Mind you his comments will not I imagine win over many Tories to Labour but might have a few leftwingers spitting out their herbal tea and going Green.
'Mr Caudwell said he had donated to the Conservatives in 2019 “because I couldn’t possibly stand a Corbyn government, and I am still of exactly the same view there.”
He praised Sir Keir's attempts to get rid of what he called "the loony Left" which he claimed had focused on "extreme socialist policies", instead of "creating a wealthy Britain".
"We can't tax rich people in order to help the poor because they'll go off to Monaco and other places, we have to create real genuine wealth.”
Something big is happening. Nigel will be an MP after July 5th.
Cue sea of old people jokes.
But in all seriousness people finally seem ready to put Farage into the Commons. He's been an important political figure for a long time, it will be interesting to see how he adapts to the role, or if he still spends his time licking boots in the United States.
He could be Tory Deputy Leader by Christmas.
He's not going to accept being deputy anything is he?
Merely a stepping stone, after a Tory Reform merger in which the Tories were the largest portion. He'd then make his move in time.
How would a merger work? The Tories are, at least nominally, a member-based organisation. Reform are basically just Farage and Tice.
Perhaps they could go the Co-operative Party route?
CDU/CSU. More separate and regionalised. Reform gets the red wall and Essex.
Reform actually is projected to do better in areas like Gt Yarmouth and East Kent as well as the redwall than the posher parts of Essex like Chelmsford and NW Essex
Their vote likely correlates strongly with lower levels of educational attainment
p.s. re Tugendhat, if the tories do go to a 1997 or worse, remember what happened after that one. The young new darling of the party, William Hague, took on the leadership at the wrong time and when the inevitable happened in 2001, he went.
Hague should have backed Howard in 1997, let him take the 2001 landslide defeat, then he would likely have been the next leader not IDS. He could have cut Labour's majority in 2005, been young enough to stay leader and then beaten Brown in 2010 and become PM rather than Cameron. He did everything CV wise to become PM but tactically made a huge error politically.
I suspect Barclay is more likely the next Tory leader than Tugendhat anyway once it gets to the members
Wasn't Howard stuffed by Widdy's 'Something of the night' barb?
There are several different MRPs, and they are different enough that they can't all be as impressively right as the technique was when it first emerged. Ultimately it's still vulnerable to the main problem afflicting regular opinion polls - getting hold of a decent sample. And then the second main problem - people who lie to themselves about their intentions can't help doing the same to a pollster.
Apart from the one just before the 2017 their results have been poor.
They are interesting, but just another projection.
"In November, long before #zeroseats, even as the media was reporting politics as usual, I wrote a thread on why the Tories were heading for an epochal defeat. Now that this is received wisdom, it's time for a new thread, forecasting how Labour will govern. Be very afraid."
I pray that this dude is wrong; I fear in my vittals that he is bang on
A lot of this talk about Labour seeking to stop any future government going in a right wing direction seems like scaremongering to me.
No Parliament can bind it's successor. The Tories could have thrown out most or all of the 1997-2010 reforms in the past 14 years if they'd wished but the fact is they chose not to.
But the Equality Act did exactly that, without anyone realising, until very recently
And he makes that point
As did the European Communities Act Solution to the Equality act preventing reform is same as European Communities Act & Human Rights preventing reform. Repeal or Heavily Amend it.
Tories have been torn apart because they thought Brexit was enough. It wasn't Brexit was just the enabling measure that enabled the rest to be done. They were not done and as a result reforms that the public wanted could not be enacted and they regard the Tories as having betrayed them.
Exactly right
I blame Boris. He had the majority to do all this, but he was too frit of his posh lefty friends, fam and neighbz
For this to change, it will take a firmly rightwing leader of a firmly rightwing party that doesn't give a tinker's wank about fashionable opinion
OMG Georgia!!!
Sadly, Fair comment.
I fear Boris had two fatal flaws (possibly 3).
1) Weakness - so he didn't have the balls to stick with essentially the same policy as Sweden and more unforgivably, didn't end the lockdown nonsense after six weeks when it was obvious that Covid was a disease of the very elderly, very ill with something else and very unlucky (he clearly thought it was nonsense as illustrated by his behaviour).
2) Needing to be liked (which let his posh lefty friends have a veto).
3) I suspect (pure spectulation) he got some policy ideas from domestic sources. That would account for his U turn on Eagle Slicers and the like, when the M'Learned former Mrs Boris was swapped for the current incumbent.
It is the firm bit rather than particularly right wing bit that is needed. Someone willing to do what Thatcher did when losing a judicial review. Pass an act overthrowing the judgement.
Did Boris have any lefty friends while Prime Minister? Based on the friend he married and the friends who gave him freebies and those friends who advised him on getting Paterson and/or Pincher off the hook, Boris's entire social circle is well-heeled Tory poshos.
Well-heeled Tory poshos are generally left of Corbyn. That's the problem
And twas ever thus. Wasn't it Wodehouse who observed that his dukes voted Labour and Jeeves was a Tory?
Tories to the left of Corbyn must be a pretty select group. Johnson is just a standard issue boarding school libertarian with a side order of little Englander prejudices and his social circle would I imagine be in tune with that. If he has any left wing friends he has certainly kept them well hidden. The "rich upper class lefty" trope is well loved by chippy rightists on here but I have never encountered one in the wild.
That just proves how irredeemably lower middle class you are
No, seriously, the posh are left wing. It's not a joke. The gags about Guardian journalists' backgrounds are not a spoof
Marina Hyde has been mentioned on this thread:
"Hyde is the daughter of Sir Alastair Edgcumbe James Dudley-Williams, 2nd Baronet, and his wife, the former Diana Elizabeth Jane Duncan. Through her father, she is the granddaughter of aviation pioneer and Conservative politician Sir Rolf Dudley-Williams, 1st Baronet. She attended Downe House School, near Newbury in Berkshire,[1] and read English at Christ Church, Oxford.["
She's not just posh she's absurdly rich, I know this personally
I'm sure these people exist, but the point is that you can name them because there are so few of them. They probably all work for the Guardian. I've never met any of them. But I've met a never ending line of posh right wingers, because there are so many more of them (maybe you should get a job in finance). One thing you need to bear in mind is that you are extremely right wing. So people you think of as lefties (despite them eg working for the Tory party) are not lefties on any reasonable definition of the word. It's the same mindset that sees Corbynites call Labour moderate red Tories etc.
In what way am I "extreme rightwing"? Genuinely curious
Dude are you serious?
How many actual "hard" right posters do we have on here? Plenty of disgruntled conservatives, some sitting this one out, a few voting Labour to send a message, a few reluctantly voting Conservative for fear of worse (Farage, or a massive Labour majority).
But I'm struggling to think of anyone who's actually declared for Reform. Including Leon.
With Reform at ~18% in the polls, it's a sign of how detached PB demographics are from reality. Either that, or there are a lot of 'shy reformers' out there.
I'll fess up. I might vote Reform. It's either Starmer for laughs or Reform to kill the Tories
But in what universe is Reform "far right"? They aren't even "hard right" by mainland European standards. Indeed they sometimes struggle to be rightwing, so far has the Overton Window shifted
Their big thing is immigration, Are they going to shoot the boats and drown people (as has been happening off the EU shores)? No. They want to "tow boats back to France". That may be a dream, but it ain't the Shoah. As for overall immigration, they want "net zero" - in a recent interview Farage admitted that might still mean "600,000 immigrants" but they want to keep the incomings and outgoings balanced and the population stable, for a while, as our infrastructure cannot sustain explosive growth (and looking at our rivers, they have a point)
That's it. That's Britain's "Nazi party" - gently towing boats and trying not to destroy rivers. Wow. Practically Treblinka
You do know that net zero migration is completely mental, yes? We'd be better off with Truss and PM and Corbyn as Chancellor. You want runaway inflation and the collapse of half the public and private services in the country? That's what Farage is offering.
To be fair being 'completely mental' is not necessarily the same as being far right. Some of Corbyn's ideas, plenty of the Green ideas and even some of the main party ideas can be considerd 'completely mental' but they would not be considered right wing.
You are conflating two completely separate, although not always exclusive, arguments.
No argument from me. There's a problem with identifying racist authoritarians as right wing and identifying hardcore liberals as left wing. My only point here is zero NET migration is completely loopy.
So what is YOUR target for net migration, or do you have no target at all? Do you let everyone in? Let no one in? What is it? Come on, try and answer, if you come up with something coherent and articulate and sensible you might even get a column on "The National" paying £15 per 1000 words
Rejoin EU, freedom of movement.
5 words, that'll be 7.5 pence, please.
But only for nice white Europeans?
You're better than that quip. EU freedom of movement isn't conditional on race.
No but it is conditional on being a citizen of a predominantly white and wealthy bloc of countries. If people are so in favour of freedom of movement then it should not apply only to those fortunate enough to live in a small caucasian portion of the first world.
It seems more politically sustainable than free migration from the third world, which hasn't been sustainable in any rich country. A bit like the people who want world government, it seems like vaunting the best (maybe) as the enemy of the good.
It is no longer possible to construct the concept of a Noam Chomsky, although the possibility of an unconstructed or deconstructed Noam Chomsky - uninstantiated if you will - remains.
p.s. re Tugendhat, if the tories do go to a 1997 or worse, remember what happened after that one. The young new darling of the party, William Hague, took on the leadership at the wrong time and when the inevitable happened in 2001, he went.
Hague should have backed Howard in 1997, let him take the 2001 landslide defeat, then he would likely have been the next leader not IDS. He could have cut Labour's majority in 2005, been young enough to stay leader and then beaten Brown in 2010 and become PM rather than Cameron. He did everything CV wise to become PM but tactically made a huge error politically.
I suspect Barclay is more likely the next Tory leader than Tugendhat anyway once it gets to the members
Not sure about that. Tugendhat comes across as likeable and level-headed. Military bsckground won't harm him either. Could appeal to Tory members wanting an end to chaos, and someone they, and the public can identify with, as a slightly old-fashioned, if not old (he's 50) public servant-type Tory.
p.s. re Tugendhat, if the tories do go to a 1997 or worse, remember what happened after that one. The young new darling of the party, William Hague, took on the leadership at the wrong time and when the inevitable happened in 2001, he went.
Hague should have backed Howard in 1997, let him take the 2001 landslide defeat, then he would likely have been the next leader not IDS. He could have cut Labour's majority in 2005, been young enough to stay leader and then beaten Brown in 2010 and become PM rather than Cameron. He did everything CV wise to become PM but tactically made a huge error politically.
I suspect Barclay is more likely the next Tory leader than Tugendhat anyway once it gets to the members
What happens if one member votes for Tugendhat and the other one votes for Barclay?
The Conservative Party has, for so long, been a successful political party because it has been able to tie together disparate groups, who don't all share exactly the same ideology.
And it's done this by being pragmatic and remembering that there are going to be people who believe homosexuality is a sin, and there are going to be people are publicly gay, but they might share common views about - say - the size of the state.
I'm reminded of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who was caught on tape saying that the US was in a (culture) war, and there would only be one winner.
No, Justice Alito, there is no winner. You cannot silence the voices of the 50% of people who disagree with you without actual war. And that actual war (see the Thirty Years War for an example) will end with everyone grudgingly agreeing that actually they can't agree and they can't force other people to agree with them.
The Conservative Party cannot just be the party of people left behind by globalisation. Nor can it just be the party of pensioners. Nor can it just be the party of wealthy plutocrats. It needs to be a big tent. If you choose to silence - or make unwelcome - the voices that disagree with you, then you are consigning yourself to electoral oblivion.
This is why "we didn't win because we weren't centrist enough" and "we didn't win because we weren't right wing enough" are both bullshit arguments. You didn't win because you were unable to make the tent big enough.
Where was the voting market behind monetarism when MT made that her guiding theme? There wasn't one. She decided that that was the right thing for Britain, and set about winning the arguments. That's how you get positive change. Crafting your platform out of a mishmash of what voters have found acceptable up until now is not a plan to get into (or stay in) government; it's a way to go around in circles achieving very little.
And I also don't think the issue is that Tories 'haven't been right wing enough', it's that they have sold themselves as the right wing alternative, benefitted from doing so, and changed their minds completely when it comes to actually doing anything right wing. That's a question of trust, rather than a question of politics. Those who feel that they haven't been centrist enough should vote for parties that espouse social democracy, of which there are two in the political mainstream. Why do they need a third? It smacks of reducing the alternatives available to voters because they aren't actually that confident in the attractiveness of their centrist prospectus.
