I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
IMO there are three things that determine current polling.
1) We are are still in the middle of a crisis, the govt gets the benefit of the doubt and 'rallying round' support. When the crisis ends, the reckoning will begin and questions will be asked about what comes next. Until then politics is suspended.
2) Labour were a loooooong way back in 2019 and the party is still dealing with the aftermath. There is a lot of ground to recover both internally and externally.
3) We are three years from a general election, after two recent elections and a chaotic period there is not yet a huge appetite from change.
I wish you were right. I fear it's more simple than that. I'd say there are two reasons for the current polling
1. 55% of the country feel sour about Brexit. Labour have now totally capitulated. Is there a single ex Labour voter who will be impressed by Starmer's damascene conversion? The man who fought this scourge for four years now appears to be it's most wholehearted supporter. If it's worth doing now why wasn't it when Mrs May suggested it? We could have avoided Johnson.
2. An invisible shadow cabinet. A shadow chancellor who has been given the chance of a lifetime is completely out of her depth and invisible. It all feeds in to the idea that Starmer lacks judgement.
He's got time but he needs advice badly. He could do a lot worse than getting Tony back on board or at least the brighter Milliband.
I'm agree with some of this, but I think it's Ed Miliband who's in fact marginally the brighter Miliband. He demolished Johnson in the Commons a couple of months ago, in the kind of Commons performance his brother didn't put on. His brother is also very bright for a politician and an excellent organiser and motivator, but Ed is probably the more innovative policymaker.
I mentioned David because the only Labour figures I can remember making an impression in the last year have been Blair T and Milliband D. I have a lot of time for Ed's backroom abilities but the public aren't aware of them or him. Labour has become a one man band and a pretty unimpressive one of late. I don't think Starmer gets it. He can be wrong but he has to impress.
For me, Labour must stop pulling punches. The Tories were ruthless in pinning the consequences of the Global Financial Crisis on the presiding Labour government. There is no reason not to return the favour now. The virus is not of this government's making but many aspects of their response have been a disgrace. The latest debacle - schools - yet again showcases the astonishing level of incompetence and lack of consideration. It's an unforgivable carry on. Impossible to defend. Trouble is, they are not really having to. Not from Labour anyway.
If Labour had called for schools not to reopen, and for the government to plan for this inevitability rather than leave it until they had already gone back for a day, they would be in a position to make hay. But they didn't, so they're not. I hope when the next shambles comes - as it surely will - this mistake is not repeated. Forget "national consensus" and "softly softly" we need a New Labour ready and willing to stick it to these bozos whenever the many chances arise.
Time to sharpen up the politics with some new and brutal talking points. Covid shambles = TORY shambles. Johnson can't hack it and he doesn't give a tinker's. Thousands of deaths in this country directly attributable to the mishandling of this crisis. The culprits mustn't get away with it. If we tolerate this god knows what will be next. Blood on their hands. Blood on HIS hands. C'mon. It's the truth so let's not be squeamish about saying it.
Ah, you're missing the Corbynite red meat. Sadly Labour's gone all vegan now, and their tastiest offering is some cold raw tofu, which makes it a bit tricky to compete with 17 stone of solid muscle:
IMO there are three things that determine current polling.
1) We are are still in the middle of a crisis, the govt gets the benefit of the doubt and 'rallying round' support. When the crisis ends, the reckoning will begin and questions will be asked about what comes next. Until then politics is suspended.
2) Labour were a loooooong way back in 2019 and the party is still dealing with the aftermath. There is a lot of ground to recover both internally and externally.
3) We are three years from a general election, after two recent elections and a chaotic period there is not yet a huge appetite from change.
I wish you were right. I fear it's more simple than that. I'd say there are two reasons for the current polling
1. 55% of the country feel sour about Brexit. Labour have now totally capitulated. Is there a single ex Labour voter who will be impressed by Starmer's damascene conversion? The man who fought this scourge for four years now appears to be it's most wholehearted supporter. If it's worth doing now why wasn't it when Mrs May suggested it? We could have avoided Johnson.
2. An invisible shadow cabinet. A shadow chancellor who has been given the chance of a lifetime is completely out of her depth and invisible. It all feeds in to the idea that Starmer lacks judgement.
He's got time but he needs advice badly. He could do a lot worse than getting Tony back on board or at least the brighter Milliband.
I'm agree with some of this, but I think it's Ed Miliband who's in fact marginally the brighter Miliband. He demolished Johnson in the Commons a couple of months ago, in the kind of Commons performance his brother didn't put on. His brother is also very bright for a politician and an excellent organiser and motivator, but Ed is probably the more innovative policymaker.
I mentioned David because the only Labour figures I can remember making an impression in the last year have been Blair T and Milliband D. I have a lot of time for Ed's backroom abilities but the public aren't aware of them or him. Labour has become a one man band and a pretty unimpressive one of late. I don't think Starmer gets it. He can be wrong but he has to impress.
For me, Labour must stop pulling punches. The Tories were ruthless in pinning the consequences of the Global Financial Crisis on the presiding Labour government. There is no reason not to return the favour now. The virus is not of this government's making but many aspects of their response have been a disgrace. The latest debacle - schools - yet again showcases the astonishing level of incompetence and lack of consideration. It's an unforgivable carry on. Impossible to defend. Trouble is, they are not really having to. Not from Labour anyway.
If Labour had called for schools not to reopen, and for the government to plan for this inevitability rather than leave it until they had already gone back for a day, they would be in a position to make hay. But they didn't, so they're not. I hope when the next shambles comes - as it surely will - this mistake is not repeated. Forget "national consensus" and "softly softly" we need a New Labour ready and willing to stick it to these bozos whenever the many chances arise.
Time to sharpen up the politics with some new and brutal talking points. Covid shambles = TORY shambles. Johnson can't hack it and he doesn't give a tinker's. Thousands of deaths in this country directly attributable to the mishandling of this crisis. The culprits mustn't get away with it. If we tolerate this god knows what will be next. Blood on their hands. Blood on HIS hands. C'mon. It's the truth so let's not be squeamish about saying it.
Ah, you're missing the Corbynite red meat. Sadly Labour's gone all vegan now, and their tastiest offering is some cold raw tofu, which makes it a bit tricky to compete with 17 stone of solid muscle:
IMO there are three things that determine current polling.
1) We are are still in the middle of a crisis, the govt gets the benefit of the doubt and 'rallying round' support. When the crisis ends, the reckoning will begin and questions will be asked about what comes next. Until then politics is suspended.
2) Labour were a loooooong way back in 2019 and the party is still dealing with the aftermath. There is a lot of ground to recover both internally and externally.
3) We are three years from a general election, after two recent elections and a chaotic period there is not yet a huge appetite from change.
I wish you were right. I fear it's more simple than that. I'd say there are two reasons for the current polling
1. 55% of the country feel sour about Brexit. Labour have now totally capitulated. Is there a single ex Labour voter who will be impressed by Starmer's damascene conversion? The man who fought this scourge for four years now appears to be it's most wholehearted supporter. If it's worth doing now why wasn't it when Mrs May suggested it? We could have avoided Johnson.
2. An invisible shadow cabinet. A shadow chancellor who has been given the chance of a lifetime is completely out of her depth and invisible. It all feeds in to the idea that Starmer lacks judgement.
He's got time but he needs advice badly. He could do a lot worse than getting Tony back on board or at least the brighter Milliband.
I'm agree with some of this, but I think it's Ed Miliband who's in fact marginally the brighter Miliband. He demolished Johnson in the Commons a couple of months ago, in the kind of Commons performance his brother didn't put on. His brother is also very bright for a politician and an excellent organiser and motivator, but Ed is probably the more innovative policymaker.
I mentioned David because the only Labour figures I can remember making an impression in the last year have been Blair T and Milliband D. I have a lot of time for Ed's backroom abilities but the public aren't aware of them or him. Labour has become a one man band and a pretty unimpressive one of late. I don't think Starmer gets it. He can be wrong but he has to impress.
For me, Labour must stop pulling punches. The Tories were ruthless in pinning the consequences of the Global Financial Crisis on the presiding Labour government. There is no reason not to return the favour now. The virus is not of this government's making but many aspects of their response have been a disgrace. The latest debacle - schools - yet again showcases the astonishing level of incompetence and lack of consideration. It's an unforgivable carry on. Impossible to defend. Trouble is, they are not really having to. Not from Labour anyway.
If Labour had called for schools not to reopen, and for the government to plan for this inevitability rather than leave it until they had already gone back for a day, they would be in a position to make hay. But they didn't, so they're not. I hope when the next shambles comes - as it surely will - this mistake is not repeated. Forget "national consensus" and "softly softly" we need a New Labour ready and willing to stick it to these bozos whenever the many chances arise.
Time to sharpen up the politics with some new and brutal talking points. Covid shambles = TORY shambles. Johnson can't hack it and he doesn't give a tinker's. Thousands of deaths in this country directly attributable to the mishandling of this crisis. The culprits mustn't get away with it. If we tolerate this god knows what will be next. Blood on their hands. Blood on HIS hands. C'mon. It's the truth so let's not be squeamish about saying it.
The difference is that Brown screwing up and over-spending before the financial crisis hit meaning that there was still a mammoth structural deficit to be fixed a couple of years after the crisis had finished was absolutely accurate and truthful.
Labourites like you want to pretend the deficit was all the recession's fault while ignoring the fact we weren't in recession when Brown caused his pre-recession deficit - nor were we in recession when the 2010 election happened.
The Tories are simply right now just dealing with a global pandemic during the pandemic not years after it right now.
A structural deficit of 2-3% of GDP isn't a "mammoth structural deficit" by any stretch of the imagination. The pandemic was global, the financial crisis was global. Both crises exposed serious weaknesses with respect to the UK's economy, society and governance, which can be attributed to the government of the day to some extent. The differences is that Brown dealt with the financial crisis better than Johnson has dealt with the Covid crisis.
Yes it is during a boom, 16 years after the last recession. 🤦🏻♂️
When the next inevitable recession hits and you're already standing there with your pants down with a 3% deficit then what do you think happens next?
Its like saying someone in stable employment, who hasn't had any financial shocks in a decade and a half isn't exposed to debt because their credit cards and loans are maxed out but they're barely making the minimum repayments each month. Then when a shock hits, an unforeseen bill or drop of income, then they should be completely surprised and taken aback to now be in difficulty.
Your deficit goes up. If your deficit goes from 3% to 10% you're not in a qualitatively different position from if your deficit goes from 0% to 7%. Especially if you are starting from a low level of debt (which is where your simplistic analogy to the person with maxed out credit cards breaks down). You're simply wrong on this. The UK's fiscal position in 2007 is at best a minor footnote in terms of explaining what happened next.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
You are really quite the university and qualifications snob aren't you?
Well I would like the PM of the UK representing the country on the world stage and taking difficult decisions to at least have a few GCSEs and A Levels and ideally a degree as well and I would hope most sensible people would too, otherwise you may as well just pick the PM by lottery from people in the street
Did you have this issue with John Major?
