept falling, because that's what tends to happen.
Maybe Sunak should have done a deal with Boris when they both had the numbers for a leadership vote. Let Boris try and inspire some swing back for the next GE, and take over if he lost
Is there any polling that shows Boris is currently viewed positively by the general electorate? The mood music (on here, and that I see in the media) seems to be generally against him?
(Then again, I'm rather biased against Boris as a politician...)
The mood music was against him on here when he won an 80 seat majority! Even before that, Alastair Meeks made him a 10/1 shot to make the final two of the 2019 leadership election, which he won easily
The PB mood music is always against anyone who isn’t a centrist, (albeit Boris probably is) but UKIP, the referendum, Corbyn and Boris all showed mood music isn’t always worth listening to.
When Boris was just about to quit he was still doing a lot better than Sunak is now on ‘Best PM’ vs Sir Keir
That doesn't really answer my question: is there any polling showing that Boris is still well-regarded by the public?
I was 'against' Boris not because I am a centrist, but because his time as MoL showed that he'd be a terrible PM. The only way around that was be for him to recognise his flaws and address them. He did not do so.
No 'enemies' took Boris down; no external plot. His own character flaws were the source of his downfall.
And it's not quite a like for like comparison anyway.
Suppose Boris had somehow survived Pinchergate. Let's be generous, and butterfly the Lying About Partygate investigation away without political cost.
Chances are that his reputation would have continued to drift down, because that's what almost always happens. Apart from the vaccine bounce, it happened pretty steadily to PM BoJo.
Events would still have happened, he'd have been as constrained as his successors. The default assumption has to be that BJ now would be below RS now.
Well of course it is your default assumption, but why should it be so for Tory voters who rated Boris over Rishi when Boris was at his lowest ebb?
Parliament spent three years saying getting a deal agreed and through the house was impossible. A few months later Boris had done it
Not just Boris, though. Here are the graphs going back to Thatcher;
Spike up when you win an election, drift down afterwards. You need a Bloody Huge Event (Falklands, Vaccines) to counteract that. It might have happened, but it can't be the default assumption.
So why would Summer 2022 have been Boris's lowest ebb? Seems much more likely that he would have kept falling, because that's what tends to happen.
When Liz Truss quit, Redfield & Wilton ran these polls
At this moment, which of the following do voters think would be the better Prime Minister for the UK?
Starmer v Johnson:
Starmer 42% Johnson 39%
Starmer v Sunak:
Starmer 44% Sunak 33%
Starmer v Mordaunt:
Starmer 49% Mordaunt 22%
2019 Conservative Voters
At this moment, which of the following do 2019 Conservative voters think would be the better Prime Minister for the UK?
When Liz Truss quit, Redfield & Wilton ran these polls
At this moment, which of the following do voters think would be the better Prime Minister for the UK?
Starmer v Johnson:
Starmer 42% Johnson 39%
Starmer v Sunak:
Starmer 44% Sunak 33%
Starmer v Mordaunt:
Starmer 49% Mordaunt 22%
2019 Conservative Voters
At this moment, which of the following do 2019 Conservative voters think would be the better Prime Minister for the UK?
Starmer v Johnson:
Johnson 69% Starmer 19%
Starmer v Sunak:
Sunak 58% Starmer 25%
Starmer v Mordaunt:
Mordaunt 39% Starmer 32%
So between 19 and 32% of Con 2019 voters preferred Starmer to their possible leaders.
The Tories are completely shot away.
The question posed was ‘is there polling that suggests Johnson would be doing better than Sunak?’ and this is what I found
But a year old, so what relevance now?
Not least because Sunaks support has sunk even lower.
Perhaps Boris was rather rash in taking the Chiltern Hundreds, but he did and thereby stuffed his comeback chance.
Well the relevance is that, as he has always been rated more highly than Sunak in the eyes of Tory voters, it would take someone refusing to see reason to seriously try & argue that he wouldn’t be doing better than Sunak now
Yep, but he isn't even on the bench now. He was released on a free transfer...
When Liz Truss quit, Redfield & Wilton ran these polls
At this moment, which of the following do voters think would be the better Prime Minister for the UK?
