He said the "growing range of pressures on the next education secretary's to-do list" also included school building repair backlogs and the rising number of children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send).
The number of children with the highest levels of Send has increased by more than 60% since 2015 - driving a £3.5bn increase in the high-needs budget, the report says. That has used up nearly half of the £7.6bn increase in school spending in the same time period.
Farage on Today this morning. Now I know I’m not his target market but it all seemed a bit old hat - a UKIP and Brexit tribute act with nothing particularly interesting to say. Is that really going to be the game changer the Tories seem petrified of?
As a LD I found the interview disturbing and not why you might think. I thought the interviewer was awful and Farage performed well. Really it was an indictment of the Tory failure on immigration. He even quoted the difference between illegal immigrants deported under Labour compared to the Tories (45k cf 5k). I have no idea if that is correct. He really sounded like he would prefer a Labour govt he is so annoyed with the Tories.
Farage on Today this morning. Now I know I’m not his target market but it all seemed a bit old hat - a UKIP and Brexit tribute act with nothing particularly interesting to say. Is that really going to be the game changer the Tories seem petrified of?
As a LD I found the interview disturbing and not why you might think. I thought the interviewer was awful and Farage performed well. Really it was an indictment of the Tory failure on immigration. He even quoted the difference between illegal immigrants deported under Labour compared to the Tories (45k cf 5k). I have no idea if that is correct.
Sounds about right. Deportations collapsed under the Conservatives.
Sunak’s basic problem is that most people hate him. But, he’s really carrying the can for the incompetence of May, Johnson, and Truss.
Do most (real world) people hate him? Really? PB is not the real world.
When something went really badly wrong at work today someone quipped "that was a bit of a Sunak". It got a lot of knowing smiles.
Yes, people in the real world seem to genuinely dislike Sunak. To a much more universal extent that seemed to be the case with Boris or Truss. Of course, that might just be his misfortune to be a fag-end PM. Possibly anyone in his situation would be regarded the same. But I don't recall the same level of opprobrium towards Major. Possibly towards Brown. Like Brown, Sunak unfortunately just ooozes insincerity.
Unfair but yes. Sunak is neither as dishonest as Johnson nor as deluded as Truss but isn't appreciated for it.
I think there is some substance to the public's dislike of Sunak. A billionaire with a very right wing ideology, thinks government should be "small" ie favour rich people liked himself, has clearly no interest in people and how they live. This doesn't sit well.
Y The farcical national service policy sums up his lack of interest in people.
The idea that 18 year olds can give up a weekend a month to get an experience might work for people who can live off mummy and daddy's millions and have a gap year.
It doesn't work for normal people, who have a weekend job to pay the bills while they put themselves through university etc.
Or aren't in education but have instead already entered the world of work, many jobs suitable for 18 year old without qualifications of course including significant shift work at weekends.
It is an absurd and offensive policy that sums up just how out of touch Sunak and those who surround him are to have come up with such lunacy.
As I have noted previously, it is an immensely useful policy because it allows those who were a bit will I/won't I about voting Cons now unambiguously to commit to not voting for them under any circumstances.
So there is that.
They shoulda gone full-on “You’re in the army now”
12 months of learning to shoot Jonny Russian, and droning people in dusty lands. No ifs no buts, the army, or deportation to the South Sandwich Islands to look after albatross eggs
Hopefully, Prime Minister Farage will bring this in, alongside his new bessies President Le Pen, Prime Minister Meloni and Dutch Premier Wilders
A New Order Arises. Rejoice
Heh. PM Farage super-charges European collaboration. It’s just the “wrong” sort of European collaboration for those who’ve been dreaming about it. Would be amusing.
Farage as PM is an amusing daydream, but a largely hard right or even far right European mainland is anything but. It is already happening, and is accelerating, and is an inevitable backlash to decades of mass migration and multiculti. In the end the voters rebel, and by now they’ve all forgotten World War 2 so the Nazi bogeyman doesn’t work
Christ knows what mental contortions Remoaners/Rejoiners will go through then. I’m not sure the cognitive dissonance is sustainable
He said the "growing range of pressures on the next education secretary's to-do list" also included school building repair backlogs and the rising number of children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send).
The number of children with the highest levels of Send has increased by more than 60% since 2015 - driving a £3.5bn increase in the high-needs budget, the report says. That has used up nearly half of the £7.6bn increase in school spending in the same time period.
Mr. Ghedebrav, last session of DnD went very well. Been going almost a year with this homebrew. Helps having good players (no "I am the main character" fools).
Saw the Farage announcement yesterday. I do wonder if this *might* be worse for Labour than the Conservatives. Anyone fully Faragian was not going to return to the Conservatives, but reluctant/soft Labour voters might jump ship his way. My suspicion is the overall numbers will play that way but it'll cost the Conservatives more by letting Labour in through the middle at plenty of seats (akin to UKIP versus Ed MIliband's Labour in 2015).
Morning! I can only reference a small number of seats which I saw directly, but in 2019 the damage done by the Brexit Party was heavily onto the Tories. Seat after seat after seat where Labour clung on with BXP having more votes than the Tory majority.
John Curtice was interviewed yesterday and said that the polls and the local election results suggest this time about the threat is - once again - predominantly to the Tories.
The other problem is how it affects the Conservative campaign.