Every time the Tories get into power they're lured into nanny-statism. Thatcher had enough about her to push against that for several years. Imperfect though such direction might prove I think it is beneficial. Reducing the size of the state should be top of the list for any government.
OK.
The number of people of pensionable age is rising every year: we have promised them (repeatedly) that there is no circumstance where their pensions will grow less than 2% or wages or inflation. In addition, the proportion of people who are pensioners will grow every year. And a pensioner costs approximately 15x as much in social and health care as someone in their 20s.
So: interest payments, healthcare and pension cost increases are nailed on. And they are half the budget.
We need to spend more on defence. Policing and the administration of justice have been cut to the bone.
I want to cut the size of the state too. But we all need to be realistic about the challenges facing us with a greying population.
Plus everyone wants more transport projects and everyone wants increasingly improving schools. Add on people always having a pet regulation….
The problem is that most expect the state can do more than it can do. It could only do what it did in the first place due to the revenue of empire and tbe legacy assets and soft power in the post empire world which have slowly inevitably decayed
Also, as life becomes more complex the state can do less. EM Forsters "The Machine Stops" was a boring book foisted on us at school but a very prohetic one.
The choice is collapse with authoritarianism on the way or a wholesale deregulation, a very limited state based on a principle of Caveat Emptor and an acceptance that people will make bad or inept decisions and suffer as a result and it is not the states job to prevent or mitigate this, other than to set some core, simple to understand rules (which is basically what Common Law is).
I think the die was cast though when Cameron beat Davis in 2005, or perhaps even when Wilson won in 1964.
You're overstating the "revenue of empire" here, as costs matched benefits from the 1870s onwards even if you look at it from a pure revenue perspective.
On a wider economic basis it produced a clear loss, especially when you factor in the downsides of it fucking our trade and monetary policy over and over and over again until we finally began to cut our losses in 1957.
Direct revenue is one thing. Indirect (a captive market for UK manufacturers) is another, this has lingered on to a certain extent even now (e.g MK will have good sales in Singapore, Ireland, Cyprus, Hong Kong and half the middle East and Africa as a legacy of empire is that they use BS1363 plugs and sockets.
Plenty more such trade was kicked in the nuts in 1973 when joined customs union with rival industrial countries and put trade barriers up with such countries as a result.
The root cause of empire is need, a country not having enough land and resources to support it's population sustainably. See Rome, Japan and us (not to mention Russia invading Ukraine, both now and in aftermath of the Russian Revolution)
It dosen't help that we are making it worse by unsustainable population increase and shunning the Oil, Gas and Coal resources (the latter of which is still abundant) so are therefore making our industry uncompetitive compared with those that do exploit such resources unreserved.
And yet S Korea - and postwar Japan - achieved great prosperity without significant natural resources, or captive markets.
And Hong Kong. And Singapore. And Switzerland.
It's almost like the most important natural resource is the human brain.
Denmark and South Korea are more prosperous than us because we have too many thickos..
The other thing to state about writing ref. earlier discussions is that you need never retire. If your brain/body stays fit you can write until you drop. It’s good for keeping the mind active and if you love it, keep at it.
If you are paid £1 or £2 a word you are one of the better paid jpurnalists on Fleet Street, and therefore one of the more noticeable. It's weird I cannot recognise your style. Do you specialise in a certain field?
Yes. And no. But I’m amused you refer to ‘Fleet Street’
I don’t have a weekly column by the way. Pieces from time to time, often on commission when they sense a juicy topic for me to write up.
I’ll leave it there but if anyone outs me on here you won’t ever see me again. I like to keep it anon and I hope that can be respected.
xx
No chance of that. All journos on this site are incredibly well disguised.
I’ve had pieces published in HR Magazine and Personnel Today. Does that count?
I got Star Letter in Cats Today once.
I won a caption competition in The Chemical Engineer.
"In November, long before #zeroseats, even as the media was reporting politics as usual, I wrote a thread on why the Tories were heading for an epochal defeat. Now that this is received wisdom, it's time for a new thread, forecasting how Labour will govern. Be very afraid."
I pray that this dude is wrong; I fear in my vittals that he is bang on
A lot of this talk about Labour seeking to stop any future government going in a right wing direction seems like scaremongering to me.
No Parliament can bind it's successor. The Tories could have thrown out most or all of the 1997-2010 reforms in the past 14 years if they'd wished but the fact is they chose not to.
But the Equality Act did exactly that, without anyone realising, until very recently
And he makes that point
As did the European Communities Act Solution to the Equality act preventing reform is same as European Communities Act & Human Rights preventing reform. Repeal or Heavily Amend it.
Tories have been torn apart because they thought Brexit was enough. It wasn't Brexit was just the enabling measure that enabled the rest to be done. They were not done and as a result reforms that the public wanted could not be enacted and they regard the Tories as having betrayed them.
Exactly right
I blame Boris. He had the majority to do all this, but he was too frit of his posh lefty friends, fam and neighbz
For this to change, it will take a firmly rightwing leader of a firmly rightwing party that doesn't give a tinker's wank about fashionable opinion
OMG Georgia!!!
Sadly, Fair comment.
I fear Boris had two fatal flaws (possibly 3).
1) Weakness - so he didn't have the balls to stick with essentially the same policy as Sweden and more unforgivably, didn't end the lockdown nonsense after six weeks when it was obvious that Covid was a disease of the very elderly, very ill with something else and very unlucky (he clearly thought it was nonsense as illustrated by his behaviour).
2) Needing to be liked (which let his posh lefty friends have a veto).
3) I suspect (pure spectulation) he got some policy ideas from domestic sources. That would account for his U turn on Eagle Slicers and the like, when the M'Learned former Mrs Boris was swapped for the current incumbent.
It is the firm bit rather than particularly right wing bit that is needed. Someone willing to do what Thatcher did when losing a judicial review. Pass an act overthrowing the judgement.
Did Boris have any lefty friends while Prime Minister? Based on the friend he married and the friends who gave him freebies and those friends who advised him on getting Paterson and/or Pincher off the hook, Boris's entire social circle is well-heeled Tory poshos.
Well-heeled Tory poshos are generally left of Corbyn. That's the problem
And twas ever thus. Wasn't it Wodehouse who observed that his dukes voted Labour and Jeeves was a Tory?
Tories to the left of Corbyn must be a pretty select group. Johnson is just a standard issue boarding school libertarian with a side order of little Englander prejudices and his social circle would I imagine be in tune with that. If he has any left wing friends he has certainly kept them well hidden. The "rich upper class lefty" trope is well loved by chippy rightists on here but I have never encountered one in the wild.
That just proves how irredeemably lower middle class you are
No, seriously, the posh are left wing. It's not a joke. The gags about Guardian journalists' backgrounds are not a spoof
Marina Hyde has been mentioned on this thread:
"Hyde is the daughter of Sir Alastair Edgcumbe James Dudley-Williams, 2nd Baronet, and his wife, the former Diana Elizabeth Jane Duncan. Through her father, she is the granddaughter of aviation pioneer and Conservative politician Sir Rolf Dudley-Williams, 1st Baronet. She attended Downe House School, near Newbury in Berkshire,[1] and read English at Christ Church, Oxford.["
She's not just posh she's absurdly rich, I know this personally
I'm sure these people exist, but the point is that you can name them because there are so few of them. They probably all work for the Guardian. I've never met any of them. But I've met a never ending line of posh right wingers, because there are so many more of them (maybe you should get a job in finance). One thing you need to bear in mind is that you are extremely right wing. So people you think of as lefties (despite them eg working for the Tory party) are not lefties on any reasonable definition of the word. It's the same mindset that sees Corbynites call Labour moderate red Tories etc.
In what way am I "extreme rightwing"? Genuinely curious
Dude are you serious?
How many actual "hard" right posters do we have on here? Plenty of disgruntled conservatives, some sitting this one out, a few voting Labour to send a message, a few reluctantly voting Conservative for fear of worse (Farage, or a massive Labour majority).
But I'm struggling to think of anyone who's actually declared for Reform. Including Leon.
With Reform at ~18% in the polls, it's a sign of how detached PB demographics are from reality. Either that, or there are a lot of 'shy reformers' out there.
I'll fess up. I might vote Reform. It's either Starmer for laughs or Reform to kill the Tories
But in what universe is Reform "far right"? They aren't even "hard right" by mainland European standards. Indeed they sometimes struggle to be rightwing, so far has the Overton Window shifted
Their big thing is immigration, Are they going to shoot the boats and drown people (as has been happening off the EU shores)? No. They want to "tow boats back to France". That may be a dream, but it ain't the Shoah. As for overall immigration, they want "net zero" - in a recent interview Farage admitted that might still mean "600,000 immigrants" but they want to keep the incomings and outgoings balanced and the population stable, for a while, as our infrastructure cannot sustain explosive growth (and looking at our rivers, they have a point)
That's it. That's Britain's "Nazi party" - gently towing boats and trying not to destroy rivers. Wow. Practically Treblinka
You do know that net zero migration is completely mental, yes? We'd be better off with Truss and PM and Corbyn as Chancellor. You want runaway inflation and the collapse of half the public and private services in the country? That's what Farage is offering.
To be fair being 'completely mental' is not necessarily the same as being far right. Some of Corbyn's ideas, plenty of the Green ideas and even some of the main party ideas can be considerd 'completely mental' but they would not be considered right wing.
You are conflating two completely separate, although not always exclusive, arguments.
No argument from me. There's a problem with identifying racist authoritarians as right wing and identifying hardcore liberals as left wing. My only point here is zero NET migration is completely loopy.
So what is YOUR target for net migration, or do you have no target at all? Do you let everyone in? Let no one in? What is it? Come on, try and answer, if you come up with something coherent and articulate and sensible you might even get a column on "The National" paying £15 per 1000 words
Rejoin EU, freedom of movement.
5 words, that'll be 7.5 pence, please.
But only for nice white Europeans?
You're better than that quip. EU freedom of movement isn't conditional on race.
No but it is conditional on being a citizen of a predominantly white and wealthy bloc of countries. If people are so in favour of freedom of movement then it should not apply only to those fortunate enough to live in a small caucasian portion of the first world.
That’s entirely illogical. Why are the only options free movement within the British Isles or free movement in the whole world?
p.s. re Tugendhat, if the tories do go to a 1997 or worse, remember what happened after that one. The young new darling of the party, William Hague, took on the leadership at the wrong time and when the inevitable happened in 2001, he went.
Hague should have backed Howard in 1997, let him take the 2001 landslide defeat, then he would likely have been the next leader not IDS. He could have cut Labour's majority in 2005, been young enough to stay leader and then beaten Brown in 2010 and become PM rather than Cameron. He did everything CV wise to become PM but tactically made a huge error politically.
I suspect Barclay is more likely the next Tory leader than Tugendhat anyway once it gets to the members
Not sure about that. Tugendhat comes across as likeable and level-headed. Military bsckground won't harm him either. Could appeal to Tory members wanting an end to chaos, and someone they, and the public can identify with, as a slightly old-fashioned, if not old (he's 50) public servant-type Tory.
He was too much of a Remainer to win it though yes he likely gets 45%
"In November, long before #zeroseats, even as the media was reporting politics as usual, I wrote a thread on why the Tories were heading for an epochal defeat. Now that this is received wisdom, it's time for a new thread, forecasting how Labour will govern. Be very afraid."
I pray that this dude is wrong; I fear in my vittals that he is bang on
A lot of this talk about Labour seeking to stop any future government going in a right wing direction seems like scaremongering to me.
No Parliament can bind it's successor. The Tories could have thrown out most or all of the 1997-2010 reforms in the past 14 years if they'd wished but the fact is they chose not to.
But the Equality Act did exactly that, without anyone realising, until very recently
And he makes that point
As did the European Communities Act Solution to the Equality act preventing reform is same as European Communities Act & Human Rights preventing reform. Repeal or Heavily Amend it.
Tories have been torn apart because they thought Brexit was enough. It wasn't Brexit was just the enabling measure that enabled the rest to be done. They were not done and as a result reforms that the public wanted could not be enacted and they regard the Tories as having betrayed them.
Exactly right
I blame Boris. He had the majority to do all this, but he was too frit of his posh lefty friends, fam and neighbz
For this to change, it will take a firmly rightwing leader of a firmly rightwing party that doesn't give a tinker's wank about fashionable opinion
OMG Georgia!!!
Sadly, Fair comment.
I fear Boris had two fatal flaws (possibly 3).
