I'm disappointed Labour didn't drop below 200 seats, as per the exit poll.
I really wanted to taste that.
That's a rather unpleasant remark. I don't think grinding down your 'enemy' is what this country needs right now. So go and vent your hatred on something else please.
And, besides, it meant I won plenty of money
(Looked very dicey with the exit poll so I was rather relieved that Labour crept over the 200)
I agree with you. At the same time I remember when the Tories were reduced to 165 seats in 1997 and 166 in 2001 a lot of Labour supporters were crowing about it for a long time.
True!
I'm out of the country but what has been the response to Nicola Sturgeon's reaction when Jo Swinson lost her seat?
They keep showing it on tv - definitely the election moment - I don t think politicos give a shit, can t speak for the proles
So no one thought it was inappropriate? I have to confess (look away now Scots) that I've never quite got the visceral hatred between SNP and SLD?
She was made a bit uncomfortable about it and had to apologise/claim it was celebrating her 'friend' being elected, not Swinson being defeated.
Thanks.
It was evidently celebration at Jo's decapitation.
I guess sometime that's going to come back and bite her but who knows.
Right off for some breakfast. The sun is up.
One day the SNP won't be dominant in Scotland. It just might take independence for it to happen!
Wasn't she planning on quitting/retiring as leader early next year, or have I just totally made that up?
You've made it up.
Thanks - I thought it sounded weird. Not sure why I thought that.
I would go with 600 + 50 (partly because we already have 600 seat boundaries set up, and also because it wouldn't change the mathematics of majorities meaningfully). I'd also use the FPTP elections as the source of the top up, to avoid the situation in Scotland where the SNP encourages its voters to go Green for the list vote. I'd also simply make the 50 proportional, so it wouldn't seek to compensate for some parties getting too few FPTP seats, it would simply be a case of one seat per 2% share gained. (Or more likely 1.91%)
I think the AM system manages to combine two of the worst aspects of FPTP and PR: safe seats and party lists.
STV is a much better basis to tinker from. You can vote for the platform you want, but don't get railroaded into a particular candidate, and party patronage counts for a lot less.
I'm disappointed Labour didn't drop below 200 seats, as per the exit poll.
I really wanted to taste that.
That's a rather unpleasant remark. I don't think grinding down your 'enemy' is what this country needs right now. So go and vent your hatred on something else please.
And, besides, it meant I won plenty of money
(Looked very dicey with the exit poll so I was rather relieved that Labour crept over the 200)
I agree with you. At the same time I remember when the Tories were reduced to 165 seats in 1997 and 166 in 2001 a lot of Labour supporters were crowing about it for a long time.
True!
I'm out of the country but what has been the response to Nicola Sturgeon's reaction when Jo Swinson lost her seat?
They keep showing it on tv - definitely the election moment - I don t think politicos give a shit, can t speak for the proles
So no one thought it was inappropriate? I have to confess (look away now Scots) that I've never quite got the visceral hatred between SNP and SLD?
The SLD have been wining like fuck about it no one else gives a shit.
I've got an SNP supporting friend who has been very vocally defending Sturgeon on Twitter. He wouldn't be doing that if it wasn't coming under fire. It is at the very least going to be endlessly repeated as an annoying Sturgeon clip on everything. 'More Scottish kids leave school without being able to read than ever before' [Nicola guffaws and punches the air] etc.
The chimera of Brexit will lead to a lot of disappointment.
The centre ground must be ready no later than 12 months from now to present an alternative agenda.
Johnson’s going to occupy it
Get Brexit done (TM) then park his tanks firmly on the centre right/soft left.
Moderately high spending socially liberal.
I hope that proves correct. But how will the neoliberals in the Tory party - Rees-Mogg and the like - react?
Toe the line like the Labour centrists did with Corbyn, I'd imagine.
I guess Johnson's comprehensive victory means the Tory right have no choice. If Boris (sensibly imo) decides to take them down the higher spending / socially liberal path the ERG etc will just have to swallow it - for a while at least.
The chimera of Brexit will lead to a lot of disappointment.
The centre ground must be ready no later than 12 months from now to present an alternative agenda.
Johnson’s going to occupy it
Get Brexit done (TM) then park his tanks firmly on the centre right/soft left.
Moderately high spending socially liberal.
And if/when the next recession comes under his watch, even deeper austerity?
The astonishing thing is that even three years ago this kind of spending would have been ripped to shreds by the current Tory Party.
Whilst correct, to be fair part of the problem with our political debate around economic policy these days is there is little acknowledgement that tax and spend (and borrowing) ratios should adjust over time. It should be perfectly possible to argue consistently that austerity was the right policy for 2010 and the wrong policy now. Just as Keynesianism advocated increasing spending/borrowing during a recession, and paying back during the recovery.
Arguing that taxes should always be lower, or spending should always be higher, is the default position of our political parties and, backed up by ludicrous pledges every Chancellor for 20 years has been constrained (politically) in using the full economic levers at their disposal to run the economy well.
I'm disappointed Labour didn't drop below 200 seats, as per the exit poll.
I really wanted to taste that.
That's a rather unpleasant remark. I don't think grinding down your 'enemy' is what this country needs right now. So go and vent your hatred on something else please.
And, besides, it meant I won plenty of money
(Looked very dicey with the exit poll so I was rather relieved that Labour crept over the 200)
I agree with you. At the same time I remember when the Tories were reduced to 165 seats in 1997 and 166 in 2001 a lot of Labour supporters were crowing about it for a long time.
True!
I'm out of the country but what has been the response to Nicola Sturgeon's reaction when Jo Swinson lost her seat?
They keep showing it on tv - definitely the election moment - I don t think politicos give a shit, can t speak for the proles
So no one thought it was inappropriate? I have to confess (look away now Scots) that I've never quite got the visceral hatred between SNP and SLD?
She was made a bit uncomfortable about it and had to apologise/claim it was celebrating her 'friend' being elected, not Swinson being defeated.
I'm not sure which measurement is being used to assert Sturgeon was 'made a bit uncomfortable',
Nicola Sturgeon apologises for wildly celebrating SNP win over Jo Swinson
The chimera of Brexit will lead to a lot of disappointment.
The centre ground must be ready no later than 12 months from now to present an alternative agenda.
Johnson’s going to occupy it
Get Brexit done (TM) then park his tanks firmly on the centre right/soft left.
Moderately high spending socially liberal.
And if/when the next recession comes under his watch, even deeper austerity?
The astonishing thing is that even three years ago this kind of spending would have been ripped to shreds by the current Tory Party.
Whilst correct, to be fair part of the problem with our political debate around economic policy these days is there is little acknowledgement that tax and spend (and borrowing) ratios should adjust over time. It should be perfectly possible to argue consistently that austerity was the right policy for 2010 and the wrong policy now. Just as Keynesianism advocated increasing spending/borrowing during a recession, and paying back during the recovery.
Arguing that taxes should always be lower, or spending should always be higher, is the default position of our political parties and, backed up by ludicrous pledges every Chancellor for 20 years has been constrained (politically) in using the full economic levers at their disposal to run the economy well.
My underlying point is that if/when the next recession hits, the Tories are going to have even more problems than the last Labour Government. It might be Black Wednesday all over again
I'm all for tidal barrages too. But it's worth investing so they don't sod off.
Why?
Because we belong to the most successful political union in modern history. I've always loved Scotland and coming to live here has been wonderful - it's given me so much. It troubles me that people feel so alienated from Britain, and I hope that one day all of us will feel ownership and pride in every square mile. And even if you're firmly in the Little England camp, if we have no successful formula for uniting the four nations of the UK, do we also wave goodbye to Cornwall? Yorkshire? Where does it stop?
I don't wish the Union gone per se, but one has to confront reality. Nearly half the population in Scotland and Northern Ireland has reached a settled opinion that they want to go, and a substantial fraction of them regard the English as colonisers and loathe us for it. That's no basis on which to construct a lasting political settlement.
A good Government can, over time, deal with the divides that afflict England and has a reasonable chance of keeping England and Wales together, but the rest of the country is gone. It's just a matter of time.
I'm disappointed Labour didn't drop below 200 seats, as per the exit poll.
I really wanted to taste that.
That's a rather unpleasant remark. I don't think grinding down your 'enemy' is what this country needs right now. So go and vent your hatred on something else please.
And, besides, it meant I won plenty of money
(Looked very dicey with the exit poll so I was rather relieved that Labour crept over the 200)
I agree with you. At the same time I remember when the Tories were reduced to 165 seats in 1997 and 166 in 2001 a lot of Labour supporters were crowing about it for a long time.
True!
I'm out of the country but what has been the response to Nicola Sturgeon's reaction when Jo Swinson lost her seat?
They keep showing it on tv - definitely the election moment - I don t think politicos give a shit, can t speak for the proles
So no one thought it was inappropriate? I have to confess (look away now Scots) that I've never quite got the visceral hatred between SNP and SLD?
She was made a bit uncomfortable about it and had to apologise/claim it was celebrating her 'friend' being elected, not Swinson being defeated.
I'm not sure which measurement is being used to assert Sturgeon was 'made a bit uncomfortable', and if you think a young candidate with an impressive back story knocking out the leader of an opposition party isn't worth celebrating, perhaps you've never been part of a GE campaign (even at the low level that I've been).
I have more sources should you not like these ones
Maybe you should read more than the headline. The only person 'deriding' anything was one engineer saying it was 'crazy' to cost something that hadn't yet been designed, and said 'costs always go up'. No shit Sherlock. Nothing whatever about unexploded ordinance. As I said, PR fluff.
It would literally be the longest bridge in the world, the costs would spiral and I suspect it would be deemed unfeasible. But thanks for your condescending tone.
"We've had enough of experts" indeed
Were're currently struggling with high speed rail, something for which the technology exists and examples can be seen in across the world. But no Boris will fix everything.
You cannot slogan your way out of building the most technologically challenging bridge in the world, in a fucking shipping lane over a giant munitions dump. Run all the Facebook campaigns you want. Plaster it over the Sun and the Mail, it changes nothing. Look at the expected cost over runs of Crossrail, HS2 and the latest super-subsidised nuclear power stations and then honestly say you think Boris, the man of 'the airport on the Thames' can feasibly build a bridge across the Irish sea.
We all know every time Johnson needed a little publicity he'd whip out one of these spaff covered monstrosities and then ignore the backlash like the mother of his last illegitimate child. For the cost of the fucking thing you could run a free ferry service for eternity.
I don't think the plan is for Boris himself to actually build it. Thanks for your contribution though, there's a dire shortage of verbose, crudely partisan, foul mouthed wankers around here - you're just what we've been looking for.
Someone else has linked the wiki page for a far longer bridge....
Wouldn't surprise me if the Boris Bridge is far more technically challenging mind you, and I Am Not An Expert but could well be "largest bridge of type X" for quite a painfully wide range of values of "X".
I doubt that bridge will be seriously considered, let alone built. Why invest money in places that offer you few or no votes, and which might sod off in a few years' time?
The cash would, from the point of view of political expediency, best be lavished on England and Wales. Now, a tidal power barrage across the Bristol Channel, with a road running along the top to join Glamorgan and Somerset - that would be a project... 😁
I'm all for tidal barrages too. But it's worth investing so they don't sod off.
I reckon the bridge would economically be a white elephant even if physically feasible. Might even be too late for any purported union-saving. I'm not ramping it up as a great idea. Just saying, if you try entering into the mind of Boris, this does feel like the kind of big boy's toy symbolic legacy thing that might just trigger some excitation in his neural pathways. He's talked a lot about the North of England, the Bridge lets him say he's "One Nation" in the Union-wide sense too. Wouldn't be surprised if the plans come out again. Would be surprised if it all gets rubber-stamped and any work starts on it.
