On the map, the colour blue is now extinct - at Upper Tier AND Lower Tier. You have to burrow all the way down to MSOA level to get sufficient clumping to see blues. There's one solitary purple holdout at that level, from an outbreak of forty people in West Bridlington sending the incidence up in a population not much over 8,000.
In my area of the Flatlands of South Yorkshire, the big numbers seem to be in the places with big warehouses. Coincidence, or not?
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
You seem to have gone all weird, Colonel Topping. I'm getting a bit scared now.
So I take it you are backing out of your proposed bet. No shame in that. We'll leave it there.
We can but we don't have to.
If instead of just repeatedly barking "how much?" you were to frame the bet (around your army rank) you're thinking off, we can do it for a modest sum if we both like the look of it.
It needs to come from you because it's about your personal info and I don't want to be striking the wrong note. I like the old banter but I also like to be sensitive to people.
£1,000 that I wasn't a full colonel.
If I was I pay you £1,000; if I wasn't you pay me £1,000.
Hang on, you already know the answer! That sounds like I very likely end up a grand in the hole.
We can do something fairer and more interesting and for less money. A spread bet.
FM Gen Lt Gen Maj Gen Brig Colonel Lt Col Maj Capt Lt 2Lt OCdt
I "buy" you at Colonel for £1 a rank.
Profit or loss to site funds.
Yes?
LOL it was you who offered the bet in the first place. You presumably realised I knew my own rank at the time.
And wait a minute - you think I was an officer?!!?
Just kidding - my evident lack of common sense gives me away as one. Or an ex-one.
But £1 a rank sounds a bit miserly for a noted denizen of NW3. Make it £5 and write out a cheque to Mike for £15 (= most dashing rank) and I'll be happy to match it.
In other news, I have a brisket in the oven that I'm trying to slow cook for 8 hours. I'm hoping it's going to turn out amazing.
I am sure it will - a slow cooker is an invaluable (and very small) investment if you're into that sort of thing. Especially one with a metal casserole dish insert (as opposed to ceramic) because then you can fry off the meat to seal it before leaving it to slow cook and forgetting about it.
Yummmm. To both.
Though there is a lot to be said of the traditional Scottish dish of lamb shank simmered for hours in an [edit] deep pan such as a pressure cooker sans pressure, with fairly large chunks of swede (of course) and potato, and lots of grated carrot. Eat as soup as course 1, add meat and more soup and eat with bread for course 2.
Brings back memories of my granny. Who also cooked boiled sheep's head (for the dog, actually, though that is also a traditional recipe for humans).
Sounds delicious (the lamb shank dish - possibly not the sheep's head though would not knock it before trying it!). There are various hostelries in Scotland called 'The Sheep's Heid Inn' - wonder if there's a connection.
@TimSpector Despite “fears” around SA variants in London the rates of new cases dropped even further today on ZOË app - showing that we should be far less gloomy and vaccines are working - thanks for logging !
Absolutely right and both the Pfizer and AZ vaccines provide very good protection against severe disease and hospitalisation risk from the SA and Brazilian variants. The variant panic is completely unnecessary. Though I'd still completey close the border to Africa and South America until we're at herd immunity and have gen 2 vaccines being delivered.
It’s frustrating that first doses have slowed down so much because we’re tantalisingly close to the same level of coverage Israel has reached.
It's not going to be long now, in two weeks everyone will be wondering what the slowdown was. Remember when the government said the government were saying no new first doses at all from March 29th onwards and no new age groups to be added in April. Yet here we are with probably 4-6m first doses for April and 45-49 year olds becoming eligible with 40-44 year olds waiting in the wings.
I know it won't take long but its a shame we're so close to the threshold of 50% of the population being vaccinated, which would be a nice psychological landmark.
At prior rates it would have taken less than a week to get there. Oh well, won't be long but it will be nice to do so.
We've got an artificial asymptotic peak right now at about 50% due to need for 2nd doses.
But it's at 60% since we are currently vaccinating adults
I wonder if the reason why Prince Andrew wanted to wear a full Admiral uniform was to one up Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence (i.e. Princess Anne's husband).
I wonder if the reason why Prince Andrew wanted to wear a full Admiral uniform was to one up Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence (i.e. Princess Anne's husband).
He should be grateful enough to be let out of the cellar.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
You seem to have gone all weird, Colonel Topping. I'm getting a bit scared now.
All the best colonels develop a bit of a Kurtz manner...
Blimpish comment.
Your post may contain a colonel of truth - you're keen as Mustard today.
As a pun topic, it's a real coup for a Greek specialist.
According to the CDC the risk of hospitalisation for the twice-vaccinated is 396 in 66,000,000.
He'll be worried about being ill but not needing hospitalisation. It's a wonder some folk ever get in a car or walk along a street .
The trouble seems to be is that we have reached a point where illness from Covid is perceived as somehow greater than equivalent illness from anything else.
I genuinely don’t know whether that’s a fear factor issue or something to do with covid being stigmatised.
In any case, a hospitalisation risk of 396 in 66 million doesn’t strike me as ‘nontrivial’.
For the first time I can remember - certainly the first time since last September, and possibly the first time since we started recording properly last July - a local authority has gone for a whole week without recording a single positive covid test (Rother, clean since 6th April) https://coviddatashare.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/TableCumulative_Rate_20210415.html
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
I wonder if the reason why Prince Andrew wanted to wear a full Admiral uniform was to one up Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence (i.e. Princess Anne's husband).
I've not felt sad about this news at all - don't see the point - a very long life, well lived. But reading the one line in that about:
'The congregation will put on masks and socially distance in line with Covid lockdown rules, with the Queen seated alone.'
According to the CDC the risk of hospitalisation for the twice-vaccinated is 396 in 66,000,000.
Well, that's only if everyone would otherwise have been hospitalised!
Difficult to make any comparisons of efficacy with the data at hand, because we need to compare to the unvaccinated.
Going beyond back-of-the-envelope all the way to scientific-wild-arsed-guess level, over the past 7 days, 449,064 cases have been reported in the US, 37,352 hospitalisations. and 4,977 deaths.
If we assumed that the 66 million was a static number (it's not) and all the cases in the vaccinates occurred over the past 7 days (they didn't), we'd have:
Efficacy against disease: around 93% Efficacy against hospitalisation: around 99% Efficacy against death: around 99%
As the first number ain't far off the measured efficacy in trials and in practice, the (inaccurate) assumptions should give a handwavy sense of scale of the difference to hospitalisations and deaths.
I'd take that. It would make vaccinated covid less deadly than average vaccinated influenza. While hugely suppressing transmission. Mission damn well accomplished.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the policy vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
In 1990 the Conservative Party was the party of business and moderate Euro-scepticism. In 2019 the Conservative Party(INO) became the party of fuck business and rampant populism.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
Theresa May was overestimated, but the rest of them who all won majorities at elections I completely agree.
According to the CDC the risk of hospitalisation for the twice-vaccinated is 396 in 66,000,000.
Well, that's only if everyone would otherwise have been hospitalised!
Difficult to make any comparisons of efficacy with the data at hand, because we need to compare to the unvaccinated.
Going beyond back-of-the-envelope all the way to scientific-wild-arsed-guess level, over the past 7 days, 449,064 cases have been reported in the US, 37,352 hospitalisations. and 4,977 deaths.
If we assumed that the 66 million was a static number (it's not) and all the cases in the vaccinates occurred over the past 7 days (they didn't), we'd have:
Efficacy against disease: around 93% Efficacy against hospitalisation: around 99% Efficacy against death: around 99%
As the first number ain't far off the measured efficacy in trials and in practice, the (inaccurate) assumptions should give a handwavy sense of scale of the difference to hospitalisations and deaths.