1) Weakness - so he didn't have the balls to stick with essentially the same policy as Sweden and more unforgivably, didn't end the lockdown nonsense after six weeks when it was obvious that Covid was a disease of the very elderly, very ill with something else and very unlucky (he clearly thought it was nonsense as illustrated by his behaviour).
2) Needing to be liked (which let his posh lefty friends have a veto).
3) I suspect (pure spectulation) he got some policy ideas from domestic sources. That would account for his U turn on Eagle Slicers and the like, when the M'Learned former Mrs Boris was swapped for the current incumbent.
It is the firm bit rather than particularly right wing bit that is needed. Someone willing to do what Thatcher did when losing a judicial review. Pass an act overthrowing the judgement.
Did Boris have any lefty friends while Prime Minister? Based on the friend he married and the friends who gave him freebies and those friends who advised him on getting Paterson and/or Pincher off the hook, Boris's entire social circle is well-heeled Tory poshos.
Well-heeled Tory poshos are generally left of Corbyn. That's the problem
And twas ever thus. Wasn't it Wodehouse who observed that his dukes voted Labour and Jeeves was a Tory?
Tories to the left of Corbyn must be a pretty select group. Johnson is just a standard issue boarding school libertarian with a side order of little Englander prejudices and his social circle would I imagine be in tune with that. If he has any left wing friends he has certainly kept them well hidden. The "rich upper class lefty" trope is well loved by chippy rightists on here but I have never encountered one in the wild.
That just proves how irredeemably lower middle class you are
No, seriously, the posh are left wing. It's not a joke. The gags about Guardian journalists' backgrounds are not a spoof
Marina Hyde has been mentioned on this thread:
"Hyde is the daughter of Sir Alastair Edgcumbe James Dudley-Williams, 2nd Baronet, and his wife, the former Diana Elizabeth Jane Duncan. Through her father, she is the granddaughter of aviation pioneer and Conservative politician Sir Rolf Dudley-Williams, 1st Baronet. She attended Downe House School, near Newbury in Berkshire,[1] and read English at Christ Church, Oxford.["
She's not just posh she's absurdly rich, I know this personally
I'm sure these people exist, but the point is that you can name them because there are so few of them. They probably all work for the Guardian. I've never met any of them. But I've met a never ending line of posh right wingers, because there are so many more of them (maybe you should get a job in finance). One thing you need to bear in mind is that you are extremely right wing. So people you think of as lefties (despite them eg working for the Tory party) are not lefties on any reasonable definition of the word. It's the same mindset that sees Corbynites call Labour moderate red Tories etc.
In what way am I "extreme rightwing"? Genuinely curious
Dude are you serious?
How many actual "hard" right posters do we have on here? Plenty of disgruntled conservatives, some sitting this one out, a few voting Labour to send a message, a few reluctantly voting Conservative for fear of worse (Farage, or a massive Labour majority).
But I'm struggling to think of anyone who's actually declared for Reform. Including Leon.
With Reform at ~18% in the polls, it's a sign of how detached PB demographics are from reality. Either that, or there are a lot of 'shy reformers' out there.
I'll fess up. I might vote Reform. It's either Starmer for laughs or Reform to kill the Tories
But in what universe is Reform "far right"? They aren't even "hard right" by mainland European standards. Indeed they sometimes struggle to be rightwing, so far has the Overton Window shifted
Their big thing is immigration, Are they going to shoot the boats and drown people (as has been happening off the EU shores)? No. They want to "tow boats back to France". That may be a dream, but it ain't the Shoah. As for overall immigration, they want "net zero" - in a recent interview Farage admitted that might still mean "600,000 immigrants" but they want to keep the incomings and outgoings balanced and the population stable, for a while, as our infrastructure cannot sustain explosive growth (and looking at our rivers, they have a point)
That's it. That's Britain's "Nazi party" - gently towing boats and trying not to destroy rivers. Wow. Practically Treblinka
You do know that net zero migration is completely mental, yes? We'd be better off with Truss and PM and Corbyn as Chancellor. You want runaway inflation and the collapse of half the public and private services in the country? That's what Farage is offering.
To be fair being 'completely mental' is not necessarily the same as being far right. Some of Corbyn's ideas, plenty of the Green ideas and even some of the main party ideas can be considerd 'completely mental' but they would not be considered right wing.
You are conflating two completely separate, although not always exclusive, arguments.
No argument from me. There's a problem with identifying racist authoritarians as right wing and identifying hardcore liberals as left wing. My only point here is zero NET migration is completely loopy.
So what is YOUR target for net migration, or do you have no target at all? Do you let everyone in? Let no one in? What is it? Come on, try and answer, if you come up with something coherent and articulate and sensible you might even get a column on "The National" paying £15 per 1000 words
p.s. re Tugendhat, if the tories do go to a 1997 or worse, remember what happened after that one. The young new darling of the party, William Hague, took on the leadership at the wrong time and when the inevitable happened in 2001, he went.
Hague should have backed Howard in 1997, let him take the 2001 landslide defeat, then he would likely have been the next leader not IDS. He could have cut Labour's majority in 2005, been young enough to stay leader and then beaten Brown in 2010 and become PM rather than Cameron. He did everything CV wise to become PM but tactically made a huge error politically.
I suspect Barclay is more likely the next Tory leader than Tugendhat anyway once it gets to the members
Wasn't Howard stuffed by Widdy's 'Something of the night' barb?
He still would have beaten Ken Clarke who Widdy backed then
The shadow health secretary has said he would buy up private beds for the NHS, in defiance of objections from “middle-class Lefties”. Wes Streeting said a Labour government would get the NHS to buy thousands of beds from care homes, to “unblock” a failing health and care system, while expanding use of private hospitals for state-funded operations.
Mr Streeting said there was “nothing Left-wing” about leaving working class patients to lie in pain because of “middle class Lefty” objections to the use of the private sector.
This is the second constituency poll of the campaign, both for The Economist. Both the Hartlepool and the Gillingham constituency polls suggest the polls and MRPs are being significantly too generous to the Conservatives.
Fascinating! It really does seem like there's a serious chance of the Tories ending up with less than 100 seats.
I've still not traded out any of my 50-99 seats bet on bf, and suspect that I'll now stick with it - if it comes off, it'll be my second-most successful bet ever.
The Conservative Party has, for so long, been a successful political party because it has been able to tie together disparate groups, who don't all share exactly the same ideology.
And it's done this by being pragmatic and remembering that there are going to be people who believe homosexuality is a sin, and there are going to be people are publicly gay, but they might share common views about - say - the size of the state.
I'm reminded of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who was caught on tape saying that the US was in a (culture) war, and there would only be one winner.
No, Justice Alito, there is no winner. You cannot silence the voices of the 50% of people who disagree with you without actual war. And that actual war (see the Thirty Years War for an example) will end with everyone grudgingly agreeing that actually they can't agree and they can't force other people to agree with them.
The Conservative Party cannot just be the party of people left behind by globalisation. Nor can it just be the party of pensioners. Nor can it just be the party of wealthy plutocrats. It needs to be a big tent. If you choose to silence - or make unwelcome - the voices that disagree with you, then you are consigning yourself to electoral oblivion.
This is why "we didn't win because we weren't centrist enough" and "we didn't win because we weren't right wing enough" are both bullshit arguments. You didn't win because you were unable to make the tent big enough.
Where was the voting market behind monetarism when MT made that her guiding theme? There wasn't one. She decided that that was the right thing for Britain, and set about winning the arguments. That's how you get positive change. Crafting your platform out of a mishmash of what voters have found acceptable up until now is not a plan to get into (or stay in) government; it's a way to go around in circles achieving very little.
And I also don't think the issue is that Tories 'haven't been right wing enough', it's that they have sold themselves as the right wing alternative, benefitted from doing so, and changed their minds completely when it comes to actually doing anything right wing. That's a question of trust, rather than a question of politics. Those who feel that they haven't been centrist enough should vote for parties that espouse social democracy, of which there are two in the political mainstream. Why do they need a third? It smacks of reducing the alternatives available to voters because they aren't actually that confident in the attractiveness of their centrist prospectus.
Every time the Tories get into power they're lured into nanny-statism. Thatcher had enough about her to push against that for several years. Imperfect though such direction might prove I think it is beneficial. Reducing the size of the state should be top of the list for any government.
OK.
The number of people of pensionable age is rising every year: we have promised them (repeatedly) that there is no circumstance where their pensions will grow less than 2% or wages or inflation. In addition, the proportion of people who are pensioners will grow every year. And a pensioner costs approximately 15x as much in social and health care as someone in their 20s.
So: interest payments, healthcare and pension cost increases are nailed on. And they are half the budget.
We need to spend more on defence. Policing and the administration of justice have been cut to the bone.
I want to cut the size of the state too. But we all need to be realistic about the challenges facing us with a greying population.
Plus everyone wants more transport projects and everyone wants increasingly improving schools. Add on people always having a pet regulation….
The problem is that most expect the state can do more than it can do. It could only do what it did in the first place due to the revenue of empire and tbe legacy assets and soft power in the post empire world which have slowly inevitably decayed
Also, as life becomes more complex the state can do less. EM Forsters "The Machine Stops" was a boring book foisted on us at school but a very prohetic one.
The choice is collapse with authoritarianism on the way or a wholesale deregulation, a very limited state based on a principle of Caveat Emptor and an acceptance that people will make bad or inept decisions and suffer as a result and it is not the states job to prevent or mitigate this, other than to set some core, simple to understand rules (which is basically what Common Law is).
I think the die was cast though when Cameron beat Davis in 2005, or perhaps even when Wilson won in 1964.
You're overstating the "revenue of empire" here, as costs matched benefits from the 1870s onwards even if you look at it from a pure revenue perspective.
On a wider economic basis it produced a clear loss, especially when you factor in the downsides of it fucking our trade and monetary policy over and over and over again until we finally began to cut our losses in 1957.
Direct revenue is one thing. Indirect (a captive market for UK manufacturers) is another, this has lingered on to a certain extent even now (e.g MK will have good sales in Singapore, Ireland, Cyprus, Hong Kong and half the middle East and Africa as a legacy of empire is that they use BS1363 plugs and sockets.
Plenty more such trade was kicked in the nuts in 1973 when joined customs union with rival industrial countries and put trade barriers up with such countries as a result.
The root cause of empire is need, a country not having enough land and resources to support it's population sustainably. See Rome, Japan and us (not to mention Russia invading Ukraine, both now and in aftermath of the Russian Revolution)
It dosen't help that we are making it worse by unsustainable population increase and shunning the Oil, Gas and Coal resources (the latter of which is still abundant) so are therefore making our industry uncompetitive compared with those that do exploit such resources unreserved.
And yet S Korea - and postwar Japan - achieved great prosperity without significant natural resources, or captive markets.
And Hong Kong. And Singapore. And Switzerland.
It's almost like the most important natural resource is the human brain.
Denmark and South Korea are more prosperous than us because we have too many thickos..
The other thing to state about writing ref. earlier discussions is that you need never retire. If your brain/body stays fit you can write until you drop. It’s good for keeping the mind active and if you love it, keep at it.
If you are paid £1 or £2 a word you are one of the better paid jpurnalists on Fleet Street, and therefore one of the more noticeable. It's weird I cannot recognise your style. Do you specialise in a certain field?
Yes. And no. But I’m amused you refer to ‘Fleet Street’
I don’t have a weekly column by the way. Pieces from time to time, often on commission when they sense a juicy topic for me to write up.
I’ll leave it there but if anyone outs me on here you won’t ever see me again. I like to keep it anon and I hope that can be respected.
xx
No chance of that. All journos on this site are incredibly well disguised.
The Conservative Party has, for so long, been a successful political party because it has been able to tie together disparate groups, who don't all share exactly the same ideology.
And it's done this by being pragmatic and remembering that there are going to be people who believe homosexuality is a sin, and there are going to be people are publicly gay, but they might share common views about - say - the size of the state.
I'm reminded of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who was caught on tape saying that the US was in a (culture) war, and there would only be one winner.
No, Justice Alito, there is no winner. You cannot silence the voices of the 50% of people who disagree with you without actual war. And that actual war (see the Thirty Years War for an example) will end with everyone grudgingly agreeing that actually they can't agree and they can't force other people to agree with them.
The Conservative Party cannot just be the party of people left behind by globalisation. Nor can it just be the party of pensioners. Nor can it just be the party of wealthy plutocrats. It needs to be a big tent. If you choose to silence - or make unwelcome - the voices that disagree with you, then you are consigning yourself to electoral oblivion.
This is why "we didn't win because we weren't centrist enough" and "we didn't win because we weren't right wing enough" are both bullshit arguments. You didn't win because you were unable to make the tent big enough.
