Sunak, he’s just not up to it – politicalbetting.com
Sunak, he’s just not up to it – politicalbetting.com
Sunak had a choice between either being seen as a competent anti-Truss centre ground Conservative, or a populist culture war fighting populist.He's instead tried to do both, while managing to pull off neither.
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Pick a philosophy and stick to it.
And now they’re worrying about seats in the blue wall…
Big win for the LDs in Blaby though, so @Icarus called that one right.
Sunak will seem like a rock of consistency
Plus he's annoyed the Corbynites and the Faragists, which makes him brilliant for a socialist.
People raise concerns
The government listens and amends the policy
Isn’t that a good thing?
Sunak Is Crap At Politics.
How else can you possibly explain the insane timeline of HS2 under Rishi, from announcing the project’s cancellation in its *key terminus city*, to then spending the earmarked money in London, a city with by some distance the best-funded transport infrastructure in the country.
This salary threshold is another example. Rwanda is another.
Please please please can we have a general election ASAP?
I am surprised by how bad Sunak is, even with his lack of experience you might have thought that the people around him would create some basic competence and political common, but no.
The way Sunak made a song and dance over the change compared to the low key u turn is rather characteristic of his political ineptitude.
The random policy generator shoots out a kneejerk reaction to the highest immigration figures on record, trumpeted to the dinosaurs of the Daily Mail and Express, then quietly abandoned a few weeks later. Whatever the wisdom or not of the policy it is a pretty cackhanded approach.
As the tweets point out he's pissed off everybody.
Amongst all the populist blundering incompetence wind is something the UK has got broadly right.
(We still need those new interconnectors though.)
Sunak is all about the headlines.
The weird thing is that the earnings data and the tax take from it both indicated that if anything economic activity was being underestimated, not over estimated. Curious.
My guess is that Sunak is ‘performing’ OK in all the meetings behind the scenes, but lacks any real political vision or instinct and allowing others to pull his strings when it comes to the politics, very much as Hague did (and of course LOTO is mostly politics, being PM is mostly administration). And unable to join one up with the other.
Why then did they sneak out the change in a Parliamentary written answer, rather than piblicly announcing it ?
Here in Laon in Northern France where we arrived at 3am after a journey from “festive travel chaos” textbooks yesterday, it’s a little calmer and misty.
Precious few of those.
The overall picture of the economy slowing was the plan behind the lower interest rates.
It will simply be continuity Rishi without the helicopter jokes.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/25/offshore-windfarms-vital-tensions-russia-ed-davey?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Vote Starmer, because he'll have to do.
But from a political betting point of view, Sunak will have pissed off both those who want the threshold higher and lower and made them feel he is not on their side. He does this repeatedly. It is a big part of why he is unpopular as PM and quite different to how he acted as Chancellor where he, at least appeared, to have a fairly consistent and coherent plan, which made him popular.
I wish Labour was more aggressive. The Tories are getting off lightly for what they have done. It’s shameful . If the boot had been on the other foot, the Tories would have been remorseless.
At this point you have no way of knowing that.
There will be plenty of scrutiny once it becomes clearer when the election is going to be.
Remind me which party's leader refused to do an interview with Andrew Neil at the last election and then hid in a fridge to avoid another?
Give me a break.
2) It's also absolute horseshit. Horoscopy for management consultants.
As yesterdays thread demonstrated why not give South Africa a go and compare and contrast
As a left leaning voter, I’m normally disinclined to agree with Alanbrooke but on this occasion I have to. I still think the next election will be in January 2025, but I realise I’m in a minority. If I am, it is surely high time that we had some definition in policies from the major contenders.
But that will come, even it's slower than it should be.
Another thing the last decade of Tory government could have done better.
Only one of the parties is in government.
As fur 'no plans', we've had this discussion before, and I can't be bothered to rehearse all over again the stuff Labour has already talked about.
As you're clearly not arguing in good faith.
Point was that even though they listed where Starmer is deficient, they recognise and call out that Sunak and the Tories are *more* deficient.