It will never get built, he just likes the idea of a "Boris bridge" and talking it up bolsters the current narrative that he gives a shit about the North of England. In the end there will be some expensive feasibility studies and a load of money spaffed up the wall like with the stupid Garden Bridge in London (after he cancelled plans for a genuinely useful crossing in East London, where we continue to suffer from a dearth of crossings and suffer gridlock every time there's an accident in the Blackwall Tunnel).
About that bridge over the Irish sea, it might be good politics and generate lots of jobs to spite both Irish and Scotish nationalists.
An extra bit is power generation, you could use the bridge to generate power from the strong sea current and the wind, that would generate some extra money flow to pay for the construction costs.
I'm all for tidal barrages too. But it's worth investing so they don't sod off.
Why?
Because we belong to the most successful political union in modern history. I've always loved Scotland and coming to live here has been wonderful - it's given me so much. It troubles me that people feel so alienated from Britain, and I hope that one day all of us will feel ownership and pride in every square mile. And even if you're firmly in the Little England camp, if we have no successful formula for uniting the four nations of the UK, do we also wave goodbye to Cornwall? Yorkshire? Where does it stop?
I don't wish the Union gone per se, but one has to confront reality. Nearly half the population in Scotland and Northern Ireland has reached a settled opinion that they want to go, and a substantial fraction of them regard the English as colonisers and loathe us for it. That's no basis on which to construct a lasting political settlement.
A good Government can, over time, deal with the divides that afflict England and has a reasonable chance of keeping England and Wales together, but the rest of the country is gone. It's just a matter of time.
Doesn't this undermine your previous comment? It's only worth spending money on the idea if doing so might actually change minds and reverse the 'inevitability' of their departure?
I'm all for tidal barrages too. But it's worth investing so they don't sod off.
Why?
Because we belong to the most successful political union in modern history. I've always loved Scotland and coming to live here has been wonderful - it's given me so much. It troubles me that people feel so alienated from Britain, and I hope that one day all of us will feel ownership and pride in every square mile. And even if you're firmly in the Little England camp, if we have no successful formula for uniting the four nations of the UK, do we also wave goodbye to Cornwall? Yorkshire? Where does it stop?
I don't wish the Union gone per se, but one has to confront reality. Nearly half the population in Scotland and Northern Ireland has reached a settled opinion that they want to go, and a substantial fraction of them regard the English as colonisers and loathe us for it. That's no basis on which to construct a lasting political settlement.
A good Government can, over time, deal with the divides that afflict England and has a reasonable chance of keeping England and Wales together, but the rest of the country is gone. It's just a matter of time.
God forbid the SNP ever get back to 2015 polling levels, then we really might see some defeatism set in...
I'm disappointed Labour didn't drop below 200 seats, as per the exit poll.
I really wanted to taste that.
That's a rather unpleasant remark. I don't think grinding down your 'enemy' is what this country needs right now. So go and vent your hatred on something else please.
And, besides, it meant I won plenty of money
(Looked very dicey with the exit poll so I was rather relieved that Labour crept over the 200)
I agree with you. At the same time I remember when the Tories were reduced to 165 seats in 1997 and 166 in 2001 a lot of Labour supporters were crowing about it for a long time.
True!
I'm out of the country but what has been the response to Nicola Sturgeon's reaction when Jo Swinson lost her seat?
They keep showing it on tv - definitely the election moment - I don t think politicos give a shit, can t speak for the proles
So no one thought it was inappropriate? I have to confess (look away now Scots) that I've never quite got the visceral hatred between SNP and SLD?
The SLD have been wining like fuck about it no one else gives a shit.
I've got an SNP supporting friend who has been very vocally defending Sturgeon on Twitter. He wouldn't be doing that if it wasn't coming under fire. It is at the very least going to be endlessly repeated as an annoying Sturgeon clip on everything. 'More Scottish kids leave school without being able to read than ever before' [Nicola guffaws and punches the air] etc.
Yeah, the 'defending someone against bullshit means that someone did bad' is where we're at. I'm applying that to the relentless BJ apologias on here from now on.
I'm all for tidal barrages too. But it's worth investing so they don't sod off.
Why?
Because we belong to the most successful political union in modern history. I've always loved Scotland and coming to live here has been wonderful - it's given me so much. It troubles me that people feel so alienated from Britain, and I hope that one day all of us will feel ownership and pride in every square mile. And even if you're firmly in the Little England camp, if we have no successful formula for uniting the four nations of the UK, do we also wave goodbye to Cornwall? Yorkshire? Where does it stop?
I don't wish the Union gone per se, but one has to confront reality. Nearly half the population in Scotland and Northern Ireland has reached a settled opinion that they want to go, and a substantial fraction of them regard the English as colonisers and loathe us for it. That's no basis on which to construct a lasting political settlement.
A good Government can, over time, deal with the divides that afflict England and has a reasonable chance of keeping England and Wales together, but the rest of the country is gone. It's just a matter of time.
Briskin Says -
Federal States of Britain is the simple and obvious solution.
That's not going to happen though because Scots like their high public service expending at the expense of fellow Brits. It's a little bit canny but it will be South Sudan Mk 2 if they're stupid enough to vote en masse (well over 50pc) to be "an independent country"
I have more sources should you not like these ones
Maybe you should read more than the headline. The only person 'deriding' anything was one engineer saying it was 'crazy' to cost something that hadn't yet been designed, and said 'costs always go up'. No shit Sherlock. Nothing whatever about unexploded ordinance. As I said, PR fluff.
It would literally be the longest bridge in the world, the costs would spiral and I suspect it would be deemed unfeasible. But thanks for your condescending tone.
"We've had enough of experts" indeed
On the contrary, I am all for engineering experts when it comes to engineering projects, and since this project has already been examined and costed more than once over a period of decades, it is clear that engineering experts more experienced than you, me, or @Ishmael_Z, do not consider the WW2 bombs to be a sufficient blocker to make this a no go.
Any similar expert costing/examination I have ever seen would have a brief section saying BOMBS: They say there's a shitload of bombs down there. I am only an engineer advising on the engineering aspects of the proposal, and I therefore haven't a Scooby about the implications of this. Best ask an expert.
Also, it was only in 2005 the MOD came clean as to the extent of the problem so decades old studies are irrelevant anyway.
I'm disappointed Labour didn't drop below 200 seats, as per the exit poll.
I really wanted to taste that.
That's a rather unpleasant remark. I don't think grinding down your 'enemy' is what this country needs right now. So go and vent your hatred on something else please.
And, besides, it meant I won plenty of money
(Looked very dicey with the exit poll so I was rather relieved that Labour crept over the 200)
I agree with you. At the same time I remember when the Tories were reduced to 165 seats in 1997 and 166 in 2001 a lot of Labour supporters were crowing about it for a long time.
True!
I'm out of the country but what has been the response to Nicola Sturgeon's reaction when Jo Swinson lost her seat?
They keep showing it on tv - definitely the election moment - I don t think politicos give a shit, can t speak for the proles
So no one thought it was inappropriate? I have to confess (look away now Scots) that I've never quite got the visceral hatred between SNP and SLD?
She was made a bit uncomfortable about it and had to apologise/claim it was celebrating her 'friend' being elected, not Swinson being defeated.
I'm not sure which measurement is being used to assert Sturgeon was 'made a bit uncomfortable', and if you think a young candidate with an impressive back story knocking out the leader of an opposition party isn't worth celebrating, perhaps you've never been part of a GE campaign (even at the low level that I've been).
My fear with Johnson is that he makes a lot of big pledges on paper that sound good and generate good headlines but they take years to get built (if at all), whilst people continue to suffer with foodbanks and rough sleeping and homelessness get worse.
I really hope I am wrong - but I must say Johnson's history does not inspire confidence.
I'm all for tidal barrages too. But it's worth investing so they don't sod off.
Why?
Because we belong to the most successful political union in modern history. I've always loved Scotland and coming to live here has been wonderful - it's given me so much. It troubles me that people feel so alienated from Britain, and I hope that one day all of us will feel ownership and pride in every square mile. And even if you're firmly in the Little England camp, if we have no successful formula for uniting the four nations of the UK, do we also wave goodbye to Cornwall? Yorkshire? Where does it stop?
I don't wish the Union gone per se, but one has to confront reality. Nearly half the population in Scotland and Northern Ireland has reached a settled opinion that they want to go, and a substantial fraction of them regard the English as colonisers and loathe us for it. That's no basis on which to construct a lasting political settlement.
A good Government can, over time, deal with the divides that afflict England and has a reasonable chance of keeping England and Wales together, but the rest of the country is gone. It's just a matter of time.
Doesn't this undermine your previous comment? It's only worth spending money on the idea if doing so might actually change minds and reverse the 'inevitability' of their departure?
I think something's gone a bit to pot with the nested comments on this one! The point I've been trying to make is that there is indeed no point in trying to bribe the restive components of the Union into staying put. After all, that was the whole point of the Barnett formula and its predecessors - and they didn't work.
I'm disappointed Labour didn't drop below 200 seats, as per the exit poll.
I really wanted to taste that.
That's a rather unpleasant remark. I don't think grinding down your 'enemy' is what this country needs right now. So go and vent your hatred on something else please.
And, besides, it meant I won plenty of money
(Looked very dicey with the exit poll so I was rather relieved that Labour crept over the 200)
I agree with you. At the same time I remember when the Tories were reduced to 165 seats in 1997 and 166 in 2001 a lot of Labour supporters were crowing about it for a long time.
True!
I'm out of the country but what has been the response to Nicola Sturgeon's reaction when Jo Swinson lost her seat?
They keep showing it on tv - definitely the election moment - I don t think politicos give a shit, can t speak for the proles
So no one thought it was inappropriate? I have to confess (look away now Scots) that I've never quite got the visceral hatred between SNP and SLD?
The SLD have been wining like fuck about it no one else gives a shit.
I've got an SNP supporting friend who has been very vocally defending Sturgeon on Twitter. He wouldn't be doing that if it wasn't coming under fire. It is at the very least going to be endlessly repeated as an annoying Sturgeon clip on everything. 'More Scottish kids leave school without being able to read than ever before' [Nicola guffaws and punches the air] etc.
Yeah, the 'defending someone against bullshit means that someone did bad' is where we're at. I'm applying that to the relentless BJ apologias on here from now on.
I don't think I've said she did bad. I was contradicting the statement that it's only Lib Dems who give a shit.
CHB - didn't they mock that people like us would be gone from this site by now?
They did. But I think you and I have had similar realisations in the last few days.
I genuinely think I'm a pragmatist, what underlines me is getting the Conservative Party out - and I think therefore you can see where I come from with my views.
I genuinely thought Labour could do that with Corbyn and his policies - but I was wrong. Some of them aren't bad in isolation - but it's caught up in the anti-business, anti-media, anti-aspiration, really anti-Britain sphere that makes him so toxic. I am embarrassed I could not see it.
I think the lack of focus was a big issue too. The "no shark unjumped" manifesto had lots of things that pleased different groups, but all of them felt that the cumulative effect was to cast doubt on whether we could really do any of it. We kept changing the subject, which was helpful in driving the news agenda (and I think that was a contributing factor in winning back Lab-Lib voters) but unhelpful in making any group feel confident that we were really interested in them.
The Tory focus on Get Brexit Done and Stop Corbyn was by contrast easily memorable, a bit like Blair's 6 points (and even they weren't especially memorable, but they highlighted that we were about education+health+crime+sensible economics).
I'm wary about attributing too much to the leader issue (although Corbyn had obvious weaknesses whch certainly got cited on the doorstep0, because the Labour leader is always a press target - too weak (Blair, initially), too dictatorial (Brown, later Blair), too intellectual (Miliband), too thick (Prescott), too windbaggy (Kinnock), etc. Whoever we choose will have weaknesses on which people hesitant to vote Labour will hang their reluctance.
It's a mistake to expect defeated Labour members and activists to come to terms with it immediately.