Starmer v Johnson:
Starmer 42% Johnson 39%
Starmer v Sunak:
Starmer 44% Sunak 33%
Starmer v Mordaunt:
Starmer 49% Mordaunt 22%
2019 Conservative Voters
At this moment, which of the following do 2019 Conservative voters think would be the better Prime Minister for the UK?
Starmer v Johnson:
Johnson 69% Starmer 19%
Starmer v Sunak:
Sunak 58% Starmer 25%
Starmer v Mordaunt:
Mordaunt 39% Starmer 32%
So between 19 and 32% of Con 2019 voters preferred Starmer to their possible leaders.
The Tories are completely shot away.
The question posed was ‘is there polling that suggests Johnson would be doing better than Sunak?’ and this is what I found
But a year old, so what relevance now?
Not least because Sunaks support has sunk even lower.
Perhaps Boris was rather rash in taking the Chiltern Hundreds, but he did and thereby stuffed his comeback chance.
Well the relevance is that, as he has always been rated more highly than Sunak in the eyes of Tory voters, it would take someone refusing to see reason to seriously try & argue that he wouldn’t be doing better than Sunak now
Yep, but he isn't even on the bench now. He was released on a free transfer...
So his stats don't matter.
Meanwhile Milwall nearly at kick off.
They do when you’re having the debate over whether he’d be doing better than Sunak had he not quit!
That’s an absolute shocker. Their social media team needs a reboot.
You mean the way that it's drawing attention to the government's own failures?
Yes, it's staggeringly incompetent.
The obvious riposte that it invites is a justifiable “that’s what you’ve done you useless xxxx’s!”
Unreal really, someone’s getting paid for this. Last week they used the newsreader with her middle finger up as an equally crass meme, and even their own MPs were asking for it to be taken down
Well the relevance is that, as he has always been rated more highly than Sunak in the eyes of Tory voters, it would take someone refusing to see reason to seriously try & argue that he wouldn’t be doing better than Sunak now
Yes, you want Boris Johnson back and in truth wish he'd never gone. Would he be doing any better than Sunak now? That's up there with backing two flies racing up a wall. Johnson would have dragged all the Covid events around like an anchor but it's quite clear he engenders a fierce loyalty from a vociferous minority.
The fact remains the Conservative Party dumped him as they dumped Thatcher before and Truss after. Sunak, the last person standing on the battlefield. inherited but hasn't been the miracle worker some hoped.
The polls suggest a cynical, exhausted public feeling a change is necessary but far from convinced Starmer will make a lot of difference. Once elected and especially so with a big majority, Starmer will have the opprtunity to be as radical as a Thatcher or an Attlee but at this stage he feels the need to reassure the wavering and disillusioned Conservative voters he's neither a left-wing firebrand nor a socialist wolf in a social democrat sheep's clothing.
You know, if Farage wasn't such a total pain to work with (see comments from essentially anyone who worked with him at UKIP), then Reform could play a blinder, and sign Boris Johnson up.
That’s an absolute shocker. Their social media team needs a reboot.
You mean the way that it's drawing attention to the government's own failures?
Yes, it's staggeringly incompetent.
The obvious riposte that it invites is a justifiable “that’s what you’ve done you useless xxxx’s!”
Unreal really, someone’s getting paid for this. Last week they used the newsreader with her middle finger up as an equally crass meme, and even their own MPs were asking for it to be taken down
It seems like the Tories' social media account is being run by a couple of nerdy teenagers from their mum's basement. Truly embarrassing, as you say.
Well the relevance is that, as he has always been rated more highly than Sunak in the eyes of Tory voters, it would take someone refusing to see reason to seriously try & argue that he wouldn’t be doing better than Sunak now
Yes, you want Boris Johnson back and in truth wish he'd never gone. Would he be doing any better than Sunak now? That's up there with backing two flies racing up a wall. Johnson would have dragged all the Covid events around like an anchor but it's quite clear he engenders a fierce loyalty from a vociferous minority.
