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The Democrats have become the first party in the USA to choose a female Presidential candidate. At 4/11 to become the next President, Clinton has a good chance to be the first female leader of the Free World. Others might shrug about how ground-breaking it is to have a Hillary Rodham Clinton return to the White House – but it is significant.
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For strict like-for-like comparison it's 41 years since the Tories elected a female leader. It's pretty scandalous that Labour have lagged behind on this but then Blairites were really one nation Tories. It took progressive Conservatives to shake things up in this country.
edit - Drats!
Without Major we would have had Kinnock in 1992 and many of the Thatcher reforms would have been undone.
Without Major the Labour Party would not have reformed and become a party of government again - though Corbyn's elevation shows they've forgotten nothing and learned nothing.
And now that Golum of the Back Benches, the seeker of ideological purity, what ever the political cost, IDS once again pursues principle over power. A long and undistinguished future awaits him - and I half suspect he'll be even happier were he on the Opposition back benches....but thats it with these multi-millionaire LEAVErs - IDS, Johnson, Farage, Boris, they won't have to pay the cost of LEAVE....
He fumbled and stumbled his way out of the ERM which, by sheer luck, brought on this country's prosperity. (There's a lesson there re. the EU of course.)
And he managed to generate the Blairite landslide victory: a generation lost to the Conservatives as well as the single-most disastrous foreign policy in British history which has unleashed a thousand years of terrorism against the west. And you could argue that because of Major we're now lumbered with Cameron who stands for precisely nothing.
Chapeau.
Imagine if the Tories had not had a female leader over 40 years after Labour first elected one.
Does anyone think that would go unremarked?
Do you seriously think Bush would not have gone to war without Blair?
He offered to.
I could understand it if she wanted to withdraw from the leave campaign over a dispute on their NHS stand, but for someone who so trenchantly publically supported the leave position until recently to suddenly decide to support Remain seems a little odd to say the least.
1. I'm on her at 10/1
2. She'll be a good reuniter of the Tories after a bruising referendum campaign
3. A second woman PM from the Tories will make the more excitable feminist lefties go absolutely nuts!
That's why she's switched....
Dr Wollaston, chairman of the health select committee, said Vote Leave's claim that Brexit would free up £350m a week for the NHS "simply isn't true"......"For someone like me who has long campaigned for open and honest data in public life I could not have set foot on a battle bus that has at the heart of its campaign a figure that I know to be untrue."
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36485464
Desperate.
The others look way too short priced to me. The electorate is now far too fundamentalist.
I'm very doubtful whether it will change many votes. Its impact will be more negative - the disruption of the news cycle.
Transparent.
The biggest element of the Tories losing in 1997 was their loss of economic credibility post the ERM departure.
Kinnock supported the ERM as well - and would have been slammed by it. It would have been Ramsay MacDonald and the Wall Street Crash all over again
GP, strong supporter of the NHS, Chair of the Health Select Committee.
The Campaign you support is, you believe, telling lies about the NHS.
What would you do?
What's being said by Vote Leave doesn't matter.
Is she saying she didn't know the true numbers two months ago when she made her decision ? For an MP in her position that's unforgivable.
Alternatively, is she saying, she doesn't want people to vote leave under false information? If so she should tell the truth about the numbers, but it wouldn't impact her decision to leave.
The only reason to change position at this stage for an mp is if new material facts have come to light which would have influenced her original decision. They haven't, so we're left with she didn't think through her position properly in the first place or she's been bought off.
I'd stick her in the Reckless box myself.
With AWS the demographics of the PLP have changed considerably, and the orientation of the party towards women is strong whoever is head. Whatever else Ed Milliband and Corbyn have in common it is not being alpha male macho men crushing the sisters!
Labour is favoured by women voters and consistently seen as more female friendly by polls. There is also the fact that Labour has had a long serving female Deputy Leader, who has twice been acting Leader and often led PMQs, as did Margaret Beckett. The Tories have had a female leader, but one notoriously not supporting other women, and May is not one to appeal to other women either (indeed I cannot see her appeal to anyone!) In this issue substance should outweigh style.