They need to work through the seven stages of grief first, which could take weeks or months. If they don't they will pick a leader that accords with whatever stage of grief they've reached at the time.
It took us two cycles before Dave became leader, it could be two cycles before Labour get to that point.
About that bridge over the Irish sea, it might be good politics and generate lots of jobs to spite both Irish and Scotish nationalists.
An extra bit is power generation, you could use the bridge to generate power from the strong sea current and the wind, that would generate some extra money flow to pay for the construction costs.
I can't see a bridge ever being constructed, can you?
I don't think the plan is for Boris himself to actually build it. Thanks for your contribution though, there's a dire shortage of verbose, crudely partisan, foul mouthed wankers around here - you're just what we've been looking for.
I simply don't understand how you can think it is a great idea? And I have provided my reasons for that. Why not refute them?
I'm not going to hide my views and having seen some of the posts on this thread and many others I am no more partisan than the majority of posters and far less than some.
CHB - didn't they mock that people like us would be gone from this site by now?
They did. But I think you and I have had similar realisations in the last few days.
I genuinely think I'm a pragmatist, what underlines me is getting the Conservative Party out - and I think therefore you can see where I come from with my views.
I genuinely thought Labour could do that with Corbyn and his policies - but I was wrong. Some of them aren't bad in isolation - but it's caught up in the anti-business, anti-media, anti-aspiration, really anti-Britain sphere that makes him so toxic. I am embarrassed I could not see it.
I think the lack of focus was a big issue too. The "no shark unjumped" manifesto had lots of things that pleased different groups, but all of them felt that the cumulative effect was to cast doubt on whether we could really do any of it. We kept changing the subject, which was helpful in driving the news agenda (and I think that was a contributing factor in winning back Lab-Lib voters) but unhelpful in making any group feel confident that we were really interested in them.
The Tory focus on Get Brexit Done and Stop Corbyn was by contrast easily memorable, a bit like Blair's 6 points (and even they weren't especially memorable, but they highlighted that we were about education+health+crime+sensible economics).
I'm wary about attributing too much to the leader issue (although Corbyn had obvious weaknesses whch certainly got cited on the doorstep0, because the Labour leader is always a press target - too weak (Blair, initially), too dictatorial (Brown, later Blair), too intellectual (Miliband), too thick (Prescott), too windbaggy (Kinnock), etc. Whoever we choose will have weaknesses on which people hesitant to vote Labour will hang their reluctance.
Give it a rest. Just watch the Vox Pops from across the North, time and time again all these people stating they absolutely detest Corbyn. People didn't detest Miliband, they thought he was a bit rubbish, but they didn't detest him.
CHB - didn't they mock that people like us would be gone from this site by now?
They did. But I think you and I have had similar realisations in the last few days.
I genuinely think I'm a pragmatist, what underlines me is getting the Conservative Party out - and I think therefore you can see where I come from with my views.
I genuinely thought Labour could do that with Corbyn and his policies - but I was wrong. Some of them aren't bad in isolation - but it's caught up in the anti-business, anti-media, anti-aspiration, really anti-Britain sphere that makes him so toxic. I am embarrassed I could not see it.
I think the lack of focus was a big issue too. The "no shark unjumped" manifesto had lots of things that pleased different groups, but all of them felt that the cumulative effect was to cast doubt on whether we could really do any of it. We kept changing the subject, which was helpful in driving the news agenda (and I think that was a contributing factor in winning back Lab-Lib voters) but unhelpful in making any group feel confident that we were really interested in them.
The Tory focus on Get Brexit Done and Stop Corbyn was by contrast easily memorable, a bit like Blair's 6 points (and even they weren't especially memorable, but they highlighted that we were about education+health+crime+sensible economics).
I'm wary about attributing too much to the leader issue (although Corbyn had obvious weaknesses whch certainly got cited on the doorstep0, because the Labour leader is always a press target - too weak (Blair, initially), too dictatorial (Brown, later Blair), too intellectual (Miliband), too thick (Prescott), too windbaggy (Kinnock), etc. Whoever we choose will have weaknesses on which people hesitant to vote Labour will hang their reluctance.
Did you imagine a Prescott leadership, or was i spending time with aliens when it happened?
On your second question, building HS2 from the north is a non-starter. The capacity constraints are into London, so it would just be a white elephant: the trains couldn't decant anywhere.
Makes sense. Could be a long wait for them then.
Any idea of whether HS3 is only viable once HS2 is done and dusted?
The issue is more a decent trans-pennine link.
I'm not sure the 'high speed' bit matters too much at that length; it just needs a decent modern new main-line.
Federal States of Britain is the simple and obvious solution.
That's not going to happen though because Scots like their high public service expending at the expense of fellow Brits. It's a little bit canny but it will be South Sudan Mk 2 if they're stupid enough to vote en masse (well over 50pc) to be "an independent country"
Waahey, you've reached end stage 'we must now consider federalism cos I'm shiting it' stage. It comes to all yoons in the end.
About that bridge over the Irish sea, it might be good politics and generate lots of jobs to spite both Irish and Scotish nationalists.
An extra bit is power generation, you could use the bridge to generate power from the strong sea current and the wind, that would generate some extra money flow to pay for the construction costs.
I can't see a bridge ever being constructed, can you?
If it was easy, it wouldn't be a large infrastructure project would it?
At the very least, it doesn't involve purchasing everyone's back gardens, felling ancient woodland, causing massive transport delays, ruining picturesque villages etc.
CHB - didn't they mock that people like us would be gone from this site by now?
They did. But I think you and I have had similar realisations in the last few days.
I genuinely think I'm a pragmatist, what underlines me is getting the Conservative Party out - and I think therefore you can see where I come from with my views.
I genuinely thought Labour could do that with Corbyn and his policies - but I was wrong. Some of them aren't bad in isolation - but it's caught up in the anti-business, anti-media, anti-aspiration, really anti-Britain sphere that makes him so toxic. I am embarrassed I could not see it.
I think the lack of focus was a big issue too. The "no shark unjumped" manifesto had lots of things that pleased different groups, but all of them felt that the cumulative effect was to cast doubt on whether we could really do any of it. We kept changing the subject, which was helpful in driving the news agenda (and I think that was a contributing factor in winning back Lab-Lib voters) but unhelpful in making any group feel confident that we were really interested in them.
The Tory focus on Get Brexit Done and Stop Corbyn was by contrast easily memorable, a bit like Blair's 6 points (and even they weren't especially memorable, but they highlighted that we were about education+health+crime+sensible economics).
I'm wary about attributing too much to the leader issue (although Corbyn had obvious weaknesses whch certainly got cited on the doorstep0, because the Labour leader is always a press target - too weak (Blair, initially), too dictatorial (Brown, later Blair), too intellectual (Miliband), too thick (Prescott), too windbaggy (Kinnock), etc. Whoever we choose will have weaknesses on which people hesitant to vote Labour will hang their reluctance.
Yes Blair's pledge card, as well as being unseemly, were rather bland.
Federal States of Britain is the simple and obvious solution.
That's not going to happen though because Scots like their high public service expending at the expense of fellow Brits. It's a little bit canny but it will be South Sudan Mk 2 if they're stupid enough to vote en masse (well over 50pc) to be "an independent country"
Waahey, you've reached end stage 'we must now consider federalism cos I'm shiting it' stage. It comes to all yoons in the end.
No. I've always been a federalist. The system as it stands now is a complete mess - almost as bad as the EU's
I worry about us centrists. The LibDems played a good hand incredibly poorly from c. 6 months ago. We made so many mistakes.
Labour are about to go into a internecine war. I suspect, but can't be sure, that the centre ground will win.
However, I'm not at ALL sure that it's correct for the Blairite contingent to be blaming this all on Jeremy Corbyn. It could be argued that a significantly large reason for their defeat is that the party wasn't sufficiently Leave. By dithering around and embracing Remain they alienated the working class northern vote. And they're the ones who lost them the election.
You're a centrist?
Could have fooled me.
Don't you mean you just wish the centre of public opinion is where you're at?
At some point your bitterness will hopefully evaporate and you will turn your energy to rebuilding this country and helping to bring people together. It's going to be needed because Brexit is going to be a (very) tough project to deliver successfully. That's where your focus should now be.
Yes I am. I just have a few ideas which might appear 'radical' like the public ownership of railways. Something which the majority of us agree with.
There's plenty about the Corbyn agenda that was bonkers.
No bitterness at all; you're reflecting your own feelings onto me.
Your posts on here are far from centrist, and at the same time are highly emotional: your responses dependent upon whether people agree with you or not.
You'd do well to reflect on that.
Mansplaining
I had no idea of your gender, and it would make no difference with respect to how I engage with you on here.
I judge the content of your posts on their own merit.
Downing Street boycotts Radio 4's Today programme in a bust-up over election bias as a Number 10 source slams the BBC for 'speaking to pro-Remain Islington, not the real world of Wakefield and Workington'
Last night, a No 10 source called on the BBC to mount an internal investigation into its performance during the campaign, saying: 'The BBC speaks to a pro-Remain metropolitan bubble in Islington, not the real world represented by Wakefield and Workington. There has been a failure by senior management at the BBC, and we expect them to launch an internal review of their performance.'
CHB - didn't they mock that people like us would be gone from this site by now?
They did. But I think you and I have had similar realisations in the last few days.
I genuinely think I'm a pragmatist, what underlines me is getting the Conservative Party out - and I think therefore you can see where I come from with my views.
I genuinely thought Labour could do that with Corbyn and his policies - but I was wrong. Some of them aren't bad in isolation - but it's caught up in the anti-business, anti-media, anti-aspiration, really anti-Britain sphere that makes him so toxic. I am embarrassed I could not see it.
I think the lack of focus was a big issue too. The "no shark unjumped" manifesto had lots of things that pleased different groups, but all of them felt that the cumulative effect was to cast doubt on whether we could really do any of it. We kept changing the subject, which was helpful in driving the news agenda (and I think that was a contributing factor in winning back Lab-Lib voters) but unhelpful in making any group feel confident that we were really interested in them.
The Tory focus on Get Brexit Done and Stop Corbyn was by contrast easily memorable, a bit like Blair's 6 points (and even they weren't especially memorable, but they highlighted that we were about education+health+crime+sensible economics).
I'm wary about attributing too much to the leader issue (although Corbyn had obvious weaknesses whch certainly got cited on the doorstep0, because the Labour leader is always a press target - too weak (Blair, initially), too dictatorial (Brown, later Blair), too intellectual (Miliband), too thick (Prescott), too windbaggy (Kinnock), etc. Whoever we choose will have weaknesses on which people hesitant to vote Labour will hang their reluctance.
Yes Blair's pledge card, as well as being unseemly, were rather bland.
Also worth remembering that Labour in 1997 did feel that not putting something in the manifesto (or mentioning it in the campaign) restricted them from actually doing it. Brown just accidentally forgot to tell us about the Independence of the Bank of England that he de facto instigated on day 1!
I'm all for tidal barrages too. But it's worth investing so they don't sod off.
Why?
Because we belong to the most successful political union in modern history. I've always loved Scotland and coming to live here has been wonderful - it's given me so much. It troubles me that people feel so alienated from Britain, and I hope that one day all of us will feel ownership and pride in every square mile. And even if you're firmly in the Little England camp, if we have no successful formula for uniting the four nations of the UK, do we also wave goodbye to Cornwall? Yorkshire? Where does it stop?
I don't wish the Union gone per se, but one has to confront reality. Nearly half the population in Scotland and Northern Ireland has reached a settled opinion that they want to go, and a substantial fraction of them regard the English as colonisers and loathe us for it. That's no basis on which to construct a lasting political settlement.
A good Government can, over time, deal with the divides that afflict England and has a reasonable chance of keeping England and Wales together, but the rest of the country is gone. It's just a matter of time.
Doesn't this undermine your previous comment? It's only worth spending money on the idea if doing so might actually change minds and reverse the 'inevitability' of their departure?