The fact remains the Conservative Party dumped him as they dumped Thatcher before and Truss after. Sunak, the last person standing on the battlefield. inherited but hasn't been the miracle worker some hoped.
The polls suggest a cynical, exhausted public feeling a change is necessary but far from convinced Starmer will make a lot of difference. Once elected and especially so with a big majority, Starmer will have the opprtunity to be as radical as a Thatcher or an Attlee but at this stage he feels the need to reassure the wavering and disillusioned Conservative voters he's neither a left-wing firebrand nor a socialist wolf in a social democrat sheep's clothing.
The polls suggest Boris would be doing better than Sunak, it doesn’t really matter what I think
I posted the R&W polls from July 22, when Boris quit, and he was miles clear then. The same is shown in their polls from Oct 22, and again in this one from July of this year with YouGov.
Strange to see PB people so reluctant to believe hard polling evidence! Wonder why?
If the Tories want to avoid a wipeout, they need to start with booting Sunak and Hunt, not the person doing the Tweets.
If you're a potential Tory leader, why wouldn't you rather take over after a defeat?
There's a reason that Braverman and Badenoch aren't agitating for a change of leader; it's because they feel defeat is inevitable, and they'd rather someone from the other wing of the Conservative Party took the blame.
Well the relevance is that, as he has always been rated more highly than Sunak in the eyes of Tory voters, it would take someone refusing to see reason to seriously try & argue that he wouldn’t be doing better than Sunak now
Yes, you want Boris Johnson back and in truth wish he'd never gone. Would he be doing any better than Sunak now? That's up there with backing two flies racing up a wall. Johnson would have dragged all the Covid events around like an anchor but it's quite clear he engenders a fierce loyalty from a vociferous minority.
The fact remains the Conservative Party dumped him as they dumped Thatcher before and Truss after. Sunak, the last person standing on the battlefield. inherited but hasn't been the miracle worker some hoped.
The polls suggest a cynical, exhausted public feeling a change is necessary but far from convinced Starmer will make a lot of difference. Once elected and especially so with a big majority, Starmer will have the opprtunity to be as radical as a Thatcher or an Attlee but at this stage he feels the need to reassure the wavering and disillusioned Conservative voters he's neither a left-wing firebrand nor a socialist wolf in a social democrat sheep's clothing.
The polls suggest Boris would be doing better than Sunak, it doesn’t really matter what I think
I posted the R&W polls from July 22, when Boris quit, and he was miles clear then. The same is shown in their polls from Oct 22, and again in this one from July of this year with YouGov.
Strange to see PB people so reluctant to believe hard polling evidence! Wonder why?
That’s an absolute shocker. Their social media team needs a reboot.
And what's with the fashionable puffer jacket? Makes SKS seem youthful and trendy. Whereas one of the few advantages Sunak has is that he isn't in his sixties.
If the Tories want to avoid a wipeout, they need to start with booting Sunak and Hunt, not the person doing the Tweets.
If you're a potential Tory leader, why wouldn't you rather take over after a defeat?
There's a reason that Braverman and Badenoch aren't agitating for a change of leader; it's because they feel defeat is inevitable, and they'd rather someone from the other wing of the Conservative Party took the blame.
Well the relevance is that, as he has always been rated more highly than Sunak in the eyes of Tory voters, it would take someone refusing to see reason to seriously try & argue that he wouldn’t be doing better than Sunak now
Yes, you want Boris Johnson back and in truth wish he'd never gone. Would he be doing any better than Sunak now? That's up there with backing two flies racing up a wall. Johnson would have dragged all the Covid events around like an anchor but it's quite clear he engenders a fierce loyalty from a vociferous minority.
The fact remains the Conservative Party dumped him as they dumped Thatcher before and Truss after. Sunak, the last person standing on the battlefield. inherited but hasn't been the miracle worker some hoped.
The polls suggest a cynical, exhausted public feeling a change is necessary but far from convinced Starmer will make a lot of difference. Once elected and especially so with a big majority, Starmer will have the opprtunity to be as radical as a Thatcher or an Attlee but at this stage he feels the need to reassure the wavering and disillusioned Conservative voters he's neither a left-wing firebrand nor a socialist wolf in a social democrat sheep's clothing.