The theory, and it's been mentioned here by people plugged into the Conservative party, was to spend weeks 1 and 2 winning back Reform voters and shoring up the right flank. Then move the focus to winning voters back from Labour.
That wasn't particularly working, but the Farage explosion has completely put that strategy through the shredder.
Now the Tories will tack very hard to the hard right to try and see off Farage. Which will drive non-mad voters away for the LibDems to pick off.
A great day for E.L.E. yesterday!
And it won't work- however sharply the Conservatives move to the right, Farage will always go one step further.
Sunak’s basic problem is that most people hate him. But, he’s really carrying the can for the incompetence of May, Johnson, and Truss.
Do most (real world) people hate him? Really? PB is not the real world.
When something went really badly wrong at work today someone quipped "that was a bit of a Sunak". It got a lot of knowing smiles.
Yes, people in the real world seem to genuinely dislike Sunak. To a much more universal extent that seemed to be the case with Boris or Truss. Of course, that might just be his misfortune to be a fag-end PM. Possibly anyone in his situation would be regarded the same. But I don't recall the same level of opprobrium towards Major. Possibly towards Brown. Like Brown, Sunak unfortunately just ooozes insincerity.
Unfair but yes. Sunak is neither as dishonest as Johnson nor as deluded as Truss but isn't appreciated for it.
I think there is some substance to the public's dislike of Sunak. A billionaire with a very right wing ideology, thinks government should be "small" ie favour rich people liked himself, has clearly no interest in people and how they live. This doesn't sit well.
Sunak is a nice guy,.
No he isn’t.
No one who deliberately inflames culture wars, promotes sending boat people to a corrupt dangerous African country, attacks people with disabilities including mental ill-health, attacks LGBGTQ minorities, attacks young people on their smart phones and wants to march them off to war, flies everywhere in a helicopter to block out the appalling public service decline over which he has presided … can be described as a ‘nice guy.’
I’d love it if he lost his seat. He’s a thoroughly nasty piece of work.
Only a tory campaigner a long, long, way down their rabbit hole could think otherwise.
Well so you say but the only nastiness Ive noticed in this campaign is Starmer bullying a woman because she's elderly and black.
And probably because she's a woman too, Labour dont do women.
You know, as well as I do, that in the words of Luke Skywalker not one single word of what you’ve just put is true.
Naughty boy.
Ok
name me a female leader of Labour
name me a non-white Labour leader
To be pedantic, Harriet Harman.
But I get your point.
Stopgaps dont count.
And there still isnt a female leader.
The Conservatives had had 3, LSd one, Greems lots, SNP one, shit even the neanthedrals of Sinn Fein and the DUP have had female leaders,
But Labout ? Here luv go get the tea, the men are at work.
Poor old Margaret Beckett, always forgotten.
(Technically, both were permanent leaders under the Labour Party rules, but yes, you're right in the real world.)
If Ed Miliband counts, being Jewish, towards an ethnic minority, then it looks even worse because the Conservatives had a Jewish leader as long ago as 1868.
Farage on Today this morning. Now I know I’m not his target market but it all seemed a bit old hat - a UKIP and Brexit tribute act with nothing particularly interesting to say. Is that really going to be the game changer the Tories seem petrified of?
As a LD I found the interview disturbing and not why you might think. I thought the interviewer was awful and Farage performed well. Really it was an indictment of the Tory failure on immigration. He even quoted the difference between illegal immigrants deported under Labour compared to the Tories (45k cf 5k). I have no idea if that is correct.
Sounds about right. Deportations collapsed under the Conservatives.
This is why people like Grant Shapps bleating yesterday are so funny. "A vote for Farage is a vote for Labour and that means a vote for immigration" he said, with a mention of "stop the boats" and "the plan".
I genuinely don't get it. the Tories have a catastrophic record on this subject. Literally doing the exact opposite of what both their supporters want and of what they as a party claim they are doing.
I think some people - some PB Tories as well - get mesmerised by this. Yes! Stop the Boats! Yes! Rwanda is a plan! Yes! Labour would increase migration!
And then the Nigel (for it is He) comes out of retirement and says "2.4m". And the remaining Tory voters shake their heads and say "you what?" and thats the Tory campaign done and dusted.
You could promise to fire asylum seekers into the sun. Doesn't matter. You have Failed. You have Lied. And you've been caught.
I'd call him a poor, or even terrible, politician. He has never been elected to parliament in many tries, even whilst leading a significant party. He falls out with everyone, and it's always about him, not the party. Once he leaves the party, it disintegrates.
I'd also call him a brilliant campaigner. He knows how to develop a simple message - truthful or not - and get many people, both significant and not, fully behind that message. He's truly brilliant at that.
He was elected to the European Parliament multiple times, and led a highly successful UK/European party - UKIP, that consistently did very well or actually won UK/euro elections
As he has said, his aims in the UK “as an MP” were always to agitate, he only made one serious bid (which he lost, but one loss hardly outweighs everything else)
He is an excellent campaigner and a highly gifted politician - if democratic politics is largely the art of winning votes/elections that matter, which it is
What we don’t know is whether he is any good at running a country - as a manager, a technocrat, an administrator. In some ways it doesn’t matter: he’s probably never going to be in that position. My sense is that he’d be REALLY crap at this boring stuff, but then he could delegate, as gifted politicians with no admin skills generally do
He said the "growing range of pressures on the next education secretary's to-do list" also included school building repair backlogs and the rising number of children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send).