Where was the voting market behind monetarism when MT made that her guiding theme? There wasn't one. She decided that that was the right thing for Britain, and set about winning the arguments. That's how you get positive change. Crafting your platform out of a mishmash of what voters have found acceptable up until now is not a plan to get into (or stay in) government; it's a way to go around in circles achieving very little.
And I also don't think the issue is that Tories 'haven't been right wing enough', it's that they have sold themselves as the right wing alternative, benefitted from doing so, and changed their minds completely when it comes to actually doing anything right wing. That's a question of trust, rather than a question of politics. Those who feel that they haven't been centrist enough should vote for parties that espouse social democracy, of which there are two in the political mainstream. Why do they need a third? It smacks of reducing the alternatives available to voters because they aren't actually that confident in the attractiveness of their centrist prospectus.
Every time the Tories get into power they're lured into nanny-statism. Thatcher had enough about her to push against that for several years. Imperfect though such direction might prove I think it is beneficial. Reducing the size of the state should be top of the list for any government.
OK.
The number of people of pensionable age is rising every year: we have promised them (repeatedly) that there is no circumstance where their pensions will grow less than 2% or wages or inflation. In addition, the proportion of people who are pensioners will grow every year. And a pensioner costs approximately 15x as much in social and health care as someone in their 20s.
So: interest payments, healthcare and pension cost increases are nailed on. And they are half the budget.
We need to spend more on defence. Policing and the administration of justice have been cut to the bone.
I want to cut the size of the state too. But we all need to be realistic about the challenges facing us with a greying population.
Plus everyone wants more transport projects and everyone wants increasingly improving schools. Add on people always having a pet regulation….
The problem is that most expect the state can do more than it can do. It could only do what it did in the first place due to the revenue of empire and tbe legacy assets and soft power in the post empire world which have slowly inevitably decayed
Also, as life becomes more complex the state can do less. EM Forsters "The Machine Stops" was a boring book foisted on us at school but a very prohetic one.
The choice is collapse with authoritarianism on the way or a wholesale deregulation, a very limited state based on a principle of Caveat Emptor and an acceptance that people will make bad or inept decisions and suffer as a result and it is not the states job to prevent or mitigate this, other than to set some core, simple to understand rules (which is basically what Common Law is).
I think the die was cast though when Cameron beat Davis in 2005, or perhaps even when Wilson won in 1964.
You're overstating the "revenue of empire" here, as costs matched benefits from the 1870s onwards even if you look at it from a pure revenue perspective.
On a wider economic basis it produced a clear loss, especially when you factor in the downsides of it fucking our trade and monetary policy over and over and over again until we finally began to cut our losses in 1957.
Direct revenue is one thing. Indirect (a captive market for UK manufacturers) is another, this has lingered on to a certain extent even now (e.g MK will have good sales in Singapore, Ireland, Cyprus, Hong Kong and half the middle East and Africa as a legacy of empire is that they use BS1363 plugs and sockets.
Plenty more such trade was kicked in the nuts in 1973 when joined customs union with rival industrial countries and put trade barriers up with such countries as a result.
The root cause of empire is need, a country not having enough land and resources to support it's population sustainably. See Rome, Japan and us (not to mention Russia invading Ukraine, both now and in aftermath of the Russian Revolution)
It dosen't help that we are making it worse by unsustainable population increase and shunning the Oil, Gas and Coal resources (the latter of which is still abundant) so are therefore making our industry uncompetitive compared with those that do exploit such resources unreserved.
And yet S Korea - and postwar Japan - achieved great prosperity without significant natural resources, or captive markets.
And Hong Kong. And Singapore. And Switzerland.
It's almost like the most important natural resource is the human brain.
Denmark and South Korea are more prosperous than us because we have too many thickos..
The other thing to state about writing ref. earlier discussions is that you need never retire. If your brain/body stays fit you can write until you drop. It’s good for keeping the mind active and if you love it, keep at it.
If you are paid £1 or £2 a word you are one of the better paid jpurnalists on Fleet Street, and therefore one of the more noticeable. It's weird I cannot recognise your style. Do you specialise in a certain field?
Yes. And no. But I’m amused you refer to ‘Fleet Street’
I don’t have a weekly column by the way. Pieces from time to time, often on commission when they sense a juicy topic for me to write up.
I’ll leave it there but if anyone outs me on here you won’t ever see me again. I like to keep it anon and I hope that can be respected.
xx
No chance of that. All journos on this site are incredibly well disguised.
I’ve had pieces published in HR Magazine and Personnel Today. Does that count?
I got Star Letter in Cats Today once.
I won a caption competition in The Chemical Engineer.
Something big is happening. Nigel will be an MP after July 5th.
Cue sea of old people jokes.
But in all seriousness people finally seem ready to put Farage into the Commons. He's been an important political figure for a long time, it will be interesting to see how he adapts to the role, or if he still spends his time licking boots in the United States.
He could be Tory Deputy Leader by Christmas.
He's not going to accept being deputy anything is he?
Merely a stepping stone, after a Tory Reform merger in which the Tories were the largest portion. He'd then make his move in time.
I had a read of the reform manifesto. It has just been 'launched' but actually the policies have been up on the Reform website for months almost word for word. It is the manifesto that the tories desperately wanted to write and has a lot of very solid, popular stuff in it - (but let down mainly by the pro motorist nonsense - something the tories are also guilty of). I cannot avoid the conclusion that the historic blunder the conservatives have made is not merging with the Reform party, dumping the centrists, and going in to opposition with 200+ seats.
I don’t think their proposals to effectively abolish the right to paid holiday and maternity leave, amongst the other bonfire of employment right, are that popular. Labour would be all over that.
Where is this in their manifesto, as in their 'contract with Britain'? I am interested. Even if this is true, isn't what they are suggesting pretty similar to the US? I understand that people dislike Farage and Lee Anderson, but it feels like they project things on to this party that are not supported by evidence. As I said before, their actual manifesto just seems to be mainstream conservative circa 2024.
The Hajj may become ecologically unsustainable, and indeed unfeasible. That will be a major blow to one of the great pillars of one of humanity's most important religions: without which the world would be so hugely different
It is almost too hard to bear. I am actually crying, here in my chair, and I only emotionally getting by with a decent Rioja to numb the pain. It must be even worse for Muslims
The Conservative Party has, for so long, been a successful political party because it has been able to tie together disparate groups, who don't all share exactly the same ideology.
And it's done this by being pragmatic and remembering that there are going to be people who believe homosexuality is a sin, and there are going to be people are publicly gay, but they might share common views about - say - the size of the state.
I'm reminded of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who was caught on tape saying that the US was in a (culture) war, and there would only be one winner.
No, Justice Alito, there is no winner. You cannot silence the voices of the 50% of people who disagree with you without actual war. And that actual war (see the Thirty Years War for an example) will end with everyone grudgingly agreeing that actually they can't agree and they can't force other people to agree with them.
The Conservative Party cannot just be the party of people left behind by globalisation. Nor can it just be the party of pensioners. Nor can it just be the party of wealthy plutocrats. It needs to be a big tent. If you choose to silence - or make unwelcome - the voices that disagree with you, then you are consigning yourself to electoral oblivion.
This is why "we didn't win because we weren't centrist enough" and "we didn't win because we weren't right wing enough" are both bullshit arguments. You didn't win because you were unable to make the tent big enough.
Where was the voting market behind monetarism when MT made that her guiding theme? There wasn't one. She decided that that was the right thing for Britain, and set about winning the arguments. That's how you get positive change. Crafting your platform out of a mishmash of what voters have found acceptable up until now is not a plan to get into (or stay in) government; it's a way to go around in circles achieving very little.
And I also don't think the issue is that Tories 'haven't been right wing enough', it's that they have sold themselves as the right wing alternative, benefitted from doing so, and changed their minds completely when it comes to actually doing anything right wing. That's a question of trust, rather than a question of politics. Those who feel that they haven't been centrist enough should vote for parties that espouse social democracy, of which there are two in the political mainstream. Why do they need a third? It smacks of reducing the alternatives available to voters because they aren't actually that confident in the attractiveness of their centrist prospectus.
Every time the Tories get into power they're lured into nanny-statism. Thatcher had enough about her to push against that for several years. Imperfect though such direction might prove I think it is beneficial. Reducing the size of the state should be top of the list for any government.
OK.
The number of people of pensionable age is rising every year: we have promised them (repeatedly) that there is no circumstance where their pensions will grow less than 2% or wages or inflation. In addition, the proportion of people who are pensioners will grow every year. And a pensioner costs approximately 15x as much in social and health care as someone in their 20s.
So: interest payments, healthcare and pension cost increases are nailed on. And they are half the budget.
We need to spend more on defence. Policing and the administration of justice have been cut to the bone.
I want to cut the size of the state too. But we all need to be realistic about the challenges facing us with a greying population.
Plus everyone wants more transport projects and everyone wants increasingly improving schools. Add on people always having a pet regulation….
The problem is that most expect the state can do more than it can do. It could only do what it did in the first place due to the revenue of empire and tbe legacy assets and soft power in the post empire world which have slowly inevitably decayed
Also, as life becomes more complex the state can do less. EM Forsters "The Machine Stops" was a boring book foisted on us at school but a very prohetic one.
The choice is collapse with authoritarianism on the way or a wholesale deregulation, a very limited state based on a principle of Caveat Emptor and an acceptance that people will make bad or inept decisions and suffer as a result and it is not the states job to prevent or mitigate this, other than to set some core, simple to understand rules (which is basically what Common Law is).
I think the die was cast though when Cameron beat Davis in 2005, or perhaps even when Wilson won in 1964.
You're overstating the "revenue of empire" here, as costs matched benefits from the 1870s onwards even if you look at it from a pure revenue perspective.
On a wider economic basis it produced a clear loss, especially when you factor in the downsides of it fucking our trade and monetary policy over and over and over again until we finally began to cut our losses in 1957.
Direct revenue is one thing. Indirect (a captive market for UK manufacturers) is another, this has lingered on to a certain extent even now (e.g MK will have good sales in Singapore, Ireland, Cyprus, Hong Kong and half the middle East and Africa as a legacy of empire is that they use BS1363 plugs and sockets.
Plenty more such trade was kicked in the nuts in 1973 when joined customs union with rival industrial countries and put trade barriers up with such countries as a result.
The root cause of empire is need, a country not having enough land and resources to support it's population sustainably. See Rome, Japan and us (not to mention Russia invading Ukraine, both now and in aftermath of the Russian Revolution)
It dosen't help that we are making it worse by unsustainable population increase and shunning the Oil, Gas and Coal resources (the latter of which is still abundant) so are therefore making our industry uncompetitive compared with those that do exploit such resources unreserved.
And yet S Korea - and postwar Japan - achieved great prosperity without significant natural resources, or captive markets.
And Hong Kong. And Singapore. And Switzerland.
It's almost like the most important natural resource is the human brain.
Denmark and South Korea are more prosperous than us because we have too many thickos..
The other thing to state about writing ref. earlier discussions is that you need never retire. If your brain/body stays fit you can write until you drop. It’s good for keeping the mind active and if you love it, keep at it.
If you are paid £1 or £2 a word you are one of the better paid jpurnalists on Fleet Street, and therefore one of the more noticeable. It's weird I cannot recognise your style. Do you specialise in a certain field?
Yes. And no. But I’m amused you refer to ‘Fleet Street’
I don’t have a weekly column by the way. Pieces from time to time, often on commission when they sense a juicy topic for me to write up.
I’ll leave it there but if anyone outs me on here you won’t ever see me again. I like to keep it anon and I hope that can be respected.
xx
No chance of that. All journos on this site are incredibly well disguised.
I’ve had pieces published in HR Magazine and Personnel Today. Does that count?
I got Star Letter in Cats Today once.
I won a caption competition in The Chemical Engineer.
I mean, his academic work is interesting and all. But you his political views were lazy, and his reflexiveness anti-Americanism resulted in him cozying up to the most revolting of dictators.
For the record, I thought Henry Kissinger was a piece of shit too.
And the world is a far better place than it was a few hours ago.
Nasty
The scumbag defended warcrimes even most Serbians wouldn't touch.
Is he actually dead? Suggestions he’s alive and well.
His genocide denials were indeed rather Irving-esque. Cambodia, FFS.
I don't know the ins and outs. Perhaps he did say outrageous things - things I couldn't defend. But in a lifetime of opposition to state violence, it's not surprising that he put the backs up of some powerful people. Regarding Cambodia he said his comments never minimised atrocities. He claims he criticised how media and political bodies used the reporting of events to serve their interests. Perhaps you know more.
