This is a remarkable data visualisation from a study of hospitalised patient outcomes (likelihood of discharge vs mortality), which suggests that much of the mortality risk from pre-existing conditions suggested by other studies might simply be because those conditions become more prevalent with age.
Intriguing that being male doesn't look to be much of a contributor.
That said, if the figure of 10 years for the average amount of life lost is true, then we should expect underlying health conditions to be largely immaterial.
The graphic is not good, because age makes everything else look the same by dwarfing other variables, but in the text we see male sex is a significant risk factor:
"Male sex was also associated with increased risk of in-hospital mortality (OR 1.76, 95%CI=1.33-2.35)"
If age is such a major, major factor, it is hard to believe in the figure of an average of 10 years life lost. Surely all those 85+ years olds (which will obviously include a lot of 90+s and 95+s) can't have all had that long left?
It is important not to confuse live expectancy at age 80 with life expectancy at birth.
Never thought Id say this but Im starting to move in favour of compulsory vaccinations if the alternative is never-ending lockdown measures, due to the fact that a small percentage of people not having had the jab might be used as a reason why we cant return to normal life. At least with the jab you can get it over and done with.
I get the annoyance - anger even - about this but I'm not sure it's a massive problem in the grand scheme of things. The objective of the vaccine rollout is to create sufficient population immunity to open up society, in stages culminating in Freedom Day on 21st June. Vaccine hesitancy or refusal should be countered in every conceivable way short of compulsion, but so long as it's not high enough to derail the reboot I won't be getting too animated about it.
Agreed. And I'm reasonably comfortable taking that view at present because it seems vaccine refuseniks are in such a small minority.
Never thought Id say this but Im starting to move in favour of compulsory vaccinations if the alternative is never-ending lockdown measures, due to the fact that a small percentage of people not having had the jab might be used as a reason why we cant return to normal life. At least with the jab you can get it over and done with.
I get the annoyance - anger even - about this but I'm not sure it's a massive problem in the grand scheme of things. The objective of the vaccine rollout is to create sufficient population immunity to open up society, in stages culminating in Freedom Day on 21st June. Vaccine hesitancy or refusal should be countered in every conceivable way short of compulsion, but so long as it's not high enough to derail the reboot I won't be getting too animated about it.
The unvaccinated should become social lepers like drunk drivers, but once the vaccine rollout is done then all lockdown must be over. No ifs, no buts.
If the unvaccinated are the primary ones who die as a result that is Darwinian but so be it. I feel sorry for those they infect but we can't have lockdowns for that.
I agree. We can't have lockdowns just for the unvaccinated. I doubt this is going to be an issue in UK. Look at the numbers. We don't have an anti-vax issue on a scale that will matter to wider public health imho.
Now having extended lockdowns for what seems to me some kind of misguided fantasy about 'zero covid' is another matter. I am hoping Johnson and Witty crystal clear statement on that earlier this week has put that idea out to pasture as far as serious policy is concerned.
This is a remarkable data visualisation from a study of hospitalised patient outcomes (likelihood of discharge vs mortality), which suggests that much of the mortality risk from pre-existing conditions suggested by other studies might simply be because those conditions become more prevalent with age.
Intriguing that being male doesn't look to be much of a contributor.
That said, if the figure of 10 years for the average amount of life lost is true, then we should expect underlying health conditions to be largely immaterial.
The graphic is not good, because age makes everything else look the same by dwarfing other variables, but in the text we see male sex is a significant risk factor:
"Male sex was also associated with increased risk of in-hospital mortality (OR 1.76, 95%CI=1.33-2.35)"
Fair point. Perhaps a more useful way of presenting the data would be to say the risk of death was approximately the same for a male who is x years younger than a female (not sure if that could be worked out, though).
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
The issue is that the others weren't taken out of context or Tory smears either. Corbyn was just genuinely that awful as was being said and Salisbury made it crystal clear.
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
There was quite a smear campaign waged in many places against Jeremy Corbyn. It's plain silly not to acknowledge this.
Oh come off it. No-one needed to smear Jeremy Corbyn, he achieved all that himself. His apologists used that to try and cover up hide total awfulness. By all means disabuse me and tell me something that Jeremy Corbyn was "smeared" about was not a result of his own previous history or just his genuine stupidity? I am genuinely interested to hear about it.
The big problem that I have with Jeremy Corbyn, and those that supported him being leader of the Labour Party is not just the fact that he was an even more absurd applicant to the post of PM than the current incumbent, but because he was the facilitator of said current incumbent being there. Had we had a decent LoTO it is highly unlikely that the Clown would now be in No!0.
Whether they needed to or not, they did. Taking no chances, I guess.
"Corbyn: Abolish the Army!" "Corbyn: I'm supporting Brazil in the World Cup!" "Corbyn: He nicked sarnies meant for veterans!" "Corbyn: He danced on way to Cenotaph!" "Corbyn: He was a Russian spy!"
Pretty standard in the non-legacy space industry. It allows you to create extremely complex shapes (especially with built in cooling channels) at low volumes, with high repeatability and moderate cost.
This is a remarkable data visualisation from a study of hospitalised patient outcomes (likelihood of discharge vs mortality), which suggests that much of the mortality risk from pre-existing conditions suggested by other studies might simply be because those conditions become more prevalent with age.
100 years ago and earlier the virus would have passed almost unnoticed.
I really doubt that. One of the reasons for the low IFR in younger demographics is that they respond well to medical treatment that is way beyond what we had available 100 years ago. In countries where the average age is low, they have still very much noticed it (only about one-seventeenth of the population of Manaus was over 60, for example).
Fewer old people would have died due to the fact that there were fewer old people, granted, but it would have been one hell of a lot worse amongst the younger groups.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
I downloaded the Alex Salmond evidence documents yesterday as some light reading. I have compared the unredacted and redacted ministerial code submissions. The only changes were to remove references to 2 meetings to discuss the handling of the allegations against AS, with the redactions having no relation at all to the accusers identity. I understand the redactions were made after a request from the Crown Office, but I do not understand on what basis that objection was made or agreed to.
I assume the committee cannot now ask AS about these meetings because the sections have been redacted, and AS cannot talk about them in front of the committee.
This really stinks. Parliaments should be able to dig into things like this without fear or favour, otherwise future governments with really unpleasant leaders could use the precedent to cover up anything. I am amazed that the committee are being so supine.
I have to credit full marks for your observation and to be honest, irrespective of the Independence debate, the SNP have the air of decay and corruption that often comes with dominant power
My wife is very sad to observe the state of Scottish politics and does not recognise the nasty and toxic culture which has no part in the open generous nature of Scots
I have no idea how this will effect the polling but maybe Scots will look again before empowering the SNP yet again in May
And vote for whom instead? Remember that: 1. The hooey about Salmond is a fabulous bit of soap opera but isn't seen as politics 2. The SNP have quite a strong record to point to when asking for re-election 3. Their various policy failings compare reasonably well against the policy failings of the alternative Tory or Labour options
Politics isn't about one single party in isolation. Yes there is a smell about some of these SNP shenanigans, but if Big G suggests the solution to corruption is to vote Tory then hold my coffee whilst I wee myself laughing. The worst case scenario for the SNP is to be reduced to a minority administration.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
On thread - Theresa May's failure in 2017 wasn't in failing to persuade enough people to vote Conservative - Con in 2017 received the third highest vote total of any party at any GE ever (yes I know the electoral roll is gradually expanding, but still...) but in failing to persuade sufficient people not to vote Labour. It's not exactly edifying for democracy, but the conclusion is that the campaign was insufficiently negative.
I still believe that Theresa May's problem was that everyone assumed she would get a landslide which may have caused some to stay at home and some to switch sides. Most people thought PM Corbyn impossible so voting a different way from Tory was a way to minimise the Tory landslide
This is a remarkable data visualisation from a study of hospitalised patient outcomes (likelihood of discharge vs mortality), which suggests that much of the mortality risk from pre-existing conditions suggested by other studies might simply be because those conditions become more prevalent with age.
Pretty standard in the non-legacy space industry. It allows you to create extremely complex shapes (especially with built in cooling channels) at low volumes, with high repeatability and moderate cost.
SpaceX are doing it for a lot of the iterative parts on their Starship test flights. They’re getting destroyed anyway, so might as well make them as cheaply and quickly as possible until there’s a candidate for the final design.
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
The issue is that the others weren't taken out of context or Tory smears either. Corbyn was just genuinely that awful as was being said and Salisbury made it crystal clear.
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
There was quite a smear campaign waged in many places against Jeremy Corbyn. It's plain silly not to acknowledge this.
If by smear you mean educating the public in what Corbyn actually said and did then yes.
If by smear you mean making things up then no. There was no need to do that as Corbyn had such a rich history there was literally no point in making anything up about him, it was rendered entirely redundant.
By "smear" I mean smear. And by "plain silly" I meant plain silly.
On thread - Theresa May's failure in 2017 wasn't in failing to persuade enough people to vote Conservative - Con in 2017 received the third highest vote total of any party at any GE ever (yes I know the electoral roll is gradually expanding, but still...) but in failing to persuade sufficient people not to vote Labour. It's not exactly edifying for democracy, but the conclusion is that the campaign was insufficiently negative.
May's mistake was trying to fix the cost of social care.
Without that she would have won a majority but with it she lost just enough votes to create a problem.
I really don't think Corbyn was much of an issue one way or the other.
You might be right but CCHQ thought you were wrong, and that 2017 went beyond social care. That is why the Conservatives lifted so many elements of Labour's campaign for next time. Of course, Boris did not say much about social care either.
On thread - Theresa May's failure in 2017 wasn't in failing to persuade enough people to vote Conservative - Con in 2017 received the third highest vote total of any party at any GE ever (yes I know the electoral roll is gradually expanding, but still...) but in failing to persuade sufficient people not to vote Labour. It's not exactly edifying for democracy, but the conclusion is that the campaign was insufficiently negative.
May's mistake was trying to fix the cost of social care.
Without that she would have won a majority but with it she lost just enough votes to create a problem.
I really don't think Corbyn was much of an issue one way or the other.
You might be right but CCHQ thought you were wrong, and that 2017 went beyond social care. That is why the Conservatives lifted so many elements of Labour's campaign for next time. Of course, Boris did not say much about social care either.
The sad thing is that the proposal itself wasn't a bad idea, and the issue of social care still remains a huge problem four years later.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
He was judged the best option available, sure. That doesn't mean he was objectively the best option though.
Is that really true? Or just Russian fake news? Seems quite unlikely to me to be honest.
Let's say he has in the past said hateful things. How does that make him not a prisoner of conscience? The two don't seem mutually exclusive to me. Seems like the Russians taking advantage of Amnesty being a woke mess.
Amnesty - brilliant concept - lost its way years ago by broadening its focus into issues way beyond the protection of non violent prisoners of conscience. Once they went into territory like opposition to the death penalty - however well intentioned - they lost their USP.
If some non violent consciences are going to be better than others they will lose a lot of support.
On thread - Theresa May's failure in 2017 wasn't in failing to persuade enough people to vote Conservative - Con in 2017 received the third highest vote total of any party at any GE ever (yes I know the electoral roll is gradually expanding, but still...) but in failing to persuade sufficient people not to vote Labour. It's not exactly edifying for democracy, but the conclusion is that the campaign was insufficiently negative.
Hence CCHQ's negative social media campaigning; under the radar so Labour could not respond to it.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
So you are saying May was worse than a donkey then, given she did not win big against Corbyn in 2017?
The Tories were always going to get 42%+ against Corbyn as they did in 2017 and 2019 in order to keep him out of No 10.