I think something's gone a bit to pot with the nested comments on this one! The point I've been trying to make is that there is indeed no point in trying to bribe the restive components of the Union into staying put. After all, that was the whole point of the Barnett formula and its predecessors - and they didn't work.
I agree with you there. But I don't think this would be a bribe. More a demonstration of the relevancy and value of the Union.
CHB - didn't they mock that people like us would be gone from this site by now?
They did. But I think you and I have had similar realisations in the last few days.
I genuinely think I'm a pragmatist, what underlines me is getting the Conservative Party out - and I think therefore you can see where I come from with my views.
I genuinely thought Labour could do that with Corbyn and his policies - but I was wrong. Some of them aren't bad in isolation - but it's caught up in the anti-business, anti-media, anti-aspiration, really anti-Britain sphere that makes him so toxic. I am embarrassed I could not see it.
I think the lack of focus was a big issue too. The "no shark unjumped" manifesto had lots of things that pleased different groups, but all of them felt that the cumulative effect was to cast doubt on whether we could really do any of it. We kept changing the subject, which was helpful in driving the news agenda (and I think that was a contributing factor in winning back Lab-Lib voters) but unhelpful in making any group feel confident that we were really interested in them.
The Tory focus on Get Brexit Done and Stop Corbyn was by contrast easily memorable, a bit like Blair's 6 points (and even they weren't especially memorable, but they highlighted that we were about education+health+crime+sensible economics).
I'm wary about attributing too much to the leader issue (although Corbyn had obvious weaknesses whch certainly got cited on the doorstep0, because the Labour leader is always a press target - too weak (Blair, initially), too dictatorial (Brown, later Blair), too intellectual (Miliband), too thick (Prescott), too windbaggy (Kinnock), etc. Whoever we choose will have weaknesses on which people hesitant to vote Labour will hang their reluctance.
Yes Blair's pledge card, as well as being unseemly, were rather bland.
Also worth remembering that Labour in 1997 did feel that not putting something in the manifesto (or mentioning it in the campaign) restricted them from actually doing it. Brown just accidentally forgot to tell us about the Independence of the Bank of England that he de facto instigated on day 1!
Nobody gave a shit because the consensus was that it was a good idea - but yes, once again, rather unseemly
I'm disappointed Labour didn't drop below 200 seats, as per the exit poll.
I really wanted to taste that.
That's a rather unpleasant remark. I don't think grinding down your 'enemy' is what this country needs right now. So go and vent your hatred on something else please.
And, besides, it meant I won plenty of money
(Looked very dicey with the exit poll so I was rather relieved that Labour crept over the 200)
I agree with you. At the same time I remember when the Tories were reduced to 165 seats in 1997 and 166 in 2001 a lot of Labour supporters were crowing about it for a long time.
True!
I'm out of the country but what has been the response to Nicola Sturgeon's reaction when Jo Swinson lost her seat?
They keep showing it on tv - definitely the election moment - I don t think politicos give a shit, can t speak for the proles
So no one thought it was inappropriate? I have to confess (look away now Scots) that I've never quite got the visceral hatred between SNP and SLD?
She was made a bit uncomfortable about it and had to apologise/claim it was celebrating her 'friend' being elected, not Swinson being defeated.
I'm not sure which measurement is being used to assert Sturgeon was 'made a bit uncomfortable', and if you think a young candidate with an impressive back story knocking out the leader of an opposition party isn't worth celebrating, perhaps you've never been part of a GE campaign (even at the low level that I've been).
I broadly agree with your point but Guido is just as trash as some of the leftie outlets, I really wish people wouldn't post it.
I think in the long term, Guido's operation and their ilk are something we are going to have to get used to as a news-ish source. Not necessarily accurate (to put it mildly), often just rumour, sometimes plain trolling. Biased, but at least the bias is worn on their sleeves - doesn't mean you can always correct deduce what the truth is by mentally subtracting the bias though. But on the positive side, fast and rather less filtered than the traditional media. If you want to understand what's going on in Westminster and you scrupulously avoid Guido, then you are missing out on information. You are also missing out on misinformation. You know less, but more of what you know is actually true. Pretty much all of the above applied to a whole wave of blogs from the 2000s, of which Guido seems to have been the most successful and longest-lasting. Now it applies, in spades, to Twitter "newsish" sources.
On a betting blog people are going to post this stuff because rumours are just as capable of moving markets as facts are. You might prefer this as a political discussion blog, but the reason it functions so well as a discussion blog is that it has a high signal-noise ratio generated, at least in part, by a small but core part of its commentariat (and much of the above-the-line content) having a political betting bent. So I'm afraid twitter news-ish and Guido news-ish are going to pop up here. "Fast news" is bad in many ways. Our media as a whole has a poor attention span and doesn't spend enough time looking at deeper, long-running trends. This is one reason I liked blogs as discussion groups, and am rather sad that their heyday seems to have been and gone - twitter, where the bloggertariat seem mostly to have decamped, is far worse at that. Yet the politicalbetting.com community seems to have thrived under the line, and I wonder if that's in part because its discussions refreshed and replenished by the constant turnover of the news-du-jour. So maybe the "fast news" nuggests are a necessary component of life down here, and we just have to put up with these incursions and interruptions from the Twittersphere or Guido. When we got stuck on Brexit, and the same discussions kept on being repeated day after day, we did stagnate a lot and the atmosphere deteriorated.
Downing Street boycotts Radio 4's Today programme in a bust-up over election bias as a Number 10 source slams the BBC for 'speaking to pro-Remain Islington, not the real world of Wakefield and Workington'
Last night, a No 10 source called on the BBC to mount an internal investigation into its performance during the campaign, saying: 'The BBC speaks to a pro-Remain metropolitan bubble in Islington, not the real world represented by Wakefield and Workington. There has been a failure by senior management at the BBC, and we expect them to launch an internal review of their performance.'
I think we can all guess who gave this comment....
Ah, the 'real world'...
You would have thought the Conservatives would have been quite pleased. If they had reported more from Workington and Wakefield people might have cottoned on to what was happening
CHB - didn't they mock that people like us would be gone from this site by now?
They did. But I think you and I have had similar realisations in the last few days.
I genuinely think I'm a pragmatist, what underlines me is getting the Conservative Party out - and I think therefore you can see where I come from with my views.
I genuinely thought Labour could do that with Corbyn and his policies - but I was wrong. Some of them aren't bad in isolation - but it's caught up in the anti-business, anti-media, anti-aspiration, really anti-Britain sphere that makes him so toxic. I am embarrassed I could not see it.
I think the lack of focus was a big issue too. The "no shark unjumped" manifesto had lots of things that pleased different groups, but all of them felt that the cumulative effect was to cast doubt on whether we could really do any of it. We kept changing the subject, which was helpful in driving the news agenda (and I think that was a contributing factor in winning back Lab-Lib voters) but unhelpful in making any group feel confident that we were really interested in them.
The Tory focus on Get Brexit Done and Stop Corbyn was by contrast easily memorable, a bit like Blair's 6 points (and even they weren't especially memorable, but they highlighted that we were about education+health+crime+sensible economics).
I'm wary about attributing too much to the leader issue (although Corbyn had obvious weaknesses whch certainly got cited on the doorstep0, because the Labour leader is always a press target - too weak (Blair, initially), too dictatorial (Brown, later Blair), too intellectual (Miliband), too thick (Prescott), too windbaggy (Kinnock), etc. Whoever we choose will have weaknesses on which people hesitant to vote Labour will hang their reluctance.
Hello Nick
More chance of Watford staying up than your lot ever winning a GE again!
Downing Street boycotts Radio 4's Today programme in a bust-up over election bias as a Number 10 source slams the BBC for 'speaking to pro-Remain Islington, not the real world of Wakefield and Workington'
Last night, a No 10 source called on the BBC to mount an internal investigation into its performance during the campaign, saying: 'The BBC speaks to a pro-Remain metropolitan bubble in Islington, not the real world represented by Wakefield and Workington. There has been a failure by senior management at the BBC, and we expect them to launch an internal review of their performance.'
CHB - didn't they mock that people like us would be gone from this site by now?
They did. But I think you and I have had similar realisations in the last few days.
I genuinely think I'm a pragmatist, what underlines me is getting the Conservative Party out - and I think therefore you can see where I come from with my views.
I genuinely thought Labour could do that with Corbyn and his policies - but I was wrong. Some of them aren't bad in isolation - but it's caught up in the anti-business, anti-media, anti-aspiration, really anti-Britain sphere that makes him so toxic. I am embarrassed I could not see it.
I think the lack of focus was a big issue too. The "no shark unjumped" manifesto had lots of things that pleased different groups, but all of them felt that the cumulative effect was to cast doubt on whether we could really do any of it. We kept changing the subject, which was helpful in driving the news agenda (and I think that was a contributing factor in winning back Lab-Lib voters) but unhelpful in making any group feel confident that we were really interested in them.
The Tory focus on Get Brexit Done and Stop Corbyn was by contrast easily memorable, a bit like Blair's 6 points (and even they weren't especially memorable, but they highlighted that we were about education+health+crime+sensible economics).
I'm wary about attributing too much to the leader issue (although Corbyn had obvious weaknesses whch certainly got cited on the doorstep0, because the Labour leader is always a press target - too weak (Blair, initially), too dictatorial (Brown, later Blair), too intellectual (Miliband), too thick (Prescott), too windbaggy (Kinnock), etc. Whoever we choose will have weaknesses on which people hesitant to vote Labour will hang their reluctance.
Give it a rest. Just watch the Vox Pops from across the North, time and time again all these people stating they absolutely detest Corbyn. People didn't detest Miliband, they thought he was a bit rubbish, but they didn't detest him.
I think this is very true. Personally I don't detest Corbyn I just think he's a bit rubbish but just about everyone I have spoken to (even those minded to vote Labour) really do seem detest Corbyn.
It's a mistake to expect defeated Labour members and activists to come to terms with it immediately.
They need to work through the seven stages of grief first, which could take weeks or months. If they don't they will pick a leader that accords with whatever stage of grief they've reached at the time.
It took us two cycles before Dave became leader, it could be two cycles before Labour get to that point.
In hindsight the turning point was 2003, that was when we went for a competent leader, recognised the need to hold the line and make some advances.
We also picked one big enough and mature enough to let flowers shine, which directly led to Cameron's election in 2005.
That was just over 8 years in. Labour are rapidly coming up to ten years out of power with no sign of a Howard or Kinnock, let alone a Cameron or Blair.
Downing Street boycotts Radio 4's Today programme in a bust-up over election bias as a Number 10 source slams the BBC for 'speaking to pro-Remain Islington, not the real world of Wakefield and Workington'
Last night, a No 10 source called on the BBC to mount an internal investigation into its performance during the campaign, saying: 'The BBC speaks to a pro-Remain metropolitan bubble in Islington, not the real world represented by Wakefield and Workington. There has been a failure by senior management at the BBC, and we expect them to launch an internal review of their performance.'
I'm wary about attributing too much to the leader issue (although Corbyn had obvious weaknesses whch certainly got cited on the doorstep0, because the Labour leader is always a press target - too weak (Blair, initially), too dictatorial (Brown, later Blair), too intellectual (Miliband), too thick (Prescott), too windbaggy (Kinnock), etc. Whoever we choose will have weaknesses on which people hesitant to vote Labour will hang their reluctance.
Agree with most of this.
I think the problem for Corbyn was he almost made it too easy for people to not like him and I have to conclude that is down to his media profile. It just was never any good.
Miliband failed because he could not articulate a good enough alternative vision to the Tories and people wondered why they'd bother to vote for Labour at all when they could just get the Tories instead who'd been doing it for five years already successfully. I also think that the collapse of the Lib Dems somewhat overexaggerated the problem because that's where the Tory majority pretty much came from. Miliband was somewhat unlucky in timing. I am quite sure that had he run this year Labour would have done a lot better.