I think he may not have died, but to crow at the announcement of the death of an old man seems awful to me!
Mind you his comments will not I imagine win over many Tories to Labour but might have a few leftwingers spitting out their herbal tea and going Green.
'Mr Caudwell said he had donated to the Conservatives in 2019 “because I couldn’t possibly stand a Corbyn government, and I am still of exactly the same view there.”
He praised Sir Keir's attempts to get rid of what he called "the loony Left" which he claimed had focused on "extreme socialist policies", instead of "creating a wealthy Britain".
"We can't tax rich people in order to help the poor because they'll go off to Monaco and other places, we have to create real genuine wealth.”
And the world is a far better place than it was a few hours ago.
Nasty
The scumbag defended warcrimes even most Serbians wouldn't touch.
Is he actually dead? Suggestions he’s alive and well.
His genocide denials were indeed rather Irving-esque. Cambodia, FFS.
I don't know the ins and outs. Perhaps he did say outrageous things - things I couldn't defend. But in a lifetime of opposition to state violence, it's not surprising that he put the backs up of some powerful people. Regarding Cambodia he said his comments never minimised atrocities. He claims he criticised how media and political bodies used the reporting of events to serve their interests. Perhaps you know more.
I think he may not have died, but to crow at the announcement of the death of an old man seems awful to me!
He was a total fucking piece of shit, who simply supported anyone who was in conflict with the US.
The world is a better place without him, and there are very few people I would say that about.
During a radio interview on Tuesday, Sir Keir was asked what he meant by working people.
“People who earn their living, rely on our [public] services and don’t really have the ability to write a cheque when they get into trouble,” he told LBC.
“So the sort of people I’m meeting pretty well every day now. It’s quite a big group because these days there are many people obviously not so well off.”
Two-thirds of working-age households have savings of more than £1,000 - considered the minimum “rainy day” fund - according to the Resolution Foundation.
The Conservative Party has, for so long, been a successful political party because it has been able to tie together disparate groups, who don't all share exactly the same ideology.
And it's done this by being pragmatic and remembering that there are going to be people who believe homosexuality is a sin, and there are going to be people are publicly gay, but they might share common views about - say - the size of the state.
I'm reminded of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who was caught on tape saying that the US was in a (culture) war, and there would only be one winner.
No, Justice Alito, there is no winner. You cannot silence the voices of the 50% of people who disagree with you without actual war. And that actual war (see the Thirty Years War for an example) will end with everyone grudgingly agreeing that actually they can't agree and they can't force other people to agree with them.
The Conservative Party cannot just be the party of people left behind by globalisation. Nor can it just be the party of pensioners. Nor can it just be the party of wealthy plutocrats. It needs to be a big tent. If you choose to silence - or make unwelcome - the voices that disagree with you, then you are consigning yourself to electoral oblivion.
This is why "we didn't win because we weren't centrist enough" and "we didn't win because we weren't right wing enough" are both bullshit arguments. You didn't win because you were unable to make the tent big enough.
Where was the voting market behind monetarism when MT made that her guiding theme? There wasn't one. She decided that that was the right thing for Britain, and set about winning the arguments. That's how you get positive change. Crafting your platform out of a mishmash of what voters have found acceptable up until now is not a plan to get into (or stay in) government; it's a way to go around in circles achieving very little.
And I also don't think the issue is that Tories 'haven't been right wing enough', it's that they have sold themselves as the right wing alternative, benefitted from doing so, and changed their minds completely when it comes to actually doing anything right wing. That's a question of trust, rather than a question of politics. Those who feel that they haven't been centrist enough should vote for parties that espouse social democracy, of which there are two in the political mainstream. Why do they need a third? It smacks of reducing the alternatives available to voters because they aren't actually that confident in the attractiveness of their centrist prospectus.
Every time the Tories get into power they're lured into nanny-statism. Thatcher had enough about her to push against that for several years. Imperfect though such direction might prove I think it is beneficial. Reducing the size of the state should be top of the list for any government.
OK.
The number of people of pensionable age is rising every year: we have promised them (repeatedly) that there is no circumstance where their pensions will grow less than 2% or wages or inflation. In addition, the proportion of people who are pensioners will grow every year. And a pensioner costs approximately 15x as much in social and health care as someone in their 20s.
So: interest payments, healthcare and pension cost increases are nailed on. And they are half the budget.
We need to spend more on defence. Policing and the administration of justice have been cut to the bone.
I want to cut the size of the state too. But we all need to be realistic about the challenges facing us with a greying population.
Plus everyone wants more transport projects and everyone wants increasingly improving schools. Add on people always having a pet regulation….
The problem is that most expect the state can do more than it can do. It could only do what it did in the first place due to the revenue of empire and tbe legacy assets and soft power in the post empire world which have slowly inevitably decayed
Also, as life becomes more complex the state can do less. EM Forsters "The Machine Stops" was a boring book foisted on us at school but a very prohetic one.
The choice is collapse with authoritarianism on the way or a wholesale deregulation, a very limited state based on a principle of Caveat Emptor and an acceptance that people will make bad or inept decisions and suffer as a result and it is not the states job to prevent or mitigate this, other than to set some core, simple to understand rules (which is basically what Common Law is).
I think the die was cast though when Cameron beat Davis in 2005, or perhaps even when Wilson won in 1964.
You're overstating the "revenue of empire" here, as costs matched benefits from the 1870s onwards even if you look at it from a pure revenue perspective.
On a wider economic basis it produced a clear loss, especially when you factor in the downsides of it fucking our trade and monetary policy over and over and over again until we finally began to cut our losses in 1957.
Direct revenue is one thing. Indirect (a captive market for UK manufacturers) is another, this has lingered on to a certain extent even now (e.g MK will have good sales in Singapore, Ireland, Cyprus, Hong Kong and half the middle East and Africa as a legacy of empire is that they use BS1363 plugs and sockets.
Plenty more such trade was kicked in the nuts in 1973 when joined customs union with rival industrial countries and put trade barriers up with such countries as a result.
The root cause of empire is need, a country not having enough land and resources to support it's population sustainably. See Rome, Japan and us (not to mention Russia invading Ukraine, both now and in aftermath of the Russian Revolution)
It dosen't help that we are making it worse by unsustainable population increase and shunning the Oil, Gas and Coal resources (the latter of which is still abundant) so are therefore making our industry uncompetitive compared with those that do exploit such resources unreserved.
And yet S Korea - and postwar Japan - achieved great prosperity without significant natural resources, or captive markets.
And Hong Kong. And Singapore. And Switzerland.
It's almost like the most important natural resource is the human brain.
Denmark and South Korea are more prosperous than us because we have too many thickos..
The other thing to state about writing ref. earlier discussions is that you need never retire. If your brain/body stays fit you can write until you drop. It’s good for keeping the mind active and if you love it, keep at it.
If you are paid £1 or £2 a word you are one of the better paid jpurnalists on Fleet Street, and therefore one of the more noticeable. It's weird I cannot recognise your style. Do you specialise in a certain field?
Yes. And no. But I’m amused you refer to ‘Fleet Street’
I don’t have a weekly column by the way. Pieces from time to time, often on commission when they sense a juicy topic for me to write up.
I’ll leave it there but if anyone outs me on here you won’t ever see me again. I like to keep it anon and I hope that can be respected.
xx
No chance of that. All journos on this site are incredibly well disguised.
I’ve had pieces published in HR Magazine and Personnel Today. Does that count?
I got Star Letter in Cats Today once.
I won a caption competition in The Chemical Engineer.
I mean, his academic work is interesting and all. But you his political views were lazy, and his reflexiveness anti-Americanism resulted in him cozying up to the most revolting of dictators.
For the record, I thought Henry Kissinger was a piece of shit too.
I mean, his academic work is interesting and all. But you his political views were lazy, and his reflexiveness anti-Americanism resulted in him cozying up to the most revolting of dictators.
For the record, I thought Henry Kissinger was a piece of shit too.
The Conservative Party has, for so long, been a successful political party because it has been able to tie together disparate groups, who don't all share exactly the same ideology.
And it's done this by being pragmatic and remembering that there are going to be people who believe homosexuality is a sin, and there are going to be people are publicly gay, but they might share common views about - say - the size of the state.
I'm reminded of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who was caught on tape saying that the US was in a (culture) war, and there would only be one winner.
No, Justice Alito, there is no winner. You cannot silence the voices of the 50% of people who disagree with you without actual war. And that actual war (see the Thirty Years War for an example) will end with everyone grudgingly agreeing that actually they can't agree and they can't force other people to agree with them.
The Conservative Party cannot just be the party of people left behind by globalisation. Nor can it just be the party of pensioners. Nor can it just be the party of wealthy plutocrats. It needs to be a big tent. If you choose to silence - or make unwelcome - the voices that disagree with you, then you are consigning yourself to electoral oblivion.
This is why "we didn't win because we weren't centrist enough" and "we didn't win because we weren't right wing enough" are both bullshit arguments. You didn't win because you were unable to make the tent big enough.
Where was the voting market behind monetarism when MT made that her guiding theme? There wasn't one. She decided that that was the right thing for Britain, and set about winning the arguments. That's how you get positive change. Crafting your platform out of a mishmash of what voters have found acceptable up until now is not a plan to get into (or stay in) government; it's a way to go around in circles achieving very little.
And I also don't think the issue is that Tories 'haven't been right wing enough', it's that they have sold themselves as the right wing alternative, benefitted from doing so, and changed their minds completely when it comes to actually doing anything right wing. That's a question of trust, rather than a question of politics. Those who feel that they haven't been centrist enough should vote for parties that espouse social democracy, of which there are two in the political mainstream. Why do they need a third? It smacks of reducing the alternatives available to voters because they aren't actually that confident in the attractiveness of their centrist prospectus.
Every time the Tories get into power they're lured into nanny-statism. Thatcher had enough about her to push against that for several years. Imperfect though such direction might prove I think it is beneficial. Reducing the size of the state should be top of the list for any government.
OK.
The number of people of pensionable age is rising every year: we have promised them (repeatedly) that there is no circumstance where their pensions will grow less than 2% or wages or inflation. In addition, the proportion of people who are pensioners will grow every year. And a pensioner costs approximately 15x as much in social and health care as someone in their 20s.
So: interest payments, healthcare and pension cost increases are nailed on. And they are half the budget.
We need to spend more on defence. Policing and the administration of justice have been cut to the bone.
I want to cut the size of the state too. But we all need to be realistic about the challenges facing us with a greying population.
Plus everyone wants more transport projects and everyone wants increasingly improving schools. Add on people always having a pet regulation….
The problem is that most expect the state can do more than it can do. It could only do what it did in the first place due to the revenue of empire and tbe legacy assets and soft power in the post empire world which have slowly inevitably decayed
Also, as life becomes more complex the state can do less. EM Forsters "The Machine Stops" was a boring book foisted on us at school but a very prohetic one.
The choice is collapse with authoritarianism on the way or a wholesale deregulation, a very limited state based on a principle of Caveat Emptor and an acceptance that people will make bad or inept decisions and suffer as a result and it is not the states job to prevent or mitigate this, other than to set some core, simple to understand rules (which is basically what Common Law is).
I think the die was cast though when Cameron beat Davis in 2005, or perhaps even when Wilson won in 1964.
You're overstating the "revenue of empire" here, as costs matched benefits from the 1870s onwards even if you look at it from a pure revenue perspective.
On a wider economic basis it produced a clear loss, especially when you factor in the downsides of it fucking our trade and monetary policy over and over and over again until we finally began to cut our losses in 1957.
Direct revenue is one thing. Indirect (a captive market for UK manufacturers) is another, this has lingered on to a certain extent even now (e.g MK will have good sales in Singapore, Ireland, Cyprus, Hong Kong and half the middle East and Africa as a legacy of empire is that they use BS1363 plugs and sockets.
Plenty more such trade was kicked in the nuts in 1973 when joined customs union with rival industrial countries and put trade barriers up with such countries as a result.
The root cause of empire is need, a country not having enough land and resources to support it's population sustainably. See Rome, Japan and us (not to mention Russia invading Ukraine, both now and in aftermath of the Russian Revolution)
It dosen't help that we are making it worse by unsustainable population increase and shunning the Oil, Gas and Coal resources (the latter of which is still abundant) so are therefore making our industry uncompetitive compared with those that do exploit such resources unreserved.
And yet S Korea - and postwar Japan - achieved great prosperity without significant natural resources, or captive markets.