Or, indeed, Jim Callaghan.
I'm not sure I want Angela Rayner as PM- I think what I want is a Conservative party that is capable of governing honourably. But she has made a go of her life, and that's a good thing, isn't it?
(And if I were the Conservative party, I'd be very very careful making digs at people making babies...)
Jim Callaghan passed the Senior Oxford Certificate and the civil service entrance exam as well as tough exams to become a senior tax inspector
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group representing major U.S. airlines on Monday backed a proposal by public health officials to implement a global testing program requiring negative tests before most international air passengers return to the United States, according to a letter seen by Reuters....
....The CDC on Dec. 28 began requiring all airline passengers arriving from Britain - including U.S. citizens - to test negative for COVID-19 within 72 hours of departure.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
Makes an interesting comparison with your leader and his educational and progenitive record.
Boris has an Oxford degree
But a poorer one than someone of his background, schooling and purported intelligence should have obtained, especially in that subject and especially a subject inculcated into him from early in his prep school days.
That's not quite the conclusive argument you might think. Boris was right on the Upper Second / First borderline, and it came down to a philosophy viva that failed to get him across it (in the dark days when vast tracts of philosophy were compulsory in Greats). The sadly-departed Martin West, perhaps the greatest Hellenist of his generation, also took a Second for the same reason.
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
HYUFD is just like Gordon Brown and Labour between circa 2006 and 2015.
They kept on banging on about Cameron being a toff and the voters didn't care, poshboy-cum-aristo or working clas pleb, doesn't matter where you're from, it's where you're going that counts.
Education is important but nothing compares to the education you get through real life.
IMO there are three things that determine current polling.
1) We are are still in the middle of a crisis, the govt gets the benefit of the doubt and 'rallying round' support. When the crisis ends, the reckoning will begin and questions will be asked about what comes next. Until then politics is suspended.
2) Labour were a loooooong way back in 2019 and the party is still dealing with the aftermath. There is a lot of ground to recover both internally and externally.
3) We are three years from a general election, after two recent elections and a chaotic period there is not yet a huge appetite from change.
I wish you were right. I fear it's more simple than that. I'd say there are two reasons for the current polling
1. 55% of the country feel sour about Brexit. Labour have now totally capitulated. Is there a single ex Labour voter who will be impressed by Starmer's damascene conversion? The man who fought this scourge for four years now appears to be it's most wholehearted supporter. If it's worth doing now why wasn't it when Mrs May suggested it? We could have avoided Johnson.
2. An invisible shadow cabinet. A shadow chancellor who has been given the chance of a lifetime is completely out of her depth and invisible. It all feeds in to the idea that Starmer lacks judgement.
He's got time but he needs advice badly. He could do a lot worse than getting Tony back on board or at least the brighter Milliband.
I'm agree with some of this, but I think it's Ed Miliband who's in fact marginally the brighter Miliband. He demolished Johnson in the Commons a couple of months ago, in the kind of Commons performance his brother didn't put on. His brother is also very bright for a politician and an excellent organiser and motivator, but Ed is probably the more innovative policymaker.
I mentioned David because the only Labour figures I can remember making an impression in the last year have been Blair T and Milliband D. I have a lot of time for Ed's backroom abilities but the public aren't aware of them or him. Labour has become a one man band and a pretty unimpressive one of late. I don't think Starmer gets it. He can be wrong but he has to impress.
For me, Labour must stop pulling punches. The Tories were ruthless in pinning the consequences of the Global Financial Crisis on the presiding Labour government. There is no reason not to return the favour now. The virus is not of this government's making but many aspects of their response have been a disgrace. The latest debacle - schools - yet again showcases the astonishing level of incompetence and lack of consideration. It's an unforgivable carry on. Impossible to defend. Trouble is, they are not really having to. Not from Labour anyway.
If Labour had called for schools not to reopen, and for the government to plan for this inevitability rather than leave it until they had already gone back for a day, they would be in a position to make hay. But they didn't, so they're not. I hope when the next shambles comes - as it surely will - this mistake is not repeated. Forget "national consensus" and "softly softly" we need a New Labour ready and willing to stick it to these bozos whenever the many chances arise.
Time to sharpen up the politics with some new and brutal talking points. Covid shambles = TORY shambles. Johnson can't hack it and he doesn't give a tinker's. Thousands of deaths in this country directly attributable to the mishandling of this crisis. The culprits mustn't get away with it. If we tolerate this god knows what will be next. Blood on their hands. Blood on HIS hands. C'mon. It's the truth so let's not be squeamish about saying it.
Politicising a pandemic might go down well with the Canary-reading Corbyn fan club, but it will go down like a cup of cold sick with the other 99% of the population who are happy we have vaccines coming, and think the government did everything they could to avoid closing the schools.
I do think it is fair to say that Johnson vacillates. Despite being PM he is no decision-maker. I`m guessing that he had a strong constituency arguing that "whatever happens schools stay open" and a second constituency saying "the writing is on the wall close them now, you are going to have to do so eventually anyway".
I think he sided with the first constituency and then switched late on.
The sheep in Animal Farm come to mind.
Johnson just cannot tough out bad publicity from the MSM/opposition/commentariat.
When BBC is running a headline 'pressure grows' you know a U-turn is coming.
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
No it wouldn't, it may do with class warfare obsessed Corbyn voters there filled with inverse snobbery but they would never vote Tory anyway
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
You are really quite the university and qualifications snob aren't you?
Well I would like the PM of the UK representing the country on the world stage and taking difficult decisions to at least have a few GCSEs and A Levels and ideally a degree as well and I would hope most sensible people would too, otherwise you may as well just pick the PM by lottery from people in the street
Well, not everyone in the UK gets those qualifications. Some get Highers, some get Int Bac ... but perhaps those don't count.
They are still qualifications so obviously count, Rayner left school with no qualifications at all
My girlfriend has no qualifications other than A-Levels but that does not mean she is any less intelligent than me. She has other skills acquired outside of a formal education environment.
She sounds super intelligent aside from her one obvious blind spot.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
Makes an interesting comparison with your leader and his educational and progenitive record.
Boris has an Oxford degree
But a poorer one than someone of his background, schooling and purported intelligence should have obtained, especially in that subject and especially a subject inculcated into him from early in his prep school days.
He got a good upper second in Literae Humaniores, a harder subject than PPE which he could have gone for instead if set on a political career
I'd query that - it's a relatively uncompetitive course to get onto compared to PPE at least, given few schools teach Latin and Greek. That's why quite a lot of public school types go for it.
No offence to those with good Classics degrees - I'm sure a lot of work went into achieving the grades and I know several who are fine and capable people - but it isn't known as a particularly tough option.
I have a first in PPE. I can`t comment on other degrees in comparison, but my degree was bloody difficult. I do have degree-comparable occupational type qualifications and they were nowhere near as difficult as getting my degree in PPE.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
You are really quite the university and qualifications snob aren't you?
Well I would like the PM of the UK representing the country on the world stage and taking difficult decisions to at least have a few GCSEs and A Levels and ideally a degree as well and I would hope most sensible people would too, otherwise you may as well just pick the PM by lottery from people in the street
Well, not everyone in the UK gets those qualifications. Some get Highers, some get Int Bac ... but perhaps those don't count.
They are still qualifications so obviously count, Rayner left school with no qualifications at all
So, she sacrificed her chances to look after her baby. Again, not sure that line of attack is entirely wise while the Conservative party has its present leader...
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
You are really quite the university and qualifications snob aren't you?
Well I would like the PM of the UK representing the country on the world stage and taking difficult decisions to at least have a few GCSEs and A Levels and ideally a degree as well and I would hope most sensible people would too, otherwise you may as well just pick the PM by lottery from people in the street
Well, not everyone in the UK gets those qualifications. Some get Highers, some get Int Bac ... but perhaps those don't count.
They are still qualifications so obviously count, Rayner left school with no qualifications at all
My girlfriend has no qualifications other than A-Levels but that does not mean she is any less intelligent than me. She has other skills acquired outside of a formal education environment.
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
Evergreen message with him.
If he represented the Tory Party in reality rather than in the fiction of his and extreme socialists minds then I and many other Tories on this site would abandon the party PDQ.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
Makes an interesting comparison with your leader and his educational and progenitive record.
Boris has an Oxford degree
But a poorer one than someone of his background, schooling and purported intelligence should have obtained, especially in that subject and especially a subject inculcated into him from early in his prep school days.
That's not quite the conclusive argument you might think. Boris was right on the Upper Second / First borderline, and it came down to a philosophy viva that failed to get him across it (in the dark days when vast tracts of philosophy were compulsory in Greats). The sadly-departed Martin West, perhaps the greatest Hellenist of his generation, also took a Second for the same reason.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
Makes an interesting comparison with your leader and his educational and progenitive record.
Boris has an Oxford degree
But a poorer one than someone of his background, schooling and purported intelligence should have obtained, especially in that subject and especially a subject inculcated into him from early in his prep school days.
That's not quite the conclusive argument you might think. Boris was right on the Upper Second / First borderline, and it came down to a philosophy viva that failed to get him across it (in the dark days when vast tracts of philosophy were compulsory in Greats). The sadly-departed Martin West, perhaps the greatest Hellenist of his generation, also took a Second for the same reason.
Yet that was always part of the rules. The trick was to make dam' sure you weren't borderline.
(As a matter of interest, what was the source for that story, please?)
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
Evergreen message with him.
If he represented the Tory Party in reality rather than in the fiction of his and extreme socialists minds then I and many other Tories on this site would abandon the party PDQ.
You have never been a true Tory anyway, as proved by your votes for Blair and Farage
I`ve been speaking to a few people today about the strengthened lockdown. People, on the whole, seem bruised but resigned to the situation I`d say; coupled with slightly less intention of sticking to the letter of the law, perhaps. Acceptance and compliance is dwindling only a little. Sunak`s financial support is vital to this, of course.
One aspect to think about is this: we shall soon get to the point where whole cohorts are vaccinated. Groups of people who have all been vaccinated will feel justified in having more freedoms compared to those that haven`t been vaccinated yet. I`ve not seen this aspect discussed anywhere, but it will become an issue I predict.
Indeed, once my septuagenarian parents are vaccinated, where is the problem in my seeing them, as long as a I drive there and back with my household and don't stop en route?
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
Makes an interesting comparison with your leader and his educational and progenitive record.
Boris has an Oxford degree
But a poorer one than someone of his background, schooling and purported intelligence should have obtained, especially in that subject and especially a subject inculcated into him from early in his prep school days.
He got a good upper second in Literae Humaniores, a harder subject than PPE which he could have gone for instead if set on a political career
I'd query that - it's a relatively uncompetitive course to get onto compared to PPE at least, given few schools teach Latin and Greek. That's why quite a lot of public school types go for it.
No offence to those with good Classics degrees - I'm sure a lot of work went into achieving the grades and I know several who are fine and capable people - but it isn't known as a particularly tough option.
I have a first in PPE. I can`t comment on other degrees in comparison, but my degree was bloody difficult. I do have degree-comparable occupational type qualifications and they were nowhere near as difficult as getting my degree in PPE.