The main difference between 2017 and 2019 though was diehard Remainers decided the LDs were a better bet to stop Brexit than Corbyn Labour and some working class Leave voters switched from Labour to the Tories under Boris to get Brexit done.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
He was judged the best option available, sure. That doesn't mean he was objectively the best option though.
There's no such thing as an overall objective best in politics, its all subjective.
On the objective measures of seats won or vote share or opinion polls he was best, but I'd value subjective measures over those.
Labour’s Jackie Baillie — ordinarily a cheery soul — underlined the gloom. ‘I want to be optimistic and I am equally patient but I would like to ask the First Minister what the ultimate goal is.’ Was it virus suppression or virus elimination?
The goal, Sturgeon replied, was ‘as close to elimination as possible’ but also ‘to get back to normal life’. Those two destinations are miles apart with no roadmap for the rough terrain in between.
Pretty standard in the non-legacy space industry. It allows you to create extremely complex shapes (especially with built in cooling channels) at low volumes, with high repeatability and moderate cost.
SpaceX are doing it for a lot of the iterative parts on their Starship test flights. They’re getting destroyed anyway, so might as well make them as cheaply and quickly as possible until there’s a candidate for the final design.
They use it as part of their standard build processes - 3D printing and low/zero touch CNC can massively reduce issues of reproducibility/tooling maintenance etc. Not quite "Print me a FFSC rocket engine", but heading there....
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
So you are saying May was worse than a donkey then, given she did not win big against Corbyn in 2017?
The Tories were always going to get 42%+ against Corbyn as they did in 2017 and 2019 in order to keep him out of No 10.
The main difference between 2017 and 2019 though was diehard Remainers decided the LDs were a better bet to stop Brexit than Corbyn Labour and some working class Leave voters switched from Labour to the Tories under Boris to get Brexit done.
I think the actual answer is somewhere between your two positions. No doubt Brexit had a significant effect but I don't think it was all-encompassing like you sometimes suggest, @HYUFD .
On thread - Theresa May's failure in 2017 wasn't in failing to persuade enough people to vote Conservative - Con in 2017 received the third highest vote total of any party at any GE ever (yes I know the electoral roll is gradually expanding, but still...) but in failing to persuade sufficient people not to vote Labour. It's not exactly edifying for democracy, but the conclusion is that the campaign was insufficiently negative.
May's mistake was trying to fix the cost of social care.
Without that she would have won a majority but with it she lost just enough votes to create a problem.
I really don't think Corbyn was much of an issue one way or the other.
You might be right but CCHQ thought you were wrong, and that 2017 went beyond social care. That is why the Conservatives lifted so many elements of Labour's campaign for next time. Of course, Boris did not say much about social care either.
The sad thing is that the proposal itself wasn't a bad idea, and the issue of social care still remains a huge problem four years later.
The heat and fury of an election campaign is not the time to bring out a proposal like that.
There were years until the next election was due, it could have been released prior to the election or after it and been debated on its merits. Instead it got tarnished by the election without a chance to reasonably discuss it.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
He was judged the best option available, sure. That doesn't mean he was objectively the best option though.
There's no such thing as an overall objective best in politics, its all subjective.
On the objective measures of seats won or vote share or opinion polls he was best, but I'd value subjective measures over those.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
As usual your analysis is very weak. He beat Hunt because he pretended to believe in Brexit, which like most things in his life was a lie and duplicitous political calculation. So, no Philip, he was not "better" than Hunt, either as a person or in his track record in office, leadership skills or honesty. Considerably worse than the hapless May also on all fronts. Just for balance, he is also "not better" than Gove or a handful of genuine Brexit believers. Boris Johnson is an appropriately cretinous figurehead for Brexit; a policy based on stupidity, prejudice and lies and led by a liar. Those are your values, and therefore you are an appropriate fanbois of the most inappropriate person ever to have held the office.
On thread - Theresa May's failure in 2017 wasn't in failing to persuade enough people to vote Conservative - Con in 2017 received the third highest vote total of any party at any GE ever (yes I know the electoral roll is gradually expanding, but still...) but in failing to persuade sufficient people not to vote Labour. It's not exactly edifying for democracy, but the conclusion is that the campaign was insufficiently negative.
May's mistake was trying to fix the cost of social care.
Without that she would have won a majority but with it she lost just enough votes to create a problem.
I really don't think Corbyn was much of an issue one way or the other.
May's social care plans did not help her in 2017 either, no.
May's problem was she was too honest about the difficult solutions needed to tackle problems, eg people would need to pay more to cover their social care in future and GB would have to be in a temporary customs union and with closer alignment to the single market to avoid a border in the Irish Sea given the EU would not agree to any trade deal that led to a hard border in Ireland.
Boris however was willing to promise cake for all to get elected, ie to be an even better populist in 2019 than Corbyn was in 2017
This is a remarkable data visualisation from a study of hospitalised patient outcomes (likelihood of discharge vs mortality), which suggests that much of the mortality risk from pre-existing conditions suggested by other studies might simply be because those conditions become more prevalent with age.
Labour’s Jackie Baillie — ordinarily a cheery soul — underlined the gloom. ‘I want to be optimistic and I am equally patient but I would like to ask the First Minister what the ultimate goal is.’ Was it virus suppression or virus elimination?
The goal, Sturgeon replied, was ‘as close to elimination as possible’ but also ‘to get back to normal life’. Those two destinations are miles apart with no roadmap for the rough terrain in between.
They are going down the route in ROI which offers no hope to anyone. ROI has near-zero excess deaths because most people who die of COVID-19 are frail. But ROI has a lot of public-sector dependent interest groups who benefit, so between the old and the dependent, it is now stuck in lockdown until the EU acquires enough vaccines to cover over 80 per cent of the population.
Pretty standard in the non-legacy space industry. It allows you to create extremely complex shapes (especially with built in cooling channels) at low volumes, with high repeatability and moderate cost.
SpaceX are doing it for a lot of the iterative parts on their Starship test flights. They’re getting destroyed anyway, so might as well make them as cheaply and quickly as possible until there’s a candidate for the final design.
They use it as part of their standard build processes - 3D printing and low/zero touch CNC can massively reduce issues of reproducibility/tooling maintenance etc. Not quite "Print me a FFSC rocket engine", but heading there....
And being able to formulate complicated hollow structures in a single piece is presumably a massive advantage in engineering where mass is a crucial consideration.
On thread - Theresa May's failure in 2017 wasn't in failing to persuade enough people to vote Conservative - Con in 2017 received the third highest vote total of any party at any GE ever (yes I know the electoral roll is gradually expanding, but still...) but in failing to persuade sufficient people not to vote Labour. It's not exactly edifying for democracy, but the conclusion is that the campaign was insufficiently negative.
I still believe that Theresa May's problem was that everyone assumed she would get a landslide which may have caused some to stay at home and some to switch sides. Most people thought PM Corbyn impossible so voting a different way from Tory was a way to minimise the Tory landslide
There was polling evidence against that - the swing to Labour was largest among people who thought Labour was likely to win.
I don't think it's possible to be much more negative than the 12-page features on how awful Labour would be that ran in the Sun and the Mail. Negative campaigning mainly works when most of the public is already convinced that the LOTO is unacceptable, which wasn't yet entirely the case in 2017 (but became the case in 2019, as Mike's leader demonstrates).
This is all water under the bridge, but the relevant point now is that the Tories will need to have some positive reasons in 2024, as a campaign based on "Starmer, the Evil Threat" won't work as there is really less to go on than they already had against Corbyn in 2017.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
As usual your analysis is very weak. He beat Hunt because he pretended to believe in Brexit, which like most things in his life was a lie and duplicitous political calculation. So, no Philip, he was not "better" than Hunt, either as a person or in his track record in office, leadership skills or honesty. Considerably worse than the hapless May also on all fronts. Just for balance, he is also "not better" than Gove or a handful of genuine Brexit believers. Boris Johnson is an appropriately cretinous figurehead for Brexit; a policy based on stupidity, prejudice and lies and led by a liar. Those are your values, and therefore you are an appropriate fanbois of the most inappropriate person ever to have held the office.
He beat Hunt as he was a better candidate with better judgement than Hunt.
Hunt wanted to continue with the failed and discredited Theresa May politicy of indefinitely extending Article 50 which was an atrociously bad policy leaving us in perpetual limbo and unable to get anywhere.
Because of Johnson's rejecting of that policy he was able to renegotiate May's awful deal, get a better one for England and Wales at least and win a landslide majority.
I think advances in 3D printing have particularly interesting implications for Martian colonies. Instead of needing to transport lots of precisely made goods, which then need to survive landing, you can dump certain raw materials and have them converted through 3D printing into a wide variety of tools and the like.
Not a space chap, but it seems like that would make life a lot easier.
On thread - Theresa May's failure in 2017 wasn't in failing to persuade enough people to vote Conservative - Con in 2017 received the third highest vote total of any party at any GE ever (yes I know the electoral roll is gradually expanding, but still...) but in failing to persuade sufficient people not to vote Labour. It's not exactly edifying for democracy, but the conclusion is that the campaign was insufficiently negative.
May's mistake was trying to fix the cost of social care.
Without that she would have won a majority but with it she lost just enough votes to create a problem.
I really don't think Corbyn was much of an issue one way or the other.
You might be right but CCHQ thought you were wrong, and that 2017 went beyond social care. That is why the Conservatives lifted so many elements of Labour's campaign for next time. Of course, Boris did not say much about social care either.
He's said he had a brilliant plan to fix it, but unfortunately the margin manifesto was too small to fit it in.
The key difference between May and Johnson? May believes you can't have your cake and eat it- you want decent social care, it's going to cost someone a lot; if you want invisible borders, you can't just do what you want within yours. Johnson fundamentally still believes you can have whatever you want, and that worrying about internal contradictions in your desires is for girly swots.
One approach is clearly more effective for winning elections. The other approach tends to work better the rest of the time.
I downloaded the Alex Salmond evidence documents yesterday as some light reading. I have compared the unredacted and redacted ministerial code submissions. The only changes were to remove references to 2 meetings to discuss the handling of the allegations against AS, with the redactions having no relation at all to the accusers identity. I understand the redactions were made after a request from the Crown Office, but I do not understand on what basis that objection was made or agreed to.
I assume the committee cannot now ask AS about these meetings because the sections have been redacted, and AS cannot talk about them in front of the committee.
This really stinks. Parliaments should be able to dig into things like this without fear or favour, otherwise future governments with really unpleasant leaders could use the precedent to cover up anything. I am amazed that the committee are being so supine.
I have to credit full marks for your observation and to be honest, irrespective of the Independence debate, the SNP have the air of decay and corruption that often comes with dominant power
My wife is very sad to observe the state of Scottish politics and does not recognise the nasty and toxic culture which has no part in the open generous nature of Scots
I have no idea how this will effect the polling but maybe Scots will look again before empowering the SNP yet again in May
And vote for whom instead? Remember that: 1. The hooey about Salmond is a fabulous bit of soap opera but isn't seen as politics 2. The SNP have quite a strong record to point to when asking for re-election 3. Their various policy failings compare reasonably well against the policy failings of the alternative Tory or Labour options
Politics isn't about one single party in isolation. Yes there is a smell about some of these SNP shenanigans, but if Big G suggests the solution to corruption is to vote Tory then hold my coffee whilst I wee myself laughing. The worst case scenario for the SNP is to be reduced to a minority administration.
The best case for the union is tactical voting and I would do so in Scotland
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
So you are saying May was worse than a donkey then, given she did not win big against Corbyn in 2017?
The Tories were always going to get 42%+ against Corbyn as they did in 2017 and 2019 in order to keep him out of No 10.
The main difference between 2017 and 2019 though was diehard Remainers decided the LDs were a better bet to stop Brexit than Corbyn Labour and some working class Leave voters switched from Labour to the Tories under Boris to get Brexit done.