The number of children with the highest levels of Send has increased by more than 60% since 2015 - driving a £3.5bn increase in the high-needs budget, the report says. That has used up nearly half of the £7.6bn increase in school spending in the same time period.
Farage on Today this morning. Now I know I’m not his target market but it all seemed a bit old hat - a UKIP and Brexit tribute act with nothing particularly interesting to say. Is that really going to be the game changer the Tories seem petrified of?
As a LD I found the interview disturbing and not why you might think. I thought the interviewer was awful and Farage performed well. Really it was an indictment of the Tory failure on immigration. He even quoted the difference between illegal immigrants deported under Labour compared to the Tories (45k cf 5k). I have no idea if that is correct. He really sounded like he would prefer a Labour govt he is so annoyed with the Tories.
Of course he prefers a Labour government, his stated aim is to gobble the Tory party whole. That is impossible to do if they’re the government, but relatively easier if they are in opposition and having a crisis of confidence.
Farage on Today this morning. Now I know I’m not his target market but it all seemed a bit old hat - a UKIP and Brexit tribute act with nothing particularly interesting to say. Is that really going to be the game changer the Tories seem petrified of?
As a LD I found the interview disturbing and not why you might think. I thought the interviewer was awful and Farage performed well. Really it was an indictment of the Tory failure on immigration. He even quoted the difference between illegal immigrants deported under Labour compared to the Tories (45k cf 5k). I have no idea if that is correct.
Sounds about right. Deportations collapsed under the Conservatives.
This is why people like Grant Shapps bleating yesterday are so funny. "A vote for Farage is a vote for Labour and that means a vote for immigration" he said, with a mention of "stop the boats" and "the plan".
I genuinely don't get it. the Tories have a catastrophic record on this subject. Literally doing the exact opposite of what both their supporters want and of what they as a party claim they are doing.
I think some people - some PB Tories as well - get mesmerised by this. Yes! Stop the Boats! Yes! Rwanda is a plan! Yes! Labour would increase migration!
And then the Nigel (for it is He) comes out of retirement and says "2.4m". And the remaining Tory voters shake their heads and say "you what?" and thats the Tory campaign done and dusted.
You could promise to fire asylum seekers into the sun. Doesn't matter. You have Failed. You have Lied. And you've been caught.
I agree with every word. And this is why Farage is so valuable in this election, even if you hate him. He exposes Tory failings in a way that Labour can’t ever do, he attacks from the right, and it is highly effective, and it needs to be done so the Tories get proper scrutiny
I'd call him a poor, or even terrible, politician. He has never been elected to parliament in many tries, even whilst leading a significant party. He falls out with everyone, and it's always about him, not the party. Once he leaves the party, it disintegrates.
I'd also call him a brilliant campaigner. He knows how to develop a simple message - truthful or not - and get many people, both significant and not, fully behind that message. He's truly brilliant at that.
He was elected to the European Parliament multiple times, and led a highly successful UK/European party - UKIP, that consistently did very well or actually won UK/euro elections
As he has said, his aims in the UK “as an MP” were always to agitate, he only made one serious bid (which he lost, but one loss hardly outweighs everything else)
He is an excellent campaigner and a highly gifted politician - if democratic politics is largely the art of winning votes/elections that matter, which it is
What we don’t know is whether he is any good at running a country - as a manager, a technocrat, an administrator. In some ways it doesn’t matter: he’s probably never going to be in that position. My sense is that he’d be REALLY crap at this boring stuff, but then he could delegate, as gifted politicians with no admin skills generally do
*You* could get elected as an MEP, given the closed list system used. He is a great campaigner; a poor politician, for the reasons I mentioned (and you ignore...)
He'd be terrible at running the country, for the reasons I also gave above. He falls out with people big-time, and it's all about *him*. Think Johnson crossed with Trump.
Sunak’s basic problem is that most people hate him. But, he’s really carrying the can for the incompetence of May, Johnson, and Truss.
Do most (real world) people hate him? Really? PB is not the real world.
When something went really badly wrong at work today someone quipped "that was a bit of a Sunak". It got a lot of knowing smiles.
Yes, people in the real world seem to genuinely dislike Sunak. To a much more universal extent that seemed to be the case with Boris or Truss. Of course, that might just be his misfortune to be a fag-end PM. Possibly anyone in his situation would be regarded the same. But I don't recall the same level of opprobrium towards Major. Possibly towards Brown. Like Brown, Sunak unfortunately just ooozes insincerity.
Unfair but yes. Sunak is neither as dishonest as Johnson nor as deluded as Truss but isn't appreciated for it.
I think there is some substance to the public's dislike of Sunak. A billionaire with a very right wing ideology, thinks government should be "small" ie favour rich people liked himself, has clearly no interest in people and how they live. This doesn't sit well.
The farcical national service policy sums up his lack of interest in people.
The idea that 18 year olds can give up a weekend a month to get an experience might work for people who can live off mummy and daddy's millions and have a gap year.
It doesn't work for normal people, who have a weekend job to pay the bills while they put themselves through university etc.
Or aren't in education but have instead already entered the world of work, many jobs suitable for 18 year old without qualifications of course including significant shift work at weekends.
It is an absurd and offensive policy that sums up just how out of touch Sunak and those who surround him are to have come up with such lunacy.