The polls suggest Boris would be doing better than Sunak, it doesn’t really matter what I think
I posted the R&W polls from July 22, when Boris quit, and he was miles clear then. The same is shown in their polls from Oct 22, and again in this one from July of this year with YouGov.
Strange to see PB people so reluctant to believe hard polling evidence! Wonder why?
If the Tories want to avoid a wipeout, they need to start with booting Sunak and Hunt, not the person doing the Tweets.
If you're a potential Tory leader, why wouldn't you rather take over after a defeat?
There's a reason that Braverman and Badenoch aren't agitating for a change of leader; it's because they feel defeat is inevitable, and they'd rather someone from the other wing of the Conservative Party took the blame.
Yes. While in the present state of the party anything is possible, the best case against anyone but Sunak being PM charge at the next GE is that taking over after a defeat is the obvious ambitious move.
The best case for someone other than Sunak being PM at the next GE is not that there will be a defenestration but that he will resign.
Well the relevance is that, as he has always been rated more highly than Sunak in the eyes of Tory voters, it would take someone refusing to see reason to seriously try & argue that he wouldn’t be doing better than Sunak now
Yes, you want Boris Johnson back and in truth wish he'd never gone. Would he be doing any better than Sunak now? That's up there with backing two flies racing up a wall. Johnson would have dragged all the Covid events around like an anchor but it's quite clear he engenders a fierce loyalty from a vociferous minority.
The fact remains the Conservative Party dumped him as they dumped Thatcher before and Truss after. Sunak, the last person standing on the battlefield. inherited but hasn't been the miracle worker some hoped.
The polls suggest a cynical, exhausted public feeling a change is necessary but far from convinced Starmer will make a lot of difference. Once elected and especially so with a big majority, Starmer will have the opprtunity to be as radical as a Thatcher or an Attlee but at this stage he feels the need to reassure the wavering and disillusioned Conservative voters he's neither a left-wing firebrand nor a socialist wolf in a social democrat sheep's clothing.
The polls suggest Boris would be doing better than Sunak, it doesn’t really matter what I think
I posted the R&W polls from July 22, when Boris quit, and he was miles clear then. The same is shown in their polls from Oct 22, and again in this one from July of this year with YouGov.
Strange to see PB people so reluctant to believe hard polling evidence! Wonder why?
Why do you keep banging the drum for Boris Johnson? I'm not going to gainsay the point he might be doing better than Sunak had he stayed PM (hard to imagine anyone doing much worse except Truss of course).
As for the polling "evidence", fine but it's all pointless. Your man failed - he's not wanted back in politics except by his diehard supporters. That doesn't mean he can't or won't come back but at the moment he's on the outside.
Well the relevance is that, as he has always been rated more highly than Sunak in the eyes of Tory voters, it would take someone refusing to see reason to seriously try & argue that he wouldn’t be doing better than Sunak now
Yes, you want Boris Johnson back and in truth wish he'd never gone. Would he be doing any better than Sunak now? That's up there with backing two flies racing up a wall. Johnson would have dragged all the Covid events around like an anchor but it's quite clear he engenders a fierce loyalty from a vociferous minority.
The fact remains the Conservative Party dumped him as they dumped Thatcher before and Truss after. Sunak, the last person standing on the battlefield. inherited but hasn't been the miracle worker some hoped.
The polls suggest a cynical, exhausted public feeling a change is necessary but far from convinced Starmer will make a lot of difference. Once elected and especially so with a big majority, Starmer will have the opprtunity to be as radical as a Thatcher or an Attlee but at this stage he feels the need to reassure the wavering and disillusioned Conservative voters he's neither a left-wing firebrand nor a socialist wolf in a social democrat sheep's clothing.
The polls suggest Boris would be doing better than Sunak, it doesn’t really matter what I think
I posted the R&W polls from July 22, when Boris quit, and he was miles clear then. The same is shown in their polls from Oct 22, and again in this one from July of this year with YouGov.
Strange to see PB people so reluctant to believe hard polling evidence! Wonder why?