And Hong Kong. And Singapore. And Switzerland.
It's almost like the most important natural resource is the human brain.
Denmark and South Korea are more prosperous than us because we have too many thickos..
The other thing to state about writing ref. earlier discussions is that you need never retire. If your brain/body stays fit you can write until you drop. It’s good for keeping the mind active and if you love it, keep at it.
If you are paid £1 or £2 a word you are one of the better paid jpurnalists on Fleet Street, and therefore one of the more noticeable. It's weird I cannot recognise your style. Do you specialise in a certain field?
Yes. And no. But I’m amused you refer to ‘Fleet Street’
I don’t have a weekly column by the way. Pieces from time to time, often on commission when they sense a juicy topic for me to write up.
I’ll leave it there but if anyone outs me on here you won’t ever see me again. I like to keep it anon and I hope that can be respected.
xx
No chance of that. All journos on this site are incredibly well disguised.
I’ve had pieces published in HR Magazine and Personnel Today. Does that count?
I got Star Letter in Cats Today once.
I won a caption competition in The Chemical Engineer.
Did you get a good reaction?
Alas there wasn't a prize, just the glory of victory.
I did however come away with a pen when our team won at an IChemE quiz night.
I remember some time ago you called me out for mental health issues when I started posting like this. I am now worried about your welfare. Hope you can get some help.
During a radio interview on Tuesday, Sir Keir was asked what he meant by working people.
“People who earn their living, rely on our [public] services and don’t really have the ability to write a cheque when they get into trouble,” he told LBC.
“So the sort of people I’m meeting pretty well every day now. It’s quite a big group because these days there are many people obviously not so well off.”
Two-thirds of working-age households have savings of more than £1,000 - considered the minimum “rainy day” fund - according to the Resolution Foundation.
Glaswegians and Mancunians need more than £1,000, as we have more rainy days.
And the world is a far better place than it was a few hours ago.
Nasty
The scumbag defended warcrimes even most Serbians wouldn't touch.
Is he actually dead? Suggestions he’s alive and well.
His genocide denials were indeed rather Irving-esque. Cambodia, FFS.
I don't know the ins and outs. Perhaps he did say outrageous things - things I couldn't defend. But in a lifetime of opposition to state violence, it's not surprising that he put the backs up of some powerful people. Regarding Cambodia he said his comments never minimised atrocities. He claims he criticised how media and political bodies used the reporting of events to serve their interests. Perhaps you know more.
I think he may not have died, but to crow at the announcement of the death of an old man seems awful to me!
I’m not sure he has died - seem to be suggestions his wife has been in touch saying he’s alive and well.
I was a bit of a fan, but had a moment of disillusionment at a talk he gave on the eve of the Iraq war at Harvard (I was visiting a friend there). He gave Iraq about 10 minutes and then started banging on about Serbia. He really did seem to be convinced that Milosevic was a victim of Western propaganda and the Serbs were just courageously defending themselves.
During a radio interview on Tuesday, Sir Keir was asked what he meant by working people.
“People who earn their living, rely on our [public] services and don’t really have the ability to write a cheque when they get into trouble,” he told LBC.
“So the sort of people I’m meeting pretty well every day now. It’s quite a big group because these days there are many people obviously not so well off.”
Two-thirds of working-age households have savings of more than £1,000 - considered the minimum “rainy day” fund - according to the Resolution Foundation.
I'm often right. But, not enough people want to hear it in the next 2 weeks, and time is running out.
Think very carefully how you mark your ballot. Because, after that, you're stuck with it for a full 5 years.
Do you want to look yourself in the mirror that whole time knowing you voted for it?
This is the second constituency poll of the campaign, both for The Economist. Both the Hartlepool and the Gillingham constituency polls suggest the polls and MRPs are being significantly too generous to the Conservatives.
Fascinating! It really does seem like there's a serious chance of the Tories ending up with less than 100 seats.
I've still not traded out any of my 50-99 seats bet on bf, and suspect that I'll now stick with it - if it comes off, it'll be my second-most successful bet ever.
What times are these.
I was on less than 49 seats at 26.
Cashed out a bit now one can lay that for 6.4.
6.4!!! The most successful party in democracy is layable at 6 for seats less than 49!!!
I mean, his academic work is interesting and all. But you his political views were lazy, and his reflexiveness anti-Americanism resulted in him cozying up to the most revolting of dictators.
For the record, I thought Henry Kissinger was a piece of shit too.
I remember some time ago you called me out for mental health issues when I started posting like this. I am now worried about your welfare. Hope you can get some help.
He's joking. It's a sign of mental health. You're welcome
This is the second constituency poll of the campaign, both for The Economist. Both the Hartlepool and the Gillingham constituency polls suggest the polls and MRPs are being significantly too generous to the Conservatives.
Fascinating! It really does seem like there's a serious chance of the Tories ending up with less than 100 seats.
I've still not traded out any of my 50-99 seats bet on bf, and suspect that I'll now stick with it - if it comes off, it'll be my second-most successful bet ever.
What times are these.
I was on less than 49 seats at 26.
Cashed out a bit now one can lay that for 6.4.
6.4!!! The most successful party in democracy is layable at 6 for seats less than 49!!!
Mind you his comments will not I imagine win over many Tories to Labour but might have a few leftwingers spitting out their herbal tea and going Green.
'Mr Caudwell said he had donated to the Conservatives in 2019 “because I couldn’t possibly stand a Corbyn government, and I am still of exactly the same view there.”
He praised Sir Keir's attempts to get rid of what he called "the loony Left" which he claimed had focused on "extreme socialist policies", instead of "creating a wealthy Britain".
"We can't tax rich people in order to help the poor because they'll go off to Monaco and other places, we have to create real genuine wealth.”
Sir Jim who moved to Monaco to save - checks - £4bn in taxes.
And he's lecturing other people about paying their taxes?
What a total fucking scumbag.
Just to add: if you move your taxable residence away from the UK to avoid paying taxes, no fucking way should you be allowed to vote.
Do you mean that you would have no voters who are not tax-resident in the UK, or would you introduce some sort of test to judge whether people had moved abroad for other reasons?
The Conservative Party has, for so long, been a successful political party because it has been able to tie together disparate groups, who don't all share exactly the same ideology.
And it's done this by being pragmatic and remembering that there are going to be people who believe homosexuality is a sin, and there are going to be people are publicly gay, but they might share common views about - say - the size of the state.
I'm reminded of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who was caught on tape saying that the US was in a (culture) war, and there would only be one winner.
No, Justice Alito, there is no winner. You cannot silence the voices of the 50% of people who disagree with you without actual war. And that actual war (see the Thirty Years War for an example) will end with everyone grudgingly agreeing that actually they can't agree and they can't force other people to agree with them.
The Conservative Party cannot just be the party of people left behind by globalisation. Nor can it just be the party of pensioners. Nor can it just be the party of wealthy plutocrats. It needs to be a big tent. If you choose to silence - or make unwelcome - the voices that disagree with you, then you are consigning yourself to electoral oblivion.
This is why "we didn't win because we weren't centrist enough" and "we didn't win because we weren't right wing enough" are both bullshit arguments. You didn't win because you were unable to make the tent big enough.
Where was the voting market behind monetarism when MT made that her guiding theme? There wasn't one. She decided that that was the right thing for Britain, and set about winning the arguments. That's how you get positive change. Crafting your platform out of a mishmash of what voters have found acceptable up until now is not a plan to get into (or stay in) government; it's a way to go around in circles achieving very little.
And I also don't think the issue is that Tories 'haven't been right wing enough', it's that they have sold themselves as the right wing alternative, benefitted from doing so, and changed their minds completely when it comes to actually doing anything right wing. That's a question of trust, rather than a question of politics. Those who feel that they haven't been centrist enough should vote for parties that espouse social democracy, of which there are two in the political mainstream. Why do they need a third? It smacks of reducing the alternatives available to voters because they aren't actually that confident in the attractiveness of their centrist prospectus.
Every time the Tories get into power they're lured into nanny-statism. Thatcher had enough about her to push against that for several years. Imperfect though such direction might prove I think it is beneficial. Reducing the size of the state should be top of the list for any government.
OK.
The number of people of pensionable age is rising every year: we have promised them (repeatedly) that there is no circumstance where their pensions will grow less than 2% or wages or inflation. In addition, the proportion of people who are pensioners will grow every year. And a pensioner costs approximately 15x as much in social and health care as someone in their 20s.
So: interest payments, healthcare and pension cost increases are nailed on. And they are half the budget.
We need to spend more on defence. Policing and the administration of justice have been cut to the bone.
I want to cut the size of the state too. But we all need to be realistic about the challenges facing us with a greying population.
Plus everyone wants more transport projects and everyone wants increasingly improving schools. Add on people always having a pet regulation….
The problem is that most expect the state can do more than it can do. It could only do what it did in the first place due to the revenue of empire and tbe legacy assets and soft power in the post empire world which have slowly inevitably decayed
Also, as life becomes more complex the state can do less. EM Forsters "The Machine Stops" was a boring book foisted on us at school but a very prohetic one.
The choice is collapse with authoritarianism on the way or a wholesale deregulation, a very limited state based on a principle of Caveat Emptor and an acceptance that people will make bad or inept decisions and suffer as a result and it is not the states job to prevent or mitigate this, other than to set some core, simple to understand rules (which is basically what Common Law is).
I think the die was cast though when Cameron beat Davis in 2005, or perhaps even when Wilson won in 1964.
You're overstating the "revenue of empire" here, as costs matched benefits from the 1870s onwards even if you look at it from a pure revenue perspective.
On a wider economic basis it produced a clear loss, especially when you factor in the downsides of it fucking our trade and monetary policy over and over and over again until we finally began to cut our losses in 1957.
Direct revenue is one thing. Indirect (a captive market for UK manufacturers) is another, this has lingered on to a certain extent even now (e.g MK will have good sales in Singapore, Ireland, Cyprus, Hong Kong and half the middle East and Africa as a legacy of empire is that they use BS1363 plugs and sockets.
Plenty more such trade was kicked in the nuts in 1973 when joined customs union with rival industrial countries and put trade barriers up with such countries as a result.
The root cause of empire is need, a country not having enough land and resources to support it's population sustainably. See Rome, Japan and us (not to mention Russia invading Ukraine, both now and in aftermath of the Russian Revolution)
It dosen't help that we are making it worse by unsustainable population increase and shunning the Oil, Gas and Coal resources (the latter of which is still abundant) so are therefore making our industry uncompetitive compared with those that do exploit such resources unreserved.
And yet S Korea - and postwar Japan - achieved great prosperity without significant natural resources, or captive markets.
And Hong Kong. And Singapore. And Switzerland.
It's almost like the most important natural resource is the human brain.
Denmark and South Korea are more prosperous than us because we have too many thickos..
The other thing to state about writing ref. earlier discussions is that you need never retire. If your brain/body stays fit you can write until you drop. It’s good for keeping the mind active and if you love it, keep at it.
If you are paid £1 or £2 a word you are one of the better paid jpurnalists on Fleet Street, and therefore one of the more noticeable. It's weird I cannot recognise your style. Do you specialise in a certain field?
Yes. And no. But I’m amused you refer to ‘Fleet Street’
I don’t have a weekly column by the way. Pieces from time to time, often on commission when they sense a juicy topic for me to write up.
I’ll leave it there but if anyone outs me on here you won’t ever see me again. I like to keep it anon and I hope that can be respected.
xx
No chance of that. All journos on this site are incredibly well disguised.
I’ve had pieces published in HR Magazine and Personnel Today. Does that count?
I got Star Letter in Cats Today once.
I won a caption competition in The Chemical Engineer.
I remember some time ago you called me out for mental health issues when I started posting like this. I am now worried about your welfare. Hope you can get some help.
He's joking. It's a sign of mental health. You're welcome
I pretended I was joking too but actually I wasn't. Casino's recent posts are a pattern of behaviour and I am concerned. I do hope he can get help.
I hope you can too, you're clearly in need of a friend. But that won't be me.
Mind you his comments will not I imagine win over many Tories to Labour but might have a few leftwingers spitting out their herbal tea and going Green.
'Mr Caudwell said he had donated to the Conservatives in 2019 “because I couldn’t possibly stand a Corbyn government, and I am still of exactly the same view there.”
He praised Sir Keir's attempts to get rid of what he called "the loony Left" which he claimed had focused on "extreme socialist policies", instead of "creating a wealthy Britain".
"We can't tax rich people in order to help the poor because they'll go off to Monaco and other places, we have to create real genuine wealth.”