No, working class one-time Labour voters switched to the Clown primarily because they didn't want what they regarded as a communist in No 10. Very simple. Mike has done a number of headers that have demo'd this. Perhaps you missed them.
I think advances in 3D printing have particularly interesting implications for Martian colonies. Instead of needing to transport lots of precisely made goods, which then need to survive landing, you can dump certain raw materials and have them converted through 3D printing into a wide variety of tools and the like.
Not a space chap, but it seems like that would make life a lot easier.
I thought weight was the primary consideration and expense when transporting goods out of the atmosphere, and therefore it wouldn't matter too much if you're transporting "precisely made goods" or "raw materials"? I guess it would be a game changer if the materials can be "mined" in space itself rather than having to pull them out of the earth's gravitational pull.
I think advances in 3D printing have particularly interesting implications for Martian colonies. Instead of needing to transport lots of precisely made goods, which then need to survive landing, you can dump certain raw materials and have them converted through 3D printing into a wide variety of tools and the like.
Not a space chap, but it seems like that would make life a lot easier.
There is a fair of processing required for parts post-print at the moment - porosity etc.
We aren't at the print-and-use-immediately stage yet, except for simple plastic things.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
As usual your analysis is very weak. He beat Hunt because he pretended to believe in Brexit, which like most things in his life was a lie and duplicitous political calculation. So, no Philip, he was not "better" than Hunt, either as a person or in his track record in office, leadership skills or honesty. Considerably worse than the hapless May also on all fronts. Just for balance, he is also "not better" than Gove or a handful of genuine Brexit believers. Boris Johnson is an appropriately cretinous figurehead for Brexit; a policy based on stupidity, prejudice and lies and led by a liar. Those are your values, and therefore you are an appropriate fanbois of the most inappropriate person ever to have held the office.
He beat Hunt as he was a better candidate with better judgement than Hunt.
Hunt wanted to continue with the failed and discredited Theresa May politicy of indefinitely extending Article 50 which was an atrociously bad policy leaving us in perpetual limbo and unable to get anywhere.
Because of Johnson's rejecting of that policy he was able to renegotiate May's awful deal, get a better one for England and Wales at least and win a landslide majority.
So yes, better than Hunt.
All of the things you listed are your opinions rather than objective fact.
So you think he was better than Hunt but it doesn't mean he IS better than Hunt. Just like you said in your earlier post.
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
The issue is that the others weren't taken out of context or Tory smears either. Corbyn was just genuinely that awful as was being said and Salisbury made it crystal clear.
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
There was quite a smear campaign waged in many places against Jeremy Corbyn. It's plain silly not to acknowledge this.
by smear you mean pointing out all the things that made the man and those that surrounded him a disgrace?
I'm using "smear" in its traditional sense of smear.
Look, people can respectably make the case that Corbyn was anti-semitic, not the brightest, not much of a patriot, wedded to an outmoded 1970s view of the world, rigid and closed-minded, incompetent, weak, unable to manage conflict. Just generally unfit to be PM or even a party leader.
All of the above and more can be argued and I would defend him or not, often not, based on my own perceptions. I'm no fan.
But you can't - you simply cannot - deny that he was relentlessly smeared by his opponents both inside and outside the party. It's a pure and simple fact.
Anyone who won't acknowledge this is a bad faith partisan softhead.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
As usual your analysis is very weak. He beat Hunt because he pretended to believe in Brexit, which like most things in his life was a lie and duplicitous political calculation. So, no Philip, he was not "better" than Hunt, either as a person or in his track record in office, leadership skills or honesty. Considerably worse than the hapless May also on all fronts. Just for balance, he is also "not better" than Gove or a handful of genuine Brexit believers. Boris Johnson is an appropriately cretinous figurehead for Brexit; a policy based on stupidity, prejudice and lies and led by a liar. Those are your values, and therefore you are an appropriate fanbois of the most inappropriate person ever to have held the office.
Under Boris, the Conservatives won the highest share of the national vote for any party in 40 years. But I'm sure that pales into comparison with your own electoral achievements and those of graduates of the Nigel Foremain School of Political Leadership.
Pretty standard in the non-legacy space industry. It allows you to create extremely complex shapes (especially with built in cooling channels) at low volumes, with high repeatability and moderate cost.
SpaceX are doing it for a lot of the iterative parts on their Starship test flights. They’re getting destroyed anyway, so might as well make them as cheaply and quickly as possible until there’s a candidate for the final design.
They use it as part of their standard build processes - 3D printing and low/zero touch CNC can massively reduce issues of reproducibility/tooling maintenance etc. Not quite "Print me a FFSC rocket engine", but heading there....
And being able to formulate complicated hollow structures in a single piece is presumably a massive advantage in engineering where mass is a crucial consideration.
I've heard engineers say that an equally big gain is the ability to qualify a single big part.
Traditional manufacturing gives you a pile of bits, where you have to do traceability and quality on each piece for aerospace applications.
With zero touch CNC and 3D print - you have a generic automated process. Once the design and manufacture is qualified, then a few test on the machines (to check they are working in spec) plus a few tests on the produced parts does the job.
On thread - Theresa May's failure in 2017 wasn't in failing to persuade enough people to vote Conservative - Con in 2017 received the third highest vote total of any party at any GE ever (yes I know the electoral roll is gradually expanding, but still...) but in failing to persuade sufficient people not to vote Labour. It's not exactly edifying for democracy, but the conclusion is that the campaign was insufficiently negative.
May's mistake was trying to fix the cost of social care.
Without that she would have won a majority but with it she lost just enough votes to create a problem.
I really don't think Corbyn was much of an issue one way or the other.
You might be right but CCHQ thought you were wrong, and that 2017 went beyond social care. That is why the Conservatives lifted so many elements of Labour's campaign for next time. Of course, Boris did not say much about social care either.
The sad thing is that the proposal itself wasn't a bad idea, and the issue of social care still remains a huge problem four years later.
The heat and fury of an election campaign is not the time to bring out a proposal like that.
There were years until the next election was due, it could have been released prior to the election or after it and been debated on its merits. Instead it got tarnished by the election without a chance to reasonably discuss it.
Good lord no! For a cricket fan you'd think she had heard of "rolling the pitch".
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
As usual your analysis is very weak. He beat Hunt because he pretended to believe in Brexit, which like most things in his life was a lie and duplicitous political calculation. So, no Philip, he was not "better" than Hunt, either as a person or in his track record in office, leadership skills or honesty. Considerably worse than the hapless May also on all fronts. Just for balance, he is also "not better" than Gove or a handful of genuine Brexit believers. Boris Johnson is an appropriately cretinous figurehead for Brexit; a policy based on stupidity, prejudice and lies and led by a liar. Those are your values, and therefore you are an appropriate fanbois of the most inappropriate person ever to have held the office.
Under Boris, the Conservatives won the highest share of the national vote for any party in 40 years. But I'm sure that pales into comparison with your own electoral achievements and those of graduates of the Nigel Foremain School of Political Leadership.
You really do take any criticism of Boris personally don't you? It's very weird.
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
The issue is that the others weren't taken out of context or Tory smears either. Corbyn was just genuinely that awful as was being said and Salisbury made it crystal clear.
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
There was quite a smear campaign waged in many places against Jeremy Corbyn. It's plain silly not to acknowledge this.
by smear you mean pointing out all the things that made the man and those that surrounded him a disgrace?
I'm using "smear" in its traditional sense of smear.
Look, people can respectably make the case that Corbyn was anti-semitic, not the brightest, not much of a patriot, wedded to an outmoded 1970s view of the world, rigid and closed-minded, incompetent, weak, unable to manage conflict. Just generally unfit to be PM or even a party leader.
All of the above and more can be argued and I would defend him or not, often not, based on my own perceptions. I'm no fan.
But you can't - you simply cannot - deny that he was relentlessly smeared by his opponents both inside and outside the party. It's a pure and simple fact.
Anyone who won't acknowledge this is a bad faith partisan softhead.
Corbyn wasn't 'smeared' (i.e. had the truth told about him) nearly enough. That he got over 30% of the public to vote for him even after they all knew what he was is something of a national disgrace.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
As usual your analysis is very weak. He beat Hunt because he pretended to believe in Brexit, which like most things in his life was a lie and duplicitous political calculation. So, no Philip, he was not "better" than Hunt, either as a person or in his track record in office, leadership skills or honesty. Considerably worse than the hapless May also on all fronts. Just for balance, he is also "not better" than Gove or a handful of genuine Brexit believers. Boris Johnson is an appropriately cretinous figurehead for Brexit; a policy based on stupidity, prejudice and lies and led by a liar. Those are your values, and therefore you are an appropriate fanbois of the most inappropriate person ever to have held the office.
He beat Hunt as he was a better candidate with better judgement than Hunt.
Hunt wanted to continue with the failed and discredited Theresa May politicy of indefinitely extending Article 50 which was an atrociously bad policy leaving us in perpetual limbo and unable to get anywhere.
Because of Johnson's rejecting of that policy he was able to renegotiate May's awful deal, get a better one for England and Wales at least and win a landslide majority.
So yes, better than Hunt.
All of the things you listed are your opinions rather than objective fact.
So you think he was better than Hunt but it doesn't mean he IS better than Hunt. Just like you said in your earlier post.
There's no such thing as objective so there's no reason to bring it up.
I've given logical reasons as to why he's better. The priority in 2019 was surely resolving Brexit, getting out of the mess of the 2017-19 Parliament, the perpetual Article 50 extensions etc.
Hunt did not have a plan to do that. He was willing to go on with extending Article 50 and had no solution. Johnson had a plan to do that - and his plan worked.
That's what makes Johnson better and is a key part of why he was elected and why he won the election and why he deserved to do so on his own merits not just Corbyn's demerits.
Mr. Malmesbury, that's a sound point, although it's also a while until heading to Mars will be credible, so technology will've advanced by then.
The Splendid Blue, a huge part of the clown winning so handsomely was the presence of Corbyn and the absence of a Theresa May act of electoral suicide by such an epic cackhanded announcement as her social care madness.
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
The issue is that the others weren't taken out of context or Tory smears either. Corbyn was just genuinely that awful as was being said and Salisbury made it crystal clear.
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
There was quite a smear campaign waged in many places against Jeremy Corbyn. It's plain silly not to acknowledge this.
by smear you mean pointing out all the things that made the man and those that surrounded him a disgrace?
I'm using "smear" in its traditional sense of smear.
Look, people can respectably make the case that Corbyn was anti-semitic, not the brightest, not much of a patriot, wedded to an outmoded 1970s view of the world, rigid and closed-minded, incompetent, weak, unable to manage conflict. Just generally unfit to be PM or even a party leader.
All of the above and more can be argued and I would defend him or not, often not, based on my own perceptions. I'm no fan.
But you can't - you simply cannot - deny that he was relentlessly smeared by his opponents both inside and outside the party. It's a pure and simple fact.
Anyone who won't acknowledge this is a bad faith partisan softhead.
He wasn't 'smeared' (i.e. the truth told about him) nearly enough. That he got over 30% of the public to vote for him even after they all knew what he was is something of a national disgrace.
Rubbish. I voted for Catherine McKinnell but I didn't vote for Corbyn.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
As usual your analysis is very weak. He beat Hunt because he pretended to believe in Brexit, which like most things in his life was a lie and duplicitous political calculation. So, no Philip, he was not "better" than Hunt, either as a person or in his track record in office, leadership skills or honesty. Considerably worse than the hapless May also on all fronts. Just for balance, he is also "not better" than Gove or a handful of genuine Brexit believers. Boris Johnson is an appropriately cretinous figurehead for Brexit; a policy based on stupidity, prejudice and lies and led by a liar. Those are your values, and therefore you are an appropriate fanbois of the most inappropriate person ever to have held the office.