I think if you do the economics element for all 3 years that makes it harder
IMO there are three things that determine current polling.
1) We are are still in the middle of a crisis, the govt gets the benefit of the doubt and 'rallying round' support. When the crisis ends, the reckoning will begin and questions will be asked about what comes next. Until then politics is suspended.
2) Labour were a loooooong way back in 2019 and the party is still dealing with the aftermath. There is a lot of ground to recover both internally and externally.
3) We are three years from a general election, after two recent elections and a chaotic period there is not yet a huge appetite from change.
I wish you were right. I fear it's more simple than that. I'd say there are two reasons for the current polling
1. 55% of the country feel sour about Brexit. Labour have now totally capitulated. Is there a single ex Labour voter who will be impressed by Starmer's damascene conversion? The man who fought this scourge for four years now appears to be it's most wholehearted supporter. If it's worth doing now why wasn't it when Mrs May suggested it? We could have avoided Johnson.
2. An invisible shadow cabinet. A shadow chancellor who has been given the chance of a lifetime is completely out of her depth and invisible. It all feeds in to the idea that Starmer lacks judgement.
He's got time but he needs advice badly. He could do a lot worse than getting Tony back on board or at least the brighter Milliband.
I'm agree with some of this, but I think it's Ed Miliband who's in fact marginally the brighter Miliband. He demolished Johnson in the Commons a couple of months ago, in the kind of Commons performance his brother didn't put on. His brother is also very bright for a politician and an excellent organiser and motivator, but Ed is probably the more innovative policymaker.
I mentioned David because the only Labour figures I can remember making an impression in the last year have been Blair T and Milliband D. I have a lot of time for Ed's backroom abilities but the public aren't aware of them or him. Labour has become a one man band and a pretty unimpressive one of late. I don't think Starmer gets it. He can be wrong but he has to impress.
For me, Labour must stop pulling punches. The Tories were ruthless in pinning the consequences of the Global Financial Crisis on the presiding Labour government. There is no reason not to return the favour now. The virus is not of this government's making but many aspects of their response have been a disgrace. The latest debacle - schools - yet again showcases the astonishing level of incompetence and lack of consideration. It's an unforgivable carry on. Impossible to defend. Trouble is, they are not really having to. Not from Labour anyway.
If Labour had called for schools not to reopen, and for the government to plan for this inevitability rather than leave it until they had already gone back for a day, they would be in a position to make hay. But they didn't, so they're not. I hope when the next shambles comes - as it surely will - this mistake is not repeated. Forget "national consensus" and "softly softly" we need a New Labour ready and willing to stick it to these bozos whenever the many chances arise.
Time to sharpen up the politics with some new and brutal talking points. Covid shambles = TORY shambles. Johnson can't hack it and he doesn't give a tinker's. Thousands of deaths in this country directly attributable to the mishandling of this crisis. The culprits mustn't get away with it. If we tolerate this god knows what will be next. Blood on their hands. Blood on HIS hands. C'mon. It's the truth so let's not be squeamish about saying it.
The difference is that Brown screwing up and over-spending before the financial crisis hit meaning that there was still a mammoth structural deficit to be fixed a couple of years after the crisis had finished was absolutely accurate and truthful.
Labourites like you want to pretend the deficit was all the recession's fault while ignoring the fact we weren't in recession when Brown caused his pre-recession deficit - nor were we in recession when the 2010 election happened.
The Tories are simply right now just dealing with a global pandemic during the pandemic not years after it right now.
A structural deficit of 2-3% of GDP isn't a "mammoth structural deficit" by any stretch of the imagination. The pandemic was global, the financial crisis was global. Both crises exposed serious weaknesses with respect to the UK's economy, society and governance, which can be attributed to the government of the day to some extent. The differences is that Brown dealt with the financial crisis better than Johnson has dealt with the Covid crisis.
Yes it is during a boom, 16 years after the last recession. 🤦🏻♂️
When the next inevitable recession hits and you're already standing there with your pants down with a 3% deficit then what do you think happens next?
Its like saying someone in stable employment, who hasn't had any financial shocks in a decade and a half isn't exposed to debt because their credit cards and loans are maxed out but they're barely making the minimum repayments each month. Then when a shock hits, an unforeseen bill or drop of income, then they should be completely surprised and taken aback to now be in difficulty.
Your deficit goes up. If your deficit goes from 3% to 10% you're not in a qualitatively different position from if your deficit goes from 0% to 7%. Especially if you are starting from a low level of debt (which is where your simplistic analogy to the person with maxed out credit cards breaks down). You're simply wrong on this. The UK's fiscal position in 2007 is at best a minor footnote in terms of explaining what happened next.
You absolutely are in a qualitatively different position with a 10% deficit and a 7% deficit.
The low level of debt is absolutely irrelevant if you have a 10% deficit.
This is exponential growth all over again. YOU are the one simply wrong, if you can't comprehend the exponential growth problem with a 10% deficit then you are beyond help.
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
No it wouldn't, it may do with class warfare obsessed Corbyn voters there filled with inverse snobbery but they would never vote Tory anyway
This just shows that you have zero understanding of your new voters other than "they want Brexit".
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
Yes Peter Lilley I know what you think of women like her, your party has done a grand job of demonising them for decades.
Leaving school with a baby doesn't make her - or them - stupid.
No but leaving school with no GCSEs either is not exactly a qualification to be PM
Never confuse lack of formal qualifications with lack of intelligence. Rayner is worth 10 of the Tory front bench.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
You are really quite the university and qualifications snob aren't you?
Well I would like the PM of the UK representing the country on the world stage and taking difficult decisions to at least have a few GCSEs and A Levels and ideally a degree as well and I would hope most sensible people would too, otherwise you may as well just pick the PM by lottery from people in the street
Well, not everyone in the UK gets those qualifications. Some get Highers, some get Int Bac ... but perhaps those don't count.
They are still qualifications so obviously count, Rayner left school with no qualifications at all
My girlfriend has no qualifications other than A-Levels but that does not mean she is any less intelligent than me. She has other skills acquired outside of a formal education environment.
She sounds super intelligent aside from her one obvious blind spot.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
You are really quite the university and qualifications snob aren't you?
Well I would like the PM of the UK representing the country on the world stage and taking difficult decisions to at least have a few GCSEs and A Levels and ideally a degree as well and I would hope most sensible people would too, otherwise you may as well just pick the PM by lottery from people in the street
Well, not everyone in the UK gets those qualifications. Some get Highers, some get Int Bac ... but perhaps those don't count.
They are still qualifications so obviously count, Rayner left school with no qualifications at all
My girlfriend has no qualifications other than A-Levels but that does not mean she is any less intelligent than me. She has other skills acquired outside of a formal education environment.
So she has A Levels then, unlike Rayner
Unlike Rayner, she was required to stay in school until she was 18. You can thank mr Blair for that.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
Makes an interesting comparison with your leader and his educational and progenitive record.
Boris has an Oxford degree
But a poorer one than someone of his background, schooling and purported intelligence should have obtained, especially in that subject and especially a subject inculcated into him from early in his prep school days.
That's not quite the conclusive argument you might think. Boris was right on the Upper Second / First borderline, and it came down to a philosophy viva that failed to get him across it (in the dark days when vast tracts of philosophy were compulsory in Greats). The sadly-departed Martin West, perhaps the greatest Hellenist of his generation, also took a Second for the same reason.
Did he take it stoically?
No, I think he was too cynical about it - lived in the garden shed at Balliol or something.
Seriously, though, he must have taken his degree in the 1960s - a good two decades before Mr J, and with the great collapse in school classics in between, surely.
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
Evergreen message with him.
If he represented the Tory Party in reality rather than in the fiction of his and extreme socialists minds then I and many other Tories on this site would abandon the party PDQ.
You have never been a true Tory anyway, as proved by your votes for Blair and Farage
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
Yes Peter Lilley I know what you think of women like her, your party has done a grand job of demonising them for decades.
Leaving school with a baby doesn't make her - or them - stupid.
No but leaving school with no GCSEs either is not exactly a qualification to be PM
Never confuse lack of formal qualifications with lack of intelligence. Rayner is worth 10 of the Tory front bench.
She has no visible evidence of great intelligence either and the fact she used a debate in the Commons to shout 'scum' at a fellow MP shows she also needs to learn some manners as well
IMO there are three things that determine current polling.
1) We are are still in the middle of a crisis, the govt gets the benefit of the doubt and 'rallying round' support. When the crisis ends, the reckoning will begin and questions will be asked about what comes next. Until then politics is suspended.
2) Labour were a loooooong way back in 2019 and the party is still dealing with the aftermath. There is a lot of ground to recover both internally and externally.
3) We are three years from a general election, after two recent elections and a chaotic period there is not yet a huge appetite from change.
I wish you were right. I fear it's more simple than that. I'd say there are two reasons for the current polling
1. 55% of the country feel sour about Brexit. Labour have now totally capitulated. Is there a single ex Labour voter who will be impressed by Starmer's damascene conversion? The man who fought this scourge for four years now appears to be it's most wholehearted supporter. If it's worth doing now why wasn't it when Mrs May suggested it? We could have avoided Johnson.
2. An invisible shadow cabinet. A shadow chancellor who has been given the chance of a lifetime is completely out of her depth and invisible. It all feeds in to the idea that Starmer lacks judgement.
He's got time but he needs advice badly. He could do a lot worse than getting Tony back on board or at least the brighter Milliband.
I'm agree with some of this, but I think it's Ed Miliband who's in fact marginally the brighter Miliband. He demolished Johnson in the Commons a couple of months ago, in the kind of Commons performance his brother didn't put on. His brother is also very bright for a politician and an excellent organiser and motivator, but Ed is probably the more innovative policymaker.
I mentioned David because the only Labour figures I can remember making an impression in the last year have been Blair T and Milliband D. I have a lot of time for Ed's backroom abilities but the public aren't aware of them or him. Labour has become a one man band and a pretty unimpressive one of late. I don't think Starmer gets it. He can be wrong but he has to impress.
For me, Labour must stop pulling punches. The Tories were ruthless in pinning the consequences of the Global Financial Crisis on the presiding Labour government. There is no reason not to return the favour now. The virus is not of this government's making but many aspects of their response have been a disgrace. The latest debacle - schools - yet again showcases the astonishing level of incompetence and lack of consideration. It's an unforgivable carry on. Impossible to defend. Trouble is, they are not really having to. Not from Labour anyway.
If Labour had called for schools not to reopen, and for the government to plan for this inevitability rather than leave it until they had already gone back for a day, they would be in a position to make hay. But they didn't, so they're not. I hope when the next shambles comes - as it surely will - this mistake is not repeated. Forget "national consensus" and "softly softly" we need a New Labour ready and willing to stick it to these bozos whenever the many chances arise.