During a radio interview on Tuesday, Sir Keir was asked what he meant by working people.
“People who earn their living, rely on our [public] services and don’t really have the ability to write a cheque when they get into trouble,” he told LBC.
“So the sort of people I’m meeting pretty well every day now. It’s quite a big group because these days there are many people obviously not so well off.”
Two-thirds of working-age households have savings of more than £1,000 - considered the minimum “rainy day” fund - according to the Resolution Foundation.
I'm often right. But, not enough people want to hear it in the next 2 weeks, and time is running out.
Think very carefully how you mark your ballot. Because, after that, you're stuck with it for a full 5 years.
Do you want to look yourself in the mirror that whole time knowing you voted for it?
Don't worry, I and the rest of my close family are voting Tory, not that it will do much good in Woking.
I'm curious as to what Labour have planned. If they scrap ISAs or something, then fine, I don't like it, but whatever. If they decide to help themselves to savings I already have, then that's theft.
I remember some time ago you called me out for mental health issues when I started posting like this. I am now worried about your welfare. Hope you can get some help.
He's joking. It's a sign of mental health. You're welcome
I pretended I was joking too but actually I wasn't. Casino's recent posts are a pattern of behaviour and I am concerned. I do hope he can get help.
I hope you can too, you're clearly in need of a friend. But that won't be me.
Mind you his comments will not I imagine win over many Tories to Labour but might have a few leftwingers spitting out their herbal tea and going Green.
'Mr Caudwell said he had donated to the Conservatives in 2019 “because I couldn’t possibly stand a Corbyn government, and I am still of exactly the same view there.”
He praised Sir Keir's attempts to get rid of what he called "the loony Left" which he claimed had focused on "extreme socialist policies", instead of "creating a wealthy Britain".
"We can't tax rich people in order to help the poor because they'll go off to Monaco and other places, we have to create real genuine wealth.”
Sir Jim who moved to Monaco to save - checks - £4bn in taxes.
And he's lecturing other people about paying their taxes?
What a total fucking scumbag.
Just to add: if you move your taxable residence away from the UK to avoid paying taxes, no fucking way should you be allowed to vote.
Ratcliffe is only after billions of support for regeneration of the Old Trafford industrial area and a new multi billion pound home for Manchester United to compete with Wembley '
He already has has a well publicised meeting with Burnham and Starmer so absolutely no surprise what he is after
The Hajj may become ecologically unsustainable, and indeed unfeasible. That will be a major blow to one of the great pillars of one of humanity's most important religions: without which the world would be so hugely different
It is almost too hard to bear. I am actually crying, here in my chair, and I only emotionally getting by with a decent Rioja to numb the pain. It must be even worse for Muslims
I don't understand that fairly sentimental (to me) reaction. There's human sympathy of course, but it is hardly unusual as a number of pilgrims to die for various reasons during Hajj. Hundreds being killed is fairly routine. 100+ killed has happened on a large number of occasions in the last several decades.
In orthodox Islam it will be viewed as kismet, the WIll of Allah, and a pass straight to heaven. That's an Islamic attitude.
I remember some time ago you called me out for mental health issues when I started posting like this. I am now worried about your welfare. Hope you can get some help.
He's joking. It's a sign of mental health. You're welcome
I pretended I was joking too but actually I wasn't. Casino's recent posts are a pattern of behaviour and I am concerned. I do hope he can get help.
I hope you can too, you're clearly in need of a friend. But that won't be me.
During a radio interview on Tuesday, Sir Keir was asked what he meant by working people.
“People who earn their living, rely on our [public] services and don’t really have the ability to write a cheque when they get into trouble,” he told LBC.
“So the sort of people I’m meeting pretty well every day now. It’s quite a big group because these days there are many people obviously not so well off.”
Two-thirds of working-age households have savings of more than £1,000 - considered the minimum “rainy day” fund - according to the Resolution Foundation.
I'm often right. But, not enough people want to hear it in the next 2 weeks, and time is running out.
Think very carefully how you mark your ballot. Because, after that, you're stuck with it for a full 5 years.
Do you want to look yourself in the mirror that whole time knowing you voted for it?
I think everyone will be proud of voting to end the shitshow of the last 5 years.
I remember some time ago you called me out for mental health issues when I started posting like this. I am now worried about your welfare. Hope you can get some help.
He's joking. It's a sign of mental health. You're welcome
I pretended I was joking too but actually I wasn't. Casino's recent posts are a pattern of behaviour and I am concerned. I do hope he can get help.
I hope you can too, you're clearly in need of a friend. But that won't be me.
You say you are just like I did. But I think based on your comments over many days there's something deeper afoot. I really hope like me you have a supportive network around you that can help. Best wishes.
Could the Lib Dems and SNP agree an 'Opposition Pact' to marginalise the Tories and Reform?
If you're Ed Davey, perhaps the chance for much greater prominence on the national stage as HM Official Opposition, outweighs any negatives of the association with the SNP. You can say "We want to effectively hold Labour to account, despite our disagreements on policy..." or something.
OTOH the SNP may demand prominent shadow cabinet positions from it. Or perhaps they'd be satisfied to have relatively few, if they think it could advance their cause somehow to just be in the official opposition.
I remember some time ago you called me out for mental health issues when I started posting like this. I am now worried about your welfare. Hope you can get some help.
He's joking. It's a sign of mental health. You're welcome
I pretended I was joking too but actually I wasn't. Casino's recent posts are a pattern of behaviour and I am concerned. I do hope he can get help.
I hope you can too, you're clearly in need of a friend. But that won't be me.
I think we are agreed
I never know what you're going on about so there is nothing to agree about. I am done talking to you.
During a radio interview on Tuesday, Sir Keir was asked what he meant by working people.
“People who earn their living, rely on our [public] services and don’t really have the ability to write a cheque when they get into trouble,” he told LBC.
“So the sort of people I’m meeting pretty well every day now. It’s quite a big group because these days there are many people obviously not so well off.”
Two-thirds of working-age households have savings of more than £1,000 - considered the minimum “rainy day” fund - according to the Resolution Foundation.
I'm often right. But, not enough people want to hear it in the next 2 weeks, and time is running out.
Think very carefully how you mark your ballot. Because, after that, you're stuck with it for a full 5 years.
Do you want to look yourself in the mirror that whole time knowing you voted for it?
Don't worry, I and the rest of my close family are voting Tory, not that it will do much good in Woking.
I'm curious as to what Labour have planned. If they scrap ISAs or something, then fine, I don't like it, but whatever. If they decide to help themselves to savings I already have, then that's theft.
I remember some time ago you called me out for mental health issues when I started posting like this. I am now worried about your welfare. Hope you can get some help.
He's joking. It's a sign of mental health. You're welcome
I pretended I was joking too but actually I wasn't. Casino's recent posts are a pattern of behaviour and I am concerned. I do hope he can get help.
I hope you can too, you're clearly in need of a friend. But that won't be me.
Could the Lib Dems and SNP agree an 'Opposition Pact' to marginalise the Tories and Reform?
If you're Ed Davey, I assume the chance for much greater prominence on the national stage, outweighs any negatives of the association with the SNP. You can say "We want to effectively hold Labour to account, despite our disagreements on policy..." or something.
I remember some time ago you called me out for mental health issues when I started posting like this. I am now worried about your welfare. Hope you can get some help.
He's joking. It's a sign of mental health. You're welcome
I pretended I was joking too but actually I wasn't. Casino's recent posts are a pattern of behaviour and I am concerned. I do hope he can get help.
I hope you can too, you're clearly in need of a friend. But that won't be me.
You say you are just like I did. But I think based on your comments over many days there's something deeper afoot. I really hope like me you have a supportive network around you that can help. Best wishes.
Err, OK mate.
Anyway. Need to get an early night. School day tomorrow.
I remember some time ago you called me out for mental health issues when I started posting like this. I am now worried about your welfare. Hope you can get some help.
He's joking. It's a sign of mental health. You're welcome
I pretended I was joking too but actually I wasn't. Casino's recent posts are a pattern of behaviour and I am concerned. I do hope he can get help.
I hope you can too, you're clearly in need of a friend. But that won't be me.
You say you are just like I did. But I think based on your comments over many days there's something deeper afoot. I really hope like me you have a supportive network around you that can help. Best wishes.
Err, OK mate.
Anyway. Need to get an early night. School day tomorrow.
It's hard to accept, I do know that. But hope you can. Good luck.
I remember some time ago you called me out for mental health issues when I started posting like this. I am now worried about your welfare. Hope you can get some help.
He's joking. It's a sign of mental health. You're welcome
I pretended I was joking too but actually I wasn't. Casino's recent posts are a pattern of behaviour and I am concerned. I do hope he can get help.
I hope you can too, you're clearly in need of a friend. But that won't be me.
Mind you his comments will not I imagine win over many Tories to Labour but might have a few leftwingers spitting out their herbal tea and going Green.
'Mr Caudwell said he had donated to the Conservatives in 2019 “because I couldn’t possibly stand a Corbyn government, and I am still of exactly the same view there.”
He praised Sir Keir's attempts to get rid of what he called "the loony Left" which he claimed had focused on "extreme socialist policies", instead of "creating a wealthy Britain".
"We can't tax rich people in order to help the poor because they'll go off to Monaco and other places, we have to create real genuine wealth.”
I remember some time ago you called me out for mental health issues when I started posting like this. I am now worried about your welfare. Hope you can get some help.
He's joking. It's a sign of mental health. You're welcome
I pretended I was joking too but actually I wasn't. Casino's recent posts are a pattern of behaviour and I am concerned. I do hope he can get help.
I hope you can too, you're clearly in need of a friend. But that won't be me.
I think we are agreed
Is this the bit where you now both kiss?
Leon is a poster I actively avoid unless he forces his way into conversations. I wish I could avoid him at all costs but sadly I make do where I can.
The answer is no btw. He lost my respect a long time ago back when he was Sean.
Mind you his comments will not I imagine win over many Tories to Labour but might have a few leftwingers spitting out their herbal tea and going Green.
'Mr Caudwell said he had donated to the Conservatives in 2019 “because I couldn’t possibly stand a Corbyn government, and I am still of exactly the same view there.”
He praised Sir Keir's attempts to get rid of what he called "the loony Left" which he claimed had focused on "extreme socialist policies", instead of "creating a wealthy Britain".
"We can't tax rich people in order to help the poor because they'll go off to Monaco and other places, we have to create real genuine wealth.”
Mind you his comments will not I imagine win over many Tories to Labour but might have a few leftwingers spitting out their herbal tea and going Green.
'Mr Caudwell said he had donated to the Conservatives in 2019 “because I couldn’t possibly stand a Corbyn government, and I am still of exactly the same view there.”
He praised Sir Keir's attempts to get rid of what he called "the loony Left" which he claimed had focused on "extreme socialist policies", instead of "creating a wealthy Britain".
"We can't tax rich people in order to help the poor because they'll go off to Monaco and other places, we have to create real genuine wealth.”
During a radio interview on Tuesday, Sir Keir was asked what he meant by working people.
“People who earn their living, rely on our [public] services and don’t really have the ability to write a cheque when they get into trouble,” he told LBC.
“So the sort of people I’m meeting pretty well every day now. It’s quite a big group because these days there are many people obviously not so well off.”
Two-thirds of working-age households have savings of more than £1,000 - considered the minimum “rainy day” fund - according to the Resolution Foundation.
I'm often right. But, not enough people want to hear it in the next 2 weeks, and time is running out.
Think very carefully how you mark your ballot. Because, after that, you're stuck with it for a full 5 years.
Do you want to look yourself in the mirror that whole time knowing you voted for it?
Don't worry, I and the rest of my close family are voting Tory, not that it will do much good in Woking.
I'm curious as to what Labour have planned. If they scrap ISAs or something, then fine, I don't like it, but whatever. If they decide to help themselves to savings I already have, then that's theft.
Yes and if they decide to sacrifice your first-born that's murder. But neither are happening of course.
Still if you're desperate to find reasons to vote for this stunningly incompetent excuse for a government, this is the sort of fiction that will have to serve, I guess.
Mind you his comments will not I imagine win over many Tories to Labour but might have a few leftwingers spitting out their herbal tea and going Green.
'Mr Caudwell said he had donated to the Conservatives in 2019 “because I couldn’t possibly stand a Corbyn government, and I am still of exactly the same view there.”
He praised Sir Keir's attempts to get rid of what he called "the loony Left" which he claimed had focused on "extreme socialist policies", instead of "creating a wealthy Britain".