If the Tories want to avoid a wipeout, they need to start with booting Sunak and Hunt, not the person doing the Tweets.
If you're a potential Tory leader, why wouldn't you rather take over after a defeat?
There's a reason that Braverman and Badenoch aren't agitating for a change of leader; it's because they feel defeat is inevitable, and they'd rather someone from the other wing of the Conservative Party took the blame.
Highlights that they see more career opportunities in becoming LotO in 2024/5 than anything else.
Echoes of the anecdote Al Campbell had this morning on The Rest Is Centrist Dads. He recounted a conversation with Alan Clark in the run-up to '97. Redacting rude words, the gist was "You'll have a decade; we hate each other more than we hate you."
If the Tories want to avoid a wipeout, they need to start with booting Sunak and Hunt, not the person doing the Tweets.
If you're a potential Tory leader, why wouldn't you rather take over after a defeat?
There's a reason that Braverman and Badenoch aren't agitating for a change of leader; it's because they feel defeat is inevitable, and they'd rather someone from the other wing of the Conservative Party took the blame.
Sure, but I'm not agitating on their behalf, but because I believe in sensible conservative aligned policies. From that perspective, I don’t agree with giving any ground at all. I don't see any benefit to the Tories in conceding the upcoming election, and I most certainly don't see a benefit to the electorate. Democracy thrives when both sides want desperately to win, so you get two very different and competing retail offers.
Well the relevance is that, as he has always been rated more highly than Sunak in the eyes of Tory voters, it would take someone refusing to see reason to seriously try & argue that he wouldn’t be doing better than Sunak now
Yes, you want Boris Johnson back and in truth wish he'd never gone. Would he be doing any better than Sunak now? That's up there with backing two flies racing up a wall. Johnson would have dragged all the Covid events around like an anchor but it's quite clear he engenders a fierce loyalty from a vociferous minority.
The fact remains the Conservative Party dumped him as they dumped Thatcher before and Truss after. Sunak, the last person standing on the battlefield. inherited but hasn't been the miracle worker some hoped.
The polls suggest a cynical, exhausted public feeling a change is necessary but far from convinced Starmer will make a lot of difference. Once elected and especially so with a big majority, Starmer will have the opprtunity to be as radical as a Thatcher or an Attlee but at this stage he feels the need to reassure the wavering and disillusioned Conservative voters he's neither a left-wing firebrand nor a socialist wolf in a social democrat sheep's clothing.
The polls suggest Boris would be doing better than Sunak, it doesn’t really matter what I think
I posted the R&W polls from July 22, when Boris quit, and he was miles clear then. The same is shown in their polls from Oct 22, and again in this one from July of this year with YouGov.
Strange to see PB people so reluctant to believe hard polling evidence! Wonder why?
Why do you keep banging the drum for Boris Johnson? I'm not going to gainsay the point he might be doing better than Sunak had he stayed PM (hard to imagine anyone doing much worse except Truss of course).
As for the polling "evidence", fine but it's all pointless. Your man failed - he's not wanted back in politics except by his diehard supporters. That doesn't mean he can't or won't come back but at the moment he's on the outside.
Well possibly because you are one of the first, if not the first, person who isn’t a fan of his that has admitted that he would be doing better. I labour the point because, despite common sense, any nous, and the polling saying he would be doing better, the haters refuse to accept it
I think it was a mistake of biblical proportions to force him out, and seeing as this is a place for political discussion/argument, here’s where I bang that drum. In real life, with my friends and family I barely talk about politics at all
Posted only to illustrate again the recent trends for very long headlines online.
Phew, so he'll be able to stay on the site. I was worried we were going to lose one of our most prolific posters.
You know our secrets, you know more than too much.
Useful in future (for the likes of you anyway) when you sit perched on on some tropic (or arctic) rock imitating Procopius by chronicling the Secret History of PB.
Well the relevance is that, as he has always been rated more highly than Sunak in the eyes of Tory voters, it would take someone refusing to see reason to seriously try & argue that he wouldn’t be doing better than Sunak now
Yes, you want Boris Johnson back and in truth wish he'd never gone. Would he be doing any better than Sunak now? That's up there with backing two flies racing up a wall. Johnson would have dragged all the Covid events around like an anchor but it's quite clear he engenders a fierce loyalty from a vociferous minority.