Brown was never going to have it easy after so many years of Government, again I think he was somewhat unfortunate in his timing. And again I think media profile played a part with that.
Blair was Blair.
Corbyn basically had a rubbish media profile, decent-ish policies (at least in 2017) but a woeful leadership style and an inability to lead. The anti-Semitism crisis and failure to deal with Brexit will be what he is remembered for.
Labour needs to take some of the more popular policies, the anti-austerity, the bus services, the NHS funding and then tack those onto competent leadership and the ability to listen. That means not going back to the spin days of Blair but equally not maintaining the media apathy of Corbyn.
The real mark of the new leader will be getting on top of the anti-Semitism issue and dealing with it competently. If they're able to regain the trust of the Jewish community (and that via the JLM), I expect a lot of people will support them again.
And Labour really needs to spend the whole five years looking like a credible alternative Government. That means opposing but also supporting where necessary. I think Corbyn spent far too long telling people how everything the Tories did was awful but never about any of the good things about our country that were already there.
And for god sake, stay away from Israel and Palestine. And prioritise defence.
I despise when losers insist they won the argument. How very nice for you. What is that feeling based on? Thst you agree your offering is better? That people said "its nice, but I'm not voting for you"?
CHB - didn't they mock that people like us would be gone from this site by now?
They did. But I think you and I have had similar realisations in the last few days.
I genuinely think I'm a pragmatist, what underlines me is getting the Conservative Party out - and I think therefore you can see where I come from with my views.
I genuinely thought Labour could do that with Corbyn and his policies - but I was wrong. Some of them aren't bad in isolation - but it's caught up in the anti-business, anti-media, anti-aspiration, really anti-Britain sphere that makes him so toxic. I am embarrassed I could not see it.
I think the lack of focus was a big issue too. The "no shark unjumped" manifesto had lots of things that pleased different groups, but all of them felt that the cumulative effect was to cast doubt on whether we could really do any of it. We kept changing the subject, which was helpful in driving the news agenda (and I think that was a contributing factor in winning back Lab-Lib voters) but unhelpful in making any group feel confident that we were really interested in them.
The Tory focus on Get Brexit Done and Stop Corbyn was by contrast easily memorable, a bit like Blair's 6 points (and even they weren't especially memorable, but they highlighted that we were about education+health+crime+sensible economics).
I'm wary about attributing too much to the leader issue (although Corbyn had obvious weaknesses whch certainly got cited on the doorstep0, because the Labour leader is always a press target - too weak (Blair, initially), too dictatorial (Brown, later Blair), too intellectual (Miliband), too thick (Prescott), too windbaggy (Kinnock), etc. Whoever we choose will have weaknesses on which people hesitant to vote Labour will hang their reluctance.
Hello Nick
More chance of Watford staying up than your lot ever winning a GE again!
😀😀😀😀😀😀😀
It's rather telling Nick focuses on process there (campaign discipline) and Whatabouts on the leader (any Labour leader is a target).
It's a remarkable display of cognitive dissonance.
He's one of the more intelligent Corbyn supporters. If that's where the bulk of them are at, now, they're going to be out of power an awfully long time.
Downing Street boycotts Radio 4's Today programme in a bust-up over election bias as a Number 10 source slams the BBC for 'speaking to pro-Remain Islington, not the real world of Wakefield and Workington'
Last night, a No 10 source called on the BBC to mount an internal investigation into its performance during the campaign, saying: 'The BBC speaks to a pro-Remain metropolitan bubble in Islington, not the real world represented by Wakefield and Workington. There has been a failure by senior management at the BBC, and we expect them to launch an internal review of their performance.'
I think we can all guess who gave this comment....
Dom - 'They didn't say what we wanted them to say'.
Is this the start of rationalising the removal of the licence fee?
To be fair, I think the point made is actually a good one. Albeit hardly something that signals evidence of BBC 'bias' since you hardly saw the rest of the media (left or right) devoting much time to Wakefield and Workington during the campaign. And if they did mention them, it was generally from afar.
I worry about us centrists. The LibDems played a good hand incredibly poorly from c. 6 months ago. We made so many mistakes.
Labour are about to go into a internecine war. I suspect, but can't be sure, that the centre ground will win.
However, I'm not at ALL sure that it's correct for the Blairite contingent to be blaming this all on Jeremy Corbyn. It could be argued that a significantly large reason for their defeat is that the party wasn't sufficiently Leave. By dithering around and embracing Remain they alienated the working class northern vote. And they're the ones who lost them the election.
When historians look back on this period they will see with crystal clear clarity that Jeremy Corbyn became and stayed leader just long enough to both cause and guarantee Brexit.
What I find really extraordinary is that on September 25th they would almost certainly have succeeded in a VONC with an installation of an alternative PM. Instead they bickered. And lost.
They were too certain they had the upper hand and could afford division and clever tactics
I really hope the Tories don't spend the next five years attacking the BBC and Channel 4. And I also hope this "anonymous source" briefing stuff is taken a bit more seriously, as it has given Cummings the ability to easily lie and get away with it.
Federal States of Britain is the simple and obvious solution.
That's not going to happen though because Scots like their high public service expending at the expense of fellow Brits. It's a little bit canny but it will be South Sudan Mk 2 if they're stupid enough to vote en masse (well over 50pc) to be "an independent country"
Waahey, you've reached end stage 'we must now consider federalism cos I'm shiting it' stage. It comes to all yoons in the end.
Two fundamental problems with federalism:
1. Westminster will never consider it, because a functioning federation requires an English Parliament, and that in turn would break up the Government. No British Prime Minister will do that. They want to play with the whole train set, not be forced to choose a half 2. Being part of a federal Britain is not independence. At the risk of stating the bleedin' obvious, the 45% who want independence want independence, not a federal system. It won't do anything to stabilise the situation or make the arguments go away
The situation that currently prevails is unsustainable. Trying to get around the tough decision that needs to be made by offering up imaginary constitutional non-solutions won't work.
I really hope the Tories don't spend the next five years attacking the BBC and Channel 4. And I also hope this "anonymous source" briefing stuff is taken a bit more seriously, as it has given Cummings the ability to easily lie and get away with it.
They need to make sure their houses are in order, especially Channel 4.
I'm disappointed Labour didn't drop below 200 seats, as per the exit poll.
I really wanted to taste that.
That's a rather unpleasant remark. I don't think grinding down your 'enemy' is what this country needs right now. So go and vent your hatred on something else please.
And, besides, it meant I won plenty of money
(Looked very dicey with the exit poll so I was rather relieved that Labour crept over the 200)
I agree with you. At the same time I remember when the Tories were reduced to 165 seats in 1997 and 166 in 2001 a lot of Labour supporters were crowing about it for a long time.
True!
I'm out of the country but what has been the response to Nicola Sturgeon's reaction when Jo Swinson lost her seat?
They keep showing it on tv - definitely the election moment - I don t think politicos give a shit, can t speak for the proles
So no one thought it was inappropriate? I have to confess (look away now Scots) that I've never quite got the visceral hatred between SNP and SLD?
She was made a bit uncomfortable about it and had to apologise/claim it was celebrating her 'friend' being elected, not Swinson being defeated.
I'm not sure which measurement is being used to assert Sturgeon was 'made a bit uncomfortable', and if you think a young candidate with an impressive back story knocking out the leader of an opposition party isn't worth celebrating, perhaps you've never been part of a GE campaign (even at the low level that I've been).
CHB - didn't they mock that people like us would be gone from this site by now?
They did. But I think you and I have had similar realisations in the last few days.
I genuinely think I'm a pragmatist, what underlines me is getting the Conservative Party out - and I think therefore you can see where I come from with my views.
I genuinely thought Labour could do that with Corbyn and his policies - but I was wrong. Some of them aren't bad in isolation - but it's caught up in the anti-business, anti-media, anti-aspiration, really anti-Britain sphere that makes him so toxic. I am embarrassed I could not see it.
I think the lack of focus was a big issue too. The "no shark unjumped" manifesto had lots of things that pleased different groups, but all of them felt that the cumulative effect was to cast doubt on whether we could really do any of it. We kept changing the subject, which was helpful in driving the news agenda (and I think that was a contributing factor in winning back Lab-Lib voters) but unhelpful in making any group feel confident that we were really interested in them.
The Tory focus on Get Brexit Done and Stop Corbyn was by contrast easily memorable, a bit like Blair's 6 points (and even they weren't especially memorable, but they highlighted that we were about education+health+crime+sensible economics).
I'm wary about attributing too much to the leader issue (although Corbyn had obvious weaknesses whch certainly got cited on the doorstep0, because the Labour leader is always a press target - too weak (Blair, initially), too dictatorial (Brown, later Blair), too intellectual (Miliband), too thick (Prescott), too windbaggy (Kinnock), etc. Whoever we choose will have weaknesses on which people hesitant to vote Labour will hang their reluctance.
Give it a rest. Just watch the Vox Pops from across the North, time and time again all these people stating they absolutely detest Corbyn. People didn't detest Miliband, they thought he was a bit rubbish, but they didn't detest him.
Labour lost in 2015 because of a poor manifesto and policies and because of the Lib Dem collapse. Corbyn learnt all the wrong lessons from that.
Ed on 2017 manifesto = a win or a minority Government. At least Ed looked vaguely competent.
Downing Street boycotts Radio 4's Today programme in a bust-up over election bias as a Number 10 source slams the BBC for 'speaking to pro-Remain Islington, not the real world of Wakefield and Workington'
Last night, a No 10 source called on the BBC to mount an internal investigation into its performance during the campaign, saying: 'The BBC speaks to a pro-Remain metropolitan bubble in Islington, not the real world represented by Wakefield and Workington. There has been a failure by senior management at the BBC, and we expect them to launch an internal review of their performance.'
CHB - didn't they mock that people like us would be gone from this site by now?
They did. But I think you and I have had similar realisations in the last few days.
I genuinely think I'm a pragmatist, what underlines me is getting the Conservative Party out - and I think therefore you can see where I come from with my views.
I genuinely thought Labour could do that with Corbyn and his policies - but I was wrong. Some of them aren't bad in isolation - but it's caught up in the anti-business, anti-media, anti-aspiration, really anti-Britain sphere that makes him so toxic. I am embarrassed I could not see it.
I think the lack of focus was a big issue too. The "no shark unjumped" manifesto had lots of things that pleased different groups, but all of them felt that the cumulative effect was to cast doubt on whether we could really do any of it. We kept changing the subject, which was helpful in driving the news agenda (and I think that was a contributing factor in winning back Lab-Lib voters) but unhelpful in making any group feel confident that we were really interested in them.
The Tory focus on Get Brexit Done and Stop Corbyn was by contrast easily memorable, a bit like Blair's 6 points (and even they weren't especially memorable, but they highlighted that we were about education+health+crime+sensible economics).
I'm wary about attributing too much to the leader issue (although Corbyn had obvious weaknesses whch certainly got cited on the doorstep0, because the Labour leader is always a press target - too weak (Blair, initially), too dictatorial (Brown, later Blair), too intellectual (Miliband), too thick (Prescott), too windbaggy (Kinnock), etc. Whoever we choose will have weaknesses on which people hesitant to vote Labour will hang their reluctance.
Give it a rest. Just watch the Vox Pops from across the North, time and time again all these people stating they absolutely detest Corbyn. People didn't detest Miliband, they thought he was a bit rubbish, but they didn't detest him.
Labour lost in 2015 because of a poor manifesto and policies and because of the Lib Dem collapse. Corbyn learnt all the wrong lessons from that.
Ed on 2017 manifesto = a win or a minority Government. At least Ed looked vaguely competent.
Actually I think Labour lost in 2015, because the Tories ran a highly effective campaign that started way before the GE. They had already shaped the debate before we even got to election.
CHB - didn't they mock that people like us would be gone from this site by now?