FT this morning reports the critical lack of a workforce in the construction industry. Practically everyone bar the bloody Tories agrees that our infrastructure is crumbling or absent, but even if the next government pushes the Go button and funds it, we just don't have the people or the skills. The company who built the Co-op Live Arena points out that a chunk of the delays at the end was that they couldn't hire people at any cost on any wage.
Instead of idiotic dogwhistle national service proposals, we need to focus on how we invest in young people to become the workforce this country needs to build its way out of the mess we are in.
As usual, in the bunfight over tertiary education, the actual results have been ignored.
1) half the population is going to university. 2) the ones who go to highly regarded university and get a good degree (subject fairly irrelevant in a first degree) get good jobs. 3) progressing down the scale, you get people paying for a degree that gets them a job that a few years back would have been non degree. 4) many of those at 3) feel they were promised 2) 5) the world of work has changed. The days of the “white collar gets all the money” are gone. You can make six figures running a small plumbing business. Despite some dumb predictions, the world of work was never going to turn into all-high-status-white-collar. There are some rather well paid jobs in the combined manual & intellectual space. 6) so you get from (3) a bunch of people in jobs that ceiling in their twenties - dull office work. I used to help run a communal workshop - place was full of frustrated pen pushers who wanted to *make* something. 7) throw in the limits on medical degrees
My answer? Degrees for *everyone*. Give the plumbers PhDs in Plumbing. That’ll solve the status gap.
And make manual/physicals skills mandatory. Remember the shouting when getting an English GCSE was made a condition of a university place? Well, no degree in Literature for you, at Cambridge, unless you do Welding or CNC Operation.
I would suggest plumbing or electrics as suitable training work but that would result in people doing it themselves and that's usually a bad idea.
I won't shed any tears if the Tories get wiped out on 4th July.
That only happens if Farage wipes them out and realigns the right in his favour.
However Reform voters alone even then would not be enough to beat Labour, they would need some One Nation Tories too. If they went LD then Starmer could largely stay PM even if the economy went south by dividing the opposition between Farage and Reform on the right, the LDs and rump One Nation centrist Tories and the Greens to his left. In such a scenario FPTP would ironically be better for Starmer Labour than FPTP but PR now better for the Tories as well as ReformUK, the LDs and Greens
On the other hand PR would probably make the break up of the right wing into separate parties a permanent state of affairs.
Do you think Starmer might really do it?
He'd have the opportunity. Blair had it, and passed.
It would render a massive improvement to our political system a single costless stroke.
I think he might but you can never be sure. Politicians, eh?
In any world where Labour has 380+ seats, PR is going to be pretty unattractive to Starmer (and doubly so his MPs).
It would depend on how things look going forward.
If we had the Single Transferable Vote system in Multi-Member constiuencies, then Starmer would not have to spend all his time removing candidates of whom he did not approve. The electorate could do that for him. Unless they liked the extreme Socialist candidates, of course.
Except that isn’t how those constituencies work nowadays. Look at Ireland as an example a 5 seat constituency will have 3 sin rein candidates max to ensure hey all get elected. 2 many candidates and you run the risk that all your candidates get eliminated before the 2nd/3rd choice votes start to pile up and you win the seat…
Indeed. How many seats a party wins is influenced by how many candidates they put up. Nothing very proportional about that.
STV is nonsense on stilts.
Just use d'Hondt, like we did in the Euros. Simple, and becomes more and more proportional the greater the number of MPs elected per constituency.
If you want to influence a party's candidate list, join the party.
Farage on Today this morning. Now I know I’m not his target market but it all seemed a bit old hat - a UKIP and Brexit tribute act with nothing particularly interesting to say. Is that really going to be the game changer the Tories seem petrified of?
As a LD I found the interview disturbing and not why you might think. I thought the interviewer was awful and Farage performed well. Really it was an indictment of the Tory failure on immigration. He even quoted the difference between illegal immigrants deported under Labour compared to the Tories (45k cf 5k). I have no idea if that is correct.
Sounds about right. Deportations collapsed under the Conservatives.
This is why people like Grant Shapps bleating yesterday are so funny. "A vote for Farage is a vote for Labour and that means a vote for immigration" he said, with a mention of "stop the boats" and "the plan".
I genuinely don't get it. the Tories have a catastrophic record on this subject. Literally doing the exact opposite of what both their supporters want and of what they as a party claim they are doing.
I think some people - some PB Tories as well - get mesmerised by this. Yes! Stop the Boats! Yes! Rwanda is a plan! Yes! Labour would increase migration!
And then the Nigel (for it is He) comes out of retirement and says "2.4m". And the remaining Tory voters shake their heads and say "you what?" and thats the Tory campaign done and dusted.
You could promise to fire asylum seekers into the sun. Doesn't matter. You have Failed. You have Lied. And you've been caught.
I think @leon mentioned it before, and he is much more of an authority than me, but you are very good at this writing lark.
I passionately hate Sunak and so does everyone I know. My Surrey tory friend thinks he’s horrible, and stabbed her beloved Boris in the back, and another sometime tory voter I know thinks he’s nasty and can’t stand him and described Sunak to me yesterday as ‘evil’.
I hate Sunak. He’s a nasty little shit who has attacked vulnerable groups and people in his evil culture wars. He’s highly privileged, out of touch with ordinary people, and his policies are ruthlessly uncaring.