Time to sharpen up the politics with some new and brutal talking points. Covid shambles = TORY shambles. Johnson can't hack it and he doesn't give a tinker's. Thousands of deaths in this country directly attributable to the mishandling of this crisis. The culprits mustn't get away with it. If we tolerate this god knows what will be next. Blood on their hands. Blood on HIS hands. C'mon. It's the truth so let's not be squeamish about saying it.
The difference is that Brown screwing up and over-spending before the financial crisis hit meaning that there was still a mammoth structural deficit to be fixed a couple of years after the crisis had finished was absolutely accurate and truthful.
Labourites like you want to pretend the deficit was all the recession's fault while ignoring the fact we weren't in recession when Brown caused his pre-recession deficit - nor were we in recession when the 2010 election happened.
The Tories are simply right now just dealing with a global pandemic during the pandemic not years after it right now.
A structural deficit of 2-3% of GDP isn't a "mammoth structural deficit" by any stretch of the imagination. The pandemic was global, the financial crisis was global. Both crises exposed serious weaknesses with respect to the UK's economy, society and governance, which can be attributed to the government of the day to some extent. The differences is that Brown dealt with the financial crisis better than Johnson has dealt with the Covid crisis.
Yes it is during a boom, 16 years after the last recession. 🤦🏻♂️
When the next inevitable recession hits and you're already standing there with your pants down with a 3% deficit then what do you think happens next?
Its like saying someone in stable employment, who hasn't had any financial shocks in a decade and a half isn't exposed to debt because their credit cards and loans are maxed out but they're barely making the minimum repayments each month. Then when a shock hits, an unforeseen bill or drop of income, then they should be completely surprised and taken aback to now be in difficulty.
Your deficit goes up. If your deficit goes from 3% to 10% you're not in a qualitatively different position from if your deficit goes from 0% to 7%. Especially if you are starting from a low level of debt (which is where your simplistic analogy to the person with maxed out credit cards breaks down). You're simply wrong on this. The UK's fiscal position in 2007 is at best a minor footnote in terms of explaining what happened next.
Regardless (irregardless), Lab spent a sh*t load of money while fiscal receipts were into the stratosphere. No one is disputing that money needed to be spent in 1997, or rather, after their matching commitment ran out, but we were several years into boom time mortgage offers falling out of your cornflakes box and @kinabalu-type City bonuses by 2007.
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
No it wouldn't, it may do with class warfare obsessed Corbyn voters there filled with inverse snobbery but they would never vote Tory anyway
This just shows that you have zero understanding of your new voters other than "they want Brexit".
Given you did not vote Tory last year when they did and most still are on the latest polling I suggest I have more understanding of them than you
Rayner is very bright and quick, no question. She also conveys genuine warmth, which is a rare quality and invaluable among politicians.
Re; a post on Brexit below, the Tory lead will continue for now ; but only if there aren't too many days with these kinds of stories in the media, or if they fade after February/March.
"A growing number of retailers in the EU have decided they won’t deliver to Britain because of the new costs involved in sending packages after Brexit. Companies have said they are unwilling to register for VAT in the UK, with one Dutch firm calling the red tape “ludicrous”.
It comes as problems emerged with the first lorries to cross from Great Britain into Northern Ireland. Some food shipments did not have the correct paperwork, with waits of 10 hours at new border posts. Disruption means Sainsbury’s has reportedly lost around 700 product lines in NI – and the giant has been forced to stock goods from Spar."
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
Yes Peter Lilley I know what you think of women like her, your party has done a grand job of demonising them for decades.
Leaving school with a baby doesn't make her - or them - stupid.
No but leaving school with no GCSEs either is not exactly a qualification to be PM
Never confuse lack of formal qualifications with lack of intelligence. Rayner is worth 10 of the Tory front bench.
She has no visible evidence of great intelligence either and the fact she used a debate in the Commons to shout 'scum' at a fellow MP shows she also needs to learn some manners as well
Yes Boris Johnson is the perfect man to teach her some manners.
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
No it wouldn't, it may do with class warfare obsessed Corbyn voters there filled with inverse snobbery but they would never vote Tory anyway
It really would. "Vote for me, I'm considerably cleverer than you and look at these certificates if you don't believe me" just isn't a good look among ANY part of the electorate.
That's not to say a keen intellect isn't an asset. But the way you've expressed it on this thread - implying that an Oxbridge degree is proof of that, and that folk without formal qualifications can't be sharp as a tack - is both wrong in fact and politically poisonous as a message.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
You are really quite the university and qualifications snob aren't you?
Well I would like the PM of the UK representing the country on the world stage and taking difficult decisions to at least have a few GCSEs and A Levels and ideally a degree as well and I would hope most sensible people would too, otherwise you may as well just pick the PM by lottery from people in the street
Well, not everyone in the UK gets those qualifications. Some get Highers, some get Int Bac ... but perhaps those don't count.
They are still qualifications so obviously count, Rayner left school with no qualifications at all
Why don't you celebrate the fact that despite a challenging start she has rolled her sleeves up, got on with it and achieved plenty? Isn't that what Tories tell us all to do?
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
Yes Peter Lilley I know what you think of women like her, your party has done a grand job of demonising them for decades.
Leaving school with a baby doesn't make her - or them - stupid.
No but leaving school with no GCSEs either is not exactly a qualification to be PM
Never confuse lack of formal qualifications with lack of intelligence. Rayner is worth 10 of the Tory front bench.
She has no visible evidence of great intelligence either and the fact she used a debate in the Commons to shout 'scum' at a fellow MP shows she also needs to learn some manners as well
Yes Boris Johnson is the perfect man to teach her some manners.
Boris has never yelled abuse at a fellow MP in the Commons
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
Makes an interesting comparison with your leader and his educational and progenitive record.
Boris has an Oxford degree
But a poorer one than someone of his background, schooling and purported intelligence should have obtained, especially in that subject and especially a subject inculcated into him from early in his prep school days.
That's not quite the conclusive argument you might think. Boris was right on the Upper Second / First borderline, and it came down to a philosophy viva that failed to get him across it (in the dark days when vast tracts of philosophy were compulsory in Greats). The sadly-departed Martin West, perhaps the greatest Hellenist of his generation, also took a Second for the same reason.
Yet that was always part of the rules. The trick was to make dam' sure you weren't borderline.
(As a matter of interest, what was the source for that story, please?)
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
Makes an interesting comparison with your leader and his educational and progenitive record.
Boris has an Oxford degree
But a poorer one than someone of his background, schooling and purported intelligence should have obtained, especially in that subject and especially a subject inculcated into him from early in his prep school days.
That's not quite the conclusive argument you might think. Boris was right on the Upper Second / First borderline, and it came down to a philosophy viva that failed to get him across it (in the dark days when vast tracts of philosophy were compulsory in Greats). The sadly-departed Martin West, perhaps the greatest Hellenist of his generation, also took a Second for the same reason.
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
No it wouldn't, it may do with class warfare obsessed Corbyn voters there filled with inverse snobbery but they would never vote Tory anyway
It really would. "Vote for me, I'm considerably cleverer than you and look at these certificates if you don't believe me" just isn't a good look among ANY part of the electorate.
That's not to say a keen intellect isn't an asset. But the way you've expressed it on this thread - implying that an Oxbridge degree is proof of that, and that folk without formal qualifications can't be sharp as a tack - is both wrong in fact and politically poisonous as a message.
I did not say an Oxbridge degree was a prerequisite, I had no problem with Callaghan or Major being PM but they at least had some qualifications, Rayner left school with none at all
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
No it wouldn't, it may do with class warfare obsessed Corbyn voters there filled with inverse snobbery but they would never vote Tory anyway
This just shows that you have zero understanding of your new voters other than "they want Brexit".
Given you did not vote Tory last year when they did and most still are on the latest polling I suggest I have more understanding of them than you
Just because I did not vote Tory doesn't mean I don't understand why people did vote Tory at least here in the North East.
There's a reason why I voted for Lisa Nandy to be Labour leader. She got it more than Starmer did.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
Yes Peter Lilley I know what you think of women like her, your party has done a grand job of demonising them for decades.
Leaving school with a baby doesn't make her - or them - stupid.
No but leaving school with no GCSEs either is not exactly a qualification to be PM
Never confuse lack of formal qualifications with lack of intelligence. Rayner is worth 10 of the Tory front bench.
She has no visible evidence of great intelligence either and the fact she used a debate in the Commons to shout 'scum' at a fellow MP shows she also needs to learn some manners as well
Yes Boris Johnson is the perfect man to teach her some manners.
Boris has never yelled abuse at a fellow MP in the Commons
'Boris Johnson told not to hurl 'insults' by Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle'
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
Makes an interesting comparison with your leader and his educational and progenitive record.
Boris has an Oxford degree
But a poorer one than someone of his background, schooling and purported intelligence should have obtained, especially in that subject and especially a subject inculcated into him from early in his prep school days.
That's not quite the conclusive argument you might think. Boris was right on the Upper Second / First borderline, and it came down to a philosophy viva that failed to get him across it (in the dark days when vast tracts of philosophy were compulsory in Greats). The sadly-departed Martin West, perhaps the greatest Hellenist of his generation, also took a Second for the same reason.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
Yes Peter Lilley I know what you think of women like her, your party has done a grand job of demonising them for decades.
Leaving school with a baby doesn't make her - or them - stupid.
No but leaving school with no GCSEs either is not exactly a qualification to be PM
Never confuse lack of formal qualifications with lack of intelligence. Rayner is worth 10 of the Tory front bench.
She has no visible evidence of great intelligence either and the fact she used a debate in the Commons to shout 'scum' at a fellow MP shows she also needs to learn some manners as well
Yes Boris Johnson is the perfect man to teach her some manners.
Maybe he could delegate classes on respectful behaviour in the Commons to Jacob Rees-Mogg?
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
You are really quite the university and qualifications snob aren't you?
Well I would like the PM of the UK representing the country on the world stage and taking difficult decisions to at least have a few GCSEs and A Levels and ideally a degree as well and I would hope most sensible people would too, otherwise you may as well just pick the PM by lottery from people in the street
Well, not everyone in the UK gets those qualifications. Some get Highers, some get Int Bac ... but perhaps those don't count.
They are still qualifications so obviously count, Rayner left school with no qualifications at all
Why don't you celebrate the fact that despite a challenging start she has rolled her sleeves up, got on with it and achieved plenty? Isn't that what Tories tell us all to do?
Yes but we do not make them PM otherwise you would give everyone walking down the street a go, Rayner has achieved no more than the average person on Epping High Street educationally and professionally
IMO there are three things that determine current polling.
1) We are are still in the middle of a crisis, the govt gets the benefit of the doubt and 'rallying round' support. When the crisis ends, the reckoning will begin and questions will be asked about what comes next. Until then politics is suspended.
2) Labour were a loooooong way back in 2019 and the party is still dealing with the aftermath. There is a lot of ground to recover both internally and externally.
3) We are three years from a general election, after two recent elections and a chaotic period there is not yet a huge appetite from change.