They did. But I think you and I have had similar realisations in the last few days.
I genuinely think I'm a pragmatist, what underlines me is getting the Conservative Party out - and I think therefore you can see where I come from with my views.
I genuinely thought Labour could do that with Corbyn and his policies - but I was wrong. Some of them aren't bad in isolation - but it's caught up in the anti-business, anti-media, anti-aspiration, really anti-Britain sphere that makes him so toxic. I am embarrassed I could not see it.
I think the lack of focus was a big issue too. The "no shark unjumped" manifesto had lots of things that pleased different groups, but all of them felt that the cumulative effect was to cast doubt on whether we could really do any of it. We kept changing the subject, which was helpful in driving the news agenda (and I think that was a contributing factor in winning back Lab-Lib voters) but unhelpful in making any group feel confident that we were really interested in them.
The Tory focus on Get Brexit Done and Stop Corbyn was by contrast easily memorable, a bit like Blair's 6 points (and even they weren't especially memorable, but they highlighted that we were about education+health+crime+sensible economics).
I'm wary about attributing too much to the leader issue (although Corbyn had obvious weaknesses whch certainly got cited on the doorstep0, because the Labour leader is always a press target - too weak (Blair, initially), too dictatorial (Brown, later Blair), too intellectual (Miliband), too thick (Prescott), too windbaggy (Kinnock), etc. Whoever we choose will have weaknesses on which people hesitant to vote Labour will hang their reluctance.
Give it a rest. Just watch the Vox Pops from across the North, time and time again all these people stating they absolutely detest Corbyn. People didn't detest Miliband, they thought he was a bit rubbish, but they didn't detest him.
Labour lost in 2015 because of a poor manifesto and policies and because of the Lib Dem collapse. Corbyn learnt all the wrong lessons from that.
Ed on 2017 manifesto = a win or a minority Government. At least Ed looked vaguely competent.
I really hope the Tories don't spend the next five years attacking the BBC and Channel 4. And I also hope this "anonymous source" briefing stuff is taken a bit more seriously, as it has given Cummings the ability to easily lie and get away with it.
The most ugly part of the Tories (or at least some of them) is attacking the BBC and the Courts.
I'm under no illusions the Conservatives have many fans within either institution, but they've both been broadly fair and balanced. I don't like the licence fee particularly, and I really don't like the bullying aggressive behaviour of the TV licencing authority - a state-sanctioned bully.
I do think Channel 4 is a different matter, and have thought that should be privatised for over 20 years.
I'm wary about attributing too much to the leader issue (although Corbyn had obvious weaknesses whch certainly got cited on the doorstep0, because the Labour leader is always a press target - too weak (Blair, initially), too dictatorial (Brown, later Blair), too intellectual (Miliband), too thick (Prescott), too windbaggy (Kinnock), etc. Whoever we choose will have weaknesses on which people hesitant to vote Labour will hang their reluctance.
Agree with most of this.
I think the problem for Corbyn was he almost made it too easy for people to not like him and I have to conclude that is down to his media profile. It just was never any good.
SNIP
Brown was never going to have it easy after so many years of Government, again I think he was somewhat unfortunate in his timing. And again I think media profile played a part with that.
Blair was Blair.
Corbyn basically had a rubbish media profile, decent-ish policies (at least in 2017) but a woeful leadership style and an inability to lead. The anti-Semitism crisis and failure to deal with Brexit will be what he is remembered for.
Labour needs to take some of the more popular policies, the anti-austerity, the bus services, the NHS funding and then tack those onto competent leadership and the ability to listen. That means not going back to the spin days of Blair but equally not maintaining the media apathy of Corbyn.
The real mark of the new leader will be getting on top of the anti-Semitism issue and dealing with it competently. If they're able to regain the trust of the Jewish community (and that via the JLM), I expect a lot of people will support them again.
And Labour really needs to spend the whole five years looking like a credible alternative Government. That means opposing but also supporting where necessary. I think Corbyn spent far too long telling people how everything the Tories did was awful but never about any of the good things about our country that were already there.
And for god sake, stay away from Israel and Palestine. And prioritise defence.
I agree with your Brown analysis - when he didn't call his honeymoon election I could see very clearly he was going to lose the election.
Blair is Blair is a total copout. He was just not a very nice human being and yet he was our PM for a decade. Maybe democracy just doesn't work? Also worth noting that Corbyn out preformed Blair in percentage terms in 2017
I simply don't understand how you can think it is a great idea? And I have provided my reasons for that. Why not refute them?
I'm not going to hide my views and having seen some of the posts on this thread and many others I am no more partisan than the majority of posters and far less than some.
Well, my comment was quite rude and unpleasant, and you no more deserved it than anyone else.
But I can only reiterate what I've already said. This project has been investigated, and costed more than once, and is still 'live'. Clearly it is a viable project of some description. So it's silly for people who know less than those who have studied it to dismiss it.
As for good reasons for doing it. -It will stimulate economic activity in two sites that could use economic development -It will make travel to Northern Ireland, and by extension the Republic of Ireland, easier, cheaper and more reliable - enabling more people from the mainland to explore the province, and vice versa -NI is the new borderland between the EU and the UK. This would link that into Scotland and Northern England in what I think would be a very powerful way -It would demonstrate that the Government has not abandoned its commitment to the Union, and that large scale infrastructure is not solely aimed at feeding London with more commuters -A project of this size and scale requires the resources of the Union and amply demonstrates its vibrancy and its value
Of course the % of the population who are 'working class' has declined too - but whoever thought (for example) the Miliband brothers were Tribunes of the North - and not well connected Labour aristocracy clearly had little idea. https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1205931357785985024?s=20
I really hope the Tories don't spend the next five years attacking the BBC and Channel 4. And I also hope this "anonymous source" briefing stuff is taken a bit more seriously, as it has given Cummings the ability to easily lie and get away with it.
The most ugly part of the Tories (or at least some of them) is attacking the BBC and the Courts.
I'm under no illusions the Conservatives have many fans within either institution, but they've both been broadly fair and balanced. I don't like the licence fee particularly, and I really don't like the bullying aggressive behaviour of the TV licencing authority - a state-sanctioned bully.
I do think Channel 4 is a different matter, and have thought that should be privatised for over 20 years.
My issue with the telly tax is that is actually totally unenforceable these days, and that watching this large moving picture box in your living room via an aerial is dying.
There does need to be real reform. What that is I don't know. But, the BBC won't accept any reform.
I despise when losers insist they won the argument. How very nice for you. What is that feeling based on? Thst you agree your offering is better? That people said "its nice, but I'm not voting for you"?
There argument was ignored because of their leader
Of course the % of the population who are 'working class' has declined too - but whoever thought (for example) the Miliband brothers were Tribunes of the North - and not well connected Labour aristocracy clearly had little idea. twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1205931357785985024?s=20
It was really striking seeing Alan Johnson on ITV on GE night next Mr Maomentum. Johnson is proper working class, from real hardship, worked his way up after having done real jobs. I don't agree with everything he says, but I respect him. He is what I would call proper Labour.
Downing Street boycotts Radio 4's Today programme in a bust-up over election bias as a Number 10 source slams the BBC for 'speaking to pro-Remain Islington, not the real world of Wakefield and Workington'
Last night, a No 10 source called on the BBC to mount an internal investigation into its performance during the campaign, saying: 'The BBC speaks to a pro-Remain metropolitan bubble in Islington, not the real world represented by Wakefield and Workington. There has been a failure by senior management at the BBC, and we expect them to launch an internal review of their performance.'
I think we can all guess who gave this comment....
Dom - 'They didn't say what we wanted them to say'.
Is this the start of rationalising the removal of the licence fee?
To be fair, I think the point made is actually a good one. Albeit hardly something that signals evidence of BBC 'bias' since you hardly saw the rest of the media (left or right) devoting much time to Wakefield and Workington during the campaign. And if they did mention them, it was generally from afar.
What does he mean by not speaking for Wakefield &c though? What is the real world that Cummings can see but is not shown in the BBC news room?
BBC News is subdivided into regional chunks, and although I rarely watched it I thought 'Look North' produced high quality out put that did factually cover the region whilst following national trends. You can find local BBC radio in the majority of cities staffed with people from the surrounding area. What more can the BBC do?
I saw more vox-pops from the North and Midlands accurately showing the strength of feeling for brexit and against Labour than those in the shires for disenfranchised ex-Conservatives.
#10 will now openly criticise the output of a public broadcasting company. To me this sounds like whispers of Trumpian rhetoric against perceived bias.
Downing Street boycotts Radio 4's Today programme in a bust-up over election bias as a Number 10 source slams the BBC for 'speaking to pro-Remain Islington, not the real world of Wakefield and Workington'
I don't like this - not a good look to be attacking the press! But I actually think it's wrong for another reason, that I don't think it matters terribly if the BBC has different "flavours" to its different brands, if they're there to engage different people.
If you ever listen to some of the news and current affairs content - some interesting, some groan-worthy - they put out under the BBC3/Newsbeat then it is there for a very particular "yoof" demographic (think it's fair to say with a woke bent), even more so their 1Xtra stuff which is very much for urban, BME youth but handles issues like knife crime rather better than their more general-purpose BBC News teams seem to. Asian Network's news material also obviously community-specific though haven't spend any time on it (does anybody? none of the many Asian people I know seem to listen to it!). Radio 5Live feels very different to Radio 4 and I tend to listen to that, given a forced choice, because I just don't feel that Radio 4 is aimed at people like me. If Radio 4 is addressed primarily to the kind of educated professional or retired middle-class people who make up swathes of Remainia, and therefore reflects some of their cultural attitudes and concerns, then that seems fair enough to me and not a reason to boycott.
I do think that some groups are not well served by the BBC, certainly in comedy and light entertainment there is far more left-wing stuff than other viewpoints, and younger people in general do seem to be moving away from the service ("it's for old people" - but is that because so much of their yoof content is patronising/woke or just that it's less responsive to their needs than content they engage with on youtube / instagram / tiktok, not sure I'd buy into "they went woke now are going broke"). But their general news service seems reasonably neutral to me, about as much as you could hope for. More in-depth or investigative journalism like you might get on Panorama or Newsnight tends to give a clearer view of the maker's "angle" on things, but I suspect that's inevitable with what's more like an extended video-essay.
Panel discussions are probably an area of weakness in terms of neutrality, but then there are more mainstream left-wing parties than right-wing ones (so if you want to represent a range of political parties, that tends to drag the average out to the left) and bringing in talking heads from civil society and academia will often mean including another liberal or left-liberal perspective into the mix. May be quite hard to fix, but as noted below they could certainly improve the calibre of left-wing talking heads in the post-Corbyn era.
CHB - didn't they mock that people like us would be gone from this site by now?
They did. But I think you and I have had similar realisations in the last few days.
I genuinely think I'm a pragmatist, what underlines me is getting the Conservative Party out - and I think therefore you can see where I come from with my views.
I genuinely thought Labour could do that with Corbyn and his policies - but I was wrong. Some of them aren't bad in isolation - but it's caught up in the anti-business, anti-media, anti-aspiration, really anti-Britain sphere that makes him so toxic. I am embarrassed I could not see it.
I think the lack of focus was a big issue too. The "no shark unjumped" manifesto had lots of things that pleased different groups, but all of them felt that the cumulative effect was to cast doubt on whether we could really do any of it. We kept changing the subject, which was helpful in driving the news agenda (and I think that was a contributing factor in winning back Lab-Lib voters) but unhelpful in making any group feel confident that we were really interested in them.
The Tory focus on Get Brexit Done and Stop Corbyn was by contrast easily memorable, a bit like Blair's 6 points (and even they weren't especially memorable, but they highlighted that we were about education+health+crime+sensible economics).