He beat Hunt as he was a better candidate with better judgement than Hunt.
Hunt wanted to continue with the failed and discredited Theresa May politicy of indefinitely extending Article 50 which was an atrociously bad policy leaving us in perpetual limbo and unable to get anywhere.
Because of Johnson's rejecting of that policy he was able to renegotiate May's awful deal, get a better one for England and Wales at least and win a landslide majority.
So yes, better than Hunt.
All of the things you listed are your opinions rather than objective fact.
So you think he was better than Hunt but it doesn't mean he IS better than Hunt. Just like you said in your earlier post.
There's no such thing as objective so there's no reason to bring it up.
I've given logical reasons as to why he's better. The priority in 2019 was surely resolving Brexit, getting out of the mess of the 2017-19 Parliament, the perpetual Article 50 extensions etc.
Hunt did not have a plan to do that. He was willing to go on with extending Article 50 and had no solution. Johnson had a plan to do that - and his plan worked.
That's what makes Johnson better and is a key part of why he was elected and why he won the election and why he deserved to do so on his own merits not just Corbyn's demerits.
You're the one who brought it up!
You said he was the best for the job because he was elected. That's objectively wrong.
He was judged the best for the job by the public and was clearly the best at winning elections.
That doesn't mean he is the best at being prime minister though. Like you said, there's no such thing as objective, but you were the one who asserted he was objectively the best.
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
The issue is that the others weren't taken out of context or Tory smears either. Corbyn was just genuinely that awful as was being said and Salisbury made it crystal clear.
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
There was quite a smear campaign waged in many places against Jeremy Corbyn. It's plain silly not to acknowledge this.
by smear you mean pointing out all the things that made the man and those that surrounded him a disgrace?
I'm using "smear" in its traditional sense of smear.
Look, people can respectably make the case that Corbyn was anti-semitic, not the brightest, not much of a patriot, wedded to an outmoded 1970s view of the world, rigid and closed-minded, incompetent, weak, unable to manage conflict. Just generally unfit to be PM or even a party leader.
All of the above and more can be argued and I would defend him or not, often not, based on my own perceptions. I'm no fan.
But you can't - you simply cannot - deny that he was relentlessly smeared by his opponents both inside and outside the party. It's a pure and simple fact.
Anyone who won't acknowledge this is a bad faith partisan softhead.
Corbyn wasn't 'smeared' (i.e. had the truth told about him) nearly enough. That he got over 30% of the public to vote for him even after they all knew what he was is something of a national disgrace.
Well you are a 'bad faith partisan softhead' and proud of it, aren't you?
Can we have a thread header on this Salmond/Sturgeon thing please? I honestly have no idea what's going on.
2018, all the people who had loathed Salmond for decades exploded with joy at the prospect of him being tried & convicted for attempted rape, and going to jail. A side note was a belief that Sturgeon was trying to protect Salmond.
2020, all the people who had loathed Salmond for decades broke into a howl of rage that he had got off, with much blubbering about fixes and the women alleging assault having been let down.
2021, all the people who had loathed Salmond for decades went through a Damascene conversion to believing a great injustice had been done to him, and that Sturgeon, the most popular politician in Scotland, must resign.
The unifying factor of these chameleon-like changes is that each time these people believed that they had found yet another silver bullet to destroy Scottish Indy and the SNP. Because they have no talented politicians, policies, positive cases for the UK or consistent principles of their own, they have to cling to these external events to preserve their fraying union.
I think that just about covers a particular aspect of what's going on.
Any thoughts on the performance of the Crown Office?
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
The issue is that the others weren't taken out of context or Tory smears either. Corbyn was just genuinely that awful as was being said and Salisbury made it crystal clear.
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
There was quite a smear campaign waged in many places against Jeremy Corbyn. It's plain silly not to acknowledge this.
by smear you mean pointing out all the things that made the man and those that surrounded him a disgrace?
I'm using "smear" in its traditional sense of smear.
Look, people can respectably make the case that Corbyn was anti-semitic, not the brightest, not much of a patriot, wedded to an outmoded 1970s view of the world, rigid and closed-minded, incompetent, weak, unable to manage conflict. Just generally unfit to be PM or even a party leader.
All of the above and more can be argued and I would defend him or not, often not, based on my own perceptions. I'm no fan.
But you can't - you simply cannot - deny that he was relentlessly smeared by his opponents both inside and outside the party. It's a pure and simple fact.
Anyone who won't acknowledge this is a bad faith partisan softhead.
He was clearly smeared, particularly around the racist allegations. I`m not convinced that the Salisbury thing was a massive factor. Corbyn`s lack of patriotism was a factor to be sure but for the main reason why LP did so badly in 2019 you have to turn to the gridlock in Parliament and the Brexit blocking.
Had the rebels purged themselves before the 2017 election as they did for Johnson in the 2019 election, Theresa May could still be governing now. She didn't lose that many seats.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
As usual your analysis is very weak. He beat Hunt because he pretended to believe in Brexit, which like most things in his life was a lie and duplicitous political calculation. So, no Philip, he was not "better" than Hunt, either as a person or in his track record in office, leadership skills or honesty. Considerably worse than the hapless May also on all fronts. Just for balance, he is also "not better" than Gove or a handful of genuine Brexit believers. Boris Johnson is an appropriately cretinous figurehead for Brexit; a policy based on stupidity, prejudice and lies and led by a liar. Those are your values, and therefore you are an appropriate fanbois of the most inappropriate person ever to have held the office.
He beat Hunt as he was a better candidate with better judgement than Hunt.
Hunt wanted to continue with the failed and discredited Theresa May politicy of indefinitely extending Article 50 which was an atrociously bad policy leaving us in perpetual limbo and unable to get anywhere.
Because of Johnson's rejecting of that policy he was able to renegotiate May's awful deal, get a better one for England and Wales at least and win a landslide majority.
So yes, better than Hunt.
All of the things you listed are your opinions rather than objective fact.
So you think he was better than Hunt but it doesn't mean he IS better than Hunt. Just like you said in your earlier post.
There's no such thing as objective so there's no reason to bring it up.
I've given logical reasons as to why he's better. The priority in 2019 was surely resolving Brexit, getting out of the mess of the 2017-19 Parliament, the perpetual Article 50 extensions etc.
Hunt did not have a plan to do that. He was willing to go on with extending Article 50 and had no solution. Johnson had a plan to do that - and his plan worked.
That's what makes Johnson better and is a key part of why he was elected and why he won the election and why he deserved to do so on his own merits not just Corbyn's demerits.
You're the one who brought it up!
You said he was the best for the job because he was elected. That's objectively wrong.
He was judged the best for the job by the public and was clearly the best at winning elections.
That doesn't mean he is the best at being prime minister though. Like you said, there's no such thing as objective, but you were the one who asserted he was objectively the best.
No I'm not, I never used the word objective since there is no objective truth. It is you that keeps bringing it up.
I didn't say he was best because he was elected. I said he was elected because he was the best candidate on offer.
I said he was best, I never said he was objectively the best.
I think advances in 3D printing have particularly interesting implications for Martian colonies. Instead of needing to transport lots of precisely made goods, which then need to survive landing, you can dump certain raw materials and have them converted through 3D printing into a wide variety of tools and the like.
Not a space chap, but it seems like that would make life a lot easier.
There is a fair of processing required for parts post-print at the moment - porosity etc.
We aren't at the print-and-use-immediately stage yet, except for simple plastic things.
How do we know that Martians can even read the instructions on the box? Maybe they are a bit dim.
On thread - Theresa May's failure in 2017 wasn't in failing to persuade enough people to vote Conservative - Con in 2017 received the third highest vote total of any party at any GE ever (yes I know the electoral roll is gradually expanding, but still...) but in failing to persuade sufficient people not to vote Labour. It's not exactly edifying for democracy, but the conclusion is that the campaign was insufficiently negative.
May's mistake was trying to fix the cost of social care.
Without that she would have won a majority but with it she lost just enough votes to create a problem.
I really don't think Corbyn was much of an issue one way or the other.
You might be right but CCHQ thought you were wrong, and that 2017 went beyond social care. That is why the Conservatives lifted so many elements of Labour's campaign for next time. Of course, Boris did not say much about social care either.
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
The issue is that the others weren't taken out of context or Tory smears either. Corbyn was just genuinely that awful as was being said and Salisbury made it crystal clear.
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
There was quite a smear campaign waged in many places against Jeremy Corbyn. It's plain silly not to acknowledge this.
by smear you mean pointing out all the things that made the man and those that surrounded him a disgrace?
I'm using "smear" in its traditional sense of smear.
Look, people can respectably make the case that Corbyn was anti-semitic, not the brightest, not much of a patriot, wedded to an outmoded 1970s view of the world, rigid and closed-minded, incompetent, weak, unable to manage conflict. Just generally unfit to be PM or even a party leader.
All of the above and more can be argued and I would defend him or not, often not, based on my own perceptions. I'm no fan.
But you can't - you simply cannot - deny that he was relentlessly smeared by his opponents both inside and outside the party. It's a pure and simple fact.
Anyone who won't acknowledge this is a bad faith partisan softhead.
He wasn't 'smeared' (i.e. the truth told about him) nearly enough. That he got over 30% of the public to vote for him even after they all knew what he was is something of a national disgrace.
Rubbish. I voted for Catherine McKinnell but I didn't vote for Corbyn.
Is Catherine McKinnell a Labour MP? Would she have supported Corbyn in passing his legislative programme and in votes of confidence? If so, then I'm afraid to say you did vote for Corbyn to become Prime Minister.
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
The issue is that the others weren't taken out of context or Tory smears either. Corbyn was just genuinely that awful as was being said and Salisbury made it crystal clear.
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
There was quite a smear campaign waged in many places against Jeremy Corbyn. It's plain silly not to acknowledge this.
by smear you mean pointing out all the things that made the man and those that surrounded him a disgrace?
I'm using "smear" in its traditional sense of smear.
Look, people can respectably make the case that Corbyn was anti-semitic, not the brightest, not much of a patriot, wedded to an outmoded 1970s view of the world, rigid and closed-minded, incompetent, weak, unable to manage conflict. Just generally unfit to be PM or even a party leader.
All of the above and more can be argued and I would defend him or not, often not, based on my own perceptions. I'm no fan.
But you can't - you simply cannot - deny that he was relentlessly smeared by his opponents both inside and outside the party. It's a pure and simple fact.
Anyone who won't acknowledge this is a bad faith partisan softhead.
Corbyn wasn't 'smeared' (i.e. had the truth told about him) nearly enough. That he got over 30% of the public to vote for him even after they all knew what he was is something of a national disgrace.
27% voted for Foot in 1983, 32% voted for Corbyn in 2019, 31% voted for the Tories in 1997 and 32% voted for Hague in 2001 so about 30% of the electorate will always vote Labour or Tory whoever is leading them.
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
The issue is that the others weren't taken out of context or Tory smears either. Corbyn was just genuinely that awful as was being said and Salisbury made it crystal clear.
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
There was quite a smear campaign waged in many places against Jeremy Corbyn. It's plain silly not to acknowledge this.
by smear you mean pointing out all the things that made the man and those that surrounded him a disgrace?
I'm using "smear" in its traditional sense of smear.
Look, people can respectably make the case that Corbyn was anti-semitic, not the brightest, not much of a patriot, wedded to an outmoded 1970s view of the world, rigid and closed-minded, incompetent, weak, unable to manage conflict. Just generally unfit to be PM or even a party leader.
All of the above and more can be argued and I would defend him or not, often not, based on my own perceptions. I'm no fan.
But you can't - you simply cannot - deny that he was relentlessly smeared by his opponents both inside and outside the party. It's a pure and simple fact.