I wish you were right. I fear it's more simple than that. I'd say there are two reasons for the current polling
1. 55% of the country feel sour about Brexit. Labour have now totally capitulated. Is there a single ex Labour voter who will be impressed by Starmer's damascene conversion? The man who fought this scourge for four years now appears to be it's most wholehearted supporter. If it's worth doing now why wasn't it when Mrs May suggested it? We could have avoided Johnson.
2. An invisible shadow cabinet. A shadow chancellor who has been given the chance of a lifetime is completely out of her depth and invisible. It all feeds in to the idea that Starmer lacks judgement.
He's got time but he needs advice badly. He could do a lot worse than getting Tony back on board or at least the brighter Milliband.
I'm agree with some of this, but I think it's Ed Miliband who's in fact marginally the brighter Miliband. He demolished Johnson in the Commons a couple of months ago, in the kind of Commons performance his brother didn't put on. His brother is also very bright for a politician and an excellent organiser and motivator, but Ed is probably the more innovative policymaker.
I mentioned David because the only Labour figures I can remember making an impression in the last year have been Blair T and Milliband D. I have a lot of time for Ed's backroom abilities but the public aren't aware of them or him. Labour has become a one man band and a pretty unimpressive one of late. I don't think Starmer gets it. He can be wrong but he has to impress.
For me, Labour must stop pulling punches. The Tories were ruthless in pinning the consequences of the Global Financial Crisis on the presiding Labour government. There is no reason not to return the favour now. The virus is not of this government's making but many aspects of their response have been a disgrace. The latest debacle - schools - yet again showcases the astonishing level of incompetence and lack of consideration. It's an unforgivable carry on. Impossible to defend. Trouble is, they are not really having to. Not from Labour anyway.
If Labour had called for schools not to reopen, and for the government to plan for this inevitability rather than leave it until they had already gone back for a day, they would be in a position to make hay. But they didn't, so they're not. I hope when the next shambles comes - as it surely will - this mistake is not repeated. Forget "national consensus" and "softly softly" we need a New Labour ready and willing to stick it to these bozos whenever the many chances arise.
Time to sharpen up the politics with some new and brutal talking points. Covid shambles = TORY shambles. Johnson can't hack it and he doesn't give a tinker's. Thousands of deaths in this country directly attributable to the mishandling of this crisis. The culprits mustn't get away with it. If we tolerate this god knows what will be next. Blood on their hands. Blood on HIS hands. C'mon. It's the truth so let's not be squeamish about saying it.
Politicising a pandemic might go down well with the Canary-reading Corbyn fan club, but it will go down like a cup of cold sick with the other 99% of the population who are happy we have vaccines coming, and think the government did everything they could to avoid closing the schools.
So the public need to open their eyes then - and Labour must help them do it. I'd say it's a duty. Presiding over this mess should not translate to a lead in the polls. Something is not right there. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Very dangerous for our democracy if there is no penalty for callous incompetence in government.
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
No it wouldn't, it may do with class warfare obsessed Corbyn voters there filled with inverse snobbery but they would never vote Tory anyway
This just shows that you have zero understanding of your new voters other than "they want Brexit".
Given you did not vote Tory last year when they did and most still are on the latest polling I suggest I have more understanding of them than you
Given that you disagree with the Tory's central policy I would tread carefully, O Chairman.
Rayner is very bright and quick, no question. She also conveys genuine warmth, which is a rare quality and invaluable among politicians.
Re; a post on Brexit below, the Tory lead will continue for now - as long as there aren't too many days with these kinds of stories in the media, or if they fade after February/March.
"A growing number of retailers in the EU have decided they won’t deliver to Britain because of the new costs involved in sending packages after Brexit. Companies have said they are unwilling to register for VAT in the UK, with one Dutch firm calling the red tape “ludicrous”.
It comes as problems emerged with the first lorries to cross from Great Britain into Northern Ireland. Some food shipments did not have the correct paperwork, with waits of 10 hours at new border posts. Disruption means Sainsbury’s has reportedly lost around 700 product lines in NI – and the giant has been forced to stock goods from Spar."
The Great Brexit Disaster:
"Some food shipments did not have the correct paperwork".
Oh. Hmmmm. But I bet before Brexit, EVERY lorry had the correct paperwork.
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
No it wouldn't, it may do with class warfare obsessed Corbyn voters there filled with inverse snobbery but they would never vote Tory anyway
It really would. "Vote for me, I'm considerably cleverer than you and look at these certificates if you don't believe me" just isn't a good look among ANY part of the electorate.
That's not to say a keen intellect isn't an asset. But the way you've expressed it on this thread - implying that an Oxbridge degree is proof of that, and that folk without formal qualifications can't be sharp as a tack - is both wrong in fact and politically poisonous as a message.
I did not say an Oxbridge degree was a prerequisite, I had no problem with Callaghan or Major being PM but they at least had some qualifications, Rayner left school with none at all
Please keep alienating vast swathes of your own voters. Thank you.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
Yes Peter Lilley I know what you think of women like her, your party has done a grand job of demonising them for decades.
Leaving school with a baby doesn't make her - or them - stupid.
No but leaving school with no GCSEs either is not exactly a qualification to be PM
Never confuse lack of formal qualifications with lack of intelligence. Rayner is worth 10 of the Tory front bench.
She has no visible evidence of great intelligence either and the fact she used a debate in the Commons to shout 'scum' at a fellow MP shows she also needs to learn some manners as well
Yes Boris Johnson is the perfect man to teach her some manners.
Boris has never yelled abuse at a fellow MP in the Commons
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
No it wouldn't, it may do with class warfare obsessed Corbyn voters there filled with inverse snobbery but they would never vote Tory anyway
It really would. "Vote for me, I'm considerably cleverer than you and look at these certificates if you don't believe me" just isn't a good look among ANY part of the electorate.
That's not to say a keen intellect isn't an asset. But the way you've expressed it on this thread - implying that an Oxbridge degree is proof of that, and that folk without formal qualifications can't be sharp as a tack - is both wrong in fact and politically poisonous as a message.
I did not say an Oxbridge degree was a prerequisite, I had no problem with Callaghan or Major being PM but they at least had some qualifications, Rayner left school with none at all
That is outrageously out-dated, not to say irrelevant.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
You are really quite the university and qualifications snob aren't you?
Well I would like the PM of the UK representing the country on the world stage and taking difficult decisions to at least have a few GCSEs and A Levels and ideally a degree as well and I would hope most sensible people would too, otherwise you may as well just pick the PM by lottery from people in the street
Well, not everyone in the UK gets those qualifications. Some get Highers, some get Int Bac ... but perhaps those don't count.
They are still qualifications so obviously count, Rayner left school with no qualifications at all
Why don't you celebrate the fact that despite a challenging start she has rolled her sleeves up, got on with it and achieved plenty? Isn't that what Tories tell us all to do?
Yes but we do not make them PM otherwise you would give everyone walking down the street a go, Rayner has achieved no more than the average person on Epping High Street educationally and professionally
Given that she as leader would be a gift for the Tories over Starmer I would have thought you`d be championing her HYUFD.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
You are really quite the university and qualifications snob aren't you?
Well I would like the PM of the UK representing the country on the world stage and taking difficult decisions to at least have a few GCSEs and A Levels and ideally a degree as well and I would hope most sensible people would too, otherwise you may as well just pick the PM by lottery from people in the street
Well, not everyone in the UK gets those qualifications. Some get Highers, some get Int Bac ... but perhaps those don't count.
They are still qualifications so obviously count, Rayner left school with no qualifications at all
Why don't you celebrate the fact that despite a challenging start she has rolled her sleeves up, got on with it and achieved plenty? Isn't that what Tories tell us all to do?
Yes but we do not make them PM otherwise you would give everyone walking down the street a go, Rayner has achieved no more than the average person on Epping High Street educationally and professionally
She earns at least double the median salary. That's pretty good going for someone with no qualifications. I need to take a leaf out of her book.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
Makes an interesting comparison with your leader and his educational and progenitive record.
Boris has an Oxford degree
But a poorer one than someone of his background, schooling and purported intelligence should have obtained, especially in that subject and especially a subject inculcated into him from early in his prep school days.
That's not quite the conclusive argument you might think. Boris was right on the Upper Second / First borderline, and it came down to a philosophy viva that failed to get him across it (in the dark days when vast tracts of philosophy were compulsory in Greats). The sadly-departed Martin West, perhaps the greatest Hellenist of his generation, also took a Second for the same reason.
Yet that was always part of the rules. The trick was to make dam' sure you weren't borderline.
(As a matter of interest, what was the source for that story, please?)
Although the first time I heard the story was from Boris' old tutor.
Ah, thank you very much. Very Jowettian.
Hmm - if Kenny said "On the basis of the tutors’ reports, I formed the judgement that while Boris had the necessary intelligence, he lacked the appropriate diligence to achieve the first-class degree that he clearly felt was his due."
And he failed because he did not know his Aristotle. Imagine not knowing the Stagyrite after - what was it? - 4 years of Lit. Hum. Not a great (sorry) look.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
You are really quite the university and qualifications snob aren't you?
Well I would like the PM of the UK representing the country on the world stage and taking difficult decisions to at least have a few GCSEs and A Levels and ideally a degree as well and I would hope most sensible people would too, otherwise you may as well just pick the PM by lottery from people in the street
Well, not everyone in the UK gets those qualifications. Some get Highers, some get Int Bac ... but perhaps those don't count.
They are still qualifications so obviously count, Rayner left school with no qualifications at all
Why don't you celebrate the fact that despite a challenging start she has rolled her sleeves up, got on with it and achieved plenty? Isn't that what Tories tell us all to do?
Yes but we do not make them PM otherwise you would give everyone walking down the street a go, Rayner has achieved no more than the average person on Epping High Street educationally and professionally
She earns at least double the median salary. That's pretty good going for someone with no qualifications. I need to take a leaf out of her book.
The only qualification you need to be an MP is to win an election that does not mean you should automatically lead the country
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
You are really quite the university and qualifications snob aren't you?
Well I would like the PM of the UK representing the country on the world stage and taking difficult decisions to at least have a few GCSEs and A Levels and ideally a degree as well and I would hope most sensible people would too, otherwise you may as well just pick the PM by lottery from people in the street
Well, not everyone in the UK gets those qualifications. Some get Highers, some get Int Bac ... but perhaps those don't count.
They are still qualifications so obviously count, Rayner left school with no qualifications at all
Why don't you celebrate the fact that despite a challenging start she has rolled her sleeves up, got on with it and achieved plenty? Isn't that what Tories tell us all to do?
Yes but we do not make them PM otherwise you would give everyone walking down the street a go, Rayner has achieved no more than the average person on Epping High Street educationally and professionally
Erm this is bonkers. She has risen to very near the top of the political ladder. A path that you wish dearly you could emulate. You have failed, as have thousands and thousands of others. She has succeeded. Hence she has achieved a sh*tload more than the average person on Epping High Street professionally and who cares about educationally.
Rayner is very bright and quick, no question. She also conveys genuine warmth, which is a rare quality and invaluable among politicians.
Re; a post on Brexit below, the Tory lead will continue for now - as long as there aren't too many days with these kinds of stories in the media, or if they fade after February/March.