I'm wary about attributing too much to the leader issue (although Corbyn had obvious weaknesses whch certainly got cited on the doorstep0, because the Labour leader is always a press target - too weak (Blair, initially), too dictatorial (Brown, later Blair), too intellectual (Miliband), too thick (Prescott), too windbaggy (Kinnock), etc. Whoever we choose will have weaknesses on which people hesitant to vote Labour will hang their reluctance.
Give it a rest. Just watch the Vox Pops from across the North, time and time again all these people stating they absolutely detest Corbyn. People didn't detest Miliband, they thought he was a bit rubbish, but they didn't detest him.
Labour lost in 2015 because of a poor manifesto and policies and because of the Lib Dem collapse. Corbyn learnt all the wrong lessons from that.
Ed on 2017 manifesto = a win or a minority Government. At least Ed looked vaguely competent.
Downing Street boycotts Radio 4's Today programme in a bust-up over election bias as a Number 10 source slams the BBC for 'speaking to pro-Remain Islington, not the real world of Wakefield and Workington'
Last night, a No 10 source called on the BBC to mount an internal investigation into its performance during the campaign, saying: 'The BBC speaks to a pro-Remain metropolitan bubble in Islington, not the real world represented by Wakefield and Workington. There has been a failure by senior management at the BBC, and we expect them to launch an internal review of their performance.'
I think we can all guess who gave this comment....
Dom - 'They didn't say what we wanted them to say'.
Is this the start of rationalising the removal of the licence fee?
To be fair, I think the point made is actually a good one. Albeit hardly something that signals evidence of BBC 'bias' since you hardly saw the rest of the media (left or right) devoting much time to Wakefield and Workington during the campaign. And if they did mention them, it was generally from afar.
What does he mean by not speaking for Wakefield &c though? What is the real world that Cummings can see but is not shown in the BBC news room?
BBC News is subdivided into regional chunks, and although I rarely watched it I thought 'Look North' produced high quality out put that did factually cover the region whilst following national trends. You can find local BBC radio in the majority of cities staffed with people from the surrounding area. What more can the BBC do?
I saw more vox-pops from the North and Midlands accurately showing the strength of feeling for brexit and against Labour than those in the shires for disenfranchised ex-Conservatives.
#10 will now openly criticise the output of a public broadcasting company. To me this sounds like whispers of Trumpian rhetoric against perceived bias.
Indeed, you could have predicted a Labour wipeout from the BBC coverage alone. I'd actually say it was quite negative of Labour.
Re npxmp comments, I don't recall swathes of the red wall falling due to supposed windbagging or oddness in their leaders..... Trad labour accepted them just fine it seemed. Given the polling showing concern at lab leadership especially Jezza was their no 1 issue even ahead of Brexit, I think having the magic Marxists just pushed them too far this time..
Actually I think Labour lost in 2015, because the Tories ran a highly effective campaign that started way before the GE. They had already shaped the debate before we even got to election.
The Tories spent five years telling people it was the "last Labour Government" that caused the problems - and so I think you're right.
But the Tories really can't use that anymore, in five years time that will really have ceased to be a potent argument.
But Labour can now use that argument quite effectively, if they are prepared to have a decent, credible alternative to offer.
I really hope the Tories don't spend the next five years attacking the BBC and Channel 4. And I also hope this "anonymous source" briefing stuff is taken a bit more seriously, as it has given Cummings the ability to easily lie and get away with it.
The most ugly part of the Tories (or at least some of them) is attacking the BBC and the Courts.
I'm under no illusions the Conservatives have many fans within either institution, but they've both been broadly fair and balanced. I don't like the licence fee particularly, and I really don't like the bullying aggressive behaviour of the TV licencing authority - a state-sanctioned bully.
I do think Channel 4 is a different matter, and have thought that should be privatised for over 20 years.
My issue with the telly tax is that is actually totally unenforceable these days, and that watching this large moving picture box in your living room via an aerial is dying.
There does need to be real reform. What that is I don't know. But, the BBC won't accept any reform.
Subscription, product placement & sponsorship should replace the TV tax.
The BBC is an anachronism belonging to an age when it was the single broadcaster & funding via the taxpayer was justified. It seems to be the only organisation where consumer choice is prohibited. Consequently it has grown into a bloated unaccountable blob.
Actually I think Labour lost in 2015, because the Tories ran a highly effective campaign that started way before the GE. They had already shaped the debate before we even got to election.
The Tories spent five years telling people it was the "last Labour Government" that caused the problems - and so I think you're right.
But the Tories really can't use that anymore, in five years time that will really have ceased to be a potent argument.
But Labour can now use that argument quite effectively, if they are prepared to have a decent, credible alternative to offer.
Actually Osborne approach was more nuanced than that. He took a leaf out of the New Labour playbook. He made sure whenever Labour pitched a new idea that they aggressively countered it with a whole range of potential issues. And they kept up that narrative week in, week out.
So by the time of the GE, there was a narrative that Ed keeps coming up with these policies that aren't very good. They had him painted as this bookworm that comes up with ideas that sound good in textbooks, but won't work in the real world.
I broadly agree with your point but Guido is just as trash as some of the leftie outlets, I really wish people wouldn't post it.
Final thought on Guido's crew. I think they're a whole bunch of four and five letter words I'm far too polite to type on here, but when they're on form they're very sharp (albeit weirdly/suspiciously credulous of some of the most thinly-sourced tripe they post) and when they're being mischievous they can be side-splittingly funny or complete ****s or both (depending on whether you're on the wrong side of it). Their leftie equivalents in the mid-2000s political BritBlog world were simply far too earnest and never cracked me up as much, even if I was more likely to agree with their underlying point. For whatever reason, Guido's formula seems to have worked out better and had greater staying power. I hope they've profited enough from it that they'll have enough cash for if/when the lawsuits finally catch up with them!
Reminds me a bit of Private Eye. At least historically that combined some much-needed reportage on poorly served issues (esp boring stuff like failure and corruption in local government that most of the Fourth Estate had given up on) and very juicy Westminster rumours the man on the street couldn't hear anywhere else in pre-social media days, with the problem you couldn't work out which of them were actually on the money versus which were just going to end up costing the paper money! Private Eye and Guido alike are not really to my taste but unless something superior supplants them in the meanwhile, I think we'll be poorer for it when they pass.
Labour have forgotten that their role is to represent the voters, not their membership.
They do, just a very niche subsection of voters mainly located in urban areas.
I was totally struck by McDonnell saying the number one issue is the Climate Emergency. You think that Flat Cap Fred gets up in the morning, with shit infrastructure, poor opportunity, low life expectancy, high crime, worried about globalization, technology, immigration, and think yes John you are right the Climate Emergency is #1 priority, I really need to get down to London and glue myself to a bus.
Downing Street boycotts Radio 4's Today programme in a bust-up over election bias as a Number 10 source slams the BBC for 'speaking to pro-Remain Islington, not the real world of Wakefield and Workington'
Last night, a No 10 source called on the BBC to mount an internal investigation into its performance during the campaign, saying: 'The BBC speaks to a pro-Remain metropolitan bubble in Islington, not the real world represented by Wakefield and Workington. There has been a failure by senior management at the BBC, and we expect them to launch an internal review of their performance.'
I simply don't understand how you can think it is a great idea? And I have provided my reasons for that. Why not refute them?
I'm not going to hide my views and having seen some of the posts on this thread and many others I am no more partisan than the majority of posters and far less than some.
Well, my comment was quite rude and unpleasant, and you no more deserved it than anyone else.
But I can only reiterate what I've already said. This project has been investigated, and costed more than once, and is still 'live'. Clearly it is a viable project of some description. So it's silly for people who know less than those who have studied it to dismiss it.
As for good reasons for doing it. -It will stimulate economic activity in two sites that could use economic development -It will make travel to Northern Ireland, and by extension the Republic of Ireland, easier, cheaper and more reliable - enabling more people from the mainland to explore the province, and vice versa -NI is the new borderland between the EU and the UK. This would link that into Scotland and Northern England in what I think would be a very powerful way -It would demonstrate that the Government has not abandoned its commitment to the Union, and that large scale infrastructure is not solely aimed at feeding London with more commuters -A project of this size and scale requires the resources of the Union and amply demonstrates its vibrancy and its value
I suppose i see it as a white elephant. I cannot see the argument for connecting two already under-developed, rural areas of the UK. It's not like the ferry service or air routes are under huge strain?
Plugging £15+ billion into NI in readiness for it as a juncture between a newly brexited UK and the customs union I can see value in. And i would support (as if it matters). But the costs of simply constructing and maintaining a steel structure in the Irish sea at a glance, seem completely disproportionate to the benefits it would bring.
I really hope the Tories don't spend the next five years attacking the BBC and Channel 4. And I also hope this "anonymous source" briefing stuff is taken a bit more seriously, as it has given Cummings the ability to easily lie and get away with it.
They need to make sure their houses are in order, especially Channel 4.
Why does the state need to own this ? Surely a prime candidate for privatization?
I broadly agree with your point but Guido is just as trash as some of the leftie outlets, I really wish people wouldn't post it.
Final thought on Guido's crew. I think they're a whole bunch of four and five letter words I'm far too polite to type on here, but when they're on form they're very sharp (albeit weirdly/suspiciously credulous of some of the most thinly-sourced tripe they post) and when they're being mischievous they can be side-splittingly funny or complete ****s or both (depending on whether you're on the wrong side of it). Their leftie equivalents in the mid-2000s political BritBlog world were simply far too earnest and never cracked me up as much, even if I was more likely to agree with their underlying point. For whatever reason, Guido's formula seems to have worked out better and had greater staying power. I hope they've profited enough from it that they'll have enough cash for if/when the lawsuits finally catch up with them!
Reminds me a bit of Private Eye. At least historically that combined some much-needed reportage on poorly served issues (esp boring stuff like failure and corruption in local government that most of the Fourth Estate had given up on) and very juicy Westminster rumours the man on the street couldn't hear anywhere else in pre-social media days, with the problem you couldn't work out which of them were actually on the money versus which were just going to end up costing the paper money! Private Eye and Guido alike are not really to my taste but unless something superior supplants them in the meanwhile, I think we'll be poorer for it when they pass.
I want more Silly Samuel on my TV, Harry was doing the papers the other day.
Comments
STV is a much better basis to tinker from. You can vote for the platform you want, but don't get railroaded into a particular candidate, and party patronage counts for a lot less.
Arguing that taxes should always be lower, or spending should always be higher, is the default position of our political parties and, backed up by ludicrous pledges every Chancellor for 20 years has been constrained (politically) in using the full economic levers at their disposal to run the economy well.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/nicola-sturgeon-apologises-for-wildly-celebrating-snp-win-over-jo-swinson/ar-AAK7qLU?li=BBoPWjQ
More chance of SNP bring listened to 😀
I don't wish the Union gone per se, but one has to confront reality. Nearly half the population in Scotland and Northern Ireland has reached a settled opinion that they want to go, and a substantial fraction of them regard the English as colonisers and loathe us for it. That's no basis on which to construct a lasting political settlement.
A good Government can, over time, deal with the divides that afflict England and has a reasonable chance of keeping England and Wales together, but the rest of the country is gone. It's just a matter of time.
An extra bit is power generation, you could use the bridge to generate power from the strong sea current and the wind, that would generate some extra money flow to pay for the construction costs.
A good Government can, over time, deal with the divides that afflict England and has a reasonable chance of keeping England and Wales together, but the rest of the country is gone. It's just a matter of time.
God forbid the SNP ever get back to 2015 polling levels, then we really might see some defeatism set in...
A good Government can, over time, deal with the divides that afflict England and has a reasonable chance of keeping England and Wales together, but the rest of the country is gone. It's just a matter of time.
Briskin Says -
Federal States of Britain is the simple and obvious solution.