I hate Sunak. Loathe him.
Posts like this just to confirm to everyone your youth and immaturity.
You love the ‘everyone thinks x, y, or z about you’ idea.
It says a lot about your own insecurities. As well as your innate nastiness. You and the current Conservative Party are well suited and your defeat thoroughly deserved.
Sunak’s basic problem is that most people hate him. But, he’s really carrying the can for the incompetence of May, Johnson, and Truss.
Do most (real world) people hate him? Really? PB is not the real world.
When something went really badly wrong at work today someone quipped "that was a bit of a Sunak". It got a lot of knowing smiles.
Yes, people in the real world seem to genuinely dislike Sunak. To a much more universal extent that seemed to be the case with Boris or Truss. Of course, that might just be his misfortune to be a fag-end PM. Possibly anyone in his situation would be regarded the same. But I don't recall the same level of opprobrium towards Major. Possibly towards Brown. Like Brown, Sunak unfortunately just ooozes insincerity.
Unfair but yes. Sunak is neither as dishonest as Johnson nor as deluded as Truss but isn't appreciated for it.
I think there is some substance to the public's dislike of Sunak. A billionaire with a very right wing ideology, thinks government should be "small" ie favour rich people liked himself, has clearly no interest in people and how they live. This doesn't sit well.
The farcical national service policy sums up his lack of interest in people.
The idea that 18 year olds can give up a weekend a month to get an experience might work for people who can live off mummy and daddy's millions and have a gap year.
It doesn't work for normal people, who have a weekend job to pay the bills while they put themselves through university etc.
Or aren't in education but have instead already entered the world of work, many jobs suitable for 18 year old without qualifications of course including significant shift work at weekends.
It is an absurd and offensive policy that sums up just how out of touch Sunak and those who surround him are to have come up with such lunacy.
FT this morning reports the critical lack of a workforce in the construction industry. Practically everyone bar the bloody Tories agrees that our infrastructure is crumbling or absent, but even if the next government pushes the Go button and funds it, we just don't have the people or the skills. The company who built the Co-op Live Arena points out that a chunk of the delays at the end was that they couldn't hire people at any cost on any wage.
Instead of idiotic dogwhistle national service proposals, we need to focus on how we invest in young people to become the workforce this country needs to build its way out of the mess we are in.
As usual, in the bunfight over tertiary education, the actual results have been ignored.
1) half the population is going to university. 2) the ones who go to highly regarded university and get a good degree (subject fairly irrelevant in a first degree) get good jobs. 3) progressing down the scale, you get people paying for a degree that gets them a job that a few years back would have been non degree. 4) many of those at 3) feel they were promised 2) 5) the world of work has changed. The days of the “white collar gets all the money” are gone. You can make six figures running a small plumbing business. Despite some dumb predictions, the world of work was never going to turn into all-high-status-white-collar. There are some rather well paid jobs in the combined manual & intellectual space. 6) so you get from (3) a bunch of people in jobs that ceiling in their twenties - dull office work. I used to help run a communal workshop - place was full of frustrated pen pushers who wanted to *make* something. 7) throw in the limits on medical degrees
My answer? Degrees for *everyone*. Give the plumbers PhDs in Plumbing. That’ll solve the status gap.
And make manual/physicals skills mandatory. Remember the shouting when getting an English GCSE was made a condition of a university place? Well, no degree in Literature for you, at Cambridge, unless you do Welding or CNC Operation.
"When everyone is somebody, the no one's anybody."
If everybody has a degree, then discrimination will be forced back onto other criteria- such as how you speak. Sunak is a loser here as well.
Sunak’s basic problem is that most people hate him. But, he’s really carrying the can for the incompetence of May, Johnson, and Truss.
Do most (real world) people hate him? Really? PB is not the real world.
When something went really badly wrong at work today someone quipped "that was a bit of a Sunak". It got a lot of knowing smiles.
Yes, people in the real world seem to genuinely dislike Sunak. To a much more universal extent that seemed to be the case with Boris or Truss. Of course, that might just be his misfortune to be a fag-end PM. Possibly anyone in his situation would be regarded the same. But I don't recall the same level of opprobrium towards Major. Possibly towards Brown. Like Brown, Sunak unfortunately just ooozes insincerity.
When Major lost to Blair and drove to the Palace to resign as PM there was a sea of middle fingers from the public waving him goodbye down The Mall.
His reputation improved after his defeat, but not during. And he was considered to be weak at the time.
In a country the size of Britain you can always find any number of knobheads out to make a point. But I recall Major himself being held in considerably higher esteem than his party. I don't think this is true of Rishi. I wonder if things might have been different for him had he taken over as soon as Boris's star began to wane.
I remember Major getting slated by both sides, with basically just Ken Clarke backing him and Michael Heseltine (sort of) but he's certainly held in higher esteem now.
Sunak’s basic problem is that most people hate him. But, he’s really carrying the can for the incompetence of May, Johnson, and Truss.
Do most (real world) people hate him? Really? PB is not the real world.
When something went really badly wrong at work today someone quipped "that was a bit of a Sunak". It got a lot of knowing smiles.