Anyone who won't acknowledge this is a bad faith partisan softhead.
He wasn't 'smeared' (i.e. the truth told about him) nearly enough. That he got over 30% of the public to vote for him even after they all knew what he was is something of a national disgrace.
Rubbish. I voted for Catherine McKinnell but I didn't vote for Corbyn.
Is Catherine McKinnell a Labour MP? Would she have supported Corbyn in passing his Queen's Speech programme and in votes of confidence? If so, then I'm afraid to say you did vote for Corbyn to become Prime Minister.
Whatever helps maintain your moral superiority mate.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
So you are saying May was worse than a donkey then, given she did not win big against Corbyn in 2017?
The Tories were always going to get 42%+ against Corbyn as they did in 2017 and 2019 in order to keep him out of No 10.
The main difference between 2017 and 2019 though was diehard Remainers decided the LDs were a better bet to stop Brexit than Corbyn Labour and some working class Leave voters switched from Labour to the Tories under Boris to get Brexit done.
No, working class one-time Labour voters switched to the Clown primarily because they didn't want what they regarded as a communist in No 10. Very simple. Mike has done a number of headers that have demo'd this. Perhaps you missed them.
Except those working class Labour Leave voters voted for Corbyn in 2017, they merely lent their votes to Boris in 2019 (note to Boris not the Tories) to get Brexit done
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
As usual your analysis is very weak. He beat Hunt because he pretended to believe in Brexit, which like most things in his life was a lie and duplicitous political calculation. So, no Philip, he was not "better" than Hunt, either as a person or in his track record in office, leadership skills or honesty. Considerably worse than the hapless May also on all fronts. Just for balance, he is also "not better" than Gove or a handful of genuine Brexit believers. Boris Johnson is an appropriately cretinous figurehead for Brexit; a policy based on stupidity, prejudice and lies and led by a liar. Those are your values, and therefore you are an appropriate fanbois of the most inappropriate person ever to have held the office.
He beat Hunt as he was a better candidate with better judgement than Hunt.
Hunt wanted to continue with the failed and discredited Theresa May politicy of indefinitely extending Article 50 which was an atrociously bad policy leaving us in perpetual limbo and unable to get anywhere.
Because of Johnson's rejecting of that policy he was able to renegotiate May's awful deal, get a better one for England and Wales at least and win a landslide majority.
So yes, better than Hunt.
All of the things you listed are your opinions rather than objective fact.
So you think he was better than Hunt but it doesn't mean he IS better than Hunt. Just like you said in your earlier post.
There's no such thing as objective so there's no reason to bring it up.
I've given logical reasons as to why he's better. The priority in 2019 was surely resolving Brexit, getting out of the mess of the 2017-19 Parliament, the perpetual Article 50 extensions etc.
Hunt did not have a plan to do that. He was willing to go on with extending Article 50 and had no solution. Johnson had a plan to do that - and his plan worked.
That's what makes Johnson better and is a key part of why he was elected and why he won the election and why he deserved to do so on his own merits not just Corbyn's demerits.
You're the one who brought it up!
You said he was the best for the job because he was elected. That's objectively wrong.
He was judged the best for the job by the public and was clearly the best at winning elections.
That doesn't mean he is the best at being prime minister though. Like you said, there's no such thing as objective, but you were the one who asserted he was objectively the best.
This isn't the forum for a debate on whether objectivity is real or possible; try Thomas Nagel's 'The View from Nowhere' and report back, or not...
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
The issue is that the others weren't taken out of context or Tory smears either. Corbyn was just genuinely that awful as was being said and Salisbury made it crystal clear.
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
There was quite a smear campaign waged in many places against Jeremy Corbyn. It's plain silly not to acknowledge this.
by smear you mean pointing out all the things that made the man and those that surrounded him a disgrace?
I'm using "smear" in its traditional sense of smear.
Look, people can respectably make the case that Corbyn was anti-semitic, not the brightest, not much of a patriot, wedded to an outmoded 1970s view of the world, rigid and closed-minded, incompetent, weak, unable to manage conflict. Just generally unfit to be PM or even a party leader.
All of the above and more can be argued and I would defend him or not, often not, based on my own perceptions. I'm no fan.
But you can't - you simply cannot - deny that he was relentlessly smeared by his opponents both inside and outside the party. It's a pure and simple fact.
Anyone who won't acknowledge this is a bad faith partisan softhead.
He wasn't 'smeared' (i.e. the truth told about him) nearly enough. That he got over 30% of the public to vote for him even after they all knew what he was is something of a national disgrace.
Rubbish. I voted for Catherine McKinnell but I didn't vote for Corbyn.
Is Catherine McKinnell a Labour MP? Would she have supported Corbyn in passing his Queen's Speech programme and in votes of confidence? If so, then I'm afraid to say you did vote for Corbyn to become Prime Minister.
Whatever helps maintain your moral superiority mate.
If by 'whatever' you mean 'indisputable facts', then yes.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
As usual your analysis is very weak. He beat Hunt because he pretended to believe in Brexit, which like most things in his life was a lie and duplicitous political calculation. So, no Philip, he was not "better" than Hunt, either as a person or in his track record in office, leadership skills or honesty. Considerably worse than the hapless May also on all fronts. Just for balance, he is also "not better" than Gove or a handful of genuine Brexit believers. Boris Johnson is an appropriately cretinous figurehead for Brexit; a policy based on stupidity, prejudice and lies and led by a liar. Those are your values, and therefore you are an appropriate fanbois of the most inappropriate person ever to have held the office.
He beat Hunt as he was a better candidate with better judgement than Hunt.
Hunt wanted to continue with the failed and discredited Theresa May politicy of indefinitely extending Article 50 which was an atrociously bad policy leaving us in perpetual limbo and unable to get anywhere.
Because of Johnson's rejecting of that policy he was able to renegotiate May's awful deal, get a better one for England and Wales at least and win a landslide majority.
So yes, better than Hunt.
All of the things you listed are your opinions rather than objective fact.
So you think he was better than Hunt but it doesn't mean he IS better than Hunt. Just like you said in your earlier post.
There's no such thing as objective so there's no reason to bring it up.
I've given logical reasons as to why he's better. The priority in 2019 was surely resolving Brexit, getting out of the mess of the 2017-19 Parliament, the perpetual Article 50 extensions etc.
Hunt did not have a plan to do that. He was willing to go on with extending Article 50 and had no solution. Johnson had a plan to do that - and his plan worked.
That's what makes Johnson better and is a key part of why he was elected and why he won the election and why he deserved to do so on his own merits not just Corbyn's demerits.
You're the one who brought it up!
You said he was the best for the job because he was elected. That's objectively wrong.
He was judged the best for the job by the public and was clearly the best at winning elections.
That doesn't mean he is the best at being prime minister though. Like you said, there's no such thing as objective, but you were the one who asserted he was objectively the best.
No I'm not, I never used the word objective since there is no objective truth. It is you that keeps bringing it up.
I didn't say he was best because he was elected. I said he was elected because he was the best candidate on offer.
I said he was best, I never said he was objectively the best.
You said:
"Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won."
And I corrected you. Johnson won because he was deemed to be better than Corbyn and Swinson.
That doesn't mean he was the best option available.
You presented the fact as objective truth and it just isn't, just like you later said.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
So you are saying May was worse than a donkey then, given she did not win big against Corbyn in 2017?
The Tories were always going to get 42%+ against Corbyn as they did in 2017 and 2019 in order to keep him out of No 10.
The main difference between 2017 and 2019 though was diehard Remainers decided the LDs were a better bet to stop Brexit than Corbyn Labour and some working class Leave voters switched from Labour to the Tories under Boris to get Brexit done.
No, working class one-time Labour voters switched to the Clown primarily because they didn't want what they regarded as a communist in No 10. Very simple. Mike has done a number of headers that have demo'd this. Perhaps you missed them.
Except those working class voters voted for Corbyn in 2017, they merely lent their votes to Boris in 2019 to get Brexit done
We'll see if it was lent.
The "red wall" North outside of the cities has been swinging blue relative to the rest of the country for the past decade now.
I downloaded the Alex Salmond evidence documents yesterday as some light reading. I have compared the unredacted and redacted ministerial code submissions. The only changes were to remove references to 2 meetings to discuss the handling of the allegations against AS, with the redactions having no relation at all to the accusers identity. I understand the redactions were made after a request from the Crown Office, but I do not understand on what basis that objection was made or agreed to.
I assume the committee cannot now ask AS about these meetings because the sections have been redacted, and AS cannot talk about them in front of the committee.
This really stinks. Parliaments should be able to dig into things like this without fear or favour, otherwise future governments with really unpleasant leaders could use the precedent to cover up anything. I am amazed that the committee are being so supine.
I have to credit full marks for your observation and to be honest, irrespective of the Independence debate, the SNP have the air of decay and corruption that often comes with dominant power
My wife is very sad to observe the state of Scottish politics and does not recognise the nasty and toxic culture which has no part in the open generous nature of Scots
I have no idea how this will effect the polling but maybe Scots will look again before empowering the SNP yet again in May
And vote for whom instead? Remember that: 1. The hooey about Salmond is a fabulous bit of soap opera but isn't seen as politics 2. The SNP have quite a strong record to point to when asking for re-election 3. Their various policy failings compare reasonably well against the policy failings of the alternative Tory or Labour options
Politics isn't about one single party in isolation. Yes there is a smell about some of these SNP shenanigans, but if Big G suggests the solution to corruption is to vote Tory then hold my coffee whilst I wee myself laughing. The worst case scenario for the SNP is to be reduced to a minority administration.
2. They have a what now? What exactly does this record consist of? The last time I saw a bulleted list of SNP achievements from them, it had giving cardboard boxes to families to put babies in near the top of a very short list - not even something from the most recent term of office.
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
The issue is that the others weren't taken out of context or Tory smears either. Corbyn was just genuinely that awful as was being said and Salisbury made it crystal clear.
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
There was quite a smear campaign waged in many places against Jeremy Corbyn. It's plain silly not to acknowledge this.
by smear you mean pointing out all the things that made the man and those that surrounded him a disgrace?
I'm using "smear" in its traditional sense of smear.
Look, people can respectably make the case that Corbyn was anti-semitic, not the brightest, not much of a patriot, wedded to an outmoded 1970s view of the world, rigid and closed-minded, incompetent, weak, unable to manage conflict. Just generally unfit to be PM or even a party leader.
All of the above and more can be argued and I would defend him or not, often not, based on my own perceptions. I'm no fan.
But you can't - you simply cannot - deny that he was relentlessly smeared by his opponents both inside and outside the party. It's a pure and simple fact.
Anyone who won't acknowledge this is a bad faith partisan softhead.
Corbyn wasn't 'smeared' (i.e. had the truth told about him) nearly enough. That he got over 30% of the public to vote for him even after they all knew what he was is something of a national disgrace.
Well you are a 'bad faith partisan softhead' and proud of it, aren't you?
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
The issue is that the others weren't taken out of context or Tory smears either. Corbyn was just genuinely that awful as was being said and Salisbury made it crystal clear.
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
There was quite a smear campaign waged in many places against Jeremy Corbyn. It's plain silly not to acknowledge this.
by smear you mean pointing out all the things that made the man and those that surrounded him a disgrace?
I'm using "smear" in its traditional sense of smear.
Look, people can respectably make the case that Corbyn was anti-semitic, not the brightest, not much of a patriot, wedded to an outmoded 1970s view of the world, rigid and closed-minded, incompetent, weak, unable to manage conflict. Just generally unfit to be PM or even a party leader.
All of the above and more can be argued and I would defend him or not, often not, based on my own perceptions. I'm no fan.
But you can't - you simply cannot - deny that he was relentlessly smeared by his opponents both inside and outside the party. It's a pure and simple fact.