The fact remains the Conservative Party dumped him as they dumped Thatcher before and Truss after. Sunak, the last person standing on the battlefield. inherited but hasn't been the miracle worker some hoped.
The polls suggest a cynical, exhausted public feeling a change is necessary but far from convinced Starmer will make a lot of difference. Once elected and especially so with a big majority, Starmer will have the opprtunity to be as radical as a Thatcher or an Attlee but at this stage he feels the need to reassure the wavering and disillusioned Conservative voters he's neither a left-wing firebrand nor a socialist wolf in a social democrat sheep's clothing.
The polls suggest Boris would be doing better than Sunak, it doesn’t really matter what I think
I posted the R&W polls from July 22, when Boris quit, and he was miles clear then. The same is shown in their polls from Oct 22, and again in this one from July of this year with YouGov.
Strange to see PB people so reluctant to believe hard polling evidence! Wonder why?
If Johnson hadn't stepped down as an MP, I think there's a reasonable chance he might have made a run at Sunak.
But he did step down, And that means this is all rather moot.
Is there a place to go to discuss moot political intangibles? I thought this was it
Weathers been bit bleak, and the housing market is down… there’s football on and someone’s winning, and I like this or that film
RCS 1000's thought was a counterfactual rather than an intangible, though it is that as well. Those who find watching grass grow too exciting and would like a rest would be better informed though no wiser by studying the modal logic of counterfactuals, known as the logic of possible worlds. political counterfactuals are as good as any other. Whatever you do don't start here unless you wish to go quietly mad:
Comments
(Then again, I'm rather biased against Boris as a politician...)
https://twitter.com/kathryn_rose123/status/1734944541793247403/photo/1
(Reminds me of when steam locos used to occasionally fire off hot axlebox detectors, as the detectors would detect the loco's firebox...)
Anyhoo...
https://www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/other-ideologies-anarcho-capitalism
https://www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/other-ideologies-anarcho-capitalism-part-two
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Somalia_(1991–2006)
The essence of it is that very successul politicians have, by definition, been quite lucky at key moments as well, in fairness, as being quite skillful as politicians. But they tend to discount the luck element completely, and conclude all their success is entirely down to exceptionally good political judgment. That's particularly the case for those who haven't had major political setbacks on the way. The over-confidence then actually impairs their once pretty decent political judgment as they increasingly give insufficient weight (indeed, often no weight) to evidence they may be wrong. In a sense, they keep upping the stakes in the belief they can't lose, and become reckless in a way they'd never have been early in their careers.
For Blair, Iraq. For Thatcher, would she really have implemented or persisted with the Poll Tax earlier in her career? It was a bit of an odd hill to die on in retrospect.
The PB mood music is always against anyone who isn’t a centrist, (albeit Boris probably is) but UKIP, the referendum, Corbyn and Boris all showed mood music isn’t always worth listening to.
When Boris was just about to quit he was still doing a lot better than Sunak is now on ‘Best PM’ vs Sir Keir
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RxebQuFgJY
Former SAS man David Davis fought off two hooligans near parliament
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/londoners-diary/tory-mp-david-david-fight-rough-sleeper-homeless-attack-parliament-b1126683.html
He had a close relationship and natural affinity with Clinton. That worked well for him. When Bush became President, Blair had a dilemma. He had no such affinity with Bush but it was important to retain good relations with the White House. Clinton advised Blair that you could only be fully for or against Bush and his team. Half-measures were unacceptable. So Blair decided to row in with Bush and Co.
Iraq was the most disastrous consequence of this decision, in many respects, not least the trashing of Blair's reputation.
If you can ignore Iraq (very big 'if') Blair wasn't a bad PM. He would however have been a much better one if he had kept the White House more at arm's length, and strengthened his ties with Europe, where the administrations were more sympatico.
Mostly though it is about him being a "Citizen of Nowhere" and I don't think that covert racism. Its his chosen career, obvious love of California, Green Card and Non-Dom wife. He even said in the leadership contest that if he hadn't gone into UK politics he would be in California.