That said the males in the field are singularly unimpressive, so it is worth considering the options. I think Nandy is a fairly flat performer in front of the camera or crowd, and she does not seem to have pushed her brief very well. Eagle has done well (surprisingly so) when leading PMQs and has grown on me over the years. A bit too tainted by the old regime though. Alexander has managed the Health brief well, on the Junior Doctors dispute in particular getting the Tories on the rack. She is worth a punt as I think the next leader will be from the 2010 or even 2015 intake. Labour definitely needs fresh blood to move on from the past.
Of the longshots: Stella Creasy did reasonably well in the Deputy race, and was pushed aside a bit by Kendall and Cooper getting their applications in first for leader. I wouldn't rule out a return of HH either. She has a lot of support in the PLP, has been effective as interim Leader twice, and is the sort of unity candidate that could lead an anti-Corbyn coup.
It was time to 'give the other lot a go' - I suspect a 1997 Labour government would have been given 'the benefit of the doubt' after their first term - and as we're seeing daily, the Tories capacity for vicious infighting is unequaled....
Vote Leave have persisted with their mendacious £350 million a week and are now suggesting it could all go on the NHS.
To campaign under that is to campaign under a false prospectus.....
I thought that whole segment re his economic predictions predicated on 3m more immigrants, is a killer.
And his squirming over the Cameron clips/£4300 misleading figure. Neil is merciless and very good at this. Thought he got the balance about right - not too aggressive.
It's Farage up next on Friday - then IDS next Friday.
The UK Statistics Authority – which polices the use of stats by politicians and civil servants – has lost patience with the Vote Leave campaign and its most prominent economic claim: that membership of the European Union costs Britain £350 million a week.
On 21 April the UK Statistics Authority, which is chaired by Sir Andrew Dilnot, criticised the use of this figure as inaccurate.......
But the Leave campaign and its main figureheads including Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage have ignored this ruling and continued to publicise the £350 million figure relentlessly in Leave posters, websites and events. It's even emblazoned across the campaign’s official “battle bus”.
A further intervention from the UK Statistics Authority today signals it has lost patience with Leave’s tactics and though it has no legal power to prevent the campaign from making the claim it wishes to make clear to the voting public that the Leave figure is not to be trusted.
“The UK Statistics Authority is disappointed to note that there continue to be suggestions that the UK contributes £350 million to the EU each week, and that this full amount could be spent elsewhere,” it said in a statement.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/eu-referendum-statistics-regulator-loses-patience-with-leave-campaign-over-350m-a-week-eu-cost-a7051756.html
2 factors seem to have caused her change of mind:
1) The increasingly xenophobic Kipper-lite Leave campaign.
2) A genuine support for the NHS, I think she has been appalled by Hunt's activities as Minister, and would want the Health role in order to do a better job, rather than for her own ambitions
Are they worried that NI isn't a slam dunk?
Still think Trump might do it,
Prof Ian Begg of the LSE notes, the rebate is deducted before any payment is made, so it is incorrect to say Britain “sends the EU £350m a week” – the Treasury actually remits just over £100m a week less.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check/2016/may/23/does-the-eu-really-cost-the-uk-350m-a-week
And that ignores funds that come back to the UK:
Deduct both the rebate (£4.9bn), which is never actually paid, and the money that is paid but sent back from the gross £17.8bn annual “membership fee” (£5.8bn), and you arrive at a net figure of £7.1bn. This equates to £136m a week, less than 40% of the amount splashed on the Vote Leave battlebus.
LEAVE Liars.....
https://twitter.com/sarahwollaston/status/736577238485901313
https://twitter.com/sarahwollaston/status/734096587870371840
First, there must be a vacancy. If Corbyn were going to jump over, one imagines he would've done so already. The electorate hasn't changed much since his landslide victory, so if he did fall under a bus, surely McDonnell's in pole position?