That's not going to happen though because Scots like their high public service expending at the expense of fellow Brits. It's a little bit canny but it will be South Sudan Mk 2 if they're stupid enough to vote en masse (well over 50pc) to be "an independent country"
Also, it was only in 2005 the MOD came clean as to the extent of the problem so decades old studies are irrelevant anyway.
I really hope I am wrong - but I must say Johnson's history does not inspire confidence.
The Tory focus on Get Brexit Done and Stop Corbyn was by contrast easily memorable, a bit like Blair's 6 points (and even they weren't especially memorable, but they highlighted that we were about education+health+crime+sensible economics).
I'm wary about attributing too much to the leader issue (although Corbyn had obvious weaknesses whch certainly got cited on the doorstep0, because the Labour leader is always a press target - too weak (Blair, initially), too dictatorial (Brown, later Blair), too intellectual (Miliband), too thick (Prescott), too windbaggy (Kinnock), etc. Whoever we choose will have weaknesses on which people hesitant to vote Labour will hang their reluctance.
I'm not sure the 'high speed' bit matters too much at that length; it just needs a decent modern new main-line.
At the very least, it doesn't involve purchasing everyone's back gardens, felling ancient woodland, causing massive transport delays, ruining picturesque villages etc.
And there were only 5 of them-
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=jDWLW6Ek&id=DA3E155C378D5A62398CDF0B7FFDCA0DF473B9B3&thid=OIP.jDWLW6EkoNMrqBzG7aZt0wHaE_&mediaurl=https://picturingpolitics.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/labour-pledge-card.jpg&exph=404&expw=600&q=labour+pledge+card+1997&simid=608019630129942149&selectedIndex=0&qpvt=labour+pledge+card+1997&ajaxhist=0
I judge the content of your posts on their own merit.
Last night, a No 10 source called on the BBC to mount an internal investigation into its performance during the campaign, saying: 'The BBC speaks to a pro-Remain metropolitan bubble in Islington, not the real world represented by Wakefield and Workington. There has been a failure by senior management at the BBC, and we expect them to launch an internal review of their performance.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7793107/Downing-Street-boycotts-Radio-4s-Today-programme-bust-election-bias.html
I think we can all guess who gave this comment....
On a betting blog people are going to post this stuff because rumours are just as capable of moving markets as facts are. You might prefer this as a political discussion blog, but the reason it functions so well as a discussion blog is that it has a high signal-noise ratio generated, at least in part, by a small but core part of its commentariat (and much of the above-the-line content) having a political betting bent. So I'm afraid twitter news-ish and Guido news-ish are going to pop up here. "Fast news" is bad in many ways. Our media as a whole has a poor attention span and doesn't spend enough time looking at deeper, long-running trends. This is one reason I liked blogs as discussion groups, and am rather sad that their heyday seems to have been and gone - twitter, where the bloggertariat seem mostly to have decamped, is far worse at that. Yet the politicalbetting.com community seems to have thrived under the line, and I wonder if that's in part because its discussions refreshed and replenished by the constant turnover of the news-du-jour. So maybe the "fast news" nuggests are a necessary component of life down here, and we just have to put up with these incursions and interruptions from the Twittersphere or Guido. When we got stuck on Brexit, and the same discussions kept on being repeated day after day, we did stagnate a lot and the atmosphere deteriorated.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/14/we-won-the-argument-but-i-regret-we-didnt-convert-that-into-a-majority-for-change
You would have thought the Conservatives would have been quite pleased. If they had reported more from Workington and Wakefield people might have cottoned on to what was happening
More chance of Watford staying up than your lot ever winning a GE again!
😀😀😀😀😀😀😀
Is this the start of rationalising the removal of the licence fee?
We also picked one big enough and mature enough to let flowers shine, which directly led to Cameron's election in 2005.
That was just over 8 years in. Labour are rapidly coming up to ten years out of power with no sign of a Howard or Kinnock, let alone a Cameron or Blair.
And better still introduce one for the NHS too!!
I think the problem for Corbyn was he almost made it too easy for people to not like him and I have to conclude that is down to his media profile. It just was never any good.
Miliband failed because he could not articulate a good enough alternative vision to the Tories and people wondered why they'd bother to vote for Labour at all when they could just get the Tories instead who'd been doing it for five years already successfully. I also think that the collapse of the Lib Dems somewhat overexaggerated the problem because that's where the Tory majority pretty much came from. Miliband was somewhat unlucky in timing. I am quite sure that had he run this year Labour would have done a lot better.
Brown was never going to have it easy after so many years of Government, again I think he was somewhat unfortunate in his timing. And again I think media profile played a part with that.
Blair was Blair.
Corbyn basically had a rubbish media profile, decent-ish policies (at least in 2017) but a woeful leadership style and an inability to lead. The anti-Semitism crisis and failure to deal with Brexit will be what he is remembered for.
Labour needs to take some of the more popular policies, the anti-austerity, the bus services, the NHS funding and then tack those onto competent leadership and the ability to listen. That means not going back to the spin days of Blair but equally not maintaining the media apathy of Corbyn.
The real mark of the new leader will be getting on top of the anti-Semitism issue and dealing with it competently. If they're able to regain the trust of the Jewish community (and that via the JLM), I expect a lot of people will support them again.
And Labour really needs to spend the whole five years looking like a credible alternative Government. That means opposing but also supporting where necessary. I think Corbyn spent far too long telling people how everything the Tories did was awful but never about any of the good things about our country that were already there.
And for god sake, stay away from Israel and Palestine. And prioritise defence.
It's a remarkable display of cognitive dissonance.
He's one of the more intelligent Corbyn supporters. If that's where the bulk of them are at, now, they're going to be out of power an awfully long time.
1. Westminster will never consider it, because a functioning federation requires an English Parliament, and that in turn would break up the Government. No British Prime Minister will do that. They want to play with the whole train set, not be forced to choose a half
2. Being part of a federal Britain is not independence. At the risk of stating the bleedin' obvious, the 45% who want independence want independence, not a federal system. It won't do anything to stabilise the situation or make the arguments go away
The situation that currently prevails is unsustainable. Trying to get around the tough decision that needs to be made by offering up imaginary constitutional non-solutions won't work.
Ed on 2017 manifesto = a win or a minority Government. At least Ed looked vaguely competent.
I'm under no illusions the Conservatives have many fans within either institution, but they've both been broadly fair and balanced. I don't like the licence fee particularly, and I really don't like the bullying aggressive behaviour of the TV licencing authority - a state-sanctioned bully.
I do think Channel 4 is a different matter, and have thought that should be privatised for over 20 years.
Blair is Blair is a total copout. He was just not a very nice human being and yet he was our PM for a decade. Maybe democracy just doesn't work? Also worth noting that Corbyn out preformed Blair in percentage terms in 2017
But I can only reiterate what I've already said. This project has been investigated, and costed more than once, and is still 'live'. Clearly it is a viable project of some description. So it's silly for people who know less than those who have studied it to dismiss it.
As for good reasons for doing it.
-It will stimulate economic activity in two sites that could use economic development
-It will make travel to Northern Ireland, and by extension the Republic of Ireland, easier, cheaper and more reliable - enabling more people from the mainland to explore the province, and vice versa
-NI is the new borderland between the EU and the UK. This would link that into Scotland and Northern England in what I think would be a very powerful way
-It would demonstrate that the Government has not abandoned its commitment to the Union, and that large scale infrastructure is not solely aimed at feeding London with more commuters
-A project of this size and scale requires the resources of the Union and amply demonstrates its vibrancy and its value
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1205931357785985024?s=20
There does need to be real reform. What that is I don't know. But, the BBC won't accept any reform.
https://twitter.com/OpiniumResearch/status/1205893838709174274?s=20
Fucking hell, the state of this
BBC News is subdivided into regional chunks, and although I rarely watched it I thought 'Look North' produced high quality out put that did factually cover the region whilst following national trends. You can find local BBC radio in the majority of cities staffed with people from the surrounding area. What more can the BBC do?
I saw more vox-pops from the North and Midlands accurately showing the strength of feeling for brexit and against Labour than those in the shires for disenfranchised ex-Conservatives.
#10 will now openly criticise the output of a public broadcasting company. To me this sounds like whispers of Trumpian rhetoric against perceived bias.
If you ever listen to some of the news and current affairs content - some interesting, some groan-worthy - they put out under the BBC3/Newsbeat then it is there for a very particular "yoof" demographic (think it's fair to say with a woke bent), even more so their 1Xtra stuff which is very much for urban, BME youth but handles issues like knife crime rather better than their more general-purpose BBC News teams seem to. Asian Network's news material also obviously community-specific though haven't spend any time on it (does anybody? none of the many Asian people I know seem to listen to it!). Radio 5Live feels very different to Radio 4 and I tend to listen to that, given a forced choice, because I just don't feel that Radio 4 is aimed at people like me. If Radio 4 is addressed primarily to the kind of educated professional or retired middle-class people who make up swathes of Remainia, and therefore reflects some of their cultural attitudes and concerns, then that seems fair enough to me and not a reason to boycott.
I do think that some groups are not well served by the BBC, certainly in comedy and light entertainment there is far more left-wing stuff than other viewpoints, and younger people in general do seem to be moving away from the service ("it's for old people" - but is that because so much of their yoof content is patronising/woke or just that it's less responsive to their needs than content they engage with on youtube / instagram / tiktok, not sure I'd buy into "they went woke now are going broke"). But their general news service seems reasonably neutral to me, about as much as you could hope for. More in-depth or investigative journalism like you might get on Panorama or Newsnight tends to give a clearer view of the maker's "angle" on things, but I suspect that's inevitable with what's more like an extended video-essay.
Panel discussions are probably an area of weakness in terms of neutrality, but then there are more mainstream left-wing parties than right-wing ones (so if you want to represent a range of political parties, that tends to drag the average out to the left) and bringing in talking heads from civil society and academia will often mean including another liberal or left-liberal perspective into the mix. May be quite hard to fix, but as noted below they could certainly improve the calibre of left-wing talking heads in the post-Corbyn era.
Seize to exist
But the Tories really can't use that anymore, in five years time that will really have ceased to be a potent argument.
But Labour can now use that argument quite effectively, if they are prepared to have a decent, credible alternative to offer.
The swing in Bassetlaw was the biggest LAB to CON swing in a seat in a GE of all time
Subscription, product placement & sponsorship should replace the TV tax.
The BBC is an anachronism belonging to an age when it was the single broadcaster & funding via the taxpayer was justified.
It seems to be the only organisation where consumer choice is prohibited. Consequently it has grown into a bloated unaccountable blob.
Words are like bullets and all I hear is machine gun fire when I tune to it.
(I said that to Ms Briskin the other day and she like it so I hope some of you will too)
So by the time of the GE, there was a narrative that Ed keeps coming up with these policies that aren't very good. They had him painted as this bookworm that comes up with ideas that sound good in textbooks, but won't work in the real world.
Reminds me a bit of Private Eye. At least historically that combined some much-needed reportage on poorly served issues (esp boring stuff like failure and corruption in local government that most of the Fourth Estate had given up on) and very juicy Westminster rumours the man on the street couldn't hear anywhere else in pre-social media days, with the problem you couldn't work out which of them were actually on the money versus which were just going to end up costing the paper money! Private Eye and Guido alike are not really to my taste but unless something superior supplants them in the meanwhile, I think we'll be poorer for it when they pass.
I was totally struck by McDonnell saying the number one issue is the Climate Emergency. You think that Flat Cap Fred gets up in the morning, with shit infrastructure, poor opportunity, low life expectancy, high crime, worried about globalization, technology, immigration, and think yes John you are right the Climate Emergency is #1 priority, I really need to get down to London and glue myself to a bus.
Plugging £15+ billion into NI in readiness for it as a juncture between a newly brexited UK and the customs union I can see value in. And i would support (as if it matters). But the costs of simply constructing and maintaining a steel structure in the Irish sea at a glance, seem completely disproportionate to the benefits it would bring.
Surely a prime candidate for privatization?