I think I was an early customer though at that time from memory he only needed petrol so I only gave him £10 which he was going to transfer to my bank as soon as he got home. They don't know if it's one Irishman or several but he was very believable
Btw of course I was looking at the btl comments haphazardly, not randomly - that would be absurd
Some bits of this proved correct and others not.
I don't think Boris, Trump or the current UK government have a single clear and reasoned supporter on PB at the moment; this is sad, but is it possible this says more about them than about PB contributors?
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/londoners-diary/tory-mp-david-david-fight-rough-sleeper-homeless-attack-parliament-b1126683.html
Except for Leaders...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR_Leader_class#/media/File:Leader-05.jpg
That favourability of 37-30 Lab/Con.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to see that ending up as the GE result.
Hung Parliament on UNS.
Decent majority once Scotland is factored in.
Nothing necessarily wrong with either - many of our politicians possess both traits - but in recent times have either played them down (Cameron, Blair) or played them for laughs (Boris).
In good times and with a party that wasn't an absolute clown show his self-confidence and earnest mild poshness might be endearing - in fact it was. During the pandemic people quite liked the guy who gave the impression he knew what he was doing. His smart investment banker vibes are what got him the job in the end. But like bankers themselves during the financial crisis, he makes himself incredibly bad by looking like he's upset people have the temerity to not be grateful to him when they think he and his party have screwed things up for them.
I was 'against' Boris not because I am a centrist, but because his time as MoL showed that he'd be a terrible PM. The only way around that was be for him to recognise his flaws and address them. He did not do so.
No 'enemies' took Boris down; no external plot. His own character flaws were the source of his downfall.
As for current polling, I don’t know that there are any that show Boris doing better than Sunak now, although polls of Tory supporters when he quit show they wanted him over both Truss & Sunak
Not dissimilar to 2015 in reverse as far as vote share is concerned.
Suppose Boris had somehow survived Pinchergate. Let's be generous, and butterfly the Lying About Partygate investigation away without political cost.
Chances are that his reputation would have continued to drift down, because that's what almost always happens. Apart from the vaccine bounce, it happened pretty steadily to PM BoJo.
Events would still have happened, he'd have been as constrained as his successors. The default assumption has to be that BJ now would be below RS now.
Also, you can't simply self identify as a white man. On the contrary, it is a badge that is awarded by those who know,
Parliament spent three years saying getting a deal agreed and through the house was impossible. A few months later Boris had done it
Oops.
I must have seen 37-30, as it accords with my prediction...funny how that happens.
He vehemently disagreed
I was right.
At this moment, which of the following do voters think would be the better Prime Minister for the UK?
Starmer v Johnson:
Starmer 42%
Johnson 39%
Starmer v Sunak:
Starmer 44%
Sunak 33%
Starmer v Mordaunt:
Starmer 49%
Mordaunt 22%
2019 Conservative Voters
At this moment, which of the following do 2019 Conservative voters think would be the better Prime Minister for the UK?
Starmer v Johnson:
Johnson 69%
Starmer 19%
Starmer v Sunak:
Sunak 58%
Starmer 25%
Starmer v Mordaunt:
Mordaunt 39%
Starmer 32%
https://twitter.com/Conservatives/status/1734978049819492668
It also goes against the Conservatives brand - they should be better than this. Reform could get away with it
In fact if I were Reform, I’d make our ads more highbrow and sensible to show there is someone who takes it seriously
Talked by a gent who sat down at by cafe table into giving him £50 I took out of a cash machine. The patter was I need money to access more money, and I will give you back more than you lend me when I have got it.
Obviously in practice took the £50 and ran away full tilt.
The patter is very similar as used by phone-you-up con artists - get you to ignore the obvious points where falling-for-it, and tie you up with chatter and distractions. I've only had one occasion when I started to be pulled in to that, but I was distracted by thinking about other things in my life so it was a bit close.
The Tories are completely shot away.
Not least because Sunaks support has sunk even lower.