I'm significantly unimpressed with Wollaston. Let's accept the £350m is wrong for the sake of argument. The £4,300 per household figure was denounced by the Treasury Select Committee. But that's acceptable?
Furthermore, this is a debate about our membership of the EU. Is she really saying she recommends we leave if one campaign uses a net figure, but because they used the gross we should stay in?
It's some good PR for Remain, but her position appears (bit sleepy and just skimmed the BBC piece on her defection) to be indefensible. It may even turn out to be reckless.
Also discrimination against catholics in jobs etc is still rife and tensions are rising. McGuinness and co are ok though on their large state salaries and other baubles of office doing the British governments bidding in this referendum.
@RaheemKassam (Breitbart London) Not significant at all. Was a long standing Remain plant. Those close to her (and who have good sources) knew it.
£350m is our gross contribution to the EU. It has been clear that there is a rebate, and then the EU spends a chunk of it on our behalf in the UK, which we do not decide upon, and Vote Leave would allocate £100m per week to the NHS from the net contribution.
It has far more factual basis than Osborne's cooked up scare numbers.
Wollaston has been vocally critical of this for weeks. It's strange (and interesting) that she would suddenly use this as her excuse to change sides.
Having said that one does get the impression in this piece that he is scrabbling around trying to find someone even vaguely credible as a potential leader. Given that the bar is currently fixed at Corbyn this is indeed a concern.
Yvette Cooper ran one of the worst campaigns ever the last time until it was way too late and she finally started to speak out. She has remained effective in the Commons from the back benchers and intellectually is a class above any of the candidates Henry mentions but he is almost certainly right to ignore her on the basis that the membership who selected Corbyn are unlikely to select someone who has refused to serve under him.
The leadership of Labour looks weaker than I can remember in my entire adult life and there are almost no big beasts left to take over when Corbyn falls. In those circumstances, like a bad horserace, you can work on the fact that someone has to win but making a compelling case for any of the current candidates is hard. Henry is right that Labour need new blood and lots of it.
During that time, the polling and mood music has worsened for Remain. Perhaps a large carrot was dangled before her.
https://twitter.com/sarahwollaston/status/717820127736176640
Not true on two counts.
The first is that the post is redundant. 'Leader of the Free World' mattered when there was an 'Unfree World' and when there were clear alliances between them. The US unquestionably led NATO and provided political, social and cultural leadership more broadly. Does it now? Certainly, the USA's soft power remains huge but because that's so diverse, there's no single individual heading it. Politically, NATO is far less relevant and the White House's symbollic role as the Head of the West no longer applies. Was George W Bush your leader? Not mine either. Leadership is by consent.
Secondly, even if it the role did exist, it wouldn't (and didn't) necessarily go ex officio to the US president. Although the POTUS wields more power than any other state in NATO (indeed, more than the rest combined), other political and personality factors can affect that. There's a good argument that at times in the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher was a more potent symbol of the West's power and resolve than her US counterpart.
Heaven has a place for a sinner that repents :-)
@Tim Montgomerie: Shallow was the word I was thinking of but yes superficial will do cc @sarahwollaston
No, so get over yourself.
For the Tories.. once Dave has gone, it'll have to be Hammond, or the Tories will be equally fecked.. What price the Lib Dems to come thro' the middle...
Only 15 days (is it) of this interminable referendum, that isn'r even binding.. its turning into a farce.. Is anyone but the diehards listening to the continual stream of lies.
ruinrun the department the way he did Education under Gove...More seriously my guess is she's switched because if they will lie about that, she's wondering what else they might be lying about. For example, their policies on health if they ever got into government.
Leave are making the exact mistake the SNP made last year of running on concrete and less than credible policies when all that really matters are principles. The aptly named BSE campaign meanwhile is doing a Darling and campaigning on fear and loathing. Talleyrand would be nodding and saying some things never change.