Anyone who won't acknowledge this is a bad faith partisan softhead.
He wasn't 'smeared' (i.e. the truth told about him) nearly enough. That he got over 30% of the public to vote for him even after they all knew what he was is something of a national disgrace.
Rubbish. I voted for Catherine McKinnell but I didn't vote for Corbyn.
Is Catherine McKinnell a Labour MP? Would she have supported Corbyn in passing his Queen's Speech programme and in votes of confidence? If so, then I'm afraid to say you did vote for Corbyn to become Prime Minister.
Whatever helps maintain your moral superiority mate.
If by 'whatever' you mean 'indisputable facts', then yes.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
As usual your analysis is very weak. He beat Hunt because he pretended to believe in Brexit, which like most things in his life was a lie and duplicitous political calculation. So, no Philip, he was not "better" than Hunt, either as a person or in his track record in office, leadership skills or honesty. Considerably worse than the hapless May also on all fronts. Just for balance, he is also "not better" than Gove or a handful of genuine Brexit believers. Boris Johnson is an appropriately cretinous figurehead for Brexit; a policy based on stupidity, prejudice and lies and led by a liar. Those are your values, and therefore you are an appropriate fanbois of the most inappropriate person ever to have held the office.
He beat Hunt as he was a better candidate with better judgement than Hunt.
Hunt wanted to continue with the failed and discredited Theresa May politicy of indefinitely extending Article 50 which was an atrociously bad policy leaving us in perpetual limbo and unable to get anywhere.
Because of Johnson's rejecting of that policy he was able to renegotiate May's awful deal, get a better one for England and Wales at least and win a landslide majority.
So yes, better than Hunt.
All of the things you listed are your opinions rather than objective fact.
So you think he was better than Hunt but it doesn't mean he IS better than Hunt. Just like you said in your earlier post.
There's no such thing as objective so there's no reason to bring it up.
I've given logical reasons as to why he's better. The priority in 2019 was surely resolving Brexit, getting out of the mess of the 2017-19 Parliament, the perpetual Article 50 extensions etc.
Hunt did not have a plan to do that. He was willing to go on with extending Article 50 and had no solution. Johnson had a plan to do that - and his plan worked.
That's what makes Johnson better and is a key part of why he was elected and why he won the election and why he deserved to do so on his own merits not just Corbyn's demerits.
Johnson's 'plan', faced with the confusion British industry was facing, was to make the situation incomparably worse. To 'make a desolation and call it peace'.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
As usual your analysis is very weak. He beat Hunt because he pretended to believe in Brexit, which like most things in his life was a lie and duplicitous political calculation. So, no Philip, he was not "better" than Hunt, either as a person or in his track record in office, leadership skills or honesty. Considerably worse than the hapless May also on all fronts. Just for balance, he is also "not better" than Gove or a handful of genuine Brexit believers. Boris Johnson is an appropriately cretinous figurehead for Brexit; a policy based on stupidity, prejudice and lies and led by a liar. Those are your values, and therefore you are an appropriate fanbois of the most inappropriate person ever to have held the office.
He beat Hunt as he was a better candidate with better judgement than Hunt.
Hunt wanted to continue with the failed and discredited Theresa May politicy of indefinitely extending Article 50 which was an atrociously bad policy leaving us in perpetual limbo and unable to get anywhere.
Because of Johnson's rejecting of that policy he was able to renegotiate May's awful deal, get a better one for England and Wales at least and win a landslide majority.
So yes, better than Hunt.
All of the things you listed are your opinions rather than objective fact.
So you think he was better than Hunt but it doesn't mean he IS better than Hunt. Just like you said in your earlier post.
There's no such thing as objective so there's no reason to bring it up.
I've given logical reasons as to why he's better. The priority in 2019 was surely resolving Brexit, getting out of the mess of the 2017-19 Parliament, the perpetual Article 50 extensions etc.
Hunt did not have a plan to do that. He was willing to go on with extending Article 50 and had no solution. Johnson had a plan to do that - and his plan worked.
That's what makes Johnson better and is a key part of why he was elected and why he won the election and why he deserved to do so on his own merits not just Corbyn's demerits.
You're the one who brought it up!
You said he was the best for the job because he was elected. That's objectively wrong.
He was judged the best for the job by the public and was clearly the best at winning elections.
That doesn't mean he is the best at being prime minister though. Like you said, there's no such thing as objective, but you were the one who asserted he was objectively the best.
No I'm not, I never used the word objective since there is no objective truth. It is you that keeps bringing it up.
I didn't say he was best because he was elected. I said he was elected because he was the best candidate on offer.
I said he was best, I never said he was objectively the best.
You said:
"Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won."
And I corrected you. Johnson won because he was deemed to be better than Corbyn and Swinson.
That doesn't mean he was the best option available.
You presented the fact as objective truth and it just isn't, just like you later said.
I never said objective. I said best. You keep adding the word objective not me.
If he's deemed to be the best then those doing the deeming agreed with me.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
As usual your analysis is very weak. He beat Hunt because he pretended to believe in Brexit, which like most things in his life was a lie and duplicitous political calculation. So, no Philip, he was not "better" than Hunt, either as a person or in his track record in office, leadership skills or honesty. Considerably worse than the hapless May also on all fronts. Just for balance, he is also "not better" than Gove or a handful of genuine Brexit believers. Boris Johnson is an appropriately cretinous figurehead for Brexit; a policy based on stupidity, prejudice and lies and led by a liar. Those are your values, and therefore you are an appropriate fanbois of the most inappropriate person ever to have held the office.
He beat Hunt as he was a better candidate with better judgement than Hunt.
Hunt wanted to continue with the failed and discredited Theresa May politicy of indefinitely extending Article 50 which was an atrociously bad policy leaving us in perpetual limbo and unable to get anywhere.
Because of Johnson's rejecting of that policy he was able to renegotiate May's awful deal, get a better one for England and Wales at least and win a landslide majority.
So yes, better than Hunt.
All of the things you listed are your opinions rather than objective fact.
So you think he was better than Hunt but it doesn't mean he IS better than Hunt. Just like you said in your earlier post.
There's no such thing as objective so there's no reason to bring it up.
I've given logical reasons as to why he's better. The priority in 2019 was surely resolving Brexit, getting out of the mess of the 2017-19 Parliament, the perpetual Article 50 extensions etc.
Hunt did not have a plan to do that. He was willing to go on with extending Article 50 and had no solution. Johnson had a plan to do that - and his plan worked.
That's what makes Johnson better and is a key part of why he was elected and why he won the election and why he deserved to do so on his own merits not just Corbyn's demerits.
You're the one who brought it up!
You said he was the best for the job because he was elected. That's objectively wrong.
He was judged the best for the job by the public and was clearly the best at winning elections.
That doesn't mean he is the best at being prime minister though. Like you said, there's no such thing as objective, but you were the one who asserted he was objectively the best.
No I'm not, I never used the word objective since there is no objective truth. It is you that keeps bringing it up.
I didn't say he was best because he was elected. I said he was elected because he was the best candidate on offer.
I said he was best, I never said he was objectively the best.
You said:
"Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won."
And I corrected you. Johnson won because he was deemed to be better than Corbyn and Swinson.
That doesn't mean he was the best option available.
You presented the fact as objective truth and it just isn't, just like you later said.
Sticking my oar in here, but what’s the difference between being better and being deemed better? Surely both are the same, as it isn’t something with an absolute scale.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
So you are saying May was worse than a donkey then, given she did not win big against Corbyn in 2017?
The Tories were always going to get 42%+ against Corbyn as they did in 2017 and 2019 in order to keep him out of No 10.
The main difference between 2017 and 2019 though was diehard Remainers decided the LDs were a better bet to stop Brexit than Corbyn Labour and some working class Leave voters switched from Labour to the Tories under Boris to get Brexit done.
No, working class one-time Labour voters switched to the Clown primarily because they didn't want what they regarded as a communist in No 10. Very simple. Mike has done a number of headers that have demo'd this. Perhaps you missed them.
Except those working class voters voted for Corbyn in 2017, they merely lent their votes to Boris in 2019 to get Brexit done
We'll see if it was lent.
The "red wall" North outside of the cities has been swinging blue relative to the rest of the country for the past decade now.
It still stayed Labour overall in 2017, it only went Tory in 2019
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
As usual your analysis is very weak. He beat Hunt because he pretended to believe in Brexit, which like most things in his life was a lie and duplicitous political calculation. So, no Philip, he was not "better" than Hunt, either as a person or in his track record in office, leadership skills or honesty. Considerably worse than the hapless May also on all fronts. Just for balance, he is also "not better" than Gove or a handful of genuine Brexit believers. Boris Johnson is an appropriately cretinous figurehead for Brexit; a policy based on stupidity, prejudice and lies and led by a liar. Those are your values, and therefore you are an appropriate fanbois of the most inappropriate person ever to have held the office.
He beat Hunt as he was a better candidate with better judgement than Hunt.
Hunt wanted to continue with the failed and discredited Theresa May politicy of indefinitely extending Article 50 which was an atrociously bad policy leaving us in perpetual limbo and unable to get anywhere.
Because of Johnson's rejecting of that policy he was able to renegotiate May's awful deal, get a better one for England and Wales at least and win a landslide majority.
So yes, better than Hunt.
All of the things you listed are your opinions rather than objective fact.
So you think he was better than Hunt but it doesn't mean he IS better than Hunt. Just like you said in your earlier post.
There's no such thing as objective so there's no reason to bring it up.
I've given logical reasons as to why he's better. The priority in 2019 was surely resolving Brexit, getting out of the mess of the 2017-19 Parliament, the perpetual Article 50 extensions etc.
Hunt did not have a plan to do that. He was willing to go on with extending Article 50 and had no solution. Johnson had a plan to do that - and his plan worked.
That's what makes Johnson better and is a key part of why he was elected and why he won the election and why he deserved to do so on his own merits not just Corbyn's demerits.
You're the one who brought it up!
You said he was the best for the job because he was elected. That's objectively wrong.
He was judged the best for the job by the public and was clearly the best at winning elections.
That doesn't mean he is the best at being prime minister though. Like you said, there's no such thing as objective, but you were the one who asserted he was objectively the best.
No I'm not, I never used the word objective since there is no objective truth. It is you that keeps bringing it up.
I didn't say he was best because he was elected. I said he was elected because he was the best candidate on offer.
I said he was best, I never said he was objectively the best.
You said:
"Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won."
And I corrected you. Johnson won because he was deemed to be better than Corbyn and Swinson.
That doesn't mean he was the best option available.
You presented the fact as objective truth and it just isn't, just like you later said.
I never said objective. I said best. You keep adding the word objective not me.
If he's deemed to be the best then those doing the deeming agreed with me.
This is ridiculous.
I didn't say you said "objective truth". I said you presented your hypothesis as objective truth.
You didn't say "the electorate thought he was the best". You said "he was the best".
This is turning into a completely meaningless argument but the fact you can't see the difference is worrying.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
As usual your analysis is very weak. He beat Hunt because he pretended to believe in Brexit, which like most things in his life was a lie and duplicitous political calculation. So, no Philip, he was not "better" than Hunt, either as a person or in his track record in office, leadership skills or honesty. Considerably worse than the hapless May also on all fronts. Just for balance, he is also "not better" than Gove or a handful of genuine Brexit believers. Boris Johnson is an appropriately cretinous figurehead for Brexit; a policy based on stupidity, prejudice and lies and led by a liar. Those are your values, and therefore you are an appropriate fanbois of the most inappropriate person ever to have held the office.
He beat Hunt as he was a better candidate with better judgement than Hunt.
Hunt wanted to continue with the failed and discredited Theresa May politicy of indefinitely extending Article 50 which was an atrociously bad policy leaving us in perpetual limbo and unable to get anywhere.