"We can't tax rich people in order to help the poor because they'll go off to Monaco and other places, we have to create real genuine wealth.”
Could the Lib Dems and SNP agree an 'Opposition Pact' to marginalise the Tories and Reform?
If you're Ed Davey, I assume the chance for much greater prominence on the national stage, outweighs any negatives of the association with the SNP. You can say "We want to effectively hold Labour to account, despite our disagreements on policy..." or something.
Mind you his comments will not I imagine win over many Tories to Labour but might have a few leftwingers spitting out their herbal tea and going Green.
'Mr Caudwell said he had donated to the Conservatives in 2019 “because I couldn’t possibly stand a Corbyn government, and I am still of exactly the same view there.”
He praised Sir Keir's attempts to get rid of what he called "the loony Left" which he claimed had focused on "extreme socialist policies", instead of "creating a wealthy Britain".
"We can't tax rich people in order to help the poor because they'll go off to Monaco and other places, we have to create real genuine wealth.”
Could the Lib Dems and SNP agree an 'Opposition Pact' to marginalise the Tories and Reform?
If you're Ed Davey, I assume the chance for much greater prominence on the national stage, outweighs any negatives of the association with the SNP. You can say "We want to effectively hold Labour to account, despite our disagreements on policy..." or something.
SNP too pro EU for the LDs.
'Opposition Pact' ??
There's no such thing constitutionally I think?
The Cons would be Opposition on those numbers.
Til early August when 15 of them have joined Farage's Nazis party
Boris Johnson is no longer expected to join Tory election campaign trail because party is facing decimation in the red wall seats he won in 2019 and there are fears he will not appeal to voters in the south
Johnson is instead expected to go on his second summer holiday within the next few days and is not due back in the UK until July 3
Sunak did not tell Johnson that he was planning a snap election and has not spoken to him for the duration of the campaign
Allies of Sunak are said to be concerned that Johnson could prove to be a distraction because of the ‘media circus’ that would surround him if he spent a day on the campaign trail
Tory strategist: ‘What’s the point of sending him to the red wall when the focus of the campaign is to defend 150 seats in the south?
‘This is not a campaign that is looking to win seats in the red wall. This is a fight for survival. If you look at the seats we’re targeting they don’t have Boris Johnson supporters’
In the past ten days the prime minister has spent his time in seats with an average Conservative majority of 15,000, up from 10,000 in the first two weeks of the campaign
Could the Lib Dems and SNP agree an 'Opposition Pact' to marginalise the Tories and Reform?
If you're Ed Davey, I assume the chance for much greater prominence on the national stage, outweighs any negatives of the association with the SNP. You can say "We want to effectively hold Labour to account, despite our disagreements on policy..." or something.
SNP too pro EU for the LDs.
'Opposition Pact' ??
There's no such thing constitutionally I think?
The Cons would be Opposition on those numbers.
Yes until the Farage reverse takeover, at which point 7 or 8 One-nation Tories defect to the LDs and hey presto Davey becomes LOTO.
Boris Johnson is no longer expected to join Tory election campaign trail because party is facing decimation in the red wall seats he won in 2019 and there are fears he will not appeal to voters in the south
Johnson is instead expected to go on his second summer holiday within the next few days and is not due back in the UK until July 3
Sunak did not tell Johnson that he was planning a snap election and has not spoken to him for the duration of the campaign
Allies of Sunak are said to be concerned that Johnson could prove to be a distraction because of the ‘media circus’ that would surround him if he spent a day on the campaign trail
Tory strategist: ‘What’s the point of sending him to the red wall when the focus of the campaign is to defend 150 seats in the south?
‘This is not a campaign that is looking to win seats in the red wall. This is a fight for survival. If you look at the seats we’re targeting they don’t have Boris Johnson supporters’
In the past ten days the prime minister has spent his time in seats with an average Conservative majority of 15,000, up from 10,000 in the first two weeks of the campaign
Could the Lib Dems and SNP agree an 'Opposition Pact' to marginalise the Tories and Reform?
If you're Ed Davey, I assume the chance for much greater prominence on the national stage, outweighs any negatives of the association with the SNP. You can say "We want to effectively hold Labour to account, despite our disagreements on policy..." or something.
SNP too pro EU for the LDs.
'Opposition Pact' ??
There's no such thing constitutionally I think?
The Cons would be Opposition on those numbers.
I've seen conflicting things online about whether 3rd and 4th parties can sit together and be the official opposition - I think ultimately it's at the speaker's discretion but can't be sure
If Sunak is spending his time in seats with majorities of 15,000 that implies that the private polling is as bad as the worst of the public polling right?
Are the Tories now as unpopular as Labour in 2019? Really?
Could the Lib Dems and SNP agree an 'Opposition Pact' to marginalise the Tories and Reform?
If you're Ed Davey, I assume the chance for much greater prominence on the national stage, outweighs any negatives of the association with the SNP. You can say "We want to effectively hold Labour to account, despite our disagreements on policy..." or something.
SNP too pro EU for the LDs.
'Opposition Pact' ??
There's no such thing constitutionally I think?
The Cons would be Opposition on those numbers.
Probably a matter of convention, but it's hard to see for what reason there would be a departure.
The prevalence (on the whole) of the two-party system has usually removed any uncertainty as to which party has the right to be called the ‘Official Opposition’; it is the largest minority party which is prepared, in the event of the resignation of the Government, to assume office. https://erskinemay.parliament.uk/section/5986/the-official-opposition
Boris Johnson is no longer expected to join Tory election campaign trail because party is facing decimation in the red wall seats he won in 2019 and there are fears he will not appeal to voters in the south
Johnson is instead expected to go on his second summer holiday within the next few days and is not due back in the UK until July 3
Sunak did not tell Johnson that he was planning a snap election and has not spoken to him for the duration of the campaign
Allies of Sunak are said to be concerned that Johnson could prove to be a distraction because of the ‘media circus’ that would surround him if he spent a day on the campaign trail
Tory strategist: ‘What’s the point of sending him to the red wall when the focus of the campaign is to defend 150 seats in the south?
‘This is not a campaign that is looking to win seats in the red wall. This is a fight for survival. If you look at the seats we’re targeting they don’t have Boris Johnson supporters’
In the past ten days the prime minister has spent his time in seats with an average Conservative majority of 15,000, up from 10,000 in the first two weeks of the campaign
Comments
Sir Jim who moved to Monaco to save - checks - £4bn in taxes.
And he's lecturing other people about paying their taxes?
What a total fucking scumbag.
They are interesting, but just another projection.
I've still not traded out any of my 50-99 seats bet on bf, and suspect that I'll now stick with it - if it comes off, it'll be my second-most successful bet ever.
Even if this is true, isn't what they are suggesting pretty similar to the US?
I understand that people dislike Farage and Lee Anderson, but it feels like they project things on to this party that are not supported by evidence.
As I said before, their actual manifesto just seems to be mainstream conservative circa 2024.
It is almost too hard to bear. I am actually crying, here in my chair, and I only emotionally getting by with a decent Rioja to numb the pain. It must be even worse for Muslims
I mean, his academic work is interesting and all. But you his political views were lazy, and his reflexiveness anti-Americanism resulted in him cozying up to the most revolting of dictators.
For the record, I thought Henry Kissinger was a piece of shit too.
I think he may not have died, but to crow at the announcement of the death of an old man seems awful to me!
The world is a better place without him, and there are very few people I would say that about.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/06/18/starmer-leaves-door-open-to-tax-rises-for-millions/
During a radio interview on Tuesday, Sir Keir was asked what he meant by working people.
“People who earn their living, rely on our [public] services and don’t really have the ability to write a cheque when they get into trouble,” he told LBC.
“So the sort of people I’m meeting pretty well every day now. It’s quite a big group because these days there are many people obviously not so well off.”
Two-thirds of working-age households have savings of more than £1,000 - considered the minimum “rainy day” fund - according to the Resolution Foundation.
https://www.timesnownews.com/world/what-happened-to-noam-chomsky-reports-of-american-professorsdeathfalse-says-wife-valeria-wasserman-article-111093969
I did however come away with a pen when our team won at an IChemE quiz night.
I'm too old for such hedonism these days.
I was a bit of a fan, but had a moment of disillusionment at a talk he gave on the eve of the Iraq war at Harvard (I was visiting a friend there). He gave Iraq about 10 minutes and then started banging on about Serbia. He really did seem to be convinced that Milosevic was a victim of Western propaganda and the Serbs were just courageously defending themselves.
Think very carefully how you mark your ballot. Because, after that, you're stuck with it for a full 5 years.
Do you want to look yourself in the mirror that whole time knowing you voted for it?
I was on less than 49 seats at 26.
Cashed out a bit now one can lay that for 6.4.
6.4!!! The most successful party in democracy is layable at 6 for seats less than 49!!!
Can we pin this post for the past 100+ years?
https://x.com/bellacaledonia/status/1803180909140865073
Superstar DJ's,
Here we go!
I hope you can too, you're clearly in need of a friend. But that won't be me.
I'm curious as to what Labour have planned. If they scrap ISAs or something, then fine, I don't like it, but whatever. If they decide to help themselves to savings I already have, then that's theft.
Gallows humour.
He already has has a well publicised meeting with Burnham and Starmer so absolutely no surprise what he is after
In orthodox Islam it will be viewed as kismet, the WIll of Allah, and a pass straight to heaven. That's an Islamic attitude.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidents_during_the_Hajj
CON 70
LIB DEM 60
SNP 20
REFUK 3
Could the Lib Dems and SNP agree an 'Opposition Pact' to marginalise the Tories and Reform?
If you're Ed Davey, perhaps the chance for much greater prominence on the national stage as HM Official Opposition, outweighs any negatives of the association with the SNP. You can say "We want to effectively hold Labour to account, despite our disagreements on policy..." or something.
OTOH the SNP may demand prominent shadow cabinet positions from it. Or perhaps they'd be satisfied to have relatively few, if they think it could advance their cause somehow to just be in the official opposition.
Anyway. Need to get an early night. School day tomorrow.
Do not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.
Also the most modest, forget the tripe that @TSE posts.
The answer is no btw. He lost my respect a long time ago back when he was Sean.
Still if you're desperate to find reasons to vote for this stunningly incompetent excuse for a government, this is the sort of fiction that will have to serve, I guess.
He isn't particularly known for ever being palmed off.
There's no such thing constitutionally I think?
The Cons would be Opposition on those numbers.
He paid it, according to reporting.
https://www.artiopartners.com/renounce/boris-johnson-pays-irs-tax-bill/
Unless there is another tax bill he dodged.
Johnson is instead expected to go on his second summer holiday within the next few days and is not due back in the UK until July 3
Sunak did not tell Johnson that he was planning a snap election and has not spoken to him for the duration of the campaign
Allies of Sunak are said to be concerned that Johnson could prove to be a distraction because of the ‘media circus’ that would surround him if he spent a day on the campaign trail
Tory strategist: ‘What’s the point of sending him to the red wall when the focus of the campaign is to defend 150 seats in the south?
‘This is not a campaign that is looking to win seats in the red wall. This is a fight for survival. If you look at the seats we’re targeting they don’t have Boris Johnson supporters’
In the past ten days the prime minister has spent his time in seats with an average Conservative majority of 15,000, up from 10,000 in the first two weeks of the campaign
https://x.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1803183714698141762
Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Exclusive:
Boris Johnson is no longer expected to join Tory election campaign trail because party is facing decimation in the red wall seats he won in 2019 and there are fears he will not appeal to voters in the south
Johnson is instead expected to go on his second summer holiday within the next few days and is not due back in the UK until July 3
Sunak did not tell Johnson that he was planning a snap election and has not spoken to him for the duration of the campaign
Allies of Sunak are said to be concerned that Johnson could prove to be a distraction because of the ‘media circus’ that would surround him if he spent a day on the campaign trail
Tory strategist: ‘What’s the point of sending him to the red wall when the focus of the campaign is to defend 150 seats in the south?
‘This is not a campaign that is looking to win seats in the red wall. This is a fight for survival. If you look at the seats we’re targeting they don’t have Boris Johnson supporters’
In the past ten days the prime minister has spent his time in seats with an average Conservative majority of 15,000, up from 10,000 in the first two weeks of the campaign
Are the Tories now as unpopular as Labour in 2019? Really?
The prevalence (on the whole) of the two-party system has usually removed any uncertainty as to which party has the right to be called the ‘Official Opposition’; it is the largest minority party which is prepared, in the event of the resignation of the Government, to assume office.
https://erskinemay.parliament.uk/section/5986/the-official-opposition