Yes, people in the real world seem to genuinely dislike Sunak. To a much more universal extent that seemed to be the case with Boris or Truss. Of course, that might just be his misfortune to be a fag-end PM. Possibly anyone in his situation would be regarded the same. But I don't recall the same level of opprobrium towards Major. Possibly towards Brown. Like Brown, Sunak unfortunately just ooozes insincerity.
Unfair but yes. Sunak is neither as dishonest as Johnson nor as deluded as Truss but isn't appreciated for it.
I think there is some substance to the public's dislike of Sunak. A billionaire with a very right wing ideology, thinks government should be "small" ie favour rich people liked himself, has clearly no interest in people and how they live. This doesn't sit well.
Sunak is a nice guy,.
No he isn’t.
No one who deliberately inflames culture wars, promotes sending boat people to a corrupt dangerous African country, attacks people with disabilities including mental ill-health, attacks LGBGTQ minorities, attacks young people on their smart phones and wants to march them off to war, flies everywhere in a helicopter to block out the appalling public service decline over which he has presided … can be described as a ‘nice guy.’
I’d love it if he lost his seat. He’s a thoroughly nasty piece of work.
Only a tory campaigner a long, long, way down their rabbit hole could think otherwise.
Well so you say but the only nastiness Ive noticed in this campaign is Starmer bullying a woman because she's elderly and black.
And probably because she's a woman too, Labour dont do women.
When you realised the ground on which you were driving your tent pole was shifting, you went from ‘Labour don’t do women’ to ‘Name a Labour leader’ and then, when answered by others, to blocking out any temporary ones who don’t fit your brief.
It’s difficult to keep up with your flip-flopping. But if you are now building your tent around identity politics then bully for you.
He said the "growing range of pressures on the next education secretary's to-do list" also included school building repair backlogs and the rising number of children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send).
The number of children with the highest levels of Send has increased by more than 60% since 2015 - driving a £3.5bn increase in the high-needs budget, the report says. That has used up nearly half of the £7.6bn increase in school spending in the same time period.
I won't shed any tears if the Tories get wiped out on 4th July.
That only happens if Farage wipes them out and realigns the right in his favour.
However Reform voters alone even then would not be enough to beat Labour, they would need some One Nation Tories too. If they went LD then Starmer could largely stay PM even if the economy went south by dividing the opposition between Farage and Reform on the right, the LDs and rump One Nation centrist Tories and the Greens to his left. In such a scenario FPTP would ironically be better for Starmer Labour than FPTP but PR now better for the Tories as well as ReformUK, the LDs and Greens
On the other hand PR would probably make the break up of the right wing into separate parties a permanent state of affairs.
Do you think Starmer might really do it?
He'd have the opportunity. Blair had it, and passed.
It would render a massive improvement to our political system a single costless stroke.
I think he might but you can never be sure. Politicians, eh?
In any world where Labour has 380+ seats, PR is going to be pretty unattractive to Starmer (and doubly so his MPs).
It would depend on how things look going forward.
If we had the Single Transferable Vote system in Multi-Member constiuencies, then Starmer would not have to spend all his time removing candidates of whom he did not approve. The electorate could do that for him. Unless they liked the extreme Socialist candidates, of course.
Except that isn’t how those constituencies work nowadays. Look at Ireland as an example a 5 seat constituency will have 3 sin rein candidates max to ensure hey all get elected. 2 many candidates and you run the risk that all your candidates get eliminated before the 2nd/3rd choice votes start to pile up and you win the seat…
Indeed. How many seats a party wins is influenced by how many candidates they put up. Nothing very proportional about that.
STV is nonsense on stilts.
Just use d'Hondt, like we did in the Euros. Simple, and becomes more and more proportional the greater the number of MPs elected per constituency.
If you want to influence a party's candidate list, join the party.
D'Hondt is a joke. A bad joke. Don't even go there.
Sunak is a nice guy, who loves his family, works hard and is a logical and competent administrator of government.
I know that's the image he presented as Chancellor, and he had a slick PR team behind him when all he had to do was dole out cash, but events since do not support that pretense any more.
A logical and competent administrator of government would not have ended up with Rwanda for example.
You're confusing logic and competence with policy you agree with.
Most European countries are exploring offshore schemes like Rwanda now.
"Around 1.5 million men have registered for conscription in Ukraine, the defence ministry has said today. The ministry added that 14,000 men living abroad across 124 countries had updated their credentials. "
Just a reminder that nice Mr Major was part of the Government that changed UK law so that any local authority:
‘Shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality … or promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’
As Theresa May said, The Nasty Party right there. And now they’re back. For 4 more weeks.
If Labour win a majority of 150+ seats then they are all but guaranteed at least two terms in office. The evisceration of the Conservatives is such that it’s likely they won’t return to power in 14-15 years at the earliest. And Reform won’t get anywhere near the gates to Downing Street except in Leon’s wet dreams.
2035 to 2040 before the tories are anywhere near a return.
It’s a sobering thought that many of you* will be dead before Labour leave office.
Sunak is a nice guy, who loves his family, works hard and is a logical and competent administrator of government.
I know that's the image he presented as Chancellor, and he had a slick PR team behind him when all he had to do was dole out cash, but events since do not support that pretense any more.
A logical and competent administrator of government would not have ended up with Rwanda for example.
You're confusing logic and competence for a policies you agree with.
Most European countries are now exploring offshore schemes like Rwanda - and they aren't easy due to the tangled web we've weaved over the last 75 years.