Because of Johnson's rejecting of that policy he was able to renegotiate May's awful deal, get a better one for England and Wales at least and win a landslide majority.
So yes, better than Hunt.
All of the things you listed are your opinions rather than objective fact.
So you think he was better than Hunt but it doesn't mean he IS better than Hunt. Just like you said in your earlier post.
There's no such thing as objective so there's no reason to bring it up.
I've given logical reasons as to why he's better. The priority in 2019 was surely resolving Brexit, getting out of the mess of the 2017-19 Parliament, the perpetual Article 50 extensions etc.
Hunt did not have a plan to do that. He was willing to go on with extending Article 50 and had no solution. Johnson had a plan to do that - and his plan worked.
That's what makes Johnson better and is a key part of why he was elected and why he won the election and why he deserved to do so on his own merits not just Corbyn's demerits.
Johnson's 'plan', faced with the confusion British industry was facing, was to make the situation incomparably worse. To 'make a desolation and call it peace'.
Worse?
The situation is far better now than it was in 2019 in my opinion.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
So you are saying May was worse than a donkey then, given she did not win big against Corbyn in 2017?
The Tories were always going to get 42%+ against Corbyn as they did in 2017 and 2019 in order to keep him out of No 10.
The main difference between 2017 and 2019 though was diehard Remainers decided the LDs were a better bet to stop Brexit than Corbyn Labour and some working class Leave voters switched from Labour to the Tories under Boris to get Brexit done.
No, working class one-time Labour voters switched to the Clown primarily because they didn't want what they regarded as a communist in No 10. Very simple. Mike has done a number of headers that have demo'd this. Perhaps you missed them.
Except those working class voters voted for Corbyn in 2017, they merely lent their votes to Boris in 2019 to get Brexit done
We'll see if it was lent.
The "red wall" North outside of the cities has been swinging blue relative to the rest of the country for the past decade now.
It still stayed Labour overall in 2017, it only went Tory in 2019
That's how swinging works. Eventually it reaches a tipping point.
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
The issue is that the others weren't taken out of context or Tory smears either. Corbyn was just genuinely that awful as was being said and Salisbury made it crystal clear.
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
There was quite a smear campaign waged in many places against Jeremy Corbyn. It's plain silly not to acknowledge this.
by smear you mean pointing out all the things that made the man and those that surrounded him a disgrace?
I'm using "smear" in its traditional sense of smear.
Look, people can respectably make the case that Corbyn was anti-semitic, not the brightest, not much of a patriot, wedded to an outmoded 1970s view of the world, rigid and closed-minded, incompetent, weak, unable to manage conflict. Just generally unfit to be PM or even a party leader.
All of the above and more can be argued and I would defend him or not, often not, based on my own perceptions. I'm no fan.
But you can't - you simply cannot - deny that he was relentlessly smeared by his opponents both inside and outside the party. It's a pure and simple fact.
Anyone who won't acknowledge this is a bad faith partisan softhead.
He wasn't 'smeared' (i.e. the truth told about him) nearly enough. That he got over 30% of the public to vote for him even after they all knew what he was is something of a national disgrace.
Rubbish. I voted for Catherine McKinnell but I didn't vote for Corbyn.
Is Catherine McKinnell a Labour MP? Would she have supported Corbyn in passing his Queen's Speech programme and in votes of confidence? If so, then I'm afraid to say you did vote for Corbyn to become Prime Minister.
Whatever helps maintain your moral superiority mate.
If by 'whatever' you mean 'indisputable facts', then yes.
Not at all
If you can prove that voting for an MP who would have made Corbyn Prime Minister is in any meaningful way 'not voting for Corbyn' under our constitutional and electoral system, then you'll deserve a very lucrative legal career indeed.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
As usual your analysis is very weak. He beat Hunt because he pretended to believe in Brexit, which like most things in his life was a lie and duplicitous political calculation. So, no Philip, he was not "better" than Hunt, either as a person or in his track record in office, leadership skills or honesty. Considerably worse than the hapless May also on all fronts. Just for balance, he is also "not better" than Gove or a handful of genuine Brexit believers. Boris Johnson is an appropriately cretinous figurehead for Brexit; a policy based on stupidity, prejudice and lies and led by a liar. Those are your values, and therefore you are an appropriate fanbois of the most inappropriate person ever to have held the office.
He beat Hunt as he was a better candidate with better judgement than Hunt.
Hunt wanted to continue with the failed and discredited Theresa May politicy of indefinitely extending Article 50 which was an atrociously bad policy leaving us in perpetual limbo and unable to get anywhere.
Because of Johnson's rejecting of that policy he was able to renegotiate May's awful deal, get a better one for England and Wales at least and win a landslide majority.
So yes, better than Hunt.
All of the things you listed are your opinions rather than objective fact.
So you think he was better than Hunt but it doesn't mean he IS better than Hunt. Just like you said in your earlier post.
There's no such thing as objective so there's no reason to bring it up.
I've given logical reasons as to why he's better. The priority in 2019 was surely resolving Brexit, getting out of the mess of the 2017-19 Parliament, the perpetual Article 50 extensions etc.
Hunt did not have a plan to do that. He was willing to go on with extending Article 50 and had no solution. Johnson had a plan to do that - and his plan worked.
That's what makes Johnson better and is a key part of why he was elected and why he won the election and why he deserved to do so on his own merits not just Corbyn's demerits.
You're the one who brought it up!
You said he was the best for the job because he was elected. That's objectively wrong.
He was judged the best for the job by the public and was clearly the best at winning elections.
That doesn't mean he is the best at being prime minister though. Like you said, there's no such thing as objective, but you were the one who asserted he was objectively the best.
No I'm not, I never used the word objective since there is no objective truth. It is you that keeps bringing it up.
I didn't say he was best because he was elected. I said he was elected because he was the best candidate on offer.
I said he was best, I never said he was objectively the best.
You said:
"Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won."
And I corrected you. Johnson won because he was deemed to be better than Corbyn and Swinson.
That doesn't mean he was the best option available.
You presented the fact as objective truth and it just isn't, just like you later said.
I never said objective. I said best. You keep adding the word objective not me.
If he's deemed to be the best then those doing the deeming agreed with me.
This is ridiculous.
I didn't say you said "objective truth". I said you presented your hypothesis as objective truth.
You didn't say "the electorate thought he was the best". You said "he was the best".
This is turning into a completely meaningless argument but the fact you can't see the difference is worrying.
You are dancing on a pin.
He was [subjectively] the best for amongst other reasons the reasons I have given.
There's no such thing as objective so its silly to bring it in. He [subjectively] was the best, we only have subjective reality. The public agreed that [subjectively] he was the best.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
As usual your analysis is very weak. He beat Hunt because he pretended to believe in Brexit, which like most things in his life was a lie and duplicitous political calculation. So, no Philip, he was not "better" than Hunt, either as a person or in his track record in office, leadership skills or honesty. Considerably worse than the hapless May also on all fronts. Just for balance, he is also "not better" than Gove or a handful of genuine Brexit believers. Boris Johnson is an appropriately cretinous figurehead for Brexit; a policy based on stupidity, prejudice and lies and led by a liar. Those are your values, and therefore you are an appropriate fanbois of the most inappropriate person ever to have held the office.
He beat Hunt as he was a better candidate with better judgement than Hunt.
Hunt wanted to continue with the failed and discredited Theresa May politicy of indefinitely extending Article 50 which was an atrociously bad policy leaving us in perpetual limbo and unable to get anywhere.
Because of Johnson's rejecting of that policy he was able to renegotiate May's awful deal, get a better one for England and Wales at least and win a landslide majority.
So yes, better than Hunt.
All of the things you listed are your opinions rather than objective fact.
So you think he was better than Hunt but it doesn't mean he IS better than Hunt. Just like you said in your earlier post.
There's no such thing as objective so there's no reason to bring it up.
I've given logical reasons as to why he's better. The priority in 2019 was surely resolving Brexit, getting out of the mess of the 2017-19 Parliament, the perpetual Article 50 extensions etc.
Hunt did not have a plan to do that. He was willing to go on with extending Article 50 and had no solution. Johnson had a plan to do that - and his plan worked.
That's what makes Johnson better and is a key part of why he was elected and why he won the election and why he deserved to do so on his own merits not just Corbyn's demerits.
You're the one who brought it up!
You said he was the best for the job because he was elected. That's objectively wrong.
He was judged the best for the job by the public and was clearly the best at winning elections.
That doesn't mean he is the best at being prime minister though. Like you said, there's no such thing as objective, but you were the one who asserted he was objectively the best.
No I'm not, I never used the word objective since there is no objective truth. It is you that keeps bringing it up.
I didn't say he was best because he was elected. I said he was elected because he was the best candidate on offer.
I said he was best, I never said he was objectively the best.
You said:
"Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won."
And I corrected you. Johnson won because he was deemed to be better than Corbyn and Swinson.
That doesn't mean he was the best option available.
You presented the fact as objective truth and it just isn't, just like you later said.
Sticking my oar in here, but what’s the difference between being better and being deemed better? Surely both are the same, as it isn’t something with an absolute scale.
It depends what you're discussing, surely.
Is Boris better at winning elections than May, Corbyn, Swinson, etc? Of course. The evidence is there.
Was Boris the best person for the job? Well the electorate thought so, @Philip_Thompson clearly thinks so, and that's fine. But him winning is not evidence of being the best person for the job, like @Philip_Thompson highlighted – that's entirely subjective.
A colleague of my wife's refused the vaccine as "they don't work against the variants so why bother getting it." 🤦♂️
He has tested positive. 🤦♂️
Self inflicted so no sympathy and it's a bit annoying that he still qualifies for sick pay but hopefully it's not too serious.
Agreed - and hopefully he's not passed the bug onto somebody more vulnerable as a result.
People such as him should be now at the back of the queue I think ? I mean not for punishment/moral reasons but anyone infected there's no real point getting the jab for a few months after ?
Here are the Guardian attempting o triangulate some of Corbyn's nuttier statements.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Sorry HYUFD, but you are too obsessed by the Brexit prism. Sure, some people, myself included, changed voting patterns of a lifetime as a result, but I think we are a tiny minority. Johnson won because of Corbyn, not Brexit. They chose the right wing clown over the left wing one. Corbyn was even better for the Tories than Kinnoch or Foot. The Tories could have won big had they put a donkey up against Corbyn. And they did!
Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
As usual your analysis is very weak. He beat Hunt because he pretended to believe in Brexit, which like most things in his life was a lie and duplicitous political calculation. So, no Philip, he was not "better" than Hunt, either as a person or in his track record in office, leadership skills or honesty. Considerably worse than the hapless May also on all fronts. Just for balance, he is also "not better" than Gove or a handful of genuine Brexit believers. Boris Johnson is an appropriately cretinous figurehead for Brexit; a policy based on stupidity, prejudice and lies and led by a liar. Those are your values, and therefore you are an appropriate fanbois of the most inappropriate person ever to have held the office.
He beat Hunt as he was a better candidate with better judgement than Hunt.
Hunt wanted to continue with the failed and discredited Theresa May politicy of indefinitely extending Article 50 which was an atrociously bad policy leaving us in perpetual limbo and unable to get anywhere.
Because of Johnson's rejecting of that policy he was able to renegotiate May's awful deal, get a better one for England and Wales at least and win a landslide majority.
So yes, better than Hunt.
All of the things you listed are your opinions rather than objective fact.
So you think he was better than Hunt but it doesn't mean he IS better than Hunt. Just like you said in your earlier post.
There's no such thing as objective so there's no reason to bring it up.
I've given logical reasons as to why he's better. The priority in 2019 was surely resolving Brexit, getting out of the mess of the 2017-19 Parliament, the perpetual Article 50 extensions etc.