Even the “Labour will break the economy” line which has reinforced Tory votes before doesn’t work. The guy who was a 2019 Tory won’t vote for them in fear of what Labour might do, because whatever that is he is living the reality of what the Tories are already doing.
“I want to be able to afford to pay my bills” is a big motivator, even if you aren’t convinced the alternative will be much better. If a bit better is enough to keep you afloat, that will do. And that’s millions on millions of voters…
Thing is, there are better and worse ways of being a technocratic leader. It's about leaning into your strengths and being realistic about your limits.
(When I teach, or have to manage stuff, it's something I have to be really careful about as a massive introvert. When to channel what little extrovert energy I truly have, when to fake it, when to hide away and decompress. Somewhat different scenario, but similar principle, I suspect.)
And I suspect Sunak's big problem isn't that he's a technocrat, but that he's a rubbish one. Secretive planning followed by a big splash isn't great, but I think we'd all accept if if the splash was good and carried through. Trouble is that Sunak's secrecy is followed by a plan that doesn't work. Starmer, on the other hand, has somehow managed to get his enemies to impale themselves on daggers without much intervention from Starmer himself.
Given a binary choice, and that's all most of us have, I know which one I prefer.
Clearly that becomes problematic during a campaign, but Starmer has mastered the non-appearance appearance. He does the interview but says nothing of interest. Box ticked on appearing, but nothing to annoy voters. Sheer genius.
Im afraid its cometh the hour and weve got the wrong men.
Anyway I have to sort out some stuff with my Germans before they all go on holiday. Have a good morning.
The threshold rise is just another attempt at their favourite trick, trying to get people to mistake cruelty for competence, like the Rwanda scheme.If they bash someone hard enough, surely there must be a good reason and they must be serious people, because surely government ministers wouldn't be this cruel just to save their arses. Except they very much would.
And Sunak is so incompetent that he's making it obvious.
I say this BTW as someone who was not massively enthusiastic about the man. I didn't vote for him to be leader. But in today's world of negative politics if you can show up and not piss people off I think you're winning.
Starmer wants to win. So being bland to ensure that people are “fairly relaxed about a Labour government “ is precisely what he wants
Your personality assessments are as convincing as your arguments.
Neither being in or out of the EU prevented us from addressing the real problems of our economy and society. Hence the Red Wall and Blue Wall both being annoyed. There are only so many dead cats that can be thrown on the table.
Because the real problem is that this country has for far too long lived beyond its means.
Which means that at some point living standards have to fall for most people.
And the longer this is delayed the harder the change will be.
*@IanB2 I believe
Lib Dem 60.4%
Con 19.3%
Lab 14.1%
Green 5.9%
Liberal Democrat HOLD
Leicestershire County Council Election -Glen Parva and Blaby even better
Liberal Democrats 61% +12.3%
Conservative 19.8% -13.7%
Labour 11.7% +1.7%
Green 7.1% -0.6%
What makes things worse is that he clearly has very little understanding of the UK or the people who live in it. That’s not a surprise given his trajectory - Winchester to Oxbridge to Silicon Valley to the City to Parliament, while marrying a billionaire’s daughter along the way - but what’s bizarre is his total lack of interest in finding out more. He has outsourced his research to the Mail and the Telegraph, and as you’d expect they’re not providing him with the full picture. He’d know that if he’d ever lived in the real world.
I am pleased to hear what it says about Brown because this is a line I have been pushing on this Site for many years, and I take flak for it. He was a poor PM generally, but he got the GFC right and indeed many other leaders at the time, notably the newly elected Obama, looked to him for leadership and they got it. The crisis played to his strengths, and he had the credibility in financial circles to carry it through.
Fwiw my view of Blair is kind of a mirror image of Brown. He was a good PM, who got the huge issue of Iraq terribly wrong.
It's all debatable, of course, but nice to know I have Heywood on my side.
We have been selling off the family silver for years and been running up the credit cards to fund imported tat for decades.
Sooner or later the bailiff comes knocking.
Sadly the toxic legacy of having helped the Tories get in means Lib Dems are still hesitant to talk about their record in coalition.
I think he will come over well at the debate stage of the campaign, being a bit more charismatic than Keir.