Perhaps Boris was rather rash in taking the Chiltern Hundreds, but he did and thereby stuffed his comeback chance.
*this is actually true
Spike up when you win an election, drift down afterwards. You need a Bloody Huge Event (Falklands, Vaccines) to counteract that. It might have happened, but it can't be the default assumption.
So why would Summer 2022 have been Boris's lowest ebb? Seems much more likely that he would have kept falling, because that's what tends to happen.
At this moment, which of the following do voters think would be the better Prime Minister for the UK?
Starmer v Johnson:
Starmer 42%
Johnson 39%
Starmer v Sunak:
Starmer 44%
Sunak 33%
Starmer v Mordaunt:
Starmer 49%
Mordaunt 22%
2019 Conservative Voters
At this moment, which of the following do 2019 Conservative voters think would be the better Prime Minister for the UK?
Starmer v Johnson:
Johnson 69%
Starmer 19%
Starmer v Sunak:
Sunak 58%
Starmer 25%
Starmer v Mordaunt:
Mordaunt 39%
Starmer 32%
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/12/new-french-ai-model-makes-waves-by-matching-gpt-3-5-on-benchmarks/
Yes, it's staggeringly incompetent.
So his stats don't matter.
Meanwhile Milwall nearly at kick off.
Unreal really, someone’s getting paid for this. Last week they used the newsreader with her middle finger up as an equally crass meme, and even their own MPs were asking for it to be taken down
The fact remains the Conservative Party dumped him as they dumped Thatcher before and Truss after. Sunak, the last person standing on the battlefield. inherited but hasn't been the miracle worker some hoped.
The polls suggest a cynical, exhausted public feeling a change is necessary but far from convinced Starmer will make a lot of difference. Once elected and especially so with a big majority, Starmer will have the opprtunity to be as radical as a Thatcher or an Attlee but at this stage he feels the need to reassure the wavering and disillusioned Conservative voters he's neither a left-wing firebrand nor a socialist wolf in a social democrat sheep's clothing.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12859739/man-caught-having-sex-cow-avoids-jail.html
Posted only to illustrate again the recent trends for very long headlines online.
If the Tories want to avoid a wipeout, they need to start with booting Sunak and Hunt, not the person doing the Tweets.
I posted the R&W polls from July 22, when Boris quit, and he was miles clear then. The same is shown in their polls from Oct 22, and again in this one from July of this year with YouGov.
Strange to see PB people so reluctant to believe hard polling evidence! Wonder why?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-sunak-tories-poll-b2360140.html
There's a reason that Braverman and Badenoch aren't agitating for a change of leader; it's because they feel defeat is inevitable, and they'd rather someone from the other wing of the Conservative Party took the blame.
But he did step down, And that means this is all rather moot.
Makes SKS seem youthful and trendy.
Whereas one of the few advantages Sunak has is that he isn't in his sixties.
Weathers been bit bleak, and the housing market is down… there’s football on and someone’s winning, and I like this or that film
They could literally put Sunak’s head on that instead of Starmers and it’s far more accurate.
Why draw attention to their own policy failings.
The best case for someone other than Sunak being PM at the next GE is not that there will be a defenestration but that he will resign.
Not a market to enter IMHO.
As for the polling "evidence", fine but it's all pointless. Your man failed - he's not wanted back in politics except by his diehard supporters. That doesn't mean he can't or won't come back but at the moment he's on the outside.
Echoes of the anecdote Al Campbell had this morning on The Rest Is Centrist Dads. He recounted a conversation with Alan Clark in the run-up to '97. Redacting rude words, the gist was "You'll have a decade; we hate each other more than we hate you."
Which is about the size of it.
I think it was a mistake of biblical proportions to force him out, and seeing as this is a place for political discussion/argument, here’s where I bang that drum. In real life, with my friends and family I barely talk about politics at all
He has a connection with exactly many of the states Trump needs for a path to victory imho.
I'm on.
Useful in future (for the likes of you anyway) when you sit perched on on some tropic (or arctic) rock imitating Procopius by chronicling the Secret History of PB.
THE smash hit of the mid-4th millennium.
https://rkirsling.github.io/modallogic/