"A growing number of retailers in the EU have decided they won’t deliver to Britain because of the new costs involved in sending packages after Brexit. Companies have said they are unwilling to register for VAT in the UK, with one Dutch firm calling the red tape “ludicrous”.
It comes as problems emerged with the first lorries to cross from Great Britain into Northern Ireland. Some food shipments did not have the correct paperwork, with waits of 10 hours at new border posts. Disruption means Sainsbury’s has reportedly lost around 700 product lines in NI – and the giant has been forced to stock goods from Spar."
The Great Brexit Disaster:
"Some food shipments did not have the correct paperwork".
Oh. Hmmmm. But I bet before Brexit, EVERY lorry had the correct paperwork.
Oh - they didn't? Hmmmmm.
This particular question will only be worrying for the government if this apparently early trickle of retailers pulling out becomes a flood.
It's far too early to say how Brexit and many other processes will go this year, in all sorts of ways ; naturally.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
You are really quite the university and qualifications snob aren't you?
Well I would like the PM of the UK representing the country on the world stage and taking difficult decisions to at least have a few GCSEs and A Levels and ideally a degree as well and I would hope most sensible people would too, otherwise you may as well just pick the PM by lottery from people in the street
Well, not everyone in the UK gets those qualifications. Some get Highers, some get Int Bac ... but perhaps those don't count.
They are still qualifications so obviously count, Rayner left school with no qualifications at all
Why don't you celebrate the fact that despite a challenging start she has rolled her sleeves up, got on with it and achieved plenty? Isn't that what Tories tell us all to do?
Yes but we do not make them PM otherwise you would give everyone walking down the street a go, Rayner has achieved no more than the average person on Epping High Street educationally and professionally
She earns at least double the median salary. That's pretty good going for someone with no qualifications. I need to take a leaf out of her book.
The only qualification you need to be an MP is to win an election that does not mean you should automatically lead the country
That's literally why you think Boris should be Prime Minister. Because he wins elections.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
Yes Peter Lilley I know what you think of women like her, your party has done a grand job of demonising them for decades.
Leaving school with a baby doesn't make her - or them - stupid.
No but leaving school with no GCSEs either is not exactly a qualification to be PM
Never confuse lack of formal qualifications with lack of intelligence. Rayner is worth 10 of the Tory front bench.
She has no visible evidence of great intelligence either and the fact she used a debate in the Commons to shout 'scum' at a fellow MP shows she also needs to learn some manners as well
Yes Boris Johnson is the perfect man to teach her some manners.
Boris has never yelled abuse at a fellow MP in the Commons
'Boris Johnson told not to hurl 'insults' by Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle'
Scottish case details are out, with some surprises. Among the worst affected now are Dumfries&Galloway and the Borders with case rates in the 400s and 500s. They had dropped to level 1 a couple weeks before Christmas ...
The Dems are indeed favourite in both races but are still a shade of odds against to do what they need to do - the double. I'm feeling bullish but also nervous. It means a lot this one. I do not want to see Joe tangled up and able to do nothing of much import. He deserves better than that, having saved his country and the wider world from the gruesome prospect of a 2nd Trump term.
Relax, either way he is going to be constrained, either way there are enough moderates that he can get some things done.
True enough. It's not a binary between Impasse and Transformation. But this version of the GOP are so bottom drawer I'd rather their influence was minimized. I wouldn't normally be so bothered about US politics, btw, it's a hangover consequence of Trump. Hated him so much and the Republican Party enabled him. So now I hate them too.
Even if the GOP won both seats tonight the swing votes in the Senate would still be Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, neither exactly close to Trump, Romney even voted to impeach him
Good post.
Except it misses the ridiculous power that Mitch McConnell wields if he's Senate Majority Leader. He can just refuse to bring a vote on issues he knows he will lose the vote on. If Mitch is Majority Leader he can be a unilateral roadblock on anything much happening for the next 2 years.
As a clear example Puerto Rico have voted unambiguously now for Statehood. It is a long-standing policy of both the Republican Party as well as the Democrats that PR can become a State if they voted for it. Some Republican Senators like Marco Rubio are long-standing advocates of Puerto Rico statehood. But Mitch McConnell opposes it despite it being official GOP policy to support it and has said he would never permit there to be a vote on it. If there was a vote then there is a clear majority in the Senate to back it - but Mitch will veto any vote.
Hard to see the 'official' justification for not even bringing it to a vote if the party policy is to support the wishes of Puerto Ricans.
I see the statehood referendum, was within a few hundredths of a percent of being 52-48.
The question, interestingly, is whether the Democrats would be so keen given the shifts in the Hispanic vote in the election. It might temper their view.
It's the right thing to do. The competitiveness of the putative state might just stop the Republicans vetoing it.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
Makes an interesting comparison with your leader and his educational and progenitive record.
Boris has an Oxford degree
But a poorer one than someone of his background, schooling and purported intelligence should have obtained, especially in that subject and especially a subject inculcated into him from early in his prep school days.
That's not quite the conclusive argument you might think. Boris was right on the Upper Second / First borderline, and it came down to a philosophy viva that failed to get him across it (in the dark days when vast tracts of philosophy were compulsory in Greats). The sadly-departed Martin West, perhaps the greatest Hellenist of his generation, also took a Second for the same reason.
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
No it wouldn't, it may do with class warfare obsessed Corbyn voters there filled with inverse snobbery but they would never vote Tory anyway
This just shows that you have zero understanding of your new voters other than "they want Brexit".
Given you did not vote Tory last year when they did and most still are on the latest polling I suggest I have more understanding of them than you
Seriously? You know more about working class voters in the north than working class PBers in the north?
IMO there are three things that determine current polling.
1) We are are still in the middle of a crisis, the govt gets the benefit of the doubt and 'rallying round' support. When the crisis ends, the reckoning will begin and questions will be asked about what comes next. Until then politics is suspended.
2) Labour were a loooooong way back in 2019 and the party is still dealing with the aftermath. There is a lot of ground to recover both internally and externally.
3) We are three years from a general election, after two recent elections and a chaotic period there is not yet a huge appetite from change.
I wish you were right. I fear it's more simple than that. I'd say there are two reasons for the current polling
1. 55% of the country feel sour about Brexit. Labour have now totally capitulated. Is there a single ex Labour voter who will be impressed by Starmer's damascene conversion? The man who fought this scourge for four years now appears to be it's most wholehearted supporter. If it's worth doing now why wasn't it when Mrs May suggested it? We could have avoided Johnson.
2. An invisible shadow cabinet. A shadow chancellor who has been given the chance of a lifetime is completely out of her depth and invisible. It all feeds in to the idea that Starmer lacks judgement.
He's got time but he needs advice badly. He could do a lot worse than getting Tony back on board or at least the brighter Milliband.
I'm agree with some of this, but I think it's Ed Miliband who's in fact marginally the brighter Miliband. He demolished Johnson in the Commons a couple of months ago, in the kind of Commons performance his brother didn't put on. His brother is also very bright for a politician and an excellent organiser and motivator, but Ed is probably the more innovative policymaker.
I mentioned David because the only Labour figures I can remember making an impression in the last year have been Blair T and Milliband D. I have a lot of time for Ed's backroom abilities but the public aren't aware of them or him. Labour has become a one man band and a pretty unimpressive one of late. I don't think Starmer gets it. He can be wrong but he has to impress.
For me, Labour must stop pulling punches. The Tories were ruthless in pinning the consequences of the Global Financial Crisis on the presiding Labour government. There is no reason not to return the favour now. The virus is not of this government's making but many aspects of their response have been a disgrace. The latest debacle - schools - yet again showcases the astonishing level of incompetence and lack of consideration. It's an unforgivable carry on. Impossible to defend. Trouble is, they are not really having to. Not from Labour anyway.
If Labour had called for schools not to reopen, and for the government to plan for this inevitability rather than leave it until they had already gone back for a day, they would be in a position to make hay. But they didn't, so they're not. I hope when the next shambles comes - as it surely will - this mistake is not repeated. Forget "national consensus" and "softly softly" we need a New Labour ready and willing to stick it to these bozos whenever the many chances arise.
Time to sharpen up the politics with some new and brutal talking points. Covid shambles = TORY shambles. Johnson can't hack it and he doesn't give a tinker's. Thousands of deaths in this country directly attributable to the mishandling of this crisis. The culprits mustn't get away with it. If we tolerate this god knows what will be next. Blood on their hands. Blood on HIS hands. C'mon. It's the truth so let's not be squeamish about saying it.
Politicising a pandemic might go down well with the Canary-reading Corbyn fan club, but it will go down like a cup of cold sick with the other 99% of the population who are happy we have vaccines coming, and think the government did everything they could to avoid closing the schools.
So the public need to open their eyes then - and Labour must help them do it. I'd say it's a duty. Presiding over this mess should not translate to a lead in the polls. Something is not right there. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Very dangerous for our democracy if there is no penalty for callous incompetence in government.
Maybe what is rotten is Labour's ability to look coherent.
I mean, if you can't get a 24-carat, diamond-encrusted win on education, something's wrong. Against Gavin Williamson? Somebody REALLY isn't doing their job if that challenge is a no-score draw....
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
No it wouldn't, it may do with class warfare obsessed Corbyn voters there filled with inverse snobbery but they would never vote Tory anyway
It really would. "Vote for me, I'm considerably cleverer than you and look at these certificates if you don't believe me" just isn't a good look among ANY part of the electorate.
That's not to say a keen intellect isn't an asset. But the way you've expressed it on this thread - implying that an Oxbridge degree is proof of that, and that folk without formal qualifications can't be sharp as a tack - is both wrong in fact and politically poisonous as a message.
I did not say an Oxbridge degree was a prerequisite, I had no problem with Callaghan or Major being PM but they at least had some qualifications, Rayner left school with none at all
Please keep alienating vast swathes of your own voters. Thank you.
The vast majority of Tory voters have more GCSEs than Rayner has
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
You are really quite the university and qualifications snob aren't you?
Well I would like the PM of the UK representing the country on the world stage and taking difficult decisions to at least have a few GCSEs and A Levels and ideally a degree as well and I would hope most sensible people would too, otherwise you may as well just pick the PM by lottery from people in the street
Well, not everyone in the UK gets those qualifications. Some get Highers, some get Int Bac ... but perhaps those don't count.
They are still qualifications so obviously count, Rayner left school with no qualifications at all
Why don't you celebrate the fact that despite a challenging start she has rolled her sleeves up, got on with it and achieved plenty? Isn't that what Tories tell us all to do?
Yes but we do not make them PM otherwise you would give everyone walking down the street a go, Rayner has achieved no more than the average person on Epping High Street educationally and professionally
What? Her profession is politics. Simply by being an MP, she's in the top 650 or so politicians in the UK; we can argue exactly how far up that list she is right now, but she's closer to the top than the bottom.
I know that Epping is a cut above, but I never realised it was such a home of the gods...
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
You are really quite the university and qualifications snob aren't you?