I'd take that. It would make vaccinated covid less deadly than average vaccinated influenza. While hugely suppressing transmission. Mission damn well accomplished.
On these graphs, I have a theory on why they are trending upwards, I've mentioned it before - the number of vaccinated people entering the funnel is now very small so the people dying are, IMO, majority unvaccinated which means they are going to have a 40-50% CFR for 80+, unfortunately my request for vaccinated vs unvaccinated flags has been rejected as unfeasible.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
Do you mean UNvaccinated people?
I really do not want to upset you but Sky are now reporting
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
Sky have been wrong a lot on this though. Maybe it would be better not to spend all day watching Sky News.
Not a problem people emoting but I have seen no evidence that the "unlocking" per the roadmap is threatened in any way.
Just read through my booklet of London Mayor candidates and noticed that one of them is pledging to scrap the extension of the ULEZ car pollution zone! This will (if they win) save me having to do something I'm dreading; sell my old merc that has been with me since 1994 and never given a moment's trouble. It's rare for an election to be capable of delivering such an immediate and tangible personal benefit to me.
Old classic cars are exempt, so you could just keep it and wait...
That's a thought actually! 25 years from now it could come right into its own. Envy of all.
I have a friend who has an SL350. The car used to belong to Hugh Laurie when he was a young Londoner.
Really? Gosh. I wonder if that provenance is sufficient to add value. Some of Steve McQueen's cars are worth millions. Ok so Hugh Laurie isn't Steve McQueen, hard to see him as the Cooler King, but still he's pretty famous, especially after that "House" show went ballistic in the US.
I wondered the same. But it’s academic as she doesn’t want to part with it.
My fiddling about with old car days are long gone, my having nursed a 1972 Sunbeam Rapier fastback as my first car from 1987 through to 1998.
Ah no I could never get into old cars in that sense. If the bonnet comes up once a year that's once too often for me. Which is where these 80s and 90s mercs really score. Built to last. I also love that everything is low tech. No "e" or computer stuff. Real keys go into real holes. Turn the main one and ... brum brum.
That’s odd, because her SL is way ahead of its time in terms of tech. Not compared with nowadays, of course, but it must have been very advanced when it was made in the 70s, compared to my old sunbeam made in Derby during the dying days of the UK car industry. When the same body parts turned to rust having been replaced once, I knew its time was up.
She reckons her car is worth £35,000. I advertised mine for £50 for parts or free for restoration, and gave it to a guy down in Margate who did an amazing job restoring it to good as new. But he was the sort of guy who would be driving it twice a year at thirty miles an hour to an exhibition, whereas I had taken it onto the beach at the Med and over to the west coast of Ireland, and kept it on the street along the Archway Road.
I'm like you in that sense. No kid gloves for a car. Use it and don't worry about it. To me, they look better as they get a bit 'lived in', a bit battered even. Like leather jackets and tweed caps.
Speaking of "lived in", I did once live in a BMW 318i for 6 days, a company car, but that's another tale.
With hindsight I was young and foolish; had some hard to find part failed on the continent, it would have been seriously inconvenient and seriously expensive. And I did worry about it; it always ran hot, and in the south of France during most of the day it was only safe to drive it downhill.
It broke down lots of times, but always on the M1, normally near Luton. Being so old it was, I guess, set in its ways.
Full of personality then, that old sunbeam of yours. A charismatic "borissy" sort of car.. No, totally agree, we can do without that. That is not my merc. It's very Sir Ed Davey.
Best thing about it, its colour was Sundance Yellow - a head turning gold colour. Ideal to go campaigning with
In other news, I have a brisket in the oven that I'm trying to slow cook for 8 hours. I'm hoping it's going to turn out amazing.
I am sure it will - a slow cooker is an invaluable (and very small) investment if you're into that sort of thing. Especially one with a metal casserole dish insert (as opposed to ceramic) because then you can fry off the meat to seal it before leaving it to slow cook and forgetting about it.
Yummmm. To both.
Though there is a lot to be said of the traditional Scottish dish of lamb shank simmered for hours in an [edit] deep pan such as a pressure cooker sans pressure, with fairly large chunks of swede (of course) and potato, and lots of grated carrot. Eat as soup as course 1, add meat and more soup and eat with bread for course 2.
Brings back memories of my granny. Who also cooked boiled sheep's head (for the dog, actually, though that is also a traditional recipe for humans).
I well remember the horns sticking out of the pan as the head made some great soup.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
On these graphs, I have a theory on why they are trending upwards, I've mentioned it before - the number of vaccinated people entering the funnel is now very small so the people dying are, IMO, majority unvaccinated which means they are going to have a 40-50% CFR for 80+, unfortunately my request for vaccinated vs unvaccinated flags has been rejected as unfeasible.
I think you mentioned this theory previously - I am endeavouring to improve the CFR calculation. Among other things I am trying to work out how to use the ONS estimates by age.....
EDIT: the dashboard guys told me that that the vaccination to case, hospitalisation and death data is not being provided to them. So they haven't got the raw data to make a connection.....
According to the CDC the risk of hospitalisation for the twice-vaccinated is 396 in 66,000,000.
He'll be worried about being ill but not needing hospitalisation. It's a wonder some folk ever get in a car or walk along a street .
The trouble seems to be is that we have reached a point where illness from Covid is perceived as somehow greater than equivalent illness from anything else.
I genuinely don’t know whether that’s a fear factor issue or something to do with covid being stigmatised.
In any case, a hospitalisation risk of 396 in 66 million doesn’t strike me as ‘nontrivial’.
No, of course 396 in 66 million is trivial.
Even if illness from Covid IS somehow greater than equivalent illness from anything else it is now nowhere near the bar necessary to morally justify demanding curtailment of the liberties of other individuals (and businesses) and running the county's economy into the ground. .
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the policy vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
In 1990 the Conservative Party was the party of business and moderate Euro-scepticism. In 2019 the Conservative Party(INO) became the party of fuck business and rampant populism.
I wouldn't call Michael Heseltine, Geoffrey Howe, Chris Patten, Ken Clarke or many others any kind of euro-sceptic. You had a tension in 1990 between a leadership (except the post-Bruges Mrs Thatcher) that was europhile, and a membership that was more and more eurosceptic. The leadership won in the short term, getting rid of Mrs Thatcher and signing us up for Maastricht and the ERM, but over the next quarter of a century, the grassroots reasserted themselves.
@TimSpector Despite “fears” around SA variants in London the rates of new cases dropped even further today on ZOË app - showing that we should be far less gloomy and vaccines are working - thanks for logging !
Absolutely right and both the Pfizer and AZ vaccines provide very good protection against severe disease and hospitalisation risk from the SA and Brazilian variants. The variant panic is completely unnecessary. Though I'd still completey close the border to Africa and South America until we're at herd immunity and have gen 2 vaccines being delivered.
It’s frustrating that first doses have slowed down so much because we’re tantalisingly close to the same level of coverage Israel has reached.
It's not going to be long now, in two weeks everyone will be wondering what the slowdown was. Remember when the government said the government were saying no new first doses at all from March 29th onwards and no new age groups to be added in April. Yet here we are with probably 4-6m first doses for April and 45-49 year olds becoming eligible with 40-44 year olds waiting in the wings.
I know it won't take long but its a shame we're so close to the threshold of 50% of the population being vaccinated, which would be a nice psychological landmark.
At prior rates it would have taken less than a week to get there. Oh well, won't be long but it will be nice to do so.
We've got an artificial asymptotic peak right now at about 50% due to need for 2nd doses.
But it's at 60% since we are currently vaccinating adults
Children are part of any population. One reason we will overtake Israel most likely is they have more kids.