Hunt did not have a plan to do that. He was willing to go on with extending Article 50 and had no solution. Johnson had a plan to do that - and his plan worked.
That's what makes Johnson better and is a key part of why he was elected and why he won the election and why he deserved to do so on his own merits not just Corbyn's demerits.
You're the one who brought it up!
You said he was the best for the job because he was elected. That's objectively wrong.
He was judged the best for the job by the public and was clearly the best at winning elections.
That doesn't mean he is the best at being prime minister though. Like you said, there's no such thing as objective, but you were the one who asserted he was objectively the best.
No I'm not, I never used the word objective since there is no objective truth. It is you that keeps bringing it up.
I didn't say he was best because he was elected. I said he was elected because he was the best candidate on offer.
I said he was best, I never said he was objectively the best.
You said:
"Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won."
And I corrected you. Johnson won because he was deemed to be better than Corbyn and Swinson.
That doesn't mean he was the best option available.
You presented the fact as objective truth and it just isn't, just like you later said.
Sticking my oar in here, but what’s the difference between being better and being deemed better? Surely both are the same, as it isn’t something with an absolute scale.
It depends what you're discussing, surely.
Is Boris better at winning elections than May, Corbyn, Swinson, etc? Of course. The evidence is there.
Was Boris the best person for the job? Well the electorate thought so, @Philip_Thompson clearly thinks so, and that's fine. But him winning is not evidence of being the best person for the job, like @Philip_Thompson highlighted – that's entirely subjective.
Well I’d say Corbyn is best at winning elections given how long he’s been in the Commons.
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
The issue is that the others weren't taken out of context or Tory smears either. Corbyn was just genuinely that awful as was being said and Salisbury made it crystal clear.
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
There was quite a smear campaign waged in many places against Jeremy Corbyn. It's plain silly not to acknowledge this.
by smear you mean pointing out all the things that made the man and those that surrounded him a disgrace?
I'm using "smear" in its traditional sense of smear.
Look, people can respectably make the case that Corbyn was anti-semitic, not the brightest, not much of a patriot, wedded to an outmoded 1970s view of the world, rigid and closed-minded, incompetent, weak, unable to manage conflict. Just generally unfit to be PM or even a party leader.
All of the above and more can be argued and I would defend him or not, often not, based on my own perceptions. I'm no fan.
But you can't - you simply cannot - deny that he was relentlessly smeared by his opponents both inside and outside the party. It's a pure and simple fact.
Anyone who won't acknowledge this is a bad faith partisan softhead.
He wasn't 'smeared' (i.e. the truth told about him) nearly enough. That he got over 30% of the public to vote for him even after they all knew what he was is something of a national disgrace.
Rubbish. I voted for Catherine McKinnell but I didn't vote for Corbyn.
Is Catherine McKinnell a Labour MP? Would she have supported Corbyn in passing his Queen's Speech programme and in votes of confidence? If so, then I'm afraid to say you did vote for Corbyn to become Prime Minister.
Whatever helps maintain your moral superiority mate.
If by 'whatever' you mean 'indisputable facts', then yes.
Not at all
If you can prove that voting for an MP who would have made Corbyn Prime Minister is in any meaningful way 'not voting for Corbyn' under our constitutional and electoral system, then you'll deserve a very lucrative legal career indeed.
You made some ridiculous and partisan assertion that the fact 30% of the country voted for Labour led by Corbyn is a "national disgrace".
I simply offered a counter-point. I voted for a Labour candidate but I was far from a supporter of Corbyn. I just didn't want some nameless Tory nobody representing my constituency rather than a good local MP with a fine track record. If you can't see the logic there then maybe you need to check your partisanship.
Comments
https://twitter.com/TheScotsman/status/1364515688002519043?s=20
I suppose bridges are ok as long as they never get built.
https://twitter.com/bbckirstenc/status/1364530856052879366?s=20
Now having extended lockdowns for what seems to me some kind of misguided fantasy about 'zero covid' is another matter. I am hoping Johnson and Witty crystal clear statement on that earlier this week has put that idea out to pasture as far as serious policy is concerned.
By population, it should be around 15%.
"Corbyn: Abolish the Army!"
"Corbyn: I'm supporting Brazil in the World Cup!"
"Corbyn: He nicked sarnies meant for veterans!"
"Corbyn: He danced on way to Cenotaph!"
"Corbyn: He was a Russian spy!"
We could fill a server with all the tripe.
One of the reasons for the low IFR in younger demographics is that they respond well to medical treatment that is way beyond what we had available 100 years ago.
In countries where the average age is low, they have still very much noticed it (only about one-seventeenth of the population of Manaus was over 60, for example).
Fewer old people would have died due to the fact that there were fewer old people, granted, but it would have been one hell of a lot worse amongst the younger groups.
1. The hooey about Salmond is a fabulous bit of soap opera but isn't seen as politics
2. The SNP have quite a strong record to point to when asking for re-election
3. Their various policy failings compare reasonably well against the policy failings of the alternative Tory or Labour options
Politics isn't about one single party in isolation. Yes there is a smell about some of these SNP shenanigans, but if Big G suggests the solution to corruption is to vote Tory then hold my coffee whilst I wee myself laughing. The worst case scenario for the SNP is to be reduced to a minority administration.
He was the best option available. That's why he won.
If some non violent consciences are going to be better than others they will lose a lot of support.
And who decides? And who guards the guards?
The Tories were always going to get 42%+ against Corbyn as they did in 2017 and 2019 in order to keep him out of No 10.
The main difference between 2017 and 2019 though was diehard Remainers decided the LDs were a better bet to stop Brexit than Corbyn Labour and some working class Leave voters switched from Labour to the Tories under Boris to get Brexit done.
On the objective measures of seats won or vote share or opinion polls he was best, but I'd value subjective measures over those.
The goal, Sturgeon replied, was ‘as close to elimination as possible’ but also ‘to get back to normal life’. Those two destinations are miles apart with no roadmap for the rough terrain in between.
https://stephendaisley.com/2021/02/24/no-exit/
There were years until the next election was due, it could have been released prior to the election or after it and been debated on its merits. Instead it got tarnished by the election without a chance to reasonably discuss it.
May's problem was she was too honest about the difficult solutions needed to tackle problems, eg people would need to pay more to cover their social care in future and GB would have to be in a temporary customs union and with closer alignment to the single market to avoid a border in the Irish Sea given the EU would not agree to any trade deal that led to a hard border in Ireland.
Boris however was willing to promise cake for all to get elected, ie to be an even better populist in 2019 than Corbyn was in 2017
I don't think it's possible to be much more negative than the 12-page features on how awful Labour would be that ran in the Sun and the Mail. Negative campaigning mainly works when most of the public is already convinced that the LOTO is unacceptable, which wasn't yet entirely the case in 2017 (but became the case in 2019, as Mike's leader demonstrates).
This is all water under the bridge, but the relevant point now is that the Tories will need to have some positive reasons in 2024, as a campaign based on "Starmer, the Evil Threat" won't work as there is really less to go on than they already had against Corbyn in 2017.
Hunt wanted to continue with the failed and discredited Theresa May politicy of indefinitely extending Article 50 which was an atrociously bad policy leaving us in perpetual limbo and unable to get anywhere.
Because of Johnson's rejecting of that policy he was able to renegotiate May's awful deal, get a better one for England and Wales at least and win a landslide majority.
So yes, better than Hunt.
Not a space chap, but it seems like that would make life a lot easier.
The key difference between May and Johnson? May believes you can't have your cake and eat it- you want decent social care, it's going to cost someone a lot; if you want invisible borders, you can't just do what you want within yours. Johnson fundamentally still believes you can have whatever you want, and that worrying about internal contradictions in your desires is for girly swots.
One approach is clearly more effective for winning elections. The other approach tends to work better the rest of the time.
We aren't at the print-and-use-immediately stage yet, except for simple plastic things.
https://twitter.com/jamesmatthewsky/status/1364521115725529088?s=20
So you think he was better than Hunt but it doesn't mean he IS better than Hunt. Just like you said in your earlier post.
Look, people can respectably make the case that Corbyn was anti-semitic, not the brightest, not much of a patriot, wedded to an outmoded 1970s view of the world, rigid and closed-minded, incompetent, weak, unable to manage conflict. Just generally unfit to be PM or even a party leader.
All of the above and more can be argued and I would defend him or not, often not, based on my own perceptions. I'm no fan.
But you can't - you simply cannot - deny that he was relentlessly smeared by his opponents both inside and outside the party. It's a pure and simple fact.
Anyone who won't acknowledge this is a bad faith partisan softhead.
Traditional manufacturing gives you a pile of bits, where you have to do traceability and quality on each piece for aerospace applications.
With zero touch CNC and 3D print - you have a generic automated process. Once the design and manufacture is qualified, then a few test on the machines (to check they are working in spec) plus a few tests on the produced parts does the job.
It was a "brave" plan born out of hubris.
I've given logical reasons as to why he's better. The priority in 2019 was surely resolving Brexit, getting out of the mess of the 2017-19 Parliament, the perpetual Article 50 extensions etc.
Hunt did not have a plan to do that. He was willing to go on with extending Article 50 and had no solution.
Johnson had a plan to do that - and his plan worked.
That's what makes Johnson better and is a key part of why he was elected and why he won the election and why he deserved to do so on his own merits not just Corbyn's demerits.
The Splendid Blue, a huge part of the clown winning so handsomely was the presence of Corbyn and the absence of a Theresa May act of electoral suicide by such an epic cackhanded announcement as her social care madness.
Edit: Rapidly shortening odds on before tea. 5/1 England make it to the break?
No bet but what odds that England are still batting tomorrow morning? Not good.
You said he was the best for the job because he was elected. That's objectively wrong.
He was judged the best for the job by the public and was clearly the best at winning elections.
That doesn't mean he is the best at being prime minister though. Like you said, there's no such thing as objective, but you were the one who asserted he was objectively the best.
I didn't say he was best because he was elected. I said he was elected because he was the best candidate on offer.
I said he was best, I never said he was objectively the best.
It's harder than the history of feudal land law.
"Johnson won because he was better than Corbyn, yes, but also because he was better than May and better than Hunt and better than Swinson.
He was the best option available. That's why he won."
And I corrected you. Johnson won because he was deemed to be better than Corbyn and Swinson.
That doesn't mean he was the best option available.
You presented the fact as objective truth and it just isn't, just like you later said.
The "red wall" North outside of the cities has been swinging blue relative to the rest of the country for the past decade now.
If he's deemed to be the best then those doing the deeming agreed with me.
I didn't say you said "objective truth". I said you presented your hypothesis as objective truth.
You didn't say "the electorate thought he was the best". You said "he was the best".
This is turning into a completely meaningless argument but the fact you can't see the difference is worrying.
The situation is far better now than it was in 2019 in my opinion.
He was [subjectively] the best for amongst other reasons the reasons I have given.
There's no such thing as objective so its silly to bring it in. He [subjectively] was the best, we only have subjective reality. The public agreed that [subjectively] he was the best.
Is Boris better at winning elections than May, Corbyn, Swinson, etc? Of course. The evidence is there.
Was Boris the best person for the job? Well the electorate thought so, @Philip_Thompson clearly thinks so, and that's fine. But him winning is not evidence of being the best person for the job, like @Philip_Thompson highlighted – that's entirely subjective.
It doesn't quite work.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/02/tory-attack-ad-corbyn-remarks-context
I simply offered a counter-point. I voted for a Labour candidate but I was far from a supporter of Corbyn. I just didn't want some nameless Tory nobody representing my constituency rather than a good local MP with a fine track record. If you can't see the logic there then maybe you need to check your partisanship.
Edited extra bit: in a binary contest with Corbyn.