Well I would like the PM of the UK representing the country on the world stage and taking difficult decisions to at least have a few GCSEs and A Levels and ideally a degree as well and I would hope most sensible people would too, otherwise you may as well just pick the PM by lottery from people in the street
Well, not everyone in the UK gets those qualifications. Some get Highers, some get Int Bac ... but perhaps those don't count.
They are still qualifications so obviously count, Rayner left school with no qualifications at all
Why don't you celebrate the fact that despite a challenging start she has rolled her sleeves up, got on with it and achieved plenty? Isn't that what Tories tell us all to do?
Yes but we do not make them PM otherwise you would give everyone walking down the street a go, Rayner has achieved no more than the average person on Epping High Street educationally and professionally
Given that she as leader would be a gift for the Tories over Starmer I would have thought you`d be championing her HYUFD.
She most likely would but no election is certain and we cannot afford the risk of having her as PM
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
Yes Peter Lilley I know what you think of women like her, your party has done a grand job of demonising them for decades.
Leaving school with a baby doesn't make her - or them - stupid.
No but leaving school with no GCSEs either is not exactly a qualification to be PM
Never confuse lack of formal qualifications with lack of intelligence. Rayner is worth 10 of the Tory front bench.
She has no visible evidence of great intelligence either and the fact she used a debate in the Commons to shout 'scum' at a fellow MP shows she also needs to learn some manners as well
Yes Boris Johnson is the perfect man to teach her some manners.
Boris has never yelled abuse at a fellow MP in the Commons
'Boris Johnson told not to hurl 'insults' by Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle'
But you said "She has no visible evidence of great intelligence either and the fact she used a debate in the Commons to shout 'scum' at a fellow MP shows she also needs to learn some manners as well".
I know scum is a 4 letter word, but it's not swearing, so far as I know, unless it was prefixed with Tory or something like it.
Rayner is very bright and quick, no question. She also conveys genuine warmth, which is a rare quality and invaluable among politicians.
Re; a post on Brexit below, the Tory lead will continue for now ; but only if there aren't too many days with these kinds of stories in the media, or if they fade after February/March.
"A growing number of retailers in the EU have decided they won’t deliver to Britain because of the new costs involved in sending packages after Brexit. Companies have said they are unwilling to register for VAT in the UK, with one Dutch firm calling the red tape “ludicrous”.
It comes as problems emerged with the first lorries to cross from Great Britain into Northern Ireland. Some food shipments did not have the correct paperwork, with waits of 10 hours at new border posts. Disruption means Sainsbury’s has reportedly lost around 700 product lines in NI – and the giant has been forced to stock goods from Spar."
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
No it wouldn't, it may do with class warfare obsessed Corbyn voters there filled with inverse snobbery but they would never vote Tory anyway
It really would. "Vote for me, I'm considerably cleverer than you and look at these certificates if you don't believe me" just isn't a good look among ANY part of the electorate.
That's not to say a keen intellect isn't an asset. But the way you've expressed it on this thread - implying that an Oxbridge degree is proof of that, and that folk without formal qualifications can't be sharp as a tack - is both wrong in fact and politically poisonous as a message.
I did not say an Oxbridge degree was a prerequisite, I had no problem with Callaghan or Major being PM but they at least had some qualifications, Rayner left school with none at all
That is outrageously out-dated, not to say irrelevant.
It isn't, the UK PM should have educational qualifications
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
No it wouldn't, it may do with class warfare obsessed Corbyn voters there filled with inverse snobbery but they would never vote Tory anyway
It really would. "Vote for me, I'm considerably cleverer than you and look at these certificates if you don't believe me" just isn't a good look among ANY part of the electorate.
That's not to say a keen intellect isn't an asset. But the way you've expressed it on this thread - implying that an Oxbridge degree is proof of that, and that folk without formal qualifications can't be sharp as a tack - is both wrong in fact and politically poisonous as a message.
I did not say an Oxbridge degree was a prerequisite, I had no problem with Callaghan or Major being PM but they at least had some qualifications, Rayner left school with none at all
Please keep alienating vast swathes of your own voters. Thank you.
The vast majority of Tory voters have more GCSEs than Rayner has
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
Evergreen message with him.
If he represented the Tory Party in reality rather than in the fiction of his and extreme socialists minds then I and many other Tories on this site would abandon the party PDQ.
You have never been a true Tory anyway, as proved by your votes for Blair and Farage
I never voted for Farage, I voted to get rid of Farage by abolishing our MEPs.
Scottish case details are out, with some surprises. Among the worst affected now are Dumfries&Galloway and the Borders with case rates in the 400s and 500s. They had dropped to level 1 a couple weeks before Christmas ...
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
No it wouldn't, it may do with class warfare obsessed Corbyn voters there filled with inverse snobbery but they would never vote Tory anyway
This just shows that you have zero understanding of your new voters other than "they want Brexit".
Given you did not vote Tory last year when they did and most still are on the latest polling I suggest I have more understanding of them than you
Seriously? You know more about working class voters in the north than working class PBers in the north?
Time out, comrade.
Tory working class voters yes, they are no different to Tory working class voters in Epping really.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
Yes Peter Lilley I know what you think of women like her, your party has done a grand job of demonising them for decades.
Leaving school with a baby doesn't make her - or them - stupid.
No but leaving school with no GCSEs either is not exactly a qualification to be PM
Never confuse lack of formal qualifications with lack of intelligence. Rayner is worth 10 of the Tory front bench.
She has no visible evidence of great intelligence either and the fact she used a debate in the Commons to shout 'scum' at a fellow MP shows she also needs to learn some manners as well
Yes Boris Johnson is the perfect man to teach her some manners.
Boris has never yelled abuse at a fellow MP in the Commons
'Boris Johnson told not to hurl 'insults' by Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle'
A man who stabbed three people to death in a Reading park believed he was carrying out "an act of religious jihad", a court has heard.
The court heard the defendant, who had been refused asylum, had been involved with militias as part of the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi.
Between 2013 and 2020 he was repeatedly arrested and convicted of various offences in the UK.
While in HMP Bullingdon, Saadallah had associated with radical preacher Omar Brooks who is associated with banned terror group Al-Muhajiroun, the court heard. He was released from the prison in June, days before the attack.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
You are really quite the university and qualifications snob aren't you?
Well I would like the PM of the UK representing the country on the world stage and taking difficult decisions to at least have a few GCSEs and A Levels and ideally a degree as well and I would hope most sensible people would too, otherwise you may as well just pick the PM by lottery from people in the street
Well, not everyone in the UK gets those qualifications. Some get Highers, some get Int Bac ... but perhaps those don't count.
They are still qualifications so obviously count, Rayner left school with no qualifications at all
Why don't you celebrate the fact that despite a challenging start she has rolled her sleeves up, got on with it and achieved plenty? Isn't that what Tories tell us all to do?
Yes but we do not make them PM otherwise you would give everyone walking down the street a go, Rayner has achieved no more than the average person on Epping High Street educationally and professionally
She earns at least double the median salary. That's pretty good going for someone with no qualifications. I need to take a leaf out of her book.
The only qualification you need to be an MP is to win an election that does not mean you should automatically lead the country
That's literally why you think Boris should be Prime Minister. Because he wins elections.
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
No it wouldn't, it may do with class warfare obsessed Corbyn voters there filled with inverse snobbery but they would never vote Tory anyway
This just shows that you have zero understanding of your new voters other than "they want Brexit".
Given you did not vote Tory last year when they did and most still are on the latest polling I suggest I have more understanding of them than you
Seriously? You know more about working class voters in the north than working class PBers in the north?
Time out, comrade.
Tory working class voters yes, they are no different to Tory working class voters in Epping really.
Bollox, plenty of working class Northerners own their own home unlike those in the South who cannot because of the ridiculous house prices in the South.
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
No it wouldn't, it may do with class warfare obsessed Corbyn voters there filled with inverse snobbery but they would never vote Tory anyway
It really would. "Vote for me, I'm considerably cleverer than you and look at these certificates if you don't believe me" just isn't a good look among ANY part of the electorate.
That's not to say a keen intellect isn't an asset. But the way you've expressed it on this thread - implying that an Oxbridge degree is proof of that, and that folk without formal qualifications can't be sharp as a tack - is both wrong in fact and politically poisonous as a message.
I did not say an Oxbridge degree was a prerequisite, I had no problem with Callaghan or Major being PM but they at least had some qualifications, Rayner left school with none at all
Please keep alienating vast swathes of your own voters. Thank you.
The vast majority of Tory voters have more GCSEs than Rayner has
How many is a vast majority? 90%?
At least and they would all be more qualified to be PM than Rayner
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
You are really quite the university and qualifications snob aren't you?
Well I would like the PM of the UK representing the country on the world stage and taking difficult decisions to at least have a few GCSEs and A Levels and ideally a degree as well and I would hope most sensible people would too, otherwise you may as well just pick the PM by lottery from people in the street
Well, not everyone in the UK gets those qualifications. Some get Highers, some get Int Bac ... but perhaps those don't count.
They are still qualifications so obviously count, Rayner left school with no qualifications at all
Why don't you celebrate the fact that despite a challenging start she has rolled her sleeves up, got on with it and achieved plenty? Isn't that what Tories tell us all to do?
Yes but we do not make them PM otherwise you would give everyone walking down the street a go, Rayner has achieved no more than the average person on Epping High Street educationally and professionally
She earns at least double the median salary. That's pretty good going for someone with no qualifications. I need to take a leaf out of her book.
The only qualification you need to be an MP is to win an election that does not mean you should automatically lead the country
That's literally why you think Boris should be Prime Minister. Because he wins elections.
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
You are really quite the university and qualifications snob aren't you?
Well I would like the PM of the UK representing the country on the world stage and taking difficult decisions to at least have a few GCSEs and A Levels and ideally a degree as well and I would hope most sensible people would too, otherwise you may as well just pick the PM by lottery from people in the street
Well, not everyone in the UK gets those qualifications. Some get Highers, some get Int Bac ... but perhaps those don't count.
They are still qualifications so obviously count, Rayner left school with no qualifications at all
Why don't you celebrate the fact that despite a challenging start she has rolled her sleeves up, got on with it and achieved plenty? Isn't that what Tories tell us all to do?
Yes but we do not make them PM otherwise you would give everyone walking down the street a go, Rayner has achieved no more than the average person on Epping High Street educationally and professionally
She earns at least double the median salary. That's pretty good going for someone with no qualifications. I need to take a leaf out of her book.
The only qualification you need to be an MP is to win an election that does not mean you should automatically lead the country
Yet we got landed with this clown through precisely that mechanism.
I disagree with you on Dodds. She is intellectually brilliant. I agree that isn`t everything but it`s a start. Raynor doesn`t even get past the starting pistol in my view.
But like Boris Johnson she's read PPE at Oxford, so she must be very intelligent as per the Boris fanbois.
She even obtained a first, so she's much more intelligent Boris Johnson, amIright?
Boris did not read PPE, as mentioned earlier he read literae humaniores
But it is an Oxford degree, I mean I thought about reading Greats at Oxford but I said no because I wanted to do a hard degree with a career pathway at the end of it.