On the map, the colour blue is now extinct - at Upper Tier AND Lower Tier. You have to burrow all the way down to MSOA level to get sufficient clumping to see blues. There's one solitary purple holdout at that level, from an outbreak of forty people in West Bridlington sending the incidence up in a population not much over 8,000.
In my area of the Flatlands of South Yorkshire, the big numbers seem to be in the places with big warehouses. Coincidence, or not?
The geography of the stubbornly high spots is interesting - it's almost exactly the geography of the stubbornly high spots last time the tide went out last August.
In other news, I have a brisket in the oven that I'm trying to slow cook for 8 hours. I'm hoping it's going to turn out amazing.
I am sure it will - a slow cooker is an invaluable (and very small) investment if you're into that sort of thing. Especially one with a metal casserole dish insert (as opposed to ceramic) because then you can fry off the meat to seal it before leaving it to slow cook and forgetting about it.
Yummmm. To both.
Though there is a lot to be said of the traditional Scottish dish of lamb shank simmered for hours in an [edit] deep pan such as a pressure cooker sans pressure, with fairly large chunks of swede (of course) and potato, and lots of grated carrot. Eat as soup as course 1, add meat and more soup and eat with bread for course 2.
Brings back memories of my granny. Who also cooked boiled sheep's head (for the dog, actually, though that is also a traditional recipe for humans).
Sounds delicious (the lamb shank dish - possibly not the sheep's head though would not knock it before trying it!). There are various hostelries in Scotland called 'The Sheep's Heid Inn' - wonder if there's a connection.
I have a feeling I might have forgotten the onion and black pepper ... but here is a seasonal harvest home variant of what is recogniseably the same dish.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
Do you mean UNvaccinated people?
I really do not want to upset you but Sky are now reporting
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
Sky have been wrong a lot on this though. Maybe it would be better not to spend all day watching Sky News.
Not a problem people emoting but I have seen no evidence that the "unlocking" per the roadmap is threatened in any way.
My only concern is that hospital admissions are stable (roughly) rather than falling.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
You really don't think people have underestimated Boris?
He's still understimated by many on this site who call him silly names like "clown" or "BoZo" and we had many assuming he simply couldn't become leader of the party or prime minister even when he was polling favourite.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
You seem to have gone all weird, Colonel Topping. I'm getting a bit scared now.
So I take it you are backing out of your proposed bet. No shame in that. We'll leave it there.
We can but we don't have to.
If instead of just repeatedly barking "how much?" you were to frame the bet (around your army rank) you're thinking off, we can do it for a modest sum if we both like the look of it.
It needs to come from you because it's about your personal info and I don't want to be striking the wrong note. I like the old banter but I also like to be sensitive to people.
£1,000 that I wasn't a full colonel.
If I was I pay you £1,000; if I wasn't you pay me £1,000.
Hang on, you already know the answer! That sounds like I very likely end up a grand in the hole.
We can do something fairer and more interesting and for less money. A spread bet.
FM Gen Lt Gen Maj Gen Brig Colonel Lt Col Maj Capt Lt 2Lt OCdt
I "buy" you at Colonel for £1 a rank.
Profit or loss to site funds.
Yes?
LOL it was you who offered the bet in the first place. You presumably realised I knew my own rank at the time.
And wait a minute - you think I was an officer?!!?
Just kidding - my evident lack of common sense gives me away as one. Or an ex-one.
But £1 a rank sounds a bit miserly for a noted denizen of NW3. Make it £5 and write out a cheque to Mike for £15 (= most dashing rank) and I'll be happy to match it.
Right you are, CAPTAIN. See, I'm on the ball.
And mental note never to use the word "bet" colloquially when talking to you.
I picture Warren Beatty calling up Carly Simon soon as he heard the song and going, "How much?"
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
You really don't think people have underestimated Boris?
He's still understimated by many on this site who call him silly names like "clown" or "BoZo" and we had many assuming he simply couldn't become leader of the party or prime minister even when he was polling favourite.
I really don't think they have, no. That's precisely why they call him silly names, and seek to find personal issues with which to undermine him. They're not so sure that in a fair fight they'll win.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
You seem to have gone all weird, Colonel Topping. I'm getting a bit scared now.
So I take it you are backing out of your proposed bet. No shame in that. We'll leave it there.
We can but we don't have to.
If instead of just repeatedly barking "how much?" you were to frame the bet (around your army rank) you're thinking off, we can do it for a modest sum if we both like the look of it.
It needs to come from you because it's about your personal info and I don't want to be striking the wrong note. I like the old banter but I also like to be sensitive to people.
£1,000 that I wasn't a full colonel.
If I was I pay you £1,000; if I wasn't you pay me £1,000.
Hang on, you already know the answer! That sounds like I very likely end up a grand in the hole.
We can do something fairer and more interesting and for less money. A spread bet.
FM Gen Lt Gen Maj Gen Brig Colonel Lt Col Maj Capt Lt 2Lt OCdt
I "buy" you at Colonel for £1 a rank.
Profit or loss to site funds.
Yes?
LOL it was you who offered the bet in the first place. You presumably realised I knew my own rank at the time.
And wait a minute - you think I was an officer?!!?
Just kidding - my evident lack of common sense gives me away as one. Or an ex-one.
But £1 a rank sounds a bit miserly for a noted denizen of NW3. Make it £5 and write out a cheque to Mike for £15 (= most dashing rank) and I'll be happy to match it.
Right you are, CAPTAIN. See, I'm on the ball.
And mental note never to use the word "bet" colloquially when talking to you.
I picture Warren Beatty calling up Carly Simon soon as he heard the song and going, "How much?"
6.5/10 for recovery. Room for improvement.
But you're right: It's ridiculous to take the word bet literally on a site...whose...only ...... stated......... purpose............ is............. to...
My only concern is that hospital admissions are stable (roughly) rather than falling.
I wonder if there is any effect of increased capacity means increased use. So the 90+ is now going into hospital rather than straight from the care home to the morgue; or more hopefully the youngster with covid that previously stayed at home but monitored themselves closely with a pulse ox now goes into hospital for a couple of days before coming back out again. No idea how to evidence that if indeed it is the case, but would be a logical explanation.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
Whether May was underestimated in reality is left as an exercise for the reader.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
You really don't think people have underestimated Boris?
He's still understimated by many on this site who call him silly names like "clown" or "BoZo" and we had many assuming he simply couldn't become leader of the party or prime minister even when he was polling favourite.
I am pretty sure in private he would acknowledge his public caricature is specifically clown like by design. It is a strength or even a super power of his that shields him from both scandal and scrutiny. Nothing to do with underestimating him at all.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
A lot depends upon how Boris’s story ends. PMs’ stories usually end badly, and in his case the potential for it to end very badly indeed remains considerable.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
A lot depends upon how Boris’s story ends. PMs’ stories usually end badly, and in his case the potential for it to end very badly indeed remains considerable.
Has any story ended worse than David Cameron's? Possibly not since Eden.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
Whether May was underestimated in reality is left as an exercise for the reader.
I don't mean her competence in office was underestimated, I mean her political skills in getting there were. Gove and Johnson destroyed each other, and Andrea Leadsom destroyed herself, so May got in through the middle.
My only concern is that hospital admissions are stable (roughly) rather than falling.
I wonder if there is any effect of increased capacity means increased use. So the 90+ is now going into hospital rather than straight from the care home to the morgue; or more hopefully the youngster with covid that previously stayed at home but monitored themselves closely with a pulse ox now goes into hospital for a couple of days before coming back out again. No idea how to evidence that if indeed it is the case, but would be a logical explanation.