At times you might almost envy the Americans even when they're left with Trump versus the Blackberry user.
Mr. Root, I think May could get the gig.
Not so chirpy this morning, are we?
I have no party any more, all of them are hopeless.. God knows how the Country will be governed after this.
It is also true that much of the money we get back from the EU is tied to specific spending programs, often with additional financial commitments on the part of the government as well, so in respect of that money we would have greater freedom to spend it in ways the government of this country thought more appropriate. But this does not apply to the rebate. The rebate money is ours to spend how we like. It can even be spent on pro EU propaganda if that is how the government of the day choses to waste it.
It has been a strategic error by Leave to make this claim and it has obscured the £280m a week that we do indeed send to Europe. Why this makes someone change sides at this point is beyond my comprehension but it was a stupid claim to base their campaign on.
Edited because I have screwed up cutting previous contributions.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Haunting-Lake-Manor-Hotel-ebook/dp/B01DQEDAEE
On the other hand, she is no ones puppet, unlike some other MPs who just parrot party lines, so I'm inclined to think her genuine even if I don't get her reasoning. INdeed. And a change of mind mid campaign is interesting. Significance will be debated, but unusual for people let alone MPs to say they've changed their minds.
@NickThornsby: Brexiters simultaneously claiming to value Parliamentary sovereignty whilst threatening to judicially review a Parliamentary decision.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbUWw8PJf1M
http://www.drsarah.org.uk/sarah's-blog/
But that's been a large part of the problem all through - figures flung around that make no sense whatsoever because nobody actually knows what our finances will do if we stay in, never mind if we leave. So any figure will be plucked from more or less thin air and used or not used as some tenth rate nonentity making the argument (Gove, Osborne) sees fit.
And then politicians wonder why people don't trust them.
Also, Lake Manor's a bestseller in three categories. Huzzah!
The Tories do have other options and May is one, but I agree that Hammond is currently the best bet as a unity candidate. He'd also contrast well against Corbyn. Dull is good when faced with risky.
Very little chance that the Lib Dems could come through the middle. They're still deep in shock and being ignored by the media. There's more chance that UKIP could make the leap to the big time, though not with Farage as leader.
There probably are people including MPs on both sides who feel the same, but I doubt many will admit it like she has.
As I say, it's an anthology in which I have a short story, but it's still a positive, especially for the publisher (it's the first book Woodbridge Press has ever released).
There are reasonable lies, the ones we are used to, and to some extent, put up with. The gross figure for the EU contributions rather than the nett figure. It's the truth but not all the truth. And there's Sadiq's pledge to freeze tube fares ... "Ah, but that doesn't apply to Oyster cards etc."
Then there are big whoppers, where the response of the guilty politicians is to change the subject and/or to talk over the interviewer. George, we're looking at you, but he's not the only one.
They get away with both sorts because the voters allow it. Supporters will deny it's a lie first. Then they will begin the what-aboutery, "The other lot are far worse." When this fails, there's always the ad-hominem. "The interviewer hates us and is a secret supporter of the other side."
The Establishment will win because they have all the big guns, and it looks more natural for them to lie big-time. They have more practice, and they are the default choice when you can trust no one.
Jezza is unhinged, but he starts to look good when this is going on. Silence really is golden. Unfortunately for the Labour party, he has to resurface sometime.
So McDonnell will be the next leader of the Labour party, and Remain will win narrowly.
And the down-the-pub voter will feel similarly attacked. Tory leavers hear themselves insulted as Little Englanders.
I'd never resort to gutter style campaigning unless I were panicking/and all I'd left was abuse. I thought Cameron was just burning all his own bridges, now he's razing his own vote to the ground.
My instant reaction is I Don't Want To Live In George Osborne's Britain. With 3m extra immigrants cranking up social issues, house prices, NHS waiting times, overcrowded schools et al.