I disagree with you on Dodds. She is intellectually brilliant. I agree that isn`t everything but it`s a start. Raynor doesn`t even get past the starting pistol in my view.
Dodds would certainly be far more capable of doing the job of PM than Rayner is, as would Thomas Symonds or virtually any other Labour frontbencher
Scottish case details are out, with some surprises. Among the worst affected now are Dumfries&Galloway and the Borders with case rates in the 400s and 500s. They had dropped to level 1 a couple weeks before Christmas ...
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
How many do you find in the House of Commons, though ?
And if we're being disparaging, there are plenty of slavish Tory loyalists on the backbenches already...
Though given their average IQ, not quite so many intellectual snobs.
I disagree with you on Dodds. She is intellectually brilliant. I agree that isn`t everything but it`s a start. Raynor doesn`t even get past the starting pistol in my view.
Dodds would certainly be far more capable of doing the job of PM than Rayner is, as would Thomas Symonds or virtually any other Labour frontbencher
Both Dodds and Thomas Symonds are held in the highest regard by Starmer I heard. Either possible successors.
Scottish case details are out, with some surprises. Among the worst affected now are Dumfries&Galloway and the Borders with case rates in the 400s and 500s. They had dropped to level 1 a couple weeks before Christmas ...
As a hypothesis, being in a lower tier has made people more relaxed about taking the necessary precautions. Yet time and time again we’ve seen the virus move into area with previously low rates of infection and produce an explosion of new cases (at national level, cf. the Czech Republic).
Which suggests that a weakness of the government’s tier strategy is that it encourages those in the lower tiers to imagine that the virus is somewhere else’s problem.
Rayner is very bright and quick, no question. She also conveys genuine warmth, which is a rare quality and invaluable among politicians.
Re; a post on Brexit below, the Tory lead will continue for now ; but only if there aren't too many days with these kinds of stories in the media, or if they fade after February/March.
"A growing number of retailers in the EU have decided they won’t deliver to Britain because of the new costs involved in sending packages after Brexit. Companies have said they are unwilling to register for VAT in the UK, with one Dutch firm calling the red tape “ludicrous”.
It comes as problems emerged with the first lorries to cross from Great Britain into Northern Ireland. Some food shipments did not have the correct paperwork, with waits of 10 hours at new border posts. Disruption means Sainsbury’s has reportedly lost around 700 product lines in NI – and the giant has been forced to stock goods from Spar."
Spar NI not having the same problems as Spar ROI dominates operations on the island...
I've run the numbers on Georgia. I took the six counties with the largest vote margin for each candidate (using NYTimes): - Fulton, DeKalb and Richmond for the Dems - Forsyth, Hall and Cherokee for the Republicans
I then used electproject.github.io and looked at early voting turnout in 2020 and in 2021, to see where the biggest changes were.
Here you go:
Result 2020 2000 2001 Change Fulton D +46 57.9 42.4 -27% DeKalb D +67 60.8 46.6 -23% Forsyth R +33 73.2 47.9 -35% Hall R +43 61.3 37.6 -39% Richmond D +37 51.6 33.9 -34% Cherokee R +39 61.9 37.2 -40%
Averaging it out, early voting turnout in Democrat areas fell 28% relative to November, and 38% in Republican areas. (And the most Democratic the county is, the smaller early voting turnout seems to be down.)
I think that makes the Democrats favourites to win both Senate seats.
I can tell you for a fact that @HYUFD's obsession with qualifications and dismissal of life experience would go down like a bucket of cold sick on the doorsteps in the red wall.
Most voters the Tories won over in the RedWall would at least have had GCSEs or O Levels unlike Rayner
Like I said, your attitude would go down like a bucket of cold sick.
No it wouldn't, it may do with class warfare obsessed Corbyn voters there filled with inverse snobbery but they would never vote Tory anyway
It really would. "Vote for me, I'm considerably cleverer than you and look at these certificates if you don't believe me" just isn't a good look among ANY part of the electorate.
That's not to say a keen intellect isn't an asset. But the way you've expressed it on this thread - implying that an Oxbridge degree is proof of that, and that folk without formal qualifications can't be sharp as a tack - is both wrong in fact and politically poisonous as a message.
I did not say an Oxbridge degree was a prerequisite, I had no problem with Callaghan or Major being PM but they at least had some qualifications, Rayner left school with none at all
Please keep alienating vast swathes of your own voters. Thank you.
The vast majority of Tory voters have more GCSEs than Rayner has
Demonstrably false, since the majority of Tory voters are over retirement age, and I will leave you to look up the date when GCSEs were introduced.
But like Boris Johnson she's read PPE at Oxford, so she must be very intelligent as per the Boris fanbois.
She even obtained a first, so she's much more intelligent Boris Johnson, amIright?
Boris did not read PPE, as mentioned earlier he read literae humaniores
But it is an Oxford degree, I mean I thought about reading Greats at Oxford but I said no because I wanted to do a hard degree with a career pathway at the end of it.
Greats is a hard degree even if it most likely leads to academia or teaching unless you subsequently qualify in something else or as with Boris make writing your living as a journalist
Rayner is very bright and quick, no question. She also conveys genuine warmth, which is a rare quality and invaluable among politicians.
Re; a post on Brexit below, the Tory lead will continue for now - as long as there aren't too many days with these kinds of stories in the media, or if they fade after February/March.
"A growing number of retailers in the EU have decided they won’t deliver to Britain because of the new costs involved in sending packages after Brexit. Companies have said they are unwilling to register for VAT in the UK, with one Dutch firm calling the red tape “ludicrous”.
It comes as problems emerged with the first lorries to cross from Great Britain into Northern Ireland. Some food shipments did not have the correct paperwork, with waits of 10 hours at new border posts. Disruption means Sainsbury’s has reportedly lost around 700 product lines in NI – and the giant has been forced to stock goods from Spar."
The Great Brexit Disaster:
"Some food shipments did not have the correct paperwork".
Oh. Hmmmm. But I bet before Brexit, EVERY lorry had the correct paperwork.
Oh - they didn't? Hmmmmm.
I can guarantee you that every truck driving from the UK to the UK had the correct paperwork before Brexit.
Comments
Makes comparisons with Gordon Brittas seem quite affectionate......
https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/politics/days-after-brexit-many-products-vanish-sainsburys-northern-ireland-and-are-replaced-spar-brand-3085106
....The CDC on Dec. 28 began requiring all airline passengers arriving from Britain - including U.S. citizens - to test negative for COVID-19 within 72 hours of departure.
https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2021-01-04/major-us-airlines-back-expanding-covid-19-testing-for-more-international-travelers?source=content_type:react|first_level_url:news|section:main_content|button:body_link
When BBC is running a headline 'pressure grows' you know a U-turn is coming.
If he represented the Tory Party in reality rather than in the fiction of his and extreme socialists minds then I and many other Tories on this site would abandon the party PDQ.
(As a matter of interest, what was the source for that story, please?)
The low level of debt is absolutely irrelevant if you have a 10% deficit.
This is exponential growth all over again. YOU are the one simply wrong, if you can't comprehend the exponential growth problem with a 10% deficit then you are beyond help.
Seriously, though, he must have taken his degree in the 1960s - a good two decades before Mr J, and with the great collapse in school classics in between, surely.
Next you tell him to fuck off and join party X
Re; a post on Brexit below, the Tory lead will continue for now ; but only if there aren't too many days with these kinds of stories in the media, or if they fade after February/March.
"A growing number of retailers in the EU have decided they won’t deliver to Britain because of the new costs involved in sending packages after Brexit. Companies have said they are unwilling to register for VAT in the UK, with one Dutch firm calling the red tape “ludicrous”.
It comes as problems emerged with the first lorries to cross from Great Britain into Northern Ireland. Some food shipments did not have the correct paperwork, with waits of 10 hours at new border posts. Disruption means Sainsbury’s has reportedly lost around 700 product lines in NI – and the giant has been forced to stock goods from Spar."
That's not to say a keen intellect isn't an asset. But the way you've expressed it on this thread - implying that an Oxbridge degree is proof of that, and that folk without formal qualifications can't be sharp as a tack - is both wrong in fact and politically poisonous as a message.
Although the first time I heard the story was from Boris' old tutor.
There's a reason why I voted for Lisa Nandy to be Labour leader. She got it more than Starmer did.
https://tinyurl.com/y2eu55cx
"Some food shipments did not have the correct paperwork".
Oh. Hmmmm. But I bet before Brexit, EVERY lorry had the correct paperwork.
Oh - they didn't? Hmmmmm.
https://news.sky.com/story/boris-johnson-told-not-to-hurl-insults-by-commons-speaker-sir-lindsay-hoyle-12065849
But thank you for walking into my elephant trap.
Big shoutout to all the parents who are doing dry January as well as homeschooling for the month.
Hmm - if Kenny said "On the basis of the tutors’ reports, I formed the judgement that while Boris had the necessary intelligence, he lacked the appropriate diligence to achieve the first-class degree that he clearly felt was his due."
And he failed because he did not know his Aristotle. Imagine not knowing the Stagyrite after - what was it? - 4 years of Lit. Hum. Not a great (sorry) look.
It's far too early to say how Brexit and many other processes will go this year, in all sorts of ways ; naturally.
The competitiveness of the putative state might just stop the Republicans vetoing it.
Time out, comrade.
I mean, if you can't get a 24-carat, diamond-encrusted win on education, something's wrong. Against Gavin Williamson? Somebody REALLY isn't doing their job if that challenge is a no-score draw....
Describing her as quick. Christ.
Her mouth hangs open at the end of every sentence like some ungulate.
Over-promoted beyond words. At least its a blind spot that will help keep Labour away from responsibility.
I know that Epping is a cut above, but I never realised it was such a home of the gods...
I know scum is a 4 letter word, but it's not swearing, so far as I know, unless it was prefixed with Tory or something like it.
ESMA withdraws the registrations of four UK-based trade repositories
drip drip drip
'A swear word and clapping in the Commons: Boris Johnson's first PMQs were an explosive affair'
https://tinyurl.com/y4l83vao
She even obtained a first, so she's much more intelligent Boris Johnson, amIright?
And if we're being disparaging, there are plenty of slavish Tory loyalists on the backbenches already...
Though given their average IQ, not quite so many intellectual snobs.
Which suggests that a weakness of the government’s tier strategy is that it encourages those in the lower tiers to imagine that the virus is somewhere else’s problem.
I've run the numbers on Georgia. I took the six counties with the largest vote margin for each candidate (using NYTimes):
- Fulton, DeKalb and Richmond for the Dems
- Forsyth, Hall and Cherokee for the Republicans
I then used electproject.github.io and looked at early voting turnout in 2020 and in 2021, to see where the biggest changes were.
Here you go: Averaging it out, early voting turnout in Democrat areas fell 28% relative to November, and 38% in Republican areas. (And the most Democratic the county is, the smaller early voting turnout seems to be down.)
I think that makes the Democrats favourites to win both Senate seats.