I am very wary of arguments that wave away worrying stats... it's not that I'm paranoid, but the Universe is out to get me....
IIRC the Israelis saw some of their stats stick for a while on the way down....
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
Do you mean UNvaccinated people?
I really do not want to upset you but Sky are now reporting
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
Sky have been wrong a lot on this though. Maybe it would be better not to spend all day watching Sky News.
Not a problem people emoting but I have seen no evidence that the "unlocking" per the roadmap is threatened in any way.
My only concern is that hospital admissions are stable (roughly) rather than falling.
In other news, I have a brisket in the oven that I'm trying to slow cook for 8 hours. I'm hoping it's going to turn out amazing.
I am sure it will - a slow cooker is an invaluable (and very small) investment if you're into that sort of thing. Especially one with a metal casserole dish insert (as opposed to ceramic) because then you can fry off the meat to seal it before leaving it to slow cook and forgetting about it.
Yummmm. To both.
Though there is a lot to be said of the traditional Scottish dish of lamb shank simmered for hours in an [edit] deep pan such as a pressure cooker sans pressure, with fairly large chunks of swede (of course) and potato, and lots of grated carrot. Eat as soup as course 1, add meat and more soup and eat with bread for course 2.
Brings back memories of my granny. Who also cooked boiled sheep's head (for the dog, actually, though that is also a traditional recipe for humans).
I well remember the horns sticking out of the pan as the head made some great soup.
One problem is that people seem to have fixated on 170-200c for cooking everything, in the oven.
110 will cook just fine if you leave it long enough.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
You really don't think people have underestimated Boris?
He's still understimated by many on this site who call him silly names like "clown" or "BoZo" and we had many assuming he simply couldn't become leader of the party or prime minister even when he was polling favourite.
TBF up until pretty late, it was clear that a considerable number of his political colleagues felt the same way, and they had the power to stop it happening. Coupled with the damning indictments from almost everyone who has ever employed him or worked with him, and the argument that he wasn’t PM material was (and remains) compelling. It is a mark of how desperate a spot they had got into that the Tory MPs were willing to swallow their reservations and gamble.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
A lot depends upon how Boris’s story ends. PMs’ stories usually end badly, and in his case the potential for it to end very badly indeed remains considerable.
Has any story ended worse than David Cameron's? Possibly not since Eden.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
A lot depends upon how Boris’s story ends. PMs’ stories usually end badly, and in his case the potential for it to end very badly indeed remains considerable.
Has any story ended worse than David Cameron's? Possibly not since Eden.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
A lot depends upon how Boris’s story ends. PMs’ stories usually end badly, and in his case the potential for it to end very badly indeed remains considerable.
Has any story ended worse than David Cameron's? Possibly not since Eden.
Eden's ended in a big bang. Cameron's seems to be Brexit, but then death by a thousand cuts.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
A lot depends upon how Boris’s story ends. PMs’ stories usually end badly, and in his case the potential for it to end very badly indeed remains considerable.
Has any story ended worse than David Cameron's? Possibly not since Eden.
His ended quicker and more decisively, but I think Callaghan's, Major's, Brown's and May's faliures were even more complete.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
A lot depends upon how Boris’s story ends. PMs’ stories usually end badly, and in his case the potential for it to end very badly indeed remains considerable.
Has any story ended worse than David Cameron's? Possibly not since Eden.
Mrs May's exit was very humiliating.
While sympathetic for it ending the way it did, it was a journey she sent herself down.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
Whether May was underestimated in reality is left as an exercise for the reader.
I don't mean her competence in office was underestimated, I mean her political skills in getting there were. Gove and Johnson destroyed each other, and Andrea Leadsom destroyed herself, so May got in through the middle.
But again, how much was skill and how much luck? Did she carefully plant the bombs beneath her opponents, or cunningly manipulate friends and allies (if she had any) to undermine her opponents? Or was she simply the last person standing when all her opponents destroyed themselves and each other?
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
A lot depends upon how Boris’s story ends. PMs’ stories usually end badly, and in his case the potential for it to end very badly indeed remains considerable.
If my story ends as well as the worst of the PM's I'll be quite happy.
Boris will finish up being well-judged. He's steered us through Brexit and covid. The quality of his steering may be questionable, but he's done well simply by being at the helm.
To be well regarded simply for being who you were when you were PM - that's only really Maggie.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
A lot depends upon how Boris’s story ends. PMs’ stories usually end badly, and in his case the potential for it to end very badly indeed remains considerable.
Has any story ended worse than David Cameron's? Possibly not since Eden.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Yes, but. The great PMs are weather makers. To see that the UK would only in the long run accept the emerging EU if and only if it gave wholehearted consent should have been seen earlier. Yes, the massive vested interests didn't want us being asked. But the genius PM sees that this won't do. The issue of consent and referenda was on the agenda, and the great and good ignored it for too long.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
A lot depends upon how Boris’s story ends. PMs’ stories usually end badly, and in his case the potential for it to end very badly indeed remains considerable.
Has any story ended worse than David Cameron's? Possibly not since Eden.
Mrs May's exit was very humiliating.
Everything about May was humiliating.
Momentarily she achieved astonishing poll numbers.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
Whether May was underestimated in reality is left as an exercise for the reader.
I don't mean her competence in office was underestimated, I mean her political skills in getting there were. Gove and Johnson destroyed each other, and Andrea Leadsom destroyed herself, so May got in through the middle.
But again, how much was skill and how much luck? Did she carefully plant the bombs beneath her opponents, or cunningly manipulate friends and allies (if she had any) to undermine her opponents? Or was she simply the last person standing when all her opponents destroyed themselves and each other?
Probably a bit of both. We forget these thngs now, but she was genuinely very popular for her first year.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
Do you mean UNvaccinated people?
I really do not want to upset you but Sky are now reporting
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
Sky have been wrong a lot on this though. Maybe it would be better not to spend all day watching Sky News.
Not a problem people emoting but I have seen no evidence that the "unlocking" per the roadmap is threatened in any way.
My only concern is that hospital admissions are stable (roughly) rather than falling.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
You seem to have gone all weird, Colonel Topping. I'm getting a bit scared now.
So I take it you are backing out of your proposed bet. No shame in that. We'll leave it there.
We can but we don't have to.
If instead of just repeatedly barking "how much?" you were to frame the bet (around your army rank) you're thinking off, we can do it for a modest sum if we both like the look of it.
It needs to come from you because it's about your personal info and I don't want to be striking the wrong note. I like the old banter but I also like to be sensitive to people.
£1,000 that I wasn't a full colonel.
If I was I pay you £1,000; if I wasn't you pay me £1,000.
Hang on, you already know the answer! That sounds like I very likely end up a grand in the hole.
We can do something fairer and more interesting and for less money. A spread bet.
FM Gen Lt Gen Maj Gen Brig Colonel Lt Col Maj Capt Lt 2Lt OCdt
I "buy" you at Colonel for £1 a rank.
Profit or loss to site funds.
Yes?
LOL it was you who offered the bet in the first place. You presumably realised I knew my own rank at the time.
And wait a minute - you think I was an officer?!!?
Just kidding - my evident lack of common sense gives me away as one. Or an ex-one.
But £1 a rank sounds a bit miserly for a noted denizen of NW3. Make it £5 and write out a cheque to Mike for £15 (= most dashing rank) and I'll be happy to match it.
Right you are, CAPTAIN. See, I'm on the ball.
And mental note never to use the word "bet" colloquially when talking to you.
I picture Warren Beatty calling up Carly Simon soon as he heard the song and going, "How much?"
6.5/10 for recovery. Room for improvement.
But you're right: It's ridiculous to take the word bet literally on a site...whose...only ...... stated......... purpose............ is............. to...