Sunak is a nice guy, who loves his family, works hard and is a logical and competent administrator of government.
I know that's the image he presented as Chancellor, and he had a slick PR team behind him when all he had to do was dole out cash, but events since do not support that pretense any more.
A logical and competent administrator of government would not have ended up with Rwanda for example.
You're confusing logic and competence for a policies you agree with.
Most European countries are now exploring offshore schemes like Rwanda - and they aren't easy due to the tangled web we've weaved over the last 75 years.
I'd call him a poor, or even terrible, politician. He has never been elected to parliament in many tries, even whilst leading a significant party. He falls out with everyone, and it's always about him, not the party. Once he leaves the party, it disintegrates.
I'd also call him a brilliant campaigner. He knows how to develop a simple message - truthful or not - and get many people, both significant and not, fully behind that message. He's truly brilliant at that.
Bit like Boris?
Although for him it was different: he never fell in with anyone.
If Labour win a majority of 150+ seats then they are all but guaranteed at least two terms in office. The evisceration of the Conservatives is such that it’s likely they won’t return to power in 14-15 years at the earliest. And Reform won’t get anywhere near the gates to Downing Street except in Leon’s wet dreams.
2035 to 2040 before the tories are anywhere near a return.
It’s a sobering thought that many of you* will be dead before Labour leave office.
He said the "growing range of pressures on the next education secretary's to-do list" also included school building repair backlogs and the rising number of children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send).
The number of children with the highest levels of Send has increased by more than 60% since 2015 - driving a £3.5bn increase in the high-needs budget, the report says. That has used up nearly half of the £7.6bn increase in school spending in the same time period.
Sunak’s basic problem is that most people hate him. But, he’s really carrying the can for the incompetence of May, Johnson, and Truss.
Do most (real world) people hate him? Really? PB is not the real world.
When something went really badly wrong at work today someone quipped "that was a bit of a Sunak". It got a lot of knowing smiles.
Yes, people in the real world seem to genuinely dislike Sunak. To a much more universal extent that seemed to be the case with Boris or Truss. Of course, that might just be his misfortune to be a fag-end PM. Possibly anyone in his situation would be regarded the same. But I don't recall the same level of opprobrium towards Major. Possibly towards Brown. Like Brown, Sunak unfortunately just ooozes insincerity.
Unfair but yes. Sunak is neither as dishonest as Johnson nor as deluded as Truss but isn't appreciated for it.
I think there is some substance to the public's dislike of Sunak. A billionaire with a very right wing ideology, thinks government should be "small" ie favour rich people liked himself, has clearly no interest in people and how they live. This doesn't sit well.
The farcical national service policy sums up his lack of interest in people.
The idea that 18 year olds can give up a weekend a month to get an experience might work for people who can live off mummy and daddy's millions and have a gap year.
It doesn't work for normal people, who have a weekend job to pay the bills while they put themselves through university etc.
Or aren't in education but have instead already entered the world of work, many jobs suitable for 18 year old without qualifications of course including significant shift work at weekends.
It is an absurd and offensive policy that sums up just how out of touch Sunak and those who surround him are to have come up with such lunacy.
FT this morning reports the critical lack of a workforce in the construction industry. Practically everyone bar the bloody Tories agrees that our infrastructure is crumbling or absent, but even if the next government pushes the Go button and funds it, we just don't have the people or the skills. The company who built the Co-op Live Arena points out that a chunk of the delays at the end was that they couldn't hire people at any cost on any wage.
Instead of idiotic dogwhistle national service proposals, we need to focus on how we invest in young people to become the workforce this country needs to build its way out of the mess we are in.
As usual, in the bunfight over tertiary education, the actual results have been ignored.
1) half the population is going to university. 2) the ones who go to highly regarded university and get a good degree (subject fairly irrelevant in a first degree) get good jobs. 3) progressing down the scale, you get people paying for a degree that gets them a job that a few years back would have been non degree. 4) many of those at 3) feel they were promised 2) 5) the world of work has changed. The days of the “white collar gets all the money” are gone. You can make six figures running a small plumbing business. Despite some dumb predictions, the world of work was never going to turn into all-high-status-white-collar. There are some rather well paid jobs in the combined manual & intellectual space. 6) so you get from (3) a bunch of people in jobs that ceiling in their twenties - dull office work. I used to help run a communal workshop - place was full of frustrated pen pushers who wanted to *make* something. 7) throw in the limits on medical degrees
My answer? Degrees for *everyone*. Give the plumbers PhDs in Plumbing. That’ll solve the status gap.
And make manual/physicals skills mandatory. Remember the shouting when getting an English GCSE was made a condition of a university place? Well, no degree in Literature for you, at Cambridge, unless you do Welding or CNC Operation.
I would suggest plumbing or electrics as suitable training work but that would result in people doing it themselves and that's usually a bad idea.
“No CORGI, no degree in Semiotics”
It’s university. Demand they pass a qualification.
Mr. Ghedebrav, last session of DnD went very well. Been going almost a year with this homebrew. Helps having good players (no "I am the main character" fools).
Saw the Farage announcement yesterday. I do wonder if this *might* be worse for Labour than the Conservatives. Anyone fully Faragian was not going to return to the Conservatives, but reluctant/soft Labour voters might jump ship his way. My suspicion is the overall numbers will play that way but it'll cost the Conservatives more by letting Labour in through the middle at plenty of seats (akin to UKIP versus Ed MIliband's Labour in 2015).