... idle away one's late middle age until a better alternative occurs to one.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
You really don't think people have underestimated Boris?
He's still understimated by many on this site who call him silly names like "clown" or "BoZo" and we had many assuming he simply couldn't become leader of the party or prime minister even when he was polling favourite.
I am pretty sure in private he would acknowledge his public caricature is specifically clown like by design. It is a strength or even a super power of his that shields him from both scandal and scrutiny. Nothing to do with underestimating him at all.
Yes, it would be a mistake to take him at face value. The Jeremy Vine story about his turning up late and dishevelled at a conference and appearing not to know what he was doing, with scripted jokes that he got wrong or didn’t remember the ending of - only for Vine to go to another conference a few months later to see word for word the same routine with the same mistakes - is proof of that.
On the other hand, it would be a mistake to assume that beneath his exterior lies someone completely the opposite. Because he is to an extent acting dishevelled and disorganised and chaotic and lazy doesn’t mean that, beneath, lies an analytical, super-organised political machine, who is in reality hard working and on top of all the detail.
I suspect - based on having spent a bit time with him in person both publicly and privately - that his act is in essence an exaggerated form of his real self. The cover he gets from accentuating and playing up his faults is not disguising the brilliant genius that lies beneath, but in negating what would be unmitigated downsides if he were just normally lazy and normally disorganised.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
A lot depends upon how Boris’s story ends. PMs’ stories usually end badly, and in his case the potential for it to end very badly indeed remains considerable.
Has any story ended worse than David Cameron's? Possibly not since Eden.
Mrs May's exit was very humiliating.
Everything about May was humiliating.
Momentarily she achieved astonishing poll numbers.
Her campaign against Corbyn has to be the worst by a conservative leader since Major in 1997. Actually, it was probably worse.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
A lot depends upon how Boris’s story ends. PMs’ stories usually end badly, and in his case the potential for it to end very badly indeed remains considerable.
Has any story ended worse than David Cameron's? Possibly not since Eden.
Mrs May's exit was very humiliating.
Everything about May was humiliating.
Momentarily she achieved astonishing poll numbers.
Her campaign against Corbyn has to be the worst by a conservative leader since Major in 1997. Actually, it was probably worse.
Yes - to nearly lose to Corbyn - awful. She's a bit lucky that she didn't lose. She'd have been called something like Horrid Theresa in history if she had.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
You seem to have gone all weird, Colonel Topping. I'm getting a bit scared now.
So I take it you are backing out of your proposed bet. No shame in that. We'll leave it there.
We can but we don't have to.
If instead of just repeatedly barking "how much?" you were to frame the bet (around your army rank) you're thinking off, we can do it for a modest sum if we both like the look of it.
It needs to come from you because it's about your personal info and I don't want to be striking the wrong note. I like the old banter but I also like to be sensitive to people.
£1,000 that I wasn't a full colonel.
If I was I pay you £1,000; if I wasn't you pay me £1,000.
Hang on, you already know the answer! That sounds like I very likely end up a grand in the hole.
We can do something fairer and more interesting and for less money. A spread bet.
FM Gen Lt Gen Maj Gen Brig Colonel Lt Col Maj Capt Lt 2Lt OCdt
I "buy" you at Colonel for £1 a rank.
Profit or loss to site funds.
Yes?
LOL it was you who offered the bet in the first place. You presumably realised I knew my own rank at the time.
And wait a minute - you think I was an officer?!!?
Just kidding - my evident lack of common sense gives me away as one. Or an ex-one.
But £1 a rank sounds a bit miserly for a noted denizen of NW3. Make it £5 and write out a cheque to Mike for £15 (= most dashing rank) and I'll be happy to match it.
Right you are, CAPTAIN. See, I'm on the ball.
And mental note never to use the word "bet" colloquially when talking to you.
I picture Warren Beatty calling up Carly Simon soon as he heard the song and going, "How much?"
6.5/10 for recovery. Room for improvement.
But you're right: It's ridiculous to take the word bet literally on a site...whose...only ...... stated......... purpose............ is............. to...
... idle away one's late middle age until a better alternative occurs to one.
I wonder if the reason why Prince Andrew wanted to wear a full Admiral uniform was to one up Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence (i.e. Princess Anne's husband).
I've not felt sad about this news at all - don't see the point - a very long life, well lived. But reading the one line in that about:
'The congregation will put on masks and socially distance in line with Covid lockdown rules, with the Queen seated alone.'
- that's pretty sad however you slice it.
It could get worse - Charles and Camilla may decide to form a support bubble with her
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
You seem to have gone all weird, Colonel Topping. I'm getting a bit scared now.
So I take it you are backing out of your proposed bet. No shame in that. We'll leave it there.
We can but we don't have to.
If instead of just repeatedly barking "how much?" you were to frame the bet (around your army rank) you're thinking off, we can do it for a modest sum if we both like the look of it.
It needs to come from you because it's about your personal info and I don't want to be striking the wrong note. I like the old banter but I also like to be sensitive to people.
£1,000 that I wasn't a full colonel.
If I was I pay you £1,000; if I wasn't you pay me £1,000.
Hang on, you already know the answer! That sounds like I very likely end up a grand in the hole.
We can do something fairer and more interesting and for less money. A spread bet.
FM Gen Lt Gen Maj Gen Brig Colonel Lt Col Maj Capt Lt 2Lt OCdt
I "buy" you at Colonel for £1 a rank.
Profit or loss to site funds.
Yes?
LOL it was you who offered the bet in the first place. You presumably realised I knew my own rank at the time.
And wait a minute - you think I was an officer?!!?
Just kidding - my evident lack of common sense gives me away as one. Or an ex-one.
But £1 a rank sounds a bit miserly for a noted denizen of NW3. Make it £5 and write out a cheque to Mike for £15 (= most dashing rank) and I'll be happy to match it.
Right you are, CAPTAIN. See, I'm on the ball.
And mental note never to use the word "bet" colloquially when talking to you.
I picture Warren Beatty calling up Carly Simon soon as he heard the song and going, "How much?"
6.5/10 for recovery. Room for improvement.
But you're right: It's ridiculous to take the word bet literally on a site...whose...only ...... stated......... purpose............ is............. to...
... idle away one's late middle age until a better alternative occurs to one.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
A lot depends upon how Boris’s story ends. PMs’ stories usually end badly, and in his case the potential for it to end very badly indeed remains considerable.
Has any story ended worse than David Cameron's? Possibly not since Eden.
Mrs May's exit was very humiliating.
While sympathetic for it ending the way it did, it was a journey she sent herself down.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
You seem to have gone all weird, Colonel Topping. I'm getting a bit scared now.
So I take it you are backing out of your proposed bet. No shame in that. We'll leave it there.
We can but we don't have to.
If instead of just repeatedly barking "how much?" you were to frame the bet (around your army rank) you're thinking off, we can do it for a modest sum if we both like the look of it.
It needs to come from you because it's about your personal info and I don't want to be striking the wrong note. I like the old banter but I also like to be sensitive to people.
£1,000 that I wasn't a full colonel.
If I was I pay you £1,000; if I wasn't you pay me £1,000.
Hang on, you already know the answer! That sounds like I very likely end up a grand in the hole.
We can do something fairer and more interesting and for less money. A spread bet.
FM Gen Lt Gen Maj Gen Brig Colonel Lt Col Maj Capt Lt 2Lt OCdt
I "buy" you at Colonel for £1 a rank.
Profit or loss to site funds.
Yes?
LOL it was you who offered the bet in the first place. You presumably realised I knew my own rank at the time.
And wait a minute - you think I was an officer?!!?
Just kidding - my evident lack of common sense gives me away as one. Or an ex-one.
But £1 a rank sounds a bit miserly for a noted denizen of NW3. Make it £5 and write out a cheque to Mike for £15 (= most dashing rank) and I'll be happy to match it.
Right you are, CAPTAIN. See, I'm on the ball.
And mental note never to use the word "bet" colloquially when talking to you.
I picture Warren Beatty calling up Carly Simon soon as he heard the song and going, "How much?"
6.5/10 for recovery. Room for improvement.
But you're right: It's ridiculous to take the word bet literally on a site...whose...only ...... stated......... purpose............ is............. to...
To bet politically? Though we all know that's a load of essaitchonetee...
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
A lot depends upon how Boris’s story ends. PMs’ stories usually end badly, and in his case the potential for it to end very badly indeed remains considerable.
Has any story ended worse than David Cameron's? Possibly not since Eden.
I now understand his logic, and it makes perfect sense. If you print your own currency to sell, and therefore to drive your currency down, then you are absolutely easing monetary conditions. It is - effectively - quantitive easing, albeit with the specific goal of devaluing the currency to boost exports.
However, I think it misses another point. World trade collapsed in the 1930s, because countries reacted to competitive devaluations by raising tariff barriers. So while it was good that countries' domestic monetary conditions loosened, the world economic environment was still pretty appalling through most of the decade - with labour participation rates that were fifteen to twenty points below the levels of the 1920s or the post-war period. (Economic growth flatters the mid to late 1930s, because it was off a very low base.)
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the policy vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
In 1990 the Conservative Party was the party of business and moderate Euro-scepticism. In 2019 the Conservative Party(INO) became the party of fuck business and rampant populism.
In 1990 UK politicians of all parties had the chance to shape a workable EU. By ruthless use of persuasion, referenda, veto and respect for democracy UK politics truly could have done something clever. The following years of mistakes, from ERM, watching bogus referenda elsewhere (the 'vote thill you get it right' stuff), the EURO, unlimited FoM with countries at very different stages of development, 'chap in Whitehall really does know best' and all that made Brexit likely. And even if 2016 had gone 52-48 the other way it would not have killed the issue, because the EU by then was configured in ways which would never work for us.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
Whether May was underestimated in reality is left as an exercise for the reader.
I don't mean her competence in office was underestimated, I mean her political skills in getting there were. Gove and Johnson destroyed each other, and Andrea Leadsom destroyed herself, so May got in through the middle.
But again, how much was skill and how much luck? Did she carefully plant the bombs beneath her opponents, or cunningly manipulate friends and allies (if she had any) to undermine her opponents? Or was she simply the last person standing when all her opponents destroyed themselves and each other?
Probably a bit of both. We forget these thngs now, but she was genuinely very popular for her first year.
She was. It proved "thin and wide" but it was there.
She should have rolled the dice and put her deal to the country. Insufficient brio. Insufficient ego.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the policy vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
In 1990 the Conservative Party was the party of business and moderate Euro-scepticism. In 2019 the Conservative Party(INO) became the party of fuck business and rampant populism.
In 1990 UK politicians of all parties had the chance to shape a workable EU. By ruthless use of persuasion, referenda, veto and respect for democracy UK politics truly could have done something clever. The following years of mistakes, from ERM, watching bogus referenda elsewhere (the 'vote thill you get it right' stuff), the EURO, unlimited FoM with countries at very different stages of development, 'chap in Whitehall really does know best' and all that made Brexit likely. And even if 2016 had gone 52-48 the other way it would not have killed the issue, because the EU by then was configured in ways which would never work for us.
It is the biggest political fail for decades.
Unlimited FoM.
There are quite a lot of limits on Freedom of Movement. No UK government ever chose to apply them.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
You really don't think people have underestimated Boris?
He's still understimated by many on this site who call him silly names like "clown" or "BoZo" and we had many assuming he simply couldn't become leader of the party or prime minister even when he was polling favourite.
TBF up until pretty late, it was clear that a considerable number of his political colleagues felt the same way, and they had the power to stop it happening. Coupled with the damning indictments from almost everyone who has ever employed him or worked with him, and the argument that he wasn’t PM material was (and remains) compelling. It is a mark of how desperate a spot they had got into that the Tory MPs were willing to swallow their reservations and gamble.
To become PM, and then win an 80 majority shows he certainly is PM material.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
You really don't think people have underestimated Boris?
He's still understimated by many on this site who call him silly names like "clown" or "BoZo" and we had many assuming he simply couldn't become leader of the party or prime minister even when he was polling favourite.
TBF up until pretty late, it was clear that a considerable number of his political colleagues felt the same way, and they had the power to stop it happening. Coupled with the damning indictments from almost everyone who has ever employed him or worked with him, and the argument that he wasn’t PM material was (and remains) compelling. It is a mark of how desperate a spot they had got into that the Tory MPs were willing to swallow their reservations and gamble.
To become PM, and then win an 80 majority shows he certainly is PM material.
No, really it doesn’t.
As with most other jobs, getting it and doing it well are some distance apart.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
You really don't think people have underestimated Boris?
He's still understimated by many on this site who call him silly names like "clown" or "BoZo" and we had many assuming he simply couldn't become leader of the party or prime minister even when he was polling favourite.
I am pretty sure in private he would acknowledge his public caricature is specifically clown like by design. It is a strength or even a super power of his that shields him from both scandal and scrutiny. Nothing to do with underestimating him at all.
I've never underestimated him as a political brand. It's something we have rarely seen the like of. Blair? Nope. Not the same. Not remotely. He had a brand and it helped him sell the New Labour product. Here, with "Boris", there is nothing to the brand other than himself. The persona. It's both very shallow (content) but at the same time quite deep (the psychology). Books will be written about him and the best ones will be by behavioural scientists not political historians.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
You really don't think people have underestimated Boris?
He's still understimated by many on this site who call him silly names like "clown" or "BoZo" and we had many assuming he simply couldn't become leader of the party or prime minister even when he was polling favourite.
TBF up until pretty late, it was clear that a considerable number of his political colleagues felt the same way, and they had the power to stop it happening. Coupled with the damning indictments from almost everyone who has ever employed him or worked with him, and the argument that he wasn’t PM material was (and remains) compelling. It is a mark of how desperate a spot they had got into that the Tory MPs were willing to swallow their reservations and gamble.
Indeed. Boris Johnson does have one thing that most of his competitors do not, and that is a charisma of bonhomie. Add to this a considerable run of luck when it comes to opponents and it is easy to see why political simpletons/keyboard warriors/fanbois (sorry Philip lol) think he is the new messiah. His essential dishonesty that is currently masked by his charisma will eventually catch up with him, though when it is impossible to predict.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the policy vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
In 1990 the Conservative Party was the party of business and moderate Euro-scepticism. In 2019 the Conservative Party(INO) became the party of fuck business and rampant populism.
In 1990 UK politicians of all parties had the chance to shape a workable EU. By ruthless use of persuasion, referenda, veto and respect for democracy UK politics truly could have done something clever. The following years of mistakes, from ERM, watching bogus referenda elsewhere (the 'vote thill you get it right' stuff), the EURO, unlimited FoM with countries at very different stages of development, 'chap in Whitehall really does know best' and all that made Brexit likely. And even if 2016 had gone 52-48 the other way it would not have killed the issue, because the EU by then was configured in ways which would never work for us.
It is the biggest political fail for decades.
Unlimited FoM.
There are quite a lot of limits on Freedom of Movement. No UK government ever chose to apply them.
Yes, it was free movement of labour, not free movement of pickpockets and undesirables.