Morning! I can only reference a small number of seats which I saw directly, but in 2019 the damage done by the Brexit Party was heavily onto the Tories. Seat after seat after seat where Labour clung on with BXP having more votes than the Tory majority.
John Curtice was interviewed yesterday and said that the polls and the local election results suggest this time about the threat is - once again - predominantly to the Tories.
We’ll never know, but I’m not sure about that. I don’t think those residual Brexit Party voters were ever going to vote Tory, but by not voting Labour they helped the Tories in many places.
I can see an argument that maybe, at 20-25% in the polls the Tories have leaked all they can to Reform anyway, and Farage is now fishing in the Labour pond. Starmer wins 36/26 and we get some really odd results.
Local elections results this year suggested that Reform UK takes mostly from the Conservative vote, and they were when the Tory vote was already low. So I think the evidence disputes that argument.
Yes but I am saying that could be priced in, and anything extra Farage might get on top comes from Labour. Just a possibility.
The Tories are polling now about the same as during the local elections. During the local elections, it was still the case that the RefUK vote came mainly from the Tories. What do you think will be different such that this will change?
Erm, nothing. My point is about anything EXTRA Farage can get.
@LOS_Fisher EXC: Trio of senior Tory donors (who’ve donated £5m+ to party) rule out funding Sunak’s election campaign
In striking move, the donors organised their own private polling, complaining they were mistrustful of Tory campaign figures’ claims that the situ was not as bad as public polling suggests
But their private survey aligned with the public polling, indicating the Tories are facing electoral rout
Just a reminder that nice Mr Major was part of the Government that changed UK law so that any local authority:
‘Shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality … or promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’
As Theresa May said, The Nasty Party right there. And now they’re back. For 4 more weeks.
Tory wheels turn very slowly. They had a piece on Newsnight last night with a youngish Tory MP and an SNP MP and the Tory said she was disgusted by Kemi Badenoch and her views on trans and her culture wars and one of her good friends had that very morning said she'd never vote Tory again. The Tories are now a Party for those with very archaic views. Watch it i thought she'd got it spot on.
Comments
Christ knows what mental contortions Remoaners/Rejoiners will go through then. I’m not sure the cognitive dissonance is sustainable
The question for me is how much is increased diagnosis - as opposed to “he/she is disruptive and maybe not suited to this school”
NEW THREAD
I genuinely don't get it. the Tories have a catastrophic record on this subject. Literally doing the exact opposite of what both their supporters want and of what they as a party claim they are doing.
I think some people - some PB Tories as well - get mesmerised by this. Yes! Stop the Boats! Yes! Rwanda is a plan! Yes! Labour would increase migration!
And then the Nigel (for it is He) comes out of retirement and says "2.4m". And the remaining Tory voters shake their heads and say "you what?" and thats the Tory campaign done and dusted.
You could promise to fire asylum seekers into the sun. Doesn't matter. You have Failed. You have Lied. And you've been caught.
As he has said, his aims in the UK “as an MP” were always to agitate, he only made one serious bid (which he lost, but one loss hardly outweighs everything else)
He is an excellent campaigner and a highly gifted politician - if democratic politics is largely the art of winning votes/elections that matter, which it is
What we don’t know is whether he is any good at running a country - as a manager, a technocrat, an administrator. In some ways it doesn’t matter: he’s probably never going to be in that position. My sense is that he’d be REALLY crap at this boring stuff, but then he could delegate, as gifted politicians with no admin skills generally do
Climate crisis buggers their future and their justifiable anger over their loss of a functioning biosphere is manifested as anxiety.
The Tory refusal to face the future realistically has a lot of long term costs.
Labour are little better.
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DiscussionID is required."
Edit: it's working ok now"
He'd be terrible at running the country, for the reasons I also gave above. He falls out with people big-time, and it's all about *him*. Think Johnson crossed with Trump.
STV is nonsense on stilts.
Just use d'Hondt, like we did in the Euros. Simple, and becomes more and more proportional the greater the number of MPs elected per constituency.
If you want to influence a party's candidate list, join the party.
If everybody has a degree, then discrimination will be forced back onto other criteria- such as how you speak. Sunak is a loser here as well.
It’s difficult to keep up with your flip-flopping. But if you are now building your tent around identity politics then bully for you.
The replacement of Facebook, with Instagram and now TikTok, has almost certainly made the problem worse.
Most European countries are exploring offshore schemes like Rwanda now.
‘Shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality … or promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’
As Theresa May said, The Nasty Party right there. And now they’re back. For 4 more weeks.
They disgust me.
@Big_G_NorthWales
2035 to 2040 before the tories are anywhere near a return.
It’s a sobering thought that many of you* will be dead before Labour leave office.
* and quite possibly me too, obvs.
Most European countries are now exploring offshore schemes like Rwanda - and they aren't easy due to the tangled web we've weaved over the last 75 years.
Most European countries are now exploring offshore schemes like Rwanda - and they aren't easy due to the tangled web we've weaved over the last 75 years. Bit like Boris?
Although for him it was different: he never fell in with anyone.
It’s university. Demand they pass a qualification.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=newsnight+june+3rd#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:2d91a9f9,vid:QjTrk9rr6u0,st:0