I now understand his logic, and it makes perfect sense. If you print your own currency to sell, and therefore to drive your currency down, then you are absolutely easing monetary conditions. It is - effectively - quantitive easing, albeit with the specific goal of devaluing the currency to boost exports.
However, I think it misses another point. World trade collapsed in the 1930s, because countries reacted to competitive devaluations by raising tariff barriers.
That's a competely different point. I agree to an extent, but you overstate the effects of the tariffs. (See Krugman on this). World trade was collapsing because the world economy was collapsing - the tariff barriers made a terrible situation completely disastrous.
In any case, the original point stands - competitive devaluations were a necessary consequence of loosening of monetary policy, which caused boom conditions in many countries between 1933 and 1937. And in depriving themselves of two of the three instruments of economic policy, the EU is economically illiterate, and the whole premise of the ERM/euro is disastrously wrong.
There's nothing surprising or controversial about this - it has been mainstream economic theory in the UK and the US for decades. Anybody with a higher degree in international macro is well aware of it. But German macroeconomics simply doesn't understand it. And the EU (and, disastrously, the europhiles in the Conservative Party in the late 1980s) bought into the continental European analysis.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
A lot depends upon how Boris’s story ends. PMs’ stories usually end badly, and in his case the potential for it to end very badly indeed remains considerable.
Has any story ended worse than David Cameron's? Possibly not since Eden.
On the map, the colour blue is now extinct - at Upper Tier AND Lower Tier. You have to burrow all the way down to MSOA level to get sufficient clumping to see blues. There's one solitary purple holdout at that level, from an outbreak of forty people in West Bridlington sending the incidence up in a population not much over 8,000.
In my area of the Flatlands of South Yorkshire, the big numbers seem to be in the places with big warehouses. Coincidence, or not?
The geography of the stubbornly high spots is interesting - it's almost exactly the geography of the stubbornly high spots last time the tide went out last August.
Some are obviously connected with particular communities, but not all.
I have a feeling that we've reached the low point in cases, though, at least until the vaccines eventually close this down.
EIGHT MILES HIGH David Crosby, Gene Clark, Roger McGuinn
Eight miles high and when you touch down You'll find that it's stranger than known Signs in the street that say where you're going Are somewhere just being their own
Nowhere is there warmth to be found Among those afraid of losing their ground Rain gray town known for its sound In places small faces unbound
Round the squares huddled in storms Some laughing some just shapeless forms Sidewalk scenes and black limousines Some living some standing alone
I now understand his logic, and it makes perfect sense. If you print your own currency to sell, and therefore to drive your currency down, then you are absolutely easing monetary conditions. It is - effectively - quantitive easing, albeit with the specific goal of devaluing the currency to boost exports.
However, I think it misses another point. World trade collapsed in the 1930s, because countries reacted to competitive devaluations by raising tariff barriers.
That's a competely different point. I agree to an extent, but you overstate the effects of the tariffs. (See Krugman on this). World trade was collapsing because the world economy was collapsing - the tariff barriers made a terrible situation completely disastrous.
In any case, the original point stands - competitive devaluations were a necessary consequence of loosening of monetary policy, which caused boom conditions in many countries between 1933 and 1937. And in depriving themselves of two of the three instruments of economic policy, the EU is economically illiterate, and the whole premise of the ERM/euro is disastrously wrong.
There's nothing surprising or controversial about this - it has been mainstream economic theory in the UK and the US for decades. Anybody with a higher degree in international macro is well aware of it. But German macroeconomics simply doesn't understand it. And the EU (and, disastrously, the europhiles in the Conservative Party in the late 1980s) bought into the continental European analysis.
Germany has a pathological hatred of inflation because of hyper inflation and the rise of Nazism that it resulted in.
The problem is that they cannot see the damage their philosophy has done to the rest of Europe
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
You really don't think people have underestimated Boris?
He's still understimated by many on this site who call him silly names like "clown" or "BoZo" and we had many assuming he simply couldn't become leader of the party or prime minister even when he was polling favourite.
I am pretty sure in private he would acknowledge his public caricature is specifically clown like by design. It is a strength or even a super power of his that shields him from both scandal and scrutiny. Nothing to do with underestimating him at all.
Yes, it would be a mistake to take him at face value. The Jeremy Vine story about his turning up late and dishevelled at a conference and appearing not to know what he was doing, with scripted jokes that he got wrong or didn’t remember the ending of - only for Vine to go to another conference a few months later to see word for word the same routine with the same mistakes - is proof of that.
On the other hand, it would be a mistake to assume that beneath his exterior lies someone completely the opposite. Because he is to an extent acting dishevelled and disorganised and chaotic and lazy doesn’t mean that, beneath, lies an analytical, super-organised political machine, who is in reality hard working and on top of all the detail.
I suspect - based on having spent a bit time with him in person both publicly and privately - that his act is in essence an exaggerated form of his real self. The cover he gets from accentuating and playing up his faults is not disguising the brilliant genius that lies beneath, but in negating what would be unmitigated downsides if he were just normally lazy and normally disorganised.
Key insight. Presenting as shallow does not mean he is at heart serious. He could be a shallow person pretending to be a serious person masquerading as a shallow one.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
You really don't think people have underestimated Boris?
He's still understimated by many on this site who call him silly names like "clown" or "BoZo" and we had many assuming he simply couldn't become leader of the party or prime minister even when he was polling favourite.
I am pretty sure in private he would acknowledge his public caricature is specifically clown like by design. It is a strength or even a super power of his that shields him from both scandal and scrutiny. Nothing to do with underestimating him at all.
I've never underestimated him as a political brand. It's something we have rarely seen the like of. Blair? Nope. Not the same. Not remotely. He had a brand and it helped him sell the New Labour product. Here, with "Boris", there is nothing to the brand other than himself. The persona. It's both very shallow (content) but at the same time quite deep (the psychology). Books will be written about him and the best ones will be by behavioural scientists not political historians.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
You really don't think people have underestimated Boris?
He's still understimated by many on this site who call him silly names like "clown" or "BoZo" and we had many assuming he simply couldn't become leader of the party or prime minister even when he was polling favourite.
TBF up until pretty late, it was clear that a considerable number of his political colleagues felt the same way, and they had the power to stop it happening. Coupled with the damning indictments from almost everyone who has ever employed him or worked with him, and the argument that he wasn’t PM material was (and remains) compelling. It is a mark of how desperate a spot they had got into that the Tory MPs were willing to swallow their reservations and gamble.
Indeed. Boris Johnson does have one thing that most of his competitors do not, and that is a charisma of bonhomie. Add to this a considerable run of luck when it comes to opponents and it is easy to see why political simpletons/keyboard warriors/fanbois (sorry Philip lol) think he is the new messiah. His essential dishonesty that is currently masked by his charisma will eventually catch up with him, though when it is impossible to predict.
Most measurements of Boris are national general elections polls where the choice is essentially him or Starmer.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Back when he was a junior minister, a good friend of mine was a civil servant working as part of his team. This friend was always going on about how brilliant Major was, and we had great fun taking the piss out of his genius-complex since Major had next to no public profile and evidenced little brilliance at the time. When he made the top job my friend did get the last laugh. At least for a while.
It is a huge bonus for a politician to be underestimated. Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all reaped huge dividends in this way.
The first three undoubtedly had to brave out the critics. I think actually doing so was helpful only for Maggie - she probably was underestimated a number of times, a serial underestimatee. Major simply became a bunker mentality. May gave herself a little time, but actually finished up not seeing that she wasn't PM material.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
You really don't think people have underestimated Boris?
He's still understimated by many on this site who call him silly names like "clown" or "BoZo" and we had many assuming he simply couldn't become leader of the party or prime minister even when he was polling favourite.
I am pretty sure in private he would acknowledge his public caricature is specifically clown like by design. It is a strength or even a super power of his that shields him from both scandal and scrutiny. Nothing to do with underestimating him at all.
I've never underestimated him as a political brand. It's something we have rarely seen the like of. Blair? Nope. Not the same. Not remotely. He had a brand and it helped him sell the New Labour product. Here, with "Boris", there is nothing to the brand other than himself. The persona. It's both very shallow (content) but at the same time quite deep (the psychology). Books will be written about him and the best ones will be by behavioural scientists not political historians.
He is certainly defying all the normal attributes of true leadership, but this maybe due to circumstance. He reminds me of some young British skiers you see that are totally hopeless in every aspect, but just by good fortune and complete arrogance they still manage to ski to the bottom of a black run unscathed, much to the applause of their British friends, who like them are unable to tell the difference between luck and competence.
Comments
And wait a minute - you think I was an officer?!!?
Just kidding - my evident lack of common sense gives me away as one. Or an ex-one.
But £1 a rank sounds a bit miserly for a noted denizen of NW3. Make it £5 and write out a cheque to Mike for £15 (= most dashing rank) and I'll be happy to match it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56761074
I wonder if the reason why Prince Andrew wanted to wear a full Admiral uniform was to one up Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence (i.e. Princess Anne's husband).
from cases data
from hospitalisations
(for bond/amis fans)
Lawrence Fox seems to have found a fiver or so down the back of his sofa.
Piers Corbyn - food parcels for the intellect.
I genuinely don’t know whether that’s a fear factor issue or something to do with covid being stigmatised.
In any case, a hospitalisation risk of 396 in 66 million doesn’t strike me as ‘nontrivial’.
https://coviddatashare.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/TableCumulative_Rate_20210415.html
Constituency:
SNP: 47% (-2)
CON: 23% (+1)
LAB: 20% (-)
LDEM: 6% (-)
List:
SNP: 36% (-3)
CON: 22% (+1)
LAB: 17% (-)
GRN: 9% (+1)
ALBA: 6% (-)
LDEM: 6% (+1)
via @Panelbase
, 12 Apr
Chgs. w/ 01 Apr
'The congregation will put on masks and socially distance in line with Covid lockdown rules, with the Queen seated alone.'
- that's pretty sad however you slice it.
Difficult to make any comparisons of efficacy with the data at hand, because we need to compare to the unvaccinated.
Going beyond back-of-the-envelope all the way to scientific-wild-arsed-guess level, over the past 7 days, 449,064 cases have been reported in the US, 37,352 hospitalisations. and 4,977 deaths.
If we assumed that the 66 million was a static number (it's not) and all the cases in the vaccinates occurred over the past 7 days (they didn't), we'd have:
Efficacy against disease: around 93%
Efficacy against hospitalisation: around 99%
Efficacy against death: around 99%
As the first number ain't far off the measured efficacy in trials and in practice, the (inaccurate) assumptions should give a handwavy sense of scale of the difference to hospitalisations and deaths.
I'd take that. It would make vaccinated covid less deadly than average vaccinated influenza. While hugely suppressing transmission.
Mission damn well accomplished.
I don't really think that people have underestimated Boris.
EDIT: the dashboard guys told me that that the vaccination to case, hospitalisation and death data is not being provided to them. So they haven't got the raw data to make a connection.....
No, of course 396 in 66 million is trivial.
Even if illness from Covid IS somehow greater than equivalent illness from anything else it is now nowhere near the bar necessary to morally justify demanding curtailment of the liberties of other individuals (and businesses) and running the county's economy into the ground. .
http://scotslarder.co.uk/hairst-bree-lamb-and-summer-vegetable-soup/
Among 25-34 year olds:
Le Pen (RN) : 37 %
Macron (LREM) : 18 %
Mélenchon (FI) : 14 %
Bertrand (LR) : 7 %
Jadot (EELV) : 7 %
Hidalgo (PS) : 6 %
Dupont-Aignan (DLF) : 3 %
https://elabe.fr/1-an-presidentielles-2022/
He's still understimated by many on this site who call him silly names like "clown" or "BoZo" and we had many assuming he simply couldn't become leader of the party or prime minister even when he was polling favourite.
And mental note never to use the word "bet" colloquially when talking to you.
I picture Warren Beatty calling up Carly Simon soon as he heard the song and going, "How much?"
But you're right: It's ridiculous to take the word bet literally on a site...whose...only ...... stated......... purpose............ is............. to...
IIRC the Israelis saw some of their stats stick for a while on the way down....
110 will cook just fine if you leave it long enough.
Boris will finish up being well-judged. He's steered us through Brexit and covid. The quality of his steering may be questionable, but he's done well simply by being at the helm.
To be well regarded simply for being who you were when you were PM - that's only really Maggie.
On the other hand, it would be a mistake to assume that beneath his exterior lies someone completely the opposite. Because he is to an extent acting dishevelled and disorganised and chaotic and lazy doesn’t mean that, beneath, lies an analytical, super-organised political machine, who is in reality hard working and on top of all the detail.
I suspect - based on having spent a bit time with him in person both publicly and privately - that his act is in essence an exaggerated form of his real self. The cover he gets from accentuating and playing up his faults is not disguising the brilliant genius that lies beneath, but in negating what would be unmitigated downsides if he were just normally lazy and normally disorganised.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8-XkiQ16BM
Thank you for the link.
I now understand his logic, and it makes perfect sense. If you print your own currency to sell, and therefore to drive your currency down, then you are absolutely easing monetary conditions. It is - effectively - quantitive easing, albeit with the specific goal of devaluing the currency to boost exports.
However, I think it misses another point. World trade collapsed in the 1930s, because countries reacted to competitive devaluations by raising tariff barriers. So while it was good that countries' domestic monetary conditions loosened, the world economic environment was still pretty appalling through most of the decade - with labour participation rates that were fifteen to twenty points below the levels of the 1920s or the post-war period. (Economic growth flatters the mid to late 1930s, because it was off a very low base.)
Can I highly recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IWTWSS8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
1921 - The Crash that Cured Itself by Jim Grant
It is the biggest political fail for decades.
She should have rolled the dice and put her deal to the country. Insufficient brio. Insufficient ego.
https://twitter.com/andyweedman/status/1382459653863378944?s=19
There are quite a lot of limits on Freedom of Movement. No UK government ever chose to apply them.
As with most other jobs, getting it and doing it well are some distance apart.
In any case, the original point stands - competitive devaluations were a necessary consequence of loosening of monetary policy, which caused boom conditions in many countries between 1933 and 1937. And in depriving themselves of two of the three instruments of economic policy, the EU is economically illiterate, and the whole premise of the ERM/euro is disastrously wrong.
There's nothing surprising or controversial about this - it has been mainstream economic theory in the UK and the US for decades. Anybody with a higher degree in international macro is well aware of it. But German macroeconomics simply doesn't understand it. And the EU (and, disastrously, the europhiles in the Conservative Party in the late 1980s) bought into the continental European analysis.
I have a feeling that we've reached the low point in cases, though, at least until the vaccines eventually close this down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J74ttSR8lEg
EIGHT MILES HIGH
David Crosby, Gene Clark, Roger McGuinn
Eight miles high and when you touch down
You'll find that it's stranger than known
Signs in the street that say where you're going
Are somewhere just being their own
Nowhere is there warmth to be found
Among those afraid of losing their ground
Rain gray town known for its sound
In places small faces unbound
Round the squares huddled in storms
Some laughing some just shapeless forms
Sidewalk scenes and black limousines
Some living some standing alone
The problem is that they cannot see the damage their philosophy has done to the rest of Europe
Indeed I think he is exactly that.
The locals might give us a different picture.